“The way the war is currently turning out does not seem to be a benefit to Putin at all, almost regardless of what happens next. Thus I don’t think it is going according to his plan, whatever his motives were. I don’t think that is in question, and I’m not seeing anyone arguing differently.”
I’m a bit skeptical about that, even though you’re right about it being the general consensus. But of course, the Western media will say anything to make Putin look weak, so there is a bit of artificiality there.
Why I’m skeptical? Because why would anyone think that it would be cake to invade a country of 44 million when yours is only about triple the population, and whose military numbers are also about only triple? Russia sent 200.000 troops to Ukraine, that’s also the number is total active Ukrainian troops, but they have another 900.000 reservists, plus several million fighting-age men who have been prohibited to leave the country. This is not to question Russia’s superiority—of course air warfare is the most important, and that’s where Russia is clearly superior, and therefore will win the war. But to think they would win in a few days? C’mon, who really believes that?
It’s totally different from Crimea, a non-country of a few million where most are ethnic Russians, or Georgia, also just a couple million.
Even the invasion of Chechnya in 1999, which has only a million people, resulted in a bloody war that extended for 10 years.
Therefore, when Russians say “we’re gonna take Kyiv in 3 days”, that’s nothing but trying to intimidate the enemy. And when Westerners really believe that that was the plan, it’s both believing their propaganda and saying “A-ha, you’ve failed!” for political purposes.
Seriously, I don’t really know how so many people are buying this.
“They question as I understood it is rather about why it might have seemed a good idea in the first place, and that is what I tried to address.”
Maybe it always has seemed like a good idea, but for some less obvious reasons. That’s where I stand. Either that, or the plan was flawed from the beginning. Or irrational/passional.
I certainly believed that Russia could take Ukraine in a few days. That Ukrainian forces would be simply overwhelmed with heavy weaponry. So did the alleged Russian soldiers who packed parade uniforms rather than food, their alleged schedules of orders printed on paper in lieu of radio communication, and the apparently pre-prepared Russian media reports of Russian victory after only a few days. I acknowledge that some of this is probably propaganda, but I note that both sides seems to have been essentially saying the same thing here, and also that it seems much more plausible for Putin to come out on top if it had in fact gone according to that plan, and thus much more plausible for him to have gone ahead with the attack in the first place if he thought that was a likely outcome. After all, the Coalition forces took Iraq in only a matter of weeks with comparable numbers of troops. Of course, that is turning into a very inadequate comparison, but I was certainly under the impression of Russia as a “near peer adversary”, similar in capabilities to the US, a view that is falling apart rapidly. This change in optics in itself is a massive, massive loss for Putin, plausibly bigger than the outcome of the war itself.
If this was obviously false to you ahead of time I applaud your ability to (seemingly at least) do better than most public military analys in the west over the last decade or more. I certainly did not. And judging by how the war is going, neither did Putin. I agree that 10 years in Chechnya, or the US in Afghanistan for that matter, should be counted as evidence against this view, and that it is indeed not holding up. This incompatibility indicates to me that Putin really did think that he’d get a heroes welcome, at least by a sizable part of the population. If he did belive that, invading makes all the more sense.
I do agree that it is in the Wests interest to portray Putin as failing, and that spreading rumors of his plan being implausibly optimistic ahead of time might have been part of that strategy. A strategy like that might backfire though, if it demoralizes defending troops before the attack (I personally would be inclined to desert if my own leaders thought we would loose within days anyway). Right now it is clearly in the interest of the west to fuel and maintain a narrative of a weak, disorganized and outdated Russian army, and this incentive should make us look more closely at the evidence. As far as I can see (which is not very far, certainly not further than anyone else with an internet connection) it seems to more or less check out.
A note on Reservists: Many reservist forces take months to mobilize and retrain even at the best of times, and will have to be processed in batches. Ukraine only activated it’s reservists on the day of the invasion. Apparently they have temporarily stopped taking more people in, due to training facilities being flooded with more volunteers than they can process. Russia has not (yet) called for remobilization of reservist forces, that we know of. If they did, that would amount to Putin admitting that something has gone horribly horribly wrong, in a way impossible to hide from the general population.
