Posted on 03/07/2022 9:00:50 AM PST by Widget Jr
What western military analysts miss and we track the Russian invasion minute by minute.
Day 7 of the Russian invasion and Kyiv hasn't fallen yet but the Russian regular forces are changing their strategy.
Using a live update open source intelligence tool we can track the Russian military in real time.
https://liveuamap.com is the website used for open source intel.
The Russian Way of War: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground Forces.
Dr. Lester W. Grau. Charles K. Bartles. 416 pages. 2016
Research gate:pdf
Army University press: pdf
My reaction: This will make you pessimisitc about Ukraine's chances about winning the war before the occupation and resistance starts.
From the Russian point of view, high casualties are acceptable as long as they win. Russia sent in their worst first (maybe). That long convoy near Kyiv is part of the second phase. That 30 mile long convoy has 15,000 troops to attack Kyiv. This convoy is part of the Russian logistics effort. The slowness of the convoy is due to the refueling stops needed to keep the convoy moving.
The Russians are where they are where they are to set up the foward support units and artillery to bombard cities. Russian tactics are moving from a short war if Ukraine collapses, to a longer conflict which they had planned. The "retreats" are when infantry go in, meet resistance, and then switch to encircle and bombard before moving in again. At that the time of this video, they were largely on schedule.
After this, I started viewing what the experts on TV were sayiing much differently. Many former Generals on TV are presenting the Russian problems as failure when they should know better.
The West.
Moscow is the west.
This entertainer didn’t understand what he was getting into, lasted a week:
Ukrainian actor and TV host Pasha Lee has been killed by Russian shelling near Kyiv, according to multiple reports.
The 33-year-old actor was died on Sunday in Irpin, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital city, Deadline reported, citing local news reports.
Lee had joined the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine last week to defend his country against the ongoing Russian invasion, according to a Facebook post from the Odesa Film Festival, which also reported the star’s death.
Some of my colleagues actually asked me what I think the end result of this invasion would be.
Here are the possible scenarios :
1. The total subjugation of Ukraine, as Putin evidently desires;
2. Some sort of compromise, probably based on the Russian-speaking eastern provinces, which Russia has already declared to be autonomous, joining Russia and leaving Ukraine, which would then be entirely autonomous, but forced to commit to not joining the NATO western alliance, though it could have a security guarantee from it;
3. An indefinite and horribly costly, drawn out war — an urbanized and more intensely conducted version of the Russian experience in Afghanistan ( guerilla warfare and terror attacks) and the American experience in Vietnam, though with nothing like the domestic support that America received from the South Vietnamese army and population.
And remember, I am open to being corrected, but in my view...
The first alternative, complete subjugation of Ukraine, would be impossible for Russia to sustain, even if it were tentatively able to achieve it, and it would degenerate into the third alternative of an indefinite, horrible and costly semi-guerrilla war.
So, I think, a negotiated end to this war, though perhaps not imminent, does seem the most likely outcome.
Ukraine may go through a period of Finlandization, but will join the West. The little Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) now seem likely to escape the control of Russia, as do the Caucasian republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. If Mr. Putin were to succeed in taking back Ukraine and turning it into another primitive subsidiary of Moscow like Belarus, it would be another severe defeat for the West and a substantial disgorgement of our great and bloodless victory in the Cold War, but this scenario seems extremely unlikely given the level of resistance we’ve witnessed from the Ukrainians.
Russia is, all in all, far from being in the overwhelming position of decisive strength that is generally assumed. Or, maybe Russia is just pulling its punches...
Of course, Russia is a much more formidable country than Ukraine, but it has less than four times Ukraine’s population, and is now facing open-ended costs and trying to finance this very disreputable invasion on a relatively primitive economy with a GDP smaller than Canada’s ( which has a smaller population than Ukraine ) and under heavy strain of sanctions.
Most importantly, this week there have been intimations from Russia’s new big brother, China, which is indirectly inconvenienced by western sanctions on Russia, that it desires a negotiated end to the conflict.
This may explain why the tentative peace talks, for which little was expected, are continuing to a third session.
Now...
