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Cont: The Russian invasion of Ukraine part 6

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President Zelensky has gone to Bakhmut to visit the troops:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made an unannounced visit to the frontline city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have fought a fierce, months-long battle.

He met troops and handed out awards to soldiers, the presidency said.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64038140

I'm not sure whether I'd be brave enough to do that.
 
Volodymyr Zelensskyy today visited front troops in Bakhmut.
What a super strong signal of courage and determination! Ruscists and the nazi Wagner mercenaries are right on the perimeter of this town and attacking constantly. There is actual danger there!

What this signals:
  • UA leadership has high confidence in their ability to keep such travel plans confidential while preparing and executing them with a high level of security - in other words, disciplin, morale and defensive aptitude are very high there, even after months of gruesome fighting
  • UA plans to hold Bakhmut - you would not visit soldiers that you expect to retreat next and give up what they fought so hard for
  • UA is reasonably certain they are able to and will hold Bakhmut for the foreseeable future

Chapeau, Mr. President! :clap:
 
steenkh said:
Does it make a sense for Ukraine to hold it with the huge losses involved? Verdun comes to mind. In that case both sides suffered grievously, and the defending French broke eventually (though not at Verdun). The French won the war eventually, of course.
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Everything I've seen and heard suggests that Russia is taking far greater causalities than the Ukrainians are. I have no direct insight into their decision making but i doubt the Ukrainians would continue to defend that town if the losses were less lopsided.

If the Russians want to send in droves of cannonfodder to be killed over nothing then let them. Every soldier they lose there is one less that can fight over something important.
 
Arcade22 said:
Everything I've seen and heard suggests that Russia is taking far greater causalities than the Ukrainians are. I have no direct insight into their decision making but i doubt the Ukrainians would continue to defend that town if the losses were less lopsided.

If the Russians want to send in droves of cannonfodder to be killed over nothing then let them. Every soldier they lose there is one less that can fight over something important.
Click to expand...

Comparisons between Verdun (or Passchendaele) per the linked and Bakhmut seem... fair.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-resemble-World-War-horror-Passchendaele.html (warning some NSFW images, but not what I'd consider NSFL).

But I believe you are correct, Ukrainian soldiers are defending from trenches, which while I'm sure is very unpleasant, results in far fewer casualties than attacking.
 
On a more basic level, there's no magical way for Ukraine to win this war by constantly retreating and never taking any serious losses. They have to stand and fight somewhere. If not Bakhmut, then Odesa. If not Odesa, Kyiv. So why not Bakhmut, if that's where Wagner has decided to shoot its shot, and that's where Ukraine is prepared to meet them?
 
The Don said:
President Zelensky has gone to Bakhmut to visit the troops:
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100 years from now, he's going to be seen as one of the key figures in Ukrainian history. Maybe it's time to start making Chuck Norris memes about Zelenskyy.

Why doesn't Zelenskyy have hair on his balls? Because hair doesn't grow on steel.
 
theprestige said:
On a more basic level, there's no magical way for Ukraine to win this war by constantly retreating and never taking any serious losses. They have to stand and fight somewhere. If not Bakhmut, then Odesa. If not Odesa, Kyiv. So why not Bakhmut, if that's where Wagner has decided to shoot its shot, and that's where Ukraine is prepared to meet them?
Click to expand...

Yup.


Also. Just because it's costly defending, the alternative is to not defend and let Russia get a better position.

Ukraine has to stop Russian advances somewhere, even though it is a huge country
 
Ziggurat said:
Why doesn't Zelenskyy have hair on his balls? Because hair doesn't grow on steel.
Click to expand...

In a perfect world, when this is all over, Zelensky will do a comedy sketch where he exhorts hair to keep fighting the good fight, and grow on that steel more and more every day, in the style of his nightly addresses to the Ukrainian people.

Also a reprise of the piano sketch, but when he goes to play the piano he just crushes it instead.
 
It's day 300 today, isn't it? Time for a short, intermediate assessment of where the aggressor stands with regard to their initial objectives.