“So did the alleged Russian soldiers who packed parade uniforms rather than food”
That’s not a good example. I’ve been hearing tons of reports of Russian soldiers who didn’t even know they were going into enemy ground. Soldiers usually know little, specially those of dictatorships.
“If this was obviously false to you ahead of time I applaud your ability to (seemingly at least) do better than most public military analys in the west over the last decade or more”
All it takes is a bit of common sense and, above all, being able to detect the propaganda on both sides (I’ve also been hearing plenty of military analysts saying the war could last years btw). How on Earth do you conquer in a few days a nation of 44 million who’s deeply adverse towards you, and who’s been receiving plenty of military aid from the West? It’s that simple. This is not Iraq. Sure, Iraq has a similar size and population, but it’s a war-torn hellhole in the middle of nowhere, where the whole world was against it, not supporting it. It’s night and day. (Or one could also think of Hitler breezing through Austria and being received with flowers, but again, you had a population/government who was in full support of him, which is pretty much the opposite of the current stance of Ukraine towards Russia ).
“That’s not a good example”, “Soldiers usually know little”
Fair.
“the war could last years”
Now that Putin is bogged down, apparently unable to make militarily advances, but politically unable to back out, it might well drag on for years. I didn’t hear anyone predicting that until after the advance seemed to stall out though (again, me not hearing about it is not proof of absence. I’d be very interested to find an analyst who predicted this from the start.).
“All it takes is a bit of common sense”
This is not how it looks to me. But if grant that it is obvious, and was well known to all involved players, then that really raises the question of what Putin thinks he is gaining from a long, unpopular, expensive war with his “beloved brother-nation”. Which I suppose was the question that you posed to start with, so fair enough :) Most of my probability mass is still concentrated around Putin simply being mistaken about how he would be received, and thus how things would turn out, like I’ve outlined above. I realize that this is basically the common western propaganda narrative, and I agree that that should make us extra critical. But the fact remains that it sure looks to me like he is deep in the shit now, which clearly implies that something didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. See also new thread.
“The way the war is currently turning out does not seem to be a benefit to Putin at all, almost regardless of what happens next. Thus I don’t think it is going according to his plan, whatever his motives were. I don’t think that is in question, and I’m not seeing anyone arguing differently.”
I’m a bit skeptical about that, even though you’re right about it being the general consensus. But of course, the Western media will say anything to make Putin look weak, so there is a bit of artificiality there.
Why I’m skeptical? Because why would anyone think that it would be cake to invade a country of 44 million when yours is only about triple the population, and whose military numbers are also about only triple? Russia sent 200.000 troops to Ukraine, that’s also the number is total active Ukrainian troops, but they have another 900.000 reservists, plus several million fighting-age men who have been prohibited to leave the country. This is not to question Russia’s superiority—of course air warfare is the most important, and that’s where Russia is clearly superior, and therefore will win the war. But to think they would win in a few days? C’mon, who really believes that?
It’s totally different from Crimea, a non-country of a few million where most are ethnic Russians, or Georgia, also just a couple million.
Even the invasion of Chechnya in 1999, which has only a million people, resulted in a bloody war that extended for 10 years.
Therefore, when Russians say “we’re gonna take Kyiv in 3 days”, that’s nothing but trying to intimidate the enemy. And when Westerners really believe that that was the plan, it’s both believing their propaganda and saying “A-ha, you’ve failed!” for political purposes.
Seriously, I don’t really know how so many people are buying this.
“They question as I understood it is rather about why it might have seemed a good idea in the first place, and that is what I tried to address.”
Maybe it always has seemed like a good idea, but for some less obvious reasons. That’s where I stand. Either that, or the plan was flawed from the beginning. Or irrational/passional.
