(Image by NEIVANMADE)
Russia once again bombarded the civilian storage facilities in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Odesa:
For most of the night, russia continued drone attacks on the civil infrastructure of Dnipropetrovsk region and the Danube areas of Odesa region. 23 out of 32 Shahed 136/131 kamikaze drones were shot down. Some of the warehouses and production facilities of industrial and… pic.twitter.com/Nh47sGheNO
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 4, 2023
For most of the night, russia continued drone attacks on the civil infrastructure of Dnipropetrovsk region and the Danube areas of Odesa region. 23 out of 32 Shahed 136/131 kamikaze drones were shot down. Some of the warehouses and production facilities of industrial and agricultural enterprises were damaged. Fortunately, this time there were no casualties.
📷 State Emergency Service
A total of 32 Shaheds were launched, targeting Odesa and Dnipro regions. Air Defense Forces successfully downed 23 of them. pic.twitter.com/CCnqVfzVMA
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) September 4, 2023
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
Today we spent the whole day with our warriors; it is very useful to hear from those who are going into battle what exactly is lacking – address by the President of Ukraine
4 September 2023 – 23:34
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
Today we spent the whole day with our warriors. Combat brigades in Donetsk region. The 109th separate territorial defense brigade, the 110th separate mechanized brigade, the 36th, 37th, 38th brigades of our marines, the 79th airborne assault brigade, the 53rd mechanized brigade, and the 59th motorized infantry brigade. Each of them is powerful. I am proud of all of them. And thank you for your sincerity, guys! Zaporizhzhia direction. The 148th separate artillery brigade, the 82nd airborne assault brigade, the 71st separate hunting brigade – thank you for your service! To all of you!
It is extremely important to support our warriors, to communicate with the brigade and battalion commanders. It is very, very useful to hear from those who are going into battle directly what exactly is lacking, what exactly is enough and what exactly needs to be changed. Everything the warriors talked about will be issues for the participants of the Staff. Especially regarding electronic warfare – we heard everything, guys.
I awarded our military doctors and thanked the staff of the stabilization points – they are great people who save heroes, restore lives and strength. It is a true Ukrainian, Cossack, spirit when the guys recover from their injuries and return to their positions to join their brothers-in-arms. And destroy the occupier again. It is an honor to thank such warriors!
I honored the bravery of our warriors with more than 50 awards. I presented “Gold Stars” to the Heroes of Ukraine – Major Oleh Dmytruk, Air Assault Forces, and Colonel Viktor Sikoza, Marines. Thank you, warriors!
All such awards, all honors are symbols of Ukraine’s success, proof of the strength and indomitability of our people.
Glory to all who fight for Ukraine! To everyone who works for our Ukrainian strength. To everyone in the world who constantly helps us! Who stands with us! And thank you personally for the chevrons, our guys, girls – all the warriors, thank you for the flags today. I will cherish it all.
Glory to Ukraine!
.@ZelenskyyUa
Donetsk region. We are visiting the combat brigades that are defending Ukraine as part of the Donetsk Operational and Tactical Groups.
8 brigades today. Each is special, yet all are powerful!
Thank you for the results you give our country every day, warriors! pic.twitter.com/LDUcWFSioo— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 4, 2023
Minister of Defense Reznikov did the classy thing and submitted his resignation today.
I have submitted my letter of resignation to Ruslan Stefanchuk @r_stefanchuk, Chairman of the Parliament of Ukraine @verkhovna_rada
It was an honor to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the #UAarmy for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history.
🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/x4rXXcrr7i— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) September 4, 2023
Lviv:
The annual Lviv Half Marathon was suspended last year due to the war. But last Sunday, the runners again took to the streets of this city. This year's marathon had a goal to raise funds for the "Unbreakable" foundation, in particular for the rehabilitation of children who lost… pic.twitter.com/wTQKNsqnz6
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 4, 2023
The annual Lviv Half Marathon was suspended last year due to the war. But last Sunday, the runners again took to the streets of this city. This year’s marathon had a goal to raise funds for the “Unbreakable” foundation, in particular for the rehabilitation of children who lost their limbs during the war. Among the runners was 12-year-old Yana Stepanenko, who lost both legs during last year’s russian missile attack on the Kramatorsk passenger station.
‘Just starting to run, it's a bit daunting because I'm not quite used to it yet. But I want to support kids who've lost their legs and can't run.’ Yana, courageous 12-year-old lost both her legs when Russian missile hit Kramatorsk station. Her mother also lost a leg.
We can't… pic.twitter.com/72O9hHrwh6
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) September 3, 2023
‘Just starting to run, it’s a bit daunting because I’m not quite used to it yet. But I want to support kids who’ve lost their legs and can’t run.’ Yana, courageous 12-year-old lost both her legs when Russian missile hit Kramatorsk station. Her mother also lost a leg.
We can’t fail these children.
Kharkiv:
61 groups at 5 metro stations.
In Kharkiv, a city of a million people located not far from the border with Russia, which has been shelled almost daily since the beginning of the war, underground schools have started the school year. No educational institution in the city has such… pic.twitter.com/CmXnldJs2a— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 4, 2023
61 groups at 5 metro stations.
In Kharkiv, a city of a million people located not far from the border with Russia, which has been shelled almost daily since the beginning of the war, underground schools have started the school year. No educational institution in the city has such reliable shelter as the subway. Children will be safe here.
