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Notes -
What do our more military-minded posters make of the current Kursk incursion of Ukrainian forces into Russia?
The battle lines inside Ukraine proper have become essentially immobile, so it seems Ukraine has at least found a softer place in which to strike. But it's not clear to me what the strategic objective of this operation is. Is it essentially a feint to draw Russian troops away from defending conquered Ukrainian territory? Is the plan to claim Russian land to negotiate land swaps with when the time comes for peace talks? I don't see how it directly gets the Ukrainians any closer to their goal of evicting the Russians from Ukraine.
You fight wars with the army you have, not the army you want. In this case there are two distinct Ukrainian armies: the trench army fighting grinding attritional static line battles dominated by artillery, and a much smaller maneuver army trained on donated western equipment. The latter army cannot function in a battlefield dominated by minefields and artillery + loitering munitions. The meta to hard counter minefields is combat engineering, and to counter artillery + loitering is air supremacy. Air supremacy means unrestricted air operations, which is incredibly difficult and which has a distorted public profile because the US doctrine has made it seem way too easy to achieve.
As such, the Ukrainian assault into Kursk is an economy of force effort, using an available resource in its optimized capability. Russia only has opportunistic air dominance, with the default assumption for any air operation being contested. As such the only overmatch Russia has available to deploy against the Ukrainian rapid advance forces is occasional longer range strikes, which while effective are insufficient compared to the current Ukraine-air-war meta of loitering munition, KA-52 attack helo and SU25 reactive strikes on advancing assets (pitch-up Mi8 rocket pods are only more useful against fixed emplacements). Russia has minimal drone assets in Kursk, and quick response close air support seems countered by air defense assets brought up by the Ukrainians, with the unknown threat scale posed by Ukrainian assets serving as an effective anti-air umbrella - the Russians do not definitively know that the Ukrainains do not have the capability to take out integrated fix-track-target platforms (basically see aim shoot, which must be a very fast decision cycle that does not work if the attacks are popup). With no minefields in place to funnel advances into specific directions and wide open traversable plains, the Russian defense is difficult and anemic.
As it stands, the Ukrainians seem to be running roughshod over local resistance, with an air defense umbrella of unknown size limiting the intensity of Russian best response. Furthermore, Russian ISR has been dominated by its drone assets, which are extensively deployed in Ukraine and not locally. I know for a fact that the Russians have extremely few COTS drones in any domestic defense units, with pretty much every fundraised COTS drone going to units on the frontlines. I would venture that a similar situation exists with organic ISR assets, with Orlans deployed where they are presumed to actually be useful (at the front) and not at home. Russian manned fixed wing aerial recon assets are anemic, and the anti air artillery brought up to Kursk seems to be impeding surveillance missions (though the Russian doctrine has to my observation never prioritized full spectrum battlespace awareness, likely due to incapability). It must be noted that ISR is actually somewhat difficult, and territory is really large. Even an incursion only 20km deep is really hard to find unconcentrated forces, and EW + AA prevent most detailed ISR assets. The most striking incident of this Ukrainian attack was the destruction of 1-2 companies worth of Russian reinforcements, with burnt out trucks visibly full of dead Russians after a Ukrainian artillery strike on the vehicles. The Ukrainians only found such a juicy target because the Russians uploaded videos of themselves travelling to Kursk to raise morale.... onto Telegram.
As to the strategic objective, who the hell knows. The optimal outcome is a rushed collapse of Russian lines within Ukraine as a disorganized command structure pulls units out haphazardly. That is unlikely to occur, and the 2022 Kharkiv offensive shows what happened when a rapid advance succeeded against Russian (held) territory: the local front collapses, and inertia prevents other forces from mobilizing in time, with the Ukrainian advance halting due to logistical limits as opposed to hardened resistance - building up minefields and fortifications is fast, but not 2-day fast. The limits of Ukrainian logistics to push through stiffening resistance will be tested fairly soon in my estimation.
The concrete strategic outcomes are, as commentators noted below, likely outsize PR outcomes. Ukraine is now seeking forgiveness rather than begging for permission to use its western assets, and videos of Ukrainians frolicking in Kursks is highly embarrassing for Russia. The messaging within domestic information environment in Russia is, to my read, the larger PR win. Russia has two contradictory narratives at play: the Russian army is the inevitable beast that is the envy of the whole world which keeps NATO afraid of taking Russia, and NATO is an incompetent meatgrinder which is throwing thousands of mercenaries and special forces to their death in Ukraine against qualitatively superior Russian tactics and equipment because the West is decadent and wasteful. The tension in the two narratives is: if NATO is so incompetent, why do we Russians need such a large army to protect ourselves from such stupid weaklings.
In this information environment, the worst case scenario is 'my large scary army is getting destroyed in the exact scenario they are supposed to be trained for'. NATO (Ukraine is basically just a NATO puppet after all) has invaded us, and we cannot defend against them. Russia can claim thousands of dead NATO soldiers and fire up DCS to show fields of burning tanks, but it can't stop its own citizens fleeing their villages and complaining extremely loudly as they run. Crimeans are not true Russians, but Kursk slavs are real Russians - blonde blue eyed white skinned orthodox Christians, true Russian blood speaking proper Russian, not Dagestani or Buryat subhumans, or dirt-eating khokhol yokels. These citizens are loud, complaining and asking difficult questions - 'what is our aviation doing' is a common complaint I've seen in Russian telegrams. Slow incremental advances past Avdiika which fell fucking 6 months ago are simply not sexy enough to drown out concerns about Real Russian Territory being tainted by Ukrainian homogays.
Low caste Dagestani and Buryati volunteers taking money to be blown up in faraway Ukraine is an ignorable outcome for the Russian state. It is not relevant to their daily lives, let alone existential. Actual Russian territory, fought on a land Muscovites can actually recognize, being overrun by NATO? Something has gone wrong, and given the shakeups in the Russian political scene - Dyumin is now the leader of Kursk defenses, which suggests Putin thinks the problem of Kursk is 'not enough political will' as opposed to 'boss we literally don't have the 4th Guards Tank Army anymore'
It's not the lack of political will, it's the clash of political egos that his alleged appointment is supposed to solve. In 2022 Putin learned that his army wasn't prepared for a protracted war against an opponent in a comparable weight class. In 2024 he might learn that the army and the state in general aren't ready for defensive operations on Russian soil.
