A chain is no stronger that its weakest link. A leaking bucket with lots of holes will still leak if even if you manage to plug half a hole and leave all the other holes unplugged. I think we agree more than we disagree on this point.
The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread
- Thread starter Feanor
- Start date
Ananda
The Bunker Group
Again war time can not be an excuse for an administration to destroy your opposition. It is just a same excuse as many dictators already done to consolidate power. War time or not, silencing your opposition is not path toward democratic behavior. It is path toward other side
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Depends on the opposition, there is a reason why our party in power refer to MPs on the other side of our House of Commons as the loyal opposition. The mob of fools earlier this year disrupting Ottawa were hardly loyal. In a war situation these people should be harshly rounded up and jailed. During wartime , parliamentary systems have formed coalition governments.
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Assuming the Ukrainians are ultimately successful in totally ejecting the Russians from the Ukraine; they would be extremely daft to carry the war forward into Russia. Their Western backers would also apply the brakes.
For me the Russian army being finished would mean it has been caught in a large pocket with all avenues of escape sealed or it continues to suffer defeats leading to a mass collapse [similar to what happened at Tannenberg in 1914 or the Kiev pocket in 1941].
It's just my opinion but I feel we're placing too much emphasis on the Russians; their low morale, badly equipped units; flawed planning, etc. The assumption is that they can't sustain things and are on their last legs. We should also be doing the same with the Ukrainians in an objective dispassionate manner because they too are facing various, issues; not withstanding the aid they are receiving.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Earlier in the thread there was a query about the effects of corruption on military performance. Aside from the obvious loss of kit, the other factor is the people involved. Mass corruption can’t be optimized without the higher level elites having a chain of enabled people under them. A corrupt senior general, what does he use as criteria for selecting his junior officers, leadership and military knowledge or the ability to steal shit and provide proper kickback to his senior? The answer seems to be the former based on the Russian war performance so far.
vikingatespam
Well-Known Member
"Finished" in the sense of clearly being unable to achieve the stated war goals. Once the RU units near Kherson are surrendered/retreated, what can the RU hope to accomplish ? Grind another month to take Siversk or Bahkmut ? If the Kharkov region was this thin, how about other regions ?
UKR is riding the wave right now, as their economy is propped up by the west, the military is supplied by the west, and compared to RU those are endless coffers....for now. As for manpower, I do not believe their losses are worse than the RU; but lets be honest, we are all guessing on that issue.
For all the tough talk coming from Kiev, I suspect they will have to give up something to RU to end this. Maybe offer "DPR/LPR/Crimea - pick 2 of 3" to RU and see what happens.
Well given how the "second largest army in the world" has performed so far, it's no wonder people are focusing on all the issues Russia got... however, you do have a point, one should not assume everything will progress smoothly for Ukraine. They have suffered massive losses, and they have huge logistics issues in part due to the large variety of equipment. On the other hand, the results so far, especially the last few days, speak for themselves.
Unless Putin decides to end this, it will become a long war and for sure Ukraine will in that case suffer numerous setbacks in the future. Then again, so will Russia, and they are currently on the backfoot. As long as the West keep supporting Ukraine, they will prevail. A significant number of Ukranian soldiers are being trained in the UK and elsewhere at this moment and will gradually enter the battle field in the coming weeks and months. Furthermore, as I have pointed to earlier, the introduction of NASAMS and IRIS-T air defence will make it even harder for Russia to attack by air and will also help neutralize missiles in regions where in particular NASAMS is positioned. I suspect another major breakthrough for Ukraine will be the supply of Western fighter aircraft. Some people who currently seem to believe that there are no major differences between an air force operating Mig-29 & Su-27 vs. one operating a fleet of F-16s with modern Western munitions & various useful pods will be in for a few surprises...
Well; it's my opinion that to get a balanced picture or narrative we have to look at the various factors and dynamics at play affecting both sides in an objective dispassionate manner. Whether our sympathy or support is for one particular side is not the point.
Actually the determining factor would not be the platform per see but having certain tertiary capabilities; operating the platforms at a systems centric level and well incorporated with ground elements.
The failure of the Russians to gain mastery of the skies wasn't so much due to their platforms only but the fact that their air force was not structured or equipped to perform a strategic air campaign; more as flying artillery.
I've posted several links to excellent videos and articles on the air war in this thread.
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Of course, that goes without saying... however, NATO is fully aware of this and will make sure that Ukr AF will be properly trained and integrated with Ukr land forces.
Well; it's my opinion that to get a balanced picture/narrative we have to look in an objective and dispassionate non fevered manner the various issues and dynamics at play affecting both sides; not just side we happen to support or have sympathy for.
The impression you gave [as I understood it] -is that operating Russian aircraft results in an air arm being ineffective or not as capable as an air arm with Russian kit - "Some people who currently seem to believe that there are no major differences between an air force operating Mig-29 & Su-27 vs. one operating a fleet of F-16s with modern Western munitions & various useful pods will be in for a few surprises"'
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The US/NATO is focusing much more on integration and systems than what Russia is doing. This is reflected in US/NATO conops and training, but also reflected in the equipment. A modern F-16 is built to integrate and be part of a system, more so than a MiG-29. However, as you correctly point out, having the F-16 is just part of the equation. I thought this was obvious and therefore did not point it out.
Brass tacks. Hypothetically speaking an air arm flying Fulcrums and Frogfoots which are equipped with the right systems and ordnance and are linked to each other and to a AEW platform via data links would be superior to an air arm flying Eagles but at a platform centric level.
I'm aware that NATO air arms operate in a much more systems centric manner compared to the Russians ..
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4,793
An insurgency in a far away land that US sodiers had no connection to, vs a conventional fight in a neighboring territory, populated by people who look like you and speak your language, that you've been tricked into thinking are under a nazi occupation backed by the US and NATO are two very different scenarios.
It remains to be seen how things play out. I'm of the opinion that not realizing Ukraine's willingness to fight is the single biggest miss of Russian leadership's planning for this war. It, far more then any western aid or any Russian mistakes, is responsible for Russia's failures so far. However I wouldn't want to make the opposite mistake either and assume that this is simply going to continue no matter what. If rank and file Ukrainians are fighting for their existence, they have been badly misled. Despite your repeated attempts to claim this, there is no evidence that Russia intends to wipe out Ukrainians as an ethnicity or as a nationality. There is evidence of Russian warcrimes, but not evidence of genocide attmptes or even of organized and systematic mass murder. We are dealing with an undisciplined and poorly trained occupation force.
In my opinion Russia's real problem is that even a military victory would be a political defeat. Russian leadership has put itself in a no win scenario, where battlefield victories simply allow them to continue and battlefield defeats jeopardize the entire endeavor with no end in sight and no payoff.
Hypothetically speaking yes. However to my knowledge those systems do not operate on the same level as Western systems, there seems to be big difference there. One of the reasons why Western air experts say that it takes a long time to train on moderns Western fighter jets is related to the completely different mindset that is needed and I suspect a lot of that is related to the "systems" vs "platform" centric thinking.
Yes, that's what I suspected and therefore I tried not to state the obvious in my first post on this. After all it was you who claimed I keep stating the obvious. Now it seems I should state the obvious...?
But to man those Russian separatist units is taking semi-random conscription, e.g. workplaces being given quotas to fill, & conscripts being sent to the front with minimal training. You think those conscripts are well-motivated? The evidence is that apart from a hard core of dedicated nationalists, their morale is pretty low. Many appear to be either running, or surrendering.First of all the arguments that I'm talking in here not Russian, but Ukranian seperatist that fight with Russian now. Their motivation is going to be different with Russian voluenteers that Putin send.
Second, yes I do believe they are coming from same cloth. Putin is just already staying in power much longer. However when you come from corrupt system and environment, then it is just matter of time before they are acting the same.
Zelenskiy Signs Law Banning Pro-Russian Political Parties In Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signed a new law banning pro-Russian political parties.www.rferl.org
“One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition | MR Online
While claiming to defend democracy, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has outlawed his opposition, ordered his rivals’ arrest, and presided over the disappearance and assassination of dissidents across the country.mronline.org
Put this two different articles on Zelensky approach on opposition. Regardless what his claim, it is another Putin in making. So yes I do get get real on this comparison.
Putin's in a different class of brutality & corruption. Look at his collection of palaces! Think about the poisonings, the falls from windows, the compliant courts banning opposition parties & imprisoning opposition candidates on obviously false charges, the laws banning the telling of the truth (Russia's at war), & so on. Remember that Poroshenko lost an election & stepped down. He's corrupt, but not in Putin's class. And where's the evidence that Zelensky's in that category? He's no billionaire. He's a new politician in a corrupt country, which almost always entail having to make compromises, so be realistic. Absolute purity is probably impossible in such circumstances, however good one's intentions. Does that mean he's a murdering kleptocrat? I don't see it.
So . . . banning supporters of the country that's just invaded you from politics is wrong? Since when? What next? It's wrong to resist armed rebels? Come on! How can you compare that to what Putin does!
Reading the article in Monthly Review is interesting, but it is very one-sided. It ignores the fact that Ukraine is at war, & the other side is murdering, raping & robbing, & replacing Ukrainian officials in occupied territories who don't fully cooperate with active supporters of Russia. Staying in office in such circumstances looks like collaboration with the invasion. I don't have all the information about the specific cases mentioned, but it's known that some mayors & other officials have welcomed & aided the invaders. There may regrettably be excesses, as there were by, e.g., the French resistance in 1940-44. Does that make De Gaulle equivalent to Hitler? Were the Finns
You're saying that if Ukrainians aren't perfect they're as bad as the people who are threatening them with the abolition of the country, denying the existence of their language & nationality. & have invaded them. That, to me, seems extraordinary.
In the hypothetical scenario I gave; the Russian platforms operated by the hypothetical air arm had been upgraded with the needed systems in order to be operated at a systems centric level against Western platforms operated at a platform level; hence the scenario.
In one of the videos I posted an expert states that aircrew can be trained to be reasonably proficient in a matter of months but it takes far longer with ground crew.
Here it is again.
Here is another one.
Here is the article [Part 2]. The author states it would be wrong to base the Russian air force on Western standards as the Russians deploy air power in a completely different manner [we saw this in WW2 and in Syria].
Amateur Hour Part II: Failing the Air Campaign - War on the Rocks
An air campaign is the controlled conduct of a series of interrelated air operations to achieve specified objectives. The conduct of effective air
warontherocks.com
Carry on as usual...
To me weren't stating or non stating the "obvious" but stating that it's a given fact that an air arm with Western kit would be superior to one with Russian kit; I'd post the quote here but I've already done that in a pevious post.
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- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4,797
Yes, a complete coincidence. Come on, you know very well that both the uprising and the arrival of Girkin (he did not come alone by the way) were a response to a third event, the completely illegal and illegitimate violent overthrow of an elected sitting president by a minority.
One could argue that the root cause is local nationalism leading to discriminatory practices against large and historically rooted Russian minorities living in the area. After 20+ years of being part of Ukraine, Crimea was just as ready to be part of Russia as it was in the '90s, to the point where the Ukrainian army didn't want to fight, and the local government switched national allegiances wholesale.
How many of Ukraine's ordinary citizens would prefer to be in pre-maydan Ukraine though? It's not as if life improved on the other side of the front line either.
You're not wrong about the nature of the rebel administrations though. They've lost what independence they ever had and now de-facto Russian-installed authoritarians. The region is also significant less open to foreign press, and there are fewer civil rights inside the LDNR then in Russia.
Kharkov was a secondary if not tertiary front ever since the withdrawal from the north. Russia had faced a successfuly, though much smaller and poorly executed, Ukrainian offensive there before, and it recaptured a few villages. Again the pattern was too few heavy Russian combat troops, too many Troops of Interior/LDNR reservists, etc. Ukraine commited huge forces to the Kherson offensive, yet hasn't gotten anything close to the results they got in Kharkov region. Kharkov and Zaporozhye are probably where Russian forces are thinnest, the LDNR front probably has the most, with Kherson somewhere in between. Again this is just napkin math based on what I've observed.
Morale is highly inconsistent. And it strongly depends on the level of fighting, and the experience the unit has. A reservist unit staffed heavily from Donetsk itself, whose members have had friends and family killed by Ukrainian shelling, that spends 2-3 months in "hot" static positions, occasionally fighting Ukrainian forces, will do much better against an actual Ukrainian offensive, then an LNR unit, recruited from a more rural part, away from the old front line, and that first sits in rear checkpoints with no sign of combat, and then gets rotated to the quietest front line with 0 action, only to then face a robust mechanized assault, and will be far likelier to break and run.
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- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4,798
Everyone, posts related to general Russian relations with the West, and the geostrategic and geopolitical implications of this relationship belong in the Russia and the West thread. This thread is for discussion of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Still I'm wondering at what point does the lack of a military victory combined with Ukrainian (limited or otherwise) advances on the battlefield becomes a serious issue for Putin. Failure to drive the limited war to tangible results or even worse a complete failure of the effort would most certainly mark the end of Vladimir Putin, first and foremost politically but, taking notes of events from Russian history, quite possibly even literally.
Without going into weather or what would a formal declaration of war bring (along with trying to muster whatever capabilities they could from rest of the society), I don't think it's inconceivable that at some point the apparatus directly or indirectly admits the limited war is stuck, that the situation evolved to Russia vs. the collective West and that the fate of the entire country hangs in the balance.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4,800
It became a serious issue the moment the initial invasion failed.
I don't see what exit strategy Russia has. This is why I thought this war was inherently unwinnable not from a military standpoint but from a political one. War is a continuation of politics by other means, Clausewitz has yet to be proven wrong. I think your assessment of the situation is correct, and it's unclear how to proceed. Russian leadership is clearly not at the point where they are willing to pack up and leave. Presumably they still hope for a negotiated settlement that salvages the LDNR, and the future of Crimea. I believe they think they can bring that about with enough success on the battlefield which is true in principle but I suspect is wholly unrealistic at this point. Negotiations are about leverage and compromise. What do you want, and what are you willing to offer? Russia is typically ready to deal on this basis. I suspect neither the US nor Ukraine are.