[QuickTidal]

Yep, absolutely. I think he overestimates the willingness of even people who support him at a civilian level to be meat for the grinder...and if he tries to force them, that will be worse.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 22 September 2022 - 03:50 PM

[Cause]

Not just to poke fun at NK, but do we have any reason to believe that their troops can fight or that their ammunition would work.

If russia's army on paper was strong and in reality was severly undermanned, undertrained, underequiped I would think triple that for NK at a minimum.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 22 September 2022 - 04:13 PM, said:

Not just to poke fun at NK, but do we have any reason to believe that their troops can fight or that their ammunition would work.

If russia's army on paper was strong and in reality was severly undermanned, undertrained, underequiped I would think triple that for NK at a minimum.

US intelligence claims North Korea was supplying Russia with arms and ammunition, though NK denied it yesterday:

'"We have never exported weapons or ammunition to Russia before and we will not plan to export them," [NK] state media[...] [...] said U.S. intelligence reports [...] were an attempt to tarnish North Korea's image.

[...] told the U.S. to stop making "reckless remarks" and to "keep its mouth shut." Biden administration officials earlier this month confirmed a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia was in the process of purchasing arms from North Korea, including millions of artillery shells and rockets'

North Korea Denies Sending Arms to Russia Amid Ukraine War

... of course Putin also accepted Syrian troops as 'volunteers' (being paid more than the Syrian army was paying them), though that was early in the war, and the number cited was only up to 16,000. Accepting a much larger number of foreign 'volunteers' now the occupation is faltering may seem too much like a sign of weakness.

NK joke might go something like: 'Russia please take our troops, we can't feed them!... Some of them are okay with being cannibals, if that's what you're into now. Could definitely save some money....'

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 22 September 2022 - 06:10 PM

[Werthead]

Russian forces in Lyman look like they're close to being surrounded.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 22 September 2022 - 06:23 PM

[worry]

From what I gather, all talk of "300k" or partial mobilization is nonsense rhetoric, and the actual written order is broad and sweeping. This conscription drive is an internal humanitarian disaster (well, the hyper-exacerbation of an existing one), that disproportionately extracts from ethnic minority populations first and foremost (naturally), but isn't limited even to that. Press-ganging on a nationwide level, but with hardly the infrastructure (or, frankly, will) to do it any way other than brutally.

[Macros]

I think he's looked back and thought Papa Joe got away with it and got a state funeral. So.....

[Malankazooie]

Top google search in Russia - "how to break an arm." That's messed up.

[Mentalist]

Macros, on 22 September 2022 - 10:26 PM, said:

I think he's looked back and thought Papa Joe got away with it and got a state funeral. So.....

Honestly, he's raising the stakes and expecting the West to blink first and tell Ukraine to back off and accept the status quo and start negotiating.

The big moment will be (probably) sometime next week when they conduct the referenda, anschluss the territory they occupied and then tell Ukraine "stop invading Russian soil, or we'll nuke you".

And when Ukraine calls that (and it absolutely sounds right now that they will), that's when we'll be in peak danger.

[Cause]

Also is Russia still calling it a special operation even after it’s been forced to institute the draft?

This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad/scary

[Tsundoku]

Do the modern Russian armed forces have whaddyacallits - zampolits? The politial officers?

Because I doubt these numbers they're floating about will work without them.
Also, are convicts being put into their own units or being used to reinforce established units? Same problem if the former.

[Mentalist]

Tsundoku, on 23 September 2022 - 02:42 AM, said:

Do the modern Russian armed forces have whaddyacallits - zampolits? The politial officers?


Because I doubt these numbers they're floating about will work without them.
Also, are convicts being put into their own units or being used to reinforce established units? Same problem if the former.

convicts are being placed into PMC units. There's like 4 different chains of command there now (Russian regular army, separatist militias, Kadyrovites, and PMCs), and this is indicative that ultimately their monopoly on violence is unraveling. Which suggests that when Putler finally kicks the bucket, there'll be several players with private armies to make a bid for power.

