Ukrainian War Developments

Abominable said:

I think you misread my post. I said carpet bombing Ukrainian lines, as in military positions.

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I mean at this point most of the Ukrainian positions are in cities

Abominable said:

Not that bombing cities would change America's position. According to the official American line, Putin is already Hitler number 2 and deliberately bombing civilians and hospitals.

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Biden would need to up the ante to appease the wolves.

Abominable said:

The administrative buildings have been taken over. There are still a lot of civilians being evacuated. The one thing I'm keeping an eye open for is Mariupol theatre, where apparently hundreds of civilians are trapped under rubble in a bomb shelter for days now. Russian lines are close to it but haven't reached it yet. The stories coming from civilians are horrific, but you'll never hear them from western media.

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The theater was a false flag.
There was literally a Telegram post on March 12th, days before the "bombing" happened that outlined how it was planned to drum up support for a no-fly zone, as if that was gonna help Mariupol

Regime change.

Only dummy would believe a word coming from this woman mouth.

LawLeadsToPeace said:

Doesn’t look like it to me. In his speech on the day of the invasion, Putin specifically said that the point of the operation was to “protect” Donbass. Since the bulk of Ukrainian forces is there, the next phase also will “demilitarize” Ukraine. The annexation of Ukraine as a whole was never openly stated to be the main objective.

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In Putin's infamous speech before invasion, half the speech was anti-NATO provocation, the other half was 'blood and soil' rhetoric and Ukraine didn't have a right to exist. That can be construed as eliminating Ukraine right to statehood or at very least regime change.

RottenPanzer said:

Rethinking about the true objective of this war, and i got confused...
Like, the original objective was to overthrow the Zelensky government, denazify the military apparatus, etc and install a Pro-Kremlin lead government right?
Then the whole narrative change and now the true objective is actually liberating most of Donbass and Luhanks region now?

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It's stupid to not perform regime change and install a pro-Kremlin leader after all the economic sanctions Russia endured. Or atleast take half of Ukraine as a puppet or vassal. The capital is literally surrounded, go big or go home. None of this paper treaty promise of neutrality.

It's the equivalent of PLA surround Taipei and then demand a paper treaty to not declare independence or ally with US. Come on .... End the regime forever.

Abominable said:

Putin hasn't said the objective was to overthrow Zelensky. He has specified that he isn't interested in "regime change". Of course he may change his mind and do just that, but we'll see.

As for if there's been a change in what his goal is, we'll have to wait and see. If it was to only liberate Donbass then it doesn't explain why Ukrainian cities outside the region are being switched over to the Russian language and currency.

To me, I don't see how he can claim to have achieved the objectives he has set out without taking over the whole of Ukraine.
For example this statue in Lvov:

It will need to be pulled down like the Saddam statues in Baghdad. The Ukrainians won't do it themselves so it is down to the Russians. He can withdraw once it's done but it will need to be occupied.

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Unless Russia gets some territory/vassal/puppet out of this war, none of it is worth the economic sanctions applied to Russian economy. Imagine surrounding the capital and just settling for DNR/LNR. Total loss. Even a paper neutrality treaty needs potential Russia re-incursion to enforce the provisions of de-militarization or monitor it's progress of non-violation, so Russian troops has to be there continually, it's not like a Russia packs up and Ukraine is guai guai for thousand years.

tphuang said:

At some point, people need to stop giving excuses for the piss poor performance that Russians have put up so far. They are still unable to achieve air dominance after a month of conflict. How do you lose so many generals because you are incapable of using encrypted communication?

You might want to listen to shilao podcast on this. They speak to people in pla all the time. They cannot believe Russians have fought this war the way they have. If pla put the same effort on Taiwan scenario, the Taiwanese would not even need American help to fight out an invasion.

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Same. Kinda shocked this is a slogfest and 13th century style siege warfare against cities. Imagine surrounding a capital just to settle for a neutrality treaty. Usually people surround capitals for quick negotiated settlements OR for regime change. They lack troops for the latter and given the economic costs so far, I don't think a paper promise was worth all this effort. Russia needs some territory/vassal/puppet to make all this effort and cost worthwhile, not some paper promise.

Overbom said:

There has been some discussion here for what is the minimum for Russia to get in order to come out of this strategically , at the very least, neutral.

For me, anything else than Russia getting (annex/puppet/vassal) Eastern Ukraine and South Ukraine is a failure

The costs that Russia has paid are too big for only getting some little territory

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If Putin stopped doing anything after recognizing Donbass independence then he would've made tremendous geopolitical gains. Instead he opted for a suicidal geopolitical gamble that's the equivalent of playing with Russian roulette.

I scoured the internet and found an interesting article about Russian strategy in Ukraine.

colonel-general-sergei-rudskoy/

Basically the strategy is to block these big cities (Kherson-Sumy-Kharkov-Kiev-Mariupol), arrest the armies that are defending there, stop the sending of supplies from the west to the east, where there are about 60 thousand soldiers heavily entrenched in the Donbass and leave them isolated.

(Sergei Rudskoy) "There were two possible courses of action.
The first is to limit the territory only to the DPR and the LPR within the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which is enshrined in the constitutions of the republics."

