Posted on 01/02/2023 3:54:03 AM PST by tlozo
Scrambling for a strategy, Russia has resorted to targeting infrastructure in the winter with the sole purpose of making Ukrainians cold.
Russia is increasingly relying on missiles and drones to attack Ukraine, apparently abandoning any real war aims
This is a new kind of tactic and it relies on lobbing missiles and drones at civilians and civilian infrastructure with no pretense that the targets are military in nature. One of the features of this campaign can be seen in the use of Iranian drones, resulting in it resembling how Saddam Hussein’s Iraq waged war more than previous wars in Europe.
Russia carried out more missile attacks against Ukraine on New Year's Eve, with reports saying that "shortly after midnight, air raid alerts sounded in the capital, followed by a barrage of missiles that interrupted Ukrainians' small celebrations at home."
Russia’s war lacks strategy, only aim is to bring suffering - analysis
According to news source CBS, "Ukrainian officials say Russia is now deliberately targeting civilians, seeking to create a climate of fear and destroy morale.”
However, Russia’s attacks don’t seem to be reducing Ukraine’s morale, and in fact, Ukraine is as staunch in its defense as it was at the beginning of the war and has only strengthened its resolve throughout the year.
Russia likely knows that its invasion of Ukraine has had the opposite effect of what it intended in the beginning.
Moscow believed it could decapitate Kyiv in the first weeks of the war, using surprise helicopter assaults and a massive line of armored vehicles staging from Belarus. Disappointed when it failed to take Kyiv, Moscow shifted strategy to a southern strategy, destroying Mariupol and linking up Crimea to the Donbas front. Then it began annexing territory and settled in for a long war. As winter approached, Russia switched strategy again, and, suffering blows from Ukraine’s counteroffensives, decided to rely on Iranian drones and its own stocks of missiles, to target civilians in Ukraine. The historical context and beyond
It's important to look at the historical context here. Do countries usually wage war like this? Terrorizing civilians, driving them from their homes and laying waste their lands is certainly one of the archetypes of historic warfare in the medieval period or the period of Rome and other empires.
Rome destroyed Carthage by reputedly sowing salt into the land. Ancient warfare was full of examples of mass destruction, such as what Alexander the Great did to Persepolis or Tyre. Cities would be razed and the inhabitants sold into slavery.
Russia’s initial campaigns did lead to destruction, and the claims that Russia has transferred thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia could be seen as an attempt to lay waste to Ukraine and transfer its inhabitants. However, Moscow has largely been stopped by Ukraine’s army and shifted strategy.
Can Moscow’s war then be compared to other examples of sieges and wars of attrition?
Israel and Egypt fought a war of attrition between 1967 and 1973. Iran and Iraq bludgeoned each other to exhaustion in the 1980s. In the Uruguayan civil war, the siege of Montevideo lasted almost ten years from 1843 to 1851. When the Western powers fought Nazi Germany and Japan, they subjected both countries to massive bombing. The US also ordered Operation Linebacker II, the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, in 1972, to bring Vietnam back to the “peace” table. So does Moscow’s strategy have parallels with these examples?
Similar to the “war of the cities” between Iraq and Iran, when Iraq used its air force to terrorize Iran’s cities in the Iran-Iraq war, Russia is trying to terrorize Ukraine’s civilians. Iraq likely knew it wouldn’t win the war by harassing Iran’s civilians, it merely wanted to inflict suffering on them.
Russia also seems intent merely on inflicting suffering. This isn’t “strategic” or “precision” bombing. Russia is targeting infrastructure in the winter purposely to make Ukrainians cold. Moscow is using drones that don’t have a large warhead to terrorize people more than “win” a war.
This means Russia’s policy today lacks strategy. It’s plausible Moscow may be planning a new offensive in February or that it could be searching for some kind of strategy and tactic, but Russia also knows that Ukraine is continuing to receive western arms.
With each passing day, Ukraine receives better weapons and Russia remains the same. Russia can’t outproduce the West and doesn't even appear to be trying to attrition the West in Ukraine. For instance, it doesn’t appear Russia is going after Himars or other ordnance the Ukrainians possess. Iranian drones are not being used in complex swarms. Russia seems to prefer to strike at soft targets, not trying to defeat Ukraine’s forces. Putin's Happy New Year
Russia’s New Year’s message was partly about normalcy and partly about the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared alongside soldiers. His was a message of defiance and conspiracy in which he portrayed the West as waging a conflict against Russia. This is a new kind of interpretation for Moscow.
