Ukraine

[andydp]

Talking to non military people Chapter MCMDLVII.

Had a little "repartee" with a High School friend.  She asked the question about Where is NATO ? Where are the leaders etc.  Told her there was a summit scheduled next week. I got the feeling she thought NATO wasn't really doing "anything" unless the leaders showed up.

I had to explain every NATO office in Brussels was fully staffed 24/7.  The NATO Alliance has standing orders on what they can do and can't without leaders getting involved. Just because we don't hear about it, doesn't mean they're not actively participating.  As an example, I'm sure there's a lot of work on the transfer of the MIGs from Poland, coordinating ammo shipments etc.

I'm also confident there are several "Unconventional Operations" groups from NATO operating in the area.  (Which, of course, no one is admitting)

[LFC]

One of the Open-Source Intelligence sites recommended by TPM is tracking heavy equipment that is destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured. I'm really surprised at the amount of equipment that Russia has lost. For example I thought the Ukrainians might nail a few tanks, maybe even a few dozen, but not 236 of them. Armored fighting vehicles? 150. I expected losses like this for an outmatched Ukraine but it speaks to how tough the fight has been for Russia.

The other interesting thing is that they flag the models by where they were built. It's amazing how much Russian equipment sent to Ukraine was made in the Soviet Union.

A detailed list of the destroyed and captured vehicles and equipment of both sides can be seen below. This list is constantly updated as additional footage becomes available.

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, munitions, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment (including aircraft) are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. ATGMs and MANPADS are included in the list but not included in the ultimate count. The Soviet flag is used when the equipment in question was produced prior to 1991.

[Bact PhD]

The Soviet flag is used when the equipment in question was produced prior to 1991.

Translation: The Russian forces are working with a fair amount of equipment that’s as old AF.

[LFC]

Mar 17, 2022 22:30:00 GMT Bact PhD said:

The Soviet flag is used when the equipment in question was produced prior to 1991.

Translation: The Russian forces are working with a fair amount of equipment that’s as old AF.

Seriously. They're getting bogged down and hammered despite having the overwhelming superiority of numbers plus a supposedly real air force. It makes me think that Vlad made the mistake of drinking his own Kool-Aid.

[andydp]

Mar 17, 2022 22:30:00 GMT Bact PhD said:

The Soviet flag is used when the equipment in question was produced prior to 1991.

Translation: The Russian forces are working with a fair amount of equipment that’s as old AF.

Adding another facet, remember many male citizens of the Ukraine have military training. They’re familiar with the vulnerable spots on Soviet Armor (including likely having some items in their own army.) Wheeled vehicles can be easily destroyed by setting their tires on fire. (Think Molotov Cocktail). I really have to wonder what sort of security efforts are being made to protect their supply lines. Thanks for the link: something to look at tomorrow

[indy]

We are, I think, witnessing what will be a significant change in battlefield armaments and tactics going forward for all modern armies. According to most estimates, Russia has around 1600 tanks total, with about 1200 currently committed to the action in Ukraine. [This does not include what I am sure are a substantial number of mothballed soviet era tanks and good luck with those.] Of the 1200 around 240 (20%) have been confirmed destroyed or captured by visual evidence so the total is probably a bit higher. By comparison, Russia lost perhaps 150 tanks total across 10 years in Afghanistan. The US deployed 1800 tanks in operation desert storm and lost 9 of them, 7 to friendly fire.  Perhaps 10% of the entire Russian armored vehicles in Ukraine have been put out of commission.  All this shows that modern hand held anti-tank weapons are devastatingly effective.

On the other hand their artillery has been quite effective particularly if you don't care about civilian causalities. With the delivery of 100 switchblades (which is a little deceiving since each switchblade has 10 drones so it is really 1000) to Ukraine we are going to see how well the so-called 'loitering munition' works against artillery. If they are half as effective as anti-tank weapons, the new and improved Russian army that cost Russia an immense amount of money over the last 15-20 years will already be obsolete.

