Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[OUTLAW 09]

Thanks for the detail Outlaw09!

Shchors---Putin is all in now as he cannot lose--the irregulars and the arms he has sent are no longing helping his proxy get a federated solution. so a defeat of the proxy is in the eyes of Putin a visual defeat of himself in the global media. there is some concern in the ruling elite that the recent polling showing him to be strong is mushy in three critical areas and those numbers are starting to drift downwards within the Russian population. Paritculary interesting is that a majority of Russians want no war with the Ukraine.

He continues to beef up his border forces and this is the key he seems to be pulling units from the Far East who have no understanding of the Ukraine thus will be more than willing to attack and kill "fascists" his main information war drumbeat for the first three months.

Concerning continued troop buildup:

3. Russia continues to build up the number of its troops near the state border with Ukraine.

In addition to the units previously concentrated at the border, [new] units from other regions of Russia are currently being deployed. Earlier, the movement of the divisions of the 32nd Motorized Rifle Brigade and the 24th Separate Brigade of the GRU of the General Staff were recorded from Novosibirsk Oblast [region].

This weekend, we documented the redeployment of units from the Russian 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade [MRB] to the state border with Ukraine. It looked strange, given that the Brigade’s permanent place of deployment is in the Murmansk Oblast [region] of Russia [in the northwest]. Today, however, these data have been confirmed.

The 200th MRB has tanks, BM-21 “Grad” and BM-27 “Hurricane” MLRS, 2SZ “Acacia” self-propelled artillery at its disposal. That is everything that Putin’s troops have unleashed on Ukraine in recent weeks.

[OUTLAW 09]

Now US finally calls a spade by the name spade---I had mentioned a number of times in the really early part of this thread that the US had to final ly call out Russia on it's open and blatant violation of the cruise missile development as part of their signing of the INF. That was the first true indication of where Putin was headed and we ignored it in order to do the reset thing.

Next they have to finally call Russia out in it's failure to have destroyed over 2000 tanks and APCs which they signed up to do under the OSCE as did and was carried out by the US and NATO---a lot of those OSCE scheduled T64/72s are now in the Ukraine.

So much for the "Russian reset"---the EU is talking actually about Putin having abused that reset.

Estimates of the coming sanctions are running in the 100B range over the next two years---a fifth of the Russian foreign currency reserves.

What is going to hurt is that by being cut off from the EU and US capital markets and currency exchange markets--Russia just cannot take the billions from their USD/Euro foreign currency reserves to prop up their economy---in order to do that they must cross over the sanctions which now they cannot do thus the Russian central bank is in one heck of a bind now. Maybe that is the reason for a lot of talk about a special tax on the rich?

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-violate...002749693.html

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia must becoming desperate to send over a full COL in uniform to delivery weapons to an insurgent group---he had to have been from the GRU.

51st Bde refers to their airborne BDE which has been in the lead attacks lately and has been holding down also a critical border area while getting shelled daily by both the mercenaries and the Russians.

Yesterday in the ATO zone a sniper eliminated a Colonel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, whist he tried to deliver weapons from Russia to terrorists again, writes Zaporozhye city council deputy Denis Pyatigorets on his Facebook page.

«Today, brazen from impunity Colonel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in uniform, chevron straps and (as it turned out) with an identity card was carrying arms to separatists from Russia to the territory of Ukraine. However, the arms did not reach the destination. A kind-hearted and indescribably modest sniper from the reconnaissance group of the 51 brigade enhanced unpretentious decoration of a moscovit UAZ vehicle with brains of the brazen Colonel.» — writes Pyatigorets.

Accompanying the Russian Army Colonel group of people was detained by the ATO Forces.

http://en.inforesist.org/a-staff-off...-the-ato-area/

[Dayuhan]

Interesting dichotomy between this:

Putin is all in now as he cannot lose--the irregulars and the arms he has sent are no longing helping his proxy get a federated solution. so a defeat of the proxy is in the eyes of Putin a visual defeat of himself in the global media. there is some concern in the ruling elite that the recent polling showing him to be strong is mushy in three critical areas and those numbers are starting to drift downwards within the Russian population. Paritculary interesting is that a majority of Russians want no war with the Ukraine.

and this:

Estimates of the coming sanctions are running in the 100B range over the next two years---a fifth of the Russian foreign currency reserves.

What is going to hurt is that by being cut off from the EU and US capital markets and currency exchange markets--Russia just cannot take the billions from their USD/Euro foreign currency reserves to prop up their economy---in order to do that they must cross over the sanctions which now they cannot do thus the Russian central bank is in one heck of a bind now. Maybe that is the reason for a lot of talk about a special tax on the rich?

