Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Силиконовый занавес" channel.

  1. What Britian and Europe can have been doing since the invasion is a steady buildup of the Ukrainian Air Force. This is necessary because the structure of NATO relies upon air forces to deter Russian aggression. NATO was never going to be able to replace air power with 600,000 artillery shells per month. The NATO method is precision strike, which includes a large percentage of munitions, not all, delivered by air power. If this air power building effort has been underway since 2022, then we should start to see some serious fruition of capability in 2025. Certainly US and other armed forces put even more time into training combat pilots than three years. But three years of training can get a pilot prepared for a small set of mission types. Serious Ukrainian air power, in the form of adding a wing (say 72 aircraft with aircrews and all support) per year starting in 2025, can tilt the war into a set of circumstances that motivate Putin to cut a deal. Putin's MIC has its limits, and those limits have required the depletion of stored armor and artillery that to date have allowed Russia to fight with a tempo it is losing the ability to sustain. Russia can probably sustain some tempo for many years. But a larger and well-equipped Ukrainian air force can concentrate combat power on vital locations that will put Russia in a much more defensive position and subject to loss of those vital locations. Ukraine can only do this with significant European assistance, and as much as it can get from the Trump administration. I can see the rhetoric teeing up Trump to look weak if he does not continue significant assistance to Ukraine.
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  2. Russian global strategy includes increasing its control of global commodities and their prices. An example would be Venezuela recently. Russia, in part through its own lack of capabilities, essentially has reduced Venezuelan oil output from 3 million barrels a day to less than one million, just enough to prop up its client regime. African regimes appear to be accepting the model, seeing as it will work for themselves. Their people in general will be like Russians in general, with little recourse and a poor standard of living compared to what they could have. We should really hold up Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua as poster children for these African populations.
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  3. A strategy to weaken Putin while minimizing nuclear risk would probably include leaving Putin feeling like he can win in the end. His optimism might prevent him from discerning a collapse of control in some particular occupied Ukrainian oblast. Such a strategy however is very costly for Ukraine, and risks Ukraine's collapse somewhere on the front.
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  4. He really doesn't explain why the Russian rail system is under high stress. If it relies on western spare parts, then that might explain it, but it is such a key, robust part of the infrastructure that I would think Russia would minimize any dependence on outside sources. I would also think leadership ensures that essential personnel are being paid and exempt from military service. Ukraine does not appear to have the kind of special weaponry needed to keep Russian rail lines out of service. There has been some sabotage of signaling systems, but railroads are quite repairable. I would think Putin and oligarchs are in a position to pay cash for real estate. With high interest rates on mortgages and landowners needing cash, I would think it's a cash buyer's market.
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  5. Musk cannot do all that engineering by himself. There's talent there that could consider spinning off. I imagine Musk does all he can to prevent that.
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  6. Solar and wind farms can be distributed, facing Russia with hundreds and even thousands of targets that have to be taken out to deprive Ukraine of electric power. We have over 100 solar farms now in Florida. Citrus greening destroyed large citrus orchards. Many of these have been converted into solar farms.
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  7.  @20chocsaday  "Citrus greening" is a term for a citrus disease that results in very poor fruit.
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  8. I would hope that NATO countries would vet visa applicants very carefully, but a simple stop to visas denies escape to worthy people. I suppose they can try the Turkish or Kazakhstan routes.
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  9.  @apacheattackhelicopter8185  I make no claims of innocence for anyone.
