“However, it is not clear that the hasty February 22 vote upholds constitutional guidelines, which call for a review of the case by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court and a three-fourths majority vote by the Verkhovna Rada — i.e., 338 lawmakers.”

The problem, or should I say one of the problems is only 328 lawmakers voted for the measure to remove him– short of the required 3/4 and there was no review by the Constitutional Court.

The other problem or should I say one of the problems is Turtler has indicated the Rada required Yanukovych to return and answer questions why he abandoned his position. Yes, he left Kyiv, along with much of his cabinet, but since when is leaving the capitol sufficient proof he abandoned his position?

The riots that left protestors and police dead couldn’t be justification of a crime since somewhere between 14 and 20 police were killed. Someone in the crowd was shooting the police.

Do I have the timeline right?
Feb. 20 marks the final bloody day of the protests.
Feb. 21 Yanukovych was supposed to sign an agreement brokered by Germany and France to sign a bill restoring the 2004 constitution which limits the President’s powers. In addition, he agreed to early elections.
Feb. 22 Rada votes to remove him as president.
Feb. 24 Rada elects Yatsenyuk President. He was “our guy” according to Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine.

March 17 Crimea declares its independence and intentions to join Russian Federation, after holding a referendum March 14.
May 12 Donetsk and Luhansk declare independence after holding a referendum May 11.

https://www.rferl.org/a/was-yanukovychs-ouster-constitutional/25274346.html

Repeating quotes from an old political hack won’t make them profound or useful, but Turtler pointed that out weeks ago.

Water off a duck, that’s how you roll.

If Vlad hadn’t seized Crimea and fomented uprising in the Donbas and Luhansk, but wait a minute he did. If Vlad hadn’t invaded Ukraine in 2022, 300,000 Russians wouldn’t have died in Ukraine.

If Ukraine had Grippens they wouldn’t need F-16s,

If the Ukrainian’s hadn’t kicked the Russians out of Kherson and Khakhiv and essentially bled the Wagner Group white in Bahkmut in 2022 expectations wouldn’t have been so high in 2023. But while Vlads little minions were left alone in the south they weren’t just doing nothing. They sewed minefields 10 miles wide. If Brain E had a brain he would know that “the enemy gets a vote in any attack.” But unlike Brain E’s favorite army (it ain’t Ukrainian) the Ukrainian army realized that the NATO-lite (lite on air power) plan wasn’t working this summer. Vlad’s army just keeps doing the same bloody thing to meet Vlad’s political goals.

If Brain E had a brain he would recognize that war is politics taken to an extreme. Vlad’s political goal is to exterminate or castrate the Ukrainian state. Brain E is good with that, hence my “snark” and contempt.

If Brain E could learn after being schooled by Turtler he wouldn’t continue to be ignorant.

You’ve said that before. Please explain why your conclusion is correct.

The constitution of Ukraine specifically outlined three methods of removing a president. The vote to remove Yanukovych didn’t have the necessary votes required had they followed the impeachment process– which required judicial review.

Had Yanukovych not been overthrown, you’re suggesting Crimea and the Donbas would have declared their independence regardless.

As to why I believe the summer counter-offensive turned out to be ill-advised, look at the results. Without air superiority, the results are similar to what Russia is facing near Avdivka– large losses of equipment and high casualties.

The counter-offensive was more of a political necessity than a military one. The weather didn’t cooperate, supplies of new weapons were late arriving and Ukraine can’t sustain the level of human losses that attacking rather than defending brings.

Delaying a large scale attack like that envisioned to cut the land bridge doesn’t affect the defensive action Ukraine is mounting, letting Russia sustain the larger amounts of casualties and equipment losses.

Meanwhile better air weapons (though from what I’ve read, the Grippen would be a better choice for Ukraine than F-16) would give them needed stand-off support for the offensive. Even if Ukraine gains an advantage, this will continue for several years unless there is a political intervention. One more year of defensive actions, while the West decides if they’re going to give Ukraine the amount of advanced weaponry wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the war.

