A few months ago analysts were warning of impending collapse of Russia's troops due to poor supplies and poor morale. Russian cheerleaders on HN were doubting it as Western propaganda saying it had been declared for months and not materialized. Well it materialized in the collapse of the Kharkiv front over a week so there's that.
In all, I don't think the mobilization is likely to matter. The Russian problem is bad supplies, bad comms, and bad morale. When the russian front in kharkiv collapsed and everyone fled, there were many units just wandering around, and even setting up defensive lines because they didn't know the rest of the force had been routed and that the enemy was already behind them. Forcing people to the front isn't going to change this. Russian strategy has been repeating idiotic assaults on bakhmut for 2 months with no gains while just trying to hold on elsewhere. Ukraine on the other hand has been maintaining a decent momentum from their offensive, taking Lyman, and on the verge of looking to retake Lysychansk and maybe Severodonetsk again. Progress will be relatively slow, but it's not crazy to imagine another wave of collapse.
It'll take a long time to get a working army together. I'd bet on Ukraine and western support every day. The only thing that could change the calculus is nuclear weapons.
> In all, I don't think the mobilization is likely to matter
Oh it matters. More poorly trained and equipped cannon fodder means more dead and more prisoners. The influx of caskets into previously less impacted areas in Russia might start to impact the general population more - that's how the USSR had to pull out of Afghanistan.
Using nukes would be unlikely to go well for Russia. The Ukrainian troops are pretty spread out so setting off a nuke would only take out a few and in response the west would probably do bad stuff to Russia, quite likely US non nuclear air strikes which could wipe out much of the Russian forces.
I mostly agree with you, but Kharkiv collapse was not that big. While Russia abandoned a lot of equipment there, they managed to withdraw most of it and the vast majority of troops. It looks like after the initial Ukrainian breakthrough Russian generals managed to convince Putin to abandon most of Kharkiv and focus on Donbas instead.
At Bakhmut Russia did made small but meaningful progress with Ukrainian sources reporting the situation as difficult or even very difficult. And Bakhmut is the last Ukrainian line in Donbas that was heavily fortified during the last 8 years, after Bahmut any defensive positions will be much weaker.
And Lyman are far from being liberated. Ukrainians forces made a progress threatening to surround Russian forces there, but the situation is rather unclear there. As for Lysychansk there were sporadic reports about small Ukrainian units nearby, but nothing more.
What is clear is that without significantly increased heavy weapon support for Ukraine the war can drag for years. And it looks like West is not going to do it for various reasons. I mean I understand the fear to give ATACMS, but I just do not understand why not extended range GMLRS and heavy artillery.
> In all, I don't think the mobilization is likely to matter. The Russian problem is bad supplies, bad comms, and bad morale.
The Russians may be suffering from "bad supplies, bad comms, and bad morale," but I've read in several places that they're also suffering from a lack of manpower. Or, more specifically: too much equipment in proportion to their ground troops, and also too many combat troops in proportion to support personnel.
Those bad things you concluded are mostly sourced from Ukrainian MoD. Winter is coming. Mother of all recession is coming to EU and America within nezt 2-3mths. Putin is preparing for overwhelming offensive (read up WW2 Russians modus operandi and you'll understand what Putin is thinking). Chinese side has been pumping resources like manpower and factories to Putin (in return for the EU portion of energy redirected to China). Heck even financial flows as well. You are looking at extremely well play chess moves. Hard to say for that for Americans...really pathetic seeing after 20 years gotten humiliated by a bunch of goat herders. Gotten kicked out of Iraq. If you have relatives toured in those failed wars you will know the casualty count were grossly understated. The only things I'm worried is USA launching nukes (US is the only country in the world ever to use nuke against others). I'm less worried about Putin. He moved very rationally. Once those regions declared joining Russia, any offensive from Ukraine will be deemed as invading Russia. This easily can justify huge number of military response with huge Russian public backing (despite what you read in the west, I suggest you try Russian soirces or friends...you'll be very surprised how different reality over there to what you thought).
