Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

'War is merely the continuation of policy by other means' - it's a good quote and so well known that it's a cliché. And also so well known that politicians often forget what it actually means; the full implications. There is really very little utility (none, actually) in winning on the battlefield and then landing yourself in an even greater policy quagmire than you were in before.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The main difference between the German Volkssturm in 1945 and Ukrainian civilians today is certainly a significantly different level in morale. My own grandfather deserted before he could be drafted into the Volkssturm.

An infinitely less noisome and likely much more relevant analogy from German history would be the Landwehr regiments of 1813-15. They might not have been as effective as regulars, but they were still useful, as motivation and morale were high enough to partially overcome their deficiencies in training and equipment.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I was just thinking this. There are a lot of Russian Americans not sympathetic to Putin or his actions with small businesses that don't deserve to be driven under by a wave of boycotts. I'm not sure I believe a boycott against international Russian products would not inevitably spill over onto innocent people.

It rather misses the point for many reasons as a strategy as well: this is not a government dependent in any meaningful sense on popular sentiment and even the more supportive parts of the population do not appear to be enthusiastic about this war. The people to target are those at the top of the tree. We know who they are, we have a pretty good idea about their assets overseas...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But this is speculation on an invasion that isn't even a week old yet. Do people expect all modern wars to be like Israel's Six Day War?

I think the relevant issue, right now, is that it's fairly clear that Russian invasion plans assumed that it would be and that it is interesting that it isn't. But, yes, beyond that we really do need to be careful, though I think we can be sure that the response from the Ukrainian people in general suggests that turning a military victory into a sustainable political one (without which any military victory is not really a victory at all), looks likely to be difficult.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Russian and American nuclear preparedness scales run in the opposite direction: the higher the number, the more serious in the Russian system, not the other way around.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Neither side will have exactly accurate casualty figures at present. But the numbers flying around are not unrealistic: mechanised war using high explosives can be extremely, extremely bloody. You should realise that the low casualty figures typical for conflicts involving Western and Western-style armies are because of particular tactical and doctrinal issues (and the fact that the conflicts are usually asymmetric) because large casualties are hard for the governments of democracies to sustain unless the cause is an animating one, not because of anything inherent to modern warfare. Quite the opposite.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In what we might as well call a 'nation under arms' situation, people from all political perspectives will end up signing up to fight in some capacity. Anyone who pretends to be surprised or shocked by this outs themselves as dishonest.

In any event, if this subject is going to come up, others may wish to discuss the presence on the front line of the Chechen warlord's gang of rapist brigands and similar groups of unsavoury auxiliaries.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What the fuck are you talking about? I see people with masks on every time I'm in a shop. This is beyond off topic.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/LahavHarkov/status/1498686224462188549

How's that 'Denazification' going, again?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It doesn't reflect well on keyboard warriors to cheerlead bigotry or spew racism toward Chechens (both of which have happened in this thread)...

It's worth noting at this point that there are Chechens fighting in this war for the other side as well. The trouble with Kadyrov's goons being that they're a pack of despicable brigands, rather than that they are Chechen or nominally Muslim. After all, most of the time they people they terrorize, are, well, Chechens.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I agree. If Putin gets away with what he is doing in Ukraine, what is stopping him from going into Moldova next? Then deciding he can go after the Baltic States?

Running things on the old Jingo Scale, he does have ships, but he's running out of men and running out of money too.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's a fairly obvious issue with any attempt to run vox pops or polling in Russia at the moment - even more so than just a week ago. Besides, more interesting (at this stage) than oppositional sentiment is enthusiasm, and there doesn't seem to be much of it around. If you understand a few things about the logic of war on this scale, you'll understand the significance of that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Not exactly insignificant, for all that Electoral Type Events in Russia are brazenly rigged. They're an important part of that vast Potemkin village of practices that have allowed for the illusion that Russia is a normal Republic.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anybody got any more info on this?

Saw this on the NYT posted two hours ago....

"Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel is in Moscow for a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin about the war in Ukraine, according to reports in Israeli media and state-controlled media in Russia."

Haaretz report here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think y’all are underestimating Russia a bit. While yes the invasion could have gone better, they still are making important advances. Invasions don’t just happen overnight.

They have been taking heavy casualties - extremely heavy casualties according to some estimates - and morale is clearly low for this and other reasons. These things matter a lot in wars, much more than the speed of any advance, particularly in a country with only one significant natural barrier until you reach its extreme western end.

Throughout its varied incarnations, the Russian military has often been able to take casualties and still yet function at a rate that other militaries could not, but this related to the ability of the Empire (whether Romanov or Soviet) to bring new soldiers to the front or create whole new armies that opponents were unable to do for basic demographic reasons. Even so it was often a close-run thing: had the Russian army been destroyed after Borodino (as nearly happened) then that would have been terminal for the defence against Napoleon, for instance. Not only that, but sometimes things still fell through: the sheer weight of casualties suffered during the (technically successful!) Brusilov Offensive in 1916 contributed directly to the collapse of the Russian war effort and the fall of the Tsar.

