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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Update 43: Russia Seems To Be Preparing To Attack Everywhere In the East and South of Ukraine

War for Ukraine Update 43: Russia Seems To Be Preparing To Attack Everywhere In the East and South of Ukraine

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(Image by Olga Wilson; found here)

Let’s start with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov’s address to partnering states from earlier today:

While it is subtitled, here’s the transcript:

Address by the Minister of Defence of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov to the partnering states

It has been 42 days since Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine.

Today I want to address all the friends and partners of our people.

And talk about what’s happening.

Contrary to many predictions, Russia has failed to break through our defences in three or 30 days. On the contrary.

Our soldiers inflicted enormous losses on the enemy and thwarted his plans. In manpower alone Russia has already lost 19,000 soldiers. As well as 150 aircraft, 135 helicopters, 700 tanks and almost 1,900 armoured vehicles.

The Russian occupiers were driven out of our capital, Kyiv. The liberation from Russian soldiers of Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions is coming to an end.

But the situation remains extremely difficult. Especially in the south and east of our country. Russia is concentrating forces for a powerful attack.

Ukraine won the first round of the war, when intense contact battles were fought with the use of landing operations, infantry and armoured vehicles. Because our army is well trained and extremely motivated. One of our fighters is fighting 10 Russians.

We managed to stop Russia largely thanks to the weapons we received from our partners. I want to thank you for that.

However, Russia drew conclusions and changed tactics. It transforms the conflict into a protracted phase and another format.

The number of contact battles is decreasing. The enemy strikes missiles, uses aircraft, uses MLRS systems and long-range artillery. Destroys our peaceful cities. The shelling is carried out from the territory of Russia, Belarus, as well as the Black and Azov Seas.

Under such conditions, the war enters a phase of competition for resources. Which in Russia are almost endless, compared to Ukraine. To win such a war, we need different help than what we have been receiving before.

We want to liberate the enemy-occupied territories as soon as possible. After all, the whole world saw the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv. We need to save our people from genocide.

To do this, we need other weapons.

First, we need air defence systems and combat aircraft to protect our citizens and our army from missiles and air strikes.

Secondly, we need long-range weapons. These are Long-Range Artillery Missile complexes, MLRS and heavy artillery. This will keep the enemy at a distance without letting him into our cities.

Third, we need tanks and armoured vehicles to break through the occupiers’ defences and liberate the occupied territories.

Fourth, we need anti-ship missiles. To destroy the enemy fleet and unblock ports on the Black Sea. After all, without ports we will not be able to trade, including food. Which will cause a global food crisis.

Fifth, we need reconnaissance and strike drones.

Moreover, there is a very important nuance.

Previously, we focused on obtaining Soviet-style weapons. This is a logical decision, because these weapons can go into battle right away, we know how to use it. It will quickly strengthen our defence in the critical period.

But the Soviet weapons we need are scarce. They are often in poor condition, because they were made 30-40 years ago. There is not enough ammunition. Under such conditions, the Soviet weapons we have received will strengthen Ukraine only for a short time.

That is why Ukraine needs to get the weapons used by NATO countries as soon as possible. This is the best solution for many reasons.

First, it will be a powerful signal to Russia that it will not succeed in depleting the Ukrainian army. On the contrary, the cost of war for Moscow will increase dramatically. The Ukrainian army will be able to put up effective resistance. This will be the best incentive to de-escalate and seek peace.

Secondly, it will further increase the interoperability of Ukrainian army with the armies of European countries. This will strengthen NATO’s eastern flank. I am sure that no one has any doubts that Ukraine can be a donor of European security. We proved it. Investing in our army is the best defence investment imaginable.

Third, there is sufficient quantity of NATO-made equipment and it is equipped with ammunition. For example, 155 mm calibre artillery is used in different countries. There will be no shortage of shells, as compared with the Soviet systems. This will not be a short-term, but a systemic solution.

Fourth, many countries will be able to transfer these weapons in different ways. Some are already removing the combat duty systems we need, replacing them with more modern ones. Others just need the permission of the country of origin.

The Ukrainian military is quickly acquiring new weapons. They have already shown that they are able to use Western complexes extremely effectively in combat conditions. Proof of this are the losses of the enemy, which I mentioned at the beginning.

We urge you to provide us with heavy weapons as soon as possible.

Russia’s leaders are war criminals. This is recognized by all. When they suffer a military defeat, they will immediately lose power.

We are not afraid of Russia and are able to defeat it. We want to destroy the murderers, rapists and looters who have brought us unbridled pain.

This is a chance for the world to get rid of a cruel tyranny.

Procrastination with the provision of weapons leads to the death of our children, to the depletion of our country. It is also depleting Europe.

We need to act. If we do not stop Putin, he will come to you.

Слава Україні!

Much more after the jump!

I’ve spent a good chunk of today’s prep for this post looking at informed analysis of what Russia is planning to do in the east and south of Ukraine. As we’ve been discussing, the logical thing would be to try to encircle and reduce the Joint Force Operation (JFO) that is exposed on three sides between Luhansk and Izium. However, that does not seem to be what the Russians are doing. They seem to be trying to and/or preparing to attack everywhere at once. Take a look at the most recent map from the British Ministry of Defence:

If you count the tips of the red arrows you can see that Russia is trying to either reinforce or attack seven different targets. That’s a lot. It is a lot of targets and it is a lot of area to cross and cover. This thread provides a good analysis.

  • The Russians are not only going to have to move up and down long lines of advance if they were going to take these areas, they are going to have to hold them. Right now they have nowhere near enough troops in theatre to do that.
  • On the north end of this area of operations the Russians have deployed 30 BTGs of approx 800-1000 soldiers. They have been in combat for almost six weeks and for all the talk about the importance of seizing Izium, they have advanced about 10 miles in 3 weeks. See map 16 March
  • So they have at most 24000 tired soldiers to control a large area from Kharkiv to Izium, which is also supposed to drive through determined Ukrainian resistance and create a Donbas pocket while protecting its long supply lines? Good luck.
  • Situation in the South is even tricker. Russians have two many different areas of operations. They have BTGs fighting from Mariupol to Kherson, which is almost exactly the same distance as Mariupol to Kharkiv. They have far fewer troops here they could spare to move on Dnipro
  • UAWAR data; an excellent resource, has only 6 Russian BTGs below Zaporizhzia. That is not enough to take that city: let alone maintain any major offensive. 5000 or so troops is way to small.
  • Russian troops around Kherson are already getting pushed back and the ones fighting in Mariupol will be in no shape to head into another major attack if/when that city falls.
  • It’s been why I’ve been banging on about seeing what reinforcements the Russians bring. They do not have anything like enough forces to undertake the kinds of operations people seem to be talking about. They will need massive reinforcement of well supplied troops.
  • If they are counting on the withdrawn Kyiv forces mainly, best guess is that it’s many weeks til they are rested. resupplied and transported to theatre for operations.
  • And all the while the Ukrainians will be reinforcing and resupplying as well. So the idea of the Russians wrapping up operations in the Donbas and seizing Dnipro by May 9 seems almost entirely implausible. Far more likely we have nasty attritional warfare along the present lines.
  • If I was a gambling man, which I’m not, I would wager it’s more likely we see a major Russian military collapse somewhere in the south and east (Kherson?) by May 9 through being overstretched and attritted than a Russian Army having seized Dnipro and surrounded the entire Donbas.
  • Btw, things don’t seem to be going well at all for Russian forces around Kherson.
  • Nothing says “winning” like moving your close-air-support back 85km because it kept getting attacked and destroyed.

LTG (ret) Hertling also had an interesting thread dealing with the same issue. With lots and lots of maps!

