• from VOX - Is Russia losing?

    From a425couple@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 24 17:35:37 2022
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc

    from https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three

    Is Russia losing?
    Russia’s offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are, according to one expert, “seeing a country militarily implode.”

    By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Mar 18, 2022, 4:10pm EDT
    Share this story

    A picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs at a target practice
    range in Lviv in western Ukraine on March 17. Russia’s invasion of
    Ukraine entered its fourth week on Thursday, with Russian forces largely
    bogged down outside major cities and shelling them from a distance,
    raining havoc on civilians. Bernat Armangue/AP

    It has been a little over three weeks since Russia initially invaded
    Ukraine. And by most accounts, the Russian war effort has been a disaster.

    The initial Russian invasion plan, a lightning march aimed at conquering
    Kyiv, collapsed within days. Since then, the Russians have adjusted to a
    more gradual advance backed by heavy artillery fire, an approach that
    has allowed them to make some noticeable territorial gains.

    But these advances appear to have been halted, at least temporarily. On Thursday, the UK Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that Russia’s
    offensive “has largely stalled on all fronts,” a judgment echoed by open source analysts tracking developments on the ground. The Wall Street
    Journal reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have even managed to
    mount a counteroffensive around Kyiv.

    Russian casualties have been horrifically high. It’s hard to get
    accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative
    estimates of Russian war dead — from the US Defense Department — finds
    that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three
    weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US
    service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan.

    “We’re seeing a country militarily implode,” says Robert Farley, a professor at the University of Kentucky who studies air power.

    This is not how the war was supposed to go. On virtually any
    quantifiable metric of military strength, from defense spending to the
    size of the respective air forces, Russia’s forces vastly outnumber and outgun Ukraine’s. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark
    Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of
    a Russian invasion.

    But Russia’s military has proven more incompetent, and Ukraine’s more capable, than nearly anyone anticipated.

    A Ukrainian soldier examines a destroyed Russian armored personnel
    carrier in Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 12. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via
    Getty Images

    “Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the Ukrainians: Nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all
    that high an estimation of their military capacity,” says Olga Oliker,
    the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International
    Crisis Group.

    There are many reasons things have turned out this way. Generally
    speaking, it appears that pre-war analyses overrated Russia’s hardware advantage and underrated less tangible factors — including logistical capacity and the morale of the front-line combat troops on both sides.

    Morale in particular “is a very significant factor in Russian combat effectiveness, and one that’s being ignored by many military observers,” argues Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA think tank.

    All that said, it is still far too early to conclude that Ukraine is
    going to win the war. Ukrainians have suffered significant losses, too; Russia’s numerical and technological advantages remain and could yet
    prove decisive, allowing the Russians to besiege Ukraine’s major cities
    and starve them into submission.

    But right now, based on the publicly available evidence we have, the
    momentum is clearly going the other way. An unqualified Russian victory,
    which once seemed almost inevitable, is looking increasingly less likely.

    Russia’s gains have been real — but are stalling out
    On paper, Russia’s military vastly outstrips Ukraine’s. Russia spends
    over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian
    military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft.

    Given this disparity, Russia was bound to be able to make some inroads
    into Ukrainian territory. And as you can see on the following map from
    the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia had seized control of
    notable chunks of Ukrainian territory by March 9 — especially in the
    south, where it controls the cities of Melitopol and Kherson:


    Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 9, 2022.
    Institute for the Study of War

    But these advances were not necessarily the sole result of Russian
    battlefield supremacy. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical
    decision to trade “space for time”: to withdraw strategically rather
    than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, fighting the Russians on
    the territory and at the time of their choosing.

    As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became
    clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with
    Russians on open terrain, where Russia’s numerical advantages would
    prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of smaller-scale clashes.

    Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller
    cities; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their
    superior knowledge of the city’s geography to hide and conduct ambushes.
    They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open
    roads, which make for easy targets. They have repeatedly raided poorly protected supply lines with an eye toward denying Russians necessary
    materials like fuel.

