9 ms·

After only a couple days, Russia is on the cusp of encircling Kyiv, and has potentially gained control of strategic airports, and hasn't even used any of their

• hunter-gatherer 5y ago
  Thanks for bringing the contrast with the Iraq invasion up. I was discussing this with a friend today and brought up how a comparitive analysis of Iraq and Ukraine against the US and Russia would look. I don't have the answers and maybe my intuition is completely wrong, but it might look a lot more favorable for Russia than the media outlets are lettibg everyone believe. I recall similar stories of ambushed convoys happening to US troops in Iraq, too.
• tlear 5y ago
  Russia is suffering massively higher attrition then US did in Iraq. Ukranians are actually successfully counter attacking in places. It is all a lot more even. In Iraq it was like a fully grown man beating up a 10 year old. Their plan in general seems unnecessary complex and risky. They are burning through VDV at a fearful rate.. why in the hell did they try all of those unsupported helicopter landings? It all seem like Market Garden all the way to Kyiv. Southern axis are a problem. Order needs to be given for a breakout of the forces holding line of control in the east. Of course we have no idea what reserves and where Ukraine has. Hopefully they did not keep too much too close east and there is a strategic reserve being held somewhere west of Dniepr
  • fkncl0wns 5y ago
  • rightbyte 5y ago
    Breakout to where? I don't think the Ukrainian army can manouver on roads due to Russian air forces. The units are where they are.
    • tguvot 5y ago
      Russian air forces are mostly not seen. They mostly supported some paratroopers and now they stay away from action (i guess stinger factor and some leftover Ukrainian air defense) There is only one video of helicopter taking out ukranian buk on the road
      • rightbyte 5y ago
        > Russian air forces are mostly not seen. Why do you believe that? I am just assuming that many Ukraine troop concentrations visible from satellites has been bombed (vehicles, tents ...) without anything indicating that. The videos available seems very onesided. I.e. Ukrainian civilian or soldiers' videos of victories. It is probably hard to tell much from the videos on the overall progress of the invasion, except where there are fights.
        • tguvot 5y ago
          There is filming of everything. Any movement of troops, any helicopter, any plane and any missile flying. After first day and a half all videos of russian planes disappeared. probably due to still functioning air defense which down some amount of them. currently seems to be the only use of planes by russians is strategic bombers shooting cruise missiles from belorussian skies. there is also enough of videos of ukranian equipment blown up. another point, russia doesn't really have much precise ammo for ground attacks. and there is no signs of carpet bombing in cases where ukranian tanks are blown
        • tguvot 5y ago
          The only new video of airplanes since yesterday: two been shot down next to kharkiv
    • mcguire 5y ago
• stefan_ 5y ago
  Have you looked for Kyiv on a map recently in relation to Russia and particular the Belarus border? Of course it's "on the cusp of encircling Kyiv" - it's less distance than the average US drive to WalMart.
  • gruez 5y ago
    >Of course it's "on the cusp of encircling Kyiv" - it's less distance than the average US drive to WalMart. I doubt it. I checked the distance from the center of Kyiv to the closest Belarus border and it was around 55 miles. The actual distance is probably higher because I'm taking the distance over the lake/river that's north of Kyiv. Meanwhile... >For most people in the United States, a Wal-Mart is literally just down the road. The median distance to a Wal-Mart in the United States is 4.2 miles https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2006/thomas-j-holmes-on-walmarts-location-strategy https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2006/thomas-j-holmes-...
    • traviswt 5y ago
      Why did you just fact check hyperbole?
      • skissane 5y ago
        A degree of pragmatic language impairment – inability to detect hyperbole/exaggeration/sarcasm/etc leads to responding in a literal manner to comments intended to be taken non-literally. Commonly associated with autism, but people who aren't remotely autistic can also display it when tired, drunk, stressed, emotional, using a foreign language in which they have imperfect fluency, etc. It is even more likely online, due to lacking other cues (such as tone of voice).
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
      • vanusa 5y ago
        Because the statement it references is patently silly?
• baybal2 5y ago
  If any offensive force loses 50% of its starting firepower, a normal general would've called it a defeat, and pulled back his troops.
