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* from VOX - Is Russia losing?a425couple
`* Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?SolomonW
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 by: a425couple - Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:35 UTC

from
https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three

Is Russia losing?
Russia’s offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are,
according to one expert, “seeing a country militarily implode.”

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Mar 18, 2022, 4:10pm EDT
Share this story

A picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs at a target practice
range in Lviv in western Ukraine on March 17. Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine entered its fourth week on Thursday, with Russian forces largely
bogged down outside major cities and shelling them from a distance,
raining havoc on civilians. Bernat Armangue/AP

It has been a little over three weeks since Russia initially invaded
Ukraine. And by most accounts, the Russian war effort has been a disaster.

The initial Russian invasion plan, a lightning march aimed at conquering
Kyiv, collapsed within days. Since then, the Russians have adjusted to a
more gradual advance backed by heavy artillery fire, an approach that
has allowed them to make some noticeable territorial gains.

But these advances appear to have been halted, at least temporarily. On
Thursday, the UK Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that Russia’s
offensive “has largely stalled on all fronts,” a judgment echoed by open
source analysts tracking developments on the ground. The Wall Street
Journal reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have even managed to
mount a counteroffensive around Kyiv.

Russian casualties have been horrifically high. It’s hard to get
accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative
estimates of Russian war dead — from the US Defense Department — finds
that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three
weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US
service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan.

“We’re seeing a country militarily implode,” says Robert Farley, a
professor at the University of Kentucky who studies air power.

This is not how the war was supposed to go. On virtually any
quantifiable metric of military strength, from defense spending to the
size of the respective air forces, Russia’s forces vastly outnumber and
outgun Ukraine’s. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark
Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of
a Russian invasion.

But Russia’s military has proven more incompetent, and Ukraine’s more
capable, than nearly anyone anticipated.

A Ukrainian soldier examines a destroyed Russian armored personnel
carrier in Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 12. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via
Getty Images

“Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the
Ukrainians: Nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all
that high an estimation of their military capacity,” says Olga Oliker,
the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International
Crisis Group.

There are many reasons things have turned out this way. Generally
speaking, it appears that pre-war analyses overrated Russia’s hardware
advantage and underrated less tangible factors — including logistical
capacity and the morale of the front-line combat troops on both sides.

Morale in particular “is a very significant factor in Russian combat
effectiveness, and one that’s being ignored by many military observers,”
argues Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA think tank.

All that said, it is still far too early to conclude that Ukraine is
going to win the war. Ukrainians have suffered significant losses, too;
Russia’s numerical and technological advantages remain and could yet
prove decisive, allowing the Russians to besiege Ukraine’s major cities
and starve them into submission.

But right now, based on the publicly available evidence we have, the
momentum is clearly going the other way. An unqualified Russian victory,
which once seemed almost inevitable, is looking increasingly less likely.

Russia’s gains have been real — but are stalling out
On paper, Russia’s military vastly outstrips Ukraine’s. Russia spends
over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian
military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and
roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft.

Given this disparity, Russia was bound to be able to make some inroads
into Ukrainian territory. And as you can see on the following map from
the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia had seized control of
notable chunks of Ukrainian territory by March 9 — especially in the
south, where it controls the cities of Melitopol and Kherson:

Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 9, 2022.
Institute for the Study of War

But these advances were not necessarily the sole result of Russian
battlefield supremacy. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical
decision to trade “space for time”: to withdraw strategically rather
than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, fighting the Russians on
the territory and at the time of their choosing.

As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became
clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with
Russians on open terrain, where Russia’s numerical advantages would
prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of
smaller-scale clashes.

Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller
cities; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their
superior knowledge of the city’s geography to hide and conduct ambushes.
They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open
roads, which make for easy targets. They have repeatedly raided poorly
protected supply lines with an eye toward denying Russians necessary
materials like fuel.

