Agreed - but not at all surprising. People suck when stressed and war is about as stressing as you can get. Once you make the leap into ‘othering’ the opposite side, just about any inhumanity becomes justified. There are probably few if any large-scale military actions that don’t come complete with atrocities and generally on every side. We should be prepared for verified stories of massacres and rape. Including from the nominal “good guys.”
Just another reason war is something to be avoided. It brings out the inner shittiness of humanity.
And in other maybe-related news, four EU countries are kicking out Russian diplomats as potential national security threats to the host countries. Earlier in the month, another five countries did the same. How worried should we be about Czar Dobby switching to going after another country?
If Russia is indeed going to move combat power from the north to their offensive in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east, as has been predicted…
How challenging is this going to be for them (logistically speaking) given their apparent lack of supplies like fuel? We’re talking a trip of some 700-800 km? This cannot be a trivial task - in the past, I would not have questioned it, but now, I can’t see the Russian logistics being able to do this efficiently. It may take them weeks. Especially with damaged/broken equipment to deal with.
How much of a target will these units be while on the move, particularly to Ukraine counter strikes with anti-tank weapons and/or drone attacks? Will they have to travel a lot in a line on roads due to inability to move on muddy fields? It would seem that bottlenecks could be created by blowing up a few of the units in front and/or cratering the roads.
Back in February, we were hearing rumblings about Belarus joining Russia in the Ukraine invasion.
This has been repeated a few times since.
We’ve also heard rumors of the Belarus military not being all that keen on the idea (as in "fuck no, we will not do it).
Where do things stand now? Is Belarus content to just remain a staging ground for Russia’s defeat? Is there any concern in that countries leadership that they’re making enemies of Putin for not sending in troops and equipment, but also making enemies of the west with significant sanctions against them?
For clarity on my previous posts. While I am speaking in certainties, there is nothing certain in war. Of course, Russia could turn things around if something unusual were to happen. When I say “Russia has lost the war”, what I mean is that unless something unusual happens. I’m talking about given probable events. If tomorrow they discover that Zelensky kicks puppies, and people start supplying Russia instead, then all previous predictions are off. So anyplace I say something is certain, you can replace it with 99% if it makes you feel better.
From everything I’ve read, it seemed that there was a significant fear of mutiny among the ranks. Probably because a sizeable contingent of Belarusian soldiers defected. Lukashenko’s grip on the country is tenuous and entirely reliant on the military to suppress the revolt. A disaster in Ukraine would spell his end. However, he still is in control so I don’t think there is any resistance to Russian troops on the soil. I would say his leadership is in jeopardy though. The people don’t want him and this has revealed a crack in the military. I’m sure Putin isn’t happy about it. He probably sends him a daily reminder that he has nukes.
I wonder how Lukashenko really feels down deep about watching Big Brother get smacked around by Ukraine. A little relief, maybe? A bit of Schadenfreude?
My guess is he’s thinking something like this. “Why didn’t Putin leave well enough alone? Everything was fine and he went and had to rock the boat. But since he’s the boss, I have to at least pretend to support him.”
That’s what dictators typically do. They tend to have a (sometimes-justified) paranoia about being deposed. Many times, large chunks of their military are closer to a glorified internal security force than an outward-facing force.
Hitler’s situation was different – he considered himself to be a genuine military genius. During the early stages of the war, he often overruled his generals, and (in the short term) was proved correct. Later on, of course, was a different story.
I believe I am on record here saying that I thought Russia didn’t have the personnel on hand to take all of Ukraine. The best they could hope for was a land bridge to Crimea, and even that was pretty doubtful.
Of course, I was just number crunching from received wisdom. I know absolutely bupkis about killing another person, in practice. Another army is right out. It appears their assumptions of the people I trusted were right in this case.
Did I think it would come to a point where the Ukrainians could use “If you leave, we’ll stop killing you” as their starting negotiating point one month into the war? No. I thought they’d stop the Russians at the Dnieper two months in or so, and the push back would be slow. Shows what I know.
Questions are now being asked in Washington about how US intelligence could have so overestimated the capabilities of the Russian military. What they did manage to get right was predicting that Putin would invade.
I myself was wrong on both counts. I thought the threat of invasion was mostly a bluff, because I didn’t think Putin was that stupid and reckless. But when they did invade, I feared Ukraine would be overrun pretty quickly. But I was wrong, and so were US intelligence agencies. A little snippet from a CNN article:
Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that US intelligence assessments before the invasion were based on a number of factors, including that the Ukrainians were “not as ready as I thought they should be.”
“Therefore, I questioned their will to fight. That was a bad assessment on my part, because they have fought bravely and honorably and are doing the right thing,” he said.
