Comments by "William Morris" (@williammorris584) on "The Telegraph" channel.

  1. Is there reason to believe that a successor regime in Russia would be a parliamentary democracy friendly to the West and apologetic about Ukraine?
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  2. Every army learns from defeat. The question is how quickly, and whether that is fast enough.
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  3. They did not do “everything they could” if they not suspend climbing and turn every effort to rescuing him.
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  4. Todays’s term for retreating from multiple locations is “changing dynamically”.
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  5. Not making any judgement about whether this is actually what it is purported to be. Historically, it’s fairly rare for one or a few soldiers to survive an attempt to surrender in combat. Most survivors of surrenders were groups or units that had some parley or at least communication with the enemy facing them before surrendering.
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  6. Europe should consider the possibility that Ukraine is their responsibility in the event that US interest turns primarily towards Israel.
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  7. Ukraine inserted a reserve brigade, which was perhaps their only fresh reserve, to break the encirclement of Avdiivka and extract what they can of the defenders who must choose between surrender or flight across ground swept by Russian artillery and air-delivered ordnance. An appalling military decision presumably made for the sake of the information space. This debacle had been predictable, and was predicted by many for weeks. And with the Europeans disarmed by decades of fecklessness, Ukraine’s main hope is staked on the US House, which is in recess and whose Speaker has no inclination to bring the passed Senate bill to the floor. Unless cutoff positions have been prepared, the Ukrainians have just left their most heavily fortified positions on the whole front to face the Russians in unimproved terrain with battered units, albeit on a shorter line, and the Russians have cleared Donetsk as a logistical hub for further operations.
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  8. Yeah, we’re noticing the contradictions. Dom desperately clings to the claim of human wave attacks with more and more convoluted rationalizations. He apparently believes the change in tactics has nothing to do with lessons learned, but an inability to raise enough men to carry out their preferred ‘have a full division rise up out of the trench and run forward’. Morale may indeed be low, but so is that of the Ukrainians, as is related by the guest. No Ukrainian wants to go to the Ostfront to face an enemy that just comes on and on and on, aided by a hail of artillery and FABs. The pod today was a combo of winging it and shaming by the regulars, followed by a sharply contrasting sobriety from the guest.
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  9. Lack of escalatory parity has been a continuous problem for Ukraine.
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  10. The pod's apparent policy is to omit coverage of the actual fighting when all Ukrainian movement is retrograde.
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  11. I can think of a quite good military reason for the drone attacks on Kyiv. By attacking an area the Ukrainians cannot afford not to defend, the drone attacks tie Ukrainian ADA assets to Kyiv, keeping them from the front. Any drone that leaks through the lower-cost air defenses (Gepard, etc) produces a trade of a $30k drone for a $4million Patriot missile. When every piece of your opponent’s major military equipment is produced elsewhere, writing his inventory down is advantageous, and forcing him to use disproportionately expensive assets is even better.
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  12. Keep an eye on the UK Parliament after this revelation by Scholz.
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  13. Bakhmut has become a mini- Verdun. The defenders are disadvantaged by near encirclement, but fight on for symbolic reasons. The attackers use the opportunity to inflict favorable attrition and gain a logistical advantage since the defenders’ access routes are increasingly constrained.
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  14. Night ‘attacks’ may have just been trials of night infiltration preparatory to a more major attack. Whether or not a firefight was intended is uncertain.
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  15. Ukraine can stop it tomorrow.
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  16. Any mention of what is happening in the combat areas has almost disappeared from the podcast. Wonder why.
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  17. Today the actual military situation got a two minute gloss, confined to air events. Perhaps it would be too time consuming to mention the dozen towns and villages that have been taken in the last week or are currently being attacked by the Russians on multiple axes across the entire southern half of Ukraine. An interesting thing I noticed is that several Russian units that fought in the reduction of Avdiivka are participating in the attacks spreading radially from that area. Apparently they weren’t rendered combat ineffective at Avdiivka, or they were rested and brought up to strength in less than a week, neither of which is heartening for Ukraine. I saw that Scholz promptly and categorically nixed Macron’s musings. I guess Macron can send just French assets, perhaps the Foreign Legion would obey. Who knows what the Russian reaction would be. Some rapid connection with reality by the Europeans is necessary to save Ukraine, rather than gabbling about the Americans needing to save them all. The problem is that it may not be within their means, having disarmed in order to coast under the umbrella of the US deterrent.
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  18. 2:01 As if the same isn’t true of the degradation of Ukrainian air defenses. Remember that with respect to deep strikes, Russian missile and aviation strikes inside Ukraine are consistently more numerous and with heavier warheads than those made by Ukraine against Russia. There are more and more Ukrainian areas without power or experiencing rolling blackouts, which isn’t true of Russia. The diesel generator has become the folk music of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials are already warning their citizens about a cold, dark winter.
