War Update

Mariupol appears to be done. I doubt the Russians will derive much benefit from finishing the battle at this point, as it took them much longer to seize the city than it should have. The Russians are making limited headway in the Donbas, while the Ukrainians make some headway around Kharkiv. The Russians seem to be giving up on the hopes for a big encirclement and have settled for trying to get around a much smaller salient; this may still be within their grasp. In other news, Turkey is probably just conducting some aggressive negotiations with respect to Sweden and Finland but there’s plenty of work left to be done on the diplomatic side.

Some links:

• On the dangers of Lend Lease nostalgia…
• Observations of Russian and Ukrainian military life post-USSR…
• It is unlikely that Putin will be able to reconstruct the repressive mechanisms that characterized the Stalinist USSR…
• Impact of the war on Russo-Japanese relations…
• And impact of the war on Germany…

And I have some thoughts on the transfer of aircraft to Ukraine:

An interview of a Ukrainian fighter pilot at Coffee or Die clarified many of the tactics that the Ukrainian air force has used to remain alive and effective. Essentially, the Ukrainians have approached the war with extraordinary care and attention to force preservation while at the same time opportunistically providing ground support and other kinds of attacks to unsettle and unbalance the Russian offensive. Russians have taken Ukrainian air (and surface-to-air) capabilities seriously, often discharging weapons while still in Russian airspace. A recent strike by two Su-27 Flankers on Russian facilities on Snake Island indicated that the Ukrainian air force is still alive and kicking.