Ukraine v Russia II

He couldn't stop the former prisoners from drinking or shooting each other and these were those that made the choice to go to Ukraine. It takes vast manpower to force large amounts of people to do what they don't want to do and the Russians haven't really had those structures since the '60's.

 

This is very true. I've already seen that Russia is going to modify their laws to force the soldiers that refuse to fight in Ukraine to join Wagner's prisoner brigades. Same is true for anti-war activists. It isn't a large stretch to assume that if the prison pipeline dries up, Russia will just re-open the spigot and force prisoners to the front lines.

 

If Putin is free to exercise his will with total freedom, there would be no reason for him to use prisoners as a supply of troops while he has the whole population available.

 

There are bounds within Putin has to operate tho. One of those is that Putin limits the involvement of the general population as much as possible. That's why Putin has limited the mobilization as much as possible. Going to a general mobilization would absolutely shatter that limitation tho and I'm not sure Putin is ready for that. However, prisoners, refuseniks, and anti-war protestors don't fall into that category, so it would allow Putin the opportunity to expand the available group of men without crossing that line.

 

Prisoners in Russia aren't like prisoners in the US. They have a cohesiveness, a tradition and a level of autonomy that endured from the stalinist days on. You've must have read Solzhenitsyn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_in_law

 

I'm not disagreeing. Just saying altering rules for them with regards to the war in Ukraine isn't as impactful as another mobilization round.

 

This is a massive oversimplification and, for the most part, German misinformation. While Poland has not put in a formal re-export request, they have absolutely been having discussions with Germany on a formal basis leading up to a formal re-export request and it is in these discussions where Poland has been told repeatedly by Germany that they would not approve a request for them to re-export.

So no, it's not "hot air". There is absolutely an actual plan in place to hand over Leopards to Ukraine and Germany has absolutely been blocking that plan from being implemented. The lack of a formal request belies the fact that Germany has been very public that they will not approve any re-export request if it were submitted.

 

Funny you should mention standardising the Polish MBT fleet. I believe they have now gotten rid of all their Soviet era MBT (including the ones they upgraded), but they still have Leopards, Challengers, Abrams, and K2. That's a ridiculous amount of complexity.

That being said, Germany had a much better chance of having Poland replace their Leopards with new Leopards had they not stood in the way of Poland handing over Leopards.

 

I doubt that would be permanent tho. Basically, the US is offering to "loan" them Abrams until they buy replacements for the tanks they give up. Whether that is Abrams Sep3, Leopards, K2s, or Challengers, who knows.

 

There appears to be a fairly large corruption clean-up in the Ukrainian government. Earlier today an official at the Infrastructure ministry was arrested and fired and there have, reportedly, been a number of other officials arrested/fired/resigning. The Ukrainian government has also announced that all government employees are banned from leaving the country for now. I'd assume the reason for this is so they don't have to file extradition requests and what not.

Some strange stuff is going on Internally within the Ukrainian Government with multiple Regional Heads set to Resign and all Government Employees being Barred from Leaving the Country. https://t.co/7zvPt5i8e2

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) January 23, 2023

The main reason for this is that part of Ukraine's EU candidacy required a 1 year corruption investigation and Ukraine is running up on the end of that 1 year.

 

Well.. I think unlike Ukraine's many other attempts to "fight corruption" this one actually comes with a tangible cost to Ukraine if they don't actually do it. While the US doesn't particularly care if money ends up in the pockets of local officials, that isn't necessarily true with EU countries. They are sending a lot of money into Ukraine to keep the country from economically collapsing. If it is discovered a hefty chunk of that money is going into pockets rather than to help the people...

 

We have new hard numbers from the Russian military on how badly Ukraine's armed forces are suffering. So far Russia has shot down 372 Ukrainian airplanes and 200 helicopters, destroyed 401 SAM systems, 3841 artillery, 983 rocket systems, 8066 trucks, and 7537 tanks and IFVs. This is 23 complete armies - the equivalent of (for The Jitty Slitter) 4 World War II Wehrmacht Army Groups, or the total combined forces of all NATO in Europe.

There's nothing left. The dam is about to break. Clearly the Russian forces will soon be driving through Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, back to Paris, London, and finally reaching their ultimate target of Inverness, to enjoy whatever passes for food there. It's inevitable.


https://nitter.1d4.us/wartranslated/status/1617618846978043905

 

Am I the only one who thinks Baerbock is hot?

 

I have been wondering about this. Assuming the 100K number of Russian casualties is accurate, how many would it take for Putin to blink? Twice as many? Five times as many? I have seen 500K bandied around as the number but what is this actually based on? I guess it's pretty close to the original invasion force + the new rounds of mobilization in terms of number?

 

I'm not sure that is entirely true? I think people have discussed the unspoken contract between the Russian people and Putin before? The one in which he could do whatever he wanted but he would leave them largely unbothered (unless of course they actively opposed him). The reasoning being that he was recruiting largely from ethnic minorities and prisons to keep that status quo intact. But there has to be a threshold in terms of casualties where he has no choice but to recruit from the groups that were previously largely left alone?

 

I think the 188k casualty figure is accurate, but includes all wounded, missing, captured. In any event, it is the size of the entire initial invasion force that is likely not fit for purpose. Which means the best case scenario for Russia is they switched to mercenaries/prisoners/mobiks a long while ago to replenish units and the regular army are mostly held in reserve.

To which my bigger Q is: so? If the initial force is in reserve to avoid insurrection or eliminated, does it matter in terms of battlefield progress? Can mobiks become an army?

 

Well, Russia just replaced Surovikin (a skilled general who did the excellent retreat from Kherson) with Gerasimov (one of the generals who designed the initial invasion, and personally led the wasteful push from Izium until he was wounded). I think it's clear Putin wants to win by throwing Russian lives at Ukrainian bullets and wants a general who thinks the same.

He has to change people's minds about the nation being on a full war footing. I've seen some recent man-on-the-streets interviews of Muscovites and they still don't think this is going to affect them personally. But they are not questioning him either. We'll have to see how things change, but I'm not hopeful.

 

It's the HIMARS and other GLRMS systems, plus Russia using up their shells (what ratio, who knows). Russia is shooting an order of magnitude fewer shells now than before.