[andydp]

Mar 18, 2022 12:56:22 GMT indy said:

We are, I think, witnessing what will be a significant change in battlefield armaments and tactics going forward for all modern armies. According to most estimates, Russia has around 1600 tanks total, with about 1200 currently committed to the action in Ukraine. [This does not include what I am sure are a substantial number of mothballed soviet era tanks and good luck with those.] Of the 1200 around 240 (20%) have been confirmed destroyed or captured by visual evidence so the total is probably a bit higher. By comparison, Russia lost perhaps 150 tanks total across 10 years in Afghanistan. The US deployed 1800 tanks in operation desert storm and lost 9 of them, 7 to friendly fire.  Perhaps 10% of the entire Russian armored vehicles in Ukraine have been put out of commission.  All this shows that modern hand held anti-tank weapons are devastatingly effective.

On the other hand their artillery has been quite effective particularly if you don't care about civilian causalities. With the delivery of 100 switchblades (which is a little deceiving since each switchblade has 10 drones so it is really 1000) to Ukraine we are going to see how well the so-called 'loitering munition' works against artillery. If they are half as effective as anti-tank weapons, the new and improved Russian army that cost Russia an immense amount of money over the last 15-20 years will already be obsolete.

Did you glean that from the article ?  I'm in total agreement with the figures (even it they're not precise).  As I was getting out of the Army, they were in final development of artillery rounds that could be fired against a group of vehicles. The munitions would independently select a target and hit it from above.  I'm sure you can surmise, the top of any armored vehicle is the weakest. 

We're seeing the preeminence of cheap munitions taking out a multi million dollar piece of equipment.

As for artillery:  the new tactics are to "shoot and scoot".  Fire one volley, pack up and move on.  This was made possible by use of computerized plotting and GPS which can precisely locate the battery so they can shoot at known target areas.  As someone who had to do this manually, it's like being in Star Wars.  There are counterbattery fire radars that can plot the location of the battery which sent the volley but, with the "shoot and scoot" doctrine this becomes very difficult.

Another reason why there are special ops people out there: they can put a laser on the target for the munitions to follow.  

[indy]

Well, shoot and scoot and other similar tactics are useful only to the extent that the enemy can't respond immediately. Switchblade drones and similar munitions simply fly around behind enemy lines waiting for the artillery to fire. As soon as it does, they visually see it via video cameras and drop down on the position. I'm simply not sure how well this is going to work in practice because it seems there is some element of luck involved.

[indy]

Oh, and another stat I forgot to include: Of the 300 Javelin missiles fired, it is estimated they destroyed 280 vehicles.

[andydp]

A tale of two helpers to the Ukraine.  Any guesses who is actually getting more done ?

First, a hard core, macho Boogaloo Boy man who suddenly realized they're shooting back

A Boogaloo Boi Tried to Join the Foreign Legion In Ukraine — It Didn’t End Well

Hoeft’s well documented Boogaloo background isn’t the only strike against his character. Far from staying in Ukraine to the bitter end, as he vowed, Hoeft has already gone viral for a video announcing his decision to cut and run. In the clip, he makes dire allegations, including that his life was threatened for deciding to leave, and that he had to masquerade as an aid worker to make it back across the border into Poland. “We had to get the ^%$# out of there,” Hoeft says in the video. “People need to stop *&^%% coming here. It’s a trap and they’re not letting you leave.”

Hoeft’s claims are already being circulated as propaganda for the Russian side; a prominent extremism researcher has tracked the video across forums on Telegram and the Russian social media platform VK that use Hoeft’s claims to mock foreign fighters in Ukraine. His video has also been blasted as disinformation by one erstwhile brothers in arms, who called the video “100 percent completely false” and the product of Hoeft’s bitterness at failing a vetting process to join the fight.

latimesnow.com/2022/03/20/a-boogaloo-boi-tried-to-join-the-foreign-legion-in-ukraine-it-didnt-end-well/


Now we have a story of one person who is actually helping in any way they can.

A Temple grad decided he had to help Ukrainian refugees — and headed to Poland

As he left, he told his 4-month-old child, "In the joy of others lies our own."

