Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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The Russian Way of War
By Bob Seely | November 24, 2023
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russian-way-war
Putin began to move closer to voina — traditional war — by sending unmarked Russian troops into eastern Ukraine and Crimea. But this operation was still irregular, relying heavily on paramilitary groups and intelligence operatives. It had echoes of 1990s conflicts that Russian operatives had curated in Moldova and Georgia, if on a larger and more professional scale. In fact, the operational plan for Ukraine broadly followed a template written in 2013 by Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, which, in turn, closely resembled earlier KGB templates on staging coups.
The curated uprising succeeded completely in Crimea and partially in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Russian operatives, organized crime groups, and local thugs established two “people’s republics” that were ostensibly independent but were actually controlled by Moscow. Yet elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, including in cities such as Kharkiv and Dnipro, the coups failed. In the southern port city of Odessa, Russia’s efforts literally went up in flames: the 40-person core of Moscow’s cell was burned alive in a trade union building.
But despite its failure to engineer the political collapse of Ukraine, even this modest success enabled Russia to create a managed conflict — blocking any potential Ukrainian moves toward EU or NATO membership. Moscow then tried to parlay this partial gain into a wider political victory. So as the Kremlin pocketed Crimea, it dangled Donetsk and Luhansk as leverage in negotiations. The provinces could rejoin Ukraine, Moscow said, but only under conditions that would force Kyiv to effectively accept pro-Russian paramilitary forces and political parties on its soil. The resulting arrangement would have locked Ukraine into an ever-tighter relationship with Russia, slowly strangling the country’s genuine independence.
Kyiv saw through this gambit, and the peace talks flopped. By 2020, it was clear that Putin’s strategy was failing. Russia and Ukraine were still negotiating over the east, but Kyiv was simultaneously deepening its Western relationships. Russia remained in de facto control of the seized territory, but it had destroyed its “soft” power and degraded its international influence in the process. In his drive to subjugate Ukraine, Putin had created exactly the united Ukrainian identity he wanted to squelch. As one Kyiv resident told me, “We have such an expression: thanks to Putin, Yanukovych, for creating the Ukrainian nation.”
Despite the defeats, Putin remained obsessed with controlling Ukraine. And so, having exhausted his nonmilitary and paramilitary options, he ordered a major invasion of the country in February 2022. The third stage of the conflict began: outright voina.
Putin’s primary goal — swiftly suppressing Kyiv’s government — was akin to Soviet actions in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, where Moscow sent in troops and tanks to suppress opposition and reassert its rule. But unlike in those two states, Russia’s military performed poorly. Indeed, Putin’s shambolic but brutal invasion was the very opposite of the integrated plans Russian doctrine endorses.
Much more at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russian-way-war
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Manpower becomes Ukraine’s latest challenge as it digs in for a long war
Kyiv seeks to persuade younger recruits with better endurance and higher skills to join up. Kyiv faces the challenge of how to maintain a flow of recruits into the armed forces without stirring social unrest
By Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv | November 25 2023
https://www.ft.com/content/25711074-5e1a-494a-9d7c-ccb535f671d5
Of the four men who lined up at an army recruitment centre in Kyiv one morning this month, only one was there voluntarily.
Oleksandr, a 34-year-old used-car dealer, said he could no longer watch from the sidelines after five acquaintances were killed in Europe’s biggest war since 1945. He built up a financial cushion for his wife and newborn child before deciding to fight. “It’s time,” he said.
The others had received mobilisation notices. Two said medical conditions had previously prevented them from serving: one cited brain damage from a freak accident, the other metal plates in his spine. The fourth — Yevhen, a 42-year-old sales manager with no military experience — said: “I’m not going to hide, but I honestly don’t know what I can contribute.”
The meagre queue was a far cry from the thousands of volunteers who lined up at recruitment centres following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
It underscored the challenge facing Ukraine, with a population of less than 40mn, nearly two years into a war against an enemy with more than three times the number of people: how to maintain a flow of recruits into the armed forces without stirring social unrest and how to build capacity to enable Kyiv to regain the battlefield initiative.
General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, told The Economist earlier this month that to break the “stalemate” — a term that earned him a rebuke from the government — he needed not just new capabilities in artillery, mine clearance and electronic warfare but “to build up our reserves”.
“However, our capacity to train reserves on our own territory is also limited,” Zaluzhnyi wrote separately in an opinion article. “We cannot easily spare soldiers who are deployed to the front, [and] Russia can strike training centres. And there are gaps in our legislation that allow citizens to evade their responsibilities.”
Selective conscription has continued since February 2022 but has lost steam as the grim reality of a long, gruelling war sets in. According to a BBC investigation, nearly 20,000 Ukrainian men evaded call-up notices either by slipping out of the country in defiance of an exit ban or fraudulently acquiring permission to leave. In August, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired all the country’s regional army recruitment chiefs over the issuance of medical exemptions in return for bribes.
Ukrainian officials and western analysts say it is not just a question of numbers but of fitness, capability and skills. The average age of Ukrainians at the front and those trained by western allies has been 30-40, rather than more usual 18-24, said Jack Watling, senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think-tank.
The issue was not troop quantity but the “quality and capacity to command operations at scale”, he said.
Mobilisation early last year disproportionately pulled in older men with military experience, but younger men with more endurance and skills were now needed, he added.
“Ukraine needs infantry in top physical shape,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The physical requirements for the infantry are demanding and have increased as this conflict has settled into small-scale infantry engagement fought on foot in trench systems.”
Ukraine keeps its troop and casualty numbers secret. Experts and local officials have suggested it had 1mn men and women under arms last year, including territorial defence, secret services and border guards — double the pre-February 2022 number. US officials estimate that about 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and up to 12
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Does the US Actually Want Ukraine to Defeat Russia?
Nov 26, 2023 at 3:00 AM EST
A common refrain since February 2022 is that the U.S. is giving Ukraine enough military aid to survive, but not enough to win. In this telling, Washington, D.C. fears that a strategic Kremlin defeat in Ukraine could prompt chaos within Russian borders, perhaps the unseating of President Vladimir Putin, and a vicious regional struggle to fill a power vacuum littered with weapons of mass destruction. Anarchy would pose many new problems for the White House.
"The Ukrainians do see continued hesitancy and this mindset of worrying about escalation, not provoking the Russians in some sort of way," Daniel Vajdich — president of Yorktown Solutions and one of Ukraine's most prominent lobbyists in Washington, D.C. — told Newsweek.
"On the implementation side, there's a whole lot of continued caution that raises real questions in Kyiv about whether there is a desire for the Ukrainians to truly defeat the Russians. And the conclusion is 'no'."
"The Ukrainians believe that despite all the assistance, despite the fact that the administration is doing so much, there is still so much caution because there is not a desire for the Ukrainians to decisively defeat the Russians, thinking that this would really lead to internal turmoil and collapse in Russia."
Vajdich said this sentiment is strong in Kyiv. "It is an empirical fact that a lot of the assistance has not gotten to the Ukrainians as quickly as it could have," he said. "There are supply chain issues, there's no doubt about that. But there's also a portion of this assistance, both qualitatively and quantitatively, that could have gotten to the Ukrainians a lot earlier."
"It had a decisive impact in terms of the situation on the ground...the spring offensive this year would have been a spring offensive and not a July offensive, which made all the difference. It allowed the Russians to literally entrench themselves and fortify their defenses."
Kyiv has had to fight hard for every new NATO weapons system. The first American-made main battle tanks had arrived in Ukraine as of October, more than 18 months since Russian armored columns rolled across Ukrainian frontiers. Kyiv is still pushing for the longest-range version of the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System — known as the ATACMS, and U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets will not be expected to arrive until early 2024.
More at https://www.newsweek.com/us-want-ukraine-defeat-russia-putin-biden-zel
ensky-peace-talks-1846772
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Does the US Actually Want Ukraine to Defeat Russia?
Nov 26, 2023 at 3:00 AM EST
A common refrain since February 2022 is that the U.S. is giving Ukraine enough military aid to survive, but not enough to win. In this telling, Washington, D.C. fears that a strategic Kremlin defeat in Ukraine could prompt chaos within Russian borders, perhaps the unseating of President Vladimir Putin, and a vicious regional struggle to fill a power vacuum littered with weapons of mass destruction. Anarchy would pose many new problems for the White House.
Oh, bull!
SINCE FEB 2022 WE'VE BEEN TOLD THAT UKRAINE WAS WINNING! ALWAYS WINNING! OR COULD WIN, WITH ENOUGH WEAPONS!
You can't rewrite history THAT blatantly, SECOND.
The problem is, TBTB seriously "misunderestimated" Russia since 2014. And you're evidence of that bc you repeated every trope, every lie about defective Russia/ Russians. Just review your posts.
TPTB really thought that if they couldn't beat the Russkies militarily their "sanctions from hell" would FOR SURE do the trick. Bc Russia was just a gas station masquerading as a country.
