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Ukraine: What’s Happening, What Might Be Next
This post is intended to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive, as for instance BDB’s poll on support for weapons/troops for Ukraine.
What’s Happened
The MSM has been saturated with news of a hurricane that might be blamed on Republicans somehow, and a pipeline explosion that might be blamed on anyone, or sheer incompetence, depending on your favorite theory. So the operational details of what’s been happening in Ukraine after the big breakthrough East of Kharkiv may have disappeared unless you’ve been specifically tracking them (I have). So, a quick recap of the last couple of weeks:
Ukraine went into a short operational pause in the Kharkiv / north Luhansk area, presumably to resupply and reorganize.
Russia kept banging away on the Donetsk front, making little progress and continuing to lose troops and equipment.
Ukraine kept banging away in the Kherson area west of Dnipro, also making little apparent progress and expending a lot of HIMARS and other ammo blowing up bridges and Russian supply dumps and headquarters.
Things started moving quickly again last week. In the northeast, the Ukrainians managed to surround the town of Lyman, a rail and road hub. There were between 500 and 5,000 Russians and proxy troops trapped there, depending on who you believe. Some or most of the Russians may have made it out, losing a lot of equipment. The final retreat, mostly by LPR proxy troops, apparently became a slaughter by Ukrainian artillery, mines, and light recon forces. There’s plenty of video evidence of the latter out there, don’t go looking unless you’re ready for it. I’ll drop a link to a text-only report by an American volunteer in one of the recon teams, but you still don’t want to read it near meal or bedtime.
After the Lyman episode, the Russian front north of there is being pushed back daily. Some of this may be planned/controlled withdrawal, some seems to be a collapse. The Ukrainians now appear to control the important road between the towns of Svatove and Kreminna in Luhansk oblast.
Over the weekend, the Kherson front suddenly erupted. The Ukrainians punched in between several towns in the northeast of the oblast, west of a large reservoir on Dnipro, and have pushed the Russians back some tens of kilometers. The advance appears to be continuing. As of today, the Russians abandoned another portion of that front (Davydiv Brid) to avoid a possible envelopment. Again, this appears to be some combination of collapse and planned withdrawal.
Both of these fronts are moving daily, best followed in real time. A sampling of reporting sites: Most speculative, kinda conservative, really conservative. These are all more-or-less the Ukrainian view. For Russian side reports, try here.
Some of the ‘mobiks’ from the chaotic Russian mobilization have appeared at the front. Mobik prisoners have been taken, and the dead recovered. There are video reports and call intercepts reporting mobiks being dropped off along the front with little or no supplies or communications.
What Might Happen
A pattern of Ukrainian operations is emerging. They are pushing recon/sabotage teams in between Russian-occupied towns and strongpoints, followed by light mechanized forces heavily armed with anti-armor weapons and backed with artillery and rocket fire. These threaten to envelop a major position, leading the Russians to fall back to protect their flanks, or potentially become surrounded. For what it looks like from the POV of the scouts, this series of reports from the same volunteer I linked above gives a sample.
The UA is managing this because the Russians can no longer man a continuous line at the front. This implies that the larger numbers of casualty reports for Russia are credible. It’s also visible that some of Russia’s most elite formations have been shredded (‘heavily degraded’ is apparently the term of art) in the process. It also makes some ‘sense’ of the reports of untrained mobiks being dropped off with little support along the front. These poor [CoC] are being used as human trip wires to slow down the penetration by Ukrainian scouts and light forces.
The Russians left the mobilization too late to assemble a credible, trained, and equipped reserve force. They are being used as cannon fodder to delay Ukraine. Local Russian reserves have apparently been committed and defeated in Kharkiv/Luhansk and Kherson. This suggests Ukraine can continue to advance.
On the other hand, the fall mud season (rasputitsa) is beginning, which will slow everything down. Recent videos have shown muddy but still firm secondary roads in the north (Kharkiv/Luhansk), but there’s been enough rain that it’s likely armor would now bog down off-road. Roads in the south (Kherson) appear to be dry still.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Ukrainian attempt to punch much deeper into Luhansk, probably towards the key logistics center of Starobilsk, before the mud really sets in.
There are recurrent rumors of Ukraine preparing a third offensive, this one to punch South towards Melitopol and then Crimea. I haven’t seen any actual evidence of such, including from those who are buying up satellite photos. And it’s just what I’d spread around if I were the Ukrainians, to convince the Russians to keep reserves there while the other fronts collapse. But I could be wrong…
Published in Foreign Policy
I think they caught a break with Chavez. Sadly not sustainable, but still.