Why do I think the “counter-offensive” was mainly political? Because some of Europe’s political class was basically saying so a year ago. Had Ukraine even advanced to Tokmak, Europe would likely stay in the conflict. Now, maybe not.
Had they just told Europe the weapon deliveries and weather made a summer attack impossible might have bought them another year.

“*No one should enter a war without realistic objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and a plan for war termination.”
“*Self-righteousness and bravery are no substitutes for military mass, firepower, and stamina.”
“*In the end, wars are won and lost on the battlefield, not with propaganda inspired by and directed at reinforcing wishful thinking.”

Southern counteroffensive runs out of steam as West scrambles to deliver aid

https://kyivindependent.com/explainer-is-ukraines-counteroffensive-over/

By the way, the article isn’t as negative as the headline makes it out to be.

I’ve been working so couldn’t get back to your points. But Turtler has been very thorough.

You may not care whast happens in Ukraine except if Russia is forced to stop and retreat. Then you will care immensely. Your “point” that if the US wanted Ukraine to win the US should have counciled Ukraine to wait at least a year (or more?) is just ignorant and foolish. You think Russia would just sit around while Ukraine accumulates ordnance, equipment, manpower? The Russians spent a year laying minefields 6 to 10 miles deep in the south IIRC. How would more time for Russia make things better?

What a McGreagor you turn out to be.

Domino Theory
“For all of Putin’s rhetoric about NATO expansion, the behavior of he and his ilk has been even more revealing. At no point have they invaded a country actually in NATO, nor one armed with nuclear weapons or even breakout capacity for it.— Turtler

This is one the reasons I don’t buy the narrative that Russia must be defeated in Ukraine because his expansionist policies would advance to eastern Europe.
The bordering NATO countries are spending in excess of 3% GDP on defense, unlike most of the western European countries. With article 5, and the guarantee that a full fledged support by the US under article 5 and our ability to project air dominance is more than enough deterrent.
———
Joining the EU
A few points. The article you linked to says it was the EU, not Russia that was the barrier to a “tri-lateral” agreement.

“On 26 November, President Yanukovych called the EU agreement a ‘dead end’ for Ukraine, and made its signature at some point in the indefinite future conditional on ‘agreement on normal conditions’. On the same day, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov criticised the EU for failing to offer financial compensation with regard to the limitation of the access of Ukrainian goods to the Russian market after signing the Agreement. He (Yanukovych) also stated that in order to protect its exports, Ukraine was proposing the start of trilateral talks with the EU and Russia. On 21 November the initiative was already supported by Vladimir Putin, which indicates that this was a joint initiative by Kyiv and Moscow. “

And this from a National Interest article: “While Russia has not opposed some links between ex-Soviet republics and the European Union, it (Russia) has opposed the EU Partnership Agreements because these bind the signatories to the EU in such a way as to make membership in the Moscow-sponsored entities (the customs union, the single economic space, and so on) impossible.”

https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ukraine-why-yanukovych-said-no-europe-9453

Europe would have had to make some adjustments to the agreement to allow Ukraine to benefit from both the Customs Union and the EU, which they were unwilling to do.

Sorry for the delay, I was distracted and recent blog posts pushed this back.

We are mostly rehashing our original points.

Indeed we are.

Yanukovych had suggested that Ukraine join both the EU and Custom’s Union, but that was rejected by the EU. It’s unfortunate, because as the poll indicates the regional interests of the Donbas highly favored the Customs Union.