[Chance]

One of the worst case scenarios certainly seems to approach rapidly, some kind of degradation of order in Russia even if we don't get a full blown civil war which would probably be the worst case possible.

Mentalist, on 23 September 2022 - 04:49 AM, said:

Which suggests that when Putler finally kicks the bucket, there'll be several players with private armies to make a bid for power.

Maybe we could it end up in another type of historical situation where disgruntled soldiers march on Moskow, if the war drags on a year or two. Of course it could be over before end of winter if the crazy czar finds a way to save face and the ukrainians let him. The later part seems unlikely and should probably be.

This post has been edited by Chance: 23 September 2022 - 05:18 AM

[Mentalist]

Chance, on 23 September 2022 - 05:14 AM, said:

One of the worst case scenarios certainly seems to approach rapidly, some kind of degradation of order in Russia even if we don't get a full blown civil war which would probably be the worst case possible.

Mentalist, on 23 September 2022 - 04:49 AM, said:

Which suggests that when Putler finally kicks the bucket, there'll be several players with private armies to make a bid for power.

Maybe we could it end up in another type of historical situation where disgruntled soldiers march on Moskow, if the war drags on a year or two. Of course it could be over before end of winter if the crazy czar finds a way to save face and the ukrainians let him. The later part seems unlikely and should probably be.

Ukrainians want Crimea back, so they certainly aren't interested in "saving face".
Some groups in the West might be, though.

I've seen suggestions that what we are most likely to see in Russia in the coming years is something like the Warlords Era in China.

[Werthead]

Some reporting that NATO and the United States have been informing Russia for months that there will be "severe" consequences to Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. What that entails is unclear, but one retired American general believes the use of a tactical nuclear weapon on the territory of Ukraine would automatically require the United States to directly respond, for fear or emboldening North Korea or Iran or China in the future. Probably not a nuclear response but a cruise missile attack against Russian (or - maybe more likely - DPR/LPR) targets operating in Ukraine. This would not be the United States entering the war directly, but a single attack designed to show the consequences of further escalation.

Obviously a thin line and a dangerous moment if that came to pass. But them standing up and telling Putin, directly, that he risks even just a conventional conflict with NATO if he uses nuclear weapons has to be a sobering moment, if they make it clear they are not bluffing either.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 23 September 2022 - 08:25 PM

[Mentalist]

I mean, you'd hope that whomever gets the order from Putler to pop open the briefcase so he can push the button would just lift that briefcase and nail him in the temple with it instead.

But alas, we can't really rely on such common sense.

[Chance]

Mentalist, on 23 September 2022 - 12:18 PM, said:

I've seen suggestions that what we are most likely to see in Russia in the coming years is something like the Warlords Era in China.

That's my nightmare scenario half a dozen russian leaders each with some nukes. Each making war with each other for the crown.

Think it is unlikely but even uprisings or fracturing of russia into a few different states could be nearly as bad, while that probably also is unlikely maybe a bit less so now. What would be the fault lines for a fracturing russia? To outsiders it does seem rather monolithic after the soviet breakup but obviously even the soviet years can't have eradicated all regional difference. I could see that warlord in the Caucasus doing something but for the rest of the country?

Upside of fracturing the nation would of course be that repeats of what is happening now would be increasingly less likely, while an intact russia might/probably will get similiar ideas in 10-30 years. It would however probably make for a breakup of Jugoslavia situation where internal wars and tensions would be high for all those who thought they got cheated of their national/personal glory and wealth.

Of course this is taking russia's defeat for granted but...well that does seem inevitable to happen in some fashion. In some ways it did once Ukraine held out for the first month, got western military support which must be unequaled except for where actual western troops fought such as Vietnam and Afghanistan and when the russian army's "quality" was revealed.

We certainly live in more interesting times than I thought a few years ago and the historian in me find it captivating while the actual news horrify me.

