Russia's negotiating position ...

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Zelensky: Russia negotiating position becoming “more realistic”

Amazing the effects a very stiff resistance can have when the bully begins to realize he is getting his butt kicked isn’t it? The Russian barely trained draftees were not up to the task nor were their hearts into dying on a battle field in a brutal battle against people that were no threat to their homeland.

Now as long as nobody else takes a hand on his side he may be able to declare some sort of success while crawling back into his palace and trying to explain to his Oligarchs why they have to sell their dachas? The mistresses will be pizzed!

Anymouse the optimist

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/16/zelenskyy-says-russ…

News Russia-Ukraine war

Russia-Ukraine peace talks ‘sounding more realistic’: Zelenskyy

Kyiv sees room for compromise as Russian and Ukrainian delegations prepare for a new round of talks on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said peace talks with Russia were beginning to sound “more realistic” but that more time was needed to ensure the outcome of the negotiations were in Kyiv’s interests.

Zelenskyy’s comments early on Wednesday came as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine neared the three-week mark and Russian forces continued their bombardment of Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and the southern port city of Mariupol.

Note: There were several other sources for the information, I chose Aljazeera to irritate people who think it is an unreliable source.

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Russia-Ukraine peace talks ‘sounding more realistic’: Zelenskyy

Any Russian military softening? No.

When there is some stalling in the action this gives the Ukraine and advantage. The allies are coming to understand two of the weapon systems needed in air defenses. Those supplies can alter this dramatically for the Ukraine.

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Amazing the effects a very stiff resistance can have when the bully begins to realize he is getting his butt kicked isn’t it? The Russian barely trained draftees were not up to the task nor were their hearts into dying on a battle field in a brutal battle against people that were no threat to their homeland.

This article reminded me of your comment that the Russians lack professional NCOs, and rely on commissioned officers to do the NCO work. Thus far, four Russian generals have been killed in combat:

https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1011352/ukraine-says…

That seems to be an extraordinarily high number of generals killed in only three weeks of fighting.

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Thank you for recommending this post to our Best of feature.

syke6: This article reminded me of your comment that the Russians lack professional NCOs, and rely on commissioned officers to do the NCO work. Thus far, four Russian generals have been killed in combat:

Yes, it is not just the lack of experienced NCOs. Young Soviet era officer’s most important asset was the radio they had to contact their higher level commander as they did not make decisions without approval from above. Of course this lack of trust may have lead to the senior officers feeling the need to “have a look” exposing them to higher risk?

Put another way, it looks like nothing changed in the Russian military hierarchy with the fall of the wall.

The draft was (and from recent reading still is) corrupt with wealthy families paying bribes for deferments. Since much of the money was in Moscow area, the lowest by far rates of draftees actually showing up is in the Moscow region. Meanwhile the majority of those that did answer the call were from racially diverse poorer regions many of whom didn’t even speak the language.

I read an interesting book by a former draftee who took part in the Second Chechen War. He was given just 8 bullets to fire from his assault rifle in a much shortened basic training. When they got near the battle front helicopters arrived to drop off bodies of those who had been killed in action and he and others were loaded into the back of the MI-8 helicopter among body parts and blood until it was full for the trip to the front. He was living in Denmark when he wrote the book.

OT - amusing.

While serving on ships at sea as aircrew I had no other duties than to show up for scheduled or emergency flying stations launches. The Air Det techs and we (usually 2) AESOps shared a mess. I climbed up the ladder for a late breakfast after two 3 hour night dipping missions one morning and saw a sign over our doorway.

“Quiet Please, Aircrew Sleeping! Aircrew need eight hour sleep a day … plus whatever they can get at night!” Once I became a senior NCO the quarters improved to 4 man cabins. }};-D

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Oh, there you go.

https://www.rferl.org/a/1058315.html

Russia: Thousands Dodge Military Service as Draft Begins

April 07, 2005 15:15 GMT
By Claire Bigg

Many other articles on the subject including newer ones.