US army isn't ready for defensive operations on American soil too, but that's because the US can conventionally destroy Canada or Mexico as soon as they try. Russia has this stuff in the doctrines, but as usual, everyone's been sitting on their hands and not preparing for anything resembling a cross-border invasion. The situation is salvageable, but requires cooperation between multiple centers of power that are currently busy assigning the blame to each other instead: the FSB, the armed forces, the police, the national guard, the EMERCOM, the governors.
Dyumin's appointment is about replacing the lack of a well-tested efficient process with an ad-hoc emergency authority that can stop any power games by having Daddy Poo on speed dial.
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From a military pov it's a stupid choice, though they don't really have any good choices to make. They are not in the same position they were in with the Kharkiv offensive. Back then they had a large manpower advantage now they are increasingly at a disadvantage. The likelihood of it pulling Russian troops out of Donetsk is pretty close to zero. If seems like Russia has actually called Ukraine's bluff and doubled down on Prokrovsk and Toretsk so far. They already have ~30k reserves in the north due to the Kharkiv offensive. The whole point of that offensive was to force Ukraine to commit more forces to the north and away from Donetsk, pulling even more Ukrainian forces out of Donetsk to start a new offensive is almost a gift to Russia in the long run.
The tactics they are using might be working now, but it's more due to no one expecting anything this stupid. ISR is simply too good for rapid incursions deep into enemy territory. They will outrange their logistics and EW support and get picked off, which seems to already be happening in places like Gir'i where they attempted some more deep raids. Lots of fog of war still but it seems there is already a more static front forming around Sudzha in the east, Snagost in the west and Korenova to the north their are still saboteur groups operating further out but actual controlled territory hasn't moved much from these general areas since the initial raid. This is territory they will now have to try to defend without the advantage of years of built up defenses and established logistics routes for supplies, GL with that.
Guessing it's more politically motivated. PR and propaganda like a lot of people have been saying, though even western pro ukraine sources seemed surprised by this. I'm thinking it might be similar to Bibi's situation, Zelensky and co are cooked once the war ends, they seem to be getting increasing pressure with elections coming up to start negotiations or commit to a cease fire. By invading Kursk any negotiations are now off the table so they'll stay in power for longer. Not sure what the long term goal is, but I guess if you're hanging off a cliff's edge you cling to whatever you got.
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Maybe Zelensky's been reading Sun Tzu? ("attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve", 6:11)
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Neither country has exactly proven itself to be a strategic mastermind in this war. Everyone knows how bad Russia has miscalculated the way the war would unfold, but so did Ukraine. Back in April 2022 peace was within reach: the Istanbul communique didn't exactly benefit Ukraine, but the terms were quite generous. All Ukraine had to do was not sink the Russian flagship and suppress the news from Bucha. The decision to stay and fight back has now resulted in casualties that dwarf Bucha. There's no way either country can come out on top in a peace deal in 2024.
Not quite. Russia is pushing through Ukrainian lines with a velocity that is still slow but is also much faster than in the old "Russian forces have taken over the living room of 29 Bandera street" joke. Taking Pokrovsk, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk won't be easy, especially given Russia's operational incompetence, but the plan is to keep bombing them until Ukraine runs out of reinforcements.
Circling back to the original question, why invade Russia proper?
If it was a plan to get Russia to divert its forces from the Donbass frontline, so far it has failed, especially given that Ukrainian troops taking part in the operation had been diverted from the Donbass too.
Is it a landgrab operation in the anticipation of upcoming peace talks? What peace talks?
Is it a way to remind other countries that Ukraine still can fight to get more aid? Maybe.
Is it a consolation goal before Ukraine starts talking about negotiations? It's not like it has backfired on them before, right?
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I will make this post with the prior that I personally favor the Ukrainians and their cause.
I do not like warfare by media spectacle. Insomuch as this is a victory, it is giving the Ukrainians a positive media cycle. What strategic value was gained here? Has the overall situation changed much? It is very much stinks of desperation. Perhaps if you subscribe to vibes-based warfare it is a victory worth talking about. It embarasses Gerasimov (and Putin by proxy.) Who cares? Gerasimov is a nincompoop. He is a butcher and a moron, but even a moron can hold a trench line.
The memory holed offensives with the much-hyped Western equipment half a year ago destroyed much material and good men for no gain at all. I also believe that they wanted a good media cycle before the NATO conference. Zelensky's generals seem to be strategizing, not to win the war, but to get the best headlines in the west. Why are they doing this? I don't know. Why aren't they trying to win the war? Why are they spending manpower and material on what are essentially photo ops?
The only comparable situation I can imagine from history is Republican Spain throwing an excess of resources to holding Madrid, of planning offensives for newspapers and prestige. The Republicans lost for many reasons, but they lost, because they weren't fighting to win. Can the Ukrainians even win? I suspect that their American backers need political cover to continue their aid.
The Battle of Shanghai would be another partial example, where Chiang Kai-Shek intentionally spent his best men and disproportionate amounts of armor to defend Shanghai both to buy time to move industry and to try to provoke an international reaction.
Throwing resources to hold a symbolic target is more a Ukrainian thing, with the massive overcommitment at Severodonetsk causing Lysychansk to fall in short order. Overcommitting in Avdiika and Bakhmut should have cause rapid collapses of Chasiv Yar and (pokrovsk?) but the Russians barely stormed 2km out the gate before settling down for a long grind (to nowhere in Bakhmut and now encroaching Pokrovsk near Avdiika. Ukraine overcommitted to stupid defenses in those locations, and Russia arguably overcommitted in throwing bodies there too. A question could of course be 'where should Russia choose to attack', but I am uninterested in expending brain cells in even theoretical advancement of Russian goals.
If we want historical analogies of 'overcommitting offensive resources to a militarily ineffective onjective' it would probably be Stalingrad historically or even Kursk itself, where Germany pushed troops it did not have to secure a target it did not need. Hindsight showed that German commitment to those campaigns was ineffective. We may yet make such a similar assessment of Ukraines own Kursk adventure in future, but right now it is very much Ukraines ball to play.
I was just giving another example of a military decision made explicitly for international optics rather than for strategy or propaganda, etc. Doubtless there are many examples of militarily ineffective overcommitments throughout history.
Hmm. Strictly speaking even Shanghai served a real purpose: the defense, however hopeless, of a major population center. Highlighting its value for foreign audiences would be opportunistic, since foreigners were actually there. I don't doubt the Chinese, like literally every military, would have yelled for every eyeball possible to be on their plight when they are under attack.
