[Discussion] Ukraine - Russian Invasion and Discussion

A place for aggregated discussions of a possible conflict, it’s implications and effects, news updates and personal accounts if any. If the expected conflict kicks off, I will change the title but the function will stay the same.

RUS is definitely stalling for time.

Killing the gas pipe, knocking out civilian infrastructure - it's to inflict collateral damage on UKR's supporters with economic pain and diverting resource support to replacing damaged infrastructure. There may well be a global recession; a tightening of fiscal policy is well underway. The two things that could avoid it - cheaper energy and no-lockdown China are not in sight.

What RUS may be finding difficult to understand is that the whole world is letting this drag on so that RUS is taken off the table as a global power. Once that's done, the world will pivot against China. That's what this is really about - attempting to contain China after subduing RUS. Heck, even China isn't getting involved too substantially; they also prefer a drawn out conflict to sap the western nations of resources while strengthening their forces.

The nutty thing is, RUS is not immune to economic pain and a global recession.
They think they are. Well I wouldn't label not considering it "thinking" to be exact.

Yeah. Putin has definitely gone all in with 2, 7 off suit against a table full of fat stacks.

fangblackbone wrote:

The nutty thing is, RUS is not immune to economic pain and a global recession.
They think they are. Well I wouldn't label not considering it thinking to be exact.

They're already in a recession.

On top of that their military spending this year is 40% over budget and their national budget surplus has all but been wiped out (and is expected to be a 9% deficit next year).

There's no doubt about the economic pain the average Russian is suffering.

However I think the point others have made is that Russians are so used to suffering that the drop in standard of living is not felt as keenly as what is being experienced in other countries.

I'm not sure if everyone is following the news but there are finally outbreaks of open protestation in China in response to the Urumqi apartment fire (allegations abound the complex was closed and first responders couldn't get in nor could locked down residents escape. Whilst this tragedy occurred in a region which is ethnically Muslim, it struck a raw nerve with reportedly 400m+ in constant lockdown with the latest winter COVID season. When you can't get sufficient food work/income or medical treatment, you have nothing to lose; you may have lost everything by that point. And this is a population pre-brainwashed with nationalism and censorship is everywhere. Chinese history is rife with dynasties torn down by peasant revolution when the collective suffering is too much to bear.

[Edit: I want to point out the average Han/other ethnicity Chinese cares nothing about the genocide occuring in the northwestern region of their country - the protests are in major cities where the doctrine of common prosperity is being undermined by economic disruption]

Do you know how hard it would be to protest against a massive political apparatus that is everywhere and routinely disappears dissidents at a mere whim? It's hard to speak out if it's just a few hundred people but once you hit the tens to hundreds of thousands across dozens of mega cities then that's when moderation occurs - the ruling class know that a very thin line divides order and chaos - even brutal police states have a small percentage of strongmen compared to total population.

That's why I would love to see the Russian people turn up en masse to show their displeasure but at present we're still only seeing pockets of resistance.

I think the issues the Russians will protest will have less to do with the economic hardship they are facing than they will opposition to being sent off to die in a war that violates their implicit social contract. That social contract has been that they outsource politics to the Kremlin in exchange for generally being left alone to do their own thing. That was the whole point in the "professionalizing" of the military and handing foreign policy execution over to Prigozhin. Now that mobilization has overtly broken that implicit contract and folks stand a sizable risk of being chopped to meat in a war they aren't even allowed to have an opinion about, opposition will take multiple forms. The first form is simple avoidance. 700k young Russian men have left the country. Probably double that are actively avoiding "mobilization" through other means like avoiding their domiciles. So far, the Russian authorities have not started "mobilizing" people at their places of employment, but when they do, I imagine it will effectively shut down the entire economy as just about anyone of draftable age will suddenly stop showing up to work. They are already full blown in the middle of stage one.

The next form of resistance will be passive and active sabotage of the mechanism of mobilization. And we are seeing symptoms of that as recruitment stations catch fire, recruiters are shot at, and efforts to mobilize are sabotaged administratively. We are only beginning to see the beginning of this.

Finally, the defiant opposition to the war, internal calls for regime change, and/or regional separatist movements will emerge. Particularly in flashpoint areas like Chechnya, Buryatia, and Dagestan where the burden of mobilization has been disproportionately borne by ethnic non-slavs, it won't take a lot to ignite tensions.

This war is not even a year old, but the progress down the pipeline of chaos is pretty impressive.