If anything it was even more strongly rejected by the Russian Government, which I note had already been fighting trade and tariff wars with Ukraine. Indeed, while the EU was lukewarm about allowing Ukraine to remain within the Russian Customs Union with an Association Agreement of trade with the EU, the Kremlin (already struggling with its own economic woes and things like the pensions issue) reacted sharply and with broad public support against it, claiming (and with fair point) that Ukraine being both in the customs union and an association agreement would undermine Russian economic policy.

https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2013-11-27/ukraine-withdraws-signing-association-agreement-vilnius-motives-and

That’s more important because it undermined the less offensive middle ground Yanukovych campaigned on and which was broadly supported by the Blues (especially his Donbas Base). In effect Yanukovych and most Ukrainian factions wanted to play both sides (though with different levels of emphasis and preference), while both the EU (w/ US support) and Russia tried to press them to choose one. But the rejection of Ukraine being able to sign the Association Agreement without suffering yet another tariff war was decisive and came from Moscow.

This is important to emphasize because

A: It points to some important divergences between the Donbas populace’s interests and those of Russians proper, and between the former and their presumed champion Yanukovych.

B: It came across a backdrop of literally years upon years of economic tension and regular trade wars between Russia and Ukraine (indeed, the Kharkhiv Pact was positioned as a way to end yet another tariff war).

https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/09/underachiever-ukraine-s-economy-since-1991-pub-47451

About 1/3 of the population in the Donbas favored independence, similar to the American Revolution, though only about 1/3 were against the rebellion compared to 52% of Donbas.

And how do we know this? How do you know this?

Because we don’t even know that in regards to the American Revolution. It is quite literally a guesstimate by John Adams in reference to the Ongoing *French Revolutionary* wars, not America’s own.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/5641

https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/02/john-adamss-rule-of-thirds/

Don’t hang your tri-cornered hat on those percentages. This famous quote comes from a letter Adams wrote in 1815 to Massachusetts Senator James Lloyd, saying “I should say that full one third were averse to the revolution…. An opposite third… gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France. The middle third,… always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France;….” Truth is, Adams was not addressing America’s rebellion – he was writing about American attitudes towards the French Revolution, when Americans grappled with either supporting France or maintaining commercial ties with Britain. The mistake appears to stem from historian Sydney George Fisher, who misinterpreted Adams’s meaning in his 1908 book, The Struggle for American Independence, Volume I. Others, reading the quote without the full context of Adams’s letter, have repeated the error ever since. In Fisher’s defense, it is easy to get the context of the passage wrong because it’s buried in the middle of a somewhat windy paragraph that jumps around with references to multiple topics, years, and other correspondence. And that paragraph is buried in the middle of a somewhat windy letter (at 2,105 words) which also jumps around with references to multiple topics, years, and other correspondence. Fisher may have missed the point because he got tired of looking for it.

Moreover, I have no reason to believe that one third of the people in the Donbas favored “Revolution”, considering how the territory occupied by the Kremlin’s proxies was well below that, and the onset of the conflict started East and tried to spread West, not consistent with sporadic grass roots conflicts as various paramilitaries sized each other up and engaged in escalating conflict (like our own American Revolution, which saw sharp outbreaks in the American South and West as well as at Boston as the two sides squared off) but very consistent with a Kremlin military Entrada based in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Like exactly what we saw conquer Crimea just days earlier.

And in light of the Kremlin’s proven track record with vote rigging (see: overturns in nay votes for Herod’s Law in response to the Magnitsky Act, to cite just one) and the proven track record of the Kremlin or at least its local allies for torturing and murdering opponents of “separatism” or “independence” as well as the methodologically bankrupt way in which they have conducted themselves (in sharp contrast to the American Revolution at least in the Continental Congress, where dissenting members of Congress retained their seats unless they were found guilty of treason like Ben Church or chose to abdicate their seats such as “Colonial British Reformists/Colonial British Whigs” like Isaac Low, who were opposed to military occupation and foreign legislation but identified themselves as Britons who did not want independence or war against their country and who generally were allowed to leave in peace even if their property was confiscated), I do not regard the “independence” referenda as legitimate.

