I was up in the wee hours (thanks, evil dex) and clearing out my RSS feeds when I noticed that the top entry on Memeorandum happened to be something by Francis Fukuyama. He's a smart and interesting guy and I had lots of time on my hands, so I clicked.
It turns out that Fukuyama is an optimist:
Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine. Russian planning was incompetent, based on a flawed assumption that Ukrainians were favorable to Russia and that their military would collapse immediately following an invasion. Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations. Putin at this point has committed the bulk of his entire military to this operation—there are no vast reserves of forces he can call up to add to the battle. Russian troops are stuck outside various Ukrainian cities where they face huge supply problems and constant Ukrainian attacks.
Sounds great! After a bit more, including a prediction that Vladimir Putin won't survive the loss, he also suggests that this will be a boon for democracy worldwide:
The invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who prior to the attack uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin. That includes Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and of course Donald Trump. The politics of the war has exposed their openly authoritarian leanings....A Russian defeat will make possible a “new birth of freedom,” and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.
Also great! Isn't it nice to read something optimistic these days?
Of course, everything Fukuyama says depends on his initial prediction of Russian defeat. Not very many people seem to agree with this, unless I'm just not reading the right people. But I'm going to hold Fukuyama to this. I sure hope he's right.
There was talk that Russia is near the end of its operational capability. But in the next week or two, they can still do a lot of damage. Hence the pressure on Belarus to join in. Note: Russia in bombing refineries and fuel depots. They desperately need fuel--the only reason to bomb them
Fukuyama is right that that a loss in Ukraine will end Putin reign. That is what makes this war so dangerous. Russian troops dying at hands of Ukrainians is an embarrassment. But if Putin goads in the US to get directly involved, then the Russians died fighting the good fight and more rally around the flag.
Isn’t Putin talking about using Syrian troops too? That smells like desperation to me.
But I still think Russia won’t be defeated. Defeat means no more Putin and he won’t let that happen. I expect the destruction in Ukraine to be pretty horrible and Russia’s victory to be pyrrhic.
It occurs to me that the absolute worst outcome of this war for the Republican Party would be for Russia to lose and Putin to be deposed. Biden would be the guy whose strong leadership brought about Putin’s demise. This, I think, is why Trumpian Republicans are rooting for Putin pretty openly.
The GQP could barely tolerate Barry Hussein Obummer being the one in the Situation Room when we got bin Laden, rather than it being the manly "Flight Suit" Walker Bush. If Biden follows up by being the one in the Oval when Putin goes down, rather than El Jefe Maximo de Maralago, who was stronger on Russia than any US president before him, they will relaunch a March on Washington to finish what they started on 1/6/2021.
Having Putin fall will probably do no more for Biden than the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union did for Bush I.
Foreign policy achievements, military and otherwise, have done almost nothing to help Democrats in elections.
It's going to be all about inflation, and if inflation is declining, it will be about CRT, gays, and whatever hate-fueled bigotry the Republicans can think of.
hmmm....seemed to have lost a line...
The only reason for Russian to bomb fuel depots is because they know they about to lose.
During the Second World War we (the allies) were bombing fuel depots all the time. The reason was to deny fuel to the Germans. No fuel, no planes. No fuel, no tanks. Etc etc. It didn’t suggest we were about to loose.
Now, what it might suggest is the Russians are accepting they are in for a long haul against the Ukrainians. Even if the Biden administration finally follows through with allowing/enabling the fighter transfers, and/or Ukraine continues to get drones etc etc they won’t be any good without fuel.
How does the saying go? Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. Perhaps the Russians are relearning the logistics lesson.
Allied logistics in World War II was a much better run operation than Russian logistics is now. Allied troops didn't desperately need fuel. Aside from which, the German infrastructure we were bombing wasn't subject to capture in the near future when it was being bombed. It wasn't fuel in depots at all. It was primarily refineries and coal-to-oil conversion plants.
We may be in more agreement than not, but there was far more going on with bombing in WWII than the lauded accomplishments of the US 8th Air Force.
We, through the 9th Air Force, were also bombing fuel (and ammunition) depots.
