Is there going to be a war?

A bit of a summary as to what is happening from the BBC - and although the report is shown as current by them, actual events have swiftly moved on and a few of the places the BBC mention have since officially been taken by the Ukraine forces.

Everything seems to be moving incredibly fast from the Ukrainian side and there is talk about being on the doorstep of one of the big cities they lost a few months back, which if true would be a stunning achievement considering where they started their counteroffensive from just 4 or 5 days ago.

Kharkiv offensive: Russian forces retreat as Ukraine takes key towns

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62860774

Worst case scenario:
Russia quickly withdraws troops from a large area.
Ukrainian forces rush in to the void left.
Russians tactically nuke it.

Classic kill zone tactic, but highly unlikely - unless the Russian leader is a psycho dictator of course.

wanderlust wrote:Worst case scenario:
Russia quickly withdraws troops from a large area.
Ukrainian forces rush in to the void left.
Russians tactically nuke it.

Classic kill zone tactic, but highly unlikely - unless the Russian leader is a psycho dictator of course.

Just to reiterate I don't think the above scenario is likely but you can throw into the mix that the Russian-installed governor of Kharkiv has asked residents to pack up and move to Russia "to reduce casualties". Could mean lots of things but it isn't inconsistent with the nuke theory.

Russians still getting their arses kicked as they retreat.

I've been following all this from the start of the war although I'm limited to following only the sources that are given in English - which are basically all from the Ukrainian side (they even translate (selective) Russian news / Russian military blogger sites) - so I try to be cautious in that what I read may well not all be true as such and there is probably more than a bit of 'poetic licence' about it all.

That being said though it is clear the Russian western front (the Ukrainian Eastern) - has collapsed.

In simple terms Ukraine (and Russia for that matter) seem to work in areas known as Oblasts (which I we would call 'counties').

The front I'm talking about above is the Kharkiv Oblast - and just to confuse things a little, the main cities in the Oblasts are the ones that give their name to the Oblast - so there is a Kharkiv city (that has always been under Ukrainian control) and the Kharkiv Oblast (a large chunk of it being/was being occupied by Russia).

Kharkiv Oblast sits on the border with Russia.

The latest news today is that Russia has withdrawn from the whole of Kharkiv Oblast apart from leaving defensive forces on the Russian side of a river which flows north to south in the Oblast.

This news probably means nothing to most who read this but is incredibly significant in that since the first day of the war Kharkiv city (which is the second city of Ukraine behind only Kiev) has been under constant attack as one of the main Russian targets of the war.

The withdrawal from the Oblast is an embarrassing defeat for Russia - along the lines of the retreat from Kiev was earlier on.

It is impossible for me to describe the war in a few sentences because it simply isn't a war in the sense that we understand wars to be.

The best I can say is that just like the west, nobody supports a war when bodies of soldiers are returned home for burial - and that includes Russia - so the way they 'recruit' their soldiers is mostly by employing them on a 6 months contract or by employing mercenaries (Wagner Group being one such mercenary company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group ).

The soldiers are 'attracted' because of signing up bonuses BUT can refuse to fight as part of their contracts!  I know it sounds mad doesn't it!!!

So what Russia does basically is not sign anyone up from Russia itself but give money to their federations to get their people to sign up instead - think of it as England having a war but not sending English people to fight (and be killed) but give Scotland, Wales and NI money to get them to send their nationals instead!

So Russian people are told the war is going great and don't see any dead bodies being returned but places hundreds/thousands of miles away from Moscow have signed on, been killed and no one else there now is keen to sign up because they can see what has happened to those who have gone before!

And to keep the numbers of soldiers up the other thing that has happened is that people in the two break away areas in Russia (Luhansk and Donetsk - known as Peoples Republic) have been forced to join up and fight even though they may not want to or even be in good health!

Theses 'soldiers' are the ones that have either been thrown in as cannon fodder (their losses have been incredibly high) or in this case sent to the 'quiet' areas so the better soldiers can take on Ukraine elsewhere in the conflict.