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  10. It is not the case that every person, or even most persons, in Ukraine who speak Russian is loyal to Russia. I personally know several who want nothing to do with Russia. The Russian language is widespread in Ukraine and many grew up there with it as their primary language because of Soviet influence. And now my Ukrainian friends are learning a great deal of English, which certainly will not endear them to Russian leadership but will strengthen the bond between Ukraine and the West. In Kherson, Ukraine will need to innovate with multiple shore installations on both banks for not only boats but eventually larger barges for bulk supply of forces on the left bank. Once these forces push the more common and prolific types of Russian artillery out of range of the selected portions of the river, then pontoon bridges and even artificial islands can be used to form a web of repairable crossings to increase the flow heavy equipment southward. No doubt the system will be attacked, but like the electric utility system, it is possible to offset losses with timely repairs. The long distance to Kherson is an advantage for Ukraine, increasing the difficulty of Russian eastern and southern forces reinforcing each other. Russia may very well decide it needs to cede more of Kherson oblast to maintain control of its land bridge to Crimea. Ukraine needs to be developing a potent, permanent riverine engineering capability to maintain sovereignty. They might as well get started on it now. It will force Russia to increase its logistical effort over a longer distance and thwart much of its investment in the defense of Zaporizhya. One wonders if decommissioned American littoral combat ships would be of any use to Ukraine.
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  11. Good comment. Unfortunately, the FSB is the ruling institution in Russia, and it does not care to have much competition.
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  12.  @timthetiny7538  If they don't, then it is unlikely they can maintain their country.
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  13. Makes me wonder if China chats up Taiwan while it builds up its military to recover Chinese lands taken by the Soviets. How much weaker does Russia need to get before China starts undermining stability in eastern Russia and offers to step in and help manage the situation?
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  14. I suppose it depends on how many perspectives you use to evaluate conversations. What perspectives do you use besides a "left/right" bipolar view?
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  15. You have hit the nail on the head.
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  16. My Ukrainian friend has a story about Russian mafia influence in Ukraine. As far as mafia influence is concerned, Ukraine was already pretty porous to Russian influence. The purging is in part about reducing Russian influence in Ukraine. Russia has had years to buy "friends" using revenue from oil, gas, and mineral sales. Money for that has gotten a bit tighter.
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  17. It's difficult to find the Russian Orthodox Church clergy as sincerely Christian. Putin would see the church as a useful con and tool for monitoring the population. Religious freedom and the right of the sincere to assemble and call their own clergy through discernment would be perceived as a threat to the state. I believe there are Christians in Russia, but they may be as atomized by FSB monitoring as much of the population. Christianity is international, but the Russian church does not figure large in that community.
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  18. It would seem that part of the Western plan to continue weakening Russia is to help Mr. Putin remain in his dream world that his big break is just around the corner. Thus the lovely IMF reports he and his minions happily accept. Meanwhile, the frogs swim in ever warming water. However, Ukraine needs significantly more assistance to maintain the heat.
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  19. Putin is an old Soviet. He saw a "correlation of forces" justifying the invasion. Acquiring territory is indeed one. I would add: believing he would append the Ukrainian population and its talents and energy to Russia, increasing the national power overall; obtain control of Ukraine's grain, oil, gas and other mineral resources and thus preserving Russia's market share of those goods; preserving the option to expand further into adjacent, former Soviet occupied nations; offsetting likely loss of influence to China in East Russia and Asia; Russian financial strength could sustain the regime and open new opportunities for an expanded FSB; further buffering the Russian population from Western influence; and the psychopathic impetus for series victory. He seems to have seriously misjudged how to achieve these outcomes.
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  20. Given the financial stresses in journalism that have led to dozens of closed publications, and the wealth Russia had before this conflict, it would not surprise me at all if some Western journalists and other pundits have been compromised by Russian money and will speak as instructed.
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  21. An economist as Minister of Defense may indicate an intent to prepare for a future war and to manage the culmination of the current war and a policy for getting sanctions lifted in the interim.
