Ukraine Invasion: Part 30

[MagicFox]

We're now on our 30th thread, thanks as usual to all who contribute.

If I lived in Russia ...

I live perhaps in a poor area. We don't have internet, or only minimal. My education level is only so-so and I've learned that Mother Russia -is- my mother, that I can be proud of her and of my leaders. So my leaders in the village say since I was small, so the TV says.

The West hates my Mother Russia since the Cold War. They want to destroy us. My standards of living are dropping and there are more programmes on how the West is trying to hurt me. Our Russian speakers who want to belong to Russia are getting attacked by Ukrainians, who are funded by Western money to overthrow the rightful government [the Maiden protests] and the Ukrainian western shills are actually attacking Russians in Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk. They aren't as good Russians as me and my village are, but if the West isn't stopped then they will come into Russia itself.

So we went to keep the peace and protect our people in Donbas and Luhansk. We are kind to the people who live there, even the ones who support the evil West, and we look after the civilians, we bring schooling and helpful soldiers, we see these reports on TV.

The West declared war, NATO declared war on us and they are attacking our people and our land of Donbas & Luhansk. They are attacking us economically, there are NATO soldiers in Ukraine and the West are giving Ukraine more and more powerful weopons. Putin, our Leader, is doing everything he can to protect us. We don't want more young men in our village to go there and die, and it's all the West's fault. We have to fight because they want to destroy us and it's their fault that our Russian brothers in Donbas are dying and our soldiers are dying.

The West is evil and wants to destroy us.

You aren't quite right there. Its not going to be people aware of others who got conned on 24th Feb

They are mobilising the very rookies who WERE the ones on the training exercise, but were at the end of their year service so didn't sign contracts and return to Ukraine after they withdrew from the north of Ukraine.

They have military experience, so will be conscripted straight back there first.

These guys KNOW what they are going to face. There are going to be a lot of men in rural Russia who just hide. Like they are doing in the Donbas already.

How many Chechens is Putin going to need, to shoot Russians in the back?

It's going to get messy in Russia whatever happens next.

At this stage, whatever we have spent on weapons and aid in Ukraine looks like a flipping bargain, even if it's hurting us on energy. If we are serious about finishing this war, we need to keep supplying as many bullets & bandages as UKR needs to destroy the remaining invaders (or more accurately, their morale). The sooner the better, really.

My main concern at this stage is what Putin will do when the new set of soldiers collapse/peter out. He might be tempted to stage a nuclear incident as a farewell shot.

ISW Key Takeaways

Russian-appointed occupation officials in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts announced on September 20 that they will hold a “referendum” on acceding to Russia, with a vote taking place from September 23-27.

The Kremlin’s annexation plans are primarily targeting a domestic audience; Putin likely intends to improve Russian force generation capabilities by calling on the Russian people to volunteer for a war ostensibly to defend newly-claimed Russian territory.

Ukrainian forces continued disrupting ongoing Russian efforts to reestablish ground lines of communications (GLOCs) across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.

Russian forces are likely targeting Ukrainian hydrotechnical infrastructure in Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts to threaten Ukrainian positions along the Siverskyi Donets River.

Russian forces conducted ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on September 20.

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks west of Hulyaipole on September 20 and continued routine artillery strikes throughout Zaporizhia Oblast.

Russian forces continue to degrade their force generation capabilities by cannibalizing training elements to fight in combat formations in Ukraine. [very relevant given today's news!]

+++

⚡️Ukroboronprom [main Ukr defense company] says it's building ammunition factory together with NATO member state.

⚡️Official: US will never recognize Russia's claims to any annexed parts of Ukraine.

⚡️Bloomberg: EU guidance weakens sanctions on Russian coal.

⚡️Google data: Russians consider fleeing the country as possible mobilization looms.
According to data from Google Trends, the search for fleeing the country became highly popular in Russia on Sept. 20 after the Kremlin and its proxies announced plans to annex occupied territories in Ukraine.

⚡️ Scholz: Germany won't accept peace on Kremlin's terms.
In his speech at the UN General Assembly he called Putin's actions "flagrant imperialism" and his plans to hold pseudo-referendums on occupied Ukrainian territories "a new round of escalation." "If we want Putin's war to end, then we cannot be indifferent to how it ends," Scholz tweeted later on Sept. 21. "This is why we will not accept a peace dictated by Russia – and we will not accept any sham referendums either." [seems his position may be shifting slightly]

Macron: Nations staying neutral on war in Ukraine support Russia's 'new imperialism.'
(kyivindependent.com/uncategorized/macron-nations-staying-neutral-on-war-in-ukraine-support-russias-new-imperialism) [hello Switzerland?]

Zelenskyy reports "A sincere and productive online conversation with the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, within The Clinton Global Initiative."

👏 Belgium will send more weapons to Ukraine and intensify its demining efforts, Dmytro Kuleba said.