I am so not surprised.
The family dresses tacky.I am not arguing that nations pursue foreign policies antithetical to their perceived national interests.
It’s easy to understand why a democracy like Estonia would support Ukraine against Russia. Estonians fear that if Russia is successful in conquering Ukraine, Estonia might be next.
That begs the question: Why would Estonians not want to be part of Russia? Because Russia isn’t a democracy. The Estonians fear that if Russia were to conquer Estonia, they would no longer enjoy any human rights. Things would go back to the way they were under the Soviet Union.
If Estonians thought that Ukraine was a human rights hell hole and Russia was a land of freedom, they might look at Russia’s war on Ukraine as an attempt to liberate the Ukrainians from the yoke of Zelenksy’s Nazi tyranny.
But no intelligent person thinks this is what is the Russian invasion is about.
People in the EU and the UK and Canada and the US and Japan and Australia think that Ukrainians are fighting to resist being tortured, killed and oppressed by Putin and his military. They support Ukraine because they see the interests of Ukrainians and the interests of the people in their own country to be similar.
It’s democracy vs autocracy. And yes, it is also a case of nations pursuing their perceived national interests.
Estonians don’t want their country to be America either. They like being Estonia. It’s about nationalism, imho, not democracy/autocracy.
It is both.
Estonians don’t want to be ruled by a dictator even if that dictator was born and raised in Estonia and speaks Estonian.
Nationalism doesn’t explain why people in Taiwan don’t want to live under the rule of Xi Jinping.
The difference between democracy vs autocracy does explain this.
Biden’s lifting those sanctions so he can get oil. Because the last thing he wants to do is have us produce oil at home. “Ethical Oil”? Nah, that’s for conservatards.
Sure it does. They see themselves as the true nation of China, and the commies as the usurpers.
The people of Taiwan don’t want to live under Xi’s dictatorship, even if the dictator, Xi, is Chinese.
The people of South Korean don’t want to live under the dictatorship of Kim Jong-un, even if the dictator is Korean.
Nationalism isn’t a sufficient explanation.
“Democracy vs Autocracy” provides additional explanatory power.
Estonians don’t want to live under a Polish, Lithuanian, or Latvian government, and vice versa, even though they are all democracies. Canadians don’t want to live under a U.S. government, and vice versa, even though they are both democracies. Germans don’t want to live under a French government, and vice versa, even though they are both democracies. And so on, and so on …
Nationalism IS a sufficient explanation.
Nationalism is a partial explanation.
But lots of people don’t want to live under a dictatorship even if the dictator and the subject share the same ethnic background, nationality or religious background.
Democracy vs autocracy provides additional explanatory power. It’s not “either it’s all based on nationalism or it’s all based on democracy vs autocracy.” It is both.
Non-sequitur. Taiwan is officially “The Republic of China.” They are the true nation of China as it was before the Maoist forces took over.
You’re talking about race.
If you want to know why people in Taiwan don’t want to be governed by Xi Jinping, it has to do with democracy vs autocracy. Perhaps it also has to do with nationalism.
The mistake many people have made is to focus only on the issue of nationalism while ignoring the difference between democracy and autocracy.
There are a lot of Russians who are against the war, even though they love their country and have fled elsewhere. Nationalism is not a sufficient explanation.
When people feel that their current politicians are more influenced by outsiders (be it a nation like the U.S., or an organization like the EU) than by the concerns of their own citizens, they will willingly turn to even authoritarian politicians who listen to them. We have already seen inklings of that, first in Hungary, then in Sweden, and now in Italy.
The importance of nationalism is not to be underestimated. When push comes to shove, it trumps concerns about authoritarianism.
A hierarchy of a people’s preferences in regards to who’s in charge in their country, in descending order, would look like this:
1. Domestic democratic.
2. Domestic authoritarian.
3. Foreign democratic.
4. Foreign authoritarian.
The term “nationalism” to many people implies “a love of the nation.”
But one might ask: Why does these people love their nation? Perhaps because in their nation they are not oppressed by a brutal dictator and instead enjoy the living under a representative government.
Democracy vs autocracy represents an ideological disagreement over who has the legitimate right to govern. Nationalism might include the ideology of representative government, the idea that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
True. But the importance of the human rights that many people believe they are more likely to enjoy under democracy vs autocracy should also not be underestimated.
This explains why most South Koreans, for example, don’t take vacations in North Korea. They realize that there is a huge difference between South Korea and North Korea, despite the fact that Koreans are in charge of both nations.