"He's a smart and interesting guy ..."
And was also utterly wrong in "The End of History"
+1
This prediction really just looks like End of History 2.0: Vladimir Putin and the Era of Dialectical Negation. The Owl of Minerva awakes!
Yeah -- "end of history"? Even if every last human being on this (or any other) planet was dead, "history" would continue. Fukuyama sure had a pinched, parochial view of what constituted "history." Maybe he should'a taken a few courses in the physical sciences.
I agree that he has a parochial view of history but it’s not true that if all humans disappear history will continue. To be considered history a written record is required . Otherwise events are prehistoric — or post historic, I guess.
I hate to defend Fukuyama, but ... he made it very clear that he was not claiming that historical events would cease. His point was that the end-game for nation-governing had been reached. He was wrong. He was not wrong about "history continuing", because he never made that claim, despite the book title.
And what utterly irked me was how much his essay was steeped in "Great White Man" history or arguably "Great Man History". Clearly history was not going to end, it was simply changing eras and strongmen were still strong in many parts of the world, not unlike COVID hiding in deer in North America right now even though it's declining in humans at the moment.
Sounds like Fukuyama could be taglined "Meet the Japanese V.S. Naipaul" -- though V.S. would prolly support Putin.
Fukuyama was born in Chicago and grew up in New York. He’s American, not Japanese.
& Naipaul is from Barbados. But he'd still rather you think he's Indian.
Russia hasn’t reached the limits of its military capacity at all. Putin’s miscalculations (based on isolation and a lack of knowledge on the actual history of Russian adventures)…will none the less lead to massive destruction and if he continues to succeed( which he is at the moment)…to further land grabs.. He has his eye on the Baltics and that military base in Poland annoys him. He will not win in the end…but what will the end look like.?
He may have "his eye on the Baltics," but if Ukraine is a mistake, military invasion of the Baltics and Poland is orders of magnitude worse. Ukraine isn't a NATO country; the Baltics and Poland are. NATO can and will impose a no-fly zone over those nations if Putin invades, and he knows it.
Is Putin a madman? Maybe. He'd have to be to take on NATO.
Putin is isolated…he believes what he thinks…( he is not a learned man do what he thinks is dangerously incorrect)…but within this context he is behaving rationally. There is no one to contradict him….so every action he takes is further proof to himself that he’s within his rights ….therefore it’s not a good idea to underestimate how far he will go….what do you think NATO will do if he conducts a tactical nuclear strike on the military base in Poland?
That's a tough one. We certainly could not leave it unanswered but how is very complicated.
But the reality is that Putin knows that too, so he'd be likely to skip the "battlefield nukes" stage and go straight to an SLBM and ICBM attack, especially now that he has the decapitation ability of the hypersonics.
NATO can and will impose a no-fly zone over those nations if Putin invades, and he knows it.
It will go well beyond a no-fly zone. The United States of America and its NATO allies are treaty-bound to defend Poland and the Baltics. Russians and Yanks (and Brits and Germans and Dutch) will be killing each other on the ground. I think such a situation would very likely lead to a nuclear exchange.
That's the madman scenario. Putin would have to be unmoored from any sense of self-preservation.
If you’re Putin…you have convinced yourself that self preservation means doing whatever it takes to survive and reassert the Russian Empire…he is living in the past and wants to reinstate the past….so modern deterrents don’t have any resonance for him…his idea of self preservation is the opposite of what the West thinks it is.
Or he realizes there is no way for him to win so he decides to take down the rest of Eastern Europe with him — or worse.
He knows he's going to have a huge price on his head for War Crimes now, so "self-preservation" is sort of a null comparison. His soul may be shriveled enough to want to take "everyone else" with him, though of course what it means is that the Chinese will "inherit the Earth".
Might depend on whether some NATO MacArthur wants to press on to the equivalent of the Yalu.
