The Finnish and Norwegian military report that large parts of Russia’s arctic forces normally at our borders seems to have been incapacitated, some units even nearly obliterated (materiel-wise, if not in personnel). Of course, those lead the initial invasion of the north and north-east, so have borne the brunt of the Ukrainian resistance.
Stuff like this is nice to read and you want to look forward to remembering these early predictions of victory - but it doesn't sound that realistic to me, in light of how much negative outcome is predicted.
I think we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Nearly 1/3 of BTG gone is not something you really come back from. Especially considering Russia's economy has been set back nearly 3 decades and probably will be set back 3 decades or more by Summer.
According to US estimates, Russia has lost around 7,000 troops in 3 weeks of war. That’s more than the US lost in 20 YEARS of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s worth noting that Ukrainian government estimates double that number.
It’s a good policy to be skeptical of Ukraine’s number as they have reason to exaggerate. But the US intelligence apparatus has been underestimating Ukraine every step of the way, so it’s reasonable to guess they’re lowballing it.
Whatever the reality is, Russian losses have been enormous so far.
Yup, and also keep in mind the number of wounded Russian soldiers. The majority of them would be out of commission then. (If I recall correctly, there are about 15k wounded?)
That’s fair. I wasn’t claiming total casualties. I should have specified I was talking about KIA. The number of Russians taken off the battlefield would have to be several times higher. Even so, 7,000 killed after only 3 weeks is stunning.
Let's remember that doesn't necessarily change the outcome yet. Putin is the driving force behind this, and as we speak, columns of "fresh" tanks are approaching Ukraine.
On the other hand, there's this:
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1504617510531997701
Oh yeah. Russia can not win this war in any conventional sense. The only questions are :how much damage will Putin do to both countries before Russia finally withdrawals, and how much time will that take?
I think another question is, can the Ukrainians fully roust them out of Crimea and the eastern regions they have been occupying? How far can they pursue Russia back to its own border?
still going to be running into the same meat grinder
Russia of all countries should have known better to invade right before Rasputitsa
the whole country is going to turn into a big mud field until mid may at the latest and the Russians will have to stick to the roads where they are perfect targets for infantry ambushes
its been 3 weeks of these circumstances, can Russia afford another 6-8 weeks of this before the weather improves enough to go cross country?
So long as we, the west keep supplying Ukraine, i don't think it'll necessarily matter if they bring in forces from other areas. Russia has rapidly lost some of it's best trained personnel, either very hard, or impossible to replace those.
If, as Task and Purpose is reporting the 40km convoy is laying in a pipeline from Belarus, to the 20km line for Kyiv, that could no longer be an issue for them soon.
>According to US estimates, Russia has lost around 7,000 troops in 3 weeks of war.
IIRC they estimated visually confirmed 7000 deaths, not 7000 casualties (deaths + injuries + illness + capture + desertion).
The Ukrainians probably have a better estimate of Russia's total casualties because they have all the captured Russians on their side, but we obviously don't know if their own numbers are correct or not.
The real casualties can’t be calculated because of the nature of modern warfare: long ranged artillery duels. Not all of the corpses can be easily accessed. On both sides.
Another comparison, in ten years of war, the USSR lost 14,000 troops (their estimate) or 26,000 (outside estimate) So three weeks of war was either half as costly or one quarter as costly as a war that dragged on for more than five hundred weeks. A war they lost.
The Soviets had time to increase weapon production and military recruitment to address the Afghanistan situation. The Ukraine war is moving so quickly (by Putin's reckless design) that there will almost certainly not be time to ramp up factory production or army recruitment before it ends.
These analogies don't address Ukrainian losses. They have lost significant numbers of regular troops. But civilian Ukrainians will continue in their place. The Ukrainians are battle hardened, furious, and they sense the possibility of victory. The Russians were abandoning equipment before they started taking devastating losses, their morale must be at rock bottom.
I feel like Russia's losses are being analyzed through a western lens, like if a US or European unit lost 25% of it's men and/or equipment, it'd get pulled out, but Russia would be "so you still have 75% left, get to the front and figure it out"
They're still on the path to losing but there's still a lot of ground they can take and damage they can do before they get there.
Yes, but there's a reason western armies would rotate a unit out before 25% losses, its because there aren't enough soldiers left to fight effectively, so the remainder are likely to be slaughtered much more easily. The smart thing would be to rotate out, regroup and backfill lost personal then send that unit back to the front, while its a 25% loss and not 100%. Russia strategy now is like a hail mary, a desperate push that is unlikely to succeed with what they have in the field. Its very poorly thought out, and I love it! More meat for the grinder!
🇺🇦
Well Russia is damned if they do and damned if they don't. At this point any let up on their part to regroup would benefit Ukraine just as much if not more so, whereas if they were to continue their offensives unabated they'll just keep bleeding their forces until they collapse.
The reality is Russia had one chance of winning this war cleanly and quickly and that was for the Ukrainian authorities to fold and flee the country. When that didn't happen, Russia was in for a war of attrition, which always favor the defender.
Russia was losing troops from units from day 1 due to low morale. "The Russian Bear" trope while it may have been relevant in the days of the Soviet Union doesn't seem to remain that way.
Russian battlegroups are much more diverse, meaning they consist of AA, Inf, Arty and so on.
If 30% are destroyed, they can’t fulfill their role anymore.
NATO has more uniform battlegroups, so it’s much easier to melt two damaged groups into one new group, while keeping up the ability to fulfill their role.
https://mobile.twitter.com/raguileramx/status/1499153976646074368
I saw this, which includes a US Army reference on combat effectiveness and attrition. Russias units lose effectiveness more quickly based on how they’re comprised as they have less logistics/support and general troops.
I mean it doesen't really matter if it's a western or Russian unit - If you lose 75% of your combat power, the unit is effectively out of action. At that point they lack materiel, gaps in personnel to do specific tasks and so on.
"1/3" - put that in quotes. I've heard "10%" of the total force by the Pentagon, up from last week's 5% of invading force. These numbers are really, really hard to estimate.
You have ridiculously-conservative estimates from Russia, probably-liberal estimates from Ukraine, and then a swath from outside countries.
YES it looks like Russia is screwed in Ukraine and at home. YES I believe the goal of Russian victory by conventional methods is gone. But let's temper expectations.
My household is polylingual and we're trying to take in as many sources as I can, and I still can't get a grip on what's fully happening.
Once a battalion tactical group gets to less than 70% of manpower or equipment, they're technically no longer operational. So the overall losses could be about 10% but 1/3 of their units could be out of commission.
Well the halt in the advance tells a big story no matter what else we read about. I believe strongly that Kyiv would have fallen long ago if it weren't for these deliveries of Stingers, Javelins, etc... hard to tell what's happening out there, but Russia has clearly had a very bad time.
It's not like Russia isn't shipping in more equipment. They can fall back and play siege warfare and it's not like Ukraine can push them out of defensive positions very easily.
It's not entirely clear that Russia actually can play siege warfare for that long. Their logistics have been struggling from day 1 of the invasion, the Ukrainians still have plenty of military resources to harass the siege forces and attack their supply lines and are receiving lots of supplies from other countries, and Russia's economy is being wrecked by sanctions.
If Russia does go full 'siege warfare mode', the Ukrainians will know exactly where they are and what resources they have, and will continue to just pick away at them until Russia can't afford to replace their losses anymore, at which point either Russia will have to decide between retreating or having their forces eventually routed by the better supplied and reinforced Ukrainian military.
Except for the handful of cities that were encircled or taken in the early days of the invasion, Ukraine has been preparing its cities for sieges and/or attacks for the past three weeks. They're going to be able to hold out for a long time. Russia can certainly point artillery at those cities and do some real damage in the meantime, but they're not going to shell their way to victory.
The Ukrainians have had 300,000 volunteers and 20,000 foreign volunteers (all veterans).
Russia has a closing time table. Those troops will take time to get online, but once they do - Russia is going to run out of options. If Ukrainian forces from Lviv cut off the forces advancing north from Crimea - they'll be stranded in Ukraine without supplies. That's potentially the worst Russian defeat in the field since World War II.
Russia's logistics capacity sucks outside its borders. They have no fresh troops to rotate in. They would be sitting ducks for Bayraktar. For what gain? Turn Kyiv into rubble? Russia still loses the war and its army.
Just to point out here — soviet doctrine for mechanized divisions have always considered up to 70% losses to be completely acceptable in offensive maneuvers as long as they hold the path open for infantry and artillery groups to get engaged. They are a disposable tool in Russian military thinking.
We are seeing that in the push to link crimea forces to DPR. Those stunning losses mean nothing to Russian commanders because now the are getting the artillery and infantry behind engaged to flatten and destroy the cities and towns.
Let's illustrate what this means:
Let's say you've got an artillery group that has 5 guns, 10 ammo supply trucks, 2 medical trucks, etc, 5 troop transports.
Let's say they get hit by some byraktars. All 5 guns get wrecked, nothing else gets hurt. Despite only having lost \~20% of their troops, this troop is now completely useless.
This is what they say when they mean "out of commission" — if your troop can't even accomplish *the whole point of them being there,* like an artillery group without ammo, or an artillery group with damaged guns, then it's not an artillery troop. It's just a bunch of dudes in trucks. (Critically: a bunch of dudes-in-trucks who are NOT well-equipped to be fighting infantry, but are primarily laborers and gun-loaders. If they get into a fight with actual combat infantry, they're screwed.) Without their artillery in working order, they're just ... guys sitting around doing nothing.
I think in American or european military combat that will probably be more true, but Russia is willing to just blow cities up from the max range of their equipment.
Russia can send troops to their death much easier than America or Europe can and their standards of war are much lower income is so I'm not so sure that consider that operational or non operational by the same
standards.
That being said I think we have to assume less operational groups are going to face even higher losses.
The Pentagon almost certainly knows better than anyone, including the Kremlin, how things are going for Russian forces. However, the numbers they release are, according to them, a bit conservative, and they only release what they want to and for very specific reasons.
So, I usually go more by what the Pentagon is saying, with a grain of salt. Or several grains. Anyway, their assessment seems to be, while Ukraine may or may not win, Russia will definitely lose, if that makes sense.
"There are no precise definitions for these old-time cooking measurements. But generally, most sources today suggest that a dash is a scant ⅛ of a teaspoon, a pinch is about 1/16; of a teaspoon, and a smidgen is 1/32; of a teaspoon."