Verbove:
Allow me to present a russian propagandist's nightmare: notably deteriorated defensive positions to the west of Verbove, evidence of significant fire pressure on the intricate multi-layered defenses, both before and after the so-called "Surovikin line." pic.twitter.com/0xP5hOGh9U
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) September 4, 2023
Romania:
In a massive Russian attack on Izmail port, Shaheds landed and detonated on Romanian soil, as reported by Ukraine's Border Guard. I wonder whether Erdogan has this on agenda discussing grain deal with Putin today. pic.twitter.com/QzkPsBpRMj
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) September 4, 2023
Prescott Cactus has sent along the reporting with the details that Russia may have committed a Schroedinger’s missile attack on Romania.
Reuters, relying on Ukrainian sources, says Russia did strike Romania, but the Romanian sources say they didn’t:
KYIV/BUCHAREST, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Ukraine said on Monday Russian drones had detonated on the territory of NATO member Romania during an overnight air strike on a Ukrainian port across the Danube River, but Bucharest denied its territory had been hit.
Reuters could not independently verify either account, a rare report of stray weapons from the war in Ukraine hitting a neighbouring member of the Western military alliance.
Moscow has conducted long-range air strikes on targets in Ukraine since the start of its invasion last year. Since July, when Moscow abandoned a deal that lifted a de facto Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, it has repeatedly struck Ukrainian river ports that lie across the Danube from Romania.
Russian launched its air strike hours before President Vladimir Putin was due to discuss reviving the Black Sea deal with the deal’s sponsor, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
“According to Ukraine’s state border guard service, last night, during a massive Russian attack near the port of Izmail, Russian ‘Shakheds’ fell and detonated on the territory of Romania,” foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said, referring to Iranian-made drones.
“This is yet another confirmation that Russia’s missile terror poses a huge threat not only to Ukraine’s security, but also to the security of neighbouring countries, including NATO member states,” he wrote on Facebook.
Nikolenko published a photo showing flames of an explosion visible from across a river. Reuters could not immediately verify the vantage point of the image.
The Romanian Defence Ministry said Romania was not hit.
“The ministry of defence categorically denies information from the public space regarding a so-called overnight situation during which Russian drones would have fallen in Romania’s national territory,” it said.
“At no time did Russia’s means of attack generate direct military threats on Romanian national territory or waters.”
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it was aware of reporting on the matter but referred queries to Romania’s government. The Pentagon declined to comment.
Daniela Tanase, whose house in the Romanian village of Plauru overlooks Ukraine’s Izmail port across the river, said she was not aware of explosions on the Romanian bank but could not say for certain.
“We heard the drones, the booms and the air defence systems across the river,” she told Reuters by telephone. “We saw a light in the distance from our window, it was raining last night.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports, based on the Romanian sources, that Russian missiles definitely did not land on Romanian soil:
Romania’s Defense Ministry has “categorically” denied a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry claim that at least one Russian drone launched during an overnight attack on a Ukrainian port fell and detonated on Romanian territory.
Kyiv said on September 4 that Russia launched the air strike on Ukrainian port infrastructure, and one of the drones hit across the Danube River in the territory of NATO-member Romania.
The Romanian Foreign Ministry, however, said the information released by Ukraine was false.
“The Ministry of National Defense categorically denies information from the public space regarding a so-called situation that occurred during the night of September 3 to 4 in which Russian drones allegedly fell on the national territory of Romania,” it said.
Romania said that it monitored in real time the situation both during the night from September 3 to 4 and the night before.
“At no time did the means of attack used by the Russian Federation generate direct military threats to the national territory or the territorial waters of Romania,” the ministry said.
It added that measures to strengthen defenses on the eastern flank had been taken.
Yarrow sent along this Max Boot interview BG (ret) Mark Arnold about the Ukrainian offensive, doing business as the counteroffensive, which is underway. Here are some excerpts.
Some U.S. military officials appear astonished that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has not made a rapid breakthrough — and, through anonymous quotes to the news media, they are laying the blame on the Ukrainian military. Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Arnold, by contrast, isn’t the least bit surprised at the slow pace of the advance — and he’s blaming the Americans, not the Ukrainians.
Arnold, a cheerful former Special Forces officer with three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has spent extensive time near the front lines advising the Ukrainian military (at his own expense). He has come away impressed by the professionalism and élan of the Ukrainian army — while also cognizant of the limitations of the training and equipment they have been provided by the West.
I first met Arnold in Kyiv in May. Even back then — weeks before the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive — he was telling me that the Ukrainians would not be able to make a breakthrough this year. However, he was — and remains — more optimistic about the prospects for decisive operations next year.
After getting back from Kyiv, I have kept in touch with Arnold and have found him a consistent font of realism. Back on June 23, at the very start of the counteroffensive, he emailed me: “I remain very skeptical that a decisive battle will occur this year that makes a material effect toward Ukrainian victory. That can happen next summer when the majority of maneuver equipment arrives from NATO into Ukraine.”
More recently, he has lamented to me: “The Ukrainians lack the mobility equipment necessary to breach high-density minefields and obstacles. U.S. Army mechanized infantry and armor battalions have tanks with antitank mine blades and heavy rollers in each company team. The Ukrainians do not.”
Last week, Arnold emailed me: “If you add all the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 tanks, and other equipment, the Ukrainians could outfit only one brigade. Only six battalions of the ~350 battalions in the ground forces have been trained in combined arms by NATO.” That simply is not enough, he said, “to move the needle.”
