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So, the deal they agreed to when they surrendered? Glad it only took 3 months...
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Sep 22, 2022 05:24
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mlmp08 posted:It’s not like the head of the DOD at the time and the commander of the forces who conducted the strike did not defend and justify the strike, on the record. It was controversial in wisdom/effect, but defended legally and morally by the DOD leadership of the day. Considering they were the ones who put the "crazy option he'll never go for" on the table, they backed themselves into a corner of their own making.
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Sep 22, 2022 05:29
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Even without a detailed background it's fairly easy to see why the Russian hardliners would be furious at the prisoner exchange that got them Medvedchuk. He's basically useless to Russia and to get him they traded some very valuable POWs. He's of more use to Ukraine in Russian hands. It reminds me of an anecdote about the Battle of Fort Donelson in the American Civil War. One of the Confederate commanders, Gideon Pillow, fled the fort before it surrendered to General Grant's army. Pillow was an incompetent narcissist who assumed that his capture would be a disaster to the Confederacy. When informed of this, Grant replied that if he'd captured Pillow, "I'd let him go again. He will do us more good commanding you fellows."
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Sep 22, 2022 05:41
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Couldn't they want him back to put him on trial or something for "screwing up the invasion"? Maybe it's convenient for Putin to have a traitor idiot to pull up on stage to shift the blame onto, and/or to punish.
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Sep 22, 2022 05:56
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It's very interesting that they aren't even pretending the outcome of these referenda are in question in Russian media https://ria.ru/20220922/zaporozhe-1818584830.html
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Sep 22, 2022 06:02
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FishBulbia posted:So, the deal they agreed to when they surrendered? Glad it only took 3 months... 3 months and one bombing of their prison barracks
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Sep 22, 2022 06:04
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I can't recommend that wapo article I posted above enough, it's full of interesting stuff, also more re medvedchuk and also the bizarreness of him suddenly being a part of the prisoner swapquote:Moscow’s subsequent spurning of Medvedchuk has been one of the few visible signs of Putin’s pique.
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Sep 22, 2022 06:10
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I can't recommend that wapo article I posted above enough, it's full of interesting stuff, also more re medvedchuk and also the bizarreness of him suddenly being a part of the prisoner swap Lol If they wanted to exchanged for him just because they wanted to see if they could get back any of the money he stole. Really doesn't seem like any one in Russia wanted him back for anything else.
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Sep 22, 2022 06:15
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It reminds me of an anecdote about the Battle of Fort Donelson in the American Civil War. One of the Confederate commanders, Gideon Pillow, fled the fort before it surrendered to General Grant's army. Pillow was an incompetent narcissist who assumed that his capture would be a disaster to the Confederacy. When informed of this, Grant replied that if he'd captured Pillow, "I'd let him go again. He will do us more good commanding you fellows." That reminds me of how they talked about Gen. Hood after he got crushed, twice, by his old mentor from West Point. Or Bragg after he got ruined in Tennessee. Honestly, I'm surprised the confederacy lasted as long as they did. Most of their top brass were goddamn idiots. And that ties us back into Russia with most of their forces being led by apparent idiots who can barely maintain their own forces!
