Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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File this story under #cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys (the sudden bowel-loosening realization that if you are a soldier, you can be killed/wounded/inconvenienced):
Army conscription becomes toxic issue for Ukraine’s leaders
Neither the Ukrainian president nor his top military commanders want to take responsibility for drafting reluctant fighters
By Ben Hall | Jan 1, 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/3ce63abc-9a71-427b-8e11-ab5309288845
As it prepares to enter the third year of full-scale war against Russian invaders, Ukraine needs significantly more troops. But given the risk of a public backlash, the task of raising men for the armed forces has become something of a hot potato in Kyiv, tossed back and forth between Ukraine’s political leaders and its top military commanders. Neither side appears to be willing to take full responsibility for drafting hundreds of thousands of perhaps reluctant Ukrainians to serve in a grim, grinding war.
The tussle began on December 19 when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at his year-end press conference that Ukrainian army chiefs had requested the conscription of 450,000 to 500,000 men. His announcement was extraordinary in two ways.
First, he put a figure on it. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has kept secret the number of people it has recruited, whether voluntarily or through compulsion, just as it has the number of casualties.
Second, Zelenskyy stressed this was a request from the top brass, one that he had not yet granted. Before approving it, he wanted a detailed plan from his commanders about why so many recruits were needed and what that would mean in terms of troop rotations at the front.
“I need specifics,” he said. “This is a very serious number.”
Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are barred from leaving the country and are supposed to register with military recruitment offices for possible call-up. However, under current rules, only men who are 27 or older can be conscripted. A draft bill to lower that age to 25 was published in December, given that the rules governing mobilisation are the responsibility of parliament.
Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, however, seems loath to take ownership of the bill. Its MPs were instructed not to comment on it and instead refer journalists’ questions to military commanders, according to the Ukrainian Truth media outlet.
The day after the conscription legislation was published, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was wheeled out to defend it in a TV interview and at his first press conference since February 2022.
Up until then, Zaluzhny had been largely kept out of the media spotlight, with a few exceptions, notably a November interview with The Economist in which he described the war at a “stalemate”, a taboo word in government circles which enraged the president.
In his defence of the recruitment drive, Zaluzhny said the military needed more men and had been included in the drafting of new legislation, but stressed that he was not responsible for all the details.
Asked about the 450,000-500,000 number cited by Zelenskyy, the general said he “did not make any request for any figures”. Revealing any numbers would amount to divulging a military secret, he added.
He also distanced the armed forces from provisions in the bill to expand the conscription orders to Ukrainians living abroad and to impose tougher sanctions on draft dodgers. These were questions for lawmakers to address, he added.
“We are an army, and we should fight, not interfere in the lives of civilians,” he said.
Zaluzhny’s appearance to explain the mobilisation drive was necessary, says Mariia Zolkina of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation think-tank in Kyiv, because Ukraine’s “political authorities attempted to distance themselves from this step and redirect responsibility to military leadership”.
Blaming the army for a potentially unpopular move was “destructive and wrong”, Zolkina wrote on X.
Relations between Zelenskyy and his top military comm
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So Far Russia Hasn’t Destroyed Even One Of Ukraine’s 39 HIMARS Rocket-Launchers — And Not For A Lack Of Trying
The arrival of HIMARS in Ukraine compelled the Russians to get their act together. In the war’s second year, Russia’s artillery kill-chain got “more responsive and more flexible,” analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds wrote for the Royal United Services Institute in London. https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf
https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/so-far-russia-hasnt-
destroyed-even-one-ukraines-39-himars-rocket-launchers-and-not-lack-trying
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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That's odd, bc Dima has shown videos of HIMARS getting destroyed. Not many, but more than none.
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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:You know what else is odd? For the new year, Putin has retconned his explanation for why Russia went to war:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That's odd, bc Dima has shown videos of HIMARS getting destroyed. Not many, but more than none.
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 2, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin identified the West as Russia’s “enemy” and implied that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in order to defeat the West. Putin responded to a Russian serviceman’s question about Western aid to Ukraine during a meeting at a military hospital in Moscow Oblast on January 1, stating that Russia’s issue is not necessarily that the West is aiding Ukraine, but rather that the West is Russia's "enemy."[1] Putin added that “Ukraine by itself is not an enemy for [Russia],” but that Western-based actors “who want to destroy Russian statehood” and achieve the “strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield” are Russia’s enemies. Putin claimed that Western elites are trying to break Russia into five parts and are trying to do so using Ukraine, but that the situation on the frontlines is changing and that Russia will “deal with the [West] faster” than the West can deal with Russia on the battlefields in Ukraine. Putin added that the problem is not in Western aid deliveries to Ukraine and noted that Ukraine has already been “completely destroyed,” that there is “nothing left” of the country, and that it “exists only on handouts.”
Putin implied that Russia is fighting an existential war against the West in Ukraine and noted that Western rhetoric has recently refocused on how to “quickly end the conflict.” This phrasing implies that Putin sees a conflict and potential negotiations between Russia and the West – not a conflict and potential negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Putin added that Russia also wants to end the Russia-West conflict but only on the Kremlin’s terms and emphasized that Russia will not give up its positions. Putin does not view Ukraine as an independent actor and is thus portraying his full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a confrontation between Russian and West – deliberately misrepresenting the reality that Russia invaded Ukraine to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Putin’s emphasis on changing narratives in the West may indicate that he will perceive and/or frame any wavering in Western support for Ukraine and any Ukrainian defeats on the battlefield as a Russian victory in this supposed Russian-Western confrontation.
Putin’s framing of his war in Ukraine as a Russian struggle against the West – and not Ukraine – indicates that he does not intend to negotiate in good faith with Ukraine and is setting information conditions aimed at convincing the West to betray Ukraine through negotiations. Putin is likely deliberately and falsely framing Ukraine as pawn without agency in the Russia-West conflict to mask his expansionist and maximalist goals of establishing full effective Russian control of Ukraine. Putin’s January 1 discussion of negotiations refers to his intent to negotiate solely with the West about Ukraine’s future within the Russian sphere of influence and only about Western abandonment of Ukraine. It does not signal that Putin is interested in negotiating with Ukraine as an autonomous actor. Putin previously adopted a similar line when issuing two ultimatums to the United States and NATO in December 2021, which were intended to force the West to recognize Russia’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe by surrendering essential elements of Ukraine’s sovereignty in the name of de-escalating the conflict between the West and Russia that Putin was inflaming.[2] Any Western commitment to negotiations about Ukraine's future that bypass Ukraine will signal to Russia that it can impose its will upon countries that it deems to be in its sphere of influence – even countries beyond Ukraine, and potentially including Finland and Moldova, about which various Russian actors have begun setting informational conditions
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Want 200,000 155mm Artillery Shells A Month For Ukraine? Simplify Production
By Craig Hooper | Jan 2, 2024, 02:27pm EST
https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2024/01/02/want-200000-155mm-
artillery-shells-a-month-for-ukraine-simplify-production/
It is no secret the artillery fight for Ukraine has devolved into a battle for mass. The West, hoping to pump at least 200,000 155mm rounds a month into the Ukraine fight, is reaching into old stockpiles and even exploring the idea of refurbishing expired shells. These are all viable stopgaps, but, as the West’s ammunition production infrastructure struggles to scale up in 2024, the artisanal, hand-crafted aspects of post-Cold War artillery manufacturing merits some tough scrutiny.
Production is key.
America is set to produce at least 100,000 155mm shells a month by 2025, leaving Europe with the task to boost domestic production of 155mm shells by 150% over the course of 2024.
That is a heavy lift. To beat Russia in the production fight, the West has an obligation to explore every avenue to speed shells to the front. And while raiding old stockpiles and refurbishing expired munitions may offer some relief to Kyiv’s shell-hunger, Ukraine’s allies can do more to speed production by scrubbing their artillery production processes of un-needed and un-necessary requirements.
Excessive requirements are a big problem. To eke the maximum safety, shelf-life, and performance out of each and every shell, Western artillery ammunition is over-engineered—and then, on top of already daunting engineering requirements, the shells are subjected to an array of boutique national requirements.
Having each Western shell lovingly crafted to the exacting tolerances of a Formula 1 race-car engine offers measurable benefit. In ideal circumstances, Allied artillery systems outrange, outfire and hit harder than equivalent Russian systems. But conditions are no longer as ideal.