Most days, he carried luggage, the bags and suitcases of women, children, and old men who often had trudged for miles even before they reached the border. That weight he could lift from them. Other days, he picked up trash. And served meals. Or helped people find warm clothing in the freezing cold.

He sang Hindu prayers to the weary, and listened as they sang back their own calls to God in their language.

“I’m just a simple guy, with a kid,” said Sheth, who lives with his wife and baby in Robbinsville, N.J., in Mercer County.


www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/ukraine-russia-temple-university-hindu-20220321.html

[goldenvalley]

A followup to Andy's boogaloo boi...another type of volunteer is the wannabe that just wants to get to the front line (wherever that is)

Before he decided to buy a one-way plane ticket to Ukraine, Adam worked two jobs, as a security guard and as a cashier at a dollar store. He owned guns and fired them at shooting ranges, but the only fighting he had ever done was in mixed martial arts classes.

That didn’t stop the tall, lanky 24-year-old from Thousand Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb, from flying to this war-torn capital earlier this month. He joined a new international legion set up to fight Russian forces about 15 miles outside the city.
Adam, sporting camouflage pants, is unfazed by his inexperience in combat. He will rely, he said, on sheer determination — to save Ukraine and protect American values.

How's it going for him?

On Saturday, when reached by phone, Adam was angry and emotional. Despite the legion’s assurances of proper vetting, he was now in the northern section of the capital with a territorial defense unit mostly composed of Ukrainian civilians turned militiamen.

Adam still hadn’t received a bulletproof vest, a helmet — or a weapon. And he could hear the sounds of shelling, he said.
“I have been here 15 days now and still nothing is happening,” he said in a phone interview. “I am not putting up with that.”
“They expect me to guard the base with no guns, no armor, no vest, no helmet and no knowledge of the Ukrainian language,” he continued. “It makes absolutely no sense. I am not going to stand around and get hit with a missile with no guns or nothing. If am going to die, I’d rather get to the front line and do that.”

Won't any orders he would receive on the front line be in Ukrainian?

[jackd]

Or Russian!

[pnwguy]

Mar 21, 2022 15:23:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

A followup to Andy's boogaloo boi...another type of volunteer is the wannabe that just wants to get to the front line (wherever that is)

Before he decided to buy a one-way plane ticket to Ukraine, Adam worked two jobs, as a security guard and as a cashier at a dollar store. He owned guns and fired them at shooting ranges, but the only fighting he had ever done was in mixed martial arts classes.

That didn’t stop the tall, lanky 24-year-old from Thousand Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb, from flying to this war-torn capital earlier this month. He joined a new international legion set up to fight Russian forces about 15 miles outside the city.
Adam, sporting camouflage pants, is unfazed by his inexperience in combat. He will rely, he said, on sheer determination — to save Ukraine and protect American values.

How's it going for him?

On Saturday, when reached by phone, Adam was angry and emotional. Despite the legion’s assurances of proper vetting, he was now in the northern section of the capital with a territorial defense unit mostly composed of Ukrainian civilians turned militiamen.

Adam still hadn’t received a bulletproof vest, a helmet — or a weapon. And he could hear the sounds of shelling, he said.
“I have been here 15 days now and still nothing is happening,” he said in a phone interview. “I am not putting up with that.”
“They expect me to guard the base with no guns, no armor, no vest, no helmet and no knowledge of the Ukrainian language,” he continued. “It makes absolutely no sense. I am not going to stand around and get hit with a missile with no guns or nothing. If am going to die, I’d rather get to the front line and do that.”

Won't any orders he would receive on the front line be in Ukrainian?

The NRA needs to get more donations from related manufacturers of military attire so they can start promoting them too (to line LaPierre's pockets).  "You don't just need guns.  You need body armor, helmets, fatigues, night vision goggles, and tactical communication equipment.  Fulfill your second amendment rights!"

[pnwguy]

The tide may turn against Ukraine's defense advantages, as Russia is shifting tactics to assets outside of Ukrainian territory. Guided missiles from Navy ships in the Black Sea, and missile batteries in Belarus or Russian itself are the current escalation. You need troops on the ground if you are intending to take over a country. But if you just want to destroy it out of spite, that can be done with less exposure to your troops and military equipment.