A recent Washington Post account of a battle near the Kyiv suburb of
Brovary, based on Ukrainian military videos and interviews with
witnesses, paints a clear picture of how this has played out:

A column of tanks moved down a main highway toward the town of Brovary.
As they passed a cluster of houses, the Ukrainian forces saw an
opportunity. They pummeled the convoy with artillery shells and antitank
missiles, destroying or disabling several tanks and armored personnel
carriers. Russian soldiers fled their vehicles and ran into the woods,
according to videos posted on social media by Ukraine’s military. One
tank slowly rolled to a halt, engulfed in flames.

The Ukrainian defensive strategy has not fully thrown Russia’s advance
back, but it has slowed it to a near halt. ISW’s updated March 17 map
shows that Russian forces have barely moved forward from their positions
about a week earlier — a reflection of Ukrainian success:

Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 17, 2022.
Institute for the Study of War

Again, the Russian advancement mostly came in the south, where they
continue to besiege the port city of Mariupol. Their current aim appears
to be to do the same to Kyiv in the north, cutting it off from food and
water and bombarding it with artillery.

In theory, this is something their vastly superior military forces
should be able to accomplish. In practice, the Ukrainians have
successfully stopped Russia from encircling their capital and may even
be able to push Russian forces back.

And Russian casualties are taking their toll on the invasion. A recent
US intelligence assessment found that Russia had lost over 10 percent of
its initial invasion force due to a combination of factors like
battlefield deaths, injuries, capture, illness, and desertion. According
to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University
of St. Andrews, this is a very ominous sign for the future of its campaign.

“Once they get below 75% their overall effectiveness should plummet,” he
writes. “If the Russians don’t send fresh well-trained troops (and this
will not be mercenaries or people impressed off the streets in Crimea)
very soon, their whole strategy seems pointless.”

What is wrong with the Russian military?
To understand why the war has gone in such a surprising direction, we
can first look at some of the Russian side’s problems. They started with
Putin himself.

The initial invasion plan was reportedly put together in secret by a
handful of his top military and intelligence advisers; it reflected the
Russian strongman’s seemingly sincere belief that Ukraine was a fake
country and they could achieve regime change with limited resistance.

“He actually really thought this would be a ‘special military
operation’: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldn’t be a real
war,” Kofman says.

A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard at a military checkpoint in the
center of Kyiv on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

You can see this assumption at work in the structure of the early
offensive. Instead of a methodical advance characterized by “combined
arms” — the use of multiple forms of military power, like infantry and
artillery, in mutually supportive fashion — Russian tanks and elite
paratroopers were sent pell-mell toward Kyiv with little support. This
kind of rapid advance might have worked if it had faced token
resistance, but it opened up Russian forces to devastating Ukrainian
counterattacks.


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Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?

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 by: SolomonW - Sun, 27 Mar 2022 22:29 UTC

On Thu, 24 Mar 2022 17:35:37 -0700, a425couple wrote:

> from
> https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three
>
> Is Russia losing?
> Russia’s offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are,
> according to one expert, “seeing a country militarily implode.”
>
> By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Mar 18, 2022, 4:10pm EDT
> Share this story
>
> A picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs at a target practice
> range in Lviv in western Ukraine on March 17. Russia’s invasion of
> Ukraine entered its fourth week on Thursday, with Russian forces largely
> bogged down outside major cities and shelling them from a distance,
> raining havoc on civilians. Bernat Armangue/AP
>
> It has been a little over three weeks since Russia initially invaded
> Ukraine. And by most accounts, the Russian war effort has been a disaster.
>
> The initial Russian invasion plan, a lightning march aimed at conquering
> Kyiv, collapsed within days. Since then, the Russians have adjusted to a
> more gradual advance backed by heavy artillery fire, an approach that
> has allowed them to make some noticeable territorial gains.
>
> But these advances appear to have been halted, at least temporarily. On
> Thursday, the UK Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that Russia’s
> offensive “has largely stalled on all fronts,” a judgment echoed by open
> source analysts tracking developments on the ground. The Wall Street
> Journal reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have even managed to
> mount a counteroffensive around Kyiv.
>
> Russian casualties have been horrifically high. It’s hard to get
> accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative
> estimates of Russian war dead — from the US Defense Department — finds
> that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three
> weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US
> service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan.
>
> “We’re seeing a country militarily implode,” says Robert Farley, a
> professor at the University of Kentucky who studies air power.
>
> This is not how the war was supposed to go. On virtually any
> quantifiable metric of military strength, from defense spending to the
> size of the respective air forces, Russia’s forces vastly outnumber and
> outgun Ukraine’s. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark
> Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours of
> a Russian invasion.
>
> But Russia’s military has proven more incompetent, and Ukraine’s more
> capable, than nearly anyone anticipated.
>
> A Ukrainian soldier examines a destroyed Russian armored personnel
> carrier in Irpin, north of Kyiv, on March 12. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via
> Getty Images
>
> “Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the
> Ukrainians: Nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all
> that high an estimation of their military capacity,” says Olga Oliker,
> the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International
> Crisis Group.
>
> There are many reasons things have turned out this way. Generally
> speaking, it appears that pre-war analyses overrated Russia’s hardware
> advantage and underrated less tangible factors — including logistical
> capacity and the morale of the front-line combat troops on both sides.
>
> Morale in particular “is a very significant factor in Russian combat
> effectiveness, and one that’s being ignored by many military observers,”
> argues Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA think tank.
>
> All that said, it is still far too early to conclude that Ukraine is
> going to win the war. Ukrainians have suffered significant losses, too;
> Russia’s numerical and technological advantages remain and could yet
> prove decisive, allowing the Russians to besiege Ukraine’s major cities
> and starve them into submission.
>
> But right now, based on the publicly available evidence we have, the
> momentum is clearly going the other way. An unqualified Russian victory,
> which once seemed almost inevitable, is looking increasingly less likely.
>
> Russia’s gains have been real — but are stalling out
> On paper, Russia’s military vastly outstrips Ukraine’s. Russia spends
> over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian
> military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and
> roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft.
>
> Given this disparity, Russia was bound to be able to make some inroads
> into Ukrainian territory. And as you can see on the following map from
> the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia had seized control of
> notable chunks of Ukrainian territory by March 9 — especially in the
> south, where it controls the cities of Melitopol and Kherson:
>
>
> Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 9, 2022.
> Institute for the Study of War
>
> But these advances were not necessarily the sole result of Russian
> battlefield supremacy. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical
> decision to trade “space for time”: to withdraw strategically rather
> than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, fighting the Russians on
> the territory and at the time of their choosing.
>
> As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became
> clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with
> Russians on open terrain, where Russia’s numerical advantages would
> prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of
> smaller-scale clashes.
>
> Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller
> cities; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their
> superior knowledge of the city’s geography to hide and conduct ambushes.
> They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open
> roads, which make for easy targets. They have repeatedly raided poorly
> protected supply lines with an eye toward denying Russians necessary
> materials like fuel.
>
> A recent Washington Post account of a battle near the Kyiv suburb of
> Brovary, based on Ukrainian military videos and interviews with
> witnesses, paints a clear picture of how this has played out:
>
> A column of tanks moved down a main highway toward the town of Brovary.
> As they passed a cluster of houses, the Ukrainian forces saw an
> opportunity. They pummeled the convoy with artillery shells and antitank
> missiles, destroying or disabling several tanks and armored personnel
> carriers. Russian soldiers fled their vehicles and ran into the woods,
> according to videos posted on social media by Ukraine’s military. One
> tank slowly rolled to a halt, engulfed in flames.
>