This is really going to screw Russia for generations. Every young Russian I know has either already left, plans to leave, or has to stay but hates their leader. You don't get your country to turn into a superpower by losing the most educated and skilled of the young generations. I only hope as things get more desperate he doesn't feel trapped lash out with the nukes.
Russia was already always going to lose that "superpower" tag the moment the world shifted from hard industrial goods to consumer goods and technology. The first computer, the growth of the Japanese consumer goods industry, and Silicon Valley likely did as much to collapse the Soviet Union as anything else - they were simply out of the picture the moment we started creating software and portable stereos and personal computers.
That's beauty of being sociopathic dictator - you don't need to care about reality of those pesky humans that are under you, you can massage your massive ego with grand plans matching it. You have your billion dollar palaces and hundreds of billions stolen distributed throughout the world via thousands of cronies.
If skilled intelligent people leave? Good, more loyal and easy to manipulate remain. People are dying in wars? Who cares if something is reached, like protecting motherland from made up boogeymen.
Russian psyche relishes in suffering and misery and drinking into oblivion in vain attempt to forget about it. The worse it gets the more to blame that evil west for. This can be truly endless cycle that you can't break from outside.
Really, this clash of civilizations is coming at a seemingly good time, while Russia is obviously weak. Obviously better would be to have no conflict at all, but that's not what Russia can offer to rest of the world, only arrogance, suffering, and primitive disfunctionality of its system. Since nobody willingly wants it, clash is inevitable.
In every country there are people who are nationalistic and think withint that framework and in every country there are people who want to be part of the global community of engineers/artists/scientists/professionals etc. and it is as if the nationalistic ones and their political fractions see the others as human resources that they want and have right to use in their ideological goals.
In Iran, in Turkey, in the USA, in Hungary, in France, in South Africa, in Russia, in the UK there are people who all they want is a decent life for the work they do and there are people who want to make America Great again, show Greeks that Turks are the boss or show Turks that Greeks are the superior culture that one day will rise and take back Istanbul, show EU that they are the man, revive the French greatness, preserve British ways against EU, screw the liberals, make the Vegans cry, keep the women in line, stop Netflix making the youth gay, preserve the Islam in a specific way, preserve christian values etc.
It's almost as if there are class wars everywhere but those in power fight their local class wars through external fights. That's why it almost feels like Brexiteers, MAGA, le Pen, Putin, the guy in Brazil or Philippines are all coordinated.
It's bizarre and I don't see anything special about Russia TBH. It's just that they seem to be ahead of the west in the direction the world is headed.
You know people who disapprove Putin and try to run away from Russia but unfortunately Putin continues to enjoy very high approval ratings[0].
I really hope the russian/kreml/putin war against Ukraine will end in a epic failure for them. I also hope that frozen russian assets in west can be confiscated to build up Ukraine again, russia has to be accountable and pay for all madness and horrific things they have done.
Their main propaganda news channel has already said (incorrectly) that they are already fighting NATO and US troops in the breakaway areas.
Is it time to make this a reality? I really don't see it ending without it happening. russia has shown that it has no regard for the suffering of any troops of any nationality. So purely from a population perspective, Ukraine will fail eventually unless they can effectively force-multiply like we've never seen in any other armed conflict.
The comments have been civil, all things considered. These events have been extremely consequential and possibly the root cause of the looming global recession.
That’s the beauty of HN. Being able to talk about important events and still be civil when discussing them.
I didn’t upvote the article because I thought the article was lacking details. Example:
>>>“New concepts were introduced into the Russian Criminal Code: including “voluntary surrender,” “looting,” “mobilization,” “martial law” and “wartime.””
>>>The rulings were passed unanimously.”
In my opinion, the article is lacking for not including the actual new code or sentences from the code.
Excerpts clarifying what is meant by "partial mobilization":
As I have said, we are talking about partial mobilisation. In other words, only military reservists, primarily those who served in the armed forces and have specific military occupational specialties and corresponding experience, will be called up.
