From the author's point of view, it's ridiculous when we can't analyze and discuss what the enemy openly discusses. This gives rise to a screaming or one-sided kind of analyst who littered the information space. And there is some reason to assume that not only the public part of it has been littered.
I watched the program with Pavel Shchelin with interest, which does not belong to the mentioned predominant genre :)
The author shares almost everything that Paul said. But I would significantly complement what was said so that there would be no mistake in the assessment of important things. Today, Ukraine risks finding itself in exactly the same situation as before the war. Then the West signaled to Ukraine that there would be a war. And Ukraine answered that you should not scare us, you have a behind-the-scenes agreement with Russia, and in general, you want to sacrifice our interests. Just take us to NATO.
Amazingly, this situation is now literally repeating itself. The West signals that the war is becoming increasingly dangerous for Ukraine and it's time to correct something. What does Ukraine answer? Yes, almost the same, as pre-war: "Don't scare us, you have an agreement, and in general, you want to sacrifice our interests. You just didn't take us to NATO."
Yes, every day of war raises the price of the issue for the West, not only for Ukraine. Because it is planned to restore Ukraine at his expense. And this will have to be somehow explained to the attention of spoiled Western voters.
But it's not just that, from my point of view. Ukraine still lags very far behind the West in opportunities for a comprehensive and objective assessment of the situation.
It's natural for several reasons.
1. Ukraine was brutally attacked. Which inevitably emotionally colorizes what is happening.
2. Ukraine has neglected the need for any systematic and objective analysis for too long. Objective analysis prevents the authorities from driving on the handbrake. And which of the Ukrainian leaders was able to overcome the temptation to control the handbrake?
3. Ukraine is fascinated by the analysis lying in the Procrustean bed of party PR, in a TV picture. Therefore, objective information coming from the field (for example, from Yuri Butusov, as a fresh case) can irritate many in power. It doesn't fit into PR.
There is a non-illusory risk at this point.
The fundamental problem of forming a political course in a democratically replaceable state is that the government is tied to the current sentiment of the voter at short intervals (and the current large-scale war is still de facto about short intervals).
It's a dance where everyone thinks he controls another. Both politicians and their voters are involved in inertia. As an illustration, I remembered the famous episode in "Golden Fever", where Chaplin's character dances, girding his falling pants with a dog leash. Even more or less to dance... Until the cat appears.
The average voter, aka public opinion, is frankly inert, does not bother with an in-depth analysis of the situation, and is always very late in assessing the situation. But he sticks to illusions and puts pressure on politicians. It puts pressure on political decisions, on military decisions. Pressure is often heated by armies of bots, including Zaporebriks. Because he is used to thinking simplistically, superficially, and can't distinguish. Because trying to make realistic forecasts is too alarming for him.
The voter himself is deceived by politicians, and he takes revenge on politicians himself. For accumulated, due to his connivance or short-sighted applause, mistakes. Disappointment and discontent cover the voter with some delay. Which allows politicians to amuse themselves with self-deception. But when this happens, it's too late to react.
The situation is even more complicated, taking into account the context. For example, when the rating of the president (any) before the war is reduced several times, it is not the same risk for the nation as the decline in confidence in the Supreme Commander-in-Chief during the war...
Returning to Pavel Shchelin's estimates. Yes, a voter in Ukraine does not know that his empathetic mass Western "colleague" can today sympathize with Ukraine and seem like a reliable ally. But the eternal nuance did not go anywhere - its shirt, in the modern world, is closer to the body. Yes, for the most part, the Western voter won't say - take the money from Ukraine, give it to us.
He will say, "Houston, we have problems. Their solution urgently requires money." Then politicians will think about it. Because their employer is society, and it's dissatisfied. Shareholders are dissatisfied... In the West, politicians are used to reacting to such things without waiting for the Maidans.
But the West is concerned not only about the elections that are always urgent for democracies. Below I will try to supplement Pavel Shchelin's TZ in this regard. First, I will allow myself a few necessary theses in defense of the genre in which the material will be written.
1. Heresy of analytics :)
It will be purely analytical material. Only for those who strive to honestly analyze and know how heavy this cross is :) I invite adherents of propaganda to read other materials - not related to ruthless, imaginary "insulting the feelings of believers" propaganda, the genre of analytics.
Analytics and propaganda perform different functions, although they serve one common cause. During the war - victory. But honest analytics, to tell the truth, always risks more. Because, unlike propaganda, it is unpleasant. Moreover, because of its very nature, it is heresy.
Analytics deliberately appeals to a few. The analyst, like his thoughtful reader, is always in the minority. They strive to see and, very often, see patterns of future events and future consequences before the mass reader. And, therefore, it can be dangerous to deviate far from the established "norm". So they always risk facing the indignation of the Holy Inquisition of public opinion and all kinds of punishing "apostates" of the right hand. All those who are wrong, at the moment, by definition, cannot. Although their mistakes are recognized and even repented in them, it happens only after hundreds of years.
