They are slowly gaining ground. If the war stopped today with the front line frozen they would have failed to achieve key objectives but would have succeeded in stealing vast amounts of territory with natural resources, people and industry (whatevers not destroyed), securing a corridor to Crimea, intimidating many small countries, and creating a bigger buffer between Russia proper and unfriendly countries.
One consequence of Russia invading Ukraine is that Finland and Sweden joined Nato. Finland has a 1,340 km border with Russia, so Putin has not created a “bigger buffer” - he has managed to double Russia’s border with Nato.
Also, the countries you label as unfriendly are peaceful countries who are only ‘unfriendly’ to Russia because they worry about Russian imperialist expansion, and Russia’s aggression habit.
The whole border argument is silly anyway. Russia has the longest border of any country, and they expect that border to be surrounded with buffer states that they control. If they engulf them, then there’s an even bigger border and more states to seize control over. It doesn’t take much to see the self-serving imperialist logic of this position. They’ll grab evrything they can until they’re stopped. That’s the real situation.
Gaining ground isn’t the same thing as winning, a lesson that the Russians should be all too familiar with, as it’s how they beat the Germans in WW2 (though a more accurate point of comparison would be Germany’s failure against the West in WW1; they held significant ground in France at the time of their surrender. It wasn’t that their lines collapsed or that they were outmanoeuvred on the battlefield; it was their economy that could no longer bear the weight of the war). It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear, and that’s exactly what Ukraine is doing to Russia. This doesn’t mean Ukraine is guaranteed to win, but their success largely depends on the continued support of their allies in Europe and North America. Whereas Russia has no real clear path to success at this point.
Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy. Ukraine has gotten too good at entrenching, and is creating deeply layered defences that the Russians have no way to break through in a decisive fashion, and Ukraine is being extremely careful with it’s manpower, whereas Russian continues to waste theirs on pointless attacks and dispersed operations. We’re seeing constant footage and reports of Russian sections consisting of only 2-4 men attacking over open ground with no vehicle support, and getting picked off as they come in by Ukrainian machine gun positions and FPVs. The Russian economy is grinding to a halt under the weight of the war; they held out a lot longer in the face of sanctions than anyone in the West predicted, but the choices they made early on to keep the economy flowing are now turning into major pain points (massive interest rate hikes to control inflation now turning into a serious lack of investment and consumer spending, dumped foreign currency reserves used to float the rouble now leaving them with no fallback for the hard times ahead, etc). Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.
This is why Putin is eager to talk peace now. He would love to, as you describe, stop with their current gains. That would actually constitute a win. The longer this goes on for, the worse it gets for Russia, while Ukraine can continue to hold out for as long as we continue to stand with them and keep them supplied. Their manpower losses are serious, but manageable if they continue with their current strategies, and while Russia continues to hammer their infrastructure, Ukraine has superior - and more efficient - air defence and most of their manufacturing happens outside of the country where Russia can’t hit it.
Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.
It is especially delicious how Russia’s greatest advantage in this war - their size relative to Ukraine, hence significantly higher manpower and resources than Ukraine, as well as territorial depth that let them have important military facilities beyond the range of Ukraine, has been turned by Ukraine into one of Russia’s worst strategical weaknesses.
Anywhere in Ukraine can be hit by Russia, even with shitty shit drones like Shaheed, so Ukranians adapted, plus comparativelly to Russia their’s is a smaller country hence with fewer sites of strategical value, which means having enough AA to take down most of Russia’s missiles and long-range drones is actually possible, which is why Russia’s ever larger mass attacks of late have had so much less effect than smaller attacks did at the start of the Invasion.
Meanwhile Russia’s strategically important infrastructure is all over a large country, so they would have to deploy AA to defend every individual site and they don’t have enough of the kind of AA that can successfully deal with low-flying drones (it doesn’t matter how good their coverage with longer range systems like the S-500 is when that weapon system is not suitable to deal with Cessna-152s converted into drones flying at low altitude plus each missile costs many times more than each of those drones).
Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy.
According to whom?
According to the actual battlefield, Russian doctrine relies on throwing wave after wave of poorly trained criminals and shanghaied DPR/LPR citizens into the machine guns, artillery and drones of the Ukrainians.
Don’t get me wrong, there are massive weaknesses, and we may see Ukraine exploit them. But we aren’t seeing that translate to battlefield success. Putin hasn’t shown any eagerness to talk peace; only the same old “peace” meaning capitulation. He’s been keen on that since the beginning.