A South Korean might be a nationalist in the sense that he loves South Korea. But the reason why he loves South Korea is because in South Korea he enjoys basic human rights that he would not enjoy in North Korea.
I would guess that, even among them, the percentage who would be OK with Russia being governed by foreigners would be about the same as the percentage of, say, Poles who would be OK with Poland being governed by Germans.
Nationalism IS a sufficient explanation.
Except it leaves out the fact that people don’t like being loaded into gas chambers.
Few people will say, “I don’t mind being put into a gas chamber as long as the person who puts me in it isn’t a foreigner.”
The reason that hardly any South Koreans visit North Korea is because it as nearly impossible to do so as it was for West Germans to visit East Berlin, not because of ideological reservations.
Ever wonder why many Germans fled East Berlin for West Berlin? Human rights. Democracy vs Autocracy.
Germany is a full-fledged democracy, and has been for over 75 years now. Your bringing up gas chambers is a red herring. Poles wouldn’t want to be governed by Germans, despite how wonderfully democratic Germany is, because they prefer being governed by … Poles. IOW, nationalism. Same reason that Americans wouldn’t want to be governed by Canadians, and vice versa, even though their historic interactions have not involved any gas chamber horrors.
I was born and grew up behind the Iron Curtain. No need for me to wonder. I lived it.
One must bring up gas chambers because someone from your own nation might put another person from that same nation into a gas chamber.
With the Russia invasion of Ukraine you have both explanations.
[1] Ukrainians fight against the Russians because they are of a different nation.
[2] Ukrainians fight against Russians because the Russians aim to put them in mass graves.
Both explanations are important.
Ukrainians would fight the Russians even in the absence of any imagined “mass graves” danger at the hands of the Russians, simply because Ukrainians prefer to run their country in the way they please, which in their particular case has involved putting about 15,000 of their own fellow citizens in the “uppity” southeastern provinces into graves over the past 8 years.
IOW, [1] above is a sufficient explanation for why Ukrainians are fighting the Russians, or for why Estonians would fight Latvians, Canadians would fight Americans, Danes would fight Swedes, etc.
Shhh. Thou shalt not speak of this.
By itself, [1] makes it appear that German Jews were cool with being put into concentration camps, as long as these concentration camps were German. This is nonsensical.
That leaves out the fact that many people actually want to live under a representative government, not under a brutal dictator like Putin.
Hello Comrade Bidenistas!
You guys have done such wonderful work pushing the “Russia Did It” line on this bridge explosion in this blog post! You are to be really congratulated for it! I am sure Comrade Biden really appreciates your efforts as does of course our Great Leader Klaus Schwab, because the more turmoil and revolutionary chaos we generate , killing, maiming as many people as we can along with way, the better!You guys must be so proud of all the people you killed and maimed and the millions of people whose lives you’ve ruined! Great Job!
We all know of course the “Russia Did It” line is complete utter whack-a – doodle nonsense, but hey our brain dead brainwashed Leftard minions will buy anything we tell them, so you are to be congratulated for giving such great support for our propaganda!
But I must warn you there are dark clouds are on the horizon. The Line B string of Nordstream 2 apparently is still intact. Oh Nooooooo! Ya know ya can’t count on Biden to get anything right. Ya know Lord Obama, our savior, warned us about us about Biden and how he would always find a way to F things up. Well I guess he did so in the worst possible scenario which might derail our long protracted Ukrainian War and the continued destruction of the European and World economies, the Russians are apparently back talking to the Germans about what has to happen to get the gas flowing again. OMG! Noooooooooooooooooooo!
By itself, [1] simply means that the mere fact of Country A being attacked/invaded by Country B is a sufficient motivation for Country A to fight Country B. No other factors, real or imaginary, are needed. And no other conclusions about the citizens of Country A, such as that they would be OK with being put in concentration camps as long as it was their fellow countrymen who put them there, can logically follow. Not without doing serious damage to the rules of logic.
Or do you think that a scenario where Ukrainians would only decide to fight against the Russian invaders if the Russians started putting them in concentration camps is within the realm of possibility? Personally, I certainly don’t. And that’s why I argue that [1] is a sufficient explanation.
From Zerohedge:
Kiev hasn’t officially taken responsibility for the Kerch incident, although it commemorated the explosion within hours with a new postage stamp and Zelensky’s aide, Mikhail Podoliak, posted on Twitter saying the explosion is “the beginning.”
Notably the bridge is already partly operational:
Wtf?