Additionally, the Executive Order on partial mobilisation also stipulates additional measures for the fulfilment of the state defence order. The heads of defence industry enterprises will be directly responsible for attaining the goals of increasing the production of weapons and military equipment and using additional production facilities for this purpose. At the same time, the Government must address without any delay all aspects of material, resource and financial support for our defence enterprises.
Can someone Russian explain what on earth they are thinking? Russia appears to have 10x the casualties as Ukraine, soldiers that doesn't really want to fight, and are currently losing. Yet the leaders think it is a good idea to keep the war going? To me it seems that with the material Ukraine is receiving from the West they will easily retake all territory Russia has occupied.
Russia has no military capabilities to feed and transport so many soldiers, let alone train them, officers are already in Ukraine and probably already dead. It's basically cannon fodder.
Yep, same as Luhansk and Donetsk "volunteers", with WWI vintage rifles and 1960s tanks. This hasn't worked since WWI, or even before (the humiliations against China) so I'm curious how they see this playing out.
I am not a historian, so this post is just describing my own impression. I may be wrong, but this is at least how I perceived the historical events.
The past 10-20 years have been a tragedy for the relationship between Russia and Europe, and a failure from Putin to take advantage of the goodwill that existed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Many European countries actually wanted a close relationship with Russia, as they (naively) thought that it was moving in a democratic direction. Lots of companies started offices in Russia and countries like Germany trusted Russia enough to supply them with gas. They will probably not do that again unless they have alternative suppliers.
There were of course some negative rhetorics from old school politicians, and Europe were still close allies with US. But the general hope was that Russia was moving closer to Europe and that in time they could perhaps even join the EU to create a new political and economical power.
Unfortunately Putin decided to go in the opposite direction and trying to rebuild the old empire. Oligarks made it difficult to do business and the political rhetorics made "the west" into an enemy.
The only way I see Russia coming out of this stronger, is if the pressure from the people is high enough to let a real democratic election vote in a new leadership that can reduce corruption. This could start repairing foreign relations which would improve the economic situation. Maybe we could get back to the optimism we had 15-20 years ago.
This is probably not likely to happen in the short term.
The only "upside" of this war is that due to the dependency on gas from Russia, Europe will accelerate the process of switching to greener energy. Windmills, solar power and maybe even nuclear power plants. This may be remembered in history as the turning point in the reduction of global warning, that came with a high human cost.
If they could conquer Ukraine and effectively quell unrest, the Federation could be said to have come out stronger. That is very unlikely though, with the Ukrainian army getting effective support.
If they manage to hold the land bridge to Krim and negotiate a cease-fire, it can be argued that they had limited success in their objectives. But at a huge economic and humanitarian cost.
And in a nuclear war, nobody wins. So stronger could only be used in relative terms.
It seems to me that the occupied regions of Ukraine are very vast and cannot be controlled by the number of Russian troops that they now have in Ukraine. Accordingly, more human resources are needed, so they want to close this gap with the help of this call (about 300 thousand soldiers).
According to Shoigu (their minister of Defence) they'll use the conscripted men in order to secure the existing front-line, which is quite long. Couple that with the incoming referendums during which the regions that now Russia controls in Southern and Eastern Ukraine will vote for an annexation to Russia, which makes me doubtful that the Russian Army will try and make a push further North across the Dnieper or even towards Mykolaiv or Odessa. Not sure though what will happen with the part of Donetsk region that they do no presently control, i.e. to cities like Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. As such, I don't think that the ground being frozen or not will have such a big effect going forward.
Of course, I might be wrong on all this and the Russians launching a new offensive on Kiev and Kharkov.
(CNBC) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced a partial military mobilization in Russia, putting the country's people and economy on a wartime footing as Moscow's invasion of Ukraine continues.
In a rare pre-recorded televised announcement, Putin said the West "wants to destroy our country" and claimed the West had tried to "turn Ukraine's people into cannon fodder," in comments translated by Reuters, repeating earlier claims in which he has blamed Western nations for starting a proxy war with Russia.
