Apropos of nothing in particular, I thought it might be a good time to take a fresh look at Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine these days:
The southern portion of the Russian territory is east of the Dnieper river and is all but impossible to attack successfully. The Dnieper is a big river. Further north, the natural obstacles are less formidable but the territory adjoins Russia and is easy to keep armed and supplied.
So, I dunno. Maybe once Ukraine gets those F-16s in the air it will make a difference. At the moment, though, it's a little hard to see how either side is going to break this stalemate without some significant change in circumstances.
POSTSCRIPT: Like what? The aforementioned F-16s have potential. A cutoff of aid to Ukraine thanks to US political infighting could do it. Russian exhaustion is possible, similar to Germany's in World War I. Direct entry into the war by the US would definitely do it, but Russia would have to do something phenomenally stupid to provoke that.
The F-16s increases Ukraine's ability to stop Russian air-support along the front lines while decimating Russian radar units all along the front. Not a game-changer, but it would have made their 2023 offensive easier to execute.
In the last month Ukraine has destroyed nearly a dozen fighter/bomber jets and Russian daily casualties have been over 800 a day since mid-October, increasing to an average over 1000 daily in the last two weeks. The last US estimate had Russian casualties at over 300K (100K killed + 200K injured and out of the war). That was over a month ago before Russia was averaging over 1000 casualties a day.
Most countries would have sought a way out by now. Putin's making a regime-ending bet: Either the Federation collapses or it captures Ukraine.
And despite what people have said, a "stalemate" isn't what is going on right now. Russia's still throwing bodies into the fallow fields to turn to fertilizer and Ukraine is still working to eliminate Russia's material advantage. Project 775 go boom. IOW, Russia's making sure its future is bleaker, sooner.
Wow! The Ukrainians are killing more armed and equipped Russian troops than the Israelis are killing unarmed Gaza civilians!
My apologies for the digression. The continuing disaster of the middle east feels very dominant just now.
Don't get distracted.
In fifty years, the middle east will still be at war, but a free Ukraine will be feeding the world.
best from our available data entry jobs. It doesn’t take an internet connection to complete the task. Download the files to your PC or other vx20 device just once. Give us the task in a period of fifteen to thirty days. The page measures A4 in size. As per the proposal, the page may be purchased for between $10 and $20 USD. Just show up eighty-five percent flawless. Easy vx10 method of making money.
Here.................................. https://paymoney33.blogspot.com/
Most likely true (sigh).
The Russian carnage is still mainly people from outlying regions, not so much ethnic Russians per se, so opposition in Moscow still small and propaganda prevails.
The minefields and drones combination is working well as a defensive strategy. Mine fields slow advance so drones can pick people/tanks off. As for areas around Bakhmut, Russian human wave attacks fill in gaps.
As for jet fighters, they'll help--but this seems mainly to be drone warfare with some hand held anti-tank and anti-air missiles. Oh, and lots of shelling. Shelling makes up for in quantity what it lacks in quality--and for the Russians who don't mind destroying towns along the way, it's a great option.
That's right -- lots of impoverished Central Asians and Siberian ethnic groups filling the ranks of the Russian military these days and they seem to have a (seemingly) inexhaustible supply of them. As long as Russia can 1. dragoon enough conscripts, 2. keep dug in along those lines and 3. produce enough artillery shells to hold off any major ground offensives, I don't see how Ukraine can really dislodge them without introducing some seriously overwhelming new kind of firepower. Maybe the F-16s will be that, but who knows? They don't seem to have been able to do a lot with their Leopard or Abrams tanks up to this point from what I can tell.
Don't forget about the prisoners!
That's one of the information gaps. Neither side seems to want to talk about the number of prisoners they are taking.
Recently heard an interview with Derk Sauer, the Dutch publisher of the English language Moscow Times. He was fairly pessimistic about the long-term outcome for Ukraine.
His argument was basically that Russia is so huge and has such a large, mostly pliant population, that it can take an enormous amount of punishment and still manage to grind out its war machine. He thinks the war is having minimal impact on the daily life of most Russians, so the pressure to stop it is also minimal.
I have been reading the same thing, and the pressures of the war are only forcing them to address the corruption and structural inadequacies of their system so it's having an improving effect.
Ah, there. If corruption is curtailed, it's the oligarchs and Putin himself who are hurt!
"the war is having minimal impact on the daily life of most Russians", who have very little sway with Putin. Wonder how long the oligarchs will stay with him; the sanctions and economic effects will affect them more.