[LFC]

If this TPM reader's assessment is remotely correct then destruction of Ukraine out of spite is all that Russia has left. (paywalled) It's also interesting to see how differently the NYT has been reporting things and why.

TPM Reader PT has some thoughts and questions on two versions of the Ukraine War he’s seeing from the Times on the one hand and various government analyses, outside expert analyses and comments from military analysts.

I’ve mainly been following the Russia-Ukraine war via various sources on Twitter, including the UK’s MOD and US DOD updates, plus some maps, knowledgeable sources, etc. From these I’ve learned that Russia has barely advanced at all in several days, that they appear to be unable to advance into the country because they’re limited by round-trip distance their supply trucks can cover on 1 tank of fuel, that their logistics and armor are getting picked off, that their Air Force has underperformed to a degree that nobody can really explain, that they’re losing an average of over 1000 soldiers per day (where losses include injuries and defections as well as deaths). CW in these sources is that Russia’s forces will probably lose all capacity for offensive action in the next couple of weeks unless something changes drastically in their favor. In other words, what Ukraine is doing in combat, and what the rest of the world is doing to assist them, is working.

Then I go to the NYTimes website. None of the above is reported.

What I see in the NYTimes website is items like: a Ukrainian Marine barracks was destroyed in a missile attack; the Mariupol Drama Theater is still destroyed (apologies to Chevy Chase); Russia claims to have used a hypersonic missile on an ammo depot (which, BTW, nobody else seems to believe); a Ukrainian family is recovering in the hospital after being at the site of an attack; one in five Ukrainians have fled their homes; and so on.

Point being, the NYTimes reporting seems to be making selective use of micro-level stories that convey a very false sense of the macro-level trajectory of the conflict. I don’t know why they would do this, and I doubt that the Times is trying to nudge NATO into conflict with Russia. It feels more like a case of looking for your keys under the lamppost: the Times has some collection of sources on the ground in Ukraine, they report out stories, and those stories are what the paper writ large has to choose from when deciding what to publish. It’s largely an accident of history that the Times has nobody to cover the macro-level story of the war, so they just don’t report on it.

Alternatively, might this be an issue of how the Times, writ large, understands the profession of reporting? That is to say, they understand “A tank drove down a street in Mariupol today!” is a news story that can be reported and deserves coverage and amplification, while “Russian army still unable to advance due to supply line issues” is not. If so, it’s a very frustrating and borderline dangerous approach to the news in that it floods the zone with stories about the war while simultaneously not conveying the most important facts about it.

I’ve seen this too. And I can’t say precisely why it’s the case. But I can offer some general observations that explain part of it.

One issue is that Times reportage is always very 30,000 feet, at least on national security and electoral politics issues. I now sometimes rely on others to dig deep into news stories. But over the twenty-plus years I’ve been doing this I have known a very clear pattern. A lot of how I report is mining other news sources for factual information. Not just accurate information but new nuggets. Then I try to weave them together into a comprehensible whole and I do my own reporting to fill in parts I can’t find answers to from published sources. For those purposes I noticed early on that The Washington Post was almost always much more valuable to me than the Times. Since I was I was a scavenger for factual nuggets of information the Post always had way more than the Times. The Times would usually come to the story a bit later. So that’s one part of what PT is seeing – that 30,000 foot approach. And to be fair, my news reading needs and preferences are an extreme edge case as news consumption goes. So it’s not that the Times approach is bad. It’s just usually not as useful for me. What PT describes is a scrounging for detail that’s similar to what I do.

But that doesn’t answer why the big picture seems to be off, if it is. I suspect it is at least somewhat off. But sometimes going too granular can be misleading. Yes, the Russian military has wildly underperformed. They’re having all the logistical problems PT describes and which we’ve noted recently. But perhaps you step back and say, well, yeah, but Russia’s a huge country with lots of its military resources dispersed across its 10 time zones and as poorly as they’re performing if they want to reduce Ukraine to rubble they can. It will take longer and be ugly. But they can do it. Adam Smith said there’s a lot of ruin in a nation. And there’s a lot in a Great Power army too. So let’s leave open the possibility that the Times view of the conflict is catching things from a distance that PT and I are not.

