Young Master Smeet
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Yes, Stalingrad had horrendous casualty rates (and the defenders lost more men than the attacker. As, it seems Paulus told Hitler: “18,000 wounded without the slightest aid of bandages and medicines.” the loss of supply would be critical to high fatalities. Both sides had over a million men in that theatre alone (and, of course, the Axis had men from several countries).
And, importantly, the Germans ended up being encircled, which will have led to a great many more deaths than otherwise (this perhaps explains why Bakhmut has taken longer to fall than Stalingrad, the lessons have been learned).
Perhaps Stalingrad is a poor example, and Bakhmut is about to join Ypres as a long lasting bulge in the line.
Apologies, I’m in a bleak mood. ISTR the Vietnamese NLA worked out that maiming soldiers was more effective than killing them. Sending home angry men unable to work imposes a burden on your opponent. So, if more Ukrainians are dying than Russians of their wounds, then that spells doom for Russia, as they’ll have to live with the burden of the wounded (on top of paying all the war widows). Maybe True Scotsman is telling us the Russians are going to succeed themselves to death.
Slightly interesting angle in RT today on Zelensky’s long view[/url].
It is unlikely that President Vladimir Zelensky expects to win militarily. But it seems that he genuinely believes that he will succeed in turning Ukraine into something like Israel – a paramilitary state living with a sense of constant military threat.
Normally, I’d put health warnings on anyone invoking Israel in a debate, and I will raise a light flag here, since Zelensky himself is Jewish that a hostile author may be trying an anti-semitic tarry brush. That said, however, the basic logic is sound: a rump Ukraine permanently depended on foreign funds, serving as an advanced local outpost and permanently at war is not just a viable, indeed, likely outcome.
The only way for that not to happen would be complete occupation by Moscow, which would lead to Russia being bled by geurilla war for the rest of all our lives.
Now, to the article referenced in TS’s Youtube link (it saves time, btw, to reference articles, they can be skim read rather than listen to someone blather for an hour and a half).
Firstly, the source is a comment piece in the Telegraph, a conservative nationalist paper – its stance will be the need to protect UK defence and talk up arms production (looking at today’s papers, it does seem to have a different focus than the Times, which says Russia is losing 2,000 troops for every hundred yards).
Thus this seems a key quote from today:
One major fear is that governments are so keen to support Ukraine that they are “giving away everything”, the official added.
and
Business leaders want cast-iron guarantees of orders, for perhaps decades to come, before they agree to undertake the multimillion-pound work to transform their production lines to meet demands.
(The West’s cupboard may soon be bare as it arms Kyiv to the hilt; Analysis, Telegraph, 16/02/2023)
So, I’d take a little pinch of salt on all this, as the Telegraph avers, arms manufacturers want guaranteed sales to justify the investment in production:
The last time ammunition production lines were operating for “just-in time” supplies was over two decades ago when Western governments were fighting wars in the Middle East.
Logistical operations, supply chains and procurement were almost set up entirely to service that market.
It sounds to me that really, they arehttps://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/07/haggling/.
Nothing to say they can’t ramp up production, it’s just a matter of price.
Oh, and we can’t exclude the recent machinations in the Westminster Party and the change of leadership there.
Craig Murray has pretty much openly called her a Unionist asset[/url]: and he is set to publish some emails of hers with Stewart McDonald. There is the issue of her husband’s loan to the SNP (over £100k), and the £600K of donations to the SNP for Indyref that appear to have been swallowed up by the party’s regular accounts.
All that said: I’ve never seen a politician look so happy at their resignation speech. As politicians go, I’ve always thought she was, by usual standards, very effective and straight forward, so I kind of believe her that it’s just the accumulated baggage of being in office for 8 years, and believing that the polarised opinions around her would get in the way of further progress of her cause.
Unless she’s an incredibly good liar, I thought her anecdote about deciding to go during a long term party member’s funeral rang true.
While Russia’s army is much greater than Ukraine’s in total, they can’t commit everything, since they need to hold the whole of their vast territory.
Yes, I think by the end of the year Russia might well have occupied all Donbas.
NATO’s cupboard isn’t entirely bare, just strained relative to what the member states think they can spare versus maintaining their own battle readiness: and relative to non-total war arms manufacture: they can keep supplying long enough to maintain a viable Ukrainian army in the field.
