7 ms·

Hopefully this turns out better for Kyiv then it did for Grozny...

by enkid 5y ago

dogma1138 5y ago
There is almost no chance that Putin will pull off a Grozny that would have no support of the Russian population or the troops and would drag NATO into the conflict directly. Unless Putin has decided that 2022 would be the last year of record of the Gregorian calendar at least for a while he isn’t going to bring on the apocalypse. As horrible as this conflict is it’s pretty much the death knell of Russia as a superpower and probably for good. It almost lost in Georgia in 08 which brought it a lot of army reforms and its performance in Syria has emboldened them to think that they can play in the big leagues again but it seems that they aren’t able to perform on the modern battlefield at all. I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief. I almost want that once this conflict is over for the pentagon to release a statement in jest that it officially downgrades Russia from near peer to junk like the credit agencies did.
- adventured 5y ago
  It's clearly time to pivot China into Russia's spot as the globe's #2 military. That seemed to be the case prior to Ukraine, and based on the showing so far, Russia's military may have been exceptionally badly mismanaged by Putin over the years. What did they do with all that supposed upgrade / modernization money? Where'd they funnel it to? The klepto state klepto'd their own military - it'd be a fitting outcome.
  - redisman 5y ago
    Where has modern China fought though? What battles have they won?
- khazhoux 5y ago
  > There is almost no chance that Putin will pull off a Grozny that would have no support of the Russian population or the troops Honest question because I don't know: Does Putin listen at all to public opinion, or to the sentiment of his military.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Not really, but no man is an island and no one rules alone.
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      Unclear regarding Putin. Stalin was probably the most powerful man on Earth during his lifetime, but even he didn't always get his way in the Politburo. Sometimes Stalin was on the losing side of a debate. But win or lose, the Soviet leadership emphasized speaking with a unified voice regardless of whether one had supported or opposed the outcome. Is there a Politburo for Putin? Is there a group of people around him who can influence him and, sometimes, change his mind?
      - oblio 5y ago
        We don't know exactly, but there has to be a head of police, one of secret services, one for the military. All those people need to be trusted up to a point.
- sgc 5y ago
  Unfortunately, as long as they have nuclear weapons they will remain poignantly relevant.
- enkid 5y ago
  I think the idea that we can predict what Putin's lines are went out the window four days ago.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    Not really as it was clear that he intends to invade for a long time. If he is completely deranged and wants to start a nuclear war he could’ve done so without sacrificing so many Russian troops. He can sit in his bunker and order a nuclear strike and even if most forces would disregard that order it only takes one launch to bring on the end of the world as we know it. He knows he is running out of time and he wanted a new Russian empire to be his legacy but I don’t think turning Europe and North America into glass is on his todo list. At least I hope not.
    - enkid 5y ago
      Very few people accurately said he was going to invade. The president of Ukraine said like two days before hand that it was unlikely. Tryin to make specific predictions at this time about what he will or will not do is not a good idea.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Very few people accurately said he was going to invade Quite a lot of people said he seemed like he was going to, for quite a few weeks in advance, though they were trying to dissuade him, just counting people in the US government, NATO, etc. > The president of Ukraine said like two days before hand that it was unlikely. He said that the West needed to move forward the sanctions threatened for after an invasion to before, and that Russian behavior depended on immediate, united Western action. The US media played up the part you refer to and downplayed the I assume our friends will heed my clearly-correct and urgent advice context, because they had a narrative they were selling of “Biden Admin sees imminent invasion, but the Admin is paranoid and everyone else, even the people who would be attacked, disagrees”.
        5y ago
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  >I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief. Not in the Pentagon, but I'm still very worried about their capabilities on the cyber front.
- reddog 5y ago
  >I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief. I doubt anyone in the pentagon was woried about Russia becoming an near peer in conventional arms. The US economy is 14 times the size of the Russian economy. The US spends about $800 billion on its military each year, the Russians spend about $60 billion.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    The effective purchasing power of $60B in Russia is far greater than of that amount in the US and by many estimations their actual spending is much higher. The fear of near peer came from their reforms following 2008 where they decided to modernize their army especially their infantry adopt modern combined arms and maneuver warfare and basically mimic the US individual squad battlefield doctrine. They shifted on paper form a conscripted army to a professional one and have revamp their NCO core. And their relative success in Syria did make it seem like they were making a lot of progress now it’s clear that what ever progress they have made was either all a smoke screen or limited to such a small number of units that it doesn’t make an impact on the battlefield. This war has shown that even what the west feared the most the so called elite airborne troops which were always a key part of Russias military doctrine aren’t effective at all at taking and holding military objectives. Russian armor seems to also be extremely vulnerable to western ATGMs so the fear of Russian APS systems has also now proven to be completely unfounded and Arena/Afganit seems to either be non existent in the field or utterly and completely useless especially when compared to western battle proven APS systems like Trophy/Windbreaker which have seen great success against Russian modern ATGMs. Basically they aren’t even a paper tiger at this point they are a wet tissue. We have now hard indisputable proof that they aren’t capable of anything more than leveling cities from 100 miles away which they won’t be able to do due to NATOs total air superiority or bringing a nuclear annihilation which hopefully they aren’t mad enough to do.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      How is it possible to draw such conclusions on day three of a war? This article makes it seem like Russia is winning and will soon be in Kiev. I've not seen anything saying the Russians are suffering massive losses, but rather that they are limiting their offense to minimize civilian casualties, have been rebuffed in some places, and are closing in on the enemy capitol. Did anyone publish, prior to the invasion, a timeline of how they expected it to go that had Russia far ahead of where they are on day three? If so, can you link it? If not, how do we know they are behind schedule?