Ukraine has cleverly manipulated a situation where Russia (and everyone else) though that they would attack in the Kherson Oblast area but instead sent their main force into to Kharkiv areas and brushed these (not proper) soldiers away hence the massive breakthrough we've seen in the last four or five days.

It would seem that the knock on to this could affect the next two areas south of Kharkiv being Luhansk Oblast and Donetsk Oblast (or in other words the Donbas area - being the reason given by Russia why they started this war it the first place!).

Russia seems to be in a bit of a pickle at the moment and certainly needs to regroup urgently.

It is unknown what strength Ukraine has to both secure all the land they've just recaptured - and defend - with it being on the border with Russia - and to press home the current advantage they currently have with the rout that is impacting on the Donbas and Luhansk regions.

And on top of all that apparently everyone is working to a deadline in that come October and the rains, it is impossible to fight a mobile battle with tanks etc, because the ground is to soft.

God knows what is going to happen next.

Oh and finally the way it is portrayed (and may well be true for all I know) is that Russian philosophy is that of an imperialist entity entitled to a subservient empire by history/divine right - so if Putin is removed in a coup, it wouldn't mean that anything much would change as those who would take his place have the same mindset.

Seems the west plan is to gradually force the Russian economy downwards which would lead to public discontent leading to an end to the war - or something like that.

That's how I understand things anyway.

Well explained Sluffy, it’s all very confusing and as you say hard to confirm what’s really happening through all the propaganda machines. It certainly seems that the Ukrainians are doing far better than either they or Russia anticipated and with the training and state of the art weaponry Ukraine is receiving from the West proving more than just a match for Russias ageing stuff, we could well see more victories. I’m not sure about your point on the bodies though because I understood originally Russia suffered heavy casualties of nationals but you are right about their using mercenaries of which they must surely be running out? Other events have taken news space recently and as you say, the weather will have an effect when winter comes. I’m not sure how open to peace talks Zelensky is right now but with Russia on the back foot maybe now is the time to ask the question?

No, peace talks are out of the question until Ukraine recovers all its lands and that includes what was took from them by the (covert) Russian invasion of 2014 which deprived them of the 'breakaway' states of Donetsk and Luhansk and the invasion and annexation of the Crimea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%932022)

That sentiment is supported by the west in that any 'ceasefire' will just allow Russia to build up its reserves again and sometime in the future attack again.

The view is that Russia needs to 'understand' NOT to seek to reestablish its former 'empire' and a temporary unresolved lull (a frozen war is how it is being termed) and continuing desire for its past perceived status in their eyes could/would resolve itself by them attacking the Baltic states, Scandanavia (Finland and Sweeden are seeking to join NATO) Poland, the 'Russian' breakaway state in Moldova (think Romania, as well as Ukraine again - and that is only in the west!

Country's such as Azerbaijan (ongoing conflict with Armenia of which Russia backs and who have acted as a 'peacekeeper' there!) - until the current war with Ukraine, with Azerbaijan taking advantage of Russia's 'difficulties' and attacked to reclaim most of its lands - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_war

Georgia also has been 'attacked' by Russia and seeks to 'join' the west - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%E2%80%93Russia_relations

There's probably more I'm not aware of as well.

The latest today is that Russia is suddenly putting out tentative feelers to resume peace talks but Ukraine doesn't want to know.

Seems Ukrainian troops have already reached the Russian boarder in some places -

More footage from the border with Russia in the north of Kharkiv. Historical moment. pic.twitter.com/9TpsfkeaeF

— Dmitri (@wartranslated) September 11, 2022

For anyone who may be interested the person posting this tweet 'Dimitri' is one of those I follow to get information of what is going on.

He states that he was born in one of the Baltic states (I forget which one) which was under Russian control at the time, of Russian parents (I think one of which was born in Ukraine) and his native language is Russian.  

He views himself as Russian.

He does though has lived in the Baltic state independent of Russia and currently works/lives in London.

He clearly doesn't like what Putin has done and strongly supports Ukraine.

I find his reports quite reasonable for most of the time although clearly mainly pro-Ukraine.

He's certainly worth a follow if you want to see what's going on in general.

Seems Russia has hit back - but not on the battlefield but by systematically targeting and blowing up a big chunk of the country's electricity generating and water pumping stations - aimed at making innocent people suffer - not the Ukrainian army.

I rather like what President Zelenskyy said to the Russians in his public response (and underlines my point above about how there will be no peace talks until Russian is totally beaten).

Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Russians:

"Do you still think that we are "same nation"?
Do you still think that you can scare us, break us, make us make concessions?
You really did not understand anything? https://t.co/iNIuFFA2jW

— FLASH (@Flash_news_ua) September 11, 2022

Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your "friendship and brotherhood".
But history will put everything in its place.
And we will be with gas, light, water and food... and WITHOUT you!"

Follow @Flash_news_ua

— FLASH (@Flash_news_ua) September 11, 2022

Ukraine war: Kharkiv blackouts caused by targeted Russian attacks - Zelensky

Russia aims to "deprive people of light and heat" by causing power cuts across eastern Ukraine in revenge for a Ukrainian counter-offensive, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The blackouts have reportedly affected around nine million people in eastern regions including Kharkiv and Donetsk.

Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure left much of his city without power or water.

He called it a vile and cynical attempt at revenge for the Ukrainian army's recent successes.

In a defiant post on social media after the power cuts, President Zelensky said standing up to Russia was more important to Ukraine than suffering cold, hunger, darkness or thirst.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62873205

It's hard to know what or who to believe - although the Russian state TV output is bordering on the comical. However in amongst everything there have been a few rumours about discontents of various hues predicting Putin will be brought down by the Russian people - but to me it sounds overly optimistic ATM.

wanderlust wrote:It's hard to know what or who to believe - although the Russian state TV output is bordering on the comical. However in amongst everything there have been a few rumours about discontents of various hues predicting Putin will be brought down by the Russian people - but to me it sounds overly optimistic ATM.

That isn't going to happen anytime soon if at all.

The video clip (with English subtitles) from today is worth a watch - then when you've watched it read the comments which which more or less explain that all these things are basically scripted, in this case testing the water/putting in the Russian viewers minds about floating ideas such as possible mobilisation or future peace talks etc.

As a long-time viewer of these programs (in the past), this is one (with glasses) of the guys with "opposing views" they invite to make the program more believable. https://t.co/KdyTgkQeSR

— Dmitri (@wartranslated) September 11, 2022

Putin controls everything - there is no opposition to him, he's killed/jailed them all!

For example -

Police in Ekaterinburg have arrested former mayor Evgeny Roizman, who was just about the only major Russian opposition politician who hadn’t been arrested or left. He had criticized Putin’s war in Ukraine relentlessly and profanely. Now he faces up to five years in prison. pic.twitter.com/o7wE7bSi2I

— max seddon (@maxseddon) August 24, 2022

The hope is that continuing sanctions will eventually lead to some sort of popular uprising but there is no one yet brave/stupid enough to rally around.

Could be a long wait though...

How do most Russians perceive Putin? Thread
I will try to understand what people in Russia think about Putin. My thoughts are based on my experience reading/watching the Russian internet and real-life conversations with Russians. pic.twitter.com/7JLHdio7wN

— Volodymyr Tretyak (@VolodyaTretyak) August 13, 2022

Any Russian brave enough to criticise Putin is in trouble, but it's interesting that some established anti-war figures and local politicians are increasingly being given a platform to be heard. The message coming out of Russia via the Ukranians here who have relatives and contacts in Russia definitely feel the mood is shifting and perhaps those who are sticking their heads above the parapet are merely reflecting the mood of a good proportion of the people - but I've also heard that the majority of Russians - especially those located in the rural parts of Russia swallow the official propaganda hook line and sinker.

