Weird that the author mentions international support and the importance of inaccessible bases to Mao, but doesn't mention the ability of the Taliban or Viet Cong to hide in neighboring countries where conventional military force can't be applied. I expect that will also be crucial in Ukraine.
Borders of this war are drastically in Russia's favor. They control the entire north (Belarus), east (Russia) and south (Crimea and Black Sea). Ukraine could potentially use their western borders with friendly countries to their advantage, but those are long ways away from the key population centers of the country. After a strike in, say, Kyiv, they will have to drive 7+ hours to hide in Poland.
> Borders of this war are drastically in Russia's favor. They control the entire north (Belarus), east (Russia) and south (Crimea and Black Sea). Ukraine could potentially use their western borders with friendly countries to their advantage, but those are long ways away from the key population centers of the country. After a strike in, say, Kyiv, they will have to drive 7+ hours to hide in Poland.
But if the population is friendly to the insurgents, couldn't they hide there after an operation?
It seems like the border with an insurgent-friendly country would be mainly useful for supply, training, etc. IIRC, the Taliban had a kind of "fighting season" where their fighters would migrate into Afghanistan from Pakistan, then return months later. It wasn't hit and run from border outposts.
And that's also assuming that e.g. Poland would allow Ukranian soldiers to cross the border; Poland is a NATO country, and NATO allowing non-NATO soldiers in can be considered a provocation and escalation by Russia.
I mean if it wasn't for Russia having and threatening with nukes I would applaud NATO getting involved; the various air forces of NATO countries would make quick work of the very exposed supply lines of the Russian invaders. So far, Russia has not shown much military dominance or strategy. But it can't be allowed to escalate due to the threat of nukes.
What about Finland and Sweden? What about if it was just the island of Gotland, and not an all out invasion.
Edit: And how much will you give up to avoid a Nuclear War. Assuming the other side is not rational and can't be trusted to protect their existence in a MAD scenario.
Maybe Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are not worth "the world being destroyed".
Finland and Sweden haven't asked to be in NATO. It was clear that Germany was not even willing to send defensive weapons to Ukraine. So I don't think the NATO countries were ready to fight over Ukraine, including the US. I don't know if Germany would go to war to protect Gotland, but if Swedes think it could happen maybe they should join NATO? That would clarify the situation one way or another.
I don't think the Russians would do well against Finland and Sweden. Both are big economies, both produce a lot of arms, and the Finnish army is both large and modern.
They could maybe win against Sweden alone, since it's largely demilitarized, but they don't actually have a border, and I don't know why Finland wouldn't get involved.
PS: Finland also does conscription, so there's like a million fins who could be called up if a war broke out, and they'd all have training.
I imagine we'd protect Finland and or Sweden / Gotland. Though not a foreign policy expert or anything.
I think it's a bit of a practical trade off. I'm in London and while it's tempting to do a UK/US no fly zone I'm don't especially want the risk of an off his trolly Putin nuking here. But maybe we could slip some planes and missiles to Ukraine - depending on what we can get away with.
This is exactly the sort of prevarication dressed up as realpolitik that Putin thrives on. This is why it was so dangerous for Biden to indicate that a small incursion into Ukraine was ok - show weakness and he'll take whatever he can and wait to be stopped, if he's not stopped he'll take again till he is.
Trump is weak and will do whatever Putin says. Just as one example he advocated for dismantling NATO to prepare for this conflict, on the orders of Putin.
He paused after taking Crimea too. A pause is not stopping. He needs to be stopped. He's already responsible for the most significant war crimes of the century - the razing of Grozny and Aleppo and other cities in Syria and is currently doing the same to Ukraine.
The only thing that gives me hope in this situation are the strong sanctions enacted against Russia, which may result in regime change (but will cause a lot of pain to ordinary people before they do so).
I wish that was true, but look at the latest analysis by the Economist. The current sanctions against Russia are similar to those of 2008-2009 and 2014-15, and pale in comparison with the financial crisis of 1998-1999 (if we only look at the rouble-dollar change rate).
I really don’t think that’s accurate. At no previous time have huge companies like MS and Apple withdrawn from Russia. All trade except a very limited set of commodities has ended. The stock market has been closed for 5 days. The aeroflot fleet is grounded. Much if the reserves of the national bank have been frozen.
This is unprecedented and may trigger complete economic collapse.
- The collapse of the CCCP and Warsaw Pact was a catastrophe
- Peter The Great was great, and Russia should be extended to its old imperial borders
I'm not aware that he's expressed the desire to go to war with NATO. But I do believe that subjugating Ukraine is a prerequisite to occupying the Baltic states. In particular Kaliningrad, Russia's only ice-free Baltic naval base, is connected to Russia by a long, narrow landbridge, which is very vulnerable, being protected largely by treaty commitments.
Defending that landbridge with purely military force would imply aggression against Lithuania or Poland (or both), and both countries are in NATO.
"Russian proposals for visa-free travel between the EU and Kaliningrad have so far been rejected by the EU. Travel arrangements, based on the Facilitated Transit Document (FTD) and Facilitated Rail Transit Document (FRTD) have been made."
So it looks like you're right, and I'm wrong - it's not a proper corridor.
> I mean if it wasn't for Russia having and threatening with nukes…
This is the part that I’m gobsmacked by. Simply by uttering the phrase “this is an existential threat to the nation” gives Putin a legalistic means to change nuclear first strike terms to any conventional war response. The “eastward expansion” narrative doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. He’s displayed no compunction killing political rivals up to now, so why the sudden squeamishness killing far-right Ukrainian leaders (who, let’s face it, are indeed bona fide Nazi-admiring fascists)? That’s certainly far cheaper in political capital and easier than an invasion.
Friendly borders do a lot even if their not close.
Just having a safe place to decompress between fighting makes a huge difference. Militaries need to be on constant alert where resistance forces can train and plain in safety. It also takes a lot of manpower to defend a border and those people can’t then be directly useful in the fighting. Russia could setup barricades, minefields etc, but that stuff take time, effort and resources to setup.
I'm sorry, but what do you think would be the consequence of Russia bombing targets in... Romania, let's say. Considering the US has air defense in the area, I doubth they even could. The situation is hardly comparable.
It depends if it's the Russian army or some force that Russia can claim plausible deniability from.
I mean there's been at least three assassination attempts at Zelensky in the past week, one by Chechens and two by a paramilitary group that, while supported by Russia, is not actually represented or (formally) under order by them. Plausible deniability.
That is true, bombing targets in a NATO country wouldn't work. On the other hand Russia could probably try to completely seal that border. It's not easy to do and will take years, but can be done.
No. Ukraine has a giant border with Poland. Russia do not have the troops to close it down.
They don’t have the troops to counter civilian resistance either. I read an article about hostile army : civilian population ratios in recent conflicts. Russia is off by an order of magnitude and Ukraine has a history almost as bad as Afghanistan. Russia really thought they would be greeted as liberators.
> Russia really thought they would be greeted as liberators.
Even if they did, they won't now. And that only means more bad news as then they wouldn't mind a Syria in their backyard as the only thing that's worse than that, in their eyes, is NATO in their backyard.
> ...history almost as bad as Afghanistan.
I don't know what history you are alluding to, but after advent of Islam in Central Asia, Afghanistan was a dominant power in the region, with its rule firmly established in South Asia for a century or two. Afghanistan's recent "bad history" is courtesy of Soviet and American invasions.
If Ukraine's NATO member neighbors aren't sending their own armies to attack Putin or defend Ukraine, why do you think a neighboring country would let the Ukrainian military attack from their soil? I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it's far from clear this is an option.
> Weird that the author mentions international support and the importance of inaccessible bases to Mao, but doesn't mention the ability of the Taliban or Viet Cong to hide in neighboring countries
That is mentioned explicitly:
>> in all of these cases, outside support, particularly the provision of weapons and safe bases, was crucial for the success of the protracted war strategy
I'd wished they would have gone into some of the differences between a protracted was with the U.S. and Russia looks like.
It's seems like it is easier to point out how Afghanistan and Vietnam were able to draw out a long-term protracted war and out-will a democracy that (to a degree) follows the changing will of the people. It's especially easier given the lack of threat to the mainland that can be manufactured.
But what about against a neighboring oligarchy like Russia? How do you out-will the singular authoritarian leader and/or his small group of oligarchs?
Chechnya is the counterpoint here: Russia crushed the local populace completely mercilessly and successfully installed a puppet in the form of the equally merciless Ramzan Kadyrov.
This would be likely the worst possible outcome for Ukraine, but it's sadly feasible. The main difference is that world didn't really care about a bunch of Muslims in an unpronounceable city (Grozny) in what was legally Russian territory, while for Ukraine they do seem willing to stand up a bit more.
The why it was possible in Chechnya is that the rebels have started fighting between themselves; specifically, the (older) Chechen traditionalist / nationalist faction was unhappy with the growing power of the (newer) Salafi fundamentalist faction.
Thus, Kadyrov - except back then it was Ahmad Kadyrov; Ramzan is his son and successor. As the Chief Mufti of Chechnya, he was one of the most powerful figures in the traditionalist camp, and one with the most to lose from Salafism gaining ground (traditional Chechen Islam is Sufi).