Any benefit from the West’s exquisite ammunition machining requirements and other time-consuming ammo production steps are likely offset by the degraded field conditions of an actual wartime environment.
Put another way, precision ammunition machining doesn’t make much difference when the shell goes up an overused gun barrel that, in peacetime, would have long been consigned to the scrapheap thousands of shells ago.
This isn’t to say that precision weapons aren’t needed, but a rough-and-ready “deployable” shell — just like the rough and ready M-109 self-propelled gun — is perfectly fine for repulsing Russian human wave attacks. Precision aiming is less of a concern when Ukraine fighters just want to keep hungry and cold Russian conscripts heads-down in their trenches.
Western ammunition is also designed with long-term storage in mind. With a big conventional war long being pretty much an “unthinkable” thing for Europe, frequent artillery employment was secondary to the West’s pursuit of long-term ammunition stability. Long-term ammunition reliability and easy decommissioning after lengthy storage have dominated Western shell requirements.
These peacetime priorities were the correct things for unchallenged armies to pursue. A long-lasting, stable and easy-to-decommission ammunition stockpile is a great thing, but when newly-produced shells are arriving at the front and used within days, some safety and storage features — if they make production more time-consuming or more costly — can be jettisoned.
Speeding ammo production or rapid design changes to advance lethality may not sit well with rear area warrior bureaucrats. In sclerotic procurement systems, change only comes after years of unnecessary study, debate and gamesmanship. Put bluntly, it will take some ruthless leadership to identify and cut requirements that, in the heat of battle, are no longer relevant.
Cherished rice bowls will break. Old, longstanding methods may go away. But, right now, the overarching priority — at least for general purpose artillery ammunition — is lower price and greater speed.
The Jo
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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 3, 2024
Recent Kremlin and MoD statements and the Russian MoD-affiliated milblogger’s post may be part of Kremlin efforts to set information conditions for Russia to blame Denmark and other Western Arctic countries for any future conflicts with Russia in the Arctic. These narratives are in line with Putin’s declaration on January 2 that the West is Russia’s “enemy” and his further implication that the war in Ukraine is an existential war for Russia against the West.[26]
Efforts driven by Kremlin mouthpieces to set such information conditions may be permeating the larger Russian information space. Another prominent Russian milblogger, who has previously amplified Kremlin narratives about Russia's maximalist goals of imperial reconquest in Ukraine, amplified a post claiming that the next regional “flare up” will be the Baltics and Nordic countries.[27] The post vaguely claimed that an unspecified actor, possibly the West, is preparing the Baltic and Nordic peoples for a confrontation with Russia and that the Baltic and Nordic countries have lacked sovereignty for a long time - echoing Kremlin narratives about how states that are not great powers - like Ukraine - do not have full sovereignty.[28] These informational lines are disturbingly similar to the justifications the Kremlin used to invade Ukraine in 2022 and to continue the invasion. There are no indications that Russia will seek conflict with NATO in the very near future, but Moscow began running similar information operations in Ukraine many years before Russian invasions in 2014 and 2022.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-3-2024
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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Is Russia’s Future a Forever War?
The Kremlin is hunkering down, but 2023 showed that its rule is less stable than it wants us to think.
By Stefan Theil, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy | Dec 29, 2023
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/29/russia-putin-ukraine-war-security
-geopolitics-empire-2023/
Part of what makes Russia’s war on Ukraine such a world-changing event is that it’s not just about the latter’s survival as a state. The war has also cast a spotlight on the future of Russia itself. Will it ever settle in its borders? Will the Kremlin turn its stated aims into action and try to restore its Cold War-era empire beyond Ukraine? What happens if Russia loses the war?
That nuclear-armed Russia is not as stable as its leaders would have us believe became obvious last June, when Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion that brought his mercenaries almost to the gates of Moscow. The most significant challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin since he took power in 2000 ended in Prigozhin’s fiery death and a further crackdown on the regime’s critics.
Since then, Putin has hunkered down for a long war. With some 20,000 Russians arrested for anti-war infractions since 2022, dissent has been smashed. A staged election planned for 2024 will extend Putin’s rule for another six years; all serious challengers have been murdered, jailed, or pushed into exile. The Russian economy has been thoroughly retooled for war.