It's not even December and I've already seen quite a bit of drone footage of Russian defensive positions with multiple KIAs who very much look like they died of hypothermia during the night. This is on top of drone footage of grenades being dropped into Russian foxholes that elicit extremely sluggish responses from soldiers even though a grenade just went off a few feet from them.

I honestly have no idea how many poor Russian bastards are going to freeze to death in the coming months, but it's probably going to be a lot, like tens of thousands.

OG_slinger wrote:

It's not even December and I've already seen quite a bit of drone footage of Russian defensive positions with multiple KIAs who very much look like they died of hypothermia during the night. This is on top of drone footage of grenades being dropped into Russian foxholes that elicit extremely sluggish responses from soldiers even though a grenade just went off a few feet from them.

I honestly have no idea how many poor Russian bastards are going to freeze to death in the coming months, but it's probably going to be a lot, like tens of thousands.

Yeah. There is a whole lot more to combat effectiveness than occupying space and trying to survive. I have to think that unless and until the Russian supply situation improves there is a massive opportunity between the dnieper and Donetsk for a Ukrainian push when the ground gets frozen.

I keep hearing about Russian soldiers calling their mothers complaining about conditions. One common complaint that keeps coming up is how they are stuck in entrenchments with unremoved fatalities. I imagine mortuary services are pretty low on their list of logistical priorities but I am hard pressed to think of a worse decision from a morale standpoint. I guess they have mostly given up on the whole mobile crematoria thing.

Fighting in east Ukraine descends into trench warfare as Russia seeks breakthrough

Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily, as neither Russian or Ukrainian forces were able to make a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.

As Russia moved fresh formations to the area in recent weeks, including reinforcements previously in the Kherson region, the fighting in the Bakhmut sector has descended into trench warfare reminiscent of the first world war.

Over the weekend, images emerged of Ukrainian soldiers in flooded, muddy trenches and battlefields dotted with the stumps of trees cut down by withering artillery barrages.

Heavy fighting continued on Monday around Soledar, with mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner private military corporation – which includes pardoned convicts – in the forefront.

Ukraine’s presidential office said on Monday that at least four civilians had been killed and 11 others wounded in the latest Russian attacks. It said intense fighting was continuing along the frontline in the east, with the Russians shelling Bakhmut and Toretsk at the epicentre of the fighting.

“People are sheltering in the basements, many of which are filled by water,” said the governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko. “They have been living in catastrophic conditions without power or heating.”

The focus of much of the recent fighting, however, has been the now-shattered town of Bakhmut itself, largely abandoned by its 70,000 residents, with both sides sending reinforcements for a battle that has continued relentlessly since the summer as Moscow has sought to secure a victory after a series of battlefield setbacks and retreats.

Well, things were a LOT colder in '41 outside Moscow (vehicle oil pans frozen, rifles that couldn't be cleared, no fires, no hot food, and guys freezing overnight) and both sides still managed to butcher each other, so I'm a bit cautious about whether these guys will just keel over when it's not even winter yet.

I mean, they should if they want a chance to live. Just surrender. But for whatever reasons, chiefly that man is a social animal and it's really hard to buck one's circle of comrades, that hasn't been happening at scale.

Yet.

Top_Shelf wrote:

Well, things were a LOT colder in '41 outside Moscow (vehicle oil pans frozen, rifles that couldn't be cleared, no fires, no hot food, and guys freezing overnight) and both sides still managed to butcher each other, so I'm a bit cautious about whether these guys will just keel over when it's not even winter yet.

I mean, they should if they want a chance to live. Just surrender. But for whatever reasons, chiefly that man is a social animal and it's really hard to buck one's circle of comrades, that hasn't been happening at scale.

Yet.

I suspect there were a lot of very combat ineffective folks in that conflict as well. Paulus' 220,000 troops were encircled and out of supply in December of 1942. The 91,000 that remained alive surrendered three months later. Supply matters.

There were also millions of combatants, which Putin seems loathe to replicate, so...

Top_Shelf wrote:

There were also millions of combatants, which Putin seems loathe to replicate, so...

Though it is important to learn from the past, it is equally important to recognize when conditions have changed sufficiently that the lessons you think you knew are no longer applicable. This is more true in the Ukraine war and WW2 than just about anywhere. The conflicts are at least as different as the US Civil War and WW1 (wars separated by similar timeframes, societal and doctrinal changes, and most significantly technology).

Putin appears to be stuck in this idea that since WW2 was Russia's last successful real war, all he has to do is replicate the conduct of the Soviets to recreate success. Meat grinder = victory. But it is worth noting that the lethality of weapons and, critically, systems has increased by factors, not by increments. And this increase in lethality requires war to be fought differently (much like the Maxim gun required the significant change between muzzle loading line armies of the 1860's and the trenches of the 1910's).

