Thoughts on the Russo-Ukranian War?

[lljadw]

I think at this stage of the war there are no victory conditions for Russia even if it takes over all of Ukraine.
From a Western perspective, Western military weaknesses have been exposed, its weapons are being tested effectively for free and the mystique of the 20th century Red army has been shattered.

Politically and economically it will take them decades to recover from this debacle.

The primary "win" for Ukraine would be to recapture the territory they have lost since 2022 and victory for them would be the return of the Donbas and decisive victory would be Crimea.

Personally, I think if Russia offered a return to the 2022 borders, they keep Crimea and some sort of special status for the areas of the Donbas that were occupied before 2022, Ukraine probably would accept it with Western security assurances.

1 It is not at this stage of the war that there are no total victory possibilities for Russia ,but already since 23 February 2022,as the Russians knew that that a military defeat of Ukraine , which was very unlikely, would not result in a political victory for Russia that such a defeat would not result in the conquest of Ukraine and that the conquest of Ukraine would/could not result in the occupation of Ukraine . The best they could obtain was to transform Ukraine in an other Belarus .
That the war is costing Russia a lot of money,is a fact ,but there are no proofs that Russia will need decades to recover from it . Compared to WW2,the economic costs for Russia are almost meaningless and the USSR recovered very soon from WW2 .
2 For Ukraine the situation is that a collaps of Russia will not result in Ukraina Restituta but only in the increased danger of the Russians using nuclear weapons ,
Economically ,it will take Ukraine much longer to recover from the war as the hope that someone else (West or Russia ) will pay the costs ,is only an illusion .
Would Ukraine accept a Russian peace proposal to return to the 2022 border but Ukraine losing Crimea /Donbass ? Not at the moment as the Ukrainian population would not accept it ,the Ukrainians would demand revenge for the destruction and the deaths ,the French would refuse a compromise peace in 1916, the Germans also .
Such a peace is not possible for the moment .
3 The West :
that its military weakness has been exposed does not mean that the population will accept to give more of their money for defense .
that its weapons have been tested ,not for free but at the cost of the tax payer,does not prove their efficiency, as you need men to use these weapons,and these men are lacking .
that the mystique of the Red Army has been shattered,better the illusion ,the claims from the arms sellers , can have as result that people will say that there is no need for a new rearmament ne can not say at the same time : the Russians are no good,they can't win against Ukraine ,and : the Russians are a threat for our security ,thus :again conscription and more money for defense .
My prediction (which has 50% + chances to be wrong ) is that the war will continue till,NOT one, but both parties will be exhausted and accept a compromise peace .Only one of both will not suffice as the other will then increase his demands .
The Russians have that (illusionary ? ) benefit that the willingness of people in Europe and the US to continue to give money to Ukraine ,will not last and they hope that this will result in a greater Ukrainian willingness to accept the Russian demands .

 

[MontyB]

1 It is not at this stage of the war that there are no total victory possibilities for Russia ,but already since 23 February 2022,as the Russians knew that that a military defeat of Ukraine , which was very unlikely, would not result in a political victory for Russia that such a defeat would not result in the conquest of Ukraine and that the conquest of Ukraine would/could not result in the occupation of Ukraine . The best they could obtain was to transform Ukraine in an other Belarus .
That the war is costing Russia a lot of money,is a fact ,but there are no proofs that Russia will need decades to recover from it . Compared to WW2,the economic costs for Russia are almost meaningless and the USSR recovered very soon from WW2 .
2 For Ukraine the situation is that a collaps of Russia will not result in Ukraina Restituta but only in the increased danger of the Russians using nuclear weapons ,
Economically ,it will take Ukraine much longer to recover from the war as the hope that someone else (West or Russia ) will pay the costs ,is only an illusion .
Would Ukraine accept a Russian peace proposal to return to the 2022 border but Ukraine losing Crimea /Donbass ? Not at the moment as the Ukrainian population would not accept it ,the Ukrainians would demand revenge for the destruction and the deaths ,the French would refuse a compromise peace in 1916, the Germans also .
Such a peace is not possible for the moment .
3 The West :
that its military weakness has been exposed does not mean that the population will accept to give more of their money for defense .
that its weapons have been tested ,not for free but at the cost of the tax payer,does not prove their efficiency, as you need men to use these weapons,and these men are lacking .
that the mystique of the Red Army has been shattered,better the illusion ,the claims from the arms sellers , can have as result that people will say that there is no need for a new rearmament ne can not say at the same time : the Russians are no good,they can't win against Ukraine ,and : the Russians are a threat for our security ,thus :again conscription and more money for defense .
My prediction (which has 50% + chances to be wrong ) is that the war will continue till,NOT one, but both parties will be exhausted and accept a compromise peace .Only one of both will not suffice as the other will then increase his demands .
The Russians have that (illusionary ? ) benefit that the willingness of people in Europe and the US to continue to give money to Ukraine ,will not last and they hope that this will result in a greater Ukrainian willingness to accept the Russian demands .

