Ukraine war mega thread

[sabang]

Gadzooks- is it a Wunderwaffen?

[misskit]

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 2, 2023
Feb 2, 2023 - Press ISW


A Ukrainian intelligence official stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to capture Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by March 2023, supporting ISW’s most likely course of action assessment (MLCOA) for a Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Representative Andriy Chernyak told the Kyiv Post on February 1 that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by March 2023. Chernyak also stated that Russian forces are redeploying additional unspecified assault groups, units, weapons, and military equipment to unspecified areas of eastern Ukraine, likely in the Luhansk Oblast area.

Institute for the Study of War

[panama hat]

Gadzooks- is it a Wunderwaffen?

Are you going to wet yourself again about Putin's hypersonic misssiles?

[sabang]

Na mate, the air balloon is all the rage now.

[sabang]

The unravelling military situation in Ukraine means that Biden’s best option is to negotiate, a new RAND report argues. The sooner the better. There is the awful danger that continued procrastination will propel the hapless Biden administration into precipitating nuclear war.
The issue of how to approach negotiations to end America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine continues to be tortuous, murky and unresolved.
.... In these circumstances the recent RAND report calling for meaningful negotiations for a peace deal is important not only because RAND itself is influential but also because instead of humanitarian and democracy posturing it bases its argument on what’s good for US imperialism. There’s no shortage of cant of course, but underneath there is a substratum of strategic rationality. Crucially it calls for negotiations, with whatever concessions and compromises are necessary, in order to do a deal with Russia.The authors argue that, in addition to minimising the risks of major escalation, U.S. interests would be best served by avoiding a protracted conflict. The costs and risks of a long war in Ukraine are significant and outweigh the possible benefits of such a trajectory for the United States.

It recognises that Kyiv conquest of the Crimea is unfeasible but it goes beyond that by arguing territorial concessions (as suggested by Kissinger to outrage in May) are not that important compared with the costs and disadvantages for the US of a prolonged war and that Kyiv will adjust to whatever they are. It implies that the line of control at time of writing (December 2022) will have to be accepted. Crucially it says that the US (and NATO) will have to commit to Ukrainian neutrality and not joining NATO. Since this would address the twin Russian demands of protection of the Russian minority and the removal of the threat of Ukraine as a NATO springboard a deal is quite feasible....

FULL- RAND: Ukraine procrastination unwise for American imperialism - Biden must negotiate - Pearls and Irritations

[baldrick]

American imperialism

but Ukraine is the territory claimed by russ ? you are so fcuking inured to the reality of the putin gasp of dog bothering fcukwittery

[bsnub]

Gadzooks- is it a Wunderwaffen?

Pain is coming, clownboy. The thunder is going to rain down upon thee...

[bsnub]

When Ukraine did its thunder run into occupied Kharkiv, the Russians saw the tanks coming, and they broke and ran. It was the largest battlefield defeat for them since WW2. Imagine what they will be thinking when these monsters are bearing down on them?



They will be like rats to the exits.

[sabang]

Yep the latest, greatest Wunderwaffen yet. Gadzooks. Think I'll just leave you to your adolescent fantasies. There is much more significant stuff happening behind the scenes, if you look at the latest Rand report.

The thunder is going to rain down upon thee...

Gotta timetable on that? The promised Winter 'thunder run' failed to materialise.

[bsnub]

Yep the latest, greatest Wunderwaffen yet. Gadzooks.

I can not wait to use that quote against you. I really enjoyed seeing you twist on the vine when Kherson and Kharkiv oblast were liberated. Likewise, I look forward to your further humiliation.

There is much more significant stuff happening behind the scenes, if you look at the latest Rand report.

No, there really isn't.

The promised Winter 'thunder run' failed to materialise.

Mother nature and the announcement of proper western offensive weapons to be delivered has a way of changing plans. One thing is certain for you, and that is that more humiliation is inbound. Russia celebrates "major" victories these days by expending 20,000 men to take a small town like Soledar. That in and of itself is a defeat.

