I have mentioned it before: I’ve been a wargamer for about 45 years. From my perspective, the hogh point of that was when I used to bicycle down to Read St, home of Avalon Hill games, and playtest Squad Leader, which I still regard as the best regiment-level tactical game ever made.
One characteristic of the good games is that they have a model of some sort for morale – the tendency of people in battle to sometimes break and run, or cower, or see that the guy next to you just broke and ran, then you drop your weapons and run them, muttering in your language of choice, “fuck this …” Back in my napoleonic miniatures phase we had a guy who could say “di di mau” in seemingly every language from Zulu to French (“sauve qui peut!”) etc., it was great fun when the enemy disintegrated into an out of control rabble.
The models are all different. There was one game, Patrol, in which getting your men to move at all was an accomplishment and often hilarious. Your fire-team would decide that it was time to leave the ditch just in time to get flanked by enemy hussars, etc. ha, ha, merde alors!
At some point or another, the men in a unit have each seen a friend, on fire, trying to get out of a tank before its too late, but at that point it already is. It sharpens your suspicion that the lieutenant has no tactical sense and that makes getting the squad moving forward take a bit longer than getting them moving backward. When morale begins to collapse, it can just mean that units start hugging comfortable places. Units melt into the field and disappear. Years later when old men talk about Waterloo, you prefer not to mention that you were there.
Around 5% casualties is where it starts to kick in. At around 5% everyone has lost a friend. Maybe they were standing right next to them, and were just a little faster getting out of the armored personnel carrier and now they’re ineffective in combat simply because they’ve realized that they’re only there for the personal aggrandizement of some motherfucker with a $200 million yacht. If he wants Kyiv so bad, he should have bought a tin hat of his own.
And so it goes. The Russians went in with 150,000 troops and have over 7,000 killed and a lot more casualties. These are not hardened killers full of hate, like the men who marched to Berlin and left a trail of dust behind them. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it’s right around now that the Russian military is going to start moving just a little bit slower. They won’t break and run (need about 10% casualties for that) but enthusiasm will be waning. I mean, really, would you like to ride in the back of one of those APCs? They look pretty flammable, let me sit closest to the door OK?
The Russians are already losing momentum, and have switched from trying to maneuver, to blasting stuff flat. That won’t win any battle, so I guess I’m saying the Russians have lost. 150,000 troops can’t hold a populated region the size of Texas, they’re spread too thin and they know it, and the troops will be figuring it out.
Putin’s going to negotiate for Ukrainian neutrality and a promise not to join NATO. Ukraine will agree and the CIA will funnel loads of weapons to them. If Putin doesn’t start to play nice, that porous border will equate to Ukrainians sneaking into Moscow with military weapons and taking the insurgency home to Russia – just like the Georgians did. The lines on the map will move a bit here and there but the Russians should have invaded, taken ports and power stations and airports as non-violently as possible, then started negotiating.
I spent last night in Corvallis, at a place labeled “ANGRY BEAVER” well, hell yes. Time to hit the road down the coast to Bandon.
The casualty rate for Russian generals seems to be about 20%. That can’t help morale.
Alternative: Putin’s not negotiating *for* anything at all. It’s all a delaying tactic because…
Those 5%/10% figures really depend on a lot of things. A well trained, well led and motivated army can take more before coming apart. An army defending it’s home territory can take more then one attacking. The more the two sides hate each other the more they can stay motivated. The Russian army is none of those things, at least in the conscripts part. The professional part may be well trained and led at the local level but have to be upset about how this was organized and run at the top.
The Russians also seem to have pulled a bone headed anti-motivation move that I have never heard off before. As part of keeping the entire thing secret some of the troops thrown into the first wave were not told they were going to be part of an invasion until they entered Ukrainian territory. Finding out you are part of a war by coming under enemy fire is not supposed to happen for the side that is on the attack.
I think that is where it ends up also but there are some big assumptions behind that. The first is that Putin has good enough information to realize he has already lost. It is very likely he is being told victory is only a few days and bomb raids away. The second is that Putin will negotiate. He likely looks on Ukraine as the cap stone of his career and may just refuse to give up no matter the cost. Third, that any accommodation can be found. Ukraine has already been promised safety for being neutral and it didn’t work. They may not agree to terms that are just setting up the next round of fighting. Putin will want to impose restrictions on the government beyond not being in NATO.
JM @3:
My impression is that the best-trained Russian troops (airborne) were used in the early days, to try and take key locations like airports. But they didn’t seem to have enough support to hold their positions. I can imagine even the best troops becoming rapidly demoralized when they know that nobody has their backs.
One gets the idea that a lot of the generals have their rank due to politics more than military savvy, and that the ones who have been killed so far were probably among their best.
In a just world, a place called Angry Beaver is a brothel, not a sports bar.
