Yes and yes. I didn’t want to get too much into detail but… they needed something like THAAD to protect against the first wave of the attack, which were missile attacks against command and control and air defenses. In addition, they should have had Patriot missiles, which are roughly equivalent to the S400. And some Harpoons would have been great. Those brave Ukrainians who died on Snake Island should have been able to do more than tell the Russian warship to f off. I’m glad at least they have Javelins. Maybe some Stingers, to remind Russia what those do to helicopters.
Anyway, whatever, I’m glad they are fighting and I’m bitter that the west didn’t give them the high-tech missiles (beyond the Javelin) that would have changed the dynamics early on.
Even before the invasion invasion started, there was talk of supply problems in the Russian army - e.g. this story about Russian troops stationed in Belarus whose food rations were so scant that they started bartering away army property - fuel, uniforms, even weapons - to get normal food from the locals (and booze, lots of questionably-sourced, possibly-lethal booze). Now there is talk of tank crews getting stranded and scavenging around for fuel. You’d think if there was one country who understood that an over-confident attacker can lose a land war entirely due to poor logistics, it would be Russia, but here we are.
Another indication that things are not going well for Russia is that its propaganda has been rendered utterly useless. In earlier times, Russia would try to maintain some cloak of deniability, to obscure truth by pushing a lot of disposable alternative narratives. Russian propaganda was effective at sowing doubt even when presented together with factual reports - if would exploit gaps in the official narratives and suggest through conspiratorial logic that there was something they were not telling you. But now Putin appears to have done something fundamentally un-spinnable. Russian propagandists insist that this is a small “special military operation” against military targets in Donbas, that the Ukrainian government is unpopular at ready to topple at any moment, and that the citizens are welcoming Russians. None of this can survive even a cursory glance at independent reporting, it only barely makes sense for people who subsist on a 100% diet of state-run Russian news sources.
That’s a message in itself. The message is “you can’t stop me anyway so why bother making it plausible”. It means he’s gotten to the point that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, whether in Russia or out of it, because he doesn’t think they can do anything about it.
That right there is really the thing that scares me.
In a lot of ways it feels like the “We are untouchable” mindset of the U.S. going into Iraq (with the same (false) assumptions about quick victory, control of the narrative and ability to install friendly regimes as needed).
And in some ways we are seeing the same mistakes play out
But my assumption has always been that Putin is evil, but not stupid, so wtf is going on? What am I missing?
I think maybe he got high on his own supply of propaganda. What started as a cunning lie seems to have become something he truly believes, and that belief has only been reinforced by everyone around him.
I think the story below shows how far he has strayed from objective reality.
No, I get the performative (and toxic) masculinity of it all.
I just am really confused as to why he would do this after having seen us do it so recently. I mean, I know that despite the claims of nth dimensional chess most of these guys are not special, or really even generally competent. During the Iraq war I took particular pleasure in sharing a U.S. WW2 Army guide to Iraq that talked about what brilliant and successful insurgent fighters the Iraqis were.
But the mistakes that I am seeing here are just so similar to really fresh lessons that the US learned that it boggles the mind. It makes me think that I must be missing something, but I have no idea what.
Louie CK was supposed to be performing in Kyiv tonight.
Blonde lady would have loved Putin if she was his mommy and it would all be k now.
John Cena does not understand his character Peacemaker.
Now neither of us has to click on it. Though…I have no idea why Putin is in a toilet…I am just going with "keeping with the “dump” theme
ETA: I would also have put the Andy Cohen Wordle thing in there
It could be something as simple as that Putin is just a massive asshole. As in art, sometimes its worth remembering that it is just paint on canvas and there might be no deeper meaning.
I am going to go with punctuated equilibrium. Some days you believe a little lie, some days none, somedays a lot of little ones, and occasionally you believe a very big one
There’s been suggestions that his extreme isolation during the pandemic has rendered him out of touch with reality. That, and his anxiety about a color revolution in Russia, caused by stagnation and horrible Covid numbers, and inspired by a more or less democratic and functional Ukraine giving ideas to the Russian people.
Well, calling for a coup makes sense, so he can claim that is what happened if he takes Kyiv. If that happens I guarantee that the narrative is not going to be invasion, it is going to be an uprising of his people against him and the de-nazification of Ukraine, regardless of how believable that is. This won’t fool anyone, but that is not the point
What doesn’t make sense is the terrible logistical prep we are hearing about. He literally spent 20 years watching us suffer from the mistakes he is making
I see all of that and it makes sense. It’s the logistics that don’t make any sense. Why go into this if you are obviously not ready? This is the thing that bothers me and edges me to thinking that he has a very different view of the use of nuclear weapons than the traditional one (I talked about this above) and that scares me if I can’t find other ways to make his actions make sense.
I mean maybe it is another soviet collapse scenario where Russia is really just an empty shell barely holding itself together and this is his best move, but that doesn’t feel right. I don’t know enough to know why though, of course
That is actually what terrifies me most and why I want to find some other answer. If he is just an asshole and a nihilist then there is not really a limit to what he could do. So, I hope for and try to find a rational actor
