RFU News — Strategic Geopolitics Today, there are important updates from the Russian Federation. Russian military channels are reacting with anger to the Russian retreat around Liman, where Ukraini…

The counterattck north of Lyman is a small area in the grand scheme. And if you’re looking for signficance, you shouldn’t over react to the push-pull of front lines in small sectors.

But - there is maybe a story behind the story here. Several stories.

  • The closest you’re going to get to The Truth and an honest insight of Russian thinking and awareness is probably an aggregate of similarly timed and themed milblogger Telegram channel freakouts.

  • There’s a brittle chauvanism to the Russian invasion mindset that doesn’t respond well to ANY step backwards. That’s a very inflexible way to fight a near-peer war of conquest. It also indicates a weakness - Ukraine doesn’t have to fully expel the Russians to 2014 or 1991 borders for Russia to consider it a defeat. They treat every retreat like an irreversible loss with shrieking hysterics, searching for scapegoats. And usually at the opeational command level, which is kind of dumb. The failure may manifest there, but the real blame is several layers higher in the chain of decision makers.

  • Ukraine remains capable of coordinated manueuver warfare. This is after a period where it seemed both sides seemed to accept that mutual drone mass has made zone operations fairly moot. And maybe it is - but that lapses in that drone mass coverage create opporutnity that conventional thinking considered a thing of the past. Ukraine isn’t in a mere “hold on” phase - they are capable of offensives, and they may be growing stronger as Russia’s man-intensive horde war approach is weakening.

  • Taking several steps back - the Russian anxiety reacting to a localized rollback at least implies a palpable fear of a ‘turning point’. One that is past ‘culmination’, where you stop advancing, and instead suggests you’re at a point where you start to lose significant pockets that would require limited reserve strength you might not even HAVE to try to get back. That could create a dangerous domino effect both on the physical front lines, and in the collapsing confidence of a slow-but-inevitable strategy of grinding ever forward over a presumably weaknening ukraine.

  • For all the talk of a September mobilization, it hasn’t happened yet. And the first fresh conscript, whose combat effectiveness is highly debatable, wouldn’t arrive to reinforce failing fronts for several months from this sentence if mobilization were announced. Nor is there much certainty that mobilized conscripts would be any good as assault forces in the first place to underwrite Russia’s “grind forward, meat bags” strategy. How many more pocket collapses might happen before those conscripts who have less support, less equipment and poorer leadership even arrive at the front to replace the low-funcntioning grunts that are currently being blasted into canned pasta in charred piles of timber and blasted concrete right now?

In short - they are not moving forward and are starting to move backwards. Slowly, then quickly.

That all implies a collective fear among Russky milbloggers that they understand their entire position and philosophy is very fragile. There’s lots of examples in history where a small local defeat reinforces a wider fear that the entire approach to the war is pointless.

It’s very possible that a few collapsed pockets clustered together makes Russia finally accept defeat and screw off home.

The courage that the Ukrainians show every day is truly historic stuff. Slava Ukraini.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    Remember a few years ago when Ukraine managed to push Russia back a lot and even took over parts of Russia proper?!

    I think that situation will inspire Russian chauvinists to convince themselves that this time is like that time - a temporary setback that they will recover from.

    Personally I think that at a far broader strategical level things are very different now:

    • Russia’s stockpiles of Soviet-era weapons are pretty much gone now. Russia is now at a new stage were for most things their access to military hardware is limited to what it can buy or make and it can’t just freely take stuff out from deep weapons stocks. Amongs other things that means their ability to react to territory losses by throwing tons of resources at it is limited when it comes to equipment.
    • Ukraine has developed and is now mass producing weapon technology that counters Russia, not just in the front but also with a lot of depth meaning amongst other things that previously safe logitical hubs (which could supply large scale counter-attacks) and staging areas (were such large scale counter attacks could more easilly be organised) are not safe anymore. This also has strategical implications (see next).
    • Ukraine is actually taking out economically strategical Russia assets thus reducing Russia’s ability to pay for the weapons or the components for the weapons it now needs to buy or make. This further throttles down Russia’s access to military equipment and ammo.
    • Russia’s ages old “just thrown warm bodies at it since we have more of those than they have” strategy which is the one they seem to have devolved into as their access to equipment got worse, is now affecting people closer and closer to the centers of power and industry and away from the far-way peripheral poor provinces which were their initial cannon fodder sources, further negativelly impacting Russia’s Economy and increasing risk of rebelion against Putin. Also by all indications Ukraine’s weaponry (i.e. drones) is giving them increasing advantages in countering Russia’s “human waves” with reduced risks for Ukrainian personnel, though it’s unclear if the rate of casualties per country population size has already reached the point were it is now better for Ukraine than for Russia (my impression for a while is that casualty rates were evolving in that direction as Ukrained used more and more drones against Russia’s frontlines, who in turn had less and less training and equipment).

