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One Year into the War in Ukraine
- moremetadata 4y agoI remember the BBC News telling viewers it would all be over in 6 weeks!
- mmcclure 4y agoThe first section is titled "Predictions Are Hard."
- annexrichmond 4y ago“2 more weeks!” ™
- melling 4y agoDidn’t most people expect Russian to easily take Ukraine? They are several times bigger, larger military, etc.
- jemmyw 4y agoYes they absolutely did. There were quite a few surprises. The resistance of the Ukrainian people, especially the leadership. The effectiveness of small shoulder mounted weapons in taking out armoured vehicles. The incredibly poor logistical capability of the Russian forces who thought they could just drive into Kiev without infantry support, or even bringing enough fuel. The way the Russian forces conducted themselves initially has led to the belief that they believed they'd have local support. Purge of their security people supports this idea too. Putin thought he'd paid for insurgency in Ukraine and instead had some uncommonly wealthy spies.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago[flagged]
- melling 4y agoWhich stated intentions? They initially claimed they weren’t going into Ukraine.
- riku_iki 4y agoputin literally said in his speech at the beginning that the goal is to overthrow "drug addict government". How could they do it without taking over country?
- anextio 4y agoThey don't have to occupy the whole of Ukraine to do that, they only have to defeat Ukraine's military and destroy NATO's materiel on the battlefield. If they intended to occupy the entire country they would need several million troops as well as legions of administrators ready to go, which would be visible. They most likely only plan to long-term occupy the parts of Ukraine where the majority of the population still living there supports them. The last thing that Russia wants is fighting a never ending insurgency in Lviv oblast.
- int_19h 4y agoThe column that was rushing towards Kyiv consisted in large part of the Russian National Guard units - those are the guys whose primary purpose is to beat up people in opposition protests. And they had the anti-riot gear packed, as Ukrainians have found out when going through the wrecks. So, yes, they were absolutely planning to suppress civilian opposition to the occupation.
- anextio 4y ago[flagged]
- GaggiX 4y agoI don't find it particularly convincing that you dismiss int_19h's evidence as mere propaganda, without further elaboration. I think it is easy to say now, after a year of war, that Russia could not have occupied Ukraine, but I think it is important to understand the prelude to war, 200.000 troops is not enough to occupy a country the size of Ukraine that will fight back, but it is more than enough for a country that would not, Ukraine had almost no army in 2014, and it still seems like yesterday, Russia under Putin has always won military conflicts: Chechnya, Georgia, and the fact that it took Crimea without hardly firing a shot, also the attitude that Russians have toward Ukrainians as sort of stupid cousins who need to be brought home, and after that the fact that Russia has a high level of corruption and Putin chooses his men well, the people he surrounds himself with have survived endless purges and power plays, so I would hardly see them responding (one of the reasons why I think democracies are stronger than public opinion seems to think). These are the reasons why it is clear to me that Russia tried to occupy Kiev and overthrow the government, the plan was not to get to the suburbs and then simply withdraw forces from the area, this is not how you "demilitarize and denazify" a country, the capital also is not far from the Belarusian border, then there is the evidence of int_19h.
- GaggiX 4y agoNot many predicted that Ukraine would hold out so long, especially the Kremlin itself which believed that the most reasonable course of action at the time was to start the invasion even with such a small number of men.
- moremetadata 4y agoWell I remember Liz Truss saying British civilians would not be prosecuted if they went over there and fought. This is standard textbook SAS/SBS protocol, resign your commission for deniable ops, go off to conflict zone and fight. They also dont like tattoos for this reason, so if you are military and want to earn more money, dont get a tattoo, you might just as well get useful idiot tattooed on your forehead! The fact that NATO have been loading up the Ukrainian people with debt via forced if not compulsory purchases in all but name of military equipment tells me both sides will be winning out of this at the expense of the useful idiots going out to fight and the Ukrainian people. The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least. You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed, I see demolition for new shopping centres, car parks and other civil amenities taking place when its reported and spun in the news. Didnt anyone learn anything from the Iraq war? Govt's especially the US spunking money everywhere like there was no tomorrow? How do you stimulate an economy? Got to war, and force change on people.
- jemmyw 4y agouh yeah, it's going to work out well for the Russian economy. > The businesses already sizing up their contracts when rebuilding Ukraine, the poorest country in the EU, starts in earnest, is going to be lucrative to say the least. Yes I'm sure that's true. The war has happened, the rebuild is going to happen. > You know that Putin is in on it by the seemingly random buildings being destroyed No. lol
- Animats 4y agoBusiness Insider says 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine.[1] That leaves the central Russian government very vulnerable to its own internal separatist movements, of which there are rather a lot.[2]. Some of those movements are in areas landlocked or not economically viable, but the Free Ingria movement (Leningrad oblast, including St. Petersburg) has potential. That area is bordered by Finland, Estonia, and the Gulf of Finland. An independence movement there could be well supported from Europe. Something to think about. There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip to trade for Ukraine's own territory. There's nothing but farmland and mountains. Which is why this war is so stuck. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/97-of-russia-army-in-ukraine-uk-intel-defense-putin-war-2023-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/97-of-russia-army-in-ukraine... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatism_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatism_in_Russia
- hammock 4y ago> Business Insider says 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine.[1] The UK defense minister said this. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-64634760 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-64634760
- bigdict 4y ago> Free Ingria […] has potential No, it's a toy movement. > There's no part of Russia bordering Ukraine that Ukraine could take as a bargaining chip Transnistria could play precisely that role.
- notahacker 4y agoDon't really see Transnistria as remotely useful as a bargaining chip. Sure it's propped up by Russia and would eventually be integrated into Russia under Putin's wildest imperial fantasies, but it's not Russia, its people mostly aren't Russian and I'm not sure it's all that valuable either. All a Ukrainian invasion of Transnistria would do is give Putin's claims about Ukrainian aggression some veneer of legitimacy and annoy Moldova, which doesn't want to see something which is constitutionally part of their territory fought over and then bargained back to Russian control...
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago"The current War in Ukraine is, after all, a continuation of what I’ve seen termed the War in the Donbas, which began in April of 2014. " I was happy to read that since it is constantly ignored by American media.
- ROTMetro 4y agoYou mean the conflict in Donbas that killed 25 people in 2021, mainly from mines? Hardly justification for Russia's invasion.
- yucky 4y agoThousands have been killed on both sides of that conflict since 2014, handpicking a temporary downturn in 2021 is a bit disingenuous, no?
- int_19h 4y agoIt wasn't a "temporary downturn". If you look at the graph of casualties in Donbas before 2022, the first 2 years of fighting in 2014-2015 see the vast majority of casualties, and then it goes down sharply from there. By 2021, this much lower rate was a well-established status quo, and this was reflected even in official government briefings from separatist republics and Russia itself. For example, DNR published (https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3467017.html https://regnum.ru/news/polit/3467017.html) its own stats claiming a grand total of 70 military casualties and 7 civilians for the entirety of 2021 - a proportion, by the way, that tells you volumes about where that fire was aimed.
- yucky 4y agoI can show you the same trend in the Iraq War, and it doesn't make it not a war. I guess I'm not sure of the point.
- int_19h 4y agoThe point is that it is an extremely silly justification to start a war which resulted in these numbers spiking ~100x for the civilian population in the affected areas.
- pphysch 4y ago[flagged]
- Nimitz14 4y agoIt's called making fun of oneself. I know I know, incomprehensible for Americans. But do try.
- wardedVibe 4y agoHe mostly does history education through the lens of pop culture. He's a bit outside his expertise on this subject, but uses it as a launching off point for educational content rather than trying to be a "military strategist". He even says as much at the outset. > keeping in mind that I am largely reliant here on the expertise of others and so am operating from my ‘professional thing explainer’ role, rather than as the expert
- int_19h 4y agoThe guy is a military historian, so armchair military strategizing is literally a part of the job. Unlike the rest of us, though, he actually studied for it.
- retconekt 4y ago"Urban warfare is brutally difficult and has in the past not been a particular strength of the Russian Federation.” Ahem, Stalingrad Cough, splutter, gurgling blood..
- dragonwriter 4y ago> "Urban warfare is brutally difficult and has in the past not been a particular strength of the Russian Federation.” > Ahem, > Stalingrad Ahem, “Russian Federation”. Not the same thing as the USSR.
- andrewflnr 4y agoPretty close though, realistically. Continuity of doctrine and a fair number of people AFAIK. I'm not an expert but I still think I would have heard about it if Russia reconstituted its entire military from scratch after the USSR's collapse.
- lnsru 4y agoUrban warfare for russians is a no-brainer - level everything to the ground. See leftovers of Grozny.
- oriolid 4y agoUsually the defender is expected to have advantage but somehow Soviet Union ended up with higher casualties than losing side.
- int_19h 4y agoFWIW the sheer concentration of artillery firepower at hot spots in Ukraine exceeds anything seen in Stalingrad. Mariupol was one prominent example, and the ongoing battle for Bakhmut is another.
- I_complete_me 4y agoIn fact Putin is completely correct in his attempt to retrieve Ukraine for Mother Russia and it is the West that is the aggressor. Now, if you just had a visceral (negative) response to this, I am with you. The point I am trying to make is that the Russian people seem to be equally incredulous to the idea that Russia itself is the aggressor. How is it that the Russian media has such a hold over them - in this day of the internet and other forms of communication? And if Russia can have such a hold, why couldn't OUR government have such an equal hold over US. I want the war to end as much as anyone but I believe that only by informing the Russian people of this can there be real hope for peace and resolution. (And please forgive my naivety.)
- cjblomqvist 4y agoEasy to forget, but an objective and great educational system (which doesn't optimize only for getting people to be able to do certain jobs, but to truly educate people about life), along with free speech is equally important as free elections in order for democracy to work.
- ninjagoo 4y ago> The point I am trying to make is that the Russian people seem to be equally incredulous to the idea that Russia itself is the aggressor. You may want to point this crowd to some sources about that incredulity being widespread in Russia. > How is it that the Russian media has such a hold over them - in this day of the internet and other forms of communication? There is a language barrier at play here - Russian natives may not be able to avail English-media content, and I do wonder about how much russian language counter-programming is widely available to the average Russian. > And if Russia can have such a hold, why couldn't OUR government have such an equal hold over US. Russia is practically a dictatorship, while the US is a functioning democracy. That said, within the last 2 decades we have seen the US invade Iraq for no good reason, with significant support from the population resulting in Bush's re-election. Granted, the US people finally threw those responsible out of power for a couple of cycles (albeit for a mix of reasons, including poor economic performance). Meanwhile the Russian people do not appear to have that luxury of being able to peacefully remove Putin from power for any reason.
- 4y ago
- UIUC_06 4y agoOnly people whose knowledge of history begins with WW II think everything is Munich, and that analogy applies to everything. There was 6,000 years of recorded history before Munich. It's not always correct to think that "if we appease them here, they'll be in our bedrooms next." Sometimes in history, the two sides cut a deal, and peace was maintained for a few generations, which was all anyone expected anyway.
- timeon 4y agoThis seems bit vague.
- UIUC_06 4y agoSo you're unhappy unless some specific wars are cited?
- robochat 4y agoI agree with this sentiment but in this particular case, with the personality that Putin projects to the world, it seems like appeasement would just encouragement him to try to take more.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> There was 6,000 years of recorded history before Munich. Yeah, “Dane-geld” was written long before Munich, and references experiences much longer before Munich. The observation that accommodating aggression encourages more aggression was not first made in regards to Munich, Munich is just one notable example of that time-worn lesson being forgotten at great cost.
- rainworld 4y agoIt’s hard to know exactly how heavy Ukrainian losses in the first phase and this second phase were; I suspect we’ll find out that they were quite a bit heavier than media coverage would lead us to believe. Actually, if you read Western mainstream media front line reports, past the headlines and between the lines, a picture of very heavy losses emerges. Units completely depleted or rebuilt several times. Territorial Defense volunteers sent into the trenches with hardly any preparation [0]. And so on. But somehow such reports never manage to shatter the Conventional Wisdom. [0]: Just one recent example: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/world/asia/ukraine-russia-war-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/world/asia/ukraine-russia...
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Actually, if you read Western mainstream media front line reports, past the headlines and between the lines, a picture of very heavy losses emerges. You don’t even have to read “past the headlines and between the lines”. The most common estimates I’ve seen are around 120K killed+wounded for Ukraine, which are very heavily casualties. Not as heavy as the 200K the same sources are estimating for Russia, but still very high. This is a meatgrinder of a war. This is very clear.
- rainworld 4y ago[flagged]
- dragonwriter 4y ago> All in all Russian dead do not exceed 40k at the moment. Based on…what? Intuition?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- leereeves 4y agoRelative to population, 120K casualties in the Ukrainian forces is much worse than 200K in the Russian forces.
- diimdeep 4y ago> Bret Devereaux, "About the Pedant", "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry", "PhD", "ancient and military historian", "intersections of the Roman economy and the Roman military" https://acoup.blog/about-the-pedant/ https://acoup.blog/about-the-pedant/ > “I am not going to pretend to be neutral here. I am on the side of the nascent democracy which was ruthlessly and lawlessly attacked without provocation by a larger and more powerful foreign power.” I'm not going to quote anything else or what is missing, but overall: Deep substance, neutral style or “pedantry” is not found in this article. But there is one sided ideology propaganda, vilification and demonization, black and white thinking, omitting of crucial events, facts, and parties involved not just for duration since 2008 but just in 2022. Strongly recommend avoiding this article and this author, unless you already wholly agree with him and want to reinforce your information bubble.