> The Ukrainian defensive strategy has not fully thrown Russia’s advance
> back, but it has slowed it to a near halt. ISW’s updated March 17 map
> shows that Russian forces have barely moved forward from their positions
> about a week earlier — a reflection of Ukrainian success:
>
> Map of Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine on March 17, 2022.
> Institute for the Study of War
>
> Again, the Russian advancement mostly came in the south, where they
> continue to besiege the port city of Mariupol. Their current aim appears
> to be to do the same to Kyiv in the north, cutting it off from food and
> water and bombarding it with artillery.
>
> In theory, this is something their vastly superior military forces
> should be able to accomplish. In practice, the Ukrainians have
> successfully stopped Russia from encircling their capital and may even
> be able to push Russian forces back.
>
> And Russian casualties are taking their toll on the invasion. A recent
> US intelligence assessment found that Russia had lost over 10 percent of
> its initial invasion force due to a combination of factors like
> battlefield deaths, injuries, capture, illness, and desertion. According
> to Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University
> of St. Andrews, this is a very ominous sign for the future of its campaign.
>
> “Once they get below 75% their overall effectiveness should plummet,” he
> writes. “If the Russians don’t send fresh well-trained troops (and this
> will not be mercenaries or people impressed off the streets in Crimea)
> very soon, their whole strategy seems pointless.”
>
> What is wrong with the Russian military?
> To understand why the war has gone in such a surprising direction, we
> can first look at some of the Russian side’s problems. They started with
> Putin himself.
>
> The initial invasion plan was reportedly put together in secret by a
> handful of his top military and intelligence advisers; it reflected the
> Russian strongman’s seemingly sincere belief that Ukraine was a fake
> country and they could achieve regime change with limited resistance.
>
> “He actually really thought this would be a ‘special military
> operation’: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldn’t be a real
> war,” Kofman says.
>
> A Ukrainian serviceman stands guard at a military checkpoint in the
> center of Kyiv on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
>
> You can see this assumption at work in the structure of the early
> offensive. Instead of a methodical advance characterized by “combined
> arms” — the use of multiple forms of military power, like infantry and
> artillery, in mutually supportive fashion — Russian tanks and elite
> paratroopers were sent pell-mell toward Kyiv with little support. This
> kind of rapid advance might have worked if it had faced token
> resistance, but it opened up Russian forces to devastating Ukrainian
> counterattacks.
>
> Once Putin’s strategy failed in the first few days of fighting, Russian
> generals had to develop a new one on the fly. What they came up with —
> massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege
> Ukraine’s major cities — was more effective (and more brutal). But the
> initial Russian failures gave Ukraine crucial time to entrench and
> receive external supplies from NATO forces, stiffening their defenses.
>
> Even after this strategic shift, Russian forces have continued to suffer
> from a series of problems that have kneecapped their ability to execute
> the plan.
>
> “If the point is just to wreak havoc, then they’re doing fine. But if
> the point is to wreak havoc and thus advance further — be able to hold
> more territory — they’re not doing fine,” Oliker tells me.
>
> One of the biggest and most noticeable issues has been rickety
> logistics. The most famous images of this have been Russian armored
> vehicles parked on Ukrainian roads, seemingly out of gas and unable to
> advance any further. But on a whole range of issues, from secure
> communications to adequate tires, the Russian forces have proven to be
> underequipped and poorly supplied.
>
> Part of the reason is a lack of adequate preparation. Per Kofman, the
> Russian military simply “wasn’t organized for this kind of war” —
> meaning, the conquest of Europe’s second-largest country by area.
>
> Destroyed Russian armored vehicles clog a street in the city of Bucha,
> west of Kyiv, on March 4. Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
> Another big problem, experts say, is corruption in the Russian
> procurement system. Corruption in Russia is less a bug in its political
> system than a feature; one way that the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of
> its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity.
> Military procurement is no exception to this pattern of widespread
> corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital
> supplies.
>
> “Ineffective control over fuel consumption in the Russian military
> actually long preceded the war in Ukraine and had historically created
> opportunities for embezzlement — that is why fuel is often called the
> Russian military’s ‘second currency,’” Polina Beliakova writes in
> Politico. “The quality of food and housing in the Russian military is
> reportedly worse than in its prisons, with unreasonably small meals and
> some carrying harmful Escherichia coli bacteria.”
>
> Logistical problems also seem to be a factor in one of the war’s biggest
> and most important surprises: the shocking absence of Russia’s air force.
>
> So far, Russia has struggled to establish air superiority despite
> massive numerical superiority. According to pre-invasion data from the
> International Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia’s aerospace forces
> include 1,172 fixed-wing aircraft; Ukraine has 124. Yet Ukraine’s planes
> are still flying and its air defenses mostly remain in place; as a
> result, the Ukrainian military has been able to use air power against
> the Russian attackers, including deploying Turkish-made TB2 drones
> against slow Russian armored columns to devastating effect.
>
> According to Farley, the issues with Russia’s air force run even deeper
> than lack of maintenance and fuel: Russian pilots lack adequate
> experience with this kind of campaign and do not train very effectively,
> while the leadership seems afraid to risk jets over Ukrainian skies.
>
> “There’s a big hangover from the 1990s and the early 2000s, when
> [Russia] literally didn’t have the money to pay for the gas to make the
> aircraft fly — so your pilots ended up not having many hours in the