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  19. When your interview with Zelensky is profoundly and deeply about yourself.
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  20. Russia advancing in multiple areas of Ukraine and continuing to dismantle the Ukrainian power grid; Telegraph: “Meanwhile, in Africa…”
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  21. It looks like the Ukrainians are driving the Russians out of Crimea and into Kherson 😀
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  22. Your arms control guest was very informative, and such a cheery soul. Some interesting points he made 1) Russia wins a attrition war 2) he didn’t seem to think that either side would militarily defeat the other, just that the position for negotiation could be swayed 3) Russia possesses conventional escalatory options, but these would be a marker of relative desperation.
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  23. No, they just outfitted Avdiivka for years as a fortress and an artillery position to fire on Donetsk, and declared they would “defend it to the last”. No significance at all, just like the tiny and not-too-distant Prokhorovka had long ago.
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  24. Russians pushing forward on multiple axes with increased scope and tempo, and about to start what looks like their largest operation yet: an attack along the entire Kupyansk-Liman line. ISW has extensive analysis of this on their site, and concludes: “An operation to push Ukrainian forces off the east bank of the Oskil River offers the Russian military an attainable goal that would generate operationally significant effects.”
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  25. Further Russian advances, elite Ukrainian brigades pushed back, losing quantities of top Western kit. Parts of Kharkiv area being evacuated by Ukraine. Continued Russian air strikes on Kharkiv and vicinity. Possible Ukrainian own-goal shootdowns. Russians using fiber optic reels to render their FPV drones immune to ECM. Smuggling of Ukrainian men attempting escape to Moldova is a thing. Podcast: victory through DEI. Come on, folks. Time, as in a couple of years, could favor Ukraine, but will they last that long?
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  26. I suppose that in his fervid dreams, Ukraine is as important as Israel.
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  27. I’m wondering what “stopped” means with respect to the geolocations I’m looking at from yesterday and today.
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  28.  @philipmain5701 have a look at the map lol.
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  29. Perun is talking about doing an extra YT episode on this. Looking forward to his usual objective, in-depth analysis. ISW already has some interesting commentary. Up for grabs are Wagner’s personnel. I would have thought that Putin would have hoped to extract a couple brigade sets of fighters, but that looks unlikely. Perhaps they will go to some other PMC, but getting them into MOD formations will be improbable without substantial concessions / sweeteners.
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  30. ISW’s appreciations seem to indicate that neither side appears able to produce the means necessary to achieve its victory conditions, and neither is willing to negotiate. Russia appears unable to ramp up its defense industrial base sufficiently to prevail, but is probably able to produce enough for a defensive campaign, and Ukraine cannot get from the West what it will eventually need most: more Ukrainians. One hopes for a Russian regime collapse, it’s probably the only alternative to a long war finally settled by negotiations over the division of the ruins.
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  31. The Ukrainians’ shortage of troops is now complicated by a shortage of munitions, while the Russians are attacking on multiple axes. And the largest Russian attack yet appears to be imminent from the Kupyansk-Liman direction. ISW talks about it at length and concludes: “An operation to push Ukrainian forces off the east bank of the Oskil River offers the Russian military an attainable goal that would generate operationally significant effects.”
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  32. The air raid sirens in Kyiv went off a full fifteen seconds before the Zircons arrived. Depleted Ukrainian units with depleted air defenses steadily retreat deeper into a darker Ukraine while the Russian air forces operate with greater freedom and the Russians fill out new army formations. But Ukraine hit a couple ships, all is well. An immense amount has to change for Ukraine to keep the territory it still has, much less reach their stated war aims.
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  33. Ukraine “switching to a defensive strategy”, as if they had a choice. Russia has settled in to grind, grind, grind until Ukraine effectively runs out of troops and the front breaks. I’ve posted for over a year that Ukraine’s most pressing need is for something the West can’t give them: more Ukranians.
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  34. The Ukrainians are under severe pressure and the line of contact is still moving backwards over a frontage of around 100 km, but let’s talk some more about a sunken patrol ship, and give it a promotion it to “assault ship”.
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  35.  @RyanBrown-nx8dw He’s correct, this has been true from the start. Some of the former Warsaw Pact countries had some and donated Grad systems and rockets, but that’s pretty much tapped.
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  36. AFU retreating on every major axis. The rate of Russian advance has increased every month since this summer, and the rasputitsa and snow haven’t slowed it.