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  22. Is there any Russian armed group besides Wagner that could present a genuine threat to the FSB and associated special services? If not, then Putin has diluted the threat he faced from them, but at the cost of some of their function that was for him. The core power of the FSB has been exposed as not being willing to suffer what it would take to forcefully subjugate Wagner. That might give a little hope to oligarchs forming small armies, but if they cannot reach Wagner scale, then they probably do face forceful subjugation by the FSB as have Putin's political opponents all along. This is a regime of survival and they know a great deal about how to do that. The strategy of Ukraine chipping away at the Russian occupation is the right one because it always leaves Putin thinking that time is on his side and eventually he will get some of what he took. The problem with the strategy is that as long as Putin is alive, Ukraine is going to be in conflict with Russia. This is headed for something like a North Korea/South Korea standoff, with the unknown being how much land and people can Ukraine recover from Putin's theft. There is no guarantee his successor will not have the same posture toward Ukraine.
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  23. As an American citizen, age 65, I am aware of American imperialism. Human, emphasis on human, history is filled with imperialism. It does not surprise me that America and Russia are imperial powers, as a study of both histories makes plain. Abraham Lincoln, preserving the Union; Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. What is hypocritical is the proclamation of innocence by any empire. No one is innocent if they accrue any benefit from the largesse of the empire they live under. The average American citizen, as a voter and a critic, has slightly more power than the average Russian citizen to question authority and replace poor leadership. I think that's evident by the social and electoral history of the United States. But the average citizen has little influence when economic powers that be need a change in some small government. And it's one thing to make a list like the above, and quite another to look into the circumstances of each event. I am not going to advocate that Ukraine capitulate to the Russian empire because I should be ashamed of America's imperial history. The average Russian should be as much or more ashamed for this war, although I blame them less for it, as they have next to no power to alter their government. What boggles my mind is the perpetual Russian claims of innocence and infallibility. It boggles my mind because such self-deception led to the fall of the Soviet Union, and the current Russian regime is composed of a very similar mentality. To a considerable extent, the incompetence this mentality produces is on display in the military performance of the Russian empire against a smaller power it shares a land border with and supposedly enjoys superiority over in every military metric. While on the surface, Putin enjoys unmatched support in any election, deep down there appears to be a rather wide disconnect between the Russian people and the Russian government. The FSB and the world's finest corps of riot police keeps that disconnect from getting out of hand. The average US citizen reconnects with the government at least every two years by voting. So no, the list does not change my mind. Slava Ukraine.
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  24. Or for generations the agency of the average individual Russian had been disciplined into subservience to the regime. How do you emerge from that experience? Those who retained agency were the KGB and the Russian military-industrial complex (hardly incompetent intellects who would simply accept neoliberalism), and they went on to re-establish their supremacy in a new form, e.g., Putin himself and the FSB subjugating the oligarchs or disposing of them. It is characteristic of the regime to deflect attention from itself and direct the confused, average Russian to some evil abroad. But this is the same game plan that undermined the Soviet Union and led to its dissolution, i.e. government by gaslighting. The Ukrainians are looking for a new game plan, not the old one.