> sky,” he explains. “Unlike the United States, which wages a massive air
> campaign every decade, the Russians really haven’t done stuff that
> require a lot of fixed-wing against any kind of prepared defense.”
>
> Ukraine’s stiff resistance and the importance of morale
> Perhaps the biggest single difference between the Ukrainian and Russian
> militaries, according to the experts I spoke with, has been morale:
> soldiers’ belief in their cause and willingness to fight for it.
>
> A civilian shouts anti-Russian slogans at a site where bombing damaged
> residential buildings in Kyiv on March 18. Rodrigo Abd/AP
> “It’s the one thing that could be completely decisive” in Ukraine’s
> favor, says Farley. “Armies do just decide to stop fighting.”
>
> Morale is, by its nature, a tricky thing to assess. But according to
> Dartmouth political scientist Jason Lyall, whose recent book Divided
> Armies examines the role of morale on battlefield performance, you can
> see its effects in dispatches from the Ukrainian front.
>
> “Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal
> hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript
> soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army
> was not prepared to fight this war,” he explains via email. “High rates
> of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and
> large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the
> forest) are all products of low morale.”
>
> Putin kept the Russian invasion plan a secret from everyone but his
> inner circle; before the invasion, Russian diplomats and propaganda
> outlets were mocking the West for suggesting it might happen. The result
> is a Russian force that has little sense of what they’re fighting for or
> why, waging war against a country with which they have religious,
> ethnic, historical, and potentially even familial ties. That’s a recipe
> for low morale.
>
> By contrast, the Ukrainians are defending their homes and their families
> from an unprovoked invasion. They have a charismatic leader, Volodymyr
> Zelenskyy, who has made a personal stand in Kyiv. Stories of heroism and
> defiance — like Ukrainian soldiers responding to a surrender request by
> saying “Russian warship, go fuck yourself” — have bolstered the
> defenders’ resolve.
>
> The Ukrainian morale advantage is making a difference on the battlefield.
>
> “High morale empowers units to take risks, adopt unpredictable tactics,
> and to endure hardships even when outnumbered,” Lyall tells me. “High
> Ukrainian morale, fueled by Zelenskyy’s remarkable leadership and
> personal courage, has improved Ukrainian cohesion and the ability of its
> forces to impose significant casualties on Russian forces.”
>
> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with the prime ministers
> (not seen) of Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia in Kyiv on March 16.
> Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
>
> Lyall cautions that morale can shift with battlefield developments: A
> major Russian breakthrough in one area could cheer up their troops while
> dispiriting Ukrainians. And low-morale armies can win wars, though they
> typically do so in brutally ugly fashion — including mass slaughter of
> civilians, which appears to be a significant part of Putin’s current
> strategy.
>
> But right now, morale appears to be one of the most important factors in
> explaining the difference between the two militaries’ performances. It
> could end up playing a major role in determining the entire course of
> the war.
>
> What does victory for either side look like now?
> War is unpredictable. Any number of things, ranging from Russian
> reinforcements to greater deployment of its air force to the fall of
> besieged Mariupol, could give the Russian offensive new life.
>
> But even if Russia begins to perform better on the battlefield, its
> initial objective — “a Ukraine that becomes entirely subservient to
> Russia,” as Oliker puts it — is looking increasingly out of reach. The
> inability to swiftly topple Kyiv, together with the strong resistance
> and rising nationalist sentiment among Ukrainians, makes it hard to
> imagine Russia successfully installing its own government in Kyiv.
>
> “No matter how much military firepower they pour into it, they are not
> going to be able to achieve regime change or some of their maximalist
> aims,” Kofman declares.
>
> This does not mean the Russian campaign will prove to be a total
> failure. Depending on how the rest of the military campaign goes, it is
> possible to imagine them extracting significant political concessions
> from Zelenskyy in ongoing peace negotiations.
>
>
> A woman looks at her apartment, which was destroyed by shelling in Kyiv
> on March 15. Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
>
> If more major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa are put under the
> sort of horrible siege Mariupol is currently experiencing — starved and
> under constant artillery bombardment — the Russians will have a lot more
> negotiating leverage. They could use this to extract favorable terms,
> like Ukrainian recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and a
> neutrality pledge not to join NATO or the European Union.
>
> But if current military trends hold, it’s the Ukrainians who have the
> cards — and you can imagine a deal that looks similar on paper actually
> favoring them significantly. According to Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press and
> the Financial Times, the country’s negotiating team in peace talks with
> Russia envisions a very specific version of “neutrality”: one that
> precludes formal NATO membership but nonetheless commits Western powers
> to providing weapons and air defense if Ukraine is attacked. This would
> put Ukraine in a far closer security relationship to the West than it
> was before the war, when NATO membership was already functionally out of
> reach — a victory for Kyiv and defeat for Moscow.
>
> It is hard to say how these talks will go, or if and when they will be
> successful. But the fact that a negotiated end to the war is looking
> more likely than total Russian victory reflects the success of Ukraine’s
> defense to date.
>
> “Ukraine’s battle is really for time, an extent to which they can
> [degrade] Russian forces over time in order to steadily lead Russia to
> revise down their war aims. And we’ve already seen a change in Russian
> war aims over the course of the conflict,” Kofman says. “If the
> requirements of military success are the destruction of the Ukrainian
> capital and several other cities, the likelihood of achieving actual
> political aims is nil.”