The critical elements in modern warfare now are information gathering and processing and speed of decision. Weapons are too accurate, deadly, long-ranged, quick firing, and ubiquitous to counter with cannon fodder and trenches.

In 1942, the standard field artillery piece on either side was generally between 75 and 105mm. In preparation for big assaults, one or both sides might bring up really big guns like 122 or 152mm from the division level assets, but those instances were rare. Today's Ukraine conflict, the standard on both sides is 152-155 with 122 being used as a ghetto piece and with radar, GPS, and UAV directed fire, the accuracy is an order of magnitude more effective. Now you might think that the difference between 75mm and 155mm is just 80mm. That would be a mistake. This is a measure of diameter and a little geometry will reveal that the impact on explosive volume is quite a bit more significant.

In 1942, the majority of small arms combatants were armed with bolt action or semi auto rifles. The majority of the volume of fire in a squad came from one or two individuals armed with a light machinegun. Now, all 10 members of a squad are armed with similar capability as well as disposable antitank weapons.

The difference in the level firepower a modern COMPANY (~60 men) alone possesses makes WW2 doctrine suicidal. And that capability only scales as battalion, brigade, and division assets come into play.

Thinking that the Russians have a "puncher's chance" because they pulled off the W in 1945 (with significant logistical help from the US btw) by repeating the same plays is not how any of this works.

All great points.

Some other differences between RUS of the past and today's conflict:

RUS back then did have a weapons platform quality advantage over GER (better planes and even tanks later).

Fully mobilized society with factories, built on the American model, creating an enormous advantage in weapons. (Can anyone seriously argue that RUS is better from a quality standpoint than UKR now and going forward?)

An enemy fighting multiple fronts.

An enemy making tremendous strategic and tactical mistakes.

An enemy with deep(er) strike capabilities today.

Germany stopped (!) total mobilisation in mid-1941 because victory was imminent. UKR isn't going to ever let up off the gas, and I don't think the US, UK and the rest of NATO will either.

RUS today is a shadow of it's former, younger self. They've already lost 100k+ of their "best" troops, another ~1mm fighting age men have fled and they're down to convicts and old reservists. An aging pop isn't going to get this done.

Whilst I have some sympathy for the RUS conscript who finds himself half starved under equipped and freezing in a trench - I feel far more sorrow for the millions and millions of UKR civilians deprived of fresh water heating and medical attention as a consequence of war crimes.

War is just horrible. So wasteful.

Whilst the macro analysis suggests RUS is losing men in the hundreds daily, artillery duels will also inflict high casualties on the UKR forces denying the RUS advance. It all sucks.

Top_Shelf wrote:

All great points.

Some other differences between RUS of the past and today's conflict:

RUS back then did have a weapons platform quality advantage over GER (better planes and even tanks later).

Fully mobilized society with factories, built on the American model, creating an enormous advantage in weapons. (Can anyone seriously argue that RUS is better from a quality standpoint than UKR now and going forward?)

An enemy fighting multiple fronts.

An enemy making tremendous strategic and tactical mistakes.

An enemy with deep(er) strike capabilities today.

Germany stopped (!) total mobilisation in mid-1941 because victory was imminent. UKR isn't going to ever let up off the gas, and I don't think the US, UK and the rest of NATO will either.

RUS today is a shadow of it's former, younger self. They've already lost 100k+ of their "best" troops, another ~1mm fighting age men have fled and they're down to convicts and old reservists. An aging pop isn't going to get this done.

A couple points mostly in agreement.

Industrial era mobilization is, in many ways, a lot more straightforward than mobilization in a modern age. There is a really good reason most modern militaries have gone either full time professional (volunteer) or maintain readiness through mandatory refresher training. The skills required for the operation and participation in a modern military are both much more sophisticated and far more perishable than they would be in an Industrial age one. If you lack the systems, practices, and infrastructure to maintain that level of readiness (e.g.: the US or Finnish model of reserve forces), calling up a bunch of alcoholic pensioners in your "reserve army" isn't going to add much combat effectiveness in the modern sense.

The reason Germany stopped their mobilization in 1941 is actually for similar reasons that Putin halted his "partial mobilization" after a few months: He ran out of reservists. We mostly historically remember the Treaty of Versailles as a diplomatic failure, but one of the triumphs of it is how it limited Germany's ability to maintain a military of any real size during the interwar years. This resulted in a much, much smaller trained reserve pool than its peer nations. Once they were exhausted, they were basically stuck with building units from scratch with inexperienced conscripts. Similarly to Putin, Hitler's army also largely emptied their training cadres as well with similar results.