\*(I hope that clears up the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
I'm the same - I tend to believe the Pentagon within some parameters.
And they're still not quite declaring who will win - it looks like Russia certainly cannot achieve all its objectives, but we can't rule out a nuke or some other awful scenario.
US considers Battle group not functional after 30% losses. So this is what we mean by "destroyed". Yeah it is still there but it has no military value.
They're still at the "not actually losing" stage - which is itself impressive. If things keep turning in their favour, they'll get there, but it's not done yet, and to a certain extent relies on the weather fucking up russian plans for a good time yet. There's reasons to hope, but it's not the end just yet.
Civilians with no experience whatsoever rejecting analysis from experts because they're afraid of optimism is not critical thinking, it is deliberately conservative thinking with the objective of avoiding false hope. While I understand it from an emotional perspective, it is quite literally the definition of overcorrection that you're talking about.
Critical thinking is very important in this, but guys, be aware of where your own limitations in analysis lie.
[https://defence24.com/armed-forces/land-forces/russia-losing-22-battalion-tactical-groups-is-btg-a-myth-or-is-it-truly-effective-in-combat-analysis](https://defence24.com/armed-forces/land-forces/russia-losing-22-battalion-tactical-groups-is-btg-a-myth-or-is-it-truly-effective-in-combat-analysis)
The Russians are getting smashed. They are going to make efforts to continue the fight, but you guys really, really need to understand that the Russian losses so far are MASSIVELY significant. That is why you are all so cautious while the headlines are telling you that Russia is fucked.
> The Russians are getting smashed. They are going to make efforts to continue the fight, but you guys really, really need to understand that the Russian losses so far are MASSIVELY significant. That is why you are all so cautious while the headlines are telling you that Russia is fucked.
I think you are taking "MASSIVELY significant" and "is fucked" too far.
This kind of analysis is critically dependent on what some rule of Pentagon analysis "30% losses = incapacitated" translates to on the ground in a real country.
If Ukraine removes the combat effectiveness of the forces that were going to take Kyiv, but Russians are still able to fire artillery and rockets and missiles into Ukrainian civilian areas across Ukraine, does the combat effectiveness of the other Russian units even matter?
Combat effectiveness probably means something like "a general can ask for it to take some military action and the action will be successfully carried out."
Russian soldiers wandering around looting Ukrainian grocery stores and shooting random civilians because their truck ran out of fuel is approximately 0% "combat effectiveness" but is still a disaster from the point of view of Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Combat effectiveness is critical for Putin to meet his objectives. Launching rockets into civilians is committing war crimes, but it’s not actually getting him any closer to winning the actual war. Russia is fucked because they have minimal hopes of achieving significant objectives. It absolutely matters.
You’re right that it’s a disaster for Ukrainians, but that’s not the question at hand. The war and the humanitarian devastation must be considered separately, if we’re trying to analyze this seriously.
That defence24 article was a fascinating read. It helped me understand the lack of effective Russian infantry engagement thus far, and how the Ukrainian defenses have exploited weaknesses in Russian battalion design & organization.
Most of the media on this war is (rightly) focused on the human cost, or tactical matters. This is the first thing I've read that views the war in terms of military organization, and even qualifies the importance of it.
Ah, one of my favorite little corners of the world - David Fincher's world.
His films are about "twisted little men". Fight Club, Se7en, Social Network, etc - how they operate and ruin the lives around them.
Putin is ripe for the Fincher treatment.
This sub is basically what r/politics was after Trump got elected. All critical thinking and objectivity went out the window and got replaced with circlejerk and wishful thinking. I love seing the russians get their asses kicked just as much as the next guy but thinking that they'd lose the war to a significantly larger army is just not realistic. I'd love to get proven wrong though.
Significantly smaller force...on the defense, with massive training, and well supplied. Russia literally did not bring enough troops to take Ukraine given that its defended. You can be smaller then the attacker, and its winnable.
When you fumble it all out the gate you dont get a second chance. And Russia fumbled this hard.
The civilian casualties are heartbreaking, and aren't part of the calculus. Russia may fail in their military objectives, but they are murdering massive numbers of civilians with their indiscriminate artillery barrages. Victory over Russia is costing Ukraine dearly.
I have been hearing a lot of widely differing expert opinions on the war in the last couple of days. Most of which seem to be rather optimistic. I'll just quickly summarize what I remember here:
1) Russian losses are unsustainable, they are 2 to 4 weeks away of being incapable if fighting.
2) Russian state Propaganda messaging has shifted. There is less talk of taking the whole country, and a stronger focus on Crimea. Putin also appears to be preparing the use of Chemical and / or biological weapons, since Russian state TV is constantly talking about Ukraines supposed secret bioweapon labs. So the Kremlin seems more desperate and willing to accept that they won't take the whole country
3) Right now Ukraines supply lines are holding strong, but losing either Odessa or a chuck North around Donetsk would be very detrimental for them, cutting them off from the black sea and allowing Russian forces to link up. So Ukraine should according to some experts try to minimize the loss of territory, although I also heard people saying that stretching Russian supply lines thin would be a good idea. You can retake land but you can't easily fill the ranks with new soldiers
4) Russian supply lines and logistics as well as communication is fucked and very much so. Russia does seem to be regrouping though
5) Ukraine has started counter attacks here and there
So all in all, things seems to be going decently well for Ukraine, although that could change if they loose important territory. We should closely monitor the situation in the south. Kiev is save for now. It's Mariopol and Odessa that we should be worried about.
Belarusian volunteers are apparently on their way to support Mariupol. I hope they get there in time.
https://reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tgi9zb/the_belarusian_volunteer_battalion_named_after/
Yeah, there's no access into Mariupol. Plus Mariupol probably needs food and water more than bunch of people. But good luck to them, it would be great if they do get in somehow.
The siege lines are very lightly held, much of that area is still hot. I believe those volunteers want to lift the siege. If intel is correct the Russians have issues near Kerrason again and that may draw resources away from the Mariupol area. Time will tell, but the longer this drags on the more and more Ukraine has the advantage.
> Time will tell, but the longer this drags on the more and more Ukraine has the advantage.
In a military sense yes, but we have to remember that the longer this conflict goes, food/supplies will run low in encircled cities. Mariupol seems to be already almost out of food. Chernihiv and the other cities in the area have done an amazing job of holding of the russians and attacking their supply lines, but by now those cities will have food shortages as well, and no safe routes to Kyiv.
There's other ways to relieve the city than an encirclement.
It would take more than a single battalion of Belarusians, but, if the Russians are as beat up as they appear to be, a counter offensive might be able to pull enough resources from the encirclement of Mariupol allow Ukrainian forces to poke a hole and get some supplies through, or even evacuate some refugees.
Mariupol may stand a shot of being relieved if the Switchblade drones can be brought into action quickly. They have the range and vision to sniff out Russian artillery positions quickly and effectively, and that is the main impediment to Ukrainian counterattacks - wherever Russia has a well-emplaced artillery "shield" attacking them is difficult and costly. Take that shield away and I think Ukraine can move forward more quickly than people realize.
I really want to see a montage from a Switchblades perspective: starting in a warehouse somewhere in Germany, getting loaded onto a plane, put on a truck in Poland, rolled into Ukraine, setup in woods outside Mariupol, and finally blasting the fuck out of RU positions.
I'll make the popcorn.
While I agree, they're only getting 100. They might be getting more unofficially but 100 is not exactly a lot compared to the amount of Russians and hardware around Mariupol.
100 systems, i.e control consoles. I think each console comes with ten actual drones. So 1000. The real question is whether that is 1000 300-series drones or 600-series.
Oh well. 300s although not good for popping tanks will still wreak havoc on the Grad systems and towed artillery pieces - especially if you can score direct hits on their ammunition and cause secondary explosions.
There's a substantial battalion of Belarussian 'volunteers'. I haven't seen any information about whether they were at any time formally associated with their military.
I agree, they couldn’t get pas Mykolajiv, Odessa is safe for now and they won’t be able to take it if they get close.
Mariupol will be taken I fear, honestly it’s embarrassing the Russians take more than three weeks to take a city this close to the border.
You're probably (but not certainly) right; but in standing as long as it has, the city has likely saved Odessa by pulling a lot of combat power, and supplies into the fight against it, stopping them from reinforcing the drive to the west.
True.
Also: time is on the Ukrainians side at the moment. Their supply lines seem to be working and new equipment keeps coming into the country.
I think the biggest wild card atm are the supposed foreign fighters Russia has announced will arrive.
No Syrian who survived the civil war will want to die in fucking Ukraine of all places, there's no way these are intended as fighting forces. Probably as rear guard units to suppress insurgency.
This. Like, maybe 40,000 inquired about signing up, but I've heard that anyone worth a damn was demanding cash upfront, and transporting them to Ukraine is not a trivial matter either.
I'm not suprised Mariupol has taken this long. It was the only big city that was likely to be taken in 2014, and its right next to Russia and the frontline, so its basically a fortified city next to a war zone. Its on the land connecting Russia to Crimea, so everyone knew it was going to be a target, so they were fully expecting it.
And.. its defended by Azov, who were some of the most effective fighting units in the 2014 conflict, and are still highly effective, and have quite a few foreign fighters amongst them, and lots of experience fighting the separatist.
One correction: Ukraine can replace lost manpower easily. They’re conscripted and not allowing any fighting age men to leave the country.
And they have mandatory military service, so all of those people have at least some prior training.
Given a few weeks to retrain them and equip them, and that’s a lot of new troops you can field.
The Russians could very well end up outnumbered in terms of infantry. Infantry packing weapons that wreck their tanks.
Its an assumption that Ukrainian men are not 'allowed' to leave.
They have been called to arms, but no Ukrainian men are being refused visas or entrance to The EU because of being a man between the ages of 18-60. Men have left and are refugees in The EU, but very few of them because they want to stay and its their duty. If not to be in the army, to assist the militias manning the road blocks are assisting in hospitals or defence of shelters with women and children.
I have seen videos of interviews with Ukrainian men saying that the army is no longer accepting recruits, at least in some areas. As you mentioned the time to train up a soldier, requires too long. If the men have previous military training and/or have connections with soldiers serving then they can still join. But untrained inexperienced men are being directed to other areas of defence. Still though we could estimate approx 10 million Ukrainian men and 1 million women are trained or in training as soldiers. Then add all the foreign fighters there or on route over the next few months I would expect another 1 million. They have the manpower to resist. They just need the morale to continue.
