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Foolish Vengeance on Woke Billionaires
President Biden's budget proposal for 2023 picks up the idea, popular among progressives, of taxing unrealized capital gains under the label "Billionaires Minimum Income Tax". It differs in detail from the version that the Senator Wyden floated last year but retains the combination of administrative complexity and economic stupidity. I think that my critique of the Wyden proposal applies to this one, too, and you can read others here and here and many other wheres.
But this post isn't about the idea's well-known flaws. Instead, I want to take note of the reaction of some on the political Right who have suggested that BMIT is just what the current generation of plutocrats deserves. For example:
Rare is the wealthy man who actually stands up for America and American values any more. So let DC take their money and run. I don't care. I have 99 problems. Protecting Warren Buffett from the tax man is not one of them. . . .
The argument that confiscatory taxation of billionaires will lead to recession falls on ears deafened by the election of a billionaire-backed Biden. They made a recession inevitable. Undoubtedly, they will benefit from this recession as they did the last one.
The political calculus of the rich is pretty simple. Suck up to the liberals because conservatives will always back the rich, right? We are for limited government and therefore limited taxes.
But if the rich are now for unlimited government, then I have four words to say to them:
You pay for it.
My message for readers is quit being a patsy. Conservatives need to play hardball. If the billionaires aren't with us in opposing abortion, pedophilia and CRT, then why should we be with them on taxes?
When Instapundit linked to that effusion, comments were overwhelmingly positive. Well, when I hear Bill Gates's yammering about how we need to eat fungus-derived ersatz meat in order to save Gaia, I sometimes feel like confiscating his wealth, just as I sometimes feel like slapping someone who speaks rudely to my wife. But I've managed to stifle both impulses.
Since the author of the screed just quoted is undeterred by the negative economic effects of a BMIT, let's leave that aside and think instead about whether his venture into moral pragmatism will accomplish anything more than feeding a hunger for revenge.
Very few woke billionaires got rich by exploiting government largess. Taxpayers don't subsidize Microsoft. Regulators don't force anyone to buy from Amazon or subscribe to Bloomberg or waste time and brain cells on Facebook or Twitter. Google doesn't have a legal monopoly on Internet searches. The primary way that Gates and Bezos and the rest made their fortunes was through free economic exchange.
They have used those fortunes, alas, to promote ideas that are inimical to civilization. One of those ideas is that men should be punished for espousing the wrong opinions. But let's close our eyes to the irony of adopting the techniques of "cancel culture" for the purpose of expunging its partisans. After all, isn't turnabout the only rule of fair play?
So realpolitik avers. But it also reminds us, "If you shoot at the king, you must kill him." Joe Biden's BMIT won't reduce the wokexecs' wealth by enough to diminish their influence materially, and conservative support for, or indifference to, the concepts of free speech and fair play won't lead Michael Bloomberg to start reading Thomas Sowell. All that vengeance will accomplish is to make ordinary citizens poorer by putting economic obstacles in the way of innovations that improve the quality of life. The assault on civilized values will meanwhile continue unabated.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold." And the reason is that vengeance in hot blood runs a high risk of missing its target and doing more damage to friends than to foes. If Western civilization survives that current assault, future historians' damnatio memoriae of the propagators of wokeness will be more than sufficient retributive justice.
Posted by Tom Veal on Wednesday, March 30, 2022 at 10:53 PM in Biden Administration, Current Affairs, Economics, Wokeness | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Brief Comment on Yesterday's Most Earth-Shattering Event
For missing my regularly scheduled Sunday posting, I have an excellent excuse: I was traumatized by the news that Will Smith had assaulted someone at a large public event. Just what Major League Baseball needs at a time like this, I thought glumly. How badly will Rob Manfred mishandle this embarrassment? Moreover, my wife is a Dodgers fan and will be upset if the team loses its starting catcher for some large part of the season.
I could easily imagine how it happened. Sunday was the day before Will's 27th birthday. Probably a big birthday bash, too many drinks, the inevitable sequel.
The trauma dissipated when I learned that the assailant wasn't the Dodgers' Will Smith or even Atlanta's, but just some actor. By then, though, I couldn't face a keyboard, so I went to bed and awoke to a new trauma in the morning when one of our dogs suffered a spell of diarrhea and vomiting. Perhaps he watched the Academy Awards. (The vet gave him medication and expensive dog food but says that there's nothing seriously amiss.)
So that is why this blog fell silent. At least, it's my story, and it's as good as any that Joe Biden tells.
Posted by Tom Veal on Monday, March 28, 2022 at 07:33 PM in Baseball, Film, L, t U & E | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Cost of Stalemate
Yesterday's Institute for the Study of War's update was so devoid of movement, and I was so busy on other matters, that I didn't get around to posting it. The March 22nd update is slightly more exciting:
Russian forces did not make any major advances on March 22 and Ukrainian forces conducted local counterattacks northwest of Kyiv and around Mykolayiv. Russian forces around Kyiv and other major cities are increasingly prioritizing long-range bombardment after the failure of Russian ground offensives but are unlikely to force major cities to surrender in this manner. Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations toward the northeastern Ukrainian cities of Chernihiv, Sumy, or Kharkiv in the last 24 hours. Russian forces continued to further reduce the Mariupol pocket.
ISW has also posted an analysis by Frederick Kagan of what the apparent stalemate means:
The initial Russian campaign to invade and conquer Ukraine is culminating without achieving its objectives – it is being defeated, in other words. The war is settling into a stalemate condition in much of the theater. But the war isn't over and isn't likely to end soon. Nor is the outcome of the war yet clear. The Russians might still win; the Ukrainians might win; the war might expand to involve other countries; or it might turn into a larger scale version of the stalemate in Ukraine's east that had persisted from 2014 to the start of Russia's invasion in February 2022. The failure of Russia's initial military campaign nevertheless marks an important inflection that has implications for the development and execution of Western military, economic, and political strategies. The West must continue supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs to fight, but it must now also expand its aid dramatically to help keep Ukraine alive as a country even in conditions of stalemate. . . .
