Ukraine Conflict - conflict continues

[Zoraptor]

It's probably more Bethesda Magic: It Just Works!..

..When you're a behemoth like Bethesda already, with all the fancy bells and whistles, practically unlimited resources and an enormous inbuilt fan base. Not so easy if you're a plucky new company relying on kickstarter, and the same ideas that work for Bethesda don't necessarily work for a 12 person company trying to take down EA with a Sims killer.

The big mistakes are that western doctrine relies on air superiority, at minimum, and that's the crucial part of their 'combined arms' doctrine (significantly, left out of the description above, though). Ukraine doesn't have that, not even close, and on offence their short range systems are significantly outranged by Ka-52s. NATO has by design never fought a war where they expected to have anything less than air supremacy. That reliance pervades everything. And yeah, the insistence on having raw recruits supplied so they would not have learnt bad habits meant they also hadn't learnt any good ones. No matter how good the training and simulations are people fall apart when it's real. Happens to experienced soldiers too, but a lot less.

Funny (well, 'funny') all the things you see when the offensive isn't going well though. NATO would just abandon troops and not try and rescue them (yeah, right), NATO would just drive around mine fields (lol), NATO would roll out a few thousand man attacks instead of lots of 50 man ones (they wouldn't, if the 1000 man attacks were getting smashed*), Ukraine's western trained brigades were actually 2k men each not 4k (plain cope), Ukraine isn't actually using NATO tactics. The last is at least true but they did try to at the start, they just didn't work on the ground so they went back to what does: Stoss, from WW1.

*to whit, the Big Bradley Burn Up from the first few days and there were at least two smaller examples. They've still been losing a lot of vehicles, but nowhere near that many all at once since reverting tactics. Also another example of mixed messaging: on one hand say the scale of the attacks are too small and independent, on the other say that that is how you taught them: to give small unit commanders initiative. Very much a "no, not like that, just do it again successfully" type situation.

[Elerond]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/us/politics/ukraine-troops-counteroffensive-training.html

"Biden administration officials had hoped the nine Western-trained brigades, some 36,000 troops, would show that the American way of warfare was superior to the Russian approach.

 

That seems odd considering that American way is supreme air superiority and Biden refused to give air crafts to Ukraine

[Zoraptor]

I'd give Biden some leeway on that. I don't think the US could practically supply Ukraine with enough aircraft to allow NATO doctrine without supplying pilots- and a lot of them- to fly them as well. Then you'd also need Apaches or similar...

The stuff that might make a difference is a lot of short(ish) range Air Defence in the 15-20km range to deny Russia its air support by outranging the KA-52s. But western countries simply don't make much of that, because they always expect air superiority to take care of enemy helicopters. You could see the result of that lack by things like S-300 systems getting hit by lancets. A system with ~70km range should not really be getting hit by something with 50km range launched from behind the front lines, and haven't before or since; but they tried bringing them in close at the start, lost a few, then withdrew them as being unsustainable losses.

[xzar_monty]

Patrushev is apparently trying to re-brand Finland as a genuine enemy of Russia. Interesting to see how this one works out and how much of an influence he still has. For those who don't know, the back and forth between the Finnish and Russian side of Karelia had been fairly strong until the war began, and the relations between Russians and Finns were pretty good, for the most part, around that area (southeastern Finland and the Russian parts adjacent to that). It seems Patrushev really wants to change that. His "ten Western terrorist plots" sounds like something out of a madman's fiction, which, come to think of it, it may well be.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2023/08/ten-western-terrorist-plots-against-karelia-over-last-half-year-says-russian

[Mamoulian War]

On 8/2/2023 at 6:30 AM, xzar_monty said:

Indeed. I'd love to know the percentages of Russians who buy and don't buy the nation's official rhetoric. I mean the real percentages, not what people tell when asked. But of course I'm not going to know.

I recently read an analysis by a Finnish specialist on Russia; she pointed out that even after 30 years of being fairly free to travel abroad, the Big Misconception in Russia is that every country is like Russia, i.e. corrupt to the hilt, hence why bother trying to change anything. Not certain of the extent to which is true, and it has to be said that not all that many Russians travel abroad or even have a passport.

And this is what Russia fears most. Most of the Russians knew someone from Ukraine. Now let’s imagine, if Ukraine would be able to magically remove all corruption and join EU. That would mean, that all of these people, would sooner or later start to question their Tsar and his corrupt to the bone entourage.