Yes, they may have to keep falling back on new defences, but it doesn’t look like they are headed for open rout.
As Alan says, we don’t really know, so maybe everything will change, but the fact the most likely thing is that some sort of frozen conflict will emerge.
From a Kremlin POV that would still be a win: they’d have proven they were willing to commit blood and treasure to defending their turf, and turn Ukraine into a ko position for the foreseeable.
“Recall the Iraq-Iran war lasted 8 long bloody years.”
Recall the Hundred Years War. Erm, why?
Because it was two states with comparable scale armies fighting trench warfare and able to resupply their armies: it is a suitable modern comparator.
Remember, the size of Ukraine means supply lines are a key feature of the war, and Russia cannot advance too fast, unless the Ukrainian army completely collapses, which it is unlikely to do while it is still being supplied.
Look at Artemovsk: if Ukraine manages to pull out it’s forces, Russia will face another three or four such city assaults to keep it’s assault moving.
Yes, the possibility of sudden collapse is there.
True Scotsman wrote:
No that was not the plan… Stage five: break up Russia into statelets, pauperise the population, privatise all state assets and steal anything not nailed to the floor. All this you will find written in exquisite detail in neo-con think tank white papers and RAND reports. It’s not even a secret.Sounds awfully like bringing Ukraine, and ultimately Russia, into the US sphere of influence.
Rubbish. Russia has no imperial ambitions. Quite the opposite. It is at the coal face of the struggle against NATOstani(read US) imperial hegemony. If you weren’t blinkered by ideology you would know this. But you can only lead a horse to water. You can’t make it drink.
Russia has a clear and longstanding sphere of influence policy: it’s stated war aim was to control the foreign policy of Ukraine, much as it demonstrated it’s sphere of influence interests during the NATO bombing of Serbia (which it clearly hasn’t forgotten). Likewise, it’s intervention in Syria. It’s intervention in Georgia, etc.
BBC embedded in Bakhmut report
“We have some shortages of ammunition of all kinds, especially artillery rounds,” says Capt Mykhailo from the 93rd Mechanised Brigade, whose call sign is ‘Polyglot’. “We also need encrypted communication devices from our Western allies, and some armoured personnel carriers to move troops around. But we still manage. One of the main lessons of this war is how to fight with limited resources.”
We get an insight into the ammunition problems as Ukrainian troops target a Russian position with 60mm mortars. The first mortar round flies from the tube with a loud bang. The second round doesn’t eject.
Of course, they also highlight the high cost in human life for the Russians (but don’t mention the same for the Ukrainians, save that a lot of men have given their lives to hold the town).
Just while I’m here, True Scotsman makes the below point:
Sure, but they can’t both be right. You will probably retort that they can both be wrong. And yes, they could. But I don’t believe the Russian state is in the wrong here. As far as I understand it it is the official position of the SPGB that Russia was provoked in to invading Ukraine. If you deliberately provoke someone in to taking an action then they they take that action it seems to me that the provocateur is at fault.Ethically, it depends on what the provocateur wanted to achieve, and what the provoked person is doing. A nagging spouse may well provoke a person to violence, but we would condemn the violent one anyway, and see it for the abuse it was.
In this circumstance, the provocation from the US is to try and make Ukraine part of it’s sphere of influence (or, at least, that is how the kremlin sees it) while Moscow believes it to be within its sphere of influence: Ukraine is caught between the pass and fell of mighty powers (or, again, at least, that is Moscow’s aim, to claim equality with the US and to settle this Empire to Empire).
BBC and TASS are both reporting that the Russians are claiming to have captured the district of Krasny Hora to the north of Bakhmut: which puts them almost inside the town and cutting off northern supply routes.
Now, the BBC are reporting Russian losses of 800+ per day (pinch of salt: but RT & Tass are not talking up Ukrainian casualties, and not mentioning Russia casualties: but the fighting is intense, Russia has more men it can lose: and if Bakmut falls, it will probably involve the surrender of thousands of Ukrainian troops).
Tactical advances have been made in Kremennaya in Luhansk, but fighting in Ugledar doesn’t seem to be being highlighted, where the twittersphere says things are not going well for the Russians (and there doesn’t seem to be any propagandising pushback on that).