Our assessment that the Russian campaign has culminated and that conditions of stalemate are emerging rests on our assessments, laid out carefully in many fully documented reports published on our website (not just maps) and increasingly validated by reports from various Western intelligence communities, that the Russians do not have the capability to bring a lot of fresh effective combat power to the fight in a short period of time. The kinds of mobilizations the Russians are engaging in will generate renewed fighting power in months at the earliest. Unless something remarkable happens to break the stalemate now settling in, the stalemate is likely to last for months. Hence our assessment and our forecast.
Meanwhile Wall Street Journal has a dramatic account of the siege of Mariupol. The headline and subhead capture the flavor:
Ukrainians Flee Mariupol as Russian Forces Push to Take Port City Russian airstrikes, artillery and mortar rounds have gutted entire neighborhoods in the strategically important Ukrainian city
An excerpt from the story:
Streams of cars from Mariupol pull into the parking lot of a hardware store on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia – now a way station for people fleeing to safety further west, or abroad – part of the more than 10 million people uprooted by the fighting.
Taped to the windows are homemade signs reading "children" in Russian, and strips of white material tied to the door handles, scant protection from the war raging over their city.
More than a dozen residents who fled since last week described a desperate struggle to stay alive in a city where venturing outside meant exposure to being shot, shredded by artillery fire or obliterated in an airstrike.
"They are basically wiping the city from the face of the earth," said Andriy, 37, who took his chances during a lull in the bombardment on Monday and fled Mariupol with his wife and two children. Andriy, who declined to give his full name, said his ears had yet to adjust to the absence of constant shelling in the city he left behind. "It's as though I've come back to life."
As Frederick Kagan observes, "The Battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele took place in conditions of stalemate. Hundreds of thousands were killed in those battles that moved the front lines a little, but not much." And so he comes to a grim conclusion:
We published our assessment that this Russian campaign has culminated because it has important, urgent implications for Western policy. If our assessment is correct, then the West must increase efforts to supply Ukraine with all the materials it will need to survive as a country and continue fighting during conditions of stalemate and siege, which will be brutal. The West will have to help Ukraine stabilize a functioning economy in its unoccupied territory that can survive even under constant Russian attack. It will have to move beyond the appropriately rushed effort to get specific high-end defensive systems to Ukrainian soldiers and think about the bigger problem of keeping Ukraine and Ukrainians alive during a long war.
Posted by Tom Veal on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at 05:35 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
Little Change and a Dissenting Opinion
Yesterday the Institute for the Study of War posted one of its longest-ever, and most optimistic, updates on the Russo-Ukrainian War. The summary paragraph of the March 20th post is more succinct:
Russian forces did not make any major advances on March 20. Russian forces around Kyiv are increasingly establishing defensive positions and preparing to deploy further artillery and fire control assets. Ukrainian forces repelled continuing Russian efforts to seize the city of Izyum, southeast of Kharkiv, and Russian forces did not conduct any other offensive operations in northeast Ukraine. Russian forces continue to make slow but steady progress on Luhansk Oblast and around Mariupol, but did not conduct any offensive operations towards Mykolayiv or Kryvyi Rih.
After ISW's declaration yesterday that Ukraine has achieved a stalemate (not ideal when the war is being fought on your own soil but better than most observers would have forecast a month ago), I looked around for a more pessimistic view. Bill Roggio of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, offers one:
On the actual battlefield, the Russian offensive has undoubtedly slowed over the past week. But what is being described as a 'stalled' takeover may be the result of the Russians taking time to reorganize their forces and improve their logistics.
On the Western side of the information war, we were told from the opening days of the conflict that the Russian military would break due to high casualties and defections, loss of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft, and domestic opposition.
Videos of Russian battlefield setbacks abound in the media, and strangely there is little reporting on Ukrainian losses.
And yet, over three weeks into the war, Vladimir Putin remains president and the Russian war machine has not collapsed but in fact continues its plodding, imperfect, and messy advance.
Ukraine certainly has won the war on social media and in the press. This gives the average Western viewer the impression of a lopsided victory in favor of Ukraine. . . . But the West should not delude itself into believing that the Ukrainians will be saved by wishful thinking.
Mr. Roggio highlights two key facts supporting his assessment. One is President Zelensky's statement a few days ago, "For years we heard about the apparently open door [to membership in NATO], but have already also heard that we will not enter there, and these are truths and must be acknowledged." That could be a sotto voce acknowledgment of inevitable defeat, though it sounds more like no more than recognition that NATO isn't enthusiastic about expanding farther to east, whatever the outcome of the current conflict.
Second, and more substantively, Mr. Roggio points out that "Conventional warfare is a time, manpower and equipment consuming effort and quick victories are rare." He notes "that it took the U.S. military three weeks to take Baghdad and 42 days to conquer Iraq in 2003", notwithstanding that the American forces were far more proficient than Putin's and Saddam Hussein's forces less motivated than Ukraine's. One can counterargue that Baghdad was farther away than Kiev and that the American advance was slowed by rules of engagement designed to minimize civilian casualties, concerns about encountering chemical weapons and an untimely sandstorm. Nonetheless, the argument makes sense as a generality. Russia remains much stronger than Ukraine and has the resources, if it can find the wit and will, to break the stalemate. We can hope that neither will be in sufficient supply to spare Tsar Putin woe.
Posted by Tom Veal on Sunday, March 20, 2022 at 08:02 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
"Creating Conditions of Stalemate"
The Institute for the Study of War's March 19th update leads off with an exceptionally long and detailed summary, the essence of which is that the war appears to have ground to a stalemate. Here are key excerpts, but it's worth your while to read the whole thing. The final paragraph is particularly important.
Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way. The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.
The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically. . . . The block-by-block fighting in Mariupol itself is costing the Russian military time, initiative, and combat power. If and when Mariupol ultimately falls the Russian forces now besieging it may not be strong enough to change the course of the campaign dramatically by attacking to the west.
Russian forces in the south appear to be focusing on a drive toward Kryvyi Rih, presumably to isolate and then take Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west but are unlikely to secure any of those cities in the coming weeks if at all. . . .
The Russian military continues to commit small groups of reinforcements to localized fighting rather than concentrating them to launch new large-scale operations. . . .
The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time. . . .
Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties. The World War I battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele were all fought in conditions of stalemate and did not break the stalemate. If the war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition Russian forces will continue to bomb and bombard Ukrainian cities, devastating them and killing civilians, even as Ukrainian forces impose losses on Russian attackers and conduct counter-attacks of their own. The Russians could hope to break Ukrainians' will to continue fighting under such circumstances by demonstrating Kyiv's inability to expel Russian forces or stop their attacks even if the Russians are demonstrably unable to take Ukraine's cities. Ukraine's defeat of the initial Russian campaign may therefore set conditions for a devastating protraction of the conflict and a dangerous new period testing the resolve of Ukraine and the West. Continued and expanded Western support to Ukraine will be vital to seeing Ukraine through that new period. [emphasis added]
Today's maps:
Posted by Tom Veal on Saturday, March 19, 2022 at 02:11 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
Is Ukraine Getting Cocky?
The March 18th update from the Institute for the Study of War quotes assessments by the Ukrainian general staff. If Ukraine's apparent view is accurate, the war is entering its final stages, and the major question is, how will Tsar Putin extricate his forces? (Accompanying is the worrisome thought that he might choose to go down in some spectacular manner.) One can't help by suspect, though, that the situation isn't quite so rosy as one would like to imagine. Recall that plenty of conflicts look far different after three months than they did after three weeks.
Ukrainian forces conducted a major successful counterattack around Mykolayiv in the past several days, and Russian forces continued to secure territorial gains only around Mariupol on March 18. Russian forces face growing morale and supply problems, including growing reports of self-mutilation among Russian troops to avoid deployment to Ukraine and shortages of key guided munitions. The Ukrainian General Staff continued to report on March 18 that Russia has failed to achieve its strategic objectives in Ukraine, including destroying the Ukrainian Armed Forces, capturing Kyiv, and establishing control over Ukraine to the east bank of the Dnipro River—the first time the Ukrainian General Staff included this territorial conquest as an explicit Russian objective.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally stated that Ukrainian forces "continue step by step to liberate the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in all directions" on March 18, the first Ukrainian mention of conducting counterattacks "in all directions."
Extra maps today, too:
Posted by Tom Veal on Friday, March 18, 2022 at 08:26 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
"Little Territorial Progress"
Another day, another yawner (except, alas, for civilians who are being killed or wounded by decreasingly precise Russian assaults). The summary paragraph of the Institute for the Study of War's March 17th update reports on the stasis:
Russian forces did not make any major advances and Ukrainian forces carried out several local counterattacks on March 17. Russian forces made little territorial progress and continued to deploy reserve elements – including from the 1st Guards Tank Army and 810th Naval Infantry Brigade – in small force packets that are unlikely to prove decisive. Russian forces continue to suffer heavy casualties around Kharkiv, and Russian attempts to bypass the city of Izyum are unlikely to succeed. Russian forces continued assaults on Mariupol on March 17 but did not conduct any other successful advances from Crimea.
On nonbelligerent countries' home fronts, meanwhile, anti-Russian sentiment is becoming disproportionate. Essays on the topic by Gary Saul Morson ("The Cancellation of Russian Culture") and Heather Mac Donald ("Denounce Putin, or Be Blacklisted") are very much worth your attention. If we want a 21st Century Weimar and its aftermath, our bien-pensants, mostly the same people who denounced any and all criticism of Islam after 9/11, are propelling the world toward them.
Posted by Tom Veal on Thursday, March 17, 2022 at 08:22 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
"Mounting Difficulties Replacing Combat Losses"
The Institute for the Study of War's March 16th update portrays a continuing Russian quagmire:
Russian forces face mounting difficulties replacing combat losses in Ukraine, including the possible death of the commander of the 150th Motor Rifle Division near Mariupol. Russian efforts to deploy forces from Armenia, its proxy states in Georgia, and reserve units in the Eastern Military District will not provide Russian forces around Kyiv with the combat power necessary to complete the encirclement of the city in the near term. Russian forces made limited, unsuccessful attacks northwest of Kyiv and did not conduct offensive operations in northeastern Ukraine, toward Kharkiv, or toward Mykolayiv. Russian forces did make limited territorial gains in Donetsk Oblast and around Mariupol and continued to target civilian infrastructure in the city. Russian forces will likely continue to reduce the Mariupol pocket in the coming days, but Russian forces likely remain unable to conduct simultaneous attacks along multiple axes of advance.
Being unusually busy with other matters today, I won't add my own comments, but commentary isn't really needed.
Posted by Tom Veal on Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 04:06 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
Turning Away from Kiev
The Institute for the Study of War's March 15th update on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict suggests that the Russians, frustrated by lack of progress near Kiev, may be looking for victories elsewhere.
Local company- and battalion-level attacks by Russian forces northwest of Kyiv on March 14-15 likely indicate the largest-scale offensive operations that Russian forces attempting to encircle Kyiv can support at this time. Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northeast of the city, around Sumy, and only limited (and unsuccessful) attacks southeast of Kharkiv. Russian force generation efforts, including reservist and conscript call-ups and the ongoing transport of Syrian fighters to Russia and Belarus, are unable to change the balance of forces around Kyiv within the coming week. Russian forces have not conducted simultaneous attacks along their multiple axes of advance across Ukraine since March 4 and are unlikely to do so in the next week.
Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine continue to demonstrate the greatest capabilities to date and are steadily advancing in three directions: northeast from Kherson, taking territory in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, and reducing the Ukrainian pocket in Mariupol. Russian forces are unlikely to successfully encircle Mykolayiv and threaten Odesa in the near future but retain uncommitted Naval Infantry reserves that could conduct an amphibious operation or disembark to reinforce Russian ground operations, as Russia has employed Naval Infantry elsewhere. Russia may seek to encircle Zaporizhya by advancing northeast up the west bank of the Dnipro River after failing to break through Ukrainian forces directly south of the city on the east bank. Russian forces are making slow but steady progress against Ukrainian defenders on the line of contact in Donbas and likely seek to force them out of their prepared defensive positions.
