Ukraine's War Of Independence, Vol. III
Ukraine's War Of Independence, Vol. III
An annotated link post
This is the third annotated link post of my analysis of the war in Ukraine covering events since the end of the Battle of Kherson. Volume I is here. Volume II is here.
23 November 2022. After you have been high on your own supply for long enough, quitting cold turkey is hard. For some hardcore addicts, it is too hard.
2 December 2022. Perhaps the most surprising finding in the report is the deep vulnerability of Russian forces to deception campaigns as long as they are not subtle. Ukraine had to telegraph their Kherson offensive for months to stimulate a response in Moscow.
9 December 2022. Cannons are hungry, like dragons. Either feed the guns or watch them eat your whole kingdom.
20 December 2022. The misfortune of being alive in Vladimir Putin’s Russia is that one cannot name the problem. Should the man at the top lose his grip, or die in place, this generation of veterans will likely turn on Putin, or at least his reputation, with white-hot fury.
29 December 2022. I am only suggesting that Ukrainians are human beings. This will be shocking to some people, I realize. They can cope, however, because they are humans too.
4 January 2023. Russian forces are being degraded over time, but not because they are untrainable. The trainers — the experienced staff — are dead, and the new staff are being taught on the fly, with a book of rules written before last July.
19 January 2023. Whatever decision Putin arrives at now on mobilization, he is a year late and a few rubles short to catch up with the quality of the force that Ukraine will field during 2023.
20 January 2023. Although similar in function, the Leopard 2 and the M1 Abrams are distinctive enough in design that the same expert would understand they came from different organizing societies.
25 January 2023. In the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy, Putin is creating the very monster he supposedly sought to prevent.
27 January 2023. The evident plan in Moscow is to fill the space between ambition and reality with hundreds of thousands of dead Russians. Extend that out to 2025 and we have a grim, but realistic, picture of the potential future.