On paper Russia is supposed to have a massive, effective, overwhelmingly strong army/airforce capable of overrunning any small country on its border.

In this instance, russia chose to invade a country at a time of its choosing, using tactics of its choosing, and has failed to take _all_ of its key objectives.

to put it in perspective, russia has lost ~3x as many tanks as the UK has in _total_ for almost no progress.

So yes, this war, so far, has been botched.

Because supply lines.

As soon as you drop paratroopers, you have ~24 hours to reach them, or they are all fucked. They have limited ammo, no heavy support, unless you have air superiority. so dropping two waves of paratroopers is a dead giveaway.

> This is classical American way of waging wars: shock and awe followed by a mad dash to the capital

but to your point, this Russian war is not the classical American way of waging war. American war involves air superiority. close coop between armour, infantry and air, and keeping supply lines clear above all else. The amount of effort devoted to keeping forward bases stocked in Afghanistan is/was huge.

But more importantly it involves letting the "machine" do the work, not just chuck men at the problem.

> the main Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, will be completely encircled soon

Mariupol is currently surrounded.

But given that the Russians _still_ haven't managed to take the rest of Luhansk or donbas its seems optimistic. They've been at it since 2014.

> an 800 billion/year military that failed to pacify both Iraq and Afeghanistan.

which is also the point here. Now the Russians have one thing on their side here, they aren't afraid to just wholesale murder any civilian between 18-50. After all you can't have rebellion if there isn't anyone there to rebel. However I'm not really sure that pogroms are something to boast about.

The western propaganda assumes that Putin had one success scenario - just the most optimistic one - rather than a range of them.

Attempting to take Kyiv was a gamble that didnt work out but it also wreaked havoc on Ukrainian military infrastructure around kyiv and took heat off the eastern front. A gamble that didnt pay off but not a 100% waste and not even a particularly bad gamble.

The land bridge to crimea is almost in the bag. That's one milestone that holds the highest strategic value to Moscow in and of itself. It controls the sea of azov now and has entrenched its previously precarious strategic position on the black sea (site of its only warm water ports).

It also provides land buffer against the economic and energy chokepoint that is the land bridge between the caspian and the black sea.

The Russians would settle for a bruised, broken and weakened independent Kyiv. They wont settle for a mariupol that might host NATO forces. Theyll gladly nuke it rather than see that.

I mean Putin pretty much said as much, in his own words.

> The land bridge to crimea is almost in the bag. That's one milestone that holds incredible strategic value to Moscow in and of itself. It controls the sea of azov now and has entrenched its previously precarious strategic position on the black sea (site of its only warm water port).

I broadly agree, but the cost of kyiv "feint" has been astronomical.

Had Putin just pushed from crimea, he could have taken Donbas and Luhansk without anywhere near as much loss, or international condemnation. I mean he could have been done by now. (no extended supply lines...)

Don't get me wrong, Putin is just going to continue to grind eastern Ukraine, because he can. but, I suggest anything less than complete control is admission that the "Nazis" are better.

Putin has three rhetorical themes for domestic propaganda consumption but they are vague enough to be able to claim success under a range of criteria on the ground, some of which certainly will be met. He's not dumb enough to paint himself into a corner like that.

Western propaganda has and will try to characterize almost anything less than the total capitulation of Ukraine and tanks rolling on lviv as a crushing defeat. Comparisons to the winter war will permeate twitter to the point of tedium after this is all done because Russia will get some territory.

>Don't get me wrong, Putin is just going to continue to grind eastern Ukraine, because he can. but, I suggest anything less than complete control is admission that the "Nazis" are better.

Defeating the azov brigades in mariupol is probably sufficient to claim success against the nazis. Thats where all the fighters with swastikas tattooed on them were anyway. A parade of dead swastika tattooed bodies and a few stories of them using human shields after winning will satiate the domestic audience.

If he loses there then yea he really cant claim victory under any circumstances but thats increasingly unlikely.

Mostly agree. but given the bluster of the on air pundits, some of them will need special briefings.

> Comparisons to the winter war will permeate twitter

Perhaps, but I don't think people realise just how bad Finland was for the USSR. The land gained was nowhere near worth the effort.

> Thats where all the fighters with swastikas tattooed on them were anyway I've never understood this bit. Yes, the Azov have ultra nationalists in them, but then the some of the Donbas fighters appear to be wearing Totenkompf badges. If you're going to be anti nazi, don't wear SS badges.

But that aside, are Russian state parading captured "nazis" on TV yet? surely you'd be doing that to show progress no?

Especially when parents and wives start to realise that their significant other isn't communicating anymore.

but I digress.

The real issue comes from holding all that land. Its not like the populace are going to take it lying down

Precisely. This is how the west will probably characterize this war in retrospect too.

