Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Sat 03/05/2022 View Fri 03/04/2022 View Thu 03/03/2022 View Wed 03/02/2022 View Tue 03/01/2022 View Mon 02/28/2022 View Sun 02/27/2022
1
2022-03-05 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Roggio...the Russian invasion is not failing.
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by BrerRabbit 2022-03-05 05:02|| || Front Page|| [11129 views ]  Top

#1 If you believe that in this world you eventually need to make friends and influence people, it failed. Making yourself the next North Korea is not something to define as 'victory'.
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-03-05 08:10||   2022-03-05 08:10|| Front Page Top

#2 Sales hit record low, prices plummet.
Posted by Besoeker 2022-03-05 08:15||   2022-03-05 08:15|| Front Page Top

#3 "Believing Russia’s assault is going poorly may make us feel better but is at odds with the facts. We cannot help Ukraine if we cannot be honest about its predicament."

Denial is a bitch
Posted by Jeang Scourge of the Faith4171 2022-03-05 08:26||   2022-03-05 08:26|| Front Page Top

#4 Why aren't we hearing or reading this kind of sober and intelligent analysis anywhere else?

What matters more than a handful of setbacks is that Russian forces have pushed 70 miles into contested terrain in less than a week and are on the outskirts of the capital.

This is not a sign of a disorganized, poorly assembled, and failed offensive.
Posted by Huputer de Medici7516 2022-03-05 08:30||   2022-03-05 08:30|| Front Page Top

#5 Uh huh - two days to take Kyiv, right?
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-05 08:38||   2022-03-05 08:38|| Front Page Top

#6 Vlad has a shi* sandwich on his hands. Far reaching dividends, none of them good for Russia.

Europeons take note. I suspect they've already received the memo, but MANPADS and Anti-armor weapons are the key to an 'active defense.'
Posted by Besoeker 2022-03-05 08:41||   2022-03-05 08:41|| Front Page Top

#7 The Russians are caught in an insurgency of 40 million people. The many thousands of guided At, AT rockets, MANDPADs and small arms are only beginning to filter to Ukrainian forces. When the invasion began, Ukraine had just 77 Javelins. Hundreds more Javelins and 10,000+ other AT rockets will be in the field with thousnads more streaming in. Same for MANPADs. An ambush behind every blade of grass.
Posted by Angaiper Ulavins1210 2022-03-05 08:51||   2022-03-05 08:51|| Front Page Top

#8 What evidence is there that Pooty planned on taking Kyiv in two days? None. Roggio's bang on target with his analysis. Everyone should read this and start thinking with a clear mind instead of just grabbing onto rainbow-coloured unicorns

PUTIN IS NOT CRAZY AND THE RUSSIAN INVASION IS NOT FAILING. THE WEST’S DELUSIONS ABOUT THIS WAR – AND ITS FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE ENEMY – WILL PREVENT IT FROM SAVING UKRAINE
Bill Roggio
Senior Fellow and Editor of FDD's Long War Journal

Wishful thinking has the upper hand in the battle to shape Western perceptions of the war in Ukraine.

Sympathy for the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Kyiv has led to the exaggeration of Russian setbacks, misunderstanding of Russian strategy, and even baseless claims from amateur psychoanalysts that Putin has lost his mind.

A more sober analysis shows that Russia may have sought a knockout blow, but always had well-laid plans for follow-on assaults if its initial moves proved insufficient.

The world has underestimated Putin before and those mistakes have led, in part, to this tragedy in Ukraine.

We must be clear-eyed now that the war is underway.

Yet even the professionals at the Pentagon are letting sympathy cloud their judgement.

Just two days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Department of Defense briefers were quick to claim that failing to take Kyiv in the opening days of the war amounted to a serious setback.

DoD briefers implied that Russia’s offensive was well behind schedule or had even failed because the capital had not fallen.

But U.S. leaders should have learned to restrain their hopes after their catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Once again, U.S. and Western officials are falling into the trap of failing to understand the enemy and his objectives.

Never happens to us, no sir

Allegedly, Putin believed that the Ukrainian government would collapse once Russian troops crossed the frontier and pushed to Kyiv, and that the operation has failed because the Ukrainian government remains in place.

Putin certainly hoped for a swift victory, but he clearly was not relying on his opening salvo as the only plan for success.

Rather, the Russian military was prepared to take the country by force if a swift decapitation strike fell short.