I’m certain that NATO would have its hands full just trying to push an invading force out of the Baltics and/or Finland. But it wouldn’t have much choice but to suppress any missile or artillery firing from Russian or Belarusian territory, probably with cruise missiles or drone-fired missiles. That would seem less escalatory than sending crewed aircraft into Russian airspace, but would hardly justify a nuclear response to any sane actor. The Kaliningrad Oblast is Russia proper, and is highly militarized, but it is also an exclave, with no historical connection to Russia, though its population now is overwhelmingly Russian. It borders Poland and Lithuania. What happens in that region is anyone’s guess.
I object. The place is not "Kaliningrad"; it's "Königsberg" if we're talking the 17th Century history of which The Impaler is so enamored.
Good one!
That’s why he’s so utterly dangerous….
Re: nuclear exchange.
Or maybe the Samson Scenario. If Putin feels he's going down, maybe he'll want to take the rest of the world with him.
I think trying to use a nuke is the one thing that might get some of his generals to politely object.
“Here, Vladimir Vladimirovich, have a nice cup of tea while you think this over …”
What if Putin holds out in Ukraine, devastating the country but doesn't go further until January 22nd 2024 when perhaps a GOP president is sworn in and withdraws from NATO. It's very, very scary to realize how bad our insider threats are in the US right now, the GOP fifth column is very much active.
I can't see Putin winning unless the GOP fifth column takes over the US government. So it's incumbent upon all of us who want Putin's defeat to work hard to keep the Democrats in control of the US government.
Yep…..
Don't count on the DSA Fraud Squad to provide any support for a continued Democrat presence in the national executive, though.
France and Britain already have nuclear capability. It's obviously much weaker than Russia's, but remember that they have the almost bottomless pockets of Germany, plus France's thirty-some nuclear plants making the necessary Plutonium wholesale, to build a few hundred more before 2024 as we speak. When Macron talks about an "Independent European deterrent" what else do you think he means?
The House may go all-in for Putin under Kevin the Fearful, but there are plenty of Republicans in the Senate to defeat any move to exit NATO. Mitch may be a gung-ho footsoldier for the rich, but he, Willard Mitt, most of the women in the GOP Senate caucus and even otherwise Ludicrous Lindsey would not countenance it.
Note: I did not mean OUR Kevin, who is deeply esteemed by all who read and post here. I meant the Irish Republican Army boyo, Kevin McCarthy.
If the US withdraws from NATO, that does not mean the end of NATO. The other members would carry on, and would still have enough fire power to slap Russia silly in conventional warfare, and enough nukes to discourage any thought of going there.
Damn it, that means the end of Ukraine.
(｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-ten-hardest-truths-about-the?s=r
Or this.
Even if Russia were defeated in Ukraine (big if/won't happen, not totally), that won't impact support for right-wing nutjobs and Trumpists here in the US one iota. The anti-democratic forces are too entrenched in the US. Perhaps in other states, but I'd be surprised if it meaningfully impacted Orban and perhaps some others where anti-democratic forces are similarly entrenched.
The baboon colony will just convolve it all into their obscure morass of low-information motivation where they will somehow manage to think Putin and Yelensky are the same person and it's all the international Deep State that somehow tricked their innocent hero into this to make psychotic wingnuts look bad.
They're the real victims here!
Speaking of psychotic wingnuts, The Washington Post reports in its column on religion that the Rapture Index believers think that Putin plays a role in the prediction, which doesn't account for the support from trump or his fawning acolyte Cawthorn but might account for the refusal of the evangelicals to condemn Putin & accept his pretense of being firmly supportive of Russian church. Can't argue with those in favor of the end times arriving sooner than later.
Somebody should convince these idiots that Jesus is hiding just behind the comet . . .
Maybe Vincent Fusca will expand his role & become the new embodiment of Putin in addition to being Kennedy, Jr.
If a 500 lb guy has a heart attack and falls on you, technically he died first, and if his creep relatives are standing around they can walk off with your stuff.
If his creep relatives have already abandoned him, you're still stuck under the rotting corpse if no one can get in to help you.
The best move would be to get the corpse to leave on it's own, but that can only happen over Vladimir Putin's dead body which I am not easily picturing.