📌 According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Russian invaders are forming 4 rifle battalions to be sent to the war in Ukraine, officers are being recruited from teachers of the military college.

🥤PepsiCo completely stopped sales of Pepsi, 7UP and Mountain Dew in Russia — Reuters. 🤷‍♀️ None of the retailers in Russia have received legal sales authorization for the iPhone 14.

🗣 President Volodymyr Zelensky said that strengthening the air defense of Kharkiv is not a matter of money but of countries-manufacturers that can provide the necessary air defense systems.

💡 EU foreign ministers will discuss proposals to abolish or limit the principle of unanimity when voting on issues such as sanctions against Russia. Currently, any country in the bloc can veto sanctions

🍞 Bread prices in the European Union have increased by almost 20% due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is a major grain and fertilizers exporter

[ Photo ]
❌ Russia was not allowed to participate in the 2024 UEFA European Football Championship — President of the Ukrainian Association of Football Andriy Pavelko

📉 Shares of Russian state-owned companies collapsed following Peskov's statements that negotiations with Ukraine were not ready — The Moscow Times

❌ The Russian national judo team has been suspended from participation in the World Championship, which will be held from October 6 to October 12 in Tashkent. The reason is the war in Ukraine

📣 NATO is not at war with the Russian Federation, despite assistance to Ukraine, said the head of the military committee of the alliance, Rob Bauer
No. NATO is not at war with Russia. I must state this very clearly. If Russia were to attack one of our member states, it would be perfectly clear, and we are trying to make it as clear as possible to Russia, that we would defend every inch of our ally's territory. Then there will be a conflict between Russia and NATO. But so far, NATO is not at war with Russia," Bauer stressed.

📍 Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko instructed to begin preparations for the defense of the state in accordance with wartime standards, writes the pro-government edition of Belta

📣 Erdogan held talks with Zelensky — CNN Türk
The meeting took place before Erdogan's speech at the UN General Assembly.

💵 The US Department of Justice asked Congress to legalize the transfer of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine
At least $300 billion worth of Russian assets are blocked in the US.

❗️Russia recruits soldiers from prison inmates, including people convicted of murder and rape

Up to 20% of prisoners usually agree immediately, and 90% of recruits die. Recruiters have already come to some prisons several times.

A protest happening tonight in Moscow? twitter.com/betelgeuse1922/status/1572500056468783107?s=46&t=E2QDuo7-11tDRcBYQWZFeQ

📹 Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will not meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York
“No,” Kuleba said in response to questions from Russian journalists.

⚠️ The European Union will introduce new sanctions against Russia in case of holding referendums in the so-called "L/DPR", Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions

‼️ This night, the Russians fired at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, – Energoatom
The communication equipment of power unit No. 6 is damaged. As a result, its block transformer and auxiliary transformers were turned off. The diesel generators of the power unit are turned off and switched to alternation

[ahahaha] Shoigu, in his video message, said that Russia had lost almost six thousand soldiers, so they announced a partial mobilization — they would call on 300 thousand reservists

📌 Referendums in the territories occupied by Russia will not affect the actions of the Ukrainian army, and its counteroffensive and the liberation of the occupied territories will continue, adviser to the President of Ukraine Mykhailo Podolyak told CNN

📌 Holding pseudo-referendums by Russia in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine is a violation of international law, which will lead to an escalation of the war – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

I suppose Russia look at it as a savvy return on investment in commercial terms.

Likely letting dangerous people out who are capable of inflicting maximum terror, injury and death on their enemies …. and then they die which saves Russia prison costs.

Definitely.

Putin isn't going to train the new troops. They are going to be those with experience and therefore very unwilling to go or completely untrained.

And then he's going to equip them with what exactly? Keeping in mind he has to give the better guns for his execution squads behind them.

There are already points were infighting has been reported. And even the Chechens are unhappy, and were calling for greater intervention because they knew it was going so badly. Which suggests they haven't exactly got full control of the situation either.

We know that inexperienced young men from rural areas are most likely to be the other group called up. But if they start getting even larger numbers of dead, thats another can of worms. Loyalty to Moscow will only extend to a point - ethnic minorities fighting the war for the imperialists, isn't necessarily in their interests. Kamil Galeev has talked about this tension before. We shouldn't assume that Russian Nationalism is universal. Its a lot more complex than that.

People want food, water and a roof over their heads. The follies of their masters aren't really of that much interest to them. They just want to survive.

I suppose Russia look at it as a savvy return on investment in commercial terms.

Likely letting dangerous people out who are capable of inflicting maximum terror, injury and death on their enemies …. and then they die which saves Russia prison costs.

And a third 'benefit' - letting loose violent men, rapists and murderers, on the Ukrainian population will traumatize them and quite probably more will be killed.