• volkl48 5y ago
  They're not really comparable. 1.) Kyiv is 50mi from the border, Baghdad is 200mi. 2.) Iraq was a numerically far superior force to the coalition, with >500,000 active soldiers and >1.3 million total. Clearing out that many people simply takes time. 3) The coalition moved slowly and largely neutralized resistance along their way, they didn't skip settlements or cities. Russia is trying deep strikes and bypassing/avoiding many of the larger cities/settlements. And those places are not necessarily under any kind of coherent siege at this point either. 4) Coalition losses in the entire war, where they were again, fighting a numerically far superior force, were tiny. ~200 killed. Estimates of Russian losses so far are 10x+ that and with a lot of lost equipment. I'm not suggesting I think the Ukrainian position is great or that they're poised to win other than via long insurgency, just that I don't think the comparison works.
  • baybal2 5y ago
    Yes, it's not US-Iraq war, but Iran Iraq war, and Putinism, and Baathism are eerely similar.
    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      > but Iran Iraq war The quick two week land grab by Iraq that turned into an 8-year slog that they got nothing out of? Yeah, I can see that.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • iamshs 5y ago
    Iraq saw lots of Civilian casualties and we are not seeing it in this invasion. As someone who opposes this invasion 100% it has been quite stark to see cordial behaviour of Russian soldiers until now with the local populace. They are not hostile. Infrastructure is intact, electricity and internet is working. There is no vibe of an occupation. There are no massed artillery barrages. Civilian casualties are probably lower then Russian Army’s. There seem to be no embedded journalism from Russians. (I don’t follow Russian propaganda outlets and have avoided the tankie echo chamber). Contrast this with so many blue ticks and Ukrainian media outlets spreading outright lies and going viral. If US was directly invoked, 10 fact checking orgs would have propped by now and started warning on game videos being spread. At the end it is still an invasion and Ukrainians will be killed and come under an occupation, but US is more ruthless with its occupations. US media machine can whip anyone into a frenzy with their reporting. I absolutely don’t support sanctions on Russia, only Russians are going to beat the brunt of it. On one hand we are seeing visuals of Russians protesting and want them to stand up against Putin and Western governments seem to be ok with brutalizing those same people, even if in minority. War is a nasty virus on brain for people away from all this. It is a privileged take but mental faculties are overloaded with the emotional language being used. A TV station was showing how to make Molotov cocktails to non-Ukrainian audience. Is that helpful at all? So much thoughts on this invasion. Have seen maybe 4 conflicts (Kargil, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine); numerous military mobilizations and small scale strikes between sworn enemy nations. It is just bile churning to see the whole events play down with no accountability.
• vkou 5y ago
  > People are claiming it's a victory when Russia hasn't totally taken over within 72 hours, but is that really any kind of victory? What else are they going to claim? That everything's fucked and there's no realistic hope of even a partial victory? Regardless of whether or not the war goes well or poorly, the news will be positive, right up until the end. If it turns out to be the latter, everybody who spent the past few weeks listening to it will be struck with one hell of a cog-dissonance hangover.
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    >Regardless of whether or not the war goes well or poorly, the news will be positive, right up until the end. If it turns out to be the latter, everybody who spent the past few weeks listening to it will be struck with one hell of a cog-dissonance hangover. I am cautiously optimistic for Ukraine based on early reports. But I am also aware of the history of war propaganda. The front pages of US and UK newspapers during the Battle of France, for example, were filled with headlines talking about French successes in repelling the Hun. Anyone paying attention to the details, however, could see that the successes were constantly occurring closer and closer to Paris. If Russia wins, there is going to be (as you said) a lot of cognitive dissonance among those whose worldviews are entirely shaped by Reddit headlines and Twitter takes. I'd hope that having their worldviews shattered so abruptly and violently would cause such people to reexamine all of their preconceptions, but given how previous such cases (notably Brexit and Trump's election) mostly caused them to double down rather than seriously self reflect, I am not hopeful.
    • vkou 5y ago
      Surely, when you say Trump's election, what you really meant was Trump's failure at re-election. Because man, a lot of people still don't believe that has happened.
• runjake 5y ago
  You're right, but that "victory" messaging isn't there for you, it's designed to bolster Ukrainians and demoralize the Russians, and western media sources are just parroting this message. This is also why normally-classified intelligence was leaked by the US goverment.
  • lbwtaylor 5y ago
    The intelligence was leaked so that the world would know that the invasion was pre-planned by Russia, rather than some organic response to some act by Ukraine. And I think it was very successful at that. Historically when something like this happened, it was always hard to understand who really started a violent confrontation. In this case, the US has been successful at showing that the invasion was pre-meditated.
