Said Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian intelligence bureaucracy, interviewed in "Putin’s Pivot to a 'Really Big War' in Ukraine/As his invasion enters its fourth month, the Russian leader is preparing for the long haul. Meanwhile, the military is chattering about its losses, and putting out calls for supplies on Telegram" (The New Yorker).
The Russian Army suffered some big, disastrous casualties, and, to be honest, I’ve been following how people reacted to that internally.... Pro-Russian military bloggers started talking about the losses and asking why nobody was held responsible for these losses....
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I think we have some new factor here in that [the messaging app] Telegram is such a big thing in Russia, that it is probably the very first war where we have, if you can call it, some public opinion of the Russian military and some sort of discussion about the military....
Posts
52 comments:
"But we are not in position to inflict any damage back on NATO."
Tell it to the Germans. No physical damage yet, but economic pain is increasing. Outside Europe, the hurt is only beginning.
The degrading of the Russian military is a great benefit to us and many others. What's enough? What's our end goal?
I read Finland joins NATO so that they can cut defence spending from 4% now to 2% required in NATO >>> bargain sale
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I think we have some new factor here in that [the messaging app] Telegram is such a big thing in Russia, that it is probably the very first war where we have, if you can call it, some public opinion of the Russian military and some sort of discussion about the military...
Watch Russia pull a page from the Biden playbook and appoint its own "Mary Poppins of Disinformation."
Some think this is the end of the beginning of the end of globalization. Soon China and Russia will be redundant.
Degrading of Russian military is both immediate and long-lasting. Immediate degradation on the battlefield is noted by milbloggers, and made explicit and incontrovertible by video and other data from drones, satellites and so on. Long-lasting degradation will emerge in civilian life as Russians count the military casualties —cripples on every corner, fresh graves in every village. As they do that, the political cost will continue to climb. If the Ukrainians start to shell Belgorod and other sites inside Russia, things might get even more expensive and unstable for the oligarchs. Then throw in the effect of sanctions on both civilian life and on military logistics (spares requiring Western components). At some point it just stops working. Tick tick tick.
Just a thought. But see what happened to the Tsar’s army in 1917.
Now he knows how we felt about Russia during the Vietnam War.
Russian antiwar activists will spped the end of this war just as much as the US protesters did starting in 1965.
But still, they persisted.
Best weaponry in the world -- maybe by 1980 standards. But Ukraine is getting second-rate hand-me-downs in many cases. And while they are getting modern weapons for some close-in combat uses, they have been denied the weapons needed to prevent the Soviets from destroying Ukraine's cities from afar with artillery guns and rockets.
We'll see. Ukrainian propaganda is so rife with lies that it's hard to sort out the valid points they might be making, and credible sources on the Russian side are few and far between, and our media is, as we have all seen, captive to the MIC. They are keeping us in the dark and feeding us bullshit. Obviously, though, support for sending billions to Ukraine, some of those billions with a 'b' earmarked for propaganda, BTW, support for all of this money would dry up quickly if the Ukrainians appeared to the American public to be losing the war. We also know that Pelosi's kid is involved in Ukrainian corruption, same as Joe Biden. Zelensky's handlers have piles of kompromat on our leadership at the highest levels.
The NATO strategy seems to involve baiting Russia to attack it by constantly escalating the conflict. Rhetoric out of Davos is making out like this is an existential war for the West, and Russia sees it as an existential war as well. If you look at a map, it's obvious whose vital interests are at stake, and who is just spoiling for any pretext for WWIII to impose a globalist order. Noise is coming out that the US now thinks that a nuclear war is winnable, for one thing.
"Degrading of Russian military is both immediate and long-lasting."
That was going on decades before Putin started this war.
' they have been denied the weapons needed to prevent the Soviets from destroying Ukraine's cities from afar with artillery guns and rockets.'
We have sent them state of the art artillery which is an order of magnetude better than the Russian arty. We even sent them our 'smart shells' to go with that.
Endless stupid propaganda. Yep, Russia is finished. The walls are closing in on Putin. Zelensky will be in Moscow by Labor day, dictating terms. Meanwhile, in the real world, Russian army is advancing slowly but surely and capturing all the donbas.
I think the Russians might conclude that taking ALL of the Ukraine is the only solution. Or maybe, installation of a Russian controlled Government. Certainly, Zelenksy has shown himself so Ant-russian, I don't think they can let him stay in power.
Putin seems determined to relive the Forties. If you grew up in the USSR, the UK, or the US when he did, popular culture was saturated with stories and images of the Second World War. Sieges, air raid sirens, fighting in tractor factories, pins in maps showing the front lines, boys studying airplane silhouettes ...
Mark said...
Best weaponry in the world -- maybe by 1980 standards. But Ukraine is getting second-rate hand-me-downs in many cases. And while they are getting modern weapons for some close-in combat uses, they have been denied the weapons needed to prevent the Soviets from destroying Ukraine's cities from afar with artillery guns and rockets.
Lots of stuff to kill Russians. Not much stuff to save Ukranians.
The goals are clear.
You have to remember the Regime needs bloody shirts.
rcocean said...
Endless stupid propaganda. Yep, Russia is finished. The walls are closing in on Putin. Zelensky will be in Moscow by Labor day, dictating terms. Meanwhile, in the real world, Russian army is advancing slowly but surely and capturing all the donbas.
At this point both Biden and Putin need the war to continue.
As soon as the war is over they have nothing to hide behind.
The question will be which one of the massively unpopular warmongers falls first.
Tim in Vermont @ 9:10: “…nuclear war is winnable..”. AYFKM?
We are deep into Crazytown here.
"The degrading of the Russian military is a great benefit to us and many others. What's enough? What's our end goal?"
I'll take a stab at answering both those questions. As for what is enough, total humiliation of the Mongol Horde would probably suffice. It's important for the world to understand that Russian society is too corrupt and backward to ever again be a major player in world affairs. You can't have the top three echelons of Russian society stealing half the government and military funding streams and expect to project power and win wars. You can't expect an army (or navy or air force) to fight efficiently without an effective non-commissioned officer corp. You can't fight wars with conscripts without having a lot of them to throw into the meat grinder. You can't defeat a modern army without having the ability to conduct maneuver warfare and use combined arms. You can't fight using WWII blunt force tactics when you no longer have a WWII sized Soviet state that can afford to sacrifice lives for territory. Anyone with a modicum of war fighting knowledge understands that the annihilation of the Iraqi military in the Gulf War, a military that was as much a proxy for the Russian military in terms of tactics, training, equipment and command and control as is possible, presaged the current Ukraine success because none of the tactics, training state or even equipment of the Russian military has evolved much in the last 30 years. Specifically, Russia is a Potemkin state with an obsolete military, and the world needs to understand that fact. Their plutocrats are going to have to be satisfied with their yachts, foreign villas and mistresses while concentrating on keeping a boot firmly on the necks of the Russian peasantry lest they rise up and interrupt the graft streams. As for end goals, our own is less important than those of Europe and NATO. Europe and NATO need to establish a formidable regional defense force that is capable of containing Russian expansion without outside help. Otherwise, the Russians will be emboldened to periodically bite off chunks of their neighbors' territories just as they have attempted in Ukraine and just as they plan to do in the Baltic states and the states of the old Warsaw Pact. Russia's size alone is enough to threaten the smaller European states in the absence of a NATO type alliance. So, the goal should be to build a standalone NATO that does not depend on the US to provide the muscle and to do the heavy lifting. Trump made significant progress in that regard by badgering NATO countries to live up to their existing 2% of GNP defense funding obligations and Russia's invasion of Ukraine has provided a timely reinforcement of the requirement. Europe needs to be capable of holding their own against threats from the East so that the US can concentrate on the West and China, because we will have no choice. The added benefit would be that we would not have to endure Vermont and the other Putin-philes surrendering every time the bear growls. So, we would also have that going for us. Which is nice.
One of the points of Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 was how inept Russian generals and, as a result, big parts of their entire military were. It does not sound inapplicable here either.
That the Russians are calling Western weaponry superior is telling. Makes me wonder when they were going to let their troops know.
Not every would-be warlord has the best and most advanced military in the world at their disposal, and even those that do--like Bonaparte and Hitler--find that a diminishing or wasting asset over time. Putinforce has skipped the superior army phase entirely.
It is entirely to the credit of the average Russian conscript that he is not enthusiastic about the Uke venture, and sees no advantage to himself in it.
Well, the Ukrainians just declared that they are outnumbered 7-1 in Donbass. Cynical commenters are suggesting that this is just a pelude to breaking the news to their people that their brave soldier did their best, but faced impossible odds, since the numbers don't jibe with anything previously known, unless the Ukrainians have taken massive casualties and large surrenders have occured...
Like when they called the Nazi mass surrender in Mariupol an "evacuation." Maybe it's all BS and the Ukrainians are really winning and it was a great idea not to negotiate before the war started, but instead for the Ukrainians to mass troops on the front with Donbass and begin intensive shelling that could only be taken for battlespace prep prior to an offensive, while Russian troops were massed on the border and tensions were. It almost seemed designed to provoke Putin to act.
I hope this war works out for the globalists who are frothing at the mouth today in Davos, baying for Putin's blood. You know, the globalists... the people who think high American wages, or high French wages for that matter, are de-facto theft from the ruling classes. Putin was not a problem for the average American, Putin is a problem for the transnational cabal of hyper wealthy megalomaniacs meeting in Switzerland right now, and the made him a problem for working Americans.