If we are talking about attacks launched specifically for foreign support against militarily dubious targets, arguably the Oct 7 Hamas-Palestine attack counts. The now-purged Arab telegrams and social media were publishing footage of the attacks on Israelis far and wide, with calls for the rest of the Arab world or at the very least West Bank and Hezhollah to strike the visibly weak Israelis that were blown away by the Hamas onslaught. Similarly the Six Day War had the Egyptians claim they had successfully bombed the Israeli Air Force into oblivion in order to get the Syrians to attack as well. This may be a case of an attack failing to materialize that nonetheless was constructed for foreign optics, so it may hold to your example.
Thinking about it, I recall tankies at one point claiming that Indonesia attacked East Timor to curry favor with the USA, or Columbia warring against Cartels and FARC for the same reason, claiming that these peopld would not have acted without US demanding it so. Though this may fall kore as 'proxy war' instead of 'notice me senpai'.
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Although not strictly a war, the Hong Kong protest leaders made a lot of mistakes because they were thinking more about how certain actions would play in the western media than how they would look at home.
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You seem to be assuming that the most straightforward avenue "to win the war" is also the most viable for Ukraine to take. It reads as "just break the Russians' offensive head-on, bro", but in more words.
My impression is that they, in fact, believe that with the resources available they can't just break the Russians' offensive head-on, or otherwise accomplish straightforward victories that would be legible to you as "trying to win the war", so they're going for headline victories. Which aren't nothing.
Then what, exactly, is all of this western aid paying for?
What is the length of commitment necessary from the West for Ukraine to win the war?
I think the average American is happy to support Ukraine, less happy, if it proves to be a Afghanistan-level commitment. Open-ended conflicts with no clear objective is the kind of foreign entanglement I do not like.
Presumably to bleed Russia of manpower and materiel. Ukraine definitely isn't winning the war right now, but Russia's eventual victory (barring some sort of black swan event like an internal coup or civil war etc.) will definitely be a Phyrric one. Russia will likely become a client state of the Chinese (see China already bending Russia over on petroleum deals), the embarrassing performance of a lot of their systems (like the S-400) will cause tons of nation states to turn to other suppliers for arms. The widespread incompetence seen in the Russian military is unlikely to lead to significant or lasting reforms.
In the end Russia will likely secure a peace deal that gives them Crimea officially (along with a land bridge connecting it, basically the territory that Russia currently controls). But at tremendous cost to their capabilities and their place in the world order.
For me any ideas I had of Russia being able to go head to head against NATO were obviously wrong after the failed Kiev offensive at the start of the invasion. Russia clearly can't into logistics when they don't have uncontested railways within 50 km of where they're operating. Logistics is what wins wars, and has ever since the advent of modern weapons/air power/etc. have made armies unable to support themselves solely on raping and pillaging the countryside. See America's barge dedicated to making ice cream for troops in the Pacific vs. Japan not even having enough fuel for their remaining fleet by the end of WW2 (and the US also had several more ice cream barges serving the European theater).
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It doesn't, but Ukraine needs to do something to keep Western attention and support. In addition, letting Russia operate airfields close to the border is probably not a good idea.
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Early 2024 was one of the worst periods for Ukraine of the war so far (shell hunger, no recent wins, etc). For both domestic and international backers a high profile success provides hope and assurance that they are still in the fight. It's hard to understate the importance of troop morale. In the international context, backers are more likely to continue to provide support if Ukraine demonstrates that they can achieve success on the battlefield.
The message to ordinary Russians, particularly those in Kursk and adjacent, is that the war can come for them too. It also makes Putin and co. look less secure and in control. It's probably not going to break the camel's back, but if you're in the business of camel-back breaking you take the straws you can get.
In terms of military effect: Russia has been on the offensive for a while now, and there's reason to believe it will culminate in the near future. By conducting the incursion they create a dilemma: stay on the offensive even longer to try and retake the territory, or take the operational pause as planned and give Ukraine the opportunity to dig in. Neither option is particularly appealing.
It also takes uti possetidis off the table....
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[Last week JKF asked in the Transnational Thursday thread if the salient was defensible. That's not the quite the same question, but response I wrote had enough overlap to be relevant.
Per JKF-
To which my response was-
Kinda / sorta / it doesn't need to be to serve the purpose of overall defense. The issue isn't the specific-holdability of this specific terrain, but rather what the Russians would need to re-secure it, particularly since while they have 'more resources', they don't necessarily have more of the right kind of resources to counter a mobile defense without compromising the offense in other sectors.
In military doctrines, there are generally two main types of defense: positional defense, and mobile defense.
A positional defense is what you generally think of in the Ukraine War over the last 2.5 years- trench lines, artillery duels, relatively static air defense needs and placements. This has its advantages for the defender in increasing cost-ratio, but disadvantages in that the opponent gets to choose when and where exactly to the attack. Similarly, it has its disadvantages for the attacker, but it also has it's advantages in some respects. Because it's mutual trenchworks, counter-attacks face the same general disadvantage, even as the general attack can establish overlapping mitigation measures for things like counter-drone / anti-air / artillery / etc, which can let the participant move forces in 'relatively' safe conditions. Positional defenses are costly, but generally more one way in favor of the larger party.
This is what Russia has reorganized its military to fight over the last two years. Tanks are used to support attacks on specific positions, mass concentrations of artillery forces and depots to support suppressive fires on static positions, etc.
A mobile defense, on the other hand, is a far more aggressive form of counter-force defense which terrain is given up for time / opportunities to maneuver and strike where most advantageous, with the goal of targetting enemy forces so that they are unable to advance / must retreat and reconsolidate, preserving the defender's control of key territory further behind and having out-sized effects on forces. It is harder to pull off in both terms of contexts and skill level, but it also has the potential to be even more efficient in terms of cost-to-the-defender, as the defender can be fighting over ground that the other side doesn't already have prepared with the sort of over-lapping systems of artillery / AA / counter-drone EW that could mitigate the force effectiveness, as only the stuff that you can carry with you can move with you. The defender can thus be more proactive in choosing when and where to counter-attack, avoid fights over specific terrain that is unfavorable, and because the attacker has to press the advance- and thus leave the advantages of positional defenses- to pursue.
The issue with mobile defenses is that you need to give up terrain for time and space for when to counter-attack the enemy force. This could lead to retreating until the war is lost, or you have to go into positional defenses you can't abandon. It also requires the political capital for a leader to be willing to tell his nation 'no, we're not going to fight over all the terrain.'
But if- hypothetically- you could get a lot of the enemy's terrain to maneuver through, which you wouldn't pay a significant political cost to give up...