  • The fighting is like many “frozen conflicts” RU has stoked in various European countries (Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan-Armenia) with their illegal actions. Much of the line resembles WWI trenches. With intense sniping and shelling since 2014. Thousands killed 3/
  • By reinforcing these lines, and the 2 shoulders in the N & S, RU hopes to conduct frontal attacks in the Donbas while attempting to surround URK’s forces from N & S. They’ll have trouble executing this plan. But how will the frontal attacks look? 4/

  • Well, there’s already reports of RU attacks last night from within Donetsk. Reports say RU attempted a “breakthrough” (we’ll come back to that word) near Razdolnoye, with a purpose of reaching the Donetsk-Zaporizhia hiway near Bogatyr. (more to that in a minute, too). 5/
  • I’d say this action REALLY was is a Reconnaissance‐in‐force (RIF). A RIF is designed to find the enemy’s strength, weakness, dispositions & test their reactions, according to our doctrine (ADRP 3‐90). See example… 6/

  • If the RU RIF finds a weak spot, they push through (as shown). If they find strength in UKRs line, they should pull back. Last night, the RU found UKR strength, but kept going instead of pulling back. UKR reports they engaged & destroyed this small RU tactical attack. 7/
  • Had the RU RIF found a hole, it would have provided RU with intelligence about what they’re facing in the UA. They would’ve then planned to push other forces through the hole, while holding in other places along the front. In doctrine, this is called a “Breakthrough.” 8/
  • When RU finds a weak spot, their doctrine in to use LOTS of artillery to make the weak spot bigger and then send lots of fast moving forces (that is, tanks) through. Holding the “shoulders” with other forces. The Germans did this in WWII as part of their blitzkrieg doctrine. 9/

  • My belief, because of what I’ve seen, is RU hasn’t trained or practiced these kinds of maneuvers. Based on what we’ve seen, the RU “maneuver” capability, skill of their force, C2 & log support are all extremely weak. And, they haven’t tried this in the Donbas in 8 years. 10/
  • A bunch of RU generals have been writing about this technique over the last few years. Here’s an interesting piece: internationalmagz.com/articles/milit Problem: writing about and doing are two different things. 11/
  • Also, I’m convinced RU will NOT be able to get the same forces they used in the Kyiv and Kharkiv offensives back into the fight anytime soon, no matter what others say. Those forces are depleted. Mauled. Some may fight, but they likely won’t be effective. 12/
  • BTW, before we leave breakthrough, Brusilov & his followers say RU must use massive artillery on enemy positions OR use *battlefield tactical nuclear weapons* to create a breakthrough when gaps are found by the RIF. Again, theoretical…but that scares the crap out of me. 13/
  • So, how does UKR counter these offensive actions? 1. be strong everywhere (tough to do) 2. have a good reserve (possible, but also tough) 3. be able to move quickly to counter any attacks. “Interior lines” I discussed in another thread helps w/ 2 & 3, because of distance 14/

  • But, UKR must also find ways to be more mobile for this new phase. First, they’ll need very good intelligence about where RU forces are moving. Then, tanks they’ve “acquired” from RU and those provided by NATO nations will help. 15/
  • UA will continue to rely on technological advanced weapons to close any gaps on the front line, and focus on defeating RU’s artillery. They will use territorials and UA to thwart RU advances from the N & S “shoulders” of the Donbas, to ensure no encirclement. 16/
  • UKR must defend their own supply line, interfere with RU C2, logistics, and movement… …while also conducting other unconventional operations behind RU front lines.
  • This ? is about the “front line” tactical fights in the Donbas. UKR must still deal with civilian assistance, cataloguing war crimes, fighting RU assaults in Crimea, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, etc everywhere else. Donbas will be a battle of attrition. UKR is prepared for it.17/17

Here’s the Ukrainian Foreign Minister’s view of what is coming in the Donbas:

And here’s some of what’s already happening:

None of this means that Kyiv has been removed as a high value target:

Chernihiv:

Chornobyl:

Spain:

Here’s today’s British Ministry of Defence’s assessment:

And here’s the most recent assessment/update from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. It’s from yesterday:

The operational update regarding the russian invasion on 18.00 on April 6, 2022

2022-04-06 19:00:00 | ID: 67183

The forty-second day of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to a russian military invasion continues.

A russian enemy continues to prepare for an offensive operation in eastern Ukraine in order to establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. A russian occupiers are regrouping troops and conducting reconnaissance, trying to improve the tactical position of separate units in the South Buh area and gain a foothold on the administrative borders of the Kherson region.

The main focus of a russian enemy’s efforts is to conduct offensive operations in order to break through the defences of the Joint Forces in the Donetsk direction. It is also trying to take full control of the city of Mariupol.

The regrouping of russian troops and the restoration of combat capability of the Central Military District units deployed to the Bryansk and Kursk oblasts are nearing completion.

Training and relocation of units of the occupying forces of the armed forces of the russian federation to the territory of Ukraine is underway. The enemy planned to move units of the 38th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 35th All-Military Army of the Eastern Military District from the territory of the republic of belarus to the Belgorod Region. The movement of some units of the Central Military District to this region is also recorded.

In the Volyn and Polissya directions, no significant changes were found in the position and condition of the enemy troops. Units of the Eastern Military District withdrawn to the territory of the Gomel region are completing the regrouping.

The movement of russian enemy units to railway stations for loading and subsequent redeployment is noted.

The enemy continues to block Kharkiv in the Slobozhansky direction. Mostly at night, the russian occupiers shell the city using multiple rocket launchers, artillery and mortars. In the area of ​​the city of Izyum, the enemy did not take active action. By forces of separate divisions of the 20th all-military and 1st tank armies of the Western military district it carries out regrouping.

To increase the efficiency of the transfer of military cargo, the enemy began to use the railway. The arrival of railway echelons with weapons and military equipment from the Valuyki station (russian federation) to the Kupyansk railway station (Ukraine) has been recorded.

In the Donetsk and Luhansk directions, the enemy’s main efforts are focused on hostilities in the areas of the settlements of Popasna and Rubizhne and the establishment of control over the city of Mariupol. A russain enemy is trying to improve the tactical position.

Russian enemy continues to fire in most areas.

The enemy carried out artillery shelling in the areas of Kreminna, Pisky, Ocheretino, Rozivka, Novobahmutivka, Novosilka Druha, Marinka and Krasnohorivka.

In the areas of Popasna, Stepny, Novotoshkivske, Rubizhne, Severodonetsk and Solodky, the enemy carried out assault operations, but was unsuccessful.

The storming of the city of Mariupol continues, while the enemy is actively using aircraft.

In the South Bug direction, the enemy continues to shell the settlements of Shcherbaki, Komyshuvakha, Novodanylivka, Mala Tokmachka, Huliaipilske, Lukyanivske, Preobrazhenka and Huliai Pole.

As a result of offensive actions of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the enemy lost control over the settlement of Osokorivka.

The Defence Forces of Ukraine continue to hold certain borders, destroy the enemy and liberate Ukrainian lands from the invader.

Let’s win together! Glory to Ukraine!

Before we finish, I promised Martin an answer to his question about the rise of fascism from Tuesday night’s update post. Here’s his question:

We are seeing a domestic rise in fascist ideology against the backdrop of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. We had the very same thing happen leading into WWII. My take had always been that the domestic rise was feeling emboldened by a greater willingness to project fascist ideologies globally. That take could be completely wrong.

But I also felt that the observed need to fight those fascist forces domestically may have contributed to the US leadership at the time wanting to fight them abroad. Since this is a growing problem not just in the US, but also UK, France, Germany, Hungary (obviously), do you think that will push NATO countries further into Ukraine?

Today I got this really strong feeling that all of these different things are pulling us unavoidably into a larger conflict.

The rise, or attempt to create, a domestic American fascism prior to WW II was a project of the elites. Specifically the ultra-wealthy financiers, bankers, industrialists, and business owners who had managed to retain most of their wealth despite the Great Depression. They were enamored of what Mussolini was doing with national-syndacalism in Italy, as well as attempts to create a viable fascist movement in France and other parts of Europe. These elites and notables sent a trusted agent to tour Europe and meet with the continent’s fascist theorists and leaders and then bring back what he’d learned and report back to them. As a result of what he told them they decided that FDR’s presidency, which had just gotten started, needed to end immediately. The intention was to (what we’d now call) astro-turf a popular uprising with a sympathetic group as its vanguard to force FDR to take on an unelected co-president. This unelected co-president, who would never be publicly acknowledged, would secretly run the US while FDR functioned as the president in public; as a figure head and as ceremonial head of state, but not the head of government/chief executive and commander in chief.

The sympathetic group they decided upon was the remnants of the Bonus Army of World War I veterans. And they approached MajGen (ret) Smedley Darlington Butler, who was beloved by the veterans in the Bonus Army, to lead the revolt. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the US, Butler led the coup plotters along just long enough to gather the full details of the plot and then he ran right to the White House, Congress, and the press to expose it. Unfortunately for America, and to Butler’s frustration, it was largely covered up. I wrote about the Business Plot to overthrow FDR back in October 2021. The post includes a video of what was originally a news reel of Butler describing the plot.

Among the coup plotters were two men whose names you may recognize: George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush. Walker was the maternal grandfather and namesake of President George H.W. Bush and great-grandfather and semi-namesake of President George W. Bush. Prescott Bush, who would go on from his coup plotting to be a senator from Connecticut, was the father of President George H.W. Bush and the grandfather of President George W. Bush.

