The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[Madner Kami]

Oddly, the European Far Right is really against Russia in this war [...]

Not true. This war created a very wierd rift in the european far right, between those supporting Russia and those fighting Russia. It nicely replicates the troubles with neonazism in Ukraine, where you have anti-russian (ukrainian!) nazi-groups fighting pro-russian (ukrainian!) nazi-groups (and then, when the pro-russian neonazis get trashed after attacking anti-russian nazis during a Euromaidan protest, barricade up in a building, only to the building then being set on fire with them inside after the pro-russian nazis threw fire bombs from inside the building at the anti-russian nazis, the russian media reports: Ukrainian nazi-mob murders Russians by setting them on fire! - No, this is not a joke, that really happened in Odessa in 2014...)

In Germany for example, you got the AfD (Alternative for Germany). A hodge-podge of anti-european, anti-NATO, nationalist, neo-conservatives and neo-liberalists. It's pretty much proven, that they're at least partially on Russia's payroll (as most modern european far right groups). They've adopted russian talking-points, refuse to call the invasion a war, insisting on calling it a "conflict" and blaming NATO for it. Now keep in mind, that this party absorbed pretty much every previous neonazi-party in Germany, including the voters.
At the same time, a number of local militant neonazis are conspicuously absent from public life, since the "conflict" has started and some digging from the local "Network for Democracy and Courage" (a very left-leaning group of anti-fascists, working Germany-wide and being fairly well connected to similar groups in other european states) has uncovered, that they went to Ukraine, to fight for Ukraine, to fight against the Russians. This story is fairly ubiquitous all over Germany and Europe as a whole.

The european far-right is deep in an identity crisis and you can see this on the macro-level as well. You have Viktor Orban and his Fidesz-party in Hungary as prime-minister, refusing to help Ukraine, while at the same time the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of the "Law and Justice"-party travels to Kyiv just yesterday in order to talk with Zelensky about how to better help the Ukraine with fighting against the russian invasion... You can't make this shit up...

[hammerofglass]

Given these are Nazis I'm honestly surprised there's not a group who just wants maximum losses on both sides so there are as many dead Slavs as possible.

[phantom000]

British Intelligence reports that the invasion has almost completely stalled with Russians making little to no progress in the last few days.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... ts-uk-mil/

The fighting probably won't stop for awhile but unless Putin's tries something else, it looks like his take over of Ukraine is basically over.

[Madner Kami]

British Intelligence reports that the invasion has almost completely stalled with Russians making little to no progress in the last few days.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... ts-uk-mil/

The fighting probably won't stop for awhile but unless Putin's tries something else, it looks like his take over of Ukraine is basically over.

Yesterday a pretty interesting number made it's way around the news: Ukrainians managed to disable 40% of the russian forces. Many news-outlets misinterpreted that as meaning that they killed or injured 40% of the forces, but that is quite far from the truth. Overall, Ukraine managed to outright kill between 7,000 to 15,000 russian soldier at the time of this writing. Conventional wisdom says, that the casualties to fatal loss ratio in most wars is close to 3:1. For every dead soldier, you have 3 soldiers wounded beyond being able to be used in any sort of duty. This means that between 28,000 to 60,000 soldiers are off the field. Russia went in with a total of 200,000 pairs of boots, so Russians lost between 14% to 30% of it's active forces (the reality is likely somewhere between 14% to 20%)

Now, keeping that in mind, loosing soldiers is bad. What is worse however is, loosing unit cohesion. Contrary to what games tell you, you don't have to kill every soldier in a unit to render it combat-ineffective. Killing a few officers, killing logistics, removing certain integral assets of the unit (like artillery pieces) can practically disable a unit far more effectively, than just killing grunts ever could. And that is where the Ukrainians shine. Due to their relentless attacks on logistics, AA-assets and removing isolated parts of larger units, they've managed to practically disable 40% of the russian battlegroups (the russians went in with about 150 BTGs). Those are units that can't attack effectively, can't defend effectively. In essence, it's military assets sitting idle and consuming supplies until they are reinforced or reorganized or merged with other similarly disabled units.
Rendering 40% of the opposing forces combat-ineffective is a big deal, because this means that Russia just can't go into larger offensive operations anymore, unless they reorganize and relocate forces into new focus points in order to create local troop superiority, which would leave other areas critically understaffed and opening those areas up for counter-attacks.

The Russians are effectively in the same situation that Germany was in, after the failed drive to Moscow in 1941. They lack supplies, they are disorganized, they haven't achieved nearly enough of their strategic goals, get their logistics disrupted by ukrainian forces essentially acting like partisans in their back and Russia can do jack shit about it, because they lack the manpower to effectively control the occupied territores (this is where their syrian recruits will be employed...), especially due to the local civilians being inately hostile to the occupation.
But! Russia is still far from loosing militarily. Germany managed to rerorganize and reorient themselves to the Caucasus in '42 and that may still happen in this conflict, because the Russians have advanced quite far into southern Ukraine and if they halted their attempts to seize Kyiv and reinforce the southern forces, then this can go tits-up for Ukraine quick. The situation in the Donbas is far from ideal for the ukrainian forces, too and is a permanently bleeding wound. Russia is currently settling into a war of attrition and this can go really ugly really quickly, if they fall back to their standard tactics of just flattening everything with artillery and bombs indiscriminately and then go into the ruins. We've seen signs of this switch in tactics already and it can get a lot worse.

[phantom000]

British Intelligence reports that the invasion has almost completely stalled with Russians making little to no progress in the last few days.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... ts-uk-mil/

The fighting probably won't stop for awhile but unless Putin's tries something else, it looks like his take over of Ukraine is basically over.