With Russian forces likely unable to complete the encirclement of Kyiv or resume mobile offensive operations in northeastern Ukraine in the near future, the Russian capture of Mariupol will likely be the next key inflection in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces have successfully encircled Mariupol and are conducting daily assaults on the western and eastern outskirts of the city. Russian air, missile, and artillery strikes continue to target residential areas and civilian infrastructure to force the city to capitulate. Russian forces have encircled the city to a depth that will likely prevent the defenders from breaking out and prevent Ukrainian efforts to relieve the defenders. Russian forces will likely be able to capture Mariupol or force it to capitulate despite strong Ukrainian defenses. The Russian capture of Mariupol will free up Russian forces, likely including large portions of the 8th Combined Arms Army, to threaten Ukrainian defenders along the line of contact in Donbas with encirclement or alternatively reinforce a Russian offensive toward Mykolayiv and Odesa. This assessment assumes that the defenders in Mariupol will run out of ammunition and/or water at some point in the relatively near future. Mariupol has been heavily fortified for years, however, and it is possible that its defenders secured sufficient supplies in advance to hold out longer. The Russians will likely continue to escalate bombardments to the point of simply destroying the city if that appears to be the case, but the reduction of Mariupol in this way could take considerably longer.
Since gaining ground in the southeast or capturing Mariupol would be trivial sideshows rather than war-winning accomplishments, this change of focus, if it occurs, suggests to me that Tsar Putin is looking for something that he can call "victory". The war doesn't have to end in any formal manner. Russia can let it dwindle, crow over slicing off more territory populated by Russian speakers (Putin's counterparts to the Sudeten Germans) and wait for the West to grow weary of enforcing sanctions. That wouldn't, from Putin's point of view, be a glorious outcome, but it also wouldn't be a defeat.
The Financial Times has published an analysis headed "'A serious failure': scale of Russia's military blunders becomes clear" (paywalled but excerpted here). Maybe it's wishful thinking, but maybe Putin sees the same thing.
How Long Can Russia Continue to Fight?
The situation on the ground in Ukraine is becoming a bore (albeit a noisy bore with extensive collateral damage). Here is what the Institute for the Study of War has to say in its March 14th update:
Russian forces made small territorial gains in Luhansk Oblast on March 14 but did not conduct any major attacks toward Kyiv or in northeastern Ukraine. Russian forces continue to assemble reinforcements and attempt to improve logistical support in both the Kyiv and southern operational directions. Ongoing Russian efforts to replace combat losses with both Russian replacements and non-Russian sources, including Syrian fighters and the Wagner Group, are unlikely to enable Russia to resume major offensive operations within the coming week.
That doesn't sound kinetic. One almost begins to think that the Daily Mail's anonymous sources may not be cockeyed optimists:
Russian forces may only be able to sustain full fighting capacity for another 'ten to 14' days, senior UK defence sources indicated last night.
By that time they may struggle to make any significant progress – while finding it difficult to hold ground, according to the latest intelligence.
Despite another day in which bombs rained down on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv and Kharkiv, resistance to the onslaught has seen the invasion fall behind schedule, allies of Vladimir Putin admitted for the first time on Monday. And American officials said the ground advance, now in its third week, had largely stalled.
A senior UK source said last night: 'Ukraine has Russia on the run. It is running out of manpower and running out of energy. As long as we keep pressing they've got ten to 14 days before reaching their culminating point.
'That's when the strength of Ukraine's resistance should become greater than Russia's attacking force.'
If it is true that Tsar Putin recently sacked eight Russian generals, he may not wholly disagree with the "senior UK source's" assessment.
Posted by Tom Veal on Monday, March 14, 2022 at 09:07 PM in Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
All Quiet on the Ukraine Front
Well, not totally quiet. There was a lot of noise, and, among other incidents, an American war correspondent was killed, reportedly by Russian fire. On the whole, though, the Institute for the Study of War's March 13th update has little new to report:
Russian forces again conducted few ground offensives on March 13, only securing new terrain in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces predominantly took measures to restore combat readiness and regrouped combat units as of noon local time on March 13. Russian forces continue to assemble reinforcements and attempt to improve logistical support in both the Kyiv and southern operational directions. Russian forces may intend to resume larger-scale attacks on both axes of advance in the coming week, but will likely take longer to (or may never) cohere the combat power necessary to complete the encirclement of Kyiv.
BTW, I quote only the summaries that lead off the updates. The reports include much more detail. The current one, for instance, relates how Russia is trying to find more troops for the Ukrainian front by drawing down other international commitments, importing Syrians and working to assume control of the Belorussian armed forces, a move not appreciated by that country's hitherto subservient authorities. Click on the link above if you want to delve more deeply.
Backward, Turn Backward, O Time, in Your Flight
Whenever this blog has been active, I have posted semiannual denunciations of DST ("Deranged System of Timekeeping"), marking both its imposition and its (alas, temporary) end. I suppose that everything that can be said on the topic has been repeated ad infinitum. The arguments for DST were already past their sell-by date when I first heard them over sixty years ago, when my then and future home state of Washington put the question to a popular vote. TV commercials promised that a "yes" would give voters "an extra hour of daylight", suggesting that jumping clocks ahead would slow the Earth's rotation on its axis. The vote was very close – 51.71% to 48.29% – so the fools had only a slim majority. (In the same year, the similarly specious JFK lost the state.)
This year I'll pursue the soul of wit by limiting myself to a paragraph from Scott Johnson's Powerline post:
Redistributing daylight is the kind of zero-sum game that underlies the liberals' vision of the world. The hour of daylight in the evening comes at the expense of the morning. At least it is in fact only a zero-sum game. [emphasis added]
If DST affected nature the same way that progressive policies affect the economy, "springing forward" would take an hour away from morning and add only about fifty minutes to the afternoon.
Posted by Tom Veal on Sunday, March 13, 2022 at 08:42 AM in Economics, L, t U & E, Science | Permalink | Comments (0)
"Logistical Challenges, Mounting Casualties, and Sustained Ukrainian Counterattacks", But Don't Get Cocky
Today's update from the Institute for the Study of War sounds almost encouraging for the Russians after the last dismal week, but that bar is so low that a cockroach would have trouble limboing under it:
Russian forces secured limited advances east of Kyiv and north from Crimea on March 12 but continue to face logistical challenges, mounting casualties, and sustained Ukrainian counterattacks. Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northwest of Kyiv in the past 24 hours. Russian forces made limited advances around Chernihiv and toward Kyiv's eastern outskirts after pausing for several days. Continued Ukrainian counterattacks and successful operations by Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces continue to threaten Russia's long line of communication in northeastern Ukraine. Russian forces captured unspecified "eastern outskirts" of Mariupol on March 12 and continue to shell the city in a likely effort to force it to capitulate.