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Sep 22, 2022 06:22
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Staluigi posted:so why did so many people's attitude on the war move straight from "he won't try to conquer all of ukraine because that's obviously an impossible goal with his existing forces" to "oh, he's insane and invaded anyway? well that must just be it for Ukraine, that's really too bad smh" I want to focus on this part of the post. The core problem (and it happens all over this thread) with this type of thinking is that you create caricatures of both Putin, the man, and Putin the construct made by analysts or anyone who thinks of Putin whether it be in the CIA or here in this thread, when no serious(tm) analyst thinks like that. You also apply 20/20 hindsight to all the variable factors that no one could really guess and then work then declare the people who made decisions obviously smart, obviously stupid, and obviously insane etc. Yes if this was "The Man in the High Castle" and Putin had DVDs of the reality he was about to unleash, then he would be insane to go through with it anyways. But that isn't real life. 1) While every analyst understands that Ukraine falling into the Western orbit was always a no-go for Putin, the reason why analysts (including real politik guys like Mearsheimer) that Russia wouldn't seriously consider an invasion is not because it was an insane idea or that Putin was a "tactical master strategist brain guy". Analysts sat down and looked at the options available for Putin and concluded that he wouldn't seriously consider invading for several reasons. He largely already had what he wanted in terms of freezing Ukraine out of additional integration into the West. The conflict in Donbas meant the eternal cocktease of Ukraine, by NATO wrt to joining the organization, would continue as open invitation to the Ukrainians would potentially drag NATO members into active conflict with the Russians. An active invasion of Ukraine would also add a degree of tension and isolation on top of the effects already suffered by Russia imposed on it after the 2014 land grab. In most analysts' minds, there was very little to be gained from invading Ukraine. Did we err? Yes. We underestimated Putin long-term distrust of the West and his desire to build a legacy for himself as not just the restorer of order following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but to secure in his mind the territorial future of Russia by pushing back Western influences in the Near Abroad by returning Ukraine back into the Russian sphere. But the fact the Western construct of what a rational Putin would do differed from what Putin, the man, actually did isn't in and of itself 'proof' that he is delusional, ill-informed, or otherwise mentally handicapped (the original thesis that set off this side discussion). Putin simply looked at the calculation and weighted potential events and outcomes differently than what Western analysts estimated he would. In other words, we viewed it as risky enough to dissuade a rational actor, even one that is deeply committed to returning Ukraine into the fold, from likely following this path. Putin clearly assessed the risk as an acceptable one. Why did we view it as too risky and why might he have thought differently? 2) It wasn't immediately known by the Russians, the Americans, or anyone else whether the invasion of Ukraine would be a "dumb thing". That is of course with hindsight the only conclusion that could be drawn. Prior to Feb 2022 though, the was a huge array of unknowns or factors that could only be roughly estimated. For example, the capabilities of the Russian military writ large were unknown. Russian modernization in the late aughts, teens as well as showcase deployments in South Ossetia, Crimea, and Syria had very impressive moments as well as some lingering issues that would sow doubt. While no serious analyst believed the Russian conventional army was on par with say an equivalent NATO (in particular American) force of similar size and capability, it is clear that at least segments of their conventional forces (ex VDV) had been brought up to a standard which would pose a threat to a 2nd tier military power. Ukraine clearly fits into this category. There is also widespread disdain for Russian military competence of their basic soldiers in this thread when there is strong evidence that while they are not exactly world beaters, the best of the regular formations were competent in combat and simply placed in terrible situations by the Russian high command and never given a chance to succeed (ex Convoy traffic jam of doom, lack of coordination in terms of the main effort, dispersion of assets so that no one objective was cleanly met, lack of mobilization of manpower to support its ambitious program of over running the country the size of Ukraine etc). We have a very good idea of why Russian high command did what it did (they thought Ukraine wouldn't fight). Were they optimistic to their detriment? Sure. But did anyone know that the Zelensky would be the lion he turned out to be? Clearly no. Ukrainian capabilities were also largely unknown, or should we say the range of potential effectiveness was very large. While the Ukrainians have been spending the past 8 years desperately modernizing and receiving Western training, their experience was mostly limited to a very static low-intensity conflict in the Donbas and an invasion is an entirely different animal. There were questions about the will and effectiveness of the Ukrainian military even by the US to the point where Biden offered Zelensky a flight out of Kyiv in the opening hours of the invasion. As it turns out, the Ukrainian regulars, reservists, and territorials all performed at or beyond all the estimates. Not just in terms of fighting spirit in which large segments of the Ukrainian population were willing to take up arms and defend the country but in terms of the competence displayed by those who took up arms and the officers who led them at all levels in the chain of command. Finally, the sustained support to the Ukrainians by the EU and the US was also something that could not be taken for granted. Remember the opening weeks of the war when Germany balked at sending any real supplies and offered helmets? Remember the MiG transfer fiasco? While Ukrainian battlefield success has largely allowed the West to continue to back a winner, there exists in an alternate reality where Putin succeeds in sacking Kyiv in a week and NATO would be staring across the Polish and Baltic border armed to the teeth and drawing the line in the sand saying here and no further. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that if we knew all the variables that we know now, and plugged them back into the calculator we had in Feb. 2022, then the only possibility Putin pulls the trigger is if he is either delusional, ill-informed, or both. But no one back in February had the values to plug into that calculator. All they had were educated guesses. And as events transpired, the unknowns, as well as the variables, resolved into a cleaner picture. We shouldn't use this cleaner picture to then go back and judge decisions or predictions made and dismiss decision makers as stupid or delusional. What we should do is ask the question, was there something we missed given the information we did have in Feb 2022 that we should have known or could have resolved the variables into a narrower range? There certainly are missed details as more military commentators have mentioned their doubts about the efficacy of Russian logistics or the fact that Western leaders simply didn't take Putin's words at more face value regarding how he views the Russia and its sphere of influence and just how much suffering he is willing to put Russia through to try and realize that vision. J.A.B.C. posted:That reminds me of how they talked about Gen. Hood after he got crushed, twice, by his old mentor from West Point. Or Bragg after he got ruined in Tennessee. Bragg had his faults, but he legitimately got hosed multiple times by incompetent subordinates and deserves a better place in the military history books. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 22, 2022 07:01
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MikeC posted:Long wall of text I feel like you are ultimately conflating two points. One point is the argument of whether Putin is "sane/competent" - which is the idea that a reasonable person with the same set of information might make the same choices when presented with the same information as Putin had. Another is whether Putin is "predictable" - where given a more accurate model of Putin's thinking and his inputs we might be able to predict what he might have done in the scenario. What you're saying is if Putin's weighting of inputs presented were skewed in an unreasonable fashion that a reasonable person would not make the same choice, it somehow becomes the onus on the observer to twist the inputs to make the outcome reasonable because Putin is reasonable. If Putin was overly motivated on securing his legacy, that becomes a defacto reasonable objective to pursue and part of the game when there is no such demand in the real world.
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Sep 22, 2022 07:20
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MikeC posted:Bragg had his faults, but he legitimately got hosed multiple times by incompetent subordinates and deserves a better place in the military history books. He deserves to be exhumed and dumped in a sceptic tank, like all Confederate generals. But I'll settle for his name being dragged through the mud, taken off the army base and his only memory being a bumbling idiot who got undercut by his subordinates and made a ton of costly mistakes that further cemented the demise of the slave-state. You don't have to hand anything to traitors, man. It's fine.
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Sep 22, 2022 07:29
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WarpedLichen posted:I feel like you are ultimately conflating two points. Perhaps, though the original assertion that Putin is uninformed has somewhat morphed into Putin is just unpredictable/insane when evidence that Putin is merely uninformed cannot be produced. The poster I quoted said he was insane. WarpedLichen posted:One point is the argument of whether Putin is "sane/competent" - which is the idea that a reasonable person with the same set of information might make the same choices when presented with the same information as Putin had. No, I would say that just because our construct of Putin did not make the same choice as what Putin did make in real life, there are two separate variables that went into making the construct that could have gone awry. The first is we may not be operating on the same facts (we do not know what Putin knows/estimates) and we may not understand how much he desires particular outcomes (ie if a rationale actor really desires a lot of cake, he will spend an inordinate amount of resources on cake but not necessarily an irrational amount). In order for a claim for Putin to be irrational, I would say the person making that claim would need to show either that Putin's inputs were so wildly out of whack with reality that only irrationality could explain it, or that his desired outcome was so out of reach that only irrationality could explain it. My assertion is that only with 20/20 hindsight could you make either or both claims. edit: I would add that we do not make a single construct. Instead, we make a wide range of constructs and inputs and assign the probability of which one best represents the real Putin. All the while, understand that just because we think a particular construct of Putin is most likely, we shouldn't rule out other possibilities. MikeC fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 07:35
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MikeC posted:In order for a claim for Putin to be irrational, I would say the person making that claim would need to show either that Putin's inputs were so wildly out of whack with reality that only irrationality could explain it, or that his desired outcome was so out of reach that only irrationality could explain it. My assertion is that only with 20/20 hindsight could you make either or both claims. I think you're missing at least one more option where his desired outcome is inherently irrational. If Putin wants to poo poo his pants, my model of Putin could certainly account for that particular desire, but by no means does it make that a rational one. In the real world there are historical/emotional drivers that would differ from person to person, none of us have the lived experience of Putin. But I feel like people do get to claim that Putin is acting irrationally if he is pursuing expensive goals nobody else thinks are worth pursuing.