This post has been edited by Chance: 24 September 2022 - 08:16 AM

[Werthead]

Chance, on 24 September 2022 - 07:58 AM, said:

That's my nightmare scenario half a dozen russian leaders each with some nukes. Each making war with each other for the crown.

Think it is unlikely but even uprisings or fracturing of russia into a few different states could be nearly as bad, while that probably also is unlikely maybe a bit less so now. What would be the fault lines for a fracturing russia? To outsiders it does seem rather monolithic after the soviet breakup but obviously even the soviet years can't have eradicated all regional difference. I could see that warlord in the Caucasus doing something but for the rest of the country?

Upside of fracturing the nation would of course be that repeats of what is happening now would be increasingly less likely, while an intact russia might/probably will get similiar ideas in 10-30 years. It would however probably make for a breakup of Jugoslavia situation where internal wars and tensions would be high for all those who thought they got cheated of their national/personal glory and wealth.

Of course this is taking russia's defeat for granted but...well that does seem inevitable to happen in some fashion. In some ways it did once Ukraine held out for the first month, got western military support which must be unequaled except for where actual western troops fought such as Vietnam and Afghanistan and when the russian army's "quality" was revealed.

We certainly live in more interesting times than I thought a few years ago and the historian in me find it captivating while the actual news horrify me.

Russia is not a monolithic single country. It's an accumulation of the original Russian homeland (basically the large region west of the Volga centred on Moscow) and various tribal and ethnic areas it conquered, mostly between the 16th and 19th Centuries, including the Tatars, Chechens, Buryats, Dagestanis, Ingushetians, Karelians and so on. These areas were consolidated as administrative regions of the Russian Empire and then became recognised as essentially autonomous countries within the larger country of Russia (more similar to Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom) and distinct to the external republics of the Soviet Union (i.e. the Estonian, Ukrainian, Kazakhstan and Polish Soviet Republics, which all achieved independence after the fall of the Soviet Union). Think of the states of the United States if they had been distinct national and ethnic identities for, sometimes, centuries before the USA was formed.

This has resulted in significant fault lines within the Russian Federation. So Tatarstan, for example, was forcibly invaded and annexed to the Russian Empire and not treated particularly well, but then became an independent state during the Russian Civil War before being forced under Soviet control (in the resulting famine some 2 million people died; Ukrainians may find this sequence of events familiar). When the Soviet Union collapsed, Tatarstan did consider declaring full independence but, possibly because it would have been completely surrounded by Russian territory as its neighbouring regions did not wish to do the same thing, it chose an ambiguous position as a sovereign state but also part of the Russian Federation, as defined by its 1992 constitution. This ambiguous state but remaining effectively loyal to Moscow and not causing the problems that Chechnya did allowed Tatarstan to gain significant political concessions and autonomy from Moscow. However, in 2007 its constitution was unilaterally rewritten by Moscow to remove most of its special powers and there's been significant erosion of its liberties since then, including sending many thousands of Tatar troops to Ukraine (whilst Moscow and St. Petersburg have sent barely any). There's definitely growing anger and resentment in Tatarstan and, although they'd be unlikely to rebel by themselves, if other provinces started breaking away they'd probably do the same.

The situation in Chechnya is even far more unstable. Russia ended the rebellions there through a mix of the stick (destroying Grozny) and the carrot (buying off the Kadyrov regime, literally). But the Chechens have never given up the dream of independence and Kadyrov has basically kept the other forces in the region quiet through a lot of juggling (there are Chechens fighting in Ukraine on both sides, backed by people in Chechnya, and Kadyrov has not done much to clamp down on the Ukraine supporters, for fear of triggering a civil war within Chechnya). Kadyrov has made it clear that he has personal loyalty to Putin (who keeps him in gaudy gold bling) but no loyalty whatsoever to Moscow as a whole, and if things start heading south, especially if Putin was to die or retire, Chechnya might be the first powder keg to detonate. Dagestan is not far off being in the same state, and Buryatia even has an active independence movement, not to mention has suffered proportionately the highest losses in Ukraine and the populace is pretty furious at that situation.