My big question for any negotiated settlement: What about reparations? The Russians have trashed the joint, but I doubt they’ll want to pay anything to repair it.
My big question for any negotiated settlement: What about reparations?
Not a chance.
That’d be like asking the US to fix up Afghanistan. Or Germany to fix up France. Or, or, or… It just doesn’t happen.
It seems to me Ukraine could agree to anything, and then break it later by pointing out that 1) They were under duress and 2) Russia violated the Budapest memorandum.
Russia has already lost about the same number of troops as the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan. In both of those wars, the US troops translated from offensive operations to hunkering down in walled fortresses waiting to rotate home.
Also, I’d say Russia’s going to need to invest serious rubles in a new main battle tank. Nobody in their right mind is going to want to climb into a T-90 now.
The element of surprise … https://youtu.be/lYNpgXBLawc
Putin already knows he’s lost. But I suspect he’s looking for a way out that doesn’t involve losing his own head. He’s looking for a deal that keeps himself in power, or even just keeps him alive.
We just past The Ides Of March and nothing happened (tsar, caesar, what’s the difference?). But if his backers give up and decide to back another horse (new face, new image, same plutocracy), something might happen.
Marcus @10:
They have been investing.
I wonder what the mood will be at the 2022 Moscow Victory Parade.
How the war in Ukraine showed that Canada is ill-equipped to fight a modern army
If Putin was sane and well-informed, he would at this point realize he can’t lose and start trying to negotiate for the best peace he can manage. But if he was sane and well-informed, he wouldn’t have tried this crazy stunt in the first place.
It seems as if he is pulling his forces back somewhat form Kyiv. I very much hope this is not because he is planning on breaking out the chem weapons, the anthrax, or the neutron bombs — as much to show his own people he means business as to give him any hope of winning the war.
If he does, what should our response be?
Last post, I meant he can’t win. Sigh.
If he does, what should our response be?
I don’t know “should” but … the chem weapons appear to be largely fictional – I do not believe the Russians are ready to deploy WMD other than nuclear or just saturation bombing. If it looks like they are going nuclear the US will launch a pre-emptive strike and that’ll be the end of Russia. I doubt that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is as good as it has been made out to be – but it’s enough to scare Americans into wiping them out.
Chem weapons have a distinctive preparatory footprint if they are being deployed; they’d probably be detected if enough were fielded to matter.
US is trying to warn China against aligning with Russia. That is basically the last axis that could oppose US hegemony, and if the US can block it, we rule the planet.
One really has to wonder what exactly the fuck Putin was even trying to accomplish here in the first place? Blitzkrieg? Definitely. Except Blitzkrieg never works.
Territory? He’s got more of that than anyone can handle already.
Resources? Sure. More is always better. But this is quite a gamble. Turn Ukraine into a nuclear wasteland and there won’t be much to gather. Pipelines? Goodbye SWIFT. Not much of an economic benefit in sight, here. Not that any of the sanctions ever hit the oligarchs. They only ever hit the people.
And people? Definitely not.
What’s fun is that the “denazification” excuse is basically along the same lines as the “free the women” excuse the US gave for invaiding Iraq.
Again, I must ask.
Territory? Where is Iraq again?
Resources? Oil is nice.
And people? Not ever never ever.
Hmm…
What then? Why do sickos want to conquer shit? Why do we keep respecting them?
Also: As a German, fuck Germany for funnelling weapons and money into this conflict now, completely undemocratically. Shit just gets decide by sociopaths, no questions asked (literally!). As if weapons ever helped anyone. The average Ukrainian right now could really use that money for housing and food and water instead of more gun.
Also also: Why do we all suddenly care about yet another war? There are around a hundred armed conflicts happening all the time, around the world. But when it’s white people suffering, suddenly refugees matter? What’s going on here? Wasn’t it only a few weeks ago that the world was appalled at Poland for starving out Belarussian refugees at their borders? Completely forgotten by now. Never even happened.
I honestly don’t believe the EU or NATO or the US when they suddenly claim to care about war or refugees. For them, this is just a convenient excuse
to bulk up military spending. Finally an excuse! Finally we have a reason for erecting barbed wire fences! Finally we can prepare for the BILLIONS of climate refugees that will clog up the borders in 30 years.
Also, fuck Covid. No longer a thing.
(Yes. This is terrible. Putin sucks. Bla, bla. Insert obligatory I’m-with-you notice here. Let’s all panic and despair together.)
So, yeah, my morale check? I failed it.
klatu @21: Aw, poor you. If you ever get bombed out of your house, I’ll make you a cup of tea.
@klatu If you are homeless because some asshole bombed your house into rubble, the correct order of things seems to be to first get a gun (of the appropriate caliber, or a Bayraktar, or a Javelin, etc) and get rid of that asshole and/or his arttilery. Rebuilding the house is ultimately more important, but it has to come second.