    I mean, rationally I think it’s premature to celebrate because who knows what else Russia will find that they can stretch for a pushback, though there is now a lot more reasons to hope that the war in Ukraine has finally reached a sustained turning point unlike the last time Ukrained significantly regained territory.

    • TwinkleToes@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      Your 4th point is I think the pivotal, first paragraph explaining the outcome of this war on future Wikipedia pages. Mass drones have made death cheap, precise and personal. I think this is the crux of why Russia cannot ever “win” this war - because their strategy is 20th century thinking. Namely - infestation until the other side gives up and goes away and accepts that the land turns from blue to red, like you’re in a video game, just by putting a body there. The biggest problem with that strategy is that Ukraine can use drones to kill Russian occupiers on a nearly infinite basis as long as they can make and deploy drones.

      There is no ‘pacifying’ the exclusion zone that drones can cover. That distance, which technology continues to make larger and larger. The russian strategy of pushing small infiltration teams into soft areas until the Ukrainians retreat a bit technically moves Russians forward, but it doesn’t work as an occupation and pacfication strategy at all. It only works if Ukraine gives up and says the land is yours and agrees to stop killing your troops. And why would they do that? If you’re Ukraine, knowing that Russia will never honor a peace long term anyways, the best strategy is to keep the russian army bleeding until it dies. The only way to prevent the next war is to stop Russia’s capability to fight it.

      Russia’s theory of victory depends on men and metal. Ukraine’s depends on being able to deploy machines and trade tiny slices of land until Russia leaves. This is what defeatists who say ‘Ukraine can’t push the russians out’ don’t accept. Russia is a 20th century army fighting a 21st century war with 7th century brutality, and Ukraine doesn’t have to push them out. They have to make it impossible for them to stay.

      And they’re doing a great job of it.

    • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      2 days ago

      Was that just before the USA cut critical help?

      Pepperidge farm remember.

      Edit: to clarify: Ukraine successfully punched into Russia, USA then stopped sharing intelligence and did everything to fuck the situation up for Ukraine. Ukraine had to abandon the salient.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Good thing that what makes more difference for Ukraine in the frontlines and even strategically is home-grown tech or at least not the kinds of kit the US is going through like crazy around Iran and to protect Israel (like Patriot missiles) and hence has stopped providing to Ukrained.

        I mean, as far as I know the US still doesn’t let Ukraine use their missiles against Russian territory and it wasn’t that long ago that most of Ukraine’s European partners had the same artificial restrictions, plus still now Ukraine hasn’t been provided long range cruise missiles from anybody, only stuff like the the Storm Shadow which has about 250km range.

        IMHO, the most genial thing Ukranians did after this Invasion started was heavilly investing in their own military tech, something which is now finally paying them massive dividends both in allowing them to hit strategical Russian economic targets far inside Russia and swamping the frontlines and the support lines behind them with drones.

        As far as I can tell it’s not the course of the war itself that’s suffering from the US having stopped supplying Ukraine with needed ammo, it’s the civilians getting hit by missiles on balistic trajectories which is what Patriots were supposed to intercept (since there are other, better solution for drones which are not dependent of US-provide missiles). Also, let this be a lesson for anybody else choosing Patriot systems.

        • TwinkleToes@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          Correct. They are about to bring their own domestic ballistic missiles program online at scale.

          https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukraine-ballistic-missile-russia-fire-point/

          Unknown how guidance will work - Ukraine doesn’t have their own satellite network or space launch capabilities. I have no idea how targeting works with ballistic missiles. But - presumably they’ve considered this in their production plans and they committed to developing this new capability because they thought it will work. They still have lots of friends, and may have more if Krasnov is neutered politically in the upcoming midterms, or triggers enough election interference that it leads to widespread chaos in the U.S.

          Starlink still doesn’t allow guidance within Russia proper, but autonomous capabilities are getting better. Trump, as he always does, tried to use leverage he doesn’t actually have and ham-fistedly bully people into submitting to him. He cut US Aid immediately, and Ukraine didn’t collapse because they had other backers. Then he’s tried insane measures to invade allies and crash the global economy in an hope to a) manipulate markets for his own gain and b) goad Ukraine’s supporters into recession so they become more selfish and less inclined to support Ukraine. But - he’s an idiot who can’t understand what smarter people than him think, so that hasn’t worked either because the rest of Ukraine’s benefactors aren’t personally invested in Russian corruption money like he is.

          The threat of what MIGHT happen if the U.S. pulled all aid has turned out to be more useful than the reality of having done it. And thus America really has almost no other cards to play to try and extort Ukraine into a bad peace. He really is one of the dumbest world leaders in history - like among the worst, lead-poison addled Roman emperors of all time.

      • TwinkleToes@lemmy.caOPEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Was what just before? US has already withdrawn almost all support. There’s still billions in draw down authtority from Biden that (of course) Trump refuses to allocate. Hasn’t helped Russians make a significant strategic breakthrough.