[sabang]

Talking of humiliation recruit snubski, are you gonna man up and admit that you were WRONG about this mythical Ukrainian Winter Offensive or 'Thunder Run', that you have been childishly shoving down our throats and yet totally failed to materialise?

more humiliation is inbound

OMG, how many times have we heard that! Meanwhile in the real world Rand corp is recommending the US get to the negotiating table and fast, and Blinken and co have reportedly been sounding Russia out for a possible 'land for peace' deal. And Ukraine is losing ground while we (as always) await your latest Wunderwaffen that is gonna change everything I tell ya!

You really are a Hoot.

[misskit]

RAND experts fear stalemate, ‘frozen conflict’ in Ukraine

WASHINGTON — Despite 11 months of brutal war across Ukraine, there is no end in sight, experts at the influential RAND Corp. and other DC thinktanks warned Thursday.


With neither side able to break the other’s army on the battlefield, and both unwilling to come to the negotiating table, the emerging consensus says the likely outcome is a long war or a “frozen conflict”: a heavily armed peace broken by frequent, inconclusive violence. This marathon contest, the analysts warned, will strain both western democracies’ resolve and their defense production — and the Russian people’s historic capacity for endless suffering and loss.


Another mass mobilization of Russian men, now widely expected, will not enable Putin to drown the Ukrainians in human-wave assaults. But forthcoming Western deliveries of heavy tanks, long-range rockets, and even fighter jets may not enable Ukraine to break through Russia’s ever-denser lines of fortifications, either.


“Based on how the Russians are digging in at this point in eastern Ukraine, through a network of defensive positions and trenches, multiple lines, deep minefields, I think it’s going to be really costly for the Ukrainians to [oust] them from all areas of occupation,” said Dara Massicot, a Russia scholar, during a RAND briefing for reporters. “That being said, I just don’t see the Zelensky government ever wanting to sit down and negotiate with Russians for some type of territorial concession.”


The Kremlin position looks equally entrenched, said Massicot’s RAND colleague John Tefft, a Foreign Service veteran who was ambassador to Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia itself. “I’ve kind of thought from the beginning here that Putin is so dug in on this… he’s not going to budge, or is going to only budge at the very last minute if he’s under intense political pressure at home,” Tefft said. “It’s worth thinking through what a negotiation would look like, but given the military realities on the ground and Putin’s determination — and the Ukrainian’s determination — to keep fighting on, this doesn’t augur well.”

Nor is Putin likely to keep any promises he makes, Tefft added. “When I was ambassador in Georgia, in 2008, everyone will remember that first, the president of France and [then-US Secretary of State] Condi Rice came and negotiated a ceasefire agreement, and the Russians haven’t implemented anything that they agreed to.”


It’s important to note that a stalemate doesn’t mean no fighting. Far from it: remember the Western Front of World War I.

“The bumper sticker is … heat and freeze,” said Barry Pavel, head of RAND’s National Defense Research Institute. “I think we’re going see a very intense battle… in the next two to three months.” But after that furious “heat and friction,” he went on, the frontline is likely to “freeze” again.


“That means the industrial battle is really important,” Pavel emphasized. Some crucial questions: Can the West supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition faster than the conflict burns them up? Can Russia, its oil-driven economy still largely unhurt by sanctions, resurrect rusty stockpiles of Soviet weapons and buy new technology from Iran, faster than the West can arm Ukraine?


There is also the battle of will — and sheer attrition. “The Russians are better at suffering than any people on Earth,” Pavel said, “from centuries of history.”


But sometimes even Russian soldiers reach the limits of their endurance and break, as the Red Army did in 1940 before the Nazi blitzkrieg, ceding vast territories in months — including most of modern-day Ukraine. Sometimes their autocrats then manage to rally them, as Stalin did eventually in World War II; other times the troops turn on their drivers, as the Imperial army did in 1917. With Putin throwing thousands of barely-trained conscripts at Ukrainian lines, and outburst of dissent among the newly mobilized, might the Russian army be at another such breaking point?