The analyst, with his reader, takes the risk of looking into the future and therefore finds himself in a probabilistic world - in the garden of eternally divergent and looping paths, where not everything is possible to "guess". The average man is "always right" because he follows a safe trampled path and judges everything retroactively (just does not notice it).
Rightness is more important for the average person than the search for Truth. But the truth about our world is inconvenient, it hurts the Ego. Since it is consonant with the line from the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians of the Apostle Paul: "Now we see as if through dull glass, fortune-tellingly, then face to face; now I know in part, and then I will know as I am known."
Despite this difficulty, our inevitable human limitations, the analyst is trying to anticipate. Based on praemonitus, praemunitus - warned means armed.
What is even more incomprehensible and heretical, honest analytics allows itself the impudence to voice a thing that propaganda will never say to itself: "I can be wrong." Analytics can even suggest that there may be several truths. And it is not always given to people exactly what exactly will be true or true in the future. Even to the prophets, even the best of the best, the smartest of the smartest, the most insightful of the insightful.
Analytics admits the idea that the other may be partly right, also right, or entirely right. Therefore, the analyst is able and ready to hear the opinion of another. What propaganda never bothers about.
Analytics is not afraid of the fact that the more complex the phenomenon is analyzed, the more complex, multidimensional, and ambiguous the picture becomes. After all, the road is just a road. Whether we like it subjectively or not. It's stupid to demand that she "change", become easier, straighter, smoother... Or foam on the devices.
Analytics is a way and ability to "read" the world differently. It has a high price as an occupation and as a gift. Not only in tons of time spent working with information and thinking about it. Emotional price. Because when a layman read about the next success of TRO units on the front line, he would just be happy. And the analyst would wonder why so many TRO units appeared in the hottest spots at the front? The conclusion would not immerse him in the bliss of the one who is not ignorant.
And yet... And despite this... A sharp reader of analytics, let's look forward from the height of a free analytical flight. Spreading our wings.
2. What is the West afraid of besides elections?
From the author's point of view, the West, even the Anglo-Saxon one, is concerned that Ukraine may simply not cope with the challenge it faces. Because Ukraine's defeat breaks the entire global game of the West and creates huge risks for it. Global risks.
Team computer games have such an important parameter as timing. It is relentless
and, in a huge number of cases, predetermines the result of the game. That's why every team member needs to do everything on time. Pump up the right skill in time, and find yourself in the right place on time. The advantage of the West in logistics is largely due to the excellent sense of timing. No Latin American “manian” :) The West understands perfectly well that Ukraine is far behind in timing. Problems for Russia are growing too slowly to compensate for the domestic backlog.
Yes, Putin and Rogozin already in April at the Vostochny cosmodrome, clearly not from a good life, performed a performance unprecedented before Lukashenko in the spirit of "While our spaceships are plowing the expanses of the Universe" from "Special Operation Y". Yes, at a recent meeting with Lukashenko, Putin looked and sounded unusually insecure.
But that's not enough yet. Sanctions are too slow and have ceased to become significant. Russia has too much money to continue to hire "volunteers", and finance the army and military-industrial complex.
Ukraine should look for how to buy time. I wrote about it 9 months before the war, I'm writing now. And Ukraine needs a completely different speed and depth of perestroika.
Ukraine has difficulties with timing not only and not so much because our allies delay deliveries, bureaucratized something, doubt something, or darken for some reason. Even not only because Ukraine was too sluggishly preparing for war, it slowly redesigned pre-war budgets. That many in power feared the army and did not adequately build up the MTR as an optimal asymmetric response to Russia's capabilities. That they kicked for an unforgivably long time about military orders, pulled with the missile program, "Stugnaya", etc.
Instead of creating an effective (yes, quite expensive) and significant reserve, they relied on mobilization and Territorial Defense (the author himself called for the development of this component in March 2014, but many subsequent events clearly showed that in Ukraine it will not work as expected). Yes, in practice it is impossible to compensate for the lack of many years of careful preparation and necessary motivation by the "wall plan" or initiatives, as the above-mentioned journalist put it, in the spirit of Stalin's order "Not a step back". But you can generate a multibillion-dollar (in dollars) shadow market for "services", and you can encourage a lot of people to leave the country or not return. Additionally bleeding it during the war of exhaustion and for the future.
Ukraine as a whole has spent too much time and effort over 30 years of independence on illusory tasks and internal showdowns. On initiatives about endless "running with obstacles" and creating risks for your citizens. The country has never had (and still has) a realistic agenda based on national rather than party, clan, official, or personal-oligarchic interests. And, by the way, the voter can make any claims against politicians, but it was he who did not achieve new, transparent, clear, honest, progressive rules of the game. While only their appearance, rooting could make society (and therefore a reflection of aggression!) effective.