Funnily enough, experts on Russian battlefield doctrine. The ones I talked to all work in the CAF, but you’re welcome to search up your own sources on the subject. This guy was the commander of the US armed forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, so I’d say he probably knows his stuff, and his analysis aligns with that of the experts I’ve spoken with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qjrYpDDWS4&t=1s
If you’re trying to understand the disconnect between their doctrine and what’s actually playing out on the battlefield, it’s surprisingly simple really. This is what happens when you have an inflexible command structure that relies exclusively on doctrine and rigid adherence to chain of command (eg, individual soldiers are basically just machines to operated by their superiors), mixed with a huge amount of institutional corruption and an unwillingness to report the basic facts of the situation on the ground because it’s politically unfavourable to admit that things aren’t going to plan. The doctrine says “Smash a hole” so they try, and fail, repeatedly to smash that hole. That leads to waves of men being thrown at targets to no effect because if you haven’t smashed the hole you can’t move on to step two, so you just keep on repeating step one.
The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what’s actually happening. At some point you have to accept the possibility that Putin knows what’s happening and is ok with it.
Sure, it’s possible that Russia hasn’t changed its doctrine in 3 years, but it seems unlikely. Old doctrine is obsolete on a battlefield where all movements are immediately observed and armoured vehicles are more vulnerable due to a proliferation of anti tank weapons.
But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.
I wonder if we’re just arguing over whether this strategy is something deserving of praise, with you thinking that, since I characterise the balance favouring Russia, I think this is strategic genius? In case of that, I don’t; it’s stupid and wasteful. But it’s also working in the sense that it’s gradually pushing Ukraine back.
The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what’s actually happening.
I’m really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation. I’ve already covered how their doctrine is failing them, and it’s resulting in troops being pushed into the meat grinder instead. If you’re confused on some particular point, maybe try asking questions instead.
But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.
75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones. These can attack from any position and angle, and can loiter in an area for a long time, so the notion that they’re revealing the position of enemy guns with these attacks does not hold up to the reality on the battlefield. It may be the belief of some of the commanders that that’s what they’re doing, but if so, they’re wrong.
But it’s also working in the sense that it’s gradually pushing Ukraine back.
I covered this in my first reply in this conversation. If you’re going to repeat arguments that I’ve already countered, without offering any additional counterargument or support for your claim, then I might as well try to have a debate about quantum physics with a toddler.
I covered this in my first reply in this conversation.
What you specifically said was “It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear” but then ignored the fact that Russia seems extremely willing to bear the cost it is paying.
75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones.
Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who’s wounded. There is a first-hand account of this here but if you’re following the war and think back to videos you’ve seen of FPV kills you’ll probably recognise this.
I’m really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation.
Think of it this way then: if you can explain a phenomenon by a potential adversary as either a conscious choice or a blunder, attributing it to a blunder is risky, because you start to assume that party is incompetent.
Don’t forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don’t mean that it’s “slowly winning” to mean, “I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years.” I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.
There are very real reasons to think that Ukraine’s war against Russia’s oil economy will eventually provide the pressure away from the frontline that forces Russia to capitulate. But we can’t be at all confident of this; economic collapse has, as I mentioned before, been repeatedly predicted and has not yet come to pass. That doesn’t mean it won’t, but it means that confidence about Russia’s inability to threaten violence against other states is dangerously misplaced.
Ukraine’s economy is only able to maintain its effort due to massive support from its allies. But Russia has powerful allies too: it would be a foreign policy loss for China if Russia fails; China wants the same “spheres of influence” thinking that Putin does (and Trump does) to prevail internationally.
If you want to say that Russia’s slow battlefield progress is of little importance to the war in Ukraine I’d be inclined to agree with you, but if you want to stand by the original comment that Russia’s struggles in Ukraine indicate its threats must be toothless I hope I’ve explained why I disagree.
Russia is using WWII equipment, Ukraine recently retook a big piece of land, Russia’s economy is on the brink of collapse, opposition of the regime grows bolder day by day.
Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous. The outcome is what matters, though.
Ukraine recently retook a big piece of land
I don’t think this is true, and in any case, Russia is still advancing consistently. Go on DeepStateMAP and check the past few months (not every day - just once per month) and you will get the picture: no major breakthroughs, but grinding advancement.
Russia’s economy is on the brink of collapse
It’s been massively weakened by sanctions but a quick google for russian economy "brink of collapse" reveals as many articles predicting this as dispelling the predictions going back at least two years.
Exactly how is Russia winning the war in Ukraine?
If you measure success by territory gained, they’re gaining ground. At a huge cost in lives and equipment, but they’re doing it.
End of the day wars winner is measured by the government and it’s cost by it’s people.
But these are kilometers here and there, where Ukraine rather keeps forces alive than fighting for it.
Russia is not winning massive amounts of territory, their economy will crash once the war is over etc.