This is where we start hitting the defensive context of this offensive. It's not that the surprisingly rapid advance of Ukrainian forces means a new static front line to be defended in Russia. It's that the fact that Ukrainian forces were able to maneuver so quickly forward, also means they will be able to maneuver backwards, and laterally, and thus have the capacity for a mobile defense. And because this is so far from the Russian-Ukrainian front lines, the Russians have to leave their static position setups and try to maneuver- and in doing so, open themselves up for attacks that wouldn't be possible against forces under the defensive-position envelopes.
We've already seen some of this happen. There was reportedly a HIMARs attack in Kursk that destroyed a column of Russian forces in transit. This would simply not have been possible in a normal static defense, because (a) the units wouldn't have been consolidated, (b) would have likely been in defensive positions, and (c) the area would have been under various AA/missile-defense envelopes. Similarly, there were reports of Russian platoons surrendering after being flanked and enveloped. The point isn't that the Russians are in a catastrophic defeat- the point is that the same sort of expenditure of Ukrainian resources wouldn't have achieved these sort of results if just pushed into the positional defenses.
What this means for the Russians is that they need to bring in maneuver forces of sufficient capacity / protective capabilities to push back the Ukrainians, and that this requirement increases with time. The more the Ukrainians are able to advance, the more terrain they have with which to maneuver and trade away- and the more they have, the more Russian resources are required to contain the pocket.
The issue for the Russians is that they don't have the extra army to spare. If it did, we wouldn't be discussing the Ukrainians advancing over a relatively under-defended Russian border, but the Russians advancing the other way across the relatively under-defended Ukrainian border. Unlike the Ukrainians, who built up the resources for this offensive rather than put it into the front lines, the Russians have been prioritizing beefing up the front lines over additional fronts- as seen with the recent Kharkiv offensive, which could be the analog here, but which was apparently under-resourced as a light-infantry push without significant technical/mechanized support.
Which will likely mean that Russia will need to take forces from the front lines. This likely means the reserves, not literal front line troops, but front line offensives won't be conducted with the same level if there's no reserve force to sustain the losses / exploit a success.
And in the process, those reserves are being exposed to much greater risk. This is why that HIMARs-convoy destruction is notable- the Russian maneuver warfare capability has sharply degraded over the last few years as the Russians have reverted from a post-Soviet era to a Soviet-era army, and maneuver warfare is one of the contexts where technological differentials matters more and more. The Russians are able to mitigate some of the risks of modern western capabilities when they have nested EW/AA capabilities, but when you take Russian forces out of it, you're getting back to the technology differentials of the Desert Shield era.
Which is how this serves as a strategic-level defense even if no territory or town is fought over street-by-street. Even if this offensive 'only' takes a month for the Russians to roll back to the border, that's a month of disruption to the Russian offensives elsewhere, at higher system vulnerability than in the positional defense paradigm. The Ukrainians could blunder this, of course... but even if the Russians tried to follow them right across the border, that would be a relative Ukrainian win, as there was a reason that the Russians weren't attacking that border anyway, and forces the Russians commit there aren't fueling the advances elsewhere.
And this is without the other anciliary costs and benefits. Aside from the propaganda value, including the value of Ukraine having a high-profile success near the end of the American election cycle (good news encourages continued support, when the Russian strategy has been hoping for a negative narrative to encourage American withdrawal of support), there's also the matter of western aid policy. The Ukrainians have been faced with real significant limitations on how some weapons can be used from Ukraine into Russia, such as what would allow them to go after Russian airfields. (Or- more recently- how the Kharkiv offensive was allowed to build up strength because the Ukrainians weren't allowed to fire into the clearly massing forces.) The Ukrainian offensive- in which various systems are now being used from within Russia in Russia- has had such a muted response, that this will very likely lead to relaxed restrictions in the future. If it does so, then Ukrainian gains in better utilizing western aid will further increase their overall defensive effectiveness against the Russians, and mitigate some of Russia's main enduring advantages (such as military airfields for the glide bomb campaign.)
Put all together, and I think your question of 'is this a defensible salient' is a qualified yes on an operational level (maneuver defense is a form of defense), but a much stronger yes on a campaign level (undercutting offenses in other regions by requiring commitment of Russian reserves), and especially at a strategic level (shaping western weapons restriction policy, information/vibes impact of the US election season).
But it's not necessarily the right question. It's not whether any square kilometer of the salient will be held- it's that by putting the Russians in the position of having to take it back in the first place, multiple defensive interests have likely been advanced.
Hope that helps.
/
Returning back to your specific questions-
No.
In military terms, a feint is a diversionary attack to draw enemy attention away from the decisive operation. There has to be an intended 'real effort' the feint is supposed to enable via the distraction. A feint with unexpected can translate into a genuine attack, and a feint needs enough support behind it to be credible to work as a diversion in the first place, but a feint is always in support of some other primary operation.
Instead, the primary purpose of this attack is almost certainly not to draw Russian troops away from defending conquered Ukrainian territory, but to draw Russian troops away from attacking not-conquered Ukrainian territory.
The nature of the positional struggle further south is that the Russians and Ukrainians there both have significant defensive setups with overlapping systems. The same factor that has prevented Russian breakthroughs despite months of incremental advances at high attritional cost also prevents Ukrainian breakthroughs. However, even on the offensive Russia needs reserves on those fronts to sustain the advance (as if there weren't the reserves to replace attrition, the front forces wouldn't be launching the sort of attritional attacks they have), and were Ukraine to attack there, the Russian reserves powering the advance would also be there, in more favorable defensive systems, to counter the counter-attack.
Given that a significant part of the Russian overlapping systems are systems like electronic warfare equipment to mitigate western-equipment advantages in things like precision targetting or drones, large artillery formations, and other defenses, the same X Ukrainian forces committed to the Kursk attack would almost certainly not have had the impact were they committed further south.
What the Ukrainian offensive has done is force the Russians into a very awkward position of taking forces that would otherwise be supporting the attacks further south, and bringing them around to Kursk. The Russians could conceivably try to rely on the normal conscript cycle manpower for this- except the political costs to Putin of such is why the Russians switch from the first mobilization conscription wave to the current volunteer model- and taking the forces from eastern Ukraine, reduces the ability to advance in Eastern Ukraine.
No.
In terms of 'claim,' the Ukrainians aren't making the claims the land is theirs. That doesn't mean return wouldn't be a part of negotiations, or relevant, but this isn't a 'you claimed our province so we'll claim yours.' (Probably not what you meant precisely, but it's important to be clear.)
