Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[Biff_T]

1 hour ago, DirkDiggler said:

 

This is all part of Putin's brilliant plan.  We're just too stupid to understand it.   

[Lord Ratner]

3 hours ago, torqued said:

Making the rounds in German media: an Interesting read from a leaked RAND report from JANUARY 2022.

Germany is getting too big for its breeches. They may abandon NATO and the EU in favor of an Old Europe alliance.

Solution: Plunge Europe into a financial crisis, crash the Euro, and cause massive outflows of skilled labor and finance as people sell the euro to buy dollars and yuan.

This would pull the USA out of a looming recession.

https://t.co/Ox9qckkjEV

 

 

That report reads like it was written by a high schooler. 

[busdriver]

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

That report reads like it was written by a high schooler. 

And reads nothing like what Rand produces.

[uhhello]

7 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

That report reads like it was written by a high schooler. 

 

1 hour ago, busdriver said:

And reads nothing like what Rand produces.

https://www.rand.org/news/press/2022/09/14.html

Because it's not RAND.  Surprise.  The internet and its wealth of "information" is very dangerous.  

[ATIS]

ATIS 

 

 

[Biff_T]

32 minutes ago, ATIS said:

ATIS 

 

 

That's a big helmet.  I'm a little jealous.  

[bfargin]

[DirkDiggler]

https://apple.news/AskpqBgwBTwSZ79CZZsr42g
 

  Not a good time to be a pro-Russian puppet in the occupied territories.

 

  Also find it interesting that fighting has flared up again on the Armenia-Azerbaijan front.  Meanwhile apparently Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are resolving old territorial disputes with tanks and heavy artillery; Russia doesn’t have the schilz to weigh in on their traditional sphere of influence (right across their border) that it did 9 months ago.  Mr. Putin isn’t looking like the “strategic genius/very smart guy/chess master he was claimed by some to be in early January.

  

[Lord Ratner]

16 hours ago, DirkDiggler said:

https://apple.news/AskpqBgwBTwSZ79CZZsr42g
 

  Not a good time to be a pro-Russian puppet in the occupied territories.

 

  Also find it interesting that fighting has flared up again on the Armenia-Azerbaijan front.  Meanwhile apparently Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are resolving old territorial disputes with tanks and heavy artillery; Russia doesn’t have the schilz to weigh in on their traditional sphere of influence (right across their border) that it did 9 months ago.  Mr. Putin isn’t looking like the “strategic genius/very smart guy/chess master he was claimed by some to be in early January.

  

Old man lack vision, and vision wins wars.

 

So does overwhelming force, but it seems like the entire world was wildly overestimating Russia's overwhelming force.

It's obviously not worth gambling on, but it has made me wonder just how functional their nuclear deterrent is. 

 

 

[DirkDiggler]

1 hour ago, Lord Ratner said:

Old man lack vision, and vision wins wars.

 

So does overwhelming force, but it seems like the entire world was wildly overestimating Russia's overwhelming force.

It's obviously not worth gambling on, but it has made me wonder just how functional their nuclear deterrent is. 

 

 

I’ll be the first admit that prior to the invasion I didn’t think the Russian military as a whole would perform this poorly.  In retrospect it’s kinda not surprising given that Putin’s entire system is a kleptocracy; I’d imagine a good portion of military funding over the years actually purchased mega yachts and West London real estate.

  Overwhelming force is great until poor logistics, low morale, and precision fires fuck up your weekend.

  Couldn’t say on the nukes, don’t have any window into that world.  I think the bigger question is whether there’s enough Putin loyalists in the launch chain to ensure preemptive nuclear strikes are carried out.

[FLEA]

2 minutes ago, DirkDiggler said:

I’ll be the first admit that prior to the invasion I didn’t think the Russian military as a whole would perform this poorly.  In retrospect it’s kinda not surprising given that Putin’s entire system is a kleptocracy; I’d imagine a good portion of military funding over the years actually purchased mega yachts and West London real estate.

  Overwhelming force is great until poor logistics, low morale, and precision fires fuck up your weekend.

  Couldn’t say on the nukes, don’t have any window into that world.  I think the bigger question is whether there’s enough Putin loyalists in the launch chain to ensure preemptive nuclear strikes are carried out.

I mean this is exactly it. Even if 99% of their forces are incapable, dis-repaired or unwilling....60 nukes is still A LOT to sustain even for the US. 

[uhhello]

8 minutes ago, DirkDiggler said:

I’ll be the first admit that prior to the invasion I didn’t think the Russian military as a whole would perform this poorly.  In retrospect it’s kinda not surprising given that Putin’s entire system is a kleptocracy; I’d imagine a good portion of military funding over the years actually purchased mega yachts and West London real estate.

  Overwhelming force is great until poor logistics, low morale, and precision fires fuck up your weekend.

  Couldn’t say on the nukes, don’t have any window into that world.  I think the bigger question is whether there’s enough Putin loyalists in the launch chain to ensure preemptive nuclear strikes are carried out.

I'd imagine the CIA has their hands full right now vetting walk-ins and potential sources.  Hopefully they have a good handle on the chain of command for emptying the silos.

[FourFans]

On 9/17/2022 at 12:47 PM, uhhello said:

I'd imagine the CIA has their hands full right now vetting walk-ins and potential sources.  Hopefully they have a good handle on the chain of command for emptying the silos.

...which I doubt.  Considering the lack of consistent funding and support they've had over the past decade, they'd be lucky to have HUMINT resources in place to give appropriate reporting.  CIA has been getting crapped on since Clinton, and it can take decades to develop reliable and well placed sources.

That said, with the rapid deterioration of Russia in...well...everything, it's entirely plausible they've had walk-ins with good intel.