The Ukrainian attackers are further hindered because they lack, as he noted, air superiority. In many instances, Russian attack helicopters have targeted Ukrainian armored units as they were trying to clear minefields, slowing their advance to a crawl.
While some in the United States criticize Kyiv’s conduct of the counteroffensive — which appears to finally be gaining some momentum as the Ukrainians breach the first line of Russian defenses in the south — Arnold does not. “The U.S. military would be hard-pressed to achieve much better results without air dominance and long-range artillery systems,” he told me. “So, I am pleased with the progress the Ukrainians have demonstrated to date.”
Arnold rejects many of the specific criticisms being made by the Pentagon, including the charge that the Ukrainians have diverted too many resources to Bakhmut in the east. He argues that the offensive there “has not consumed large volumes of mechanized equipment” and that “Ukrainian operations in multiple geographic areas are essential to tying down Russian military resources and defending Ukrainian ground in the northeast.”
While some in the Pentagon apparently want the Ukrainians to risk heavy casualties by charging straight into the teeth of Russian defenses, Arnold believes Ukrainian commanders have made the right choice to proceed more cautiously. “Prudently valuing and expending human resources during the counteroffensive while also waiting for the majority of armor and mechanized equipment to arrive next year is wise,” he told me.
Arnold’s argument — that Kyiv can achieve even greater gains next year — runs counter to the assumption among some U.S. officials that it’s 2023 or bust for the Ukrainian advance. “We built up this mountain of steel for the counteroffensive. We can’t do that again,” one former U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal. “It doesn’t exist.”
Arnold is optimistic that the Ukrainians can break through next year — provided they get more training and equipment than they received this year. “If the Biden administration is interested in ending this war,” he told me, “then it will provide the long-range weapons (Army Tactical Missile System, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Reaper drones, F-16s), more M113 armored personnel carriers, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams tanks.”
But it’s not just a question of more weapons. The Ukrainian military also needs more training. “The Western training of Ukrainian military during the past 15 months is 85 percent basic training, 5 percent small unit leader training and 10 percent battalion training,” Arnold says. “Those efforts have trained less than 5 percent of Ukraine’s ground forces, and almost no officers at battalion level and above.” The results of that inexperience were evident in the faltering pace of the initial counteroffensive.
Arnold has been lobbying the Ukrainian General Staff and the Defense Ministry to recruit retired Western officers to train brigades inside Ukraine rather than making them go to other countries, because this will enable more units to be trained more quickly. He believes it is also essential to train corps-level staff in higher-level command functions so they can more effectively maneuver these units in combat. While retired Western officers would initially lead the training, they would be “training the trainers” so that Ukrainians could take over the courses themselves. Arnold is also trying to raise private-sector funds to expand the training and equipping of combat medics so that Ukrainian troops will be more likely to survive their wounds in combat.
“I find it frustrating, and the Ukrainians find it excruciating, that the West has the ability to do so much more to help end the war, but we’re not doing it,” Arnold told me. That needs to change. Rather than fall prey to the U.S. military’s “short war obsession” — imagining that every war will end quickly — the Biden administration would be well-advised to set up the Ukrainians for greater success in the future even if they aren’t able to achieve all of their objectives during this counteroffensive.
There is some more at the link.
And yes, I’m in agreement with BG (ret) Arnold. As far as I know I don’t know him. But I was trained and mentored by people from his community, so I find his assessment very persuasive.
War on the Rocks has published Michael Kofman’s and Rob Lee’s most recent assessment of where things stand three months in to Ukraine’s offensive.
On June 4, Ukraine launched its long-awaited offensive. The operation has proven to be a test of Ukrainian determination and adaptation. Despite stiff resistance, Ukrainian forces have made steady gains in a set-piece battle against a heavily entrenched force. Ukraine’s main effort is a push from Orikhiv, with the goal of driving south past Tokmak and ideally reaching Melitopol. If successful, this would sever Russian lines along the Black Sea coast and endanger supply routes from Crimea. The second is at Velika Novosilka, a secondary offensive operation likely aimed at Berdyansk, also along the coast. The third is a supporting offensive along the flanks of Bakhmut further to the north. Ukraine has made gains here, pinning several Russian airborne units. The offensive is gaining momentum, and much remains undecided, but three months in offers an opportunity to take stock of the operation thus far.
This has become a war of tree lines, with shifts in the line often counted in hundreds of meters. Artillery fire and drones dominate the battlefield, as small groups of infantry advance through dense minefields, field by field, tree line by tree line. Progress has been fitful and slower than expected, as acknowledged by President Volodymyr Zelensky and now former Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. However, Ukraine’s recent gains illustrate that it has worn down Russian defenses over time, leveraging an advantage in fires and long-range precision weapons to steadily press Russian forces back from their defensive positions. That said, Ukraine will need to both break through Russian lines and exploit that success to reach its objectives. Much could be decided in the coming weeks.
As we and others predicted, this kind of operation was bound to be difficult and costly. Without air superiority, a decisive advantage in fires, and limited enablers to breach Russian lines, any military would have faced similar struggles in such an operation. This is especially so against a force that had time to entrench, preparing a layered defense replete with minefields and fortifications. Ukraine’s military changed tactics, from initially trying to breach Russian lines in a mechanized assault to taking a more familiar attritional approach that achieved incremental gains. Over time this approach can work, and has worked for the Ukrainian armed forces in the past, but each battle has its own context with a different set of conditions, geography, and forces in play.