The long and short of it is that Putin is not going to 3D print a modern, capable army in the middle of this conflict irrespective of what he tries. In so much of warfare, but particularly in MODERN warfare, successful strategy is "build" strategy. You are your pipeline and you don't get it build it in the middle of a firefight. The time to have committed to that build strategy was 8 years ago. One of the participants in this war actually did.

Paleocon wrote:

The reason Germany stopped their mobilization in 1941 is actually for similar reasons that Putin halted his "partial mobilization" after a few months: He ran out of reservists.

Russia has nothing like our Army Reserves or National Guard (they recently attempted to start a program where a small number of former contract soldiers or conscripts would do periodic training a few years ago, but it never took off). They have dudes who were conscripted X number of years ago and who haven't done any training since then, not that they did any training when they were conscripts.

But the first round of Russia's partial mobilization didn't even target reservists. It was just a panicked grab for bodies--any bodies, regardless of previous military experience, age, health, etc.--by local officials. Those officials wanted to demonstrate their loyalty to Putin so when he called for bodies they sent bodies without any regard for who they were sending.

Russia's currently trying to improve it's mobilization system by updating data on military-aged men--most of which is stored locally on paper--and turning it into a national database as all the rumors are that it most definitely is going to have another round of mobilization over the winter.

The largest issues for Russia when it comes to mobilization seem to be two-fold. One, its military training structure has long been designed around a spring and winter conscription round, each of which that takes on about 200,000 new soldiers. All of its training facilities and staffing levels are designed around that number and, as has been seen, it doesn't seem to have any flex to take on an additional 100,000 men, let alone 300,000+.

The other is there aren't good signs that Russia has the ability to equip all those newly mobilized soldiers to levels that are expected by modern armies. There's already evidence that Russian soldiers in Ukraine are wearing Iranian body armor and helmets because Russia either doesn't have enough or, as videos on social media have shown, their Russia gear is either cheap knock-offs or 1970s-era helmets dressed up with some padding and an outer fabric covering because some corrupt general or supply officer made money off of it years ago.

Paleocon wrote:

The long and short of it is that Putin is not going to 3D print a modern, capable army in the middle of this conflict irrespective of what he tries. In so much of warfare, but particularly in MODERN warfare, successful strategy is "build" strategy. You are your pipeline and you don't get it build it in the middle of a firefight. The time to have committed to that build strategy was 8 years ago. One of the participants in this war actually did.

You're absolutely right that Putin isn't going to print a modern, capable army now.

But he might be able to flood Ukraine with enough cannon fodder that the Ukrainian Army is hard pressed to defend against waves and waves of attacks, especially when its clear that the UAF aren't exactly drowning in excess of equipment and aren't churning out tens of thousands of soldiers trained up to NATO standards every couple of months.

We're already seeing some Russian success around Bakhmut where the entire Russian strategy seems to be "let's throw thousands and thousands of Wagner convicts a backwater ethnic Russians against Ukrainian defenses and wait for them to break under the waves of bodies."

Russia might not need a modern, capable army if it has a virtually bottomless well of entirely disposable manpower it can draw from that the Russian public doesn't care about in the slightest.

(An interesting recent development has been a video from a former convict who served time with Wagner's Prigozhyn who said that Prigozhyn was a 'c*ck' who had personally performed oral sex on him.

'c*cks' in Russia's penal system are an untouchable social cast. They lowest of the low. The guys who are made to sleep next to the toilets and who are considered so unclean that when other prisoners beat them up they have to use their feet so as to not dirty their hands.

The former convict is saying that any prisoner who would fight for a known 'c*ck' becomes even lower.

Who knows if the story is true, but it's certainly interesting because it's either the Russian MoD fighting back against Prigozhyn's political maneuverings, a real prisoner who's pissed about all the other thieves selling out to the literally lowest of the low in their culture, or both. Either way it will be fun to see how it develops.)

OG_slinger wrote:

But he might be able to flood Ukraine with enough cannon fodder that the Ukrainian Army is hard pressed to defend against waves and waves of attacks, especially when its clear that the UAF aren't exactly drowning in excess of equipment and aren't churning out tens of thousands of soldiers trained up to NATO standards every couple of months.