Ahmad Kadyrov was all in with the rebels during the first Chechen war, officially declaring it a jihad in his capacity as a mufti. Ramzan boasted of "killing his first Russian at 16" at the time. But by 1999, the Kadyrov clan decided that Salafis are more dangerous than Russians, and switched allegiance.
That is why Russia could install that puppet government relatively easily - because they had considerable local support: not just the Kadyrov clan, but numerous others aligned with it. Ukraine also has many potential collaborators, but mostly in the East, and they are already mostly in the separatist militias. I expect that Russia will recruit from those for its occupation administration.
I doubt Chechnya has the opportunity to be outfitted with a drone air force and TOW/MANPADS for any Ukrainian that wants them. Chechnya involved muslims. Ukrainians are far more European, yes that makes a difference.
Chechnya didn't have direct NATO border nations and supply lines.
I don't believe this to be the normal massive asymmetric difference in firepower if NATO arms the Ukrainians enough. IF they are given sufficient drones, I believe Ukraine could actually have a firepower and battlefield advantage.
Now, I don't know for sure NATO is going to commit to such supply. I think they'll be a bit more reserved, but the more weaponry Russia use, the more NATO will supply Ukraine. NATO may decided to supply just enough to bog down Russia but not hand Ukraine a rapid victory.
I 100% believe NATO could equip Ukraine with enough weapons for certain victory. It now comes down to whether NATO does that.
Turkey is supplying new drones. I bet there are more on the way. Stingers and Polish MANPADS are being supplied.
These are the publicly announced numbers. Those numbers tell me NATO will supply ample weaponry.
Ukraine is a nation of 40,000,000 people. And they appear spoiling for a fight. How many of those would train to fight? 2 million? 5 million? 10 million? If Ukraine gets 1 million volunteers and full arms support from the West, Russia is doomed.
I'll be interested to see if female fighting units start getting news like in Kurdistan. If that happens, Russia is in deep trouble.
> Ukrainians are far more European, yes that makes a difference
There’s also a gigantic diaspora: I had no idea I knew so many Ukrainians. Also the amount of posts on LinkedIn where people point out some portion of their dev team is in Ukraine, and now some Product Manager in Spokane is all in on supporting Ukraine because his front-end guy is in a bunker
My wife is in a similar position here in Oregon. Two of her direct reports are Ukrainian, and one just took a leave of absence that wasn't explicitly "I'm off to defend my homeland," but it wasn't explicitly not that, either.
> I 100% believe NATO could equip Ukraine with enough weapons for certain victory
Also curious to know how many unofficial troops from NATO countries show up. Russia’s neighbours aren’t fans, and bored Slav, Baltic, and Scandi kids who did military service and wanna be heroes showing up in great numbers isn’t outside the realm of possibility
And since Chechnya was mentioned, I recall the war nerd discussing that if there's a conflict with Russia, there is the possibility that Chechens show up.
And he emphasized: They are BADASSES. Apparently they were winning the war with Russia until Russia cut a "Red Wedding" deal with the non-muslim contingent of the Chechen resistance. I believe Chechens were in ISIS/Syria and were basically the most effective soldiers.
As you said this could become a perverse version of ISIS: a call to arms to anyone that wants a piece of Russia, from bored teenagers to other conflict regions.
Maybe it's been sufficiently long that those soldiers have finally aged out, or maybe they haven't.
If Ukraine/NATO really is offering 45000 Euros in bitcoin per Russia soldier that surrenders for POW status, then they would probably provide pay to experienced anti-Russia fighters.
If you are a -stan with issues with Russia, then this is a golden opportunity: a possible "death blow" to Russia militarily and economically, possibly cause regime change, and possibly destroy any appetite for war by oligarchs and people in Russia.
The announced figure the other day was 16000. That's two to three days after the request. It's being connected via reddit[0] and other platforms (which can be found from Reddit).
> NATO may decided to supply just enough to bog down Russia but not hand Ukraine a rapid victory.
If you read a bit more of ACOUP, it's clear that the only path to a "rapid victory" is a set battle against the Russian armed forces, resulting in a decisive defeat for Russia. Even with copious supplies from the west, Ukraine simply couldn't do that. Even if NATO decided to pile in with divisions and air-cover, a rapid victory seems unlikely.
Chechnya population in 1992 was about 800,000. Ukraine has a population of 41,000,000.
Chechnya did not receive military or humanitarian aid, and if it did, it was not as substantial as what Ukraine is receiving now. Ukrainian allies are supplying fuel, food, vehicles, weapons, training, volunteers, humanitarian aid, intelligence, etc.
Russia back then was not sanctioned economically to the extent we see today or kicked out of the banking system. For example, the Soviet Union had banks in the SWIFT system. Now, Russia has been completely isolated: Russian companies cannot do business internationally due to being unable to transfer money or process payments, the value of Russian company stocks has gone to zero, their stock exchange ceased operations (temporarily), their population are doing bank runs, their currency is worth nothing and its economy is expected to collapse soon.
And, unlike Russian equipment where most of the equipment spending has been diverted to corrupt endeavors, Ukrainian military equipment works. Most Russian military equipment now doesn't meet their own specifications.
I agree Ukraine will be a much tougher situation for Russia to conquer and hold onto, but you also exaggerate the extent of their economic pain:
> Now, Russia has been completely isolated: Russian companies cannot do business internationally due to being unable to transfer money or process payments, the value of Russian company stocks has gone to zero, their stock exchange ceased operations (temporarily), their population are doing bank runs, their currency is worth nothing and its economy is expected to collapse soon.
Russian companies can do business with the world outside the "West", notably China, which is already a voracious consumer of Russian raw materials. The stocks that crashed to zero are the ones listed in Western stock exchanges, not the ones in Russia itself. Yes, the currency has halved, but it has done so many, many times before since 1990. So while the economy will certainly take a beating, it's not going to "collapse" entirely.
> Donetsk and Luhansk become fully annexed by Russia.
It's always possible, but Russia started the war by recognizing their independence from Ukraine. This is the kind of thing that would happen after the war concluded ("we held a referendum and they decided to rejoin Russia"); it'd be kind of strange during a war the purpose of which is to grant them independence.
That presupposes that he joins the armed forces; at the moment, he is a non-combatant. If he is shot, that would make him a victim of assassination, not a combat casualty.
> Ukraine negotiates a ceasefire, then joins the European Union.
Wooh! Just join! It takes a while to join the EU. Ask Turkey.
> That said, I sadly doubt Ukraine will survive this ordeal.
Well, not if Russian and Ukrainian diplomats can get it together and see this conflict to a amicable conclusion. Ceasefire has to be top priority for the Ukrainian diplomats (as in, liberally accept conditions that stops the war). Whatever the new arrangement for the two countries look like will also probably take weeks, if not months, to draft up and agree to.
With their risky foreign policy, NATO dared Russia, and they called their bluff on it. It is time to accept that Russia didn't hesitate, and it'd be very prudent to move to limit the damage instead. That is, NATO should refrain from making matters worse by feeding the war, as it were, by arming Ukraine's civilians and sanctioning Russian business interests, among other things.
China isn't siding with NATO, and so far, India hasn't too (it may not, since in the century gone by, Russia has bailed out India in multiple wars against CENTO / US-aided Pakistan).
In sum, this is a dangerous enough situation to escalate any further as the West has done, even if without sending its military.
The EU is an economic union, not a military union. It's not in a position to protect anyone from military threats.
I happen to believe that Russia has over-reached itself rather badly; they aren't administering any of the territory they've got troops in, including the single city they've overrun (it's being administered by the incumbent mayor). Most of their supply columns seem to be bogged down, either by resistance or by mud. The best troops they have are paras in the south, and mercenaries around Kiev. Both groups have so far failed to achieve their objectives. The rest seem to be demoralised conscripts.
You use conscripts and mercenaries as cannon-fodder at the front of your attack; I imagine Russia will bring up better equipped and trained troops once they have suppressed Ukrainian air defences, and can provide close air support.
The European Union is a federation of countries and they do have the equivalent of a department of defense among other institutions.
In Ukraine, once the supply lines are cut, the main cities may fall. Once one city falls, the invaders will move on to other cities and start an avalanche effect.
I can't be bothered to look it up but Ukraine has spent a lot of time and money refurbishing their army after the 2014 crisis (where their army performed poorly against the separatists and Russians).
Kadyrov, a puppet? Russia was badly losing a war, and only managed to achieve peace by siding with one of the feuding clans and paying exorbitant tribute to it.
Kadyrov is totally uncontrollable, makes outrageous criminal statements, yet the Kremlin can't do anything to him because he has a very big private army. Chechen operatives act all over the country and are basically untouchable, kidnapping people even from the police custody without repercussions.
Checnya is less than 2 million people and less than 20k square kilometers.
Ukraine is 20 times larger. It is impossible for the Russian forces to hold by force, the population should agree to it or a puppet regime ia installed that is accepted by the population.