Being German, too, I am enraged at our government for not sending enough weapons to Ukraine.
5 Russian generals killed. Start rolling saving throws!
Lawmakers reject Russian official’s request to return Alaska: ‘Never, ever, ever’
@24: It’s hard to keep up.
Andrey Paliy, 51, a Black Sea fleet commander, was shot dead by Ukrainian forces near the embattled city of Mariupol, making him the first Russian naval boss and sixth high-up military leader to die since the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine started last month.
So, if this were HOI4, Putin slacked on his research, didn’t fill out the proper focii and ignored any Org or Soft Attack buffs.
Sound about right?
ahcuah #7; My big question for any negotiated settlement: What about reparations?
Marcus Ranum #8; Not a chance. That’d be like asking the US to fix up Afghanistan. Or Germany to fix up France. Or, or, or… It just doesn’t happen.
It rather famously does – Germany’s reparation bill after WW1 is notoriously blamed for contributing to WW2.
And it didn’t go away – Germany continued to pay it’s bill until 2010.
@20 klatu
there are many possible reasons and I can’t say which one are true.
Remember that he expected west not to intervene, at least not in time that was necessary to do a regime change and then sanctions would be pointless.
1. He may really believe in his own propaganda about encroaching NATO. I doubt that personally.
2. He may really believe in rebuilding russian empire, especially im uniting all 3 russian nations (as per “victory editorial” that was quickly removed)
3. Newly found deposits of gas and oil in Ukraine and Black sea. It’s not just about getting access to more oil, but Russia’s economy is not only based on oil and gas, the walls and roof are also made out of it. If Ukraine started drilling and selling it to Europe, no one would need russian oil.
4. Putin created cleptocratic oligarchy, that results in high level of corruption, which means most people will be poor. You can hide how poor they are compared to the west, many russians can’t read latin alphabet and is not using internet as a source of information, but around 10% of Russians have relatives in Ukraine. If Ukraine succeeded in joining EU and started chasing Poland in relative wealth, the difference would be impossible to hide.
@ 19 Marcus Ranum
US is trying to warn China against aligning with Russia. That is basically the last axis that could oppose US hegemony, and if the US can block it, we rule the planet.
And as a Chinese TV presenter tweeted:
Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?
CGTN LIU Xin 刘欣
US “diplomacy”, to misuse the term, is mad.
Russia has lost the battle for “hearts and minds” badly and withlong term cnseuqences for them.
Ukrainians will not soon forget or forgive Putin’s invasion. If they were ever inclined to agree to merge with RuSSia eventually one day, they aren’t now and won’t be fro as far as Ican reasonably imagine. Putin managed to drive Ukrainains further apart from Russians and make them more determined to be independent of Moscow.
Russia has lost the battle for world opinion. Putin has made his nation an international outcast which is being sanctioned like old Apartheid South Africa. Economically, diplomatically siolated and kicke dout of sproting and cultural arenas. He’s also blown his own global crediibility and forever soiled his reputation as a world leader.
Putin ahs also destabilised his repuatuion at home. benath the propganda there are massive protests and unrest and so many fmailies willbe losing sons, brothers, hsubands and more and they will remember thsi tooand not forgive him. I hope theymanage totopple Putin ASAP.
Yes, I think he’s lost – even if he manages to eventually militarily capture Ukraine and kill Zelensky, occupations like this do not end well.
@ jrkrideau : Out of morbid curiosity – what do you make of Putin’s “diplomacy” here then?
Do you agree with Trump that its somehow “genius” or something I wonder?
Don’t forget there are others under the thumb of Russia who see how weak Russia is militarily: Chechnya, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan…
That is an interesting issue. Russians seem to have been aghast at the very idea that someone might try to assassinate Putin; see their reaction to Sen. Lindsay Graham. But they have reportedly targeted special ops forces to take out Zelensky and have featured him on their deck of cards. They have already made him a hero. If they manage to kill him, they will make him a martyr.
Those so-called Russian Paratroopers are not actually any good at fighting real soldiers. Nice breakdown here – https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1499377671855292423
And the morale is going to be worse than one might expect because the “Russian” army is having to draft a huge amount of minorities that really don;t want to be there because actual Russian youth are getting relatively rare – https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1506479259866394625
Ukraine has destroyed nearly 10% of Russia’s tanks, making experts ask: Are tanks over?
@28
the people of Ukraine still remember what Stalin did as well their dislike of Russia goes even further back even then that.
An interesting site that takes existing pictures and video, eliminates duplicates and documents multiple views of a single event, tries to figure out what type of equipment it is, and who it belong/ed/s to and creates a list:
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
IE: Tanks (280, of which destroyed: 117, damaged: 4, abandoned: 41, captured: 118) Note each iteration comes with a photo:
T-72B:(3, destroyed) :
https://postlmg.cc/Dm3rgD7c
No expert, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to hammer those dents out.