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  25. No. I think the US national security establishment understands psychopaths. Not that long ago they went up against the world's fourth strongest military, Iraq, out of concern for that bully leader's trends, and changed that regime. But he did not have nukes. I think Western behavior has more to do with the prevailing American (and perhaps other) interests deciding that Ukraine is not worth the risk of nuclear escalation and has made that known to the White House. See Lloyd Austin's press conference early in the war after 2/24/22. He gets uncharacteristically animated about avoiding nuclear conflict. "It shall not happen" seems to have come down from multiple places on high. Ms. Berlin seems to think the President has the last say on these matters. He is definitely a player because he is the manager, but not the owner, of the federal government. He is not the only player in such decisions. I think that more logically explains the very calibrated delivery of military aid and calibrated tests of what the Russian regime will do in reaction to a specific act of war or set of circumstances. We now know it may be less risky to take out the Kerch Bridge in an isolated, surgical operation, but do that in coordination with broad combined arms assaults across the line and especially the land bridge and Russia might decide it can take the steam out of that with dozens of tactical nuclear detonations in Ukraine. A Russian nuclear spasm in Ukraine is possible. The bully paradigm really does not apply. The psychopathic paradigm must be considered. Putin cannot look weak to the rest of his regime. He has also proven he is willing demolish Ukrainian cities. And what catastrophic consequence were we going to mete out after taking down the Kerch bridge? Take out the relatively unused port of Sevastopol? Become Ukraine's air force? How does Ukraine move on from that point? Russia has to be left thinking it can adjust and persevere in the long run without resorting to supplementing its bombardment capabilities with tactical nuclear weapons. It might be willing to make a withdrawal from the Kherson Oblast in pieces without resorting to nuclear weapons, but only if it believes it will recover Kherson and reestablish the fresh water supply to Crimea. Russia is now on a war footing for the long run, and Ukraine will need to be in NATO and under its nuclear umbrella to retain what it has and what it might recover. The real test of Western resolve will be the strength of the NATO fortification of the remnant of Ukraine, which Russia will vehemently oppose. I don't see how Putin saves face if he just lets Russian forces in Ukraine collapse. He will do what he can do. This ends like Korea, a very tense armistice. Stopped in Ukraine and by NATO on the west, Putin will probably head for the Stans. Now there's a country that will be very difficult to help without starting immediately to provide them military aid. Like the Soviets, Putin's psychopathic paradigm will run the Russian economy into another collapse. Western oligarchs take note that our system seems more sustainable for wealth.
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  26. I tend toward a paradigm of the empathic-neurotypical-psychopathic. Christopher Hitchens described the Kremlin as a psychopathic dictatorship. There, if you are not a psychopath, you very much need to learn to think and act like one. Victory and wealth are the values. That is a repeatedly human situation, and it's rather remarkable that in spite of those situations democratic republics exist. They may have varying degrees of corruption, yet strongly empathic people and neurotypicals have a share of power. These republics obtain advantages in productivity and morale that help them repel the more state of nature regimes like Russia.
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  27.  @stevealba56  And airports and hangars, like railways, can be repaired after strikes. How much does an Iskander cost compared to the typical airport damage it causes? And the Iskander DSMAC can probably be fooled by F-16 mock-ups. As demonstrated by Israeli and US naval air power during the Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel, aircraft, like the F-16, can act in a defensive role to thin the effect of drone attacks. Nice try with the fatalism, but non-Russians are capable of stubborn resistance. I suggest you go to church this coming week and think about what crushing the human spirit does to an economy.
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  28.  @stevealba56  And the West has more financial depth than Russia with which to replace military assets. Russia likes to broadcast a sense of fatalism about their victory and a mythical infinite capacity to achieve it. It's the same kind of hubris the Soviets had. Sounds like Russia is going to fight its way to a zero bank balance.
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  29.  @capitalistdingo  I don't frame the re-assimilation of former Chinese lands as an invasion. I frame it as an expanded Chinese military providing security services in Russian areas while Russia attempts to assimilate more of Ukraine.
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  30.  @thomasherrin6798  How could Russia afford not to export oil, gas, and minerals to China for revenue? The discount on all of those resources China receives indicates that China has the upper hand in the relationship. It will strengthen that hand as it increases its nuclear arsenal and improves its conventional forces. The two parties do not have to go to war for China to recover its former lands illegally seized by the Soviets. The change in jurisdiction will be negotiated, with both parties receiving benefits. Russian behavior is fixated on Ukraine, and it makes sense for it to trade very lightly settled land adjacent to China for weaponry and other considerations. Russia has sold land before, e.g., Alaska. There are Google Earth pictures showing suburban Chinese development right next to the border of Russia, while on the Russian side there is little development. It's quite rational from a real estate perspective for Chinese development to extend into that land formerly of China but taken by the Soviets. It would be a genuine recovery from humiliation inflicted upon China, a righting of a wrong, something friends should do.
