Nice post, but it didn’t answer my questions in post #25: What are you willing to concede to prevent WWIII, and what makes you believe Putin won’t change his mind?
Ukraine give up Crimea? Or Donbas? How about the whole country? Who are we to decide she has some bits carved away so the rest of us can live in comfort? Pointing out my second question, we did acquiesce to the loss of Crimea nine years ago, and look where we are today, look where Ukraine is today.
I did answer it. The answer is that I don’t know, other than that we have to be very careful to avoid backing Russia into a corner.
One thing that makes Russia more dangerous is that Putin probably realizes that in terms of conventional warfare, this is a one-and-done deal. Russia cannot afford to build back its cold-war era military. Hell, it couldn’t even afford to maintain the one it had.
This is both good and bad. It’s good becaue Ukraine is essentially de-fanging Russia (aside from nukes), but it’s bad because Putin may decide there is no ‘other day’ to live for, since he has no hope of returning Russia’s prior stature, military capacity, or mystique. So if he doesn’t prevail now, Russia might always be a has-been country. There are a lot of Russians who will fight very hard to prevent that and support Putin if they think it’s the end of the dream of greater Russia if he capitulates. That makes them dangerous.
NATO spends 17.8 times as much money on its military than does Russia. Even just Europe and Canada without the U.S. spend 5.5 times as much as Russia at a smaller percentage of GDP.
Russia had a free-roll: a gigantic military left behind from the ex-Soviet days. It couldn’t afford it, and cut back in ways that are very obvious on the battlefield now. But it had huge amounts of armor and artillery.
That stuff is being depleted rapidly, and was out of date anyway. And Russia cannot keep pace with the west on a tiny fraction of the military spending. It won’t be able to pay enough to attract decent soldiers after this fiasco, and mobiks and criminals are no match for a modern trained army. Putin knows: If they lose now, they got 'nuthin. And their economy will be in tatters, and if they are forced to pay reparations they will be broke for a generation.
That’s on them, and they will have brought it on themselves. But I worry that nothing even close to this will be an acceptable option, and someone like Putin might just start a nuclear war in the belief that the Russians will rise from the ashes first. Megalomaniacs are good at justifying megalomaniacal acts.
True, but NATO members can also make personal alliances with any countries they want. The U.S. is an ally of Japan, for instance, without Japan being part of NATO. If the United States wants to ally itself with Ukraine and deploy forces there, NATO can’t stop it.
People have been saying this for an entire year now. It’s clear that Russia is all bark and no bite. There were dozens of occasions when Russia could have said “We’re backed into a corner” and they did nothing of the sort. Time and time again they set “red lines” and the West called their bluff each time. We need to stop this timid approach and realize that bold action is safe by this point and always was.
Seems that if Putin wanted to use nukes to turn the tide in Ukraine, there were dozens of equally-compelling times before now. Such as perhaps in the first few months of the war when it became clear that the advance had stalled and Russia had lost its momentum and was being perceived as the eventual loser. It’s hard to think of any particular red-line or trigger at this point that would make Putin think “OK I need to hit the red button now when I didn’t before”. Only one that might vaguely qualify might be Ukraine trying to retake Crimea or advance into Russian soil itself and neither is likely.
I think - from a military POV - the right way is to turn the heat up gradually on putin (as it has been done in the past year) - to not create a “huge event” that could justify RU nukes … but use incrementalism
So, a few tanks here and there, then a larger number … 6 F-16s lent from Poland … and then a couple more, a hand full of german stuff, french, spanish and italian …
and most importantly: the RIGHT weapons … just think on how much those himars et al contributed to a huge shift in momentum, vs. bringing in 100s of 1000s of “unskilled labor” like the RU do.
so, adapting a proverb - allow UKR to fight smarter, not harder …
and the frog is boiling in hot water
That’s true (and in fact is something any sovereign state is allowed to do accordingly to at least two international treaties I can think of - that Russia has signed.) But an interlocking bunch of overlapping alliances in the same part of the world just isn’t a good idea. Long term, Ukraine should be in NATO.
Russia is a dying state, and it’s going to go down thrashing. Sam Stone is ABSOLUTELY correct; Russia must be handled with great care. That doesn’t mean giving them Ukraine, that can never happen, but it does mean letting the rabid dog thrash around in its crate and not letting ourselves get bitten.
Things are going to get even worse in Ukraine before they get better. When the rasputitsa ends, we will see a new Russian offensive late this spring. We must ensure Ukraine can weather that storm.
Agreed, but a separate alliance can also be a way for the U.S. to strongarm NATO into accepting Ukraine - “We’re deploying the U.S. military; you can either join us or get out of the way, but bear in mind that Russia will still blame you.” There will definitely be major consequences to doing something like this, but it’s an option.