Ukraine needs more air defense, mine clearing, and similar enabling capabilities. Western assistance over the past 18 months has enabled Ukraine, but it has also limited Ukraine’s options, resulting in undertrained units having to go up against a well-prepared defense without the benefit of air support. However, the challenges of this are not only due to capability and capacity shortcomings. The Ukrainian military continues to struggle with scaling offensive operations, and conducting combined arms operations at the battalion level and above, with most attacks being at the level of a platoon or company. These are important areas to address in Western training programs, as we have discussed with our colleagues in various episodes of the War on the Rocks podcast and the Russia Contingency.
There is no single answer to the challenges Ukraine faces. The problem cannot be reduced to a lack of Western tactical aviation. The more important factors remain ammunition, training, providing the necessary enablers, and effective resource management in a war of attrition. War requires regular adaptation, since few plans survive contact with the enemy, but the process of adaptation equally requires identifying what has worked and what has not. The ability to discuss these challenges openly (which, in our view, doesn’t include leaks to newspapers from behind a veil of anonymity) is what separates successful militaries from those like Russia’s, which often falsifies success and buries bad news. Indeed, a poor understanding of how Ukraine’s military fights, and of the operating environment writ large, may be leading to false expectations, misplaced advice, and unfair criticism in Western official circles.
Ukraine’s summer offensive is coming down to the balance of attrition over time, which side has more reserves, and who can better manage their combat power in a prolonged slugfest. In order to sustain Ukraine’s war effort, Washington should support Kyiv’s preferred approach, which means resourcing ammunition for an intensive fight, providing the requisite long-range strike systems, and supporting enablers. However, it should also learn from this experience, tackling long-term issues such as training, helping Ukraine improve its ability to conduct operations at scale, and transitioning to employ Western airpower along with the associated organizational changes to make it effective. It is also critical for Western countries to draw the right lessons from the development and performance of Ukraine’s new brigades to improve future training efforts. The details discussed in this article are based on open sources and our own field research in Ukraine, but do not disclose anything that is not publicly available about ongoing operations.
The offensive has thus far played out as a shaping phase, an initial breaching effort, followed by a prolonged attritional period with fitful gains, leading to the better progress seen in more recent weeks, as both sides are increasingly forced to pull from their reserves. In advance of the offensive, Ukraine spent several weeks conducting shaping operations to set the conditions for the assaults, including attacks on Russian command and control with Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles, raids into Russia’s Belgorod region, and various sabotage efforts. These were designed to weaken Russia’s ability to defend and potentially force Moscow to redirect forces away from Ukraine’s main effort. The initial axis of attack began with a localized counteroffensive around Bakhmut in mid-May, designed to draw Russian forces there by steadily pressuring the flanks. Then Ukrainian units attempted an advance along the Velika Novosilka axis in the south, followed by a push from Orikhiv farther west in Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian forces made gains along the flanks of Bakhmut, but the initial advances along the main axis in the south were not as successful as anticipated. In the second week, Ukraine managed to capture a string of towns running south of Velika Novosilka, but the progress afterwards there has been slow. What appeared to be the main axis of advance in this offensive, led by the 47th Mechanized Brigade south of Orikhiv toward Robotyne, also stalled early on. Most of the gains have been at the first Russian line of defense, but this is also where Russian forces had focused their defensive effort, making them particularly significant. The Ukrainian attack has created a salient that is steadily being widened. At the time of this writing, Ukrainian forces have degraded the defending Russian units, and show signs that they may have penetrated the main defensive line near Verbove, but the details are too early to assess. Ukrainian forces have recently liberated Robotyne, and pushed east of it, which represents an advance of about ten kilometers since the offensive began. The distance of advance has been similar on the Velika Novosilka axis at the furthest point.Ukraine’s initial plan appeared to be an effort to advance along several axes to reveal weaknesses that could reveal the best place to breach Russia’s main defensive belt. It is therefore likely that Ukraine sought to force Russia into a decision to deploy reserves to the front line, thereby reducing the Russian military’s ability to respond to a breach. Rather than a singular main effort, the campaign was split along several fronts to impose a dilemma.
Much, much, much more at the link!
Another Ukrainian Valkyrie and Valkyrie in Training!
Ukrainian combat medic Yaryna Chornohuz with her daughter: 'For the first time in 4 years, I took Orysia to her first day of school. Happy.' pic.twitter.com/rLLLkh2BDk
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 4, 2023
That’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron.
There is a new slideshow at Patron’s official TikTok. Those don’t embed here, so please click across if you want to see it.
Open thread!
Anonymous At Work
Adam,
FYI, if you didn’t see it but NYT did a pretty good article about the Navy’s inability to change and their large orders of 20th-century ships. Scary stuff if there’s a war with China. The article also references war-games (I presume not well-published ones) where naval drones/recon and asymmetrical responses were decisive.
Another Scott
You probably noted much of this in earlier updates, but I found France24.com’s take today interesting:
(repost from downstairs)
Good, good. More, please.
Slava Ukraini!!
Thanks Adam.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
Once Umerov is confirmed as Reznikov’s replacement, Ukraine will be (AFAIK) the only country with a Jewish President and a Muslim Defense minister. Fucking Nazis, amirite?