Voting patterns between 1991-2006 for most of the eastern region. First number is nationalist/pro independence and the second number is communist/pro Russia index.
Dnipropetrovsk 28, 50; Kherson 28, 54; Mykolaiv 28, 55; Odesa 26, 53; Kharkiv 25, 55; Zaporizhzhia 25, 58; Donetsk 20, 63; Luhansk 18, 69, Crimea 17, 60.
Obviously sentiments changed in subsequent years and the pro-separationist sentiments were still highest in Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, which, of course, are the regions that separated from the Kiev regime.

But Kherson, Zaporizhizhia, Odessa, and Kharkhiv (among others) did not “separate from the Kyiv regime”, or in the case of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia only “did so” after the surprise Russian breakthrough and advance from Crimea and the partial occupation of those regions, after which “separation” and “annexation” referenda were rapidly manifested. As I’m sure they would be if the Kremlin’s troops took Kharkhiv. I fail to see why I should regard these obviously coerced and illegitimate referenda occurring under the color of force to be substantially different in nature from those in Crimea or the Donbas. The true popularity or result may have been different in terms of vote counts (though as I’ll cover later, we don’t have much reason to believe the official results accord much with their true popularity), but they were ultimately made possible by occupying Kremlin troops getting the “right” answer.

This is why I think that after a point reading through old electoral results is almost tea leaf or entrail reading. The commonality in “separatism” isn’t voting patterns or averages from 1996-2006. It isn’t even the presence or prevalence of Anti-Maidans (or else Kyiv itself and Odessa might be suspect).

It is the presence of Russian military forces or proxies thereof, Moscow-sponsored state terrorism, and the presence or absence of pro-Kyiv troops or paramilitaries. This is one reason why for instance it took so long for the Kremlin to siege down the inner city airports of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Trying to paint this as some kind of American Revolution against an illegitimate government in Kyiv or an organic outgrowth of Donbas and Crimean Regionalism (especially once you get past the certain point of “The public in these regions majorly favored ties with Russia, and was opposed to Euromaidan) is that Marquis de Lafayette didn’t arrive on the Boston Siege Lines with false-flagged French Regiments in 1775, and Baron von Steuben did not carry a commission from the Prussian Crown. Moreover, fighting in places where the Russian Military couldn’t reach remained much less serious and low level than in the places where it could and did, as Odessa shows. Because AGAIN, there’s a quantifiable difference between voting for a Pro-Russian trade policy, or even joining an Anti-Maidan and engaging in some scrummage with Maidanites, and enlisting in a collaborationist and outlaw paramilitary in concert with a foreign military and against a national government.

And that’s ignoring the fact that (much to the consternation of many that viewed a pro-Russian orientation or annexation as a salve for their problems but with the predictions I figured) the actuality of Russian military rule in the Donbas and Crimea has turned out VERY Different from what was hoped for, especially for those in the Donbas. Not only did they overestimate Moscow’s willingness and ability to provide and underestimated their dependence on Ukraine (something that even the post-national totalitarian mass murdering gits of Khruschev’s Central Committee could see in their brutally utilitarian decision to transfer the peninsula), but they also probably did not expect protracted martial law (in the case of Crimea) and the depths of sanctions, or (in the case of the Donbas) an even greater collapse in economic potential and the unstable rule of more or less lawless warlords.

Your argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is largely because he was a corrupt politician (not particularly unique in Ukraine politics).

If you have to mutilate my fundamental point in order to make it more palatable or easy to refute, you have already given it up.

My argument for the overthrow of Yanukovych is partially because he was a corrupt politician (and a SPECTACULARLY corrupt one even by Ukrainian standards). However, it was PRIMARILY because he violated his oaths of office and the constitutional guarantees of his fellow citizens and refused to answer for it in the chamber duly constituted for it.

That’s an important distinction.

