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I was calling russian army a paper tiger for a long time, citing immense corruption and deterioration of all public institutions in Russia under Putin. Military

I was calling russian army a paper tiger for a long time, citing immense corruption and deterioration of all public institutions in Russia under Putin. Military isn't public, but that's just more opportunities for corruption and theft. My opponents usually disagreed, pointing to a big military budget and some modern-ish new weapons shown here and there. No, they do look cool at a show or a parade, but does the personnel know how to use it? Are they built en masse? Is the quality good enough? (With all that corruption!) Turns out, things are even worse then I imagined, but in the hindsight it shouldn't be surprising: this is far from the first time in history when decaying russian institutions and imperial hubris had led Russia to a disastrous war, which was planned as a 'small victorious' one: Crimean War (1853), Japan war (1905), Winter war with Finland (1940), Afghanistan war (1980), Chechena war (1994). Now Putin has one of his own. I hope his regime will crumble in the fallout from a resounding defeat.

chmod600 5y ago
To be clear, are you saying the 65km convoy is going to fail to take Kyiv? I just don't understand how that could happen unless they literally run out of fuel on the way, or if some serious airforce intervenes.
- yks 5y ago
  Length of this convoy is different every hour and it's been out there "ready to take Kyiv" for days now. If the soldiers are already out of food, it's as good as a heap of scrap. If you fancy thinking about "3D-chess mastermind military tactics", then how about the fact that Ukraine seemingly does not even bother to deal with the convoy, and they have working ballistic rockets, think about that.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Indeed, this convoy has made a variety of seemingly contradictory impressions on those reporting. The strongest possibility may be that the reports we're receiving aren't very accurate.
    - ihumanable 5y ago
      "Length of convoy" is such a weird metric for all the news agencies to use. We don't they just count the vehicles, I would imagine even basic computer vision software could do that with reasonable accuracy. If 100 vehicles are in a 10 mile long convoy and then they space out more and are now in a 20 mile long convoy, it's still 100 vehicles. I do enjoy reading each day the different lengths and distances to Kyiv.
      - cutemonster 5y ago
        Do you know how many vehicles are in the convoy?
- blibble 5y ago
  > unless they literally run out of fuel on the way this seems to be happening quite a bit
- ddalex 5y ago
  65km convoy means, what, 6000 vehicles and 30k people ? How do you control with 30k soldiers a city of 3Mil that freely distributed guns to residents ? It's going to be a slaughter, on both sides :(
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  This convoy might defeat itself in a few days because they'll run out of fuel, or food, or drinking water. If anything, it is unthinkable for an advanced army to move in such disposition. They what, cosplay the Freedom Convoy?
  - type0 5y ago
    > They what, cosplay the Freedom Convoy? Putin did say his troops will be fighting for "Freedom" of Ukraine.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  They're on roads. The ground is muddy. Pop the leader with a Javelin. Pop a couple more vehicles that try to get around it. Presto, instant traffic jam and the Russians have repeatedly shown they clump up in traffic jams. Now you hit the vehicles in the rear, you're not likely to need sophisticated weapons to do that. Now you have a huge mess that you can rain mortar fire on. Finland did a lower-tech version of it to them long ago with trees rather than mud as the barrier.
- 0ld 5y ago
  > they literally run out of fuel on the way surprise (not), but they literally ran out of fuel on the way [0] that 65km convoy is just a 65km sitting duck of a traffic jam at the moment. without fuel and food all of this war is a festival of glorious russian corruption and incompetency at its best. i, as a ukrainian, must thank them for that [0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-move-kyiv-stalled-now-may-be-rethinking-approach-us-official-2022-03-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-move-kyiv-stall...
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
This isn't a videogame or binging the latest show on NetFlix. Not sure why so many are convinced a war should take a couple of hours in time to turn over to the sports highlights of the day. I'm seeing lots of "Putin thought this..." and "Putin thought that..." with absolutely no evidence of what Putin thought. It seems like wishful thinking on the part of people who have given themselves ADHD and get upset when a story doesn't wrap up quickly like on tv.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Most of USA war media, especially in the first several weeks of a new TV war, is best described as "wishful thinking".
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Yeah, but let's face it. Their "elite" spetsnaz got captured during an operation. The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general. And what did Putin lose in that country anyway? The entire population hates Russians and are willing to die for their freedom. Let's say he can capture it. They have no natural resources of interest or anything like that. Meanwhile his own economy, that was already as tiny as the Benelux, goes completely to the shitterhole. He has nukes, yes, he has nukes.
  - dtn 5y ago
    > Yeah, but let's face it. Their "elite" spetsnaz got captured during an operation. I highly doubt this, considering https://nikopol.nikopolnews.net/nikopol/uvaga-informaciya-pro-zatrimannya-diversantiv-u-nikopoli-hibna/ https://nikopol.nikopolnews.net/nikopol/uvaga-informaciya-pr... claims the image is of Ukrainian military. In addition to that, all the claims of them being Spetsnaz seem to originate from social media. > The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general. Once again, there is no solid source for this that doesn't circle back to some social media post. I don't think there's currently way to confirm whether any of these claims are true or not, not until the conflict is over.
vbezhenar 5y ago
How much time did Americans spent to conquer Iraq? Russians are besieging Kiev in mere days and probably will finish the entire operation in few weeks. This is unprecedented efficiency against a huge ukrainian army fed by the entire West with weapons and instructors, which just had 8 years experience of constant war against donbass. Russian army is amazing.
- dereg 5y ago
  This is a bizarre perspective, especially because our lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us that the invasion itself occurs simply and uneventfully. Remolding the conquered land to become invader friendly is, on the other hand, an endeavor that both the US and Russia know is infeasible and a losing proposition.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    Honestly, it seems like taking a lot longer on the invasion, and therefore killing a lot more of your enemy combatants might be a better strategy than dealing with them as insurgents after a swift take over.
    - rurp 5y ago
      Bombing cities and killing civilians is a great way to create insurgents. Every time a country blows up a person's home or kills their family members there is a chance that person picks up a gun and starts fighting back.
- rurp 5y ago
  You are comparing an invasion to an invasion plus an occupation, which makes no sense. Saddam had a very powerful army at the time, and the US military walked through it like it was nothing. Occupying Iraq and building a new regime went terribly, as almost all such projects do. Even if Russia manages to conquer Ukraine entirely, which is a massive if, I've seen absolutely nothing in the past 6 days to make me think that an occupation by them would be anything other than a horrid disaster. Aside from pure propaganda, I have no idea what information you could be looking at to come to the conclusion that Russia is executing the invasion well at this point.
lbsnake7 5y ago
I would agree that Russia and China bluff their strength but there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment. To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time. My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take over.
- f1refly 5y ago
  > To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time. I'd rather trust my national security on equipment that's subpar but reliable and predictable, instead of trying to make my own and failing. Kind of like home security: I'd rather buy a lock for my front door that may be not perfect rather than trying to machine my own better version, even if I technically know how it works and could maybe make a working prototype. Military development is really, really expensive and extremely hard to do right when your state is still developing and running low on qualified engineers, physicists and mathematicians. In any case, having recent russian weapons is more than enough when your neighbours are equipped with leftovers from the fifties.
- namlem 5y ago
  Their enemies have the same equipment, so it balances out.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    Right now Ukrainians seem to have the javlins and stingers. Plus, I'm pretty sure they know everything US intelligence knows.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  > there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment. I don't know about China, but Russian exports are mostly soviet-era models, and they are known to have huge maintenance issues. Also note this: in the USSR they knew how to build things, but modern Russia can't. We have no electronics industry, no machine industry, we can't really make commercial airplanes, and we can't build a decent car. How would country with such capabilities make state of the art military equipment?!
LorenPechtel 5y ago
I have long figured their nuclear forces would prove to be barely function if called upon, but I didn't realize how deep the rot was on the conventional side. Those get used in exercises.

