Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-says-russia-to-deploy-tactical-nuclear-weapons-in-belarus-reports/

"Putin says Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, state media report"

Couldn't they already station nukes in Kaliningrad if they wanted? So this is really just pointless posturing and is likely to simply stir up Belarusian partisans more than anything and probably even just regular citizens who would prefer to not be a nuclear target.

[Lord Halifax]

https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-says-russia-to-deploy-tactical-nuclear-weapons-in-belarus-reports/

"Putin says Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, state media report"

Put nukes in a country whose leader grip on power is shaky at best. 12D chest from Putin again

In all fairness to Putin (something I don't say a lot), Russia would have sole possessions of the nuclear codes that make the things useable. Something most people don't mention in the historical point about Ukraine and Kazakhstan giving up the nukes they inherited from the Soviets in the 1990s is that those nukes were useless to them because the Kremlin were the only ones with the launch codes.

Ukraine might have been able to take control of some of them, but not the most useful ones (the ones that could have hit targets in European Russia), and it was too expensive.

Ukraine’s Monolit produced critical pieces of hardware for command and control of Soviet ICBMs, including devices that blocked unauthorized access, and could attempt to adapt existing systems to establish control over the SS-24s. The question seems to have been not whether Ukraine would be capable to acquire launch control but rather how long it would take and how much it would cost. Bruce Blair, an expert in US and Soviet nuclear command and control systems, concludes that the easiest route would have been for Ukraine to rebuild an independent guidance system and blocking devices for the SS-24s produced by Pivdenmash.

The ranges of the SS-24s, however, were not suitable for the purposes of credibly deterring Russia: their shortest range was 2,700 kilometers and thus could not hold at risk targets in the European part of Russia. The older SS-19s would have been more suitable for the purpose - they had been tested for ranges of about 1,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Khmelnitsky in Ukraine, where 90 of them deployed, to Moscow. While the SS-19 guidance systems were built in Ukraine, the missiles themselves were not and their service life was due to run out in 1998. Moreover, the highly toxic liquid propellant used in them made them expensive and dangerous to handle.

"Interpreting the Bomb: Ownership and Deterrence in Ukraine’s Nuclear Discourse" by Polina Sinovets and Mariana Budjeryn. NPIHP Working Paper #12 December 2017

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

"Culminating" means ending? Who knew? I guess English is not ISW's first language.

Anyway, what both sides are putting out at the moment mostly seems to be disinformation. A case in point is the "leak" that U's counteroffensive is going to be centered in Bakhmut itself, sort of like that red dot "storm" on Jupiter that never seems to fade away.

I still don't see how a U offensive will work out well without air superiority myself. 

I would guess they're using it in the same sense as Clausewitz (stuff I wouldn't have known 13 months ago):

On the offensive, the culminating point marks the time when the attacking force can no longer continue its advance, because of supply problems, the opposing force, or the need for rest.[2] The task of the attacker is to complete its objectives before the culminating point is reached. The task of the defender on the other hand, is to bring the attacking force to its culminating point before its objectives are completed.[3]

The concept of a culminating point (Kulminationspunkt) was formulated by the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz in his book On War published in 1832 (Book 7, Chapter 5).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-says-russia-to-deploy-tactical-nuclear-weapons-in-belarus-reports/

"Putin says Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, state media report"

Put nukes in a country whose leader grip on power is shaky at best. 12D chest from Putin again

In all fairness to Putin (something I don't say a lot), Russia would have sole possessions of the nuclear codes that make the things useable. Something most people don't mention in the historical point about Ukraine and Kazakhstan giving up the nukes they inherited from the Soviets in the 1990s is that those nukes were useless to them because the Kremlin were the only ones with the launch codes.

Unless, then and now, the Soviets/Russians did :

Remember all those cold war movies where nuclear missile crews are frantically dialing in the secret codes sent by the White House to launch nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles? Well, for two decades, all the Minuteman nuclear missiles in the US used the same eight-digit numeric passcode to enable their warheads: 00000000.

That fact, originally revealed in a column in 2004 by then-president of the Center for Defense Information Dr. Bruce G. Blair, a former US Air Force officer who manned Minuteman silos, was also mentioned in a paper by Steven M. Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University who teaches security architecture. Both of these sources were cited this week in an article on the site Today I Found Out written by  Karl Smallwood, as well as in an article in the UK's Daily Mail.

[Storr]

"...consisting of 161 people initially, has only several dozen men left alive. They claim that soldiers are being "taxed", and those who refused to pay are sent straight to the zero line, and if they get wounded, they'll be removed from hospitals with unhealed wounds and sent back."

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1639390679670374403?s=20

"...channels today about this video, mainly raging at the commanders. Some said that similar situation is happening across many other units. They just don't talk about and don't make video appeals."