Also no, in that the land doesn't need to be held until the point of peace talks to serve the purpose of taking it.
Per the points above about the different types of defense and the difficulties of a counter-attack on different parts of the border, the land itself is not the point. The land is a context, a battlespace with different advantages/disadvantages, but more importantly one with implications for Russian force allocation and utilization further south. Even if Russia takes back all of the Kursk salient next week, that's a week that those Russian forces aren't spending contributing to attacks further south.
Several ways, though that's not to say any one of these is 'the plan' or the decisive reason the Ukrainians did it.
Among other things, the offensive has or will likely-
-Be a more efficient attritional tradeoff of Ukrainian forces versus Russians than would be used further south, at a relatively low risk
The current Kursk attack is really not that big of a force danger to the Ukrainian forces involved, because the primary tool Russia relies on to drive up the casualties- artillery- isn't present, and many of the compounding factors- prepared defenses, covered minefields, EW to mitigate drones, etc.,- also are largely absent. Without a significant maneuver capability to isolate and cut off the Ukrainian forces, and the Russian mechanized forces are both committed to the front and have downgraded over the years to reduce that- the risk to the thousands of Ukrainians involved in this is... relatively low. Even if/when the Russians bring the forces to bear to push them out, it will generally be within the Urkainian ability to do a fighting withdrawal, picking when and where to fight until they go back behind the border (at which point if the Russians were going to invade that way, they would have before this).
Instead, the Urkainians have a significant opportunity for more selective engagements in more favorable conditions due to the Russian requirements to move forces quicker, and thus without the sort of defenses that exist on the static front. We've seen this with ambushes, the flanking / surrounding / surrender issues, the columns attacked by US precision weapons, and so on. Russia's mechanized capabilities are already heavily degraded, and their motorized forces are very vulnerable in transit when the western missiles / drones aren't being as countered by EW / drones, and the Russians are having to make that transit.
Even outside of the 'does it relieve pressure further south' dynamic, this is likely to be a more favorable attrition opportunity, and the long-term Ukrainian strategy continues to be a fundamentally attrition-based strategy in which Ukraine attrits Russian offensive capabilities (such as the forces that will be moved to conduct the counter-attack) while Western production (and thus potential aid) spools up. (It feels trite to still be saying this, but 2024 is / has been since last year expected to be the year of maximum relative Russian advantage vis-a-vis Ukraine+ backers on a production footing, as the Western investments in increasing artillery production and such are expected to start resulting in expanded production next year and grow at faster rates than Russia. Hence why Russia's strategy this year was higher manpower attrition rates than in 2023, as this year is the one with which they wanted to set conditions for potential talks with a potential new US administration / after the European elections of 24).
-Force Putin into politically difficult positions that reveal the limits of his manpower strategy to win the war by volunteer-attrition
The Ukrainian offensive was only possible because Russia has functionally bled every other front and posting in Russia white to the degree that it thinks it can get away with. While Russia has demonstrated it's willingness to keep burning through it's manpower in high-attrition rates- and we've seen the increase in recruitment offers as a monetary example of the escalating costs in both casualty and monetary terms- as long as the conflict was constrained to the established front in, say, Donetsk it was a suitable enough solution. What the Kursk incursion has demonstrated is the limits of this manpower sourcing, as the ability to fill the Russian manpower needs on a relatively narrow front doesn't mean that the only manpower Russia needs is on that narrow front. If Putin needs to garrison the frontier, he's going to need considerably more manpower- and probably the use of the conscription cycles.
This matters, because Russia lost approximately 800,000 people in 2022 not from combat, but as mass emmigration events after starting the war and the mobilization. Putin has very repeatedly not repeated the experience, but transitioned to a money-for-recruitment model after the prison-pipeline largely died out. Putin is very sensitive to the Russian public being directly involved in the war, which is what the use of Conscripts also entails, and has repeatedly demonstrated a preference to decrease military effectiveness over compelling that sort of service. Forcing Putin into that position has multiple benefits, especially since the Russian limiting factor is now the reactivation of equipment, not personnel, so even a mobilization wave wouldn't produce a practically equipped army for anything but high-political-cost garrison duty.
-Undercut Russia's information strategy of the year of presenting the entire year of one of one-sided Russian advances
Russian force utilization over the last year has been focused far more on consistency of marginal gains over military efficacy over a multi-year campaign, with an expenditure rate that almost certainly couldn't be repeated next year bar significantly more inflows from outside parties at considerable cost. The most likely (competent) reason for this is trying to frame the information environment for potential talks next year in the framework of 'Ukraine should make all the concessions, as we made all the advances last year and they were unable to do anything.'
Instead, the counter-attack (this late in the year even) illustrated Russia's continued weaknesses, demonstrated that Ukraine still had the political and material ability to launch meaningful attacks, and that Russia's position of strength in one front isn't a position to be conflated everywhere/elsewhere. That matters not only in terms of negotiations, including resisting diplomatic pressure form those who want the Ukrainians to make further territorial concessions in the name of peace, which is the Russian theory of victory on how to compel Ukraine to capitulate when the Russian military has demonstrated it really can't do so miltiarily.
Note that this also undercuts some of the anti-Ukrainian narratives in the global information environment. One of the common narratives since the start of the war has been that Ukraine is on the cusp of a failure cascade for lack of forces / equipment to resist, and that every operation is throwing what they have away and etc. etc. etc. Successful counter-offensives, even 'small' ones, counter this by demonstrating that the force generation surpluses needed to take to the offense and not just defend still exists. This will likely be more relevant in the future when rebutting criticisms of the 2023 counter-offensive as inherently doomed to fail, as the current Kursk offensive is demonstrating that offensives are potentially successful, and that the factors that determined whether Ukraine can succeed are factors that can be accounted for (say- having the right aid policies to counter russian capabilities), rather than being beyond control or recreation (dismissing the 2022 offensives as flukes).
-Bolster western supporters by generating a high-publicity win
This goes into aid politics. Just as the Russian propaganda incentive has been to present the conflict as a futile struggle with an inevitable conclusion that Western countries shouldn't bother sending Ukraine aid for because of the futility, Ukraine has an incentive to show partners that it's weapons enable good results. People like backing underdogs, but also winners, and especially underdogs that can produce wins, which improves the (foreign donor) political support for continuing to donate aid. Sometimes launching offenses isn't even a 'we do it for the fans' priority, but 'the patreons demand it of us' dynamic, which was seen in 2023 when the Ukrainian offensive that year had a degree of western pressure to conduct to justify the sizable aid buildup.
