I think to a degree the successful Ukrainian "propaganda" or social media savvy actually is working against them in regards to the actual nature of this conflict. The urgent need for MORE western aid is a little obscured.
You suck, Debbie. No offense.Continuing my Debbie Downer binge (I'm starting to get pessimistic about this war)
General Sir Richard Barrons is a former commander of the British Joint Forces Command and is now chairman of the defense and security company, Universal Defense & Security Solutions.
He spoke to RFE/RL's Georgian Service about the constraints on both sides of Russia's war on Ukraine, the importance of industrial transformation in a drawn-out conflict, and offered a bleak forecast for the course of the war.
RFE/RL: What have we learned after one year of warfare in Ukraine? And where are we now?
Sir Richard Barrons: There are some lessons at a very high level, particularly for Europe. And the first of those is that we haven't somehow grown out of fighting in a way that some people wanted to believe at the end of the Cold War in 1990. And we're being reminded by the war in Ukraine that war is part of the human existence. And even if you would prefer it was not so, there is no guaranteed immunity from it. And as [Prussian] General von Clausewitz says, "You may not choose war, but war can choose you." And when it occurs, it is the same brutal, feral, dangerous, usually disappointing business it has been for millennia. And yet, at least once a generation, we feel the need to reacquaint ourselves with that thought.
And the second thing it has reminded us [of] is that big wars -- and the war in Ukraine is a big war -- are fought, won, and lost by civilians, as the war becomes not something that is just conducted by the professional, regular armed forces in the way Western armies principally took part in Iraq and Afghanistan and Balkan interventions in the 1990s. These big wars, where the survival of the state is at stake, which is the case in Ukraine, are fought by citizens who are mobilized and industry that is mobilized. And you can see that actually now, on both sides, in this war in Ukraine, that it's being fought by Ukrainian citizens who a year ago, in many cases less than a year ago, were teachers, nurses, mechanics, whatever; and increasingly, on the Russian side, the manpower is being mobilized from civil society. So again, people who were not professional soldiers.
RFE/RL: And if the tactics of the private Wagner mercenary group are employed, people who were not professional soldiers, but professional criminals.
Barrons: Yes. And that is a feature that is important to the Russian effort -- that there is a mixture of the Russian armed forces, increasingly mobilized civilians, and the Wagner Group, which has this extraordinary role in this war of a private enterprise mobilizing prisoners and mercenaries to fight alongside the Russian armed forces. And indeed, now they are locked in a competition about who is succeeding and who is failing, and actually who is to blame for failing. And you don't see that on the Ukrainian side.
And I think the third thing we're being reacquainted with is there is no logical rule that says these wars either have to be definitively successful for one or other party, or quick. And what we're essentially seeing playing out in Ukraine is not just a big war but a long war where, despite the aspirations of both sides and despite everyone's preference for this to be done and over, the dynamics of it suggest, first of all, a long fight because neither side has won, neither side has lost, neither side is anywhere close to giving up. So, there's a lot of fighting to come at the cost of terrible destruction. But the most likely outcome is one of exhaustion and stalemate followed by profound disagreement for as long as you can imagine. And we may be staring at an outcome where you can't count [on] the war as being over for decades.
RFE/RL: That's an even bleaker prediction than the earlier one of yours, when you said that this war might last until 2025. And if indeed, we need to be bracing ourselves for such a long war, let me ask you whose side is time on strategically?
Barrons: The question of who prevails is one of choice. From the Western perspective, it has always been absolutely clear that Ukraine can be supported to achieve an outcome that Ukraine is content with, provided the West mobilizes a relatively small fraction of its money and its industry. Because Ukraine wins, or prevails, or at least it doesn't lose, so long as it is connected to money, at about $6 billion a month, and [the] Western defense industry to supply the weapons and ammunition and other equipment and stores that Ukraine needs to equip a mobilized society with. And if the West continues to choose to provide that support -- and let's be absolutely clear, that support is a very small fraction of the economic power of the West, so it is a matter of choice -- yes, there's a cost. But it's a very small percentage of the economic wealth of the West. If the West does that and Ukraine retains the will to fight, it can keep fighting.
From the Russian perspective, well, Russia is mobilizing its society more and more and reenergizing its defense industry, which employs around 2 million people. So, it's a very big enterprise. And Russia believes that it has the money, the will, and the social control, and the industry to outlast the West's will to continue.
And no one really knows the outcome of that. The one thing that would be a game changer now, in all sorts of ways, given that both sides are short of equipment, because of losses, and both sides are very short of ammunition, particularly artillery ammunition, because of the rate of use and the time it will take to ramp up production -- so a lag of a year or two is going to apply to both the way the West supports Ukraine and the way Russia drives up its own industry.