Putin said "mobilization events" would begin Wednesday without providing further details, aside from saying that he had ordered an increase in funding to boost Russia's weapons production, having committed (and lost) a large amount of weaponry during the conflict, which began in late February.
Personally I believe that NATO should occupy the whole of Western Ukraine up to about 100km from the frontline, with a clear warning that any direct fire on NATO troops will result in retaliation. This will free up the Ukrainians to fight Russia on the frontline without worries about Belarus etc.
Putin's approval rating since the war began has been a steady 80%+ (https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...). We don't know yet what September's numbers will look like, but it will likely take a hit from the retreats and losses of territory to the Ukrainians this month. Mobilization is going to drop that further. People are ok supporting a war in the abstract, but less so if they have to go out there and fight themselves. And they'll like it even less when they find that people with connections aren't being called up.
Calling for mobilization now gives them a few months to train and get equipped when winter brings fighting to a close. It'd be interesting to see where Russia finds officers for these new troops. Or maybe training/equipment/officers don't matter, if the plan is to use them as cannon fodder.
Regardless, Ukraine will find it harder to make progress next year like they've done in the last few weeks. There won't be any fronts that are thinly manned and easy to punch through like Kharkiv was.
It’s hard to see where this ends; should things move toward weakening of the Russian government will he go without attempting to escalate his way out of domestic danger?
I think mobilisation and moving toward declaring the special operation a war (more mobilisation) could be the beginnings of that slippery slope.
There are a lot of western reporters on the ground in the Ukraine. Sometimes more, sometimes less close to the front. One difference to earlier conflicts is, that many Ukrainians of course have smartphones and consequently can record pictures and videos. These can be cross checked by the reporters and immediately give detailed information.
It’s really concerning how many people here would cave to nuclear blackmail. Which part of your own country would you be willing to give up to the nuclear power so it doesn’t launch its nukes for now?
[+] [-] spywaregorilla|3 years ago|reply
In all, I don't think the mobilization is likely to matter. The Russian problem is bad supplies, bad comms, and bad morale. When the russian front in kharkiv collapsed and everyone fled, there were many units just wandering around, and even setting up defensive lines because they didn't know the rest of the force had been routed and that the enemy was already behind them. Forcing people to the front isn't going to change this. Russian strategy has been repeating idiotic assaults on bakhmut for 2 months with no gains while just trying to hold on elsewhere. Ukraine on the other hand has been maintaining a decent momentum from their offensive, taking Lyman, and on the verge of looking to retake Lysychansk and maybe Severodonetsk again. Progress will be relatively slow, but it's not crazy to imagine another wave of collapse.
It'll take a long time to get a working army together. I'd bet on Ukraine and western support every day. The only thing that could change the calculus is nuclear weapons.
[+] [-] sofixa|3 years ago|reply
Oh it matters. More poorly trained and equipped cannon fodder means more dead and more prisoners. The influx of caskets into previously less impacted areas in Russia might start to impact the general population more - that's how the USSR had to pull out of Afghanistan.
[+] [-] tim333|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|3 years ago|reply
Neither are likely, but both are possible and have been rumored.
[+] [-] _0w8t|3 years ago|reply
At Bakhmut Russia did made small but meaningful progress with Ukrainian sources reporting the situation as difficult or even very difficult. And Bakhmut is the last Ukrainian line in Donbas that was heavily fortified during the last 8 years, after Bahmut any defensive positions will be much weaker.
And Lyman are far from being liberated. Ukrainians forces made a progress threatening to surround Russian forces there, but the situation is rather unclear there. As for Lysychansk there were sporadic reports about small Ukrainian units nearby, but nothing more.
What is clear is that without significantly increased heavy weapon support for Ukraine the war can drag for years. And it looks like West is not going to do it for various reasons. I mean I understand the fear to give ATACMS, but I just do not understand why not extended range GMLRS and heavy artillery.
[+] [-] tablespoon|3 years ago|reply
The Russians may be suffering from "bad supplies, bad comms, and bad morale," but I've read in several places that they're also suffering from a lack of manpower. Or, more specifically: too much equipment in proportion to their ground troops, and also too many combat troops in proportion to support personnel.