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  31. Russia has to consider China's interest in the Arctic of the future as well as China's economic and expanding military power. China's capacity to develop and manage resources is likely to increase its influence in eastern Russia. China is likely to carry out this expansion of influence very incrementally, yet purposefully because of its own needs and interests. A highly sanctioned Russia will have little choice but to accept some of this expansion of Chinese power in exchange for Chinese purchases of Russian resources. Look at the advantages that China seeks for itself in terms of technology transfer as an example. I propose this is a factor in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because Ukraine for a very long time will be too far a reach for China compared to Moscow. Russia may assess that overall, seizing land for power makes more sense near western Russia than eastern. Nuclear arsenal metrics aside, Russian hubris in its actions is clear, but Russian leadership perspective is based on successive victories in the expansion of its power, not international cooperation in a context of climate change. Russia has a vain concept of its capacity, and it also seems to a vain concept of China's capacity or willingness to buttress Russian capacity. Reality is facing Russia with a dilemma. It is not acquiring the power Putin thought it would acquire by invading Ukraine to offset the rise of Chinese power. The West is doing what it can to present Putin with a very grim, long-term future. But Putin, like Trump, has trouble processing loss. He seems to always be chasing some silver lining he sees. I don't know that public discussion on how this sorts out for China might get Putin's attention in time to consider how his losses in Ukraine could accelerate Russia's loss of power to China, but it might be worth a try.
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  32. Christopher Hitchens described the Russian Federation leadership as "a psychopathic dictatorship."
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  33. It took a truck bomb to take out part of the Kerch bridge. Ukraine has the skill to devise a set of special weapons and tactics to take it out of service, but it is a big project. Trump's plan to increase US oil production would put pressure on Russian oil revenue without creating inflation due to lack of supply. People might also work on consuming less oil products. If Trump does not do that and then cuts off arms to Ukraine, then Ukraine might as well reduce Russian oil exports.
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  34. Christopher Hitchens described the Russian government as a "psychopathic dictatorship." A study of psychopathy expands one's perspective on that regime. We can empathize with most of the Russian people, but the Russian regime generally has no empathy for anyone. It is psychopathic. For them, winning isn't everything. Winning is the only thing. And the regime is very hard to topple as long as its gunmen and their handlers are paid something and are essentially the only ones armed. A real fear for the regime now is not the loss of common soldiers, but the less frequent loss of those upper ranks tasked with managing and sometimes executing common soldiers, and the far less frequent loss of skilled FSB operatives tasked with reforming occupied territories. A long-term attrition of such key personnel, and the need to backfill losses of these key personnel, will weaken the regime. The regime indeed may have entered Ukraine because its oil and gas prosperity had funded an expansion of the cadre of gunmen and handlers. Perhaps from an FSB perspective, the regime was ready to expand its control over more land and people, and it is likely for the moment that its attrition is not a significant consideration. While crass in many respects, over the decades Russian internal security organizations have refined the business of controlling the population to a high degree, and they have access to the internal security laboratories of the likes of China, North Korea, and Cuba from which to draw additional techniques. The regime's concern with Ukraine being able to threaten Russian territory has to do with the ability to strike command and control, and I mean control not just of military operations but internal security operations. This function is well secured in most of Russian territory, but in Ukraine or near it, internal security force protection is less assured. Weaken regime control of its forces in and near Ukraine and large numbers of Russian troops in Ukraine may very well surrender for the sake of their lives and families.
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  35. Oil, like Steinbeck's "The Pearl". The knives come out.
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  36. The threat to Russian identity is assimilation by China, and Russia seems to be just waking up to that possibility. However it is nigh blasphemous for Russia to see China in that light. NATO offers Russia a stable Russian border, long term. It does not offer some Russian biased sphere of influence beyond that border. China makes no such offer long term. Russia will soon need the West. It will need trade with the West to show China that it has its own agency and will not accept an undue dependency or subordination to China. And while Russia can probably continue to disqualify Ukraine from NATO, it may not be able to stop a smaller group of European bordering states forming a supplemental alliance with each other and the Budapest Memorandum signatories, Britain and the United States. Ukraine's security and that of the other border states need something like that or a mechanism for NATO to include Ukraine. Russia needs to subordinate its western ambitions in order to conserve its far east.