Now holding the east part, that seems reasonably easy, and to me it's clearly the end goal, the rest is just putting yourself inal a strong negotiating stance.
> Now holding the east part, that seems reasonably easy, and to me it's clearly the end goal
Judging from what Putin has actually said, the end-goal is much more expansive than that. I believed that a couple of weeks ago; but recent comments to the effect that Ukraine is a bogus state have changed my mind.
Recognising chunks of Ukraine as "independent republics" and then moving troops in isn't a negotiating tactic. Encircling the capital isn't a negotiating tactic.
Well, Afghanistan was able to defeat the Soviets. I can't think of a guerrilla war since WWII that hasn't been successful.
Edit: some folks have mentioned several, so let me be more specific: guerrilla wars to expel an invading power. This would exclude several attempted Marxist revolutions, but good points made about Chechnya, as well as Northern Ireland and Kenya which failed to expel colonial powers.
The blog post specifically mentions Che Guevara's two failed revolutions as examples. Some more modern examples I can think of would be FARC in Colombia, or Shining Path in Peru, or LTTE in Sri Lanka. "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland would also probably qualify.
> I can't think of a guerrilla war since WWII that hasn't been successful
Because failed ones don't last long enough to be remembered. There was a guerrilla insurgency in Iraq after Saddam's government fell, for example, which folded pretty quick.
Interesting note there. One of the leaders of the early insurrection was Muqtada al-Sadr [1]. There's a lot that's happened in between including him going into exile in Iran, returning, the US droning his house when it was empty to send a message, and much more. But suffice to say the conclusion of this story is that he's now becoming the dominant political force in Iraq. This is particularly relevant today since I think given the chaos around the world, there's a real chance that his name will come to be much more well known.
But the point of this is that unpopular occupation forces trying to impose their will never really works in anything even remotely like the long-run. The only times it can work is when a genuinely popular (and not artificially propped up) leader is able to find common ground with the "enemy". For instance one of the best decisions we made after WW2 was with the leader of Japan, Emperor Hirohito. We actively avoided not only attacking him, but did not try him for war crimes, and let him retain control of the country after the war. He chose to lead Japan in a different direction following their defeat, and everybody came out all the better for it. It's very likely that had we executed him, or installed a puppet, that Japan's relation with the west would be radically different today.
The Emperor of Japan was part of a very old, very well established monarchy; his legitimacy in the office of Monarch far outweighed that of Saddam's in the office of Tyrant.
That's not true--the examples I gave in my sibling comment are all decades-long insurgencies (which is why I can remember them).
In general, the more likely reason is that most people tend to be resolutely incurious about foreign politics. There are, IIRC, 150-ish ongoing armed conflicts in the world right now (and this count is far lower than it was 50 years ago!). I suspect that even reasonably well-read Westerners would struggle to identify even a dozen of them. So people selectively remember the ones that involved the major powers (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam) while completely ignoring ones that don't (so, how about that rebellion in Aceh that failed...).
A civilian elected government has been running Iraq since 2005. US wasn't "pushed out" by insurgents but rather left in a planned gradual transfer of power. If anything, militant groups in the region (like ISIL) actually extended US military presence there by many years.
> I can't think of a guerrilla war since WWII that hasn't been successful.
Modern Western countries haven't had much of a history of successful insurgencies. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were both invaded by the USSR (along with Warsaw Pact allies), and it didn't result in an insurgency. We shouldn't exclude WWII either, since that was the last time many of Western nations were invaded by outside powers. The resistance movements never seriously threatened Axis rule in Western Europe.
Everyone seems to be expecting a large Afghan style insurgency, but I think it's far from certain that it will happen.
The rebellion itself didn't succeed, but it's widely acknowledged that the brutality and violence used to put it down meaningfully contributed to Kenyan independence.
Afghanistan was different enough in that it wasn't a unified Afghan government or population fighting against a Soviet invasion in the same style of aggression of what we're seeing from Russia in Ukraine. A new local Afghan government that had recently sized power in a coup begged the Soviets to help them consolidate power in a civil war in that the Soviets knew would only escalate through international intervention in favor of their allies opposition.
Was it really a defeat for the US? Seems more like the US realized the futility of nation building there and just withdrew, hoping the propped up Afghan government wouldn't just surrender or flee.
It absolutely was a defeat, but the asymmetric numbers get worse every year for a guerilla force fighting a huge war machine. The ratio of deaths for the US versus the Afghans was staggering...the Taliban won, but at a huge cost of life.
I don't know if there's the same cultural will in Ukraine to absorb that kind of pummeling.
Afghanistan won because they literally lived in caves and herded goats; they had nothing to lose but their lives. Modern adversaries to Russia have plenty to lose.
Well, they could also lose their caves and their goats, so it was more than their lives. Let's not underestimate the sophistication and resilience of less economically developed societies.
Afghanistan won because the insurgents could be resupplied and given shelter by Pashtun pakistanis next door and because every part of the country is surrounded by mountains with very few, very easily disrupted mountain passes.
When your reliable supply lines are all flights, costs will seriously mount up.
Plus, they had stingers. They could raid and retreat essentially forever.
I think people miss the point when they try to make the case that Ukraine can win, NOW.
The thing is, if the Ukrainian is really again a Russian regime, and it sounds like they do (if because I'm not them can't speak for them), then Russia has already lost. In time, whatever puppet state that it creates, will fall. America learnt this lesson too many times, most recently in Afghanistan.
The name John Mearsheimer has come up recently and I think one of the key points in his theory is solid: nationalism triumphs everything else, be it America branded liberalism, or communism.
When he says "nationalism", it's actually not what we often think, in his theory it's used in the narrow sense that is the need to determine one's own country's destiny, as opposed to having to obey a foreign power.
"How do you out-will the singular authoritarian leader and/or his small group of oligarchs?"
If the Russian people are unhappy enough, regimes change from within. We can see that with some of the Russian soldiers surrendering.send me to Ukraine? OK, I'll just surrender so I don't have to fight and die for a bogus cause.
As of February 26-28, roughly 50% of the Russian population believed it to be a justified war, according to this poll (which is as independent as it gets in Russia):
I thought it was much more than 50%, had been lead to believe the majority of the Russian people supported this war. As the Russian economy tanks, mothers find out their sons died for a pointless war where civilians are getting killed, and the notion that Russia is being internationally shunned starts to sink in, this number should drop.
Hopefully that makes a difference. I do think it's smart to do everything we can to sanction Russia's rich. Those people have power. They're the ones backing Putin. If they start to feel the pinch, feel that the party is getting ruined because of Putin's mood and his thirst for power, they might do something about it.
I think a lot of Westerners are forgetting what "no free press" means. Your average Russian citizen - who does not have foreign bank accounts etc - may not even find out the details about the sanctions. Their quality of life will suffer, but their TV will feed it into resentment of the West.
In other comments, people are talking about how it's impossible for Russia to control all communication in Ukraine because there's always a way for the "resistance" to exchange information in a way the enemy cannot stop... yet, we also see comments like yours that assume Russians have no way to get information from non-state-sponsored actors, despite them being still mostly connected to the Internet (despite Ukrainian requests to remove them) and a simple VPN would give you full access to any website you may want to visit (and that a lot of international sources are still available in Russia - they just now cut off the BBC, for example, but it had been available the whole time before that).
Both are true. It's very hard to control information exchange to such a degree that determined persons cannot find a way to exchange information. But your average citizen doesn't have any reason to be determined - they consume information from mainstream media, and so long as it isn't obviously off, they aren't going to double-check every bit of it.
Thus, over time, you can gradually create a bubble, lie by lie. I remember the early 00s - freedom of press wasn't gone overnight, they went after the more popular stuff first, and then gradually it became more and more marginalized, with the last vestiges being swiped away only now. But with every independent TV channel or newspaper erased, more and more people ended up in the bubble.
>I do think it's smart to do everything we can to sanction Russia's rich. Those people have power. They're the ones backing Putin.
How? The oligarchs had a head's up regarding the start of the war and no doubt took measures to secure their wealth abroad and even get dual citizenship so the west can't touch them.
There was a TV show where one of such oligarchs came to tears for losing two mansions in Italy, apparently :D so I don't think they are very happy or had time to "fix" the issues, at least not all of them.
>There was a TV show where one of such oligarchs came to tears for losing two mansions in Italy, apparently
Well yes, sure, if we're talking about some dumb corrupt politician who blew his illicit gains frivolously on luxuries, out in the open, the second he landed on piles of cash, then yes, same how we have lottery winners who lose everything in a year and crypto speculators who also were left holding the bag, etc.
My point is that stupid and financially irresponsible people are easily parted with their money, especially if it's from illicit gains and have no knowledge how to launder it or invest it, but I can assure you that the smart money took enough timely precautions to keep their dirty wealth intact.
> If the Russian people are unhappy enough, regimes change from within.
Apart from when the US got the UK and France to kneel and kiss the ring in 1956 with Suez when hav sanctions worked? Grenada? North Korea and Iran have been under crippling sanctions for a long time. It leads to plenty of civilian suffering but there’s not much record of success in forcing governments to do what the sanctioners want.
