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Published | 2022/03/18 |
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Beau says:
Russia's chances in Ukraine hinge on Putin's ego and acknowledgment of failures, requiring significant changes in leadership and strategy.
Analysts, policymakers, activists
In-depth analysis of Russia's military capabilities and strategic challenges in Ukraine.
#Russia #Ukraine #Putin #MilitaryStrategy #Leadership
Well, howdy there, internet people.
It's Beau again.
So today, we're going to talk about whether or not Russia
still has any chance, because I got a message asking,
basically, is there anything Russia
could do to win at this point?
Win is a fluid term here.
When Putin laid out his long rambling speech initially, he left the window open for a whole
lot of victory conditions, which was smart.
That was a good move.
If you're talking about what appeared to be the real goal, which was taking Ukraine and
turning it into a puppet, that is less likely than anything else.
Now as far as whether or not he could convince Zelensky to maybe allow some of the little
republics he set up, allow them to become their own countries, that's up to Zelensky.
When it comes to the minor victory conditions, that would be decided not on a battlefield
but at a conference table, whether or not that could happen.
As far as actually taking the country and forcing Russian will upon it, that's hard.
It's not impossible.
The reality is, as much as all analysts right now are kind of making fun of Russia, they
do have a military.
They have a real military.
This was a lot of corruption, not having the right equipment, a lot of bad training, the
use of conscripts, bad logistics, bad intelligence.
The thing is, all of this could be sorted out, but it would require Putin to A, acknowledge
the failures and B, acknowledge what caused them and want to fix it.
I think the little ragey rant that he went on where he talked about the fifth column,
I think that was him acknowledging that the current plan has failed.
I don't know based on the content of that speech that he understands what would need
happen to fix it. Now everything I'm about to say before anybody says
anything about, oh you're giving them ideas, all of this stuff is in manuals.
This is basic stuff. There are lines. Their lines are shot, so they
would need to go on what's a strategic pause is the nice way to say it. They'd
have to stop trying to advance, which to be honest at this point they're there
anyway. It's pretty static. Their offensives are going nowhere. So basically everybody in place
kind of holds and then they consolidate and try to shore up their lines. So troops can get things
like gas, food, ammo, you know, the stuff you need to run a war that the Russians haven't been
getting. So they would need to fix their logistics. Then he's going to need a
whole bunch of more troops. And I'm not just talking about replacements for the
tens of thousands that have been put out of the fight. They're gonna need more
than that. They didn't have enough to actually subdue this country. Now if the
The troops that are sent over are conscript quality and are the quality that we have seen
thus far.
It may not do a whole lot of good, but we have to assume somewhere in the Russian military
there are trained units and they would have to be brought forward because remember, at
This point all Ukraine has to do to win, to stop the actual capture of the country, is
to fight.
They don't have to win any battles.
They don't have to do anything other than fight and wear down Russian resolve.
It's already hit that point.
Russia on the other hand, they have to take the capital, at minimum.
That's a thing they have to do.
Thus far, they haven't been very successful with it.
In media reports, you know, it keeps saying
the encircled capital or the besieged capital.
But when you look at those maps,
yeah, there's some pretty big gaps.
They still don't really have it surrounded even.
And then they would need to take a majority
of the other major cities
before they could really even start thinking about saying,
this is ours now. And they have to do all of this and they have to win the battles and they need
to win them decisively because if they're either losing battles or they're paying too high a cost
to achieve to achieve the objective and they're dealing with the unconventional side from Ukraine
it's going to wear down morale. And those troops, they're going to run into all the same issues.
So they would have to basically get their rear in order, bring up a lot more troops,
another hundred thousand with what we have seen thus far, to just get to the point where they're
actually making advances again. They would have to bring out more equipment,
hopefully somewhere back there they have some stuff in better shape, and
basically once they get all of that in place, once they have the trained units
up at the front, they have supply lines secured, that's what the conscripts
could have been used for and they can kind of make sure that everybody's
supplied. The first step would be to consolidate the different fronts that
they have. They have a number of different advances and they're kind of
all over the place. They would need to consolidate that so they would need to
fill in those holes on the map and then they would have to refocus and move back
towards the capital and try to take it. The idea of bombarding it and just
beating it into submission, I don't actually think that will work. It might,
but a lot of times those kind of sieges, they just increase the opposition's
resolve so it would increase Ukraine to resolve. When you're talking about modern
Europe, sieges don't do well. Sarajevo was under siege from 1992 to 1996, 1,425
days, and it was a stalemate. They have to actually take the city, which is going to
require trained troops. The other problem that exists is it's fair to assume at
this point that a lot of the breakdowns in Russian equipment were due to
corruption. Now if this is what they have and they don't have other forces that
actually have their stuff together, all of their equipment is shot, all of their
equipment didn't have, it didn't have the preventative maintenance done, they all
have bad tires, all of this stuff, if this is the totality of their equipment they're
gonna have a problem. So it's not impossible that Russia still wins but
But it's going to be costly, and it's going to require Putin to put aside his ego.
And that's probably the biggest obstacle to a Russian victory, because he's painted this
picture at home.
If they have to send out another 100,000 troops, they're going to need that just to take it.
And if there is any real resistance from Ukraine, they're going to need even more to hold it.
So if he starts bringing up all of these troops, it casts doubt on all of the stories that
he has told the public.
It also shows he's lying about the number of lost, which, I mean, that's going to become
evident relatively soon anyway to the populace back home in Russia.
So it really is.
It's up to Putin.
It's his ego.
Is he willing to replace his friends who advised and planned on this operation and replace
them with people who actually know how to do the job?
Or is he going to stay wanting yes-men?
Again, just remember, this shouldn't have gone this way.
It went this way because of poor leadership, primarily, and not just during the fighting,
but leadership in the run-up to it, in keeping the equipment up and running, in the intelligence
and the training and all of this stuff.
That's all on Putin.
His crony world of yes-men did this.
He would have to replace them.
He'd have to bring up people who know what they're doing.
The problem with that is that he's been sending a lot of them into Ukraine, and quite a few,
I want to say there's been four major generals taken out, and the number of colonels I know
is in the teens or twenties at this point.
He's going to run out of people that know what they're doing.
He would need some of them, and he would have to break with the traditional way of doing
things, the way that he has been used to doing it, which is just brute force.
That doesn't appear to be a winning strategy here, and they're going to have to take the
capital.
That may be a bridge too far for them.
It's not impossible, but given the personalities involved, it seems unlikely.
It seems like they'll try to use artillery and rockets to beat the city into submission.
I don't know that that's going to be successful.
So no, it isn't impossible, but what it takes the most is for Russian leadership to admit
that they were wrong, which it seems unlikely.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
y'all have a good day.
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