I certainly believed that Russia could take Ukraine in a few days. That Ukrainian forces would be simply overwhelmed with heavy weaponry. So did the alleged Russian soldiers who packed parade uniforms rather than food, their alleged schedules of orders printed on paper in lieu of radio communication, and the apparently pre-prepared Russian media reports of Russian victory after only a few days. I acknowledge that some of this is probably propaganda, but I note that both sides seems to have been essentially saying the same thing here, and also that it seems much more plausible for Putin to come out on top if it had in fact gone according to that plan, and thus much more plausible for him to have gone ahead with the attack in the first place if he thought that was a likely outcome. After all, the Coalition forces took Iraq in only a matter of weeks with comparable numbers of troops. Of course, that is turning into a very inadequate comparison, but I was certainly under the impression of Russia as a “near peer adversary”, similar in capabilities to the US, a view that is falling apart rapidly. This change in optics in itself is a massive, massive loss for Putin, plausibly bigger than the outcome of the war itself.
If this was obviously false to you ahead of time I applaud your ability to (seemingly at least) do better than most public military analys in the west over the last decade or more. I certainly did not. And judging by how the war is going, neither did Putin. I agree that 10 years in Chechnya, or the US in Afghanistan for that matter, should be counted as evidence against this view, and that it is indeed not holding up. This incompatibility indicates to me that Putin really did think that he’d get a heroes welcome, at least by a sizable part of the population. If he did belive that, invading makes all the more sense.
I do agree that it is in the Wests interest to portray Putin as failing, and that spreading rumors of his plan being implausibly optimistic ahead of time might have been part of that strategy. A strategy like that might backfire though, if it demoralizes defending troops before the attack (I personally would be inclined to desert if my own leaders thought we would loose within days anyway). Right now it is clearly in the interest of the west to fuel and maintain a narrative of a weak, disorganized and outdated Russian army, and this incentive should make us look more closely at the evidence. As far as I can see (which is not very far, certainly not further than anyone else with an internet connection) it seems to more or less check out.
A note on Reservists: Many reservist forces take months to mobilize and retrain even at the best of times, and will have to be processed in batches. Ukraine only activated it’s reservists on the day of the invasion. Apparently they have temporarily stopped taking more people in, due to training facilities being flooded with more volunteers than they can process. Russia has not (yet) called for remobilization of reservist forces, that we know of. If they did, that would amount to Putin admitting that something has gone horribly horribly wrong, in a way impossible to hide from the general population.
“So did the alleged Russian soldiers who packed parade uniforms rather than food”
That’s not a good example. I’ve been hearing tons of reports of Russian soldiers who didn’t even know they were going into enemy ground. Soldiers usually know little, specially those of dictatorships.
“If this was obviously false to you ahead of time I applaud your ability to (seemingly at least) do better than most public military analys in the west over the last decade or more”
All it takes is a bit of common sense and, above all, being able to detect the propaganda on both sides (I’ve also been hearing plenty of military analysts saying the war could last years btw). How on Earth do you conquer in a few days a nation of 44 million who’s deeply adverse towards you, and who’s been receiving plenty of military aid from the West? It’s that simple. This is not Iraq. Sure, Iraq has a similar size and population, but it’s a war-torn hellhole in the middle of nowhere, where the whole world was against it, not supporting it. It’s night and day. (Or one could also think of Hitler breezing through Austria and being received with flowers, but again, you had a population/government who was in full support of him, which is pretty much the opposite of the current stance of Ukraine towards Russia ).
“That’s not a good example”, “Soldiers usually know little”
Fair.
“the war could last years”
Now that Putin is bogged down, apparently unable to make militarily advances, but politically unable to back out, it might well drag on for years. I didn’t hear anyone predicting that until after the advance seemed to stall out though (again, me not hearing about it is not proof of absence. I’d be very interested to find an analyst who predicted this from the start.).
“All it takes is a bit of common sense”
This is not how it looks to me. But if grant that it is obvious, and was well known to all involved players, then that really raises the question of what Putin thinks he is gaining from a long, unpopular, expensive war with his “beloved brother-nation”. Which I suppose was the question that you posed to start with, so fair enough :)
Most of my probability mass is still concentrated around Putin simply being mistaken about how he would be received, and thus how things would turn out, like I’ve outlined above. I realize that this is basically the common western propaganda narrative, and I agree that that should make us extra critical. But the fact remains that it sure looks to me like he is deep in the shit now, which clearly implies that something didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. See also new thread.