[Edit] Also, I don't think the Russian people have the power to overthrow their rulers. Russia is quite good at repressing dissent. My guess would be that any leadership change in Russia would come about because military leadership decided it had to happen.
Sanctions got Iran to sign the nuclear deal which was a huge accomplishment (unfortunately later torpedoed by Trump for no reason, but that’s not relevant to the point).
They don’t have to topple the government to be effective.
That said, I do think there’s not enough public recognition of how hostile and damaging sanctions are to innocent normal people.
> unfortunately later torpedoed by Trump for no reason
Not just Trump, but the entire Republican Party and its voter base. And not for no reason: the reason is that it's easier to keep Iran as a public punching bag than try to deal with real and far more difficult strategic problems like North Korea, Russia, or China, all three of which seized the opportunity to pursue their strategic goals while the U.S. was distracted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran took that opportunity, too--the wars provided both the impetus and the time to pursue a nuclear program.
Eh, this isn't exactly true. The three main reasons were that the deal did not have permanent enforcement, Iran is still pursuing ballistic missile development (not covered by the deal), and they provide support to the Hezbollah terrorist group (although this is declining and technically done through a non-government group).
I'm curious, what strategic goals did North Korea, Russia, and China achieve during that time that the US should have dealt with, and what could be have done that we haven't already?
This is exactly the short-sighted mindset that torpedoed the deal. It was explicitly designed to deal with nukes not make Iran behave in general. I think the hawks want to keep the dream of regime change alive. It was a win thrown away for ideological reasons.
"It was a win thrown away for ideological reasons."
That's one opinion.
I think people on both sides are calling the others shortsighted.
For example, what enforcement is there after the 10 year period expires? They weren't forced to forfeit or destroy their Arak facility. This means they could just start using it again.
In my view, the deal could be beneficial, but could also end poorly. The deal doesn't seem to embrace a systems thinking mindset of how all the pieces fit together. The downside is that if we allow the economy to expand and for Iran to accumulate resources during a 10 year period, then reimposing the sanctions will be less impactful (we can only hope that the people would be upset enough to pressure them goverment). In theory, the deal will benefit Iran in the power dynamics, and only benefit us if they decide to follow through in the long term. So the outcome is almost completely at the discretion of Iran, and provides them guaranteed benefit, with no guarantee to the others.
In my general experience, focusing on a single issue, or component of an issue, is the way we come to short sighted solutions. This doesn't mean that we can't do things in an iterative fashion, but we need to have a plan and vision for how that policy will work long term in relation to a variety of other policies and potential events. I don't see that type of strategic thinking with this agreement, and that's even ignoring the terrorist ties.
> If the Russian people are unhappy enough, regimes change from within.
We all hope that, but it's not been effective for north korea and basically everywhere else. Waiting 70 years as for the Soviet does not seem an ideal outcome.
True, but what escalations would be preferable? Nuclear war, protracted ground war with near-peer adversaries, WW3, etc are not ideal courses of action either. Assassinations could be an option, but would likely have to come internally to have the desired affect.
Unfortunately, it seems that Putin is fairly popular in Russia.
Anecdotally, there's been an HN commenter around who claims to be Russian and who buys Putin's line that something had to be done about NATO. Apparently they are not alone:
> But Arina's mother sees it completely differently: "My mom believes everything she sees on TV," Arina says.
> "She believes that it was a necessary measure by Putin because there are weapons surrounding the country...there's a threat from the West, which is why Putin is doing this."
Sanctions may be indiscriminate, but not as indiscriminate nor as final as shelling apartment buildings. There seems to be a significant slice of the Russian population who are entirely too content with the current state of affairs, and who need to be woken up to the ungodly horror being unleashed in their name.
So long as the people with guns have their bellies full, not much will happen in Russia. Just like as much as the world wants North Korea to change and become more free, most of the people enforcing the law can’t imagine living any other way and they’re happy to maintain the status quo.
Maybe a rapid decline in quality of life will be enough to turn things around in Russia. Or maybe just enough people are so used to struggles there that nothing will change. North Koreans went through decades of wars and invasions—the people there haven’t known that life can be better, so they don’t feel a reason to revolt. People in Russia who were alive during pre-Putin era struggles most likely do really see him as lifting the country to a higher level. The possibility for Russia becoming a new NK-style state isn’t completely impossible.
The USSR collapsed over 30 years ago. There's a lot of people who were born after that, or who saw their quality of life improve after it happened. I bet you not many of them want to go back to those days.
The death rate in Russia went way up after the fall of the USSR.[1]
Democracy and a free market did not deliver a better life for the average Russian. It's important to understand this, because it's part of why Russia ended up with an autocrat.
Note that the Russian economy was still organised around a Sovjet planned economy. Just because you change the legal system doesn’t mean you have fixed the economy instantly. For example there were still monotowns, where the whole town was centred around a single factory. These towns are extremely fragile in a market economy.
> who saw their quality of life improve after it happened.
The end of the USSR is widely considered a humanitarian catastrophe because after the economy colapsed, people had no food, no medicines, no order, it was a wild west for several years (my wife was there, she tells me all about it)... where the hell did you "learn" that people's lives improved after the USSR fell??
Access to many viewpoints and sources of information does not mean much, as we see here in the U.S. The idea that we just need to shower Russia with the "right" information to get them to turn against Putin is simply a fantasy. However, it's still worth doing as it will help some.
I don't expect plain rhetoric to change the minds of Putin supporters.
Unfortunately, we have to resort to economic pain, which is quite grim even if it's not having your leg blown off and your home reduced to rubble: businesses ruined, working class populations impoverished, massive uncertainty...
It's also not guaranteed to work, as aggressors and oppressors are adept at wallowing in self-pity and inventing victimization narratives.
What's changed for me is that I've come to believe that the Russian population is a bit more at fault here for buying Putin's bullshit.
Whatever the truth of that ('she believes it was a necessary measure ...'), as someone remarked "Putin has done more for European Defence in three days than anyone's done in 30 years". The reaction of the European countries has been astounding.
Personally, I don't understand this point of view.
Most despotic leaders are not well liked by the people. There are so few examples of the people rising up to depose a despot. I actually can't even think of one that would apply in this situation.
He is probably insulated with layers of old Soviet/KGB true believers/cronies.
Somehow the common person is going to penetrate that? I just don't see it.
We thought that about Belarus, and Syria. All that happens is the regime becomes as brutal and oppressive as necessary to stay in power. The USSR broke up because it was held together by an ideology and political structure which fragmented. Putin doesn’t have or need an ideology, any more than Assad or Lukashenko do.
i've seen this sentiment echoed lately and it seems patently absurd, US presence in iraq and afghanistan was massively unpopular by the middle of the bush administration; it took another 14 years for us to leave.
it seems like foreign policy is still trapped within the fallacies of Giulio Douhet and Curtis Lemay, simply replacing firebombing with starvation.
not to mention that the economic devastation and looting of the 90s was how we ended up with Putin today.
The USSR was far more willing to use extreme violence and collective punishment in Afghanistan than modern Russia seems to be in Ukraine, yet they still ultimately had to pull out and leave their ally to its fate. It's hard for any government to justify to its constituents, whether they be voters or unelected state officials, why so much blood should be shed for the achievement of no real goals.
Also, I'm no military expert but aren't both Afghanistan and Vietnam particularly challenging locations in which to conduct large-form warfare over a protracted period of time?
I don't think Ukraine benefits from the same natural advantage, what with its paved roads that easily grant passage to forty-mile-long Russian convoys
In Vietnam, the majority of the people supported the Viet Minh, otherwise the USA and the dictator of South Vietnam would have allowed the elections for reunification agreed to at the 1954 Geneva Accords to go through as planned.
It took 20 years for both Vietnam and Afghanistan (in the American case) to finally convince foreign occupiers to leave. Putin is very unlikely to still be alive in 20 years, so it's more a matter of convincing whoever or whatever follows that the prospect of even more decades of occupation is not worth it. It's unfortunate it takes that long for regime change to finally get over the sunk cost fallacy of the original invaders, but some sort of change will eventually come. When it happens, we'll get to find out how much Putin's cronies really agree with him versus just being afraid of publicly disagreeing as long as he is still in charge.
Protracted wars (i.e. long slow wars via hit-and-run and guerilla warfare) have been very successful in past to topal the mighty powers by far weaker forces. However, in recent times, I feel they are becoming much less effective. The electronic surveylence and automated targetting makes such warfare much difficult. This is especially the case because, (1) the ruling power will eventually control all communication and remove any free speech, (2) they will constantly find and kill leaders through electronic means which are now amazingly effective.
A much better defensive route is probably mandatory militery training of all able citizens. Eventually, most professional armies are in the size of million at most and only 100,000 or so get deployed. If you have a million citizens with militery training, you are way harder to beat.
How is this non-sense the top comment?
I can't believe we get this level of ignorance on HN.
(1) the ruling power will eventually control all communication and remove any free speech.