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Sep 22, 2022 07:54
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Putin is making bad decisions not because he is irrational, but because 1) he is absolutely getting bad information from his subordinates, who are getting bad information from their subordinates, and they from theirs, and so on. This must've changed a bit since the complete and utter pizdets keeps happening, but the corruption and lying is incredibly pervasive all up and down the Russian military and government apparatus. Putin himself made sure of it by cultivating it all these years by running his government like the mob. Russia is not a normal country and their power structures don't function in the same way ours do, and we cannot assume Putin is informed truthfully. 2) He seems absolutely convinced of his world view, that he is the only one fighting western degeneracy, which is threatening Russia's very existence, and he really seems to think that he needs to restore Russia's greatness to include all of Russkiy Mir (Russian World) to combat this. This includes the idea that the territories of Ukraine, the Baltic states, Moldova, Poland, the Caucasus, etc that were lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and even the fall of the Russian Empire, need to be brought back into the fold. (And that the Russian-speakers living there actually want this) Source: his rambling TV speeches Some might call this insane, but it doesn't make him irrational. It just means that his decision making calculus is different than what western analysts might think it'd be. And lastly, he is all the way in on this now, because his main goal seems to be self preservation, or at least preservation of his idea what Russia's future needs to be, and he's not willing to give up, because he knows that losing the war means losing Russia. He is way down in the sunk cost fallacy hole and he just keeps on digging, the referenda and mogilization being the latest example. spankmeister fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 08:02
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spankmeister posted:Putin is making bad decisions not because he is irrational, but because YouTube just described a lot of textbook irrationality to explain why Putin is supposedly rational.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:10
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spankmeister posted:Putin is making bad decisions not because he is irrational, but because "He's completely loving irrational, but he thinks he makes sense, so he's actually perfectly rational." is a very weird thing to argue. Like I don't get the whole point of this "He is an Inscrutable But Wise Foreigner, so how are Decadent Westerners suppose to understand his perfect rationality?!" dance that always comes up when someone calls him out as irrational. Just because something is logical to him doesn't make it actually logical to the world. Or, in short: steinrokkan posted:YouTube just described a lot of textbook irrationality to explain why Putin is supposedly rational.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:19
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steinrokkan posted:YouTube just described a lot of textbook irrationality to explain why Putin is supposedly rational. Explain the youtube dig please
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Sep 22, 2022 08:20
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Kchama posted:"He's completely loving irrational, but he thinks he makes sense, so he's actually perfectly rational." is a very weird thing to argue. Like I don't get the whole point of this "He is an Inscrutable But Wise Foreigner, so how are Decadent Westerners suppose to understand his perfect rationality?!" dance that always comes up when someone calls him out as irrational. Just because something is logical to him doesn't make it actually logical to the world. Wait hang on. The last thing I'm trying to argue is that he's secretly some inscrutable wise man who is good save for these dastardly underlings who keep feeding him false information or something. Apologies if my post comes across like that. No, he's all kinds of twisted in his thinking and he thinks the world is completely different than to how it really is. And he's a chauvinistic narcissistic rear end in a top hat who needs to be stopped at all costs holy poo poo. All I was trying to argue is that a lot of western analysts have been wrong about him and his motives and that they should adjust to analyzing a weirdo imperialist mobster instead of some 5D geopolitical chess master he was often made out to be.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:26
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spankmeister posted:Explain the youtube dig please Autocorrect hosed up
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Sep 22, 2022 08:29
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spankmeister posted:Explain the youtube dig please I'm assuming it was a typo and they just meant to say "You"
