Ukraine Notes - twice in as many days!
May. 15th, 2022 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneThis is too big to sit on, especially if it comes to fruition soon!
The head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, in an interview with the international affairs editor for Sky News, says that a coup is in process in Russia to depose Putin. For his bona fides, Budanov correctly predicted when Russia was going to invade. He seems to be a pretty straight-up, no-nonsense guy.
Needless to say, this is big. There is, of course, no telling what this would mean in terms of the invasion. We can hope that the best possible outcome would be a cessation of hostilities and soon a withdrawal of Russian forces, but it's possible that an even bigger nutter could take Putin's place and make things worse. Or that the coup could fail. By their nature, coups introduce a lot of instability in a country and there are frequently follow-on coups as the replacement administration is vulnerable and hasn't fully consolidated their power, so another group of opportunists can take their chance at trying to grab the reins. Why not!
The General goes on to say that Russia is little more than a large group of thugs with guns, and that the tipping point will be in mid August and the war should be over by the end of the year.
Now, could this guy be blowing PR smoke trying to encourage a coup against Putin? Obviously yes. But so far, the Ukrainians seem to have been fairly honest in their war-related announcements.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-military-intelligence-chief-optimistic-of-russian-defeat-saying-war-will-be-over-by-end-of-year-12612320
https://fortune.com/2022/05/14/does-putin-have-cancer-coup-underway-blood-cancer-ukraine-war/
A few things under the cut. And it's pretty good news, for a change.
The finale for the Eurovision song contest was Saturday, and Ukraine won! President Zelensky, perhaps overambitiously, said that they'll hold the competition in Mariupol next year. Might need an additional year or two for some reconstruction after the fighting ends. Ukraine narrowly edged out the UK's artist in the final vote.
Speaking of Mariupol, before I read the news as I was getting ready for bed about the coup and Eurovision, Russia announced that Mariupol is going to have a referendum to see if they want to join the Russian Federation. Yay? All nice and proper. Rest assured that it will be a completely fair election in which 98% of the residents vote to join Russia. Even though several thousand of the ones that voted have been dispersed throughout Russia. Absentee ballots, marvelous things.
Ukraine has launched a counter-offensive against the Donetsk offensive. You generally don't do that unless you've pretty much stopped your opponent cold and sent them reeling, it's an opportunity to really disrupt them. Since the Russian forces seem to be fairly disorganized to start with, I would think that the Ukrainians have very good chances for success here, not knowing anything about relative unit compositions and such. Just the pure "willingness to fight" between the two sides, and the Ukrainians' "Home Team Advantage" wanting to shoot the shit out of the orcs gives them a great force multiplier when it comes to launching a counter-offensive. There is one thing they have to watch out for, though. It's possible to advance faster than your rear echelon support can, and then you can get into trouble. You can compress your opponents into a tight pack that they can't escape from, and your support is too far behind you - you've stretched your resupply and medevac route thin - and possibly your artillery is too far behind to support! - and you can be in trouble! If your goal is to push out your opponent, you have to manage the advance to give them routes to pull back. Sure, kill as many as you can - they earned it, but let them have escape routes as you advance. And give time for your artillery to advance behind you so they can still support you, along with all of your rear-echelon support elements.
The head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, in an interview with the international affairs editor for Sky News, says that a coup is in process in Russia to depose Putin. For his bona fides, Budanov correctly predicted when Russia was going to invade. He seems to be a pretty straight-up, no-nonsense guy.
Needless to say, this is big. There is, of course, no telling what this would mean in terms of the invasion. We can hope that the best possible outcome would be a cessation of hostilities and soon a withdrawal of Russian forces, but it's possible that an even bigger nutter could take Putin's place and make things worse. Or that the coup could fail. By their nature, coups introduce a lot of instability in a country and there are frequently follow-on coups as the replacement administration is vulnerable and hasn't fully consolidated their power, so another group of opportunists can take their chance at trying to grab the reins. Why not!
The General goes on to say that Russia is little more than a large group of thugs with guns, and that the tipping point will be in mid August and the war should be over by the end of the year.
Now, could this guy be blowing PR smoke trying to encourage a coup against Putin? Obviously yes. But so far, the Ukrainians seem to have been fairly honest in their war-related announcements.
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-military-intelligence-chief-optimistic-of-russian-defeat-saying-war-will-be-over-by-end-of-year-12612320
https://fortune.com/2022/05/14/does-putin-have-cancer-coup-underway-blood-cancer-ukraine-war/
A few things under the cut. And it's pretty good news, for a change.
The finale for the Eurovision song contest was Saturday, and Ukraine won! President Zelensky, perhaps overambitiously, said that they'll hold the competition in Mariupol next year. Might need an additional year or two for some reconstruction after the fighting ends. Ukraine narrowly edged out the UK's artist in the final vote.
Speaking of Mariupol, before I read the news as I was getting ready for bed about the coup and Eurovision, Russia announced that Mariupol is going to have a referendum to see if they want to join the Russian Federation. Yay? All nice and proper. Rest assured that it will be a completely fair election in which 98% of the residents vote to join Russia. Even though several thousand of the ones that voted have been dispersed throughout Russia. Absentee ballots, marvelous things.