It isn’t a foolproof system. There are obvious sampling imbalances. It isn’t a score card. It does give you useful information as to relative numbers in a format which would be very hard to fake.
Seventh Russian general killed
…
Russian Colonel ‘deliberately’ run over and killed by his own soldiers in Ukraine
First phase of Ukraine war over, Russia says
(Certainly not a direct quote, as they wouldn’t call it a “war”)
@38 Iorn – There was a really good youtube presentation by a youtuber who goes by Perun about that kind of documentation. Basically it lets you set a soft floor for casualties and losses and gives you a snapshot of what kind of systems are present. Error bars are large, but visually verified data is verified, which gives you the soft floor.
@34 Reginald – Any time anyone is effectively ‘aghast’ in news I just ignore it. It’s all performative, like a Devin Nunes lawsuit, or a republican holding up a book that you know they haven’t read.
@35 I look at that paratrooper thread you linked and it’s a nice story. But it’s by ‘someone on the internet’ with some credentials. Looks ok, but I don’t know how to independently verify that stuff in a reasonable time. There were a lot of confident statements based on individual footage and examples, which is the definition of arguing from the specific to the general. Good story nonetheless, just not much to hang a hat on.
The only thing I’ll add is how the war has sucked all the air out of every other piece of news. I feel less informed than I was before this started. I may have actively try to diversify my news sources.
@ 40 Reginald Selkirk
Certainly not a direct quote, as they wouldn’t call it a “war”
About as close to a direct quote as we are likely to get in English.
In general, the main tasks of the first stage of the operation have been completed,” said Rudskoy, who serves as chief of the Russian military’s Main Operational Directorate.
https://www.rt.com/news/552734-russia-first-stage-ukraine/
Also
In a rare update on combat losses, Rudskoy also announced that 1,351 Russian servicemen have died in the hostilities, with another 3,825 injured. Ukraine, meanwhile, claims to have killed some 16,000 Russian troops and destroyed hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery guns. Though Kiev has not offered casualty estimates for its own soldiers since mid-March – when it said 1,300 had died – the colonel general cited a much larger figure of 30,000 for those both killed and wounded.
I do not believe the Ukrainian figures for Russian casualties and I suspect the Russian figures for Ukrainian casualties are very exaggerated if not invented. The Russian figures for their own casualties are probably closer to reality but who knows?
@ 32 StevoR
Out of morbid curiosity – what do you make of Putin’s “diplomacy” here then?
Von Clausewitz is famous for, among other things “War is the continuation of politics by other means”. Both Yeltsin and Putin told the USA/NATO that NATO expansion eastward was an unacceptable threat to the Russian Federation. See Putin’s Munich speech in 2007. Russia tried diplomacy for years and NATO kept expanding to the east.
If Washington was too stupid to understand this, well tough luck for the Ukrainians. They should have talked to the Kurds or the Swamp Arabs.
It looks like the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was Zelenski’s statement that he was going to break the 1994 Bucharest Memorandum and seek or develop nuclear weapons. Some other Ukrainian or NATO act could easily have precipitated the Russian attack but this seems to have been the actual decider.
To quote some guy on the Internet:
The one that Russia has already repeatedly violated?
1994 Bucharest Memorandum…
There are so many hypotheticals flying around I’m afraid someone’s going to take one in an eye and really get hurt.
But … Did you notice how Biden appears to have said that the US might respond in kind to a bioweapons attack or a chemical attack? What does that mean? Does the US have a bioweapons or chemical program that we don’t know about?
@45: Most articles are not using the “in kind” quote – only FauxNews is doing that. So while he may have said that, most of the non-nutjob media is giving him a break, either because he is the president of the United States during a very tense time of international relations, or because he has a long history of gaffery, and thus has built-in deniability.
My assumption is that he meant something like “proportional”.
Also, not his worst recent gaffe.
because he is the president of the United States during a very tense time of international relations, or because he has a long history of gaffery,
It seems like it’s not such a great idea to put crazy people and old coots in charge of the difficult things. Biden and Putin should be running a bowling league somewhere, for kids, not running the world.
I wouldn’t bowl with a habitual cheater like Putin.
Hmmm.
Roman Abramovich, Ukraine officials in Russia peace talks possibly poisoned: reports
Reginald Selkirk@#49:
I wouldn’t bowl with a habitual cheater like Putin.
I wouldn’t smoke a bowl with him, either. Who knows what’d be in it.
Reginald Selkirk @44:
(referring to the Bucharest memorandum). Ah, but Sergei Lavrov assured us Russia didn’t violate it;
Of course, Lavrov lied; that was just one of the six points, but I’ll bet jrkrideau believes that, even with a fucking copy of the memorandum in front of him.