It’s hard to say what’s more humiliating, having teams roaming around blowing shit up in your country, or your country being unable to prevent its airspace from being penetrated by 800 km. Either way…
I found his background good, but his speculations…highly speculative 
. I think he is a little guilty of constructing a clever narrative, when I’m not so sure Russia was in fact acting with full Machiavellian cleverness. I think the notion that securing Crimea was the ONE goal to rule them all, rather than one of several, is a little tendentious. For one thing I suspect that while logic says Russia shouldn’t have been nervous about NATO expansion, I am not so sure Russia IS logical on that topic. What I’ve read seems to indicate that they (particularly Putin) are in fact full-on paranoid on the topic. Also many analysts think Putin is obsessed with revanchist fantasies of re-expanding to the borders of the USSR/Russian Empire as his ultimate life’s work.
I think the evidence from the early stages of the war indicate Russia’s strategy was both broader and simpler. They wanted to neutralize and vassalize Ukraine full stop with a distant goal of eventual full annexation. Failing that, they wanted to secure that land bridge and take as much territory as they possibly could. I again strongly suspect Crimea was an important part of the thought process, but not at all the driving motive. The driving motive I think was simple revanchism, securing Crimea was a consolation prize if the first failed in its totality. But then again, I’m just one more armchair analyst with credentials a whole period long, so what do I know 
?
Also all the above being said, I think his conclusions on where Ukraine goes from here seem reasonable enough. It’s a logical axis of advance, but we’ll see where it goes from here soon enough I reckon. It should be freezing up in Ukraine pretty soon.
I don’t think Russia even contemplated the failure of the “invasion and decapitation of leadership”. They had no plans in place if they were not having a toast in Kiev 7 days after the first tank rolled across the border.
Would it be better to retake Crimea now rather than after eastern Ukraine? If you save Crimea to the last, then Putin could finally come to the table and say, “OK, you win. Lets just go back to the borders we had at the start of 2022.” And a LOT of folks on our side would be ok with that. Taking it now removes that option. And right now, the battle lines are shorter in eastern Ukraine than they will be when that area is retaken. So less threat on the strategic flanks and more reserves to shift to the south. But this is all armchair generalship.
ETA: And there is a nice bit of vengeance in taking Crimea away because it leaves Putin with less than he started with when he began this war.
Yeah, this is an embarrassment for Russia no matter why the places blew up.
And I love how they’re “blaming” Ukraine, like we’re going to hear that Ukraine bombed an airfield, and go, “Tut-tut, Ukraine, bombing military airfields in the middle of a war is just not done.”
Fuck that, if Ukraine did pull this off, however it happened, good on them. And if it’s Russians just trying to blame Ukraine to cover up yet more Russian Incompetence, then they deserve whatever ridicule they’re going to get.
I don’t profess to be doing anything beyond speculate but I would probably differentiate between being nervous about “NATO” and being nervous about “NATO expansion”.
NATO isn’t going to attack Russia. If it wasn’t for Clinton convincing the group to go gung-ho for the Kosovars, there wouldn’t even be a tendril of an argument that NATO is anything but a fully-defensive operator. But, even then, it’s hard to argue that they will do anything but block genocides in small regions that are under legitimate threat, and then leave without asking anything in return. The record is fairly good and we can legitimately show that we were trying to be friendly and cooperative with Russia. That one point of animosity can fairly clearly be shown as American opposition to ethnic wars and not anything against Russia itself.
NATO expansion, on the other hand, does prevent Russia from conquering regions. That is a real risk to them. If NATO expands into Kazakhstan then, suddenly, Kazakhstan can start taking a percentage on products flowing through the region and over to Russia and do it harder the more that Russia says mean things to them. That’s true of everyone on the border of Russia. They’ll be reduced to trading on the basis of fair return and good relationships.
You can imagine how broken up I am about that fear.
Few beyond the QOP and Tucker Carlson are broken up either, but the inability to expand (and the need to play nice with more neighbors) is feasibly a larger concern to Russia than NATO in general.
And Russia responds to an attack on it’s military planes by… launching missiles against Ukrainian civilians.
Fucking scum.
Well, yes, ditto. It’s a rational position for a bad person, but not a good position in any way.
There’ve been rumours that the Russians were about to launch the next mass cruise missile strike for the last 2-3 days. It’s highly likely that the strike was set to go and the timing of the Ukrainian drone strike was incidental to that. It’s additionally very unlikely that the Russians can launch an attack on that scale on such short notice. It would take more time than that to select targets, program them into the missiles, and arm all the bombers, let alone get the missile frigates in the Black Sea into position.
The Russians can say that their missile strikes were retaliation, but almost certainly they were about to launch them anyways.
Oops…
Russia has stopped using Iranian-made kamikaze drones in Ukraine because they don’t work in cold weather…
Not sure I believe that. Temps have been ranging between 0 and -10C in most of Ukraine, which just isn’t very cold, and unlikely to be cold enough to cause issues with brittle plastics etc.
Might be that the Russians were still reliant on Iranian personnel to make them work, and reportedly the base where the Iranians were got HIMARSed in the week after the Kherson withdrawal. Perhaps Tehran pulled all their people home and the Russians are trying to make sense of the Farsi manuals.
In my rich fantasy life, Mossad has managed to get a virus into the operating systems of these drones, which makes them turn around and blow up at the coordinates where they were launched…
Unconfirmed reports that they’re ancient Tu-141’s, which are essentially 70’s fighter jets with autopilots. If true, I wouldn’t want to be the officer in charge of air defense in that sector.
I think ‘Having toast in Kiev’ sounds like a good metaphor for something. [NB: ‘Toast’ as in heat-treated bread.]
It doesn’t have anything to do with anything here; it just popped into my head that way.
No joke. Those punch cards are a real pain.
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Full article. That’s a very long reach for Ukraine.
I suspect there may be a anti-war movement within the Russian military. They would have the resources for the attacks at the refineries and airfields. Perhaps the attack on the Crimea bridge.
terminology question:
serious questions of Russian PVO.
what’s that, please?
ProtivoVozdushnoy Oborony, meaning Anti-air Defense Troops. Apparently air defense is an independent branch in the Russian Armed Forces.