The center of Kharkiv is ::checks notes:: 20 miles from the Russian border. A medieval army on foot with a decent cavalry contingent might expect to have the city cut off and invested in four days.

But apparently not the Russian army with trucks and BTRs.
Of course that's not the only Russian axis of advance and they are making ground elsewhere, but that's probably also the problem - too many separate prongs, with resources split too thin.
Again, fog of war caveats, but it seems like only the push in the south is moving at speed? Speed is important for Russia here - slogging it out with highly motivated Ukrainians in every town and city in the country one by one is going to impose unacceptable losses.
Deep Battle, the Soviet ground battle doctrine that form the foundation for modern Russian doctrine, does focus on multiple parallel operations, but it also relies on using them to create confusion, to accelerate tempo beyond the ability of an enemy to react.
And, uh, this ain't it, chief.

Instead, Ukraine seems able to move important supplies (and one assumes also people) along interior lines while the separate Russian operations can't yet really support each other.

Jomini would be proud. Tukhachevsky, less so.
That said, I doubt Ukraine will hold Kharkiv and Dnipro forever so I sure hope Ukrainian forces in the Donbas have good plan for how they're either going fall back or else melt into the countryside and continue as guerillas.

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More from @BretDevereaux

Mar 1
So this past week, I wrote an explainer on the war in Ukraine read now by more than 60,000 people & even more explanatory material here.

This week I also found out my department likely won't have the resources to renew my contract next academic year, so I'm out of a job in May.
Since the search I was a finalist for seems to have been cancelled without making an offer, that means that - while I'm still exploring options - chances are I won't have an academic job in the fall.

This also isn't a 'we don't teach military history' rant (we do teach it!)...
...but it is a 'our institutions do not value history (all fields) enough' - often less than the general public - and 'our field doesn't value public education and engagement enough.'

Historians are teaching 'the important stuff' but being made to do it on a shoestring budget.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 27
Twitter! Remember, for all those watching Ukraine, that the fog of war here is thick and the war in Ukraine is only in its early phases. Both triumphalism and despair are premature.

Also remember both Ukraine and Russia are going to be doing information ops here. 1/20
Both amplifying true information and also untrue information for the morale and public opinion effects. That's part of war: you trumpet your successes (or even make a few up) because you need to maintain morale.

Be wary of 'feel good' stories. 2/20
Twitter in some ways reminds me of Thucydides' description of armies on the shore at the naval battle in the Harbor of Syracuse (Thuc. 7.71), "Meanwhile, the 2 armies on the shore, while victory hung in the balance, were a prey to the most agonizing&conflicting emotions..." 3/20
Read 20 tweets
Feb 25
This week on the blog, a break in our normally scheduled content for a short post to try to explain some of the complexities of what is happening in Ukraine, particularly for those 'just tuning in' as it were.

acoup.blog/2022/02/25/mis…
One comment I'm seeing a lot of boils down to "but don't you know Ukraine has problems too?"

And yes. Ukraine has corruption problems, it's civil institutions aren't perfect.

But does a country have to be perfect in order to deserve to live in peace?
What Ukraine isn't: it isn't a Nazi state, like Putin says. It isn't doing a genocide, like Putin says. It isn't threatening Russia, like Putin says.

And for me that's what matters. All of the rest are real problems but in this context...it's just whataboutism.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 24
A few points:
1) Putin's objectives, as he stated them tonight, reveal all of the diplomatic lead up to have been lies - he aims to overthrow the elected govt. of Ukraine.
2) Given that, it is not clear to me that any reasonable NATO action could have averted this.
3) This was Putin's choice. He has chosen war because he thinks he can gain by it. I suspect he is wrong in the long term, but very likely to prevail on the field in the short term.
4) I wish I had confidence that the sanctions to come would be as severe as I want.
5) Putin is waging a naked war of aggression. The people defending him are defending a naked war of aggression. The people and businesses who associate with those quislings are also making that choice.

They should be judged by the friends they keep; there is now no excuse.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 23
So ever since Russia lawlessly invaded Ukraine (again), there's been a lot of very stupid whataboutism floating around this platform.

One of those dumb lines is "Why is separatism in XYZ ok, but Donetsk and Luhansk are illegitimate?"

This line is stupid, let's discuss why. 1/11
What this relies on is that most people are guided by moral intuition in this, and so not prepared to offer a logical response - they feel it - so the questioner (who also doesn't have an answer) gets to score a point, despite being very dumb.

But there is a logical answer! 2/11
The questioner is advancing along the lines of 'national self-determination.' But - as the UN Kenya ambassador put it so well - that's road that ends in a river of blood. Europe DID bleed itself into ethno-states and it very bad. 3/11

Read 11 tweets
Feb 21
Journalists!

Yes, I see your sneer-quotes around "keep the peace" or "peacekeepers," but you need to be clear and explicit about the brazen lies.

An invading army of aggression is not 'peacekeeping.'
Russia has spent the last few days manufacturing transparently false 'provocations' to provide the pretext to invade Ukraine under the false guise of 'defending' two illegitimate breakaway republics that were never under threat.
Do not assume your readers know that! Most people are not paying close attention - but they may be about to.

So you have to state these facts *every*single*time.* Seriously, get a ready-to-go hyperlinked paragraph to copy-paste into everything you write.
Read 4 tweets

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