Then they thought they had an ace in the hole with Prigozhin.
And then they really thought ... yes, really thought! ... that if the Russian army saw those magnificent Leopards and ATACMS and Storm Shadows coming at them they'd throw down their weapons and run.
And now you're just repeating the butt hurt story that we didn't really lose bc we weren't really trying. (Shades of Vietnam!)
Hate to tell you this, but we were really trying. And we lost, dood.
This is the THIRD* time you misunderestimated a people.
Try not to make that mistake again!
*N Vietnamese, Russians, and ...? If you ask, I'll tell you the third.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Only the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans have failures this huge in their history (Google "what is the biggest famine in history" https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+biggest+famine+in+history ):
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, bull!
SINCE FEB 2022 WE'VE BEEN TOLD THAT UKRAINE WAS WINNING! ALWAYS WINNING! OR COULD WIN, WITH ENOUGH WEAPONS!
You can't rewrite history THAT blatantly, SECOND.
The problem is, TBTB seriously "misunderestimated" Russia since 2014. And you're evidence of that bc you repeated every trope, every lie about defective Russia/ Russians. Just review your posts.
Five million Russians died during the Great Famine of 1921. Without Herbert Hoover, it would have been more. Side question: Why do bad things happen to stupid people? Hint: the stupidest don't know they are stupid. Instead, they know for sure they are the smartest.
Official website: https://to.pbs.org/3tKSle1
The little-known story of the American effort to relieve starvation in the new Soviet Russia in 1921, The Great Famine is a documentary about the worst natural disaster in Europe since the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. Five million Russians died. Half a world away, Americans responded with a massive two-year relief campaign, championed by Herbert Hoover, director of the American Relief Administration known as the ARA.
In July of 1921, Herbert Hoover, received a plea for international aid by Russian novelist Maxim Gorky. "Gloomy days have come for the country of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Mendeleyev," Gorky warned. He made a similar request to other Western nations, but it was Hoover who responded immediately with a promise of support.
The first American relief ships arrived in Petrograd in September 1921, as the embers of the 1917 Russian revolution still smoldered. American relief workers were among the first outsiders to break through Russia's isolation and to witness and record the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution. They would be tested by a railroad system in disarray, a forbidding climate, a ruthless government suspicious of their motives, and the enormous scale of death and starvation.
The initial plan called for feeding one million children by delivering bread, rice, grits, sugar, corn and milk to the most hard hit regions. Almost immediately, Hoover encountered formidable obstacles. Vladimir Lenin's new communist government was skeptical of American aid and sabotaged the relief effort by planting spies in local American Relief Administration offices. When trains stuck on the tracks prevented food from being transported, Russian officials were uncooperative, resulting in delays that contributed to an estimated 50,000 deaths. New estimates in the fall of 1921 revealed that at least 16 million Russians would be impacted by the famine. Hoover's initial plan to feed just the children would not be sufficient.
That winter, cannibalism became widespread across Russia as the people continued to starve. In the U.S., Hoover managed to double the project's funding, arguing that by providing food famine relief, Americans could demonstrate the strength, kindness and efficiency of American society to a Communist culture.
After a spring thaw, hundreds of American relief workers — nicknamed "Hoover's boys" — were finally able to deliver food. In August 1922, a full five months after the initial shipments of corn were sent to Russia, American Relief Administration officials were still feeding almost 11 million Soviet citizens each day in 19,000 kitchens. By the end of the famine that fall, five million Russians had starved to death, but the toll would have been significantly higher without Hoover's unprecedented humanitarian commitment.
Known as "the Great Humanitarian" for his relief work during and after World War I, Hoover is said to have saved more lives than any person in history.
"Lenin's government never recognized America's
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OK Comrade.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=65817
Say hi to your alter-ego Reaverfan for us.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, bull!
SINCE FEB 2022 WE'VE BEEN TOLD THAT UKRAINE WAS WINNING! ALWAYS WINNING! OR COULD WIN, WITH ENOUGH WEAPONS!
You can't rewrite history THAT blatantly, SECOND.
The problem is, TBTB seriously "misunderestimated" Russia since 2014. And you're evidence of that bc you repeated every trope, every lie about defective Russia/ Russians. Just review your posts.
SECOND:Quote:Side question: Why do bad things happen to stupid people? Hint: the stupidest don't know they are stupid. Instead, they know for sure they are the smartest.
Five million Russians died during the Great Famine of 1921. Without Herbert Hoover, it would have been more.
blah blah blah...