Tim

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Young Soviet era officer’s most important asset was the radio they had to contact their higher level commander as they did not make decisions without approval from above.

That was my takeaway last week, when the Russian tank column turned 180 degrees, then sat for several minutes, stationary and packed together, as Ukrainian artillery rained down on them: waiting for permission to retreat.

Steve

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Good BBC article on the four Russian generals killed in the Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60767664

A good read.

I was scanning the news today on my iPad and read another article about the points Tim has been making about the Russian Command & Control structure. But I haven’t found it again so far. Will post if I do.

It talked about how all decisions are made top down, and that lower ranking officers are afraid to make decisions without checking with the top brass. Apparently the generals being killed correspond in rank to a one-star US brigadier general and they have about the same decision making authority as a Lt. Colonel in the US Army. And decision making in the US army - and I presume Canada - is further delegated down the line to NCO’s. Totally different philosophy as to how to cope with the fog of war.

Seems the Ukraine brass understand this and are taking advantage of it. “Speaking to the WSJ a person within President Zelensky’s inner circle said Ukraine had a military intelligence team dedicated to targeting Russia’s officer class.”

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Seems the Ukraine brass understand this and are taking advantage of it. “Speaking to the WSJ a person within President Zelensky’s inner circle said Ukraine had a military intelligence team dedicated to targeting Russia’s officer class.”

Ho! Get your hands down. Do not salute me. There are gddmned snipers all around this area who would love to grease an officer. I’m Lieutenant Dan Taylor. Welcome to Fourth Platoon.

—Lieutenant Daniel Taylor

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Thus far, four Russian generals have been killed in combat:

Russian generals are expendable, How many did Stalin kill? In Russia a life is not worth a ruble, except Putin’s, of course.

The Captain

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With such high losses, some experts believe that the generals have not simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that Ukraine is likely to be targeting top-level Russian officers. “I don’t think this is an accident. One is an accident, but this many is targeted”, Rita Konaev of Georgetown University told the BBC.

If true, this is wonderful news for the Ukrainian effort and could well indicate that much more trouble for the Russians is to follow.

Pete

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If true, this is wonderful news for the Ukrainian effort and could well indicate that much more trouble for the Russians is to follow.

One high ranking military commenter said that Russia has only enough ammo for ten more days.

The Captain

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Dictators are all the same, they kill for money and power and control.

I remember watching the haunting video of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party purge….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Ba%27ath_Party_Purge

This is why history is so important to learn in schools….you remember the horrors that were committed by ruthless leaders.

Lucky Dog

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A good read.

I was scanning the news today on my iPad and read another article about the points Tim has been making about the Russian Command & Control structure. But I haven’t found it again so far. Will post if I do.

It talked about how all decisions are made top down, and that lower ranking officers are afraid to make decisions without checking with the top brass. Apparently the generals being killed correspond in rank to a one-star US brigadier general and they have about the same decision making authority as a Lt. Colonel in the US Army. And decision making in the US army - and I presume Canada - is further delegated down the line to NCO’s. Totally different philosophy as to how to cope with the fog of war.

Thanks Tex, after all these years on METaR gleaning stuff from the experts it feels sort of odd to actually know something. }};-@

I promise once this thing is over I shall fade back to humble obscurity and shed the funny blue crown! }};-D

Tim

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Found the article I referenced. Unfortunately can’t link it. It is a WSJ article published today, 3/16, by William Mauldin, Thomas Grove, and one other. I’m not a WSJ subscriber, but get access to a lot of their articles via my subscription to Apple News. (Well worth the price - access to lots of newspapers and magazines.)

Maybe someone else can find a link. Has more details than the BBC article.

Tex

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It talked about how all decisions are made top down, and that lower ranking officers are afraid to make decisions without checking with the top brass.

I remember a piece on the news during their Afghan adventure. When ambushed, instead of going after the attackers, the soldiers would cluster around the officer and wait for orders.

“Speaking to the WSJ a person within President Zelensky’s inner circle said Ukraine had a military intelligence team dedicated to targeting Russia’s officer class.”

