Ukraine is using Western ammo faster than the west makes it
We just have to make ammo faster than the Russians.
The depressing thing is that every Steve Rosenberg piece I see, seems to suggest that the general Russian population's attitudes are hardening towards the war, and Putin's regime is nurturing a siege mentality.
^^ I think that even if the true number of fatalities was shared with the Russian populous it would make them more inclined to seek revenge on Ukraine rather than increase introspection.
I see no change in Russia for decades. I'd be happy to see the country completely ostracised until things did finally change. The fly in the ointment will always be the nukes. We also seem to be living in an age where dictatorships/ authoritarianism is becoming increasingly normal and even admired. Russia, China and North Korea allied together could easily snuff out democracy this century as far as I can see.
Then again, I think this century is a perfect storm for mankind in general. Climate change, decreasing resources, nuclear proliferation, AI. You'd have to be a brave man to bet on humankind surviving this century. Sorry for ot!
The fly in the ointment will always be the nukes.
Let's face it, without nukes, Team USA (probably with Britain as useful idiots) would have already flattened Russia...
(IMO)
waning electoral support for this lot in latvia
As far as I can tell, Russia is loathed and feared by pretty much everyone in the countries it has invaded in the past, except for ethnic Russians who have nostalgia for when Russia was a superpower and they got to run things. Putin and his minions just do not seem to comprehend that other countries aren't run as gangster states.
Many of their stories share not only gruesome details but also an atmosphere of unreality. Ukrainian captives were told that the Ukrainian state had discriminated against them for speaking Russian; now they were “free,” the invaders insisted. But when Russian-speaking mayors and other elected officials flatly explained that no one in Ukraine had harmed them for using their native language, or that Russian was widely spoken in the region, the soldiers didn’t have any response. Dmytro Vasyliev, the secretary of the city council of occupied Nova Kakhovka, recalled that his Russian was more fluent and more grammatical than the Russian of the soldier interrogating him. The soldier was a Kalmyk, one of Russia’s minority groups; Vasyliev had been born in Moscow. He considered himself a Ukrainian of ethnic Russian extraction, which confused them: “They couldn’t comprehend why I, Russian by ethnic origin, did not want to cooperate with them,” Vasyliev recalled. “I said, ‘How can I look into the eyes of my son, my colleagues, if I become a traitor?’ They just didn’t get it.” Since his interview with the Reckoning Project, Vasyliev has died.
But even as they inflicted pain on the most civic-minded Ukrainians, even as they assaulted local leaders, Russian soldiers seemed not to know how to replace them. Unlike their Soviet Communist forebears, who could at least name the ideology that had driven them into Poland, or Estonia, or Romania, the modern Russian army seems to have no coherent theory of government or administration, no concrete plans to run the region, even no clear idea of the meaning of Russkiy mir, the “Russian world” that some of President Vladimir Putin’s ideologues extol.
Over and over again, victims told the Reckoning Project that this extreme behavior came from nowhere. There was no provocation. Nothing that Ukrainians have done to Russians either in the distant past or in recent memory could explain the beatings, the electric shocks, the detention centers, the torture chambers in garages and basements, the utter disregard for Ukrainian life. Only the Russians’ frustration with their own incapacity—their inability to make the Ukrainians obey them; indeed, their inability to understand Ukraine at all—might offer a clue. They were told to transform the schools, but they do not know how. They were told to find secret Ukrainian organizations, but instead they found small-town mayors and local volunteers. On the one hand, they have to send a report back to Moscow, proving that they are in control. On the other hand, they are angry because they exercise so little control.
Steve Rosenberg's reporting is pretty amazing. I can't fathom how it must be like to make the broadcasts under pretty opressive circumstances. he manages to say quite a bit that would get other Russian folks arrested. Pretty ballsy work Mr R.
Yeah, no chance I'd have stayed in Russia doing that sort of reporting - seems a pretty high-risk he could be imprisoned in retaliation for the UK supplying military aid. It's not like Russia has a good track record of treating journalists fairly or caring about international condemnation...