>But that aside, are Russian state parading captured "nazis" on TV yet? surely you'd be doing that to show progress no?

Not until the city is secured. Similarly it took 2 days until after the pullout before we started hearing about the Bucha war crimes.

Donbass had a huge amount of best Ukrainian corps stationed, taking them out would take months in any scenario short of regime change in Kiev. This is what will happen now and there would be huge loss of human life from both sides (but especially Ukrainian once pocket around their troops is formed).

It should have been "he wouldn't have had such vociferous condemnation". like Finland and sweden wouldn't be trying to join nato.

But that's not how it works, and especially not how it works with Russia.

There clearly isnt. By every fucking means there is no plan B. Unless you call shell a city to the ground a "plan". And now that is being abandoned.

> But that's not how it works, and especially not how it works with Russia.

Apparently plan A's also don't work with russia like they should.

Anyone trying to scaremonger that big bad russia is still out to get ukraine is a fool or a troll.

Two months ago nato was still planning for case when russian tanks will be in berlin by sunset, now we can see they can barley travel to a border town.

They fell flat face unable to do anything for a whole month (not counting all the war crimes by command and by individual units/soldiers). Now their troops are tired and most munitions are spent, not to mention the loses. But yet russia has more plans? What are those retreat plans?

As a matter of fact russia reunited and rekindled unity in ukraine and eu, pushed eu countries to diversify their fossil fuel imports and blew wind into green energy sails.

Sweeden and Finland are now partners of nato.

And with crashing economy china becomes a big daddy of russia.

Is that plan B?

I don't know what's the plan of converting a local military victory to a political success, though. The idea was to make Ukraine recognize the loss of territory - don't see that happening.

I'm not writing to you directly so please only respond if you have anything constructive.

They clearly failed with north invasion and disruption of supply lines. They are clearly retreating and the military leadership is either dead by Ukrainians or let go by kremlin. You don't fire your general(s) for achieving goals.

Russia is amassing troops on south and east, as probably last attempt to take and hold ground. But that will be much harder now (no political support of puppet government, plus failed to disrupt logistical channels). They have less then a month to do something substantial to claim war goals for their Victory Day parade.

Shelling cities to the ground is absolutely a plan A tactic.

Armor can't return fire at high azimuthal angles, to move it through a city without risk of ambush, they destroy tall buildings near the route. And to avoid giving away the route ahead of time, they cut multiple routes.

And it's not scaremongering to say that Russia wants to remove Ukraine from the map, that is literally Putins plan. But thankfully it looks like the plan won't happen.

What do you mean? 90% of stuff we have is with Made in China sticker on it.

> And it's not scaremongering to say that Russia wants to remove Ukraine from the map,

I didnt say that, I said that russia can only dream about it, since they are clearly not able to do it. As a matter of fact they had everything prepared to suppress population and purge the leaders of Ukraine after the blitz. So their thankfully failed plan was to crush and dismantle Ukraine.

Not just thinking. They are being taken in.

Front page of Reddit today was a completely nonsense story from three old women talking about Russian soldiers stole their toilet seats to take home because they could not imagine the magic of flush toilets. Absolute propaganda.

Russia has horrible levels of income inequality. A lot of the oil and gas money flows into the hands of the oligarchs and is thus concentrated either abroad, or in a few elite places like Sochi. Of course, the largest cities such as Sankt Peterburg and Moscow do reasonably well, too.

But a random village in Siberia has unpaved roads, wooden shacks and outhouses. Fully comparable to poor parts of India or Africa. This is where many of the soldiers come from, and where time has stopped, because the Russian state does not give a f*ck about living standards of rural people.

We had the same experience with them in 1945 and 1968 in former Czechoslovakia. And when they withdrew their forces in 1991, they bargained guns and grenades for stuff like toilets as well.

Obviously that is perfectly reasonable and no doubt happens. However the original comment was about "soldiers stole their toilet seats to take home because they could not imagine the magic of flush toilets." That I do not believe.

1) Flush toilet systems are uncommon in poor parts of rural Russia, where a good chunk of their contract soldiers are from. Having proper plumbing for your private house (not an apartment, where the infrastructure is done by the state) is very expensive. That is why soldiers were genuinely surprised to see them in Ukrainian villages. Also, note that Russian propaganda always portrays Ukraine as extremely poor. 2) Expensive ceramic toilet is as good target for marauding as any.

There were reports from Belarus that one guy sent some 440 kilos of “presents” to his family in Russia.

It was absolute propaganda.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u192o3/babushkas_f...

Ok, interesting take.

Cool how it only took you one post to completely reverse your position from “oh no one would believe that obvious garbage” to “oh it’s okay people believe that”.

Good luck with all that goal post moving.