"But then we would be faced with constant feeding from the Ukrainian authorities of the grouping involved in the so-called joint force operation."

"That is why the second option was chosen, which provides for actions throughout Ukraine's TERRITORY with the implementation of measures for its demilitarization and denazification.

The course of the operation confirmed the validity of this decision."

In theory, until securing the separatist areas of the Donbass region, they would attack all fronts, keep cities surrounded and without effective support from western Ukraine. Almost a distraction to not have heavier resistance there...

The problem is that apparently there was a deliberate or unintentional failure of Russian intelligence and the invasion is taking much longer and more costly than the Kremlin anticipated.

"According to US and NATO secret services, flaws in the interpretation of spy information that led to underestimating the Ukrainian Army would be behind Putin's purges of the FSB and the SVR, the Russian counter-intelligence and foreign intelligence services."

"The failures in the transmission of strategic information and the distrust within the Russian secret services constitute a threat to Putin himself. The distrust parallels the president's pressure on his circle, which, for example, led this week to the escape of Anatoli Chubais."

"Chubais fled after the fall of the intelligence chiefs. There was the public humiliation that, on the eve of the invasion, Putin inflicted on Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR. Days later, the head of the 5th Division of the FSB, Sergei Beseda, and his deputy, Anatoli Boluj, were put under house arrest"

"Beseda was in Ukraine in 2014 to help Yanukovych stay in power and did not do well in this task. It was reported that Beseda's arrest was due to embezzlement of military funds. The real reason would have been the absurd report about the real power of the Ukrainian army"

sheogorath said:

It's still a mediocre system, relative to others, as evidenced by the less than stellar performance in Saudi Arabia if you wanna go with recent memory

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You couldn't really compare the performance of PAC-1 with current PAC system nowadays

And regarding the whole spiel of "Air superiority", i'm pretty sure this would be a hard job for the RUAF to achieve total air supremacy, the thing is, Ukraine still have their AD systems which are now i bet mostly are Buk. Considering the fact that RUAF DEAD or SEAD capability is pretty limited unlike NATO and also most of Ukes AD systems now primarily are mobile, this is a tough job to deal with.

I'm surprise this hasn't been brought up..
Even back in Yugoslav war, NATO has fully enacted their SEAD and DEAD operations and even then, they only managed to destroy 3 of the Serbians 22 SA-6 gainful, which were/are a mobile AD system.

delete keeping on topic

Lapin said:

I cannot read Melissa Chan's mind or speak for her.

As far as I can infer, Melissa Chan's argument may go like this:
1) Ukraine is a victim of aggression by Russia. As a metaphor, Ukraine is being raped (violated) by Russia.
2) John Mearsheimer's attempting to excuse Russia's aggression by implying that it's understandable, perhaps even inevitable.
3) When a woman gets raped, some misogynists attempt to excuse the rapist by claiming that he was provoked by her short skirt.
Blaming the victim is common.

Even if Ukraine's like a woman with a dubious reputation who appears 'provocative' by wearing a short skit, she's still innocent.
She does not deserve to be raped. I suspect that's Melissa Chan's point.

I suspect that Melissa Chan has a visceral aversion to Putin's calculated public displays (going shirtless) of his robust masculinity.
Some women may be turned off by it; other women may be turned on, apparently:

"I'd have loved to have been [Putin's mistress] ... he's a very attractive man. Such a strong, male energy."
--attributed to Anna Netrebko (a Russian opera soprano who's now widely banned in the West)

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A credible analyzer of relationship between states should not conflate pop social psychology dogma du jour with the necessities of states operating in a system of realpolitik. Doing so shows either one is far out of one’s depth, or one seeks to advocate to ignorant masses under false pretenses rather than provide insightful disinterested analysis of material reality.

siegecrossbow said:

If Putin stopped doing anything after recognizing Donbass independence then he would've made tremendous geopolitical gains. Instead he opted for a suicidal geopolitical gamble that's the equivalent of playing with Russian roulette.

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Exactly. He hoped that after the highly choeregropahed 'Independence' of DNR/LNR, then blitzkrieg the capital to surround it, that Ukraine would sue for peace and relinquish claims over DNR/LNR. He didn't expect Ukraine to continue fighting this fiercely, even if cities get razed. It likely expected sanctions, but the severity is higher than expected. Russia is now in a conundrum... does it expand the original objectives and push for regime change, or does it stick to original demands and grind Ukraine to rubble/ashes? Given the costs endured so far, might as go for regime change or atleast vassal/puppet/territory. You already balls deep in proverbial shithole, might as well go big or go home.

siegecrossbow said:

If Putin stopped doing anything after recognizing Donbass independence then he would've made tremendous geopolitical gains. Instead he opted for a suicidal geopolitical gamble that's the equivalent of playing with Russian roulette.

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That's just not good enough. Going after the Donbass alone is worse than doing nothing. That's just inviting the Ukrainian government to say, "Alright, you know what, take the patches of dirt with Russians on them and get lost. We relinquish our claims on Crimea and the Donbass and we're joining NATO."