chmod600 5y ago

To be clear, are you saying the 65km convoy is going to fail to take Kyiv? I just don't understand how that could happen unless they literally run out of fuel on the way, or if some serious airforce intervenes.

yks 5y ago
Length of this convoy is different every hour and it's been out there "ready to take Kyiv" for days now. If the soldiers are already out of food, it's as good as a heap of scrap. If you fancy thinking about "3D-chess mastermind military tactics", then how about the fact that Ukraine seemingly does not even bother to deal with the convoy, and they have working ballistic rockets, think about that.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Indeed, this convoy has made a variety of seemingly contradictory impressions on those reporting. The strongest possibility may be that the reports we're receiving aren't very accurate.
  - ihumanable 5y ago
    "Length of convoy" is such a weird metric for all the news agencies to use. We don't they just count the vehicles, I would imagine even basic computer vision software could do that with reasonable accuracy. If 100 vehicles are in a 10 mile long convoy and then they space out more and are now in a 20 mile long convoy, it's still 100 vehicles. I do enjoy reading each day the different lengths and distances to Kyiv.
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      Do you know how many vehicles are in the convoy?
blibble 5y ago
> unless they literally run out of fuel on the way this seems to be happening quite a bit
ddalex 5y ago
65km convoy means, what, 6000 vehicles and 30k people ? How do you control with 30k soldiers a city of 3Mil that freely distributed guns to residents ? It's going to be a slaughter, on both sides :(
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
This convoy might defeat itself in a few days because they'll run out of fuel, or food, or drinking water. If anything, it is unthinkable for an advanced army to move in such disposition. They what, cosplay the Freedom Convoy?
- type0 5y ago
  > They what, cosplay the Freedom Convoy? Putin did say his troops will be fighting for "Freedom" of Ukraine.
LorenPechtel 5y ago
They're on roads. The ground is muddy. Pop the leader with a Javelin. Pop a couple more vehicles that try to get around it. Presto, instant traffic jam and the Russians have repeatedly shown they clump up in traffic jams. Now you hit the vehicles in the rear, you're not likely to need sophisticated weapons to do that. Now you have a huge mess that you can rain mortar fire on. Finland did a lower-tech version of it to them long ago with trees rather than mud as the barrier.
0ld 5y ago
> they literally run out of fuel on the way surprise (not), but they literally ran out of fuel on the way [0] that 65km convoy is just a 65km sitting duck of a traffic jam at the moment. without fuel and food all of this war is a festival of glorious russian corruption and incompetency at its best. i, as a ukrainian, must thank them for that [0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-move-kyiv-stalled-now-may-be-rethinking-approach-us-official-2022-03-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-move-kyiv-stall...

