Several reasons why it will fail.
It really is astounding how poorly the Russian military has performed.
33 thoughts on “Russia’s Offensive”
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Several reasons why it will fail.
It really is astounding how poorly the Russian military has performed.
Comments are closed.
It won’t fail. There, I said it.
How are you defining success?
I would think success would look like the RF rolling up the UA ground forces combined with RF domination of the sky. The US and Nato haven’t really supplied much in the way of AD assets to prevent that.
Bonus points if Germany throws in the towel and seeks peace with Russia. At that point, the entire world will see that the US is a dying and nearly dead empire.
Wild card will be if China coordinates a move against Taiwan during this same period.
.. RF rolling up the UA ground forces combined with RF domination of the sky…
Any day now, right?
Yep. Real Soon Now.
I would think success would look like the RF rolling up the UA ground forces combined with RF domination of the sky.
With all respect, that’s hilarious, given what has happened over the past year. Did you actually read the link?
“I would think success would look like the RF rolling up the UA ground forces combined with RF domination of the sky.”
I would think that too. But the RF doesn’t seem able to do much rolling – except in long, badly defended columns that the Ukes use for target practice.
“The US and Nato haven’t really supplied much in the way of AD assets to prevent that.”
If one doesn’t count all the MANPADS that have wrecked such havoc on the Russian air force at low altitude. Higher altitudes are rendered unusable by a soupcon of Western stuff and a whole lot of captured BUKs and S-300s. Those big drone and missile strikes pretty routinely suffer 80% or more destruction en route. Can’t say I’m surprised no live pilots are eager to face those odds.
“Bonus points if Germany throws in the towel and seeks peace with Russia.”
At this point, it’s far likelier that Russia will have to seek peace with Ukraine and NATO.
“At that point, the entire world will see that the US is a dying and nearly dead empire.”
Rumors of our imminent death have been greatly exaggerated. And the U.S. is not an empire, though if it was there would have been a U.S. viceroy sitting in Moscow since 1991.
“Wild card will be if China coordinates a move against Taiwan during this same period.”
Can’t entirely rule that out no matter what happens in Europe. Nations that are one-man shows have a history of making a lot of stupid moves.
But the PRC is already in slo-mo collapse. Making a grab for Taiwan would simply cut down the very little time the PRC has left as a going concern to zero.
The PRC is one of the most exquisitely vulnerable nations on Earth. Simply instituting a naval blockade at a great distance would require trivial resources and reduce the PRC to a state of pre-industrial mass famine in a few months. We could do that, Japan could do that, India could do that – heck, even Australia could do that.
I would think success would look like the RF rolling up the UA ground forces combined with RF domination of the sky. The US and Nato haven’t really supplied much in the way of AD assets to prevent that.
The time for that would have been last March. It didn’t happen and Russia no longer has that better air force. Further, Ukraine has substantial air denial assets that have successfully prevented Russian air superiority and will continue to prevent Russia from achieving air superiority.
I hope that your posts here have been sarcasm despite your unthinking support of the invasion in the past. Because otherwise, Russia’s future will be a scary thing for you. At this point, I think there’s a good chance that not only does Russia cease to exist as a superpower due to upcoming civil war, but this might result in the eventual end of a distinct Russian culture and history too.
Change that “might” to “will” and you’ve got it nailed. Russia is already a dead nation walking. Most of its population is 50 and older in a nation with a life expectancy in the 60s. 30-and-unders are barely over 10% of the population. Putin is busy killing off the male half of that cohort in Ukraine. A lot of the women have achieved sterility from multiple abortions. There pretty much is no up-and-coming next generation – hence the mass kidnappings of children from Ukraine.
Ending Russia is mainly a matter of helping the Ukrainians to throw the Russians out, then waiting for the Grim Reaper to do most of the rest. At some point not long hence, we will probably need to organize some sort of lightning strike to destroy or confiscate the Russian nuke arsenal. After that, Russia ceases to matter. The world has already gone quite a ways toward compensating for loss of its natural resource exports. If its neighbors choose to wait the demographic stragglers out or actively assist the extinction process the choice will be of no major consequence to the rest of the world. No one will miss Russians when they’re gone.
Dick, you might want to remember that we don’t actually live in a Tom Clancy novel.
That is mostly because the Ukrainians are currently living in a Tom Clancy novel so we don’t have to. That situation may or may not last. I think the closer we get to the end, the likelier we are to have to get more directly involved.
Guess I’d better call Ladbrokes and get me down for a bob or two on Pooty then.
Russia lost from the very beginning.
Whether Ukraine wins, is in doubt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bqk8cB9iQ
Russia’s Grand Strategy and Ukraine – Is Putin’s war already a strategic failure?