---Endless stupid propaganda. [rcocean]
Blind faith in Russia is better? More accurate?
Nyet and nyet.
I would put the chances Joe Biden can avoid direct conflict with Russia at fifty-fifty, which means Trump was only slightly exaggerating when he said nuclear war is now "more likely to happen than not.”
Yep, Russia is finished. The walls are closing in on Putin.
Like a cornered rat?
rcocean said, "...Russian army is advancing slowly but surely and capturing all the donbas."
Impossible to know for sure what is really happening, but I read Stephen McIntyre's retweets of Ukraine war reporting, and I am fairly convinced Russia is doing a slow, methodical take-down of Ukraine.
Anyone who lived through the Vietnam War years should know the USA does propaganda and tells lies with the best of them. Sooner or later we may wake up and find Ukraine won so many battles they felt sorry for the Russians and just...gave up.
I hope Ukraine triumphs, but take note: In the past, Russia has used defeat and retreat as an offensive weapon....During WWII, Finland inflicted a great deal of damage on invading forces from the Soviet Union. Hitler observed the shabbiness of the Soviet forces and thought he could easily defeat them. The Soviet Union later rallied to defeat both Finland and Germany....I don't know how this will play out. So far it has been a failure for Putin, but time marches on.
@LA_Bob "I am fairly convinced Russia is doing a slow, methodical take-down of Ukraine." Yeah, anyone who follows the details can see that.
https://twitter.com/Suriyakmaps/status/1529436397643390977?cxt=HHwWgoCzwZyT07kqAAAA
Just keep scrolling up. It's pretty obvious.
Unclear if Ukraine can attack Russian logistics hard enough to starve the slow envelopment moves near Severodonetsk. With good spotting and enough precision artillery, maybe. (Some cruise missiles would probably help). That counteroffensive, plus a breakthrough around Kharkiv toward Belgorod, could alter the game board in short order. Otherwise it’s a meat-grinder for maybe months.
What a colossal waste.
Sometimes it's an invasion. Other times it's social justice to defeat political separation forced by an ancient tribal conflict. Other times yet it's a weapons distribution campaign to sustain an Arab Spring, a Libyan Spring, a Syrian Spring, an Afghan Spring, an American Spring. This time it's standing with Ukrainians who were disenfranchised and under siege in a Slavic Spring, denied essential services, and under assault by a Kiev-aligned military and paramilitary axis over 8 years, 2 under the current regime. Then there are the "benefits" including: Wuhan-style labs and other illicit operations.
I am fairly convinced Russia is doing a slow, methodical take-down of Ukraine.
Maybe, but if Georgia is precedent, then a counter-Slavic Spring is not the goal. In fact, Russia's presence was a democratic choice in Crimea, which was coupled with legal title and a compelling national interest. Their presence in the Donbas was at the invitation of Ukrainians in response to a violent progressive condition sustained by a Kiev axis over 8 years, 2 under the current regime, which was further exacerbated by regional instability normalized through official support from the Biden administration to expand a low grade risk to neighboring nations. The sanctions with collateral damage ("boomerang effect") was just a poor choice, a narcissistic indulgence, a deflection from reproductive rites, rabid diversity [dogma], unreliables (energy), progressive prices, etc.
So we have the continual escalation of US/NATO involvement in Ukraine. An added provocation in the admission of Finland to NATO (Turkey forfend!), which puts NATO troops in close striking distance from Russia's strategic forces. Then we have US practicing an air attack on Iran with Israel. Finally (?) we have Biden trashing 50 years of China-US diplomacy and agreements, all but saying Taiwan is independent.
Does Vegas have a book on when WW III kicks off?
The Russian army has been exposed as not very proficient and not very modern. The reality is that the Ukrainians are still outnumbered and certainly, in quantity, outgunned. I suspect that Putin's goals were fairly limited right from the beginning and probably still are. Certainly the odds of Ukraine recovering the eastern territories are quite low. My real fear is that Joe is going to stumble into a commitment of personnel that will escalate things beyond everyone's control. My impression is that even though the Europeans' initial reaction was positive the longer Russia lasts the more likely that the EU countries - particularly Germany - are going to revert to their weak position re their own defense.
"Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship." - Andrei Sakharov, (1921 – 1989) a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, Nobel laureate, and activist for disarmament, peace, and human rights.
The quote that comes to mind after reading the comments of some profound Russian experts (aka jaydubs).
jaydub at 10:11 AM
I'll take a stab at answering both those questions. ....
I'll take a stab at reading your answer if you break up your one long paragraph into several paragraphs.
Tim in Vermont @ 9:10: “…nuclear war is winnable..”. AYFKM?
No. Not without Washington, DC, New YorkCity, Boston, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and, probably, Mar-A-Lago and most of the small state of Delaware being turned into into glass-bottomed lakes, but there’s a lot more to the US than its big cities and in-over-their-heads politicians.