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  37. Casualties exist in a context rather than as an absolute measure. The Russian historical paradigm is to lose several times the casualties as their enemy right up until the day that Russia wins.
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  38. I did the ‘Tommy Lee Jones newspaper meme face’ over Dom’s assertion that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a Soviet demonstration of ideological congruity with Nazism. The Soviets and Germans shared some common interests briefly with respect to Poland and other issues, but both Hitler and Stalin believed they would be at war with one another relatively soon. Stalin’s participation was to get a buffer in Poland, a free hand with the Baltics and Finland, and a respite for military buildup. Their shared disregard for human rights was a feature of totalitarianism, not shared ideology.
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  39. Your guest makes Kyiv sound like Carnaby Street in the ‘60’s. I would think drone operator isn’t the idyllic existence imagined by most. There are a lot of different types of drones, but I expect that a lot of drone operators are close to infantry formations at the front and assiduously hunted by the enemy, much as snipers draw special attention.
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  40.  @drewmalesky9869  Which way is it moving, and hasn’t it been speeding up? October was the largest monthly gain in a couple years. And whose territory is close to 25% occupied?
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  41.  @easymoneeey That old and tired trope was a US general’s prediction.
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  42. “The Ukrainians are under severe pressure and the line of contact is moving backwards over a frontage of over 100 km, but let’s talk about a sunk patrol ship”. The Ukrainians would devoutly wish the current situation was a stalemate. Let’s have serious commentary about serious situations.
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  43. It was extensively fortified and close enough to Donetsk to serve as an artillery interdiction position. At some point it was useful to produce attrition vs the Russians, since the attackers sustain more losses than the defenders. But at a certain point, as positions are degraded and the position is flanked, a salient becomes increasingly costly to the defenders, and difficult to supply as the neck of the salient narrows. And at the point that the position collapses, the defenders lose many more than the attackers, either as killed or captured. There is a balance point in such defenses when it becomes preferable to pull out and establish a straighter, shorter and less vulnerable line to the rear. Unfortunately Ukraine got politically invested in Avdiivka as a symbol that they could resist the Russians successfully. The Russians accepted the challenge, hammered in the flanks, ranged artillery all about, stormed the town, and won both the battle because they had more forces, more choices, and the Ukrainians were stubbornly anchored to a symbol.
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  44. The front is going so dismally for the AFU that it is seldom mentioned anymore.
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  45. The continued cruise missile strikes by Russia seem to be more about writing down Ukrainian inventories of SAM’s and impeding SEAD maintenance cycles that having actual effect. A strike aimed at specific effect would more concentrated in numbers and time. This might be intended to allow Russia to use its superior air assets closer to the front when Ukraine attacks. I haven’t heard this possibility addressed in the context of the continued ALCM attacks.
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  46. For something that can’t be ruled out, that got ruled out extremely swiftly.
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  47. Check the mapping. Russian forces have been crumpling the western side of the Kursk salient while continuing to advance in other areas. Making it was an accomplishment, holding it is proving harder.
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  48. Dependence upon aid is an extremely volatile weakness in a war effort.
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  49. We’re now down to semantics about a single route. Whether or not it is actually occupied by Russian troops, it’s clearly interdicted by fire to a greater or lesser degree. The road’s approach to the town is even within range of 12cm mortars. The ability to resupply by such a conduit is dependent upon two things: what degree of loss of vehicles is acceptable to the Ukrainians, and how much howitzer, mortar, or Grad ammunition can be allocated to interdiction by the Russians. The defense of Bakhmut looks all but untenable, barring a major counter by Ukrainian forces from outside the city. The unfathomable level of importance placed on this small town’s fate implies that someone believes that symbology is crucially important in sustaining material Western support for Ukraine.
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  50. A considerable amount of 155 has already been supplied, and Ukraine continues to fire daily about 1/4 of the West’s monthly production. Reserve stocks may be available from a few countries, but the Ukrainian position look much less favorable than the Russians, who apparently have maybe a bit less than half of the ~17 million artillery rounds of all types that they started the war with, not counting their production. Even things like barrel wear are coming into play, so old 152 and 122 guns are being limbered up, and the reserve stocks of these old systems are just not comparable. Some fun is made of this against the Russians, but an elderly 122 is still a round downrange; the Ukrainians would do the same if they had significant stocks of ammo for these old pieces. They are making arrangements for the west to make some 152mm shells for the Russian guns they use, but basically they are dependent on western 155 and rocket munitions. I doubt they have access to a change of barrels for the many Russian 152mm pieces that they are using. In the absence of air superiority, this is an artillery war, and Russia has an artillery army, disguised by the fact that they also have a lot of tanks.
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