But the history/story doesn’t just end there. The US, still reeling from the Great Depression, had succumbed to the isolationism and nativism of the 19th century reinvigorated by the economic disruptions of the late 1920s and the 1930s. As such, America’s door’s were shut. Even to those fleeing from the rise of NAZIism. I wrote about the late 19th and early 20th century American isolationism and nativism way back in September 2016, including how Senator Robert Taft (R-OH) in 1939 made it very clear to the national president of the Jewish War Veterans of America that neither he, nor the Senate Republican Caucus, would do anything to assist in resettling 20,000 Jewish children from Europe to the US in order to save them from the NAZIs. Some things never change.

A lot of what would eventually be called fascism or NAZIism already existed before those labels were created for them. And those ideological impulses and political, social, economic, and religious positions were all present in the US well before Mussolini and his national-syndacalism or Hitler and NAZIism came on the scene. We just didn’t have the terms to label them that we do now. I think one can make a very good argument that the ideological movements in the US that we currently call neo-NAZI or fascist or national-conservative for the largely incoherent bricolage that Bannon is serving up as America First/MAGA or white Christian nationalism long predate the early 20th century. We see the earliest manifestations of these movements in the antebellum south as it grew ever more apart from the north. We see it in the Confederacy. And since the Union won the Civil War on the battlefield, but lost the post war peace, it is not surprising that it is still with us. For a very long time it rode the Democratic Party at the national level, especially the southern Democratic Party, like a parasite. Even as it was also riding select Republicans like Senator Taft. And riding whichever party was in control in each particular state. When it became clear that the Democratic Party was no longer a suitable host, it detached itself and fully latched on to the Republican Party. It took over forty years to fully consolidate its control of the GOP from local to national level, but this anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and anti-liberty movement is nothing if not patient and persistent.

Putin’s genius, or those of the people he put in place in his intelligence agencies, was in recognizing that these political, social, economic, and religious beliefs had long existed in the US and that if he provided the movements that espoused them with support, he could empower those movements to weaken the US from within. This is why you see the influence operations run on the National Prayer Breakfast, on white evangelicals and traditionalist Catholics through the Global Christian Forum, on ultra-orthodox Jews through co-opting the Chabad movement. It’s the reason for the influence operation with the National Rifle Association. All of these influence operations, and several I haven’t mentioned, all targeted organizations that cater almost exclusively to Americans who identify as politically, socially, and/or religiously conservative and vote Republican. At the same time, Putin was both overtly in Europe and covertly in the US and Europe funding and amplifying the most extreme hard right elements in the US and the EU member states. The groups and individuals that don’t get upset if they’re called NAZIs, neo-NAZIs, white supremacists, racists, and/or fascists.

To tie this all up so we can all get on with our lives, there is a definite through line. There was in the 1930s and 1940s because the American business elites and notables that embraced fascism and tried to astro-turf it in the US were influenced by the European fascists. Even as they were already there in terms of ideology, they just lacked a name. For the past decade or so there has also been a definite through line between what Putin has done in Russia to his own state, society, and citizenry and what he’s encouraged through a variety of covert means in the US and many of the EU states. Putin and his key agents found ways into the worst elements in American political, social, religious, and economic conservatism. They then exploited those opportunities to further radicalize these people and the organizations they are members of. And when it was all finally exposed the people and organizations that have been and are still being exploited looked around and instead of becoming angry for being played for fools decided they liked the influence operation that had been undertaken on them. They both embraced it and denied it was happening at the same time. Unlike the disastrous reinvasion of Ukraine, and here’s hoping it remains disastrous for Putin and Russia, the influence operations he’s been running on Americans, the British, and a variety of European and Israeli political parties, social, and religious movements cost pennies on the dollar. And they have been and continue to be effective beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

And we’ll finish with this tonight:

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  2. 2.

    debbie

    So if Russia controls Luhansk, why is it bombing their hospitals? None of their sympathizers need medical care?

  4. 4.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Failure to concentrate its forces greatly contributed to the failure of the early operations of the invasions. It does not seem like Putin has learned the lesson.

  5. 5.

    frosty

    Thank you for these updates Adam, and for putting in the time to research and write them. You’ve kept me better informed than anyone I know.

  9. 9.

    LivinginExile

    Thanks Adam. Malcolm Nance retweeted Anders Aslund that Ukr had received harpoon anti-ship missiles from Britain, and that they were in Odessa.  Hope that’s true.

  13. 13.

    Dan B

    Amazing post, as usual.  Many thanks!

    It feels hopeless at times for Russia to be stopped completely but situations can change quickly.  It’s good to know critical details.

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    Thanks for this excellent collection and your thoughts. It’s a great service.

    The Pink Floyd piece is excellent too.

    слава україні

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    Carlo Graziani

    I’m wondering what the 1943 Battle of Kharkiv tells us about the upcoming engagements. The weapons have changed, but the terrain hasn’t,  and the scale is kind of similar, and both of the participants have memories.  Looking to the bookcase.

  17. 17.

    pajaro

    Adam,

    Thank you so very much for taking the time to do these.  I appreciate your efforts a great deal.

  18. 18.

    Medicine Man

    @Adam – Two questions:

    • What do you think of Hertling’s fears that the Russians may consider slinging some tactical nukes? What are the likely consequences of such an action?
    • With so many axis of advance being built up, do you think the Russians are so full of arrogance they literally expecting to breakthrough in 7 places? Is it Maskirovka to conceal their main points of effort?

    I think the later is more sensible, but their leadership is basically drunk on high-grade hopium, so who knows.

  21. 21.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    OK, so a few thoughts as a segue from my comment a couple of nights ago (by the way, many thanks to everyone who replied, I’m sorry I didn’t have time to respond directly back to each of you) about the 3-way contest between Democracy, Fascism, and Communism. Also, I apologize to Adam for not addressing the specific contents of his most recent post here with these remarks. I started typing  them up hours ago (while a bit of spare time was readily at hand) in anticipation of hopefully contributing to an ongoing conversation. My thanks to Martin for his kind replies and to Adam in particular for indulging me in this.

    This has to do with the nature of evil, it having both inner and outer aspects, and the resources we have to hold it at bay. I’ll break this up into several comments, even so they will be very long, for which I apologize.

    By sheer chance several different books I was reading happened to intersect with each other in ways that surprised and astonished me.

    First, reading for pleasure. As a confession, I’m a big fan of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy writing, and have not only read LOTR and many of his other works many times, but also much of the subsequent critical literature attempting to dissect his work or explain its appeal. One of my favorite such authors is Tom Shippey, who like Tolkien was a professor of philology and thus brings to his criticism a professional knowledge of the subjects in which Tolkien was in his own time a highly renowned and respected academic authority and from which JRRT derived much source material.

    One of Shippey’s better books in my humble opinion is JRR Tolkien – Author of the Century. Despite the somewhat fanboyish sounding title (which is deliberately provocative I think), Shippey makes a persuasive case that LOTR is a very distinctively 20th Century work, sharing many themes and concerns, and some answers, with the work of other authors like Orwell, works which garnered a very different reception from the gatekeepers of English lit than did Tolkien’s books. And that Orwell, Tolkien, and some other similar writers of fantastic literature share a common trait of having been in the early to mid 20th Cen. either combat veterans or otherwise had some degree of personal exposure to and familiarity with some of the horrific mass casualty events which so darkened the century. Tolkien for example served as a young man in the First World War and was only saved from being killed (most of his friends died) by mere chance, having been invalided out of the ranks due to illness shortly before the BEF’s catastrophic and disastrous attack on the Somme in 1916.

    Shippey has some very interesting thoughts regarding how evil is portrayed in LOTR – see my next comment

  22. 22.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    This is Tom Shippey writing, in JRR Tolkien – Author of the Century:

    At the heart of The Lord of the Rings are the assertions which Gandalf makes in Book I/2, his long conversation with Frodo. If they are not accepted, then the whole point of the story collapses. And these assertions are in essence three. First, Gandalf says that the Ring is immensely powerful, in the right or the wrong hands. … Second, though Gandalf insists that the Ring is deadly dangerous to all its possessors: it will take them over, ‘devour’ them, ‘possess’ them … Furthermore this will not be just a physical take-over. The Ring turns everything to evil, including its wearers. There is no one who can be trusted to use it, even in the right hands for good purposes. … But finally, and this third point is one which Gandalf has to re-emphasize strongly and against opposition in ‘The Council of Elrond’, the Ring cannot simply be left unused, put aside, thrown away: it has to be destroyed.