Click here to read the complete article
Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?

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 by: a425couple - Wed, 30 Mar 2022 18:09 UTC

On 3/27/2022 3:29 PM, SolomonW wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Mar 2022 17:35:37 -0700, a425couple wrote:
>
>> from
>> https://www.vox.com/2022/3/18/22977801/russia-ukraine-war-losing-map-kyiv-kharkiv-odessa-week-three
>>
>> Is Russia losing?
>> Russia’s offensive is stalled. It has taken massive casualties. We are,
>> according to one expert, “seeing a country militarily implode.”
>>
>
> I liked thesee two videos on this subject
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9pVEP0AzZ4
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igq2fqa7RY4

#1
"Be careful drawing conclusions from the Ukraine videos.
517,383 views Premiered Mar 23, 2022
The Chieftain
217K subscribers
There are a lot of videos coming out of Ukraine, leading to a lot of
opinions. Not to be a wet blanket, but I caution that these are merely
small data points, and normally will only permit conclusions supported
by that one snippet, not larger trends. [Edit. Dear God, people, this is
a video about critical thinking. It's not about who I think is going to
win or who I hope is going to win (Ukraine, for the record). Listen
carefully to my words: saying "Not everything unpleasant is a war crime"
is NOT the same as "Russia is committing no war crimes".]"