This is not news.
But it convinced me of something I had not realized,
EU has won.
I thought the EU was done, Russia gave the EU a new life.
Not said in above video, but Trump was part of why Europe has won- when said, you guys should follow your treaty agreement, and they started to do this before, Russia made huge mistake of invading Ukraine- which never had any chance of working out- even if they won it, in the 3 days.
If EU haven’t started years before- the story would be, what is US going to do about the invasion, rather than what is Europe going to do about the invasion- or EU has more in leadership position, rather than this being something that US had to take charge of.
So, the win goes to EU- as it should.
Given the growing weakness of the US, the EU needed to get involved sooner or later. We’ll see what they make of it.
What “growing weakness of the US?”
I’ll list some examples:
1) Declining logistics and procurement ability – consider that the US is having trouble supplying munitions and other gear for Ukraine. This should not be such a strain for the US.
2) Increasing public debt.
3) More and more of that debt is coming from spending that just redistributes wealth – entitlement spending.
4) Increasing difficulty of the US to build basic infrastructure – for example, the increasing cost of building highways and bridges.
5) Political class continues to fail to find solutions to hard problems. There are several examples above: entitlement spending (and a number of other costs) growing faster than GDP, growing infrastructure costs, and the increasing failure of military procurement.
My take is that if these trends continue, then we’ll see things (just from my short list) like the US losing critical future wars, ceasing to build effective infrastructure, and having most public funding redirected to pointless and corrupt wealth redistribution and interest payments on debt.
It’s certainly true we’re not in WW2 anymore. But logistics don’t seem to be a problem from where I sit. We seem to be able to get anything we want to send to Ukraine actually sent to Ukraine. Some of what we intend to send requires first training up the Ukes on the gear. Other stuff, we dither pointlessly about sending at all. But, once a decision to send is taken, the process seems to work pretty well.
We are drawing down stocks of a lot of stuff pretty fast. But a lot of it is stuff we no longer make because it has been succeeded by better – usually smarter – stuff. But the Russians are running out of everything and can’t seem to make any significant amount of new stuff even as the Ukrainians make mincemeat of the antiques the Russians are being forced to rely on.
This isn’t really a production war like WW2 was on either side. Our cupboards are getting more bare, but the Russians have already emptied most of theirs and then chopped them up for kindling to keep warm.
The Ukraine War is not contributing significantly to U.S. public debt. Most of what we’re sending to Ukraine we paid for long ago.
Entitlement spending is a problem, but solutions exist. The two biggest such programs are Social Security and Medicare which have no basis of support except current taxation. I think funding of both needs to come from a National Mutual Fund of stocks and bonds. That would, at a stroke, align the interests of pensioners and future pensioners with growth of the economy instead of growth in economy-wrecking taxation.
We could kickstart such a fund by confiscating all hedge fund assets, all college and university endowments and all public employee union pension funds, then add to it with a steadily declining rate of payroll tax.
This would, of course, require the effective destruction of the Democratic Party, but that is necessary for the sake of the nation’s future in any event.
I think the right-populist politics of such a proposal would be very salable. The left likes to ballyhoo “Medicare for All!. How about “Social Security for All!” Including government employees.
The cost of building highways and bridges is mainly due to:
1) the preference by Democratic urban centers and Blue states to prioritize increasing the size of the unionized government workforce over infrastructure, and
2) the requirement to pay “prevailing” – i.e., union – wages for all such construction. Get rid of the Davis-Bacon Act and the problem is greatly reduced.
3) “Customary graft.” Destroy the Democratic Party and most of that goes with it.
Much of the current political class – including essentially all Democrats – think the U.S. is done for and are trying to simply steal as much as they can before the roof falls in. They have no interest in actually solving problems as those problems provide them bloody shirts of various sorts to wave come election time – apart from the ones they make up out of whole cloth.
Once more, there is a straight line connecting the solution of actual problems and the necessary destruction of the Democratic Party.
We seem to be able to get anything we want to send to Ukraine actually sent to Ukraine.
Only if the US has it in the first place. Ask yourself this, why aren’t the Ukrainians swimming in HIMARS missiles, if they’re so effective? Because the US doesn’t have a huge manufacturing capability for these missiles and stockpiled only so much. This is only the latest in a series of wars where the US has quickly exhausted its existing supply of many munitions without a good system in place for making more.
But a lot of it is stuff we no longer make because it has been succeeded by better – usually smarter – stuff.
The key label here is “more expensive” not “better”. The US military has spent a lot of money in recent years on stuff that just isn’t good enough. There’s also a track record of failed development that should be a huge warning sign such as the Seawolf submarine, F-22 and F-35 jets both, B-1 and B-2 stealth bombers, Stryker armored personnel carrier, the KC-46 Pegasus, etc as well as supply issues for simple stuff (for example, sourcing pre-9/11 small caliber ammunition from a single supplier). These sort of failures can lose wars by themselves!