    These assertions determine the story. … One might point out that while all of this is perfectly logical, granted the initial assumptions, Gandalf’s basic postulates might take a bit of swallowing. Why should we believe them? However, while critics have found fault with almost everything about The Lord of the Rings, on one pretext or another, no one to my knowledge has ever quibbled with what Gandalf says about the Ring. It is far too plausible, and too recognizable. It would not have been so before the many bitter experiences of the twentieth century.

    …

    If one fits together the three points which Gandalf makes in this early chapter, it would be a dull mind, nowadays, which did not reflect, ‘All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.

    …

    Orwell, Golding, White (and several other post-war authors of fantasy and fable): the thought that they expressed in their highly different ways was that people could never be trusted, least of all if they expressed a wish for the betterment of humanity. The major disillusionment of the twentieth century has been over political good intentions, which have led only to gulags and killing fields. That is why what Gandalf says has rung true to virtually everyone who reads it – though it is, I repeat, yet one more anachronism in Middle-earth, and the greatest of them, an entirely modern conviction.

    …

    Just as the wraiths are both substantial and insubstantial, in Mordor .. absence can take on a kind of life, can become presence – as it does for instance in Milton’s presentation of Death in Paradise Lost II, 666-73, also a ‘shape’ poised between ‘substance’ and ‘shadow’, and like the chief Ringwraith, bearing ‘the likeness of a kingly crown’ on ‘what seemed its head’.

    By saying things like this, however, Tolkien sets up a running ambivalence throughout the whole of The Lord of the Rings, which acts as an answer at once orthodox and questioning to the whole problem of the existence and source of evil … there are two opinions about the nature of evil, both old, both deep-rooted, both still relevant, neither easy to deny, but apparently irreconcilably in contradiction.

    One is that of orthodox Christianity … The Boethian view is this: there is no such thing as evil. What people identify as evil is only the absence of good.

    [ThatLeftTurnInABQ: to summarize a long and complicated discussion, Boethian evil, so named after its description by Boethius in his early sixth century work De Consolatione Philosophiae, is internal and psychological in character, arising from human free will and turning away from the good by choice, and in orthodox Christian terms turning away from God. Basically it means people becoming bad inside and acting with wickedness, but this kind of evil does not enjoy an independent ontological existence and it harms the malefactor as much as it harms their victims]

    Shippey continues:

    The trouble with this view is that it is both highly counter-intuitive, and in many circumstances extremely dangerous … at the time Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings, surrendering to his country’s enemies would have meant handing over not only himself but many others to the whole apparatus of concentration camps, gas-chambers, and mass murder. A brave man might be prepared to be Boethian [TLTiA: i.e. resist evil passively and non-violently] himself. But did he have the right to impose the results of that stance on others more defenseless? Neither Tolkien nor King Alfred would have thought so.

    In any case there is an alternative tradition in Western thought, which has never risen to the status of being official, but which generates itself spontaneously from common experience. This says that while it may be all very well to make philosophical statements about evil, nevertheless evil does exist, and is not merely an absence; and what is more, it has to be resisted and fought, not by all means available, but by all means virtuous; and what is even more, not doing so, in the belief that one day Omnipotence will cure all ills, is a dereliction of duty. The danger of this opinion is that is swerves towards being a heresy, Manichaeanism, or Duality: the belief that the world is a battlefield, between the powers of Good and Evil, equal and opposite – so that, one might say, there is no real difference between them and it is a matter of chance which side one happens to choose [TLTiA: remember this phrasing, it will come up later].

    …

    his education, his faith, and the circumstances of his time, all set up what seemed to be a deep-seated contradiction between Boethian and Manichaean opinions, between authority and experience, between evil as an absence (‘the Shadow’) and evil as a force (‘the Dark Power’). In The Lord of the Rings this contradiction drives much of the plot. It is expressed not only through the paradoxes of wraiths and shadows, but also through the Ring.

    [TLTiA: Shippey goes on to cite many passages from the book in which the One Ring shows a dual character, at various times acting as a manifestation of both inner and outer forms of evil, an amplifier of Boethian temptation and moral corruption, but also a Manichaean malevolent external power]

  25. 25.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    Turning from reading (for pure pleasure) fiction & related criticism to non-fiction reading which to me at least is very instructive, I’ve come to have vast respect for the book: Humanity – A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, by Jonathan Glover. This covers many awful atrocities both large and small during the 20th Cen, and asks how people participated in them, or stood by and did nothing to stop them, or in rare cases intervened to help the victims and to oppose slaughter and cruelty. It makes for gruesome and horrifying reading. It is still well worth the read I think. Glover pays particular attention to the techniques used in the service of evil for breaking down a person’s sense of moral identity to produce participation in, complicity with, or support for an atrocity, but also the mental & emotional resources we can draw upon to resist those techniques and that breakdown – most saliently, Sympathy for other people, and Respect for other people. In addition to documenting events already well known (I imagine the readers here on this blog are already familiar with almost all of the events described) the book is devoted in part to reverse engineering the ethics and morality involved and figuring out how we can best build defenses against a repetition of such events.

    Here are some excerpts from Humanity which struck me quite forcefully with regard to how they tie into the explication of inner vs. outer evil penned by Tom Shippey, and the contest between 20th Cen. mass political ideologies described & analyzed by Philip Bobbitt in The Shield of Achilles, which I mentioned in that earlier comment. To me there is an interesting conversation between these 3 works and they have much to say to one another.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Carlo Graziani: I know LTG Hertling, though not well. He knows his business. Though he didn’t last long as the commanding general of US Army Europe.

  28. 28.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    This is Jonathan Glover writing in Humanity – A Moral History of the Twentieth Century:

    Part Seven – On the recent moral history of humanity

    Trying to learn from the twentieth-century atrocities can seem absurd. Hiroshima, the Gulag, the cruelties of Mao or of Pol Pot, their enormity transcends our imagination. Any ‘lessons’ drawn are bound to seem puny beside the events themselves.

    A few years ago a group of British philosophers was visiting Cracow. One day we were taken by bus to Auschwitz. On the way there was the buzz of philosophers’ conversation: a mixture of gossip and ‘People say such and such, but is it really rational?’ Returning, we were silent. It was hard to take in emotionally what we had seen. The fine distinctions of ethical analysis would have been grotesque on the bus back to Cracow.

    Inevitably, the discussion here is in the same sense dwarfed by its subject. No ethical reflections, no thoughts, seem adequate.

    All the same, we do need to learn from these events. One thought after a visit to Auschwitz is that ‘never again’ is the only morally serious response. The battlefields of the First World War provoke the same thought. I have not been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or to the sites of the Gulag, or to Cambodia, but the same thought must come there too. So this last section of the book contains comments on the threats from some parts of human nature and on our defenses against them. Against the backdrop of the events of recent times, the fragility of these defenses will be obvious.

    Chapter 42 – Some People and Not Others

    If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being … it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t
    – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

    I do not know, and it does much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed … and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.
    – Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

    The causes of these catastrophes are partly political and social. Solutions to them cannot be purely in the realm of psychology or ethics: the political dimension has to be central. There is a need for proper policing of the world, with a legitimate and properly backed international authority to keep the peace and to protect human rights. There is a need for independent sources of information as alternatives to propaganda. There is a need to avoid large-scale utopian political projects.

    But the solutions are also ethical and psychological. This is partly because the political solutions need a supportive public opinion. More generally, a climate of opinion can make a difference as to whether a disaster is avoided. The politics and the psychology are interwoven.

    The psychology is partly about groups and partly about individual differences. One question about those who ran the Gulag or the Nazi genocide is about the rest of us too. Could anyone have done these things?

    Primo Levi is right. It does no service to truth to blur the moral contrast between the victims and the murderers. Some people were willing to become murderers and some were not.

    Alexander Solzhenitsyn exaggerates when he says that it was ‘only because of the way things worked out’ that some became murderers and some did not. That suggests the differences were only external, only of circumstances. Qualities of character made a difference too. In similar circumstances, different people made different decisions.

    Yet Solzhenitsyn is partly right too. Character makes a difference, but character is itself shaped by genetic and environmental factors beyond our control. Self-creation is at best only partial. So, to some extent, character itself is a matter of ‘the way things worked out’.

    It is not necessary to create a false opposition between these two great chroniclers of the atrocities they lived through. The writings of each include recognition of the truths contained in both the passages quoted.

    …

    The sense of moral identity is one relevant aspect of character. Those who have a strong sense of who they are and of the kind of person they want to be have an extra defense against conditioning in cruelty, obedience or ideology.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LivinginExile: Aslund’s source is someone using a pseudonym. Until I see a verifiable legitimate source report it, it sounds nice, but it’s RUMINT (rumor intelligence),

  32. 32.

    featheredsprite

    Thank you Adam. I look forward to your post every night. We are all invested in Ukraine by now and shudder each day with good news, bad news, not enough news, and confusion. Slava Ukraini.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Medicine Man: To answer the first question, this is one of the reasons I think the ambiguity in the Russian doctrine is Information Warfare and Psychological Operations. The astounding stupidity of dropping even a low yield nuke to open a hole for a tactical breakthrough is stupendously nuts. Escalate to deescalate at least has some logician coherence. This would just be bug fuck nuts.

    As to trying to attack seven high value objectives at once rather than concentrate on one or two, whatever the Russians are doing makes as little sense as what they’ve been doing.

  35. 35.

    CCL

    Thank you, Adam.

    Also, thanks to so many for such thoughtful and thought provoking comments – tonight it was Thatleftturninabq, other nights it has been Carlos or Sebastian…and always anything from Martin or Another Scott.

  36. 36.

    Martin

    Thank you Adam, that’s very helpful. My sense is that success in WWII at least adequately disorganized the fascist movement in the US. They didn’t go away, but their ideas had no place to take root. I wonder how we replicate that today, or if the Biden admin is seeking to.

    Any thoughts on the bill passed in the Senate that authorized lend/lease? It lifts the 5 year duration and establishes the start of conflict before when Crimea was seized so it’s an authorization to lend Ukraine pretty much anything the president deems suitable possibly until such time that Crimea is retaken. It’s not an actual escalation, but it sure seems to give permission for one.

  38. 38.

    Kattails

    I’ve only read the first bit so far, Reznikov’s statement, might have to save the rest for breakfast.  But what has impressed me consistently is the quality of the Ukrainian communications.  They are clear and factual yet emotional.  The ad, aimed at Europeans, showing the real cost of the gas they’re pumping into their cars–in human bodies.  Zelensky’s addresses to various governing bodies.  They’re pretty damned eloquent, more so given the ungodly stress every soul in that country is under.

    Thanks again, Adam.

  39. 39.

    Captain C

    @Adam L Silverman:

    As to trying to attack seven high value objectives at once rather than concentrate on one or two, whatever the Russians are doing makes as little sense as what they’ve been doing.

    It seems that at an institutional level, they still think it’s World War II (with better tech) and that they have the skill, reserves, and effectively limitless equipment to conduct operations of that scale; this includes them thinking they’re fighting a worthy cause (actual OG Nazis in the ’40s) rather than trying to exterminate a neighboring people.

    I also had a thought that if Putin is indeed dying, or facing a severely and permanently debilitating condition, then perhaps this is in part some sort of weird end-stage Hitler-esque psychological thing where he on some level (conscious or not) wants to see Russia destroyed for not being worthy of his Greatness or whatever, hence the continuing head-scratching military tactics.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Martin: It just changed names. Some of it stayed on the fringe, but the mainstream just took on different names. Like the John Birch Society.

    I think the Lend-Lease program is an excellent idea.

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: ​
      Yes, attacking into any area one just nuked is a bit nuts. The old doctrine on the IGB was that we would use tactical nukes in the final phases of the initial engagements by the 2d and 11th ACR battle groups. It was the last part of the speedbump action that was supposed to buy time for the units that weren’t at the same level of readiness to get into position. That is, it was a part of a tactical retreat and was designed to slow an advance.

  42. 42.

    Fair Economist

    My concept of good and evil is that they are tactics people use to advance their ends. You can improve your situation by helping others or by hurting others.

    I think our aim should be to make the world the kind of place that favors being good and disfavor being evil.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    So I’m not doing multiple individual replies on this, everyone is most welcome.

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: At this point, there is so much difference between their doctrine and what they’re actually doing, I’m not sure referencing their doctrine is actually very useful right now.

  45. 45.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Oh my, that’s interesting (The Last Ringbearer).

    Over the years I’ve toyed with the idea of writing (but I possess not even 1/10,000th of the literary talent needed to pull it off) a revisionist version of the LOTR story, written from Sauron’s point of view.

    In it his intentions from the beginning of the 2nd Age were good ones – as a way of showing repentance and atonement for his past evils he wanted to find a way to undo the corruption of the Orcs which had been engineered by his former master Melkor / Morgoth, and restore to these pitiable creatures something like a normal life as enjoyed by the other speaking, rational inhabitants of Middle Earth. The forging of the Rings was merely a means to that end, meant with the best of intentions. A power source was needed for the great project.

    But misunderstanding his benevolent and altruistic purposes, his enemies multiplied, frustrating his progress and making the problem worse. And then things just sort of spiraled downhill from there…

  46. 46.

    kalakal

    @Carlo Graziani: Encouragingly for the present, 3rd Kharkhiv was pretty much a disaster for the Russians. OTOH the Germans had air & armour superiority for that operation

  47. 47.

    Martin

    I keep seeing videos of solitary Ukrainian armored units taking on multiple Russian units (BTR-4 taking on a pair of T-72s which is a very uneven matchup), and of course there’s going to be a survivors bias around this, but is this just a matter of effectiveness (I’m defending my country so I’m going to commit a lot harder than the enemy) or is it that drone up there taking video telling the Ukrainian unit exactly what they’re up against, and the Russians being comparably blind.

    Ukraine really does seem to be punching above their weight at every level.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: It’s a hard read. But it is much more than the synopsis you posted. The basic plot is that the war of the rings was really a fight between the progress of science, which is what Sauron was pursuing, and backward superstition intended to keep men subjugated, which was the project of Gandalf. This is, of course, all allegorical. Sauron/science/progress is the Soviet Union. Superstition/backwardness/Gandalf is the US.

  49. 49.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    The Ukrainian song Pink Floyd works with is called Kalyna, the Ukrainian name for viburnum. It’s a song with a lot of historical weight behind it. Here’s Andriy Khlyvnyuk’s street performance, which Pink Floyd sampled. If you look for it on YouTube, you’ll find many versions, including several remixes featuring Khlyvnyuk’s performance.

    Let me add myself to the list of people thanking you for this ongoing effort, Adam.

  50. 50.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: I must not have been clear.  The doctrine I was talking about was US/NATO doctrine in which tactical nukes would be used as a part of a defensive strategy in an area from we were retreating.  Advancing into an area you just nuked rather turns it on its head.

    FWIW I wonder if the Russians have the combat troops and equipment that it would take to do a combined arms attack on multiple points.  I certainly doubt they have the skill at battalion level and below to carry it out.

  51. 51.

    Kent

    It sounds very much like Russia is trying to use WW2 tactics but without WW2 armies.

    By way of comparison, the Soviets used over 1.1 million men, around 1000 tanks and 13,000 artillery pieces in November 1942 when the enveloped the battered German armies at Stalingrad and that was a pocket that is maybe 1/4 the size of what we are seeing in the above maps for eastern Ukraine and those Soviet armies only had to go maybe 1/4 that distance.  Plus they were on home territory so didn’t have to worry about security of their supply lines.  The Russians will be at least 200 miles deep inside Ukraine with such a pincer move so that means running endless truck caravans for 200 miles through bandit territory to keep their battle groups supplied with fuel, ammo, and food.  You don’t need sophisticated anti-tank weapons to take out a fuel truck or supply truck.  A squad of soldiers hiding in the trees along the side of the road can do it with simple land mines, machine guns, and grenades.

    And if the Russians do manage to close a 100 mile gap with a pincer move, that will leave them with a new 100 mile front line that they will have to defend from both directions with maybe 4 or 5 tanks per mile spaced out along that front so they will all be sitting ducks just waiting to be destroyed by light mobile bands of Ukrainians with missiles and drones.

  52. 52.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Adam L Silverman: 

    The synopsis I wrote was of my own hare-brained story, not a summary of Last Ringbearer. I read the wiki page on the latter which you linked to and your summary of it makes sense – the story turned into a USSR (good) vs. USA (bad) allegory.

    Tolkien had his own allegorical version of LOTR = World War II, in which Sauron = Nazi Germany and Saruman = USSR. But he disliked it, with good reason.

  53. 53.

    EZSmirkzz

    Hello Adam, thanks for the effort to inform us wee foke on Mordor’s current offensive in Ukraine. I’m still keeping up with the other guys, but you’re my go to source on the situation.
    I can’t help thinking of Stormin’ Norman’s  left hook,

    But that anticipated amphibious attack was an illusion, an elaborate ruse concocted by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s planners to conceal the real main attack: a roughly 150-mile sweep west by U.S. Army ground forces into Iraq that cut off supply lines and retreat for many Republican Guard troops.