Corrupt politicians are not and were not particularly unusual in Ukraine. Corrupt politicians that give broad leverage for the torture and murder of peaceful protestors and give sanction to anti-Jewish propaganda by government organizations like Berkut, however, Are. That’s a different kind of corruption from “merely” unethical grabbing from the till or “questionable” contractual relations (as former President Poroshenko’s chocolate company can attest). Ideally both should be punished with removal from office, but there’s a pretty qualitative difference when blood and rights are on the like.

And clearly Yanukovych agreed, given how he had weathered many corruption investigations before but found the summons to answer for his Cabinet’s conduct and the Dictatorship Laws to be something else.

As the video I linked to shows, the Rada after the overthrow was “trying to legitimize” the new government. >/blockquote>

Which isn’t surprising, because again even I admit this was a contentious and legally dubious move.

And unlike Yanukovych (whose moves were if anything even MORE legally dubious but who didn’t need to take responsibility beyond shouting accusations and outright lies from exile, and who probably WOULDN’T and indeed HASN’T been asked to take responsibility because nobody likes him that much), the Rada still had their jobs to do.

It was a revolution in all senses as they reverted to the 2004 constitution–

After legislative procedures by the Parliament, as the changes from it were done.

but the sticking point was how to legally oust Yanukovych. As the legislator says, there were three options for Yanukovych– he could resign, they could impeach him, or he could take the course of Ceau?escu.

Indeed, which was a problem. They should have pursued impeachment and the summons to answer questions was obviously geared towards that.

And Yanukovych knew it, which is why he and his cabinet (the obvious targets of the impeachment and probable criminal proceedings afterwards) did a runner. In doing so they exploited a foundational weakness of the Ukrainian Constitution (and one that STILL REMAINS and which I condemn the new governments for not addressing). Namely that there is no explicit statutory grounds for removing a President outside of impeachment or health reasons, meaning that someone who was “possibly” guilty of high crimes and who was refusing to carry out his literally enumerated constitutional duties but who refused to resign and continued to insist he occupied the office of the President was a problem without enumerated remedy.

Hence the Ad Libs solution to deal with an Ad Libbed problem, drawing on the (overly) broad legislative and interpretative powers of Parliament. I don’t like it and I especially don’t like the refusal to amend the constitution to deal with this problem, and I have happily criticized the process by which it was done.

However, I am not going to pretend it happened in a vacuum, and particularly not the context and timing from which Yanukovych fled Kyiv. Which not only factored in the street climate and the extra-parliamentary street radicals opposing the deal and threatening his life (which you emphasize almost to the exclusion of all others) but also the Parliamentary inquiry into Yanukovych’s cabinet, which more closely dovetails to the decision to flee.

The Rada took a fourth option– declare he had abandoned his office, even though he was still in the country at the time.

This is a bit misleading. Firstly, we aren’t sure if he was still in the country in the time due to how Yanukovych has been proven to be willing to lie under oath of perjury. But that’s a minor issue.

Secondly: Even if he was “still in the country at the time” he was very obviously refusing legal summons from the Democratically Elected Ukrainian Legislature (especially since these summons were far broader than the more contentious and later vote to remove him).

This would be a bit like if Biden was about to be impeached (swell dream I know) deciding to refuse to appear or even to provide mandated evidence but instead running up to Kiska, or Puerto Rico, or more accurately his home state of Delaware while grabbing lots of stuff and obviously gassing up a jet ready to skirt to Russia/Cuba/Canada.

Sure, all those territories are within the legal territory of the US. But they’re obviously not where the President’s legal duties in the context of legislative hearings regarding him are. And Yanukovych knew this.

Which is why I characterize this as an abuse of the loophole in the Constitution and an abdication of his duties.

I suppose he could have returned to Kiev and possibly a sniper’s bullet.

Or he could have broadcast his reasons for not going back to Kyiv or found some way to testify remotely. Which I note he did not.

But as our own US Presidency shows, sometimes carrying out the duties involves the risk of catching a bullet (sniper or otherwise). And the Ukrainian Constitution makes Parliament’s ability to compel testimony quite clear.