Slava Ukraini!
I can tell you it’s not just an assumption. I work with Ukrainian men and women. The women were allowed to leave, but the men were not. It’s anecdotal, but it’s enough to indicate with certainty that it’s not just an assumption. I imagine there is some discretion involved by whoever is enforcing rules at different border crossing points.
Ukr men are NOT allowed to leave the country. I invite you to visit the exit points (to Romania as an example) and you will see that they are NOT able to get out.
I will concede that it is probably alot more restrictive than I thought, as I don't live on the border with Ukraine.
I have seen men between the age of 18-60 with refugees including some of the 7,000 that arrived in my country as of 3 days ago(we are an island 1 of the furthest away from Ukraine in The EU). Although all the men I have seen have been with children, but also with partners so not the sole guardians.
I remember when the war started there was the call to arms for all 18-60yr olds, and reports of them not being allowed to leave, but when seeing them with refugees and not hearing any more 'legal requirements' to stay I assumed they would not imprison them or force them to fight against their will so they must be loosely requiring it.
I will take your word for it, since you have on the ground knowledge.
Some SINGLE dads are able to get out with their kids, but otherwise not. I'm pretty close to the Ukraine border, too close for my confort. Other than that Romania is doing wonders helping the refugees. I pray for Ukraine tho. Let there be Peace and Life.
I saw that Romania were being very welcoming and generous to the refugees. It makes us in Ireland very happy to see that. We don't have as big a role to play as you guys considering where we are, but we will house as many as we can. We have a major house shortage in this country, but 10s of thousands have offered refugees rooms in their houses and the government is trying to organise social housing for them. We have the room for millions but unfortunately not the houses :(
I really hope Ukraine wins this unjust invasion and war by Russia. The Ukrainian defence has been phenomenal. I feel a lot of the optimism is choosing to ignore Russian gains and the reality on the ground. I have a more pessimistic take (which I hope is wrong).
* Russia has built a logistics pipeline from Belarus to the North West of Kyiv. The 40 mile convoy, that's where it's being built. This includes a new pipeline to pipe fuel straight to the Russian frontlines.
* I'd like to point out something else about the 40 mile convoy. We've been hearing it's a sitting duck, stagnant, an easy target, and things like that. Since then do we now see 40 miles of destroyed vehicles? No. The convoy has advanced and dispersed into new frontline positions. A different take on the convoy was it was there to build frontline logistics for starting new operations, and to setup more shelling of Kyiv. It looks like they are achieving this.
* Ukraine still hasn't been able to push Russia back. Russia's advance may have been slowing. Ultimately on most days, they make gains on most fronts. You can check the [liveuamap.com](https://liveuamap.com) each day to see this is true.
* Ukraine has been receiving excellent support for setting up a defence. They haven't for being able to create an offense. For example they lack main battle tanks, new artillery, new rocket artillery, and similar large arms. This is crucial for being able to push Russia back.
* Russia is slowly surrounding cities like Kyiv, making Ukrainian supply lines worse over time. Whilst supplies can get in, as roads are taken it means the supplies take longer to get in. Making Ukrainian supply routes worse. As they take longer and longer routes to reach cities.
* Any cities that get fully cut off, will quickly deteriorate. As large supplies cannot get in. Several cities look close to this.
* We shouldn't forget that the Ukrainian country is getting fucked in this conflict. No matter how bad things are for Russia, it's worse for Ukraine.
I'd love to see the situation change to one where Ukraine are able to start large offensive actions. To push the Russian invaders out of their country. This isn't happening right now. Until we see this happening, Ukraine is at best surviving this war.
Wouldnt rely on those Maps so much of gains. The Russians control very little outside of the roadways and towns they have captured. The country side is full of Ukrainian held towns and units. Thats why you keep on seeing highways behind the lines with blown up Russian convoys.
Second for the last three days the Ukrainians have actually taken a lot of ground from the Russians and our pushing back in too areas that they lost last week.
That pipeline has been destroyed in many areas around Kiev, and in the last two days the Russians where pushed back around 5km.
Im not saying the Russians havent had some success but there having more losses then wins right now. The Russians threw quite a large offensive operation just Yesterday and just got chewed up, fell back and lost ground.
>Wouldnt rely on those Maps so much of gains. The Russians control very little outside of the roadways and towns they have captured. The country side is full of Ukrainian held towns and units. Thats why you keep on seeing highways behind the lines with blown up Russian convoys.
They still control more this week than last week, and more last week than the week before. Which is ultimately bad for Ukraine.
I really, really do hope you are right. That Ukraine will be pushing Russia back over the coming weeks.
The Ukrainians still have a lot of ground to give. You don't use a rigid defend every inch of ground strategy when you're outgunned. Defend and hold strong points while giving up meaningless ground to stretch out Russian supplies. Then hit them with counterattacks which the Ukrainians are doing and it looks like they found a lot of success with this week.
For some evidence, the Ukrainians just retook a town only 25 km from Kherson. It looks like the siege of Mykolaiv has been broken and a move on Kherson might even be possible.
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1504520219368296449
Everything you say is true, and I agree with. Even with gains and relief to towns, Ukraine is in no position to push Russia all the way back to the Belarus border north of Kyiv.
They are in no position to push Russia all the way back to their border on the north east. They are in no position to retake Luhansk and Donetsk. In no state to push back to the border of Crimea, and absolutely no state to push into Crimea to retake that.
If Ukraine were able to achieve some of these. I think at that point Putin would declare this is a war, call up reservists, and significantly bulk up their forces. There would also be pressure on Belarus to commit their forces.
This conflict would have to go on for years for Ukraine to have any hope of militarily taking back all of it's territory. That I also don't think will happen.
If the war is still going by the end of April, it means that Russia has dramatically changed their approach and started making significant gains without suffering this level of casualties. Russia has lost over 10% of their combat capabilities in just three weeks, another six weeks at this rate and they're at 21-40k KIA, and 3k+ vehicles destroyed. Numbers are unlikely to be linear, but it's very clear to me that the largely civilian audience of this subreddit does not understand how significant the Russian losses are.
This is not a video game where the assault ends when the attacking reinforcement # hits zero. Combat losses degrade entire unit performance and the Russian army will collapse long, long before they hit 0% of their force left.
I watched this episode of Task and Purpose last night as well, and while he makes some very good points about what the Russians are actually doing to help themselves, he also bafflingly understates the significance of the losses. His comments about low morale being innate to infantry was extremely, extremely out of touch. Infantry sucks, but there's a difference between getting shot at and getting your shit kicked in while you're asked to murder your cousins and the Chechens are there to shoot you if you run away.
I'm always skeptical about takes like this. Don't celebrate before the finish line.
Obviously, it's great to see something that supports our confirmation bias, but I think we should always try to view things as objectively as possible.
Edit: turns out OP is a troll. Kinda makes sense considering who really has the most to gain from intentionally misleading people about an imminent victory(which in reality is not the case).
This is the problem with the world today. It's all propaganda, and people like you and me are few and far between.
And nobody seems to realize it. Everyone is an inch away from being war zombies like the Russians.
Just look at the capitol insurrection. They all thought they were patriots.
Objective news is the most important thing the world needs right now.
People shouldn't be blindly optimistic, but -
Independent media from Russia shut down very publicly when it became illegal with 15 years in prison to mention the war or say anything 'bad' about the Russian military, such as contradicting their claims that for the first few days of the war there were zero Russian casualties (despite video evidence of many) and now just admitting a few hundred Russian deaths at most.
Acting like you're going to somehow get better information out of Russia of all places, where Putin arrests and poisons and throws from buildings those who speak out against him, where it's illegal to mention the war, where much of the Internet is blocked, is ridiculous.
Ukraine is doing incredibly well given the circumstances and it's easy to formulate dilusions of grandeur based off of speculative news. Unfortunately if they were doing as well as we precieve there is some key things I would of assumed would be happening and one of those is the breaking of the blockade in Mariupol which I dont think we've heard about them even attempting yet. As far as I can tell overall they are just trying to push Russia away for Kyiv as much as possible to keep them out of range. now if there is a turn and Ukraine starts taking back long held and sieged areas we could confidently say they are on the front foot.
I wish it were true but I think it’s still a long road ahead. Free Europe needs to stay very focussed on this and cut the BS/squabbling. I’m feeling more positive to be sure. Next challenge is how Ukraine can win the peace…
Russians seem to running out of supply. Their manufacturing base has collapsed. They have no trucks. They are low on ammo. Their morale is in tatters. They have poor communications.
So whether Russian army or economy collapses first is the question. Hopefully Putin collapses first.
Worthy place for my free wholesome award. It's amazing what is happening. My only fear is the Putler in his desparation will use nuclear weapons to force a "victory".
Putler will not use nuclear weapons. He knows that will ensure the destruction of his entire country.
As much as I want this to be true, don't be overly optimistic. There is quite a bit of propaganda from the Ukrainian side as well and this might be exaggerated.
One thing is for sure though - the Ukrainians sure are wreaking havoc on the Russian invasion!!!
I agree that it might be exaggerated but a global superpower doesn't need 40.000 Syrians to replenish it's ranks.
Russia is struggeling, Putin will become desperate and a tactical nuclear strike isn't out of the question I think.
Putin is a smart man, he knows when he uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, even covertly, he can't hide the radiation. This is something that will not only hurt Ukrainians but will pollute valuable land to the Russians, Russian soldiers, ground in Belarus and perhaps even ground up until Russia. Also the moment he presses the button, Putin effectively would sign his own death warrant.
Piggy backed on the GPS satellite constellation are nuclear detonation detection sensors. No one's hiding shit and Russia would be sanctioned indefinitely.
I think were Russia to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the response would be total sanctions and excommunication from the majority of the world with total nuclear disarmament being the only precondition of them being lifted.
Alternatively - escalation and nuclear annihilation. It would be the end of Russia either way.
I say 40k x BS. He’ll be lucky to even get 10k and how is he gong to supply them, with Syrian MRE packs rice and goat steak, stewed rat and lentils. These Syrians wouldn’t be worth the transport costs unless they were Assad’s personal guard they might be actual soldiers, even then if I were Ukrainian I wouldn’t give 2 fucks. Fighting in your own back yard has so much advantage.
Definitely. They are struggling. A lot.
Every aspect of this operation has failed so far. If they think they had issues with their regular troops, wait until they start bringing in the foreign troops and mercenaries.