His argument was basically that Russia is so huge and has such a large, mostly pliant population, that it can take an enormous amount of punishment and still manage to grind out its war machine. He thinks the war is having minimal impact on the daily life of most Russians, so the pressure to stop it is also minimal.
This is an understandable view but one that reminds one of the French generals and politicians who believed Russia's enormous, inexhaustible manpower ("Russian Steamroller") would grind down the Germans in World War I because, well, the Russian people simply just obey the Tsar and the average Russian goes to their death willingly regardless of whether the army well-supplied or troops even have rifles or their officers shoot them. Yet after four years of war it was Germans who dictated terms and took huge chunks of Russian land for themselves at the treaty of Brest-Livtosk. In other words, the Russian war machine can be ground down with so many casualties that the political situation collapses behind the front and lead to revolution as the result of a long and costly war for a cause not clear to the average Russian and that eventually causes hardships at home. But to simply try to end the war with current front lines because everyone is "tired" simply is going to invite another war down the road, as the lack of a response to Russia's initial invasion in 2014 help to cause this war. If countries can simply takeover territory so armed force and be successful, then it will happen more often, only the next NATO will have to get involved.
Seems like a frozen conflict. High likelihood the lines will stay as they are for years, like Korea. Putin will eventually die, he is 71. Then it's a crapshoot.
I doubt Ukraine will be allowed in the EU so long as there is formally a war on, but that would be a big deal. Along the same lines if Ukraine can get corruption in check and develop economically up to the level of Bulgaria ($12000 per capita GDP vs. $5000) it would be way easier for Ukraine to hold the lines without outside help.
Since the Wagner Group has now murdered African miners to steal gold to finance Putin's war, Biden really should take Russian funds that have been frozen here & provide that money to Ukraine. it would compensate somewhat for his delaying approval for F-l6s, sending the worst things - cluster bombs - instead.
I believe that this is justified, since Putin has violated international laws, as well as the UN's principles, with no UN means of condemning him.
And I hope that the EU dares to do the same thing with Russian funds, since Orban is blocking anything that Ukraine needs to ingratiate himself with Putin.
The rich and politically connected people who run the US are dead set against setting a precedent where countries seize the foreign assets of a nation that starts wars. Can you guess why?
Don’t forget Putin’s broader loss here: initially his [stated] justification was Ukraine potentially joining NATO, putting another NATO member on his southwest border.
He’s ended up with one and soon two new NATO members on his northwest border.
One big thing the course of the war demonstrates is that offensives are almost impossible in modern war without control of the air-- the defensive side has too many advantages otherwise. Offensives between similarly-equipped militaries have to have either 3-dimensional firepower in enough depth to control the front, or overwhelming numbers on the ground without significant aerial opposition, or surprise. The 2022 invasion was predicated on the latter two and was beaten back at great cost and by significant innovation and tactical cleverness. The Ukrainian recovery of Kharkiv succeeded mostly because of surprise in a thinly-held area. The NATO-style offensive that was urged on the Ukrainians last summer needed what NATO assumes, at least near-total air superiority, and so it aimed to do what NATO would never do itself.
There's nothing magical about Abrams and Leopard tanks, or F-16s, or ATACMS. They're better than almost all Russian equipment head-to-head but need to be used in numbers and in conjunction. We haven't quite provided that, so from here on the dramatic offensives that were talked up aren't likely to happen until/unless one side or the other has run out of logistical capacity, like the Germans in the summer and fall of 1918. Or the Russians in 1917.
But a lot will still go on, and for the Ukrainians it's largely about logistics. They've been doing a good and improving job of keeping the Russian navy mostly hiding out in port so it can't protect seaborne supplies, and have scored some coups against Russian aircraft that have threatened their own internal movements. It seems like they mainly aim to choke off supply lines west of the Sea of Azov (ideally, west of Mariupol, probably) and force Russians to either withdraw or surrender from the western third or half of what they've taken. That will be a grinding process but can have some dramatic moments.
Zelensky and a bunch of others have said many times it's about Crimea. They'll keep at it until the Russians are out of there-- it depends on vulnerable supply lines too. But who believes that any kind of deal short of full Russian withdrawal would be a stable solution? Or that as long as Putin is alive he'd abide by any kind of a deal at all? He's in that weird space where the scale of losses and the shift to a wartime command economy actually make his position inside Russia more secure and more powerful. He's not looking for any ceasefires, unless it's to resupply and reinforce.
"Zelensky and a bunch of others have said many times it's about Crimea."
Not sure what you mean by this. On one hand supply lines to Crimea are vulnerable and cutting them would really help Ukraine's bargaining position.
On the other hand Crimea seems like a done deal. It is not clear Crimeans prefer Ukraine and Crimea has enormous military value to Russia because of Sevastopol. Do analysts seriously think it will return to Ukraine under any likely scenario?
I meant they intend to retake Crimea, and not as a bargaining chip. "Western analysts" (meaning mostly American ones, official and academic) have tended to think first of the eastern regions the Russians invaded in 2014, and of Crimea as an afterthought. Probably for a lot of the reasons you mention.
But from everything I've seen, the Ukrainians look at it the other way around. Sevastopol has enormous military value, sure, but with respect to who? A Russian Crimea, especially because of its bases, is a perpetual threat to Odessa on the one side and what used to be the country's metallurgical hub on the other. Ukraine needs to export in order to survive, and it needs unrestricted passage through the Black Sea in order to export. In anyone's lifetime Russia will never be anything less than hostile to an independent Ukraine, as it demonstrated in 2014 and again in spades in Feb 2022. I think that's the Ukrainian math here.
The thing about Crimea that I didn't know until pretty recently is that it's barely habitable and for only a small population-- it doesn't get much rain and the soil is lousy, so without water, food, and other supplies from outside it can't support even small cities. Most of its water, btw, came from that reservoir that was blown up (the one factor that might point to the Ukrainians doing it themselves, though I don't think they did).
Needing everything from outside is one reason the locals voted for Russia in the long-ago referendum-- Russia imported what it needed to keep its installations going, and locals benefited. Thousands upon thousands of whom among the indigenous were shipped off east in the USSR days, so they're not necessarily fans. A lot of the current population as I understand it is ethnic Russians moved in during that same time, and they'll have a decision to make.
Reports are that the Russians are already beefing up smaller bases on the eastern shore of the Black Sea and have moved a lot of the fleet in that direction for safety. So Sevastopol seems to be less pivotal for them than it had been. I think Ukrainians probably see these moves as a phase in recovering the whole peninsula, rather than a temporary relocation.
I'm not sure what you mean by "done deal"?
Thanks for the info.
The Russians would have to take Odesa and occupy all of southern Ukraine to keep the Ukrainians out of missile range of Sevastopol. Failing that, Sevastopol’s strategic value is virtually nil. The degradation of Russian naval and air forces by Ukraine dooms a combined land and amphibious assault; Odesa and surround will be Ukrainian. I don’t think Russia will ever control the western Black Sea again. The Ukrainians have even successfully attacked the secondary Russian naval base at Novorossiysk, forcing the planning of yet another base in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.
Crimea is a tempting goal for Ukraine because access is more easily cut off, and because its symbolic value for Russia exceeds its military value.
Crimea's also been a big vacation destination for Russians, iirc (before the recent unpleasantness, anyway). Do you think trump has been planning to put in a resort there, and that's one of the holds Putin's had on him?
Don't fall for the news cycle narrative, Kevin. Defeating evil takes time. And that's what this is about.
> Russian exhaustion is possible, similar to Germany's in World War I.
You don't have to go back that far. We have a very similar historical war: Russia vs Afghanistan in the 1980s. Which was very similar to U.S. vs N. Vietnam earlier.
In all three cases, a superpower attempted to impose their will on a much smaller country via force. Another superpower (and its friends) then supplied the local defenders with arms. In the case of the U.S. being the supplier, with high-tech arms. The defenders proceded to create huge casualties amongst the invaders for years until the invaders finally decided they could better spend money on something else.
The U.S. would be hugely stupid to stop supplying Ukraine with arms. This is an extremely cheap way to keep Russia pinned down and occupied while increasing discontent at home. Last time we did this, there was a regime change.
2021 was the most recent example exhaustion caused a retreat from Afghanistan. That super power was us.
I'm not sure Germany lost in WW1 because of exhaustion per se. It was more a successful blockade was starving them, they had essentially run out of military manpower, and the US Army - fresh and in bewildering numbers - was landing in France. None of those factors are particularly in play here at least any time soon.
Interesting analysis here -- https://youtu.be/-NdIoseN6HM?si=jDRVQ75YI5T8CGsE
Really need more longer range weapons in Ukraine.
I think longer range missiles that can hit the Kremlin. Take the action to Moscow.
In my fantasy, the US takes the Missouri out of mothballs. Russia signs its unconditional surrender on its deck, in Sevastopol harbor.
Putin is transported by open ox cart to Nuremberg, by way of Ukraine. The roadway through Ukraine and all the way to Nuremberg is amply supplied with small rocks and lumps of dog shit.
After conviction, Putin is sentenced to death by hanging. The execution is beset by the same difficulties as the earlier Nuremberg executions. The aperture of the trap is too small, and instead of cleanly dropping through the trap, Putin smashes his face on the parapet. Between this slowing his fall and the rope being too short, Putin's spinal cord is not severed, and he slowly strangles to death. Later, photos of his body with the noose still around him are circulated. In death he looks strikingly like the executed Julius Streicher.
The letter Z is removed from the Russian alphabet.
The war's been going on for almost 10 years. American support for continuing it is almost at an end; the "negotiate now or face total defeat in the future" mentality is in the ascendant. And there are good arguments for Ukraine to stand its ground on the current lines, accept a ceasefire, and concentrate on ensuring a renewed Russian assault would be unsuccessful. It's likely that Europe will move to improve its military capabilities dramatically over the next decade. Once that has happened, it may be safe for Ukraine to move firmly into the EU/NATO camp without fear of Russian retaliation.
Imo, the reason the lines don't shift quickly is simple, the Ukrainians value their people several orders more than the Russians. As has been said in other comments, the Russian military is using zerg tactics with citizens/draftees/recruits/prisoners/pressed it considered superfluous. Yes the Ukrainians take causalities, but no where near the rate the Russians suffer and why would risk your troops when you undoubtedly know a counterattack will be into the assembly areas of thousands of more doomed souls where a trade in material and men is useless, inhumane, and ultimately stupid. This isn't chess. Let them die in your minefields, killboxes, and in their trenches. We did much the same thing, sending robots to do our killing in the last years of Afghanistan and Iraq. But the difference is that we were fighting ghosts, they are fighting hoardes. Eventually, a weak spot will be identified and exploited, but without air superiority that we Americans have had our perceptions of war spoiled, there will not be any thunder runs in the near future.
Given the density of Russian anti-aircraft missile sites, I am skeptical F-16’s will make a big difference. With cheaper better missiles continually being introduced, we may be approaching the end of manned aircraft as useful weapons against a technologically sophisticated foe. A full $tealth aircraft might still work, but anything lass is just a vulnerable target.
One of the things that American doctrine emphasizes is control of the air, and as a consequence they've put a lot of effort and technology into ack-ack suppression. They no longer have to do the Wild Weasel thing they did in Vietnam, where the lead aircraft deliberately draws fire from ack-ack so following aircraft can attack the ack-ack site. Effectively all the longer range anti-aircraft systems rely on radar. The best known suppression weapon is HARM. A barrage of HARMs can deprive the enemy of operating radar, which makes all but the short-range infra-red sensing missiles useless.
It won't end until some cash-poor oligarch puts a bullet in the back of Putin's head.
"The southern portion of the Russian territory is east of the Dnieper river and is all but impossible to attack successfully."
Ukraine has bridgeheads east of the Dnipro. Neither side seems to be following doctrine with respect to them. For the attacker standard doctrine calls for reinforcing a bridgehead quickly and massively before the enemy can counterattack. For the defender, standard doctrine calls for eliminating bridgeheads before they can be massively reinforced. Neither of those things has happened. The Ukrainians have had weak bridgeheads for a couple of months and the Russians have thrown a few weak attacks at them.
Yes, that has been puzzling me. The problem for the Ukrainians is getting armor across the Dnipro under fire. It’s not so clear why the Russians seem unable to build up their forces. It’s possible that Ukrainian long-range precision munitions are taking out Russian assets before they can even reach the battlefront. That, and notoriously inferior Russian logistics, may be enough to maintain the status quo for some time.
Speculation, but I have to think a Russian clearing operation would need a lot of new troops and equipment and supplies beyond what they have there already. Any equipment they could get there would be vulnerable, as you say, to even field artillery once in the open, no matter whether it was massed or not, and preliminary concentrations couldn't be made far enough away to be out of range for the longer-range NATO equipment the Ukrainians have.
The needed Russian equipment would take up a lot of whatever transport capacity exists-- has to be moved by rail, which is harder with the Kerch bridge damaged and the mainland rail routes are also vulnerable to Ukrainian fire or at least missiles.
Shells, on the other hand, don't take up a whole lot of logistical space by comparison. So the Russians can lob a lot of artillery fire at the enclaves if they want to and are willing to risk exposing the guns to counterfire. Troops don't take up much logistical space either but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. Maybe when they get scads of fresh conscripts they'll try the meat-wave assaults on those Dnipro bridgeheads. But I don't think the terrain there favors that tactic as much as it does farther east.
Just read 22% of Russians don't have indoor plumbing.