20722

They really started when they saw things going south, that took a bit of time, and they had actual laws limiting mass mobilization, those had to be repealed…even in Russia this takes time.

We already saw them increasing their recruiting drive in april-may, but unleashing total mobilisation needed some actual lawmaking to be done or something.

I also see they have mostly taken those 300k that they got now, and shipped them untrained to the front, its still a shit show btw…but they are arriving en masse…
I don’t think we will see any protests until they have to start taking young educated men from the bigger suburbs…for now, they are using fodder that most are okay with being used up there.

20723

To be sure, Russia screwed up royally by being overconfident (as well as corrupt and inept in many ways), and not actually planning or preparing for a war. We know, from what the USSR and its allies were able to do in the Cold War, that they can with enough time and focus prep pretty damn well for a war. They managed to assemble plenty of supplies and logistic support for GSFG back in the day, and nothing I’ve seen since the end of the USSR has convinced me that the Soviet Union would have been unable to prosecute a war more or less effectively (though for how long is another issue of course). So it’s not unreasonable to think that had Putin actually gone to his military and intelligence people and worked up a real plan over several months at least, including stockpiling, training, and all that, that Russia could have probably won this thing early and pretty decisively.

So it is not totally unreasonable to think they might now be able to turn things around. I don’t see any real indication of that, but it would be foolish to think they won’t learn from mistakes to an extent (the extent possible with their existing limitations, which are mostly due to Putinism).

20724

s-l400

So… You are actually saying this, but you don’t see the obvious problem?

The thing is, in the best of cases, the Society military was inferior to NATO. In the limited cases where we saw a soviet style military force fight against NATO forces in the last 30 years, NATO has crushed them.

Russia’s military is simply a joke compared to US forces, not just technologically, but clearly when it comes to just basic training and discipline.

And Ukraine is essentially fighting with US technology and training. And that’s why they are beating the Russians despite all expectations… Because we expected Russia to not suck. But they do suck.

Can Russia turn all that around and fix it?

No. No, they cannot.

In ideal circumstances, making that kind of shift would have been immensely difficult for the Russians to achieve… And really, virtually impossible to achieve in combination with the fundamental corruption of their entire government.

Now? After suffering massive losses of their best personnel and equipment? While under huge economic sanctions from the entire world?

No, Russia is fucked. They cannot win.

20725

I’d say theoretically they could, but the reality is that their society and government isn’t going to allow it to happen.
And we’re talking about a change that in the best case would take the better part of a decade.

Ukraine managed something similar in 8 years, with a lot of outside help and big changes.
But existential threats are a lot more galvanizing than dictatorial foreign adventures.

20726

Yeah Timex, there are problems dumping 300k on the frontlines, I’m not arguing that, I’m just saying thats what they are DOING…and it will be a fucking tragedy not only to Russia but also Ukraine.

Russias military is a joke, but not compared to Ukraine, no arguments there compared to the US.

Can they fix it, I don’t know, maybe, they are sure going to try…like real HARD LIKE…

20727

No man, we have witnessed over the past number of months that Russia’s military is indeed a joke compared to Ukraine’s.

This is no longer an academic discussion of theory.

This is now a matter of historical fact.

20728

Not really, I mean you yourself have mentioned the notion and discussed sources that have covered how all the legalistic stuff is bullshit. They are mobilizing as many men as they can. The barriers are not legal. Heck, there have been “volunteers” illegally serving in the invasion of Ukraine from the start. Remember when Putin was oh so very angry to find out volunteers were in fact participating in the special military operation and that gambling was going on here?

20729

Yes, it is, and it is.

What are you arguing again?

20730

There was an actual law saying mobilized troops cannot be used for invasions in other countries…uhm thats a thing…

They still circumvented it as far as it could, but it had to be addressed which it was in September or something

As for Ukraine vs Russia, I am never going to question Ukranian courage, that is some impressive shit, however training wise, they were inferior and just as corrupt to begin with. That said, they had been at war for a good while, and Russia underestimated them big time.

Right now, casualty figures are about 100k on each side…with Russia trading armor for lives.
They also started this with parity or maybe a slight numbers disadvantage.

I remember the first foreign warriors coming to Ukraine was complaining about how shit their military was…compared to …eh US maybe…

Also, I think US generals are guiding Ukraine a -lot- I don’t think their own leaders are very capable in some respects, atleast not in the beginning…maybe now.

20732

No man, both sides have lost a100k men each… And the Russians have lost a massive amount more armor and equipment than the Ukrainians have.

And the Ukrainians are getting resupplied by the West. Russia has no real mechanism for replacing that lost equipment, as their industrial base is garbage.

20733

Yeah, i ment 100k on each side, but those losses would have been higher for Russia if they had less armored units.

I agree, Russia cannot replace their shit, and I’m hoping that won’t change…rumours have they lack 300k workers in their factories or something. I don’t know if China will step up and supply them, maybe but they are asking Iran and not China…so…

What a fucking calamity this war is.

20734

Oh God this breaks me heart. I wish I could have them come here and be safe under my roof. If she has CF, this is such an incredibly dangerous situation for her.

20735

This is the rotten to the core system Putin has fostered over the last twenty years to benefit him and the powers backing him. They aren’t drastically changing that with Putin at the top and the same government in place. This is the thing I’m most confident about predicting with all of this. Sure they’ve managed to fix some issues at some level, but they won’t fundamentally fix the deep corruption that has rotted the military too. That’s just not how things work.

20736

I think it’s dangerous to retcon the Cold War and base a theoretical Soviet performance then on Russian performance now. There are some structural weaknesses that perhaps we didn’t realize, that would have affected a NATO/Warsaw Pact war, but I do think the USSR era Russian military was a lot better than today’s force. For one, they had more men continually under arms and in training. For another, they had an entire state industrial economy devoted mostly to making war goods of some sort. And because of the situation, being on the inter-German border, they could leverage the memories of the Great Patriotic War far better than anything Putin is able to do. Morale would have been fine for the initial phase of the war at least, probably better and longer lasting than in the war with Ukraine (though there is reason to believe their plans were to win big quick because they knew as @Timex says without a quick victory, their only hope was nukes.

20737

There will never be enough money left in the husk of Russia which survives this war, to pay the reparations needed to make Ukraine whole after all this destruction of their infrastructure and people.

20738

They were terrible in 2014 and horribly corrupt, but it’s clear they’ve worked HARD to address those issues over the last 8 years. Sure they’ve had a lot of Western training over that time too but they’ve also clearly taken those lessons incredibly seriously and adopted whatever reforms were necessary to put that stuff into place. That’s no small feat.

As for the US generals providing direct guidance or leadership for the war, there have been a number of stories recently about the early war that have reported the Ukrainians were they incredibly secretive with their defense plans and the US generals felt shut out of it all. Since then they’ve built some trust but still don’t seem super close. I sure thought like you that there was a ton of integrated help at the high levels from early on, but I’m not sure what the point of making up this kind of story would be. There was a lot of frustration apparent from the US side in those statements.

20739

The big thing the US gave to Ukraine, aside from tech, is that we started training them like we train our own guys, starting in 2014.

And that way of training soldiers is the way to do it.

20740

Yes, but most importantly they totally bought into that training.

20741

THEY HAVENT

20742

Reparations will never happen. RUssia would nuke before paying anything.

I think the red nuclear lines for Russia are direct NATO attack into Russia or loss of Crimea.