Europe at War

[drogulus]

     It looks like the theory that Russia is not sending their best has gone poof. Top notch equipment is over represented in confirmed losses according to a website run by people good at knowing stuff.

     https://www.youtube.com/v/Lem3enNkbV0&t

     One point: The Russian army Ukraine is defeating is the Russian army, a large representative portion.

     One other point: The notion that Russia will now send in the Non-Clowns for the big push that's supposed to encircle the Ukes in the space between Mariupol and Donetsk (Dnipro, maybe) is not credible.

[Karl Henning]

     It looks like the theory that Russia is not sending their best has gone poof. Top notch equipment is over represented in confirmed losses according to a website run by people good at knowing stuff.

     https://www.youtube.com/v/Lem3enNkbV0&t

     One point: The Russian army Ukraine is defeating is the Russian army, a large representative portion.

     One other point: The notion that Russia will now send in the Non-Clowns for the big push that's supposed to encircle the Ukes in the space between Mariupol and Donetsk (Dnipro, maybe) is not credible.

The gap between gear and soldiery?

[Herman]

On the issue of clowns or non-clowns in the invading Russian troops Pjotr Sauer, one of the few reporters apparently still in Russia, has an revealing report. A lot of soldiers are from very remote regions, who have no idea what Uke is and what they're there for and nobody in leadership is telling them  -  which may be part of the reason why there is so much indiscriminate killing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/30/coffins-in-buryatia-ukraine-invasion-takes-toll-on-russias-remote-regions

[Herman]

Most American military/foreign policy think tanks, regardless of political affiliation, also have longstanding biases regarding Russian culture as a whole, including claims that Russians are somehow genetically predisposed to be violent, perennially duplicitous authoritarians who require dictatorial leadership and have no ability to comprehend modern life; the kind of thing that would be universally condemned as racism if they said it about any other ethnic group.

I tend to agree with this, the only problem is we're not really helped right now in thinking another way.

Nevertheless it's always inadvisable to work from the premiss that the other party is stupid and savage.

[Florestan]

Nevertheless it's always inadvisable to work from the premiss that the other party is stupid and savage.

Evidence for stupidity: Chernobyl and Zaporozhzhye.

Evidence for savagery: pretty much all of occupied Ukraine, especially Mariupol and Bucha.

claims that Russians are somehow genetically predisposed to be violent, perennially duplicitous authoritarians who require dictatorial leadership and have no ability to comprehend modern life

Which might actually be true.

[Herman]

Evidence for stupidity: Chernobyl and Zaporozhzhye.

Evidence for savagery: pretty much all of occupied Ukraine, especially Mariupol and Bucha.

Which might actually be true.

Please, "genetically predisposed" to violence and authoritarianism etc? Not a cultural thing, connected to the utter lack of opportunities for most people there?
So, following that line of thinking, USA Americans are "genetically predisposed" to shooting guns at each other?

We're not going to win a 21st century war with that kind of simple thinking.

[Florestan]

Please, "genetically predisposed" to violence and authoritarianism etc? Not a cultural thing, connected to the utter lack of opportunities for most people there?

When you have been living for more than 500 years under tyranny, ignorance and poverty all the while being told what a great nation you are and what a redeeming mission you have in the world, culture turns into nature. 

[Karl Henning]

Evidence for stupidity: Chernobyl and Zaporozhzhye.

Evidence for savagery: pretty much all of occupied Ukraine, especially Mariupol and Bucha.

Which might actually be true.

"genetically predisposed"? Hello, Junk Science.

[BasilValentine]

     It looks like the theory that Russia is not sending their best has gone poof. Top notch equipment is over represented in confirmed losses according to a website run by people good at knowing stuff.

     https://www.youtube.com/v/Lem3enNkbV0&t

     One point: The Russian army Ukraine is defeating is the Russian army, a large representative portion.

     One other point: The notion that Russia will now send in the Non-Clowns for the big push that's supposed to encircle the Ukes in the space between Mariupol and Donetsk (Dnipro, maybe) is not credible.

An interesting and informative read on the identification of the units and hardware involved in the invasion. But at least one big false dichotomy has to be addressed: The mistaken distinction drawn between cannon fodder and professional troops. In what conflict over the last two centuries have Russian troops at every level of experience from special forces and officers to raw conscipts been treated as anything but expendable? I must have missed a war or two there I guess. The best are fodder too. In fact, generals and colonels seem to be cannon fodder in this conflict. And this analysis doesn't address some major causes of the offensive's failure (The command structure of the Russian military and the disastrous failures in materiel maintenance and logistics) and so leaves a perhaps overly optimistic impression of the Ukrainians' performance(?)

[Pohjolas Daughter]

It's been horrible hearing the recent news about the mass grave at Bucha and other atrocities by the Russian forces.

Latest news:  some Ukrainians are trying to "expedite" matters by trying to get into the US via the Mexican border (having watched videos on youtube) and are finding that they were misinformed.

