Thursday, September 22, 2022

More On Chronic Putardation

 














Nuclear Option

1) It's not 1945 any more. No one has a monopoly on nuclear force. A "limited" nuclear war doesn't stay limited. Five thousand simulations have demonstrated this to the point it's beyond arguing. Pop one nuke, anywhere, and it snowballs in a couple of days until someone shoots their leader in the head, or until everything north of the equator is radioactive glass. Russia pops a nuke, anywhere, they're signaling their wish for an extinction-level societal event.

2) Russian generals know this too. Which makes popping Putin's pumpkin head with a pistol far easier than complying with a nuclear deployment or launch order, and orders of magnitude more likely.

3) We know this too. Which means the odds are, no one will pay any attention to this as anything other than a bluff, on the theory that Russia isn't as crazy as Putin is. If we're wrong, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina can fight over the world in a hundred years. (Related Food For Thought: Different CinC for sure, but when Russia released control of WMDs in Syria in 2017 and used them on rebels there, we wiped out an entire Russian Air Wing there next day with 59 Tomahawk missiles with the hint not to deploy WMDs again. Putin pops a nuke in Ukraine, or anywhere else, and the engines will start warming up at the 509th and 131st BWs in Whiteman. After that it gets ugly.)

4) So his nukes are an empty rattle unless he's got a death wish for the entire Russian people, and Putin's going to have to dance with the gal who brung him: his drunken, incompetent, untrained and ill-prepared Russian Army boobs and bumpkins. Boo frickin' hoo.

Conventional Forces

1) Putin has plenty of troops already. So why "mobilize" partially?

2) Because he has thousands of miles of hostile borders, with every single nation. Russia has fought China, and incurred thousands of casualties in border skirmishes over the last century. They're not friendly with Iran or Afghanistan either. Turkey, Norway, and the Baltic States are NATO. Finland and Sweden want to be. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary are also NATO, and have no wish to return to the fold of their temporary overlords from Moscow; in fact, they're rabidly strident about that point.

3) More than half a dozen -stans have no wish to be under Moscow's thumb either, and they make that point known to Moscow every few years, violently. St. Petersburg is a looong way from Moscow as well. And even the Russian capital is no hotbed of Putin-lovers these days, or any days.

4) In short, Putin has a metric fuckton of conflicts that need troops to staff them, 24/7/365. None of those guys can be pulled without risking invasion, internal disaster, or even civil war. Bummer, for Vlad.

5) Those conscripts haven't been in the military for months to years. It will be months and months before they can be processed, re-trained, equipped, and deployable to units, whether piecemeal, or wholesale. That's next spring, at the earliest, before they make any difference at all. And then he'll have 300,000 green, untested troops to throw at a problem that 190,000 soldiers have proven unable to handle. Or with people who don't want to be there at all left to guard his vital national interests from actual enemies, while moving, at great difficulty and expense, the better-prepared and more politically reliable units to the Ukrainian meatgrinder. Well-played, MápШaԯ. That will turn out well.

6) Russian doctrine since ever is to reinforce success, not failure. That's true at the soldier level, and the army level. They don't reinforce struggling units, they leave them to their fate, and send fresh troops to make new attacks.

7) The problem in Ukraine is the US, NATO, the whole world, and 3000 satellites, are all watching everything Putin does, live and in color. Elon Musk has single-handedly given Ukraine a first-world satcom comms capability. Putin's a two-dimensional thinker in a three-dimensional battlespace. And he's paying for that now, in real time.

8) His forces right now continue to get rolled back, in most cases faster than they can make defensive lines to hold. 

Political Sideshow

1) Trying faux referendums, among a population that is either dead by Russia's hand, refugees in Poland and Slovakia, or rabidly anti-Russia in the occupied zones isn't going to fly. Nobody will buy the bullshit, and it will be d.o.a. anywhere it's peddled.

2) Putin wants to claim this is about protecting Russian sovereignty. The problem with that is that he thinks "Russia" is any territory he wants to grab ahold of, whether they want it or not. If he and his murderous military fucktards would simply fuck off, and march back to Russian territory mutually agreed upon by all parties as of December 31, 1990, he'd be at peace with the world. Nobody wants to talk about that inconvenient little truth. GTFO of Ukraine, and MYOB, respecting the status quo ante, and this is over by breakfast tomorrow.

3) India has openly rebuked him for the Ukrainian war, and China has "severe doubts and hesitations" about his entire ill-advised enterprise. His alliances of convenience are becoming inconvenient to the only allies he has in the world.

Conclusions

You don't mobilize reserves and send in 150% more people than you started out with when you're winning a war. Look no farther than LBJ or Dubbya to figure out the truth of that statement. So Russia isn't winning this, and they've obviously even gone beyond what the initial troop commitment could get and hold. And they're not done losing yet.

Current Russian losses are lied about by both sides, but anyone who believes Ukraine managed to bum rush a million square miles of territory and more out of Russia's grasp because the Russians were retreating faster than Ukraine could catch up to them, and suffered negligible casualties in such a wholesale rout, is smoking truckloads of hopeium. 

If you think Russia is going to strike back, it begs the question: If they were any such competent, and capable, why did they get their asses kicked back inside the Russian border in the first place?

Because they're not that competent and capable. Duh.

The initial offensive has slowed, but not stopped, and Ukraine is putting continual pressure on Russian forces, increasingly against troops poorly motivated, abysmally led, and running out of critical supplies. The retreat and despair grows by the day, which emboldens Ukraine, and encourages the West to continue and indeed increase supplying Ukraine with what they need to humble Russia all the way back to inside their own borders - where Putin should've kept them in the first place.

The losses that have to be the highest now are in Moscow. Anti-war protests by hundreds and thousands of Muscovites who said "Hell no! We won't go!" sprung up within hours of Putin's mobilization. Bombs are being thrown at his motorcade. And at this rate, the only unit taking more casualties than the ones in contact with Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv and Donbas are Putin's food-tasters in the Kremlin. He's probably losing 100 a week at the current rate.

And it's a going to be a long, cold winter ahead of him.

For the midwits out there trying to do this with half the IQ points needed, Putin's a world-class @$$hole because he's a KGB thug and ruthless murdering dick-tater, always has been one (you could look it up) since ever, and not because Poopypants likes him or hates him. You're not right on this because you're opposed to Emperor Poopypants' opinion, you're wrong because you're twenty-five years behind the curve on Vlad. You have enemies closer to home than Vlad, but they're not your only enemies. When you set the problem up wrong, you'll never get the right answer.

50:50 odds Putin never sees Christmas if nothing changes. Even if he does, Santa's bringing him a lump of coal. And if he's very, very lucky, it won't be from the charred remains of his army, or his capital.



31 comments:

Joe in PNG said...

I know the basement in Ekaterinaburg isn't available anymore. Maybe they can use the bunker where they shot Beria?

Go Again said...

Right again, Aesop. I love coming here to read you. There's so much information out there and you distill it down to the basic truth of things. Well done, sir!

John Wilder said...

Feels like a creepy remake of the Guns of August.

"Could be worse."

"How?"

"Could be raining."

Anonymous said...

Like I said before, one army or the other could collapse. Right now it looks like it may be the Russians.

Maybe it will be like WW1? The Russians didn't like the idea of more war after they signed their first disastrous peace treaty when the Czar was overthrown in 1917.

The downside is what could happen if Putin decides the Russian People are to blame for his failures?

RD

Allen said...

1) Putin has plenty of troops already. So why "mobilize" partially?

well, they're already using north korean rockets and mortar shells..why not north korean tactics too? human wave assaults work if the enemy runs out of ammo before you run out of people...

Tucanae Services said...

I would quibble about only one thing in this whole post -- "That's next spring" December would be a long time. The front edge of the draftees will be there by mid November. When cannon fodder will be dead within a week of engagement no use worrying about spit polish training.

Czars did not worry about it. Soviets did not even bother to paint the tanks in full knowledge it was wasted effort for a machine that will be rubble in a fortnight. I suspect Putinists are no different on that score.

Wayne said...

@Aesop. Re: Nuclear Option 1)
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"
Joshua/WOPR, WarGames.

