Thoughtful read. Key graphs But when the war shifted to the East, and to the slow grinding advance and the siege warfare that the Russian military has employed elsewhere, with its employment of massive, indiscriminate, demoralizing artillery fire, the “spirit” of the war changed as well. The public lost interest in the fight. The news went from victories to tragedies, like the crushing siege at Mariupol or the strange and disturbing reports of Russian deportations into the interior. Like the Syrians before them, Ukrainians are now being turned into objects of humanitarian pity, rather than the subjects of a heroic war of self-defense. This is the secret logic of atrocity in war: it makes the world more, not less likely, to turn away, as it finds the scenes either unbearable or unbelievable. Politically, now Putin is in the role he likes to play: the instransigent, standing for a stability, permanence, a fait accompli. And he gets to deploy his most potent weapon, which has propped up his regime much more than patriotic mobilization ever has: cynicism. Since it’s colorless (but not odorless), it takes a moment to when it’s happened, but the poison gas of cynicism has once again settled over the world. The Ukrainian defender and his Western supporter are now the object of derision: silly little people who ought to understand how the world really works and take what’s coming to them. Once again, we are talking about grand, abstract terms like power, —it’s all about “power,” “geopolitics,” “proxy wars,” “national interest,” “realism.” It’s “realism,” that nice word for cynicism, that’s taken hold again of the serious people in the West. A Real War
Russia is using very few guded weapons, certainly not guided artillery. Wr will have to agree to disagee on whether Ukraine deserves support or not and whether that support will matter
I think they deserve support and IDK why we're sending them such ridiculously small amount of arms. Russia most certainly has guided artillery and they've had it for decades. It's not really cutting edge stuff (although ours are more accurate). I can't imagine why they wouldn't use it, but they're certainly heck a lot more expensive so like their guided missiles they probably have a fairly small stock.
Russia said to be relying on weapons that are more deadly, Ukraine says Ukrainian and British officials warned Saturday that Russian forces are relying on weapons with the potential to cause mass casualties as they try to make headway in capturing eastern Ukraine. Russian bombers have likely been launching heavy 1960s-era anti-ship missiles in Ukraine, the U.K. Defense Ministry said. The Kh-22 missiles were primarily designed to destroy aircraft carriers using a nuclear warhead. When used in ground attacks with conventional warheads, they “are highly inaccurate and therefore can cause severe collateral damage and casualties,” the ministry said. Both sides have expended large amounts of weaponry in what has become a grinding war of attrition for the eastern region of coal mines and factories known as the Donbas, placing huge strains on their resources and stockpiles. Russia is likely using the anti-ship missiles because it is running short of more precise modern missiles, the British ministry said in a daily update. It gave no details of where exactly such missiles are thought to have been deployed and there was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian authorities of the use of the 6.1-ton missiles.
Biden Races to Expand Coalition Against Russia but Meets Resistance Brazil, India and South Africa — along with Russia and China — are members of a group of nations that account for one-third of the global economy. At an online meeting of the group’s foreign ministers last month, Moscow offered to set up oil and gas refineries with its fellow partners. The group also discussed expanding its membership to other countries. Other nations that abstained from the United Nations vote, including Uganda, Pakistan and Vietnam, have accused the U.S.-led coalition against Russia of shutting down any chance of peace talks with its military support of Ukraine. U.S. and European officials maintain that the weapons and intelligence it has provided serves only to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s military. The growing urgency in the Biden administration is embodied in the president’s plans to visit Saudi Arabia, despite his earlier denunciations of its murderous actions and potential war crimes. Mr. Biden’s effort, which is already being criticized by leading Democrats, is partly aimed at getting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help on the margins with Ukraine. One goal is to have those nations coordinate a substantial increase in oil production to help bring down global prices while the United States, Europe and others boycott Russian oil. Role of BRICS in the Global Economy In the ten years since its first summit (Yekaterinburg, 2009) BRICS has become an institution of global economic governance and a platform for coordination and cooperation of its member states. The increasing role of BRICS in the global economy has come about due to several factors among which the key ones are the economic might of the five сountries, the contribution to the reform of international economic institutions and the impact on the transformation of the international monetary and financial systems. BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa are a powerful force in the global economy. These are the nations (with exception of Russia) that the US is attempting to persuade into supporting Ukraine and taking sides against Russia to no avail. This doesn't include many other nations that are on the fence as well. These nations will act in their own self interests and no matter what the US can promise them they will continue to do so.
It was only a matter of time SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — The euphoria that accompanied Ukraine’s unforeseen early victories against bumbling Russian troops is fading as Moscow adapts its tactics, recovers its stride and asserts its overwhelming firepower against heavily outgunned Ukrainian forces. Newly promised Western weapons systems are arriving, but too slowly and in insufficient quantities to prevent incremental but inexorable Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, which is now the focus of the fight. The Ukrainians are still fighting back, but they are running out of ammunition and suffering casualties at a far higher rate than in the initial stages of the war. Around 200 Ukrainian soldiers are now being killed every day, up from 100 late last month, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC on Friday — meaning that as many as 1,000 Ukrainians are being taken out of the fight every day, including those who are injured. Ukraine is running out of ammunition as prospects dim on the battlefield
OK, so our strategy for defending Ukraine is failing, and Russia’s strategy for conquest is succeeding. Now that the general public is coming around to what the military and intelligence communities have been saying for a couple of weeks, what is our next move? Can we really let Ukraine fall and airily assume that is the end and not merely the beginning of this?
The answer is Russia will stop in Ukraine. A heavily protracted war with Ukraine will prevent Russia from moving any further which was the goal of the lesser degree to start with. I will add a caveat in that China is threatening all out war if anyone threatens to split Taiwan from China. If the US intervenes and this happens WW III is sure to follow. Ukraine will become a waste land and gloves will come off in making that happen as quickly as possible. 'Smash to smithereens': China threatens US with 'war no matter the cost' over Taiwan China's defense minister threatened all-out war while discussing Taiwan's independence during a meeting between top Chinese and American military officials. The threats were made on Friday during the first face-to-face meeting of U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe. "If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost," warned China’s defense spokesman Wu Qian – who was quoting General Wei.
I hope you are right, but I also hope that hope is not the strategy of this Administration. Well, more directly, my greatest fear is that hope will continue to be the strategy of this administration: “We hope Afghanistan won’t fall. We hope Iran won’t continue to develop nuclear weapons. We hope Russia won’t invade Ukraine. Etc.” Hope has never succeeded as a strategy as you’re aware. As to Ukraine pinning down Russia in a protracted war, my professional opinion is that when the Russian victories start to stack up (as they are), the Ukrainian armed forces will begin to collapse under the weight. Maybe Ukraine can rally behind the Dnieper on the Right Bank, but two problems will emerge: militarily, Russia can always outflank the Dnieper through Belarus again, only this time with Russian forces in close mutual support, holding the Left Bank; politically, at some point Ukraine realizes that having a half a country, with some small measure of autonomy is better than not having a country at all, and so they effectively surrender. I don’t think we can count on them holding down Russia for years. The Taiwan situation is even more problematic to debate. From my perspective the only way to not have to fight China if they invade Taiwan is to do the opposite of what we did for Ukraine and make it unambiguous that invading Taiwan means being wholly at war with the United States. And that is something I don’t believe we will do. Unless our Pacific allies drag us in, Taiwan will be on its own, fight valiantly, cause enormous Chinese casualties, and eventually be starved and beaten into submission.
Generally not a big fan of RS, however this first-hand account of a embedded journalist is interesting. “Between my service in the U.S. Marines and over more than a decade as a foreign correspondent, I’ve been engaged in the professional study of organized human violence for 25 years. But I’ve never seen anything even close to this volume of artillery being unleashed.” 'They're Wiping Us From Earth': Evading Russian Artillery With a Ukrainian Military Unit
Russia likely to seize control of eastern Ukrainian region within weeks, US official says As fighting continues in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, causing heavy casualties and leaving Ukrainian forces with dwindling ammunition, a senior U.S. defense official said Russia is likely to seize control of the entire region within a few weeks. The cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, in Luhansk, are increasingly under duress and could fall to Russia within a week, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Can’t blame Ukraine. They have fought harder and braver than most would have thought possible. And they gave us in the West a precious gift of time to get our houses in order politically, economically, and militarily in order to confront and smack down Russia for this grievous, unjust, disgusting breach of the peace. We accepted that gift, unopened, with half-hearted thanks, tossed it into the closet, and went back to watching Real Housewives of Somewhere.
I’m not one of the experts, but I would have had the same conclusions then. They were not wrong; they made the best analysis they could with the best data available. Pre-WW2 experts assessed Italy’s armed forces to be much better than they were, too. My greatest concern for the West, if and when Russia completes its conquest of Ukraine, is that we collectively scoff at the Russian conventional threat when they start to make their next move. I said in the beginning that the Russian military machine has always learned and moved slowly … but it does learn, and it does move. We won’t be facing the overconfident, bumbling Russians who couldn’t hit their plate with a fork or lead a donkey to the water. We will be facing the ones who survived and learned how to fight against Western weapons. They will be led by the generals who learned not to talk on their cellphones and how to advance under a rolling barrage of artillery. Oh, and every single one of them will have a buddy who was killed by a U.S.-provided Javelin in case you think there will be any quarter. The only answer is preparation.
Fair points. I must confess to being one who thought Russia did not have the wherewithal to sustain a prolonged campaign, especially not with the sanctions. Reminds me of an Andrew Dice Clay joke about Japan in the 80s, when their economy was rocking, and they were kicking our asses in manfacturing, so he says: "...didn't we drop a couple of atomic bombs on those guys? What was in those *** things?? *** fertilizer???" Can't help but ponder the same question about these sanctions...
They also didn’t send their marines in first. They sacrificed conscripts and drew out the opposition and learned what they faced. They found out that they weren’t going to overrun Ukraine fast and adapted with better troops.
I had expected the same thing as well because no one expected Ukraine to put up much of a fight. Truth is no one not even our own intelligence community let alone our military brass expected Ukraine to put up a fight. Our military brass should have known up front what the capabilities of the Ukraine forces were. Fact is we were all asleep at the wheel including Russia. That said once the fighting began I knew full well it would be a long drawn out war that will eventually be determined by sheer numbers. That is why we turned to sanctions hoping to make Russia the next North Korea. Wishful thinking in a globally connected world. The military cared much less about the economics of war as their mission is centered around beans and bullets. Sadly our economic advisors were asleep at the wheel as well. One would have thought COVID would have made them realize just how entrenched we are in the stove piped connected world of globalization. Putin and Russia on the other hand knew and understood sanctions would hurt everyone all be it some more than others. Have we learned our lesson? I think not. We live in and took for granted a nation that has not experienced hardship let alone empty shelves for the past two generations. Every want and every need was readily available. That myopic view has now begun to change. Reminds me of the final verse in Puff the Magic Dragon His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane Without his life-long friend, puff could not be brave So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave