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Sep 22, 2022 08:29
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spankmeister posted:Wait hang on. The last thing I'm trying to argue is that he's secretly some inscrutable wise man who is good save for these dastardly underlings who keep feeding him false information or something. Apologies if my post comes across like that. It wasn't just you, but a lot of posters who have into the same hole of "HE'S REALLY RATIONAL BECAUSE HE HAS REASONS FOR WHAT HE DOES". You just happened to copy their logic and reasoning pretty much word for word. Like, if you think he's rational, then why would you say uhh any of this post? Or the other? "It's impossible to understand an insane idiot" that you are positing here (and yet, western analysts have nailed him pretty drat perfectly during this war don't you think?) is completely at odds with the "He's very rational and western analysts don't get that" you were positing in the other post.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:30
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A friend mentioned something yesterday that I haven't seen so much mentioned by analysts but I think is a valid point: Force drafting 300 000 middle aged men is probably a bad idea as a military move. But it is even worse as an economical move. Especially as they seem to be aiming at specialists such as mechanics etc. while the Russian production of new vehicles, replacement parts etc. is plummeting. Draft 19 year old for a war and you kill off a future generation. Draft 40 year olds and you leave mothers alone with families, you pull out middle management and specialists from your factories, you devastate small companies, etc. E; and on top of that tens of thousands of the more resourceful part of your male population is in the process of escaping your country. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 08:33
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spankmeister posted:Wait hang on. The last thing I'm trying to argue is that he's secretly some inscrutable wise man who is good save for these dastardly underlings who keep feeding him false information or something. Apologies if my post comes across like that. The question is, is there an a priori logic to what he does, or is he just flailing and making up excuses? It looks like it's increasingly the latter, and if that's so, there's no way to usefully analyze his behaviour for future insights, all we can do is 1) consider hard factors in Russian capabilities, i.e. effectively worst case scenarios based on the material they have available 2) consider the limits of other actors in Russian politics and what may cause them to override Putin 3) not negotiate with Russia but rather force them to accept unilateraly set conditions
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Sep 22, 2022 08:35
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spankmeister posted:Putin is making bad decisions not because he is irrational, but because Honestly going into Putin ideology other than he is an authoritarian that believes Russia should have a lot of land and be something that is thought of as great, I don't think that's interesting or useful. Dude is corrupt as hell and says lies about whatever. Will say though although I think he is culturally conservative, siding with the far right and right wing Russian orthodox people seems more a power thing. Guys a criminal dude who known to have wild party with prostitutes and probably around people taking drugs all the time. Sure could be a massive hypocrite, but far right sort of does seem a place where he found was naturally authoritarian so an easy place for him to work from, then of actual belief. But honestly if it's an actually held belief or not really doesn't matter that much. End the day guy just like power and having a reputation.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:46
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MikeC posted:words First, you should really go read that wapo piece I linked above and have been posting excerpts from, it goes into a ton of detail about precisely what the informational inputs were that Putin and the FSB were getting in the weeks and months leading up to the conflict and particularly in light of their surveys of Ukrainian sentiment there should've been absolutely massive red flags about launching the invasion and the absolute inevitability of Ukrainian resistance. idk where you get the idea that there was a perception that Putin wouldn't invade among westerners. Putin eventually invading Ukraine a second time was considered an absolute inevitability among pretty much everyone vaguely aware of the situation. The only disagreement was the timeline. when you say 'we' idk who you are referring to (since afaik you are canadian?) but assuming you're using it in as a catchall western sense, we anticipated that