Capitalist Eric said...

I read your essays, at this point, for entertainments sake, not for anything actually informative. This one is no different. However, you did have a nugget of truth that shone through:

>>"When you set the problem up wrong, you'll never get the right answer."<<

The only accurate point in this essay. Unfortunately, your hatred of Putin and Russia, blind you to any contradictory information.

Put simply, you fail to follow your own advice.

For example, you say that Russian troops were pushed back to Russian lines because they're incompetent. You completely missed the point, and the results of that particular battle.

How?

Well, what are the stated GOALS of the Russian "special operation?" One part, is to dismantle the warfighting capability of Ukraine. That means, kill their soldiers and destroy their weapons. So the Ukrainian troops drove the Russians out of several hundred sqaure miles... of cattle country, land which can't be defended. To accomplish that "victory," the Ukes lost 12000-14000 men, while Russia lost... what, a few hundred? If that? Like every other battle occurring there, the results are equally lopsided. THIS is why Ukraine is getting slowly ground up. They cannot sustain such losses.

This is not a war about occupying territory; it never was. It was (and still is) about destroying Ukraine's warfighting capability. And in this context, Russia is succeeding in their objective.

I'm no cheerleader for Putin, but I have absolute disgust for the Ukrainian government, and their corruption, same as I do for our own corrupt government and MSM propaganda outlets. But you need to get something straight; there ARE NO GOOD GUYS in this fight. WE are not the heroes; it can easily be argued that the West instigated this whole thing, pushed Russia into a corner, where the conclusion (WW3) was easily predicted.

So get off your high horse; your self-righteousness is embarrassing.

June J said...

My worries over Putin going nuclear are equal to my worries about the US/NATO going nuclear if Ukraine appears to be falling to the Russian army...or massively retaliating if Putin uses tactical nukes in Ukraine.
Either way...the quote from War Games above is pertinent.
None of the average Russians, Ukrainian or Americans wants to be obliterated in a nuclear exchange.
Evil and insanity are gripping all the leaders of the world.

Skyler the Weird said...

Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity used to be called Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Where is our Napoleon?

Aesop said...

@Tucanae Services,
Consult the encyclopedia, and see how well winter offensives fare in Russia.
So more likely next spring, unless Putin wants to fill another 300,000 body bags with dead Russians.

@Capitalist Eric,
1) I don't hate Putin. I understand him. Commies gonna commie.
2) Contrary information told us this war would be over in 72 hours.
Contrary information told us Ukraine would embrace Russian authority.
Contrary sources told us the overwhelming sentiment even in the "breakaway" provinces wanted Putin.
Contrary sources told us Moskva was steaming under its own power back to Sevastopol after a minor fire.
Contrary sources told us this war was over at the end of May.
Contrary sources told us new weapons wouldn't make any difference.
Contrary sources told us Ukraine was spent, crumbling, and falling apart.
Contrary sources now tell you Ukraine lost men at 100:1 in this offensive, yet it keeps rolling on. (Sumdood on the 'net pulling numbers straight out of his underpants isn't a fact. You should know better than that.)

Contrary sources are thus rightfully seen as entirely full of undiluted bullshit, and are nothing but Russian propaganda, inflated with hopeium, and powered entirely by confirmation bias and Russian spin.

3) You're blinded by your view that this about governments. It's not.
Wars are fought by men. For themselves and their comrades, not for their governments. The Ukrainians want to be free, and the Russians have no love for their own government, nor Putin's delusions of grandeur at restoring his beloved Soviet Empire, piece by piece.
You can't conquer a people who won't be defeated, and the people of Ukraine keep driving that lesson home. You'd have thought seeing this in China, India, Vietnam, Afghanistan (multiple times), great powers would have figured this out. You cannot subjugate people who won't have it. You can exterminate them, or you can fail.

Wake up and smell Russia's fail.

4) Ukraine has no territorial ambitions beyond its own borders. Russia has nothing but that. Perenial endemic corruption, paranoia, and a millennia-old inferiority complex have dealt them a shitty hand. It's not 1960 anymore, and they can't sustain this, which is why they're at 1/10th their Cold War strength.