This is a good time to remember Han Solo's wise advice: "Great, kid! Don't get cocky." A note of triumphalism is creeping into Western commentary on the war, including rising speculation that Tsar Putin is in danger of assassination or a palace coup. Maybe he is. The effect on the Russian economy has apparently been catastrophic. If rumors can be believed, top leaders of the Russian secret service have been placed under house arrest, and the regime is laboring to suppress anti-war sentiment.
It's no longer inconceivable that the invasion will fail. Where cockiness creeps in is the nascent belief that, if good comes to best, NATO's adroitness and determination will deserve the credit. The current crop of Western leaders, as feckless a crew as every sat in the seats of power (their August 1914 counterparts look Bismarckian by comparison), will then pat each other's backs and plod forward to future disasters.
As I said a few days ago, Russia against NATO is Lilliput against Brobdingnag. I was afraid then that Brobdingnag lacked the minimal will needed to flex its muscles. That degree of pessimism was unwarranted. The fact remains, though, that NATO's economic and military superiority over Russia is immense. Before we preen over this victory (assuming that it comes to pass), we should recall the words of a Spartan statesman who, when his countrymen were clamoring to revolt against Alexander the Great and citing past victories over Persia as proof that the effort would succeed, responded, "Because you have slaughtered a thousand sheep, you believe that you can fight fifty wolves."
Further Reading: Mary Dejevsky, "How Close is Russia to Collapse?"
"Another Pause to Resupply and Refit"
After not very kinetic attacks over the past few days, Russia pauses again. It's a challenge to distinguish the starts from the stops. The Institute for the Study of War's March 11th update:
Russian ground forces attempting to encircle and take Kyiv began another pause to resupply and refit combat units on March 11 after failed attacks March 8-10. Russian forces also appear to be largely stalemated around Kharkiv. Russian advances from Crimea toward Mykolayiv and Zaporizhya and in the east around Donetsk and Luhansk made no progress in the last 24 hours, and Russian forces in the south face growing morale and supply issues. The Ukrainian General Staff asserted Russia has so far failed to take its territorial objectives for the war and will likely increasingly turn to strikes on civilian targets and psychological operations to undermine civilian support for the Ukrainian government. Uncoordinated and sporadic Russian offensive operations against major Ukrainian cities support the Ukrainian General Staff's assessment that Russian forces face growing morale and supply issues and have lost the initiative. The Ukrainian General Staff stated on March 11 that Ukrainian forces are "actively defending and conducting successful counterattacks in all directions," but did not state where reported counterattacks are occurring.
The Kremlin likely seeks to increase its combat power by drawing Belarus into the war and leveraging Syrian proxies, in addition to ongoing efforts to directly replace Russian combat losses through individual conscripts that are unlikely to be well-enough trained or motivated to generate effective new combat power. Putin is reportedly conducting an internal purge of general offers and intelligence personnel and recalibrating Russia's war effort to sustain combat operations far longer than the Kremlin initially planned. Russia likely requires a new wave of combat-effective reservists or recruits in a short period of time to achieve its objectives in Ukraine but is unlikely to be able to generate such a wave. Russian aircraft likely conducted an attempted false-flag attack on Belarusian territory on March 11. The Kremlin is likely pressuring Belarus to enter the war in Ukraine to support Russian forces, though Belarusian President Lukashenko is likely attempting to delay or prevent his entry into the war to avoid costly Western sanctions and Belarusian combat losses. The Kremlin additionally announced plans on March 11 to deploy foreign fighters, including up to 16,000 Syrian fighters, to Ukraine. The Kremlin is highly unlikely to abandon its continuing main effort to encircle and capture Kyiv and will continue to feed replacements and reinforcements into this operation.
For those who want to look back, ISW has collected its updates from the start of the invasion here.
"Could Fight to a Standstill"
The Institute for the Study of War's March 10th update on the Russo-Ukrainian War for the first time suggests that a Russian victory is not inevitable. It may not even be probable.
The likelihood is increasing that Ukrainian forces could fight to a standstill the Russian ground forces attempting to encircle and take Kyiv. Russian forces also appear to be largely stalemated around Kharkiv and distracted from efforts to seize that city. Russian advances in the south around Mykolayiv and toward Zaporizhya and in the east around Donetsk and Luhansk made little progress as well in the last 24 hours. Russia likely retains much greater combat power in the south and east and will probably renew more effective offensive operations in the coming days, but the effective reach and speed of such operations is questionable given the general performance of the Russian military to date. There are as yet no indications that the Russian military is reorganizing, reforming, learning lessons, or taking other measures that would lead to a sudden change in the pace or success of its operations, although the numerical disparities between Russia and Ukraine leave open the possibility that Moscow will be able to restore rapid mobility or effective urban warfare to the battlefield.
Russian forces around Kyiv did not attempt to renew offensive operations on a multi-battalion scale on March 10 following the failure of limited efforts on March 8-9. Ukrainian forces badly damaged a Russian armored column in the Brovary area east of Kyiv, likely further disrupting Russian efforts to set conditions for offensive operations on the east bank of the Dnipro. Ukrainian resistance all along the Russian lines of communication from eastern Kyiv to the Russian border near Sumy continues to disrupt Russian efforts to bring more combat power to bear near the capital. The episodic, limited, and largely unsuccessful Russian offensive operations around Kyiv increasingly support the Ukrainian General Staff's repeated assessments that Russia lacks the combat power near the capital to launch successful offensive operations on a large scale.
As Tsar Putin's forces flounder, we see two trends in the pro-Ukrainian West: ever more flamboyant virtue signaling on the one hand (boycott Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky!) and pusillanimous bumbling on the other (no Polish planes for Ukraine! shut down nuclear reactors!). If Vladimir I were half the genius he fantasizes and Russia were more than a middling power, the West's will to resist its aggression would have collapsed at the first shove.
Addendum: Now guests on Russian state television are calling for an end to the war. The critics are from the intelligentsia, so Tsar Putin may despise their opinions, but the fact that they dare to voice them is a sign that the regime is less solid than it appeared to be two weeks ago.
