22852

Or at least this could be like the “bowl of M&Ms with no brown ones” riders at a rock concert. You look at your clean-shaven private and feel assured that he’s not broadcasting your location via his cell phone to Ukrainian artillery.

Unless he was so busy shaving that he forgot to secure his phone.

22853

CNN live updater has some info from a Ukrainian intelligence report regarding Wagner forces in Bakhmut.

It goes on to say that Wagner infantry are not allowed to carry wounded off the field and must continue the assault.

So, yeah, I would imagine Russian casualty rates are probably a little higher than the AFU’s.

22854

Send the tanks!

22855

Poor Ukrainian logistics.

22856

I gather the Abrams can run on a variety of fuels but they’ve been pretty much run entirely on aviation fuel for their lifespan, hopefully they can just smack some diesel in them and they run…

22857

Yeah, the Abrams has a specially designed gas turbine that you can fuel with almost anything.

22858

Including Russian tears, I hope.

22859

One of my good friends was a tank driver/gunner in the early 90s and he was always going off about how wonderful the M1’s turbine engine was .

“It can run on anything! Even cooking oil!”

Did you guys ever run yours on cooking oil?

“What? Hell no, we would have spent a week cleaning the gunk out of the turbines if we had done that!”

22860

I’m totally certain these guys care about their own wounded and make sure to evacuate them and get them the proper medical care!

22861

I have to imagine they’ll be very selective in their actual usage to try to avoid running into major problems. But just knowing they are in theatre is going to have a psychological impact on the Russians for sure. Inflatable Abrams will probably be way more common on the battlefield than real ones.

22862

I would imagine alcohol would be both plentiful and effective as fuel.

22863

There’s a paywall so I don’t know details beyond the headline.

EDIT: According to quotes from others I’ve seen on social media (grain of salt), these would be Leopard 2A6s.

22864

I was listening to some podcasts (I think the NYTimes The Daily) and someone mentioned that the real concern from the Biden administration is the retrofitting required to remove sensitive technology from the Abrams tanks vs actually being all the concerned around the fuel logistics.

I guess the older M1 tank is a compromise here?

22865

If they have older M1s in storage that are ready to run, then that would be the best option if sensitive tech is a concern.

What I don’t understand after all this time is why Putin, who seems to be entrenched no matter what happens, doesn’t just say “We thought there were Nazis. We got rid of them. We’re leaving now.” and act like it never happened? He could easily spin it his own way and have the Olympics and F1 back before he’s dead along with McDonald’s and everyone else. Crimea might even remain as his accomplishment.

It’s clear to me that he cannot actually win this conflict. Unless he and everyone in power are ready to use nuclear weaponry, it really looks like this is already over except for more bloodshed to get to the endgame, which could be even worse than the above “failure” which in true Trumpian manner, would probably not look like a failure at all to the Russian people because they seem to eat up all the propaganda.

22866

I think the problem is the middle ground. Up front, the decision to declare victory would be relatively easy I think, and immediately result in at the very least a lot less destruction of Russian stuff and, well, Russians. It could be spun at home pretty well too. In the long term, the story of the war could be spun in all sorts of ways, and people’s memories (well, probably not the Ukrainians’ memories in this case, or those of Russian families who lost people, but still) are often short.

No, it’s that period of time between the cessation of hostilities and the creation of the mythology that scares Putin. That’s where he gets seen as a murderous, and ineffective, thug who couldn’t even beat a former SSR with the full might of Russia behind him. I don’t think Putin can take that hit to the ego.

22867

He’s too deep in it to be able to step back and do something logical like that.

I wonder if the US could strike a deal with any of the operators of Abrams to ship some of their stock to Ukraine in exchange for new units from the US in the future? Presumably the exported version has less sensitive tech?

22868

I don’t think that’s at all clear. Equipping and training a smaller army can help a lot, but at the end of the day if Russia is willing to throw enough people at the problem and just bear the cost of a long grinding war then they still have a path to a win.

22869

I agree it’s strange, but I don’t think reintegration is in the cards, for numerous reasons. Whatever he goes for, there’s nothing Putin can or will do to uninvade Ukraine, or make us forget about Russian behavior over the last 20 years.

It’s clear now that Russia is a 19th century power that is purely about strategic opportunism to expand their borders, and who feel that blood and iron are the only true measures of a country. They have to be treated as such.

I think the fact that they aren’t backpedaling yet is an indication that they genuinely don’t believe they’ve lost at this point.

People paint the Russians as cartoon characters, for good reason - Prigozhin genuinely looks like someone who would spend entirely too much time trying to kill a pesky wabbet - but in the real world they’re not actually trying to lose, and they will do whatever they can to win.

So that probably means more mobilization and a push. After that we’ll know more about their options, although I suspect they’ll keep trying for as long as they’re able.

Some people are calling this a global ordering war. Once it ends, we will have to find an entirely new order under which to live with the Russians, which is also why it would be incredibly stupid of us not to pressure them as much as we dare right now, without risking adverse outcomes.

We need to act like there’s nothing of theirs that we want, including normal relations, and we need the Ukrainians to humiliate them as much as possible on the battlefield, because all of that adds up to leverage we will use in negotiations after the war.

I suspect that we will want to prevent Russia from collapsing completely (because civil war + nukes is a wild party) and I suspect that we’ll opt for some solution that maintains a strictly transactional relationship, possibly for something like gas or whatever we need. Sort of a Saddam-Iraq model.

How much we choose to humiliate them after the war is highly disputed. The right wing (by which I mean classic Republicans, not the Putin-romancers) want to turn them into Weimar Germany - which ironically speaks to Putins point about this having been the goal of the US all along - while the centre and left tend to have more concern for how that might play out long term, and are considerably more deterred by the prospect of a Russian break-up.

But I don’t think anyone beyond the worst loonies on the left and right are angling for anything that resembles normalization.

/edit/ I should’ve added that the left is also concerned with strengthening American hegemony

22870

You mean they have a path to a longer and even more grinding occupation/guerilla conflict.

22871

Even if they do win somehow, they lose. Occupying a wrecked country that will be a constant drain on their resources is hardly the ticket to renewed global respect power and relevance.