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Russian logistics only really need to be good enough to keep the front supplied with food, fuel, bullets, and artillery shells. Russia isn't, and won't be fighting this war like most of the western world has gotten used to thinking wars are fought since Gulf War 1. Russia tried that in the very...

To be fair, Ukraine isn't getting the casualty ratios that it really needs to win. If Ukraine wants to win, absent something fundamental changing on either side, then it must turn it into a war of maneuver where the Ukrainian forces can get ten to one or better exchange rates. If Ukraine can...

Gazprom likely actually. The pipeline getting blown up activates the "Act of War" clause in their contracts with Germany and gets the off the hook from having to pay Germany market rate for Natural Gas. If the pipeline was just turned off but still intact then Gazprom would have been...

Not really. The US cocked up when it elected Clinton instead of re-electing Bush. The eight years of Clinton was the most critical time period for moving Russia from enemy to ally. Post Soviet collapse the US should have thrown its full might into rebuilding Russian society and fully...

Le sigh. Once again an analyst fails to think things through. Let's say that Ukraine somehow does actually straight up win. That they halt the Russian military, get mass surrenders, and retake most/all of the territory that Russia grabbed this time around. Now what are the consequences of...

Why the fuck does the west seem to want WW3? I mean really, you do wonder if Putin is going to have to nuke Berlin before the west gets it through their thick skulls that Russia actually does see Ukraine as an existential issue and a red line that they are prepared to go all the way for...

Not really. Most of the military equipment Russia has deployed is at least a generation behind their current best active service equipment. Most of the soldiers Russia has sent are conscript and contract forces. Most of the Russia Air Force is being kept out of the fight. Russian artillery...

A lot more to be fair. The US is orders of magnitude better in every respect than Russia when it comes to air power, battlefield intelligence gathering, coordinating units, logistics, and well basically everything else involved in this kind of war. The thing is, any military comparison (at...

No, not really. You do realize it took the US longer to capture Baghdad, much less conquer all of Iraq, than Russia has yet spent in Ukraine? The same US that had massive superiority to the Russian military in every category, was attacking a nation that had been sanctioned to hell and gone for...

Ukrainian depots are Russian ones for most practical purposes. Those depots are connected to the Russian/Soviet pipeline network and so are spots in that network where crude can be stored. Oil gets pumped out of the ground, oil goes into pipelines. Until that oil is consumed or loaded onto an...

Taking out oil depots is actually a bad idea for Russia. You can't simply turn off the oil pump and then turn it back on later. The entire ecosystem is designed around oil flowing out at roughly the same rate it is being pumped out of the ground. If oil can't be shipped out of a port then it...

No, my position is that Russia needs to "win" with "win" being defined as something that Russia can reasonably sell to both its general public and its management caste (the people a few levels below Putin in the government) as a "win" that justifies the costs spent to achieve it. "We got to...

It's a lot easier to sell taking half of Ukraine and having the west have to publicly swallow it as a win than it is to sell "we stopped those Nazis from being Nazi's" as a win. Basically what the West has been defining as a win already; getting Russia to stop invading Ukraine and go back home...

Sure, but that's today. You have to be all "I stand with Ukraine!", "Russia EVIL!!!!!" right now. Six or eight months from now? Much less two and a half years from now? Suddenly its all the Democrats fault. Biden has publicly staked out a position that Russia can't be allowed to grab Ukrainian...

For the cost spent? The clay in question isn't worth it. And these are largely immaterial points. For domestic political reasons, Russia has to win. There is basically no conceivable situation where Russia can fail to "win" and handle the domestic political fallout. So the starting point for...

Except that the West would have to dump all the sanctions, concede that territory, and publicly and in writing say that Ukraine isn't ever becoming part of NATO or the EU. Getting a concession on territory that Russia already effectively owned isn't a "win", especially not at the cost. And you...

He isn't wrong though. Legally and morally, Ukraine absolutely has the "right" to try and join NATO & the EU. Legally and "morally", Russia is absolutely in the wrong. Alas, when it comes to nation states the only relevant use of "rights" is the old school definition. You have whatever rights...

So everyone appears to want Ukraine to win, but what I don't see is any of the talking heads talking about what happens if Ukraine does "win" the initial fight. Imagine what would happen if when the US invaded Iraq, the US lost and was forced to pull out. What that would do in terms of domestic...

Rights do not exist in international relations or the interactions of sovereign powers. The only two factors that matter are ability and will. The US certainly doesn't allow nations to "chart their own course" or give a solitary damn about the opinions of other nations when it comes to US...

It's also not about the threat today, or tomorrow, but the threat ten or fifteen years down the road. The Russia of ten to fifteen years from now is not going to be ABLE to take Ukraine in a conventional war. The Russian demographic picture and educational system is THAT bad. They can't even...