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1639757260766191619?s=20

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1639548171939467264?s=20

[CumbrianLefty]

Unless, then and now, the Soviets/Russians did :
Remember all those cold war movies where nuclear missile crews are frantically dialing in the secret codes sent by the White House to launch nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles? Well, for two decades, all the Minuteman nuclear missiles in the US used the same eight-digit numeric passcode to enable their warheads: 00000000.

This story has tickled me for some reason.

[Logical]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65075952

"No Ukraine offensive without more weapons – Zelensky"

I was confused about why Ukraine publicly told everyone, including the Russians, about their upcoming offensive.  At least this statement now makes more sense.  The goal here is to get more weapons.  It is not to say there is no offensive.  There very might well be one.  But the point of telling everyone about it is to put pressure on the collective West to send more weapons.

Media statements you can always ignore from the war
-Zelensky begging for more weapons
-Prigozhin attacking the MoD for not providing them more ammunition/weapons
-Putin making vague nuclear threats
-Ukraine claiming that they will launch a counteroffensive at [X] soon™
-Ukrainian generals saying the situation is much worse than it is unless they get newer weapons
-Putin claiming that the Russians have 10000 super modern tanks ready (they do not)
-Russian MoD claiming that they destroyed 78 Himars launchers

All these statements are either active deception or meant to pressure decision makers in the West and do not reflect reality.

[jaichind]

https://www.newsweek.com/ted-nugent-kicks-off-trump-rally-attacking-ukraines-zelensky-1790323

"Ted Nugent Kicks Off Trump Rally Attacking Ukraine's Zelensky"

Ted Nugent calls Zelensky a "homosexual weirdo" at Trump re-election kickoff rally.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

https://www.newsweek.com/ted-nugent-kicks-off-trump-rally-attacking-ukraines-zelensky-1790323

"Ted Nugent Kicks Off Trump Rally Attacking Ukraine's Zelensky"

Ted Nugent calls Zelensky a "homosexual weirdo" at Trump re-election kickoff rally.

BREAKING: Ukraine has just annexed itself into Russia after this sick burn from a coke-addled neofascist right-winger who last had a certified record forty years ago at a rally for a insurrectionist in a second-rate Texas city.

[Woody]

"Russia's power in Bakhmut is culminating"

Meanwhile in reality:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Suriyakmaps/status/1639928147033423872?cxt=HHwWgIC80c...
https://twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1639923570536054785?cxt=HHwWgoC8iY_zlsItAAA...

[Woody]

Wagner advancing south/are in the center of the city

https://mobile.twitter.com/Suriyakmaps/status/1639766676668403715?cxt=HHwWhsC-1d...

[Lord Halifax]

"Russia's power in Bakhmut is culminating"

Meanwhile in reality:

Give it a rest, or make your own Bakhmut thread, this level of detail doesn't belong in the megathread.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

"Russia's power in Bakhmut is culminating"

Meanwhile in reality:

Give it a rest, or make your own Bakhmut thread, this level of detail doesn't belong in the megathread.

Thank you for being a much-needed comedian.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

"Culminating" means ending? Who knew? I guess English is not ISW's first language.

Anyway, what both sides are putting out at the moment mostly seems to be disinformation. A case in point is the "leak" that U's counteroffensive is going to be centered in Bakhmut itself, sort of like that red dot "storm" on Jupiter that never seems to fade away.

I still don't see how a U offensive will work out well without air superiority myself.  

"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu

They already tried that and failed. Has Medvedev forgotten?

There's certainly no chance such an offensive would succeed now, with how much help Ukraine has gotten from our wonderful intelligence community.
Much thanks to the CIA and the like, for their strong role in helping American state priorities.

[Mopsus]

"Russia's power in Bakhmut is culminating"

Meanwhile in reality:

Give it a rest, or make your own Bakhmut thread, this level of detail doesn't belong in the megathread.

At this point WoodyWoodSucker has memorized more of Bakhmut’s geography than a Bakhmut real estate agent.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Some interesting reads today from Reuters on the war. First, Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Zaluzhniy reported to his British counterpart that they have stabilized Bakmut. Second, Ukraine is calling for a UN intervention on Russia putting nukes in Belarus
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-top-soldier-says-situation-embattled-bakhmut-is-stabilising-2023-03-25/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-security-chief-says-basing-russian-nuclear-weapons-belarus-will-2023-03-26/

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Some interesting reads today from Reuters on the war. First, Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Zaluzhniy reported to his British counterpart that they have stabilized Bakmut. Second, Ukraine is calling for a UN intervention on Russia putting nukes in Belarus
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-top-soldier-says-situation-embattled-bakhmut-is-stabilising-2023-03-25/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-security-chief-says-basing-russian-nuclear-weapons-belarus-will-2023-03-26/

From the article: Putin talking about a new "Axis" feels like yet another effort on his part to pull from the Great Patriotic War playbook.
Zelensky, of course, does the same too, but in different ways. This is Putin's version.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Some interesting reads today from Reuters on the war. First, Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Zaluzhniy reported to his British counterpart that they have stabilized Bakmut. Second, Ukraine is calling for a UN intervention on Russia putting nukes in Belarus
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-top-soldier-says-situation-embattled-bakhmut-is-stabilising-2023-03-25/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-security-chief-says-basing-russian-nuclear-weapons-belarus-will-2023-03-26/

From the article: Putin talking about a new "Axis" feels like yet another effort on his part to pull from the Great Patriotic War playbook.
Zelensky, of course, does the same too, but in different ways. This is Putin's version.