Hopefully this turns out better for Kyiv then it did for Grozny...

by enkid 5y ago

Hopefully this turns out better for Kyiv then it did for Grozny...

There is almost no chance that Putin will pull off a Grozny that would have no support of the Russian population or the troops and would drag NATO into the conflict directly. Unless Putin has decided that 2022 would be the last year of record of the Gregorian calendar at least for a while he isn’t going to bring on the apocalypse. As horrible as this conflict is it’s pretty much the death knell of Russia as a superpower and probably for good. It almost lost in Georgia in 08 which brought it a lot of army reforms and its performance in Syria has emboldened them to think that they can play in the big leagues again but it seems that they aren’t able to perform on the modern battlefield at all. I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief. I almost want that once this conflict is over for the pentagon to release a statement in jest that it officially downgrades Russia from near peer to junk like the credit agencies did.

adventured 5y ago
It's clearly time to pivot China into Russia's spot as the globe's #2 military. That seemed to be the case prior to Ukraine, and based on the showing so far, Russia's military may have been exceptionally badly mismanaged by Putin over the years. What did they do with all that supposed upgrade / modernization money? Where'd they funnel it to? The klepto state klepto'd their own military - it'd be a fitting outcome.
- redisman 5y ago
  Where has modern China fought though? What battles have they won?
khazhoux 5y ago
> There is almost no chance that Putin will pull off a Grozny that would have no support of the Russian population or the troops Honest question because I don't know: Does Putin listen at all to public opinion, or to the sentiment of his military.
- oblio 5y ago
  Not really, but no man is an island and no one rules alone.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    Unclear regarding Putin. Stalin was probably the most powerful man on Earth during his lifetime, but even he didn't always get his way in the Politburo. Sometimes Stalin was on the losing side of a debate. But win or lose, the Soviet leadership emphasized speaking with a unified voice regardless of whether one had supported or opposed the outcome. Is there a Politburo for Putin? Is there a group of people around him who can influence him and, sometimes, change his mind?
    - oblio 5y ago
      We don't know exactly, but there has to be a head of police, one of secret services, one for the military. All those people need to be trusted up to a point.
sgc 5y ago
Unfortunately, as long as they have nuclear weapons they will remain poignantly relevant.
enkid 5y ago
I think the idea that we can predict what Putin's lines are went out the window four days ago.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Not really as it was clear that he intends to invade for a long time. If he is completely deranged and wants to start a nuclear war he could’ve done so without sacrificing so many Russian troops. He can sit in his bunker and order a nuclear strike and even if most forces would disregard that order it only takes one launch to bring on the end of the world as we know it. He knows he is running out of time and he wanted a new Russian empire to be his legacy but I don’t think turning Europe and North America into glass is on his todo list. At least I hope not.
  - enkid 5y ago
    Very few people accurately said he was going to invade. The president of Ukraine said like two days before hand that it was unlikely. Tryin to make specific predictions at this time about what he will or will not do is not a good idea.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Very few people accurately said he was going to invade Quite a lot of people said he seemed like he was going to, for quite a few weeks in advance, though they were trying to dissuade him, just counting people in the US government, NATO, etc. > The president of Ukraine said like two days before hand that it was unlikely. He said that the West needed to move forward the sanctions threatened for after an invasion to before, and that Russian behavior depended on immediate, united Western action. The US media played up the part you refer to and downplayed the I assume our friends will heed my clearly-correct and urgent advice context, because they had a narrative they were selling of “Biden Admin sees imminent invasion, but the Admin is paranoid and everyone else, even the people who would be attacked, disagrees”.
      - 5y ago
throwaway6734 5y ago
>I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief. Not in the Pentagon, but I'm still very worried about their capabilities on the cyber front.
reddog 5y ago
>I have a feeling that a lot of people in the pentagon that have been concerned about Russia becoming a near peer to the US are now sighing in relief. I doubt anyone in the pentagon was woried about Russia becoming an near peer in conventional arms. The US economy is 14 times the size of the Russian economy. The US spends about $800 billion on its military each year, the Russians spend about $60 billion.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  The effective purchasing power of $60B in Russia is far greater than of that amount in the US and by many estimations their actual spending is much higher. The fear of near peer came from their reforms following 2008 where they decided to modernize their army especially their infantry adopt modern combined arms and maneuver warfare and basically mimic the US individual squad battlefield doctrine. They shifted on paper form a conscripted army to a professional one and have revamp their NCO core. And their relative success in Syria did make it seem like they were making a lot of progress now it’s clear that what ever progress they have made was either all a smoke screen or limited to such a small number of units that it doesn’t make an impact on the battlefield. This war has shown that even what the west feared the most the so called elite airborne troops which were always a key part of Russias military doctrine aren’t effective at all at taking and holding military objectives. Russian armor seems to also be extremely vulnerable to western ATGMs so the fear of Russian APS systems has also now proven to be completely unfounded and Arena/Afganit seems to either be non existent in the field or utterly and completely useless especially when compared to western battle proven APS systems like Trophy/Windbreaker which have seen great success against Russian modern ATGMs. Basically they aren’t even a paper tiger at this point they are a wet tissue. We have now hard indisputable proof that they aren’t capable of anything more than leveling cities from 100 miles away which they won’t be able to do due to NATOs total air superiority or bringing a nuclear annihilation which hopefully they aren’t mad enough to do.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    How is it possible to draw such conclusions on day three of a war? This article makes it seem like Russia is winning and will soon be in Kiev. I've not seen anything saying the Russians are suffering massive losses, but rather that they are limiting their offense to minimize civilian casualties, have been rebuffed in some places, and are closing in on the enemy capitol. Did anyone publish, prior to the invasion, a timeline of how they expected it to go that had Russia far ahead of where they are on day three? If so, can you link it? If not, how do we know they are behind schedule?