This isn’t really a production war like WW2 was on either side. Our cupboards are getting more bare, but the Russians have already emptied most of theirs and then chopped them up for kindling to keep warm.
It’s not a production war only due to the collective incompetence of both sides producing the weapons systems.
Entitlement spending is a problem, but solutions exist. The two biggest such programs are Social Security and Medicare which have no basis of support except current taxation. I think funding of both needs to come from a National Mutual Fund of stocks and bonds. That would, at a stroke, align the interests of pensioners and future pensioners with growth of the economy instead of growth in economy-wrecking taxation.
We could kickstart such a fund by confiscating all hedge fund assets, all college and university endowments and all public employee union pension funds, then add to it with a steadily declining rate of payroll tax.
There are two huge and closely related problems with that. Creating a national mutual fund creates a food source for parasites to feed on. And by creating that fund through the massive stealing of money from elsewhere creates a precedent for similar scale theft in the future. The above national mutual fund would be a natural target for such theft.
As to the Democrat party, I don’t see ending it as necessary. Ending first-past-the-post elections probably will suffice. Even weakening first-past-the-post to have a second election for the top two candidates would change things significantly. The US’s blinkered approach to elections is what generates such a persistent two party system.
Too much wealth.
Politicians not in constant fear of facing justice
for their criminal behavior.
There is no such thing as too much wealth.
The other thing, you have a point about. That will be a problem until Democrats – the party of criminals – are entirely out of power.
I wonder if commenter Orville saw the comic book tycoon’s post on the same subject?:
https://voxday.net/2023/02/19/the-offensive-begins-next-week/
He’s referring to someone named Simplicitus, an apt name for someone who truly seems to be a moron. Vox can be interesting when he isn’t sludging thru the fever swamps, but his conviction that the moon landings were faked leads me to be wary of his pronouncements.
From the link:
Historically Russia had massive armies, and their doctrine is still based on the assumption that they massively outweigh any opponent they attack. Their battalion tactical groups were built on the assumption that they’ll be doing so much winning that they didn’t need their own integrated medical support, artillery support, or much of anything else, since each unit could just stop and take a break and hundreds of other units carried on with the overwhelmingly successful breakthrough attacks until they were all doing vodka shots looking out at the cliffs of Dover.
Russia still hasn’t grasped that they’re no longer an empire of 400 million that outnumbers any opponent the way China would outnumber any nations in Southeast Asia. Russia is down to a population the size of Mexico’s, and the average Russian male is 39 years old. Through the 1980’s Russia was producing 1 million to 1.3 million male babies a year. That plummeted, and now they only make 700,000 a year. And that drop isn’t because Russia got carved up some. That’s based on the birth years of Russians currently living in Russia.
Two men who both seem to lead full and complete fantasy lives. This sort of thing is eerily reminiscent of Hitler in his bunker making plans to use no-longer-extant formations and never-extant wonder weapons to somehow snatch victory from the jaws of imminent defeat. Perhaps, like the late Fuhrer, Simplicitus and Vox are also drugged all the way up to their hairlines?
I would urge each of you to read Putin’s address today at this link below. These are not the ruminations of a madman. I think if you consider them closely, you will find areas of agreement.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/70565
Here’s some selected quotes from that speech.
Sounds like Putin huffed his supply. Why in the world would this be at all persuasive to anyone with a brain and a shred of morality and ethics? His speech ignores that Russia is even worse on the Nazi and colonialism front, Still uses that weaselly phrase “special military operation”, that Russia attacked first (with no serious effect at diplomacy ahead of the invasion), and spews nonsense morality (classic whataboutisms about US wars and faux concern about Western impiety). On that last point, I think it’s telling that the “degradation and degeneration” part of the world does vastly better than Putin’s part. Once again, we see the morality pushers of the world bring worse degradation and degeneration than the West does. When the groomers are more moral than you are, then you’re doing it wrong.
And most important, why would Ukrainians bother? They’re fighting awful hard for those Western handlers and such. Maybe there’s something wrong with the narrative – like it being a stream of bald lies lightly seasoned with the occasional truth?
Anyway, if you believe all that, it’ll be awfully hard to understand why more than a hundred thousand Russian soldiers have died at the hands of the Ukrainians and why Russia loses so badly right now.
But perhaps I’m wrong on that last part, and it’ll merely take Russia listening to your, no doubt, excellent strategic advice and do that air superiority thing that they just have been too dumb to see for the past year. Then they’ll easily win and the Orvilles of the world will be right.
