The good news:
1. Ukraine continues to gain ground, but slowly.
2. Ukraine appears to have an unlimited number of committed & skillful soldiers.
3. The West supplies ever more and better arms, especially badly needed air defense.
4. Russia seems to be running out of reserves & doesn't dare to call up its own conscripts or deploy troops that are needed to protect the Kremlin.
5. Russia does not seem to be able to move any new arms into the Ukrainian theater.
The bad news:
1. Mariupol has not been liberated.
2. Putin is going full Hitler not only bombing, but increasingly shooting, civilians. The Russian terror is becoming Stalinist. Human and material are awful.
3. "Rashisty", as they now are called, are pummeling Soviet bombs.
4. Putin is not accepting that he is losing but escalated to greater terror & worse weapons.
5. So far, Russian society seems unable to oust their tyrant, which would be the best conclusion of this war.

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More from @anders_aslund

Mar 22
Wonderful article by Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic: "Why Can’t the West Admit That Ukraine Is Winning?"
Indeed, why is this irrational nonsense allowed to dominate the US "analysis"? Cohen offers many good answers.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
"Analysts and commentators have grudgingly declared that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been blocked, and that the war is stalemated. The more likely truth is that the Ukrainians are winning.

So why can’t Western analysts admit as much?"
"Most professional scholars of the Russian military first predicted a quick and decisive Russian victory; then argued that the Russians would pause, learn from their mistakes...Their analytic failure will be only one of the elements of this war worth studying in the future."
Read 8 tweets
Mar 20
Many people claim to be surprised that Putin started a war of aggression against Ukraine. Really? To me it was evident from his article of July 12, 2021. Let me go back to my article of July 14 about "Putin's Dangerous Ukraine Narrative."
project-syndicate.org/commentary/put…
1. "Putin is obsessed with Ukraine – or, rather, with pretending that Ukraine doesn’t exist. In his annual call-in show on June 30, he claimed that “Ukrainians and Russians are a single people.”...It is a masterclass in disinformation – & one step short of a declaration of war."
2. "Russia always treated Ukraine “with great love,” Putin declares. That’s not quite how I would describe imposing severe trade sanctions on a country in turmoil, as Russia did to Ukraine when President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin crony, was ousted in 2014."
Read 6 tweets
Mar 19
A few thoughts on the Western economic sanctions on Russia.
1. They are truly vicious. No sensible forecasts can be made today, but I would be surprised if Russia's GDP does not fall by some 20% in 2022.
2. Russia suffers from extreme financial, trade & air isolation.
3. These sanctions are self-reinforcing & self-reproducing. It has become indecent to trade with Russia or doing anything commercially in Russia.
4. The big hole that is open is shipping. Close that & the sanction breakers, such as India & China can no longer do that.
5. As @AmbDanFried has long advocated, the dominant state shipping company Sovcomflot should be sanctioned. Western ports and shipping companies should be prohibited to handle Russian shipping anywhere in the world. Today, China & India buy discounted Russian oil.
Read 8 tweets
Mar 19
On the whole, I must give @POTUS great credit for how he has handled Russia's war against Ukraine.
1. Already in 2014, he pushed for serious arms to Ukraine. He lost to Obama, but he was on the right side of history.
2. Since he became president, he has sent lots of good arms.
3. Biden made a mistake to meet Putin on June 16, giving him undue recognition for no reason.
4. Biden made an extraordinary mistake when he let Nord Stream 2 go ahead first in the spring & then in the July 21 agreement with Merkel. That was the low point.
5. Biden's great achievement has been to turn the world's attention to what Russia was doing around Ukraine by daily report intelligence publicly. This was a major victory in the information war.
6. As a result of his public statements journalists flooded to Ukraine & told it all
Read 5 tweets
Mar 19
Will Putin use nukes & if so in what case? I see 3 dominant answers:
1. He won't as it does not make sense. He is only threatening. We can ignore those threats but keep a high guard. (my position).
2. He might do so, so we have to be cautious (bleeding heart liberals). Appease!
3. Putin is so mad and desperate that he might use nukes. The best we can do is to hit hard early so that it cannot save him or does not manage to get around to do so (the general Ukrainian position).
The best argumentation I have heard is General Wesley Clark (twice publicly this week) who states that we should start with the assumption that Putin will use nukes. Then ask ourselves what we would do in that case: Threaten to respond in kind!
Read 4 tweets
Mar 18
Russia's war in Ukraine illustrates how warfare has changed. Tanks & armored personnel carriers have become obsolete. They are too expensive & are easily destroyed with manifold light anti-tank weapons or drones.
Airplanes and helicopters are too expensive and too vulnerable to modern weapons, so they are not much used, but much destroyed.
The obvious winners are the Turkish killer drones, as in the war in Nagorny Karabakh.
Cruise missiles remain effective, but they are expensive.
Special forces remain vital, but they must have high moral and be disciplined. The Ukrainians are, while the Kadyrovtsy have been revealed as cruel and trigger-happy but pretty useless.
The Putin army has been revealed as an obsolete Potemkin army.
Read 5 tweets

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