On the fifth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of many unanswered questions is why Russia has launched a military campaign at huge cost with maximalist objectives, and then declined to use the vast majority of its fixed wing combat aircraft.
This is weird. It would be too easy to chalk this up to some sort of inferiority of the Russian air force, only to discover later on that it’s some ploy or strategy. Are they holding it in reserve for an even wider invasion, and if so, who’s their next victim?
Seems pretty obvious that they’re trying to minimize civilian casualties since they don’t want to turn the entire population against them. Indiscriminate bombing the way US likes to do it tends to result in a lot of negative consequences as we’ve seen with Iraq and Afghanistan.
The sanctions were much harsher than Putin expected. This decimated his war chest to maybe ten days of operations. So if this guy is correct, we’ll see some indiscriminate bombing like the Russians did in Aleppo. If they’re playing some 4-D chess, they’ll continue to lose armor and SAMs to Ukrainian drones, maybe? We’ll know in the next few days.
I’m not entirely sure I buy this either. Yes, the sanctions have hurt, and yes there’s less money now… but that wouldn’t explain the refusal to use air power… they weren’t going to be able to buy more bombs and missiles even if they had the cash. Those aren’t easily or quickly purchased.
This alone suggests that even if the sanctions hadn’t hurt (or hadn’t happened), they’d still only have as many munitions as they have now.
That’s not exactly what I’m saying. The sanctions put a time limit on the invasion. This implies that we’ll soon see the Russian airforce suddenly pushed all-in, in a desperate attempt before their gold reserves are depleted. That’s all they have to trade with, now.
At that point, we’ll see what the real state of the Russian airforce is. Out of precision munitions or unable to maintain their high tech planes? Or afraid of pilots defecting.
Russia’s war doesn’t depend on its economy. Russia doesn’t buy its equipment. It is manufactured at home.
Syria has suffered from a crippling economy for a decade, yet the government army is fully standing. Its biggest issue isn’t supplies. It’s manpower.
Yes, this explains what we’ve seen. Russia couldn’t produce a single Su-27 without international trade. No country could. The lack of day-one air domination might be explained by this. They don’t dare risk a precious asset in the expectation of years of sanctions.
Also, they’re rolling out aging and poorly maintained armor, because that’s what they manufactured at home. But it’s the 21st century. Drones and shoulder-launched self-guiding munitions are cheap hard counters. I wouldn’t want to be trapped inside a tank today!
As far as Syria goes, it wasn’t facing off against another army. They struggled to stop a multitude of powers and factions fighting them and each other for years. Only the lack of a united opposition, and Russia’s support, allowed that regime to persist. Shelling civilians with poison gas might work in Syria, but the whole world is watching Ukraine.
This is pure and utter nonsense. Russia has been literally preparing for this eventuality since 2014, and they’re very much ready for these sanctions, even financial times acknowledges that these sanctions aren’t likely to have much of an effect. Thinking that Russia didn’t consider the worst case outcomes before making a decision to start a war is incredibly delusional.
On the other hand, the west was entirely unprepared for this and the west depends on both Russia and Ukraine for food, energy, metals, and plenty of other things. Energy prices in UK have already shot up 54% and now there are talks about prices going up as high as 300%. I wonder how western public will react when thee bills for necessities shoot through the roof. Seems like nobody is considering the impact that economic warfare will have on the western countries.
It’s also worth remembering that the whole conflict has only lasted 5 days so far, and here’s how it compares with US invasion of Iraq which is a small isolated country, half the size of Ukraine where US invaded with 10x as many troops and had utter disregard for civilian casualties.
Whatever a person’s ideology is, or their opinion of Russia, I think we can all agree they’ve been preparing since then.
And yes, it is a fairly strong counter-argument to the idea that they just unexpectedly ran out of money. If they’ve been preparing for 7 years, the missiles and bombs should have been stockpiled. It’s not like creditors showed up and repossessed those.
But it’s perplexing. Even if we accept at face value your assertion that they want to minimize civilian casualties and not turn the Ukrainian public against them, the laser-guided bombs hitting military targets would put a quick end to resistance and shouldn’t make things worse from a PR perspective.
They either don’t have them (seems unlikely, but if true, also inexplicable), or aren’t using them. And it’s a little fucking weird.
Well, if there is one criticism of the west you could level at us that’s difficult to deny, it’d be that. Since when does anyone here consider the impact of anything farther than about 3 business days out? Touche.
If this was a particularly bad winter, we’d already be howling.
Good point. It’s been a long while, I guess I’d forgotten the timetable for that one. But what will we see in the next 3-6 weeks if the comparison is apt?
Entirely possible that they don’t want to reveal their full capabilities to NATO unless they have to. They’re already doing very well using old and outdated tech, so they likely don’t see a reason to show off their latest tech unless they have to. One of the reasons could be that they anticipate that NATO may join in after all, at which point they would have the advantage of surprise.
How this progresses in the coming weeks is the real question. If Russia sees more resistance than they anticipated then they may escalate. We’ve already seen signs of that in Kiev and a few other cities. It’s very hard to predict what will actually happen, but sincerely hope that the ongoing negotiations will result in some solution that’s acceptable to both sides so that the conflict can end.
This is semi-plausible. And scary as fuck.
Were it true, though, it might mean that they intend to do something that inevitably provokes such a response. It’s not as if NATO is itching to get into the fight on this one. My read is that even if they bumbled across a border into a NATO country, NATO would do everything they could to not follow up on that unless it looked like the Russians planned on staying.