Volodymyr Tretyak's thread (above) is interesting inasmuch that the perception that Putin is on some sort of "holy mission"  and is above the law is widely held in the poverty-stricken rural areas and remote towns from what I can gather - but views are far more divided in the "woke" cities and conurbations where many can see through the bullshit.

If Russian State TV is totally scripted as it appears to be, in order not to undermine Putin himself, the narrative is likely to put all the blame on his advisors so I imagine there will be a procession of scapegoats if the situation doesn't change.

Saw an interesting thread about the Ukrainians firing rockets filled with leaflets over the Russian lines advising them to surrender and providing information on how to do it.

I’m not sure Ukraine will ever succeed in recovering all of its territories from Russia unless it invaded Russia itself, which it clearly can’t do. I neither accept that by holding peace talks it gives Russia time to rearm and rebuild its forces for a further and wider push. The weaponry that Russia has is proved to be massively inferior to that the West has supplied to Ukraine and any break would allow the West to build up even more hardware as well.

With the greatest of respect to you 63 those are certainly NOT the views of the west's military intelligence services.

Their view is the Ukraine using western weaponry are more than capable of defeating Russia in this war and that previous peace agreements (there have been TWO in respect of all this) have basically allowed Russia the time to build up plans and resources to inflict this current invasion -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#Minsk_II,_February_2015

Russia does have inferior weaponry, but they have huge amounts of it and huge reserves if they chose to mobilise them.

The west's view is that Putin will not call for a full mobilisation as ultimately it would result in the Russian public eventually turning against the war and the deaths of its people fighting it.

At the moment the war is virtually 'hidden' to the Russian nation as those being mobilised to fight (and die in it) are largely not 'Russians' themselves but from republics of the Russian Federation and that all news of the war - and the reasons to support it - are fed to the people by the strictly controlled state media.

How all this will end up is anyone's guess but peace talks will not be had until either Ukraine is defeated or Russia leaves all of Ukraine including the Donbas and Crimea.

To put it bluntly this sign says it all.

There is an outside chance that the Russians will accept Ukraine retaking the Donbass - but re-annexing the Crimea would probably be a step too far and on a par with invading Russia itself in their minds.
The very thought of Russia ending up with less land than it had at the beginning is unconscionable to the Russians.

Difficult to find an acceptable exit strategy for Putin. Options seem to be:
Mobilise millions of Russians for a bloodbath
Peace negotiation where both sides can claim victory
Assassination of Ukraine leadership
Nukes/destruction of Ukraine
Escalation dragging in the West despite their reticence
Overthrow/assassination of Putin
..or a combination of some of these elements.

Anything else?

Russia strategy is to inflict economic presure on the west through weaponizing energy and wait for people to feel the pain and drive their governments to push Ukraine into peace talks.

Russia's problem now is that they don't seem to be able to recruit enough to replace their loss of manpower AND certainly don't want to declare a war and mobilise and brining in compulsory armed service.

The west's belief is that once the weather turns next month and tank attacks across open ground becomes impossible as the land gets wetter that the situation will 'freeze' in the positions they are in at the time - both sides defending and not attacking - Ukraine does though have HIMARS (basically guided missiles fired from a cannon) that out range anything Russia has and thus can keep destroying military targets deep in Russia's rear.  Russia has diminishing stocks of less sophisticated missiles that aren't anything like as precise and clinical as the HIMARS and other similar western weapons they have been given.

Also worth noting is that the west has stopped short of giving Ukraine anything like the best weapons 'we' have and could rachet that up if Russia starts to play even dirtier than they have been = no one wants to trigger a 'world war'.

Things should become a bit clearer one way or the other over the winter months as to what the likely outcome will be - ie will Russia endure all the pain and sacrifice their armies for an ultimate win or will the west resolve weaken and governments start to withdraw their support to Ukraine and thus pushing them into negotiating.