There are indications the war isn’t going well for Ukraine.

Sure, but the same also applies there.

Before you add it’s not going well for Russia either– I would suggest the type of trench warfare favors Russia.

You would suggest that, but I’d argue history gives plenty of reasons to believe otherwise. Especially since Russia actually has a rather poor track record with trench and positional warfare (with a few very bright spots otherwise).

This seems counterintuitive, given Russia’s advantages (and even moreso those advantages it is Perceived to have) and the nature (or at least perceived nature) of trench warfare. Russia has more soldiers, more people, and more materials, and trench warfare is an attritional slog. Ego we should expect them to have the edge, right?

Well, not exactly.

People are right that trench warfare is an attritional slog, but they tend to ignore its other aspects. Such as that it tends to reward not merely (and sometimes not even primarily) manpower and material numbers but the ability to concentrate forces and deliver sudden, relatively decisive blows in a local sector and speed of response. Weight of Force offensives are way less effective than we’d expect, as the Germans concluded correctly at the Champagne Offensives in 1915 (….before proceeding to stake their war effort on such a weight of force offensive at Verdun the following year, because Falkenhayn apparently didn’t even remember his own post-mortem of the Second Battle of Champagne).

What matters isn’t so much who has the mostest but who can get “there’ with the mostest, firstest and then draw them back.

Which is one reason why Russia has actually had a pretty poor track record in trench war. The big exception I can think of (and admittedly it is a BIG exception) being its track records in the late 16th and 17th centuries (with some notable exceptions such as the disastrous Livonian War and the defeats on the Chinese frontier) and the 1877-1878 revenge tour for Crimea. It lost the Crimean War (and indeed was starting to run into trouble in both the Danube Basin and the Caucasus even before Western Intervention, and then had its main Black Sea base besieged and crushed). It traded blows with the Polish-Lithuanians in the 16th and 17th centuries and ultimately prevailed but mostly lost to Sweden in similar conflicts (with the change coming largely due to reforms in the Russian field armies and field victories helping to bring about the collapse of Sweden in the Great Northern War), lost WWI badly in spite of a similar force ratio to the Central Powers as we see here. It struggled with the Mannerheim Line and ultimately pierced it at great cost, held Odessa and Sevastopol decently well but had to withdraw, and was contingent on victories elsewhere to save Leningrad (with Kursk being the big counter example of a masterfully conducted positional defense-and-attack, but one where they benefitted from Western intelligence intercepts and the enemy being on the offensive).

We saw similar indications during the long Donbas War between 2014 and the start of 2022, with Russian/Kremlin Proxy occupations peaking in 2015 and slowly, steadily decreasing in the years afterwards.

There are a few big reasons for this underperformance, but a lot of it tends to come down to the traditional inflexibility in Russian military leadership going back centuries (which people would THINK would be an advantage or at least less of a problem in trench warfare but Really, Really Isn’t), mobility problems (both in speed and flexibility), and applied firepower (aka not just the raw amount of firepower but where one can put it and how accurately).

(I’d probably guess that one reasons for the success in positional warfare during the 16th and 17th centuries came largely due to a mixture of factors. Firstly that while society and the state were highly authoritarian and rigid, they were not so rigid or pervasive due to things such as communication lag. Secondly, the lay of the geography was very different; because while you could barely throw a stone in Western Europe or even the Balkans without it hitting a star fort, this was very different with wide vistas of tundra, taiga, and grasslands that left unsupported forts defenseless and prioritized massed infantry and “shooting” cavalry, two things Russia excelled at, and allowed one that dominated the field to cut off major fortresses and conquer entire regions. The Russians benefitted from this at Smolensk and Orsha, but suffered it at Novgorod and at Albazin). Thirdly, combat experience and pervasive discipline through society mixed with technological lag and distance helped create a welcome case where society and subordinates were generally loyal to the Tsar but given broad latitude to pursue the campaign according to their instincts and whatever letters the Tsar came through. This helped conquer Kazan a generation or two earlier and largely saw the Russians conquer most of “Grand Lithuania.”

It’s not so tenable later as technological progress was directed to cementing the regime’s control over its armies (especially after the likes of the Decemberists and Revolutionary Infighting in WWI), the landscape filled out, and it became harder to hide. The sweeping maneuvers Russia is good at are not so plausible on the industrial jungle of the Donbas and the Upper Dnieper.

Many of these apply to the Ukrainian military as well, and it’s one reason why its offensives have been slow, bloody, and grinding. But it generally has fought the war better than the Kremlin has since 2015-6 ish (with some notable exceptions) and is generally more responsive and able to get more accurate intel.

The average age of the Ukraine solder is 43 years old. They are running out of young men to fight.

Ironically the source of that largely came to the opposite conclusion, as Ben Wallace wrote.

https://scottcdunn.medium.com/the-average-age-of-ukraines-army-is-40-and-america-is-not-that-far-behind-ca740781f7aa

Ukraine can also play its part. The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilising the whole country by stealth. Putin knows a pause will hand him time to build a new army. So just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilisation.

TL:DR, while they are increasing the age ranges for mobilization (as is Russia de facto) they are largely trying to call up older personnel first in a given age bracket,

So they are running out of them much less than this indicated.

The Minister of Defense recently said something to the effect that the world couldn’t provide the amount of ammunition Ukraine needed (yes Russia may be running low as well).

This I largely believe, or at least leavened with the usual caveats of “We want more/we want to overestimate what we want to help generate pressure (and/or more stuff to skim)”. But we can see the same for the Russian military and its auxiliaries. It’s the classic “Shell Shortage” style with production being outstripped by use.

If there is a finite amount of ammunition in the short term– I would much rather it be sent to Israel. Their fight is truly existential.

On that much we agree.

However, I do think that Israel has much fewer need for shells for a number of reasons. Starting with that it is a smaller country with smaller numbers of better quality guns, better quality optics and detection, an irregular enemy, and a different way of fighting. While in my darker moments I do consider the merits or detriments of blasting the entire Gaza Strip flat and the mythical lack of rooftops makes for funni memes about “Queers for Palestine”, it’s not what the Israelis are actually going to do. That coupled with the disconnect and non-overlaps in some of the shells and I figure we can do both.

You may be the only person left that believes Ukraine has “liquidated” 300,000 Russian soldiers.

Not really. It’s a common estimate, mostly admittedly derived from the Ukrainian MOD, who are biased and tend to overclaim but generally have been far more accurate in their estimates than most of the alternatives.

“The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began 18 months ago is nearing 500,000, U.S. officials said, a staggering toll as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor and tries to seize more territory.

Firstly: Why I should trust a general piece from the Times or what anonymous “US Officials” say to the Times NOW is beyond me. While I’m not totally adverse to using them to prove a point if I think it fits, in this case there’s not much substance here.

Secondly: There are a few things to note.

A: This piece was published in August, meaning we’re looking at three entire months of pretty high intensity combat after the estimate, even if it were accurate.

B: There’s the perennial issue of counting what is and isn’t a “Russian” Casualty, given conscription in the Donbas and the deployment of volunteers and mercenaries.

C: There’s the simple fact that “US Officials” in addition to being anonymous are filtering older data because they’re further removed from it.

300,000 KIA for one side is not exactly out of the realm of possibility, and if anything I generally estimate Ukrainian and Russian losses to be higher than US estimates let alone their own (though lower than what each other claim for their enemies).

I am more inclined to trust Ukrainian sources for casualties both because of bias (including my own) but also a greater track record and the Kremlin’s confirmed tendency to cremate its dead without confirmation, worse wound treatment policy, and general tendency to lie on an even more egregious scale, and because the US is somewhat further up the chain.

Granted these are American estimates, and our intelligence agencies have been known to be….well, rather dumb.

