re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

This is the 4th separate group of Russian POWs captured that I have seen.

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General Winter is overstated, just look at the Winter War with Finland. It is more of an issue when the country they are fighting doesn't have the same climate. The idea works well against say England but not so much versus Ukraine given they are fighting in the climate they live in every day.

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In WWII Germany had rail cars full of winter gear within 50 miles of the front but never issued. Germany didn't have the fuel to even maneuver its armor. Russia had US supplied trucks. This was revealed when military records were available at the Kremlin in the 1990's. Up to then all we had was accounts from German generals trying to cover their behinds for strategic and tactical blunders.

Reporter for The Economist went to a military hospital in Sumy and interviewed the wounded. Worth reading.

LINK

But but Ukrainians are evil NAZI Joos

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THE SOLDIERS chanted the Lord’s Prayer and clicked rosary beads as they advanced. For Ivan, 43, an old-timer from Ukraine’s 103rd brigade, the fighting inside Russia was just another day’s work. “Grenades and mortars look the same wherever you are.” The newest recruits were almost paralysed with fear. But the men tramped on together, 10km a day, crossing fields and railway lines, every night replacing forward units in hastily dug positions ahead of them.

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Cooling tower cells going dry in old HVAC towers that were made of wood would catch fire. Cooling towers work through evaporative cooling. Between evaporation, drift, and blowdown, a cooling tower can go dry quickly if make-up water rate is too low or cut.

Saw u have 20,000 GPM of flow and 600 GPM of loss (evap/drift/blowdown)

In an hour you have lost 36,000 gallons of water.

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I'm not sure how many people appreciate how much the Doolittle Raid not only boosted American morale and damaged Japanese morale, but also disrupted and misdirected Japanese military planning. History has shown that the raid affected Japanese military operations to a much greater extent than the (minimal) physical impact of the bombings. It influenced the Japanese political and military leadership to do things that differed substantially from what they'd thought was the militarily-best approach.

I don't know whether Ukraine will get a similar set of benefits from invading Russia. But I'm betting they will, and I hope they do.

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Let's pretend that the wildest fantasies of Lima and BKR come true, and the Russian army shows up tomorrow with the force to drive Ukraine back out of Russia. What then?

Is Russia going to bomb and kill its own civilians who stayed behind in Sudzha? Are they going to level their own towns into rubble?

If so, then we will have lots of videos of crying babushkas, saying things like:

"It was such a pretty little town -- and now it's a ruin that looks like Syria."

"All I had left was my little cat, Pasha, and now he's dead and I have nothing."

Ukrainians will drink those tears up like a dying man in the desert. They've endured so many such stories of pathos over the last 30 months that seeing Russians deal with just a taste of them will fill them with joy.

War is a contest of wills, and this alone will give Ukraine the strength they need to fight for years more.

I just keep thinking about the ignorant analyst (I don't remember which one) right after the Kursk incursion who said something about how he didn't understand how this territory would be any easier to defend than the Donbas, so it didn't make any sense to him.

Wars are fundamentally about the stories we share, whether those are about sacrifice (the Alamo, Nathan Hale), deceit and infamy (Pearl Harbor), or bravery (Alvin York, or John Paul Jones with "I have not yet begun to fight!").

The Doolittle Raid is a great example of an event with relatively little significance in the strict military sense, but enormous impact in the areas of morale and inspiration.

As has already been pointed out, another analogue to the Kursk incursion could be Washington crossing the Delaware. The Continental Army was largely seen a loser, morale was extremely low, and the population of the new states was hesitant about providing the army with additional support. The raid at Trenton changed all of that and changed the trajectory of the war. The Kursk incursion could have a similar effect.

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If so, then we will have lots of videos of crying babushkas, saying things like:

"It was such a pretty little town -- and now it's a ruin that looks like Syria."

"All I had left was my little cat, Pasha, and now he's dead and I have nothing."

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Suffering is at the core of the Russian identity. Life is suffering, but simultaneously, it doesn't mean you have to be sad.

They're a resilient people

ISW Update Aug 11

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Key Takeaways:

Ukraine's operation in Kursk Oblast has allowed Ukrainian forces to at least temporarily seize the battlefield initiative in one area of the frontline and contest Russia's theater-wide initiative.

Geolocated footage and Russian and Ukrainian reporting from August 10 and 11 indicate that Ukrainian forces advanced westward and northwestward in Kursk Oblast, although Russian sources largely claimed that Russian forces have stabilized the situation.

The Ukrainian operation in Kursk Oblast and further possible Ukrainian cross-border incursions force a decision point on the Kremlin and the Russian military command about whether to view the thousand-kilometer-long international border with northeastern Ukraine as a legitimate frontline that Russia must defend instead of a dormant area of the theater as they have treated it since Fall 2022. Moscow’s response may require the Russian military command to consider the manpower and materiel requirements for defending the international border as part of its theater-wide campaign design and can therefore impose long-term operational planning constraints that Russia previously did not face.

Geolocated footage and Russian and Ukrainian reporting from August 10 and 11 indicate that Ukrainian forces advanced westward and northwestward in Kursk Oblast, although Russian sources largely claimed that Russian forces have stabilized the situation.

The hastily assembled and disparate Russian force grouping responding to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast is comprised of Russian units likely below their doctrinal end-strength and ill-prepared to establish the joint command and control (C2) structures necessary to coordinate operations.

Russia’s redeployment of battalion and lower-level units rather than full brigades and regiments to defend in Kursk Oblast is likely contributing to Russian forces' difficulty in quickly establishing effective C2 in the area.

Confusion about the status of Russian conscripts fighting in Kursk Oblast is a consequence of ineffective C2 and will likely continues to further strain Russia’ C2 structures to respond to the Kursk operation.

Russian officials acknowledged that Ukrainian mobile groups advanced upwards of 25 kilometers into Belovsky Raion, Kursk Oblast on the night of August 10 to 11, but there are no indications that these groups remain in the area or that Ukrainian forces are operating beyond the immediate border area in Belovsky Raion.

The reported rapid Ukrainian maneuver in Belovsky Raion suggests that Russian forces along the international border remain poorly prepared to respond to further Ukrainian cross-border incursions.

Russian sources claimed on August 11 that small Ukrainian groups attempted unsuccessful limited cross-border incursions into western Belgorod Oblast.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky officially acknowledged the Ukrainian cross-border incursion into Kursk Oblast for the first time on August 10.

A top Ukrainian defense official reportedly stated that Russian forces have somewhat reduced the intensity of assaults in eastern Ukraine but that otherwise the situation remains largely unchanged amid the Ukrainian operation in Kursk Oblast, which is consistent with ISW's observations of Russian offensive tempo across the theater.

Russian forces recently advanced near Kupyansk and Donetsk City.

Russian propagandists are attempting to use the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast to promote Russian force generation efforts.

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Suffering is at the core of the Russian identity. 

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It's the core tenet of religious philosophies too, most notably as it relates to world events Shia Islam and Judaism. The point I think you seemed to miss in his post was that it was suffering without a wider context, a story to place within a long series of stories of suffering. Given that part of Putin's appeal has been that under his leadership Russia has avoided the suffering of the 90's, I'm not sure you can shape the potential for suffering in the same way when the impetus for a leader's appeal is that he specifically saved those people from suffering.

That's why martyrdom and self-sacrifice remains a powerful narrative in Shia Islam, which is defined by the literal military opposition to the Sunni establishment and why Shia resistance seems to be limitless. I'm not doubting the Russians of the same ability, but I'm skeptical that the context needed to understand that suffering is there right now at this moment because of the specific political circumstance.