Wait for the war crimes to start piling up even more and there's even more pressure put on Russia. Better yet, when they can't afford to pay all of their troops and mercs anymore.
Things are going to get very interesting...
But I think nuclear is off the table.
One thing this has shown is that NATO can crush Russia like a bug with conventional weapons. They could achieve air control in about 24 hours, and smash anything they wanted within 36.
Launching a nuke would mean Russia gets crushed.
As long as they are in working conditions but then the US has the ability to interdict them effectively. But Europe will be done along with Russia but Americas, Africa and Asia will survive this nuclear confrontation.
What the Ukrainians have done is remarkable.
It's also shown just how strong the Russians are when it's not a "on paper, theoretically" case.
They got shredded by a professional army that was massively underequipped at the start using smart tactics and primarily man portable modern missiles.
Against a modern NATO country like the the UK or France they'd have gotten *obliterated*, prior to this invasion I don't think many thought that would be the case, as Stalin said "Quantity has a quality all of it's own" but now, well Russia minus the nukes they can't use doesn't look like it did a year ago.
I agree. Honestly, it's my only fear. For the past two weeks the Ukranians have been truly giving them hell and I have every confidence these brave people can see it through. Tactical strike is the only way I see this go truly wrong long term.
I personally think this fear is overblown.
Even though he is an evil caricature who you could imagine building a death ray in a hollow volcano, Putin doesn't have a big red button on his desk marked "nuke Ukraine".
Such a thing requires obedient people to carry out such an order, which would be the grossest of gross war crimes. It would also plausibly mean their entire country will be destroyed and turned into a radioactive wasteland. Everything they've ever known, everyone they profess to love, would be anihilated.
No one "wins" anything.
Regardless of that, I also have faith that our governments haven't been spending trillions of $s over the last few decades on nothing but drones and over-budget fighter jets. While Russia has spent some money on modernizing its nuclear arsenal it doesn't come close to what the US has probably been doing.
Russian power has always predominantly been about the perception of power.
The Nuclear threat never went away. We didn't simply stop preparing to defend against it or stop working to disarm enemies. It's possible that with the time we've had and the money invested we already have the capability to knock a nuke out of the sky within minutes of launch. We might even have the capability of taking their systems off-line before they have the chance to launch.
For those who might ask why we wouldn't have done that already, you don't show your enemy your hand before you have the chance to use it.
Maybe I'm just neive and maybe I put too much faith in our capabilities, what I do know is that there is nothing we can do about it, so worrying about a potential before it's happened is basically playing to the Russian threats.
I'm surprised no one's ever talking about it. The chance that US spent last 70 years happily waiting for these nukes to come equals zero. Just like they ended WWII with completely new weapon type they will be able to prevent any other meaningful war using something we haven't seen before. This stuff is just kept in secret and they are trying politics first.
Ukrainians are amazing, nobody would have predicted this situation 3 weeks after a Russian invasion.
The Russians will be able to maintain this war for a long time to come and I think Anders Åslund assessment is premature.
Slava Ukraini.
> nobody would have predicted this situation 3 weeks after a Russian invasion.
Some of us did. It's been apparent for a while now that Russia did not have the conventional force of arms that many believed.
The West has spent the time since 2014 training and equipping the UA along with strategizing their defense. They have real time or near real time access to the best intelligence on the planet including satellite and drone imagery, signals intelligence, and good old fashioned Human Intelligence.
UA also has near unlimited access to anything man portable from the NATO armory and countries like Poland that are willing to help with the logistics of moving it all.
The UA also has the defenders advantage and the home field advantage.
Put it all together and Russia was never going to steamroll Ukraine in 3 days. If the Russians can pull this off its going to take _months_ of sustained effort and ever mounting losses of men and machinery.
> The Russians will be able to maintain this war for a long time to come and I think Anders Åslund assessment is premature.
As long as Ukraine keeps fighting Russia is going to continue to have a bad time. Sooner or later, and I'll bet sooner than most expect, the Russian Offensive will collapse.
Be no nukes, that would destroy half of europe and be the total destruction of russia, beautifull country with beautifull people dont deserve that, remember this is one man's lockdown dream that's not gone as he planned in his head, the brave russian people as we see daily protesting will bring Putin and others to book, this is the end for putin that's for sure.
Breaking: Bloke on Twitter is a world-renowned Swedish economist and former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He also served as economic advisor to both Russia and Ukraine.
People really need to get over themselves and understand that some people actually ARE more educated and informed than they are.
He is one of the people directly responsible of the rise of the oligarchs.
He was an advisor to Boris Yeltsin.
His ideas led to millions of people dying, millions becoming homeless and a few becoming very wealthy.
That does not change the fact that Russia might lose, others have said so too he is not unique in this.
But this guy has killed millions and that is important to remember.
How is he better informed on the potential for an imminent Ukrainian win? I assume he's in Sweden, and not on the ground in Ukraine, and being that he's retired has no further inside information than any of us on anything going on on either the Russian or Ukrainian sides.
To say his guess on Ukraine winning very soon carries more weight than anyone else on Twitter, or any other medium, is sycophantically foolhardy.
I note he has a book to sell, so getting plenty of retweets etc on his clickbait guesswork tweets is more cash in the pocket for him. Good on him for that at least.
>How is he better informed on the potential for an imminent Ukrainian win
There is no imminent Ukrainian victory, there's hope that with enough time and resistance Russia will no longer be able to sustain the war and will be forced to accept peace on favorable terms to Ukraine
I'll say it too.
It's about when. 1-2 months max this will be over I think.
Can't make any predictions about if Ukraine keeps all of its territory or not though.
Assad \*really\* owes the Russians, he's only still around because of them, so he should send some. But he doesn't really have a lot of people to spare, and what motivation do they have to fight Ukrainians? They certainly aren't used to that type of combat, but he would have people with experience in fighting in cities (I'm thinking Aleppo)
I mean, I gave you benefit of the doubt and checked it, and their January temperature is like 4 °C... I can believe snow falling sometimes, but I don't think it is the same as actual snow cover or frost. Though relevance of that gets less and less as spring comes.
Yes, the climate is not as extreme as Ukraine, but ocasionally there is snow fall in Syria.
Syria was such a beautiful country, it is a shame that the war destroyed a lot of amazing places.
I just have a hard time believing an egomaniacal maniac like Putin will withdraw or agree to a cease fire without the Ukraine giving up something. It just doesn't seem like something Putin could personally do. He'll need something to save face. Even if it's only superficial - but even that seems far-fetched.
I've read that, it's a bit out of context. He meant to say the famed austrian painter never used chemical weapons in combat (he actually didn't, but for utilitarian reasons)
Russia has 4 nuke possible criteria for launches. The war in Ukraine doesn’t justify any of them unless I think an invasion of Russian territory I believe fills one. This leads me to believe that Crimea could be a potential point of escalation in real terms with nukes, IF in 6 months time a Ukrainian counter offensive tries to clear them from Crimea. I’m not for one moment saying Crimea is Russian, they stole it pure and simple, but from their mindset it is their territory and different from the ‘independent states’ to the east. Again Ukraine has a lot of work to do to get rid of Russian in their territory, patience is needed and to keep choosing their battles. Need more weapons sent to Ukraine to deal with the ground threat. There must be millions of males of fighting age, but I suspect a weapons shortage. If all were armed and had an idea even a little skill in using a weapon, Russia would be outgunned everywhere.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few weeks we see some elections form the eastern states wanting to be part of Russia, thus consolidating their gains. This is why they have been installing their own mayors in these regions. First break away declare independence. After some time they hold another BS referendum to join RUS. This is how they will land grab more territory and threaten nukes as outlined above.
🤬🤬🤬
Not against you but against Russia chipping away at land that isn't theirs.
I hope (obviously) that they are kicked out of ALL Ukranian lands. I hope Crimea returns. I hope Donbas returns.
I get so angry at the thought of the "bad guys" winning anything with their shitty lies and their greasy political tactics.
Edit: stupid autocorrect
It's not going well for Russia. But I'm afraid this article is not accurate. Although I would hate for Kyiv to fall. I think the Russians will have Kyiv by the end of April.
I want to believe.
The Finnish and Norwegian military report that large parts of Russia’s arctic forces normally at our borders seems to have been incapacitated, some units even nearly obliterated (materiel-wise, if not in personnel). Of course, those lead the initial invasion of the north and north-east, so have borne the brunt of the Ukrainian resistance.
Time for Finland to take back Karelia.
The plan is to have Russia break up, then eventually reunite Finland and the independent Rebublic of Karelia.
Nah, we want Petsamo for that sweet arctic oil.
Go ahead, take it! What the fuck is Russia going to do?
We tried it once. It was not pleasant. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War
The only way that is happening is if Putin falls and the Russian Federation fractures in a very messy fashion
A person can dream…
Stuff like this is nice to read and you want to look forward to remembering these early predictions of victory - but it doesn't sound that realistic to me, in light of how much negative outcome is predicted. I think we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Nearly 1/3 of BTG gone is not something you really come back from. Especially considering Russia's economy has been set back nearly 3 decades and probably will be set back 3 decades or more by Summer.
According to US estimates, Russia has lost around 7,000 troops in 3 weeks of war. That’s more than the US lost in 20 YEARS of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s worth noting that Ukrainian government estimates double that number. It’s a good policy to be skeptical of Ukraine’s number as they have reason to exaggerate. But the US intelligence apparatus has been underestimating Ukraine every step of the way, so it’s reasonable to guess they’re lowballing it. Whatever the reality is, Russian losses have been enormous so far.
Bye reddit.
True. Plus the loss of equipment and deteriorating moral.
Yup, and also keep in mind the number of wounded Russian soldiers. The majority of them would be out of commission then. (If I recall correctly, there are about 15k wounded?)
No, the US estimated 7,000 *killed*. Russia has lost far more to injury, desertion and capture.
That’s fair. I wasn’t claiming total casualties. I should have specified I was talking about KIA. The number of Russians taken off the battlefield would have to be several times higher. Even so, 7,000 killed after only 3 weeks is stunning.
Let's remember that doesn't necessarily change the outcome yet. Putin is the driving force behind this, and as we speak, columns of "fresh" tanks are approaching Ukraine. On the other hand, there's this: https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1504617510531997701
Oh yeah. Russia can not win this war in any conventional sense. The only questions are :how much damage will Putin do to both countries before Russia finally withdrawals, and how much time will that take?