Unlikely, Massicot said. “I think the closest we actually came to that was when the Kharkiv [defenses] collapsed last fall,” she said. “That was uncontrolled collapse… A situation like that can cascade very quickly as panic and rumor and everything else spreads.”


“Right now, I don’t see the same ingredients, [however]. The frontlines are becoming more dense over time,” she said. “It will be hard for the Ukrainians to get that kind of breakthrough and punch through.”


“I’m not sure where that leaves it,” Massicot said frankly, “if it’s a temporary frozen conflict, or frozen frontlines for a while, but I see a military reality and I see a political reality, and they’re not really aligned at this point.”


What about the new weapons from the West — the Leopard II tanks recently released by Germany, or the GLSBD rockets with a 100-mile range, or perhaps F-16s and ATACMS missiles? Are any of those a silver bullet to change the course of conflict?


“My short answer … is ‘no,’” said David Ochmanek, a RAND senior researcher, in a follow-up email with Breaking Defense. “ As analysts, we can, with effort, identify capabilities and weapons that can be decisive in helping to win engagements and battles. But what wins wars is always more complicated, bearing on issues of strategic depth, national will, economics, etc.”


Other Experts Weight In


While the RAND panel was largely in sync, other experts were more mixed.


“Neither side has a significant enough advantage in combat power, and a few dozen tanks is certainly not going to turn the tide, nor ATACMS missiles, nor F-16 jets,” said Thomas Spoehr, a retired US Army three-star general who heads defense studies at the Heritage Foundation. “What will turn the tide is sufficient military force and munitions, tanks in quantities of hundreds, dozens more HIMARS, and similar equipment to facilitate a successful Ukrainian offensive.”


Even so, “Crimea, because of the terrain, would be very hard to take by force. The only way it can be taken is by first isolating it: cutting Kerch Bridge and the land bridge from Mariupol,” Spoehr told Breaking Defense after the RAND panel. “The most likely area where Ukraine can have success is in the south since the supply lines from Russia can be severed. The Donbas [is] more difficult because the Russians have solid supply lines.”


Pat Donahoe, a retired Maj. Gen. who led the Army’s Maneuver Center “schoolhouse” at Fort Benning, was more optimistic, saying a complex package of equipment and training could lead to successful rapid, combined-arms advances. That means the West must deliver on its promises of hundreds of heavy tanks and other armored fighting vehicles to take the open steppe, then follow up with long-range missiles, including ship-killers, for a siege of Crimea.


“As we look at the next six months and our ability to recraft the Ukrainian army into much more of a western-model, armored, mechanized force,” Donahoe told Breaking Defense, “there’s sizable pieces of terrain in the Ukraine, both north and south of the Donbas, where they could reestablish a war of maneuver.”


“When you look at their ability to retake Crimea, that’s much more challenging,” Donahoe continued. An overland attack would require a frontal attack against an easily defended isthmus less than five miles wide; an amphibious landing would require naval forces Ukraine has never had. The best solution, he said, is to cut the peninsula off by land, then use long-range precision missiles to drop the Kerch Bridge and sink Russian ships, isolating Crimea until the defenders run out of supplies.


“Long term conflict, absolutely,” Donahoe summed up. “We’re not near the end of this conflict, but I disagree with ‘frozen conflict.’”


Taking Crimea will be tough, agreed the former three-star commander of US Army forces in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges — but, he said, retaking the peninsula is not optional. With Crimea and its naval bases in Russian hands, he said, Moscow can blockade all of Ukraine’s seaports at any time: “When you take that into account, the chances of Ukraine rebuilding its economy are zero.”


While an armored force can retake the southeast coast and cut Russia’s overland connection to Crimea, Hodges said, only long-range, precision-guided weapons can bring down “that stinking bridge” at Kerch and bombard Russian positions on the peninsula.