Jay
As always, thank you Adam.
https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FF5JGlhlWAAAr4aZ.jpg
japa21
@Gin & Tonic: Super devious Nazis.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: Petrovsky is a scumbag, and I look forward to the Finns extraditing him to Ukraine. FAFO, motherfucker.
Adam L Silverman
@Anonymous At Work: I’ll give it a look. Thanks!
Gin & Tonic
:: Open Twitter
:: See “#NazisForBiden” trending
:: Close Twitter
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: I had no idea but that’s fucking awesome! Multi cultural, modern folks fighting for the freedoms to which we pay lip service.
@Adam – I’m not trained by anybody but I agree with the Brigadier’s assessment (and yours), too. Washington needs to get its head out of it’s ass and into the current century.
Slava Ukraini
Alison Rose
Yana is a wonderful girl, and I hope others can look to her for bravery when they need some help in that area.
Those photos of kids attending school in metro stations…makes all the whining about how horrible and awful it was for kids to do online school from home in the first year or so of quarantine even more ridiculous. Your kids could’ve had it a lot fucking worse.
Three lovely videos on Zelenskyy’s FB page: Meeting with and giving awards to combat medics, to soldiers in Zaporizhzhia, and visiting combat brigades in Donetsk. I always love seeing these videos, and I especially love hearing the Героям слава response, how strong and confident and unshaken it is. An indomitable people.
Thank you as always, Adam.
Alison Rose
@Gin & Tonic: That’s pretty awesome. I’m sure Lavrov or whoever will explain why some Muslims are the most Islamophobic just like he enlightened us that some Jews are the biggest purveyors of antisemitism.
Anoniminous
NSFW COMMENT FOLLOWS
The motherfucking piece of shit cowards don’t have the balls to stand behind their sniveling.
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: Mr. Umerov seems well qualified for a job that does not require military experience so much as administrative capability. And at age 42, he should have the neccesary stamina.
Anoniminous
@Anonymous At Work:
In a real war with China US carrier groups would last about 4 days before the capital ships were sunk. Carriers have no defense against a ballistic missile attack. The US Navy deals with this in the usual manner of the US military: they ignore it.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: you got another link to this? I can’t get it to open.
Anonymous At Work
@Anoniminous: 4 days is generous. Carrier groups have poor defenses against massed attacks. Any carrier group defending Taiwan would be too close to China’s backyard to defend against ballistic missiles AND rapidly deployed surface ships AND larger numbers of aircraft, plus now the possibility of surface drones.
I think any attack on Taiwan would be made on the basis of overwhelming numbers before international support cut off resupply. Same with how China would swarm initial American support. Why the stuff about updating the Navy is important, to go wider on what we can field cheaply and quickly.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Oy vey!
Carlo Graziani
Another interesting observation in that Kofman and Lee piece is that the Russians have in fact been attempting Gerasimovian “active defense,” fighting in front of their defensive emplacements, instead of fighting from them, as Surovikhin had intended. As a result, they are taking many more casualties and wasting far more materiel than ought to be the case for an entrenched army “welcoming” an offensive on their defensive positions. In other words, the attritional battle is still probably working in Ukraine’s favor, despite their offensive role.
While refraining from explicit snark they say that Gerasimov “…has consistently demonstrated poor military judgment and a weak understanding of what Russian forces can and cannot do, most recently in the failed Russian winter offensive.”
This putz is in charge, while Surovikhin himself, thought to have sympathized with Prigozhin, has vanished from view since the Progozhin circus caravan tried to play Moscow. In some ways, Putin himself is one of the most valuable Ukrainian assets in this war.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
this might work,
https://nitter.net/NAFOMemesCenter/status/1698497646573281736#m
It’s the RuZZian tankers using tires to protect their heads meme
Sometimes with Nitter, you have to reload the link, sometimes several times, before it loads.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: This it?
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Yup. The upper right (#2 when cycling through).
Cheers,
Scott.
Anoniminous
Lots of chatter on Nitter the Ukrainians are now winning the artillery battle. The recently supplied cluster munitions are apparently doing the job.
Prescott Cactus
I don’t think we show up for the China – Taiwan bout.
Like USSR coming to the defense of Cuba it’s too far from us and too, too close to China. China has stepped up flights tightly encircling their air defense identification zone (ADIZ). Bayonet looking for bone? How much help other than resupply are we going to get from Japan and South Korea? Is Japan or South Korea going to supply human assets? Is South Korea going to worry about Kim attacking Seoul?
Along with threat from sea our Navy would be exposed to they would also be exposed to land based attacks from the Chinese coast. China strikes before we can get the planes gassed up and we send an apology to Taipei.
Just a civilian whose last military movie I watched was Stripes.
Carlo Graziani
In yesterday’s thread, we had a side-discussion of the significance of the slide in Chinese real estate values for the country’s economy (implicitly, also, for contagion to the West, the risk of which is long-term, but real enough). The issue that I raised was whether the Chinese government will have the technical adroitness required to manage the situation if a 2009-style deleveraging chain reaction—a debt-deflation spiral—should set in.
The NYT has an article up on the difficulties faced by Country Garden, the nation’s largest remaining real-estate conglomerate, which issues its own debt to on-shore and foreign investors (gift link). The article mostly discusses the company’s public vicissitudes, but it also contains this:
That is, Chinese regulators are determined to incentivize more private borrowing to prop up the real-estate market and its preferred players in that market. Which strongly suggests (to me, at least) that those regulators are blind to the risk of overleveraging, and are essentially recapitulating the Greenspan blunder of favoring the inflation of the RE market by encouraging unsustainable levels of private debt.