The Continental army did the same thing: selected marksmen with those crazy long, and accurate, Pennsylvania rifles, picking off the British officers.

I supposed there is a lesson in there about dictatorships that crush independent thought.

Steve

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Note: There were several other sources for the information, I chose Aljazeera to irritate people who think it is an unreliable source.

I also have been choosing Al Jazeera lately, An[on]ymouse.

In the past, during big events, I used to skip around between CNBC, MSNBC, Fox, RT News, Al Jazeera, NPR, CBS, CNN, and ABC. By the time any major event was over, I had tasted all flavors of propaganda of the moment, nourishing my own special kind of skepticism.

In less than a month, Vladimir Putin has engaged in televised war crimes against humanity that none of the listed propagandists or my news sources in the past could convince me would occur if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

At the time, despite Al Jazeera’s accurate coverage of Putin’s atrocities in Syria, I somehow suspected that the claimed attacks against Syrian homes, schools, and hospitals could be hyperbole.

Observing social liberality among Russians online, I assumed Putin to be a somewhat tolerant authoritarian, seeing his benign neglect of nice Russian people. The online social media posts of fun-loving, cosmopolitan residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg suggest that they share “Western values” of live-and-let-live freedom, egalitarianism, and human kindness.

In less than one month, Putin’s war machine has doomed a modern, educated society to devolve into an isolated, economic ruin. The generals and soldiers who continue to obey Putin’s commands are themselves war criminals who each should be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court.

Putin has made himself one of the most universally despised and irredeemable figures in the last century. He has achieved this feat in three weeks of spreading malignancy.

If I had paid more attention to Al Jazeera than any of the US news sources over the last 10 years, I might have noticed that Western leaders on both sides of the aisle were being far too indulgent toward Putin. Perhaps I might have recognized Putin as a man on the road to ruining his country and setting up his nation to become a geographically vast version of North Korea, Venezuela, or Iran.

I feel sorry for ordinary Russian people - especially those young, friendly, educated folks born in the last 30 years. However, I do NOT feel sorry for any solder, general, or Russian currently serving Putin’s war machine in Ukraine.

Based on what we’ve been seeing, Putin’s minions may only redeem themselves by laying down their arms and “defecting” from Russia over to the Ukrainian side. The world will be the judge of Putin and all Russians. If that nation wishes to re-join civilization and become a functioning economic entity again, it must first remove Vladimir Putin from power by whatever means is available to them.

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I think a reasonable negotiating position for Russia would be:

We will rebuild all of the structures needlessly destroyed.

We will pay the families who lost someone a wage stipend for the rest of their lives.

Putin will have a a bullet in his head by Tuesday.

Russian media that participated in this fiasco will be shut down.

And everyone in the Russian Duma will be sent home and open elections held for new members, but only after an investigation and public examination of the Ukraine tragedy has been finished and published for the Russian people to see and read.

And a statement of abject apology would also probably be appropriate.

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Russian media that participated in this fiasco will be shut down.

Someone said something like “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

Russia’s state TV hit by stream of resignations

Channel One colleague Zhanna Agalakova quit her job as Europe correspondent while two journalists have left rival NTV. Lilia Gildeyeva had worked for the channel as a presenter since 2006 and Vadim Glusker had been at NTV for almost 30 years.

Maria Baronova is the highest-profile resignation at RT, formerly known as Russia Today. Former chief editor at RT, she told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg this month Mr Putin had already destroyed Russia’s reputation and that the economy was dead too.

Former London correspondent Shadia Edwards-Dashti announced her resignation on the day Russia invaded Ukraine without giving a reason. Moscow-based journalist Jonny Tickle quit on the same day “in light of recent events”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60763494

Unfortunately, I expect the resignations to have the same impact on Russian media as the resignations of Shep Smith and Chris Wallace had on Fox Noise, none.

Steve

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except Putin’s, of course.

This is definitely true today. If Putin remains alive, billions and billions have to spent on war, on reconstruction, on “policing” the area, etc. If Putin attains room temperature, most of those billions can be saved.

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