There is a current argument that the Ukrainian counter offensive is not one to retake vast tracts of land but rather to exhaust the Russians.
The problem for the Russians is that for the west this war is cheap and safe, Ukraine has received less than 4% of the wests defence budgets and not one "western" soldier has died in the year and a half it has been running.
With regards to arms shipments to Ukraine, they are not receiving the best we have in fact for the most part we are clearing out the storage of retired equipment (hell even we got rid of the M113 forty years ago and have just been using them as artillery and ATGM targets) probably the most up to date item has been Himars but even that has downgraded ammunition.

For the most part I agree with the prediction the question is who is closest to exhaustion, Ukrainian morale seems high and western manufacturers upgrades are starting to kick in with regards to ammunition.

 

[BritinBritain]

Regarding Russian Morale, I don't know where you are getting your info from, mostly everything I have read or watched the Russians are fed up with the war they know they cannot win, they are fed up with substandard or obsolete equipment, knowing that the Ukrainians are getting the latest western kit. Many have refused to fight, abandoned equipment or surrendered.

 

[MontyB]

Regarding Russian Morale, I don't know where you are getting your info from, mostly everything I have read or watched the Russians are fed up with the war they know they cannot win, they are fed up with substandard or obsolete equipment, knowing that the Ukrainians are getting the latest western kit. Many have refused to fight, abandoned equipment or surrendered.

There are a number of problems with what we see the largest of which is that it is predominately pro-Ukrainian.
The thing which makes me question the narrative is that Ukraine is on the offensive yet the number of POWs they are taking appears to be a handful to low tens at a time, if morale was bad and the will to fight was absent this number would be higher.

On the other side of the coin looking at Russian troops specifically the mobilised ones, they look out of shape, poorly equipped with a mismatch of weapons and uniforms and in general a rabble which can't be helping morale.

Regarding the latest western equipment, what we have sent Ukraine is largely the wests second and third tier equipment, Leopard 1s are as old as T-55s, M-113s are not a lot newer than a BMP-1, effectively Ukraine is a well equipped western force of the 1980s and will remain so even with F-16s.

 

[I3BrigPvSk]

A military victory or a defeat can be perceived differently. One way to look at it is if the two (or more) fighting parties reach a mutually hurting stalemate (Korea) If we look on wars like foreign policies with other means, a warring party can reach a political victory even if they didn't really won on the battlefield, or maybe they in some way did. (Yom Kippur) The Israelis faced a different war back in 2006, who won that war? It depends on who you ask.

The Ukrainians can win, but only if they trash the Russian supplies and also trash the infrastructure so the Russians cannot use roads and railroads to supply and regroup their forces. It will however, make it complicated for the Ukrainians if they are able to take the control over the same area. But if we look at it from the Ukrainian perspective, they can politically defeat the Russians, but not on the battlefield, but in Russia when they begin to make a cost and benefit analyses of the war

 

[George]

They had assurances from Russia, U.K. (& France?) when the ICBMs were removed. Didn't happen. Wonder if the Russians would have taken the risk that some ICBMs might have still been operational if Ukraine hadn't given them up.....