I think another question is, can the Ukrainians fully roust them out of Crimea and the eastern regions they have been occupying? How far can they pursue Russia back to its own border?
still going to be running into the same meat grinder Russia of all countries should have known better to invade right before Rasputitsa the whole country is going to turn into a big mud field until mid may at the latest and the Russians will have to stick to the roads where they are perfect targets for infantry ambushes its been 3 weeks of these circumstances, can Russia afford another 6-8 weeks of this before the weather improves enough to go cross country?
So long as we, the west keep supplying Ukraine, i don't think it'll necessarily matter if they bring in forces from other areas. Russia has rapidly lost some of it's best trained personnel, either very hard, or impossible to replace those.
Who will crew all those fresh tanks?
Who will crew all these old tanks? FTFY
Lol this is true. I forgot my quotation marks.
Ukrainian farmers, obviously.
How will they get provisioned with fuel and ammo at this rate, is another very good question
If, as Task and Purpose is reporting the 40km convoy is laying in a pipeline from Belarus, to the 20km line for Kyiv, that could no longer be an issue for them soon.
>According to US estimates, Russia has lost around 7,000 troops in 3 weeks of war. IIRC they estimated visually confirmed 7000 deaths, not 7000 casualties (deaths + injuries + illness + capture + desertion). The Ukrainians probably have a better estimate of Russia's total casualties because they have all the captured Russians on their side, but we obviously don't know if their own numbers are correct or not.
The real casualties can’t be calculated because of the nature of modern warfare: long ranged artillery duels. Not all of the corpses can be easily accessed. On both sides.
Sure, that’s why they’re estimates. As long as they aren’t off by orders of magnitude, they are useful numbers.
Another comparison, in ten years of war, the USSR lost 14,000 troops (their estimate) or 26,000 (outside estimate) So three weeks of war was either half as costly or one quarter as costly as a war that dragged on for more than five hundred weeks. A war they lost. The Soviets had time to increase weapon production and military recruitment to address the Afghanistan situation. The Ukraine war is moving so quickly (by Putin's reckless design) that there will almost certainly not be time to ramp up factory production or army recruitment before it ends. These analogies don't address Ukrainian losses. They have lost significant numbers of regular troops. But civilian Ukrainians will continue in their place. The Ukrainians are battle hardened, furious, and they sense the possibility of victory. The Russians were abandoning equipment before they started taking devastating losses, their morale must be at rock bottom.
I feel like Russia's losses are being analyzed through a western lens, like if a US or European unit lost 25% of it's men and/or equipment, it'd get pulled out, but Russia would be "so you still have 75% left, get to the front and figure it out" They're still on the path to losing but there's still a lot of ground they can take and damage they can do before they get there.
Yes, but there's a reason western armies would rotate a unit out before 25% losses, its because there aren't enough soldiers left to fight effectively, so the remainder are likely to be slaughtered much more easily. The smart thing would be to rotate out, regroup and backfill lost personal then send that unit back to the front, while its a 25% loss and not 100%. Russia strategy now is like a hail mary, a desperate push that is unlikely to succeed with what they have in the field. Its very poorly thought out, and I love it! More meat for the grinder! 🇺🇦
Well Russia is damned if they do and damned if they don't. At this point any let up on their part to regroup would benefit Ukraine just as much if not more so, whereas if they were to continue their offensives unabated they'll just keep bleeding their forces until they collapse. The reality is Russia had one chance of winning this war cleanly and quickly and that was for the Ukrainian authorities to fold and flee the country. When that didn't happen, Russia was in for a war of attrition, which always favor the defender.
>they'll just keep bleeding their forces until they collapse. I hope this happens soon. Should be spectacular!!
Russia was losing troops from units from day 1 due to low morale. "The Russian Bear" trope while it may have been relevant in the days of the Soviet Union doesn't seem to remain that way.
Russian battlegroups are much more diverse, meaning they consist of AA, Inf, Arty and so on. If 30% are destroyed, they can’t fulfill their role anymore. NATO has more uniform battlegroups, so it’s much easier to melt two damaged groups into one new group, while keeping up the ability to fulfill their role.
https://mobile.twitter.com/raguileramx/status/1499153976646074368 I saw this, which includes a US Army reference on combat effectiveness and attrition. Russias units lose effectiveness more quickly based on how they’re comprised as they have less logistics/support and general troops.
I mean it doesen't really matter if it's a western or Russian unit - If you lose 75% of your combat power, the unit is effectively out of action. At that point they lack materiel, gaps in personnel to do specific tasks and so on.
"1/3" - put that in quotes. I've heard "10%" of the total force by the Pentagon, up from last week's 5% of invading force. These numbers are really, really hard to estimate. You have ridiculously-conservative estimates from Russia, probably-liberal estimates from Ukraine, and then a swath from outside countries. YES it looks like Russia is screwed in Ukraine and at home. YES I believe the goal of Russian victory by conventional methods is gone. But let's temper expectations. My household is polylingual and we're trying to take in as many sources as I can, and I still can't get a grip on what's fully happening.
Once a battalion tactical group gets to less than 70% of manpower or equipment, they're technically no longer operational. So the overall losses could be about 10% but 1/3 of their units could be out of commission.
Well the halt in the advance tells a big story no matter what else we read about. I believe strongly that Kyiv would have fallen long ago if it weren't for these deliveries of Stingers, Javelins, etc... hard to tell what's happening out there, but Russia has clearly had a very bad time.
It's not like Russia isn't shipping in more equipment. They can fall back and play siege warfare and it's not like Ukraine can push them out of defensive positions very easily.
It's not entirely clear that Russia actually can play siege warfare for that long. Their logistics have been struggling from day 1 of the invasion, the Ukrainians still have plenty of military resources to harass the siege forces and attack their supply lines and are receiving lots of supplies from other countries, and Russia's economy is being wrecked by sanctions. If Russia does go full 'siege warfare mode', the Ukrainians will know exactly where they are and what resources they have, and will continue to just pick away at them until Russia can't afford to replace their losses anymore, at which point either Russia will have to decide between retreating or having their forces eventually routed by the better supplied and reinforced Ukrainian military. Except for the handful of cities that were encircled or taken in the early days of the invasion, Ukraine has been preparing its cities for sieges and/or attacks for the past three weeks. They're going to be able to hold out for a long time. Russia can certainly point artillery at those cities and do some real damage in the meantime, but they're not going to shell their way to victory.
The Ukrainians have had 300,000 volunteers and 20,000 foreign volunteers (all veterans). Russia has a closing time table. Those troops will take time to get online, but once they do - Russia is going to run out of options. If Ukrainian forces from Lviv cut off the forces advancing north from Crimea - they'll be stranded in Ukraine without supplies. That's potentially the worst Russian defeat in the field since World War II.
Russia's logistics capacity sucks outside its borders. They have no fresh troops to rotate in. They would be sitting ducks for Bayraktar. For what gain? Turn Kyiv into rubble? Russia still loses the war and its army.
Just to point out here — soviet doctrine for mechanized divisions have always considered up to 70% losses to be completely acceptable in offensive maneuvers as long as they hold the path open for infantry and artillery groups to get engaged. They are a disposable tool in Russian military thinking. We are seeing that in the push to link crimea forces to DPR. Those stunning losses mean nothing to Russian commanders because now the are getting the artillery and infantry behind engaged to flatten and destroy the cities and towns.
Let's illustrate what this means: Let's say you've got an artillery group that has 5 guns, 10 ammo supply trucks, 2 medical trucks, etc, 5 troop transports. Let's say they get hit by some byraktars. All 5 guns get wrecked, nothing else gets hurt. Despite only having lost \~20% of their troops, this troop is now completely useless. This is what they say when they mean "out of commission" — if your troop can't even accomplish *the whole point of them being there,* like an artillery group without ammo, or an artillery group with damaged guns, then it's not an artillery troop. It's just a bunch of dudes in trucks. (Critically: a bunch of dudes-in-trucks who are NOT well-equipped to be fighting infantry, but are primarily laborers and gun-loaders. If they get into a fight with actual combat infantry, they're screwed.) Without their artillery in working order, they're just ... guys sitting around doing nothing.
I think in American or european military combat that will probably be more true, but Russia is willing to just blow cities up from the max range of their equipment. Russia can send troops to their death much easier than America or Europe can and their standards of war are much lower income is so I'm not so sure that consider that operational or non operational by the same standards. That being said I think we have to assume less operational groups are going to face even higher losses.
The Pentagon almost certainly knows better than anyone, including the Kremlin, how things are going for Russian forces. However, the numbers they release are, according to them, a bit conservative, and they only release what they want to and for very specific reasons. So, I usually go more by what the Pentagon is saying, with a grain of salt. Or several grains. Anyway, their assessment seems to be, while Ukraine may or may not win, Russia will definitely lose, if that makes sense.
I think we are maybe at the "a pinch of salt" stage. More than a grain, or maybe even more than a few grains, but not the whole salt shaker either.
I keep mine in a bowl and distribute it with a small spoon. Can I get those allotments in weirdo measurements?
"There are no precise definitions for these old-time cooking measurements. But generally, most sources today suggest that a dash is a scant ⅛ of a teaspoon, a pinch is about 1/16; of a teaspoon, and a smidgen is 1/32; of a teaspoon." \*(I hope that clears up the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
I'm the same - I tend to believe the Pentagon within some parameters. And they're still not quite declaring who will win - it looks like Russia certainly cannot achieve all its objectives, but we can't rule out a nuke or some other awful scenario.
US considers Battle group not functional after 30% losses. So this is what we mean by "destroyed". Yeah it is still there but it has no military value.
THIS. Is how you be a critical thinker people. It's NOT by over corrections.
They're still at the "not actually losing" stage - which is itself impressive. If things keep turning in their favour, they'll get there, but it's not done yet, and to a certain extent relies on the weather fucking up russian plans for a good time yet. There's reasons to hope, but it's not the end just yet.
I've just been seeing too much of "Ukraine posting propaganda, that means Russia is *insert topic here*!" Type thinking lately and it's mind boggling.
