Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Well Russia no longer seems to be winning in quite the same way they were right out of the gate. As it turns out an insurgent force armed by the leading weapons manufacturers can be fucking tough. I mean the US got it’s ass handed to it by dudes in the mountains with decades old soviet tech and some ingenuity. They’re giving these guys the real shit
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I don't know if I would agree with your idea of operational depth being more sophisticated making models more complex doesn't necessarily yield better results, models should reflect the need of in this case what the army is doing.
That said I do think there is a big comparison to WWII to be made here, this isn't 1:1 but both sides have adopted tactics from the two armies with the russians favouring these probing attacks and now looking to encircle several ukranian fortifications, in that same vein the ukranians have been incredibly inflexible and have focused on not giving up ground and choosing to stay in bad positions over retreating to more advantages ground but giving that area up, which is similar to what the Wehrmacht did. So I wouldn't call this a showdown between NATO doctrine and soviet doctrine.
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I don't think that's likely tbh, I think if the uaf was directed by NATO commanders they'd have given up their more vulnerable positions and gone for a more flexible approach and you wouldn't have this problem right now with several looming encirclement because of their "No ground given" approach. I think it's more likely that they are being commanded by the government to not give any ground because that makes them look bad because they need it to either get more arms or so they have an easier to time leave and a more than willing officer cadre that has a lot of fascists whose ideology lines right up with that command.
If you are NATO you'd want to play for time as much as possible so that your weapons can reach Ukraine and also so you can train those troops with those weapons. Standing your ground does the exact opposite even ignoring the russian army being able to push through if your line is able to hold completely you'd force a confrontation which means soldiers die and you use up way more of your equipment which you can only replace so fast.
I don't think they're directly controlled by NATO, and their troops with the most training in that regard were also likely to be some of the highest lost units. That said, they have definitely been getting training and advice from western powers.
Unfortunately, as their better troops and officers get ground up, their conscript force becomes less capable. Current western doctrine places a lot of reliance on the competence, confidence, and initiative of the lower end of command (read: closer to the troops), which once you start chewing into your 30-50 year olds is probably not going to be there. This especially is required to perform an orderly retreat from a highly entrenched position (less experienced/trained units will feel safer in their trench networks and bunkers than a risky retreat over open highways etc and attempting to prepare new positions).
This is in addition to the desire not to give ground to Russia from the leadership, which is perfectly natural from a few angles. There's also the propaganda of "who holds more territory".
The politics of who really controls the army has been up in the air for a long time in Ukraine, and I imagine that question could be asked at each level with jockeying between the government and the nationalists, in between which any NATO advisors might have a rough time navigating and asserting any real advice.
EDIT: This isn't to say that ordered retreats and delays and spoiling attacks can't happen, it's just they're probably going to happen way less than one would expect.
This war could turn into an insurgency vs counter-insurgency type of conflict at some point, but as it stands now, the fighting in Ukraine much more resembles trench warfare of the type found on the eastern front in WW2, rather than what the US found in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Which, don't get me wrong, the western weapons Ukraine is getting are certainly blunting Russia's offensive capabilities. But there's a relatively clear cut frontline, and the fact that the Ukrainians are fighting from fixed defensive fortifications means that the Russians have the ability to sit back and hammer Ukrainian positions with artillery and airstrikes in a way that the US was very rarely able to do in Iraq or Afghanistan.