NEWS FLASH! Russians NOT starving this year!!
Sad to say, tho, an estimated 500,000 to a million Ukrainians were killed fighting a war for us.
Now THAT'S stupid!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Russia did starve people this year by stopping the flow of grain as Russia did to recalcitrant citizens in the past. Nothing makes political opponents quit faster than starving them. Russia never forgot that fact and never stopped doing it, including turning off gas and electricity.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
NEWS FLASH! Russians NOT starving this year!!
Sad to say, tho, an estimated 500,000 to a million Ukrainians were killed fighting a war for us.
Now THAT'S stupid!
Signym, why stop at 1 million? You could estimate 1.5 million dead. No, make that 1.65 million dead/wounded for the appearance of "accuracy" and "precision". Make it any old number you want, Signym. There is nothing stopping you!
'I Can't Believe Them': Young Russian Conscript's Father Suspects Son May Have Been Beaten To Death For Refusing To Fight In Ukraine (The Father can't say he is absolutely sure or else he will go to jail for besmirching the Russian Army's reputation. Russia is very legalistic about its Army.)
RadioFreeEurope RadioLiberty | November 26, 2023 20:37 GMT
More at https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-conscript-lazhyev-beaten-death-ukraine-
war/32700547.html
Andrei was repeatedly asked to sign a contract with the Defense Ministry despite his reluctance. By law in Russia, which has compulsory two-year military service, conscripts cannot be deployed to fight outside the country. That means that, in theory, those drafted into the military cannot be sent into combat in Ukraine. But there is loophole. Draftees can sign a contract with the Defense Ministry that would allow them to fight in Ukraine.
Widespread rumors that some draftees are physically coerced to sign up for combat service leads Nikolai to suspect his son was beaten in an attempt to get him to sign the contract.
When Andrei contacted him on September 21 to say he was in a field hospital, Nikolai said, his son said he was being pressured heavily to sign the contract.
"Every day. Contract, contract, contract," Nikolai recalled his son saying. "I told him: just don't sign. He didn't sign."
However, Nikolai said, "there is information that they were allegedly forced to sign contracts by beating them. And I cannot rule this out."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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General James L. Jones: West 'Too Cautious About Giving Ukraine Weapons That Could Strike Into Russia'
By Vazha Tavberidze | November 26, 2023 13:06 GMT
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-james-jones-interview-long-rang
e-weapons/32700251.html
RFE/RL: Many noticed that the ATACMS given to Ukraine are of older production with a shorter range than their modern equivalents? Will there be more, better, longer-range ones?
Jones: It goes back to a fear in [NATO] capitals that if you give the Ukrainians the weapons that can strike into Russia, they will do that and it might cause a wider war. I don't think that's correct, to be honest with you. My first war was in Vietnam, and I was always frustrated by the fact that we couldn't pursue the enemy into Laos or Cambodia or go north of the DMZ [demilitarized zone], and there were so many restrictions on us that we did have the impression that we're fighting with one hand tied behind our back. And I think that's a risky strategy that normally contributes to defeat of the side that has so many impositions on it. The fear, obviously, is that Vladimir Putin would escalate to a nuclear conflict, and everybody's concerned about that. But I do think that the important thing is to give the Ukrainians the panoply of weapons that they need and to certainly prevent Russia from advancing any further into Ukraine.
RFE/RL: So, should we expect more, better, longer range ATACMS? And what's that dependent upon?
Jones: I think the military advice here is that they want to give them longer ranges. I'm not sure where the political leadership is on that. But if you're going to fight a war, you need to fight a war to win it. And you need to have the equipment that you need to prevail. Otherwise, you're working toward a stalemate, and that's not very good for anybody.
RFE/RL: Let's look at this from General Zaluzhniy's perspective. You are a general, you have to conduct a counteroffensive, and you are asked by your partners on whom you are heavily dependent in your war efforts to go into it without air support. How does it feel?
Jones: Not good. You know, in my days in Vietnam, we always had adequate air power, whether [it was] gunships or Phantom jets. The North Vietnamese that we fought against did not have that, and they paid a heavy price militarily, regardless of how it worked out politically. And I think that Ukraine understands that without air power, the manpower bill goes up exponentially. So, you have to be very careful, because for Ukraine manpower is really important. And they can't afford the Putin doctrine, which is just throw men at the problem; he doesn't care.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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What part about FUCK UKRAINE do you not understand?
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK (April 23, 2022):
Nobody cares.
Nothing has changed.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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