This kind of plan should be familiar to Americans who remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ah how quickly we forget. Attention span of a gnat, we have

In the first hours of the war, the U.S. Air Force launched its ‘shock and awe’ campaign in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and other key leaders and bring down the government. Saddam survived, but the U.S. military was fully prepared to follow up with a ground assault.

And the US military threw down not just tonnes of ordnance but about 4x as many troops at SH as Pooty has put, cautiously, carefully, into strategic positions

A look at the Russian military offensive demonstrates there was a plan for a full-scale invasion, which Russia is now executing.

Conventional, mechanized warfare is a time and resource consuming enterprise, and an operation of this scope isn’t cobbled together in days.

The Russian offensive is taking place on four separate fronts. On a fifth front, in eastern Ukraine, which Putin declared independent last week, Russian forces are tying down Ukrainian troops that are needed elsewhere.

Wow. Imagine that. Actual analysis in the western media of the order of battle and the correlation of forces. Someone arrest this man!
Posted by Vernal the Tiny9402 2022-03-05 08:55||   2022-03-05 08:55|| Front Page Top

#9 Paid by the word, Comrade? Two days. And the assassination of Zelenskyy went so well.
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-05 09:03||   2022-03-05 09:03|| Front Page Top

#10 I don't think that's a "comrade." He's following one of our best and most honest defense analysts, Bill Roggio.
Here's Roggio's Twitter feed - you should read it
@billroggio



Posted by Big Lover of the Danes9975 2022-03-05 09:21||   2022-03-05 09:21|| Front Page Top

#11 I read Roggio, and I often agree. I don't on this, and that doesn't make me wrong. Two days and a quick decapitation of Uke's government was the plan, not a slow crushing encirclement that allowed world sentiment to build against Russia and the Soviet reconstruction. It's been FUBAR'd
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-05 09:44||   2022-03-05 09:44|| Front Page Top

#12 ...on that point. /sarc
Posted by Procopius2k 2022-03-05 09:50||   2022-03-05 09:50|| Front Page Top

#13 Got tired of Reggio early in the Afghan war. His pieces usually revolve on errors of the US military or US soldiers committing war crimes. In my book he is US hater.
In this current piece again he states the obvious to most readers of Rantburg, Ukraine is doomed. Still he takes shots at the US military. Of which he has opinion not facts of what they are planning.
Posted by Xyz 2022-03-05 09:50||   2022-03-05 09:50|| Front Page Top

#14 Think how much the rest of the world and the left (I repeat myself) would hate the US if we were always competent and didn't take half measures.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-03-05 09:56||   2022-03-05 09:56|| Front Page Top

#15 The bulk of the Ukranian Army was and still is neutralized for the whole time of the invasion because they engaged in a delusion that they were Going To Take The Donbass Back.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-03-05 09:59||   2022-03-05 09:59|| Front Page Top

#16  If you believe that in this world you eventually need to make friends and influence people, it failed. Making yourself the next North Korea is not something to define as 'victory'.

He can't be failing if we in the west are still giving him a billion dollars a day.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-03-05 10:03||   2022-03-05 10:03|| Front Page Top

#17 Oh, btw: that Ukranian _army_ that's stuck in the mud over by Donbass?

That's not because we're smart and Putin's stupid.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-03-05 10:07||   2022-03-05 10:07|| Front Page Top

#18 Possibly President Putin did start with a two-stage military plan if the blitzkrieg didn’t work. But he clearly hadn’t planned for the world-wide convulsion that’s opened an economic front that will have ripples long after this is over.

We were in Prague’s Old Town Square in 1991 when the Czechs expected Soviet/Russian tanks to come over the border. I don’t remember what triggered it, now, but the mood of the crowd was quiet mourning for temporary freedoms they were not strong enough to fight for when there was no hope that anyone would come to their aid. At any rate, the tanks did not come, and when Slovakian politicians grandstanded about splitting off, Vaclav Havel shocked them by dividing the assets and sending them on their way to bucolic obscurity.

