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Putin’s Move
Hard to say, of course, but Putin seems to be far on his back foot. The “referendum,” partial mobilization, and lack of effective counter-counter-attack so far are the things that make me think so. I do not believe that the referendum or the mobilization were in the works as anything but potential future things before the Ukrainian counterattack.
The laughable referendum sounds like an attempt to create the appearance of a fact on the ground, and will of course be used the same way China waves about its maps with a nine-dashed line encompassing the Vietnam Sea. The mobilization is tricky because a full mobilization would simply advertise that suddenly Russia must go to war on a national footing just to accomplish knocking over a few counties of Ukraine. The strategic damage to Russia of merely declaring a full mobilization seems considerable. So “partial mobilization” it is.
Ukraine seems to have gained a bunch of important ground, which is after all the point, but the meat in this sandwich is the effectiveness of Russian troops on Ukrainian soil, which looks poor. I know Russia has a two-commander problem which is stupidly cross-threaded (the senior commander is in the south, but the northern one gets priority *when Russia’s border is in question*, which is just a recipe for command confusion. From the outside, and squinting through a lens of near apathy, I would say that this is the chief problem for Russia. There is of course the Napoleonic maxim about morale and materiel, a metric that also greatly favors the Ukes. And the Russians have had no answer so far for the advance made by Ukraine. Not a good look for a supposed superpower.
I recall some ops research which was breathtaking in its simplicity of structure yet complexity of result. I have tried to find it off and on for about twenty years, but it went something like this:
Simulate two opposing forces which attrite each other (slightly probabilistically, based on the ratio of force remaining) on two fronts — so each force has two units deployed, and each of those units fights its counterpart. Each side has a single reserve, and may deploy that reserve to either front (one controllable variable) and at any time (the other controllable variable). Allow a computer to run the simulation, and to select both decision points; repeat many thousands of times (Monte Carlo) to see how the results shake out. The high number of repetitions accounts for the “dice” introduced via “probabilistically.” The results were chaotic across most of the domain, with only small islands of generally good combinations of decision points, the opposite of what you would expect.
Lesson learned — predictions are for suckers, and the more anecdata recruited to the prediction, the less likely it is based on anything at all. Still, decisions must be made, and advice must be given. The most valuable part of any such briefing or set of orders could be collected under the heading “unknowns.”
The (naval) Battle of Salamis featured a superior force squeezed into an awkward area, thereby able to bring only a small part of its force to bear at any time. They should have withdrawn — instead they were defeated, and the remnants sailed for home at daybreak. There is a corollary here that all of the aid from the West must still be deployed by the hands of Ukrainians. This is a choke point on a different sort of map, a sort of phase space salient.
I remember back when the Russians were going to carve up Ukraine as easily as peeing a hole in the snow (learned a Finnish adverb today). The Russians should have been able to wipe out the archers before the stockpile of arrows mattered. Yet the Russian effort is hampered internally as well as externally, and good ol’ Russian incompetence and corruption are having their way.
After the Ukrainian advance in the east, it seems that the following can happen to/by them; endless victory all the way to Vladivostok, overextension, stasis with or without consolidation, withdrawal or pushback, or destruction by Russian counterattack. Personally, I hope that on that front, they are able to consolidate while keeping Ivan on the hoof. Depends how much force they have available. Presumably Putin’s logistics get much better across the border, where (presumably) you can simply order up more fuel and trucks will bring it. It would be very easy for Ukraine to overextend and get rolled up.
I very much *like* the idea that Putin just failed with his best, and now will try with the rest. I hope it’s true, and this goofy referendum seems to be a Hail Mary attempt to legitimize the invasion — let us hope that nobody here falls for it. And mobilization? I saw a reference to a thing: “Go ahead. Draft me. Put a gun in my hand. See what happens.”
Your move, Putin.
Published in General
I want to know who would play Lenin.
That is an excellent question. Vladimir would give anything to know that too.
Don’t tell him, but it’s Masha Gessen.
The source is the Russian negotiator- Kozak.
if you ask Frederick Paulus, I am sure he will tell you the bridge at Kalach wasn’t a prime residential location either.
It would be better if it were someone who had figured out English pronouns, though I realize this rules out a lot of so-called native English speakers.
Is it worthwhile damaging the ability of other people to communicate in order to inflict one’s own personal hangups on the universe?
Probably it was in one of Perun’s video reports from much earlier in the war. If I happen to run into it I’ll post it. I’m watching one of Perun’s latest reports now. They are lengthy and I’m not able to keep up with all of them. But the latest one is about equipment more than personnel.
The reason I recall is that Ukraine can only train and equip so many men at a time.
You also have young men like Pavlo from the Poltava area (on the east side of the Dnieper, but not in the war zone) just going about his ordinary village life with his girlfriend, and blogging about conditions during the war. From outward appearances he looks like he’d be eligible for military service, but one never knows.
Denys Davidov reports almost daily on the war, and is a rah-rah Ukraine supporter. He is a former commercial airline pilot, but IIRC lost his job even before the decrease in travel during covid (though somewhere along the line he found work in Indonesia for a couple of years). He looks older than most soldiers on the ground, but offered his services to the Ukraine military. He was turned down, but I presume will be available if needed. In the meantime he is doing good English-language propaganda work for Ukraine by reporting on the war. His information is very useful, but there are far better sources who are not so optimistic who will also point out the danger points for Ukraine’s military effort.