 

[lljadw]

Meanwhile, it has leaked out and has been confirmed by the Kremlin,that 5 days after the Wagner mutiny ,which was transformed by our media in a coup attempt, Putin was meeting Prigozhin .
After our media claimed that Prigozhin was in Belarus,rebuilding the Wagner group to attack Ukraine from Belarus, now we have information that he is in Russia.
All this indicates
A that the mutiny had almost no influence on the war between Ukraine and Russia
B that there is no reason to believe anything our media are claiming .In January a British tabloid claimed that Putin had cancer and would die very soon .They are only an extension of the CIA .See the false claims about Russia in the war in Afghanistan .
C that the mutiny was not directed against Putin but against the leaders of the army :chief of staff and Defense Minister .

 

[MontyB]

Meanwhile, it has leaked out and has been confirmed by the Kremlin,that 5 days after the Wagner mutiny ,which was transformed by our media in a coup attempt, Putin was meeting Prigozhin .
After our media claimed that Prigozhin was in Belarus,rebuilding the Wagner group to attack Ukraine from Belarus, now we have information that he is in Russia.
All this indicates
A that the mutiny had almost no influence on the war between Ukraine and Russia
B that there is no reason to believe anything our media are claiming .In January a British tabloid claimed that Putin had cancer and would die very soon .They are only an extension of the CIA .See the false claims about Russia in the war in Afghanistan .
C that the mutiny was not directed against Putin but against the leaders of the army :chief of staff and Defense Minister .

That is hardly accurate.
1. Our media never claimed he was moving to Belarus to attack Ukraine; it commented that Wagner in Belarus "could" be used to attack Ukraine but for the most part it reported that a deal had been struck between Putin and Prigozhin that involved the replacement of Gerasimov and Shoigu and to date that has been half right. Most of the speculation was that Wagner would concentrate on its African business.

A. It is too early to tell what influence this has had on the Ukraine war.
B. We don't know what the results will be for Putin or Prigozhin, but I suspect given Russan politics one of them will have an accident soon.
C. When I read accusations of the media being an "extension of the CIA" I start thinking "Russian propaganda" as this is where you usually hear that statement.

My favourite bit of Russian propaganda is that this was all a big plan to move Wagner group to a different area to open a new surprise front in the north, when I hear that I think "yeah nothing gets western intelligence's attention like 30000 armed men staging a pretend rebellion" I am sure the various western intelligence agencies looked at it and decided there was nothing to see there and went back to watching porn.

 

[lljadw]

That is hardly accurate.
1. Our media never claimed he was moving to Belarus to attack Ukraine; it commented that Wagner in Belarus "could" be used to attack Ukraine but for the most part it reported that a deal had been struck between Putin and Prigozhin that involved the replacement of Gerasimov and Shoigu and to date that has been half right. Most of the speculation was that Wagner would concentrate on its African business.

A. It is too early to tell what influence this has had on the Ukraine war.
B. We don't know what the results will be for Putin or Prigozhin, but I suspect given Russan politics one of them will have an accident soon.
C. When I read accusations of the media being an "extension of the CIA" I start thinking "Russian propaganda" as this is where you usually hear that statement.

My favourite bit of Russian propaganda is that this was all a big plan to move Wagner group to a different area to open a new surprise front in the north, when I hear that I think "yeah nothing gets western intelligence's attention like 30000 armed men staging a pretend rebellion" I am sure the various western intelligence agencies looked at it and decided there was nothing to see there and went back to watching porn.

Why did our media tell us that the mutiny of the Wagner group was a rebellion against Putin ? Who told the media that it was a rebellion against Putin ?
The fact that a British newspaper said in January that Putin had cancer and would die very soon,is a proof that our media are an extension of the CIA ,because :who told this newspaper the story of the dying Putin ? And why did this newspaper spread this story ? Answer : MONEY
It was the same for the story that Russia was giving the Taliban a big amount of money for every US soldier that was killed .Story that was proved to be a lie .
Who was giving the media this story and why did the media publish it ? Answer : MONEY .
One of the missions of the CIA is to influence and infiltrate foreign and US media .( See Operation Mockingbird )and given the corruption in the media,which are commercial enterprises ,this mission is easy .
In 2010 it leaked out that officials of the New Zealand Ministry of Defense were giving illegally information to the US embassy .
And no one will convince me that this was done for free .

