Tag Archives: Russian invasion of Ukraine

As always, I must start by saying I have no expertise and there is no reason anyone should be particularly interested in my thoughts. The question is how will the war in Ukraine end. I guess I have a guess, but it implies it will last a long time. I can think of 3 possibilities, Russian victory, Ukrainian victory or a negotiated peace. First, I think it won’t end with Russian victory. Given recent Ukrainian battlefield victories, this...

In Ukraine, Use the Weapon the Russians Can’t Match It’s nowhere near as expensive as it sounds, and much more humane: offer every Russian soldier who defects $100,000 and the right to settle in any EU/North American country of their choice.  It might not work, especially if Russia uses deadly force against soldiers who lay down their arms or violent reprisals against their families back home.  But if a large enough portion of their troops accept...

The current situation is that Russia has abandoned the effort to capture Kiev. Russian forces have been withdrawn from North Central Ukraine and are now operating on an arc from Kharkiv (North East) to Kherson (South Central). So far, Ukraine has won amazing victories and Russia has suffered astonishing defeats. The extreme surprise suggests that we can learn a lot from the war so far. What have we learned ? I will include things that we...

Why War Might Go On Longer  An unfortunate reason the current war in Ukraine might go on longer than it should (with the should here being that it should never have happened in the first place, and the sooner it stops the better, with the onus here clearly on V.V. Putin to stop it as he started it without any justification), is that wartime leaders get a puff in their popularity at least for awhile and are let off the hook on domestic problems. ...

I should stop posting about Ukraine, since I have no expertise and not much ability to judge the credibility of things I read.  But I keep reading and want to share some twitter threads about Russian logistics that I found interesting.  I had assumed that the Russians would eventually get their logistics problems more or less ironed out, or at least they could “solve” them by throwing enough men and material at the Ukrainians, but it seems like at...

Will Kyiv Become Like Aleppo?  There are reports that many Russian soldiers are lacking in morale for the invasion of Ukraine. They were told repeatedly like the rest of us that there would be no invasion. The Ukrainians are very similar, and most of them know Putin has exaggerated the things they have supposedly done or not done wrong.  And rather than welcoming them as liberators and throwing down their arms to surrender, the Ukrainians have...

War Comes to Kyiv | The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa Interesting article that showed up in my inbox. This is a copy and paste ot it with minor editing. If you follow the link, there are other short articles to be read. I believe the takeaway from this article is the courage of Zelensky. The Ukraine will fall apart without him. Can the Russians be this bad militarily? The road into Kyiv is lined with military checkpoints, many of which are manned by...

Vladimir V. Putin Loses His Mind And Becomes A War Criminal Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has just announced a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify the Ukrainian government” so as to halt the supposed “genocide” being committed against Russian speakers in Ukraine.  There is not a shred of justification for any of this.  The extreme nationalist fascist groups in Ukraine do not support and are not part of the current Ukrainian...

The Minsky Moment In Eastern Ukraine  Oh, I cannot resist taking that phrase from a recent Economist article about the separatist Donbass republics, the Luhansk Peoples’ Republic (LPR), and the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR). The official recognition by V.V. Putin of their independence brings about the end of the Minsk II Accord negotiations that have been going on since 2015. These accords were supposed to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, but...

Trying To Make Sense Of The Confusion  On the one hand Russian media is telling Russians that Russian troops will leave Belarus when exercises there end on Feb., 20, coinciding with the end of the Winter Olympics, and also sends out videos of troops supposedly being pulled back. OTOH, US officials declared based on reported satellite evidence that 7,000 more troops have gone to “the Ukrainian border” with a chance of Russia invading Ukraine very...