How long would it take? “Ukraine has the capability to liberate Crimea by the end of this summer — if the US decides we want them to win and we provide the capabilities now,” Hodges said. “Unfortunately I don’t see the evidence the administration actually wants them to win, [because] it’s using a process that will get stuff there by the end of this year.”


“If the administration decides that we want Ukraine to win, there’ll be no question,” he said. “Ukraine will win.”


One leading Russia expert was more cautious about any kind of prediction. “It’s premature to judge how this year will go,” said Michael Kofman, Russia expert at the thinktank CNA and host of a podcast on the conflict, The Russia Contingency. “Uncertainty about both forces combined with a lull in offensive operations up until last week renders this picture difficult to judge.


“I do agree that there’s no ‘game changer’ capability we have, and that this is the wrong way to think about war in general,” Kofman told Breaking Defense. “It’s ultimately about quantity, force employment, mobilization and reconstitution” — not specific technologies.


“I generally agree that a major breakthrough is unlikely, but wars can enter a gradually-then-suddenly pattern,” he said: Attrition can accumulate invisibly until it brings about a sudden collapse, much as slowly rising temperatures can cause Antarctic ice shelves to suddenly splinter into icebergs. “Things in war,” he warned, “are contingent.”

RAND experts fear stalemate, ‘frozen conflict’ in Ukraine - Breaking Defense

[Norton]

This marathon contest, the analysts warned, will strain both western democracies’ resolve and their defense production — and the Russian people’s historic capacity for endless suffering and loss.

Far from a Rand expert but as I have said from day one, this will turn into a long, long slugfest. I was in one of these march in, win in a couple years and march out wars. 8 years later we finally got out in less than an orderly manor.

[bsnub]

OMG, how many times have we heard that!

Being that you had two mini flounces from the forum when Kherson and Kharkiv were liberated, I think the comment was more than warranted. You have humiliated yourself countless times in this thread from the very start.

[sabang]

Oh, so when I returned from three months in Thailand (some exotic place you have never been, but maybe heard about) to Australia, that was a mini flounce? Idiot.
Can I put to you what the whole forum already knows? You don't know the fuck what's going on, no more than any other basement dweller. You are just an excitable boy scout.

[bsnub]

Oh, so when I returned from three months in Thailand

You posted the entire time you were in LOS. Harry pointed that very fact out to you many times. The mini flounces happened after your Russians were defeated and forced to retreat.

Can I put to you what the whole forum already knows?

The whole forum? So you mean yourself and three other dimwitted useful idiots?

You don't know the fuck what's going on, no more than any other basement dweller. You are just an excitable boy scout.

This from a clown that said this invasion would never happen. The fact is that I called Kherson and Kharkiv correctly. You on the other hand have been wrong about literally everything since before this war started, not to mention posting a steady stream of lies and propaganda.

Idiot.

You sure are.

[sabang]

Of course I posted when in Thailand- that exotic place actually does have Wi-fi you know, and i was staying at my own place- home for several years actually. Like, d'uhh. But I didn't post when i was travelling to and from the airport, and on a lane, plus the interminable waiting times at airports. So in your infantile mentality, that is a mini flounce.

The whole forum? So you mean yourself and three other dimwitted useful idiots?

Oh, so you missed the TD Bellend poll?

This from a clown that said this invasion would never happen.

The clowns are those who let the escalation happen, when it could so easily have been prevented. The whole world is paying for it now- and "We" are not winning, unless you pledge fealty to arms manufacturers and oil companies.

Your excitable NAFO propaganda impresses no one recruit snubski. Nobody worth impressing, anyway. Any fool knows Ukraine is losing this war.

[OhOh]

Some numbers from, allegedly, Israeli Intelligence Mossad - year to date:

[bsnub]

Some numbers from, allegedly, Israeli Intelligence Mossad

The useful idiots are running the clown car around.

2458 dead NATO soldiers.