"A Drawn-Out Affair"
If Tsar Putin had only thought to replace the Russian general staff with the commentators at the Institute for the Study of War, the conquest of Ukraine might be complete by now. Luckily, he didn't think of that. Here are the highlights of today's ISW update on the sitzkrieg:
Russian operations to continue the encirclement of and assault on Kyiv have likely begun, although on a smaller scale and in a more ad hoc manner than ISW expected. The equivalent of a Russian reinforced brigade reportedly tried to advance toward Kyiv through its western outskirts and made little progress. Smaller operations continued slowly to consolidate and gradually to extend the encirclement to the southwest of the capital. Russian operations in the eastern approaches to Kyiv remain in a lull, likely because the Russians are focusing on securing the long lines of communication running to those outskirts from Russian bases around Sumy and Chernihiv in the face of skillful and determined Ukrainian harassment of those lines. The battle for Kyiv is likely to continue to be a drawn-out affair unless the Russians can launch a more concentrated and coherent attack than they have yet shown the ability to conduct.
The Russian military is clearly struggling to mobilize reserve manpower to offset losses and fill out new units. The Kremlin admitted that conscripts have been fighting in Ukraine (in violation of Russian law) for the first time on March 9, although in a customarily bizarre fashion: according to the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin himself discovered that conscripts were operating in Ukraine while he was reviewing a report on the conflict. The Kremlin says Russian military judicial authorities will reportedly open an investigation into this practice and punish those responsible.
That the Tsar didn't know what his underlings were doing is a touch worry of the unfortunate Nicholas II.
Although political leaders and diplomats are fighting the Russo-Ukrainian War with ever increasing fury, and its consequences are spilling over into domestic politics as the Biden Administration insists that rising fuel costs are solely Tsar Putin's fault and have nothing to do with the President's stifling of American oil and natural gas production, the situation on the ground remains rather static. An assault on Kiev has been 24 to 96 hours off for the past week or so. Here is the Institute for the Study of War's March 8th update:
Russian forces continued concentrating in the eastern, northwestern, and western outskirts of Kyiv for an assault on the capital in the coming 24-96 hours. The reported appearance of forces belonging to Chechen leader Ramazan Kadyrov, Russia's Rosgvardia internal security formations, and the Liga (former Wagner) Private Military Company in the western outskirts of Kyiv may indicate that the Russian military is struggling to assemble sufficient conventional combat power to launch its assault on the capital. Russian forces near Kyiv made limited gains and prepared for limited drives to continue their attempted encirclement to the west.
Ukrainian forces have continued to challenge the lengthy Russian ground lines of communication leading from near Sumy to eastern Kyiv. Russian forces near Kharkiv have been steadily diverting to secure and extend those lines over the past few days, as we have reported. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 8 that Russian troops currently near Chernihiv appear to be moving east. We assess that those forces may seek to link up with troops coming from near Sumy to help them consolidate and protect their extended lines in support of the planned offensive against Kyiv.
The situation in eastern Ukraine and southwestern Ukraine remained largely unchanged in the past 24 hours. Ukrainian General Staff reporting of additional Russian efforts to advance on the city of Zaporizhya likely confirm that Russia intends to make blocking that city a priority. The forces Russia is so far moving toward Zaporizhya appear to be far too small to encircle or take it.
On a somewhat related note, wasn't Joe Biden going to restore America's place in the world after Bad Orange Man cut us off from the international community? Today the Wall Street Journal headlines, "Saudi, Emirati Leaders Decline Calls With Biden During Ukraine Crisis" (summary here if you can't penetrate the WSJ paywall).
Posted by Tom Veal on Tuesday, March 08, 2022 at 08:31 PM in Biden Administration, Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
Russia Prepares to Assault Kiev – Maybe
The Institute for the Study of War's daily Ukraine update indicates that little is happening on the ground but that a multi-pronged assault on the Ukrainian capital is not far off. Of course, it's been "not far off" almost since the war began. On other fronts, the Russians continue to spread their forces. "He who attacks everywhere attacks nowhere." They also face protests in many southern cities, which may be only a minor annoyance but certainly suggests that maintaining control over conquered territory will necessitate a continuing military commitment.
Russian forces are concentrating in the eastern, northwestern, and western outskirts of Kyiv for an assault on the capital in the coming 24-96 hours. The Russians are bringing up supplies and reinforcements as well as conducting artillery, air, and missile attacks to weaken defenses and intimidate defenders in advance of such an assault. It is too soon to gauge the likely effectiveness of any Russian attempt to complete the encirclement of Kyiv or to seize the city at this time. If Russian troops have been able to resupply, reorganize, and plan deliberate and coordinated simultaneous operations along the several axes of advance around and into the capital, they may be more successful in this operation than they have in previous undertakings. Operations near Kyiv in the past 72 hours have not offered enough evidence to evaluate that likelihood.
Russian troops in southern Ukraine continue to divide their efforts between attacks westward toward Mykolayiv and Odesa, attacks northward toward Zaporizhya, and attacks eastward toward Mariupol and Donbas. Failure to focus on any single line of advance has likely hindered Russian operations and will probably continue to do so. Russian troops in Kherson Oblast appear to be feeling their way around Mykolayiv, likely seeking to find a route across the Southern Bug River that would allow them to bypass Mykolayiv itself and resume their advance on Odesa. Those heading toward Zaporizhya currently lack the combat power likely necessary to encircle or take that large city. They could, however, set conditions for successful operations against Zaporizhya once reinforcements arrive following the fall of Mariupol and the opening of a wide land route westward from Donbas.
It's no longer rash to speculate that the day may soon arrive when Russia will be desperate to make peace. Unfortunately, passion for vengeance may overwhelm responsible statesmanship. The world doesn't need a Weimar Republic redux in Moscow.
Solzhenitsyn on Russia and Ukraine
The Institute for the Study of War reported little change on the ground in its daily update, so I'll leave that to the end and instead call attention to some observations by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died fourteen years ago but had a sense of the divorce between Russia and Ukraine over the course of the last century. Here is what he wrote on the subject in volume three of The Gulag Archipelago:
Why are we so exasperated by Ukrainian nationalism, by the desire of our brothers to speak, educate their children, and write their shop signs in their own language? Even Mikhail Bulgakov (in The White Guard [see note 1]) let himself be misled on this subject. Given that we have not succeeded in fusing completely; that we are still different in some respects (and it is sufficient that they, the smaller nation, feel the difference); that however sad it may be, we have missed chance after chance, especially in the thirties and forties; that the problem became most acute not under the Tsar, but after the Tsar – why does their desire to secede annoy us so much? Can't we part with the Odessa beaches? Or the fruit of Circassia?