I have no clue what would be acceptable to either. Ukrainians obviously want the Russians out, and permanently. They’d likely want reparations were they in any position to demand them. They definitely want some sort of insurance policy against a repeat, of which only inclusion in NATO seems to fit the bill. (Or nukes, but even the US is clear on the subject of non-proliferation… they can’t make their own and no one will give them those.)
Russia wants something that’s unclear to me. They probably don’t want to keep the land, or to integrate it into the Russian Federation. But they want it weakened to the point that it could not defend itself against another incursion, at minimum. Probably also to the point that if they choose, they can meddle in its internal politics.
I don’t think those are negotiable. And god help everyone if Putin’s really going after that horseshit Dugin wrote up.
I don’t want to fall for propaganda, and I try not to (not even the stuff that I find comforting), but this is just impossible to make fucking sense of. Russia doesn’t seem to be behaving very sanely, which my entire life was the one thing you could count on them doing. Realpolitik seems to have been thrown out with the trash.
Indeed, as that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust.
Russia wants 3 things as far as I know:
I imagine that they will continue military action until Ukraine agrees to these terms. Unless NATO intervenes militarily, which opens the door for a nuclear holocaust, Russia knows that they will eventually control the country and will be in position to implement their demands.
To understand why Russia is behaving the way it is you have to start from the premise that NATO is a hostile military alliance with the ultimate goal of enacting regime change in Russia.
Whether this is actually the case or not is entirely besides the point. This is what Russia is convinced of, and NATO actions can certainly be interpreted that way especially given that NATO refuses to negotiate with Russia in good faith and has now expanded right up to their border.
What happened in Ukraine is akin to if Russia engineered regime change in Mexico to install a pro-Russian government, and then Mexico asked to join CSTO and host Russian nukes on US border.
Starting from this perspective conflict is inevitable, and then it simply becomes a question on whose terms this conflict will happen. Russia calculated that they are likely in the best position they’re going to be to take Ukraine, and that their position will steadily become worse going forward. They’re willing to take any amount of economic blow back because they see this as an existential threat.
Well, #1 is a done deal. That’s not going to change. #3 is hypothetically on the table, but is a hard sell given the current circumstances. #2 just won’t happen. They’d never agree to it in a million years, not unless they are thoroughly broken… and the sorts of misery that have to be put on them for that are the same that would provoke western intervention.
It would be irrational for Ukraine to agree to demilitarization. For reasons I hope are obvious to everyone. But if we can ignore those…
Then we have to assume that the secessionists in Donbass and Luhansk won’t give up either. The Ukrainian government would no longer be able to resist them (with or without Russia sending weapons to the secessionists). They’d see their country whittled away over a few decades, until nothing is left.
They really have been put into circumstances where #2 is a dealbreaker, so if that’s a non-negotiable point for Russia… this is utterly fucked. There will be no peace.
I really wish someone would put forth the option of Russia joining NATO. Maybe if they were in the club, they’d no longer feel like it’s specifically designed to threaten them. Even if 70 years ago it was made clear that the Soviet Union wasn’t welcome, supposedly they’re no longer that entity, right?
All this spin isn’t going to change the fact that Russia is going broke. They clearly underestimated the capture of their foreign currency reserves. Putin doesn’t like to hear bad news, so his advisors likely painted a rosy picture. “It’s the 2014 victory lap! We’ll in Kyiv before they know it!”
Buddy, you should read up some history. In particular, go look up what Russia already went through in the 90s and in 2014. The elephant in the room is that this tactic has never worked once. This has been tried with North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela just to name a few examples. All of them are still around. These are small countries that aren’t even self reliant. If these tactics haven’t worked there, what reason is there to believe they would work in Russia.
It frankly amazes me just how deluded some people are. Do people seriously think Putin managed to stay in power all these years because he’s an irrational fool who makes rash decisions he doesn’t consider the outcomes of. It’s just fantastical to me.
I certainly suspect Putin has surrounded himself with sycophants. That Russian press release where he’s talking down to his defense ministers doesn’t look good. They look like they’re about to piss their pants. “Yes, boss! We’ll roll into Kyiv by the second day, tops!”
This is going to make the 90s Russian bond default look like a joy ride. And Russia is certainly not self reliant. Has the Moscow exchange re-opened yet? Are the trains in Moscow running again without credit card transactions? Putin clearly miscalculated here, both militarily and economically. I don’t see what his exit strategy is here. Neither NK, Iran, nor Venezuela were trying to fund an invasion when sanctioned. He’ll be broke before he can dig his heels in and demand terms. Russia, however, can safe face by ousting him.
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It ceases to exist. With no capital investment companies can’t grow, people have nowhere to invest savings (see the mega-housing bubble in China, as a result of that), and the currency backing it becomes meaningless.
Here, they are just delaying because the open would see a free fall. Judging by the performance of listings for Russian companies on the London exchange, they’d be trading at penny stock levels now.
You certainly sound like you’re living in an invented reality. There is no point arguing with you over this as the reality will become quite clear in the coming months.
Lol I watched a Russian tank aim at and run-over a commuter in his car. Minimize?
It’s a war, horrors will always happen in wars. However, when you compare this to what US did in Iraq it’s incredibly restrained. The first thing US did was to do shock and awe where they bombed the shit out of the civilian population in major cities.
We get it. You hate the US.
Amazing counterpoint you’ve got there.
If you don’t hate the US government, you are in a small minority in the world and even within the US itself.
There’s a reason why the majority of the population doesn’t vote. EDIT: Apparently this is only true for midterms, but trust in government remains low. Source
You should too
No proof it was Russian. There were no Z or other markings on it and it happened in a part of Ukraine where no Russian activity was reported. So more than likely it was Ukrainian. In any case, it seems like whoever was driving has some severe mental health issues and should not be in active duty.