The only way that can happen is if the key figure in the scheme is someone who is not close to Putin, who is not part of the inner circle or upper tier of government, some regional personality who has built a local power base, someone entirely obscure, to me certainly, and who has been careful to remain at arm's length from Putin for his own safety.
Who is that, is there such a person? I've no idea.
Barring that it just keeps going on until the army mutinies, and so far that looks like the best bet.
Reports are that Russian casualties are running close to 10% now. That's the level that historically has preceded mutinies. Assault ships off Odessa have turned back at least twice so far; nobody really knows why but speculation is that the marines who were supposed to do the assaulting refused to.
Kazakhstan was supposed to be involved in the original "war game" exercises but didn't. Belarus was strong-armed to accept nukes on its territory, after Putin saved Lukashenko's sorry ass over the summer. It's now being browbeaten to invade but that's a recipe for mutiny and possibly a putsch there, so the pressures in both directions must be immense-- there have been announcements both ways for a couple of days now. Only the Chechens, as far as I know, were drawn in. They, and Syrians if they come, and like the paratroopers so far, you have to think are marked for special treatment by the Ukrainians. Who certainly seem to be trained, disciplined, cannily led, and now well-equipped.
That said, desertion seems maybe much more likely to me than mutiny, especially among the young conscripts. Whichever way it happens, armies have tended to break when they get to around 10% casualties.
If it goes on for more than another month or so they might run out of food is what I was thinking.
Could be. I also have a tickle, maybe a fantasy, in the back of my mind about the possibility of a Ukrainian counter-assault in the rear of one or two of those over-extended task force groups outside Kyiv, to seal it/them off from resupply. It would be classic blitzkrieg. All the Russian troops are committed so they have no reserves to fight it off with, and their command is clearly thinking only of being on the offensive. No idea whether the Ukrainians have the manpower or equipment for it or would think it's a sound move, but if they had adequate ground-based air defenses a turnaround like that would fit the opportunistic way they've been fighting so far. The cut-off Russians would have to either fight their way back to their own rear area or surrender. That's where the troops' attitudes really could make a difference.
I'm worried about a sudden Russian turn to Dnipro. The Ukranians have interior lines which has been to their advantage, but they're strung out in three different lines separated by a couple of hundred miles of gap between each group. If the Russians push through those two gaps and concentract at Dnipro they can surround and crush each of the three battlegroups of Ukrainians in detail.
I'm sure that folks in both the Russian and Ukrainian high command are aware of this and that the Ukrainians are taking care to watch for it. And the Russian generals may have been ordered by Putin to take Kiev first, regardless of the tactical opportunities.
But it's obviously a huge risk the Ukrainians are running fighting in such a detached way.
I haven’t heard that there have been any significant aerial attacks on Odessa. Trying to land an amphibious force without a major attempt to suppress shore defenses would be suicidal. I would assume the Ukrainians have antiship missiles and SAMs to defend their naval base there.
Another path for optimism in this mess:
If the war does devolve into a decade(s)-long insurgency as some expect, sanctions will likely be permanent which means oil prices may stay elevated long-term. This will certainly mean an economic shift that vastly accelerates global adoption of electric cars, etc, which means rapid tangible progress fighting global warming.
Making Putin the true engine of the green new deal & ecologic justice, just as the profits foretold at the Jacobin, intercept, & Substacks of Matt Taibbi & Glemm Greemwald.
Vladimir was a Leftist after all!
Well, Russia is apparently seeking to hire foreign mercenaries. That's never a good sign. I do hope internal opposition can head off whatever Putin has in store if things really got ugly, because I personally think it's entirely possible he would indeed use chemical or nuclear weapons.
Also, Putin's replacement by a fascist, oligarchic junta wouldn't be much of an improvement, would it?
But if the reform genie got out of the bottle, and Russia actually headed down the road to normalcy and democracy? That really would be wonderful. And Xi would be shitting bricks.
The color revolutions are what scares Putin. The protests in Belarus were the immediate trigger for this invasion--Putin needs to scare people into submission. That includes his own people.
