21932

What still interests me the most is what Russia (or I guess Putin) will do going forward. Nothing so far seems to have given them much forward momentum; quite the contrary. At what point does either Putin do something drastic, or someone else do something drastic to Putin? Or, as we’ve also discussed, is this one of those weird things where what seems to be an unsustainable status quo is, in fact, sustainable, because we really are not understanding the psychology of those involved?

21933

I suspect the hope now is to sustain the war to avoid a loss, and hope it wears down Ukraine so there’s some kind of agreement to end the war and Russia ends with a bit more of Ukraine than they had before. That will be a victory as framed by Putin.

But who knows? Putin needs a victory, not a loss. He’s happy to sacrifice lives to get it. If he can avoid a bullet to the head this can go on for some time. And he seems to be quite careful.

21934

Putin thinks that his strength and Russia’s strength is the willingness to spend many lives to achieve political aims. He’s perfectly willing to exhaust Ukraine and the West by giving them hundreds of thousands of Russians to kill.

21935

I love how Putin is betting his country on the idea that the American government will prove unwilling to shovel ever more money into the military industrial complex. Brilliant plan my guy. Let’s see how it works out for you.

21936

I guess for now you don’t even need to understand any psychology. When Russia started mobilization it was clearly an admittance of troubles. But for now the frontline has stabilized and Russia can report a dozen HIMARS destroyed daily and explain how they successfully defend against the might of the whole NATO. No new developments for now, any country can live in this state for decades probably.

21937
21938

Thanks for the update and thanks again for organizing all of this, it clearly has been a lot of work.

21939

Celebrating the New Year, Russian style:

21940

This is a bit disingenuous. Nobody is “pro-Russia” here.

There are varying levels in confidence in Russia’s ability to continue this war effort. That is important to say here, that Janster has always said that he hopes that Ukraine will win this conflict, and he is just more on the devil’s advocate side of the argument.

While I definitely don’t agree with everything he has said, it is very important for us to remember that we are seeing a very specifically pro-western curated version of this war. I would argue that our western sources are much more reliable (this is an understatement) than anything Russia has, but we are being fed propaganda from Ukraine as well.

The offenses and taking back of territory have been great, but Ukraine is taking heavy losses as well, and we have to remember that Russia absolutely has the manpower to crush Ukraine, just in terms of military and population size. The question is, do they have the talent technology or willpower to do so? The answer to that seems to be a resounding “No”. The years of corruption, bad training, and poor equipment upkeep have ruined them from the talent and technology aspect. The willpower is also going to come into question now, as Ukraine continues to hold strong and have major support from western allies. Willpower might also continue to wane as the stacks of coffins return to Russia month after month.

The worrying thing to me is, in a major war of attrition with artillery, Russia has an advantage on paper. They can continue to throw poor Ivans from Siberia at the line while pounding Ukrainian infrastructure to the ground. This reduces the fight to willpower, will the Ukrainian citizen without water and power still support Ukraine? (The answer right now is a HUGE yes) What about 12 months with no power water or plumbing? Whether Russia have enough ammo or weaponry keep this up is a big question, but they certainly give 0 shitskis about the human lives they are costing. Ukraine does not have the luxury of a massive pool of bodies they can throw on the line. They need to continue to fight hard and smart.

I still think this ends with Russia giving up, because western support has made Ukraine’s talent and technology advantage so high that even at a numbers disadvantage Ukraine’s army and citizens willpower can’t be beaten.

21941

And I remember her saying that Russian propagandists seem nervous and the situation changes. See? They’re as determined as ever.

21942

I suppose. Can they sustain the sort of losses they are suffering, and more importantly, can they sustain the public, social-media driven exposure of those losses on a daily basis? That seems more the question.

21943

But exposure where? I have to assume very little is making it to the Russian people, otherwise they would have opened Putin’s top floor window months ago.

21944

And here we do need some psychological explanations cause it seems hard for you to imagine Russians know they lost thousands of people for questionable gains but do not demand the government to resign.

21945

Feeding the potentially rebellious to the meat grinder is one way of retaining power if you don’t mind a little blood on yer hands.

21946

It seems like this has been the plan, or at least if not the potentially rebellious, they are sending people from rural areas out to the front lines. People with less social and political connections.

Things probably will look a lot different if they start mobilizing the guys living in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

Sending the poor and marginalized off to fight wars for you… How very American!

21947

There, FTFY. It’s been this way ever since the dark ages man, everywhere.

21948

“We’ve always done it this way!” is not a great way to excuse yourself, especially when there are other countries with more egalitarian military service programs.

21949

That is the question. We don’t know, do we? I mean, we see evidence of dissent sometimes, but we also see evidence of a lot of lack of information or lack of concern about the information. Are Russians getting info from outside but the info isn’t resonating, for various reasons? Are they not getting it? The answers are important, because if they are getting access to the outside infosphere, and choosing not to believe, that’s a totally different situation than if they have not been getting access at all. In the latter case, theoretically at least, exposing them to the outside world could cause a seismic shift.

In truth, who knows?

True enough, but at some point, one would think that they actually need those people to, you know, grow food and make stuff and what not.

21950

Those are problems for tomorrow comrade!

We can get children to work on the farms no?

21951

Eh, the agricultural sector of Russia is much like that of the US… it is hugely automated and involves a very small percentage of the population.

As for making stuff… with what? And for whom? Russian authorities are probably very happy to have unhappily laid-off factory workers conscripted.