My final point is about very different kinds of news reporting. And this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I get your emails about why you read TPM and as we chart the future of the organization. When we cover a story we want to get you right down to the nitty gritty and understand the essence of it. We want to give you as best an understanding as we can of where things are going. You see some of this in the way we often do rapid updates which are only fully comprehensible or meaningful if you’ve been following our coverage of a particular story. We expect that you want us to get our hands dirty getting at stories that are important and that you’re up for that kind of detail. Another thing we do is try to air as much as we can the editorial questions that we’re asking ourselves and discussing amongst ourselves.

One concept of journalism is that you don’t go to print until you know the story. And that’s certainly correct in the sense that you don’t want to tell the story before you know the facts. But it’s incomplete. Because sometimes it’s as illuminating to reveal to readers how you’re piecing together the story. Or to share with readers the really critical questions we don’t yet seem to have answers for. The right questions are often as illuminating as the answers. This requires some editorial know-how and experience to be clear what you know and what you don’t, what you think is likely but which you do not yet know for certain and things that are simply questions. But if you can do that it leads to news consumers who are much better informed. Less surprised by what comes next.

But what’s key about that is that it’s not for every news consumer. It’s for a certain kind of news consumer who’s really into news and wants to go deep. Or in some cases, they don’t have time to go deep but they want to be updated by reporters who have and will present the findings in a way that is suited to a news consumer who is serious about the news. That’s what we do that is different from most other news organizations. It’s not better or worse. It’s just aimed at a particular kind of news consumer. Hopefully, you.

So back to the question: why do these seem like two different wars?

My own sense is that they’re trying to look at the big human story. The reporters I see on many of the Times Ukraine articles are veterans who are used to talking to big name sources rather than drilling down deep into the details. (Not all of them. Just saying a lot of them.) That generates a different picture than if you try to figure out what is happening today, what is different from yesterday and where this is actually going by listening to war college and think tank military analysts and other area experts and analysts.

[LFC]

Mar 17, 2022 19:57:06 GMT LFC said:

One of the Open-Source Intelligence sites recommended by TPM is tracking heavy equipment that is destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured. I'm really surprised at the amount of equipment that Russia has lost. For example I thought the Ukrainians might nail a few tanks, maybe even a few dozen, but not 236 of them. Armored fighting vehicles? 150. I expected losses like this for an outmatched Ukraine but it speaks to how tough the fight has been for Russia.

So I've been peeking almost daily at this site.The following gives total Russian equipment lost and I put tanks in parentheses. Using Indy's figure of about 1,200 tanks committed to Ukraine to calculate the loss percentage.

3/17 : 1550 (236) 19.7%

3/18 : 1574 (244) 20.3%

3/19 : --

3/20 : 1616 (254) 21.7%

3/21 : 1662 (263) 21.9%

The total 1,550 number may be off a little but the last 4 days give you an idea just how badly the Russians are bogged down and taking it in the shorts. Indy mentioned that Russia lost about 150 in 10 years in Afghanistan. They've lost 27 in the last 4 days.

This is unsustainable and Putin knows it. Murdering civilians and destroying their homes and infrastructure out of spite really is all that Putin has left.

[LFC]

Oops. I've read that the number of deaths are so high that it's become impossible for Putin to hide the fact from the people. Funeral after funeral after funeral will do that.

This is hard to make sense of. But let me give you a brief update. A short time ago the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article which cited official Russian military numbers of killed in action in Ukraine as 9,861. That is a mind-blowing number. In one month Russia would have lost 2/3rds of the soldiers it lost in a decade in Afghanistan. But then a very short time later the article was pulled and replaced by a 404 error. Then it was reposted without any numbers.

