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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

Sunray said:
Its not bollox, because I said welcome the Russians in and shoot them in the back. Its clearly a matter of perspective and context.
You are correct, agressors I don't know of anyone winning war that decends into a war of attrition.
The Ukarianians should be clever because in a numbers games they will lose. Ensure Russians walking about are greeted like friends and butchered like enemies.
History says you will win.
Click to expand...
Maybe you should give President Zelenskyy a call and share your ideas?
 
bluescreen said:
Have we had this yet?
Thread from Bellingcat exec describing how Russian state media were all prepped with a story about the successful operation in Ukraine - that was then pulled and wiped as if never existed. But there are screengrabs. So perhaps there is some insight into Putin's assumptions after all, if the screengrabs are to be believed:
Click to expand...


There arent just screengrabs, there is an archive.org copy of the article which then means I can machine-translate it into English and read it for myself to see what it actually said.

Its an article that assumes there will be victory, justifies the war, talks up what that victory will mean, and then starts going on and on about the future in terms of global powers. Even allowing for some possible misinterpretations during the machine-translation of the article, it does not seem to include anything which requires the victory or the fall of Kyiv or the Ukraine government to have already happened by the time the article is published, and it seems to make reference to how Ukraine and Russias armed forces are still shooting each other.

So for now I have to conclude that the twitter thread is deliberately misrepresenting what the article says and is talking bollocks about it being published prematurely, presumably doing so in order to go along with the propaganda idea that Russia thought it would already have won by now. There is plenty in the article that we could take the piss out of, but that angle taken on twitter doesnt ring true.
 
Sunray said:
120 pages in sorry for tldr

I'm puzzled why the Ukrainians didn't wave them in like they were heros. Then when they aren't looking shoot them in the back?
If the Vietnamiese, the Irish and the Afganis have taught humanity, you can't win a guriella war. Endless body bags are a very good deterrent..
Click to expand...
So there’s another poster whose opinion can be assigned to ‘worthless’
 
bluescreen said:
Have we had this yet?
Thread from Bellingcat exec describing how Russian state media were all prepped with a story about the successful operation in Ukraine - that was then pulled and wiped as if never existed. But there are screengrabs. So perhaps there is some insight into Putin's assumptions after all, if the screengrabs are to be believed:
Click to expand...

archive.org snagged it before it was taken down
web.archive.org

Наступление России и нового мира

Новый мир рождается на наших глазах. Военная операция России на Украине открыла новую эпоху — причем сразу в трех измерениях. И конечно, в четвертом,... РИА Новости, 26.02.2022
web.archive.org web.archive.org


I threw it into google translate 1 para at a time:

A new world is being born before our eyes. Russia's military operation in Ukraine has ushered in a new era - and in three dimensions at once. And of course, in the fourth, internal Russian. Here begins a new period both in ideology and in the very model of our socio-economic system - but this is worth talking about separately a little later.

Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia.

Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but would also be cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.

Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.

The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the insane versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine."

Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. And in the event of the consolidation of the full geopolitical and military control of the West over Ukraine, its return to Russia would become completely impossible - it would have to fight for it with the Atlantic bloc.

Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what boundaries, in what form will the alliance with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.

And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia's relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe. And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise.

Did someone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which took place according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools.

More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin's Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning.

Now the West is trying to punish Russia for the fact that it returned, for not justifying its plans to profit at its expense, for not allowing the expansion of the western space to the east. Seeking to punish us, the West thinks that relations with it are of vital importance to us. But this has not been the case for a long time - the world has changed, and this is well understood not only by Europeans, but also by the Anglo-Saxons who rule the West. No amount of Western pressure on Russia will lead to anything. There will be losses from the sublimation of confrontation on both sides, but Russia is ready for them morally and geopolitically. But for the West itself, an increase in the degree of confrontation incurs huge costs - and the main ones are not at all economic.