    A recent Washington Post account of a battle near the Kyiv suburb of
    Brovary, based on Ukrainian military videos and interviews with
    witnesses, paints a clear picture of how this has played out:

    A column of tanks moved down a main highway toward the town of Brovary.
    As they passed a cluster of houses, the Ukrainian forces saw an
    opportunity. They pummeled the convoy with artillery shells and antitank missiles, destroying or disabling several tanks and armored personnel
    carriers. Russian soldiers fled their vehicles and ran into the woods, according to videos posted on social media by Ukraine’s military. One
    tank slowly rolled to a halt, engulfed in flames.

    The Ukrainian defensive strategy has not fully thrown Russia’s advance
    back, but it has slowed it to a near halt. ISW’s updated March 17 map
    shows that Russian forces have barely moved forward from their positions
    about a week earlier — a reflection of Ukrainian success:

    Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 17, 2022.
    Institute for the Study of War

    Again, the Russian advancement mostly came in the south, where they
    continue to besiege the port city of Mariupol. Their current aim appears
    to be to do the same to Kyiv in the north, cutting it off from food and
    water and bombarding it with artillery.

    In theory, this is something their vastly superior military forces
    should be able to accomplish. In practice, the Ukrainians have
    successfully stopped Russia from encircling their capital and may even
    be able to push Russian forces back.

    And Russian casualties are taking their toll on the invasion. A recent
    US intelligence assessment found that Russia had lost over 10 percent of
    its initial invasion force due to a combination of factors like
    battlefield deaths, injuries, capture, illness, and desertion. According
    to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University
    of St. Andrews, this is a very ominous sign for the future of its campaign.

    “Once they get below 75% their overall effectiveness should plummet,” he writes. “If the Russians don’t send fresh well-trained troops (and this will not be mercenaries or people impressed off the streets in Crimea)
    very soon, their whole strategy seems pointless.”

    What is wrong with the Russian military?
    To understand why the war has gone in such a surprising direction, we
    can first look at some of the Russian side’s problems. They started with Putin himself.

    The initial invasion plan was reportedly put together in secret by a
    handful of his top military and intelligence advisers; it reflected the
    Russian strongman’s seemingly sincere belief that Ukraine was a fake
    country and they could achieve regime change with limited resistance.

    “He actually really thought this would be a ‘special military
    operation’: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldn’t be a real war,” Kofman says.

    A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard at a military checkpoint in the
    center of Kyiv on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

    You can see this assumption at work in the structure of the early
    offensive. Instead of a methodical advance characterized by “combined
    arms” — the use of multiple forms of military power, like infantry and artillery, in mutually supportive fashion — Russian tanks and elite paratroopers were sent pell-mell toward Kyiv with little support. This
    kind of rapid advance might have worked if it had faced token
    resistance, but it opened up Russian forces to devastating Ukrainian counterattacks.

    Once Putin’s strategy failed in the first few days of fighting, Russian generals had to develop a new one on the fly. What they came up with — massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege
    Ukraine’s major cities — was more effective (and more brutal). But the initial Russian failures gave Ukraine crucial time to entrench and
    receive external supplies from NATO forces, stiffening their defenses.

    Even after this strategic shift, Russian forces have continued to suffer
    from a series of problems that have kneecapped their ability to execute
    the plan.

    “If the point is just to wreak havoc, then they’re doing fine. But if
    the point is to wreak havoc and thus advance further — be able to hold
    more territory — they’re not doing fine,” Oliker tells me.

    One of the biggest and most noticeable issues has been rickety
    logistics. The most famous images of this have been Russian armored
    vehicles parked on Ukrainian roads, seemingly out of gas and unable to
    advance any further. But on a whole range of issues, from secure
    communications to adequate tires, the Russian forces have proven to be underequipped and poorly supplied.

    Part of the reason is a lack of adequate preparation. Per Kofman, the
    Russian military simply “wasn’t organized for this kind of war” — meaning, the conquest of Europe’s second-largest country by area.

    Destroyed Russian armored vehicles clog a street in the city of Bucha,
    west of Kyiv, on March 4. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
    Another big problem, experts say, is corruption in the Russian
    procurement system. Corruption in Russia is less a bug in its political
    system than a feature; one way that the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of
    its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity.
    Military procurement is no exception to this pattern of widespread
    corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital supplies.