Even though the Ukrainian offensive is not presenting itself as relying on western kit (to avoid donor fears of escalation), it is being enabled by western kit elsewhere, and in turn facilitating future aid delivery in a way that committing the forces further south wouldn't.
(If you really wanted to expand this argument, you could claim that generating a win is intended to help the Democrats in the US election, as the Ukraine support is a broadly more-popular-than-not thing for the Democratic coalition, and that a high profile success may indirectly boost the Democrat's prospects. However, there's no particular reason to believe this was the motive, as opposed to a welcome anciliary benefit, as the motives for the Ukrainians to act remain.)
-Improve western weapon efficiency by breaking down sensitivity restrictions by demonstration
One of the dynamics of the western aid to Ukraine has been the amount of usage-restrictions imposed in the name of avoiding 'escalation' with Russia. I use the term in quotations because there is now a multi-year pattern as Russian explicit/implicit threats if a category of aid were to reach Ukraine, the aid reaching Ukraine, and the threats not materializing- rather the threats served primarily to delay the arrival and limit the utility of capabilities provided. This has had multiple operational impacts, ranging from undercutting the 2023 counteroffensive (Russians were able to use helicopter aviation much more aggressively against the forces trying to breach minefields because ATACMs and similar missiles that could disrupt airfields were being witheld because they could range into Russia; the ATACMs were unlocked later in the offensive), or even this year's 2024 Russian Kharkiv offensive, in which Russian buildup was observed and well within potential fire range, but western aid restrictions prohibited attacks onto Russian territory where the buildup was occuring (the restriction was relaxed for the adjacent areas).
What the current offensive is doing is further breaking down the Western weapon usage taboos by demonstrating that the sky doesn't fall if you attack into Russia. It's notable that the Ukrainians are mostly doing this with Soviet-era kit for this reason, as it limits the political perception risk, but likewise the Russian response is, well, something the Ukrainians can plausibly point to to justify being able to strike military targets in Russia.
This matters because the current restriction that would mean quite a bit is the ability to more aggressively target Russian airfields not just in Crimea, but Russia proper, where the Russians have been launching the glide-bomb campaign. The Russian glide bombs are one of the main Russian advantage points in the current context, arguably more so than artillery due to the heavy glide bombs ability to destroy fortifications, and being able to use western weapons against such airfields would matter.
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The best explanation/defense of Ukraine's actions that I saw actually came from a guy I consider fairly pro-Russian (Michael Valtersson, a Swede), who said they were expecting a Russian attack from that axis and attacked preemptively. He said the Russians had begun removing minefields in preparation of the troop incursion and that the Ukrainians infiltrated in sabotage groups and then probably attacked during a routine troop rotation (so they were able to double their numbers for the offensive without it raising alarm bells.)
A preemptive attack at a weak spot seems like, on balance, a good move to me. Throws the enemy off balance, forces them to throw their forces into retaking ground they have lost instead of taking more ground.
The Russian collapse would be an argument against an expectation of any attack from that axis. If there were a force buildup, the Ukrainians wouldn't have been running amuck virtually unopposed. Additionally, there was never any commercial imagery indication of a russian buildup in Kursk, even though such mobilizations were noted at the Kharkiv buildup a relatively short ways away.
The Ukrainians had been launching strikes into the region for some time, which means that any troops being built up for an attack were probably still well behind the lines if this theory is correct (I dunno if it is, not being privy to Ukrainian high command's thinking.) If you were to launch such an attack, you'd want to time it before any troops were placed on the border but after as many minefields and roads were cleared as possible.
There have been some open-source reporting suggesting that there might be a Russian attack from this position, although Russian activity in the area seems to have dropped off before the attack. Ukrainians were saying in July that they expected an attack from the North, and the Russians did in fact launch a raid later that month.
A Russian buildup in the Kursk region was reported earlier this spring, although it was subsequently reported that Russian activity in the Sumy area decreased.
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Ukraine could be aping the strategy of Israel here. There's a growing consensus that Israel thinks it has "escalation dominance" in its proxy war against Iran. They can embarrass Iran and Iran will just have to take it. If Iran strikes back too harshly, the U.S. will stomp them.
Therefore, Israel, bleeding a death by a thousand cuts, must take an offensive posture to draw the U.S. into the war. It hopes to provoke Iran into attacking, thereby getting more military support or at least money. It might work. Iran is apparently planning a significant reprisal for the assassination of the Hamas leader on their soil. And the U.S. is trying to talk them down, promising support to Israel if they do attack too harshly.
This logic seems to hold for Ukraine even more. They are losing a war of attrition and may be facing a manpower collapse in the near future. As time goes on, the West tires of this war. The Ukrainian flags quietly disappear from the Twitter bios. But if Ukraine can provoke a Russian atrocity, it will get more Western support, more arms, more dollars, and maybe even NATO troops. This is their best bet to "win" the war.
I don't consider Israel's assassination of the leader of Hamas on Iranian soil a big escalation. It seems like just the normal thing to do with terrorist leaders.
Edit: also, I think the US Government might continue to supply Ukraine indefinitely, as long as the voting public doesn't actively oppose it. It's not like we live in a direct democracy where every voter has to actively re-up on the decision to arm Ukraine once per year, it's more delegated/technocratic/deep-statey than that. Whatever words you want to use to describe it.
As much as I don't trust the unelected bureaucracy about some things, this way of making the decision seems fine to me.
Would you consider a Chinese assassination of an individual they believed to be a Tibetan separatist leader living in the USA to be a hostile act? Is your belief that international borders do not matter, or that only Iran's borders do not matter?
In addition to the example of India assassinating a leading Sikh separatist in the core American province of Canada with absolute impunity, China doesn’t typically employ overseas assassinations because it doesn’t have to, there is no genuine Tibetan threat to Beijing’s rule of that territory. In addition, they’re happy for dissidents to leave. Russia is more scared of ex-FSB types defecting to the UK or US with mountains of intelligence, so they use assassination more.
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If the Tibetan was a terrorist leader responsible for an October 7th attack then that would be the same. But the US Government would probably never shelter someone who committed an attack like that against China.
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India did that to a Sikh leader in Canada, and other than it being very embarassing that our government is unable to prevent or dissuade it, Canada isn't exactly going to war with India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar
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Since Iran could not protect its borders, yes Iranian borders do not matter.
When China starts openly sabotaging American military infrastructure and assassinating people on American soil with impunity, it would be clear that US superpower days are over and it is now just ordinary third world shithole country.