From my reading, it’s already started, but it’s so feeble that it’s been barely noticed (seriously). Russia’s capability has been overestimated at every single turn of this conflict so far. It’s Ukraine’s offensive that will be starting in the next few months, and that will change things significantly, based on what I’ve read.
That’s entirely possible, but Russia has a wave of conscripts due to be sent to the front and my impression is we haven’t seen them so far. If we haven’t seen some major wave attacks by July, we’ll know they weren’t able to logistically support that.
By all accounts Russia is really struggling with combined arms operations, which is a sign of true donkey-headed amateurism.
One can see how this would annoy Ukraine whose infrastructure and people are being ground into dust right now, the victims of realpolitik.
And I first saw incrementalism as incremationism. My mind is in a dark place vis-à-vis Russia right now.
Poorly motivated conscripts, without good training and good supplies, are literally worthless on the battlefield against a determined and well-supplied enemy. They will make zero difference.
I don’t think there is any reason or merit in considering Putin as a rational and well-informed actor capable of studied consideration of consequences at this point.
Known by tankers as “tread lubricant”.
Stranger
Maybe Russia could air-drop crates of vodka just behind the Ukrainian front line and tell the conscripts they have to get to them before the Ukrainians do.
I for one would not shed a tear if the Empire of Muscovy finally passed away.
You know, I’ve heard a lot of people make this argument about a new leader “looking weak” for pulling out of Ukraine, but I’m not sure I buy it. Whoever inherits Putin’s mess will also inherit his toolset, which includes some pretty good propaganda people.
I could see a new leader spinning a withdrawal from Ukraine as a power move. “The Secret CommieNazis in Putin’s Kremlin sent our Glorious Troops into battle, but then denied them the tools they needed to win! It was all a plot to destroy the Motherland! But now our Glorious Troops have returned, to destroy those Secret CommieNazis!”
Put all the blame on whoever you have handy as a scape goat, cast the whole “Incompetent Russian logistics” thing as a plot, with the intent of getting all the Russian troops killed, and then keep repeating how the New Leader was the only one strong enough to stop this heinous plot. Lots of people would buy into that narrative.
Not to entirely disagree with you but (before the war) a t-shirt in the US costs between $10 and $50 (let’s say $20 as average) and, in Russia, it was around $4 average. So if the US is spending 5x more on t-shirts, they still only have the same number of t-shirts as Russia, at the same level of quality. They don’t have 5X more shirts nor 5X better shirts. You’re better off to just count shirts.
Labor costs in the US are significant higher. You have to spend more dollars to get the same product. And, when it comes to military, you’re almost always going to be buying domestic as much as possible, except maybe on raw resources.
In the case of Russia, though, the raw resources are usually also coming in domestically. They have cheap labor and they don’t have any import/shipping costs because it’s all, already in the country, right next door to the factory that turns it all into munitions.
Again, this isn’t to say that their army had as good of equipment, as much equipment, etc. Just that the ratios you give aren’t terribly meaningful. You would need to do a lot more work to try and figure out the dollar value of manufacturing tanks, bullets, missiles, ships, etc. in Russia vs in the US and factor based on that to get a more proper sense of what the scale difference is. And then you’ve simply figured out the cost of a tank without figuring out how different those tanks are from one to another.
The easier way to do it is just to look at the actual number of tanks and equipment, and try to guesstimate some factor of quality difference between the two (e.g., their average artillery fires X km and hits its target with Y precision, vs NATO’s is Z and W). That will probably get you closer to a quantitative difference than trying to compare on money.
Russia is the biggest exporter of titanium sponge, but it’s very far from the biggest miner. It’s a processor, not a primary source.
Guess where the biggest source of Russian titanium ore for processing was? You only get one guess…
There’s a reason the figures for titanium production are all at least two years old. Russia isn’t going to be producing anywhere near as much without Ukrainian sources.
At a quick gander of mine locations (so not looking at total output, just location count), it looks like about 1/3rd of the titanium mines are near Mariupol and are, probably, currently under Russian control.
I don’t know if they’re operational but I’d guess that they are. Mines are probably fairly resilient to shelling.
I’m doubtful. Even if you could put a ‘spin’ on a retreat, not gaining anything for the cost of Russian lives and the impact of sanctions is going to look give the appearance of weakness. The Soviet retreat from Afghanistan was regarded as a failure of Gorbachev even though he was not responsible for the original ‘invasion’ and by the time he was in power it was clear that the Soviets could not successfully occupy the region. Regardless, it is unlikely anyone who might succeed Putin would be willing to admit that kind of defeat, even internally.
We have a number of people on this board who have lived in Russia and I’ll gladly concede the greater knowledge and familiarity with Russian culture and recent political sentiment to them but my reading of Russia and the attitudes of Russian leadership do not support the idea that even a post-Putin Russia is likely to retreat and hammer their guns into plowshares.
Stranger