Fwiw as long as America is fully committed to backing Ukraine then I don't think the west will fold and thus it will come down to Russia as to how great a pain economically, politically and socially, they are willing to endure - as for now they can't beat Ukraine by conventional means, and I believe use of nuclear weapons is off the table for them.

I agree nuclear is off the table Sluffy. Clearly the problems will continue mounting for Russia because not supplying gas and oil over the winter will severely damage them financially. The West is quickly finding options to Russian energy, so much so that I can’t see it ever returning to previous levels. Putin has effectively committed hari kari on himself as things haven’t turned out anything like he anticipated. From latest reports he’s also now sacked his top general after only 16 days and if that doesn’t smack of panic I don’t know what will? I’d obviously love to see Ukraine take back Crimea but frankly i just don’t see it although they do seem to be excelling in the Eastern regions. Personally I’d like to see Ukraine actually hitting a few military targets in Russia itself in order to make the Russian public more aware of what’s happening. Either way if things keep going badly and Putin alienates himself from the military we may yet get the overthrow we all want?

Whitesince63 wrote:I agree nuclear is off the table Sluffy. Clearly the problems will continue mounting for Russia because not supplying gas and oil over the winter will severely damage them financially.

So are you getting solar panels and a wind turbine in your garden to help with the war effort White?
Russia can throw plenty of manpower and equipment at the problem to swamp Ukraine given that they have such a a massive army at their disposal, but the more they do, the more discontent there will be among the people and that seems to be already on the rise.

Ukraine claims to have taken 1000s of Russian POWs - and that in itself is going to become a logistical problem for the Ukranians, especially if they want to keep them and try them for war crimes.

Meanwhile..

No you aren't understanding reality.

The Russians don't have a big army - yes there are lots of people in it at any one time but in reality as such most are just passing through as a sort of national service, which most people seem to avoid by paying bribes not to have to serve.

Similarly they have loads of equipment built up of stocks that have been accruing since WWII and are simply being taken out of the years of storage.

Loads of it haven't been maintained either and again corruption has been rife, as it seems to be across the board in Russia - hence the oligarchs emergence - resulting in poor performance of the equipment on the battlefield.

Added to all that is how their army operates which seems to be decisions are made from the top down giving inflexibility and delays on the battlefields whereas western armies have delegated powers to lower ranks to call for artillery and aerial support as and when needed.

Also don't forget the army fighting in Ukraine is not one unit like the Ukranian army but made up of the regular army, the private mercenary army firms, those who signed up for 6 months for the money (and can refuse to fight!) and blokes off the streets of the two breakaway regions who have been basically used as cannon fodder.

So yes Russia appears to have a 'big' army in numbers and loads of equipment, but the reality is that these numbers are completely misleading when translated into actual performance on the battlefield.

Russia's battleplan is to simply overwhelm their opponents by sheer weight of numbers and a total disregard for the lives of their troops - they steamroller forward if you will.

However when finally matched by opponent's who don't have the same numbers but compensate for that with much better weapons and war strategies, they clearly have struggled to adapt and have been defeated as evidenced in the last week.

Russia seems not to have a plan B as such and no doubt will try to raise reserves to continue to throw them into their meatgrinder plan and arm them with older and older equipment as they dig deeper and deeper into their reserve stocks of weapons and arms.

It looks for now that the Kremlin still intends to grind things out this way.

I've no idea what is going to happen next, but it will be interesting to see if Ukraine will continue their advance into the two breakaway states which initial reports seem to suggest they are doing and how Russia will react - as in theory in Russia's view these states are part of the Russian federation - which is seen as an attack on Russia itself - which could be perceived by them as Ukraine declaring war on them!!!

As for your video clip don't pay too much attention to it as it is all scripted and tightly controlled by the Kremlin for internal consumption for the Russian public to believe/ be led by.