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Have they, or anyone, done it before on the soil of a country that is friendly to the leader and has sufficient state capacity of its own that there isn't some sort of "we're just doing policing for you that you would be doing yourself if your country functioned" narrative that lets everyone save some measure of face? Israel assassinated some Iranian scientists before, but that seemed like a lower-ranked target than the leader of an allied military (and anyway was shut down by US pressure about a decade ago). This seems akin to if Russia went from having that Chechen militiaman shot in Berlin to blowing up Zelenskiy (or at least Syrskiy?) during one of his visits to the West, which surely would be seen as an escalation - or Ukraine going from merely blowing up Russian milbloggers to setting a bomb in Russia for Kim Jong Un.
Why does an enemy nation that launched a multiple-front war on us via proxy get to keep its “sovereignty”? Why even after launching ballistic missiles from its own territory? The only thing keeping them safe is the limited capacity of the IDF to wage any kind of real war on them, but that’s not a moral argument.
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Hezbollah isn’t a nation, it’s a paramilitary force designated a terrorist group by the US and allies and the GCC.
Israel assassinated the leader of Hamas, not Hezbollah.
Ah, I was confused as to what the poster was referring to. Israel isn’t going to kill Nasrallah because he’s widely seen as more conservative about a full war against Israel than his likely successors.
Does "the poster" here refer to me? I was just referring to the incident the parent I was responding to brought up (though then I went along with Hezbollah after you said that without even noticing the substitution).
It was almost certainly my mistake
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Why does the way that the US designates it matter? Whether it's an escalation or not surely depends on the perception of those affected by the measure, as understood by those who took it - if I know that you will consider some step a greater infringement of your interests than anything I have done before and yet I take it, then I am escalating. Russia considering Zelenskiy and/or the state of Ukraine illegitimate would not have any bearing on how escalatory an assassination of him would be either - or are you implying that this is different because the US is the one that thinks Hezbollah is illegitimate?
Has Russia not tried to assassinate Zelensky many times? AFAIK he is only being kept alive because Western intelligence is in charge of his movements.
If they have (and, well, what do we know if there is no success and no public record of claimed attempts?), they surely haven't tried to do so on the soil of a Western country?
I've got no idea if it's true, but why would you assume that they wouldn't? They've carried out assassinations in western nations before.
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Why does that matter in the context of violating Iran's sovereignty over its territory?
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Honestly it's becoming a sort of Iranian strategic devolution at this point.
Most of the point of a proxy war is that the proxy is distant enough from the state so as to minimize the costs of engaging in a conflict. 'Plausible deniability' works as a mutual fiction, as it lets the person being attacked focus on fighting the proxy instead of you, but it also lets you not get exposed if the proxy starts to lose. Just like offensive-alliances are a strategically untenable idea since it drags parties into other people's wars they don't want to contribute to, a proxy relationship is not a defense treaty.
Treating an attack on a proxy as the same as an attack on one's self is losing the plot, and actively bringing the proxy into your political center is blurring the identification lines that make the proxy, well, a proxy. If the Iranian government wanted to launch a multi-day attack on Israel by Iranian forces, it could do so without the proxy. If Iran feels obliged to because Israel attacked the proxy, then it's no longer a proxy, but a vassal-ally to whom state-deterrence applies. But if you're applying state-deterrence theory in protection of a proxy, that in turn applies state-deterrence on what the proxy does... which is the whole historical mess of empires getting dragged into conflicts their vassal-allies drag them into.
This is an understandable mess given how the Iranian theocracy has cultivated the IRGC into a deep-state, and the IRGC has very personal relationships with the axis of resistance members, but it's still a mess of bad strategy. Iran has wanted and gotten used to the benefits of plausible-deniable proxy warfare over the last decades, but stopped putting in the work- or the mental discipline- to keep the distance between itself and its proxies enough for the distinction to be relevant.
There are ways to manage a proxy relationship so that they are active but the backer remains safe. You could look at how the Ukraine coalition has managed to support Ukraine, but you could also look at how Pakistan approached the Pashtun-Taliban against the US, or the Chinese in the Korean war, and so on. There are ways... but Iran's breaking some basic principles, and we're seeing the results.
I don't understand how all of this reasoning (apart from the value judgements regarding Iran, the IRGC etc., which seem orthogonal to any determinations about the proper way to treat proxy wars) wouldn't apply to Ukraine and NATO. Do you see the same binary choice between "the backers should just attack (Russia/Israel) themselves" and "the backers must keep a sanitary cordon around the proxy that entails not inviting its representatives into own territory, and if they do it anyway they can't complain if the proxy's representatives get attacked on their soil" in that case? If not, what is different?
I could imagine someone as on board with the official US line as you would have the reflex to say that Ukraine/Russia is not a proxy war because Ukraine decided to fight out of its own volition, but I have not seen a case being made that Hezbollah does not have the will (nor have I seen the suggestion that in a proxy war the proxy must be unwilling). If you wanted to say that it's all different because Ukraine is a real country blessed by the US while Hezbollah is a terrorist militia and therefore doesn't get agency, then it seems like you would just be taking roundabout steps to Russell-conjugate "proxy war" so that the bad-sounding word does not apply when your side does it.
The nature of the relationship with the proxies, the nature of the threat the proxies pose to the opponent, the nature of the ways to provide both off-ramps to the target to stop the proxy war, and the relative difference in escalation risk of attacking proxies in the backer's countries as a contrast to the status quo.
(Or- in other words- Russia is not already in a conventional military conflict with NATO, and both does not face existential risk from the proxy and can end the proxy war by a return to conduct that respects Russia's existence. Iran's coalition instigated the framing conflict, is already in the attempted Intifada, is already executing a sustained bombardment campaign, is already disrupting maritime shipping- Iran can't really leverage threats it is already executing as deterence against an Israeli escalation.)
In case you were reading a moral judgement, don't. This was a utility-viewpoint assessment.
If you missed the argument, I suppose, but even that wouldn't mean that the distinction between being a country and not being a country isn't rightfully a dominant distinction, or even the only distinction that needs to be defended.
The international system revolves around the premise of state sovereignty. States are owed / entitled / accorded certain privileges and presumptions that non-state actors, hence why Russia spent it's pre-war justification narrative trying to discredit that there was a Ukrainian nation to have an independent state. While Iran and its axis of resistance have also rejected the right of an Israeli state to defend itself, Israel is indeed a state, and states do have a right to defend themselves against other states who perpetrate attacks against them.