They are slowly gaining ground. If the war stopped today with the front line frozen they would have failed to achieve key objectives but would have succeeded in stealing vast amounts of territory with natural resources, people and industry (whatevers not destroyed), securing a corridor to Crimea, intimidating many small countries, and creating a bigger buffer between Russia proper and unfriendly countries.
One consequence of Russia invading Ukraine is that Finland and Sweden joined Nato. Finland has a 1,340 km border with Russia, so Putin has not created a “bigger buffer” - he has managed to double Russia’s border with Nato. Also, the countries you label as unfriendly are peaceful countries who are only ‘unfriendly’ to Russia because they worry about Russian imperialist expansion, and Russia’s aggression habit.
The whole border argument is silly anyway. Russia has the longest border of any country, and they expect that border to be surrounded with buffer states that they control. If they engulf them, then there’s an even bigger border and more states to seize control over. It doesn’t take much to see the self-serving imperialist logic of this position. They’ll grab evrything they can until they’re stopped. That’s the real situation.
Gaining ground isn’t the same thing as winning, a lesson that the Russians should be all too familiar with, as it’s how they beat the Germans in WW2 (though a more accurate point of comparison would be Germany’s failure against the West in WW1; they held significant ground in France at the time of their surrender. It wasn’t that their lines collapsed or that they were outmanoeuvred on the battlefield; it was their economy that could no longer bear the weight of the war). It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear, and that’s exactly what Ukraine is doing to Russia. This doesn’t mean Ukraine is guaranteed to win, but their success largely depends on the continued support of their allies in Europe and North America. Whereas Russia has no real clear path to success at this point.
Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy. Ukraine has gotten too good at entrenching, and is creating deeply layered defences that the Russians have no way to break through in a decisive fashion, and Ukraine is being extremely careful with it’s manpower, whereas Russian continues to waste theirs on pointless attacks and dispersed operations. We’re seeing constant footage and reports of Russian sections consisting of only 2-4 men attacking over open ground with no vehicle support, and getting picked off as they come in by Ukrainian machine gun positions and FPVs. The Russian economy is grinding to a halt under the weight of the war; they held out a lot longer in the face of sanctions than anyone in the West predicted, but the choices they made early on to keep the economy flowing are now turning into major pain points (massive interest rate hikes to control inflation now turning into a serious lack of investment and consumer spending, dumped foreign currency reserves used to float the rouble now leaving them with no fallback for the hard times ahead, etc). Ukraine has developed new long range attack drones that can strike deep into Russia, opening up all of their industry, and particularly their oil refining capabilities, to attack. Russia is so big that they simply cannot defend all of it from aerial attack, and Ukraine’s intel is good enough that they can continually shift their focus to wherever Russia isn’t defending.
This is why Putin is eager to talk peace now. He would love to, as you describe, stop with their current gains. That would actually constitute a win. The longer this goes on for, the worse it gets for Russia, while Ukraine can continue to hold out for as long as we continue to stand with them and keep them supplied. Their manpower losses are serious, but manageable if they continue with their current strategies, and while Russia continues to hammer their infrastructure, Ukraine has superior - and more efficient - air defence and most of their manufacturing happens outside of the country where Russia can’t hit it.
It is especially delicious how Russia’s greatest advantage in this war - their size relative to Ukraine, hence significantly higher manpower and resources than Ukraine, as well as territorial depth that let them have important military facilities beyond the range of Ukraine, has been turned by Ukraine into one of Russia’s worst strategical weaknesses.
Anywhere in Ukraine can be hit by Russia, even with shitty shit drones like Shaheed, so Ukranians adapted, plus comparativelly to Russia their’s is a smaller country hence with fewer sites of strategical value, which means having enough AA to take down most of Russia’s missiles and long-range drones is actually possible, which is why Russia’s ever larger mass attacks of late have had so much less effect than smaller attacks did at the start of the Invasion.
Meanwhile Russia’s strategically important infrastructure is all over a large country, so they would have to deploy AA to defend every individual site and they don’t have enough of the kind of AA that can successfully deal with low-flying drones (it doesn’t matter how good their coverage with longer range systems like the S-500 is when that weapon system is not suitable to deal with Cessna-152s converted into drones flying at low altitude plus each missile costs many times more than each of those drones).
In this, Ukraine’s strategy is masterful, IMHO.
Putin’s definition of peace is that the aggressor is rewarded and the international community hands Russia what it couldn’t win by force.
No arguments there.
According to whom?
According to the actual battlefield, Russian doctrine relies on throwing wave after wave of poorly trained criminals and shanghaied DPR/LPR citizens into the machine guns, artillery and drones of the Ukrainians.