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

This isn't a videogame or binging the latest show on NetFlix. Not sure why so many are convinced a war should take a couple of hours in time to turn over to the sports highlights of the day. I'm seeing lots of "Putin thought this..." and "Putin thought that..." with absolutely no evidence of what Putin thought. It seems like wishful thinking on the part of people who have given themselves ADHD and get upset when a story doesn't wrap up quickly like on tv.

jessaustin 5y ago
Most of USA war media, especially in the first several weeks of a new TV war, is best described as "wishful thinking".
koonsolo 5y ago
Yeah, but let's face it. Their "elite" spetsnaz got captured during an operation. The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general. And what did Putin lose in that country anyway? The entire population hates Russians and are willing to die for their freedom. Let's say he can capture it. They have no natural resources of interest or anything like that. Meanwhile his own economy, that was already as tiny as the Benelux, goes completely to the shitterhole. He has nukes, yes, he has nukes.
- dtn 5y ago
  > Yeah, but let's face it. Their "elite" spetsnaz got captured during an operation. I highly doubt this, considering https://nikopol.nikopolnews.net/nikopol/uvaga-informaciya-pro-zatrimannya-diversantiv-u-nikopoli-hibna/ https://nikopol.nikopolnews.net/nikopol/uvaga-informaciya-pr... claims the image is of Ukrainian military. In addition to that, all the claims of them being Spetsnaz seem to originate from social media. > The fearsome Chechenians were on the way to capture the leaders, and then turned out the Ukrainians already drone striked them including the general. Once again, there is no solid source for this that doesn't circle back to some social media post. I don't think there's currently way to confirm whether any of these claims are true or not, not until the conflict is over.

vbezhenar 5y ago

How much time did Americans spent to conquer Iraq? Russians are besieging Kiev in mere days and probably will finish the entire operation in few weeks. This is unprecedented efficiency against a huge ukrainian army fed by the entire West with weapons and instructors, which just had 8 years experience of constant war against donbass. Russian army is amazing.

dereg 5y ago
This is a bizarre perspective, especially because our lessons in Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us that the invasion itself occurs simply and uneventfully. Remolding the conquered land to become invader friendly is, on the other hand, an endeavor that both the US and Russia know is infeasible and a losing proposition.
- Loughla 5y ago
  Honestly, it seems like taking a lot longer on the invasion, and therefore killing a lot more of your enemy combatants might be a better strategy than dealing with them as insurgents after a swift take over.
  - rurp 5y ago
    Bombing cities and killing civilians is a great way to create insurgents. Every time a country blows up a person's home or kills their family members there is a chance that person picks up a gun and starts fighting back.
rurp 5y ago
You are comparing an invasion to an invasion plus an occupation, which makes no sense. Saddam had a very powerful army at the time, and the US military walked through it like it was nothing. Occupying Iraq and building a new regime went terribly, as almost all such projects do. Even if Russia manages to conquer Ukraine entirely, which is a massive if, I've seen absolutely nothing in the past 6 days to make me think that an occupation by them would be anything other than a horrid disaster. Aside from pure propaganda, I have no idea what information you could be looking at to come to the conclusion that Russia is executing the invasion well at this point.

lbsnake7 5y ago

I would agree that Russia and China bluff their strength but there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment. To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time. My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take over.

f1refly 5y ago
> To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time. I'd rather trust my national security on equipment that's subpar but reliable and predictable, instead of trying to make my own and failing. Kind of like home security: I'd rather buy a lock for my front door that may be not perfect rather than trying to machine my own better version, even if I technically know how it works and could maybe make a working prototype. Military development is really, really expensive and extremely hard to do right when your state is still developing and running low on qualified engineers, physicists and mathematicians. In any case, having recent russian weapons is more than enough when your neighbours are equipped with leftovers from the fifties.
namlem 5y ago
Their enemies have the same equipment, so it balances out.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Right now Ukrainians seem to have the javlins and stingers. Plus, I'm pretty sure they know everything US intelligence knows.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment. I don't know about China, but Russian exports are mostly soviet-era models, and they are known to have huge maintenance issues. Also note this: in the USSR they knew how to build things, but modern Russia can't. We have no electronics industry, no machine industry, we can't really make commercial airplanes, and we can't build a decent car. How would country with such capabilities make state of the art military equipment?!

LorenPechtel 5y ago

I have long figured their nuclear forces would prove to be barely function if called upon, but I didn't realize how deep the rot was on the conventional side. Those get used in exercises.