Iran's mistake in disregarding the plausible deniability / gap between proxy and state backer is that this gap is what is required to try and exploit an advantage of unilateral aggression between states, even as Iran set up a weak paradigm that decreased it's deterrence against being called out. Israel pre-attack was already in the midst of an Iranian-backed attempted Intifada, major artillery campaign, maritime disruption campaign, and global anti-jewish terrorism efforts... and these all were instigated / arranged while competition with Iran was at a much, much lower level. Iran doesn't get deterrence value out of threats it is already executing- it's the threat of retaliation that drives deterence, and pre-emptively executing it just leads to targets accepting it as a sunk cost and retaliating.
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I would argue that both you and @Dean are right. It is a bad strategic mistake, and it’s one that both Iran and the United States are making.
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NATO didn’t react to the war on Ukraine the way it would react to an invasion of a member state, though. That’s the entire reason the Ukrainians want into NATO.
Even if the Ukrainian Defense minister was assassinated on say, German soil it is still unlikely that the US would send American soldiers to fight the Ukraine War, or that we’d bomb Moscow. So again, the situation isn’t really the same as Hezbollah/Iran.
I actually think that German boots on the ground in Ukraine would be a fairly likely response in that event (and American ones if the assassination happened in the US) - and, well, Iran hasn't sent physical soldiers to attack Israel yet, and we are seeing American and German hardware raining down on Russia every day. I'm sure Iran would have been happy to let its rocket volley be launched by Hezbollah or Hamas rather than sending it directly, too, if they had had the logistical possibilities to move the launchers there, as the Western alliance has with Ukraine.
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Ukraine wants not to be fighting an attritional war, they want to get out of a game that's stacked against them. They want to induce a political crisis in Russia or bring in NATO forces to help them. So they make a big deal out of blowing up warships, sending drones at random refineries, there's a certain fixation about destroying the Kerch bridge. None of this is terribly relevant to the land war. Maybe they hope that getting 30km into Russia will cause the whole rotten structure to come crumbling down? Failing that, they can say that 'oh Russia's "red lines" haven't been crossed when we did this so give us more long-range missiles please'. In addition, they want Russia to react in some way that draws NATO into the conflict. That's what the long-range missiles are for!
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Looking at the history of this war, it seems to me that Ukraine is willing to make extremely risky decisions that amount to strategic blunders so long as they can remind the West to send them money and supplies because that is their lifeline. It's not as silly as it sounds to fight a war in the newspaper headlines in their position, the day Washington and Brussels decide to cut their losses the Ukrainian state is bankrupt, and the West is famously fickle. They have to show that they can be a useful tool to bleed Russia.
In a purely military sense, this looks like the Ardennes Offensive. They have been slowly losing the methodical artillery war for a while now so a new offensive at least forces the Russians to respond and may disrupt their plans. Shuffling the cards when you are losing is rarely a bad idea. Attacking Russian territory maximizes the potential for this because of the political implications.
My long term prognostic doesn't change, this offensive is unlikely to achieve significant logistic disruption in the long term. And it's consuming men and materiel that are more precious to Ukraine than Russia. It's a delay, probably a costly one, but there doesn't seem to be anything else the Ukranians can do militarily speaking.
They may get many more rounds of Western military hardware, but at some point they're going to run out of fighting age men.
The issue would seem to be whether some escalation would lead to nuclear war. Russia has been patient up to this point, but Putin absolutely does have red lines that he will not allow crossed without serious consequences, up to and including nuclear war. He’s been pretty smart in my view by not saying exactly where the lines are (which would encourage NATO to get to the point where it’s next to the line, but not technically crossing it. You’d retaliate against NATO for 10,000 troops? Okay 9999 it is!) and creating a bit of hesitation for certain weapons or other aid packages.
My main fear at this point is that NATO gets serious about the idea of plugging the manpower gaps with Western troops. Everyone told off on Macron for suggesting it so it is a red line, but as Macron himself pointed out the red lines of a year ago are today's proud declarations. If the F-16s can actually come, why not some volunteer brigades. And once the coffins sent back home start being Western Europeeans and Americans, there is no telling where this ends.
Two methods to get Ukraine manpower:
Congress passes the Lafayette Act, which allows any US military serviceman to request a leave of absence to serve in the military of friendly government. While in service of a friendly government, the servicemen would continue to accrue seniority and promotions. Repeat across NATO. This gets trained specialists over there.
EU countries pass a law granting visas for the families of Ukraine volunteers from third countries who complete five years of honorable service or die in combat. This would produce vast quantities of warm bodies.
Do them both and Russia could be drained, and the cost of the war can grind on, and the human being lawnmower can chop chop chop, and the Black Sea can remain a warzone for another decade, and weapons manufacturers can make trillions, and a million more men can die over places I've never heard of and wouldn't be able to tell apart whether they were in Russia or Ukraine.
I think you overestimate how much people want to get into Europe legally. People will "risk their life", but there's going through a long arduous journey and there's getting shelled by rocket artillery. I know which I'd rather pick. Not to mention the quality of such troops. Ukraine is already suffering from training issues due to the turnover and pèle-mèle hardware. Adding language barrier into the mix is not going to help matters.
Poaching servicemen from western countries is a more realistic proposition, then you are actually getting people trained on the hardware they're going to use and who can fight.
But then, which is my point, how close is this from just being a NATO war against Russia in all but name, with the nuclear implications this brings? How long can both sides pretend that theirs is just a special military operation?
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IMO that would mostly result in greater political pressure not to send Western European and American troops to war.
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There are already volunteer brigades, with no earth-shattering results.
As long as in the coffins are professional mercenaries who signed for the job, no big deal.
Oh come on, you understand perfectly what I mean. Technical support and actual volunteers is no Legion Condor.
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Russia can more easily afford to lose men than Ukraine, but the flip side of that is that NATO can more easily afford to spend money on tanks/planes/missile systems/etcetera than Russia.
Of course. But my thesis since the beginning of the conflict has been that the limiting factor is manpower, not materiel.
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In my more tinfoil hat moments I think Ukraine is trying to get itself nuked in order to bring NATO into the conflict. Otherwise I agree with @Throwaway05 and @WestphalianPeace
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/r/CredibleDefense suggests that it's primarily a way of redirecting and exhausting resources, since the Russian war machine is incredibly slow and lumbering. Little desire to take and hold territory, more to force them to deploy a bunch of resources and then teehee and peace out. Russia probably knows this, but because of the propaganda aspect...they have to make the mistake.
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My intuition is that it's
but mostly, be skeptical of anyone saying with certainty they know what it is.
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