• tenpies 5y ago
  Yes, it's fascinating to watch the West impose its own culture into everything - even warfare. By this I mean the West's addiction to immediate gratification. If Putin hasn't conquered every last inch of Ukraine within 72 hours then he has "failed" according to Western media. To some degree I don't blame them. In Iraq for example, the war tempo was intentional rapid. The US decided that maneuver warfare[1] would be the doctrine to use and it worked out okay only because they largely dealt with demoralized forces - but in areas where they encountered a willing opposition, it crushed the tempo. Then, less than a year after "victory" they had terrible battles lasting months where the US lost and public sentiment flipped[2]. I keep two things in mind: in war, the first casualty is the truth. The second: that it was only a year between "freedom fries" (because the French did not want to help invade Iraq) and "no blood for oil". What will US sentiment be a year from now when the crushing energy and food prices caused by this have worked their way through the system and the Democrats and their media go into the elections with full weaponized Russia-paranoia all over again? When China is now even stronger because the West weaponized the financial system against an enemy that didn't warrant it? When China leapfrogs the West even further because they benefited from the sanctions while not having deal with any material suffering? Could Putin maybe have had an iota of a point about the enlargement of NATO suffocating Russia and backing them into a corner?[3] Is there perhaps a shred of truth to the claim that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine - some even trained by the West - even if its understood that this is just an excuse?[4] These are questions that will inevitably be visited, but not today. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO [4] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/far-right-extremists-in-ukrainian-military-bragged-about-canadian-training-report-says-1.5631304 https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/far-right-extremists-in-ukraini...
  • hinkley 5y ago
    > Yes, it's fascinating to watch the West impose its own culture into everything - even warfare. Gee, I wonder where we learned it from...
  • poisonarena 5y ago
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  > If you track the timeline of the Russian developments versus against something like the Iraq invasion, Russia is actually ahead of schedule in many ways. Iraq had a much larger military in 2003 than Ukraine does now, the US wasn't able to come at it from all sides, and was doing it from the far side of the globe, with a smaller force than Russia deployed in and around Ukraine. And Baghdad is 350 miles from Kuwait, Kyiv 70 miles from Belarus. So, yeah, Russia is expected to be way ahead of the Iraq War schedule. > People are claiming it's a victory when Russia hasn't totally taken over within 72 hours, but is that really any kind of victory? Yes, when the decapitation portion was expected to be much shorter, with Russia’s problems expected to be more guerrilla-ish resistance after the lightning-fast takeover that the massive paper imbalance of forces suggested, it is, especially when there is evidence of serious logistical and morale problems contributing, which will also make the phase after a takeover harder than they would otherwise be expected. Kazakhstan rebuffing Russia’s request for additional troops, and a number of previously relatively pro-Russia governments not aligning the way Putin might have hoped also is a complication (Hungary, one of the more pro-Russian EU/NATO governments, coming down hard against Russia on this is particularly significant, and the pro-NATO swing in Swedish public opinion is a hard backfire on Putin’s attempt to capitalize on the invasion with further threats.) While it is still very bad for Ukraine, this has the early signs of a massive debacle for Russia.
  • vkou 5y ago
    > and the pro-NATO swing in Swedish public opinion is a hard backfire on Putin’s attempt to capitalize on the invasion with further threats. I am positive that those threats are also purely for internal consumption. There's no possible way where this invasion would not result in Sweeden joining NATO. (Other than a complete and total Russian defeat, that revealed it to be a paper tiger, and no real threat to anyone. That's not quite the outcome we're seeing, though.)
    • clutchdude 5y ago
      > There's no possible way where this invasion would not result in Sweeden joining NATO. Rewriting this for clarity sake: It is absolutely that this invasion would result in Sweden joining NATO.
• smoe 5y ago
  I don't think Ukraine can beat Russia in a regular war and has to eventually shift to full guerrilla warfare, with which the Russians would have to deal with for years. Some in the Kremlin might have expected the takeover to be as swift as the Taliban taking back Afghanistan with little to no resistance, before other countries can agree upon any sanctions or reaction. If that were the case, I think sanctions from the west would have been much tamer, due to the war already being over and less political pressure from their own constituencies. E.g. German government needed at ton of public outcry first, before they changed their mind. Also the longer it takes, the more Putin has to deal with opposition in their own ranks and populace.