Yup that sums it up pretty well. I suppose the indicators we should be looking for then are largely internal to Russia, e.g. strikes, any sign of dissent or sudden arrests of figures within the power structure etc. I would expect the Ukrainains to continue providing us a steady stream of tactical success stories in the interim.Eliminatus said:Jayhawk said:I know how logistics work.... The Russians have had far bigger logstics FUBARs than this in their history. They have that column stuck north of Kyiv, I imagine it is an absolute goat rope at the moment. BUT, the Ukrainians do not have the capability to remove it from the battlefield. So whether it takes weeks or months, those forces, even in degraded condition will still be there by the time the Russians figure out how to get diesel flowing, which eventually they will. And don't get me wrong, I am not saying this is going to be resolved by the Russians in a competent way. Just that it will eventually be resolved in a ... Russian way. Which means absurd levels of casualties, insane amount of material losses and waste, but ultimately overpowering to their outnumbered and outgunned opponent. But that is IF they don't lose the ability to pay for force sustainment first, which in my view is truly the Russians biggest weakness.Eliminatus said:Jayhawk said:
There is no way Russia is running out of fuel, vehicles, food, etc. There is no doubt that given enough time the Russian military will wear out the Ukrainian armed forces by attrition, regardless of the number of casualties they are forced to absorb.
Ukraine's best hope for something like a victory is for Russia's money supply to run out. Russia's weak spot is not its poor tactics or apparently non-existent operational planning or its equipment, its the finite amount of cash that Moscow has to pay for this. The Ukrainians win by drawing this out as long as possible and then, if they can keep the will to fight, by making it a brutal and expensive occupation. No amount of purely military successes will win this for Ukraine, but turning it into a massive financial ulcer is a viable path toward victory.
I am not sure you know how logistics work. Not being facetious either. The main battle of logistics is getting the stuff where it needs to be at the time it needs to be there. That isn't happening in Ukraine, for several known reasons and a couple unknown. Verifiable. You may be right and it won't matter in the end, but wars have turned due to that very point I just made. No matter how powerful on paper. Operation Barbarossa is a screaming example of this.
Also, both things can be true ya know.
Aye, you are for sure right on the ability to keep it going. And that is where I am confused because we are still not seeing that level of response from Russia. They are trickling in forces piecemeal at this moment.
There is definitely a slider of variables here of Russian stability and commitment vs Uke ability to buy time. At some point it lines up to a Uke survival. At others it goes to Russian victory (whatever that looks like).
We are talking the same point from different angles I think. We both know Russia should be able to win this, even in "Russian" fashion. We just don't know if they will, or even can in the coming weeks and months.
An analogy that occurs to me (verrrrry rough analogy) is from our civil war. The Ukes are the southerners, they have some tactical capability that apparently exceeds that of their more numerous enemy, and they have the advantage of fighting on their home turf. If the war is occurring in a vacuum then it is just a matter of time before the lumbering enemy meat-grinders his way to victory. BUT here its sort of like, imagine if the greenback suddenly became worthless in late 1861 or early 1862... could Lincoln keep that big old army together when their paychecks were suddenly worthless?
Honestly, I do not know the internal dynamics of Russia well enough to be able to predict if there is enough "team spirit" to keep the big bear machine rolling on IOU's long enough to win in depressing fashion. But I think that is going to ultimately be the question that decides the conflict.
