He might be rethinking that stance, however. Today’s Russia is not the Russia of massive losses during WWII. It’s not even the Russia of the heyday of the Soviet Union in the 50’s or 60’s. Today, Russian population figures are all downward trends, and even then, they have a huge brain drain to western Europe that’s been going on for a while now. Their best and brightest are leaving the nest…and even they’re not so best and brightest are becoming more and more scarce.
Putin has got to be in WTF mode, to be honest. I mean, nothing is turning out the way he planned. When he took Crimea in 2014 the people cheered…and the west didn’t do a thing except some fairly mild sanctions, pushed mainly by the US with a reluctant Europe half-heartedly following suit on some of them. NATO was in decline, with countries like Germany increasingly cutting spending on their military while their people questioned even that expense and wondered why they needed a military at all. In a very short time, a lot of that has been turned on its head, with Germany now saying they will spend and additional $100 billion this fiscal year, and they want to write into their constitution a 2%+ GDP level for every year after this. I don’t think a lot of non-Germans even understand what a shift that is. Even if it doesn’t happen, the fact that they are talking about it is…mind blowing. And Putin didn’t see any of this coming…and, in fact, it’s all happening because of him. Putin…making NATO great again!
Exactly.
I wonder if they will use the foreign volunteers as an excuse to go all out. we are liberating them from the clutches of the criminals and their hired foreign guns?
That was my point with the population pyramid - post #29. The number of new recruits has taken a nose dive with a sudden decline in the birth rate 30 years ago. (Wonder why? /s ) Between killing of a few thousand, scaring the hell out of anyone due to be conscripted and making them try to hide, and the massive negative publicity he’ll get from any soldiers that do come home… and the ones that don’t - I don’t see a good future in the longer term. I wonder how long before his generals tune him up? At least in the Soviet days, the government was run by a committee and no one person could run roughshod over the rest, decisions were carefully weighed - Stalin cured them of his sort of control structure.
I agree - I think Vlad The Failure thought it would be a cakewalk like Crimea with token condemnation from the west, and is surprised to find the large number of conscripts is not the same quality as a small assortment of properly trained regular army forces. Plus, as mentioned, much of the equipment is not as good as the small amount that has been regularly used and maintained. I see only further trouble if the Ukrainians can hold out long enough to get the pipeline of supplies from the West properly distributed. If a bunch of untrained mujahadin could cause that much trouble for the Soviets, I imagine a bunch of educated Europeans can match that level of harassment.
I also suspect that anyone who collaborates is also going to be in for a world of trouble whenever their Russian bodyguards are not around - I would not like to be a Ukrainian enforcing the Russian decrees when everyone might have a gun. They can overrun a city or two or four, but what happens when the main force moves on and there are just a few men left behind the lines trying to control the population?
This was big news that didn’t get the coverage it deserved. I hope they go thru with it.
I think everyone backing Ukraine has to stick with the aid and sanctions long enough to push the Russians totally out of the country and deter them from doing something similar again. We should also be working on getting the 35 countries that abstained from the UN vote on our side. They may not be capable of sending significant aid, but maybe the unity of the vote will have some effect on Russian plans. I know the vote carries no weight, but sometimes symbolic showings can make things clearer.
I fear if this drags on that some may get tired of it and push to allow Russia to keep the ethnic Russian parts of Ukraine if they withdraw from the rest of the country. Putin could spin that into a giant win at home. Meanwhile, Ukraine would lose a chunk of their country after putting up a great fight, and we will once again look like wishy washy allies.
because in the 90ies dozen of millions of “soviet citizen” lost everything, transitioning towards “Russia” … the whole country basically went bankrupt and had to stop paying their civil staff, etc…
in a scenario like that, having to feed a kid is a liability … (there may be other reasons, but i think lack of money/perspective was a mayor one)
I went to a lecture by a mining engineer who had returned from a trip to Russia not long after the USSR fell apart. He described the effect of hyperinflation in Moscow. People were paid every day at noon, and would rush out on their lunch hour to buy whatever they could. Tee shirts, flour, shoes, whatever. Then they’d be in crowds standing by their subway exit near their home after work holding up what they had, looking for someone willing to trade for something they wanted.
And obviously, the value of pensions tanked overnight, making life even more difficult.
I don’t think a lot of people who aren’t German or who haven’t kept up with German politics, especially in the past decade really understand the implications. The Germans had convinced themselves that the world was what they thought it was, that they really didn’t need the outdated concept of a military, and, of course, that Putin would never invade Ukraine and this was all the US trying to stir things up to get them to spend more. A lot of that has been shattered by this one event.
Doesn’t mean they will actually write this perpetual increase into their constitution, of course…but even the fact that they are going to debate this is just unreal.
To get back to the OP’s question: "What new weapons/tactics have the Russians so far introduced…"
I’m thinking that shelling a functioning nuclear reactor (or rather 4 functioning and 2 offline) is a tactic nobody else has tried before. Obviously an amazingly clever tactic.
(The Israelis, IIRC, bombed the incomplete Iraqi reactor before the fuel was loaded)
I can’t figure out what the purpose of this was. It’s not like you can mistake a nuclear power plant for anything else, can you? Seems to me they are pretty distinctive.
It’s like they don’t have maps or spotters and are just shelling in the general direction of stuff. That’s not last century tactics, that’s the century before that tactics.
The plant in question supplies something like 20% of Ukraine’s power. If you want to control a country, seizing control of a 20% of its power supply seems like an obvious move. And it’s not like Ukrainian military and government facilities have a segregated power grid with their own power plants. Power plants are generally considered legitimate military targets under the Law of War.
Attacking a nuclear power plant has some pretty obvious risks, of course, and there’s a legitimate argument that the risk of environmental damage and civilian casualties should make them off-limits. Intentionally targeting it in order to destroy it and spread radioactive waste would probably be a war crime. But seizing it is probably defensible.
And there were apparently Ukrainian military forces stationed there. They were definitely legitimate military targets.
My first thought on hearing about that was “Do they really want another Chernobyl?” Someone wasn’t thinking there. Or thinking the wrong thing.
And speaking of Chernobyl, on the first day of the war, the Russians captured that. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand this at all. Does Chernobyl, in any way, shape, or form, have a strategic or tactical value?
From what I recall, it was simply on the way to where they were trying to go. Even though the power plant is shut down and decommissioned, and the cities and towns around it are abandoned, there is still an extensive road network that goes through that area (tourists were going there until all of this blew up), and the Russians wanted to use it. I think it’s as simple as that.
I agree that it is a legit target, I just think the way they tried to gain control of it was nuts. Artillery around a nuclear plant is a bad thing, even if the Russians are just thinking about themselves. If their idea is to seize the country, cutting off 20% of it’s power is a bad move. Not to mention the disaster they’d have on their hands if the reactors were breached.
It’s similar to not using their airpower when they should have. It’s like their entire plan was “Invade Ukraine - Go!” Just bad tactics.
If the Ukrainians became desperate enough, Chernobyl had the potential to be used as the world’s deadliest suicide vest. Securing it was probably a top priority for the Russians in the first days of the invasion.
Exactly. Not only won’t their population take those sorts of massive losses today, but the people aren’t exactly fighting for their lives and their homes…they are fighting to invade a country they really aren’t angry at so that Putin can show he’s the biggest dick…er, has the biggest dick.
Yeah, as someone else put it, it’s hard for a Russian conscript to be any more motivated about invading Ukraine than it would be for an American soldier to invade Canada.