An excellent, insightful, and all too sobering appraisal of Putin's Folly--er, the "Special Military Operation--that lays bare the absolute sorry state of the once vaunted Russian armed forces. The greatest casualty of this misbegotten military misadventure--aside from the ongoing fratricide and senseless destruction--is the reputation of Russian strategy, tactics, command & control. Shoigu & Co. are not even fit to shine the boots of such Red Army giants such as Rokossovsky, Zhukov, Konev, & Bagramyan.
Just read an article that Ukraine officially began its discussions for joining the EU agriculture being the first on the list. So much for the red lines of Kremlin ☠️
My comment double posted and when I deleted one they both deleted?
Anyway what I said was that I think you praise the Uky command too much. Reports I read from foreign fighters described it as a real shit show with commanders sending platoons into certain death. They did however even with their incompetence still do ok but a lot of lives were spent need;essly. Please continue with the book , it is interesting to see a Russian insiders perspective.
Thank you for your efforts to enlighten us on the state of the Russian army. I really appreciate reading your summaries.
Two objections to the book. First a friend of mine is an excellent computer engineer and currently works for a defence company building a new system of battlefield reconnaissance. He had never seen that level of rigour and precision in software development : plenty of tests involve detecting intrusions and insertions of false data. More have been added in the past few years. His opinion is that Russians are able to intrude in the NATO systems and access the positions of the Ukrainian army units. The Russians may also alter the information. Such intrusions are obviously intermittent and short so as to evade detection and tracing. One cannot exclude help from Ukrainian traitors either. Finally he had never been in such a constrained work environment : nothing about this system is on the internet, everything travels on paper or USB keys in suitcases ; the programming computers are standalone ; he can only use pen and paper provided by the company ; whatever he wants to bring inside and outside of the working room must be checked. Finally he was warned against dating an Iranian beauty...
Second objection on the radios. Military radios are extremely complicated tools. An acquaintance of mine was working on them and explained it to me in 2009 ! They communicate on a very large spectrum, on many channels, sending both the actual and false voice streams, using intermittent coupling yet offering a smooth communication to the users. In spite of this, adversaries, then presumed to be Russians or Chinese, did manage to scramble them. They were also worried about interception. In the war in Syria, the Russians have demonstrated their ability to scramble NATO communications; reading and decrypting the signal is a real possibility too. So the Ukrainian army is certainly advantaged by the availability of the NATO radios in normal times. But the Russians may suddenly block the communications and cut the local command off from the front units at their chosen time.
Here's an amusing and insightful comparison of the Wagner and Blackwater mercenary operations. No admiration at all for the botox fancier in the Kremlin, or for Dubya.
An excellent, insightful, and all too sobering appraisal of Putin's Folly--er, the "Special Military Operation--that lays bare the absolute sorry state of the once vaunted Russian armed forces. The greatest casualty of this misbegotten military misadventure--aside from the ongoing fratricide and senseless destruction--is the reputation of Russian strategy, tactics, command & control. Shoigu & Co. are not even fit to shine the boots of such Red Army giants such as Rokossovsky, Zhukov, Konev, & Bagramyan.
This was very helpful to my understanding. Great work as always.
Just read an article that Ukraine officially began its discussions for joining the EU agriculture being the first on the list. So much for the red lines of Kremlin ☠️
I've heard so many differing opinions that I'm not sure what's right and what's wrong. But for sure this is super interesting. Please continue!
My comment double posted and when I deleted one they both deleted?
Anyway what I said was that I think you praise the Uky command too much. Reports I read from foreign fighters described it as a real shit show with commanders sending platoons into certain death. They did however even with their incompetence still do ok but a lot of lives were spent need;essly. Please continue with the book , it is interesting to see a Russian insiders perspective.
Dear Dr Livci,
Thank you for your efforts to enlighten us on the state of the Russian army. I really appreciate reading your summaries.
Two objections to the book. First a friend of mine is an excellent computer engineer and currently works for a defence company building a new system of battlefield reconnaissance. He had never seen that level of rigour and precision in software development : plenty of tests involve detecting intrusions and insertions of false data. More have been added in the past few years. His opinion is that Russians are able to intrude in the NATO systems and access the positions of the Ukrainian army units. The Russians may also alter the information. Such intrusions are obviously intermittent and short so as to evade detection and tracing. One cannot exclude help from Ukrainian traitors either. Finally he had never been in such a constrained work environment : nothing about this system is on the internet, everything travels on paper or USB keys in suitcases ; the programming computers are standalone ; he can only use pen and paper provided by the company ; whatever he wants to bring inside and outside of the working room must be checked. Finally he was warned against dating an Iranian beauty...
Second objection on the radios. Military radios are extremely complicated tools. An acquaintance of mine was working on them and explained it to me in 2009 ! They communicate on a very large spectrum, on many channels, sending both the actual and false voice streams, using intermittent coupling yet offering a smooth communication to the users. In spite of this, adversaries, then presumed to be Russians or Chinese, did manage to scramble them. They were also worried about interception. In the war in Syria, the Russians have demonstrated their ability to scramble NATO communications; reading and decrypting the signal is a real possibility too. So the Ukrainian army is certainly advantaged by the availability of the NATO radios in normal times. But the Russians may suddenly block the communications and cut the local command off from the front units at their chosen time.
Here's an amusing and insightful comparison of the Wagner and Blackwater mercenary operations. No admiration at all for the botox fancier in the Kremlin, or for Dubya.
https://antiempire.substack.com/p/that-time-blackwater-and-us-army