Here's one story:  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/ukrainians-thought-easy-cross-mexican-border-us-wrong-rcna22067

PD

[drogulus]

On the issue of clowns or non-clowns in the invading Russian troops Pjotr Sauer, one of the few reporters apparently still in Russia, has an revealing report. A lot of soldiers are from very remote regions, who have no idea what Uke is and what they're there for and nobody in leadership is telling them  -  which may be part of the reason why there is so much indiscriminate killing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/30/coffins-in-buryatia-ukraine-invasion-takes-toll-on-russias-remote-regions

     That's certainly true, however the point is that elite forces are participating and not held back. 

     The heavy losses of an elite Russian regiment in Ukraine

[Karl Henning]

God bless Ukraine.

[Irons]

God bless Ukraine.

+1

[krummholz]

God bless Ukraine.

Not personally believing in God (nor disbelieving, just to be clear), I would only echo what the Ukrainians say:

Слава Україні!

Glory to Ukraine!

[fbjim]

An interesting and informative read on the identification of the units and hardware involved in the invasion. But at least one big false dichotomy has to be addressed: The mistaken distinction drawn between cannon fodder and professional troops. In what conflict over the last two centuries have Russian troops at every level of experience from special forces and officers to raw conscipts been treated as anything but expendable? I must have missed a war or two there I guess. The best are fodder too. In fact, generals and colonels seem to be cannon fodder in this conflict. And this analysis doesn't address some major causes of the offensive's failure (The command structure of the Russian military and the disastrous failures in materiel maintenance and logistics) and so leaves a perhaps overly optimistic impression of the Ukrainians' performance(?)

To be quite honest, the most obvious thing in retrospect is that a state like Russia, where state capacity has been sold off to high bidders and crooks, would, in retrospect, very obviously have issues with conducting a war, something which requires a great deal of state capacity.

I think similar issues apply to some of the US's foreign policy failures in the last decade or so.

[fbjim]

The RUSI is a British military think tank, and should be read in that context, but I did find interesting their speculation that Russia significantly over-estimated the effectiveness of disinformation and fifth columnists to erode state support.

Nonmilitary tools and military ones need not complement each other, and may actually have contradictory effects. For example, efforts to cultivate friendly or apathetic elements in a foreign society may be entirely undone by an assault that has a unifying effort on an opposing society. In this context, previously sympathetic or neutral elements may alter their loyalties or at least avoid acting in support of an invading force. Rather than complementing each other in an additive fashion, then, subversion and direct assault may be contradictory. Indeed, this appears to have been the major flaw in the FSB Fifth Service's research conducted before the conflict, which conflated pre-war dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian government with post-war attitudes, ignoring the effect that Russia's own actions would have in changing these opinions. [...]


Finally, Russian military authors writing about phenomena such as so-called colour revolutions appear to place excessive weight on the agency of large actors and their ability to shape conditions in smaller states, while excluding the agency of the elites and people of the state in question.

One reason I find this particularly interesting is that it's a flaw that shows up in a lot of left-wing discourse - a failure to consider the agency of states as anything other than proxies of Great Powers.

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/intellectual-failures-behind-russias-bungled-invasion

[Karl Henning]

Not personally believing in God (nor disbelieving, just to be clear), I would only echo what the Ukrainians say:

Слава Україні!

Glory to Ukraine!

https://www.youtube.com/v/S-YWmDAOujs

[fbjim]

When you have been living for more than 500 years under tyranny, ignorance and poverty all the while being told what a great nation you are and what a redeeming mission you have in the world, culture turns into nature. 

The great deal of reports I hear from Russians are not that of savage patriotism, but of apathy. If the demise of the Soviet Union was arguably a good thing, then the selling-off of its assets was a humanitarian disaster which resulted in one of the worst collective declines in life expectancies and rises in so-called "deaths of despair" in history.

It is a future I sometimes see for the United States - when people lose faith in the idea that any change is possible.

[Florestan]

An hour ago Zelensky spoke in the Romanian parliament, comparing Putin with Ceaușescu (not a very good comparison, the latter was a schoolboy compared to the former), thanking Romania for the support we offered to Ukraine and the Ukrainian refugees and promising to respect more and better the rights of the Romanian minority in Ukraine. Nothing exceptional, really, but the good thing is that Romania joined the club of countries whose parliaments Zelensky addressed.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

The great deal of reports I hear from Russians are not that of savage patriotism, but of apathy.

Same here. I'm seeing a lot of videos and reports where participants in rallies are asked why they came there. Usually the answer is something like "they put us on a bus and forced us to come."

As for patriotism, expect the epidemic of draft-dodging to continue. It's widely believed in Russia that if you have a chance to dodge the draft and don't take it, you must be stupid or a loser.

You can also now get up to 15 years in jail for calling the war a war. That's pretty strong incentive to keep your mouth shut.

If the demise of the Soviet Union was arguably a good thing, then the selling-off of its assets was a humanitarian disaster which resulted in one of the worst collective declines in life expectancies and rises in so-called "deaths of despair" in history.

Absolutely, and the root of much of what's going on now.