Seems like there’s a difference between strength on paper and usefully deployable strength. Perhaps you don’t really know the numbers until you have to do it for real. Like anything really.

Russia can’t pretend it’s a small-scale operation instead of total war if they mobilize.

More importantly, if they show they need mobilization to fight Ukraine after months of preparation and in ideal circumstances they’re not even a regional power and all pretence of being a big boy is gone.

Plus, now it’s not even clear if this will help. They’ve sent professionals there. Russian conscript training is very light and mobilised troops are going to desert or die en masse.

I can’t remember if anyone posted something on this already, but some relatively good news

More greeting the liberators.

I assumed this was more for political rather than military purposes. To demonstrate to the home audience that Russia isn’t isolated; it has a powerful team of allies / vassals ready to answer the call.

They are also considering sanctions and are sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine. (Blue check account.)

Definitely also a possibility, but it might also be quicker for the Russians to activate Belarussian forces and get them to the frontline (or hold them in reserve) given their proximity.

I don’t know anything about the Chechen army under the Russians, but they’re being cast as very brutal guys with combat experience, so probably more of an asset than Russian conscripts.

RIA news agency mistakenly published and quickly yanked an article celebrating Russia’s quick and decisive victory on Saturday morning. Nothing surprising if you have been following Putin’s writings and speeches, but a good summation of myths and grievances used as justification for the invasion.

More footage of the welcome parade in Berdyansk

I was thinking about that yesterday. This is decidedly a 20th century war, taking place in the 21st century.

Who would choose to obliterate their own economy and waste all of their political capital for land, in this day and age?

Israel sort of toys with that at times, but their reasons are more complex, and they stop well short of going this far.

Here is the google translation of the Victory in Ukraine piece you mentioned - its very readable… and utter madness to a 21st century western reader.

Translation

Petr Akopov

A new world is being born before our eyes. Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has ushered in a new era - and in three dimensions at once. And of course, in the fourth, internal Russian. Here begins a new period both in ideology and in the very model of our socio-economic system - but this is worth talking about separately a little later.
Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but would also be cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.

Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the insane versions that “only Ukraine is the real Russia,” or to gnash one’s teeth helplessly, remembering the times when “we lost Ukraine.” Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum.

Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. In what borders, in what form will the alliance with Russia be fixed (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus )? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.
And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia’s relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe . And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise.

Did someone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin , seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kiev ? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which happened according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools.
More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin’s Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning.

Now the West is trying to punish Russia for the fact that it returned, for not justifying its plans to profit at its expense, for not allowing the expansion of the western space to the east. Seeking to punish us, the West thinks that relations with it are of vital importance to us. But this has not been the case for a long time - the world has changed, and this is well understood not only by Europeans, but also by the Anglo-Saxons who rule the West. No amount of Western pressure on Russia will lead to anything. There will be losses from the sublimation of confrontation on both sides, but Russia is ready for them morally and geopolitically. But for the West itself, an increase in the degree of confrontation incurs huge costs - and the main ones are not at all economic.
Europe, as part of the West, wanted autonomy - the German project of European integration does not make strategic sense while maintaining the Anglo-Saxon ideological, military and geopolitical control over the Old World. Yes, and it cannot be successful, because the Anglo-Saxons need a controlled Europe. But Europe needs autonomy for another reason as well — in case the States go into self-isolation (as a result of growing internal conflicts and contradictions) or focus on the Pacific region, where the geopolitical center of gravity is moving.

But the confrontation with Russia, into which the Anglo-Saxons are dragging Europe, deprives the Europeans of even the chance of independence - not to mention the fact that in the same way Europe is trying to impose a break with China . If now the Atlanticists are happy that the “Russian threat” will unite the Western bloc, then in Berlin and Paris they cannot fail to understand that, having lost hope for autonomy, the European project will simply collapse in the medium term. That is why independent-minded Europeans are now completely uninterested in building a new iron curtain on their eastern borders - realizing that it will turn into a corral for Europe. Whose century (more precisely, half a millennium) of global leadership is over in any case - but various options for its future are still possible.
Because the construction of a new world order - and this is the third dimension of current events - is accelerating, and its contours are more and more clearly visible through the spreading cover of Anglo-Saxon globalization. A multipolar world has finally become a reality - the operation in Ukraine is not capable of rallying anyone but the West against Russia. Because the rest of the world sees and understands perfectly well - this is a conflict between Russia and the West, this is a response to the geopolitical expansion of the Atlanticists, this is Russia’s return of its historical space and its place in the world.

China and India , Latin America and Africa , the Islamic world and Southeast Asia - no one believes that the West leads the world order, much less sets the rules of the game. Russia has not only challenged the West, it has shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over. The new world will be built by all civilizations and centers of power, naturally, together with the West (united or not) - but not on its terms and not according to its rules.

I found the article on Russian intelligence leading up to the invasion and Rob Lee interview @draxen posted this morning (Euro time) quite helpful in that regard.

That’s what is baffling me. I don’t know why Russia needs to do this, other than to swing their dicks around. What does Ukraine have that Russia wants or needs?

And here is Thomas de Waal’s trawl through it. Fascinating: https://twitter.com/Tom_deWaal/status/1498310065773809665

I haven’t studied it, but I know the RAF lost several Tornados attempting to Durandel Iraqi runways during Desert Storm. To the point where they called it off because it simply wasn’t worth it. Iraq could repair runways, and any planes that did get in the air were either shot down or fled to Iran.

Resources?
Proximity to Russia.
Democracy
Injured pride

In 2020, I started learning Russian, on and off. I’m finding it difficult. A good friend and Army Reserve colleague suggested I learn it in Ukraine, instead of Russia.

I was originally going to go do an intensive course in St.Petersburg, but the equivalent course in Kiev or Odessa is a fraction of the price, like 1/4.

I did not do the course because my partner is Spanish, and I wanted her to have the ability to come to England with me whenever, which meant she had to be a UK resident (Brexit related issue, had we not done this, she would have been able to come for only 3 months at a time,) and to have been so before January 2021. So in December we moved to the UK, and we have spent the time since then installing ourselves and earning/studying.

Had Brexit not occurred, or more specifically, had this residential requirement not been necessary due to Brexit, there is every chance I would have been in the Ukraine right now, and there is a strong part of me that wants to go. :(

Anyway, there are some people elsewhere claiming that the Ukraine government was basically installed by the CIA, which I find to be an interesting notion.

Thoughts?

IT does occur to me that the likely result of all of this is precisely the isolation and unity against Russia that Putin claims to be fighting against.

In the case of Bosnia and Kosovo, the populations generally wanted the Western forces there, too.

Good quote! I saw one yesterday along the lines of:

Russia seems to have forgotten its best fighters in WW2 were from Ukraine

Damned if I can find where I saw it, too much information flood.

Further responding to my earlier posts:

Michael Kofman makes the argument for view 2:

This is a good military that is choosing to deviate from its preferred way of fighting.