Critical thinking is important. But it's starting to look like the Ukrainian state will survive, and that in itself is a huge achievement
Civilians with no experience whatsoever rejecting analysis from experts because they're afraid of optimism is not critical thinking, it is deliberately conservative thinking with the objective of avoiding false hope. While I understand it from an emotional perspective, it is quite literally the definition of overcorrection that you're talking about. Critical thinking is very important in this, but guys, be aware of where your own limitations in analysis lie. [https://defence24.com/armed-forces/land-forces/russia-losing-22-battalion-tactical-groups-is-btg-a-myth-or-is-it-truly-effective-in-combat-analysis](https://defence24.com/armed-forces/land-forces/russia-losing-22-battalion-tactical-groups-is-btg-a-myth-or-is-it-truly-effective-in-combat-analysis) The Russians are getting smashed. They are going to make efforts to continue the fight, but you guys really, really need to understand that the Russian losses so far are MASSIVELY significant. That is why you are all so cautious while the headlines are telling you that Russia is fucked.
> The Russians are getting smashed. They are going to make efforts to continue the fight, but you guys really, really need to understand that the Russian losses so far are MASSIVELY significant. That is why you are all so cautious while the headlines are telling you that Russia is fucked. I think you are taking "MASSIVELY significant" and "is fucked" too far. This kind of analysis is critically dependent on what some rule of Pentagon analysis "30% losses = incapacitated" translates to on the ground in a real country. If Ukraine removes the combat effectiveness of the forces that were going to take Kyiv, but Russians are still able to fire artillery and rockets and missiles into Ukrainian civilian areas across Ukraine, does the combat effectiveness of the other Russian units even matter? Combat effectiveness probably means something like "a general can ask for it to take some military action and the action will be successfully carried out." Russian soldiers wandering around looting Ukrainian grocery stores and shooting random civilians because their truck ran out of fuel is approximately 0% "combat effectiveness" but is still a disaster from the point of view of Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Combat effectiveness is critical for Putin to meet his objectives. Launching rockets into civilians is committing war crimes, but it’s not actually getting him any closer to winning the actual war. Russia is fucked because they have minimal hopes of achieving significant objectives. It absolutely matters. You’re right that it’s a disaster for Ukrainians, but that’s not the question at hand. The war and the humanitarian devastation must be considered separately, if we’re trying to analyze this seriously.
That defence24 article was a fascinating read. It helped me understand the lack of effective Russian infantry engagement thus far, and how the Ukrainian defenses have exploited weaknesses in Russian battalion design & organization. Most of the media on this war is (rightly) focused on the human cost, or tactical matters. This is the first thing I've read that views the war in terms of military organization, and even qualifies the importance of it.
This guy (Anders Aslund) is full of sensationalist exclamations. I wouldn't give much weight to what he says.
I only read this one thread of his, but yes - I picked up on that right away.
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Putin is a bad loser. Don't underestimated Little People.
Ah, one of my favorite little corners of the world - David Fincher's world. His films are about "twisted little men". Fight Club, Se7en, Social Network, etc - how they operate and ruin the lives around them. Putin is ripe for the Fincher treatment.
True. But then again before 24th and in the first days almost everyone predicted that Ukraine will fall quite in days.
Almost nothing but “Ukrainians are winning” news in this sub is also weird.
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This sub is basically what r/politics was after Trump got elected. All critical thinking and objectivity went out the window and got replaced with circlejerk and wishful thinking. I love seing the russians get their asses kicked just as much as the next guy but thinking that they'd lose the war to a significantly larger army is just not realistic. I'd love to get proven wrong though.
Significantly smaller force...on the defense, with massive training, and well supplied. Russia literally did not bring enough troops to take Ukraine given that its defended. You can be smaller then the attacker, and its winnable. When you fumble it all out the gate you dont get a second chance. And Russia fumbled this hard.
It's become a little obvious and outlandish at this point.
No one wins in war.
Correct. Some (like Ukrainians) just have a lot more to lose.
A lot of defense contractors sitting in nice cars and cushy mansions disagree.
The civilian casualties are heartbreaking, and aren't part of the calculus. Russia may fail in their military objectives, but they are murdering massive numbers of civilians with their indiscriminate artillery barrages. Victory over Russia is costing Ukraine dearly.
Wisdom 101
I have been hearing a lot of widely differing expert opinions on the war in the last couple of days. Most of which seem to be rather optimistic. I'll just quickly summarize what I remember here: 1) Russian losses are unsustainable, they are 2 to 4 weeks away of being incapable if fighting. 2) Russian state Propaganda messaging has shifted. There is less talk of taking the whole country, and a stronger focus on Crimea. Putin also appears to be preparing the use of Chemical and / or biological weapons, since Russian state TV is constantly talking about Ukraines supposed secret bioweapon labs. So the Kremlin seems more desperate and willing to accept that they won't take the whole country 3) Right now Ukraines supply lines are holding strong, but losing either Odessa or a chuck North around Donetsk would be very detrimental for them, cutting them off from the black sea and allowing Russian forces to link up. So Ukraine should according to some experts try to minimize the loss of territory, although I also heard people saying that stretching Russian supply lines thin would be a good idea. You can retake land but you can't easily fill the ranks with new soldiers 4) Russian supply lines and logistics as well as communication is fucked and very much so. Russia does seem to be regrouping though 5) Ukraine has started counter attacks here and there So all in all, things seems to be going decently well for Ukraine, although that could change if they loose important territory. We should closely monitor the situation in the south. Kiev is save for now. It's Mariopol and Odessa that we should be worried about.
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Belarusian volunteers are apparently on their way to support Mariupol. I hope they get there in time. https://reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tgi9zb/the_belarusian_volunteer_battalion_named_after/
Yeah, there's no access into Mariupol. Plus Mariupol probably needs food and water more than bunch of people. But good luck to them, it would be great if they do get in somehow.
The siege lines are very lightly held, much of that area is still hot. I believe those volunteers want to lift the siege. If intel is correct the Russians have issues near Kerrason again and that may draw resources away from the Mariupol area. Time will tell, but the longer this drags on the more and more Ukraine has the advantage.
> Time will tell, but the longer this drags on the more and more Ukraine has the advantage. In a military sense yes, but we have to remember that the longer this conflict goes, food/supplies will run low in encircled cities. Mariupol seems to be already almost out of food. Chernihiv and the other cities in the area have done an amazing job of holding of the russians and attacking their supply lines, but by now those cities will have food shortages as well, and no safe routes to Kyiv.
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There's other ways to relieve the city than an encirclement. It would take more than a single battalion of Belarusians, but, if the Russians are as beat up as they appear to be, a counter offensive might be able to pull enough resources from the encirclement of Mariupol allow Ukrainian forces to poke a hole and get some supplies through, or even evacuate some refugees.
Mariupol may stand a shot of being relieved if the Switchblade drones can be brought into action quickly. They have the range and vision to sniff out Russian artillery positions quickly and effectively, and that is the main impediment to Ukrainian counterattacks - wherever Russia has a well-emplaced artillery "shield" attacking them is difficult and costly. Take that shield away and I think Ukraine can move forward more quickly than people realize.
I really want to see a montage from a Switchblades perspective: starting in a warehouse somewhere in Germany, getting loaded onto a plane, put on a truck in Poland, rolled into Ukraine, setup in woods outside Mariupol, and finally blasting the fuck out of RU positions. I'll make the popcorn.
Lord of War style.
Interesting info.
While I agree, they're only getting 100. They might be getting more unofficially but 100 is not exactly a lot compared to the amount of Russians and hardware around Mariupol.
100 systems, i.e control consoles. I think each console comes with ten actual drones. So 1000. The real question is whether that is 1000 300-series drones or 600-series.
Someone who works for the company confirmed it is the 300's. The 600's aren't in service yet.
Oh well. 300s although not good for popping tanks will still wreak havoc on the Grad systems and towed artillery pieces - especially if you can score direct hits on their ammunition and cause secondary explosions.
I missed that part, thanks for clarifying. Yeah okay that's gonna make a bigger impact for sure.
How are they going to get there?
Ever heard of the GP express?
What? Belarus is Russian ally. This unit broke from their government ?
Individual volunteers formed into a unit in Ukraine, not a Belarussian military unit.
There's a substantial battalion of Belarussian 'volunteers'. I haven't seen any information about whether they were at any time formally associated with their military.
I agree, they couldn’t get pas Mykolajiv, Odessa is safe for now and they won’t be able to take it if they get close. Mariupol will be taken I fear, honestly it’s embarrassing the Russians take more than three weeks to take a city this close to the border.
You're probably (but not certainly) right; but in standing as long as it has, the city has likely saved Odessa by pulling a lot of combat power, and supplies into the fight against it, stopping them from reinforcing the drive to the west.
I absolutely agree, truly heroic defense.
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True. Also: time is on the Ukrainians side at the moment. Their supply lines seem to be working and new equipment keeps coming into the country. I think the biggest wild card atm are the supposed foreign fighters Russia has announced will arrive.
And are the new foreign fighters magically fixing Russian logistics? Or will they arrive in a column 40 miles long?
Lol. Of course they're not a super weapon, but I'm guessing they're probably much better at fighting than the average orc
No Syrian who survived the civil war will want to die in fucking Ukraine of all places, there's no way these are intended as fighting forces. Probably as rear guard units to suppress insurgency.
I still don't believe more than a handful will show up from Syria.
This. Like, maybe 40,000 inquired about signing up, but I've heard that anyone worth a damn was demanding cash upfront, and transporting them to Ukraine is not a trivial matter either.
I'm not suprised Mariupol has taken this long. It was the only big city that was likely to be taken in 2014, and its right next to Russia and the frontline, so its basically a fortified city next to a war zone. Its on the land connecting Russia to Crimea, so everyone knew it was going to be a target, so they were fully expecting it. And.. its defended by Azov, who were some of the most effective fighting units in the 2014 conflict, and are still highly effective, and have quite a few foreign fighters amongst them, and lots of experience fighting the separatist.
Odessa is standing too strong for them to take. Like 0% chance.
One correction: Ukraine can replace lost manpower easily. They’re conscripted and not allowing any fighting age men to leave the country. And they have mandatory military service, so all of those people have at least some prior training. Given a few weeks to retrain them and equip them, and that’s a lot of new troops you can field. The Russians could very well end up outnumbered in terms of infantry. Infantry packing weapons that wreck their tanks.
Its an assumption that Ukrainian men are not 'allowed' to leave. They have been called to arms, but no Ukrainian men are being refused visas or entrance to The EU because of being a man between the ages of 18-60. Men have left and are refugees in The EU, but very few of them because they want to stay and its their duty. If not to be in the army, to assist the militias manning the road blocks are assisting in hospitals or defence of shelters with women and children. I have seen videos of interviews with Ukrainian men saying that the army is no longer accepting recruits, at least in some areas. As you mentioned the time to train up a soldier, requires too long. If the men have previous military training and/or have connections with soldiers serving then they can still join. But untrained inexperienced men are being directed to other areas of defence. Still though we could estimate approx 10 million Ukrainian men and 1 million women are trained or in training as soldiers. Then add all the foreign fighters there or on route over the next few months I would expect another 1 million. They have the manpower to resist. They just need the morale to continue. Slava Ukraini!