The one thing that would change things in the short term would be China and/or India connecting the Russian Armed Forces to their stocks of ammunition -- the things that already exist. Because that would energize the Russian military with ammunition that the West simply can't match in the time that we're talking about. And that is wholly dangerous, because were that to occur, it takes you to a much higher prospect of the West having to engage in the fighting, because reenergized Russian forces start to break through in a way that would be very disconcerting. And it also, of course, cements this idea that the war in Ukraine, which is a war between Russia and Ukraine, is actually a proxy conflict between liberal democracy in the West and autocratic capitalism, led by Russia and China but actually led by China, increasingly followed by Russia. And were that to be become amplified in Ukraine, then I don't see any way in which that makes our world safer, better, or more prosperous.
Continued at
British General Says Ukraine War Could Last For 'Decades'
A former commander of the British Joint Forces Command who advises and lectures on defense and security issues, General Sir Richard Barrons, talks about tactics, industrial mobilization, and how, depending on Ukrainian and Western choices, the war could last for many, many years.www.rferl.org
Good read thanks for sharing. It is clear this will be prolonged and the Ukrainian’s are painting a rosy picture.
Unfortunately Ukraine hasn't obtained the air assets needed to really flip the switch in the air war. Russia's Air Force has been a flop but they still have the numbers....best case scenario is the air war remains a stalemate but it'd be nice if the Ukrainian's could go into the coming offensive with air superiority....doesn't look like that's in the cards.
My guess is this is why Ukraine is so focused on an offensive to turn the momentum. Logically they’d spend 6-12 months building up armor and trained soldiers, but they don’t have that luxury. They need a decisive victory. They need to cut the Russians into 2 chunks.
Lets hope they have the wherewithal to do that...
apnews.com
I like your way of thinking better than mine to be honestI'm telling ya, my gut feeling is this leak is a manufactured rope-a-dope strategy.
Ukraine/NATO/West wants Russia to think there is confusion and non-alignment and weakness on the UKR side and that this means its coming offensive will be too weak to matter.
Then BAM --- hit 'em with a well-supplied, well-armed, well-trained fighting force.
I choose to be rosily optimistic.
For the record, I also picked Iowa football to win the West Division and go to the Rose Bowl last year.
I hate to be pessimistic, but your take on the leak feels similar to your take on quad city style pizza.I'm telling ya, my gut feeling is this leak is a manufactured rope-a-dope strategy.
Ukraine/NATO/West wants Russia to think there is confusion and non-alignment and weakness on the UKR side and that this means its coming offensive will be too weak to matter.
Then BAM --- hit 'em with a well-supplied, well-armed, well-trained fighting force.
I choose to be rosily optimistic.
For the record, I also picked Iowa football to win the West Division and go to the Rose Bowl last year.
Which has now expanded to Atlanta and continues to become increasingly popular!
Not included in the numbers we see here are those who have fled conscription (up to 700k), and IT workers that left the country (50-70k).
Pairs nicely with vodka out of a plastic jug, TBH.
Bro, you have been a Debbie downer since February 2022 on this war. Just sayin.Continuing my Debbie Downer binge (I'm starting to get pessimistic about this war
General Sir Richard Barrons is a former commander of the British Joint Forces Command and is now chairman of the defense and security company, Universal Defense & Security Solutions.
He spoke to RFE/RL's Georgian Service about the constraints on both sides of Russia's war on Ukraine, the importance of industrial transformation in a drawn-out conflict, and offered a bleak forecast for the course of the war.
RFE/RL: What have we learned after one year of warfare in Ukraine? And where are we now?
Sir Richard Barrons: There are some lessons at a very high level, particularly for Europe. And the first of those is that we haven't somehow grown out of fighting in a way that some people wanted to believe at the end of the Cold War in 1990. And we're being reminded by the war in Ukraine that war is part of the human existence. And even if you would prefer it was not so, there is no guaranteed immunity from it. And as [Prussian] General von Clausewitz says, "You may not choose war, but war can choose you." And when it occurs, it is the same brutal, feral, dangerous, usually disappointing business it has been for millennia. And yet, at least once a generation, we feel the need to reacquaint ourselves with that thought.