Truescotsman:
You don’t see it as a victory because you don’t understand the nature of the conflict. Russia’s main goal is demilitarization. To do this one does not need to take ground one needs to kill the enemy and destroy his ability to further make war. This Russia is doing with ruthless efficiency. Ukraine has lost 6,500 KIAs just this January, mostly in Bhakmut.
Out of an army half a million strong, that’s a spit in the Ocean: again, look at the precedents, the Iran Iraq War, the Korean War: humans are sadly replaceable.
Yes, the precedents of prolonged attritional trench war is that one side will break in the rear, after horrific carnage, but that might not come soon. And, don’t forget, Kyiv is basically pawning its future here into economic dependence on Europe, it will get the logistical supplies it needs not to break like that.
If it’s a fair fight then both sides weary. This is not a fair fight.
There are still costs, even if unevenly distributed. Russia has, on paper, far more military resources, but it has to keep a lot in reserve to protect it’s own territory. It’s supply lines are in a hostile environment, and need to be protected.
Actually it could with a thrust from Belorus down along the Polish border. But Russia seems happy enough to allow NATO to continue demilitarizing itself by sending its war material to be reduced to molten slag.
Materiel can be replaced, simple destruction is inefficient, NATO has deeper pockets than Moscow.
Cutting the Polish border would also need to cut the Romanian and Moldovan borders: which would be come with severe supply line problems, and would just open the Russians to be being bled by guerrilla warfare.
I’ll just note that Bakhmut has not yet fallen: a town with about the population of Redcar (not a huge city) has taken this long to fall…
Moon of Alabama does quote sources comparing the situation to WWI:
The problem is that Ukraine is losing the war. Not, as far as we can tell, because its soldiers are fighting poorly or its people have lost heart, but because the war has settled into a World War I-style battle of attrition, complete with carefully dug trenches and relatively stable fronts.
Such wars tend to be won — as indeed World War I was — by the side with the demographic and industrial resources to hold out longest. Russia has more than three times Ukraine’s population, an intact economy and superior military technology. At the same time, Russia has its own problems; until recently, a shortage of soldiers and the vulnerability of its arms depots to missile strikes have slowed its westward progress. Both sides have incentives to come to the negotiating table.I can’t see any occasion I’ve described it as stalemate (I did describe it a ‘zugzwang’), however, even inching over into Bakhmut after a five month fight is hardly the sound of a resounding victory in the offing: attrition wearies both sides. Unlike WWI Germany, Ukraine cannot be cut off.
The better example, to my way of thinking, is the Iran/Iraq war, which lasted 8 horrific years.
The BBC are preparing for the fall of Bakhmut
Oleksii says the fighting in Bakhmut is tough, emotionally and physically: “It’s hard, but we are staying here, and we will protect Bakhmut and the area around it as much as we can.”
But Ukraine is counting the cost and there’s speculation it could withdraw to avoid further heavy losses.
Well, it seems that that was the helicopter of the interior minister.
from the Beeb:
There is no indication the crash was anything other than an accident, although witnesses said Russia’s war was to blame for the disaster.“It was very foggy and there was no electricity, and when there’s no electricity there are no lights on the buildings,” local resident Volodymyr told the BBC. which is probably true…
Just to add some points:
Each organisation would have definite ends: i.e. a shoe factory might have the mission statement of ‘Providing enough shoes for the whole community’. Within that, they might have performance targets that “there should be shoes of varying purposes and designs that are long wearing and comfortable and able to resist water.” This provides a rational basis for decision making when assessing inputs. The chief thing is that socialist production is with a definite end in mind, which is to provide for the democratically agreed needs of the community. they would be aware of the global plan to ‘provide all human beings with sufficient footwear for their needs’ and would take part in discussions of how that could be achieved, and what resources (including human) would be needed.Even today, project management software allows for project planning to achieve defined goals, and this would still be available in socialism.
I’ll add an important point that there can be no compulsion to labour, so we’re only providing each other with what we’re willing to work to provide each other.
As Alan says, other methods might be applied. For example stable matching algorithms might be useful (say for housing allocation) or adjusted winner auctions could be useful at a ‘wholesale’ level. There are some interesting tools at http://www.spliddit.org/ These all provide rational and computable approaches that could help get goods where they need to be to achieve our goals.