    At this point I would hate to underestimate Boris’ strength or intentions, given that Putin has popular support at home along with Russia’s national prejudices against Ukraine and its’ people.

    Given the intelligence leaks prior to the invasion, the absence of such leaks now is a little disconcerting as well. I would think Russia has rolled some heads over that.

    Then again the concern trolling, given the advance of years, may only signify the need for a bowel movement.

  54. 54.

    Martin

    @Captain C: There’s an expression that Success conceals a multitude of sins.

    Russia and the US militaries were both so overwhelmingly powerful that you can sort of succeed just on inertia. Your execution can kind of be shit, but you have so much you can throw at the fight that you’ll win anyway, and then it’s more of an exercise of internal review and discipline to identify the parts that went poorly and fix them.

    The US does tend to be pretty good at that, all things considered (also a function of how many conflicts we get into). That’s a nice property of a democracy – you don’t have to worry about the head of state taking your head off when things don’t go great. Clearly Russia is just atrocious at it – because their head of state will take your head off, so you’re kind of motivated to not be forthright about everything. Once they got a fight that was just big enough that they couldn’t drunkenly collapse and win, all of those sins get surfaced and exploited. Plus you’ve now put yourself into a compromising position where they can be exploited really, really badly.

  56. 56.

    Kattails

    I mentioned a Ukrainian video above, aimed at Europeans, showing the real cost of that gas they’re pumping; but then couldn’t find it to link.  Turns out it was one of those that Twitter puts under the “eek be aware of what you’re going to look at” subheadings. Gut punch.

  57. 57.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Omnes Omnibus: That was Warsaw Pact doctrine. It was even practiced in a 1954 Soviet army exercise, with a live nuclear munition.

    Not that I believe for a moment that the modern Russian army is capable of fighting through a gap created by a nuclear explosion.  I also doubt that their general staff believes this is possible. But, as I’ve said before, I’m accustomed to being wrong.

  58. 58.

    ian

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    Tolkien explicitly rejected that allegory.  He makes fairly clear in his introduction to Fellowship that it is not WW2.

    “The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or conclusion.  If it had been inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-Dur would not have been destroyed but occupied”

    Tolkien, Fellowship- introduction page 11 Houghton Miffin Company 1973 edition

  59. 59.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Martin:

    Clearly Russia is just atrocious at it – because their head of state will take your head off, so you’re kind of motivated to not be forthright about everything.

    It seems that their timing may have been exceptionally bad (bad for them that is – good for Ukraine) insofar as Russia had recently transitioned from reformist leadership and war planning to an incompetent who was mainly good at playing palace politics. At least that is the story which Kamil Galeev tells:

    https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1497993363076915204

    My recollection is that something very similar happened with Tsarist Russia under Nicholas II, they alternated between good leaders who became politically unpopular (because reforming and effectively re-arming the country meant stepping on a lot of powerful and well connected toes), and palace courtiers who were good at flattering the Tsar and smoothing things over with vested interests, and not much else. August 1914 caught them in that second stage, with very bad results.

    That little bit of history seems to have repeated itself.

  60. 60.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Carlo Graziani: It is what we did too.*  Every time we did an exercise using our actual battle positions, we would fall back to our second or maybe third firing positions and the Special Weapons Officer would show up at a “surviving” firing platoon.  They would “fire” one nuke.  The battalion would become combat ineffective a little later and that would be that.

    *The battalion I served in was assigned as direct support to 2ACR.  We were supposed to be the speedbump at Hof, while Cole was up at Fulda driving a tank in 11ACR.

  61. 61.

    Carlo Graziani

    @kalakal: I’m kind of interested in terrain, weather (Feb-Mar but climate has changed), roads, strong points, etc.  Germans had the initiative and preponderance, then, like Russia now.  They could usually also gain air supremacy locally.  I really only want tactical ideas—in the larger sense that war was settled already.

  62. 62.

    Jay

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    1914 was actually not too bad for Imperial Russia. There were some Generals who didn’t play nice with each other, and they could have done much better against the Astro-Hungarian Empire, who managed the entire war horribly. Against Germany they did well for a while, until German lines contracted and their Generals couldn’t act in a combined matter.

    1915 was a yo-yo, 1916 was horrible.

  63. 63.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @ian:

    Yes – that is the same section in which Tolkien wrote that “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence”.

    One of the things which Tom Shippey points out is that JRRT was being a little bit arch in writing that. He disliked bad allegory, or fairy stories mangled to fit an allegorical template. But he cheerfully used allegory himself in some of this other works, quite clearly so in Leaf By Niggle and with devastating effect in his Beowulf lecture (the allegory of the fallen tower and the stones).

  64. 64.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Omnes Omnibus: What I meant is that this was standard part of Warsaw pact offensive strategy. The Soviet army regarded nuclear weapons as “normal” parts of the arsenal of legitimate tools for creating breakthroughs that rear echelons of troops might exploit for exploitation into an enemy’s rear.  That’s what their war game practiced.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I was tracking, was just responding to the Russia part of reversing our doctrine around.

    I think the question is even if they had the personnel and equipment, are they able – as in competent and capable based on training – of undertaking a combined arms operation?

  66. 66.

    Jay

    @Carlo Graziani:

    June is generally when General Mud goes on vacation.

    Until then, roads and railbeds are the path for tracked armour, except for skilled drivers,

    Most of the UA lines in the East are well established trenches and bunkers, with co-ordinated lines of fire.

    Keep in mind, the DPR and LPR pushed against these lines for 8 years with little success, despite breaking Minsk II restrictions on  tanks, artillery and MLRS “heavy weapons”, while the UA didn’t.

  69. 69.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    the Soviets practiced NBC offensives, including Decomm mobile units,

    of course, if you have ever worn an NBC suit on an exercise, one realized how bonkers the whole idea was.

  70. 70.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: On the evidence I have seen so far, I say no.  I sincerely doubt that they can coordinate fires and maneuver.  And I have seen nothing indicate they can get armor and infantry to work in tandem.

  71. 71.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jay: of course, if you have ever worn an NBC suit on an exercise, one realized how bonkers the whole idea was.

    You stay warm.

  72. 72.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Adam L Silverman: Going out on a limb: hard no.  This takes a shit-ton of special training. And special equipment. And personnel knowledgeable about radiation dosing. Also, the kinds of gaps that we’re talking about creating are appropriate for exploitation by much larger-scale combat units. It’s the sort of scary scenario that made sense in a NATO versus Warsaw Pact conflict.  This war is too small to fit, if that makes sense.

  73. 73.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Jay:

    Tannenberg did not go so well, but I agree that considering what they were up against in the form of the Imperial German Army and how much success they enjoyed against A-H forces, the Russians acquitted themselves well until near the end. Sukhomlinov ended his career in deep disgrace and that I think is a very ominous precedent for Shoigu today.

    Bad logistics when moving forward, and insecure communications seem to be other factors in common between then & now.

  76. 76.

    Jay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    part of the problem is that in the “old days”, your Infantry Screen had to be out 1500-2000 meters to protect your armour.

    Now it’s 6,000 meters, requires much better training, more infantry, better comms.

  77. 77.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    Adam:

    Regarding this part in your reply to Martin’s question:

    It took over forty years to fully consolidate its control of the GOP from local to national level, but this anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and anti-liberty movement is nothing if not patient and persistent.

    Kevin Phillips, who has gone thru a ideological journey from writing think pieces for Richard Nixon to use in mapping out the Southern Strategy to being a vociferous critic of the current GOP, has written, most notably in The Cousins War, that this anti-liberal movement has very deep historical roots going back even farther. Using demographic data showing who fought against whom by locality, ethnicity and sectarian religious affiliation he makes a case that the US Civil War, the US Revolutionary War, and before that the English Civil War of the 1640s and subsequent Commonwealth and Restoration were essentially the same conflict repetitively re-enacted, between two irreconcilable cultural groups in Anglo-American history. And that these divides mirror our late 20th Cen. (and now early 21st Cen.) division between the GOP and Democrats.

    If this thesis is at least to some degree correct, then I think one can trace it back even further, perhaps to the partial and incomplete character of the English Reformation, i.e. about 500 years. A division with roots that deep is not something we are likely to shake off anytime soon I’m afraid.

  78. 78.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The other thing is: This is, with high confidence, one of the bright red lines that the US  government has communicated to the Russian government. The level of detail of the consequences of nuclear weapon use that have been communicated I could not possibly have a useful opinion about. But scenarios that would be allowed to play out in the minds of Russisn leadership would include things like full-up USAF intervention in support of the Ukrainian army. Total gloves-come-off stuff, far beyond humanitarian support.

    In other words, what the Russians actually understand,

  79. 79.