It’s such a weird comparison for Putin to make because not only is Russia the aggressor here but Ukraine gave more to WW2 than even Russia. The heaviest battles were in Ukraine and I believe Ukraine had the single biggest population loss per capita than of the the republics in the USSR

[Woody]

Belarus lost a quarter of it's population during WW2.
Ukrainian SSR lost 16.3.
Russian SFSR lost 12.7.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Some interesting reads today from Reuters on the war. First, Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Zaluzhniy reported to his British counterpart that they have stabilized Bakmut. Second, Ukraine is calling for a UN intervention on Russia putting nukes in Belarus
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-top-soldier-says-situation-embattled-bakhmut-is-stabilising-2023-03-25/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-security-chief-says-basing-russian-nuclear-weapons-belarus-will-2023-03-26/

From the article: Putin talking about a new "Axis" feels like yet another effort on his part to pull from the Great Patriotic War playbook.
Zelensky, of course, does the same too, but in different ways. This is Putin's version.

It’s such a weird comparison for Putin to make because not only is Russia the aggressor here but Ukraine gave more to WW2 than even Russia. The heaviest battles were in Ukraine and I believe Ukraine had the single biggest population loss per capita than of the the republics in the USSR

It's not so weird, rather self-absorbed (in ways that nations are not unusual to be).

To use old terminology briefly here:
White Russians (Belarussians) were the most badly impacted of all three and around 20% of them died in a mere four years, iirc. They were overran first and were even subjected to the start of what would be Generalplan Ost. I feel certain that whole villages were destroyed and everyone in them slaughtered by German forces.
Little Russians (Ukrainians) were effectively in the fight the longest and without them the Soviet Union would have fallen, people like Zelensky's grandfather slowing the tide. And as you noted, lost huge numbers of people thanks to the Nazis and all...
Great Russians (Russians) provided a huge chunk of what was left to turn things around, once it was stopped. Stalin appealed to Great Russian "defend the motherland" sentiment to turn the tide and it worked. And there were roughly three times more Russians than Ukrainians.

All three of these groups lost massively. There's a cliche that American media and Americans are obsessed with World War II, but Russia takes it to a whole new level, with Victory Day parades and all...We will never really fully understand how utterly brutalized the Soviet Union was by Barbarossa. We'd understand if we had to face down an invasion of America's heartland by Nazi Germany. Russia lives on the Northern European Plain, a highway for invaders throughout history...we live on our own hemisphere insulated by two oceans.

Zelensky pulling from the Stalin playbook is naming cities Hero Cities and using what looks like a Stalingrad-style strategy in Bakhmut. Putin's is appealing to the whole "defend the motherland" trope and creating a controlled sense of siege (if there was not already one) to help further his war. If Ukraine was really as bellicose and Nazi as he claimed it was, then he would not need to create this sort of narrative, as Ukraine would be doing it for him with aggressive action that would actually give the Russians justification to fight Ukraine in the open like this and Russians might be scared, even, by Ukraine's stated goals and actions.

So Putin is forced into trying to create, within Russia, a mini-version of what Stalin had presented to him gift-wrapped by genocidal invaders. All Stalin had to do to achieve the same was direct the energy usefully and maintain unity, which he did. To make up the difference  requires even bigger bald-faced lies about Ukraine and strong efforts to get people on the government's side, aided by the fact that the social media scene is not one that is driven by truth, but rather by engagement metrics that don't care about what actual reality is.

The creator of this Russian show has been forced to create a mirror site, and suffered consequences for his stand against the Russian invasion "special military operation" in Ukraine.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Belarus lost a quarter of it's population during WW2.
Ukrainian SSR lost 16.3.
Russian SFSR lost 12.7.

Oh dear. So the losses were even worse than I thought.
It's not exactly easy being step one on the road to achieving "Generalplan Ost". Especially with the various things that made Barbarossa distinct from the fights in Western Europe pretty much uniformly making it more savage and ugly.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://mobile.twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1640005447212998657

[CumbrianLefty]

"Russia controls less territory than previously thought" - could this become a theme?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://mobile.twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1640005447212998657

It probably feels like a good thing for Ukraine that precisely now is a difficult time for offensives for either side (muddy ground and all). Even if Russia has the men to take Avdiivka in the abstract, it has to take land in and around the town and Ukraine has a cushion in the worst-case scenario.

It is true all those battles in general are producing large numbers of Ukraine dead, but this is war and casualties are to be expected. Hopefully Ukraine gets a baby boom when this war is actually over.