Don’t get me wrong, there are massive weaknesses, and we may see Ukraine exploit them. But we aren’t seeing that translate to battlefield success. Putin hasn’t shown any eagerness to talk peace; only the same old “peace” meaning capitulation. He’s been keen on that since the beginning.
Funnily enough, experts on Russian battlefield doctrine. The ones I talked to all work in the CAF, but you’re welcome to search up your own sources on the subject. This guy was the commander of the US armed forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, so I’d say he probably knows his stuff, and his analysis aligns with that of the experts I’ve spoken with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qjrYpDDWS4&t=1s
If you’re trying to understand the disconnect between their doctrine and what’s actually playing out on the battlefield, it’s surprisingly simple really. This is what happens when you have an inflexible command structure that relies exclusively on doctrine and rigid adherence to chain of command (eg, individual soldiers are basically just machines to operated by their superiors), mixed with a huge amount of institutional corruption and an unwillingness to report the basic facts of the situation on the ground because it’s politically unfavourable to admit that things aren’t going to plan. The doctrine says “Smash a hole” so they try, and fail, repeatedly to smash that hole. That leads to waves of men being thrown at targets to no effect because if you haven’t smashed the hole you can’t move on to step two, so you just keep on repeating step one.
The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what’s actually happening. At some point you have to accept the possibility that Putin knows what’s happening and is ok with it.
Sure, it’s possible that Russia hasn’t changed its doctrine in 3 years, but it seems unlikely. Old doctrine is obsolete on a battlefield where all movements are immediately observed and armoured vehicles are more vulnerable due to a proliferation of anti tank weapons.
But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.
I wonder if we’re just arguing over whether this strategy is something deserving of praise, with you thinking that, since I characterise the balance favouring Russia, I think this is strategic genius? In case of that, I don’t; it’s stupid and wasteful. But it’s also working in the sense that it’s gradually pushing Ukraine back.
I’m really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation. I’ve already covered how their doctrine is failing them, and it’s resulting in troops being pushed into the meat grinder instead. If you’re confused on some particular point, maybe try asking questions instead.
75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones. These can attack from any position and angle, and can loiter in an area for a long time, so the notion that they’re revealing the position of enemy guns with these attacks does not hold up to the reality on the battlefield. It may be the belief of some of the commanders that that’s what they’re doing, but if so, they’re wrong.
I covered this in my first reply in this conversation. If you’re going to repeat arguments that I’ve already countered, without offering any additional counterargument or support for your claim, then I might as well try to have a debate about quantum physics with a toddler.
What you specifically said was “It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear” but then ignored the fact that Russia seems extremely willing to bear the cost it is paying.
Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who’s wounded. There is a first-hand account of this here but if you’re following the war and think back to videos you’ve seen of FPV kills you’ll probably recognise this.
Think of it this way then: if you can explain a phenomenon by a potential adversary as either a conscious choice or a blunder, attributing it to a blunder is risky, because you start to assume that party is incompetent.
Don’t forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don’t mean that it’s “slowly winning” to mean, “I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years.” I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.
There are very real reasons to think that Ukraine’s war against Russia’s oil economy will eventually provide the pressure away from the frontline that forces Russia to capitulate. But we can’t be at all confident of this; economic collapse has, as I mentioned before, been repeatedly predicted and has not yet come to pass. That doesn’t mean it won’t, but it means that confidence about Russia’s inability to threaten violence against other states is dangerously misplaced.
Ukraine’s economy is only able to maintain its effort due to massive support from its allies. But Russia has powerful allies too: it would be a foreign policy loss for China if Russia fails; China wants the same “spheres of influence” thinking that Putin does (and Trump does) to prevail internationally.
If you want to say that Russia’s slow battlefield progress is of little importance to the war in Ukraine I’d be inclined to agree with you, but if you want to stand by the original comment that Russia’s struggles in Ukraine indicate its threats must be toothless I hope I’ve explained why I disagree.
Russia is using WWII equipment, Ukraine recently retook a big piece of land, Russia’s economy is on the brink of collapse, opposition of the regime grows bolder day by day.
This does not seem like a winning power to me.
Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous. The outcome is what matters, though.
I don’t think this is true, and in any case, Russia is still advancing consistently. Go on DeepStateMAP and check the past few months (not every day - just once per month) and you will get the picture: no major breakthroughs, but grinding advancement.
It’s been massively weakened by sanctions but a quick google for
russian economy "brink of collapse"reveals as many articles predicting this as dispelling the predictions going back at least two years.If the Russian economy is on the brink of collapse, there will be confident assertions it’s not true until the actual day of the collapse.