There are 22 republics in Russia in total which could fly apart and become independent states, not to mention a lot of other regions (especially in the east) which could coalesce into independent states quite easily.

[Werthead]

According to the NYT (paywalled), Putin angrily rejected a plan from his generals to shorten the Russian lines by withdrawing from Kherson, pulling back behind the Dnipro and focusing overwhelmingly on taking Donetsk Oblast. Instead, he ordered reinforcements into the Kherson salient, drawing down forces elsewhere.

Or, in other words, Putin himself is directly, personally responsible for the Kharkiv losses. 

[Chance]

Facinating Werthead lost quite a while looking at the structure of the Russian Federation and its part, while not feudal the structure of organization does seem rather byzantine in its complexity. Perhaps a Jugoslavia situation could be more likely than I thought and the first breakup of the soviet union was merely stage one.

This post has been edited by Chance: 24 September 2022 - 12:34 PM

[Mentalist]

Chance, on 24 September 2022 - 07:58 AM, said:

Mentalist, on 23 September 2022 - 12:18 PM, said:

I've seen suggestions that what we are most likely to see in Russia in the coming years is something like the Warlords Era in China.

That's my nightmare scenario half a dozen russian leaders each with some nukes. Each making war with each other for the crown.

Think it is unlikely but even uprisings or fracturing of russia into a few different states could be nearly as bad, while that probably also is unlikely maybe a bit less so now. What would be the fault lines for a fracturing russia? To outsiders it does seem rather monolithic after the soviet breakup but obviously even the soviet years can't have eradicated all regional difference. I could see that warlord in the Caucasus doing something but for the rest of the country?

Upside of fracturing the nation would of course be that repeats of what is happening now would be increasingly less likely, while an intact russia might/probably will get similiar ideas in 10-30 years. It would however probably make for a breakup of Jugoslavia situation where internal wars and tensions would be high for all those who thought they got cheated of their national/personal glory and wealth.

Of course this is taking russia's defeat for granted but...well that does seem inevitable to happen in some fashion. In some ways it did once Ukraine held out for the first month, got western military support which must be unequaled except for where actual western troops fought such as Vietnam and Afghanistan and when the russian army's "quality" was revealed.

We certainly live in more interesting times than I thought a few years ago and the historian in me find it captivating while the actual news horrify me.

you are presuming these new states woudl all keep their nukes.

Just as Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan all handed over their ICBMs and tactical nukes to Russia according to the Budapest Memorandum in 1993, so would (most) of these post-Russian states likely choose to de-nuclearize. Because nukes are expensive as fuck to maintain, and without said maintenance they pose more of a threat to the owner than to their intended targets.

Secondary to what Wert said, it's important to look at Russian Federation as a geographically contiguous colonial empire. Moscow (and to a lesser extent, St Petersburg) are the metropolies, taking resources from all the captive regions and re-distributing a mere pittance back. Even resource-rich regions are basically in a position of economic indenture to Moscow itself.

However, the situation regarding the "autonomous republics" is highly misleading. Because you need to look at demography, and, specifically, how much ethnic Russians dominate most areas of these vast "autonomous" lands. The RSFR borders, largely drawn up by Stalin in the 1920s, back when he was still subservient to Lenin, who favoured promoting national consciousness and "national awakenings" among the minorites of the Russian Empire as a tool to quicken their modernization, from which they could then make a leap into the communist "post-nation" society. But after Stalin took power in the 1930s, this policy of "korenizatsiya" (or "nativization") was reversed, and all minorities became subject to intense Russification. This policy has continued largely un-interrupted since. The Yeltzin years saw some isolated flares of national consciousness (aside from Tatarstan and Chechnya, the Republic of Tyva maintained armed resistance to central rule until mid-2000s. The fact that Shoigu is from Tyva is a bit indicative of another Kadyrov-style "Personal Union", though Shoigu is far more assimilated into the federal governance and doesn't have his own Tyvan bodyguards (as far as we know).
Dagestan is an interesting case, as it is one of the most remote regions that was one of the last conquests of the "core" Russian Empire. However, due to the fact that it's one of the most ethincally diverse places in the world (seriously, look up its demographics, and you'll go crazy), it's really hard to crystallize that into a "regional", much less "national" identity.