 

[lljadw]

The replacement of Gerasimov as commander in Ukraine ( not as chief of staff ) has been claimed by a blogger on 8 July .
A claim is not a proof .

 

[I3BrigPvSk]

The US provides Ukraine with cluster munition, a good idea or a bad idea? I should give them missiles with a longer range to their HIMARS/MLRS instead

 

[MontyB]

The US provides Ukraine with cluster munition, a good idea or a bad idea? I should give them missiles with a longer range to their HIMARS/MLRS instead

Invading another country, good idea or bad idea?
Depends on the relative capabilities of the respective countries.

I think it is time we stopped the moral hand wringing and simply gave Ukraine what it needs to win, this includes aircraft, munitions and missiles, further more it is time to drop the "no attacking Russia" nonsense and let Ukraine do what is necessary to win.

Regarding cluster munitions I don't have an issue with giving them to Ukraine, Russia has no qualms in using them and as they say "what is good for the goose is good for the gander".

 

[I3BrigPvSk]

Invading another country, good idea or bad idea?
Depends on the relative capabilities of the respective countries.

I think it is time we stopped the moral hand wringing and simply gave Ukraine what it needs to win, this includes aircraft, munitions and missiles, further more it is time to drop the "no attacking Russia" nonsense and let Ukraine do what is necessary to win.

Regarding cluster munitions I don't have an issue with giving them to Ukraine, Russia has no qualms in using them and as they say "what is good for the goose is good for the gander".

There is a lot of whining about cluster munition. Cluster munition is good to hit logistical hubs and pretty simple. Several targets being hit in one go, air bases don't like being hit by clusters.

Russia attacks Ukraine from Russian soil so I don't see any problems with giving the Ukrainians weapons that can hit what is hitting them.

 

[BritinBritain]

There are a number of problems with what we see the largest of which is that it is predominately pro-Ukrainian.
The thing which makes me question the narrative is that Ukraine is on the offensive yet the number of POWs they are taking appears to be a handful to low tens at a time, if morale was bad and the will to fight was absent this number would be higher.

On the other side of the coin looking at Russian troops specifically the mobilised ones, they look out of shape, poorly equipped with a mismatch of weapons and uniforms and in general a rabble which can't be helping morale.

Russia has lost almost 50,000 men during the war with Ukraine since the conflict began in February 2022, according to groundbreaking new statistical data.

The new statistical analysis was compiled by Russian independent media outlets Mediazona and Meduza, which worked with a data scientist from Germany’s Tubingen University to reach an educated estimate on how many of Putin's men have given their life on the battlefield in Ukraine. It marks the first independent statistical analysis of Russia's war dead, with varying unconfirmed numbers circling media reports for months.

With those kinds of loses and the crap equipment issued, I'd be highly pissed off fighting for a dictator who regards the lives of his troops as insignificant cannon fodder

 

[BritinBritain]

The US provides Ukraine with cluster munition, a good idea or a bad idea? I should give them missiles with a longer range to their HIMARS/MLRS instead

Being out of the military for 50 something years I have lost touch with what kit is available and what its capabilities are. I do however seen to remember the effect of cluster munitions can be, but I agree with 13 the Ukrainians need kit that can strike deep into the heart of Russia.

Invading another country, good idea or bad idea?
Depends on the relative capabilities of the respective countries.

I think it is time we stopped the moral hand wringing and simply gave Ukraine what it needs to win, this includes aircraft, munitions and missiles, further more it is time to drop the "no attacking Russia" nonsense and let Ukraine do what is necessary to win.

Regarding cluster munitions I don't have an issue with giving them to Ukraine, Russia has no qualms in using them and as they say "what is good for the goose is good for the gander".