We shall see. Apparently there’s some not inconsiderable existing exposure by Wall Street firms to Country Garden’s bonds, but at this point it is likely that no further foreign RE bond acquisition is in the cards. So bondholders must be found on-shore. If the PRC financial regulators really are trying to connect those savings with more RE investment, they are, in my opinion, out of their minds, or simply incompetent.
Jay
https://nitter.net/GlasnostGone/status/1698717341486305645#m
Anonymous At Work
@Carlo Graziani: No, the regulators aren’t blind. The majority of “savings” in China are tied to real estate. People don’t have a 401k, they have extra condos. If the real estate market there undergoes a 2008 level correction, there’s going to be a ton of young men without jobs and old people without money.
And it’s not like those buildings have strong foundations, literally. Building codes are a joke in China. Regulators are pouring money into the market because…”Ha ha! I was secretly part of the revolution all along, so don’t shoot me!”
wjca
Sounds like a classic ultra short term fix, guaranteed to make the final crash worse. Right up there with giving a guy with a broken leg heavy pain meds, while declining to actually set and splint the leg. This does not end well for Xi.
There appear to be two questions:
I certainly wouldn’t want to bet on the Chinese army being the kind of corrupt and incompetent mess the Russian army turned out to be. But then, nobody much grasped just how bad the Russian army was until the Ukrainians bloodied their noses.
Prescott Cactus
@Carlo Graziani:
Agree. They will throw everything they can it this but the kitchen sink, which would be easy since there are so many unfinshed condos. This is a bubble which needs to burst, not slowly deflate. The pain and suffering would be brutal, but better than a long slow bone cancer like death.
Unlike our meltdown it shouldn’t be a worldwide meltdown. Some Wall Streeters will get bloodied up, but we aren’t that ted to them.
Villago Delenda Est
The classic authoritarian play when the domestic situation is going to shit is to focus on an outside conflict, in order to create domestic unity. You’d think Xi would know better, but…
Prescott Cactus
@Villago Delenda Est:
One thing that may keep Xi from going after Taiwan because of China’s cratering economy is that he’s seen what sanctions have done to Russky terrorists.
He may try and go before all the chip fabs are built up around the world. We need a fortune cookie (and a bowl of ice cream).
sdhays
I don’t know if Ukraine will take Melitopol this year, but I wouldn’t bet on them failing to take Tokmak and severing the “land bridge” in the next few months, either effectively or completely. Getting past the initial incredibly deep and dense mine fields in front of the main line has taken awhile, but the next phases seem likely to be different and Russia seems to have lost its edge in artillery, which has been one of its primary advantages thus far.
Jay
@Carlo Graziani:
You might enjoy this deep dive.
https://tnsr.org/2023/06/the-origins-of-the-iraqi-invasion-of-kuwait-reconsidered/
sdhays
@Anonymous At Work: I believe the unemployment, or at least underemployment, rate for young people in China is already very seriously high, and so far the response from the government is that the “kids” (who are really young adults) should stop whining and go work on a commune…
wjca
The question is, is he so focused on Taiwan that he goes that way? Or does he seize the moment and invent a pretext** to annex Siberia? The latter has the advantages that a) Russia is already being trashed at the far end of their country, so resources to oppose him there are probably close to nonexistent, lowering the risk. Whereas Taiwan has been building up their defenses for decades. Also, b) nobody else is likely to offer to leap to Russia’s defense. Whereas Taiwan not only has allies, it has a lot of countries whose economies are tied to the world’s premier source to chips.
** Probably even more threadbare than Russia’s justification for attacking Ukraine. But I don’t see that mattering much.
divF
@wjca: Not a chance of China going after Siberia. Russia has nuclear weapons and this really would be a mortal threat to Russia.
sdhays
@wjca: The reasons for invading Taiwan are simply national pride. “Taiwan is a part of China, full stop.” is what they’ve been claiming for decades, and the mainland population mostly accepts and agrees. China could get most of what it wants from Taiwan by giving up its demands on its sovereignty, but that would be humiliating for any government in Beijing, so it can’t happen without duress (which wouldn’t end the conflict anyway).
And why on earth would China want to invade Siberia? They can control everything they want up there without firing a shot, especially the weaker and more isolated Russia becomes.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Chinese households are not overly leveraged. The majority have spent the post-pandemic months deleveraging by paying off their mortgages early (which is what we did). If anything, they are far too under leveraged because they are saving & not spending (& fewer businesses want to take on loans from the banks), which is causing the liquidity constraints affecting the Chinese economy.
These policy loosening wrt property purchases are reversing some of the extremely onerous restrictions enacted since 2012, made in repeated efforts to slow the RE bubble (policies that the US failed to implement pre-GFC): only residents w/ local hukou can purchase property locally, only 2 properties allowed per household, 25% downpayment required for the 1st property bought by the household & 50% downpayment for the 2nd, no mortgages issued for the 3rd property & beyond (in cities where more than 2 / household is allowed), relatively high mortgage rates. These restrictions are being unwound to prevent a seizure in the RE market during the delicate phase of economic/financial restructuring, not to reflate the RE sector. There is no expectation in China, among HHs, RE industry or local governments, that the policy loosening will bring prosperity to the RE sector again, at best it will merely provide enough support so that it does not collapse complete, & that would be success.