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  37. Credentials are no substitute for a sound argument. So make the sound argument as to why, "I just don't trust her judgment."
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  38. For the rest of his life, Putin's brain and body will decline, and it is more probable that his paranoia will increase and his decisions be less effective. This may be used to the West's advantage. We should be looking at strengthening friends on Putin's periphery. Bold moves in this direction will force Putin and his apparatus to spread their attention, thinning it. I think of the country of Georgia, where the West should not rule out assisting the recovery of oblasts recently seized by Russia.
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  39.  @davidwright5094  Well said.
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  40. China will step in to manage the situation. Xi is smiling in Putin's face.
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  41. Is Putin a psychopath, with no remorse for the early deaths his policy has brought about? What is psychopathy and what is its prevalence in the human population? We all have a human brain, but are all human brains basically the same? I don't think Fiona Hill goes into this perspective on Putin, because it is often downright dangerous to do so.
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  42. Ukraine and the West must plan as if Russia will maintain an enduring interest in assimilating Ukraine. The conflict may range from a significant covert subversion campaign along with attempts to bribe Ukrainian officials to a repeat of the 2022 invasion. And Russia must see a plan being implemented that will result in their paying dearly for any level of interference in Ukraine. But it is a good recommendation that Western journalism should not provide free or otherwise any support of the Russian narrative against Ukraine.
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  43. I think what is being missed here is that the West is not providing the Russian public much cause to become militant and thus help Putin succeed in his program. Even Russian military targets can involve the death of family members and the ripple effects that go with that. On the flip side, Putin has to take care not to provoke the European and American public with obvious violence in their own countries that could rally a response on a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 scale. No doubt he has elements in his own regime that are not impressed with that kind of restraint. The Russian public could become militant this winter if Ukraine were to unleash what it has become more capable of doing, that is, a strong strike on the Russian electric grid at the coldest possible time. This could create the kind of death and calamity, essentially a large-scale apartment bombing, that Putin likes to think will fill the ranks with energy and dramatically advance his program and legacy. The Western program is the slow and steady weakening of the Russian military, and, to the extent possible, the FSB. It also is to put Russia in a position of being little help in a Chinese seizure of Taiwan. Jake is right to propose to European governments that the time to show Russia that this can go on and on to Russia's detriment is near. If Trump is of no assistance (and Trump and his MAGA world would be very pleased to see Europe fend for itself) then Europe will be facing a decisive moment. If the process of weakening Russia is reversed, they stand to lose their prime opportunity to salvage Ukraine and its great people and resources for Europe unless they act to continue the steady decline of the Russian regime. I don't think the answer on the next American administration is obtained quickly. It is very much in Russia's interest to destabilize the United States through covertly contracting American useful idiots. Russia was doing that in Ukraine and has done it in other European nations like Hungary and Georgia. Americans may very well experience something far more chaotic than the short disruption of January 6th if Trump does not win. If Trump does win, the Russians will be able to be more subtle and systematic in turning enough Americans toward Russian interests. The Russian military may be under a lot of stress, but I'm afraid the FSB is quite intact and ready to do the job.
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  44. Good questions. I would say Ukraine needs to take a real hard look at a defensible border that contains a viable mix of resources and geography that will sustain it at a nation. I don't know that the internationally recognized borders were the most defensible or optimal. And a robust defense of its border will be a decades long project for Ukraine. Nor should Ukraine immediately rule out slices of Russian territory being taken to improve border defense or put chips on the table.