Who are people getting their Ukraine info from? I'm finding Mark Hertling, Philips P O'Brien and Mike Martin good on Twitter, and Ryan McBeth is great on YouTube. Who else? Looking for reasoned analsysis rather than partisan hyperbole and propaganda
@ shermer75, ISW and Mick Ryan (@warinthefture) are both very good indeed for intelligent, reasoned analysis.
And then there is Bellingcat which is, frankly, awesome investigative journalism and goes very deep into a lot of inner workings of Wagner etc.
I use those you mention on Twitter, plus:
Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews (translated clips from Russian TV propaganda)
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
Dmitri @wartranslated
The Moscow Times @MoscowTimes
Reuters @Reuters
The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent
OSINTdefender @sentdefender
Mikhail Khodorkovsky (English) @mbk_center
Lazerpig!!!!
Also @Tendar @RALee85 @GirkinGirkin
Russia failing to ‘punch through’ despite 97% of army at war
Russia has not been able to “punch through” Ukraine’s defences, despite almost all of its army deployed in the war, the UK defence secretary has said.
It comes as the Kremlin has intensified attacks across a swathe of southern and eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, and a major new offensive has been widely anticipated.
“That has come at a huge cost to the Russian army. We now estimate 97 per cent of the Russian army, the whole Russian army, is in Ukraine,” Ben Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Wallace is a Tory so he could be totally making that up, but if its even close to being true, it's a queation of when, not if, Russia lose?
“That has come at a huge cost to the Russian army. We now estimate 97 per cent of the Russian army, the whole Russian army, is in Ukraine,” Ben Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
a) how exposed are thier borders with (IIRC) 9 other countries protected presently? Opportunity is something places like China may seek to make use of.
b) that's a huge percentage committed to an area where the shitshow is very obvious and real. Motivation was never a Russian strong point, it must be desperate now...
c) does that mean there's a 'target rich environment' for some of the shiny new weapons to be pointed at.
@DefMon3 is another one worth following
a) how exposed are thier borders with (IIRC) 9 other countries protected presently? Opportunity is something places like China may seek to make use of.
I make it 11, if you count Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine.
I also use Darth Putin who's gotta a pretty good handle on the aforementioned gangster's mindset.
how exposed are thier borders with (IIRC) 9 other countries protected presently? Opportunity is something places like China may seek to make use of.
For a country apparently genuinely viewing NATO as an existential threat they seem awfully ok with depleting their military along the actual borders with NATO.
Almost as if, they're actually only viewing NATO as a threat because it inhibits their ability to dominate/annex their near abroad. But that cant be right? ....right?
Thinking about it more, there's a *lot* more countries where Russia has been enjoying influence/bullying for a while that it doesn't border with.
Again, if you were somewhere like Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan, might now be the time to look at developing more productive relationships and aligning with others who have a military left...
(I think there is some Central Security Treaty Organisation in Asia, which is basically all the ex-Soviet states herded by Russia).
Again, if you were somewhere like Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan, might now be the time to look at developing more productive relationships and aligning with others who have a military left…
The history of eastern Europe and Asia has been chaotic and was brought to order by Swedish Vikings who founded Kyiv on the site of much earlier settlements. Experts think that the name "Rus" might be derived from "rowers" (of longships)
The Mongols invaded a couple of hundred years later but were eventually forced back eastward and developed Moscow.
That perma-chaos exists today with Russia crossing the border with Georgia and kidnapping residents, the battles between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and even Hungary's current shunning of Ukraine following the Russian invasion. All of the chaos seems to be about enclaves of different cultures that have strong connections with a country other than the one that they live in.
These countries all want to be independent but I doubt that they could organise themselves to achieve that and they certainly don't have economies and militaries to stand up to Russia.
Tajikistan was in a civil war until 1997 and tensions with Kyrgyzstan are high
they certainly don’t have economies and militaries to stand up to Russia.