We're already seeing some Russian success around Bakhmut where the entire Russian strategy seems to be "let's throw thousands and thousands of Wagner convicts a backwater ethnic Russians against Ukrainian defenses and wait for them to break under the waves of bodies."

Russia might not need a modern, capable army if it has a virtually bottomless well of entirely disposable manpower it can draw from that the Russian public doesn't care about in the slightest.

My point a few posts above is that I think there is solid reason to believe that the human wave approach is not one that is likely to work because of how lethal modern warfare has become. It barely worked in WW1 when the worst thing you had to worry about was dumb artillery and the Maxim gun. It is far less likely to work in a world with airburst proximity fused 155mm shells guided by UAV's. And the idea that the Russians possess an undeterrable zombie army is an overestimation of their capabilities. Particularly as casualties mount, motivation is going to be hard to come by even with blocking units of Chechen sodomites.

As I also said above, the more bodies he adds, the more mouths he will have to feed. A manpower heavy zerg rush is particularly taxing on an already f*cked up logistics system. It is entirely possible that the sole reason that the Wagner wankers are concentrating their attacks at Bakmut is because its proximity to Donetsk (and supply). It may be the only place in all of Ukraine they are capable of executing this tactic without starving their entire army. Even still, the increase of the logistical burn rate is still likely to absolutely cornhole folks downstream in Zaporozhia or Kherson Oblasts.

As much disdain one might give to trenches and WW2 era tactics - it still costs UKR lives to breach and hold lines. You can have all the UAV/satellite/Muricafkyeah firepower and still depart this world from a round of Sovier era artillery finding its way into your position or have your life reaped by a 5.45 or 7.62 round from a rusty AK. On this point, the sacrificial conscripts are still serving their strategic purpose of wearing down the willingness of UKR's supporters to fund the war and recovery effort. It's why AA is now a priority and PATRIOT systems might find their way to the battlefield sooner rather than later; let the RUS attrition burn out against second tier (backup) equipment without letting them unnecessarily harm UKR civilians.

Also, Paleo - I'm not exactly comfortable with some of the adjectives you've used in your post. Can we please keep that kind of language out of the discourse; I know we are all disgusted by the situation but we don't need to sink to that level.

Paleocon wrote:

My point a few posts above is that I think there is solid reason to believe that the human wave approach is not one that is likely to work because of how lethal modern warfare has become. It barely worked in WW1 when the worst thing you had to worry about was dumb artillery and the Maxim gun. It is far less likely to work in a world with airburst proximity fused 155mm shells guided by UAV's.

Except the front lines in Ukraine are much more spread out and sparsely defended than you might think.

The 700,000 or a million people in uniform the Ukrainians publicly talk about is everyone: soldiers, territorial defense, border patrol, cops, navy, air force, etc..

I'd be very surprised to hear that they had more than the approximately 280,000 troops they had at the beginning of the conflict and they likely have less.

And those troops have to be spread out to cover a front line that runs 1,300 kilometers as well as man multiple back-up defensive lines, staff reserves that can be brought up to blunt Russian offensives or counter-attack, and staff offensive reserves that can be used when Ukraine sniffs a weakness in Russia's defenses and they've amassed enough Western supply to attack.

So a massed attack in Ukraine isn't like a massed attack in WW1 involving thousands. It's a Ukrainian squad in a defensive position who suddenly have to fight off 50 men attacking their position (or repeatedly fight off smaller attacks over the course of the day).

Those extra bodies matter at that tactical level, which is why Russia has been seeing more successes as of late.

Yes, modern weapons are more deadly. But this isn't the Battle of the Somme 2.0. The number of troops involved is much smaller and the front is much less defended in both manpower and firepower.

And unless you've seen footage of Ukrainian arty strikes that I haven't we haven't given them a whole lot of--if any--proximity fuses. Outside of what are clearly precision munition strikes (that we've only given them a few thousand of) virtually all of the shells we've given Ukraine have plain old WW1-style impact fuses.

Sure, the modern tubes and fire control software make those rounds more accurate as does corrections via UAVs, but Ukraine isn't exactly swimming in artillery right now and those tubes also have to be also be spread out to cover the 1,300 km front. Not to mention that it was recently reported that upwards of 30% of all the Western artillery provided (which wasn't a whole lot to begin with and is Ukraine's farthest hitting and most accurate) is currently out of action and being repaired or serviced.

So that theoretical Russian attack on a Ukrainian defensive position isn't going to be covered by dozens of guns ready to unleash hell at a moments notice. It'll be a handful, at best, that, even with all the accuracy improvements of the 21st century, aren't going to be raining danger-close 155mm or 152mm rounds near the defenders.