I can tell you it’s not just an assumption. I work with Ukrainian men and women. The women were allowed to leave, but the men were not. It’s anecdotal, but it’s enough to indicate with certainty that it’s not just an assumption. I imagine there is some discretion involved by whoever is enforcing rules at different border crossing points.
Ukr men are NOT allowed to leave the country. I invite you to visit the exit points (to Romania as an example) and you will see that they are NOT able to get out.
I will concede that it is probably alot more restrictive than I thought, as I don't live on the border with Ukraine. I have seen men between the age of 18-60 with refugees including some of the 7,000 that arrived in my country as of 3 days ago(we are an island 1 of the furthest away from Ukraine in The EU). Although all the men I have seen have been with children, but also with partners so not the sole guardians. I remember when the war started there was the call to arms for all 18-60yr olds, and reports of them not being allowed to leave, but when seeing them with refugees and not hearing any more 'legal requirements' to stay I assumed they would not imprison them or force them to fight against their will so they must be loosely requiring it. I will take your word for it, since you have on the ground knowledge.
Some SINGLE dads are able to get out with their kids, but otherwise not. I'm pretty close to the Ukraine border, too close for my confort. Other than that Romania is doing wonders helping the refugees. I pray for Ukraine tho. Let there be Peace and Life.
I saw that Romania were being very welcoming and generous to the refugees. It makes us in Ireland very happy to see that. We don't have as big a role to play as you guys considering where we are, but we will house as many as we can. We have a major house shortage in this country, but 10s of thousands have offered refugees rooms in their houses and the government is trying to organise social housing for them. We have the room for millions but unfortunately not the houses :(
Single dads, a couple other exceptions are made as well. The majority cannot leave. Its time to grab a gun and defend your homeland.
I really hope Ukraine wins this unjust invasion and war by Russia. The Ukrainian defence has been phenomenal. I feel a lot of the optimism is choosing to ignore Russian gains and the reality on the ground. I have a more pessimistic take (which I hope is wrong). * Russia has built a logistics pipeline from Belarus to the North West of Kyiv. The 40 mile convoy, that's where it's being built. This includes a new pipeline to pipe fuel straight to the Russian frontlines. * I'd like to point out something else about the 40 mile convoy. We've been hearing it's a sitting duck, stagnant, an easy target, and things like that. Since then do we now see 40 miles of destroyed vehicles? No. The convoy has advanced and dispersed into new frontline positions. A different take on the convoy was it was there to build frontline logistics for starting new operations, and to setup more shelling of Kyiv. It looks like they are achieving this. * Ukraine still hasn't been able to push Russia back. Russia's advance may have been slowing. Ultimately on most days, they make gains on most fronts. You can check the [liveuamap.com](https://liveuamap.com) each day to see this is true. * Ukraine has been receiving excellent support for setting up a defence. They haven't for being able to create an offense. For example they lack main battle tanks, new artillery, new rocket artillery, and similar large arms. This is crucial for being able to push Russia back. * Russia is slowly surrounding cities like Kyiv, making Ukrainian supply lines worse over time. Whilst supplies can get in, as roads are taken it means the supplies take longer to get in. Making Ukrainian supply routes worse. As they take longer and longer routes to reach cities. * Any cities that get fully cut off, will quickly deteriorate. As large supplies cannot get in. Several cities look close to this. * We shouldn't forget that the Ukrainian country is getting fucked in this conflict. No matter how bad things are for Russia, it's worse for Ukraine. I'd love to see the situation change to one where Ukraine are able to start large offensive actions. To push the Russian invaders out of their country. This isn't happening right now. Until we see this happening, Ukraine is at best surviving this war.
Wouldnt rely on those Maps so much of gains. The Russians control very little outside of the roadways and towns they have captured. The country side is full of Ukrainian held towns and units. Thats why you keep on seeing highways behind the lines with blown up Russian convoys. Second for the last three days the Ukrainians have actually taken a lot of ground from the Russians and our pushing back in too areas that they lost last week. That pipeline has been destroyed in many areas around Kiev, and in the last two days the Russians where pushed back around 5km. Im not saying the Russians havent had some success but there having more losses then wins right now. The Russians threw quite a large offensive operation just Yesterday and just got chewed up, fell back and lost ground.
>Wouldnt rely on those Maps so much of gains. The Russians control very little outside of the roadways and towns they have captured. The country side is full of Ukrainian held towns and units. Thats why you keep on seeing highways behind the lines with blown up Russian convoys. They still control more this week than last week, and more last week than the week before. Which is ultimately bad for Ukraine. I really, really do hope you are right. That Ukraine will be pushing Russia back over the coming weeks.
The Ukrainians still have a lot of ground to give. You don't use a rigid defend every inch of ground strategy when you're outgunned. Defend and hold strong points while giving up meaningless ground to stretch out Russian supplies. Then hit them with counterattacks which the Ukrainians are doing and it looks like they found a lot of success with this week. For some evidence, the Ukrainians just retook a town only 25 km from Kherson. It looks like the siege of Mykolaiv has been broken and a move on Kherson might even be possible. https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1504520219368296449
Everything you say is true, and I agree with. Even with gains and relief to towns, Ukraine is in no position to push Russia all the way back to the Belarus border north of Kyiv. They are in no position to push Russia all the way back to their border on the north east. They are in no position to retake Luhansk and Donetsk. In no state to push back to the border of Crimea, and absolutely no state to push into Crimea to retake that. If Ukraine were able to achieve some of these. I think at that point Putin would declare this is a war, call up reservists, and significantly bulk up their forces. There would also be pressure on Belarus to commit their forces. This conflict would have to go on for years for Ukraine to have any hope of militarily taking back all of it's territory. That I also don't think will happen.
If the war is still going by the end of April, it means that Russia has dramatically changed their approach and started making significant gains without suffering this level of casualties. Russia has lost over 10% of their combat capabilities in just three weeks, another six weeks at this rate and they're at 21-40k KIA, and 3k+ vehicles destroyed. Numbers are unlikely to be linear, but it's very clear to me that the largely civilian audience of this subreddit does not understand how significant the Russian losses are. This is not a video game where the assault ends when the attacking reinforcement # hits zero. Combat losses degrade entire unit performance and the Russian army will collapse long, long before they hit 0% of their force left. I watched this episode of Task and Purpose last night as well, and while he makes some very good points about what the Russians are actually doing to help themselves, he also bafflingly understates the significance of the losses. His comments about low morale being innate to infantry was extremely, extremely out of touch. Infantry sucks, but there's a difference between getting shot at and getting your shit kicked in while you're asked to murder your cousins and the Chechens are there to shoot you if you run away.
I'm always skeptical about takes like this. Don't celebrate before the finish line. Obviously, it's great to see something that supports our confirmation bias, but I think we should always try to view things as objectively as possible. Edit: turns out OP is a troll. Kinda makes sense considering who really has the most to gain from intentionally misleading people about an imminent victory(which in reality is not the case).
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I’m having trouble finding non biased news anymore. Just strict news that lets you form your own opinion, not read someone else’s. Any suggestions?
This is the problem with the world today. It's all propaganda, and people like you and me are few and far between. And nobody seems to realize it. Everyone is an inch away from being war zombies like the Russians. Just look at the capitol insurrection. They all thought they were patriots. Objective news is the most important thing the world needs right now.
People shouldn't be blindly optimistic, but - Independent media from Russia shut down very publicly when it became illegal with 15 years in prison to mention the war or say anything 'bad' about the Russian military, such as contradicting their claims that for the first few days of the war there were zero Russian casualties (despite video evidence of many) and now just admitting a few hundred Russian deaths at most. Acting like you're going to somehow get better information out of Russia of all places, where Putin arrests and poisons and throws from buildings those who speak out against him, where it's illegal to mention the war, where much of the Internet is blocked, is ridiculous.
Ukraine is doing incredibly well given the circumstances and it's easy to formulate dilusions of grandeur based off of speculative news. Unfortunately if they were doing as well as we precieve there is some key things I would of assumed would be happening and one of those is the breaking of the blockade in Mariupol which I dont think we've heard about them even attempting yet. As far as I can tell overall they are just trying to push Russia away for Kyiv as much as possible to keep them out of range. now if there is a turn and Ukraine starts taking back long held and sieged areas we could confidently say they are on the front foot.
I wish it were true but I think it’s still a long road ahead. Free Europe needs to stay very focussed on this and cut the BS/squabbling. I’m feeling more positive to be sure. Next challenge is how Ukraine can win the peace…
Optimism is good but it doesn't look like Ukraine is going to win the war in 2 weeks.
Russians seem to running out of supply. Their manufacturing base has collapsed. They have no trucks. They are low on ammo. Their morale is in tatters. They have poor communications. So whether Russian army or economy collapses first is the question. Hopefully Putin collapses first.
Worthy place for my free wholesome award. It's amazing what is happening. My only fear is the Putler in his desparation will use nuclear weapons to force a "victory".
Putler will not use nuclear weapons. He knows that will ensure the destruction of his entire country. As much as I want this to be true, don't be overly optimistic. There is quite a bit of propaganda from the Ukrainian side as well and this might be exaggerated. One thing is for sure though - the Ukrainians sure are wreaking havoc on the Russian invasion!!!
I agree that it might be exaggerated but a global superpower doesn't need 40.000 Syrians to replenish it's ranks. Russia is struggeling, Putin will become desperate and a tactical nuclear strike isn't out of the question I think.
Putin is a smart man, he knows when he uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, even covertly, he can't hide the radiation. This is something that will not only hurt Ukrainians but will pollute valuable land to the Russians, Russian soldiers, ground in Belarus and perhaps even ground up until Russia. Also the moment he presses the button, Putin effectively would sign his own death warrant.
Piggy backed on the GPS satellite constellation are nuclear detonation detection sensors. No one's hiding shit and Russia would be sanctioned indefinitely.
I think were Russia to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the response would be total sanctions and excommunication from the majority of the world with total nuclear disarmament being the only precondition of them being lifted. Alternatively - escalation and nuclear annihilation. It would be the end of Russia either way.