The thing is, the Russian military these days does not have the capacity to do that. It has lost many of its most productive recruiting grounds (one of which was Ukraine!), the post-Soviet demographic disaster has had a predictable impact on its pool of potential recruits, it has problems in attracting genuine volunteers to become career soldiers, and the military and the state are so utterly riddled with corruption that it lacks the capacity to even enforce conscription at anything like the levels it would theoretically need.

I make no predictions as to how this will unfold (other than to say that thousands more will die and that I really cannot see how any form of military victory can now be turned into a political one: and a military victory that cannot be turned into a political victory is not a victory at all) and given the record of predictions before the invasion neither should anyone else, but certain assumptions based on the military history of Russia that a lot of people have internalised simply do not hold and it is important to be aware of this.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What's the source of these casualties?  Ukraine?

Accurate numbers on casualties never exist at this stage during any war. Individual units may have some idea of how many losses they have suffered (though actually won't always) but this information will generally not have filtered up through the chain of command. And any figures as to losses from the opposition will only ever be estimates and approximations. War is not like a computer game.

Nevertheless we can be sure that Russian losses have been heavy: the war is being closely observed and plenty of people have been collating information from different sources and cross-checking things in a methodical manner. Exact figures? No one knows, but it's clearly thousands plural already with an ominous number of military vehicles and aircraft lost and destroyed as well (including some of the most costly and hard to replace in the Russian military). We can also be sure that Ukrainian military losses have not been light and that Ukrainian civilian losses have been heavy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/newschambers/status/1500841586237845517

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ayatollah Khomeini was an improvement over the Shah, who killed 60,000-70,000 innocent Iranian people. Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei only killed around 8,000-9,500 Iranian civilians during their times in power.

This is all wildly off topic, but you are talking absolute shit here as usual. The most credible estimate for the number of political prisoners (largely left-wingers; in fact most of the active Iranian political Left) murdered in the massacres of 1988 is about 30,000.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Madison Cawthorn calls Ukraine government 'evil,' Zelensky 'a thug'
 "Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug," Cawthorn said in a video obtained by WRAL. "Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies."

The “GOP’s AOC” has a less than nuanced take on this situation. Truly the Party of Lincoln Putin.

I presume that the issue for Cawthorn is that Zelensky is Jewish.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Would be huge, though I'm still skeptical. Ukrainian figures are most likely an exaggeration to boost their fighting moral. Didn't the US estimate Russian losses at around 4k 2-3 days ago? Seems more plausible to me.

As noted before, truly accurate figures at this stage in a war aren't even physically possible, but there's nothing obviously implausible about those numbers: people forget what high explosives and automatic weapons do. Two other things to note are that a) this is a much larger war in terms of scale to that which we're used to seeing these days and b) Western and Western-style militaries go to great pains to reduce casualty rates both amongst their own troops which also leads to lower casualty rates amongst their opponents. Democracy acts as a significant restraint on the tactics that such militaries can follow without risk of significant domestic backlash, unless engaged in a war for national survival or the like. This is a severely underrated point in favour of democracy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Look the fact is Russia still has made progress in Ukraine. Each day they do gain more land and another city/town. That is another loss of manpower and resources for Ukraine.

Firstly, they certainly aren't taking cities and towns on a regular basis - it is genuinely unbelievable that Mariupol is still in Ukrainian hands, for instance. I imagine that it won't be for much longer, but then I thought that a week ago. Fundamentally, though, war is not like a computer game and troops tend not to capture territory in the clearly mappable manner people often assume, unless both sides have formed into rigid entrenched lines reminiscent of the First World War.

Secondly (and critically - absolutely critically) they are taking casualties at a completely unsustainable rate. It really doesn't matter how far you advance if in so doing you are bled dry and cannot hold what you take. All these recent reports about flying in auxiliaries from Syria or the C.A.R., or of finally getting the Belarussian army to cross the border, what do they speak of? Similarly, the suggested mobilisation of reservists and the credible reports of open press-ganging in some parts of Russia?* To which it can be noted that the Ukrainians are also taking heavy casualties, which is true but they're operating on a different metric: when the people are prepared to take up arms to defend the nation against a very real existential threat they can take a lot more punishment than an invading army with poor morale and diabolical logistics.

Again, I make no predictions and, yes, it would be quite wrong to look at the situation at present and argue that it shows Ukraine winning (there is little doubt that people who do so are getting ahead of themselves), but there's a large gap between that and arguing that things thus far have been anything other than a fiasco for the invaders.

_{*It has not really been remarked enough that, in a strategic sense, the Russian army in Ukraine no longer has a reserve. Pretty much everything has been committed to the front now.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/meduza_en/status/1502350142812340224

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some unusually optimistic chatter about possible breakthroughs at the diplomatic end today. As always, only believe it when you see it, but worth noting all the same.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Even if we assume there's much truth to this and even if we assume that the request is to be granted (not minor assumptions), there are certain practical... one might even say logistical difficulties in moving Chinese military equipment to the front line.