Europe, as part of the West, wanted autonomy - the German project of European integration does not make strategic sense while maintaining the Anglo-Saxon ideological, military and geopolitical control over the Old World. Yes, and it cannot be successful, because the Anglo-Saxons need a controlled Europe. But Europe needs autonomy for another reason as well — in case the States go into self-isolation (as a result of growing internal conflicts and contradictions) or focus on the Pacific region, where the geopolitical center of gravity is moving.

But the confrontation with Russia, into which the Anglo-Saxons are dragging Europe, deprives the Europeans of even the chance of independence, not to mention the fact that they are trying to force a break with China in the same way on Europe. If now the Atlanticists are happy that the "Russian threat" will unite the Western bloc, then in Berlin and Paris they cannot fail to understand that, having lost hope for autonomy, the European project will simply collapse in the medium term. That is why independent-minded Europeans are now completely uninterested in building a new iron curtain on their eastern borders - realizing that it will turn into a corral for Europe. Whose century (more precisely, half a millennium) of global leadership is over in any case - but various options for its future are still possible.

Because the construction of a new world order - and this is the third dimension of current events - is accelerating, and its contours are more and more clearly visible through the spreading cover of Anglo-Saxon globalization. A multipolar world has finally become a reality - the operation in Ukraine is not capable of rallying anyone but the West against Russia. Because the rest of the world sees and understands perfectly well - this is a conflict between Russia and the West, this is a response to the geopolitical expansion of the Atlanticists, this is Russia's return of its historical space and its place in the world.

China and India, Latin America and Africa, the Islamic world and Southeast Asia - no one believes that the West leads the world order, much less sets the rules of the game. Russia has not only challenged the West, it has shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over. The new world will be built by all civilizations and centers of power, naturally, together with the West (united or not) - but not on its terms and not according to its rules.
Click to expand...
 
Crispy said:
archive.org snagged it before it was taken down
web.archive.org

Наступление России и нового мира

Новый мир рождается на наших глазах. Военная операция России на Украине открыла новую эпоху — причем сразу в трех измерениях. И конечно, в четвертом,... РИА Новости, 26.02.2022
web.archive.org web.archive.org


I threw it into google translate 1 para at a time:
Click to expand...
It's fair to say a new era's being born
 
I just wrote this on fb



In my opinion the secret to Putins success was that his regime didn't actually seem like a dictatorship for many years. When I was in Russia it sounds weird but I was able to go to events where you could hear people Criticise Putin and say what a travesty his regime was becoming. You could say Putin was a bastard and people didn't seem to care. I was studying in a Russian university and some of the lecturers we had were critical (albeit in a limited way) of the regime in academia whereas they had some foreign academics who were a lot more opposed to him.

There was even an illusion of choice with the elections when I was there, of course everyone knew who was going to win but I remember going around Moscow and seeing ads for all the candidates (of course these candidates were all approved by Putin and the one guy, Grudinin, who did have some success and didn't go along with the role that he was assigned for him to do had to display a notice by his name about how he was a tax evader). It sounds weird but this allowed Putin to say that he was running a democracy or at least not a dictatorship.

Likewise with the LGBT scene in Russia, it exists, but it's very secretive but it's there. It's not illegal to be Gay in Russia, it's just illegal to 'promote homosexuality' and homophobia is stoked up by Putin but the fact of being gay or trans in itself won't get you arrested, just mean it's very damaging to be too open about it.

The fact Putin doesn't (didn't) outright ban criticism of him or things he doesn't approve of, but just make it difficult for any real change to be brought about, can kinda make you feel that things aren't that bad. However the fact even the limited safety valve is disappearing and he is openly interfering in peoples lives more and more, means that undermines the secret of his success.

Putin's Russia isn't (wasn't) like north korea or even belarus or somewhere, and it allowed him to say to russians that there was nothing wrong and that it was all somehow based on a 'social contract' with a slight bit of credibility.

That's the only silver lining I can find all this really, that him openly behaving like a dictator like in North Korea or somewhere (that he was able to say his rule was so different to) is gonna make even more people wake up to the truth about him.