If there is a coup, it will be staged by people who are really feeling pain from the sanctions. Also, the fastest path to wide acceptance of a new regime will be negotiating an end to the sanctions. If the West is firm, it can demand and get full withdrawal from Ukraine (probably excepting Crimea, though there should be direct negotiations about its status among Russia, Ukraine and representatives of all Crimeans). In fact, the West should insist on the pullback of Russian forces from border areas. Think of the peace agreement the Bolsheviks made with Germany in 1917. I think the fascist junta scenario is unlikely. Continued corruption is a given, though, probably with some pretty chaotic governance for some period. Like the period after Stalin’s death.
It would. Imagine how much the fantastic Russian cultural focus on philosophy and mathematics would mean to the world's future if it were contributing to -- and competing fairly with -- the democratic nations. That would, as you say, cause real consternation among the autocrats of the world.
Of course, everything Fukuyama says depends on his initial prediction of Russian defeat. Not very many people seem to agree with this, unless I'm just not reading the right people.
Yes, you're not reading the right people. The Fukuyama position is the consensus position across a wide range of experts. It was clear in the first few days that the Russian invasion was not going according to plan. Every passing day the evidence has been building. Russia is losing. That doesn't mean it's all over. Russia still has the capability to inflict far greater damage. But the most likely outcome, as it's been clear for quite some time, is Russian defeat.
Everyone is allow an opinion. My only hope is that Ukraine can hold out without total devastation by a hollow mephitic tyrant. One can only hope that someone close to him will slip him the end.
We all need to do a collective wish for the Ukraine success. All at once. They need our help and we can't send the much needed planes.
That Vlad is looking for Syrian mercenaries is not a good sign. Either he is desperate or he wants things to move faster. Not good at all.
Can this actually have happened?
https://twitter.com/cstross/status/1502610671120310276
Might make this into a poster,
https://preview.redd.it/yv7vy0yrccm81.jpg?width=768&auto=webp&s=074d043d839a5763790bc86cf3191455e9330312
I lol'd-- Rittenhouse to the rescue!
My assumption is that if Rittenhouse decided to fight it would be on the side of the Russians.
Almost certainly right though at the moment wingnuts seem pretty confused about it, absurdly trying to find some way to say Joe Biden caused this.
That they're the secret branch of Putin's war against humanity is suddenly clear to everyone and their delusion that they're the good guys simply won't survive, so their problem is --do they care?
A lot of them won't, but a lot of them actually will. Some of my wingnut relatives are actually speechless about it, they really can't think of what to think about it.
Indeed.
Genocide.
https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/inside-the-nearly-completely-destroyed-t-idUSRTS68AB8
What I think Fukuyama misses is that there is only a limited window of opportunity to win (whatever that looks like).
I give it between a month and three months before Fox News and Trump are able to create a narrative convincing Americans that Putin is the good guy and the Ukrainians are corrupt Nazis pushing woke ideology on their people. If history is any guide, sonething between 45-50% of Americans will get on board.
And then there's the midterms. I'd say there is zero possibility of the current sanctions surviving a Republican-controlled Congress. Pressure will mount for the US to pull out of NATO. Whether we send troops to help Putin is less certain (at least until 2024).
But if Putin can hold out for another 6 months or so, the picture begins to look a lot better for him.
pretty odd and charitable to characterize Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and Donald Trump as "populists". also, i'm place very little faith in fukuyama's predictions.
I think "populist" is the new go-to term for what we used to call "fascist dictator."
yeah, i've noticed. kinda like alt-right and economically insecure are the new terms for neo-nazis and racists.
'Populismo'.
'Populismic'.
I don't think Russia needs to be defeated in order for the tide to turn against the populist autocratic movement. That began the moment Putin launched his invasion. If Russia does manage to take Kiev and the rest of the major cities of Ukraine, and that's not exactly a certainty at this point, there will still be the day-to-day coverage of the Ukrainian insurgency and urban warfare that will surely ensue. Here in the States the Democratic party needs to paint the entire GOP as the party of the Trump/Putin love affair the same way the GOP paints the left as the party of CRT and "defund the police". Putin's invasion and the tally of his daily war crimes, while devasting for the people of Ukraine, have provided the impetus for Western democracies to begin to snuff out the toxic flame of right wing populism. Putin may ultimately prevail in this battle, but this will undoubtedly turn the tide in the larger war against the right wing cancer that has been spreading for years throughout Western society.
