From the beginning, several of the people I’ve read have said Russia’s big weakness is logistics. Even above and beyond how that is generally a weakness. But, apparently, Russia was short at the start of this thing in the trucks and other vehicles needed to really move supplies forward. I’m not sure if that’s true, but even if it’s not the Ukrainians should be focusing on taking out as many of those light vehicles as possible. It’s always tempting to go for the tanks or APCs, but, really, if you kill enough of the fuel bowser and supply trucks it has a bigger impact.
Most day-by-day maps I’ve seen show the latter move making visible if not quite lightning fast progress.
Looking at the map of where Russian forces currently are, it looks to me as if they are pushing to link up the forces in Crimea with those in the breakaway regions, to give them their land bridge to Crimea. I’m a bit surprised that they haven’t pushed forward more from the break-away regions to encompass all of the territories the rebels claimed, as that’s all part of what Putin and the Duma have stated are independent (and, fairly obviously plan to claim for Russia).
I’m not at all convinced that the Russians using a small tactical nuke somewhere in Ukraine will result in a full-bore strategic conflict involving all the avowed nuclear powers. There’s too much to risk from an unprovoked all-out strategic exchange over the use of a small handful of tactical nukes.
MAD wasn’t some sort of global thing- it was always ONLY a US/USSR mutual understanding during the Cold War. But if say… India and Pakistan were to start nuking each other, there’s no real reason for the US or Russia to start nuking them too. That would be insane. More so than letting them have at it, IMO.
That’s really the critical thing. The Russians are trying to crib a page from the US playbook of limiting civilian casualties and destruction, and it’s not working for them. If I had to guess, it’s because their military isn’t nearly as highly trained or professional as the US military, and they don’t have decades of developing the sort of doctrine, training and firepower that the US has.
So like you say, either they’ll back out, there’ll be some sort of change in Russia (coup or something like that), or (IMO most likely) the Russians will go back to WWII style tactics and just start indiscriminately shelling/bombing/machine gunning anywhere they perceive there to be a threat. That’s when the real civilian casualties will mount, and that’s when they’ll actually be able to start moving forward more effectively.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if today’s talks are just that- the Russians saying “Well, keeping the gloves on hasn’t worked so far. Surrender/give us X, or we take the gloves off.”
Trying to think if there’s ever been a case in Russia’s history where soldiers, disillusioned at their participation in a costly, disastrous war that they didn’t need to be in, came back home and joined in civil unrest that ultimately overthrew a wealthy tyrant.
Has Joel Osteen been seen sleeping with Putin’s girlfriend?
It would be a fine line they would be walking. Thus far, the casualties, especially civilian casualties have been relatively light. Even that hasn’t played particularly well with western media or western audiences, but if Russia were to go all in and really start hammering major cities like Kyiv with an eye to reducing their ability to fight, then sending in a full-on attack, it will quickly get really, really ugly for Russia and Putin. I think he’s been and continues to try and avoid that, at the cost of a real loss of momentum both in real military terms and in political/PR terms.
I think like a lot of this, it was poorly thought through by Putin et al. My WAG is that they thought they could simply send in troops, Ukraine would surrender, or maybe someone in the Ukrainian military would depose the president, stage a coup and hand it all over to Russia. When that didn’t happen, they were kind of caught in the current dilemma…they have the forces and ability to smash Ukraine. But using it has a lot of downsides, both internationally but also on their Ukrainian people as well, who is going to be less disposed to go along with whatever puppet government Putin plans if Russia goes that route. Then you have the potential morale costs to his own troops if they smash Ukraine.
The Russian Revolution when they overthrew Tsar Nicholas II?
Also by many accounts the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 created a split that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia had a think about bordering Finland for a while. The Finns ended up fighting with the Axis in WWII because the Russians attacked them.
I have read one piece of speculation that the reason for the success in the south and the debacle in the north is that originally the operation was to only be in the south and /Black Sea coast and the Northern thrust was added later.
Comrade President, we have used a light touch and been made to look like idiots. We already have had the bad press and sanctions. Just let my boys do their jobs properly and screw the collateral damage.
exactly my point–and wondering if Putin is at all worried about that possibility.
That is completely inconsistent with the pre-invasion troop buildup patterns.
Not really, no. They didn’t enter Belarusian terrritory in numbers until January. They doubtless have have detailed Nolan’s and logistics infrastructure in the south, which they would lack there.
So… they moved large bodies of troops over a month before the invasion into a position from which they never intended to launch the invasion.
My cats do the “I meant to do that” routine more convincingly.
For an exercise. They wouldn’t have had the logistical infrastructure, the staff work and recon, that they would have had in the south.
Are you seriously suggesting that the joint Russia-Belarus “exercises” were actually intended to be just exercises, and weren’t planned for the express purpose of staging Russian troops north of Kyiv? And then Putin decided on the spur of the moment to use them for the invasion? Really?
That is a less convincing lie than a chocolate-smudged 3-year-old claiming not to have eaten the cake.
[Edit: that they were exercises is a lie, not that you are lying.]
And, afaik, they didn’t in fact build up the logistics dumps and supply they would have needed to really be effective coming out of Belarus. I think this was all part of Moscow’s plan…to basically make everything look like an exercise, and probably to have the part in Belarus BE an apparent exercise that they could finish and send the troops home from (or maybe just be a backup), to mitigate the suspicions of the west. Remember all of the talks before the invasion about the exercise in Belarus being over and the troops going home?
Over-smarted themselves.