Putin can't afford to lose in the Eastern Ukraine... but can he afford to sink his own economy and provoke the wrath of the oligarchs and the business community, both licit and illicit?

Russia is in some ways uniquely vulnerable to sanctions. Sanctions generally fail because they are based on the premise that if you hurt the people, the people will pressure the government into changing course. That doesn't help if the people have no influence over the government. In Russia's case, sanctions have the capacity to hurt not "the people", but that small subset of the "the people" that is internationally connected, engaged in large scale business, and wealthy. Putin may not have to listen to "the people"... but can he afford to antagonize the oligarchs by provoking further sanctions?

Putin is living dangerously no matter what he does, and it will be interesting to see what his next move will be.

[OUTLAW 09]

Interesting dichotomy between this:



and this:



Putin can't afford to lose in the Eastern Ukraine... but can he afford to sink his own economy and provoke the wrath of the oligarchs and the business community, both licit and illicit?

Russia is in some ways uniquely vulnerable to sanctions. Sanctions generally fail because they are based on the premise that if you hurt the people, the people will pressure the government into changing course. That doesn't help if the people have no influence over the government. In Russia's case, sanctions have the capacity to hurt not "the people", but that small subset of the "the people" that is internationally connected, engaged in large scale business, and wealthy. Putin may not have to listen to "the people"... but can he afford to antagonize the oligarchs by provoking further sanctions?

Putin is living dangerously no matter what he does, and it will be interesting to see what his next move will be.

Dayuhan--a good comment---the problem for the west is will the sanctions be enough of a short term threat vs definitely a long term threat weapon---no actually they could in fact destroy the Russian economy for years to come.

There was a US Army saying---money is in fact a weapons system.

If the EU sanctions coming today indicate a credit cut off from EU banks then Russia is in serious trouble---there are German indications as well that the EU Central Bank will be raising the risk levels for Russian loans and credits and today the Russian central bank also pulled back a new bond offer and indications are they will be raising again the interest rates. EU meeting started 10:30 European time.

IMO Putin does not see all of this as he is focused on his image of Russia as a superpower equal to all superpowers thus "entitled" to it's role and what he says should be the goals of that Russian superpower.

Right now the information war is setting the stage for the Russian population that the coming economic hardships are the single source of their problems and it is all the West's fault and that is being reflected as well in the polling.

An ancient Stalinist tactic--- in when trouble blame the West.

If the reported sniper killing of a Russian COL inside the Ukraine is in fact truth---waiting for his ID to show up in the blogs which it will via the SBU--- then that is an indication that Putin definitely is not listening and in fact he is all in.

IMO Putin is startled that the West has hung in so long after the Crimea---his experiences with the Western reactions stems from the Georgian and Moldavian events where the West went back to normal relatively quickly---this time that is not happening much to the surprise of Moscow which one occasionally sees in random comments the last couple of weeks.

There was a short comment sent out via Interfax yesterday contributed to the Russian FM---OK West tell us what you want as we do not understand your demands---found it strange as it did not fit the information war flow from Interfax---it was almost like a plea for some assistance ie a bridge for a way out of the mess they are in.

[OUTLAW 09]

It seems the Russian GRU urgently needs to convince young Russian artillerists to stop using the Russian Facebook to boost their egos.

These entries indicated that the Russian Army delivered into the Ukraine Grads BM21s with their Russian Army crews around 13 July.

Waiting for a good blogger site to do their analysis work on the geo tags of the photos for validation of the location of the BM21 unit inside the Ukraine as well as the IL76 photo.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/2...g-of-invasion/

[OUTLAW 09]

It seems the Russian GRU urgently needs to convince young Russian artillerists to stop using the Russian Facebook to boost their egos.

These entries indicated that the Russian Army delivered into the Ukraine Grads BM21s with their Russian Army crews around 13 July.

Waiting for a good blogger site to do their analysis work on the geo tags of the photos for validation of the location of the BM21 unit inside the Ukraine as well as the IL76 photo.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/2...g-of-invasion/

They also need to rein in the Russian UN Ambassador---- as is with all social media tweets---cannot find the actual quote by day and time---but if true then the GRU needs to really talk to him.

https://twitter.com/MaidanOnline/sta...776256/photo/1

[BrentWilliams]

I saw this and this rings true to me, at least. I never thought the actual population living in Eastern Ukraine (or Crimea for that matter), really support an armored movement to become part of Russia.

http://www.interpretermag.com/why-pe...onist-banners/

Why People in Eastern Ukraine Haven’t Flocked to Secessionist Banners
s the Ukrainian military closes in on Moscow-backed forces in southeastern Ukraine, Russian commentators are scrambling to explain why the Russian-speaking population in that region have not flocked to the banners of the secessionists in Donetsk and Lugansk.

Not surprisingly, these commentators have not focused on the fact that the population there now overwhelmingly identifies as Ukrainians and has no interest in becoming part of the Russian Federation. What they are saying explains a lot about how Moscow is trying to explain away its own miscalculation about the support it would receive.

Which makes the recent movement of Russian forces more interesting, I think. The possibility of Russian directly using forces to roll back Ukraine forces seems to be raising. For example, http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/3560 . If you invade and the population doesn't support you, how do you establish long term stability with a Keiv government still in the West. Moreover, its likely to be a Keiv government that is getting actual military assistance from the west. This is on top of further economic sanctions.

In sum, if Russia decides to directly become involved and take the harm of economic sanctions, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to act decisively and seize Kiev? If you are going to isolate yourself fully, why not?

[Firn]

At the first glance the newest round of sanctions seem to have a different quality compared to pretty soft ones. I will take a closer look at it and likely post it on the thread about the Russian economy.

EU ambassadors approve economic sanctions on Russia

Today @ 17:32

By EUOBSERVER

EU ambassadors have approved a raft of economic sanctions against Russia, banning EU citizens and companies from trading Russian bonds, as well as selling weapons to or importing them from Russia, exporting technology for oil exploration and items with military and civilian use. The sanctions will enter into force Friday.

Possibly the Duma will be indeed so stupid to 'uproot' all foreign-based audit companies in the country or other patriotic-idiotic stuff and it will continue to cut deeper into it's economy's flesh. More in the economy thread, but a weaker Russian economy will have an impact on the war.

[Firn]

@Shchors and outlaw: At the very least both large motorways to Donezk, Makiivka and Horlivka, the M04 and the H21 seem to be at the center of rather intense fights. The H21 runs in this fought over area through the urban areas of Shaktarsk, Torez and Shinzne and turns then northeast to Krasnyi Luch. Between them there is a not too dense network of roads, little rivers and almost only flat terrain which should be dry. So supplies to the west should be possible.

Donezk and Makiivka form a large urban hub. The recent 'pincer' offensive obviously bypassed this densly settled area and hit in far more open terrain.



As usual one should be quite careful with those maps, taking fog of war and party interests in mind.

[OUTLAW 09]

@Shchors and outlaw: At the very least both large motorways to Donezk, Makiivka and Horlivka, the M04 and the H21 seem to be at the center of rather intense fights. The H21 runs in this fought over area through the urban areas of Shaktarsk, Torez and Shinzne and turns then northeast to Krasnyi Luch. Between them there is a not too dense network of roads, little rivers and almost only flat terrain which should be dry. So supplies to the west should be possible.

Donezk and Makiivka form a large urban hub. The recent 'pincer' offensive obviously bypassed this densly settled area and hit in far more open terrain.



As usual one should be quite careful with those maps, taking fog of war and party interests in mind.

Shchors/firn---

Here is a perfect example for the Ukrainian crowd-sourcing going on for those UA troops that have been holding the border areas and getting shelled by the mercenaries as well as the Russian 3-5 times daily.

Raised funding goes for food, supplies and other needs of the airborne, SF and other units in that pocket that have surprisingly been holding on well.

firn---probably a new updated battlefield position map as well is in the article.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/2...rom-all-sides/

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian information war media has been interesting to say the least this last six months.

A Russian titled video started showing up in the last week or so depicting the alleged launch of a Buk shooting at the airliner

Interesting blogger analysis of the video defining it as a fake "troll" project--- everyone should simply ignore the fake video was his suggestion.

http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.nl/

[Dayuhan]

Dayuhan--a good comment---the problem for the west is will the sanctions be enough of a short term threat vs definitely a long term threat weapon---no actually they could in fact destroy the Russian economy for years to come.

The sanctions themselves are a long term threat, but the elite's fear of sanctions is immediate. The motivator in this case is not so much what the existing sanctions have already done as what the economic elite thinks they will lose if further sanctions are applied. Those losses would take time to be realized, but the economic elite are not going to wait for that to happen to make their position known. They don't want to respond to losses, they want to prevent losses, and they will apply whatever pressure they can muster to achieve that goal. How much pressure they can muster is another question, but I'd guess there's a whole lot of talk going on behind the scenes right now.

