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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

Whither the foreign fighters flocking to the blue-and-yellow flag? The answer may surprise you!

t.co

Making the Most of Foreign Volunteers in Ukraine - War on the Rocks

Editor’s note: Don’t miss our comprehensive guide to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Just days into Russia's attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr
t.co

My guess is that this lot will find that the war is over before they can be deployed. Either that, or they'll be used as cannon fodder on the hottest fronts.
 
Weller said:
Ive been trying to avoid twitter as its getting seriously difficult in this sad fucked up world for me to distinguish between trolling , propaganda and what may actually be happening whatever it is it makes me want to scratch my eyes out or get very drunk :mad:

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I'd be wary of setting much store by these spontaneous expressions of support for the War which, according to Russian state media, isn't even happening. In so far as this kind of stuff is actually happening, much of it will be happening at gunpoint. Putin's regime has extensive form for this type of shit.
 
We are approaching 2 weeks of the war now.

It seems like things have kind of stalled? Mariupol is under siege, the convoy to Kyiv seems to have come to a grinding halt, the Russians are outside Kharkiv but have failed to encircle it. Seems like that has been the state of play for a long time now with very little progress. After the 60km convoy debacle, I can't imagine Kyiv falling anytime soon, it looks like Russia would have to be up for months or years of attrition to grind Kyiv down. However, time is also on Ukraine's side as Stingers and Javelins can still freely cross over the Polish border to Kyiv, Odesa, and basically all major cities other than Mariupol and Kherson, whereas Russia's economy, domestic situation, political stability and soldiers morale is going to worsen as time goes on.
 
ska invita said:
As agricola says Ukraine have already lost control of significant territory south and east. THat is a degree of Russian victory. Giving that up officially via peace talks isnt that insane- its exactly the kind of demand from Russia you can expect to have in the settlement, and if there is to be a settlement its the kind of thing Ukraine are going to have to agree too. People were speculating about a partition from before the invasion happened.
The only other option is to push out occupying Russian forces militarily.
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Yeah but this is all very easy to say from a distance... Principles are easy when it's not you making the choices. You are saying that the inhabitants of those places should just put their hands up and spend the rest of their lives under occupation. These aren't insignificant markers on a map; Mariupol is the size of Cardiff. Kherson Belfast. Melitopol York. The people who live there have turned out to protest in the face of armed troops... They have and need agency in this and shouldn't be used as bargaining chips. Carving up nations like this is Imperialism. It's what got use here, and it's no solution.

That said yes, there may be some compromises that can be made, I don't now enough about Donbas (or indeed the rest of the place) to have the vaguest idea about what might be acceptable there. I'm more disagreeing with this principle that a lack of compromise on some things represents a bullish desire to cling onto lost territory.
 
Idris2002 said:
Whither the foreign fighters flocking to the blue-and-yellow flag? The answer may surprise you!

t.co

Making the Most of Foreign Volunteers in Ukraine - War on the Rocks

Editor’s note: Don’t miss our comprehensive guide to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Just days into Russia's attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr
t.co

My guess is that this lot will find that the war is over before they can be deployed. Either that, or they'll be used as cannon fodder on the hottest fronts.
Click to expand...
It’s all very strange. they look excited in that way that soon to be dead boys do on the hundred year old off to war photos. Idk what is going on with the dude right at the back. 4BD02AED-F60C-4251-8E39-EC9B889ED93C.jpeg
 
Rimbaud said:
We are approaching 2 weeks of the war now.

It seems like things have kind of stalled? Mariupol is under siege, the convoy to Kyiv seems to have come to a grinding halt, the Russians are outside Kharkiv but have failed to encircle it. Seems like that has been the state of play for a long time now with very little progress. After the 60km convoy debacle, I can't imagine Kyiv falling anytime soon, it looks like Russia would have to be up for months or years of attrition to grind Kyiv down. However, time is also on Ukraine's side as Stingers and Javelins can still freely cross over the Polish border to Kyiv, Odesa, and basically all major cities other than Mariupol and Kherson, whereas Russia's economy, domestic situation, political stability and soldiers morale is going to worsen as time goes on.
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I'm really wary when the impression of stalling happens for a few days. I think I expect our impression of how vulnerable Kyiv is to have changed again by the time we reach the two week mark. But I think like this partly because I dont want to build my hopes up and then find them suddenly crushed. But also because yesterdays report mentioned regrouping. I expect their next update will be out in a few hours and I have no idea at all what it will say.