And the second thing it has reminded us [of] is that big wars -- and the war in Ukraine is a big war -- are fought, won, and lost by civilians, as the war becomes not something that is just conducted by the professional, regular armed forces in the way Western armies principally took part in Iraq and Afghanistan and Balkan interventions in the 1990s. These big wars, where the survival of the state is at stake, which is the case in Ukraine, are fought by citizens who are mobilized and industry that is mobilized. And you can see that actually now, on both sides, in this war in Ukraine, that it's being fought by Ukrainian citizens who a year ago, in many cases less than a year ago, were teachers, nurses, mechanics, whatever; and increasingly, on the Russian side, the manpower is being mobilized from civil society. So again, people who were not professional soldiers.
RFE/RL: And if the tactics of the private Wagner mercenary group are employed, people who were not professional soldiers, but professional criminals.
Barrons: Yes. And that is a feature that is important to the Russian effort -- that there is a mixture of the Russian armed forces, increasingly mobilized civilians, and the Wagner Group, which has this extraordinary role in this war of a private enterprise mobilizing prisoners and mercenaries to fight alongside the Russian armed forces. And indeed, now they are locked in a competition about who is succeeding and who is failing, and actually who is to blame for failing. And you don't see that on the Ukrainian side.
And I think the third thing we're being reacquainted with is there is no logical rule that says these wars either have to be definitively successful for one or other party, or quick. And what we're essentially seeing playing out in Ukraine is not just a big war but a long war where, despite the aspirations of both sides and despite everyone's preference for this to be done and over, the dynamics of it suggest, first of all, a long fight because neither side has won, neither side has lost, neither side is anywhere close to giving up. So, there's a lot of fighting to come at the cost of terrible destruction. But the most likely outcome is one of exhaustion and stalemate followed by profound disagreement for as long as you can imagine. And we may be staring at an outcome where you can't count [on] the war as being over for decades.
RFE/RL: That's an even bleaker prediction than the earlier one of yours, when you said that this war might last until 2025. And if indeed, we need to be bracing ourselves for such a long war, let me ask you whose side is time on strategically?
Barrons: The question of who prevails is one of choice. From the Western perspective, it has always been absolutely clear that Ukraine can be supported to achieve an outcome that Ukraine is content with, provided the West mobilizes a relatively small fraction of its money and its industry. Because Ukraine wins, or prevails, or at least it doesn't lose, so long as it is connected to money, at about $6 billion a month, and [the] Western defense industry to supply the weapons and ammunition and other equipment and stores that Ukraine needs to equip a mobilized society with. And if the West continues to choose to provide that support -- and let's be absolutely clear, that support is a very small fraction of the economic power of the West, so it is a matter of choice -- yes, there's a cost. But it's a very small percentage of the economic wealth of the West. If the West does that and Ukraine retains the will to fight, it can keep fighting.
From the Russian perspective, well, Russia is mobilizing its society more and more and reenergizing its defense industry, which employs around 2 million people. So, it's a very big enterprise. And Russia believes that it has the money, the will, and the social control, and the industry to outlast the West's will to continue.
And no one really knows the outcome of that. The one thing that would be a game changer now, in all sorts of ways, given that both sides are short of equipment, because of losses, and both sides are very short of ammunition, particularly artillery ammunition, because of the rate of use and the time it will take to ramp up production -- so a lag of a year or two is going to apply to both the way the West supports Ukraine and the way Russia drives up its own industry.
The one thing that would change things in the short term would be China and/or India connecting the Russian Armed Forces to their stocks of ammunition -- the things that already exist. Because that would energize the Russian military with ammunition that the West simply can't match in the time that we're talking about. And that is wholly dangerous, because were that to occur, it takes you to a much higher prospect of the West having to engage in the fighting, because reenergized Russian forces start to break through in a way that would be very disconcerting. And it also, of course, cements this idea that the war in Ukraine, which is a war between Russia and Ukraine, is actually a proxy conflict between liberal democracy in the West and autocratic capitalism, led by Russia and China but actually led by China, increasingly followed by Russia. And were that to be become amplified in Ukraine, then I don't see any way in which that makes our world safer, better, or more prosperous.
Continued at
British General Says Ukraine War Could Last For 'Decades'
A former commander of the British Joint Forces Command who advises and lectures on defense and security issues, General Sir Richard Barrons, talks about tactics, industrial mobilization, and how, depending on Ukrainian and Western choices, the war could last for many, many years.
...and here we are.
Oh I agree. Just think it is worth pointing out in the grand scheme of things, Russia has already lost the war. They have basically exposed themselves as a paper tiger, lost the vast majority of their modern equipment, lost most of trained army, and their economy is deteriorating. For nothing. They will never get all of Ukraine so even if things don’t go great, and Ukraine can’t reclaim all land to 2014 borders in the near future, Russia still lost badly and won’t anytime soon recover, if ever.
I agree with that...Russia has "lost".