The “3 Red Line” measures (dictating the max allowed ratios of debt to profits, equity & asset for RE developers) implemented in Fall 2020 have decisively popped the expectation of real estate being a one way bet for the Chinese HHs, which was the whole point of the exercise. The government has held firm on the “3 Red Lines” even as major developers such as Evergrand (remember how it was supposed to bring down the Chinese economy in 2021?) & Country Garden face bankruptcy. The Chinese government has acted & will act to prevent contagion to the rest of the financial system & the larger economy, if necessary providing financing to complete the housing constructions in already progress (which HHs have prepaid for), but it has made clear that it will not rescue the individual developers (whether state owned or private) w/o significant restructuring of debt & big haircuts to domestic & foreign creditors.
Unless there is a prolonged housing price inflation again, well off Chinese HHs will not invest in properties as means to preserve their savings & grow their assets any longer. Meanwhile, the loosening restrictions will help the younger 1st time buyers whose property purchase is more of a necessity than an investment, so they do not have to dip so much into their savings to make that 1st purchase (& so that they would have more money left for other consumption). There is a strong social stigma in China associated w/ not owning one’s own home, which can affect one’s marriage prospects (though that is slowly changing because young people are rebelling against the stress caused by the social stigma). There is still significant demand for housing in China, urbanization probably still has another decade to run. Some HHs are holding off upgrading to better housing, waiting for the prices to drop further. The same is happening in the auto sector, all foreign & domestic marques are engaged in a vicious price war in all ICE & EV price segments, as they fight to survive the inevitable coming industry shake out & consolidation in China (failure will threaten their viability as globally relevant companies).
The financial reform going forward is to establish better functioning & more sophisticated bond markets so that Chinese HHs can park their savings in corporate & local government bonds for moderate return (as opposed to low yield bank accounts or boosting the RE bubble), & the capital can then be put to work generating more productive economic activity (outside of RE). That is a very difficult challenge for Xi & the CPC regime, as they have to over come inertia & vested interests built up over the past 2 decades, & local governments accustomed to selling land usage rights as a ready source of revenue.
One cannot analyze Chinas mixed economy through the lens of Western capitalistic economies, nor Chinese HH behavior using assumptions transported from Western HH behavior. The Chinese government has far greater ability & capacity to intervene at both the micro & the macro levels. It is certainly not immune to policy mistakes, but it has been far more willing to intervene to at least slow the development of distortions, & its policies need to be viewed in the context of the problem they are trying to solve, the distortions they are trying to correct, & how effective they are likely to be in solving (or at least alleviating) the problems.
If you go in w/ the assumption that the CPC regime doesn’t know what it is doing, and all of its policies are viewed through that lens, then your analysis will go astray. As I mentioned in a reply to Another Scott yesterday, this is not the CPC regime’s 1st rodeo dealing with challenging economic conditions. Repeated at the policymaker level, the US will lose the Great Power Competition w/ China. & if the PRC is such a hapless competitor, why then does the US need to wage a trade war, a tech war, & possibly escalating to a new Cold War to see off this competition, w/ their inevitable collateral damage?
Western commentary on Chinese economy has schizophrenically alternated between bust & boom, & many in the West are then surprised that China has become a peer competitor, defying the expectations of bust, even while not living up to the expectations of boom. There has never been any accountability for people making predictions, they just keep on w/ no impact to their credibility, often keep making the exact same arguments (w/ the hope that this time it will finally be true). In the meantime, they can sell books & write articles. Of course, that lack of accountability is not unique to China Watching.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yeah, since 2002 been hearing about empty cities and a real estate bust every year, still hasn’t happened.
YY_Sima Qian
@sdhays: As I wrote in a reply yesterday, the urban 16 – 23 cohort facing unemployment are those who are not attending upper middle school/trade school, and those who attended upper middle school/trade school but not attending university/vocational college. They represent a tiny fraction of China’s overall labor force, & a small minority of the urban 16 – 24 age cohort overall. They are the most unskilled & the most inexperienced labor in the market, thus least sought after, except for the kind of mind numbing/back breaking menial work that they do not want to do. So they choose to “lie flat”of they cannot find a job that satisfy their desires.
Structurally, they are the ones most impacted by the gradual reduction in the demand for construction labor since 2013, by the rapidly increasing automation (Industrialization 4.0), & most vulnerable to being laid off/least likely to be hired during times of economic uncertainty (such as through the pandemic). The challenges that Chinese youths face are not unlike what their counterparts across the world face.
OTOH, unemployment rate for the urban 23 – 30 cohort has remained stable in China over the past several years, at least according to official Chinese statistics. Chinese unemployment data is notorious for their unreliability, but one still needs to justify why one chooses to believe the official employment statistics for the urban 16 – 23 cohort, & not for the urban 23 – 30 cohort.
Job market for the college graduates is tough this year, too, but not to nearly the same degree as the urban 16 – 23 cohort who are in the market.
There is also the issue of discrepancy in definitions of what makes one in the jobs market. China defines someone as in the jobs market if he/she has searched for work w/in the past 6 mo. & can start w/in 2 wks. IRCC, the US definition is someone who has searched for work in the past 3 mo. & can start immediately. The former definition will produce a higher unemployment rate than the latter.
wjca
Maybe I’m just a bit slow. But if losing Siberia constitutes a mortal threat to Russia, seems like there is something significant there. Perhaps China could control it indirectly. But my take on Xi is that he prefers ownership and occupation to mere indirect control.