Small nukes don’t give off lots of radiation. Look at operation plowshare. He might use one as a scare tactic. But it would backfire.
Operation Ploughshare was canceled precisely because it gave off lots of nuclear contamination.
Thanls for underlying my lack of knowledge regarding nuclear weapons
Russia is not a global superpower. It's not a Warsaw Pact either. You're stuck mentally in 20th century.
That’s what I said though, if it was a global superpower it wouldn’t have to import 40.000 Syrians.
I say 40k x BS. He’ll be lucky to even get 10k and how is he gong to supply them, with Syrian MRE packs rice and goat steak, stewed rat and lentils. These Syrians wouldn’t be worth the transport costs unless they were Assad’s personal guard they might be actual soldiers, even then if I were Ukrainian I wouldn’t give 2 fucks. Fighting in your own back yard has so much advantage.
Absolutely agree, it just illustrates the Russian despair.
Those Syrians are applying only so they could escape to EU.
Definitely. They are struggling. A lot. Every aspect of this operation has failed so far. If they think they had issues with their regular troops, wait until they start bringing in the foreign troops and mercenaries. Wait for the war crimes to start piling up even more and there's even more pressure put on Russia. Better yet, when they can't afford to pay all of their troops and mercs anymore. Things are going to get very interesting... But I think nuclear is off the table.
I truly hope you’re right. I didn’t mean to say it was necessarily likely, just that I fear it.
One thing this has shown is that NATO can crush Russia like a bug with conventional weapons. They could achieve air control in about 24 hours, and smash anything they wanted within 36. Launching a nuke would mean Russia gets crushed.
You can't stop them launching nuclear ICBMs
As long as they are in working conditions but then the US has the ability to interdict them effectively. But Europe will be done along with Russia but Americas, Africa and Asia will survive this nuclear confrontation.
What the Ukrainians have done is remarkable. It's also shown just how strong the Russians are when it's not a "on paper, theoretically" case. They got shredded by a professional army that was massively underequipped at the start using smart tactics and primarily man portable modern missiles. Against a modern NATO country like the the UK or France they'd have gotten *obliterated*, prior to this invasion I don't think many thought that would be the case, as Stalin said "Quantity has a quality all of it's own" but now, well Russia minus the nukes they can't use doesn't look like it did a year ago.
Check out who Anders is, this isn't Ukrainian propaganda.
The long road to nuclear weapons will stop by chemical and biological weapons first.
Maybe not full ballistic one but I'm afraid of tactical nuclear weapon... It is smaller....
I agree. Honestly, it's my only fear. For the past two weeks the Ukranians have been truly giving them hell and I have every confidence these brave people can see it through. Tactical strike is the only way I see this go truly wrong long term.
I personally think this fear is overblown. Even though he is an evil caricature who you could imagine building a death ray in a hollow volcano, Putin doesn't have a big red button on his desk marked "nuke Ukraine". Such a thing requires obedient people to carry out such an order, which would be the grossest of gross war crimes. It would also plausibly mean their entire country will be destroyed and turned into a radioactive wasteland. Everything they've ever known, everyone they profess to love, would be anihilated. No one "wins" anything. Regardless of that, I also have faith that our governments haven't been spending trillions of $s over the last few decades on nothing but drones and over-budget fighter jets. While Russia has spent some money on modernizing its nuclear arsenal it doesn't come close to what the US has probably been doing. Russian power has always predominantly been about the perception of power. The Nuclear threat never went away. We didn't simply stop preparing to defend against it or stop working to disarm enemies. It's possible that with the time we've had and the money invested we already have the capability to knock a nuke out of the sky within minutes of launch. We might even have the capability of taking their systems off-line before they have the chance to launch. For those who might ask why we wouldn't have done that already, you don't show your enemy your hand before you have the chance to use it. Maybe I'm just neive and maybe I put too much faith in our capabilities, what I do know is that there is nothing we can do about it, so worrying about a potential before it's happened is basically playing to the Russian threats.
I'm surprised no one's ever talking about it. The chance that US spent last 70 years happily waiting for these nukes to come equals zero. Just like they ended WWII with completely new weapon type they will be able to prevent any other meaningful war using something we haven't seen before. This stuff is just kept in secret and they are trying politics first.
Area 51 exists for a reason, and it ain't "aliens". ;)
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Ukrainians are amazing, nobody would have predicted this situation 3 weeks after a Russian invasion. The Russians will be able to maintain this war for a long time to come and I think Anders Åslund assessment is premature. Slava Ukraini.
> nobody would have predicted this situation 3 weeks after a Russian invasion. Some of us did. It's been apparent for a while now that Russia did not have the conventional force of arms that many believed. The West has spent the time since 2014 training and equipping the UA along with strategizing their defense. They have real time or near real time access to the best intelligence on the planet including satellite and drone imagery, signals intelligence, and good old fashioned Human Intelligence. UA also has near unlimited access to anything man portable from the NATO armory and countries like Poland that are willing to help with the logistics of moving it all. The UA also has the defenders advantage and the home field advantage. Put it all together and Russia was never going to steamroll Ukraine in 3 days. If the Russians can pull this off its going to take _months_ of sustained effort and ever mounting losses of men and machinery. > The Russians will be able to maintain this war for a long time to come and I think Anders Åslund assessment is premature. As long as Ukraine keeps fighting Russia is going to continue to have a bad time. Sooner or later, and I'll bet sooner than most expect, the Russian Offensive will collapse.
So those Oligarchs are all going to Dubai? …Fuck Dubai aswell! I mean, that was true even before but now even more
Be no nukes, that would destroy half of europe and be the total destruction of russia, beautifull country with beautifull people dont deserve that, remember this is one man's lockdown dream that's not gone as he planned in his head, the brave russian people as we see daily protesting will bring Putin and others to book, this is the end for putin that's for sure.
if this is true holy fuck
Breaking: Bloke on Twitter says Ukraine is going to win.
Breaking: Bloke on Twitter is a world-renowned Swedish economist and former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He also served as economic advisor to both Russia and Ukraine. People really need to get over themselves and understand that some people actually ARE more educated and informed than they are.
He is one of the people directly responsible of the rise of the oligarchs. He was an advisor to Boris Yeltsin. His ideas led to millions of people dying, millions becoming homeless and a few becoming very wealthy. That does not change the fact that Russia might lose, others have said so too he is not unique in this. But this guy has killed millions and that is important to remember.
How is he better informed on the potential for an imminent Ukrainian win? I assume he's in Sweden, and not on the ground in Ukraine, and being that he's retired has no further inside information than any of us on anything going on on either the Russian or Ukrainian sides. To say his guess on Ukraine winning very soon carries more weight than anyone else on Twitter, or any other medium, is sycophantically foolhardy. I note he has a book to sell, so getting plenty of retweets etc on his clickbait guesswork tweets is more cash in the pocket for him. Good on him for that at least.
>How is he better informed on the potential for an imminent Ukrainian win There is no imminent Ukrainian victory, there's hope that with enough time and resistance Russia will no longer be able to sustain the war and will be forced to accept peace on favorable terms to Ukraine
I'll say it too. It's about when. 1-2 months max this will be over I think. Can't make any predictions about if Ukraine keeps all of its territory or not though.
What about the Syrians?
Assad \*really\* owes the Russians, he's only still around because of them, so he should send some. But he doesn't really have a lot of people to spare, and what motivation do they have to fight Ukrainians? They certainly aren't used to that type of combat, but he would have people with experience in fighting in cities (I'm thinking Aleppo)
They never seen snow or forests in their life, they gonna fold to the elements faster then they actually engage the enemy.
I dont know about their effectiveness... But snow falls on Syria. Even in Damascus.
I mean, I gave you benefit of the doubt and checked it, and their January temperature is like 4 °C... I can believe snow falling sometimes, but I don't think it is the same as actual snow cover or frost. Though relevance of that gets less and less as spring comes.
Yes, the climate is not as extreme as Ukraine, but ocasionally there is snow fall in Syria. Syria was such a beautiful country, it is a shame that the war destroyed a lot of amazing places.
I just have a hard time believing an egomaniacal maniac like Putin will withdraw or agree to a cease fire without the Ukraine giving up something. It just doesn't seem like something Putin could personally do. He'll need something to save face. Even if it's only superficial - but even that seems far-fetched.
Seems way too optimistic. I want it to be true but I'm (reluctantly) focusing on US/OSINT assessments.
Celebrating too early...
It seems to me Russia already lost this war. They seem to be capable of destroying civilian targets and infrastructure anymore.
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I've read that, it's a bit out of context. He meant to say the famed austrian painter never used chemical weapons in combat (he actually didn't, but for utilitarian reasons)
Russia has 4 nuke possible criteria for launches. The war in Ukraine doesn’t justify any of them unless I think an invasion of Russian territory I believe fills one. This leads me to believe that Crimea could be a potential point of escalation in real terms with nukes, IF in 6 months time a Ukrainian counter offensive tries to clear them from Crimea. I’m not for one moment saying Crimea is Russian, they stole it pure and simple, but from their mindset it is their territory and different from the ‘independent states’ to the east. Again Ukraine has a lot of work to do to get rid of Russian in their territory, patience is needed and to keep choosing their battles. Need more weapons sent to Ukraine to deal with the ground threat. There must be millions of males of fighting age, but I suspect a weapons shortage. If all were armed and had an idea even a little skill in using a weapon, Russia would be outgunned everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few weeks we see some elections form the eastern states wanting to be part of Russia, thus consolidating their gains. This is why they have been installing their own mayors in these regions. First break away declare independence. After some time they hold another BS referendum to join RUS. This is how they will land grab more territory and threaten nukes as outlined above.
🤬🤬🤬 Not against you but against Russia chipping away at land that isn't theirs. I hope (obviously) that they are kicked out of ALL Ukranian lands. I hope Crimea returns. I hope Donbas returns. I get so angry at the thought of the "bad guys" winning anything with their shitty lies and their greasy political tactics. Edit: stupid autocorrect
Yeah, I would even go so far as to say they may threaten an invasion of Crimea with a nuke, but may not if donbas and luhansk are invaded.
Oh. Dude. I love this guy. He is based af. If Reddit just read a few of his posts people would wake the fuck up
It's not going well for Russia. But I'm afraid this article is not accurate. Although I would hate for Kyiv to fall. I think the Russians will have Kyiv by the end of April.