Then again I don't know where I'm going with this, I just feel really sad :(
:(
 
Last edited:
Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's, shares his thoughts. In brief, he thinks the Russians are getting it very wrong indeed, sees little chance of any meaningful success for them.



Here is the meat of his analysis of the fighting itself:

The Course of the Fighting

The hurry to get the war over with explains many of the mistakes made by Russian forces at the start of this war. The first mistake was not to make it a priority to take out the Ukrainian air force and air defences. These are still operating and the skies over Ukraine can be dangerous for Russian aircraft. A second was to dash to get into Kyiv using special forces and light units to remove Zelensky from office and install a puppet. This went awry early on. The unit charged with taking and holding the airport near Kyiv was eliminated before more troops could be flown in. Then bridges were destroyed, adding to the journey facing Russian forces moving into position.

This in turn has put pressure on supply lines. There is evidence, at least from social media, of Russian vehicles running out of fuel and even problems with keeping soldiers in forward positions fed. More demanding logistic chains add complexity to the operations but also high costs. There have also been significant losses of men and equipment. The Ukrainians have claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the Russians – thousands of dead which would mean many more wounded. While Russians fail to talk about casualties, rumours will soon be spreading among other front-line units and this will be bad for morale. Again looking largely at social media, which are of course provide only partial insights, Russian morale seems poor and their attitude towards local people berating them appears bemused more than hostile. Even while still in their tanks they do not always appear to know what they should be doing or where they should be going.

Having tried to make their breakthroughs using only a portion of their available forces the Russians appear to have opted for a more ruthless strategy, relying more on artillery, which in turn will add to the terrible cost to civilian life and property. The attacks on the oil depot near Kyiv will cause lasting damage. The Ukrainian high command will have to face some hard decisions in the coming days about evacuations and tactical retreats. It is already the case, as again could be seen from the first day, that the position in the South is very difficult. The units in the east that have long been deployed close to the separatist territories, risk being cut off by Russian columns coming in from Crimea that have yet to face much resistance. For the moment the city of Mariupol, which has been on the front-line since 2014, is held. But already other towns in the area have fallen, and Ukrainian forces risk getting trapped.

The main attention is now focused on the two key cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv, as we now enter the next stage of urban warfare. This again must be something Putin hoped to avoid, for few events are more less likely to create a sullen and compliant population than days of poorly targeted and often pointless but cruel shelling. The Russian methodology for dealing with resistance in cities was set in the two Chechen wars of the mid-1990s and early 2000s, which led to the capital Grozny being reduced to rubble. More recently in Syria Russian aircraft pounded rebel enclaves, for example in Aleppo, including deliberate attacks on hospitals, to force residents to flee. In Mosul, from 2016 to 2017, US airpower worked with Iraqi forces to push out ISIS in a battle that lasted 9 months. The human cost was immense, although here the readiness of the Jihadists to use local civilians as shields and hostages had much to do with the carnage.

Even if the Russians want to avoid more accusations of war crimes it is impossible to fight in cities without causing great death and destruction. But the main challenge for Russian forces is to take the streets and occupy the centre. The early reports of fighting in the streets of Kyiv and Kharkiv suggest only lightly armed vehicles have penetrated thus far, which would has proved to be hazardous as they are vulnerable to Ukrainian counterattacks. Far more substantial forces are now getting into position but there are limits to how much can be poured into a city at any time. The narrower the streets the harder urban warfare becomes as vehicles can soon get trapped. Taking these cities requires infantry – who offer targets for ambushes. This is when morale starts to be really critical.
Click to expand...
 
Crispy said:
archive.org snagged it before it was taken down
web.archive.org

Наступление России и нового мира

Новый мир рождается на наших глазах. Военная операция России на Украине открыла новую эпоху — причем сразу в трех измерениях. И конечно, в четвертом,... РИА Новости, 26.02.2022
web.archive.org web.archive.org


I threw it into google translate 1 para at a time:
Click to expand...

