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It would be wild if that delay was what turned this war from a route into a quagmire for Russia by delaying them into the thaw season. They already appear to b
by InitialLastName 5y ago
It would be wild if that delay was what turned this war from a route into a quagmire for Russia by delaying them into the thaw season. They already appear to be having issues with mud, and weather forecasts in Kyiv appear to be mostly above freezing for the rest of the week.
- cutenewt 5y agoProbably the last time Putin is going to grant any wishes to Xi
- datavirtue 5y agoThese guys are tight. China has been migrating into Siberia for years.
- geoka9 5y ago"Digesting" Siberia.
- kryptiskt 5y agoRussia is very much the junior partner in the relationship with China, and now that they have burned their bridges to the West they lack any leverage against China. They are going to have to defer a lot more going forwards.
- celticninja 5y agoYup, as sole buyer China are going to set the price of Russia's oil and gas.
- lupire 5y agoDoes China have other sellers?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"Russia is very much the junior partner in the relationship with China" Exactly, Putin is not the grand strategist the world thinks he is
- jonnycomputer 5y agoAnyone that can make Switzerland and Sweden take sides against you isn't a grand strategist.
- ncmncm 5y agoPutin just was, and remains, in a desperate place. Strategy is fine at leisure. He had no choice but to do something to seem strong, to remain in power. If this doesn't work, he may move on to something desperate.
- seniorivn 5y agothat's not true at all, he doesn't need anything to remain in power, but if he wanted to get more popular among general population he could provided economic growth
- ncmncm 5y agoEvidently he is not, then, interested in getting more popular, because the invasion is an economic disaster. But he doesn't get his power from popularity. He gets it by being the baddest ass on the totem pole. Chances are the invasion on the northern and eastern fronts are more or less feints, and only the southern front actually matters to him, as it gets him full control of the Black Sea shore and the oil fields. He needs the Ukrainian forces fully occupied elsewhere, and doesn't much care what happens there as long as it absorbs enough of their attention.
- newuser94303 5y agoRussia may become like a bigger North Korea. North Korea doesn't listen to China but it doesn't go out of it's way to piss China off. China props it up because it doesn't want a bigger humanitarian crisis on it's borders. China will probably prop Russia up 1) It will get Oil and Gas cheaper 2) A mean Russia keeps the West from picking on China. 3) Russia has a lot of nukes and making it crazy helps nobody.
- romwell 5y agoProbably the last time Putin is going to grant anyone's wishes. There's only one way for him out now, and it doesn't involve him being alive. It's only a matter of time at this point.
- vkou 5y ago> There's only one way for him out now, What way is that? Because I think the one he's banking on is victory in the war over the next four weeks. Russia will suffer greatly under sanctions, but that itself is unlikely to bring him under.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 5y ago> What way is that? The Hitler 1945 option.
- dekhn 5y agoBTW, for those who haven't read it, one of the most chilling books on war is "The Last Days of Hitler" (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3626997.html https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo362699...) which is a carefully researched (if imperfect) chronicle of ... well, the last days of hitler. With US and Russia approaching Berlin on two sides, and no hope whatsoever, Hitler commanded over a near-impenetrable bunker and refused to surrender. By the end, the US retreated and lets Russia do the last work, and german units fought westward to surrender to the US. The other enlightening book is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(Beevor_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(Beevor_book) which shows just how truly absurd the war between Germany and Russia was and how megalomaniacal the leaders of those countries were.
- ModernMech 5y agoBecause after Russia "wins" comes the propaganda campaign, which will involve public executions and reeducation "camps" aimed at "proving" Putin's story about a Ukrainian Nazi genocide. This doesn't end with Putin going home and the violence ending. What will happen is that Putin will take Ukraine, and then the violence continues and gets worse.
- duxup 5y agoHe might not have many friends to grant wishes for anymore.
- throwoutway 5y agoAbove freezing? Read some news this morning that lots of snow is expected across eastern Ukraine. Maybe the weather shifted..
- cryptoz 5y agoBoth can be true. Temps don't need to be below freezing for lots of snow to fall.
- InitialLastName 5y agoEastern Ukraine is also not where Kyiv is, or where the swamp I wouldn't want to drive a tank across outside of winter [0] is. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsk_Marshes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsk_Marshes
- bpodgursky 5y agoFwiw I've seen a lot of pictures of tanks and other heavy vehicles stranded in muddy fields (presumably wheat or sunflower).