Paleocon wrote:

And the idea that the Russians possess an undeterrable zombie army is an overestimation of their capabilities. Particularly as casualties mount, motivation is going to be hard to come by even with blocking units of Chechen sodomites.

I've never remotely claimed that the Russians possess an undeterrable zombie army.

What they have with the Wagner Group is a completely disposable army. It's why Wagerites don't use military ranks. Everyone is simply an assault trooper. Reports are that Russia's prison population has dropped by nearly 30,000 over the past couple of months and that coincides with a similar increase in Wagner troops. Russia has some half a million plus prisoners it can pull from.

The Russian public isn't going to give a sh*t that tens of thousands of prisoners died in Ukraine. The prisoners themselves don't really have any say in the matter given the new mobilization laws. And, at the end of the day, they're really facing the choice between killing Ukrainians and potentially earning their freedom and some cash.

Motivation for the mobiks is a different story, but months into it Russia seems to have developed some pretty danged grimly effective methods for dealing with soldiers who don't want to fight (not to mention new laws that will put those soldiers in jail for 15 years for refusing, not that they'll serve those 15 years because they'll be mobilized again, but this time by Wagner). And while there has been some localized grumbling by their civilian relatives there doesn't seem to be a burgeoning protest movement that's going to force the Russian government to really change anything. That could change over time, but so far all the signs are that the Russian public will swallow a tremendous amount of sh*t and are still primarily trying to go through the same f*cked up system that mobilized their loved ones to try to improve their conditions.

Paleocon wrote:

As I also said above, the more bodies he adds, the more mouths he will have to feed. A manpower heavy zerg rush is particularly taxing on an already f*cked up logistics system. It is entirely possible that the sole reason that the Wagner wankers are concentrating their attacks at Bakmut is because its proximity to Donetsk (and supply). It may be the only place in all of Ukraine they are capable of executing this tactic without starving their entire army. Even still, the increase of the logistical burn rate is still likely to absolutely cornhole folks downstream in Zaporozhia or Kherson Oblasts.

The bulk of the Russian forces that were in Kherson have already been moved east to Bakhmut and Donetsk Oblast. While that puts more Russian forces in the area, it also puts them much closer to direct supply from Russia.

Barring a crazy ass move by Ukraine the Kherson front is effectively dead for now and will just be artillery duels over the Dnipro along with the occasional special ops mission by Ukraine.

Wagner's been attacking Bakhmut for months now because it's a critical strong point for Ukraine's entire defense. They "got" it because Russian forces didn't have the numbers or command to attack it over the summer. And it's become central to Prigozhyn political ambitions as success in Bahkmut where Russian troops failed would give him more power. Taking Bakhmut would also allow Russia to push on to Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, which are critical logistics hubs for Ukraine, and put pressure on two nearby command HQs.

I don't know how winter will hit Russia's logistics. It definitely won't improve things, but the bulk of Russian forces are now much, much closer to supply than they were in Kherson. I also don't know how Wagner troops are being supplied or what priority they've been given. But they seem to be better supplied than the mobiks. Either way taking Bakhmut is central to Russia's strategy so they'll figure a way to get it supplied. And it's a lot less burdensome on your logistics when you don't particularly give a sh*t about even the medium-term condition of your troops because they are disposable.

Again though, the Russians lack the supply to be able to conduct the kind of broad front offensive that would be needed to make that kind of mass meaningful. Instead, they have concentrated on creating massed concentrations along the narrow front along Bakhmut precisely because it is a single tank of gas away from a railhead. This has allowed the Ukrainians to counter with artillery safely out of range of Russian counterbattery fire.

Ironically, the strategy you are describing bears striking resemblance to the one employed by the Ukrainians in Kherson where they DID employ a broad front offensive to apply constant pressure on the Russians while taxing their logistics, obliterating rally points and troop concentrations with long range artillery, and interdicting resupply and reinforcements. This was possible because of logistical advantages, but also because the Ukrainians are simply better trained, equipped, and aided with superior intelligence.

The Russians are not going to achieve a breakthrough in Bakhmut. Not with their Kherson reinforcements. Not with their Wagner zombies. Not with terrified mobiks.

But the Russians aren't just pushing in a narrow front along Bakhmut.

They are pushing all up and down the line in Donetsk Oblast because they know if the Ukrainians continue to advance there they will really have a problem, both a political one and a logistical one.