This is not to suggest that nuclear war is desirable. But if someone starts a nuclear missile exchange with the United States they can be made to wish they hadn’t.
Mike Sylwester said...
jaydub at 10:11 AM
I'll take a stab at answering both those questions. ....
I'll take a stab at reading your answer if you break up your one long paragraph into several paragraphs.
************
amen.
I've always wondered why some people don't notice that the world routinely uses paragraphs.
Maybe it's from poor education in English classes. Or OTOH from reading too much Joyce, Faulkner. James and Proust!
MikeR,
Thanks for the link. Lot of material there to add to my daily review!
Consistent with the reports McIntyre retweets, it appears the Western press makes a big fuss over rare Ukrainian triumphs and ignores Russia's inexorable advance.
At this point I'll stick with my guess that eventually Zelensky cries, "Russia has been been punished enough" and then surrenders.
The USSR dined out for fifty years on their victory over the Hitlerites, which was achieved only with powerful allies, massive losses, and years of effort.
They were motivated by an actual and obvious existential threat, in ways that the current Russian armed forces and populace are not. That will be decisive, not bean-counting from afar by people with no skin in the game and usually only superficial knowledge of the region's history.
"I'll take a stab at reading your answer if you break up your one long paragraph into several paragraphs."
Don't bother if your attention span doesn't support it. I suppose two dozen lines of reasoning can be a bridge too far for some.
Both sides are claiming an upper hand, but Russian claims look increasingly more credible.
It looks a lot like US Civil war. Ukraine, like the Confederacy, is fighting the war of liberation, trying to expel invaders by inflicting prohibitive casualties, while Russia, like the Union, is conducting the war of aggression, slowly taking over more territory.
Candide,
One might also compare Eastern Ukraine to the Confederacy and Western Ukraine to the Union. Some of the material I've read indicates Ukraine has been in civil war for several years.
The difference is Easter Ukraine, unlike the Confederacy, has help from a powerful foreign state. As hard as the Confederates tried, they could never secure recognition from a European country.
---and ignores Russia's inexorable advance.
Which consists of constantly revising down their objectives. See the Forbes article of May 15, I believe, and the coverage by the Institute for the Study of War. Their daily summaries do not endorse the notion of Russian power and inexorability, far from it.
Their May 23rd summary talks about the frustration in the officer ranks. It is not a picture of a military operation going well. The faith in Russian military prowess seems misplaced, based on these two sources, which is all I am going on. But Jaydubs' comments on the social failures make sense to me and in some fashion connect today's misadventures with the August 1914 era as well.
Respectfully jaydub, paragraphs do help with readability.
I'm going with poor education as the explanation for poor writing. It fits the other facts.
Yes, the inexorable nibbling away, after the brilliant feints towards Kyiv and Kharkiv, so reminiscent of the Kaiserheer's audacious lunge at Paris in 1914, followed by their withdrawal from the Marne in September. Eight-dimensional strategery there, I tell you!
It's as if one of Hitler's armies had been turned back and mauled, and the others slowed to
crawls, in 1939 in Poland.
So if it's all over but the surrendering, where's the $40 billion going?
LA_Bob,
You’re right, most knowledgeable people agree that civil war in Ukraine started in 2014.
I can’t understand why Kiev rulers continued attacking Donbas for 8 years. The longer that was going on, the more likely Putin was going to use it to justify the invasion.
The $40 billion is going into the coffers of the MI(C)C*, with plenty off the top for various Big Guys.
That said, plenty of lethal stuff will be produced and delivered unless something changes dramatically.
And THAT said, I won't hide the fact that I'd enjoy seeing Putin and Russia taken down a few notches, especially now that they've made such a poor showing.
*Military-Industrial-(Congressional) Complex, headquartered in and about DC.
Bunkypotatohead said...
So if it's all over but the surrendering, where's the $40 billion going?
What $40 billion?
/sarcasm
Agree w/ n.n. and Vermont-Tim. Our official lies are really that obvious.
I highly recommend Oliver Stone's recent interview @Lex Friedman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygAqYC8JOQI&t=174s - for some honest perspective on Putin. (of course, Stone doesn't answer exactly the questions answered, is himself extremely overconfident, etc, but he's not a liar and has legitimately studied the world, and that's valuable)
Of the two, I feel Ukraine's regime is more vile ('neo nazi' is actually accurate re: the deathsquad level activity), but I really have no skin in the game and could easily have been misled (just as your average TV viewer surely is!). I wish we could all agree to leave them to fight it out w/o outside interference, but I understand NATO's interest in cowing Russia.
Note that Zelensky was elected on campaign promises of peace, but apparently someone got to him. His regime definitely provoked this war (probably w/ US assurances).
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