    Kent

    @EZSmirkzz:Given the intelligence leaks prior to the invasion, the absence of such leaks now is a little disconcerting as well. I would think Russia has rolled some heads over that.

    Or maybe intelligence leaks were a deliberate US policy PRIOR to the invasion to get inside the Russian’s heads and pre-empt their bullshit and lies.

    But now that the war is actually underway it might well be the case that the US still knows what the Russians are up to but shares that information clandestinely with the Ukrainians so that they can use the information intelligently while keeping the Russians guessing as to what the US and Ukraine actually knows.  During WW2 the most closely guarded secret of the war was that the British had broken the German codes.  In wartime you don’t actually want the enemy to know you are listening in.

  80. 80.

    Kent

    @Carlo Graziani:@Omnes Omnibus: What I meant is that this was standard part of Warsaw pact offensive strategy. The Soviet army regarded nuclear weapons as “normal” parts of the arsenal of legitimate tools for creating breakthroughs that rear echelons of troops might exploit for exploitation into an enemy’s rear.  That’s what their war game practiced.

    There was a fascinating twitter thread recently on how the Soviets designed a lot of their armored equipment to withstand nuclear warfare which simultaneously made them much less effective in conventional warfare.  In other words, the design choices and compromises you make to design vehicles to withstand nuclear fallout compromise their conventional armor.

  81. 81.

    eddie blake

    @Kent:  could you dig up that thread? i’d be very curious to read it. i was under the impression that all modern US armored vehicles could withstand and fight in A/NBC environments just with overpressure and good seals.

  86. 86.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kent: This Galeev thread was interesting: every time I see a (burned-out or not) BMP, I marvel that normal-sized adults can get into it without feeling claustrophobic as all-get-out.  So damn cramped.

  87. 87.

    Aussie sheila

    @Kent:

    My thoughts exactly. The less I hear/read about weapons or intelligence from the US and NATO the better I feel. Let’s face it, social media is now filled with ‘experts’ about all things military. One thing I know about myself is that I know nothing about such things. Like I am not an epidemiologist or a nuclear scientist or anything like it. But I do know enough about information sources to know that where nothing is doesn’t mean there is nothing.

  88. 88.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Aussie sheila:

    The less I hear/read about weapons or intelligence from the US and NATO

    On intel, I agree with you.  On weapons … when I read that the DE Chancellor is blocking transfers of tanks, and senior US defense officials are balking, arguing that we can’t give UA “offensive weapons”, I find it difficult to trust that our leaders are going to do the right thing without us actually knowing what they’re doing and pressuring them.

  89. 89.

    Geminid

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: One expression of the anti-liberal component that has come to dominate the Republican party is it’s Isolationists. The experience of the Second World War seemed to eclipse this wing, and when Robert Taft was defeated by Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 there began a string of Internationalist Republican Presidents that was broken by the last one. The 63 Republican dissenters to the recent NATO resolution- a third of their House caucus- had their counterparts in the 1950s. The difference is the trend: this wing is now on the ascent.

    How far back can this component of the party be traced? Almost to the beginning. Nativism is a form of Isolationism, expressed domestically. In the 1850’s, the nativist American Party, dubbed the “No-Nothings,” rode it’s anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform to a position challenging the dominant Democratic Party. But in 1860, the American Party dissolved itself. Most of it’s adherents found a political home in the new Republican Party, where their ideological descendents still reside.

  90. 90.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Carlo Graziani: I think people are being selective in the reading on this; I’ve seen interviews with Soviet Generals who said there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war.  They assumed than any NATO-Soviet War was going to end up in a total nuclear war.

  92. 92.

    EZSmirkzz

    @Kent: Good morning!

    Or maybe intelligence leaks were a deliberate US policy PRIOR to the invasion to get inside the Russian’s heads and pre-empt their bullshit and lies.

     

     

    @Kent:

     

    That’s the narrative. The first casualty of war is the truth, ain’t it? That being said being skeptical about government reports is a requirement not a suggestion, IMHO, YMMV. Given that the leaks were accurate, then I concluded Russia would be looking for the leaks.

    @Kent: During WW2 the most closely guarded secret of the war was that the British had broken the German codes. In wartime you don’t actually want the enemy to know you are listening in.

    I would expect that the enemy is listening in in peacetime as well as wartime. Operation Bodyguard was a precursor to the invasion of Normandy and a similar leak as the Ukrainian invasion leaks, one being false the other true.

    We don’t know why we know this information, we can assume that Boris plugged the leaks however.

  93. 93.

    Carlo Graziani

    @EZSmirkzz: Perhaps. But

    (1) The “leaks” were not leaks, but rather official US Government statements, made deliberately to wrong-foot the Russians in the lead-up to the war, and made in careful consultation with the intelligence community. The natural high value accorded to “sources and methods” capable of producing this kind of gold on Russian intentions implies  (to me, anyway) that they had high confidence that their source(s) would not be exposed. Otherwise they would never have hazarded such assets on such an untried ploy. It succeeded brilliantly—if only for the sake of tactical spoke-in-the-wheels—but this could not have been known in advance.

    (2) It is not at all clear that the Russians can plug the leak. It is quite likely multiple leaks, acquired by multiple Western Intelligence services, throughout the Russian government, in places high (FSB,MOD) and low (railways, cellphone companies), availing themselves of the massive, pervasive corruption that is the principal characteristic of that government of goons, which is very well matched to agent recruitment and grooming techniques of classic spycraft, and to the vast troves of funds in discrete bank accounts that those services can dispose of for the purpose.

    The Soviet Union was a very hard intelligence target. Ironically, modern Russia may be one of the easiest.

  94. 94.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Geminid:

    How far back can this component of the party be traced? Almost to the beginning. Nativism is a form of Isolationism, expressed domestically. In the 1850’s, the nativist American Party, dubbed the “No-Nothings,” rode it’s anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform

    There is an interesting crossing over and re-weaving of some of the cultural threads involved. This is one reason why I think Kevin Phillips’ take is a little bit too simplistic – the tapestry of Anglo-American political culture has repeatedly been unraveled and then re-woven into new patterns. But the continuity of the individual threads is impressive and perhaps frightening.

    Not so much isolation vs. active foreign policy, but there is a related contrast going back thru the US Civil War, the Revolutionary War and all the way back to the time of Cromwell and Charles I, in which the Blue side is more urbanized, more mercantile and more involved in seafaring and long distance trading, and thus more involved in other countries and cultures (in that sense more outward looking) vs. the Red side being more rural, more agricultural, and more insular in character.

    It is funny that you mention Anti-Catholic however, because that is one cultural trait which has switched sides.

    Anti-Catholicism was an important component in both the English Civil War and in triggering the US Revolutionary War, but on the Blue side, not the Red. In 17th Cen. Britain some but not all of the latter (Red) were crypto-Catholics (and openly Catholic in the case of the Irish) or something culturally close to being so, and the English Civil War in particular was in part a sectarian conflict, a side branch of the wars of the Counter Reformation which raged in continental Europe.

    But at some point during the span of the 19th Cen. and 20th Cen. anti-Catholicism in the USA switched over from the Blue side to the Red side (the KKK for example were fiercely anti-Catholic), and the way that the early Republican party (team Blue at the time) took advantage of the collapse of the Know Nothings may have been part of that process. But the details are mysterious to me, I have yet to find a good source explaining it in detail.

  95. 95.

    Feathers

    Thanks again Adam!

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: One of the things I find frustrating in the current moment in American anti-racism is the blindness to the fact that authoritarian follower is a personality type. They are always going to be there, at a rate of about a quarter of the population. If your plans (and theories) don’t include that, they are never going to succeed. This is the real blindness of the Kumbaya crowd, that you will never woo everyone to peace, love, and understanding.

    Also, as you said in this last comment, so much of this is a battle that white people are having among themselves. It may feel like it’s all anti Blackness, but it can and does exist in entirely white populations. See England and Ireland. Or Russia and Ukraine. The whole “you need to deal with the racists in your family” argument falls apart when the truth of the matter is that our family members hate us perhaps even more than they hate you, and the emotional work to heal those gaps would all need to come from their side.

    Sorry to be rambling. What is really frustrating me is the people on the left who seem to think that their POV is so obviously correct that the only thing holding back the perfect world is the people actually fighting against the tide of fascism threatening to overwhelm us all.

  96. 96.

    Carlo Graziani

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Tangentially related: Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” is eerily prescient of Trumpism, and also traces disturbing continuities to the Jacksonian era and eralier.

    Not related at all: Nice nym. Bugs fan?