China has called on all parties to negotiate. Could this be a plan between them: russia escalates , China intervenes, Kyiv forced into a cease fire? I don't think Kyiv will capitulate to talks. We're in a really dangerous stage

There wasn't going to be an easy way to force Putin out of Ukraine. The stuff on the ground is almost easier than the political issues with Putin's damaged reputation and ego.

This is the calculated bit that NATO have been most worried about from the war go.

I console myself with the fact that minds far more clever than mine have been working on this throughout this conflict and for years before.

Any Russian speakers listen to the speech? This is the first time ive seen a quote that says Putin said in his speech "do you want total war?" is this the case?

Maybe one for @OwlsDance ?

Postscript added my Lawrence Freedman to his analysis of yesterday in light of Putin's speech (original article linked below too)

**

Postscript
The day after this post was published, Putin made a speech in which he announced military mobilisation. His description of the origins of the course of the war can be left to another day. It is an extension of the delusional analysis which he has been promoting since the start of this disastrous war. The mobilisation announced will, I suspect, aggravate rather than solve the problems faced by Russian forces at the front. I will consider these in my next post. His main statement on nuclear weapons, however, is wholly in line, with my analysis. This is what he said (in full)
‘Nuclear blackmail also came into play. We are talking not only about the shelling of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, encouraged by the West, which threatens a nuclear catastrophe, but also about the statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons against Russia. To those who allow themselves such statements about Russia, I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and in some components more modern than the NATO countries. And if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It's not a bluff.
The citizens of Russia can be sure that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured - I emphasize this again - with all the means at our disposal. And those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the wind rose can also turn in their direction.’
This is still about deterrence. It came at the end of the speech as a warning to the West about further escalation. There is an issue as to whether the sham referendums proposed to support the annexation of the various occupied territories will be backed by this deterrent threat. He may be content to leave this ambiguous, but so was the statement on these referendums:
‘The parliaments of the people's republics of Donbass, as well as the military-civilian administrations of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, decided to hold referendums on the future of these territories and asked us to support such a step. Let me emphasize that we will do our best to ensure safe conditions for holding the referendum. To enable people to express their will. And we will support the decision about their future, which will be made by the majority of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.’
No link was made in the speech between this promise and the nuclear threat. Only Luhansk is close to being fully occupied, and that is now being contested again. No new red line has yet to be established here. If he wanted to protect these gains with nuclear threats, before they are taken back by Ukrainian forces, he would need to have made this explicit.

https://samf.substack.com/p/going-nuclear?r=15i4j0&s=w&utmcampaign=post&utmm_medium=email

@Ijsbear

"If I lived in Russia ...
I live perhaps in a poor area. We don't have internet, or only minimal. My education level is only so-so and I've learned that Mother Russia -is- my mother, that I can be proud of her and of my leaders. So my leaders in the village say since I was small, so the TV says.
The West hates my Mother Russia since the Cold War. They want to destroy us....."

I think that and what follows is spot on....

Putin basically tugs on the heart string of patriotic Russians, evokes memories of the Great Patriotic War and portrays current events as the Great Patriotic War II..... a lot of people won't ask too many questions...

I also tend to agree agree with the comment by RTB that

"The stuff on the ground is almost easier than the political issues with Putin's damaged reputation and ego.
This is the calculated bit that NATO have been most worried about from the war go."

yes, agreed there about his oh so fragile ego

This is really interesting.

There was some analysis previously (I think on the Telegraphs 'Ukraine the Latest' podcast) about how Putin refers to Crimea as Russian territory, in that an attack on Crimea would constitute an attack on Russia itself - in reality this hasn't meant anything, its fairly well accepted that Ukraine have been conducting attacks in Crimea (and for that matter Belgorod) and it hasn't lead to any specific physical escalation from Russia.

This is also an interesting take:

ChrisO AT ChrisO_wiki
1/ There'll be lots of commentary this morning about the logistical difficulties of Putin's announcement of a partial mobilisation. But I thought I'd add a few points, based on my own personal observations, of what it means politically and for the troops already in Ukraine.

2/ First, politics: Putin was clearly under a lot of pressure to react to Russia's defeat east of Kharkiv. This is very likely his way of responding to increasingly strident demands. IMO, this shows that he fears the nationalist flank more than the general public.

2/ Second, morale. As I've previously documented from Russian soldiers' accounts and intercepted phone calls published by Ukraine, many Russian soldiers are badly demoralised and want to go home. 20-40% of the men from some units have reportedly quit.

3/ But the Russian army has been making that increasingly difficult. Some soldiers have reportedly been kept in Ukraine despite their contracts running out in May. Putin's new decree effectively bans anyone leaving (except on certain narrow grounds, of which more later).

4/ This move will be very bad for morale. Soldiers whose contracts were due to expire this autumn will now be stuck in the army indefinitely. This is a big deal: a great many signed up for the economic benefits, not to fight and die.