[+] [-] homeland221|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaceheater|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vladcodes|3 years ago|reply
Have you seen any zombie movies?
[+] [-] willsmith72|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaceman_2020|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saiya-jin|3 years ago|reply
If skilled intelligent people leave? Good, more loyal and easy to manipulate remain. People are dying in wars? Who cares if something is reached, like protecting motherland from made up boogeymen.
Russian psyche relishes in suffering and misery and drinking into oblivion in vain attempt to forget about it. The worse it gets the more to blame that evil west for. This can be truly endless cycle that you can't break from outside.
Really, this clash of civilizations is coming at a seemingly good time, while Russia is obviously weak. Obviously better would be to have no conflict at all, but that's not what Russia can offer to rest of the world, only arrogance, suffering, and primitive disfunctionality of its system. Since nobody willingly wants it, clash is inevitable.
[+] [-] mrtksn|3 years ago|reply
In Iran, in Turkey, in the USA, in Hungary, in France, in South Africa, in Russia, in the UK there are people who all they want is a decent life for the work they do and there are people who want to make America Great again, show Greeks that Turks are the boss or show Turks that Greeks are the superior culture that one day will rise and take back Istanbul, show EU that they are the man, revive the French greatness, preserve British ways against EU, screw the liberals, make the Vegans cry, keep the women in line, stop Netflix making the youth gay, preserve the Islam in a specific way, preserve christian values etc.
It's almost as if there are class wars everywhere but those in power fight their local class wars through external fights. That's why it almost feels like Brexiteers, MAGA, le Pen, Putin, the guy in Brazil or Philippines are all coordinated.
It's bizarre and I don't see anything special about Russia TBH. It's just that they seem to be ahead of the west in the direction the world is headed.
You know people who disapprove Putin and try to run away from Russia but unfortunately Putin continues to enjoy very high approval ratings[0].
[0] https://twitter.com/grkdirik/status/1572242924460556288/phot...
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] withinboredom|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MasterYoda|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheWoodsy|3 years ago|reply
Is it time to make this a reality? I really don't see it ending without it happening. russia has shown that it has no regard for the suffering of any troops of any nationality. So purely from a population perspective, Ukraine will fail eventually unless they can effectively force-multiply like we've never seen in any other armed conflict.
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago|reply
Not on the front page or the second page of HN.
The comments have been civil, all things considered. These events have been extremely consequential and possibly the root cause of the looming global recession.
[+] [-] rippercushions|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webinvest|3 years ago|reply
I didn’t upvote the article because I thought the article was lacking details. Example:
>>>“New concepts were introduced into the Russian Criminal Code: including “voluntary surrender,” “looting,” “mobilization,” “martial law” and “wartime.””
>>>The rulings were passed unanimously.”
In my opinion, the article is lacking for not including the actual new code or sentences from the code.
[+] [-] bitcharmer|3 years ago|reply
At least he doesn't purge /active which became my default some time ago.
[+] [-] diimdeep|3 years ago|reply
Address by the President of the Russian Federation (English transcript) [1] (video in Russian, no subs)[2]
[1] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69390
[2] http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69390
[+] [-] zppln|3 years ago|reply
As I have said, we are talking about partial mobilisation. In other words, only military reservists, primarily those who served in the armed forces and have specific military occupational specialties and corresponding experience, will be called up.
Additionally, the Executive Order on partial mobilisation also stipulates additional measures for the fulfilment of the state defence order. The heads of defence industry enterprises will be directly responsible for attaining the goals of increasing the production of weapons and military equipment and using additional production facilities for this purpose. At the same time, the Government must address without any delay all aspects of material, resource and financial support for our defence enterprises.
[+] [-] bjourne|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] albertopv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sofixa|3 years ago|reply
Yep, same as Luhansk and Donetsk "volunteers", with WWI vintage rifles and 1960s tanks. This hasn't worked since WWI, or even before (the humiliations against China) so I'm curious how they see this playing out.