Every Russian weapon, every Russian vehicle, virtually every Russian bullet is irreplaceable. They couldn’t supply their conscripts with enough winter gear to avoid losing one third to frost bite. All of the trainers that would have given those conscripts a chance in battle are dead along with all the people capable of repairing the tanks, etc. They’ve worked there way back to the T-62’s that they couldn’t give away to Nasser.
They still possess the ability to do enormous damage but not enough to win. They’re in a logistic trap where the most dangerous thing they can do is advance. They don’t have the transport to feed themselves, let alone sustain a battle. One hopes the Ukrainians see this and don’t waste lives uselessly defending meaningless dirt. Let them come ahead, soon enough they’ll be willing to surrender for a couple of MRE’s.
They’re in a logistic trap where the most dangerous thing they can do is advance. They don’t have the transport to feed themselves, let alone sustain a battle. One hopes the Ukrainians see this and don’t waste lives uselessly defending meaningless dirt.
Keep in mind that Putin is looking for any win at the moment. That means he probably has some scheme in mind that requires a win as political cover. It may well be a good idea from Ukraine’s point of view to make Russia pay dearly for that meaningless dirt.
It’s not like either one of us gets a say. We’re all along for the ride. The Russians have exhibited near super human incompetence, that’s the way I’m betting.
I think Peter Grant has a pretty good take on things …
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/02/those-whom-gods-would-destroy-they.html
Putin and Biden are in a race to see which is more demented, Putin started behind but he’s coming on strong on the inside rail.
Baiting our very own Russian troll is fun until you remember the couple of hundred thousand Russians and Ukrainians lately joining the shades of the millions before, who’s only sin was to be born in a region where the government has been combining corruption, incompetence and dysfunction in new ways for a thousand years or more. If Russians have any limit to their tolerance of bad government, it has yet to measured, not for lack of trying.
It should come as no enormous surprise that the Red Army failed as badly as it has in Ukraine. It’s a truism that armies are always best prepared to refight their last war. Afghanistan to one side, the last time the Russians fought in Ukraine, it was against the Nazis, post Stalingrad, and they won. So massed artillery against light infantry and a decapitation strike against an enemy capital is a strategy that predates Napoleon. It sounds good, but…
Let’s look at something else. As our beloved general Thoroughly Modern Milley has admitted, the US Army is optimized to fight in deserts and “rolling hills,” not so much mountains, jungles, and urban landscapes. Let’s suppose that the US found some compelling reason to conquer Mexico. Not, “beat Mexico up,” but conquer it. It’s easy to gloatingly imagine supersonic bombers setting Mexico City ablaze, killing millions of civilians, while Marines storm ashore a tVera Cruz, singing about the Halls of Montezuma, while the USAF takes complete air superiority and the Mexican Navy (basically a coast guard) is sunk. Then what?
The US light infantry brigades, supported by towed artillery, cross the border, where they face the Mexican Army as a near peer, backed by the Federales (paramilitarized sherrifs) and Cartel-based irregulars. Still okay? Northern Mexico is like a harsher Afganistan, and southern Mexico is like a junglier Vietnam. And we lost those wars, all excuses (hippies, Jane Fonda, Obama/Trump/Biden) aside. And would we really napalm Mexico City? Or leave seventeen million Mexicans to inhabit an urban landscape we couldn’t hope to overrun? The Russians didn’t nuke Kiev, and opened the blockade of Odessa for supposed humanitarian reasons (it’s okay to assume they lied and simply couldn’t do it, it doesn’t matter why). They pulled their punches, and we might too.
Better still, let’s imagine the Martian High Command has decided the Earth is ripe for takeover. So they decide to arm the Mexicans with weapons capable of shooting down USAF planes and sinking USN capital ships. We tell the Martians to cut it out or else. They laugh, knowing we can’t take the fight to Mars. So we invade Mexico, fail to take air superiority, and the Mexicans sink a couple of aircraft carriers in the Pacific.
What do we do next?
What’s the preconditions by which this scenario makes sense? I’ll grant the Martians. But if they are NATO-like where they consensus-build military alliances, it’s not a serious threat to the US. Something would have to go seriously wrong with the US and its leadership even by today’s low standards.
So to answer “What do we do next?”, I would suggest replacing the terrible US government that picks fights with technologically advanced foes who need not be foes.
In thirty years, the truth will finally come out:
Hunter Biden went to Moscow, and used all the “bribes” allegedly payed to him saying: “Hey Putin, buddy, we are really worried about all those nukes and tanks and whatnot Russia still has left over from the Soviet Union. How about you invade, say, Ukraine, and waste all that stuff? Maybe get rid of some of your convicts at the same time? I can make it worth your while!”
Hunter Biden, the ultimate spy!