We must know, and clearly understand what we do as a nation in a difficult and dangerous world every day. And where is the optimal place for each of us - both in peacetime and in wartime. All this could be built in advance. If the desire of the next establishment to catch immeasurably fish in muddy water and roll the golden-breathing Sun by hand had not regularly won.
Так.
Of course, we can say that collective Western "they" are afraid in vain. "They" in the first days of the war were afraid and inadequately assessed the resilience of Ukraine. But there's a nuance. After Ghani's flight to Afghanistan, the West really "read" Zelensky inadequately. But this cannot be said about the ability of the West to count at all. Many things in the world did not happen as the West allegedly expected. Although we don't know for sure who expected what. Even in Afghanistan.
But, dear reader, we will not question the advantage of the West over Ukraine in science, in the economy, like weapons, or even in household appliances, will we? All this requires better calculations. Therefore, the opinions and concerns of partners must be taken into account. They are not always unfounded.
The modern country is not a tiny Greek policy. Victory in a large-scale war does not rest on the heroes. The Boers or Zulus were not less courageous than the British. But they lost... We are talking about the struggle of worlds inhabited mainly by ordinary people. But living by different rules. The rules help to win someone, they interfere with someone.
3. A few assessments and difficult questions
Against the background of not always advertised, but noticeable frictions of Ukraine with partners, the Pentagon organized an eloquent drain on CNN. The drain concerned the amount of Russian equipment destroyed by Ukraine. The estimates of the source are quite close to those of the Ukrainian General Staff in tanks. But strongly (almost at times) they diverge when it comes to artillery and, especially, aviation. For example, the difference for downed helicopters is more than 3 times.
The information of an extraordinary CNN source in the Pentagon means that Russia is much further away from the point of exhaustion of resources than it is seen in Ukraine. Even purely militarily, not to mention economic, etc.
And when Ukraine talks about the upcoming imminent parity at the front in armaments with Russia (which will allow the military liberation of all occupied territories, then the Kuban or there to reach Primorye, where, as you know, one in three - with Ukrainian roots), this raises questions.
А. Is the West ready to give us at least hundreds of combat aircraft comparable to the Russian number of helicopters, air defense systems, and long-range missile systems?
Not only the supplied but also the quantity of equipment planned for delivery is not yet claimed to be compared with the necessary. In commemorative February 2014, Shoigu said that only until 2020. Russia will spend more than $641 billion on the purchase of the latest weapons and military equipment (yes, a lot will traditionally be stolen, but not everything). Not even against the background of the pandemic, Russia everyone increased military spending - in the pre-war 2021. SIPRI estimated Russian military expenditures as a whole at $65.9 billion.
By the way, based on the figures of the Ukrainian General Staff, Forbes estimated the cost of equipment lost in Ukraine by Russia at $13 billion. Yes, Russia spends a lot of money on what, including nuclear weapons, remote fleets, etc. But 13 billion are too far from the trillions she spent all the time on rearmament. How much did Ukraine spend over the same years on rearmament? Is the West ready to cover such a difference? It's about the price of parity and the realism of its quick achievement.
We cannot rely only on weapons coming from the West. Something must change quickly, radically, and qualitatively in the army, society, and economy so that parity arises.
One of the answers, to be honest, on the surface - everyone should be in their place. And to do what can maximize the survival of Ukraine as a system as a whole.
In general, if Ukrainians are going to survive, we must admit that we can no longer but think about the country as a whole (although, for the most part, we are used to doing otherwise).
In the meantime, for example, in April, the Ministry of Finance assumed that GDP fell to 50%. Enterprises were massively closed, capacities were destroyed, people and firms were dispersed, and states were reduced. But, interestingly, the same Ministry of Finance already proposes to raise taxes in May. To miraculously finish off the survivors? To what? Just like an illustration.
What is happening in countries without a normal economy can be recalled by the example of Ukraine's ever-memorable sale by Russia of 11 Tu-160 and Tu-95MS strategic bombers, plus almost 600 Kh-55 cruise missiles (up to 2500 km range). Approximately at the price of 1 of these bombers, in payment of gas debt. Perhaps some of them are applied against Ukraine today. Or they could protect her. Cut into metal, by the way, it was many times more.
B. Will there be no effect of Tsushima, a "stranded squadron" fighting with a concentrated enemy? And so, for example, when artillery is delivered before modern air defense systems, how much will it be destroyed during transportation or in places of deployment to reliable air cover?
C. Will it not have a systemic impact on the fact that Russia's airports, tank farms, bridges, substations, roads, etc. have remained in good condition, but Ukraine’s didn’t? Will the West supply Ukraine with such an (unthinkable) number of missiles (the President called the figure 2400 on the evening of May 27), which Russia has already spent and will still spend so that Ukraine can create and maintain equal conditions for the transfer and repair of equipment, for supply?