+1
I'll admit Fukuyama went up in my esteem when he opposed the Iraq war. He could have been a cheerleader for it, with his "end of history" idea.
But heck, from Petraeus on CNN to other "retired generals" almost everywhere you look to Fukuyama here, it still seems to me the wrong people are getting the mic again. Just a matter of time before George W. Bush tells us in the Washington Post what he saw when he looked in Putin's soul.
Head of Roscosmos threatens that unless sanctions are lifted some kind of accident could befall the ISS,
https://www.outlookindia.com/international/russia-urges-nasa-to-end-sanctions-fears-malfunction-at-international-space-station-news-186545
Not sayin' it could happen, just sayin', y'know, things happen . . .
I feel pretty confident that these continued threats from Roscosmos will result in the US calling their bluff and signing a contract with SpaceX to have its Dragon capsule permanently replacing the Russian module for emergency escape and thrust control to maintain orbit.
Send up a crewless Dragon. Done.
If you want to help Ukraine but can't think of what you can do, vote for a Democrat, whoever it is, because a vote for a Democrat is a vote against any Republican and a vote against any Republican is a vote against Putin.
So, help Ukraine,
vote against any Republicans, they're Putin's not-so-secret army in the US.
+1
Having forgotten the meaning of the title- but never the movie - I looked up that "Z" & relearned that it represents "he lives." So hoping that letter on Russian tanks & a gymnast's shirt will turn out to signify that "Zelenskyy lives."
Not that I believe in signs, but I hope that there are enough Russians who surrender & enough in-country opposition to defy & defeat Putin.
Let's hope . . .
According to an explanation I've seen the plain Z is for forces from Russia proper, Z in a box for forces based in Crimea, and V for paratroopers.
Despite how prominent the symbol is I wouldn't have connected it to the movie, so thanks-- gives irony a new meaning. Maybe also ironic that there's no Z in either Greek or Cyrillic alphabets. Costa-Gavras's explanation probably makes a lot better sense than the Russians'.
I would like to send out an affirming message to Justin who, in expressing his entirely justified white hot rage at Russia and Russians took a lot of backlash yesterday....for telling the truth, the Russian offensive is barbarity and the US is not doing enough to deny air delivered warheads against defenseless cities.
For example, Israel to protect their own interests with Russia has refused to provide Iron Dome protection for Kiev....but doesn't the United States possess similar systems that could be used against Russian cruise missiles etc? Likewise, why hasn't the MIM-104 Patriot missile system been deployed within Ukraine?
As the wise saying goes, "Any day that shows dead Russian Soldiers," is a fine day indeed!
Traveller
🇺🇦
Fukuyama’s point 6 is important: neither a few MiG squadrons nor a no-fly zone are much help against Russian gun and rocket artillery. The West should pour in MANPADS, anti-armor missiles (Javelins and equivalent) and drones, and more drones. Russia’s advantage in armor and weaponry has to be degraded.
And RPGs. Lots and lots of RPGs.
For some reason, this came to mind. Couldn't find a clip:
Ha!
Especially the drones...to degrade the devastating artillery fire from Russian batteries.
I am impressed by the TB2's, Turkish drones, but they only carry 4 attack missiles per drone before having to return to base to refit and reload...we really need to flood the skies with drones.
I am not sure the US is even providing drones from our stockpile.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Putin has crossed red lines that prevent him from staying in power in the long term.
Even with the reestablishment of a part of the USSR, it takes years to build the ability and knowledge to produce domestically all that which Russia currently imports. Chip fabs don't appear overnight or even in a year even when you're not up against sanctions that cut off your access to global supply chains.
Russia's losing equipment faster than any war since WW-II. This attrition will have long-lasting effects as replacements will take several years with all of the sanctions in place. Every Russian tank taken out in Ukraine is one less tank Putin has to use to reassemble the USSR. The US is appropriating $Billions in defensive weapons for Ukraine in 2022. Russia cannot fight this proxy war with the US for very long.
Just consider the conservatively attributed losses Oryx is tracking -- https://bityl.co/BIhN -- and there's no way Russia can survive this war. Every uptick in equipment losses coincides with newly delivered TB2 drones and Javelins. In just under 3 weeks, Ukraine has eliminated at least 193 Russian tanks. That's just a baseline; the actual count is higher, possibly 2x higher.
The longer this war continues, the deeper Putin's support drops. The economic pain will be too much and information will slowly trickle into Russia about what's really going on.
According to this:
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-do-militaries-russia-and-ukraine-stack
Russia has 9,780 tanks. According to Oryx they have lost about 200. Even doubled that still leave a lot of tanks.
Ah, but the fine print at CFR says ‘tanks’ means tanks and IFVs. Oryx counts these separately and reports 176 IFVs destroyed, abandoned or captured. Oryx also tallies 114 loses of “Armored Fighting Vehicles”. All in addition to the 193 tanks.
See KenSchulz's point.
Remember, this is a war of attrition. After half a month they've lost 5% of their ground equipment. In two months, how would Russia deal with 15-20% attrition? Suddenly, Russia's ground war capability is vastly diminished. They already have steep logistical problems. All that is grossly amplified over time.
US Congress has appropriated another $6B for the rest of 2022. That's thousands of Javelins, Stingers, and other defensive weapons, and the US has ramped up delivery of equipment, such that Russia has finally made threats against those deliveries.
Russia can't replenish tanks -- they use advanced electronics of which components come from overseas -- and even then the attrition rate is higher than what a peace-time society is capable of producing.
We've seen how vehicle production slowed down to a crawl when global supply chains were constricted. Imagine what'd happen if those chains were completely cut off. Russia's military is being obliterated.
Is China going to come to its rescue? I find that implausible for many reasons (that I won't go into b/c it'll take up too much space). I think China would rather buy up Russian assets at deep discounts the second Putin is deposed. Why risk the ire of its largest trading partner -- US -- when it doesn't have to?
Dull, but necessary, like the quartermaster: Beau breaks down the numbers.
https://youtu.be/XeolyxyzuX4
tl, dr: Putin doesn't have the troops to occupy Ukraine, even if he strips them from the navy and air force. He can't hold the territory he's trying to conquer, and that's assuming his army is capable of even that.
And he only went ahead with the operation because he'd drunk his own kool-aid and believed what it was telling him and no one had the courage to tell him differently, so everyone around him is trapped into continuing to support him because they'll inevitably be held accountable after it fails for not having prevented it.
Upon discovering that it's not the place he imagined it was he can't change his mind or alter his course but must bully ahead despite the inevitable consequence that even if he is successful he'll never be able to retain it, and the only way he might conceivably manage would be through mass slaughter of most of the population.
Because that would be asking a lot of any one flunky I think he'll now be planning to divide a conquered Ukraine into three or four parts, claiming it's his to chop up as he cares to, and appoint separate regimes with separate schemes of oppression for each and slaughter them separately.
Then his problem becomes, can he find that many flunkies who would do such a thing? Maybe, but after the army lies in ruins, maybe not.
In a few months he'll have to contend with mass starvation and an ambitious flunky might just seize the moment, which seems to me an obvious thing Putin would think of, so he has to be careful not to give any of these flunkies a lot of real power.
Now he's buzzing like a bee in jar. What does he do? He has to end it as fast as possible. So, how?
Dropping a nuke in downtown Kyiv seems most obvious, then trying to say the Ukrainians did it to themselves.
Is my impression at the moment.
Afghanistan and Vietnam showed that as long as part of the population is willing to resist and is well supplied with weapons, the resistance can't be defeated. And eventually, not winning becomes losing.
