Ukraine conflict
 

I thought I’d start fresh since the title of the other one was meant as an insult. I’ll repost my last comment. No worries if not interested

Some interesting developments. Russia is reported to have started to pull equipment from Syria and other “soft” conflicts and rotate it back to Ukraine. This indicates that Russia is willing to sacrifice its other external goals for the sake of a protracted war in Ukraine. Furthermore Russia has apparently allocated 30% of its 2023 budget to defense spending, indicating he is willing to continue to degrade his economy.

This is interesting to me because it shows that he is probably still heads down and charging in with no intention to make a deal.

Militarily the Ukrainians officially announced they will resume combat operations when the mud freezes. Before it was a “possibility”. Currently the only gains russia is making is with the Wagner group around burkets (I spelled that wrong), otherwise it’s assessed that Russian brigades (15 to 17 in number) are all still severely degraded and will have trouble holding the line in donetsk oblast

This is interesting to me because it looks like the Ukrainians are going to push and the Russians aren’t going to have time to set a defensive line that will hold.

I stole this data from other sources. The “this is interesting” is me

One other item I find fascinating is the lack of Russia to adapt to modern maneuver warfare. I think they actually believed that running around with t-72s and BTR 25mm auto cannons was going to just smash down Ukrainian infantry.

They completely underestimated drone intel, and modern atgms.

I saw a picture of a Ukrainian infantry platoon. Of about 20 people in the pic, all but 2 had heavy AT on thier back. Of those, they had 4 variants that I saw. Carl Gustav, javelin, panzerfaust, and an rpg-72 (I think it was a 72).

People in a fight for their existence tend to become a little bit more motivated and creative and experimenting in their problem solving.
This store bought drone warfare is no doubt of high interest to the US DoD as it’s a good example of how asymmetric warfare can develop.
This with virtually unlimited weapons supply created a stale mate situation against an unmotivated hollowed out by corruption traditional ‘land mass’ army.

If nothing else, it demonstrates the utter fecklessness of many of our NATO allies. They weren’t pulling their weight before the breakup of the USSR, and they’ve ignored their defense budgets since then. I’m getting pretty tired of paying taxes to defend Europe because the Europeans are unwilling to do so.

https://www.dw.com/en/is-germanys-military-unfit-for-action/a-63955452

https://www.politico.eu/article/germanys-defense-minister-in-the-ejection-seat-as-zeitenwende-is-faltering/

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukr...ammo-stockpile

https://www.reuters.com/investigates...urope-defence/

Military logistics is a long lead time business even in normal times. After a pandemic with supply chain shortages, it’s even worse. After three decades of peace dividends, our NATO allies don’t have much military capability to offer.

It is unfortunate ( though understandable with peace time politicians) that nato is falling short. It is my belief that even if nato didn’t offer up a penny, the US still needs to put Putin in a corner. I mentioned this before, but I believe it is worth repeating.

For only 1% of recorded time have we finally been able to break the backs of autocratic rule. I am not interested in going back to the time when a bunch of dudes try and out alpha each other by sending thousands of 18 year old kids to their deaths.

Yeah it looks like joint/combined warfare concepts went right over their heads.

I'm not confident that the PRC is quite that dense though.

It would be very difficult for Vlad and his regime to back down now and remain in power. At the very least they have to make some kind of settlement with at least an appearance of RU gains (such as more RU-friendly political arrangements in the eastern provinces, etc, etc).

Also the RU naval base at Sevastopol is probably a big driving factor at this point... they simply cannot lose that, and it's also vital that they have assured logistics for it. A couple bridges from the east may not be enough, if I were them I'd really want to hold the entire Crimea otherwise the base is held at permanent risk. The base was on lease from UR, that got extended by the previous (RU friendly) UR administration but it's fairly obvious that there won't be any lease options in the future.

The loss of Sevastopol might well be too much for the RU people and power brokers to tolerate, regardless of Vlad's status. Even without their racial paranoia, Sevastopol is probably a legitimate national security issue for RU. As opposed to say nazis.

Hmmm I never even contemplated Sevastopol. That is a great point. I guess now the question is can they realistically hold anything. With patriots entering the AO now, the air picture is going to swing heavily in Ukrainian favor. Maybe bonding Sevastopol without too cover would be a no-go

Zelenskyy was obviously not going to renew the lease for Sevastopol, that probably contributed to the RU regime's calculus to invade.