    “Ineffective control over fuel consumption in the Russian military
    actually long preceded the war in Ukraine and had historically created opportunities for embezzlement — that is why fuel is often called the
    Russian military’s ‘second currency,’” Polina Beliakova writes in Politico. “The quality of food and housing in the Russian military is reportedly worse than in its prisons, with unreasonably small meals and
    some carrying harmful Escherichia coli bacteria.”

    Logistical problems also seem to be a factor in one of the war’s biggest
    and most important surprises: the shocking absence of Russia’s air force.

    So far, Russia has struggled to establish air superiority despite
    massive numerical superiority. According to pre-invasion data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia’s aerospace forces include 1,172 fixed-wing aircraft; Ukraine has 124. Yet Ukraine’s planes
    are still flying and its air defenses mostly remain in place; as a
    result, the Ukrainian military has been able to use air power against
    the Russian attackers, including deploying Turkish-made TB2 drones
    against slow Russian armored columns to devastating effect.

    According to Farley, the issues with Russia’s air force run even deeper
    than lack of maintenance and fuel: Russian pilots lack adequate
    experience with this kind of campaign and do not train very effectively,
    while the leadership seems afraid to risk jets over Ukrainian skies.

    “There’s a big hangover from the 1990s and the early 2000s, when
    [Russia] literally didn’t have the money to pay for the gas to make the aircraft fly — so your pilots ended up not having many hours in the
    sky,” he explains. “Unlike the United States, which wages a massive air campaign every decade, the Russians really haven’t done stuff that
    require a lot of fixed-wing against any kind of prepared defense.”

    Ukraine’s stiff resistance and the importance of morale
    Perhaps the biggest single difference between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries, according to the experts I spoke with, has been morale:
    soldiers’ belief in their cause and willingness to fight for it.

    A civilian shouts anti-Russian slogans at a site where bombing damaged residential buildings in Kyiv on March 18. Rodrigo Abd/AP
    “It’s the one thing that could be completely decisive” in Ukraine’s favor, says Farley. “Armies do just decide to stop fighting.”

    Morale is, by its nature, a tricky thing to assess. But according to
    Dartmouth political scientist Jason Lyall, whose recent book Divided
    Armies examines the role of morale on battlefield performance, you can
    see its effects in dispatches from the Ukrainian front.

    “Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal
    hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army
    was not prepared to fight this war,” he explains via email. “High rates
    of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and
    large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the
    forest) are all products of low morale.”

    Putin kept the Russian invasion plan a secret from everyone but his
    inner circle; before the invasion, Russian diplomats and propaganda
    outlets were mocking the West for suggesting it might happen. The result
    is a Russian force that has little sense of what they’re fighting for or
    why, waging war against a country with which they have religious,
    ethnic, historical, and potentially even familial ties. That’s a recipe
    for low morale.

    By contrast, the Ukrainians are defending their homes and their families
    from an unprovoked invasion. They have a charismatic leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has made a personal stand in Kyiv. Stories of heroism and defiance — like Ukrainian soldiers responding to a surrender request by saying “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” — have bolstered the defenders’ resolve.

    The Ukrainian morale advantage is making a difference on the battlefield.

    “High morale empowers units to take risks, adopt unpredictable tactics,
    and to endure hardships even when outnumbered,” Lyall tells me. “High Ukrainian morale, fueled by Zelenskyy’s remarkable leadership and
    personal courage, has improved Ukrainian cohesion and the ability of its
    forces to impose significant casualties on Russian forces.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with the prime ministers
    (not seen) of Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia in Kyiv on March 16. Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    Lyall cautions that morale can shift with battlefield developments: A
    major Russian breakthrough in one area could cheer up their troops while dispiriting Ukrainians. And low-morale armies can win wars, though they typically do so in brutally ugly fashion — including mass slaughter of civilians, which appears to be a significant part of Putin’s current strategy.

    But right now, morale appears to be one of the most important factors in explaining the difference between the two militaries’ performances. It
    could end up playing a major role in determining the entire course of
    the war.

    What does victory for either side look like now?
    War is unpredictable. Any number of things, ranging from Russian
    reinforcements to greater deployment of its air force to the fall of
    besieged Mariupol, could give the Russian offensive new life.

    But even if Russia begins to perform better on the battlefield, its
    initial objective — “a Ukraine that becomes entirely subservient to Russia,” as Oliker puts it — is looking increasingly out of reach. The inability to swiftly topple Kyiv, together with the strong resistance
    and rising nationalist sentiment among Ukrainians, makes it hard to
    imagine Russia successfully installing its own government in Kyiv.

