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Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
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Mar 18 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
China wants this message to be getting out at least to Europe and North America. Makes it rather difficult to turn around and give Putin a huge amount of direct military aid.
And ultimately, China needs a better relationship with the US and Europe than it needs with Russia. They trade it does with the former dwarfs the latter. One of my favorite graphics on the subject. It’s hard to even find Russia.
Here is the map by volume of exports, where China is sending what it produces. Again, Russia is a small consideration. Almost all of China’s big export markets are the nation’s sanctioning Russia the most.
And imports into China. From Russia would imagine that almost all oil and raw materials.

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More from @PhillipsPOBrien

Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 20
Ok, some people have asked for a summary of my views on war (why my analysis of the Ukraine war has been so pointed), so I thought I would make this thread with reference to my research (where possible free or library access material).
My view of war is in many ways profoundly boring. War is a struggle about the control of communications--which run from the raw materials needed to produce a good until that good is delivered to the battlefield.
It argues that the focus on bravery/cowardice of destruction/tragedy while compelling as a human story, tells us nothing of value about why wars are won and lost.
Read 14 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 20
A thread about how we report supposed victories in war (this one and others), why they dont matter nearly as much as people claim, and how they actually deceive us into understanding what really matters. Partly motivated by this @nytimes headline. Image
The New York Times is reporting this morning that the Russians are making 'significant' gains in Ukraine. In specific they are pushing into Mariopul, and they have hit two Ukrainian military facilities with long-range missile bombardment. Pretty dramatic and breathless stuff. Image
However, these are within the course of the war either unimportant, or actually signs of Russian defeats. In particular the attack on Mariopul. This is a humanitarian disaster and war crime, first and foremost. Militarily its a sign of Russian defeat, even if they seize the city.
Read 18 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 19
Still think it’s worth saying that a Russian use of chemical/biological weapons would be considered such a crossing of a escalators red lines that NATO could respond with a NFZ. That would make Russia think very very seriously before acting.
Im no expert in Russian Biological/Chemical weapons doctrine, but if they use them I assume that they would be used specifically to terrorize the largest Ukrainian cities (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lwiw, Odessa. Hitting the Ukrainian army, which is close to the Russian army, would be hard.
Such attacks would be the types of war crime that, imo, that could countenance a NFZ.
Read 4 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 19
There is a lot of discussion about Russia moving to a strategy of attrition. If so, that’s a sign of failure and desperation. They will run out of forces in Ukraine before the Ukrainians, unless they massively reinforce (which they are not doing so far).
Thought I will develop this more. There are signs that the Russians have realized that they are terribly overextended and are digging in and even retreating in places to try and rationalize their frankly bonkers number of different efforts.
There are satellite images from around Kyiv, showing Russian forces constructing fortifications as if they plan to be there for a while. This makes some sense individually, as the Russians have nowhere near the forces to surround and attack Kyiv.
Read 21 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 19
What US defense sources are saying about Russian combat power is most likely significantly underestimating Russian losses, unless they have developed a new way of defining combat power.
Visually confirmed Russian losses of all Russian military vehicles are very high, 244 tanks, 464 different fighting vehicles, over 500 trucks and other support vehicles and a wide range of other types such as anti air, etc. oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack…
As these figures cover only those with visual confirmation, This represents only some of the Russian vehicles destroyed or out of action. After three weeks in the field any military, even with excellent logistics would be suffering breakdowns, etc.
Read 11 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 18
This is part of a long thread from US Defense official, it starts the section where the person discusses logistics. It has some of the better intelligence on the state of Russian logistics that I’ve seen. The whole thread is worthwhile
Here is the whole briefing text. defense.gov/News/Transcrip…
An example of the text where the source discusses logistics: a lot there to chew on.
Read 29 tweets

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