But whether the gamble Putin took on Feb. 24, 2022, will pay off is still unclear. If he wins in Ukraine, Europe could face other wars as Putin seeks to restore what he believes to be Russia’s rightful sphere of control in Eastern and Central Europe. If he loses, Russia might enter a spiral of instability at home. At Foreign Policy, we asked our best authors to spin some of these scenarios forward. Here are some of their most noteworthy articles from 2023.
1. The Dream of a European Security Order With Russia Is Dead
By Kristi Raik, Oct. 31
How will a future Russia fit into the European security order? France, Germany, and other European states long tried to partner with the Kremlin and grow economic ties. That vision crashed and burned with Russia’s invasion, leaving Europe to struggle for an alternative.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/31/russia-ukraine-war-europe-securit
y-order-nato-peace-negotiation-settlement/
2. Why Putin Will Never Agree to De-Escalate
By Maxim Samorukov, June 13
Putin has everything to gain domestically by keeping his country on a war footing, Maxim Samorukov writes. That is one of many reasons why Moscow has no interest in negotiating an end to its brutal war in Ukraine.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/13/ukraine-counteroffensive-russia-p
utin-war-negotiation-ceasefire-successor/
3. Staring Down the Black Hole of Russia’s Future
By Anastasia Edel, March 10
“Increasingly lawless, economically doomed, and morally bankrupt, Russia is running out of good endings,” writes Anastasia Edel, who grew up in the Soviet Union and is no longer optimistic that Russia can take a turn for the better. She argues that only a clear defeat by Ukraine offers Russians the prospect of positive change after centuries of imperialism.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/10/russia-ukraine-putin-war-future/
4. It’s High Time to Prepare for Russia’s Collapse
By Alexander J. Motyl, Jan. 7
In one of Foreign Policy’s most-read articles in 2023, Alexander J. Motyl examines scenarios for a breakup of the Russian Federation, which still contains dozens of colonized non-Russian peoples. Whatever its likelihood in the years ahead, not planning for such a disintegration betrays a dangerous lack of imagination among Western policymakers, Motyl writes.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/07/russia-ukraine-putin-collapse-dis
integration-civil-war-empire/
5. Russia’s Frighteningly Fascist Youth
By Ian Garner, May 21
In an excerpt from his book, Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth, Ian Garner describes a new generation of Russians that glorif
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Behind the New Iron Curtain
By Marzio G. Mian | Jan 2, 2024
https://harpers.org/archive/2024/01/behind-the-new-iron-curtain/
Russia has become, to observers in the West, a distant, mysterious, and hostile land once again. It seems implausible, in the age of social media, that so little should be known about the country that has shattered the international order, but the shadows surrounding Russia have only grown since the days of the Soviet Union. Of course, it is one thing to observe the country from the outside; it is another to try to understand how Russians experience the war and react to sanctions from within, and what they hope the future holds. If Russia seems to have become another planet, it is largely because its regime has also waged war on foreign journalists, preventing them from straying beyond established perimeters.
Over the summer, hoping to do precisely that, I spent a month traveling down the Volga River. In a land of great rivers, the Volga is the river. They call it matushka, the mother; it flows from the Valdai Hills to the land of the Chuvash, the Tatars, the Cossacks, the Kalmyks, and into the Caspian Sea. It’s where Europe and Asia meet or part, are bridged or blocked, depending on whether the compass of Russian history is pointing east or west. It’s where it all started, after all, where the empire took root: Along the river one finds many of the cities that have established Russian culture and faith—from Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Lenin, to Stalingrad (now called Volgograd), the site of the infamous World War II siege. This is a history that weighs heavily on Russian identity today, as the country continues to look backward, sifting its vaunted past for new myths of grandeur. It seems prepared to resist and to suffer, acts at which Russians have always excelled, and to have resigned itself to a future of isolation, autocracy, and perhaps even self-destruction.
Before starting down the river, I met with Mikhail Piotrovsky, who is an old acquaintance and the director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, in his office on the museum’s ground floor, where he has carved out a space for himself among piles of books, stacks of paper, and various sculptures. The photographs crowding the room, of him with eminent Western leaders—a smiling Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth—are now themselves relics, not unlike the tapestry of Catherine the Great hanging above his desk.