    “No matter how much military firepower they pour into it, they are not
    going to be able to achieve regime change or some of their maximalist
    aims,” Kofman declares.

    This does not mean the Russian campaign will prove to be a total
    failure. Depending on how the rest of the military campaign goes, it is possible to imagine them extracting significant political concessions
    from Zelenskyy in ongoing peace negotiations.


    A woman looks at her apartment, which was destroyed by shelling in Kyiv
    on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

    If more major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa are put under the
    sort of horrible siege Mariupol is currently experiencing — starved and
    under constant artillery bombardment — the Russians will have a lot more negotiating leverage. They could use this to extract favorable terms,
    like Ukrainian recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a
    neutrality pledge not to join NATO or the European Union.

    But if current military trends hold, it’s the Ukrainians who have the
    cards — and you can imagine a deal that looks similar on paper actually favoring them significantly. According to Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press and
    the Financial Times, the country’s negotiating team in peace talks with Russia envisions a very specific version of “neutrality”: one that precludes formal NATO membership but nonetheless commits Western powers
    to providing weapons and air defense if Ukraine is attacked. This would
    put Ukraine in a far closer security relationship to the West than it
    was before the war, when NATO membership was already functionally out of
    reach — a victory for Kyiv and defeat for Moscow.

    It is hard to say how these talks will go, or if and when they will be successful. But the fact that a negotiated end to the war is looking
    more likely than total Russian victory reflects the success of Ukraine’s defense to date.

    “Ukraine’s battle is really for time, an extent to which they can
    [degrade] Russian forces over time in order to steadily lead Russia to
    revise down their war aims. And we’ve already seen a change in Russian
    war aims over the course of the conflict,” Kofman says. “If the requirements of military success are the destruction of the Ukrainian
    capital and several other cities, the likelihood of achieving actual
    political aims is nil.”

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From SolomonW@21:1/5 to All on Mon Mar 28 09:29:31 2022
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc

    On Thu, 24 Mar 2022 17:35:37 -0700, a425couple wrote:

    from https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three

    Is Russia losing?
    Russias offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are, according to one expert, seeing a country militarily implode.

    By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Mar 18, 2022, 4:10pm EDT
    Share this story

    A picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs at a target practice range in Lviv in western Ukraine on March 17. Russias invasion of
    Ukraine entered its fourth week on Thursday, with Russian forces largely bogged down outside major cities and shelling them from a distance,
    raining havoc on civilians. Bernat Armangue/AP

    It has been a little over three weeks since Russia initially invaded
    Ukraine. And by most accounts, the Russian war effort has been a disaster.

    The initial Russian invasion plan, a lightning march aimed at conquering Kyiv, collapsed within days. Since then, the Russians have adjusted to a
    more gradual advance backed by heavy artillery fire, an approach that
    has allowed them to make some noticeable territorial gains.

    But these advances appear to have been halted, at least temporarily. On Thursday, the UK Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that Russias offensive has largely stalled on all fronts, a judgment echoed by open source analysts tracking developments on the ground. The Wall Street
    Journal reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have even managed to mount a counteroffensive around Kyiv.

    Russian casualties have been horrifically high. Its hard to get
    accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative estimates of Russian war dead X from the US Defense Department X finds
    that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three
    weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan.

    Were seeing a country militarily implode, says Robert Farley, a professor at the University of Kentucky who studies air power.

    This is not how the war was supposed to go. On virtually any
    quantifiable metric of military strength, from defense spending to the
    size of the respective air forces, Russias forces vastly outnumber and outgun Ukraines. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of
    a Russian invasion.

    But Russias military has proven more incompetent, and Ukraines more capable, than nearly anyone anticipated.

    A Ukrainian soldier examines a destroyed Russian armored personnel
    carrier in Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 12. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via
    Getty Images

    Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the Ukrainians: Nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all
    that high an estimation of their military capacity, says Olga Oliker,
    the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International
    Crisis Group.

    There are many reasons things have turned out this way. Generally
    speaking, it appears that pre-war analyses overrated Russias hardware advantage and underrated less tangible factors X including logistical capacity and the morale of the front-line combat troops on both sides.