Those were the objectives:
  1. Re-unite as much as possible, possibly all, of Ukraine to the Russian motherland - after all, Ukraine does not exists, they are all Russians
  2. De-"nazi"fy Ukraine - we need not take this term literally; what Putin meant was to topple Zelenskyy and emasculate the Ukrainian government, parliament, administration; turn them into Ruscist puppets. In short: De-democratize
  3. De-militarize Ukraine
  4. Keep UA out of EU and NATO forever; push back NATO; weaken EU
It's pretty clear that Russia and Putin mostly FAILED on all points:
  1. Key locations were tried for, and the Ruscist armed forced failed miserably - they never got into Kyiv, never got into Kharkiv, never got near Odesa, failed to occupy any whole oblast with the exception of Luhansk, where they are currently being pushed back. Lately, UA collected all the big operational gains.
  2. President Zelenskyy is a superhero with stellar approval ratings that Putin can only dream of, the President has the needed support by parliament, his government, military, regioal and local administrations are coping well. In fact, we are seeing the culmination of the Birth of a Nation, a strong, proud, Ukraine more united than ever. A Ukraine that hates Russia more than ever - ungovernable by Ruscist puppets.
  3. No one has propped up the Ukraine military more than Russia itself, by leaving behind so much useful hardware and ammo, while the West is busy and happy to make Ukraine stronger militarily day after day. Ukraine will without a doubt transition gradually and steadily to superior NATO armaments, while already practicing and improving superior Western doctrine, with the help of superior Western intelligence and digital infrastructure. At the same time, Russia is wearing down its own stockpiles and, more importantly, its capable individuals (whether they be officers or IT specialists or...
  4. Seeing that Ukraine wasn't going to join neither EU nor NATO anytime soon anyway, there was no chance on earth Russia would come closer to realizing their objective of keeping UA out. If anything, these processes are now sped up: EU and UA are intensifying their talks, UA is working to implement EU standards (fight corruption) with new urgency, and all Union members (save Mr. Orban in Hungary) are happy to give some support. Ukraine population more than ever is convinced that membership is desirable. Meanwhile, NATO is expanding, NATO is propping up UA military to own standards; while formal NATO membership may be many many years away, in practice NATO is in full support, short of sending on boots on UA ground. So Russia and Putin achieved the exact opposite of goals.

It's difficult to imagine Putin pulling any kind of real win out of the mess he is in; and difficult to see that such a loser could hold on to power very long, absent the most brutal repression of all opposition, whether popular, or within the elites. Such an oppressive regime would further weaken Russia.
The only thing he "succeeds" in is incurring costs on Ukraine and the West. Inconvenient, but not decisive.

---

So I think the dice have already fallen: Russia LOST the war.
However, it is far from clear how much longer it will drag on, and consequently how much more expensive the inevitable Ukrainian victory will have become by the time the last Ruscists has fled from Donbas and Crimea.
 
Oystein said:
It's day 300 today, isn't it? Time for a short, intermediate assessment of where the aggressor stands with regard to their initial objectives.

Those were the objectives:
  1. Re-unite as much as possible, possibly all, of Ukraine to the Russian motherland - after all, Ukraine does not exists, they are all Russians
  2. De-"nazi"fy Ukraine - we need not take this term literally; what Putin meant was to topple Zelenskyy and emasculate the Ukrainian government, parliament, administration; turn them into Ruscist puppets. In short: De-democratize
  3. De-militarize Ukraine
  4. Keep UA out of EU and NATO forever; push back NATO; weaken EU
It's pretty clear that Russia and Putin mostly FAILED on all points:
  1. Key locations were tried for, and the Ruscist armed forced failed miserably - they never got into Kyiv, never got into Kharkiv, never got near Odesa, failed to occupy any whole oblast with the exception of Luhansk, where they are currently being pushed back. Lately, UA collected all the big operational gains.
  2. President Zelenskyy is a superhero with stellar approval ratings that Putin can only dream of, the President has the needed support by parliament, his government, military, regioal and local administrations are coping well. In fact, we are seeing the culmination of the Birth of a Nation, a strong, proud, Ukraine more united than ever. A Ukraine that hates Russia more than ever - ungovernable by Ruscist puppets.
  3. No one has propped up the Ukraine military more than Russia itself, by leaving behind so much useful hardware and ammo, while the West is busy and happy to make Ukraine stronger militarily day after day. Ukraine will without a doubt transition gradually and steadily to superior NATO armaments, while already practicing and improving superior Western doctrine, with the help of superior Western intelligence and digital infrastructure. At the same time, Russia is wearing down its own stockpiles and, more importantly, its capable individuals (whether they be officers or IT specialists or...
  4. Seeing that Ukraine wasn't going to join neither EU nor NATO anytime soon anyway, there was no chance on earth Russia would come closer to realizing their objective of keeping UA out. If anything, these processes are now sped up: EU and UA are intensifying their talks, UA is working to implement EU standards (fight corruption) with new urgency, and all Union members (save Mr. Orban in Hungary) are happy to give some support. Ukraine population more than ever is convinced that membership is desirable. Meanwhile, NATO is expanding, NATO is propping up UA military to own standards; while formal NATO membership may be many many years away, in practice NATO is in full support, short of sending on boots on UA ground. So Russia and Putin achieved the exact opposite of goals.

It's difficult to imagine Putin pulling any kind of real win out of the mess he is in; and difficult to see that such a loser could hold on to power very long, absent the most brutal repression of all opposition, whether popular, or within the elites. Such an oppressive regime would further weaken Russia.
The only thing he "succeeds" in is incurring costs on Ukraine and the West. Inconvenient, but not decisive.

---

So I think the dice have already fallen: Russia LOST the war.
However, it is far from clear how much longer it will drag on, and consequently how much more expensive the inevitable Ukrainian victory will have become by the time the last Ruscists has fled from Donbas and Crimea.
Click to expand...