putin would attack Ukraine again and spent a great deal of time and energy and resources preparing for precisely that and it ultimately happened along basically the exact lines that we had been helping Ukraine prepare for. The only people really caught off guard by it were people paying no attention to, like, anything since 2014. Honestly Putin could not have done much more to signal his intentions. Also of note, UK independently came to the conclusion that Putin was about to invade Ukraine via entirely different sources from the US. Curiously, they'd actually found a somewhat different invasion plan than the US had found. There was wide agreement that it would be a massively stupid invasion to undertake with the amount of forces Putin had prepared. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, has a population of 45 million people who, as the FSB explicitly knew from polls they had conducted, largely hate Putin personally and half of whom had stated that they were prepared to fight for Ukraine. Even if Russia had the ability to topple the Ukrainian government, Putin's army was nowhere even near sufficient to pacify the situation in any real way. He would have needed several times more people for it. Even the success case of the Russian invasion was getting locked into a huge insurgency in a huge country that would be heavily supported by everyone who had strong feelings about Russian expansionism. Thus the idea that it was stupid was agnostic to the question of whether it would succeed or not: either way it was going to be a disaster. The perception that attacking Ukraine was stupid came from Russian oligarchs to Russian military experts (including Putin's own propagandists) to Russians themselves to western military experts and so on. Hell even a bunch of the pro-Russian posters here were saying the same thing. If anything the perception that it was an incredibly stupid idea was more pervasive with Russians than anyone else. "No way Putin would be that stupid" was the refrain from basically anyone Russian who knew poo poo about poo poo. American perceptions of the wisdom of the invasion ranged from people who thought 2022 was still 2014 to people who were predicting that in 2 months Putin's army would be bogged down in the mud while Ukrainians savaged their supply lines. btw I personally agree and have said repeatedly that several of the better Russian units seem to perform at least well enough when not in situations where they're totally hosed by circumstances, but 1) that's rare and 2) the fact that they're always having to fight in such disadvantageous circumstances reflects on the competency of their leadership. quote:Russian modernization in the late aughts, teens as well as showcase deployments in South Ossetia, Crimea, and Syria had very impressive moments as well as some lingering issues that would sow doubt. What? this says basically nothing. South Ossetia was a steamroll against an opposition that had no chance and Crimea was even less of a military action. There's nothing to be learned about the competency of the Russian military in adverse circumstances from either of those. Conversely you're dismissive of the experience that something like 1.2 million Ukrainians got of fighting against the Russians over the 8 years that Ukraine was rotating almost everyone who served through deployments to the East (and which was not an extremely low intensity conflict for all of that time, either). That experience undoubtedly played a roll in how Ukraine was able to stop and eventually stall Russia while they waited for their mobilization to start paying dividends in combat power. Notably Ukraine was having success in the later years of the donbass conflict to the extent that Russia realizing that situation was going to crumble was possibly the impetus for launching the invasion when they did. Re Russia's performance in Syria, idk if we watched the same performance. In the early stages of the conflict they lost a lot of armored vehicles to completely boneheaded tactical decisions that actually mirrored the early days of this war. They eventually learned a bit (and also stopped putting prized vehicles at risk, which is when we stopped seeing t-90s actually leaving bases almost ever) and eventually their involvement drew down to basically just airpower and Wagner forces (who were mostly used to seize infrastructure, particularly oil infrastructure, and who were paid with a percentage of any oil facility they seized). Russian airpower in Syria was not ineffective, but was also not something that would inspire confidence and this was while operating in an environment with zero enemy AA. Its shortcomings were very much on display. Russia struggled then as it does now with providing almost any air support and it's air missions were and still are almost entirely 'fly to x, expend all munitions, return to base' with little if any real time coordination with ground forces. In general Russia's ability to do the combined part of combined