For me this is a painful subject. Russia and the Ukraine are united in my blood, my heart, my thoughts. But from friendly contact with Ukrainians in the camps over a long period I have learned how sore they feel. Our generation cannot avoid paying for the mistakes of generations before it.
Nothing is easier than stamping your foot and shouting: "That's mine!" It is immeasurably harder to proclaim: "You may live as you please." We cannot, in the latter end of the twentieth century, live in the imaginary world in which our last, not very bright Emperor came to grief. Surprising though it may be, the prophecy of our Vanguard Doctrine [see note 2] that nationalism would fade has not come true. In the age of the atom and of cybernetics, it has for some reason blossomed afresh.
Like it or not, the time is at hand when we must pay out on all our promissory notes guaranteeing self-determination and independence – pay up of our own accord, and not wait to be burned at the stake, drowned in rivers, or beheaded. We must prove our greatness as a nation not by the vastness of our territory, not by the number of peoples under our tutelage, but by the grandeur of our actions. And by the depth of our tilth in the lands that remain when those who do not wish to live with us are gone.
The Ukraine will be an extremely painful problem. But we must realize that the feelings of the whole people are now at white heat. Since the two peoples have not succeeded over the centuries in living harmoniously, it is up to us to show sense. We must leave the decision to the Ukrainians themselves – let federalists and separatists try their persuasions.
Not to give way would be fool- hardy and cruel. And the gentler, the more tolerant, the more careful to explain ourselves we are now, the more hope there will be of restoring unity in the future.
Let them live their own lives, let them see how it works. They will soon find that not all problems are solved by secession.
(The quotation is courtesy of FlaglerLive.com, which appears to be a rather leftish site; it refers to Solzhenitsyn as a "reactionary", a word as useless as "fascist" but popular among progressives in search of dismissive insults that have not worn quite so threadbare through overuse.)
Note 1: The White Guard, the debut novel of Mikhail Bulgakov (best known in the West for The Master and Margarita) is the story of the Turbin family, upper class Russians living in Kiev during the Civil War. Symon Petlyura's nationalist insurgency plays a large role in the book. The author views it very unfavorably.
Note 2: The "Vanguard Doctrine" is Marxism-Leninism. "Surprising though it may be" is, of course, sarcastic.
In 1990, as the Soviet Union was breaking up, Solzhenitsyn published a long essay, Rebuilding Russia, in which he addressed the Ukrainian question at greater length. Joseph Pearce has written an enlightening summary of the great author's views, which would not please either Tsar Putin or the Westerners who now demonstrate their virtue by pouring bottles of (Latvian) vodka into sewers and banning Russian felines from cat shows.
And now for the state of the ground war:
The military situation on the ground has not changed significantly in the past 24 hours. Russian forces continue to mass for renewed offensive operations east and west of Kyiv, west of Kharkiv, and toward Mykolayiv-Odesa but have not yet initiated new large-scale ground attacks. Russia has increased aerial and artillery/rocket attacks on civilian positions and infrastructure, including known evacuation corridors. Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted a second counter-attack in two days, this time near Mariupol. The Ukrainian air force and air defense forces continue to operate, inflicting damage on Russian ground forces and disrupting Russian air and missile operations.
It is hard to believe that nothing will continue to happen.
Posted by Tom Veal on Sunday, March 06, 2022 at 08:55 PM in Books, Current Affairs, Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Russia | Permalink | Comments (0)
Putin Pauses
The daily update from the Institute for the Study of War has little to report today.
Russian forces in Ukraine may have entered a possibly brief operational pause on March 5 as they prepare to resume operations against Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolayiv, and possibly Odesa in the next 24-48 hours. Russian troops did not launch major ground offensive operations against Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Mykolayiv in the last 24 hours. Ukrainian forces near Kharkiv, on the other hand, conducted a counter-offensive that reportedly penetrated to the Ukrainian-Russian border.
The Ukrainian counterattack is interesting news, although it's probably no more than a pinprick.
Russia Focuses on Encircling Kiev, Fritters Away Its Forces Elsewhere
Today's update from the Institute for the Study of War continues to speak ill of the quality of Russian strategists. The invaders are grinding away in a fashion that is more like the Great War on the Western Front than a blitzkrieg.
Russian forces continue their focus on encircling Kyiv. The western envelopment remains bogged down but Russian troops have moved more rapidly from the east and are arriving in the capital's outskirts on the Sumy axis. The speed of the advance from the east is likely to slow as Russian forces leave sparsely-inhabited and flat terrain and enter the more congested and built-up eastern suburbs. Russian mechanized forces around Kharkiv appear to be supporting operations toward the east and west of the city, likely weakening their ability to encircle or seize it.
The Russian military has concentrated considerable combat power around Mariupol to encircle and ultimately seize or destroy it. The purpose of this effort is not entirely clear. The capture or destruction of Mariupol will not likely materially affect the outcome of the war, whose decisive operations are more than 600 kilometers northwest around Kyiv. Russian forces have also renewed their ground offensive west from Crimea toward Odesa, currently focusing on advancing from Kherson to Mykolayiv, and seized the Zaporizhya Nuclear Power Plant north of Crimea. The continued pursuit of objectives along three diverging axes by the same group of forces in Crimea has hindered the Russian military's ability to generate decisive effects on any of the three.
Russia Slogs Along
Today's update from the Institute for the Study of War won't be read with pleasure by Russian generals at the front:
The Russian military has continued its unsuccessful attempts to encircle Kyiv and capture Kharkiv. The Russians continued to attack piecemeal, committing a few battalion tactical groups at a time rather than concentrating overwhelming force to achieve decisive effects. Russian commanders appear to prefer opening up new lines of advance for regiment-sized operations but have been unable to achieve meaningful synergies between efforts along different axes toward the same objectives. They have also continued conducting operations in southern Ukraine along three diverging axes rather than concentrating on one or attempting mutually supporting efforts. These failures of basic operational art—long a strong suit of the Soviet military and heavily studied at Russian military academies—remain inexplicable as does the Russian military's failure to gain air superiority or at least to ground the Ukrainian Air Force. The Russian conventional military continues to underperform badly, although it may still wear down and defeat the conventional Ukrainian military by sheer force of numbers and brutality. Initial indications that Russia is mobilizing reinforcements from as far away as the Pacific Ocean are concerning in this respect. Those indications also suggest, however, that the Russian General Staff has concluded that the forces it initially concentrated for the invasion of Ukraine will be insufficient to achieve Moscow's military objectives.