#2
Ukraine Fog of War: What's Really Happening?
Fundraiser
1,221,466 viewsMar 15, 2022
Task & Purpose
609K subscribers
The third week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is covered in the fog
of war and that can be confusing. In this episode we investigate some of
the Russian claims of victories and advances around the country to avoid
falling into a cognitive bias trap. I suggest that we're living in a
bubble thanks to the social media platforms that are pushing us more of
what we want to see and not what we need to see.

OK. True enough.
But if everyone was totally silent, until the
history books were written,
the newsgroup would be even deader!

Because of this war, my airplane flight to my vacation
is having to take a long dog-leg to avoid Russia and
Ukraine. Not ideal.

Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?

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Subject: Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?
From: matt...@icescape.org (Matthew)
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 by: Matthew - Thu, 31 Mar 2022 01:45 UTC

Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

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Subject: Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?
From: damark...@gmail.com (Dean Markley)
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 by: Dean Markley - Thu, 31 Mar 2022 11:51 UTC

On Wednesday, March 30, 2022 at 9:45:52 PM UTC-4, Matthew wrote:
> Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

Comparing current day Russia with the WWII Soviet Union can be deceptive. The only thing they have in common is authoritarianism. Even that is deceptive as Stalin had much more control than Putin has.

Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?

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 by: Stephen Harding - Thu, 31 Mar 2022 11:57 UTC

On 3/30/22 9:45 PM, Matthew wrote:
> Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is
> maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of
> weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

My personal experience with the Russians is that they are a very rugged
people, capable of hardships that would put most Westerners in a "rage
room" for months on end!

Don't underestimate what Russians can accomplish, especially when they
have a megalomaniac authoritarian at the helm (which Russia seems to
have a history of).

They may not always be elegant in their solutions, but they can get the
job done, even if that only means "eventually". Russians are a patient
people.

SMH

Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?

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 by: Jim Wilkins - Thu, 31 Mar 2022 13:20 UTC

"Stephen Harding" wrote in message news:t244uq$8lj$1@dont-email.me...

On 3/30/22 9:45 PM, Matthew wrote:
> Some perspective; Russia lost ~10 million troops in ww2. Russia is
> maintaining a fairly light footprint in Ukraine. The appearance of
> weakness, or the delay, may be intentional.

My personal experience with the Russians is that they are a very rugged
people, capable of hardships that would put most Westerners in a "rage
room" for months on end!

Don't underestimate what Russians can accomplish, especially when they
have a megalomaniac authoritarian at the helm (which Russia seems to
have a history of).

They may not always be elegant in their solutions, but they can get the
job done, even if that only means "eventually". Russians are a patient
people.

SMH

---------------------

If anything the US military overestimated what the Russians could do, aided
by their boasting, and used that estimate to justify heavy spending to
counter it. That spending was spread across all Congressional districts,
sometimes at the cost of efficiency, and became a form of workfare for
machinists and engineers, their dependents and supporting businesses, as an
adjustable artificial production demand not tied to consumption or the
economic cycle. It wasn't always tied to military necessity either, rather
to interservice competition.

The Left demanded that the money be spent on The People instead. But
it -was-, their only real gripe being that they didn't control it.

Re: from VOX - Is Russia losing?

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From: matt...@icescape.org (Matthew)
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 by: Matthew - Thu, 31 Mar 2022 20:09 UTC

Underestimating the Russians has rarely ended well. Russia's ambitions are global, be not deluded. The reason for Putin's hostility in Ukraine is NATO/USA.

"This is it, the apocalypse"

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 by: Matthew - Thu, 31 Mar 2022 20:16 UTC

Underestimating the Russians has rarely ended well. Russia's ambitions are global, be not deluded. The reason for Putin's hostility in Ukraine is NATO/USA.

"This is it, the apocalypse"
http://pol.foundation/Happening.html

Some videos I made on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbjvjCzJmYQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agtu0GSWadw

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