Here's what's pretty likely to happen over the next three to five years:
2022 Russia is consumed with pacifying Ukraine and finally succeeds by forcing a few million more people who could not abide living under Putin out and killing the rest of them. Xi will give him the money and tech he needs to keep the Russian citizenry pacified. Putin thereby gains functional control of the world's wheat and oilseed supplies and starts putting the squeeze on middle-income and developing countries which need wheat. The Pro-Western voting majority in the UN quickly melts away.
About this time 2023 Russia moves into Moldova and Georgia, making short work of both. Sweden and Finland apply to NATO and are quickly accepted. China declares a blockade on Taiwan, pointing the Union's blockade of the Confederacy during the Civil War as a precedent. The US tries to force it, but is pushed back with considerable losses to Chinese anti-ship missiles. The US forbears using nuclear weapons in order to avoid a holocaust. China invades and conquers Taiwan and installs Carrie Lamb as the smiling, emollient governor of "China-Taipei". Chip shipments from Taiwan immediately cease.
Summer 2023 Russia demands a corridor through the Suwalki Gap, declaring land in Lithuania it says is owed it from Soviet time. Lithuania says "Hell, No!"
Winter 2023-Fall 2024 Russia keeps ramping up demands, adding the rest of Lithuania, plus Latvia and Estonia. NATO membership and "who lost Ukraine and Taiwan" is a MAJOR campaign controversy in the US in 2024. Biden's health has failed and the Dems nominate Harris. She is crushed in the general election. France and Great Britain feverishly turn the Plutonium from their many reactors into nuclear weapons.
January 2025 Donald Trump returns to the Presidency and true to his word withdraws the United States from NATO on Day 1. On Day 2 his master Vladimir Putin pushes through the Suwalki Gap and engulfs the Baltic States plus Finland for good measure because of the 1820 Regency. He demands the resignation of Poland's and Romania's governments and they comply since nothing happens when Putin takes the Baltics. Without US troops NATO does not have enough battlefield nukes to risk a fight with Russia even with the new ones in France.
Spring 2025 Italy and Greece install right-wing governments in hock to Russia as the rest of the former Warsaw Pact countries -- except the Czech Republic -- fall in line. Putin demands the de-nuclearization of France and Britain; they refuse. Putin launches decapitation strikes using the hypersonics against Berlin, Paris and London, destroying the governmental centers of the three strongest EU nations, Germany, France and Great Britain. Though they have the means by which to retaliate, they have no government to order it. Replacement governments of Useful Idiots declare neutrality.
Summer 2025 The US is essentially alone with only Australia and Canada as allies and a rapidly shrinking resource base. Putin begins sailing his Navy through the US exclusive economic zone and supports Bolsonaro in his "quest for a Pacific presence for Brazil". Chile and Peru are overrun. Trump of course says that Putin's actions mean nothing to US citizens.
Fall 2025 Putin turns on Trump, laughing at him and otherwise humiliating him during one of Trump's obeisant pilgrimages to Moscow. Trump is enraged and orders the Navy to "sweep the seas of Russian ships". This is what Putin and Xi have been waiting for. China's anti-satellite missiles blind and destroy US missile-defense sentinels moments before Putin's subs in the Gulf and North Atlantic launch a decapitation strike against Washington and Colorado Springs with hypersonic missiles. NORAD is blinded and its command and control badly damaged. A few minutes later a large barrage of ICBM's appears over the northern hemisphere in the BMEWS radars, but it is too late to open the silos of the Minutemen, and nobody is alive to issue the orders anyway. The US retaliatory force is decimated. All that's left is some Trident boats, but there is nobody to tell them what to do. Russia starts raining nuclear depth charges around the Arctic Circle to destroy them, too.
Check and mate. US cities are unprotected from the surviving Russian boomers and politics in America is incandescent with blame.
So, to prevent this horrid outcome -- obviously horrid for us, but also for the rest of humankind who will from that time forward live under the boot of the hyper-technical, cruel and obscenely arrogant Chinese -- we need to cast off our "morals" and our "ethics" and strike first. NOW. Before Putin and Xi deploy those hypersonics. We need a full counter-force strike against Russia's land based ICBM's and do the nuclear depth charge thing against Russia's boomers. No cities, not even Moscow. We aren't monsters.