Comes back to that same question: Putin can't afford to "lose" in the Eastern Ukraine, but can he afford to directly antagonize the business oligarchs?

[OUTLAW 09]

The sanctions themselves are a long term threat, but the elite's fear of sanctions is immediate. The motivator in this case is not so much what the existing sanctions have already done as what the economic elite thinks they will lose if further sanctions are applied. Those losses would take time to be realized, but the economic elite are not going to wait for that to happen to make their position known. They don't want to respond to losses, they want to prevent losses, and they will apply whatever pressure they can muster to achieve that goal. How much pressure they can muster is another question, but I'd guess there's a whole lot of talk going on behind the scenes right now.

Comes back to that same question: Putin can't afford to "lose" in the Eastern Ukraine, but can he afford to directly antagonize the business oligarchs?

Dayuhan---he can---Russian internal power is built on four legs, 1) the military, 2) the security services, 3) oligarchs, and 4) the Russian mob and over all of this the Russian Orthodox Church---so it really it just a balancing game for Putin.

[OUTLAW 09]

Dayuhan---he can---Russian internal power is built on four legs, 1) the military, 2) the security services, 3) oligarchs, and 4) the Russian mob and over all of this the Russian Orthodox Church---so it really it just a balancing game for Putin.

Dayuhan---a solid article concerning the internal debate now among the four pillars of Russia power that I just wrote about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/wo...-tactics.html?

Dayuhan--this is the core piece of the article and it goes to the information war comments I have been making here--it was focused at the EU, the Ukrainians, but more importantly the Russian themselves.

Putin was able via info war messaging to increase his popularity, influence the mood of the Russian population to support him and his actions, and in fact was able to hold the EU up from further hard stage three sanctions-successfully by the way in holding the EU especially Germany in place-----that info war crashed the day the airliner crashed and they have not recovered to the previous successes of that info war. And the EU has gone to stage three sanctions with promises of more to come if he does not throttle back.

Actually they have lost their own information war and you can sense that in their various press releases which are all over the map especially on the reasons for the crash which was up to 15 different theories.

Putin's most serious mistake was that he had seen how the EU/US responded to Georgia and Moldavia and honesty had assumed the same in the Ukraine--meaning a lot of yelling, teeth grinding and a lot of words flying around and then it would be over and back to business as usual.

His second serious mistake was believing the myth of the power of gas and oil--meaning the EU would stop on anything to avoid less gas but in fact it appears now that Russia is so tied to the needed sales income from the two raw resources he cannot cut gas and oil off without truly destroying his economy for the next 20 years. He simply did not or wanted to not see the economic interdependence.

From the INT article:
More frequent and prominent critics are saying that Mr. Putin and the hard-line leaders in the Kremlin overreached by suggesting that Russia, far more dependent than the old Soviet Union on international trade and financial markets, could thrive without the West.

“They were not anticipating the West to make radical moves, costly moves,” said Nikolai Petrov, an independent political analyst. “What is happening is different from what they wanted and what they expected.”

He and others pointed to the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 over embattled southeastern Ukraine on July 17 as upsetting the balancing act that Mr. Putin had managed to pull off to maintain support from the public, hard-line nationalists, the security services, the oligarchs and the more liberal business community.

“Until this catastrophe, Putin’s calculations were pretty good in terms of being able to win any tactical battle,” Mr. Petrov said.

The Kremlin had been counting on its ability to maintain just enough instability in Ukraine to keep the country dependent on Russian good will, while making Europe and the United States cautious about intervening too assertively there.

Dayuhan--this is where the information warfare fit into his strategy.

Right after this weekend, when the likelihood of more serious European sanctions materialized, Mr. Putin met with advisers to say that Russia needed to become self-reliant. He was referring to arms production previously done in Ukraine, but the sentiment echoed in other fields.

[Dayuhan]

Dayuhan---he can---Russian internal power is built on four legs, 1) the military, 2) the security services, 3) oligarchs, and 4) the Russian mob and over all of this the Russian Orthodox Church---so it really it just a balancing game for Putin.

Domestic politics are always a balancing act, and the balance points can shift very quickly. Multiple pillars don't always have identical weightings, and there are sub groups within each of these groups with divergent opinions. I doubt that any of us are in a position to accurately evaluate the domestic power balance. The ball is in Putin's court, and we'll see what move he chooses to make.