What are the Russian objectives in Ukraine?

[GratefulCitizen]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

The alternative narrative is premised on the notion, which Russian propaganda outfits have run with, that the withdrawal from the Kyiv area was all part of the plan, and not a defeat.

The main objective is, as it was from the beginning, twofold: (1) securing control of the eastern and southern provinces to guarantee land access to Crimea (and secure its fresh-water supply), control the economic resources of the Donbas, and unite the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine with Mother Russia, and (2) dominating Ukraine with a friendly proxy government, if possible, or at least Finlandizing it, removing the threat of NATO membership.

The Russians miscalculated on how easy it would be to achieve those objectives. They thought the Ukrainian military would collapse easily and they underestimated popular resistance. They thought a lightning fast airborne and combined arms assault on the capital would lead to a quick military and political collapse, allowing them to consolidate gains and achieve their other objectives at their leisure.

With that failure, they are now going to plan B, which is securing control of the eastern and southern regions by grinding down the Ukrainians in a war of attrition, which they believe they can win since no matter how scrappily the Ukrainians have fought, they still outnumber the Ukrainians by a significant degree and can afford to take losses, in men and material, that the Ukrainians cannot afford to take and cannot replace, even with a steady pipeline of Western arms.

If they do prevail, it will be because they successfully adapted to conditions on the ground. It will be in spite of, not because of, their original plan.

Thank you for the nuanced answer.
Sound bites from the news tend to be low on direct information.

[Penn]

It maybe over. Russia can not afford a defeat, the out:

Chinese drone giant pulls out of Russia, Ukraine to prevent use of products in combat.

DJI Technology Co is the first Chinese firm to cite the war in ceasing operations in Russia.

The whole world is responding that this future in not possible, no longer will a nation state have the inherent right to invade, for whatever reason/cause, against another state.

Russia becomes the villain in real time, war crimes. The autocratic state is a suppressor of individual freedom - in the extreme; this is not something China wants to be aligned with.

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Penn

The autocratic state is a suppressor of individual freedom - in the extreme; this is not something China wants to be aligned with.

Sir, I'm probably jaded or it's the continued looping of footage from Shanghai of people being locked up like mice to see who dies. I can't seem to grok such an attitude from China, unless you mean that China doesn't want to be associated with additional crimes against a populace. That is, they forgive (or deny) their own but being held up in the light as supporting others' crimes is intolerable. Am I close?

[Airbornelawyer]

Food for thought:

The Russian army has been mauled, so far. The most precise damage assessment I’ve seen comes from Ben Wallace, Britain’s defense secretary. He said in a speech Monday that 15,000 Russians have been killed, 2,000 armored vehicles destroyed, and 60 helicopters and jet fighters downed. Russia’s massive invasion army of 120 battalions has suffered a 25 percent loss in combat strength, Wallace said. That’s a body blow.

A rough composite portrait of the human beings represented by these numbers comes from Mediazone, a Russian independent media group. Researchers analyzed 1,744 specific Russian death reports. They found heavy losses among elite paratroopers, marines and special forces. At least 317 of the reported dead were officers; 44 had the rank of lieutenant colonel or above. The fallen soldiers were disproportionately from the poor regions of Dagestan in the Caucasus Mountains and Buryatia in eastern Siberia.

https://daily.energybulletin.org/202...shington-post/

Author is a former CIA analyst, not that that tells us anything given how widely the quality of such analysts and analysis varies. https://www.postcarbon.org/our-people/tom-whipple/

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by FYI quote?

Chinese drone giant pulls out of Russia, Ukraine to prevent use of products in combat.

DJI Technology Co is the first Chinese firm to cite the war in ceasing operations in Russia.

Found a couple of sources for this quote..

https://kyivindependent.com/uncatego...cts-in-combat/

https://www.latestly.com/socially/wo...t-3639715.html

https://www.reuters.com/technology/c...ne-2022-04-26/

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/20...russia-ukraine

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

Found a couple of sources for this quote..

Thanks. Seems the company itself has decided that they can be minus 2 markets and keep the other bazillion.

[cbtengr]

I did not serve in Europe in the 70's I did my time in Korea but I recall always hearing how if the Russians ever made the big push into Germany one would have a life expectancy of minutes. Anyone else recall hearing the same? The Ukrainian military is more than holding their own against the vaunted red army. The reds have obviously been given a lot more credit than they ever deserved.

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by cbtengr

I did not serve in Europe in the 70's I did my time in Korea but I recall always hearing how if the Russians ever made the big push into Germany one would have a life expectancy of minutes. Anyone else recall hearing the same? The Ukrainian military is more than holding their own against the vaunted red army. The reds have obviously been given a lot more credit than they ever deserved.