It invaded Ukraine and caused millions to suffer, but it is the victim, in its own analysis.
A message of strength was broadcast on other Russian media, portraying Russia as having weathered the storm of Western sanctions and aggression, even as Russia is the one doing the aggression.
This attempt to transform the Ukraine war into a defensive war in which Russia is the victim is part of the Moscow narrative. Having annexed areas of Ukraine, Russia can now pretend to be “defending” its lands. Moscow has claimed it won’t conduct peace talks if the annexed areas are on the table. In essence, it is trying to force Ukraine to negotiate over how much land Ukraine will lose.
If the Moscow mentality continues along this line, portraying the Ukraine war as a defensive war, and lobbing missiles and drones at Ukraine to keep Ukraine on the defensive as well, it’s not clear what the way out of the war will be.
Some western politicians and experts are keen on claiming that all wars end in diplomacy and talks. This is also the message of former German leader Angela Merkel who claimed recently that it was better to have tried diplomacy with Moscow before the war, even if it failed.
However, it’s not true that all wars end in diplomacy. The Confederacy wasn’t defeated with diplomacy, and neither was Germany in 1945. Some wars don’t end with peace talks. Some do. Moscow is gambling on the fact that eventually its war in Ukraine, waged entirely in Ukraine and causing Ukraine to suffer, will result in talks that legitimize Moscow’s actions.
This is the “frozen” conflict strategy it has used elsewhere before, such as in Georgia. If the long-term strategy for Moscow is a frozen front line, and continually shelling Ukraine’s cities to cause suffering, then the West and Ukraine will have to come up with a way to reduce this threat.
Countries like Israel, faced with enemies that lob missiles at their civilian areas, have constructed complex integrated air defenses. Even Israel has learned that these have a limit, that they are costly in the long run.
Even if air defenses can stop the Moscow campaign of spreading suffering, they won’t likely end the war.
This is the “frozen” conflict strategy it has used elsewhere before, such as in Georgia.
I don’t know. Taking out the Ukraine’s industrial capacity, ability to support an army, and flooding Europe with refugees seems like a plan to destroy an enemy.
War is suffering. And killing. We all know this.
“Forcing suffering” on an enemy is a very common and serious war strategy. Like it or not, it is a strategy
and how’s that brilliant plan working out so far?
Russia has been in retreat since August, can’t defeat Ukraine, and is getting so many of its troops killed that it will soon need to do ANOTHER conscription call-up
Russia is failing by every measure
Sure aounds like suffering is the intended end state and is thus their strategy.
This article is nonsense. The Russians are employing a very specific strategy to hobble Ukraine’s ability to move men and arms to the front. Specifically, the destruction of the electric grid is intended to thoroughly disrupt the heavily depended upon rail system that runs on electric power. The fact this strategy is effective is evidenced by the fact that the Ukrainians have taken 2 steam locomotives out of museums and put them to work on the tracks.
Wonder if I can find a J-Post article, circa 2003, decrying the American destruction of electrical grid, water treatment plants, etc. in Iraq…
Right now Ukraine is trading 8 men KIA for every Russian KIA. That ratio is not evidence of winning. Russia will always cede land to save men. Ukraine is currently trading men for time.
Ukraine is being destroyed for the sake of whoever controls Biden and the cancerous Western oligarchs.
Thank goodness patriots in America and elsewhere in the West have Russia fighting for our interests, and Russia is doing it very well.
The preposterous, cartoonish anti-Russian propaganda reflects the demented, self-absorbed, malignant intentions of the globalists who want us dead just as much as they want Russia dead.
LOL, please list what "interests" Russia is fighting for that patriots in America value? Freedom, Liberty?
This has to win the award for the worst piece of "journalism" in the year.
“circa 2003, decrying the American destruction of electrical grid, water treatment plants, etc. in Iraq…”
Yeah, see if you can do that (Ruzzian) liar.
That was my war. We didn’t target civilian infrastructure. In fact we spent over $100 billion building it up.
Civilian infrastructure was most certainly destroyed. It’s undeniable.
You can't expect much imagination when they're paid by the post.
Highly unlikely.
It is a near-peer conflict. Real casualty numbers, known only to the belligerents, are a tightly guarded secret.
The most probable is they are roughly one-one for combatants, with significantly higher civilian casualties in Ukraine, where the fighting is occurring.
Trump called it “Genocide”.
Sherman's March to the Sea.
ping
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