re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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I define win by being left alone living in peace.

Besting Russia and pushing them back isn’t winning if Russia rebuilds only to come back again and again.

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Sure. But right now we are at war with Russia using Ukrainian men. Didnt have to be that way.

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You could easily volunteer. Ukraine is running out of bodies on our dime.

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They'll need bodies more than anything else soon enough. Hopefully you baws get your chance to kill some Russians.

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Russia is sustaining "1200, 1300 even 1500" casualties a day in its current offensive, mostly in Bakhmut. Killed to wounded ratio is one to three - senior Nato official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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Ukraine is taking "an order of magnitude less" - no figure given - in fighting where "several thousand" shells a day have been consumed on both sides

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Unclear how long the battle for Bakhmut will continue. Front line in the city runs along the river which has become a "killing zone". Grim, intense fighting although signs shelling slightly abating

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Ukraine ammunition expenditure currently running ahead of western production, official concedes, but no sign of defenders losing the city. However, there is a defensible ring of hills to the west that Ukraine army can retreat to if needed

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On China - still no sign of Beijing supplying lethal aid to Moscow - but the senior Nato official warns it has not been taken off the table either. Intense western focus on this, not surprisingly

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Ukraine counter offensive may or may not come relatively quickly. Russians fear an attack south from Zaporizhzhia or in northern Luhansk. First half of the year critical for Ukraine to train and build capability, official adds

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Out of the 13 that Slovakia is sending, 3 of them don't have engines and are strictly for parts. Besides using JDAMs, more airframes in the air also helps with air defense.

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Ukraine counter offensive may or may not come relatively quickly

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Here’s the thing. And I say this as a neutral observer to this whole war. Ukraine needs a settled peace soon. They are staking everything on this anticipated Spring Offensive. They really need to achieve a victory on the scale that would push Russia to accepting a settled peace. If Russia can withstand the coming offensive, the long term prospects for Ukraine are not good. They need this war to end soon.

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I question whether or not te hey have the fuel, men and ammunition to conduct a large scale offensive.

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That was a pretty fascinating point about the "two armies" in the UAF that I hadn't thought about before. But it makes complete sense like you said with old reservists that came up under the old Soviet way and all these new units that formed after Crimea and after current invasion started are definitely more western.

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A culture war is brewing within Ukraine’s armed forces. It is being waged between top-down Soviet military thinking on the one hand, and bottom-up Western military culture on the other. This intellectual tussle is hindering Ukraine’s adaptation and learning. It is also hurting Ukraine’s performance in the war against Russia. This is one of my main lessons from a recent research trip to Kyiv and the frontlines of eastern Ukraine, which I conducted alongside some of the leading Western military experts on Russia.

This culture war is largely about leadership. Some army officers have embraced the Western philosophy of “mission command,” which grants commanders on the spot, regardless of rank, the freedom to execute their missions according to their own best judgment. This approach emphasises bottom-up initiative to exploit opportunities on the battlefield. But a large number of Ukrainian officers, including far too many in the most senior ranks, curtail such initiative in favour of rigid operational orders often issued by headquarters far from the frontline.

Many Western observers of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine have been partially blind to these internal tensions in Ukraine’s army. This is in part because of Ukrainians’ ingenuity in adapting commercial and advanced military technologies to help fight off Russia’s invasion over the past 13 months. Most of these adaptations have come from the bottom up. One example is the integration of indigenously developed battle-management systems, such as Kropyva, with Starlink satellite internet and commercial drones to help Ukrainian artillery crews identify targets. This has enabled a rudimentary form of combined-arms warfare: in which different combat branches, like infantry, artillery and air power, support one another.

This narrative of technology and innovation feeds into a larger story that Westerners tell themselves about the Ukrainian army’s supposed transformation from a rigid, hierarchical Soviet-legacy force to an adaptable and effective nato-style military. Ukraine cultivates this narrative with information operations, such as carefully-edited videos made for social media that show improvised platforms, such as quadcopters carrying grenades, destroying Russian tanks.

The truth is that part of Ukraine’s armed forces, in particular the ground forces, risk backsliding to their old and inflexible ways. One reason is the large number of casualties incurred among nato-trained Ukrainian soldiers in the first months of the war, and the consequent mobilisation of a large number of retired Ukrainian officers steeped in rigid Soviet military thinking. But that is only part of the explanation. In fact, Soviet influences have always been more prevalent than many observers have realised. As one officer of a mechanised brigade told me: “It’s not enough to pass some nato course to change someone’s mentality who spent years in the Soviet-like system.”

It is tempting to say that this is merely an issue between younger and more senior officers, and thus different levels of command. In fact, old-style thinking appears to permeate all ranks. Many Ukrainian officers still have a natural tendency for “stovepiping”, or adhering to a rigid command structure that hinders communication and co-operation with others in the armed forces. Most Ukrainian operations are therefore still sequential rather than joint. That is, they follow a rigid timetable in which isolated actions—an artillery barrage here, an infantry assault there—take place one after the other, rather than simultaneously, as recommended by modern combined-arms tactics.

Look at Ukraine’s continued reliance on mass artillery fire. Despite Ukraine’s serious shortage of shells, my field research suggests that the country has not substantially decreased its artillery consumption in months. If junior officers had the authority to exploit opportunities as they arose, mounting co-ordinated attacks from infantry and armoured vehicles, supported by short but pinpoint barrages of precision-guided artillery, this would drastically reduce the number of shells needed.

The ongoing culture war in the Ukrainian armed forces makes it harder to distribute new technology evenly across the force. “The problem is not the technology, it is the culture,” I was told by one official from Aerorozvidka, an ngo founded by volunteer experts that has co-developed battle-management software and nimble r18 drones for the Ukrainian armed forces. Individual units use a range of different apps to conduct their operations. This hampers co-ordination between units, and reinforces the old Soviet habit of distinct orders flowing separately to different units. “This is essentially two Soviet militaries fighting one another”, lamented the official.

Ironically, some technology has even reinforced Soviet culture. For example, networked battle-management systems, which provide a real-time picture of the battlefield and allow messages to flow back and forth, allow higher-ranking commanders to micromanage battles from afar, despite often-limited knowledge of the local terrain and circumstances of the unit. The result is often greater inflexibility—it is hard to improvise when a general is breathing down your neck—and higher losses of men and materiel. It can also result in tensions. Some junior officers steeped in the Western tradition have started to ignore orders from above. That is dangerous in military organisations, which rely on the prompt and faithful execution of lawful orders.

The ongoing culture war is making Ukraine’s transformation into a 21st-century fighting force an uphill battle. The West could help by stepping up its training efforts, even for Ukraine’s most senior officials. But for this to make a difference, Ukraine’s armed forces will first have to cast aside their Soviet cultural inheritance, delegate authority to lower ranks, and give junior officers permission to use their initiative without facing punishment. Technology should be used to empower units, not micromanage them, and successful experiments, such as those with drones, need to be scaled up across the force. Such a transformation could help reduce Ukraine’s casualties in this ongoing war of attrition.

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