To have valuable information is on itself irrelevant : it gives the artillery not the means for precise attacks .Neither does it make it possible to hit locations behind the front .This depends on the artillery,not on the drones .
And that drones are a force multiplier is very questionable ,because there is no proof that the successful Ukrainian defense is caused by the use of drones . Besides : the Russians also use drones, but it does not help them .One thing one can say is that the Russian artillery and missile attacks are not precise, although the Russians also use drones .

Originally Posted by lljadw

To have valuable information is on itself irrelevant : it gives the artillery not the means for precise attacks .Neither does it make it possible to hit locations behind the front .This depends on the artillery,not on the drones .
And that drones are a force multiplier is very questionable ,because there is no proof that the successful Ukrainian defense is caused by the use of drones . Besides : the Russians also use drones, but it does not help them .One thing one can say is that the Russian artillery and missile attacks are not precise, although the Russians also use drones .

I don't agree, having information gives you the tools to make informed decisions and that is invaluable in both saving lives and inflicting casualties.

While it is an interesting point regarding Russian use of drones I would at this stage (and I could be proved wrong) argue that Russian drones, their users and their clients are not particularly sophisticated based on the construction and materials used in the Orlon 10 drone.

https://eurasiantimes.com/ukrainian-...ogy-watch/?amp

Anyway, we are really just dancing around in circles here so I will pose another question...

What do you think Russia's next move will be?
1. An attack from the Donbas region aka an old fashion war of attrition?
2. An attack up the west side of the Dniper toward Kiev?
3. Something else?

Having information does not give you the tools to use the information : most of the information of the B Dienst of the KM was useless,because
a when Doenitz received it ,it was too late .
b when it arrived in time, it could not be used because there were not enough U Boats .
It was the same for the Allies .
It is the same in Ukraine : most of the information from drones is useless,because it arrives too late AND because there is not enough artillery to use the information .
What will do the Russians ?
No one knows it .
The guesses are that they will try to have a connection over land between the Crimea and the Donbas region (the territories they conquered in 2014 after Euromaidan ). The attempt to conquer the whole of Ukraine has failed . Definitively .
About the Russian drones : I don't believe that the Turks are more intelligent and can make better drones and I don't believe that the Ukrainians can handle better the Turkish drones (Ukraine has between 20 and 50 Turkish drones )than the Russians their own drones .

I think you are overestimating the state of the Russian military and the military industrial establishment that supplies it.
Everything we have seen from this invasion so far says:
1. Russian troops lack discipline and initiative.
2. Russian equipment is mostly substandard and poorly maintained (the two are most likely interconnected).

I suspect the reason for this is that Russian society is effectively built on corruption, Russian troops seem to spend more time raping and looting than fighting, Russian equipment suffers from far more breakdowns than should be expected because Russian commanders are pocketing cash rather than spending it on maintenance and Russia's political leaders are turning a blind eye while collecting kickbacks, handouts and extorting as much as they can from those around them, essentially it is like a really large version of the Mafia and I am prepared to bet that it's industrial base is just as corrupt.

As much as I don't really want to say it I think Hitler may have had a point when he said all you have to do is kick in the door and the whole rotting edifice will come crashing down, it is lucky for Russia that their size means no one except China has enough boots to do it..

I do not deny the shortcomings of the Russian army, but I question ( and frankly : I do not believe them ) the claims that the Russian failure is due to qualitative shortcomings in material and manpower . That there is a lot of corruption in Russia is a fact,but there is no proof at all that this had any influence on the military operations .
The main reason of the Russian failure is their quantitative shortcomings : they attacked with 200000 men,while Ukraine also had 200000 men and 900000 reservists .
And they did it during the Spring Rasputitza !
All this means that success or failure depended more, much more on the Ukrainians than on the Russians and that with less corrupt officers and better tanks,the result would have been the same .
If on the first day the Ukrainian government was eliminated and on the third one the Ukrainian army was out followed on the 5th day by the collapse of the Ukrainian state and if already on the first day the Ukrainian civilians saluted the invading Russian forces, than, than would the invasion succeed.
The comparison with Barbarossa is striking .
Why did they attack with only 200000 men ? Because more were not available .
About the drones : the Russians have at least 10 times more drones than the Ukrainians, but this did not help them .
If it did not help them, why would the (20-50 ) Ukrainian drones be decisive ?
Yesterday,the ignorant media were telling us the story of a Russian convoy with a length of 13 km ,thus some 130 tanks/trucks . We still have not heard any Ukrainian claim that their drones attacked and destroyed this convoy .
About the quote of Hitler : when he said : All we have to do is to kick in the door and the whole rotten edifice will crash down , we may assume that he meant : all we CAN do is to kick in the door and let's hope that the rotten edifice will crash down ,because Hitler,as his generals,knew that the only way to defeat the Soviets was in a short and fast war . And Putin and his generals knew the same .That's why Hitler and Putin and their generals were trying to convince each other with stories which did not make any sense .
The Kremlin boys said to each other : we will win with 200000 men in one week,because it is the only way to win .
What Hitler said was not different .
But,what is weird is that the Russian had done the same some 40 years ago in Afghanistan,with the same results .
To be followed by the US .
And, was there more/less corruption by the Soviets in Afghanistan ?
There was also a lot of corruption in the Red Army in 1937 ( the purged ones were mostly incompetent) but this army stopped 4 years later the Germans .

Originally Posted by lljadw

I do not deny the shortcomings of the Russian army, but I question ( and frankly : I do not believe them ) the claims that the Russian failure is due to qualitative shortcomings in material and manpower . That there is a lot of corruption in Russia is a fact,but there is no proof at all that this had any influence on the military operations .

I don't agree, while I have no doubt Russia has some very good well trained soldiers by and large the majority seem to be poorly trained, ill-disciplined and unmotivated, they seem to be identified on battlefields by the giant piles of garbage they generate around themselves and to me this is the sign of qualitative shortcomings in both training and preparation, the fact that the Ukrainians have been left a lot of broken down vehicles of all types and ages is again signs of poor maintenance most likely steming from people all along the chain skimming the system.

The main reason of the Russian failure is their quantitative shortcomings : they attacked with 200000 men,while Ukraine also had 200000 men and 900000 reservists .
And they did it during the Spring Rasputitza !

The only reason you would do this is though a high level of arrogance and over confidence which should indicate either incompetence or low quality intelligence.

All this means that success or failure depended more, much more on the Ukrainians than on the Russians and that with less corrupt officers and better tanks,the result would have been the same .
If on the first day the Ukrainian government was eliminated and on the third one the Ukrainian army was out followed on the 5th day by the collapse of the Ukrainian state and if already on the first day the Ukrainian civilians saluted the invading Russian forces, than, than would the invasion succeed.

Agree entirely but making bad decisions is a sign of incompetence and having an even remotely competent NCO/junior officer cadre with some initiative would have improved the early battles.

The comparison with Barbarossa is striking .
Why did they attack with only 200000 men ? Because more were not available .

I am prepared to bet that Barbarossa would not have gone ahead if all the Germans could muster was 500 Hitler youth and a fat dachshund with a limp, if Russia did not have the military to do the job then the smart thing to do would be not go ahead with it.
This all points to corruption, cronyism and incompetence at the highest levels.

About the drones : the Russians have at least 10 times more drones than the Ukrainians, but this did not help them .
If it did not help them, why would the (20-50 ) Ukrainian drones be decisive ?
Yesterday,the ignorant media were telling us the story of a Russian convoy with a length of 13 km ,thus some 130 tanks/trucks . We still have not heard any Ukrainian claim that their drones attacked and destroyed this convoy .

Surely that would depend on Ukraines ability to hit the column, even drones are limited by range.

About the quote of Hitler : when he said : All we have to do is to kick in the door and the whole rotten edifice will crash down , we may assume that he meant : all we CAN do is to kick in the door and let's hope that the rotten edifice will crash down ,because Hitler,as his generals,knew that the only way to defeat the Soviets was in a short and fast war . And Putin and his generals knew the same .That's why Hitler and Putin and their generals were trying to convince each other with stories which did not make any sense .
The Kremlin boys said to each other : we will win with 200000 men in one week,because it is the only way to win .
What Hitler said was not different .
But,what is weird is that the Russian had done the same some 40 years ago in Afghanistan,with the same results .
To be followed by the US .
And, was there more/less corruption by the Soviets in Afghanistan ?
There was also a lot of corruption in the Red Army in 1937 ( the purged ones were mostly incompetent) but this army stopped 4 years later the Germans .

Again I agree.

