Russia-Ukraine Update
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Russia continues to push in barely ambulatory fashion out of Izyum, while the Ukrainians are taking territory near Kharkiv. To my understanding all of this territory is essentially suburban/exurban in nature; lots of small towns and small buildings with a fair amount of road infrastructure. The big question now (alluded to below) is whether Putin will order a general mobilization. If he wants to continue the war as anything other than a slow burn attrition, he’s going to have to do that. A general mobilization won’t help immediately, but it will give the Ukrainians a strong indication of which direction things are going and will certain adjust their decision tree.
Some links:
- New thinking on whether what comes after Putin will be better or worse than Putin.
- Wargame with interesting results based on the assumption that the war continues through the rest of 2022.
- The story of the stolen tractors being shut down remotely is nothing if not hilarious.
- US intelligence is enabling the killing of Russian generals.
- A couple of my students are interviewed about what it’s like to take Defense Statecraft during a full on war.
Finally I do some historical noodling on naval war in the Black Sea:
For Russia, the Black Sea has long represented a problem that remains stunningly obvious today; it is a critical theater of naval operations, the control of which can threaten amphibious attacks along its coastlines as well as conduct or prevent blockades of trade from crucial ports. At the same time, the Black Sea is distant from Russia’s other major ports and is easy to cut off from support and resupply. Generally, this has meant that during wartime what happens in the Black Sea stays in the Black Sea.