As for the nuclear weapons issue, China has a few of those itself. If the Chinese tried to cross the Urals, that would be a whole different story. But for miles and miles of tundra, with damn few people? (Most of them not actual ethnic Russian, although there might be some Ukrainian prisoners, I suppose.) Like Putin’s threats to use tactical nukes in Ukraine,** probably bluff and bluster.
** Similarly, if Ukraine was successful in reclaiming its territory, even including Crimea, probably no nukes. Likewise merely shelling Russian facilities. But if it looked like the Ukrainian army was just going to keep rolling across Russia? Again, a whole different story.
wjca
Just to be clear, I don’t see Xi invading either.
Captain C
@divF: Not to mention China can already get Siberia’s resources on the relatively cheap, and has none of the expense and bother of governing it.
Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom
So Erdogan went to Sochi to palaver with his war criminal pal. (Fuck that UN arsehole. Not a word about the stolen children. Nada!) As you can probably guess, the various news channels have been covering this meeting wall to wall, & I’m sorry to report, it’s not good. Putler’s demands are outrageous, especially coming from a genocidal fascist. Erdogan has said he will do his best to bring Putin back to reality, but I can’t see that happening. TL;Dr The grain deal is well & truly dead. Russia is already shipping the grain promised to sundry African countries through Turkey, & I can’t see anyone in Turkey doing anything to stop that. Bluntly, they’re still picking up the pieces from the earthquakes & need all the money & trade they can get. Realpolitik strikes again.🙄
Chetan Murthy
@wjca: IIUC, East of the Urals is where most of RU’s exploitable natural resources are. E.g. oil/gas. Doubt they’d be willing to give those up to China.
YY_Sima Qian
@Jay: Well, the RE sector is undergoing a tough correction, & it would be a bust if not for the micro-level interventions by local & central governments. There are RE developments that will never realize any value & government planed new districts that will fail to take off, but they are not necessarily representative.
Most of the past Western analysis have failed to reckon w/ the fact that China has been undergoing an urbanization at world historical scale, & China has been building infrastructure & public goods at an earlier stage of development that JPN/TW/SK in theirs. What is empty today may not be empty next year, or in 5 years. Housing, physical infrastructure & public goods have useful lives measured in decades, if not a century.
Chinese urban development/planning follow the axiom “if you build it, they will come”. So a freshly constructed district may seem empty because the internal furbishing is still ongoing & no one have moved in, yet. Then the government often jump start the vitalization of new districts by forcing government offices & SOEs to relocate there, mandating the top hospitals & public schools to open satellite campuses there, mandating university to move there or open new campuses there. New factories & offices are diverted to the new district by incentives. Then people start to move in to shorten the commute & take advantage of the lower housing costs, better quality of construction, as well as less crowded living conditions. Businesses large & small move in to cater to the new clientele.
It also makes sense to front load on fixed assets that have long usable lives, when labor is cheap, construction cost is low, financing is cheap (or at least could be), & land acquisition cost is low. Otherwise, see the recent experience in the US, the UK, Canada & Western Europe for building/upgrading physical infrastructure.
This works more often than not during the peak phase of China’s urbanization. However, as Chinese urbanization enters its final decade, such greenfield developments have to be reined in, or there will be a plethora of ghost cities.
Jay
@YY_Sima Qian:
In Canada, the Feds and the Provinces tend to spend on infrastructure when the economy is doing well, and slash budgets in a recession. As a result, they build what should have been built in the last recession, (at a price premium) which of course, given the project timelines, means what they built, is way behind the boom.
On the bright side, in BC we haven’t had a RE collapse since the late 80’s.
On the other hand, with the Fed’s abandoning social housing in the 70’s, and the Provinces screwing it up since the 80’s, we have unaffordable housing and a housing crisis.
Geminid
@Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom: Erdogan had a news conference today about the Sochi summit and other subjects like Syria. He had some interesting things to say but nothing too momentous.
Erdogan still thinks the Grain Initiative will be restarted. He may be counting on the UN and Western countries meeting Russia halfway on questions like Russia’s Agribank accessing the SWIFT payments system. Many people find this unnacceptable, but someone pointed out that there is an sanctions exemption for Russian nuclear fuel, and asked why European power companies can pay though the SWIFT system and grain importers cannot.
In any event, we’ll know before too long if the Black Sea Grain Initiative is truly dead. In the meantime, I saw a report that 4 grain ships are taking the inshore route from Ukraine to the Bosporus. Russia hasn’t seemed to interfere yet, but this will be worth watching.
wjca
@Geminid:
Might be kinda dicey if they hit a ship inside the 3 mile limit of a NATO country.
Geminid
@wjca: I think the territorial limit is 12 miles now, but you are right.
Mines could be a particular problem. Turkiye has the requisite minesweepers to keep the inshore route open and the frigates and warplanes to protect them, but for now at least, Erdogan is pushing for the safer play of inducing Russia to rejoin the Grain Initiative.
Personally, I’d like to see Russia and Turkiye duke it out in the Black Sea, but that’s easy for me to say from central Virginia.
This morning German commentator Tendar put up an interesting piece on Erdogan and Putin, on Twitter.