I asked him about the river. “The Volga was everything, and is still everything,” he told me. “Because it makes you aspire to greatness. It has a sort of intimacy, sheltering and bright skies, not like the wide-open spaces of the steppe or Siberian rivers, which make you feel like a speck in the cosmos.”
Piotrovsky is an illustrious scholar of Arabic studies. I’ve known him for years, but we would normally talk about Canaletto and Byzantium, the great Islamic explorers and his beloved Sicilian wines. This time I found him in full war fervor. And, I was convinced, it was not only to defend his prestigious position: At his age, seventy-nine, he could easily keep his head down and carry on quietly, like most Russians have elected to do. He spoke with his usual calm but looked feverish, as if something were devouring him from the inside.
Piotrovsky, who is mild-mannered and cerebral, and who wore his jacket loosely over hunched shoulders, seemed to have become a warrior. “Russia is many people, but one nation,” he asserted. “Russia along the Volga was able to incorporate everyone. Islam is just as much a religion of Russian tradition and identity as is Christian Orthodoxy. In Europe, in America, you speak of nothing but multiculturalism, but your cities are bursting with hate. For us, it didn’t take much to include everyone, because we’re an imperial civilization.” Then he grew more animated. “Look at the Hermitage!” he said, opening his arms to the room around us, widening his eyes. “It’s the encyclopedia of world culture, but it’s written in Russian because it’s our interpretation of world history.
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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 4, 2024
US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on January 4 that Russia has already launched ballistic missiles acquired from North Korea at targets in Ukraine and continues efforts to acquire similar missiles from Iran. Kirby stated that North Korea provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles and that Russian forces launched at least one of the North Korean missiles into Ukraine on December 30, 2023.[6] Kirby also stated that Russian officials continue efforts to buy ballistic missiles from Iran. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported earlier on January 4 that unspecified US officials stated that Russia could receive Iranian short-range ballistic missiles as early as spring 2024 but that the officials do not believe that Russia and Iran have yet completed a deal.[7]
Russia may be intensifying efforts to source ballistic missiles from abroad because these missiles appear to be more effective at striking targets in Ukraine in some circumstances. Russian forces routinely use short-range ballistic missiles to strike Ukrainian cities closer to the frontline, and these missiles appear to be more effective at penetrating or avoiding Ukrainian air defenses. Ukrainian air defenses have intercepted 149 of a reported 166 Russian cruise missiles in intensified attacks since December 29, 2023, but have only intercepted a handful of the ballistic missiles that Russia has launched at Ukraine in the same period, for example.[8] Russian forces have repurposed S-300 and S-400 air defense missiles for conducting strikes against surface targets in Ukraine, and Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that Ukrainian air defenses struggle to intercept these unorthodox missile attacks using their own S-300 and S-400 systems.[9] Ukrainian forces have also appeared to be less successful in intercepting Iskander ballistic missiles during recent strikes, although Ukrainian forces did intercept an Iskander-M missile during a less intense series of Russian missile and drone strikes on December 30.[10] Ukrainian forces reportedly intercepted all Iskander-M or S-300/S-400 missiles that Russian forces launched at Kyiv on December 12.[11] Ukrainian forces reportedly also intercepted all 10 Kinzhal missiles that Russian forces launched at Ukraine on January 2 with Western-provided Patriot systems.[12] The effectiveness of Russian ballistic missiles thus appears to depend in part on the configuration of Ukraine’s air defense umbrella in the target area and the strike package of which the missiles are part.
The relative success that Russian forces have had in striking targets in Ukraine with ballistic missiles in combination with cruise missiles and drones may be prompting an intensification of Russian efforts to source ballistic missiles from abroad. Russia can reportedly produce roughly 42 Iskander missiles and four Kinzhal missiles per month, although it is unclear how many S-300/S-400 missiles Russia can produce.[13] Russia‘s defense industrial base (DIB) likely cannot produce ballistic missiles at the scale required for a persistent strike campaign in Ukraine that relies on regularly expending a large volume of ballistic missiles, and Russia likely has to source ballistic missiles from abroad if it wishes to maintain large-scale missile strikes against Ukraine.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-4-2024
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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*yawn*
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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