    Morale in particular is a very significant factor in Russian combat effectiveness, and one thats being ignored by many military observers, argues Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA think tank.

    All that said, it is still far too early to conclude that Ukraine is
    going to win the war. Ukrainians have suffered significant losses, too; Russias numerical and technological advantages remain and could yet
    prove decisive, allowing the Russians to besiege Ukraines major cities
    and starve them into submission.

    But right now, based on the publicly available evidence we have, the
    momentum is clearly going the other way. An unqualified Russian victory, which once seemed almost inevitable, is looking increasingly less likely.

    Russias gains have been real X but are stalling out
    On paper, Russias military vastly outstrips Ukraines. Russia spends
    over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian
    military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft.

    Given this disparity, Russia was bound to be able to make some inroads
    into Ukrainian territory. And as you can see on the following map from
    the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia had seized control of notable chunks of Ukrainian territory by March 9 X especially in the
    south, where it controls the cities of Melitopol and Kherson:


    Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 9, 2022.
    Institute for the Study of War

    But these advances were not necessarily the sole result of Russian battlefield supremacy. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical
    decision to trade space for time: to withdraw strategically rather
    than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, fighting the Russians on
    the territory and at the time of their choosing.

    As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became
    clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with
    Russians on open terrain, where Russias numerical advantages would
    prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of smaller-scale clashes.

    Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller
    cities; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their
    superior knowledge of the citys geography to hide and conduct ambushes. They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open roads, which make for easy targets. They have repeatedly raided poorly protected supply lines with an eye toward denying Russians necessary materials like fuel.

    A recent Washington Post account of a battle near the Kyiv suburb of
    Brovary, based on Ukrainian military videos and interviews with
    witnesses, paints a clear picture of how this has played out:

    A column of tanks moved down a main highway toward the town of Brovary.
    As they passed a cluster of houses, the Ukrainian forces saw an
    opportunity. They pummeled the convoy with artillery shells and antitank missiles, destroying or disabling several tanks and armored personnel carriers. Russian soldiers fled their vehicles and ran into the woods, according to videos posted on social media by Ukraines military. One
    tank slowly rolled to a halt, engulfed in flames.

    The Ukrainian defensive strategy has not fully thrown Russias advance
    back, but it has slowed it to a near halt. ISWs updated March 17 map
    shows that Russian forces have barely moved forward from their positions about a week earlier X a reflection of Ukrainian success:

    Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 17, 2022.
    Institute for the Study of War

    Again, the Russian advancement mostly came in the south, where they
    continue to besiege the port city of Mariupol. Their current aim appears
    to be to do the same to Kyiv in the north, cutting it off from food and
    water and bombarding it with artillery.

    In theory, this is something their vastly superior military forces
    should be able to accomplish. In practice, the Ukrainians have
    successfully stopped Russia from encircling their capital and may even
    be able to push Russian forces back.

    And Russian casualties are taking their toll on the invasion. A recent
    US intelligence assessment found that Russia had lost over 10 percent of
    its initial invasion force due to a combination of factors like
    battlefield deaths, injuries, capture, illness, and desertion. According
    to Phillips OBrien, a professor of strategic studies at the University
    of St. Andrews, this is a very ominous sign for the future of its campaign.

    Once they get below 75% their overall effectiveness should plummet, he writes. If the Russians dont send fresh well-trained troops (and this will not be mercenaries or people impressed off the streets in Crimea)
    very soon, their whole strategy seems pointless.

    What is wrong with the Russian military?
    To understand why the war has gone in such a surprising direction, we
    can first look at some of the Russian sides problems. They started with Putin himself.

    The initial invasion plan was reportedly put together in secret by a
    handful of his top military and intelligence advisers; it reflected the Russian strongmans seemingly sincere belief that Ukraine was a fake
    country and they could achieve regime change with limited resistance.

    He actually really thought this would be a special military
    operation: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldnt be a real war, Kofman says.

    A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard at a military checkpoint in the
    center of Kyiv on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

    You can see this assumption at work in the structure of the early
    offensive. Instead of a methodical advance characterized by combined
    arms X the use of multiple forms of military power, like infantry and artillery, in mutually supportive fashion X Russian tanks and elite paratroopers were sent pell-mell toward Kyiv with little support. This
    kind of rapid advance might have worked if it had faced token
    resistance, but it opened up Russian forces to devastating Ukrainian counterattacks.