So it is understandable that Russia expected the world to stand by again.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-05 10:07||   2022-03-05 10:07|| Front Page Top

#19 And neither is the 30 billion a month in trade surplus he has indicative of any great intelligence on our part.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-03-05 10:08||   2022-03-05 10:08|| Front Page Top

#20 Putin calculated the world would continue buying his oil. “Crazy” right.
I read he has been stocking different currency and gold. Crazy.
Germans still buying Russian oil? Crazy.
BTW. What is Germany doing about the invasion other than virtue signaling NS2?
Posted by Xyz 2022-03-05 10:16||   2022-03-05 10:16|| Front Page Top

#21 Xyz, we had an article on the subject the other day — see here.
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-05 10:45||   2022-03-05 10:45|| Front Page Top

#22 Thank you TW.
I was speaking to economic and military actions to dissuade Russian from sacking Ukraine.
As far as German plans to oil purchases it looks as if the they are planning the same as before.
Posted by Xyz 2022-03-05 11:04||   2022-03-05 11:04|| Front Page Top

#23 Another not yet liberated Ukrainian Nazi
Posted by European Conservative 2022-03-05 11:39||   2022-03-05 11:39|| Front Page Top

#24 xyz
You can't stop importing 50% of your gas needs and 30% of your oil needs over night.

Germany is making contingency plans for living without any gas and oil imports from Russia next fall.
Posted by European Conservative 2022-03-05 11:45||   2022-03-05 11:45|| Front Page Top

#25 Um. Next fall? 2023?
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-03-05 11:51||   2022-03-05 11:51|| Front Page Top

#26 Unless the ships are owned by Russia, all shipping in the north Black Sea has stopped. Very little is going on in the Baltic as well. Russia pumps 3.3bbl per day and most of it isn't getting picked up. They can store 80bbl of oil. Once they hit maximum storage, they have to halt production. It then takes a long time to bring the wells back online.

If the crisis happens past that point, it will take years for Russian oil to be back in full production. Along with potash shortages as a lot comes from Russia, wheat shortages, etc., the Arab Spring that happened when Russia restricted wheat exports will look like a sunday school outing compared to what is coming at the end of this year.
Posted by DarthVader 2022-03-05 12:03||   2022-03-05 12:03|| Front Page Top

#27 Fall 2022
Posted by European Conservative 2022-03-05 12:06||   2022-03-05 12:06|| Front Page Top

#28 potash shortages

Top Ten potash countries
Posted by trailing wife 2022-03-05 12:33||   2022-03-05 12:33|| Front Page Top

#29 Uh oh, Laos had better be careful!
Posted by DooDahMan 2022-03-05 12:42||   2022-03-05 12:42|| Front Page Top

#30 The blitzkrieg it ain't. Shock and awe it ain't. Putin is showing us that the bear is just as clumsy as ever. Maybe he's trying to minimize casualties but it's looking like Kiev will become the next Grozny. Hard to believe that Putin planned to become the successor to Kim Jong-un so a miscalculation seems to be more likely. That's why I don't trust him any more than I trust Brandon. The generals on both sides are bumbling fools and we have no real statesmen anywhere who could devise a diplomatic solution. Scary.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2022-03-05 14:05||   2022-03-05 14:05|| Front Page Top

#31 Most of the US armaments are unproven and over-priced junk. Especially Javelin. Just part of the plan to keep the MICC well fed. I doubt any of the Ukranian units have any idea how to use these weapons. So they are passing out Molotov cocktails to civilians instead. The cia is run by idiots and many of this weapons will be returned with vengeance to the idiot senders in the incoming years.
Posted by Attitude  2022-03-05 14:15||   2022-03-05 14:15|| Front Page Top

#32 ^^^^^
If the above is any indication, we have been relegated to troll-team C level players . The Econ guy yesterday was a far higher caliber. This guy is right above “sea of rife”. And “running dog yankee imperialist “ script reading.
Posted by NoMoreBS 2022-03-05 14:31||   2022-03-05 14:31|| Front Page Top

#33 …fire
Posted by NoMoreBS 2022-03-05 14:32||   2022-03-05 14:32|| Front Page Top

#34 I was wondering if the first string trolls would be taking the weekend off. Looks like we got the JV.
Posted by SteveS 2022-03-05 14:46||   2022-03-05 14:46|| Front Page Top

#35 #24
The Germans were offered LG facilities by Trump. They chose Russian instead.
Posted by Ebbuger Whuque4103 2022-03-05 15:09||   2022-03-05 15:09|| Front Page Top

#36 Russian supply to the front is very dependent on trains.
The stupid Belarus had most of its freight cars inside Ukraine when the attack happened. So Ukraine blocked in 4000+ rail cars.
Trains are kind of useless without rail cars.
Posted by 3dc 2022-03-05 15:25||   2022-03-05 15:25|| Front Page Top

#37 Most of the US armaments are unproven and over-priced junk.