[Mamoulian War]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Patrushev is apparently trying to re-brand Finland as a genuine enemy of Russia. Interesting to see how this one works out and how much of an influence he still has. For those who don't know, the back and forth between the Finnish and Russian side of Karelia had been fairly strong until the war began, and the relations between Russians and Finns were pretty good, for the most part, around that area (southeastern Finland and the Russian parts adjacent to that). It seems Patrushev really wants to change that. His "ten Western terrorist plots" sounds like something out of a madman's fiction, which, come to think of it, it may well be.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2023/08/ten-western-terrorist-plots-against-karelia-over-last-half-year-says-russian

Wasn’t Patrushev also one of the fathers of the idea, that Ukraine is an enemy of Russia as well? Well, maybe it’s time to reclaim the Karelia back to Finland as historically Finish territories Are fino-ugric languages still spoken at these territories or have the Russians completely assimilated these people with their colonial policies?

[xzar_monty]

24 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

Well, maybe it’s time to reclaim the Karelia back to Finland as historically Finish territories Are fino-ugric languages still spoken at these territories or have the Russians completely assimilated these people with their colonial policies?

They have not been completely assimilated, but the Karelians, Komi, Udmurts and Mari are not doing particularly well, from what I understand, and neither are their languages. Colonial policies are still going fairly strong, and Russia has also had little interest in rebuilding anything that suffered damage in WW2 -- but of course that was only about 80 years ago, surely you can't get expect them to have started yet.

As for Russia and corruption: from my understanding, you are indeed quite correct -- Russia's biggest fear around Ukraine is that it manages to free itself from both corruption and Russian influence to a significant extent, thus demonstrating to Russians that a different, better way of living is indeed possible. According to the historian Timothy Snyder, Russia's main export is corruption, and because Russia doesn't have much ability to make itself stronger or more stable, it concentrates its energy on trying to make everybody else weaker and more unstable. (Here's one of existence's bitter ironies: breaking things down is nearly always so much easier than building or even maintaining them.)

I can't see the Karelia situation changing, by the way. There was this pipe dream of getting it back, but I don't think it was ever anything more than that, realistically speaking. For many passionate Russians, of course, anything that was ever Russian is always Russian, so the whole of Finland is still regarded as belonging to Russia, which is something that president Mauno Koivisto also emphasizes in his book The Idea of Russia (link above, somewhere quite near). In terms of nature, by the way, Karelia is quite distinct from much of Finland (as are the Baltic countries immediately to the south), so it could be an extraordinarily beautiful and fertile area if it was cared for by some country other than Russia. Not that I'm a fan of Finland's forestry policies, mind you: some of them are downright hideous.

[Malcador]

17 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I'd give Biden some leeway on that. I don't think the US could practically supply Ukraine with enough aircraft to allow NATO doctrine without supplying pilots- and a lot of them- to fly them as well. Then you'd also need Apaches or similar...

The stuff that might make a difference is a lot of short(ish) range Air Defence in the 15-20km range to deny Russia its air support by outranging the KA-52s. But western countries simply don't make much of that, because they always expect air superiority to take care of enemy helicopters. You could see the result of that lack by things like S-300 systems getting hit by lancets. A system with ~70km range should not really be getting hit by something with 50km range launched from behind the front lines, and haven't before or since; but they tried bringing them in close at the start, lost a few, then withdrew them as being unsustainable losses.

Pretty much. Although people still seem to think 30 F-16s or something will win the war.  Power of marketing and games I guess.  Wonder how long it'll take for a "stab in the back" myth to arise if Ukraine doesn't achieve total victory.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Malcador

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

Pretty much. Although people still seem to think 30 F-16s or something will win the war.  Power of marketing and games I guess.  Wonder how long it'll take for a "stab in the back" myth to arise if Ukraine doesn't achieve total victory.

Ultimately, this comes down to manpower, something Russia has an abundance of and Ukraine doesn't. You can have all the weapons in the world, it doesn't matter if there's no one left to use said weapons. Realistically, the scenario that keeps getting touted as the only thing that Ukraine will accept where Ukraine takes back all the land they lost since the war special operation started AND Crimea is a fantasy. The only way that can happen is with NATO actually going to war (not just proxy war) and sending in fighting troops. That's a recipe for WW3. I don't know about you, but I DEFINITELY don't want WW3. 

[Malcador]

Interesting claim by Kofman, he's been more cool blooded than most in talking on the war, that Bakhmut was a mixed bag for Ukraine.  High kill ratio in their favour, but they had high quality units mauled fighting convicts and low quality Russian units.