All I'm saying is the game has changed and, right now, it seems the Russians have both more manpower and the willingness to burn it to make gains than the Ukrainians. Whether those gains turn into something lasting remains to be seen, but Ukraine doesn't have an infinite amount of territory to trade and, as Bfgp noted, they're paying a dear price for every counter attack to maintain that territory.

OG_slinger wrote:

But the Russians aren't just pushing in a narrow front along Bakhmut.

They are pushing all up and down the line in Donetsk Oblast because they know if the Ukrainians continue to advance there they will really have a problem, both a political one and a logistical one.

All I'm saying is the game has changed and, right now, it seems the Russians have both more manpower and the willingness to burn it to make gains than the Ukrainians. Whether those gains turn into something lasting remains to be seen, but Ukraine doesn't have an infinite amount of territory to trade and, as Bfgp noted, they're paying a dear price for every counter attack to maintain that territory.

All I see is the same tired game plan they tried in Sieverdonetsk and Lysichansk but back then they actually had trained troops, better strategic position, and a weaker and less prepared opposition. In fact, they had their very best troops of the war deployed there and managed to lose nearly the entirety of the 1 Guards Tank Army. Now it appears that they are repeating it with lesser troops hoping for more spectacular results. As General Valerii Zaluzhnyi put it "we have defeated the professional Russian army. now we will defeat the amateur one".

And even if by simple willingness to sacrifice 80K more Russian men into what Prigozhin admits is "a meat grinder" they manage to take Bakhmut, the Ukrainians still maintain defense in depth with even stronger fortified positions in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Wars are not won with Pyrrhic victories.

My best estimation is that Putin's burn rate will reach a convergence with his supply deficit sometime before the end of Winter. In the meantime, Ukraine's supply will continue to ramp to a point where winter offensive operations will become a reality in the area of obvious advantage: Zaporizhia. The Russians will be unable to maintain supply between Melitopol and Volnovakha and will either pull back to Donbas and leave Crimea imperiled or face imminent collapse. I suspect they will chose the former. Losing the land bridge, particularly before repairs on Kerch are completed, will precipitate general chaos in Crimea and embolden political opposition in Moscow. The pressure on Putin to reach some sort of political settlement will be enormous and will probably involve sh*t like a return to 2014 borders, the demilitarization of Crimea and Donbas, and the acceptance of Ukraine's right to exist that will later be guaranteed by its entry into NATO.

edit: The tragic irony in all of this is that this is almost precisely the end point that they would have gotten had they simply not invaded at all. Zelenskyy was largely elected as a moderate who was going to put an end to the Donbas conflict and negotiate borders based on the status quo. He was also keen on making sure that Russian territorial ambitions were arrested and the only way to do so was through security guarantees and an alliance with the West. Neither side was going to be happy in the short term, either way, but at least had Putin not been an ass about it, a million people wouldn't have to die.

I like that they imagined that their "military reforms" put them at a par with the US. Seriously? Does no one there pay attention to what went on in Syria and elsewhere in the last decade?

I just finished listening to an analysis that posited that the trajectory of this conflict is headed pretty definitively toward Russian defeat with no "off ramps" that allow for acceptable outcomes for Russia. That said, of the ones identified, some are clearly better than others.

The analyst identified three.

1) Conditional Surrender: Putin pulls his military out of Ukraine and comes to a negotiated settlement effectively resembling the likely case I elucidated above. Post 2014 borders as status quo, no formal recognition of Russian annexation, demilitarization of Donbas and Crimea, Ukrainian NATO membership, continued sanctions until reparations are paid. This allows Putin to retreat with his military largely intact and the possible story that he "put an end to the conflict in Donbas". It sucks for him and he would have to sell it, but it sucks a lot less than the alternatives. He would probably have to find a way to have Prigozhin and Kadyrov die in the same car bombing, but that would be easy compared to the alternatives.

2) Unconditional Surrender: Putin pulls his military out of Ukraine without a negotiated settlement, loses Crimea and Donbas, Ukraine joins NATO, and he spends the next five years putting down rebellions with his damaged, but largely intact military. Moldova erases Transnistria, Georgia erases South Ossetia, and the Russian army rolls tanks into Buryatia to slaughter 10,000 armed separatists before largely returning to some kind of diminished version of 1998 Russia.

3) Military Collapse: Putin, through pigheadedness or inertia, decides to push on in Ukraine past May and watches in horror as his military collapses. Entire division level units simply dissolve out of breakdown of discipline and find their ways back to their home republics on trucks, stolen cars, trains, buses, and bicycles. They return to find their homes impoverished, their comrades dead or disabled, and the promises of Russian prosperity broken. They start separatist movements the central government is powerless to quell, beginning a further split up of the Russian Federation. This time, though, the republics decide not to surrender their nuclear weapons.