And in this case obsolete in estimates and out of it.

500,000 killed and wounded is a staggering number for a war only 1-1/2 years old.

Agreed.

It’s one of the reasons the war needs to end– and the war will only prolong if we keep feeding it.

Sorry Brian E, but Georgia called. It probably has something to say about that.

The War can feed itself, and to some degree will. In the absence of Western aid to Ukraine it would probably simmer down to a kind of stalemate (like what the Kremlin wishes) much like what we saw during the “Donbas War” from 2015-2021 or on the Georgian-Separatist frontiers, until a few years later.

Likely when one side (likely Russia) will try again.

It’s an old and ugly pattern we’ve seen play out time and again.

And even if it doesn’t, the war would still simmer on and people would hurt and die, as they did even after the war fell off the news around 2016.

Om, I don’t think the US ever really cared if Ukraine “wins” (reclaim all the land previously held prior to the 2014 overthrow).

Sadly agreed.

They’ve only provided the type of weapons necessary to keep Ukraine from losing.

Yeah no, I disagree. The Ukrainians have shown they have a good capacity to hold territory and even counterattack on a small scale using a trickle of resources in a low intensity war. This is the lesson of the Donbas War. There’s a reason why Putin at least openly claims he wants a ceasefire (I am reminded of Hamas pulling a dozen or so 9/11s equivalent on Israel and then talking about it). What the Ukrainians are afraid of is not so much outright losing so much as failing to reclaim their territory and allowing the retrenchment of the occupation governments, trapping them in the old No Peace, No War thing we saw during the Donbas and especially which has been the fate of Georgia.

The US goal was to de-stabilize and topple the Putin.

A: That is a goal I would broadly support.

B: Wouldn’t by logic be one of the key advantages to that being giving Ukraine as much support as possible for it to win? Things like forcing Putin to outright declare war and call up conscription or worse face the loss of Crimea would do a lot of damage.

Especially given how destabilizing the “keep Ukraine from losing” resources has been, what with Prigozhin’s abortive road trip to Moscow.

Had they wanted Ukraine to make a decisive offensive, they would have waited another year to build up the advanced weapon systems and air superiority needed to overcome the Russian defenses. That’s going to take more than a few dozen F-16s.

Few problems.

Firstly: War is always at least a two player game and the enemy gets a vote too. The Kremlin’s already been attacking at several points along the line (most infamously at Avadivka).

Secondly: This was against the backdrop of economic instability and the threat of Russian reneging on the Black Sea Cereals deal. So there was a feeling that there had to be a push to threaten the Crimean bridge and the Russian navy’s bases (at least by long range fire).

Thirdly: That would also allow the Russians to build up their systems and air superiority (or at least try to) and it seems like there was a consensus that a higher tempo of operations and pressure would benefit Ukraine more than Russia due to various things. And that seems to have worked at Kherson.

(It’s also one reason why Russia has a worse track record at trench warfare than we’d expect. Ironically Russia has tended to do fairly well at high tempo choreographed operations in the field, but the level of independent organization and adjustment as well as logistics tend to make positional attack or defense weaknesses of theirs. Especially outside of the likes of Suvorov.

People tend to forget that as devastating as it was, Brusilov’s offensive ultimately bogged down and was repulsed by a mixture of Austro-Hungarian and German troops scraped together and able to hammer the attackers down.)

It’s one of the reasons the war needs to end– and the war will only prolong if we keep feeding it.

Om, I don’t think the US ever really cared if Ukraine “wins” (reclaim all the land previously held prior to the 2014 overthrow). They’ve only provided the type of weapons necessary to keep Ukraine from losing. The US goal was to de-stabilize and topple the Putin.

Had they wanted Ukraine to make a decisive offensive, they would have waited another year to build up the advanced weapon systems and air superiority needed to overcome the Russian defenses. That’s going to take more than a few dozen F-16s.