Buryatiya is an region you'd think is in a prime position to have national aspirations, having a distinct language (from the Mongol group), having an international border, and status of an autonomy; However, it's also been clamped down very heavily on (following the 2020 constitution referendum, The Buryat State University in Ulan-Ude no longer offers Buryat language courses, meaning the government is intent on making the language extinct); and furthermore, Buryat soldiers (especially their tank units) were made poster children of the war with Ukraine- back in 2014, BTGs from Buryatiya were sent to fight on behalf of the Donbas separatists as "volunteers". Photos of Buryat youth burning in their tanks dominated teh social media pages, and they were hailed as heroes fighting on behalf of the "Greater Brotherhood of Russian Peoples"- of which they were, implicitly, made an important part of. The ongoing meatgrinder created an enduring sense of resentment of Buryats to Ukraine in particular- they want vengeance for their men, who were just following orders- while Ukraiians respond to this, due to the (obvious) sentiment of "why the F would you come allt h way from Siberia to die here?" So Buryats have been getting especially indoctrinated over the past 8 years that they are some of the Empire's best, and on top of that, they have a blood enemy in the West. And main aspirations for independence currently exist in a small emigre community, which is far less influential, by virtue of being residents of "the enemy" i.e, The west.
We have also been seeing similar themes of "blood vengeance" emerging in Bashkortostan recently--where the sentiment is "our boys could not have died for nothing". At this point, it is strengtheing support for the war in these "non-Russian" areas. Which is a shame, because Tatarstan, Baskortostan and the Chuvash republic are the three contiguous regions in mid-Voga with a majority Turkic Muslim population that could potentially be an offset to Moscow. Baskortostan lacks international border- a strip roughly 40 km wide around the Trans-siberian railway, centered around the city of Orsk in Orenburg Oblast separates the Muslim Bashkirs from their Kazakh cousins. Orenburg Oblast stretches like a half-circle to maintain the corridor of majority Russians all along the railway that links the Volga steppes to the Urals, and beyond that to Siberia.

Other regions in Siberia generally have the minorities make up a tiny percentage of the population, with their situation being quite similar to that of the Natives in North America- only without reservations, and muc greater degree of assimilation. Again, you need to look at demographics and the overwhelming majority of ethnic Russians in most of these "autonomous districts" and "national republics", before you try to draw up any of those pretty "independent Russian states" maps.

The Finno-Ugric peoples of Northwest Russia (who were the underlying basis for the formation of Russians as we know them - Finns who were colonized by Slavic missionaries and nobility) are also small minirities who still cling to their old languages and customs in a sea of Slavic-speaking Russians. Places like Karelia might have an identity and historical links to Finland, but in the aftermath of the war, Finns removed all traces of their presence from the lands they had to cede. The idea that Russian colonists here would suddenly want to "rediscover" their heritage feels far-fetched.


What I'm trying to get at, is that national boundaries are a really poor way to expect Russia to fracture. With few specific exceptions, most parts of Russia are dominated by European Russian-speakers. This does not preclude them from having their own regional identities however- there are notable differences between the everyday life of Russian townspeople in central russia, and those in the Urals factory town, or the Sibiryaks, or the much more China-influenced Far Easterners. None of these differences are (currently) strong enough to undermine the single imperial Russian identity, but if the ongoing war unravels the economic links and infrastucture, such "regional economic units" could begin to emerge.

I wouldn't count on this happening any time in the immediate future, though. Rosgvardiya and other riot/regular police forces number about 5 million, and the 2023 budget ups their upkeep by 50%. So in the immediate future Moscow will likely retain its ability to project control over its colonies.