Mossad my ass. More like Russian MOD fantasy.

[sabang]

Nobody definitively knows the true casualty figures- the best we can hope for is an unbiased estimate, but Ukraine is certainly trying to understate it's own, and they are certainly considerably higher than Russian casualties due to the crushing advantage Russia has in artillery pieces, mainly. Many of those bodies being stored in refrigerated rail cars near the Hungarian border are not even officially listed as KIA.

Showing some war porn purporting to show Russian troops being hammered changes nothing- I could show you endless such cherry picked fluff from 'Russian sources' such as Southfront, Topwar etc. It doesn't show how the overall war is progressing.

[misskit]

^ “refrigerated rail cars near the Hungarian border are not even officially listed as KIA”

If you read that item again it says there is ONE rail car and it COULD hold as many as 500 bodies.

[sabang]

I'll just take your word on that MK. Not a good look though, innit?

[misskit]

^For all we know there were 20 bodies in the box and they have all been sent home by now, sabang.


Famine, subjugation and nuclear fallout: How Soviet experience helped sow resentment among Ukrainians toward Russia

Ukraine and Russia share a great deal in the way of history and culture – indeed for long periods in the past, the neighboring countries were part of larger empires encompassing both territories.


But that history – especially during the Soviet period from 1922 to 1991, in which Ukraine was absorbed into the communist bloc – has also bred resentment. Opinions of the merits of the Soviet Union and its leaders diverge, with Ukrainians far less likely to view the period favorably than Russians.


Nonetheless, President Vladimir Putin continues to claim Soviet foundations for what he sees as “historical Russia” – an entity that includes Ukraine.


As scholars of that history, we believe that an examination of Soviet-era policies in Ukraine can offer a useful lens for understanding why so many Ukrainians harbor deep resentment toward Russia.


Stalin’s engineered famine


Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe and later of the Soviet Union. Its rich soil and ample fields made it an ideal place to grow the grain that helped feed the entire continent.


After Ukraine was absorbed into the Soviet Union beginning in 1922, its agriculture was subject to collectivization policies, in which private land was taken over by the Soviets to be worked communally. Anything produced on those lands would be redistributed across the union.


In 1932 and 1933, a famine devastated the Soviet Union as a result of aggressive collectivization coupled with poor harvests.

Millions starved to death across the Soviet Union, but Ukraine felt the brunt of this horror. Research estimates that some 3 million to 4 million Ukrainians died of the famine, around 13% of the population, though the true figure is impossible to establish because of Soviet efforts to hide the famine and its toll.


Scholars note that many of the political decisions of the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin – such as preventing Ukrainian farmers from traveling in search of food, and severely punishing anyone who took produce from collective farms – made the famine much worse for Ukrainians. These policies were specific to Ukrainians within Ukraine, as well as Ukrainians who lived in other parts of the Soviet Union.


Some historians claim that Stalin’s moves were done to quash a Ukrainian independence movement and were specifically targeted at ethnic Ukrainians. As such, some scholars call the famine a genocide. In Ukrainian, the event is known as “Holodomor,” which means “death by hunger.”


Recognition of the full extent of the Holodomor and implicating Soviet leadership for the deaths remains an important issue in Ukraine to this day, with the country’s leaders long fighting for global recognition of the Holodomor and its impact on modern Ukraine.


Countries such as the United States and Canada have made official declarations calling it a genocide.


But this is not the case in much of the rest of the world.


Just as the the Soviet government of the day denied that there were any decisions that explicitly deprived Ukraine of food – noting that the famine affected the entire country – so too do present-day Russian leaders refuse to acknowledge culpability.


Russia’s refusal to admit that the famine disproportionately affected Ukrainians has been taken by many in Ukraine as an attempt to downplay Ukrainian history and national identity.


Soviet annexation of Western Ukraine


This attempt to suppress Ukrainian national identity continued during and after World War II. In the early years of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian national movement was concentrated in the western parts of modern-day Ukraine, part of Poland until the Nazi invasion in 1939.