Ukraine has launched a counter-offensive against the Donetsk offensive. You generally don't do that unless you've pretty much stopped your opponent cold and sent them reeling, it's an opportunity to really disrupt them. Since the Russian forces seem to be fairly disorganized to start with, I would think that the Ukrainians have very good chances for success here, not knowing anything about relative unit compositions and such. Just the pure "willingness to fight" between the two sides, and the Ukrainians' "Home Team Advantage" wanting to shoot the shit out of the orcs gives them a great force multiplier when it comes to launching a counter-offensive. There is one thing they have to watch out for, though. It's possible to advance faster than your rear echelon support can, and then you can get into trouble. You can compress your opponents into a tight pack that they can't escape from, and your support is too far behind you - you've stretched your resupply and medevac route thin - and possibly your artillery is too far behind to support! - and you can be in trouble! If your goal is to push out your opponent, you have to manage the advance to give them routes to pull back. Sure, kill as many as you can - they earned it, but let them have escape routes as you advance. And give time for your artillery to advance behind you so they can still support you, along with all of your rear-echelon support elements.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-16 12:02 am (UTC)Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia; they had a revolution in 2014 (with people having medieval armored battles in the public square!) and are busily decorrupting. It's got a long way to go, but they're already obviously more prosperous and obviously more democratic; their public institutions are strengthening, they're having a national ethnogenesis moment in this war that pushes hard for the rule of law.
Having that next door is an existential threat for the current Russian metropole elites that have been running the Russian empire these last several centuries. It's so obviously a better place to live and full of fellow Rus, it has to be possible here...
(Sure, Putin's motivation is venal -- he believes these people owe him revenues -- but his analysis is not, from inside his perspective, wrong.)
"total destruction" = unrecoverable loss of the systems that enable you to fight. It's different at nation scale (army scale, battalion scale, squad scale) than it is as individual scale, but 19th century military philosophy like Clausewitz is how you get catastrophic failures like the Schlieffen Plan or the Battle of Verdun. (Or Barbarossa, in a lot of respects.) "Attack the will" is not current thinking; current thinking is "attack the mechanism of capability".
In the case of Japan, they were starving and unable to keep industry running; one of the things the Emperor asked about directly prior to the surrender decision was the supply of concrete. (Insufficient to the planned defenses.) That was the military objective; destroy the Empire of Japan's ability to wage war. On that scale, individual island campaigns are tactics. (Rather as fighting individual battle groups is tactics on the scale of "Ukraine versus Russia".)
Destruction is not always achieved, absolutely, and it doesn't mean "you have to specifically kill every single soldier", but it does mean you don't want troops or equipment or knowledge escaping; you want to deny the contribution of those things to the enemy's warfighting capability. (ESPECIALLY since Ukraine is fundamentally constrained from attacking Russian industrial capability directly.) Which means you don't want any retreats in good order among the enemy. You want logistical strangulation and systematic destruction, in several senses.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-16 01:31 am (UTC)Not an existential threat to Russia itself, but might be to its rulers, which admittedly in their minds is the same thing. That having been said, dictatorships have existed physically side-by-side with democracies without necessarily invading them.
So you don’t equate destruction with total destruction. Okay. However, cannot say it is geared to destroying the materiel means to carry on a war. Guerrilla Warfare, and Terrorism have no such aim, they are aimed at the will of the enemy. “Attack the mechanism of capability” only applies to what we egotistically called “Conventional” War. (As an aside, I hate that term, and also the term “regular forces,” because both imply that that is the important stuff, and everything else is unimportant, a side show, the ‘extra credit chapter at the back of the book,’ which why we’re so awful it. That having been said, I don’t have a better term.) The Schlieffen Plan, as originally conceived, likely would have worked, it was Von Molkte’s watering down that was the fatal flaw. The Japanese were planning on total warfare, at the level of training HS students to attack in waves with spears, when 2 cities got nuked and convinced them otherwise (admittedly that one can, and will be, argued for all eternity).
Agree you don’t want retreat in good order. You want a panic-stricken, head-long flight, being bombed and blasted, with further destruction of men and materiel (and morale), but nonetheless, you want ‘em heading home, not standing and fighting.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-16 11:18 pm (UTC)"When they attack, retreat; when they retreat, attack" is an attack on legitimacy against an incumbent power; it has less to do with will than it does with the constructions of legitimacy that cause people to listen to building inspectors and not interfere with the mail. Asymmetric warfare accepts the necessity of attacking less tangible capabilities -- legitimacy, morale -- as a tradeoff for reduced capability; if you're going to fight, you have to attack what you can harm.
The principles are consistent.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 12:57 am (UTC)The people with jet fighters forget that all warfare is asymmetrical if you can manage it. Having the jet fighters when they other guy doesn't is still asymmetrical. Yes, I know that is not what they ppl with the jet fighters mean by the term, but it is literally asymmetrical.
Other than that, I'm not sure what point you are making. You've gone from the goal of war is destruction to sometimes the goal of war is delegitimization and attacking morale. Morale would be another name for will to fight.
The full quote is "when the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy retreats, we advance; when the enemy tires, we attack." Although can be extended to any aspect of "the enemy," Mao was specifically talking about the enemy's army, not his "legitimacy."