What about a week by week of the Ukraine war?
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Some of my conservative friends hate the NYT, but NYT has a nice article with many of the Russian blunders and failures and could provide a lot of fun material for a series!
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Register to the Paradox OT Forums and follow the war thread. Forget week-by-week, nothing beats watching the chaos of a Ukrainian breakthrough in real time with all the rumors bursting through, and then the confirmations start slowly trickling in.
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Check out the channel Task and Purpose, they cover a lot on the Ukraine War as well as other military related topics
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It’s going to be difficult to separate the highly effective propaganda from the observable, confirmable facts that make this an exercise in journalism rather than in history. Don’t get me wrong: I’m rooting for Ukraine to kick the Ruskies out, but I also recognize that the western media as a whole have been taken in so many times by propaganda from both sides that they clearly can’t be able to provide anything like a full and accurate picture of the course of the war.
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Kings and Generals has such a series, rather month-by-month.
I agree its hard at this point to separate fact from deliberate fiction from fog-of-war. Ukraine has patently engaged in misdirection such as the Kharkiv operation, though they have every right to do so and this was a legitimate ruse of war.
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It may be hard to separate truth and propaganda. I imagine it wasn’t much different for civilians in WW2. I don’t know if propaganda is so much better today but people are thrown so much information from so many sources it is hard not to throw much of it out. Throw in the fact that our perception of governmental resources is they are not that trustworthy and it becomes much harder.
I saw a video yesterday from history of legends talking about casualties. I’m not sure if he is pro one side or another but he is entertaining. His arguments is that Russian casualties are much lower than reported. Less than 25,000 KIA. It was interesting how he gathered his data.
He also said that Milley estimated casualties on both side to be around 100k killed and wounded. If true, that would lend credence to his argument. We may never know the truth.
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Certainly not in the short-term, we won’t. I’d guess the revision/counter-revision/debunk cycle will take anywhere from 10-20 years after the war is over before historians will be able to take useful part in the documentation of the conflict.
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And that is if historians actually do their jobs well. It’s been 80-odd years and we’re still in that cycle regarding World War II.
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history legend also made videos with thumbnails who didn’t aged well like the kherson being a failure or bakhmut one. That guy is verry odd and I’m not sure the report of the separatist should be taken as a reliable source on their casualties and I didn’t liked how he acted toward the 100k ukrainian casualties from von der leyen. He participated on the gonzalo lira podcast too with armchair warlord in wich a guesst claimed the us army today doesn’t have a structure(wat) and there also a “russia’s going to win” moment too (note: I know it’s been 6 day you wrotte this).
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I’ll be honest, I can’t tell if this guy is pro Russian or just anti Ukrainian bullshit. I think he is often wrong but as I said, i find him entertaining. I do think Ukrainian numbers are vastly off but so are the Russian numbers. It’s a bloodier war than either side expected. I don’t think Chairman Milley saying about 100k casualties on both sides unreasonable.
He is right. Planning a 3-1 advantage for offensive operations does not mean three times the casualties but other than that I’m not sure if he deserves a lot of credence.
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at the same time, I don’t think one should underestimate russian casualties and I don’t think the separatist report should be taken as a credible source for their losses (they can still lie in it).
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Neither side’s announced casualties should be accepted as accurate while the fighting is still ongoing. Russia has a long-standing tradition of manipulating their propaganda to achieve certain goals, and right up until the Russians attacked, Ukraine’s government was seen as one of the least trustworthy in the western world. I want to see the Russians expelled from Ukraine, but my support for the Ukrainians does not extend to believing everything they say about the war.
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Here is another article with a lot of important news about the war in the early stages! From the guardian! The battle for Kyiv revisited: the litany of mistakes that cost Russia a quick win | Ukraine | The Guardian
When this war is over and the history is writte (and I am rooting for Ukraine, full disclosure), I would like to see the following topics explored by historians:
1a) What was the reaction after 2014 in the Ukrainian military and political command that led them to pursue the path of reform?
1b) As the Russian and Ukrainian Armies are both children of the Soviet Army, how did command-style choices and culture changes affect the outcome?
1c) Did the Ukrainians have an advantage in that they had such as similar background (1b) that they could, and did, deliberately choose to become the Soviet/Russian style of command’s nemesis?
2) What happened in Ukrainian high command in those first few days of the invasion? This is where Ukraine could choose to stand or surrender and they chose to stand.
3) I really want to see profiles of who has done Ukrainian PR. They have been masterful.
4) A profile of US/UK and other NATO countries reaction to the invasion, particularly at senior levels.
5) What went so drastically wrong in the Russian invasion planning that they wound up grinding to a halt?
6) A profile or inkling of what drove Putin to attempt such a stunt.
We already have the beginning answers to some of those questions; specifically, the radical changes the UAF undertook since 2014 with NATO (US, Canadian, UK) training cadres being deployed.
Regarding the specifics of Zelensky’s and Zaluzhnyi’s decisions in the first 48 hours, we’ll likely have to wait a while. On the other hand, they may publish openly when the war is over.
Regarding the reactions of NATO powers, I think we’ll at least have (or already have?) a documentary filmed in the Elysées at precisely that time, showing Macron’s reaction. For Biden and Johnson, we’ll see. For Scholz, I would pay to be the fly on that wall.
As for Russian invasion planning, we’ve got a steady stream of speculation, apocryphal leaks from the FSB on Reddit and the sheer insanity that Telegram accounts keep revealing to guide us.
Putin’s reasons will be the subject of intense debates for decades unless we get him on trial at the Hague.
But seeing the in-depth analysis will be fascinating.
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Putin killed German Ostpolitik, somehow the puzzle is how much of Willy Brands Noble Price money should be sent back, a third or two thirds or all.
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The reports from the ISW are a good source of information - Publications | Institute for the Study of War
As far as gonzalo lira goes, Lazerpig did a hilarious takedown of their putative round table discussion:
The Gonzalo Lira Roundtable do not know what they are talking about - YouTube
I watch Denys Davydov’s daily YouTube videos on the war, not necessarily high grade information, but an interesting perspective.
Here would be one segment or part of a segment . . . the defenders of Sumy! They were abandoned by the UA and the civilians got together and, with rifles and basics, kept the Ru Army out of Sumy for 6 weeks! How Sumy’s residents kept Russian forces out of their city | Ukraine | The Guardian