  97. 97.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Feathers:

    One of the things which I find striking about contemporary American politics is the degree to which the anti-liberal, authoritarian movement is open to individual people of color, if they are willing to really sign on with the core values of the movement, which is that the strong shall dominate the weak, and in turn be regarded as morally superior by virtue of their dominance.

    There are many members in good standing of the Right who purely on ethnic grounds one would naively expect not to be welcome there. And yet they are welcomed, and are not merely useful idiots either. This, and the tactical flexibility with which “whiteness” is defined (when I was very young Irish and Italians and people of Slavic descent were not considered to really truly, fully “white” – that elevated ethnic status was reserved for WASPs) is one of the strengths of the Right here in the USA and a means whereby they avoid the demographic going under which folks on our side so frequently predict – with a degree of confidence which IMHO is not justified and as such is dangerous.

  99. 99.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Adding to the discussion of US intelligence disclosures, here is an article from NBCNews on the subject. While the whole effort has been enormously successful so far, one segment caught my attention:

    Likewise, a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two U.S. officials said.
    The U.S. officials said there are no indications China is considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said.
    The European official described the disclosure as “a public game to prevent any military support from China.”

    This is why I say Sino-US relations remain in a downward spiral w/ no bottom visible, yet. So a Biden-Xi tele-summit was planned to try to steady the relationship, & leading up to the meeting the administration leaks to the press that China may be considering to provide material support to the Russian invasion, & shortly after the meeting the US places more sanctions on Chinese companies & officials. That will get Beijing into a conciliatory mood! Same w/ China. Part way through the Biden-Xi summit the Chinese propaganda apparatus started to flood domestic & international media of what Xi had said, just to get the 1st word in. It is a most un-diplomatic maneuver. Did the same during the China-EU virtual summit. Standard practices is for the mid-level officials on both sides to compare notes on the press releases, to make sure what one side puts out will not unduly embarrass or be contradicted by the other. Now even the most basic work of diplomacy has broken down, & diplomatic malpractice has become standard practice.

  100. 100.

    EZSmirkzz

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Good morning!

    @Carlo Graziani: The “leaks” were not leaks, but rather official US Government statements, made deliberately to wrong-foot the Russians in the lead-up to the war, and made in careful consultation with the intelligence community.

     

    If I were a wise ass I’d say the leaks were leaks before they weren’t leaks then?

    @Carlo Graziani: It is not at all clear that the Russians can plug the leak. It is quite likely multiple leaks, acquired by multiple Western Intelligence services,

     Our perspective on what is quite likely may be at serious variance with Russia’s. Even if their communications after flattening the cell towers in Ukraine were compromised in Ukraine I would think their encryption was and is still working in Russia proper. That may have an impact on whether Boris can pull off a left hook as Schwarzkopf did in Iraq, which is a similar scenario to the prognostications to Russia’s intentions in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. All I’m saying is don’t underestimate your enemies, at home or abroad.

    1st Kings 20:11 The king of Israel sent back this answer: “A warrior putting on his sword for battle should not boast like a warrior who has already won.”

  101. 101.

    kalakal

    @Carlo Graziani: 3rd Kharkhiv does have some parallels that are useful.

    Germans had the initiative and preponderance, then, like Russia now

    This wasn’t the case at the beginning. If anything the Nazis seized both from the Russians during the battle. In the aftermath of Stalingrad the Nazis were desperately scrambling back while the Russians were pushing forward as fast as they could. Von Manstein’s recipe for success was to not commit reinforcements to delaying the Russians but rather hold them back, trading territory for time & coherence, until the by now badly disorganised Russians had  overextended themselves and were in serious logistical difficulties. Then the fresh units were commited in force to envelop the exhausted Russians, still far below strength from Stalingrad, in a Guderian style armoured assault with massive air support

    It certainly has echoes of the operations of the last month around Kyiv, in the logistical overextension of the Russians there.

    I don’t think the same conditions apply to the most Eastern section of the war but the Russian forces staging out of Crimea may be in an unhappy place

  102. 102.

    Bill Arnold

    @EZSmirkzz:

    Even if their communications after flattening the cell towers in Ukraine were compromised in Ukraine I would think their encryption was and is still working in Russia proper.

    One of the anonymous infosec twitter accounts I track noted a while back (late 2021/early 2022? Might look)  without evidence (but implying that they or someone they know had done so) that for like $20000 it was possible for anyone in the world to construct a full dossier on an arbitrary mid-level Russian. That the system was so corrupt that you could openly buy information (e.g. dark web) from the people who run the government’s panopticon, and also from private surveillance. Surveillance videos. Stills. Full government records. Full banking records. Full communications metadata and sometimes actual recordings. Movement information. Full internet records (use of VPNs and/or Tor can hide some things). A sampling of contacts.
    Bellingcat’s FSB Poisoning Squad investigations used a few of these corruption-driven information sources. Russian propagandists call them names and mock them and call them a front/puppet for UK/US intelligence (that’s mostly false) but bellingcat beclowned the FSB. (Or rather, showed parts of the FSB to be clownishly bad at OPSEC.)

  103. 103.

    EZSmirkzz

    @Bill Arnold: Good morning!

    Yeah I’m aware of the antagonism some have for Bellingcat, I’m not one of those people. People make mistakes and people disagree, all the time. Like I said I read a lot of retired intelligence officers, some are wingnut and some are more aligned with Adam, and a couple I would say are Russophils.

    I’m just saying not to underestimate Russia, or any other enemy/adversary.

  105. 105.

    Feathers

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:  Yes. Authoritarian followers exist in every color, creed, and gender. I lose patience with people who don’t recognize the psychological/personality issues involved. More that I just excuse myself from the conversation.

    A fascinating article on the origins of West Side Story pointed out that the original version was set in Los Angeles, where the gangs were exclusively set up on racial lines, and housing deeply segregated. In New York, the gangs were territorial, which meant they were pretty much ethnically homogeneous. However, if there was a Black family in an Irish neighborhood, they would join the neighborhood “Irish” gang, not the “Black” gang from a nearby Black community. Assuming they wanted to join a gang. Apparently, New Yorkers of the time found it very silly, but the story overtook reality, and people began assuming that NY gangs weren’t territorial.

  106. 106.

    Martin

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: My thesis has been that the through-line is white christian nationalism, with that group inviting in tolerated parties as needed to build a majority.

    By default, both parties were dominated by this ideology until the Civil Rights movement. The quibble within the structure that led to the Civil War was on the degree of white supremacy rather than whether it should exist at all. And even after Civil Rights, when the GOP consolidated the movement and the Dems turned and embraced minority voters (out of necessity more than an enlightened belief in equality) that didn’t really start to manifest in practice until 2008.

    But Jews and Catholics and Mormons and all manner of other groups were tolerated by the protestant majority because they were needed to get their candidates over the finish line.

    What makes this moment so dangerous to me is that the Romneys and Cheneys and Bushs that understood the necessity and approach to build that coalition are now all out of influence with the hard core white christian nationalists now in charge, and they are increasingly turning against those groups that were previously tolerated. Because white christians have fallen so low in number in the US, they have to make increasing concessions in order to attract groups to win national office, and they’ve finally had enough, and rather than try and build a winning coalition, they’ve decided that taking power by other means is more tolerable than appealing to latino or non-religious voters.

    I see no possibility of the party returning to their previous ways. Even though the nationalist are diminishing in number, they’re still more than strong enough to hold majority within the GOP. So they are retreating to their states, dropping their moderate impulses and governing how they want to govern, and will try to win through USSC or some other minority rule institution.

    I think the answer to embracing Catholics is nothing more than ‘we need 50%+1, who is the least objectionable group to invite in to get there’.

  108. 108.

    RAM

    Jules Archer’s “The Plot to Seize the White House” is a great book on this tale of national deceit. I read it years ago when it was a featured selection in a military book club I belonged to, and I see it’s now back in print. I highly recommend it:

    https://smile.amazon.com/Plot-Seize-White-House-Conspiracy/dp/1632203588/ref=sr_1_1?crid=360K3I7E5QCB3&keywords=the+plot+to+seize+the+white+house+jules+archer&qid=1649454681&sprefix=the+plot+to+seize%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-1#customerReviews

  109. 109.

    TonyG

    Putin has had absolute authority in Russia for more than two decades. Most likely he’s surrounded himself with sycophants during those decades; any independent thinkers are gone. So, most likely, this officers in the Russian military are all ass-kissers who will not think for themselves. That probably explains a lot of the Russian military blunders over the past six weeks.

  110. 110.

    TonyG

    @VOR: Again, a combination of the stupidity of their officers and the fact that the officers do not give a damn about their own troops.

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