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  45.  @shooster5884  I suspect very few Russian soldiers are willing to die to take Ukraine. They are essentially prisoners, literally or not, with Putin's loyalists pointing guns at them from behind, forcing them to defend the front line. The front line soldiers are from outside Moscow. The elite in Moscow are forcing everybody else but themselves to fight this war. They are carefully preserving themselves in a gamble to increase their power by seizing as much of Ukraine as they can. Does that system ever collapse? Yes, it can simply run out of enough helpless Russians who cannot escape conscription, but can Ukraine endure that without setting up its own demographic catastrophe? If we want Ukraine to survive, then we need to help them achieve several forms of tactical superiority to maintain steady and timely progress with minimum losses. And can we devise tactical methods of striking the Russians pointing guns at the backs of Russian soldiers who do not want to be in Ukraine. If we could do that, the Russian front line may surrender, and rear areas steadily collapse.
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  46. If Putin plays psycho, letting him think he is winning keeps him on a course of being weakened. Lloyd Austin said very early on the US strategy was to avoid any risk of nuclear war and to weaken Russia. The dark side of the strategy has been the cost in Ukrainian lives. Providing weapons and financial aid has been the rather limp atonement. The culmination of the war was thought to be the exhaustion of the Russian Army in Ukraine enabling a lower-cost recovery of territory compared to a high-cost counter-offensive against a stronger Russian Army in Ukraine. The depletion of Ukrainian forces is such that allied forces would need to intervene to force a weakened Russian Army into withdrawal. That intervention would probably settle for a partial recovery of Ukrainian territory along a shorter and more defendable eastern border cutting to the Sea of Azov and recovering Zaporizhya and Kherson oblasts. That is a stopping point Russia might accept, and if they don't, Western forces might as well recover Crimea with their amphibious, airpower, and airlift capabilities. For the lifting of sanctions, Russia should have to accept a Western air and naval presence in and near Ukraine. It doesn't have to be NATO, it just needs to deter Russia and satisfy investors.
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  47.  @mkhbell  Without verifiable numbers it is not clear. It's a big problem Russia has with the world. It really doesn't want to be transparent at all at a time like this. So the discerning have no confidence in statements sympathetic to the Russian cause. I actually know some Ukrainians because they are not in Russia. If some want to be there, that is their choice of course. I hope Russia continues to repatriate any Ukrainian children it relocated to their rightful parents.
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  48. The Kremlin feels it has to put on a show for the Russian people every day. They are trying to get Russians riled up to improve enlistment in the armed forces so they can overwhelm Ukraine. Does anybody have any sense of the average Russian's ability to get a variety of news that isn't written by Moscow? If the Kremlin sees they are losing the information war in Russia, that would be a vital component to bringing this to an end. Geographically, yes Crimea has that combination of attributes that compels Russia to heavily defend it and Ukraine to take it. That battle could make Bakhmut look small, and I don't know that Russia would ever stop bombing the Ukrainian held parts of Crimea until its own economy went into collapse. Until then attacking Crimea could take considerable pressure off of other parts of Ukraine. Ukrainian air defense would be challenged by the expansion of territory to be protected. Ukraine needs both roads into Crimea, and clearly the Russians know this. I was pleased to hear Ukraine was receiving riverine assets, but they would need a lot of these to effectively supplement logistics via truck on the roads, and the Russians may have a focus on disrupting riverine operations. Ukraine has been collecting Russian tanks. They need to collect Russian boats, not just to get into Crimea, but to get back the rest of Kherson Oblast. D-Day and cross Channel logistics are indeed relevant and informative, and Ukraine will need to establish long-term naval (something like squadrons of road transportable PT boats with drones) and amphibious and/or drone resupply capabilities if it is going to hold Crimea.
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  49. Gifted Russians who no longer want to put up with Russian "Mongol horde" jurisdiction might find a new home in Ukraine.
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  50. If the FSB is re-organizing the military to its satisfaction, then the FSB will be producing the military strategy going forward. This does suggest that that institution sees a long road ahead for its agenda, and that indeed, the Soviet mentality has fully returned.
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