What lends some credibility to these numbers is that that is in the ballpark of many Western estimates for Russian fatalities. I’ve been watching expert Russia watchers debate this in real time on Twitter and they seem to disagree on whether this was a real number that was rapidly pulled or whether it was just a complete goof, a typo.

[indy]

The number reported in Pravda was 9,861 dead and another 16,153 wounded. There are about 190,000 Russian troops committed to the action, so if those Pravda numbers are accurate it is about 14% of the total out of commission. Depending on who you ask, the generally accepted numbers are that about 3 support personnel are required for each combat soldier so of the 190K, around roughly 47,000 are the combat troops. These death/injured numbers would be highly skewed toward the actual combat troops but we don't know exactly how much. The point being this could represent a pretty significant portion of the combat troops. Of course, fog of war and all that.

[indy]

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

3/17 : 1550 (236) 19.7%

3/18 : 1574 (244) 20.3%

3/19 : --

3/20 : 1616 (254) 21.7%

3/21 : 1662 (263) 21.9%

3/22 : 1676 (268) 22.3%

[indy]

If you wonder were I came up with 1200 tanks, the final US estimates of Russian forces bound for Ukraine was 120 battalion tactical groups (BTGs). Each BTG has typically 10 tanks and 30 other armed vehicles for a total of 40 x 120 = 4800 vehicles, so 1676 represents 35% of all the armored vehicles. That is astounding. Note that these estimates of losses by this particular site are only those that are visually confirmed in some way, so the total is probably a bit higher.

Now that I think about it, though I don't remember where I saw the 190K assessment of troops I quoted above, because each BTG has between 600-800 soldiers for a total of 84,000 (700 x 120). Which means the 25000 KIA/wounded would be closer to 35% of the total troops there and comport more closely with the armored vehicle losses. Honestly don't know which of these two numbers (190K or 84K) is correct or why.

Note that Russia has perhaps a total of 160-170 BTGs in their entire army, so it's not like they have a lot more to throw at this that is battle ready. Of course, if they are committed to this long term, they have a lot of reserves of both men and equipment to draw upon but they would take time to assemble and obviously be of even lower quality than what they have shown so far.

[indy]

Here is where I got the 190K from: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60158694 but it says 'up to'. Not sure where they got the number. NYT times says "With more than 150,000 Russian troops now involved in the war in Ukraine". Not sure where they got the number either. I haven't really seen anyone really challenge the assessment of 120 BTGs in Ukraine.

[indy]

From the Economist: "In total, elements of ten out of the country’s eleven Combined Arms Armies—a high-level formation that typically contains several divisions—are now near Ukraine, says Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting, who tracks Russian military movements. Moreover, the BTG-count excludes air and naval forces, as well as VDV units, or paratroopers, who are now available after a brief jaunt in Kazakhstan earlier this month. Add them all up, and Russia probably has more than 130,000 troops in place."

So the higher numbers apparently include all the additional personnel not in the BTGs. Not sure how useful those are in a combat sense to the soldiers on the ground in Ukraine.

[andydp]

This may sound more like a "rah rah" piece, but it does highlight the capabilities of a relatively cheap piece of equipment to take out complex very expensive equipment almost at will.  It would also be good to remember that other players (ISIS) can get these items. We've read before that the Ukrainians dispersed their assets to minimize the initial damages from air and artillery first strikes.

Ukraine’s Drones Are Wreaking Havoc On The Russian Army

It was an open question, in the days leading up to Russia’s wider invasion of Ukraine on the night of Feb. 23, whether Ukraine’s small force of Turkish-made TB-2 drones even would survive the first volley of Russian missiles.

Nearly a month later, it’s apparent the TB-2s not only survived—they quickly flew into action. Today Ukraine’s killer-drone fleet arguably is its most potent force.

TB-2s belonging to the Ukrainian air force and navy in recent days have dismantled whole swathes of Russia’s front-line air-defense network and now relentlessly are smashing Russian tanks and supply trucks.

www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/03/21/ukraines-drones-are-wreaking-havoc-on-the-russian-army/?sh=4b13d26b18b6

[indy]