Yesterdays report:

 
I'm also really wary of all the talk of Russian failure because it took over 2 weeks for the USA & Co to take Baghdad, despite the massive use of 'shock and awe', total air dominance and many years of crippling sanctions beforehand. And during that period, Russian-linked propaganda sources posing as daily news about the military situation loved to talk up the idea that the USAs invasion had stalled.
 
bimble said:
What does regrouping actually mean ?
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I guess it can mean many things ranging from moving shit around, consolidating, waiting for supplies to catch up, synchronising plans for particular operations etc.

Theres a fair bit more detail in the full report that the tweet I mentioned links to. But I mostly rely on hindsight at time like this, and as of the last report the timescale for renewed operations on various fronts seemed to be 24-48 hours. The very end of yesterdays report said:

Immediate items to watch

Russian operations northwest of Kyiv may resume attacks on the city and/or attempts to encircle it to the west in the next 24-48 hours;

Russian forces east of Kyiv may resume their drive likely intended to envelop Kyiv from the east;

Russian forces may attempt amphibious landings anywhere along the Black Sea Coast from Odesa to the mouth of the Southern Bug in the next 24-48 hours.
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I certainly wouldnt make too many assumptions based on simplistic info about what percentage of Russian forces previously gathered at the border are now believed to be inside Ukraine.
 
Trying to recruit Syrian mercenaries (and pay them rubles?) doesn’t sounds like It’s going to plan.
Doesn’t Russia have loads more soldiers of their own why aren’t they sending them?
 
Cid said:
Yeah but this is all very easy to say from a distance... Principles are easy when it's not you making the choices. You are saying that the inhabitants of those places should just put their hands up and spend the rest of their lives under occupation. These aren't insignificant markers on a map; Mariupol is the size of Cardiff. Kherson Belfast. Melitopol York. The people who live there have turned out to protest in the face of armed troops... They have and need agency in this and shouldn't be used as bargaining chips. Carving up nations like this is Imperialism. It's what got use here, and it's no solution.

That said yes, there may be some compromises that can be made, I don't now enough about Donbas (or indeed the rest of the place) to have the vaguest idea about what might be acceptable there. I'm more disagreeing with this principle that a lack of compromise on some things represents a bullish desire to cling onto lost territory.
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I agree with all of this, my concern was though how do we (the world) get out of this situation without much worse outcomes. If anything this crisis has shown how important Ukraine is to supply a lot of countries with food; if this (admittedly dubious) peace proposal is out there then it could be used for the basis of something that could both prevent further interference in Ukraine and provide security to Ukraine itself.
 
Cid said:
Yeah but this is all very easy to say from a distance... Principles are easy when it's not you making the choices. You are saying that the inhabitants of those places should just put their hands up and spend the rest of their lives under occupation. These aren't insignificant markers on a map; Mariupol is the size of Cardiff. Kherson Belfast. Melitopol York. The people who live there have turned out to protest in the face of armed troops... They have and need agency in this and shouldn't be used as bargaining chips. Carving up nations like this is Imperialism. It's what got use here, and it's no solution.

That said yes, there may be some compromises that can be made, I don't now enough about Donbas (or indeed the rest of the place) to have the vaguest idea about what might be acceptable there. I'm more disagreeing with this principle that a lack of compromise on some things represents a bullish desire to cling onto lost territory.
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Nation states always have artificial boundaries. The former republics and autonomous republics of the Soviet Union are particularly so. They were designed that way, with Russian minorities all over the place, historically antagonistic peoples lumped together, 'home territories' containing a minority of the titular ethnicity, boundaries which make no economic or geographic sense. To all that was added educational Russification, artificial famines which coincidentally targeted national minorities and massive deportations of minority communities, ethnic cleansing and migration of Russian and settler populations.
So there is lost territory all over the place. Take the Crimea, a pretty multi ethnic place up to the end of WW2. Then Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar people to Uzbekistan, as well as deporting Pontic Greeks, Crimean Italians, Germans, Bulgarians and Armenians. He then brought in more Russian settlers. The Tatars were not allow to return until after 1990, most still remain in Uzbekistan and since the Russian takeover those who had moved back to the Crimea have faced discrimination and violence.
The Crimea is a more extreme case than the Donbass, because of the genocide of half the Tatar population, but the latter is similar in terms of ethnic conflict and discrimination.
There are no absolutes in any of this, but if the Russian Federation gets its way here there are so many other places where a similar confrontation could occur.
 
ska invita said:
As agricola says Ukraine have already lost control of significant territory south and east. THat is a degree of Russian victory. Giving that up officially via peace talks isnt that insane- its exactly the kind of demand from Russia you can expect to have in the settlement, and if there is to be a settlement its the kind of thing Ukraine are going to have to agree too. People were speculating about a partition from before the invasion happened.
The only other option is to push out occupying Russian forces militarily.
Click to expand...
I think you're missing the most important part of Russia's apparent offer. It's not a land-for-peace offer. They want to re-write the Ukrainian constitution and install a puppet government. Given that it was never on the cards that Russia could just absorb the whole of Ukraine, that amounts to a total victory for Russia and the end of Ukraine as an independent country.

Moreover, it would have to be that way, for practical purposes, in order to guarantee any territorial concessions, because they would be contrary to the UN charter. So, unless Kyiv were controlled by Moscow, nothing would mean anything.

I don't think a settlement is at all possible in the near future, except in the unlikely event that Putin is deposed. There just isn't an area where the objectives of the two sides can be reconciled.
 
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elbows said:
I'm also really wary of all the talk of Russian failure because it took over 2 weeks for the USA & Co to take Baghdad, despite the massive use of 'shock and awe', total air dominance and many years of crippling sanctions beforehand. And during that period, Russian-linked propaganda sources posing as daily news about the military situation loved to talk up the idea that the USAs invasion had stalled.
Click to expand...

I think with Baghdad, they were approaching from one road from Kuwait, around a 600km journey. They were also being methodical with air strikes and so on.

By contrast, Russia (and Belarus) surrounds Ukraine from the North, East and South. Sumy and Kharkiv are a mere 50km from the border and Russia has failed to take them or even to encircle them successfully. Kyiv is only about 170km. They are yet to take Mariupol. Russia has also failed to gain air dominance. They have also likely already lost more men than the US lost over many years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and certainly more helicopters, planes, and tanks. Again, we don't have reliable figures, but it does appear likely that they have taken significant losses.

By contrast, it was only 20 days before the Americans had occupied Baghdad. It doesn't look likely that they will take Kyiv in a week from now, when they haven't even managed to encircle Sumy or Kharkiv.

And that's not to mention Russian economic collapse.

I appreciate the effort to retain some skepticism and avoid getting carried away - but I think it is also an error to trust too much that people in charge of operations have a good, well thought out plan and know what they are doing. History is replete with examples of people in similar positions to Putin making catastrophic misjudgements, and this looks like it is another one. Main misjudgement being that Russian speaking Ukrainians would welcome them, and that the government in Kyiv would flee.

It is possible that Russia can still win, but like I said - it won't be a Blitzkrieg, if Russia does win it is going to look a lot more like the war in Syria, a bloody war of attrition dragging on for years, than the relatively quick US occupation of Baghdad.

This can be inferred simply by the numbers. This isn't like the US occupation or Vietnam or Iraq, or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Ukraine has almost a third of Russia's population, and Russia is no longer a great power economically - by population and economy, it is more comparable to Mexico than to the US, Soviet Union, China, or even India.

I think they could only have realistically achieved their maximal goals if Ukrainians welcomed them in large enough numbers, but that hasn't happened.
 
agricola said:
I agree with all of this, my concern was though how do we (the world) get out of this situation without much worse outcomes. If anything this crisis has shown how important Ukraine is to supply a lot of countries with food; if this (admittedly dubious) peace proposal is out there then it could be used for the basis of something that could both prevent further interference in Ukraine and provide security to Ukraine itself.
Click to expand...

Kevbad the Bad said:
Nation states always have artificial boundaries. The former republics and autonomous republics of the Soviet Union are particularly so. They were designed that way, with Russian minorities all over the place, historically antagonistic peoples lumped together, 'home territories' containing a minority of the titular ethnicity, boundaries which make no economic or geographic sense. To all that was added educational Russification, artificial famines which coincidentally targeted national minorities and massive deportations of minority communities, ethnic cleansing and migration of Russian and settler populations.
So there is lost territory all over the place. Take the Crimea, a pretty multi ethnic place up to the end of WW2. Then Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar people to Uzbekistan, as well as deporting Pontic Greeks, Crimean Italians, Germans, Bulgarians and Armenians. He then brought in more Russian settlers. The Tatars were not allow to return until after 1990, most still remain in Uzbekistan and since the Russian takeover those who had moved back to the Crimea have faced discrimination and violence.
The Crimea is a more extreme case than the Donbass, because of the genocide of half the Tatar population, but the latter is similar in terms of ethnic conflict and discrimination.
There are no absolutes in any of this, but if the Russian Federation gets its way here there are so many other places where a similar confrontation could occur.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I take both of those points... Obviously my post was oversimplified to make the broad point that we're talking about real places and people. There clearly aren't any easy solutions, particularly with the aim to end this as soon as possible.
 
If you take Putin at his word in everything he has said about how he sees Ukraine, not just his idea that it isn't a real country just a piece of Russia that fell off by mistake, but also how its people were crying out to be liberated from the ruling cabal of drug addicts and nazis, i think that would actually explain a lot.
Think it's very possible he really believed those things to be true, at least until 11 days ago.
In which case naturally the expectation would have been for things to go very differently.
That doesn't require him to be crazy only to be sequestered from information or opinion that goes against his chosen beliefs, which of course he is.
 
Raheem said:
I think you're missing the most important part of Russia's apparent offer. It's not a land-for-peace offer. They want to re-write the Ukrainian constitution and install a puppet government. Given that it was never on the cards that Russia could just absorb the whole of Ukraine, that amounts to a total victory for Russia and the end of Ukraine as an independent country.

Moreover, it would have to be that way, for practical purposes, in order to guarantee any territorial concessions, because they would be contrary to the UN charter. So, unless Kyiv were controlled by Moscow, nothing would mean anything.

I don't think a settlement is at all possible in the near future, except in the unlikely event that Putin is deposed. There just isn't an area where the objectives of the two sides can be reconciled.
Click to expand...

Perhaps... though the problem with the puppet government idea is that such a government can't stand without the current leadership (or other legitimate leadership) in place and able to deliver it all the time; anything else would need an occupation force of Russians / from the republics (or both) which they are never going to accept.

In terms of the non-aligned status, why not expand on that by saying that they (Ukraine) will need security guarantees from the entire world as a result of that constitutional change and ask for troops from non-aligned powers to help deliver it / secure the country (India, for example, given all the students there). There is ample precedent for that, and I am not sure what legitimate objection the Russians could ever raise to it (though they no doubt would).
 
agricola said:
if this (admittedly dubious) peace proposal is out there then it could be used for the basis of something that could both prevent further interference in Ukraine and provide security to Ukraine itself.
Click to expand...
I don't understand how. This says "we are. Going to take these bits explicitly, and then we are going to make you a puppet regime, we'll install our own man as PM and we'll control your foreign policy". It takes the whole country, for now and in the future.
 
tommers said:
I don't understand how. This says "we are. Going to take these bits explicitly, and then we are going to make you a puppet regime, we'll install our own man as PM and we'll control your foreign policy". It takes the whole country, for now and in the future.
Click to expand...

They didn't publicly say (or at least I've not seen anywhere said publicly by one of them) the emboldened bits; their demands were that Ukraine can't be part of a bloc and that it should give up the three regions. I agree the intent is probably everything you've said, but by inviting the rest of the world to assist with the conditions as publicly expressed by Russia I think they might be able to get something much more workable.
 
kebabking said:
Ukraine's recent experience of security guarantees from world and regional powers wouldn't suggest that thats something they'd jump at...
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They could have the conference in Hungary then the agreement could be called Budapest II.
 
agricola said:
They didn't publicly say (or at least I've not seen anywhere said publicly by one of them) the emboldened bits; their demands were that Ukraine can't be part of a bloc and that it should give up the three regions. I agree the intent is probably everything you've said, but by inviting the rest of the world to assist with the conditions as publicly expressed by Russia I think they might be able to get something much more workable.
Click to expand...
Telling them they can't join a bloc is controlling their foreign policy. :)

I hope you're right, but this is just "we control you".
 
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