Operations to envelop Kyiv remain Russia's main effort. Russian troops are also continuing three supporting efforts, one to seize Kharkiv, one to take Mariupol and secure the "land bridge" connecting Rostov-on-Don to Crimea, and one to secure Kherson and set conditions for a drive west toward Mykolayiv and Odesa.
The Russian attack on Kyiv likely consists of a main effort aimed at enveloping and ultimately encircling the city from the west and a supporting effort along the axes from Chernihiv and Sumy to encircle it from the east.
Russian forces in the south resumed offensive operations toward Mykolayiv on March 3 after securing Kherson on March 2, but do not appear to pose an imminent danger to Odesa. Russian forces likely seek to force Mariupol to capitulate by destroying critical civilian infrastructure and killing civilians to create a humanitarian catastrophe—an approach Russian forces have repeatedly taken in Syria.
Commingling The Wizard of Oz with the Great War, the Russians at this point look like Cowardly Lions led by Scarecrows.
Roscosmos, the Russian Federation's space agency, has struck back at the United Kingdom in retaliation for the U.K.'s support of Ukraine. Its director-general has announced that a Soyuz launch scheduled for Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is to carry 36 OneWeb communications satellites into orbit, will be scrubbed unless OneWeb guarantees that they won't be used for military purposes and the British government agrees to sell its stake in the company. Britain has turned down the demands.
Separately, Roscosmos denied reports that the hacker group Anonymous has infiltrated and shut down its computer network and declared that interference with its satellites would be a casus belli.
Russia's leverage is feeble, but these rumblings show that war no longer stays earthbound.
Update (March 22, 2022): Elon Musk soars to the rescue. SpaceX will launch the stranded satellites.
Posted by Tom Veal on Wednesday, March 02, 2022 at 07:51 PM in Britain, Current Affairs, Russia, Science | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ukraine Endures, But the Outlook Darkens
Today's update from the Institute for the Study of War indicates that the Russian drive in the south is progressing. That Kherson has fallen was confirmed by the Ukrainian authorities after the ISW bulletin's posting, and Mariupol seems unlikely to hold out much longer. The news from Kiev is more positive.
Russian forces resumed offensive operations in support of their envelopment of Kyiv on March 2 but made few territorial advances. Russian forces resumed offensive operations on both axes of advance toward Kyiv after largely pausing for 72 hours to reinforce and resupply their troops north and west of Kyiv. Russian operations to envelop Kyiv are Moscow's main effort. Russian troops are also undertaking three supporting efforts, one to seize Kharkiv, one to take Mariupol and secure the "land bridge" connecting Rostov-on-Don to Crimea, and one to secure Kherson and set conditions for a drive west toward Mykolayiv and Odesa. The three supporting operations were active in the last 24 hours; Russian forces likely captured Kherson and began a bombardment of critical civilian infrastructure in Mariupol in a likely effort to force the city to surrender while making few territorial gains in Kharkiv.
The Russian attack on Kyiv likely consists of a main effort aimed at enveloping and ultimately encircling the city from the west and a supporting effort along the axes from Chernihiv and Sumy to encircle it from the east. The long Russian column of combat and logistics vehicles observed north of Kyiv in the last 48 hours is likely now supporting attacks directly into the city from positions Russian forces maintain in Kyiv's northwestern outskirts. However, Russian forces are more likely to prioritize the envelopment/encirclement in the coming days, rather than a direct assault into the city.
Russian forces resumed frontal assaults on Kharkiv on March 2 and continued using area-attack weapons, dramatically increasing the damage to civilian infrastructure and civilian casualties. Russian ground forces appear to be conducting another frontal assault on Kharkiv from the northeast rather than enveloping the city and will likely face protracted Ukrainian resistance.
Russian forces in the south likely secured Kherson, began bombarding civilian infrastructure in Mariupol in a likely attempt to force the city to surrender without a direct assault, and appear to be holding their positions south of Zaporizhya. Russian forces will likely resume offensive operations towards Mikolayiv in the next 24 hours but do not appear to pose an imminent danger to Odesa. Russian forces likely seek to force Mariupol to capitulate by destroying critical civilian infrastructure and killing civilians to create a humanitarian catastrophe – an approach Russian forces have repeatedly taken in Syria.[1] A Russian drive north through or near Zaprozhya to cut off Ukrainian forces fighting along the line of contact appears very unlikely in the next 24-72 hours.
Russian forces are receiving needed supplies and reinforcements that may facilitate much more rapid and effective operations in the coming 24-72 hours. The Russian effort around Kyiv remains poorly organized, however, with elements of many different battalions combined into what seem to be ad hoc groupings rather than operating under standing regiment or brigade headquarters. The initial errors in the Russian force composition and organization in Belarus and western Russia that ISW has previously reported on, which contributed to Russian logistical and operational failures around Kyiv, will be difficult to remedy quickly and will likely continue to cause friction and reduce the effectiveness of Russian operations even as supply issues are addressed and reinforcements come into the fight. It remains too early to evaluate the likely effective combat power the added Russian troops will bring.
The Latest from Ukraine
From the Institute for the Study of War, the situation as of 3:00 p.m. EST on March 1st:
Russian forces are completing the reinforcement and resupply of their troops north and west of Kyiv and launching an envelopment of the capital likely aimed at encircling and ultimately capturing it. This effort will likely accelerate in the next 24-48 hours. Russian operations against Kyiv are Moscow's main effort. Russian troops are also undertaking three supporting efforts, one to seize Kharkiv, one to take Mariupol and secure the "land bridge" connecting Rostov-on-Don to Crimea, and one to secure Kherson and set conditions for a drive west toward Mykolayiv and Odesa. The three supporting operations are active, with the operation against Mariupol making the most progress in the last 24 hours.
ISW's evaluation of the current situation isn't hopelessly pessimistic, even if the balance of forces continues to favor the aggressors: