Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting point about how this war could affect the Russian military's ability to retain enough people to fill the ranks. It would make sense it could be forced to more heavily rely on conscripts if fewer soldiers decide to sign contracts. The military might return to the 24 month service requirement, which was reduced to 12 months in 2007.

No problem. Putin will "convince" conscripts to sign service contracts.

This is already widespread and is the only reason why they hit the 2/3rds contract soldiers target in the first place...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1503751361946693641

There have been rumours of likely mutinies. All of this is very interesting.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Don't take anything Lukashenko says at face value

I don't. But it's interesting that this has been said given everything else, and it's clear that, at the very least, there's serious vacillation about actually committing Belarussian troops.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The thing about war crimes is that sometimes they're hard to define exactly and there are grey areas and complications and technicalities... and sometimes they're incredibly clear-cut. Bombing a theatre sheltering maybe thousands of people would be an example of the latter. Anyway, the grim and ghastly thing is that none of this is necessarily contradictory with the suggestion that Putin is looking for a way out of this mess. Not remotely.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most serious people in this thread base their understanding of what is going on based on credible reports by third party observers - these may often be, in turn, based on information or footage posted by belligerents, but the information is then verified and placed into known contexts. Insisting that all of this is propaganda is itself propaganda.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It hasn't escaped my notice that a disproportionate number of the latter seem to be taking place in Mariupol. I'm sure some of that is just because it's siege warfare, but I also am starting to wonder if perhaps there are some especially bad (or sick) guys among the Russian operational commanders there.

The thing that strikes me is that Mariupol was, bar none, the single most pro-Moscow big city in Ukraine still left under Ukrainian control after 2014. Boyko topped the poll in the first round of the 2019 election and his party (one of the successor parties to the Party Of Regions) did so in the legislative elections and it was unique amongst big cities to do so. Which makes me wonder: perhaps this reflects a degree of bitterness and spite and the cold reception to the invasion, at the failure of the people of the city and surrounds to greet the Russian army as liberators?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

One final post for the while: there are weird things afoot in the Belarussian woods and more reports and rumours of very senior Russian security officials falling rather dramatically out of favour.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Massive pro-war rally in the Luzhniki football stadium. Expect Putin to deliver a blood and soil speech.

Bit of a fiasco. People (esp. state employees) were bussed in as per the old Soviet traditions and a number left as soon as their tickets were stamped, and the TV feed for Putin's speech rather bizarrely cut off shortly before the conclusion.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It has been obvious from the beginning, Putin doesn't want a diplomatic solution.

Whether he wants one or not isn't particularly relevant. What matters is whether he can be persuaded to accept - and sooner rather than later - that doing so would now be the least-worst option for him to take.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Was there anything of interest in the speech or was it the same "we have to nazify Ukraine in order to denazify it" crapola as always?

Pure wind. The bit that got accidentally cut out by his own state broadcaster was a rambling anecdote about the invasi Special Military Operation beginning on the birthday of Fyodor Ushakhov (1745-1817) who is now the patron saint of the Russian Navy and the Russian Nuclear Bombers Fleet but, more importantly, was instrumental in the conquest of the Crimea and the founding of Sevastopol and various ports along the Black Sea coast, including Kherson.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He must have had bad ratings or something.

They're saying that a server glitched out, which, um.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't think comments like that are particularly significant. Temperatures get quite high during wars, especially very large and very nasty ones like this. That's just the way it goes. Getting involved in that side of things would be an error from a Western perspective, which is why even re-heated Cold War rhetoric is something to be extremely wary of.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's also a little tricky given that the usual ethnic and linguistic tensions that have bedevilled Ukrainian politics have (for the while) melted away in the face of invasion. I'm sure there are a lot of people who do feel that way, of course, but see above.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Certain people in this thread would do good for what little remains of their reputations if they were to cease posting in it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wait, six generals now? I'm starting to lose count.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The interesting thing about the response of the Israeli government to the war isn't that it has tried to remain comparatively neutral, it is that this comparative neutrality leans decidedly more in the Ukrainian direction than the Russian one and that this is largely due to public pressure. If you'd told me a few years ago that this would ever be the case I would have assumed that you were relaying the contents of a fever dream to me. I'm reasonable sure that this would not be the case if Ukrainian government were run by Ukrainian ethnic nationalists: it is interesting how the fact that it isn't has changed so much, both internationally and domestically.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How the hell do you spend 22 years and trillions of dollars 'modernising' your military only for this to happen?

I would not want to be a Russian senior officer right now.

In a word, corruption. All sorts of targets and goals were set, and all sorts of methods were used to cheat, to hit the targets on paper in order to satisfy the political demands to meet them, while also not having to expand the effort required to actually meet them (and many were probably completely unrealistic without a total change in the culture of the Russian armed forces and of attitudes towards it in wider Russian society) and getting to pocket a nice share of the budget through brazen embezzlement : the senior ranks of the military grew up under Communism and know how to play that game. Similar comments apply to issues surrounding procurement. Now, military procurement is notorious for inflated estimates, questionable purchases and obvious skimming off the top in all countries, even low-corruption ones in Northern Europe, but in Russia the problem is on another scale: we're talking outright and shockingly brazen theft as well as all the usual issues (and these are all much worse than normal). Without putting too fine a point on it, even Russian writers who are very careful about contemporary politics have felt perfectly safe (well, at least up until the last month, one presumes) to crack jokes about and make arch references to corruption in the armed forces, because the military is notoriously corrupt and everyone in the country knows it.

The other issue, already mentioned in thread but it makes sense to bring it up in this post as well, is that the Ukrainian military has also undergone significant reforms in recent years. One of the big questions before the war was whether this had been successful or not, and if so to what extent: no one really knew. Some observers were quietly bullish, most were pessimistic. It is undoubtedly a massive failure of Russian military intelligence that even the possibility that Ukrainian military reforms might have borne fruit was entirely absent from pre-war strategic calculations.

One top of all this, though, one really cannot ignore the extremely poor strategy pursed by the Russian army in this war, one that reeks of excessive and hubristic political interference. Even if we put to one side the issues with supply and logistics (and we should not! These are huge issues in war), they attacked on far too many independent fronts and did so with far fewer men than required for so many fronts. Their campaign has yet to come close to recovering from this massive, ridiculous error.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Talking of Shoigu, it is being reported that he has not been seen in public for nearly two weeks.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

_{(If you get the reference, you get the reference. I'm not going to explain).}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

2 Provinces, which were already mostly under de facto Russian control

no, the separatists only controlled a third of each of the two oblasts before the war.

This is a little complicated: it was about a third of the land area but a clear majority of the population as they were able to take all the major cities other than Mariupol.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://twitter.com/MaximColch/status/1508461578416496643

what

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is Spring now. There are, how shall we say, distinctly Scargillian vibes about threatening energy supply at a time of the year when usage is low. This is before we even touch on the small problem that the producer generally needs to sell their product more than the consumer needs to buy it. But he doesn't understand how these things work - he doesn't understand how many things work, really.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The nationalism of man wrapped in a patina of faux Christianity. Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace to his church.

He is, and frankly always has been, a pathetic and highly compromised figure.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's pretty clear that the Battle of Kyiv/Kiev is over* and that the Russians have decisively lost. One battle does not a war make, but this is significant.

_{*If the capital comes under assault again then it would be a new battle.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

https://www.dawn.com/news/1683055/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-must-be-stopped-immediately-coas-bajwa

Pakistan usually goes through a cycle of Democratic rule to Military Junta. I guess its time for the US to support the Junta .

The elections that brought Khan to power were quite blatantly rigged by the military, so it's more that that relationship appears to be... certainly strained and perhaps collapsed - we'll find out the latter soon enough.