    Once Putins strategy failed in the first few days of fighting, Russian generals had to develop a new one on the fly. What they came up with X massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege Ukraines major cities X was more effective (and more brutal). But the initial Russian failures gave Ukraine crucial time to entrench and
    receive external supplies from NATO forces, stiffening their defenses.

    Even after this strategic shift, Russian forces have continued to suffer
    from a series of problems that have kneecapped their ability to execute
    the plan.

    If the point is just to wreak havoc, then theyre doing fine. But if
    the point is to wreak havoc and thus advance further X be able to hold
    more territory X theyre not doing fine, Oliker tells me.

    One of the biggest and most noticeable issues has been rickety
    logistics. The most famous images of this have been Russian armored
    vehicles parked on Ukrainian roads, seemingly out of gas and unable to advance any further. But on a whole range of issues, from secure communications to adequate tires, the Russian forces have proven to be underequipped and poorly supplied.

    Part of the reason is a lack of adequate preparation. Per Kofman, the
    Russian military simply wasnt organized for this kind of war X meaning, the conquest of Europes second-largest country by area.

    Destroyed Russian armored vehicles clog a street in the city of Bucha,
    west of Kyiv, on March 4. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
    Another big problem, experts say, is corruption in the Russian
    procurement system. Corruption in Russia is less a bug in its political system than a feature; one way that the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of
    its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity.
    Military procurement is no exception to this pattern of widespread corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital supplies.

    Ineffective control over fuel consumption in the Russian military
    actually long preceded the war in Ukraine and had historically created opportunities for embezzlement X that is why fuel is often called the Russian militarys second currency, Polina Beliakova writes in Politico. The quality of food and housing in the Russian military is reportedly worse than in its prisons, with unreasonably small meals and
    some carrying harmful Escherichia coli bacteria.

    Logistical problems also seem to be a factor in one of the wars biggest
    and most important surprises: the shocking absence of Russias air force.

    So far, Russia has struggled to establish air superiority despite
    massive numerical superiority. According to pre-invasion data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russias aerospace forces include 1,172 fixed-wing aircraft; Ukraine has 124. Yet Ukraines planes
    are still flying and its air defenses mostly remain in place; as a
    result, the Ukrainian military has been able to use air power against
    the Russian attackers, including deploying Turkish-made TB2 drones
    against slow Russian armored columns to devastating effect.

    According to Farley, the issues with Russias air force run even deeper
    than lack of maintenance and fuel: Russian pilots lack adequate
    experience with this kind of campaign and do not train very effectively, while the leadership seems afraid to risk jets over Ukrainian skies.

    Theres a big hangover from the 1990s and the early 2000s, when
    [Russia] literally didnt have the money to pay for the gas to make the aircraft fly X so your pilots ended up not having many hours in the
    sky, he explains. Unlike the United States, which wages a massive air campaign every decade, the Russians really havent done stuff that
    require a lot of fixed-wing against any kind of prepared defense.

    Ukraines stiff resistance and the importance of morale
    Perhaps the biggest single difference between the Ukrainian and Russian militaries, according to the experts I spoke with, has been morale: soldiers belief in their cause and willingness to fight for it.

    A civilian shouts anti-Russian slogans at a site where bombing damaged residential buildings in Kyiv on March 18. Rodrigo Abd/AP
    Its the one thing that could be completely decisive in Ukraines favor, says Farley. Armies do just decide to stop fighting.

    Morale is, by its nature, a tricky thing to assess. But according to Dartmouth political scientist Jason Lyall, whose recent book Divided
    Armies examines the role of morale on battlefield performance, you can
    see its effects in dispatches from the Ukrainian front.

    Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal
    hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army
    was not prepared to fight this war, he explains via email. High rates
    of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and
    large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the
    forest) are all products of low morale.

    Putin kept the Russian invasion plan a secret from everyone but his
    inner circle; before the invasion, Russian diplomats and propaganda
    outlets were mocking the West for suggesting it might happen. The result
    is a Russian force that has little sense of what theyre fighting for or why, waging war against a country with which they have religious,
    ethnic, historical, and potentially even familial ties. Thats a recipe
    for low morale.