[+] [-] skc|3 years ago|reply
Because I can't see any.
Seems to me like the Russian govt are now in a situation where they have no choice but to see this thing through just to try and save face.
[+] [-] anon23623|3 years ago|reply
The past 10-20 years have been a tragedy for the relationship between Russia and Europe, and a failure from Putin to take advantage of the goodwill that existed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Many European countries actually wanted a close relationship with Russia, as they (naively) thought that it was moving in a democratic direction. Lots of companies started offices in Russia and countries like Germany trusted Russia enough to supply them with gas. They will probably not do that again unless they have alternative suppliers.
There were of course some negative rhetorics from old school politicians, and Europe were still close allies with US. But the general hope was that Russia was moving closer to Europe and that in time they could perhaps even join the EU to create a new political and economical power.
Unfortunately Putin decided to go in the opposite direction and trying to rebuild the old empire. Oligarks made it difficult to do business and the political rhetorics made "the west" into an enemy.
The only way I see Russia coming out of this stronger, is if the pressure from the people is high enough to let a real democratic election vote in a new leadership that can reduce corruption. This could start repairing foreign relations which would improve the economic situation. Maybe we could get back to the optimism we had 15-20 years ago.
This is probably not likely to happen in the short term.
The only "upside" of this war is that due to the dependency on gas from Russia, Europe will accelerate the process of switching to greener energy. Windmills, solar power and maybe even nuclear power plants. This may be remembered in history as the turning point in the reduction of global warning, that came with a high human cost.
[+] [-] lolc|3 years ago|reply
If they manage to hold the land bridge to Krim and negotiate a cease-fire, it can be argued that they had limited success in their objectives. But at a huge economic and humanitarian cost.
And in a nuclear war, nobody wins. So stronger could only be used in relative terms.
[+] [-] Mesopropithecus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajvs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _V_|3 years ago|reply
Aeroflot stopped selling air tickets to all Russian men aged 18-65 who don’t have authorization from the military office (voenkomat).
[+] [-] aizen89|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PoignardAzur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waltwalther|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thinkingemote|3 years ago|reply
I heard that the February invasion was too late and that the thaw was beginning, hampering access.
[+] [-] oneoff786|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|3 years ago|reply
Of course, I might be wrong on all this and the Russians launching a new offensive on Kiev and Kharkov.
[+] [-] leshenka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _V_|3 years ago|reply
In a rare pre-recorded televised announcement, Putin said the West "wants to destroy our country" and claimed the West had tried to "turn Ukraine's people into cannon fodder," in comments translated by Reuters, repeating earlier claims in which he has blamed Western nations for starting a proxy war with Russia.
Putin said "mobilization events" would begin Wednesday without providing further details, aside from saying that he had ordered an increase in funding to boost Russia's weapons production, having committed (and lost) a large amount of weaponry during the conflict, which began in late February.
[+] [-] sam_lowry_|3 years ago|reply
There is no such thing as "partial mobilization".
There is a law on mobilization, but who cares about laws there days in Russia.
The main objective of this mobilization is to call up to 5mln conscripts in the army.
This morning, people already started to receive summons in person.
[+] [-] globalise83|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nindalf|3 years ago|reply
Calling for mobilization now gives them a few months to train and get equipped when winter brings fighting to a close. It'd be interesting to see where Russia finds officers for these new troops. Or maybe training/equipment/officers don't matter, if the plan is to use them as cannon fodder.
Regardless, Ukraine will find it harder to make progress next year like they've done in the last few weeks. There won't be any fronts that are thinly manned and easy to punch through like Kharkiv was.
[+] [-] scanny|3 years ago|reply
I think mobilisation and moving toward declaring the special operation a war (more mobilisation) could be the beginnings of that slippery slope.
[+] [-] SanjayMehta|3 years ago|reply
During the Gulf wars we would get all these "embedded" reporters; seems there aren't any now.
[+] [-] _ph_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickpp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rightbyte|3 years ago|reply