[Mamoulian War]

57 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Ultimately, this comes down to manpower, something Russia has an abundance of and Ukraine doesn't. You can have all the weapons in the world, it doesn't matter if there's no one left to use said weapons. Realistically, the scenario that keeps getting touted as the only thing that Ukraine will accept where Ukraine takes back all the land they lost since the war special operation started AND Crimea is a fantasy. The only way that can happen is with NATO actually going to war (not just proxy war) and sending in fighting troops. That's a recipe for WW3. I don't know about you, but I DEFINITELY don't want WW3. 

WW3 is far away from what some scaremongers trying to portray

https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/news/2023/08/3/7166922/

[Zoraptor]

Not a great article, that. Sort of assumes that Poland knew about the intrusion and chose not to do anything. While you can legally shoot down intruders, you can't do so retroactively. There have been tons of intrusions too probably a dozen per year on both sides and very few have ever resulted in shooting. The two most famous cold war incidents don't even come close to fitting their scenario either- Gary Powers' was a singular result of a quite deliberate, repeated and systemic pattern of intrusions dealt with at the time, KAL007 went through Soviet airspace twice for dozens of kms and despite them thinking it was a spy aircraft it still got warning shots fired at it before missiles. And there's a massive difference between dumping flares on an unmanned drone which has been illegally toodling around a country's airspace for hours and shooting down something manned. Indeed, a far better example there would have been the drone over the Black Sea that Russian plane collided with and even then, still not a great example.

Far better examples of more active support not resulting in war would have been Soviet pilots flying in Korea (or the Chinese intervention there, though MacArthur at least wanted to nuke China for that) and Vietnam. But those were a lot more deniable before the internet- hard to deny that Joseph K Bloggs, Captain USAF, was just on holiday with his F-16 when shot down when you've got facebook and the like.

5 hours ago, Malcador said:

Wonder how long it'll take for a "stab in the back" myth to arise if Ukraine doesn't achieve total victory.

Think there's a certain amount of that already happening. Ukraine has been pretty vocal against some of their friends for what was pretty mild criticism (eg Poland recently, Britain and Germany earlier) and have been claiming that they aren't being supplied what they want and need* to win. Plus there's a decent amount of semi public hectoring about what has been going wrong with the counteroffensive and why, and I don't imagine they're all that keen on people negotiating on their behalf either, no matter how informally.

*certain amount of irony there considering that they're getting stuff for free that most have to pay for. Indeed, hard to fault Saudi/ UAE for being annoyed when they're charged $10 million a pop to protect their cities from missiles with old interceptors while Ukraine gets the new ones, for free.

[Gfted1]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Indeed, hard to fault Saudi/ UAE for being annoyed when they're charged $10 million a pop to protect their cities from missiles with old interceptors while Ukraine gets the new ones, for free.

10M a pop is highway robbery, but the situations are apples to oranges.

[Zoraptor]

The situations certainly aren't equivalent, but they don't have to be in order for KSA to be annoyed. The more equivalent situation would be Cyprus getting invaded by Turkey. That comparison is even less flattering though, since the US had an arms embargo on Cyprus until very recently. Needless to say, no embargo on Turkey.

(bit OT but... officially the west supports Saudi as trying to restore Yemen's legit government after an aggressive Iran backed coup/ civil war threatened regional instability in a region that is critical to western interests. Generally speaking that has also been enough to get aid for other countries. Saudi has signed a treaty with Israel, which got Egypt and Jordan a lot of aid- it got Saudi the right to buy more stuff at inflated prices, but still not even the good stuff. Then they look at the $49bn in aid Ukraine has got... that's Saudi's entire military budget for 2022* just given away

*per IISS, estimates very significantly)

[Gorth]

3 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Then they look at the $49bn in aid Ukraine has got... that's Saudi's entire military budget for 2022* just given away

That's more than the total annual GDP of each of the countries 84-190 on the list of countries sorted by GDP
 

Edit for those curious: https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/

 

[BruceVC]

https://mothership.sg/2023/08/modi-brics-no-show/

Interesting link with the real fractures within BRICS, Modi may not be attending the summit  in person  because of the following ( our president has asked him  after this to attend in person )

"Modi’s potential absence comes after India altered July’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, which also included China and Russia, to a virtual format without giving an official reason "

"According to the Reuters report, New Delhi is experiencing growing reservations about being part of China-dominated organisations like BRICS and SCO, given Indian’s increasing relations with Western powers"

Indian-China relations have worsened since a border clash in the Himalayas three years ago left 20 Indian soldiers and 4 Chinese soldiers dead "

Im not surprised, BRICS is basically a Chinese dominant union and India has its own reservations around China

 

 

[xzar_monty]

Apparently Ukraine managed to do some damage last night:

 

[Malcador]

Interesting BBC is showing combat footage of the drone strike. Guess they're in the marketing business.