5/ Putin again tried to justify the war as being in 'defence' of Donbas and 'Novorossiya' (Zaporizhzhia and Kherson). But soldiers' own accounts show that many simply don't believe this and don't know why they're in Ukraine. Again, bad for morale.

6/ So to a significant extent, I think this is about stopping the bleeding of the Russian army. The stats for killed and injured don't capture the large numbers who have simply quit and are just as much hors de combat as someone who's been killed or crippled.

7/ Third, effectiveness. Russia went into this war with a Rumsfeldian lightweight army and quickly found it didn't have enough troops. The impact on the ground has been clear. But a less obvious result has been a lack of rotation - allowing the troops to rest away from the front.

8/ This is very important because well-established evidence shows that combat effectiveness falls off quite rapidly - within 140-180 days. Many have now been fighting for more than 200 days. From John Keegan's 'The Face of Battle':

9/ Commentators have suggested that the newly mobilised troops could take months to arrive. I think it might actually be quicker than that. I suspect that one of their main purposes will be to allow frontline troops to be rotated and rested for a while.

10/ Winter is coming, and with it, offensive operations are likely to be at a low ebb. Both sides will be entrenching themselves within the next few weeks until the thaw comes next February-March. That's not a bad time to do a rotation.

11/ You also don't need to be all that well trained to defend a position. Ukraine's territorial defence forces proved that last spring in the defence of Kyiv. Russia's soldiers are poorly trained anyway, so giving new ones a couple of weeks' basic training isn't much different.

12/ There is also a huge rear area - the occupation zone is the size of Portugal - where Ukrainian partisans and special forces can operate without much trouble. Again, you don't need to be well trained to man a roadblock or patrol a route.

13/ Russia's crappy logistics are likely due in part to a lack of personnel to do basic things like drive trucks and handle cargos (no palletisation, as Trent Telenko and others have noted). Using contract soldiers to do this is a waste of resources.

14/ Every contract soldier who can be freed up or temporarily replaced by a newly mobilised man is a soldier who can be rested, maybe retrained, and then sent back to the front line, where it most counts.

15/ So in short, I see this move not so much as being about creating a brand new army for Russia but as creating political cover for Putin and enabling him to rest and reorganise his current depleted army over the winter. /end

I think there is another important point to consider which this thread kind of leads into. The biggest issue for the west is the political fall out over energy prices during the winter. Its been said for a while that Putin thinks he can divide the west over it. We have a number of elections that have just happened or are about to happen which might tip things towards a more pro-russia POV and might start to divide NATO. That will be another big gamble for Putin. He needs this to run into winter and to hold out over winter. This is a war of attrition and that works in multiple ways.

Ukraine isn't going to be able to advance much more. Time is running out before winter. Winter in trenches is harder than winter in buildings.

Another thing. There was an article which I saw linked to, but haven't read which talked about one of Ukraine's biggest challenges: glass. Ukraine has a massive shortage of it. There are so many buildings without it. Even if they do still have electricity. That means this winter will be extreme for many. That might test resolve within Ukraine too.

Putin stalling and making threats about nukes, makes the west falter in various different ways. It undermines unity and tests resolve. This is the back drop to the winter where the western public will have their resolve tested - not the politicians.

Putin is playing to multiple audiences: he is trying to appease his hawks to ensure his survival domestically, he's playing to third party audiences who are anti-western and he's playing to a western domestic audience. I don't believe he is playing to a western political and military audience because what he's saying is something they will have known and calculated for a long time, in terms of what support they have offered Ukraine. The winter matters to Putin - its about energy and wheat - I think the western media have talked about this, but maybe not in a way which is necessarly going to hit home in the same way as actual fuel bills and rising food prices will. Again, we've talked about this hand being played by Putin for a long time. Its only now going to start really kicking in.

Another good analysis of the nuclear portion of the speech: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1572506158208000001.html

This is very important because well-established evidence shows that combat effectiveness falls off quite rapidly - within 140-180 days. Many have now been fighting for more than 200 days. From John Keegan's 'The Face of Battle':

Excellent book, that and Glen Grey's "The Warriors" provide some insight into the effect of long campaigns, especially long campaigns where troops aren't cycled away from the front or taken away from the line for any length of time.

Be interesting to see how the human factors will all work out (or don't) if this conflict carries on for a few more months and those called up from mother Russia arrive possibly poorly equipped, in theatre, in mid-winter...maybe can we hope for a re-run of von Paulus and the Sixth Army in terms of a surrender, but hopefully not the subsequent loss of life.

Weren't there protests in Chechnya last night against chechens being sent to the front, I am sure I saw something but can't find it now

No they weren't protests, I saw that on Twitter too (Chechnya)

I struggle to see how this ends without pulling in other nations