I’ve also heard comments about how, yes, there were a lot of volunteers who were willing to defend their home city of Kyiv, but most would not volunteer to fight elsewhere in the country. For that, they would probably have to be conscripted. I would guess they would be even less willing to invade Russia to protect the Ukrainian minority living there. That’s the way it often is when one country invades another.
One of their hang ups is Putin, so I thought it might work well. And if we’re talking revolution the pronouns themselves….
Are they conscripts if they’re signing up along the line of the foreign legion? I mean the (for eg) Uzbek citizens who enlist with a view to getting a Russian passport and the right to live and work in the Russian Federation.
They may not be motivated by Donbas, per se, but by that passport.
(I think the US has a similar thing, where foreigners who serve in the US Army during wartime can qualify for citizenship. So if the US declared war I think you’d hoover up all the potential Central Asian recruits, checkmating Russia….)
The line for Russian immigration is long? First I’ve heard. I do know that getting the Donetsk People’s Militia to fight in Luhansk faces the same difficulties that getting the Luhansk People’s Militia too fight in Donetsk has to deal with.
Serving in the US military is indeed a means of getting citizenship. My great grandfather joined the US Navy just in time for the Spanish-American War. The Navy was looking for people with his experience with marine steam engines.
https://www.ponarseurasia.org/labor-migration-in-russia/
From which:
Also in the past – though smaller numbers – from Ukraine. I’m assuming mostly from Donbas.
A virtual torrent.
4 million seems like a lot. Even if 50:50 male:female that’s 2 million.
The Russians have lowered their standards. Any male 16-65, with some of the fitness criteria removed. Criminals, even violent ones, are acceptable – at least to the Wagner Group.
Still, those immigrants may have problems enlisting through regular channels. There have been a spate of fires in recruiting offices of late. Fires are becoming more common in other administrative buildings too.
There is an anti-mobilization petition circulating. It has more than 300,000 signatures.
You’d like Mikhail Degtyarev, the governor of Khabarovsk Krai. He’s a hawk on Ukraine. He apparently delivered a stirring speech on how good it would be to volunteer for duty there. He can’t himself, of course – he’s got the governorship gig. But there is a rumor that the citizens of Khabarovsk Krai have started another petition to relieve him of that burden so that he can report to the front lines forthwith. No word as to whether he’s packing his rucksack yet.
Vladimir hasn’t solved all his problems with partial mobilization. He’s picked up a whole new batch.
Okay Percival, maybe so. But:
Quoting Ukrainska Pravda is quoting propaganda. That’s their job, fair enough, but fwiw.
And
Anybody, anywhere, can ‘sign’ a change.org petition. You and I could add some fictitious names and be counted.
So maybe not as well. I can’t tell.
Dude, this is Pravda. Pravda is saying something that casts the government in a less than favorable light. Pravda!
Propaganda has its uses. It lets you know what the propagandists can’t refute. If they are reporting five arsons, there are probably more.
You realise that Ukrainska Pravda is a different organisation to the original Pravda?
Missed that. It doesn’t much matter, though. If buildings didn’t burn down, would we hear the refutation?
Once…
https://ricochet.com/1317030/siberian-shoots-recruiter/
I’m not sure which is the original. Ukraine had a Pravda publication long before the Soviets, but the Russians were trying to suppress Ukrainian autonomy and/or independence long before the Soviets, too, so I’m not sure how long a continuous existence the Ukrainian one had.
Meanwhile, the mobilization is going swimmingly-WSJ:
Two Russian recruitment centers were attacked, as pushback against mobilization for the war in Ukraine grows.
A Russian man opened fire at a military-recruiting station in Siberia, critically wounding its commander, hours after another man rammed a car into the entrance of a different recruitment center then set it afire with Molotov cocktails.
??
I wouldn’t read Russian Pravda to get an idea of what’s going on with the Ukrainians and I wouldn’t read Ukrainska Pravda to get an idea of what’s going on with the Russians.
You can read them if you enjoy them, of course, but neither of them are dependable sources on this subject.
These are the propaganda arms of their respective states. Their ages are secondary to the propaganda part.
Likewise, neither would one who is adept at smelling propaganda take “on-side” outlets’ reporting as genuine.
Personally, I try to restrict my beliefs to that which is a combination of both incontrovertible and not motivated by wrong-doing, the latter of which is of course subjective. Some here may actually want Ukraine or NATO to be humiliated for whatever reason. Their views will differ from mine.
That’s what I said.
And their desire would affect their assessment of what is incontrovertible, motivated by wrong-doing, etc. A confirmation bias they need to be aware of and to guard against.
But that’s also true of people who – for whatever reason – want Russia to be humiliated. Their desire is as likely to befuddle their capacity for critical thinking on the issue. At least it seems that way to me.
By which I mean Russian Pravda’s views on Russia and so forth.
By incontrovertible, I mean things such as “Ukraine takes big chunk of territory: with regard to the reporting from two weeks ago. I’m not there, so I cannot literally vouch for it, but nobody seems to disagree — Boom! Incontroverted.
Well sure. You don’t see anybody quoting Russian Pravda here, do you?
What you do see is quotes from Ukrainian Pravda. Which shows – what? I think a combination of confirmation bias and/or naivety, but you tell me :-)
What next, are we going to defend Mom and Apple Pie? I’m in!
I’d read it as a balance.