If I ran a left-wing site with the morals of Fox News, I would totally be twisting this into Putin: Trump welcome to come to Russia!
Well, you wouldn’t be wrong. I hope someone pranks Trump with a fake phone call from “Putin” inviting him to come to Russia. That would be epic!
Actually, that might be a way for Putin to pull out before he comes to a bad end. Have Trump travel to Russia as an unofficial negotiator. [Talking behind closed doors.] Trump announces that peace is at hand, because he’s The Bestest Negotiator. Putin withdraws. Trump campaigns on being The World’s Best Peacemaker, and that Only Himself could have ended the war. Trump gets elected in 2024, and pulls the U.S. out of NATO. Putin, having had a couple of years to regroup, takes over Ukraine.
“Putin” just needs to say the magic words: “You alone can fix this!”
“And then vee build Trump Tower Moskva. I get free penthouse at top, nyet?”
Holy shit! Delete this post before people in Trump and Putin’s camps see it. It could actually fucking work.
There were a ton of battle icons on the map earlier, but things have quieted down (it’s the same thing with the Russians…it’s like they don’t do night ops or movement). Mariupol looks…grim. There are a few battle icons in that area, and an icon claiming one of the medical facilities is in Russian hands. Kyiv also looks bad, but the Russians still don’t seem to be pushing into the city, just bombarding certain areas around the city.
I noticed a lack of reinforcements coming in from Russia before. I…really don’t get that. It’s like Putin told his military that they gets what they gets, and that’s it, so they have to do it with just that.
I heard earlier that Russia plans to bring in troops from Syria. I wonder how that will work out for them?
Sigh… what’s the plan? Surrender the city or we’ll murder all the people held in the hospital?
This is a new low even for the Russian military.
Guardian live blog
Or they don’t have reinforcements. And that’s why the need for Syrian troops.
Now might be a good time to remind Syria that they might need some of those troops at home.
And speaking of Syrian troops; How exactly do they get to the battlefield in Ukraine with equipment? Does Syria have enough air power to project an army that far, without overflying Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania? Certainly they can’t get heavy machinery into Ukraine in the short term. And how are their own logistics and supply chains going to be managed, if the Russians can’t handle that for their own troops? Enough food and ammunition for weeks?
Is this threat of 16,000 troops, each being paid $3,000/month (50 times their normal salary) just a bunch of bullshit? Where would this money come from? Russia is about to go insolvent.
Well, pretty much the logistics will be on the Russians…and, they have certainly shown a flair for this, so that’s totally justified! 
I don’t know what, if anything Putin expects wrt an impact on the battlefield (probably that the Syrians will be less hesitant and more willing to do whatever it takes to win…or something like that), but this is probably more of a political feather for Putin et al. It shows other countries support Putin directly in his justified invasion…countries willing to stand up to the evil west with our harsh sanctions and saying bad things about them.
He’s also got North Korea on his side. Oh, and Eritrea. Can’t wait for their crack army divisions to arrive. They should probably start walking now.
I sort of wonder if the goals were clear enough, but their whole premise was banking on a bunch of unsound assumptions, like the Ukrainian military will roll over almost immediately, and that the Russian Army would fight better than it has, and that the West wouldn’t flood the Ukrainians with the latest man-portable ATGMs, and so on.
IANA general, or even a military man, but this this whole thing gives me the very strong impression that it was intended to be a quick operation, and that they were expecting the Ukrainians to do something like pull forces from the east in order to protect Kyiv, and they could lop off the Donbas region in a quick operation, attacking from the direction of Belgorod and Rostov, with the idea being that the pincers would join somewhere roughly to the east of Dnipro.
Instead, the Ukrainians fought (and are still fighting) like hell near Kyiv, and also near Kharkiv and in the south and east. So there’s been no blitzkrieg-style offensive- it’s been a pretty grinding thing. Interestingly enough, they’re losing troops at a pretty high rate. ~250 per day is what they’re estimated to be losing, and that’s pretty high- it’s what the US lost on day 1 of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and more tellingly, it’s roughly the per-day casualty rate of the US Army in the Battle of Normandy (6/6/44 - 8/30/44).
So I think this couldn’t have been part of the plan; somehow I doubt that Putin or any of the generals had it in mind to fight a war with WWII rates of advance and WWII casualty rates.
I don’t think Putin gives two diddly-fucks about casualty rates in his own army. Their lives mean less than nothing to him.
Well, I haven’t heard that either is actually willing to commit any troops to fight. Hell, you probably could get a bunch of North Korean regulars to fight hard for you…just tell them you’d feed them and they would be pretty much in. But, so far, countries actually willing to commit forces to aid Russia are pretty thin on the ground. I don’t know how well Ukraine’s efforts to get foreign volunteers have gone, but my WAG is they will get at least as many people volunteering to fight for Ukraine and against Russia as you’d get ‘volunteers’ from Syria to fight for Putin et al.
This is what I’ve been thinking.
We can understand why Ukraine has asked for external reinforcements, but what would Russia’s story be ? The Syrians are closer; therefore, cheaper to fly into the theater ?
[Chechen psychopaths with laudable CVs were quicker, cheaper and easier, in the very beginning, but … now ?]
Or are they outsourcing in order to maintain certain minimum levels in numerous other parts of the country (for some reason that, at the moment, also escapes me) ?
Even materiel: If I’d invaded another country and the results were not what I expected, I’d be moving people and arms from wherever else I had them – presuming I had them – and then trying to figure out how to restock the arsenal.
[I know the distances can be great, but it’s something like a one-week train trip from East to West, end to end, no ?]
I’m missing a puzzle piece on this one.
I won’t assume that Russia shot the proverbial wad (for some value of that variable) in Ukraine already, but it doesn’t seem possible to rule it out either.
I think the goals were laid out pretty well…but, IMHO, those were political goals or ‘what we want to happen’. Militarily, I think the big picture strategy was defined and laid out to achieve those political goals as well, but I also think there were a bunch of constraints put on initially. Things like ‘don’t hit civilian targets, try not to damage infrastructure too much, minimize casualties on both sides to the greatest extent’, etc. These would have been to meet the political goals. Then you have preparation…and, sadly, not the H. kind. Russia made a huge deal about building up logistics and supply dumps for an invasion, and moving their troops into their jump-off positions for the invasion…but, apparently, didn’t train for how to move and support that invasion in the field and in adverse conditions or resistance, or that the vehicles were actually ready for an invasion, or the troops mentally ready for one. And didn’t tell the mid-level officers (I don’t think they really have changed the role of NCOs to a more western model, so they would be relying heavily on their mid-level and junior officers to carry out the actual orders) what they were actually going to do, so no one was really ready for the actual invasion. Those are all the conditions for a complete CF…which is what we’ve seen.
I think the “16,000 Syrian Troops” that Putin authorized on Friday, is just a bunch of bullshit - probably yet another yes man telling him that this would be no problem at all.
They’ll probably attract a few dozen - and then what will they accomplish with no command structure and no logistics for food/fuel/ammuniton? Just turn them loose like berzerkers?
You have little stubble in your avatar. I presume you’re using Occam’s Razor ?
Much of which were apparently supplies stolen long ago (or never delivered in the first place), with the officers who discovered the situation signing a new set of phony paperwork rather than deliver the bad news to the higher-ups.
The Ukrainian Foreign Legion claim they have recruited 20,000 foreign fighters and are turning people away if they don’t have enough military experience or if their motivation is to kill Russians rather than defend Ukraine.