I remember a WW2 German officer (I cannot remember who) saying regarding the invasion of Europe ''Invading a country is the easy part, keeping it is where it gets difficult''

 

[I3BrigPvSk]

I would give the Ukrainians more mobile air defense systems and a better capability to provide the Ukrainian ground forces with air support, that includes fighter planes, NATO is working on that. The get the Ukrainian pilots operational isn't that hard, to get the ground crews operational is much harder

 

[MontyB]

I would give the Ukrainians more mobile air defense systems and a better capability to provide the Ukrainian ground forces with air support, that includes fighter planes, NATO is working on that. The get the Ukrainian pilots operational isn't that hard, to get the ground crews operational is much harder

I think the point is that that Ukraine need all of these things now, not one or two things a year and so far Germany and France can't even pick a side and drag their feet over sending anything, the US is focused on cleaning out its old stocks of IFVs and just keeping Ukraine in ammunition.

The current system is almost like finding someone who has been lost at sea for a month and telling them that they can either have a glass of fresh water or food but not both.

The exception in the main players is the UK and Poland who have on at least a couple of occasions pushed the boundaries of what is sent with the Leopards, Challenger II and Storm Shadow.

The best thing NATO could do to push Russia is stop the nonsense of taking 6 months to decide on sending things, come up with a plan to get Ukraine up to NATO standard in training and equipment and get on with implementing it.

 

[I3BrigPvSk]

I think the point is that that Ukraine need all of these things now, not one or two things a year and so far Germany and France can't even pick a side and drag their feet over sending anything, the US is focused on cleaning out its old stocks of IFVs and just keeping Ukraine in ammunition.

The current system is almost like finding someone who has been lost at sea for a month and telling them that they can either have a glass of fresh water or food but not both.

The exception in the main players is the UK and Poland who have on at least a couple of occasions pushed the boundaries of what is sent with the Leopards, Challenger II and Storm Shadow.

The best thing NATO could do to push Russia is stop the nonsense of taking 6 months to decide on sending things, come up with a plan to get Ukraine up to NATO standard in training and equipment and get on with implementing it.

Yes, it has been frustratingly slow with providing Ukraine with the systems they need, Poland and the Baltic states have really showed what they think about the Russians. Poland is in a shopping spree and is building up their armed forces. NATO wants to have Ukraine as a member, so they need to step up the delivery and training so they can kick the Russians out and then bea member of NATO. Not exactly what Putin planned when he started this mess.

Btw, Ukrainian pilots will be training on the F-16s here in Sweden.

 

[MontyB]

Yes, it has been frustratingly slow with providing Ukraine with the systems they need, Poland and the Baltic states have really showed what they think about the Russians. Poland is in a shopping spree and is building up their armed forces. NATO wants to have Ukraine as a member, so they need to step up the delivery and training so they can kick the Russians out and then bea member of NATO. Not exactly what Putin planned when he started this mess.

Btw, Ukrainian pilots will be training on the F-16s here in Sweden.

I thought they were training on the Grippen in Sweden and the F-16 in Denmark.

Personally, I think the F-16 is a mistake in the short term given the crew training requirements and facilities needed, they would be far better off going with the Grippen at least in the short term alternatively forming a PMC air force and ground crew using F-16s.

 

[I3BrigPvSk]

I thought they were training on the Grippen in Sweden and the F-16 in Denmark.

Personally, I think the F-16 is a mistake in the short term given the crew training requirements and facilities needed, they would be far better off going with the Grippen at least in the short term alternatively forming a PMC air force and ground crew using F-16s.

I reacted like that too when I heard it. Sweden provides with the air bases and the air space. Denmark and other countries provide with the F-16s.

The F-16 is somewhat similar as the Leo2, there are a lot of them and NATO countries with F-16 is in a process to replace them with F-35. I think the F-18 would be a better than the F-16.

Ukrainian air force is here to be trained to use Gripen.

NATO can also provide with AWACS support, they most likely already do. Ukraine gets intelligence support from NATO so why not provide with command and control as well