Edited September 19, 2022 by FourFans130

[GrndPndr]

On 9/17/2022 at 11:38 AM, Lord Ratner said:

It's obviously not worth gambling on, but it has made me wonder just how functional their nuclear deterrent is. 

Or how well controlled it is.

[Prosuper]

On 9/16/2022 at 6:29 PM, DirkDiggler said:

https://apple.news/AskpqBgwBTwSZ79CZZsr42g
 

  Not a good time to be a pro-Russian puppet in the occupied territories.

 

  Also find it interesting that fighting has flared up again on the Armenia-Azerbaijan front.  Meanwhile apparently Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are resolving old territorial disputes with tanks and heavy artillery; Russia doesn’t have the schilz to weigh in on their traditional sphere of influence (right across their border) that it did 9 months ago.  Mr. Putin isn’t looking like the “strategic genius/very smart guy/chess master he was claimed by some to be in early January.

  

I wonder if we still had a presence at Manas the Tajiks would be doing this, the Canadians are heavily invested in mining in Kyrgyzstan also.

[busdriver]

I like Matt Yglesias mainly since he's 100% lefty but generally sees past the polemic BS that's ever present in our modern politics.  He also just wrote an interesting piece on how badly Russia screwed this thing up.  Most interesting to me was that I missed the impact of sanctions removing Russian access to intermediate production products (chips as an example).

https://www.slowboring.com/p/russias-military-and-economic-strategy

[DirkDiggler]

https://apple.news/AyS893nNuQAKD-CQPj3d_Wg
 

  This article has a pretty good breakdown of what’s believed to be in this partial mobilization.

[fire4effect]

On 9/19/2022 at 4:50 AM, FourFans130 said:

...which I doubt.  Considering the lack of consistent funding and support they've had over the past decade, they'd be lucky to have HUMINT resources in place to give appropriate reporting.  CIA has been getting crapped on since Clinton, and it can take decades to develop reliable and well placed sources.

That said, with the rapid deterioration of Russia in...well...everything, it's entirely plausible they've had walk-ins with good intel.

Flights out of Russia sell out after Putin orders partial call-up | Reuters

Getting while the getting is good

[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, busdriver said:

I like Matt Yglesias mainly since he's 100% lefty but generally sees past the polemic BS that's ever present in our modern politics.  He also just wrote an interesting piece on how badly Russia screwed this thing up.  Most interesting to me was that I missed the impact of sanctions removing Russian access to intermediate production products (chips as an example).

https://www.slowboring.com/p/russias-military-and-economic-strategy

People have been saying "sanctions don't work" as though anything in economics has a time-to-effect of a couple months.

 

Now, did the West (mostly Europe) hilariously fail to predict that Russia would impose sanctions of their own? Yes. But if the Russian sanctions on Europe are having an effect, clearly the reverse is true.

[busdriver]

1 hour ago, Lord Ratner said:

People have been saying "sanctions don't work" as though anything in economics has a time-to-effect of a couple months.

Agreed.  The point that I missed was basically: Russian tech industry sucks, and they can't build anything advanced without access to intermediate goods.  So they can't replace their advanced military systems.  

[Standby]

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

People have been saying "sanctions don't work" as though anything in economics has a time-to-effect of a couple months.

Would you consider a national lockdown due to a virus a type of sanction?

[Lord Ratner]

3 hours ago, Standby said:

Would you consider a national lockdown due to a virus a type of sanction?

No. COVID lockdowns used against another country (not possible) would be much closer to an act of war than an economic action.

 

Non-economic actions can absolutely have immediate effects. But the traditionally economic actions (sanctions, tariffs, taxes, regulations, interest rates, money printing, etc) are slow acting.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Lord Ratner

[Pooter]

Back on the nukes thing, I would definitely still bet on Russia having a big stockpile of functional nukes.  They pulled out a lot of their fanciest toys for this Ukraine debacle and a lot of them appeared to function as advertised.  
 

Watching them utterly bungle their logistics chain and severely underestimate Ukrainian resistance/creativity has been a joy, but that doesn't mean we can write off all of their high end threats. Honestly, pulling off a successful invasion of a country backed by the entire western world is a much taller order than maintaining a handful of nukes. 

[Lord Ratner]

22 hours ago, Pooter said:

Back on the nukes thing, I would definitely still bet on Russia having a big stockpile of functional nukes.  They pulled out a lot of their fanciest toys for this Ukraine debacle and a lot of them appeared to function as advertised.  
 

Watching them utterly bungle their logistics chain and severely underestimate Ukrainian resistance/creativity has been a joy, but that doesn't mean we can write off all of their high end threats. Honestly, pulling off a successful invasion of a country backed by the entire western world is a much taller order than maintaining a handful of nukes. 

But that's just it, it's not a handful that's needed.

 

Yeah I know, a single nuke in Manhattan would be devastating. One for every major city would be as well. But that's not really how the doctrine works. It takes hundreds, thousands really for the strategy to work *if* you plan to be the first one to launch. A couple dozen would hurt us, but the follow on devastation from our arsenal, very much functional, would end Russia as a global entity.

 

Using a nuke is end game for Putin, and I don't think he's willing to lose everything over Ukraine. Unless he's terminally ill, who knows? 

 

This isn't just about us. Europe is experiencing some pretty amazing introspection over their blind eye towards Russia over the years. They are going through way more pain than we are, willing, to hurt Russia. Humans aren't economic entities, they have pride and shame, and I think both are at play here.

 

Either way, the rules of the past 40 years, economically, military, geopolitically, don't apply anymore.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Lord Ratner

[Majestik Møøse]

The FSB just needs to shoot him already and get it over with.