arms was and remains a big issue outside of a handful of better units. We also saw that Russia does not have many pilots, of whom not many get significant flying time (and lowkey the amount of pilots Russia is losing in Ukraine is largely unremarked upon but is going to be a huge deal as experienced, qualified pilots are almost as irreplaceable as their airframes). Syria did eventually turn around after Hezbullah and Iranian forces and their militias successfully backed the Syrian armed forces into success on the ground while Russia provided the airpower. Still, Russia's performance in Syria was pretty much a wash outside of providing airpower and idk how much I would suggest evaluating an air forces capability by what they can do in an uncontested environment. As an amusing footnote, similar to their experience in Ukraine, they somehow managed to get a lot of colonels and generals blown up in Syria and at a rate entirely out of proportion to their total losses. In reality the Russian military had done basically nothing noteworthy in 20 years that would give a real reason to ascribe any specific competency to them. Analysis of their capability was influenced by natsec tendencies to always assume that every threat is bigger than it is in order to never get caught underprepared, certain think tanks played that up, too, but really Russian competency was more of a question mark than anything else. I do agree that Ukraine over performed what almost anyone expected. In particular, Ukraine specifically won the information war right at the very outset and just crystallized a will to fight as Russia's brutality and targeting of civilians quickly drove even people sympathetic to Russia away or at least to the point of being unable to publicly support Russia. Personally I found the outpouring of western support to be not as surprising insofar as I'd been screeching that Europeans were going to have a hugely more significant emotional reaction to seeing white people living in cities that looked like they could be any major city in Europe bombed by Russian airpower than they had towards the Syrians experiencing the same. Even still I was surprised by just how coordinated and rapid and ultimately effective the response from the rest of Europe was. quote:All of this is a long-winded way of saying that if we knew all the variables that we know now, and plugged them back into the calculator we had in Feb. 2022, then the only possibility Putin pulls the trigger is if he is either delusional, ill-informed, or both. But no one back in February had the values to plug into that calculator. All they had were educated guesses. And as events transpired, the unknowns, as well as the variables, resolved into a cleaner picture. We shouldn't use this cleaner picture to then go back and judge decisions or predictions made and dismiss decision makers as stupid or delusional. What we should do is ask the question, was there something we missed given the information we did have in Feb 2022 that we should have known or could have resolved the variables into a narrower range? seriously go read that wapo piece, it goes into so much depth about just what information the decision was made upon and how much of it was ignored by Russian leadership. it certainly does appear that the decision was made in one helluva vacuum and that the FSB had all the info that they should've needed to foresee how things would go. Ironically they probably knew as much as anyone about how forcefully Ukraine would respond, at least some of them. Also check out these two pieces from before the war, there's no reason to believe that the outcome was unknowable at the time. https://nvo.ng.ru/realty/2022-02-03/3_1175_donbass.html https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukraine also I think you're missing the part where Putin attacking Ukraine was considered inevitable and unquestionably his intention. the question in January and February of 2022 was 'is this time it?' 'We' got the timing of that correct, but the fundamental question of 'will Putin decide to attack Ukraine?' was not doubted by really anyone knowledgeable as far as I'm aware. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Sep 22, 2022 |
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Sep 22, 2022 08:46
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lilljonas posted:A friend mentioned something yesterday that I haven't seen so much mentioned by analysts but I think is a valid point: Yeah, but if they're were drafted to a compent military structure they would be very useful. People you can leave doing a task and won't need to constantly oversee, people with various work experience profiles, real world problem solving skills, initiative and knowledge. People that made a difference when Ukraine was standing against aggression. Of course they will likely be sent into very much understrength combat units, where those skills will be wasted. And all they will get in return is lovely medal, PTSD and wounds.