I think comments like this are based on WWII and how ruthless Stolin was in his use of troops. Much like Hitler, the cost of the war was incidental to his need to win.

The allies did not have the depth and volume of conscripts after the war to think they could go toe-2-toe with Joe..

Russia lost 27 million but still had millions more than the allies after the conclusion.

Vlad is continuing Joe's 18th-century tactics of mass troops with little technology, but I think he has seen the LIGHT.

[sg1987]

Originally Posted by cbtengr

one would have a life expectancy of minutes. Anyone else recall hearing the same? .

Yep. Spent two years in Germany in the mid 80's. The joke was always that we would never receive an alert notification. We would awaken to dropping bombs.

[GratefulCitizen]

There’s a YouTube channel run by a guy in Singapore who has been following the Ukraine war obsessively and mapping it.
His information sources are widely varied and he appears to attempt a degree of verification.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...g31tVMNxPGu0yk

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by cbtengr

I did not serve in Europe in the 70's I did my time in Korea but I recall always hearing how if the Russians ever made the big push into Germany one would have a life expectancy of minutes. Anyone else recall hearing the same?

Several people mentioned to me when I first got to West Berlin that "we're just a speed bump." Now it's true that Berlin was surrounded but as time went on it became apparent that the numbers were serious but not as bad as some thought. For one thing, Ivan named their units differently at the time (maybe now?) and what they called a Division ("holy shit, 10,000 dudes?") was more like a couple of heavy battalions.

Here's a fairly comprehensive Order of Battle of the time for the Warsaw Pact, fortunately the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG) comes first. Still, whether via air or electronic intel gathering, or motorized recon by USMLM tour personnel, or just some Special people that may have been snooping around, it was a helluva lot of people. QUALITY, however, was regarded as another matter. It would've been a fight, particularly with some pretty competent US troops I served with much later during a 2nd tour.

[Airbornelawyer]

Ironically, we generally thought of 8USA and US Army Korea as basically a speed bump. They were primarily a deterrent - a warning to the Chinese and North Koreans that a new Korean War would be a world war - and ff the balloon did go up, basically a delaying action. The fact that both the US and the ROKs had to be so forward-deployed because much of the South's population and economic might was too close to the DMZ didn't help.

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

The fact that both the US and the ROKs had to be so forward-deployed because much of the South's population and economic might was too close to the DMZ didn't help.

That's a neat observation and, to this day, that "geography" is pretty much the first thing I notice when glancing at a map of that peninsula.

[Airbornelawyer]

One of the bigger factors in the Russian Army's poor performance in Ukraine was that the invasion coincided with late winter and the spring thaws. Thus, the Russians ran afoul of the rasputitsa, the muddy season, and offensive operations were confined to roads where Russian columns became easy targets.

Has anyone seen any recent analysis as to whether with the improving weather conditions, the Russians will now be able to better maneuver and regain or pick up the momentum?

As I recall, Operation Barbarossa was originally supposed to commence in mid-May, but was delayed to June 22 because of the need to divert resources to deal with Yugoslavia and Greece. So May/June was originally seen as the best time to conduct offensive operations in this theater.

Another factor is Russian conscription, and how that affects morale and combat readiness. Conscription is generally for one year, and intakes are in the fall and spring, over the course of about two months. The bulk of non-specialized troops undergo 3-4 months of basic and advanced individual training, and Russian law supposedly forbids sending them into combat without at least four months' service time. The fall intake begins on October 1. The spring intake usually begins in April, by it was reported that this year's was actually started early, on February 18.

So, this means that a large percentage of Russian soldiers were conscripted between April and July 2021, and most were expecting to be done with their service by this point. I have not heard anything about a stop-loss or the like; have any of you? The next largest group would be the October-December 2021 intake - many of these were still undeployable when Russia first invaded, but would have been coming in as reinforcements over the course of the operation.

Even with the early start to the 2022 spring intake, even the most basic grunts ought not to be deployable for at least a month, but this is Russia. The Russians infamously sent conscripts into battle in the First Chechen War in many cases without even basic training.

So, will weather and manpower changes allow for an increased tempo in operations over the next weeks, or will other factors, including the scale of losses already taken, depletion of munitions reserves, and increased Western weapons shipments to the Ukrainians, counter this?

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

Another factor is Russian conscription, and how that affects morale and combat readiness.

Ya know, I'd known many of those things over the years but hadn't rolled it up until you laid it out like that. If they are running a "just in time inventory" of bodies, with hardly any experience, they are in deep borscht.

Don't know how it is now, but when I was paying attention to this stuff they had trouble retaining a professional NCO class and one of the considerations was that Americans would excel in the areas of adapting and executing a plan in the absence of their officers. "Continue the mission" wasn't viewed as being as driving their behavior on the battlefield like it does with us.