The following is from the international edition of the Spanish newspaper El Pais (29 March 2022 )

Why Russia has failed to secure a quick victory in Ukraine
5 reasons
1 The defender's advantage in urban warfare
2 Lack of precision in information
3 Troop shortages
4 Chain of command
5 Ukrainian resistance
IMO 5 and 3 are the most important reasons :if there was no urban warfare,reason one would not be important .If there was no Ukrainian resistance,it would be the same for reasons 2 and 4 .
The chain of command was a good one,...for a Blitzkrieg .
Now the question is : why did the Russians plan a old -fashioned Blitzkrieg ?
My guess is that they thought that other types of warfare would fail (time was essential ) and that a Blitzkrieg was the only way to succeed and that thus a Blitzkrieg would succeed .The Germans thought the same in 1941 .The truth is that with the existing force ratio the Russians had no chance at all to win .
About the arrogance to attack during the Rasputitza : I am not convinced that the reason for an attack during the Rasputitza was arrogance.It is possible that the attack was scheduled to start in December, but that because of military problems,the attack had to be delayed or that the delay was caused by political problems .
Why was the attack not delayed to April or May ? We don't know .Maybe it was considered impossible to to concentrate 200000 men during 4 months ,or that this would give Ukraine 4 months to mobilize, or that the secrecy of the attack would leak,etc..
We don't know when Putin made the decision to attack Ukraine : before the concentration of its army on the border with Ukraine, during this concentration or at the end of it ? Maybe the Kremlin thought that the concentration of its forces would be sufficient to scare Ukraine and that an invasion would not be needed .
All we know is that the first Russian units arrived in December and that the attack started two months later .

Originally Posted by lljadw

The following is from the international edition of the Spanish newspaper El Pais (29 March 2022 )

Why Russia has failed to secure a quick victory in Ukraine
5 reasons
1 The defender's advantage in urban warfare
2 Lack of precision in information
3 Troop shortages
4 Chain of command
5 Ukrainian resistance
IMO 5 and 3 are the most important reasons :if there was no urban warfare,reason one would not be important .If there was no Ukrainian resistance,it would be the same for reasons 2 and 4 .
The chain of command was a good one,...for a Blitzkrieg .
Now the question is : why did the Russians plan a old -fashioned Blitzkrieg ?
My guess is that they thought that other types of warfare would fail (time was essential ) and that a Blitzkrieg was the only way to succeed and that thus a Blitzkrieg would succeed .The Germans thought the same in 1941 .The truth is that with the existing force ratio the Russians had no chance at all to win .
About the arrogance to attack during the Rasputitza : I am not convinced that the reason for an attack during the Rasputitza was arrogance.It is possible that the attack was scheduled to start in December, but that because of military problems,the attack had to be delayed or that the delay was caused by political problems .
Why was the attack not delayed to April or May ? We don't know .Maybe it was considered impossible to to concentrate 200000 men during 4 months ,or that this would give Ukraine 4 months to mobilize, or that the secrecy of the attack would leak,etc..
We don't know when Putin made the decision to attack Ukraine : before the concentration of its army on the border with Ukraine, during this concentration or at the end of it ? Maybe the Kremlin thought that the concentration of its forces would be sufficient to scare Ukraine and that an invasion would not be needed .
All we know is that the first Russian units arrived in December and that the attack started two months later .

Having read the article I think the bulk of the points raised can be attributed to one thing, they did not expect resistance, I am convinced that the lack of resistance to the take over of the Crimea led them to think that they would face light resistance from a few "fanatics", they could simply drive to Kiev overthrow the government and go home for the victory parade.

I believe this is backed by early POW statements where they say they only expected to be away a few days also by the lack of planning, type of offensive and limited logistics assigned despite the time they had for the build up, essentially they thought all they would need is boots on the ground for a few days.

With this in mind they had all the troops they needed, conscripts would be more than adequate, it really didn't matter how obvious their moves were to western intelligence as no one was going to shoot back, the Rasputitza and supplies were of no importance as they could drive to Kiev, Kharkiv and Kherson along nice paved roads on a tank of gas, unfortunately as Helmuth von Moltke said "No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force" and in this case the Ukrainian response involved a lot of unexpected shooting.

So in essence I think all of your points are accurate but the missing piece of the puzzle is that Putin did not believe Ukraine would put up a fight, take out Ukrainian resistance and everything the Russians did makes sense.

One of Putins mouth pieces has stated that the UK intends to ~Nuke~ Russia.

Boris Johnson is an idiot, but I don't see that happening.

Originally Posted by BritinBritain

One of Putins mouth pieces has stated that the UK intends to ~Nuke~ Russia.

Boris Johnson is an idiot, but I don't see that happening.

It does make me wonder just how separated from reality Russian audiences would have to be to buy that, one of the smallest nuclear powers nuking the largest would be suicide.