All of this assumes that Putin still has some semblance of self-control and nuclear weapons will not be used. If Putin goes insane and uses nukes, then all bets are off. I might not even be around to comment anymore...
All the above are based on my personal observations.
Did he ever do any paintings? Those really go up in value when the artist dies.
This analysis is four days old
“The slowness of the convoy is due to the refueling stops needed to keep the convoy moving.”
It’s also due to cheap Chinese tires which keep going flat, and thawing Spring mud, bogging-down the multi-ton vehicles.
I’ve posted this before, but this should NOT be viewed as an invasion - it should be viewed as a civil war.
The western media and their deep-state masters calling this Putin’s “vietnam” is the first step to distorting reality on this.
Imagine an alternative history where due to a politically divided North, Great Britain had managed to keep the US South “independent” for 30 years? What would Radical Republicans in the North be thinking about restoring the Union?
You may not like it, but that’s what Putin and much of Russia are thinking.
The farmers are having fun towing them away after they are abandoned.
15k troops including logistical support is basically one division. But that 15k number is incredibly misleading because it includes a whole lot of people who aren't actually infantry. The press makes this same mistake with the U.S. military all the time in assuming that all "troops" are the proverbial trained killers. In fact, those 15k Russian troops in that convoy likely consist of no more than 4000 infantrymen, and that's a generous estimate. 4000 infantrymen are nowhere near enough to take a well-defended city the size of Kyiv.
Honestly, I think most of those generals on TV have a better appreciation for the relative combat power contained in that convoy than does this one Army infantryman.
The Russians (at least they used to!) have a much higher tooth-to-tail ratio than Western armies.
Putin has already stated his terms. Hes not demanding that much.
Yes, Putin has stated his terms. But hey, it’s just A RESTATEMENT of what he wants. Nothing has changed.
There might have been a tiny bit of movement. The Russians now are no longer demanding that the Zelensky government be replaced (or “denazified” in the charming vernacular of Russian diplomacy) or that the Zelensky government be tried for war crimes for their attempt to put down the AstroTurf “separatist” movement created and maintained by Russia. That may be more dissimulation than a softening of position. If the
Ukrainian army disbands and the Russians continue to stay in Ukraine, there is nothing to prevent the Russians from hunting down and prosecuting members of the Ukrainian government.
But any sign that Putin is backing off his demand for unconditional surrender and that Ukraine accepts status as a Russian client state because “neutrality” is not possible given Ukraine’s history and location is welcome.
All in all, it is a deeply un-serious proposal that seems more like an information operation directed at the Western media than anything else. It certainly doesn’t reflect the state of play in Ukraine or how the near future is shaping up.
Any agreement between Russia and Ukraine should be preceded by a ceasefire and a return of all Russian troops to Russia.
If it was a U.S. unit totaling 15k, it would be even fewer actual infantrymen. That 4k of infantry I guesstimated out of 15k troops gives about 27%, which is much higher than in the U.S. military.
Anyway, the point is that what is being advertised as "15k troops" needs to be understood as the total force. That's really important when you start looking at casualties, and how a given number of casualties actually impacts a unit's combat ability. I suppose you could hand out rifles to cooks, mechanics, clerks, drivers, etc., but sending those guys into urban combat would be a death sentence.
Agree!
Yeah, this analysis is pretty bad.
This invasion has been ill planned, equipped and executed.
It’s near unanimous in national security and military analysis circles.
this thread are comfortable with jumping in bed with Neo Nazis. https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/
Any agreement between Russia and Ukraine should be preceded by a ceasefire and a return of all Russian troops to Russia.
Pure Pollyanna.
I was going to give you a link to a counter-narrative that you might find of interest, but it just got banned.
It is impossible to have an intelligent discussion on this topic when one point of view is parroted by a zillion media outlets/web sites while the other point of view is banned.
RE: Presence of Neo Nazis in Ukraine is not a psy opp.
Yep, Ukraine is so filled with Neo Nazis that the country has Jewish President and Prime Minister.
Prior to the invasion, did we see Neo Nazis trying to destroy their Holocaust museum?
IT IS A PUTIN PSY OPS.
RE: Pure Pollyanna.
Surrendering to Putin’s terms of losing one’s sovereignty IS Pollyanna.
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