I just made a post about it some minutes ago having read a translation of the whole thing. Its full of bravado and justification, and if we take individual lines from it in isolation then it is possible to make the claims on twitter that I just moaned about. eg it does include the line "Now there is no problem - Ukraine has returned to Russia" but this is part of the bravado and the assumed certainty of victory, and when read as a whole this becomes obvious. It is a future-looking article that assumes that future is a certainty, and seeks to paint a vision of what victory will mean. It certainly doesnt acknowledge anything other than success, and its chock full of assumptions. But this also means its prematurity is one of its deliberate features, its guff that they can come out with long before having had to actually achieve that victory. For an article of this nature, simply having started the war and declared their intentions is enough to then indulge in the sort of talk the article is full of.
 
I don't particularly agree with everything in this article, but it does deal wth Putin in the context of Russia's fabled 'otherness.' And at least it's written by a Russian and not another excitable western no-mark.

www.theguardian.com

Vladimir Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power | Vladimir Sorokin

Putin’s end goal isn’t Ukraine but western civilization – the hatred for which he lapped up in the black milk he drank from the KGB’s teat
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Pickman's model said:
You gave three examples you said proved a point. They don't. Don't bluster on so.
Click to expand...

I'm not proving anything, it was what they should do in the face of overwhelming numbers. Going out in a blaze of glory.
Your way above your pay grade putting words into my mouth.

Just because you say something, doesn't make it true.

How to fuck with the Russians, with silent cities and smiley faces. Then unexpected death. Fighting them like a medival battle in a field is plain stupid. People are dead that might be alive with this stategy.
 
Sunray said:
I'm not proving anything, it was what they should do in the face of overwhelming numbers. Going out in a blaze of glory.
Your way above your pay grade putting words into my mouth.

Just because you say something, doesn't make it true.

How to fuck with the Russians, with silent cities and smiley faces. Then unexpected death. Fighting them like a medival battle in a field is plain stupid. People are dead that might be alive with this stategy.
Click to expand...
I'm not putting words into your mouth big man
 
strung out said:
Maybe you should give President Zelenskyy a call and share your ideas?
Click to expand...
Its not really rocket science. Some dead people wouldn't be dead now on this premis.
Imaging the fear you'd induce waving in Russian forces with silent streets and smiles.
 
Pickman's model said:
See? Not putting words in your mouth, you said this shit, fucking own it
Click to expand...
Who's won a gurilla war? Because there were no winners in those wars?
In the end they sat down and both sides gave in.

e.g.
www.thoughtco.com

Last Days of the Vietnam War & the Paris Peace Accords

With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, the United States ended its direct involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1974, North Vietnam began offensive operations against South Vietnam. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.
www.thoughtco.com www.thoughtco.com
 
frogwoman said:
I just wrote this on fb



In my opinion the secret to Putins success was that his regime didn't actually seem like a dictatorship for many years. When I was in Russia it sounds weird but I was able to go to events where you could hear people Criticise Putin and say what a travesty his regime was becoming. You could say Putin was a bastard and people didn't seem to care. I was studying in a Russian university and some of the lecturers we had were critical (albeit in a limited way) of the regime in academia whereas they had some foreign academics who were a lot more opposed to him.

There was even an illusion of choice with the elections when I was there, of course everyone knew who was going to win but I remember going around Moscow and seeing ads for all the candidates (of course these candidates were all approved by Putin and the one guy, Grudinin, who did have some success and didn't go along with the role that he was assigned for him to do had to display a notice by his name about how he was a tax evader). It sounds weird but this allowed Putin to say that he was running a democracy or at least not a dictatorship.

Likewise with the LGBT scene in Russia, it exists, but it's very secretive but it's there. It's not illegal to be Gay in Russia, it's just illegal to 'promote homosexuality' and homophobia is stoked up by Putin but the fact of being gay or trans in itself won't get you arrested, just mean it's very damaging to be too open about it.