But! Russia is still far from loosing militarily. Germany managed to rerorganize and reorient themselves to the Caucasus in '42 and that may still happen in this conflict, because the Russians have advanced quite far into southern Ukraine and if they halted their attempts to seize Kyiv and reinforce the southern forces, then this can go tits-up for Ukraine quick. The situation in the Donbas is far from ideal for the ukrainian forces, too and is a permanently bleeding wound. Russia is currently settling into a war of attrition and this can go really ugly really quickly, if they fall back to their standard tactics of just flattening everything with artillery and bombs indiscriminately and then go into the ruins. We've seen signs of this switch in tactics already and it can get a lot worse.

But wouldn't that be the Russians giving up trying to seize all of Ukraine and focusing instead on taking a section of it?

Again i'm hardly a military expert but it seems like there would be a big difference between taking over an entire country, and simply annexing one region of it, isn't there?

[Madner Kami]

But wouldn't that be the Russians giving up trying to seize all of Ukraine and focusing instead on taking a section of it?

Absolutely. And it increasingly looks like this will be their only choice in order to declare any sort of victory. (Newsflash: Treat it as unconfirmed for the moment though: It seems that the Ukrainians mounted a counter-offensive in the south-western region, having driven the Russians away from Mykolaiv and even back to Kherson, a city they took on day 1 of the invasion(!). Kherson is also the key for the drinking water supply of the Crimean Peninsula and was and is a vital target for the Russians to seize. If this is true, then this is a major defeat for the Russians in the south. But again, tread lightly on this news, it's unconfirmed.)

Again i'm hardly a military expert but it seems like there would be a big difference between taking over an entire country, and simply annexing one region of it, isn't there?

Depends on what your goals for the attack were and it increasingly looks like Russia will have to settle for what little success they can gain, as they are increasingly incapable of replacing their losses and gaining any ground outside of the eastern theatre (the Donbas), so they may face the choice between not having won anything or taking a partial strategic victory and pretend you won the "special military action" to your populace.

[CmdrKing]

Oddly, the European Far Right is really against Russia in this war [...]

Not true. This war created a very wierd rift in the european far right, between those supporting Russia and those fighting Russia. It nicely replicates the troubles with neonazism in Ukraine, where you have anti-russian (ukrainian!) nazi-groups fighting pro-russian (ukrainian!) nazi-groups (and then, when the pro-russian neonazis get trashed after attacking anti-russian nazis during a Euromaidan protest, barricade up in a building, only to the building then being set on fire with them inside after the pro-russian nazis threw fire bombs from inside the building at the anti-russian nazis, the russian media reports: Ukrainian nazi-mob murders Russians by setting them on fire! - No, this is not a joke, that really happened in Odessa in 2014...)

In Germany for example, you got the AfD (Alternative for Germany). A hodge-podge of anti-european, anti-NATO, nationalist, neo-conservatives and neo-liberalists. It's pretty much proven, that they're at least partially on Russia's payroll (as most modern european far right groups). They've adopted russian talking-points, refuse to call the invasion a war, insisting on calling it a "conflict" and blaming NATO for it. Now keep in mind, that this party absorbed pretty much every previous neonazi-party in Germany, including the voters.
At the same time, a number of local militant neonazis are conspicuously absent from public life, since the "conflict" has started and some digging from the local "Network for Democracy and Courage" (a very left-leaning group of anti-fascists, working Germany-wide and being fairly well connected to similar groups in other european states) has uncovered, that they went to Ukraine, to fight for Ukraine, to fight against the Russians. This story is fairly ubiquitous all over Germany and Europe as a whole.

The european far-right is deep in an identity crisis and you can see this on the macro-level as well. You have Viktor Orban and his Fidesz-party in Hungary as prime-minister, refusing to help Ukraine, while at the same time the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of the "Law and Justice"-party travels to Kyiv just yesterday in order to talk with Zelensky about how to better help the Ukraine with fighting against the russian invasion... You can't make this shit up...

Honestly it makes sense. Putin is hard to mistake as anything but a fascist, so ideologically motivated fascists will flock to him (especially if he’s their bankroll).

BUT

Eastern Europe spent most of living memory under the soviet empire, and who shed the most Soviet blood in that time? Oh right, the literal Nazis. So nationalist militants across the former bloc will have a very… rosy view of what the Nazis were and therefor have no issue calling themselves such.

[hammerofglass]

Russia just flatly can't achieve their stated strategic goals at this point and they were off the table when the defense still hadn't crumbled on day 4. Instead of a quick conquest with minimal resistance it's a real war, instead of driving a wedge through NATO it made NATO stronger and convinced other nations on the border to join it, and instead of increasing Russia's reputation for strength its military has become an absolute laughingstock. What's been happening after the first week is a temper tantrum.

[CmdrKing]

Pretty much. They could well take the major cities and force a favorable cease-fire condition, things could certainly turn around, but at this point it’s clear that even if they took the country and installed a puppet government they’d have to *occupy* Ukraine, not just break the government, and if they’re struggling this much with taking the country at all they flat out don’t have the means to occupy a country Ukraine’s size.

[CharlesPhipps]

But wouldn't that be the Russians giving up trying to seize all of Ukraine and focusing instead on taking a section of it?

Again i'm hardly a military expert but it seems like there would be a big difference between taking over an entire country, and simply annexing one region of it, isn't there?

This is sort of the irony of the whole thing because it's not a hypothetical. This is exactly what Russia did when they annexed Crimea.

And the rest of the world, particularly Obama, let them.

The big difference being that most of Crimea was okay with this. However, Russia has been attempting to conquer Ukraine since 2014. There's been limited fighting in the regions they've been trying to annex the entire time.

It's also a great irony that Zelensky was elected on a platform of negotiated settlement. It's just that Putin didn't accept any offers short of total annexation and installation of a puppet government.