You think people can trade child porn online because we allow them too? Anyone building a illegal operation ( i.e. a resistance ) knows that you can make anything carry information. Even IF they find what you are using to transmit it, that doesn't mean they can read whats in it.
(2) they will constantly find and kill leaders through electronic means which are now amazingly effective.
You are overestimating the Russian tech by a mile. And you are overestimating the ability to automate this process by another mile.
The Russians will eventually torture people for information on others. That is exactly how it happens in the past.
A guerilla will be spectacularly effective, even today. But it will be extremely bloody if the Russians decide that is okay.
also the whole "kill leaders" thing is very very overblown, because it assumes that guerillas would necessarily adopt some kind of hierarchy that falls apart once you lop off the head
in recent conflicts this has proven to either not be very effective (islamist groups such as Al Qaeda or ISIS), or actually make the situation worse (killing a Mexican cartel head usually just results in more chaos as factions vie for supremacy and upstarts try to muscle in). and at this point, most guerilla operations of this type usually assume their leader is going to die at some point and prepare accordingly.
The protracted Afghanistan war was "recent times", and likely involved technology that we civilians still don't know exists yet. Creating a larger standing militia is just trying to fight toe-to-toe against a superpower with more power, which still won't be enough to win in a quick decision.
If anything, utilization of improved surveillance should be prioritized more by the smaller force, to be more effective.
US intention was not to occupy and control the county. It is very different situation. If invader wants to control the county, profits massively from all the resources and don't care about human lives there then no amount of protracted war is going to push them out.
Like what? After a war everything is bombed, destroyed or polluted. Iraq didnt even have running water. Economy was in ruins. Its not the dark ages any more, microchips are more valuable than gold and even oil needs serious infrastructure.
Every war is extremely expensive - for the amount if money spent in iraq US could have bought every homeless person a penthouse. On the moon.
The expensive part of modern warfare is precision. Abandon one's soul, dial up the yield and razing a nation becomes quick work. Ancient armies wiped out civilizations with less firepower than a CVN. They were simply unconcerned with being brutal.
Well, one actual way to actually ‘win’ a guerilla war would be a war of complete
extermination, which for everyone’s sake I hope he would not only not consider, but his soldiers would not be willing to execute.
It’s only thing to pull the string on an artillery piece you think is nominally pointed at an enemy, it’s another to round up men, women, and children and machine gun them into a ditch over and over - especially when you’re stated goal is ‘denazification’.
Russian army hardly counts as modern though. They don't have nearly enough precision munition (that's why we haven't seen the overwhelming standoff attacks destroying Ukrainian bases for a week before the invasion that Americans would do, and that's also why Russia still doesn't control the airspace completely).
As for control of all communication - it's impossible to control country of 45 million people with 150 000 soldiers. Or 250 000 soldiers for that matter. Russia haven't even entered western (mountainous) Ukraine yet, and they probably won't try much. So media can be broadcasted from there, there's also internet. It won't be easy.
As for the number of soldiers - the armies actually fighting are similar in size. Russia has advantage in hardware (especially unguided artillery and air force), not in soldiers.
If you give the entire occupied populace military training, don't you basically train the resistance yourself? I think any occupying power will be paranoid enough about that (and for good reason) to not do that.
The parent is saying that the government of the country fearing an invasion should train its population, so that when the invasion happens they will greatly outnumber the invading army and can defeat them, rather than fighting a protracted guerrilla war.
You need to be an Afghanistan or a Taklamakan or a Vietnam.. You can't just do guerilla warfare in Belgium, although the Belges should theoretically be more adept at using their canals than an Invading German or Frenchman!
Right now, with the American experience in Afghanistan in Vietnam in our minds, we have this idea that a great power cannot win long term in a foreign country.
However, history is full of examples where this did not happen:
Examples include:
* The European conquest of the Americas (especially North America)
* The Boer War (British Empire vs Afrikaaners)
* Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul
* Mughal Conquest of (northern) India
* British Raj (and Sepoy Rebellion)
* US War in the Philippines
* Roman Conquest of Asia Minor
* Turkish Conquest of Asia Minor from Byzantine Empire
* Anglo Saxon Conquest of England
Basically, if a power is both more powerful militarily, can get their supply lines correct, and has the political will to see it through for the long term, it can be done.
To me it seems the problem with Afghanistan in particular was the definition of winning.
Creating a self sustaining Democracy? Hell no crazy that was ever the goal.
But completely obliterating terrorists threats, without worrying about damage or creating a self governed country? i think that could have been achieved. Though at pretty big humanitarian consequences.
Which it seems like Russia doesn't care much about since the first definition of winning seems to have failed already.
They were still trying to install a regime against the people's will.
And the Soviet army at that time (which judging by ukraine was maybe better than Russia now despite worse tech?) doesn't even come close to the unimaginably grossly powerful weapons & military we have in the US (just using colorful language, my personal belief is on the whole beneficial even though causes plenty of pain and suffering).
Most if not all of the examples you mention, the conquering nation pacified the conquered essentially with genocide. Take, for example, Caesar conquering Gaul [1]:
> The term "Celtic Holocaust" was popularized by the podcaster Dan Carlin in a 2017 podcast, in which he made the case that the Roman Republic's actions during the Gallic Wars constituted a genocide. Of the 3,000,000 Celts who inhabited ancient Gaul, one million of them were massacred, while another million were enslaved; this signifies that Gaul lost two-thirds of its population in a case of bellum romanum ("war in the style of the Romans", or total war).
In fact pretty much any Roman conquest involved a lot of slaughter and enslaving a large portion of th eremaining able population.
Another example: the Mongols [2]:
> Ancient sources described Genghis Khan's conquests as wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in certain geographical regions, causing great demographic changes in Asia. According to the works of the Iranian historian Rashid al-Din (1247–1318), the Mongols killed more than 700,000 people in Merv and more than 1,000,000 in Nishapur. The total population of Persia may have dropped from 2,500,000 to 250,000 as a result of mass extermination and famine.
We don’t really know what Russias strategy is here. They could be hitting the north near Kyiv as a primary distraction to build a land bridge to Crimea and hold on to the east.
They know at some point a treaty will be signed so it’s whatever they can compromise is the end goal. This would only take a few months at most if that’s all they care about (that and punishing western movement as a side gain).
> We don’t really know what Russias strategy is here. They could be hitting the north near Kyiv as a primary distraction to build a land bridge to Crimea and hold on to the east.
I agree, this whole belief that they are fixing history (from a russian perspective) and forcing Ukraine to be Russian again seems to be a bit of a pretext.
They have huge reserves of Oil and Gas in Crimea, this would have guaranteed many more years of Gazprom cash cow for Russia. The problem is Crimea does not have it's own water supply it depends on mainland Ukraine, this is why I think they first focused on securing Cherson and Marioepol.
This is probably the part they want to keep after negotiations, they just miscalculated expecting that the international response would have a been a shoulder shrug similar to South Ossetia in the Georgian war of 2008.
I think you are mistaken to believe, a country as natural-resourceful as Russia is in Ukraine for the purpose of natural resources.
For Russia it is about protection.
If say Russia would be able to permanently place "security-troops" on the east-bank of the Denjepr it would have reduced its "Ukranian flank" by 50% in length. If the west remains NATO-free, perfect from their standpoint.
From looking at former election results, the eastern bank as well as the southern steppe, would be relatively safe for permamently stationed Russian troops.
Actually, we do know Russia's (or at least Putin's) strategic aims: to seize all of Ukraine. His captive news agencies accidentally published them in a pre-planned "victory" editorial last Sunday that was not-swiftly-enough taken down:
I’ve read too many John Le Carré books to believe Russian ex-KGB strategy here would be so blunt and simple as swapping out some political leaders. There has to be a midgame here besides attempting to level a few major cities (Syrian cities were absolutely smashed and their state held on). But like I said we don’t really know for sure, especially because some state controlled media did something like leak convenient information.
Why would Russia who lost in Afghanistan and defended Syria’s regime expect to hold something like Kyiv or Kharkov long term via regime change? I really don’t see that happening and I haven’t seen one good explanation from anyone about how they would do that. Syria is the example people are missing not some tiny weak state like Chechnya.
The west had tons of local support in Syria but Russia just had to prop up the state and local military long enough to ‘win’ that war. That’s all the west has to do to ‘win’ in Ukraine.
To me it only makes logical sense for Russia to be feigning a full state takeover like a chess match, with a dual goal of just maintaining Baltic coast and punishing Ukrainians for Euromadien. Otherwise they are crazy and dumb, which they are regardless given their now near total economic isolation, but there has to be some logic here beyond some shortsighted George Bush style ‘regime change’ strategy.
In Syria, the Russians were as you said propping up the gov't that was already in place. In Ukraine, they will have to hold onto control long enough to remove the current gov't so they can install the crony/puppet gov't. Once that's in place and the peoples are placated enough to accept the regime, they can pull back. Of course, the threat of coming back to settle any disagreements would be ever present.
Hah just like Afghanistan then? What are the chances the Ukrainian people accept a new puppet regime in say the next 10-15 years while this violation is still fresh in their minds?