The fact Putin doesn't (didn't) outright ban criticism of him or things he doesn't approve of, but just make it difficult for any real change to be brought about, can kinda make you feel that things aren't that bad. However the fact even the limited safety valve is disappearing and he is openly interfering in peoples lives more and more, means that undermines the secret of his success.

Putin's Russia isn't (wasn't) like north korea or even belarus or somewhere, and it allowed him to say to russians that there was nothing wrong and that it was all somehow based on a 'social contract' with a slight bit of credibility.

That's the only silver lining I can find all this really, that him openly behaving like a dictator like in North Korea or somewhere (that he was able to say his rule was so different to) is gonna make even more people wake up to the truth about him.

Then again I don't know where I'm going with this, I just feel really sad :(
:(
Click to expand...
Pretty much spot on. It takes somebody who has spent time there to fully understand what's going on. And the fact that dreams of bringing Russia into the western fold are just that: dreams.

We should be aware that no matter if the west and its cultivated allies prevail in the current crisis, it will all arise again even if after some of us are long gone.
 
Sunray said:
Who's won a gurilla war? Because there were no winners in those wars?
In the end they sat down and both sides gave in.

e.g.
www.thoughtco.com

Last Days of the Vietnam War & the Paris Peace Accords

With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, the United States ended its direct involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1974, North Vietnam began offensive operations against South Vietnam. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.
www.thoughtco.com www.thoughtco.com
Click to expand...
Go to bed, you're embarrassing yourself
 
Sunray said:
I'm not proving anything, it was what they should do in the face of overwhelming numbers. Going out in a blaze of glory.
Your way above your pay grade putting words into my mouth.

Just because you say something, doesn't make it true.

How to fuck with the Russians, with silent cities and smiley faces. Then unexpected death. Fighting them like a medival battle in a field is plain stupid. People are dead that might be alive with this stategy.
Click to expand...
Jesus Christ, listen to yourself.
 
Diamond said:
Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's, shares his thoughts. In brief, he thinks the Russians are getting it very wrong indeed, sees little chance of any meaningful success for them.



Here is the meat of his analysis of the fighting itself:
Click to expand...


Well I read the whole post and its incredibly similar to everything else we've heard on the subject.

Although at one point he appears to deny himself much future wiggle room by saying "It might be thought that a few days of limited progress will soon become irrelevant once the raw power of the Russian armed forces are brought to bear, but this is wrong. ", he then goes on to discuss many other potential phases and possibilities that dont actually exclude the possibility of Russian victory in the first phase.

When I boil all his words down, the only thing I think he is really ruling out is the implausible scenario where Russia rolled in virtually unopposed and instantly installed a puppet government that enough Ukrainians would support via some kind of easy victory in the battle for hearts and minds. Thats the sort of scenario that had many people scratching their heads about how it could possibly transpire. The sort of scenario that if we allow ourselves to imagine Putin was banking on, we become tempted to think hes gone mad or lost his critical faculties and grip on reality. I dont buy it, and I expect to have to wait a little while yet before I can start to make assumptions about what Putin and Russia were actually banking on, and whether those things have actually all failed to materialise in ways that dooms Russia to failure.

I am left with the distinct impression that no article like that, written at a moment like this, by people from our side, wants to give any room at all to discuss any ways that Russia could actually make any gains from the war they have indulged in. And this rather limits my sense of how well rounded such analysis is.
 
Sunray said:
Do you think shooting at the Russians is the best approach?
Click to expand...
I don't advocate shooting at any real life human ( or other animal for that matter) targets from the comfort of my centrally-heated living room. Nor should you.
 
Crispy said:
archive.org snagged it before it was taken down
web.archive.org

Наступление России и нового мира

Новый мир рождается на наших глазах. Военная операция России на Украине открыла новую эпоху — причем сразу в трех измерениях. И конечно, в четвертом,... РИА Новости, 26.02.2022
web.archive.org web.archive.org


I threw it into google translate 1 para at a time:
Click to expand...

That's actually terrifying.
 
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