These things can change surprisingly fast. There are people on the internet speculating that Russia might not actually be the world's number 2 military.
There are people on the internet speculating that Russia might not actually be the world’s number 2 military.
*shocked face*
@ChrisO_wiki is also worth checking
Today I started reading 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' by William L. Shirer. Somewhat chillingly, in the Foreward, it says...
In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.
It sent a chill down my spine reading it.
Lukashenko is now dribbling on about trying to get Biden over for peace talks when Biden is in Poland and in the next breath a gentle reminder of how many nukes Russia has.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64664560
These things can change surprisingly fast. There are people on the internet speculating that Russia might not actually be the world’s number 2 military.
As an armchair strategist I only ever speculate 🙂
Fact remains that Ukraine has had a full five-years of UK training (COVID slowed it down, should have been seven), plus participation in NATO exercises. They also build Russian MBTs and other armoured vehicles, engines, etc.
Georgia is behind that curve with participation in NATO exercises plus additional NATO support in 2022 (another example of Russia's ambitions increasing NATO's participation in the region).
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan don't get additional NATO support although they do have involvement with NATO and Azerbaijan and Georgia have been involved in NATO peace-keeping missions. NATO is steering clear of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Kazakhstan participates in NATO exercises and has wider involvement in humanitarian crises.
Balance that against a Russia with massive natural resources, 80% of its air force intact, etc. then it's reasonable speculation that they don’t have economies and militaries to stand up to Russia. But who knows?
Balance that against a Russia with massive natural resources, 80% of its air force intact, etc.
Having natural resources isn't much use in itself. You need the industrial and technological base to turn those resources into modern weapons. Russia is heavily dependent on western countries for technology. They might be able to produce steel and weld it into tank hulls, but those tanks need engines and electronic systems, etc.
The Russian air force has played little role in the war. That's because they lack precision guided missiles. Without those, you have to fly a $50 million dollar aircraft low enough to drop unguided bombs or rockets. That makes them very vulnerable to lightweight anti-aircraft missiles. The Russian air force may have hundreds of aircraft, but if they tried to actually use them, they would suffer the same fate as their tanks.
On paper, Russia has a very impressive quantity of military equipment. In reality, they seem to have very little equipment that is much use on a modern battlefield and they don't have an economy capable of producing large quantities of advanced weapons.
Without those, you have to fly a $50 million dollar aircraft low enough to drop unguided bombs or rockets
Or you drop tonnes from a big old bomber
...they don’t have an economy capable of producing large quantities of advanced weapons
I'd agree, but there are plenty of places where they can get materiel if they can organise it through third parties. They were getting lots of western materiel until sanctions tightened in 2022 and they're getting drones and missiles now.
It's all speculation though, and here's another bit...
Facts: Russian attacks on Ukrainian air defence (AD) systems have increased. Russia is increasing its air sorties back to their Summer 2022 level (before the tide of this war changed). Ukrainian AD has used lots of munitions against drone and missile attacks. Russia has redeployed arctic AD systems to Ukraine, although two have been destroyed already
ISW speculation: It won't be an extended air campaign but fighter aircraft will support their ground offensive.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
Armchair speculation: Russia won't have 80% of its air force intact for much longer
Noticed John Simpson reporting from Ukraine on the news last night. His books are a fascinating read and he seems to have been at turning points in recent history during his career. Next week its 1 year of the invasion, so between him and Steve Rosenburg I'm sure they will be having a few things to comment on.
Its BBC centric I know but Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet and Orla Guerin all need a mention here too. Been places, seen things, told stories.
Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet and Orla Guerin
The three horsemen of the apocalypse. If they turn up on your manor, you know you're in deep effluent!
I ignore the BBC bashers, their war correspondents and front line coverage are first class.
+1 on the BBC war coverage. I find some of the longer radio pieces very good.
Or you drop tonnes from a big old bomber
Which are extremely easy to shoot down. That's why Russia isn't using them to bomb Ukraine with unguided bombs.
there are plenty of places where they can get materiel if they can organise it through third parties.