[xzar_monty]

Given the amount of prisoners released to fight in Ukraine, we're probably going to see quite a lot this in the future (see link). I've just read a psychiatrist's report where he states that although PTSD treatment tends to be insufficient just about everywhere, Russia is particularly bad in this respect, too, because 1) much of the time the problem is not even acknowledged, 2) the country has no real interest in even trying to help anyone, and 3) the deadly[*] combination of amphetamines and vodka is very common among veterans. The fact that many of them were murderers and rapists even before the war doesn't really help, either.

So, appetitive aggression galore in Russia.

 

[*] Deadly for the veteran himself and for the people around him.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2023/08/karelian-mass-murder-suspect-fought-ukraine

[Mamoulian War]

This UA guy is really perfect at depicting the current western and russian news buzz. Slow offensive.

 

[Malcador]

Ukrainian command can do no wrong.

[bugarup]

4 hours ago, Malcador said:

Ukrainian command can do no wrong.

It's them who are dying out there. Ghouls from safe, rich, fat places who complain that counteroffensive isn't ~showy~ enough for their tastes can go f*ck themselves.

[Malcador]

4 hours ago, bugarup said:

It's them who are dying out there. Ghouls from safe, rich, fat places who complain that counteroffensive isn't ~showy~ enough for their tastes can go f*ck themselves.

Heh, but as I mentioned before I keep seeing comments here and there that lay the blame for any Ukrainian misstep with the West.  Not even sure the video really has that much to bitch about, remarks about the offensive being slower than desired or expected were about but I don't see them around much.   Also is  bit much to be snarky to nations that give them the things they are being ****y with as well (Javelin, HIMARS,  Storm Shadow, Patriot, Bradley.)

Just very naive to expect ATACMS, Abrams and F-16s in their hundreds as well, when you consider the situation. 

At any rate, not very productive to engage in anyway as this officer points out (he seems credible, although bitches about Ukrainian generals alot)

 

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by Malcador

[Zoraptor]

Don't think Ukraine can be blamed (much) for the military failures, but they can be blamed for setting expectations far too high. And yeah, announcing the offensive was stupid both for doing it at all and for setting ludicrous expectations on a completely ridiculous timetable (Crimea by spring!.. in their hearts). In that at least Western Official was a lot more circumspect, in general, they just tended to be drowned out by by expectation inflation from people competing for clicks, Unnamed Western Official and Retired NATO Officer writing column. It also sets the stage for recriminations when things don't go to plan or schedule and recriminations can get out of hand.

Militarily... well NATO hasn't fought a 'proper' war ever and you have to go back to Korea 70 years ago to find an equivalent fight. No doubt their tactics look great in a simulator and when wargamed, but those always work on the basis of assumptions and the assumption is never that your army has to fight a way you don't want them to. So you get a self reinforcing impression of your own competence. Sitting back and asking why they aren't fighting as the simulations suggest they should is paternalistic bollocks at best and has often been accompanied by extremely obvious inconsistencies. It would be interesting to see how they'd perform when their lead vehicle hits a mine, everyone has to stop, and a helicopter picks your convoy off from 10km away (or artillery from even further). Just drive around the minefield (lol), deploy infantry screens (unsupported, because your armour is stuck trying to get through the mines), don't move in convoys (but keep launching those 1000 man attacks!), keep moving (but stay on the cleared lanes!); very easy to say not so easy to actually do. The one thing they might be blamed for is going for obvious PR targets over military importance, and that's mainly wasting energy and resources attacking Bakhmut not because it's important strategically but because losing it was embarrassing.

OTOH, whining about 'only' getting 60 odd billion dollars worth of military aid from your allies (and about as much again non military) is not a great look either.

[pmp10]

So the peace talks hosted by Saudis are over and predictably no much got done without Russian participation.

But you can see Ukrainian position starts to shift:
Ukraine is no longer insisting on Russian withdrawal as condition for talks.