Pricey ain't the same as over-priced. As for proven, pay a visit to White Sands, if you can get the clearance.
Posted by M. Murcek 2022-03-05 16:25||   2022-03-05 16:25|| Front Page Top

#38 Troll hourly rates after standard 13 hr workday go to 1.00025/hr. Russia doesn't want to pay the Premium
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-05 18:00||   2022-03-05 18:00|| Front Page Top

#39 Will you please stop screaming "Troll!" every time anyone says this is not our problem, not worth setting off World War III over?

So now the big story is about "furious Zelensky" and his angry rant that, if we don't set off WWIII, we've "given the green light to the bombing of Ukraine."

The Ukrainian president slammed NATO for refusing to impose a no-fly zone, saying, "All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness.”

Wrong. Tragic yes but this is Not.our.fucking.problem.

Stop beating the war drums for a minute and use some common sense for once. How many damned stupid wars do you have to drag us into before you get it through your heads? This is NOT OUR WAR.

Signed,
An American who's sick of your fucking endless wars in shitholes that have nothing to do with our security or freedom
Posted by FuckNeocons 2022-03-05 19:15||   2022-03-05 19:15|| Front Page Top

#40 Z is the tail
Biden is the dog

If you can't stop the tail wagging the dog then put down the old bitch before it sets off WWIII
Posted by Large Spawn of the Boskonians8238 2022-03-05 19:29||   2022-03-05 19:29|| Front Page Top

#41 Will you please stop screaming "Troll!" every time anyone says this is not our problem, not worth setting off World War III over?

I think it's not worth losing a single American soldier over. I also agree we should arm the f*ck out of the Ukranians to put the hurt on the Russian aggression. That doesn't make pro-Russian propaganda tools that have been blasting the site any less assholes
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-05 19:34||   2022-03-05 19:34|| Front Page Top

#42 "FuckNeocons" is right. What does any of this have to do with us?

@Frank G: You realize that your "ally" - this little person and his little country - are actually NOT America's ally, no matter what neocon senators say. This guy we've never heard of in a shitty little country that 99% of our Congresscritters couldn't find in a map is literally asking us to go to war against Russia.

A no-fly zone means war with Russia. This is becoming INSANE.

Why is anyone arguing for this? Are you out of your mind?

Why the fuck are we involved in this? You're killing our economy and now you're risking setting off a war with Russia.
Posted by Thomoper Hatrack4716 2022-03-05 19:44||   2022-03-05 19:44|| Front Page Top

#43 Funny how a simple discussion of hours and wages gets some people all spun up.
Posted by SteveS 2022-03-05 20:08||   2022-03-05 20:08|| Front Page Top

#44 $7 a gallon gas now
that's the price that "has people spun up"
Fuck Biden
Fuck Putin
Fuck Zelensky
Fuck warmongers of all types
Posted by Tiny Speaking for Boskone1672 2022-03-05 20:29||   2022-03-05 20:29|| Front Page Top

#45 "Blessed are the cheesemakers..."
Posted by SteveS 2022-03-05 21:01||   2022-03-05 21:01|| Front Page Top

#46 And speaking of France... and Russian romance... a ballad from the steps of northwest Rapistan:

A provident frog, Comrade... Sasha,
Brave son of a Soviet pasha,
Went courtin' one day
The Mohammedan way.
"I am fonder of Dylda," said Masha.
Posted by Herman Threart8026 2022-03-05 21:41||   2022-03-05 21:41|| Front Page Top

#47 Sorry, I was taking time off from commenting to spend time with our Krem-troll's sisters, delivering "a message"
Posted by Frank G 2022-03-05 22:50||   2022-03-05 22:50|| Front Page Top

22:53 Frank G
22:51 Frank G
22:51 DooDahMan
22:50 Frank G
21:58 Ichnusa aka BIAFOD
21:41 Herman Threart8026
21:22 Herman Threart8026
21:01 SteveS
20:58 Lord Garth
20:29 Tiny Speaking for Boskone1672
20:23 Procopius2k
20:10 SteveS
20:08 SteveS
19:56 McCainLives
19:44 Thomoper Hatrack4716
19:37 Herman Threart8026
19:34 Frank G
19:29 Large Spawn of the Boskonians8238
19:25 Frank G
19:15 FuckNeocons
19:14 M. Murcek
19:06 Procopius2k
18:58 Procopius2k
18:53 Herman Threart8026









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com