Long article, but the first part reads like the Ukraine playbook:
* Cede territory early and retreat to defensible positions
* Let the enemy rush in and attack their stretched supply lines from the flanks
* Let the people know you are still fighting and not defeated
* Prepare the people to fight a long guerrilla war
* When the enemy spreads out to take too much territory too quickly, counter attack
I really don't understand the Russian military strategy. Their strategy of taking slivers of territory seemed to be working in Georgia and Crimea. They could have taken Donetsk and Luhansk with little effort and much less worldwide condemnation. Then started the bribery, disinfo, threats, "security" offer process all over again in the next territory.
But driving full force to Kyiv seems like exactly what a much weaker army would want you to do.
They have literally not driven full force into kiev though. Most of the action is in Crimea and the South Even right now and they have been pretty successful on that front, advancing very quickly instead of getting bogged down in cities. I'm not sure where the impression that they are focusing on kyiv comes from considering the past couple of days, and the huge pincer movements they have been orchestrating in the Crimea front.
I thought the 40km long column was headed to Kyiv.
Also, I thought they staged troops in Belarus and started one portion of the invasion from there because it was closest to Kyiv.
I know they’re invading from all directions, but there’s a symbolism to Kyiv as Ukraine’s capital and I read somewhere that Russia wanted to capture it with the intent of demoralizing Ukrainians.
Agreed that it will be an objective if only because of it's symbolism but the crux of the attack really seems focused on a southern push while they basically just encircle the cities instead of fighting urban battles. Those are always insanely costly, no matter how well prepared the attack is. Even the US army had an incredibly tough time in Fallujah, and they are the best army in the world. The symbolism is a double edged sword since ukrainians will probably defend it very bitterly especially if they go straight for the city instead of besieging it. So it just makes sense imo that kiev isnt the main focus.
They might even want to cut the country in half, but at any rate they have been advancing really swiftly from Crimea. IIRC they are still advancing there faster than the Americans were advancing in Iraq back in 2003.
If one wanted to take the south of Ukraine it’d make a lot of sense to keep their armies distracted on the north end. Just sit outside the cities and shell them while the primary operations hit the softer coastal area. Even Odessa might be ignored, who knows.
> I really don't understand the Russian military strategy.
I'm the opposite, I really don't understand what people aren't seeing regarding the Russian strategy. People seem to think the Ukraine invasion should look exactly like the Iraq invasion and be over within 2 weeks with Putin in front of a "Mission Accomplished" sign.
We all know that wouldn't accomplish anything. The Ukrainian population would still resist Russian government whether or not Kyiv falls quickly and Zelenskyy is ousted. The Euromaidan forces that ousted the last Russian puppet will still be there. While you could argue Iraq was a boondoogle because removing Saddam left a giant power vacuum, arguably the removal of Zelenskyy wouldn't change anything about Ukraine.
This isn't the Iraq playbook. This is the Chechnya playbook. And that playbook is much more horrifying.
Contrary to Vietnam and Afghanistan, Russia has the ability to take large swathes of territory early, absorb it, and start moving Russians into that territory while continuously sieging major cities.
The Ukrainians will look bad if they attack the Russian citizens that are now occupying them, and the Russian army doesn’t need to convince the local population to join them but instead they can encourage them to evacuate and give them safe passage into the EU.
Eventually the country will be more and more Russian and most of the world will forget about the Ukrainians. We’re just in the initial “rough” stages where it’s the new news item and countries not actually involved in the conflict aren’t bored yet. Once they reach a stable position, they can just wait them out while occupying the majority of the country.
I'm skeptical that long term ethnic displacement is Putin's endgame. The Chechnya stratagem seems more likely — savage pacification followed by installation of a Kremlin-friendly regime.
> [...] Russia installed a pro-Russian Chechen regime. In 2003, a referendum was held on a constitution that reintegrated Chechnya within Russia but provided limited autonomy. According to the Chechen government, the referendum passed with 95.5% of the votes and almost 80% turnout. The Economist was skeptical of the results, arguing that "few outside the Kremlin regard the referendum as fair".
Regime change by the country that successfully defended Syria’s regime? The Russians military strategists should know better than anyone how difficult that can be. Even with western backing.
Ukraine has 45M people. To flip it from being a Ukrainian majority to a Russian majority state wouldn’t that mean migrating 10-20M Ukrainians out and 10-20M Russians in? That sounds like a huge operation.
Otherwise you have a South Africa situation where a minority rules over a majority and it’s just a matter of time before the majority takes back power.
> Russia has the ability to take large swathes of territory early, absorb it, and start moving Russians into that territory while continuously sieging major cities.
Russia's globalized economy has been snubbed, but russia is perfectly capable of deeding prime farmland to existing successful russian farmers. When it comes to tractors and fuel, russia has these in spades
> According to official figures, in 1979 over 30% of the population of Soviet Chechnya were ethnic Russians. By 1989 the figure had fallen, although not by much – they still made up 25% of the population. In 2002, however, less than four percent of residents were Russian, and by 2010 Chechnya was losing its Russian population faster than any other North Caucasus republic. It was, effectively, a mono-ethnic member of the Russian Federation.
A lot of post soviet bloc countries have lost double-digit percentages of their population to emigration over the last thirty years, so it's hard to draw any conclusions here, is my guess.
Given the history of other things turned over to other people in Putin's rule of Russia, I suspect Putin would be more likely to turn land over to successfully supportive farmers than successful farmers, which is what Zimbabwe did.
Ukraine doesn't really have the firepower to hit back. All territories it loses are really hard to recover. Russia is also sprinting to take the Dniepr river which would make any counter-attack nearly impossible.
They are also going for encirclement of areas they can't capture east of the river, breaking out of a modern siege is also really hard.
Russian strategy would be to encircle the cities and Ukrainian forces, demand surrender or shell otherwise.
I haven't read the article yet, but couldn't help but notice that that playbook should probably look really familiar to Russia. It's how the Soviet Union beat Nazi Germany.
Everyone seems to be assuming that Putin intends to annex Ukraine in the short term. But as events have unfolded, this will likely be impossible without incurring huge costs on Russia. However that doesn't mean that Putin can't settle for lesser concessions by Ukraine, like a complete demilitarization and a commitment not to join EU/NATO, combined with the loss of the two small republics. That would still be a huge win for Putin without the catastrophic cost of an occupation. Ukraine "wins" by not being reduced to rubble and have half of its population displaced in the "protracted war" that every armchair geopolitician is advocating for, undoubtedly facilitated by the fact that their armchairs are not located in Ukraine. It seems that every other generation needs to learn again how hard war sucks. This is not Game of Thrones.
Ukrainians themself are passionate about not surrendering and the message has been the same from their government, too. This war of attrition cannot possibly benefit Ukraine. I hope the diplomats from both sides of the table reach a comprise, soon, at least before Kyiv turns into Baghdad.
One million Ukrainians have already fled the country. They are now in a foreign country, they know nobody and everything they own is in one backpack. If this war goes on the odds are that they will never see their home again. Does their vote on the war count too?
> complete demilitarization and a commitment not to join EU/NATO
These are equivalent to "annexation in a few months" and Ukraine knows it. If they accept those terms, they know they lost and are accepting annexation, but keeping face publically.
Will it be a lasting peace, though? Doesn't demilitarization mean that if another "people's republic" appears, let's say near Transnistria, Ukraine will be unable to do anything about it?
If they go for demilitarization and not joining the EU, the rest of Ukraine will just get annexed a few years later when Russia has regrouped. But perhaps that's all they can hope for.
“A complete demilitarization and a commitment not to join EU/NATO“
For the common man and woman in Ukraine this is the best scenario for a quick exit from this senseless war. Too bad politicians (and armchair geopoliticians) do not see it.
Demilitarization and not being a NATO member means that the next time Russia gets imperialistic cravings, Ukraine will be utterly helpless and defenseless, with zero bargaining power. And judging by Russia's current behavior, that's a "when", not an "if".
Not seventy years ago Russia was almost destroyed by the West, with the lost of forty million lives. For Russia the danger comes from the West and the fact that we the West think ourselves to be all enlightened doesn't change that. I don't want to justify Russia's behavior in any way, but imagine if you will, for one second, that Russia starts arming one of the sides in the Mexican Drug War with high-tech weaponry and tries to convince the Mexican government to join some Warsaw pact alliance. The USA would not tolerate this for one day. Russia has tolerated this for over a decade. Since 2004 the West has been doing whatever the fuck they want in Eastern Europe and expected Russia to just take it on the chin. Now Russia has reacted and there was much astonishment. The West have been wiping their feet on a basic tenet of geopolitics, namely that the regional superpower calls the shots within their sphere of influence. Now the results are in and guess what? The West is STILL not taking this seriously, further escalating the conflict by arming Ukraine to the teeth. President Biden laughing at the idea of nuclear war like Dr. Hibbert from the Simpsons. Clown world is truly here.
> Not seventy years ago Russia was almost destroyed by the West, with the lost of forty million lives.