- Y-bar 5y agoIn addition to what you say: A snow cover will act as insulation and prevent ground frost from penetrating deep compared to bare ground (something small winter-active mammal can attest to).
- falcolas 5y agoCan confirm, with much grumbling to boot…
- stormbrew 5y agoYep, snow happens when the temperature at the cloud layer is low enough. Ground temp can be higher and the snow will still make it to the ground. Might melt immediately, or if it's snowing enough it could form an insulating layer that keeps snow on the ground a bit longer. Honestly, snow and air temperature have a bit of a counterintuitive relationship. It can also be too cold to snow, so a lot of really cold places are actually really dry and get very little precipitation because of that.
- IIAOPSW 5y agoWhen would be a good time for an invasion? Not when the snow thaws. Ok. How about when its ice cold? That option sounds even harder, though I guess the vehicles don't get stuck as badly. How about waiting until summer? That sounds like a more conventional military strategy, though I don't know enough Ukrainian geography to tell if its a sound option. Is there ever a "good" time for an invasion? If so, why did Putin jump the gun? If not, the current situation was inevitable in some form or other.
- jacquesm 5y agoIn the heart of winter the whole country is a road, right now it is very narrow strips that are easily passable and it is getting worse by the day.
- rightbyte 5y agoThat applies to UA armor too. Way harder to do hit and runs on road columns when you can't fall back to where ever but have to follow roads your self.
- jacquesm 5y agoDefender advantage is substantial in situations like that. Moving targets are a lot harder than stationary ones. Ukraine armor is concentrated around the main cities instead of strung out in long vulnerable stationary lines.
- throwaway6734 5y agoUkraine also has javelins and other shoulder fired anti tank weapons
- withinboredom 5y agoAnything you hit with those is pure luck. Source: experience. Edit: I was thinking of what we had in the Army, which was definitely not guided.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoWhen you're talking about military operations of this scope unexpected but familiar (this happens every year) weather conditions is practically rounding error compared to the unanticipated level of resistance from the people you are fighting.
- weatherlight 5y agoYes and no. 1) Slava Ukraini 2) Muddy fields/roads means that Russian armor has to stick to hard ball roads which in turn means longer and stretched out convoys which in turn means harder to defend supply lines, etc. Tanks and such are maintenance nightmares, and need a lot of material support in order to be effective.
- lmilcin 5y agoNot only that. More importantly, standing there for weeks made all subsequent explanations and provocations completely unbelievable. The troops tired and demotivated. Provisions (if they had any) depleted. And Ukrainians better prepared. Frozen ground could have made it easier to move around but on the other hand, troops are generally much more miserable when it is cold outside. Don't think that just because they are Russians they don't get cold. From what I am seeing Russian soldiers do not seem to be prepared well for cold. It seems they thought they will only go for some military maneuvers and then back home, not into full scale winter war. And another thing I am seeing is that they seem to be trying to find pretext to abandon their equipment. Those tanks stuck in mud -- there are ways to extract them. Russians regularly train in muddy conditions so I can't imagine they are surprised by conditions in March.
- Gollapalli 5y agoIt's been less than a week and they already have a couple major cities taken and the capital surrounded. I don't understand the narrative that Russia is in any way "losing" here. Taking over a country in the span of a month is considered an incredible military feat, and yet somehow Russia is in "a quagmire" four days in.
- SergeAx 5y agoThere's no evidence of "taking" major cities, even official propaganda is tentative about Kherson using words like "officials says". Kyiv is definitely not surrounded even 50%.
- Gollapalli 5y agoI haven't seen anything from any side that isn't propaganda one way or the other (incl. the supposedly homegrown stuff). It's too soon to tell how this is really going.
- michaelmrose 5y agoIt isn't an incredibly military feat to march a few hundred miles from occupied territory into a nation with 1/10th of your GDP and a week later sort of control one city at the cost of thousands of your solders and hundreds of vehicles with no air definitive air superiority, shrinking supply of munitions, factories reliant on foreign parts that will soon grind to a halt, market heading toward freefall and a geopolitical position so bad that the only thing keeping the rest of the world from absolutely murdering them is a threat to murder the world combined with a reputation so degenerate that people believe they are apt to do it. It is a humiliating defeat because it indicates that the cost of pacification would be outright horrifying. Full control might well cost a 5 figure death toll and could approach the Russian GDP and this indeed buys you what? The privilege of getting to literally square one in Afghanistan 2.0.
- Gollapalli 5y agoWell what makes you say all that?