As things stand currently, there is no possible scenario which ends with Putin prevailing in the conquest of Ukraine.

Of all of the scenarios, scenario 3 is the most horrifying ... and the most likely. I suspect that this likelihood is currently being communicated to both Putin and any possible competitors he might have in the Kremlin. More to the point, it is just as likely that the advice is being quietly offered to bring all of Russia's nuclear weapons under reliable central control. Who is to say he will take it, but this is our current reality. Putin is presiding over the end of the Russian Empire.

Paleocon wrote:

1) Conditional Surrender: Putin pulls his military out of Ukraine and comes to a negotiated settlement effectively resembling the likely case I elucidated above. Post 2014 borders as status quo, no formal recognition of Russian annexation, demilitarization of Donbas and Crimea, Ukrainian NATO membership, continued sanctions until reparations are paid. This allows Putin to retreat with his military largely intact and the possible story that he "put an end to the conflict in Donbas". It sucks for him and he would have to sell it, but it sucks a lot less than the alternatives. He would probably have to find a way to have Prigozhin and Kadyrov die in the same car bombing, but that would be easy compared to the alternatives.

One of the prerequisites for NATO membership is stable, internationally recognised borders. Ukraine would not be able to join NATO in this scenario, unless it officially recognised the post-2014 borders and renounced its claim on Donbas and Crimea, which I'm pretty confident is not going to happen.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

1) Conditional Surrender: Putin pulls his military out of Ukraine and comes to a negotiated settlement effectively resembling the likely case I elucidated above. Post 2014 borders as status quo, no formal recognition of Russian annexation, demilitarization of Donbas and Crimea, Ukrainian NATO membership, continued sanctions until reparations are paid. This allows Putin to retreat with his military largely intact and the possible story that he "put an end to the conflict in Donbas". It sucks for him and he would have to sell it, but it sucks a lot less than the alternatives. He would probably have to find a way to have Prigozhin and Kadyrov die in the same car bombing, but that would be easy compared to the alternatives.

One of the prerequisites for NATO membership is stable, internationally recognised borders. Ukraine would not be able to join NATO in this scenario, unless it officially recognised the post-2014 borders and renounced its claim on Donbas and Crimea, which I'm pretty confident is not going to happen.

Something approximating it would be pretty easy to manage. Bilateral agreements with the US and Poland, for instance would be enough to make a future Russian incursion extremely unprofitable

Russia says west's refusal to recognise annexations a barrier to peace talks

Vladimir Putin is open to talks on a possible settlement in Ukraine but the refusal of the United States to recognise annexed territories as Russian is hindering a search for any potential compromise, the Kremlin said.

US president Joe Biden said on Thursday that he was prepared to speak to Putin if the Kremlin chief was looking for a way to end the war but that Putin had not yet indicated that.

“The president of the Russian Federation has always been, is and remains open to negotiations in order to ensure our interests,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Biden’s remarks.

“The most preferable way to achieve our interests is through peaceful, diplomatic means,” Peskov said. “Putin was, is and remains open to contacts and negotiations.”

Up to 13,000 Ukraine soldiers killed since Russian invasion, says Kyiv

p to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded in February, according to Kyiv’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, far below estimates of Ukrainian casualties from western leaders.

At certain points in the war, Ukraine said that between 100 and 200 of its forces were dying each day on the battlefield, making Podolyak’s estimate seem conservative.

Speaking to Ukraine’s 24 Kanal, Podolyak quoted official figures from Ukraine’s general staff. He said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, would make the total public “when the right moment comes”.

Ukraine has been tight-lipped about the number of its military dead and wounded, citing its worry that revealing the total would give Russia a military advantage. The first official total was announced in August when Ukraine’s army chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said 9,000 had died. The total number of injured has not been stated.

On Wednesday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, estimated that 100,000 Ukrainian service personnel had died or been injured.

Ukraine’s last announcements about its daily dead came in late spring and early summer, and were seen as part of a campaign by Kyiv for additional western military support to stave off Russian advances.

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, claimed in September that Russia had lost 5,937 men in Ukraine, a number far below western estimates. The US has put the total of Russian military losses at 100,000 killed or injured since February.

Ukraine claims it has killed far more, with its total of Russian dead 90,090 as of Friday. Each day, Kyiv’s general staff updates the tally and publishes it on its Facebook page, with the number killed that day highlighted on one side.