"If" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Beyond that, it's strange to argue that Russia is powerful because they have vast natural resources, then to turn around and say that they might be able to import the technology they need by evading sanctions. If they have to evade sanction in order to build weapons, their economy is not capable of sustaining a modern high-tech military.
There seems to be an increasing consensus amongst analysts that Russias 'big push' has already begun.
If that really is the case then they really may be stuffed. The gains they're making are very limited and they are facing stiff resistance everywhere.
I'm seeing reports of 800+ daily casualties, which is mind boggling.
Do they have something up their sleeves? Maybe.
Right now it looks like the need to have something to show back home for the 1 year anniversary and to make a move before all the new Western kit arrives seems to have lead to it all going off rather half-cocked.
I’m seeing reports of 800+ daily casualties, which is mind boggling
My understanding is that they lost 10,000 soldiers in 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, but have lost ~100,000 in 1 year of fighting in Ukraine.
My understanding is that they lost 10,000 soldiers in 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, but have lost ~100,000 in 1 year of fighting in Ukraine.
The difference between fighting lightly armed insurgents with artillery, aviation and armour, and a peer to peer (or near peer) war.
I suspect another difference is that the USSR had a very strong armaments industry and their military was relatively well-trained and equipped. Russia now has a Potemkin army. The budget is siphoned off at every level and their training exercises just consist of getting guys to stand next to a tank or missile launcher so the colonel can take a photo to submit to the general to prove that the training was done. FFS, the soldiers who invaded Ukraine last year took their dress uniforms because they thought they were going to hold parades in front of welcoming Ukrainian crowds.
FFS, the soldiers who invaded Ukraine last year took their dress uniforms because they thought they were going to hold parades in front of welcoming Ukrainian crowds.
That aspect was less a military failure, but more a failure of the FSB and SVR. Either a catastrophic failure by intelligence agencies to understand the real situation in Ukraine, or a failure (due to fear) to communicate it to the Kremlin.
the USSR had a very strong armaments industry
Was a sizeable chunk of it not in Ukraine/other Vassal states and never got replaced when the USSR broke up?
Which are extremely easy to shoot down. That’s why Russia isn’t using them to bomb Ukraine with unguided bombs
I think that you're confusing a relatively well-prepared Ukraine with the likes of Armenia, which depends on Russia for assistance with conflict with Azerbaijan.
The original discussion was states other than Ukraine joining forces, eg Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which probably won't happen because of existing tensions.
Individual much smaller economies and militaries using the lightweight anti-aircraft missiles that you referred to won't get near a bomber at altitude
My understanding is that they lost 10,000 soldiers in 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, but have lost ~100,000 in 1 year of fighting in Ukraine.
On Jan 20th the ISW estimated that Russia had lost 188,000 dead and wounded, at the current rate they will far exceed 200K by the one year anniversary.
Russia have, in one year lost far more soldiers than the USA has lost in every war or engagement they've been involved in since WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Both Gulf Wars etc and the USA has over twice the population of Russia.
It's a mind blowing waste of human potential, all for one old man's ego.
It's also why this was cannot realistically continue in this manner for years and years, the level of intensity is just so far above and beyond what is sustainable, Either things will quieten down into a stalemate or it will be resolved this year, one way or another.
Thing is, both sides have strong political and military incentives to push for a swift resolution and neither see it as in their interests to let the current situation ossify so, as things stand my money is on the latter.
The three horsemen of the apocalypse. If they turn up on your manor, you know you’re in deep effluent!
I ignore the BBC bashers, their war correspondents and front line coverage are first class.
If Kate Adie arrives too, shit gets real!
Leave me out of this, thanks.
Haha!
https://www.ft.com/content/d52bcb07-ba5f-4ffd-a919-53bcf9085690
https://twitter.com/FreeUkraine91/status/1626602869918150662?t=Ln6wph9iFZByZ3pI0U0xuw&s=19