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Sep 22, 2022 08:49
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https://twitter.com/ColborneMichael/status/1572850783217156096?t=JA8QHooBvYqNiv_O5S3fTQ&s=09 No pictures, but it's a translation of Rusich/Wagner's guide on how to war crime.
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Sep 22, 2022 09:45
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Some protests yesterday, outbound roads and flights clogged up, and some other extracurricular activity https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1572871179593224192
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Sep 22, 2022 09:58
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Not exactly the cream of the crop https://twitter.com/PjotrSauer/status/1572863899934019585 Feel bad for these guys https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1572857909478039553
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Sep 22, 2022 10:12
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Charlz Guybon posted:Not exactly the cream of the crop Those guys are like late thirties to mid fifties. Do we have any general idea when the people called up last saw active service? In other news, the Russian foreign ministry is positively *incensed* at Biden's insinuation that Putin was threatening to potentially use nukes. Seemingly baffled at what could possibly have given Biden that impression, their spokeswoman weighed in: ""As for the address by the US president, I think that it was absolutely unseemly how it began and how it went mainstream, since it was framed around our country. The thing is that he began by allegedly quoting Russia’s president. He attributed remarks to the Russian president that our country was threatening the world with nuclear weapons," she told the Soloviev Live TV channel on Thursday. The diplomat noted that such a stance was a "propaganda tie-in, inflicted upon society despite what was actually said." " (It's Tass so maybe don't give them clicks.) https://tass.com/politics/1511553
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Sep 22, 2022 10:51
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The mood seems quite subdued: https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1572874130382548992
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Sep 22, 2022 10:52
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spankmeister posted:I just realized something. A few years ago I bought a Russian army ration (and some other countries) off of ebay because I saw a few of those steve1989mreinfo videos and I got curious. Here's hoping that the nice pair of russian army binoculars i bought in the mid 2000s contributed to a failed recon mission somewhere on the front. 
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Sep 22, 2022 11:10
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Since the mobilization decree seems to have no actual number is there any reason to think they'll stop at 300k? For day one this is a lot of people grabbing. Those men saying their goodbyes is beyond depressing.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:22
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Bashez posted:Since the mobilization decree seems to have no actual number is there any reason to think they'll stop at 300k? 300k already exceeds the Russian army's capability to absorb. They don't have the necessary organisational structures anymore to put the new manpower to good use. While drafting of people makes for heartbreaking social media videos, the bigger deal is the stop-loss measure of contract soldiers no longer being able to go home when their contract usually would have run out.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:27
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They all look like they're being bussed over to the next village's pub to play the local region's ongoing skittles tournament.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:31
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Bashez posted:Since the mobilization decree seems to have no actual number is there any reason to think they'll stop at 300k? That’s the stated number by Russian leadership, with the real question being if the barely functional infrastructure that would process 100-150k at this time of the year during peace time can actually accommodate 300k with the toll taken by the war already.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:36
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GaussianCopula posted:300k already exceeds the Russian army's capability to absorb. They don't have the necessary organisational structures anymore to put the new manpower to good use. This is why I think some of them will go right to the front, rather than get training. Obviously it's hard to grasp large numbers of people, but if that many buses are getting filled day one it doesn't seem like a meted out mobilization aimed at getting chunks of the 300k into training.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:39
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:They all look like they're being bussed over to the next village's pub to play the local region's ongoing skittles tournament. There's something both terrifying and pathetic about this. Like, it's an extremely weird juxtaposition between what's being asked and the goal. I don't intend to draw any direct comparison here, but there's a very 'Volkssturm, Berlin, April 1945' feeling to all this news and footage, except, you know, to fuel a loving invasion! It's exactly the kind of thing you would have expected to see in Ukraine, had things gone horribly wrong for them.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:40
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loving hell. A 250 meter long oil tanker on its way from Russia is on fire in Estonian waters in the Gulf of Finland  first reports say that there is no visible smoke on the outside, so it might not be a worst case scenario, but if e.g the engines went kaputt then things could escalate.
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Sep 22, 2022 11:41
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