When you have actual facts and evidence to bring to the table, confirmed on the ground, that indicate more substance than bile, give a holler, and post links.

Otherwise, you're just spewing out of butthurt.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I calling what I see, and Russia is coming up second-best rather consistently. Their only two plays are to leave with their tail between their legs, or burn the world down if they can't rule it themselves.
They've painted themselves into that corner, and the desperation from Putin is palpable.

I repeat: the destiny of the world is rapidly coming down to how sane (or crazy) Russian military leadership is, based on whether they think they can fight and win global thermonuclear war.

I hear it's fun to screw around with crazy chicks, but nobody sane marries them. With national leaders, it's even harsher and grimmer when everything comes unglued.
So I'm still persuaded they shoot their sonofabitch rather than ride off the cliff with him, out of some misplaced sense of loyalty.
Even Hitler's generals disobeyed him, and refused to burn Germany to the ground once it was clear they'd never win.

If I'm wrong, and they're equally as insane as Putin, this was going to happen inevitably anyways. Might as well get it over with, and with both eyes open, either way.

But if Putin gets popped in the head, and Russia retreats back to actual Russia, this goes away like fog on a summer morning, and just about as fast.

That's the exit everyone keeps ignoring for this whole shitshow.

Aesop said...

@Skyler,

Sitting in the Kremlin.

Anonymous said...

This is all whistling past the graveyard.

The bottom line is that the West wants to conquer Russia.

Skyler the Weird said...

HA! That's Vlad the Inhaler not Boney. Obama Cashiered all the officers that might weern't commies and yes men. Maybe there is a corporal in the Artillery that will rise in the ranks when the mobs hit the streets.

Aesop said...

@Anon 1:05P,

That's simply retarded, and relies on facts not in evidence (mainly pulled from someone's underpants).

If there's a rabid dog in my neighborhood, I don't want to buttfuck it and rob its owner's house. I want it either penned inside its own yard, or put down.

The West could give two shits about Russia, per se.
But it won't stand by while a nuclear power is busy rebuilding an empire by conquering the territory of sovereign nations, as though no one could tell it "No."

This isn't a hard concept.

Anonymous said...

Fact in evidence: NATO could have had a ceasefire in April with Russia holding Crimea and part of Donbas and Ukraine not pursuing NATO membership.

NATO eschewed this for "regime change" and now seeks to label Russia a "state sponsor of terror."

I hate to be reductive, but it's just Iraq but bigger and nuclear.

Tucanae Services said...

@Aesop,

Re: "Consult the encyclopedia, and see how well winter offensives fare in Russia."

The results are mixed for sure. However that is less relevant than the propensity to do so, to wit --

Russian Winter offensives:

* Russo-Polish war -- 1919-1920, October offensive
* Soviet assault on Ukraine -- January 1919
* Russian-Finnish war -- November 1939
* Counter offensive at Stalingrad -- November 19th.
* Counter offensive at Leningrad -- October 18th.
* Soviet incursion into Afghanistan -- December 1979
* Russian Ukrainian incursion -- February 2022

I think that is sufficient evidence of Russian inclination to utilize winter conditions for offensive operations.

Anonymous said...

Off topic, but wanted to say I liked your mini shotgun medpouch idea. I added cotton from other pill bottles to silence any rattling.

Aesop said...

@Tucanae,
And Russia fared poorly in most of those events.
They're already hurting in Ukraine. But if Putin just wants to fill body bags, it's certainly his party, and his bodies, but those 300,000 bodies will last longer if he doesn't squander them on futile offensives where the weather kills more people than the enemy.

@Anonymous,
1) The war is between Ukraine and Russia, not Russia and NATO.
1a) This is fortunate for Moscow, as they can barely handle a neighbor 1/10th their strength, any 3 months out of 6, thus far. If even Poland and Netherlands threw in with Ukraine, based on all available evidence thus far, Putin would either be launching nukes out of desperation, or governing what territory he had left from somewhere east of the Urals by now.
2) Ukraine isn't negotiating with terrorists.
3) Russia doesn't get to dictate terms to other sovereign nations on what those nations will and won't do. Those nations get to make their own choices. You could look it up.

Obviously, neither you nor Putin can grasp this fundamental point governing international relations, which is why you both persist in the same error.

Mike-SMO said...

The army that Putin has to worry about are the mothers, grandmothers, and wives of the men being sent into the Ukraine.

Russia is being fueled by paranoia. The Ukraine is no threat to Russia. At best (worst) the Ukraine The worst thatbthey can do is disrupt Russia's monopoly on gas, oil, coal supplies to Europe. Russia has already announced their plans to murder several million to "de-Nazify" the Ukraine, which means there is no downside to fighting and thus activating the Russian women whose menfolk will be converted into fertilizer for the coming grain crop.

Generally, it is a bad plan to back a capable opponent into a corner while blathering about extermination. Even if there is a "victory", fighting into the corner runs the price way up. The "Nomenklatura" have easier ways to inflate their wealth. 'Sides, corners tend to include falls from high places, not profit.

Anonymous said...

I just gave you the Rosetta Stone for this whole fiasco and you're rejecting its premise.

I admire your sense of honor about the combatants involved, but I think you're missing the bigger picture.

Perhaps Ukraine was the key all along for the internationalists to control Russia, and now that it's started we can see their t

Paul said...

I wonder how Putin cozying up to China will play out. Since biden is bought and paid for by Xi I would expect our support of Ukraine be pulled back. Unless China is thinking that Russia Might be a better target than the USA. Overland supply route are easier that overseas routes.

Things could get interesting pretty quickly. Have to see how the winter plays out with Europe paying through the nose for the little energy they get.


Anonymous said...

There's a simpler explanation for referendums than muh nook threats, IMO: it enables Putin to use those conscripts on 'Russian soil' without explicitly violating his domestic red line of sending conscripts abroad.

Anonymous said...

We Shall See. Sooner or Later.
We Shall See

Aesop said...

But how hard will people's noses have to be rubbed in reality before they'll admit the obvious?

Joe in PNG said...

Some people are just emotionally tied to the idea that a Man on a Horse, the one Great Dictator can make everything better.
In this case, their affections and feelz are set on Putin to make this concept work, so they can in turn find and promote their own version here. It's not so much the reality of the ex-KGB corrupt slimeball wannabe tyrant that they love so much, but the romanticized idea of what they want him to represent.

In this idea, they are just as delusional and emotionally driven as the Progressives with their beloved 19th century economic cargo cult.

Sentenza said...

Nukes take a lot of maintenance.

Would Russian nukes even work?

Sentenza said...


You've got multiple other reactors of that design melting...and at least one at that same power plant.

Those people also brought us Chelyabinsk.

Up until the tsunami and earthquake hit Fukushima, those were rated the two worst nuclear disasters in history.


Anonymous said...

Joe in PNG,

Or maybe it's the fact that Putin is directly confronting the international interests which have stolen our elections, debased our currency, controlled our news feeds, rewritten our educational standards, opened our borders, shut off our energy, poisoned our food and water, forced 'vaccinations,' and spent our country into the largest debt in the history of the world.

You know, either/or.

Aesop said...

@Anon 7:54A,
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc Fallacy.
25 yard penalty and loss of possession.

Putin didn't invade Ukraine to "confront" any such thing.
He invaded Ukraine to use it like a rented whore.
You're guilty of ascribing revisionist rationales after-the-fact to an unsupportable invasion that was simply another Putin land grab (In Ukraine's case, the third such by Putin in less than a decade).

Trying to make Putin the good guy simply because everyone in power everywhere else condemned him is simply the international version of Stockholm/battered wife syndrome.

If you can explain to the class why a burglar has the absolute right to creep into your neighbor's house and buttfuck the neighbor's wife repeatedly merely because he wants to, and it's okay with you, because a politician you don't like says it isn't, now is the time to lay out that rationale. Show your work.

Joe in PNG said...

Putin ain't the Messiah. If you want a champion to stand against the Joooozzzzz!!!!, er, Globalist, well, good luck with that incompetent Commie.

Putin is just Biden with a little less senility. Heck, even Brandon shows more courage in the fact of Wuflu than Vladimir "40' Conference Table".