Before Gemany’s invasion, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a secret agreement, under the guise of the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact, which outlined German and Soviet spheres of influence over parts of central and east Europe.

After Germany invaded Poland, the Red Army moved into the eastern portion of the country under the pretense of stabilizing the failing nation. In reality, the Soviet Union was taking advantage of the provisions laid out in the secret protocol. The Polish territories that now make up western Ukraine were also incorporated into Soviet Ukraine and Belarus, subsuming them into the larger Russian cultural world.


At the end of the war, the territories remained part of the Soviet Union.


Stalin set about suppressing Ukrainian culture in these newly annexed lands in favor of a greater Russian culture. For example, the Soviets repressed any Ukrainian intellectuals who promoted the Ukrainian language and culture through censorship and imprisonment.


This suppression also included liquidating the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a self-governing church that has allegiance to the pope and was one of the most prominent cultural institutions promoting Ukrainian language and culture in these former Polish territories.


Its properties were transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, and many of its priests and bishops were imprisoned or exiled. The destruction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is still a source of resentment for many Ukrainians. It stands, we believe as scholars, as a clear instance of the Soviets’ intentional efforts to destroy Ukrainian cultural institutions.


The legacy of Chernobyl in Ukraine


Just as disaster marked the early years of Ukraine as a Soviet republic, so did its final years.


In 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Soviet-run Chernobyl nuclear power in the north of Ukraine went into partial meltdown. It remains the worst peacetime nuclear catastrophe the world has seen.


It required the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people in the areas surrounding the power plant. And to this day, approximately 1,000 square miles of Ukraine are part of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where radioactive fallout remains high and access is restricted.


Soviet lies to cover up the extent of the disaster – and missteps that would have limited the fallout – only compounded the problem. Emergency personnel were not given proper equipment or training to deal with the nuclear material.


It resulted in a heavy death toll and a higher than normal incidence of radiation-induced disease and complications such as cancer and birth defects among both former residents of the region and the workers sent in to deal with the disaster.


Other Soviet republics and European countries faced the fallout from Chernobyl, but it was the authorities in Ukraine who were tasked with organizing evacuations to Kyiv while Moscow attempted to cover up the scope of the disaster.

Meanwhile, independent Ukraine has been left to attend to the thousands of citizens who have chronic illnesses and disabilities as a result of the accident.

The legacy of Chernobyl looms large in Ukraine’s recent past and continues to define many people’s memory of living in the Soviet era.


Memories of a painful past


This painful history of life under Soviet rule forms the backdrop to resentment in Ukraine today toward Russia. To many Ukrainians, these are not merely stories from textbooks, but central parts of people’s lives – many Ukrainians are still living with the health and environmental consequences of Chernobyl, for instance.


The presence of Russian soldiers on Ukraine’s soil serves as a reminder of past attempts by its neighbor to crush Ukrainian independence.

Famine, subjugation and nuclear fallout: How Soviet experience helped sow resentment among Ukrainians toward Russia

[bsnub]

Ukraine is certainly trying to understate it's own, and they are certainly considerably higher than Russian casualties due to the crushing advantage Russia has in artillery pieces, mainly.

You are a clueless buffoon. Attacking armies always take higher casualties. Always. Attacking armies like Russia take even higher casualties. Using primitive attacks like frontal assaults on fortified positions, human waves etc Russians take far higher casualties than the entrenched Ukrainians.

Not to mention that at this point in the war, the Ukrainians are far better equipped and trained. Many having gone through NATO training camps. Most of Russia's "regular" army was decimated at the start of the war during the Kyiv "lightning offensive".

As you have demonstrated since before the war even began, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

More likely reality...

[sabang]

Deluded. Utterly deluded. We await your new Spring Offensive with it's latest Wunderwaffen. Or will it fail to materialise, just like the Winter Offensive you were creaming your daipers over? You lack credibility, jnr recruit.