You forget that because of this war both Sweden and Finland are due to join NATO.
Plus, the antics of Trump weakened support for NATO in a lot of EU countries, but Putin managed to reverse that sentiment.
 
What we are seeing is the end result of Putin's misrule of Russia. The corrupt kleptocracy that is the Russian state has been aided and powerfully abetted by Putin's corrupt rule. And of course Putin and his allies continue the tradition, well over 20 years old of looting the state to become very rich. Putin and his cronys hae become wealthy from this organized pillaging of Russia.

And of course we see in the embarrasingly incompetent performance of the Russian Military in this war the end result of the corruption that Putin allows to flourish and what makes Russia a hotbed of over the top corruption all of which Putin didn't have a problem with so long has it poured money into his pockets.

All of Putin's hard work to securely establish an empire of corruption and incompetence has born fruit.

So much for Putin's "insight" and "competence", it was smoke and mirrors.

Meanwhile Zelensky is Times Person of the year. So much for being a "clown".
 
Oystein said:
It's difficult to imagine Putin pulling any kind of real win out of the mess he is in; and difficult to see that such a loser could hold on to power very long, absent the most brutal repression of all opposition, whether popular, or within the elites. Such an oppressive regime would further weaken Russia.
Click to expand...

I agree that this war has weakened Russia, but I wouldn't count on it toppling Putin. Plenty of people thought Saddam's loss in Gulf War 1 would lead to his ouster, but it didn't. And militarily, that was a far worse loss than what Russia is facing.

Dictatorships are a bit like a Prince Rupert's drop. Even though they are very fragile and can fall quite suddenly, they're also capable of withstanding enormous external pressures which seem sufficient to topple them.
 
theprestige said:
On a more basic level, there's no magical way for Ukraine to win this war by constantly retreating and never taking any serious losses. They have to stand and fight somewhere. If not Bakhmut, then Odesa. If not Odesa, Kyiv. So why not Bakhmut, if that's where Wagner has decided to shoot its shot, and that's where Ukraine is prepared to meet them?
Click to expand...
A war of static fronts is not the only option available. I have no idea if the Ukrainians are able to conduct a mobile defense, but that would lead to fewer losses.

Sitting in trenches makes you a nice static target, and old-fashioned artillery is still the main killer. But if you are without transportation, or if the enemy intelligence can follow your movement, staying in the trench may still be better than in the open.
 
Arcade22 said:
Everything I've seen and heard suggests that Russia is taking far greater causalities than the Ukrainians are. I have no direct insight into their decision making but i doubt the Ukrainians would continue to defend that town if the losses were less lopsided.

If the Russians want to send in droves of cannonfodder to be killed over nothing then let them. Every soldier they lose there is one less that can fight over something important.
Click to expand...
The Kings and Generals channel videos I've been posting give actual numbers of visually confirmed casualties on each side. The Russian numbers are much larger than the Ukrainian ones.

Speaking of which, the second half of November dropped the other day:

 
steenkh said:
A war of static fronts is not the only option available. I have no idea if the Ukrainians are able to conduct a mobile defense, but that would lead to fewer losses.

Sitting in trenches makes you a nice static target, and old-fashioned artillery is still the main killer. But if you are without transportation, or if the enemy intelligence can follow your movement, staying in the trench may still be better than in the open.
Click to expand...

If Bakhmut falls, that puts Russian artillery closer to the city of Kramatorsk, which is only 30km away and still has people living there.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Comparisons between Verdun (or Passchendaele) per the linked and Bakhmut seem... fair.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-resemble-World-War-horror-Passchendaele.html (warning some NSFW images, but not what I'd consider NSFL).

But I believe you are correct, Ukrainian soldiers are defending from trenches, which while I'm sure is very unpleasant, results in far fewer casualties than attacking.
Click to expand...

How long until machine guns are set up behind attacking Russian troops to "encourage" them.
 
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dudalb said:
How long until machine guns are set up behind attacking Russian troops to "encourage" them.
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according to some, the Russian battleline is already 3-tier:convicts in the front , then fresh recruits, then professional soldiers, each with orders to shoot the ones in front, should they try to run away.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
according to some, the Russian battleline is already 3-tier:convicts in the front , then fresh recruits, then professional soldiers, each with orders to shoot the ones in front, should they try to run away.
Click to expand...
Certainly the Wagner Group execute those they don't think are fighting hard enough.
 
The omnibus spending bill, which seems likely to pass Congress within the next few days (although there will have to be some horse-trading in the Senate to get a few recalcitrant Republicans to agree to fast-track the legislation) contains a large amount of funding for Ukraine. From The Hill:

Ukraine aid

The funding bill includes more than $40 billion for Ukraine aid, higher than what the White House requested last month. The jump comes as there have been concerns about how such funding would fare next year in a GOP-led House where some conservatives have become critical of the aid.​

Note that this money will all need be spent by September 30, 2023, as that is the last day of the US fiscal year.
 
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