No Western country wants to invade Russia, and hasn't wanted to for 30 years at the least. There's nothing to gain, it would be much too costly in terms of money, resources, and human lives. Russia is much more useful as a trading partner – Germany alone, for example, imports more than 50% of its natural gas from Russia.
Ironically, Russia is doing its best to destroy this mutually beneficial partnership, in favor of building protection against a completely imaginary threat.
> Since 2004 the West has been doing whatever the fuck they want in Eastern Europe and expected Russia to just take it on the chin. Now Russia has reacted and there was much astonishment. The West have been wiping their feet on a basic tenet of geopolitics, namely that the regional superpower calls the shots within their sphere of influence.
That describes imperialist behavior down to a T. "Their sphere of influence"?! Come on. Ukraine is a sovereign country. If they want to join NATO (a purely defense alliance, by the way), then that's their business.
> It's a purely defensive alliance that, somehow, keeps expanding to the East.
It keeps expanding, because countries further east wants protection from Russia aggression too. There is nothing contra intuitive or shocking about it. Presence of large aggressor in the region makes other countries want to enter the aliance. Duh.
Russia's neighbours wanted to join NATO because they were afraid of being invaded by Russia (again) --- and Putin's invasion of Ukraine shows they were exactly right to be thus afraid.
Russia's neighbors can ask all they want, it's up to NATO to decide whether this expansion is desirable and will increase stability. It will not. NATO expanding right to Russia's border is not going to be experienced as some neutral act by Russia.
It was Nazi Germany, not “the West”, that invaded the USSR. The West, insofar as that means anything, was fighting on the other side - alone for 2 years, while the USSR had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
The rest of your analogy is also weak. We haven’t armed one side in a drug war (eh?) NATO membership has not even been realistically on the table. As for the West “doing whatever they want”, can you give some examples? My impression was that eastern European countries were keen to join the EU, not that this was imposed on them. And once in, they have very much forged their own path, often to the great discomfort of Western Europeans (eg in Hungary, Poland).
> It was Nazi Germany, not “the West”, that invaded the USSR.
Ok and if you look at the last 30 years, which "side" has been to most aggressive in attacking and subjugating foreign nations? "Oh but when we do it, it's for good reasons." Then the West is genuinely surprised that other blocs like South America or the Mid East are not jumping on the great anti-Russia train by default. What is wrong with those people?
Of course we all condemn Russia's aggression. I condemn Russia's aggression. Condemning costs nothing. But those other countries are not resorting to extremely harsh economic measures against Russia, nor are they sending weapons to Ukraine.
Where do you see genuine surprise? Like, you made that up.
However, I see a lot of ingenuine surprise over, like, right-next country accepting refugees from country just across the border. The very same people who would cry hypocrisy of the refugees were not accepted (you demand surrounding countries in other conflicts to accept refugees).
I see a lot of blaming America for Russian actions, in Ukraine and of Russian actions in Syria too.
I think Putin is getting ahead. It is plain Russia made a half assed attempt to take Ukraine, hence the relatively mild events so far. They will just raze the whole country if they have to, and fearsome modern weapons allow this without getting mud on your boots. This is a credible threat (see Grozny) and he is peddling this to World leaders.
There seem to be two choices in my simplistic view. One is to continue current, which is ‘encouraging’ Ukraine, applying sanctions and largely letting Putin do what he wants, as well as really bending over to broker a peace deal grossly advantageous to Russia. The second choice is to be more aggressive, including military escalation (although not a direct conflict) and turning the screw as far as it will go with weaponising the global economy (this would involve deals with China and India so they don’t help Russia, and taking a lot of collateral damage). In the latter case, the idea will be that with an increasingly mad and aggressive and isolated leader, who frequently threatens what amounts to killing everyone in the world, Putin will be deposed. Hardly guaranteed, unless there is credible knowledge that someone is ready and has the necessary support to oust Putin.
Maybe the first option is better, considering the existential threats. But maybe this is just deferring the problem to next time.
You might be underestimating the power of the unprecedented economic and social sanctions the world has unleashed. They might force Russia to negotiate a more reasonable settlement. Notice that Lukoil has already come out against the war. Let’s hope that’s a straw in the wind.
You can see a lot of parallel with the current Ukraine situation.
Especially the first QA
Question: Under what conditions do you think China can defeat and destroy the forces of Japan?
Answer: Three conditions are required: first, the establishment of an anti-Japanese united front in China; second, the formation of an international anti-Japanese united front; third, the rise of the revolutionary movement of the people in Japan and the Japanese colonies. From the standpoint of the Chinese people, the unity of the people of China is the most important of the three conditions.
Condition 2 is true right now, while I am not sure about condition 1 in Eastern Ukraine and condition 3 will be true if Russian citizen fed up with all the sanctions I guess.
LoL. Mao was a narcissist mass murder. His “interview” with westerners was just him playing with “useful idiots.” If you read Chinese, his comrades stated he was so happy he could not sleep when he heard Japanese invasion.
It seems if you invade AND the population supports the local guerillas rather than you, then you have three options.
1. Kill everyone.
2. Convince everyone. Or enough to support you instead so that guerillas fizzle out or are actively outed by local population.
3. Leave.
Any other options?
What does 2. look like in a warzone? I mean, the West was in Afghanistan for 20 years and as a civilian many miles away I couldn't say I saw 2. reported on.
Palestine scenario (permanent military deployment, apartheid, settlements). The population ratio of Russia vs Ukraine is not that far off from Israel vs Palestine...
It's worth replying specifically to highlight how wrong the original comment is, but the evidence that was cited by the Russian government to justify their invasion was clearly fabricated.
For instance, an alleged car bombing in Donetsk right before the invasion was staged using cadavers,[1] and a video used to claim that Ukrainian troops were moving aggressively into separatist territory was filmed far from its purported location.[2]
If Russia was so sure that Ukraine was committing these atrocities, they wouldn't need to rely on fake videos to justify attacking.
You know if you are talking about lies would be great to provide some credible references
Otherwise the comment is pretty bleak and matches well Putin’s propaganda.
Context: I have relatives in that area
There is absolutely no justification for Putin's war here. None. But Putin can be wrong AND the US can be wrong AND Ukraine can be ill-prepared all at the same time. These aren't muttually exclusive.
Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, here's what should've happened:
1. The US should've formally and explicitly abandoned the effort to bring Ukraine into NATO;
2. Ukraine should've adopted a policy of official neutrality;
3. Ukraine should've abandoned efforts against minority language rights, a particularly sensitive issue with primarily-Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine;
4. Ukraine should've restructured its military into a defensive army, which is to say that it should be largely decentralized and trained in insurgency tactics. The idea of this is to make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from trying. This is essentially the Swiss model [1]. This would mean acquiring appropriate weapons: small arms, mobile artillery, Stringer missiles, that sort of thing. An advantage of this is that a defensive army is relatively cheap; and
5. Just like Russia performed military exercises every year on Ukraine's borders (as an aside, the media never mentioned that Russia in fact did this every 12-15 months for years), Ukraine should've planned for a Russian invasion with their own exercises. This means training for and practicing things taking out key bridges;
6. Ukraine should've fortified chokepoints that Russia could use to invade. This would particularly include the narrow land bridge to Crimea.
This is part of the sheer recklessness of US foreign policy as we egged Ukraine on with empty promises of standing behind them when there was absolutely no possibility we'd put boots on the ground in the case of a Russian invasion. We didn't start the fire but we sure left a lot of fuel lying around. And Ukraine is paying a bloody price.
The best thing Ukraine could've done post-annexation is brought in Hezbollah as consultants on military organization and insurgency tactics. And no, I'm not even joking when I say that.
> 4. Ukraine should've restructured its military into a defensive army, which is to say that it should be largely decentralized and trained in insurgency tactics. The idea of this is to make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from trying. This is essentially the Swiss model. This would mean acquiring appropriate weapons: small arms, mobile artillery, Stringer missiles, that sort of thing;
The Swiss model worked because the mountains act as both a defensive fortification and because Switzerland is of limited strategic value (low benefit, high cost). An effective defensive model for a nation like Ukraine would be Israel. Nuclear weapons to ensure escalation dominance. A strong air force with the ability delete any air or ground forces preemptively before they even cross the border. A heavy investment in strategic level area denial and air defense: cruise missiles, missile shields, patriot missile batteries. You want to maximize the range to ensure that an invader has no areas of safety.
An insurgency with small arms and MANPADs can be effective but only because the insurgents are willing to pay a much higher cost than the invaders. Soldiers in insurgencies expect to die at a ratio of 10:1 and that is considered winning. Insurgencies are what you do when your conventional strategy fails. Starting an insurgency is choosing a horrific sacrifice for your nation. Insurgencies don't prevent invaders from destroying your cities, from killing your family and burning everything of value. Even with that terrible cost many insurgencies still fail.
You know what is better? Advanced tanks and attack helicopters operating under SAM umbrellas that allow you to win a conventional war at your borders. The best deterrent is conventional military dominance backed up by the US nuclear arsenal. The easiest and cheapest way to achieve that is NATO membership. This war is a result of Ukraine not being given NATO membership.
