"..A senior U.S. defense official added Friday that the Ukrainians “are not using their fixed-wing fighter aircraft very much. They have about 56 fighter aircraft remaining on the ground, and that is the majority of their fleet.” Kyiv is only flying about five to 10 sorties a day compared to Russia’s roughly 200, the official continued. The Ukrainians “haven't proven that they need to do more than what they're doing. They've been very effective with the other tools that they have used, very creatively, and those are having a good effect on Russian airpower...”"
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily...
Beating the Russian Air Force in the air isn't the primary issue, we can do that. The bigger issue is that a no-fly-zone must be secured, i.e. bombing radar and SAM installations in Ukraine/Belarus/Russia.
> ... they carved themselves a situation where they can't really _lose_, ...
Quite the opposite, what does a Russian "win" look like here? A huge portion of the population doesn't want them there, a puppet government won't be internationally recognized, and the resulting insurgency would make Chechnya look quaint. Not to mention the humiliation that Russia has already suffered.
It's lunacy to think that Russia is gaining anything out of this. It's not even certain that Russia can beat Ukraine anymore, and it's already a pyrrhic victory if they do.
By a very naive reading, this maps [1] seems to scream: "Dombass has all the mines. It's the mines, stupid !" ; but I could not find any resource on the topic (neither to tell it's the real casus belli, nor if they're nothing else to grab there.)
[1] https://img.favpng.com/24/9/15/ukraine-natural-resource-map-...
I've always heard a lot of talk about that (even before the war), especially by Western leaders trying to puff up the effectiveness of their support, but is that resistance actually materializing in Russian-controlled areas?
Arguably, the Arab Spring was the first in these wars, since failed harvests and grain prices are what kicked off a lot of unrest to begin with.
"War, war never changes"
Or maybe there will be a remake, but with white actors [2] ?
[1] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/how-the-inv...
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/food-price-inflation-eastern...
Do you have a link to this? I'd be interested.
IIRC, that's currently the expected best case outcome of this. The Ukrainians are fighting with everything they have, but the Russian Army is just plain bigger and better equipped, so they've only bee able to slow it down, not meet it and defeat it. I don't really see that changing unless the West stops tiptoeing around (at least) and offers more than halfhearted military support to Ukraine.
To be clear: the West's support is less halfharted than it was before the war, but it's still halfharted (e.g. the nonsense with the Polish jets, only supplying "weapons of a defensive character," etc.).
If he takes Kyiv and deposes the current government, getting a treaty that achieves that probably won't be that hard. I don't know enough about Ukrainian demographics to know if a puppet government could be stable without a huge Russian military presence. If the latter is needed then it would probably count as a failure.
And there's no reason to believe that the Ukrainian government will give up once kyiv is taken, it's not a video game. In fact, western Ukraine is so terrifically safe I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of government operations are being run from there already.
I agree. But they don't need to give up for a puppet government to be in place. They need to lose control of the military and communications infrastructure. If the government is far to the west or in exile, it's hard to see how they would maintain control.
And I also agree that a new government would need a substantial Russian military presence. It wasn't that long ago though that a substantial voting bloc supported pro-Russian parties. It's likely that Putin calculated that they'd only get problems with western Ukraine. That's likely been badly misjudged.
It'd be really interesting to get some polling data on those people. It's hard to imagine that they don't feel betrayed. After all, the russian speaking population has been subjected to the harshest and most violent portions of this conflict, albeit incidentally.
You don't find them sometimes because Russia is extremely untrustworthy. Demilitarization just means it will be easier to annex Ukraine later. Recognizing the Donbas republics is nonsense as Putin's men have already admitted they plan to annex them afterwards.
There's a reason why you hardly ever find a mention of Poland's attack on Germany in 1939[1]. It has something to do with the fact that it's not real.
The other outcome is that Russia defeats Ukraine into unconditional surrender, and then demilitarizes it anyway.
Relative inexperience (not inability) in SEAD(Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) in the face of a robust Ukrainian air defense network.
A desire to preserve force and munitions in case of direct NATO involvement.
Additionally there is a third potential reason, I am no military expert by I assume the acquisition and engagement of targets in populated areas is hard from the air.
All these probably skews the risk/effectiveness balance toward a less aggressive air stance.
They may have a lot of aircraft sitting around, but may only have the fuel, munitions, and parts to keep a fraction of it working.
There was a lot of discussion for a while about the state of the tires in the Russian army, and how that often led to break downs or troops getting stuck. Likewise, something as simple or mundane as not having enough flairs or chaff, could be enough to keep much of the fleet grounded, doubly so in the face of a reasonably effective Ukrainian AA network. Multi-million dollar aircraft are temperamental beasts, and missing even a few parts, or not being confident in said parts, is essentially a recipe for casualties, and they can't just conscript more SU-35s
Yes but apparently not by the Air Force. Mostly by ground based missiles (and maybe some Ship based ones)
The No-Fly zone won't fix these and will come at a significant cost.
That’s pretty much it in the short term, from what I can tell. They can only lose over the long term, by bleeding themselves dry to find their imperialist adventure in Ukraine just like the USSR did in Afghanistan. It is probably likely to happen. It’s cold comfort for the people being bombed, though.
They could very well lose and are likely to, according to most experts. Even if they do take Kyiv before they run out of money, materiel, and political support - which is uncertain - they are very unlikely to sustain an occupation and defeat an insurgency. Invaders often lose to insurgencies - look at the US in the last 20 years.
nuclear weapon aside, 40million motivated Ukrainians with NATO weapons are much much much more powerful than 140million lost Russians with dysfunctional weapons
Everyone expected the much, much larger Russian Air Force to establish air superiority in Ukraine within days, even hours.
When an organization systematically failed to be able to perform even its basic activities for no obvious reason, organizational incompetence is almost certain.
A thought experiment:
- if Putin is not insane and wants to live and enjoy his lifestyle (but plays his role to frighten everyone)
- that means he is unlikely to use nukes
- which means it might be practical to establish a no-flight zone, etc
If you believe he is insane, however, the West has nothing else to do than to let him grab whatever he wants (Estonia, maybe?). This is a dead end for NATO.
Angry FSB Guy (which may be entirely false) stated that the decision isn't Putin's alone to make and that Russians are not willing to die for Putin.
Where is the line between "objectively assessing an enemy's weaknesses" and "blatant wishfull thinking" ?
While we're discussing how bad the russian air force is doing, cities are being bombed constantly, and the ukrainian governement is imploring for a no-fly zone that no one will enforce given it would mean engaging with, guess what, the air force. Oh, and starting a nuclear war at the same time.
Maybe it's an operationnal failure on Russian's side - but if so, they carved themselves a situation where they can't really _lose_, even if they can't win quickly.
Hopefully something will change the game - but I doubt "hoping for the other side to secretly be stupid" will cut it.