Ukraine Always Get What You Want

They were key in World War I when getting across No Man's Land required something other than a head-long charge into automatic weapons fire. In World War II, armor served much the same purpose to get troops across the battle field while raining down munitions fire that could, among other things, bring down a building. Modern warfare because of things like drones, jet powered aircraft, smart missiles that can be launched from miles away and landed literally on a dime, tanks are less effective. But if you have control of the air and can effectively eliminate threats from places other than the ground, tanks still have a place. They were fine in the Iraq wars when you were "speeding" across open land needing to take out fortified positions. But again, the US had complete air superiority. Not so fine in Afghanistan and Vietnam where terrain rendered them useless.

 

Tanks are a great hammer - but thus far the Russians have not gone full shock and awe. They've been somewhat delicate, trying not to fully enrage world opinion. They've gone after selected targets rather than just playing "Hulk Smash!" If you look at what they've done in Syria, when the gloves are off they can flatten cities and kill/maim civilians wholesale. They've been trying to use the scalpel, not the sledgehammer. This is part of why they've been held out of Kyiv. They've begun to break out the multiple rocket launcher artillery and the cluster bombs, whether it is out of frustration or impatience, and that's going to up the destruction substantially.

Modern main battle tanks on the move at speed (60 mph or so) are very difficult to deal with. Tanks moving slowly, especially if they don't have a substantial screen of infantry to protect them, are much more vulnerable. The Russians have also been far less successful at taking control of the air over Ukraine than expected, and that's huge. As Spartan said, if they held the skies things would be very different. That's also why the EU supplying planes is a big deal, and even moreso that Poland is donating Sukhoi fighters that the Ukranians know how to fly and maintain already so they can just put a pilot in the seat and turn them loose.

 

The Swiss freezing the accounts has to be a major shock. They’ve never done that. It was the perfect place for the Russians to hide their money, whatever isn’t tied up in Trump Tower apartments and the like.

 

One other point about the Russian army: One of the things we learned after the cold war was what an enormous Paper Dragon the Russian army was. Soviet military capabilities were a mile wide, and an inch deep, with perhaps an over focus on looking good in a May Day parade, and less emphasis on logistics and sustainability (partly because hypothetical WWIII was expected to be so lethal, there was no sense in figuring out how to keep a tank rolling for a month, because it woulda been destroyed in a week or two).

So there's a chance - as bad ass as modern Russian aircraft appears to be - they don't have nearly enough training and maintenance support necessary to maintain any kind of operational tempo.

 

How much money does Trump have tied up with Russia and are these sanctions going to hurt his organization?

 

It hurts the people building the new luxury units the most. Trump is out of the building game.

 

The Swiss freezing accounts. Next thing you know, the Vatican will stop hiding Nazis.

 

Who knows? There is very little transparency and truth out there on Trump's true financial status. Most of his money is tied up in real estate, but not doubt he has some stashed.

Don't overlook the news out of London that they are going after more information regarding the ownership of the real estate that has been bought up in Londongrad.

 

One other thing regarding tanks... when they refer to armor, that's not just tanks. It includes armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery. These are armored but thinner skinned but still far less vulnerable than infantry riding in trucks. The idea is to have a much more mobile force capable of moving up to hundreds of miles. That big column twenty miles from Kyiv is probably less than ten percent tanks and it includes trucks of ammo, munitions, and supplies.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/28/biden-new-sanctions-ukraine-putin-defenses/

"Officials noted that the United States and its allies learned over the weekend that the Russian central bank has been trying to bring back its dollar reserves from various places they are held all over the world, to use them to prop up the economy and ruble. Officials noted that the United States and its allies learned over the weekend that the Russian central bank has been trying to bring back its dollar reserves from various places they are held all over the world, to use them to prop up the economy and ruble."

 

True. Back in the days of the Cold War, Soviet ships looked way more impressive than ours. They had tons of redundant systems because they didn't have anyone onboard who could fix stuff. We did.

 

Another good Twitter thread exploring Russian systemic and doctrinal failures: