Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[LDC]

As an aside, I bet there's some US/UK/etc. assets in Russia earning their money atm.

 

[emanymton]

I'm not so sure, I (from not knowing much and only reading a little bit) think he seems quite ideologically motivated as much as personal power motivated, I think he does see this as having an element of important 'Russian destiny' in taking back Ukraine, or if not destroying it as a threat to Russia, rather than solely as a personal power play. But fuck knows really!

You could be right. I tend to think people like him tell themselves that to justify their actions to themselves on some level.

But how can Russia achieve its dsstiny without him to guide it? So he must stay in power for the sake of Russia, not his own sake, oh no, for Russia.

But either or nether of us could be right.

 

[zahir]

US Department of Defense background briefing

Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing

A senior defense official held a background briefing.

www.defense.gov

 

[The39thStep]

If I’m demolishing your garage and shouting to let you know that I might set fire to it too, you’d respond by talking about how I’d better not set foot inside your house.

But if someone broke into my house & tried to steal my stuff and at the end of the altercation they buggered off empty handed you could but probably wouldn’t call it a draw.

What was previously, to me , a complex situation in Ukraine suddenly has become a lot more simpler with this explanation,. Thank you.

 

[dilute micro]

US Department of Defense background briefing

Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing

A senior defense official held a background briefing.

www.defense.gov

I really wish the Ukrainians had anti-ship missiles. I'm not aware that they do. Two of the most urgent things right now would be to eliminate Russian artillery and ships. Drones are slow at this no matter how well they can be used.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Assuming the Russian assault has failed - as ever, what happens next it all comes down to weather Putin is operating as a calculating rational person - or weather he is more influenced by his obsessions, megalomania and twisted passions. We dont know the answer to that (i believe and fear it is the latter) but whichever is true, we know that the piece of shit would have no moral compunction against using WMDs.

 

[existentialist]

Assuming the Russian assault has flailed - as ever, what happens next it all comes down to weather Putin is operating as a calculating rational person - or weather he is more influenced by his obsessions, megalomania and twisted passions. We dont know the answer to that (i believe and fear it is the latter) but whichever is true, we know that the piece of shit would have no moral compunction against using WMDs.

Talking of weather, I imagine that the rasputitsa season is now well underway, which is going to have implications for the mobility of his forces.

 

[dilute micro]

Assuming the Russian assault has flailed - as ever, what happens next it all comes down to weather Putin is operating as a calculating rational person - or weather he is more influenced by his obsessions, megalomania and twisted passions. We dont know the answer to that (i believe and fear it is the latter) but whichever is true, we know that the piece of shit would have no moral compunction against using WMDs.

Agree. And I think it's the latter also. Could fear of a leader who's detached be the thing that motivates internal action against him? I know that's the obvious question but it is the obviousness that everyone in Russia will have to deal with. The Russian army could be ground away like a pencil with no money to recover. Somebody has to be thinking long-term.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Agree. And I think it's the latter also. Could fear of a leader who's detached be the thing that motivates internal action against him? I know that's the obvious question but it is the obviousness that everyone in Russia will have to deal with. The Russian army could be ground away like a pencil with no money to recover. Somebody has to be thinking long-term.

yes - that is the other big question - how far will putin be allowed to go by his own side.

 

[emanymton]

yes - that is the other big question - how far will putin be allowed to go by his own side.

I imagine quite a long way. I'm certainly not holding out hope for other elements of the Russian state to come to the rescue.

 

[Pickman's model]

yes - that is the other big question - how far will putin be allowed to go by his own side.

The duma is his
The ministries are his
The oligarchs are his and like the boyars of auld only have what they hold on his sufferance
The media is his
If he fucks up and someone else takes over it'll be like shammer replacing Johnson, the same but more efficient

It's not like the russo-japanese war or 1917 with fifty years of socialist activity and revolutionary struggle. I think putain willbe there for some time yet

 

[Pickman's model]

It's interesting, but completely loses it in the last paragraph where the point of the article becomes clear. Apparently the "West" should "pile on".

If it happens it'll be one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time...

 

[dilute micro]

The duma is his
The ministries are his
The oligarchs are his and like the boyars of auld only have what they hold on his sufferance
The media is his
If he fucks up and someone else takes over it'll be like shammer replacing Johnson, the same but more efficient

It's not like the russo-japanese war or 1917 with fifty years of socialist activity and revolutionary struggle. I think putain willbe there for some time yet

I'm not sure about that. What replacement will more efficiently waste away the military or more efficiently accrue sanctions? The road Russia is going down is self-defeating devastation. It's Putin holding onto his precious while falling into the fires of Mt Doom. Who's going to want to do that?

 

[MickiQ]

If his generals finally get their nerve together and shoot the vile dirtbag then let's face it he isn't going to be replaced with someone burning with a desire to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Russia, it is going to be another lesser dirtbag that will replace him.
It should at least give whoever it is an easy out from an unwinnable war by declaring it was all the fault of Mad Vlad and promptly pulling Russian troops out of Ukraine ending the whole fighting and killing thing which has got to be top priority.
The West needs to keep the sanctions pressure up at this point to a) get justice and compensation for Ukraine, b) ensure that as many as possible face a war crimes trial and c) reforms in Russia to maybe give them a better government as well.
I hope the West doesn't turn round and say "Look Putin's gone, it's all good now and we can immediately go back to how things were before all this unpleasantness started"

 

[agricola]

If his generals finally get their nerve together and shoot the vile dirtbag then let's face it he isn't going to be replaced with someone burning with a desire to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Russia, it is going to be another lesser dirtbag that will replace him.
It should at least give whoever it is an easy out from an unwinnable war by declaring it was all the fault of Mad Vlad and promptly pulling Russian troops out of Ukraine ending the whole fighting and killing thing which has got to be top priority.
The West needs to keep the sanctions pressure up at this point to a) get justice and compensation for Ukraine, b) ensure that as many as possible face a war crimes trial and c) reforms in Russia to maybe give them a better government as well.
I hope the West doesn't turn round and say "Look Putin's gone, it's all good now and we can immediately go back to how things were before all this unpleasantness started"

I disagree, I think sanctions have to be removed really quickly once this ends - the longer they go on, the less effective they’ll be for this and in the future (as you want others to recognise that if behaviour is changed then sanctions will be removed).

Besides, if this does end we will be much better advised sorting our own societies out first, which is going to restrict him more than sanctions ever will.

 

[dilute micro]

If his generals finally get their nerve together and shoot the vile dirtbag then let's face it he isn't going to be replaced with someone burning with a desire to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Russia, it is going to be another lesser dirtbag that will replace him.
It should at least give whoever it is an easy out from an unwinnable war by declaring it was all the fault of Mad Vlad and promptly pulling Russian troops out of Ukraine ending the whole fighting and killing thing which has got to be top priority.
The West needs to keep the sanctions pressure up at this point to a) get justice and compensation for Ukraine, b) ensure that as many as possible face a war crimes trial and c) reforms in Russia to maybe give them a better government as well.
I hope the West doesn't turn round and say "Look Putin's gone, it's all good now and we can immediately go back to how things were before all this unpleasantness started"

I think the next person would stop the fighting and pull back to Crimea and Donbass. Then that becomes the issue all over again. Ukraine would have the choice of continuing the fight but would be told not to by NATO. Russia would threaten to re-reinvade if Ukraine kept it up. But Ukraine is in a bad spot. They can't be secure with no NATO membership and Russia still on their territory. No matter what this will be a mess at best and may a powdered keg.

 

[Diamond]

Reports of Russian forces NW of Kiev being cut off from their main body by Ukrainian counter-attacks. Quite a number, supposedly.



Looks very hot in Irpin right now:



That could be a Russian force in the process of annihilation.

Another useful map from the replies:



Looks like this might be a major development.

 

[Diamond]

Defeat now seems a very realistic prospect for the Russian armed forces, though what that looks like is another question...

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm not sure about that. What replacement will more efficiently waste away the military or more efficiently accrue sanctions? The road Russia is going down is self-defeating devastation. It's Putin holding onto his precious while falling into the fires of Mt Doom. Who's going to want to do that?

We know, or ought to know, we're not in possession of all the facts, and in the blaring of all the individual tales of horror and all the punditry there are things we're not being told and claims being made which will turn out to be untrue or of marginal importance rather than the great weight attached to them now. We are given the impression we know what's going on when when the dust settles a different picture - how different isn't clear - will emerge. We are being told, for example, rather less of Ukrainian failures or russian successes than we might.

And we certainly know far less of what's going on in the corridors of power in Russia than we might.

The news today about rumblings in the Balkans ought to give people pause for thought, as that neglected corner of Europe may come to dominate our attention again: and open a second front in a conflict we thought just within Ukraine. I think the notion that putin-gollum will be out of the way soon owes more to hope than actual analysis. If Johnson or macron or biden presided over a campaign of brutality and attrition as Putin is then yeh they'd be out. But Russia is not France or Britain or the USA and - to look back to 1905 - Nicholas ii's disastrous war against Japan didn't do for the Romanovs. They lasted another 12 years. Maybe Putin won't last that long. But I wouldn't be surprised if in a year, two, five, he was still with us.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Think this sort of collapse was on the cards. Could spread accross the front. And could be approaching moment of maximum danger wrt putin going for WMDs.

 

[JimW]

I was actually surprised at the latest total civilian casualty figures to date being much lower than I feared, cold comfort I know for those experiencing the horror but out of morbid interest did a bit of searching about periods in WWII and found e.g. this about the D-Day landings:

Romanticizing D-Day Ignores Thousands of Civilian Deaths

We think we know D-Day on its 75th anniversary, but remembering the forgotten civilian victims reminds us of the overlooked costs of war and offers lessons for today.

www.thedailybeast.com

Entire Norman and other nearby cities and towns were leveled. Le Mans, Rennes, Saint-Lô, Flers, Le Havre and other cities still filled with civilians were virtually annihilated. An estimated 11,000 to 19,000 Normans were killed during pre-invasion bombing. Eight hundred more French civilians were killed within two days of the D-Day invasion. Then came the Allied slog through Normandy.

Genuinely not wanting to be blasé, in fact not even sure where I'm going with this, but it did catch my eye and I suppose suggests even the levelling of Mariupol is probably within the parameters that a state the size of Ukraine will bear.

 

[Cid]

Think people are reading waaaay too much into scant information here. Speculation thread >

<e2a: obviously not in response to Jim above>

 

[Flavour]

Mariupol is (was) about the same size as Bristol or Cardiff.

 

[emanymton]

I was actually surprised at the latest total civilian casualty figures to date being much lower than I feared, cold comfort I know for those experiencing the horror but out of morbid interest did a bit of searching about periods in WWII and found e.g. this about the D-Day landings:

Romanticizing D-Day Ignores Thousands of Civilian Deaths

We think we know D-Day on its 75th anniversary, but remembering the forgotten civilian victims reminds us of the overlooked costs of war and offers lessons for today.

www.thedailybeast.com

Genuinely not wanting to be blasé, in fact not even sure where I'm going with this, but it did catch my eye and I suppose suggests even the levelling of Mariupol is probably within the parameters that a state the size of Ukraine will bear.

Whenever I see picture of the scale of destruction from wars I am always amazed the number of dead is not even higher.

 

[JimW]

Whenever I see picture of the scale of destruction from wars I am always amazed the number of dead is not even higher.

Yes, think that was it; difference between old school low accuracy carpet bombing and a primarily artillery assault however reckless, I suppose.

 

[Cid]

Mariupol has no functioning communication system, presumably ruined medical care, triage etc... The real picture there will come if/when the rubble is picked through, missing notices pasted etc.

 

[Artaxerxes]

3 million odd have left the country and who knows how many moved internally so that will be a factor.

 

[Kaka Tim]

I fear the civilian death toll is considerably higher than what has been confirmed.

 

[cupid_stunt]

I fear the civilian death toll is considerably higher than what has been confirmed.

Well reports are suggesting many thousands more than the official reported deaths.

 

[cupid_stunt]

This sounds legit, especially when considered in conjunction with what we have already heard about people being rounded-up & sent to Russia.

Russia plans kidnapping and violence in ‘great terror’ to end Kherson protests (Times report, paywall busted).

The Kremlin is plotting to unleash a “great terror” on the city of Kherson by kidnapping residents and taking them across the Russian border, an FSB whistleblower has claimed.

A letter thought to have been written by a member of Russia’s domestic security service said that the Kremlin was no longer willing to “play nicely” with protesters in the Ukrainian city, where people have taken to the streets every day in defiance of their occupiers.

People will be taken from their homes in the middle of the night. “Even if we have to deport as many as half the city — we are ready for that,” the letter said.

The whistleblower said that areas captured by Russian forces had effectively gone into a state of “permanent rebellion”.

“If it were possible to identify protest leaders, they would have been liquidated already,” the letter said. “Protesters are saved only by the fact that it is unclear who exactly needs to be captured. There are also fears that a move to violence may end in a real riot, which could only be suppressed by large-scale fighting.”

Nevertheless, in the past few days there had been an order “from the very top” for a solution to be found, the whistleblower said.

The letter, dated from March 21, was published by Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net.

It is the 11th letter thought to have been written by the same FSB insider, known only by his codename Wind of Change. Earlier letters have been deemed authentic by Russian security service experts.

Although the FSB is officially a domestic security service, akin to MI5, its remit also includes countries of the former Soviet Union.