    By contrast, the Ukrainians are defending their homes and their families
    from an unprovoked invasion. They have a charismatic leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has made a personal stand in Kyiv. Stories of heroism and defiance X like Ukrainian soldiers responding to a surrender request by saying Russian warship, go fuck yourself X have bolstered the defenders resolve.

    The Ukrainian morale advantage is making a difference on the battlefield.

    High morale empowers units to take risks, adopt unpredictable tactics,
    and to endure hardships even when outnumbered, Lyall tells me. High Ukrainian morale, fueled by Zelenskyys remarkable leadership and
    personal courage, has improved Ukrainian cohesion and the ability of its forces to impose significant casualties on Russian forces.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with the prime ministers
    (not seen) of Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia in Kyiv on March 16. Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    Lyall cautions that morale can shift with battlefield developments: A
    major Russian breakthrough in one area could cheer up their troops while dispiriting Ukrainians. And low-morale armies can win wars, though they typically do so in brutally ugly fashion X including mass slaughter of civilians, which appears to be a significant part of Putins current strategy.

    But right now, morale appears to be one of the most important factors in explaining the difference between the two militaries performances. It
    could end up playing a major role in determining the entire course of
    the war.

    What does victory for either side look like now?
    War is unpredictable. Any number of things, ranging from Russian reinforcements to greater deployment of its air force to the fall of
    besieged Mariupol, could give the Russian offensive new life.

    But even if Russia begins to perform better on the battlefield, its
    initial objective X a Ukraine that becomes entirely subservient to Russia, as Oliker puts it X is looking increasingly out of reach. The inability to swiftly topple Kyiv, together with the strong resistance
    and rising nationalist sentiment among Ukrainians, makes it hard to
    imagine Russia successfully installing its own government in Kyiv.

    No matter how much military firepower they pour into it, they are not
    going to be able to achieve regime change or some of their maximalist
    aims, Kofman declares.

    This does not mean the Russian campaign will prove to be a total
    failure. Depending on how the rest of the military campaign goes, it is possible to imagine them extracting significant political concessions
    from Zelenskyy in ongoing peace negotiations.


    A woman looks at her apartment, which was destroyed by shelling in Kyiv
    on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

    If more major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa are put under the
    sort of horrible siege Mariupol is currently experiencing X starved and under constant artillery bombardment X the Russians will have a lot more negotiating leverage. They could use this to extract favorable terms,
    like Ukrainian recognition of Russias annexation of Crimea and a
    neutrality pledge not to join NATO or the European Union.

    But if current military trends hold, its the Ukrainians who have the
    cards X and you can imagine a deal that looks similar on paper actually favoring them significantly. According to Ukraines Euromaidan Press and
    the Financial Times, the countrys negotiating team in peace talks with Russia envisions a very specific version of neutrality: one that precludes formal NATO membership but nonetheless commits Western powers
    to providing weapons and air defense if Ukraine is attacked. This would
    put Ukraine in a far closer security relationship to the West than it
    was before the war, when NATO membership was already functionally out of reach X a victory for Kyiv and defeat for Moscow.

    It is hard to say how these talks will go, or if and when they will be successful. But the fact that a negotiated end to the war is looking
    more likely than total Russian victory reflects the success of Ukraines defense to date.

    Ukraines battle is really for time, an extent to which they can
    [degrade] Russian forces over time in order to steadily lead Russia to
    revise down their war aims. And weve already seen a change in Russian
    war aims over the course of the conflict, Kofman says. If the requirements of military success are the destruction of the Ukrainian
    capital and several other cities, the likelihood of achieving actual political aims is nil.


    I liked thesee two videos on this subject

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9pVEP0AzZ4

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igq2fqa7RY4

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From a425couple@21:1/5 to SolomonW on Wed Mar 30 11:09:52 2022
    XPost: soc.history.war.misc

    On 3/27/2022 3:29 PM, SolomonW wrote:
    On Thu, 24 Mar 2022 17:35:37 -0700, a425couple wrote:

    from
    https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three

    Is Russia losing?
    Russia’s offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are,
    according to one expert, “seeing a country militarily implode.”