D. Will the West supply Ukraine with nuclear weapons "for parity"? No, the author will not ask such a question.
The West is well aware and, with knowledge, assesses the situation. Pragmatically evaluates.
When Ukraine was still cautious with the wording and information on Azovstal, the leading Anglo-Saxon media were already full of headlines with the number of 1,730 prisoners (synchronously, at that time, with the Russian side). And there were other prisoners and prisoners in other places. According to the Ukrainian side, we have about a thousand Russians in captivity in general. Such a difference may not be noticed by the average person, but it is informative for a Western analyst.
The same applies to the figures for Ukrainian losses announced earlier. A party that has a huge technical advantage and does not particularly limit itself in the use of the cruelest means is unlikely to suffer 10 times large losses. Even if it comes. Later Ukrainian estimates look more adequate.
Yes, they do not want to understand or take such "matches" into account on Ukrainian Facebook, but I bet that in the West competent people understand such things plus or minus well. And they take it into account as a tough reality, regardless of the collapse of Ukrainian illusions. Including because the collapse of illusions is better than the collapse of reality. It can be too expensive for both Ukraine and the West.
4. Ability to self-correction
In the material "Difficulties and dangers of the second stage of the war" published a month and a half ago, the author described the significant changes that will occur in the second stage of the war. They were caused by... the ability unexpectedly demonstrated by the enemy to correct the situation on a large scale and quickly.
The author wrote about the fact that Russia withdrew its troops from the northeast "to impose a decisive battle on Ukraine, leveling the main advantages of the Ukrainian army and strengthening its own. That is, in the most convenient conditions for Russia. And, therefore, to significantly reduce Russian losses and increase Ukrainian ones. And significantly reduce the likelihood of a favorable outcome of the battle for Ukraine."
And "Her (RF) troops are now mainly tightly pressed against the borders of Russia or to fortified and logistically relatively safe Crimea, ORDLO, sea coast... (What) improves logistics and increases the security of communications... The real length of poorly protected communications on Ukrainian territory is decreasing significantly. This creates additional difficulties for Ukraine."
A little consonant with the very fresh words of Pentagon Speaker John Kirby that the offensive of Russian troops on Kyiv failed due to logistical problems, as a result of which the column of equipment was stretched tens of kilometers away from sources of support. And, literally, "Donbas is another territory. It is more even, more open, with many fields, small towns, and villages. And since it is in eastern Ukraine, it is closer to Russia's borders and their supply and resource chains."
The truth was announced 40 days earlier. Written even earlier, but the lag when published is a lag when publishing. That is, we see something too.
It also wrote that "the situation in Mariupol is critical. But the environment of the zone will be able to create a climate of an even larger scale, fraught with losses of the appropriate scale. At the same time, the Russian army will be much more untied in the choice of funds, as we are not talking about battles in conditions of continuous urban development.
This describes what's happening. Not a fact, but has become a real risk in several areas of the front in the JFO zone.
And one more thing... Consonant with another speaker - Mikhail Podolyak's fresh Tweet: "Russia is already using the heaviest non-nuclear weapons against Ukrainians" (specifically, it was about the heavy flamethrower system "Sun Chains", which was used in Donbas and earlier, which does not change the monstrous essence and scale of what is happening).
The author also wrote that "the ruling Russian elites and the Russian army will be ready to fight all the way and indiscriminately. In the spirit of Indian sweating, throwing any forces and means for him into the furnace. Which is fraught with huge losses not only for the Russian side."
It's all happening. The material wasn't about "everything is gone." It was written precisely about the inadmissibility of the hat-throwing illusions that prevailed then in society.
The current material is the same. He's talking about the need to see changes and strive to improve faster than the enemy.
The author doesn’t doubt that the Ukrainian army is doing everything that depends on it and that it can in the current real conditions. Even more than that. But it is impossible not to ask yourself the question of constant, often artificially, overstated expectations and silenced problems. Moreover, it is picked up by the ordinary.
"The truth is," writes one of the current Ukrainian commanders, "that we are at war with the second army of the world. Corrupt, bad, but second. By number and resources. We defeated them near Kyiv and Kharkiv, but now they are fighting us seriously, and the battle is extremely difficult. And the enemy is coming.
But the truth is that we can defeat him. And this "just about" will come only when we honestly analyze the situation and talk honestly about it. To eradicate our mistakes, and there are a huge number of them, and correctly implement our successes."
Dear layman (the appeal is rhetorical he will not read the analytics here)...Even if Ukraine continues to be destroyed at this rate, and Ukrainians are killed - a month, two, six months, a year, will the goals announced by some of your favorite politicians and experts sponsored by them be achieved?