If this was going well for Russia in any way, we wouldn't be talking about Ukraine as an independent country going into November of a year when they invaded it in February.
Things are nowhere near over, and that's exactly the point: Russia, on paper, should have been done with this before March 1st.
Hitler conquered France in 40 days. (To be fair, the Germans were only going up against the French, but you get the point.)
Russia can't even hold onto the territories they'd infiltrated since 2014, and will hold even less than they do now by the time this conflict hits 40 weeks. (Common Core grads: that would be in 5 weeks from now.) They stand a very good chance of even going backwards, and having to cough up Crimea as well, for the second time since 1989, perhaps as a Christmas present to Zelensky and the people of Ukraine. IOW, had they just sat there in February and done nothing, they'd have 60,000 more soldiers alive, 1200 more tanks, an extra airborne brigade available, and still have a Black Sea Fleet they could sail back and forth to Syria. Just by not starting this war.
Against a country with only 1/10th their military strength.
This level of military performance by Russia is why you can count their notable military victories in the last 300 years on your thumbs.
And at current trajectory, Russia wouldn't be any worse off than right now if we switched sides, and then abandoned them like Afghanistan.
 |
| Team Putin. 24/7, for 243 days and counting. |
Maybe things will be better for Russia tomorrow. Outcomes can always change in war, sometimes rapidly (just ask the crew of the Moskva), and very well may multiple times before this ends. They certainly have for Russia since September 1st, let alone since February 23rd. But they're not showing anything new, and all those conscripts seem to be just so much cannon fodder. Now they're hoping Iranian drones will help them out.
Dear Putin Rooters: Lucy Van Pelt called. She wanted to know if you'd like to practice kicking some field goals.
The Germans got extremely lucky in 1940. The perfect storm conditions which enabled them to win without losing a million men were a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
ReplyDeleteThat’s why so many commentators (especially the self-proclaimed “military reformers” of the 1980s) keep harping on the supposed superiority of the German system even after it repeatedly fails to replicate such dramatic results. And probably why the Russians think they can do it better than the Germans (and consequently fail even more spectacularly).
I read somewhere earlier this AM that Israel bombed an Iranian drone factory in Syria. So, I guess that supply chain is gone now too.
ReplyDeleteNemo
and will hold even less than they do now by the time this conflict hits 40 weeks. (Common Core grads: that would be in 5 weeks from now.)
ReplyDeleteI predict that this will not age well.
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteMe thinks that the Russian bear has finally been poked enough by Ukrainian victories.
It is unlikely that, when the dust settles, this contest will come out with Ukraine on top.
I am not sure you are right, but you certainly aren't being vague - much appreciated. I used to work for a fella who did that all the time. There were no shades of gray with this guy. He always took gray and yelled about how it was white or black and how you would have to be kinda stupid to see it some other way. Good luck with that. It will make it easy to grade ourselves in hindsight.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good plan, really. Hit Ukraine hard, take it fast, present Europe with a fait accompli, go back to getting rich off the Germans.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's a lot said about plans, from Ike and others, but the best is Tyson's "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
And the plan didn't go according to plan. The Ukrainians weren't going to roll over for the reboot of the Holodomor, and fought like hell. The various Russian generals had been using all the defense budget to line their pockets, and pencil whipped their readiness reports. The troops didn't really know what or why, and much of their equipment was Chinesium knockoffs.
But like the guy at the game table with the Perfect System, GROFAZ2 kept on keeping on, and basically lost. Even if he gets more of Ukraine's territory, the best he can hope for is isolation and decline.
Yup, Russia sucks at war. Wondering if they have any idea at an end game, on either side. Winter is coming, soon.
ReplyDelete@Phelps,
ReplyDeleteTime will certainly tell, either way. The past eight months is no guarantee of future behavior. Russia might eventually kill off all its military idiots (which, by all accounts thus far, is every last one of them), and re-learn how to conduct combined arms maneuver warfare. Something they haven't done successfully since 1945, a mere 77 years ago, meaning anyone who did it back in the day is currently 95 years old. Bearing in mind that would require a total sea change from their entire efforts to date. But don't be shy: tell us why, how, and when what you think will happen, will happen.
@Survivorman,
Maybe, but hope ain't a plan.
What actual evidence do you see of this new resolve?
I'm seeing raw conscripts
(whom we were told - by Putin - would be former military members, and whom I assumed would receive at least some rudimentary/refresher training, but who were in fact raw, never-served-in-their-lives press-ganged lumpenproletariat Ivans yanked off the street, including geriatrics and 4F semi-cripples, and who have received no such training, and seldom even got actual basic equipment)
literally shoved off the bus and into combat, ending up as KIAs and POWs in droves within days. Absent general mobilization of the entire nation, and stripping every actual combat-capable unit from the Chinese and NATO borders and internal order maintenance duties (which invites invasion and internal revolution), there's no way they can get any better at this game, unless they plan to kill millions of their own people to literally run Ukraine out of bullets with human wave attacks. (Just refurbing 1000 or so museum-piece ancient T-62 tanks is going to take them until 2025.)
They also aren't carpet-bombing Ukrainian formations in the east or south with Backfires and Bears (almost certainly because they lack the ability to even attempt that either), and can only send second-hand not-so-smart drone bombs at stationary targets, with 85% casualties and dubious tactical or strategic effect.
So where do they find a non-existent trained air force, and a competent ground force from private to generals, and using them in tandem for the first time in nearly a century, achieve anything like actual lasting military success?
I don't see them pulling that 800-pound gorilla out of their own ass anytime this year. Probably not next year either.
FFS, they're currently noted to be digging in defensive lines inside actual Russia to the east of Donetsk oblast. They're that worried.
Change my mind.
There's also a huge differentiation in motivation between "we need to fight like hell, because the Fritzs are currently and deeply invading our nation and killing our people!" to "you need to go fight and die to take someone else's land so that the Oligarchs can buy bigger yachts."
ReplyDeleteWe're not exactly seeing the Motivks charging into battle. The Quislings here might believe the ever changing RT propaganda, but they don't seem too quick to fight and die too hard.
Not only were the Russians and their neo-nazi Wagner Mercenary Group recruiting convicted prisoners out of Russian Prisons, but they are recruiting HIV and Hep-C Positive convicts. Nothing says fitness and health like Hep-C and AIDS.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-25
An update a few days ago said the Russians hope to remove the damaged sections of the Kerch / Crimea to Russia bridge in December. There is no date for completion of repairs. In the meantime, the RR bridge is still out, and trucks are being shipped by Ferry across the Kerch Straits. There is one lane open for automobile traffic. IOW? Crimean Logistics are scr*wed.
RD
The Siegfried (sic) anti-tank line tells a tale of just how confident the Russians are. Did not work for the Germans 80 odd years ago, won't work now.
ReplyDeleteI have discovered that this F'up by the Russians goes way back to the 1990's when the Soviet broke up. Why? Well guess where ....
a) the russian BMP was made?
b) a russian munitions factory was located?
c) the command and control systems were manufactured?
d) the nuclear research was conducted?
I know, its an easy test and the answer is Ukraine. Ukraine so long as they used the resources for export, and they did, had the keys to maintaining near peer capability against the russians. The russians surprised the ukranians for sure, but except for numbers of men, the ukes had/have the technical expertise to match them.
Want to backstop that assessment? Look at the timeline that NATO assumed it would take the Ukes to adopt certain NATO armaments. Then look at the same timeline of them fielding the equipment in battle. In most cases is at least half.
Who are these fanboys you complain about?
ReplyDeleteWhat's this say about the War on Drugs? Asking for a friend.
ReplyDeleteWhat "War On Drugs"?
ReplyDeleteI've seen no evidence of any such thing.
If instead you refer to the Slap Fight On (Some) Drugs, With Collateral Damage, referred to hereafter as SFO(S)D,WCD, the accurate name might suggest to you the bankruptcy of the argument attempted.
If we ever start to carpet-bomb Bolivia and Columbia with Arc Light missions, execute drug dealers and importers on the spot, and imprison all other drug offenders as POWs for the duration of the war in actual POW camps as enemy combatants, get back to us.
Because that's what a war on drugs would look like.
We've explained this on these very pages about ten times.
The ol "Bahgdad Bob" meme seems to never quite get old. Remember the M1 main gun tank fire in the background on some of those video's "We are driving the American army into the river to drown, right now, yep!"
ReplyDeleteJohn Ringo referenced some of these Meme's in one of his more recent books, Troy series I think. Been a while.
Winterborn,
ReplyDeleteI really miss the days at the turn of the century where we literally had the "John Ringo Book of the Month Club," with either a hardcover, trade paperback, or mass-market paperback book being published.
RD
Of course, 'it ain't over till it's over'. It's never too late for Ukraine to screw up some crucial decisions, or for Russia to brute force their way to victory.
ReplyDeleteBut if Russia does, they've lost. To brute force their way to victory will involve killing a lot of population they can't afford to lose, to hock themselves to China, the world's biggest loan shark, and to use up a lot of military hardware they won't be able to replace.
All to occupy a country that doesn't want to be occupied, that has had hard experience fighting, and will probably keep doing so ala Afghanistan and Vietnam. And all to get resources that they won't be able to sell at anything close to a profit- Europe is already looking elsewhere, and China and India will absolutely screw them over.
Brilliant! Such 47 D Chess! Much Greatest War Leader of All Times!
Putin seems to have a "Plan B" which may be why the 101 is in Romania (oil fields and refineries, remember Ploesti?) and a carrier battle group in the Adriatic. Which supports my belief that Putin wanted the Ukraine to guarantee his stranglehold on European fuel supplies. The Russians have evacusted their naval base and air fields in the Crimea, so maybe it was the beach-bunnies and not the gas and oil the Russkies were after.
ReplyDeletePutting troops in Romania, a NATO member, sort of anticipates a Russian play. Must have been a move left over from the Trump Administration. All friendly, except for the bayonets and missiles.
Lots of whining about limited stockpiles. Production should have been ramped up in February. You know he didn't plan on stopping at Odessa.
But if Russia does, they've lost. To brute force their way to victory will involve killing a lot of population they can't afford to lose, to hock themselves to China, the world's biggest loan shark, and to use up a lot of military hardware they won't be able to replace.
ReplyDeleteUkraine has already killed an astonishing percentage of its population, hocked themselves to America, the actual loan shark of the world, and used up a lot of military hardware that neither they nor their allies can replace.
To quote Tony Stark, "not a great plan."
But it still beats the hell out of total subjugation under Russian rule.
ReplyDeleteEveryone keeps overlooking that alternative.
This is why they fail.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Ukraine is literally a one-party totalitarian regime, with all non-Zelinsky parties banned, and criminal charges for treason leveled against anyone who tries to form one. How is that better than Russia? This is just the, "well, he was stabbed to death, but at least he wasn't shot" argument.
ReplyDeleteWhich explains Russia's unmitigated success in this invasion, and why the Ukrainian people are totally uninterested in fighting them.
ReplyDeleteWhen the map you're using doesn't match the ground, it isn't the ground that's wrong.
"2+2=4 is just what the Globalhomo Joooo Conspiracy has conditioned you to think!!!!"
ReplyDelete@Aesop, "What "War On Drugs"?
ReplyDeleteI've seen no evidence of any such thing."
Exactly.