    I liked thesee two videos on this subject

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9pVEP0AzZ4

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igq2fqa7RY4

    #1
    "Be careful drawing conclusions from the Ukraine videos.
    517,383 views Premiered Mar 23, 2022
    The Chieftain
    217K subscribers
    There are a lot of videos coming out of Ukraine, leading to a lot of
    opinions. Not to be a wet blanket, but I caution that these are merely
    small data points, and normally will only permit conclusions supported
    by that one snippet, not larger trends. [Edit. Dear God, people, this is
    a video about critical thinking. It's not about who I think is going to
    win or who I hope is going to win (Ukraine, for the record). Listen
    carefully to my words: saying "Not everything unpleasant is a war crime"
    is NOT the same as "Russia is committing no war crimes".]"

    #2
    Ukraine Fog of War: What's Really Happening?
    Fundraiser
    1,221,466 viewsMar 15, 2022
    Task & Purpose
    609K subscribers
    The third week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is covered in the fog
    of war and that can be confusing. In this episode we investigate some of
    the Russian claims of victories and advances around the country to avoid falling into a cognitive bias trap. I suggest that we're living in a
    bubble thanks to the social media platforms that are pushing us more of
    what we want to see and not what we need to see.

    OK. True enough.
    But if everyone was totally silent, until the
    history books were written,
    the newsgroup would be even deader!

    Because of this war, my airplane flight to my vacation
    is having to take a long dog-leg to avoid Russia and
    Ukraine. Not ideal.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Matthew@21:1/5 to All on Wed Mar 30 18:45:51 2022
    Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dean Markley@21:1/5 to Matthew on Thu Mar 31 04:51:51 2022
    On Wednesday, March 30, 2022 at 9:45:52 PM UTC-4, Matthew wrote:
    Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

    Comparing current day Russia with the WWII Soviet Union can be deceptive. The only thing they have in common is authoritarianism. Even that is deceptive as Stalin had much more control than Putin has.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Stephen Harding@21:1/5 to Matthew on Thu Mar 31 07:57:12 2022
    On 3/30/22 9:45 PM, Matthew wrote:
    Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of
    weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

    My personal experience with the Russians is that they are a very rugged
    people, capable of hardships that would put most Westerners in a "rage
    room" for months on end!

    Don't underestimate what Russians can accomplish, especially when they
    have a megalomaniac authoritarian at the helm (which Russia seems to
    have a history of).

    They may not always be elegant in their solutions, but they can get the
    job done, even if that only means "eventually". Russians are a patient
    people.


    SMH

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jim Wilkins@21:1/5 to Matthew on Thu Mar 31 09:20:54 2022
    "Stephen Harding" wrote in message news:t244uq$8lj$1@dont-email.me...

    On 3/30/22 9:45 PM, Matthew wrote:
    Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of
    weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

    My personal experience with the Russians is that they are a very rugged
    people, capable of hardships that would put most Westerners in a "rage
    room" for months on end!

    Don't underestimate what Russians can accomplish, especially when they
    have a megalomaniac authoritarian at the helm (which Russia seems to
    have a history of).

    They may not always be elegant in their solutions, but they can get the
    job done, even if that only means "eventually". Russians are a patient
    people.

    SMH

    ---------------------

    If anything the US military overestimated what the Russians could do, aided
    by their boasting, and used that estimate to justify heavy spending to
    counter it. That spending was spread across all Congressional districts, sometimes at the cost of efficiency, and became a form of workfare for machinists and engineers, their dependents and supporting businesses, as an adjustable artificial production demand not tied to consumption or the
    economic cycle. It wasn't always tied to military necessity either, rather
    to interservice competition.

    The Left demanded that the money be spent on The People instead. But
    it -was-, their only real gripe being that they didn't control it.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Matthew@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 31 13:09:32 2022
    Underestimating the Russians has rarely ended well. Russia's ambitions are global, be not deluded. The reason for Putin's hostility in Ukraine is NATO/USA.

    "This is it, the apocalypse"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Matthew@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 31 13:16:26 2022
    Underestimating the Russians has rarely ended well. Russia's ambitions are global, be not deluded. The reason for Putin's hostility in Ukraine is NATO/USA.

    "This is it, the apocalypse"
    http://pol.foundation/Happening.html

    Some videos I made on the subject:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbjvjCzJmYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agtu0GSWadw

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)