> The Swiss model worked because the mountains act as both a defensive fortification
I've seen this claim a lot. IMHO it's overblown. Switzerland is mountainous in parts. Here's a topographical map [1]. You'll see that it has a lot of flat parts. The border between Geneva and France isn't a natural border of any kind. Also looking a population map [2] and you'll see those mountainous areas are largely uninhabited.
But Ukraine isn't free from geography either. It has a giant river running through the middle of it.
What an insurgency needs to bloody an invader isn't mountains, it's cover. Cities are a given here. Urban warfare is a nightmare for invaders. And forests have played a significant role in warfare since ancient times.
> A strong air force
Ukraine cannot possibly hope to have an air force to defeat Russia's. Airplanes are expensive. Infrastructure such as fuel tanks, airports and landing strips are easy to bomb. You know what's cheap and effective? Anti-aircraft weapons and SAMs (particularly mobile SAMs), the kind of thing Russia can't effectively order air strikes or artillery fire against like they can against fixed installations.
> Insurgencies are what you do when your conventional strategy fails.
If you're facing Russia, your conventional strategy is going to fail. As good as it is that Ukraine has denied Russia thier wildlly optimistic quick victory and that Russia has suffered casulaties likely in the thousands, we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing Ukraine can defeat the Russian Army conventionally.
> The easiest and cheapest way to achieve that is NATO membership.
That's the quickest way to World War Three.
One shocking thing to me about this this whole crisis (beyond the actual invasion of course) is how many Ameribrained people there even on HN. The US would never accept Chinese or Russian military bases in Canada or Mexico (and nearly started a nuclear war about Russian missiles in Cuba) but can't see how Russia might have the exact same strategic concerns. Or people who raise the idea of self-determination but have no answer as to why that shouldn't apply to Palestine or Cyrpus. Or they cannot conceive of a world where another country doesn't view the US as benign even though that's clearly how China, Russia, the Middle East and possibly even India at this point see the US.
It just goes to show how pervasive American exceptionalism is.
The idea that Canada or Mexico would want Russian or Chinese bases is so counterfactual it doesn't make sense at all. The USA doesn't interfere in Mexican elections. Some of Mexico's governments are quite anti-American. None of them are crazy enough to want to become a satellite of Russia or China.
Cuba's an interesting case. Note that the USA didn't invade and subjugate Cuba. (There was the Bay of Pigs, but that wasn't the US military and isn't comparable to Russia in Ukraine.) And NATO hasn't positioned nukes in the newer NATO members.
The argument that Ukrainians can't have self-determination because, say, some parts of Cyprus don't have it, is simply ludicrous.
> The idea that Canada or Mexico would want Russian or Chinese bases is so counterfactual it doesn't make sense at all.
So this is the Ameribrain in action. I've asked this same question many times and this is one of the common responses: not to answer the question but to reject it as being so ridiculous it's not worth discussing. In doing so, such responders admit the obvious: the US would never accept it.
But this isn't just theory. We have direct historical precedent in Cuba where the US almost started World War Three over the USSR doing the exact same thing the US had already done in Turkey.
> The USA doesn't interfere in Mexican elections.
This is so laughably untrue. The US has long influenced Mexico's elections and domestic policy over things like the drug trade, foreign aid and such.
Beyond elections, Texas used to be part of Mexico.
> We have direct historical precedent in Cuba where the US almost started World War Three over the USSR doing the exact same thing the US had already done in Turkey.
Yet the US did not invade Cuba and the US choose a blockade over an invasion during the Cuba missile crisis. Even with the bay of pigs the US choose against direct military intervention and merely armed and supported Cuban rebels. This is direct contradiction of your claim.
This war has nothing to do with bases and everything to do with Putin's dream of a slavic ethno-nationalist super state. The Russia government has said as much, as had Putin in the past. Note that Ukraine doesn't even have US bases on its territory and was not even going have bases for the foreseeable future. Your argument here has no legs to stand on.
> This is so laughably untrue. The US has long influenced Mexico's elections and domestic policy over things like the drug trade, foreign aid and such.
You are moving the goal posts. Not one saying the US does not use diplomacy and soft power to attempt to influence the policies of other nations. We are talking about a war of aggression waged against a democracy by means of total war including the indiscriminate shelling of cities and population centers. Total war is very different from Russia merely supporting a coup, backing a candidate in an election, or arming rebel forces.
Saying "What about the US" is not the trump card you think it is. Attempting to wash away the blood Russia is spilling by saying the US would do that same is admitting Russia's guilt. Terrible crimes like this are not excused because someone else did them as well. Not one would accept the murder defense that sure Alice murdered Bob, but Eve also murdered Carol. If the US launched a total war against Mexico because Mexico was going to sign an economic agreement with China or offered a China a military base, I, and I suspect you as well, would be strongly against such a war.
Finally what the US does or does not do is not at issue here because Russia is not invading the US, Russia is invading Ukraine! Would Ukraine invade Belarus if Belarus had Russian military bases? No, because Belarus has Russian bases and Ukraine did not invade Belarus.
> So this is the Ameribrain in action.
Using insulting terminology like this both harms your ability to communicate your argument and harms this forum. Please don't do that here.
> Switzerland is mountainous in parts. Here's a topographical map [1].
I looked at your map and I am aware of the alps. Even a small amount of mountains can present serious problems for a military invasion and we are talking about the Swiss Alps. That is, one of the most impassable geographic boundaries in Europe. I am surprised I have to say this, the Swiss Alps are a massive defensive benefit to Switzerland.
> Also looking a population map [2] and you'll see those mountainous areas are largely uninhabited.
I think you have misunderstood the benefit of mountains to Swiss defense. People don't need to live in the mountains. Rather the mountains provide bottlenecks and choke points that prevent an attacker from leveraging their numerical advantage. Mountain roads often force the use of narrow columns which are vulnerable to ambush or barricades. Mountains provide excellent vantage points to shell roads and bottlenecks. Mountains provide some protection against airpower.
That that being said, Switzerland is not impossible to invade. During the early stages of a conflict like WW2 the cost of invasion is greater than the benefit, but it Germany had defeated the Soviet Union a successful Swiss invasion would be likely. Moving troops through Switzerland is slow so taking it to open a second front in the early stages of a war against say France doesn't provide much benefit.
> The border between Geneva and France isn't a natural border of any kind.
I agree Geneva which is only 4 miles from France and it does not have much geographic protection. If Switzerland is attacked by the French, they will capture Geneva. That doesn't mean that mountains do not provide Switzerland a massive defensive benefit especially to threats from the North or East.
> The US would never accept Chinese or Russian military bases in Canada or Mexico (and nearly started a nuclear war about Russian missiles in Cuba) but can't see how Russia might have the exact same strategic concerns.
Europe accepts Kaliningrad a Russian military base on occupied German land. The US has yet to invade Cuba.
The purpose of the invasion Ukraine as stated by the Russian government in a victory statement they accidentally published is not mostly not about NATO, if anything the invasion of Ukraine increases NATOs power. Rather the invasion is about the creation of Slavic ethno-nationalist super state [0]. The Russian government statement says in part:
"Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors" [0]
It goes on to say that NATO is only a secondary concern, the primary concern is one of blood and soil:
"Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the insane versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." [0]
This article aligns which many of the things which Putin has been saying for years so it seems that it credibly represents the reasons for the invasion in Putin's mind. Putin is chasing an imperial dream. He wants glory for himself and a legacy.
National identity don't really matter. In past, entire south american continent was changed to Western outlook and Christianity. The playbook is very simply for this: change school curriculum, medium of instruction, replace religious leaders, control media outlets, full on propoganda, remove dissendent and promote people who complies. If you don't care about human lives, you can change national identity within 3-4 generations.
> After first contacts with Europeans and Africans, some believe that the death of 90–95% of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. It is suspected that smallpox was the chief culprit and responsible for killing nearly all of the native inhabitants of the Americas.
I had read an account of someone from a tribe conquered by Rome which outlined exactly this. He complained about how his kids were educated in the Roman way, refused to speak the old language, identified with the new place, etc.
I saw a lot of common bits to how immigrant integration as I experienced in the US (granted, immigration usually implies consent where being conquered doesn't): the cultural divide between children and parents, new national identities, etc.
If you harass everyone all the time, you’ll have the entire population taking up arms. Russia doesn’t have enough soldiers or drones to even attempt to prosecute that type of war.
The weak benefit from a victory, and which side wins usually makes a lot of difference for them.
Also, the weak just do not command a lot of wealth and might. It's not that they are stupid or indifferent; they can be incessant, ultimately effecting serious changes against the will of the mighty.
Ask the "weak", aka the general population in Ukraine, who they'd rather pay taxes to – their own elected government or Putin – and you'll get a pretty decisive answer. Saying the war doesn't make a difference for them is idiotic. These aren't serfdoms in the middle ages but people who have chosen to live in a democracy.
I don’t know. The median income in Russia is way higher than the median income in Ukraine. Putin is old, he’ll be gone soon. Poor people are better off without a war . they wouldn’t vote for war over over annexation. they might prefer to be annexed by eu or the us.
