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Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
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Mar 23 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
@JackDetsch producing a number of really interesting tweets from the US DoD briefing about what the Russians are trying to do. Seems like a little of everything; reorganise to take Kyiv, make a flanking manoeuvre to take Odessa and surround Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.
Cannot see how they would have the force for all of this, unless Ukrainian forces are far weaker than they seem to be. Wonder if Moscow is just barking out orders that the Russian Army can’t fulfill?
Again, if this is true, instead of massing to attack Kyiv, Russian forces seem to be in a bit of a mess to both the east and west of the city.
Putting the last story in perspective
Another good map of the present situation

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More from @PhillipsPOBrien

Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 25
1. A thread (speculative) on what is the most important/least discussed strategic concept of the invasion so far: Ukrainian strategy. What the Ukrainians have done seems systematic, well-planned and very effective. This is an attempt to systematize it as a non Ukrainian.
2. One of the real problems so far is that the pre and post-invasion analysis has been dominated by Russian strategy people, who never bothered to look much at the Ukrainians as a serious force, which is why they expected, w/o evidence, that the Ukrainians would collapse quickly
3. What the Ukrainians have done is seemingly put in place a plan of action that has stymied a much larger war machine and inflicted the kinds of losses on the invaders that is rendering them ineffective. Here is what their plan might be.
Read 18 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 25
If true, this is an extraordinary rate of failure.
Here is another link. Really extreme failure fate.
Indeed, if true we should stop calling them precision guided munitions, and just call them malfunctioning projectiles
Read 5 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 24
Building a new thread on this, Ukraine and the long-war and why a peace deal, even a very messy one, would be the best solution even if it gives Putin an off ramp (in other words, be careful before you push for maximalist Ukrainian demands)
As someone who has been very critical of Russian military performance and complimentary of the way the Ukrainians have defended themselves, I do think we need to be careful arguing that Ukraine can somehow easily take on a long war or make extreme demands in a peace treaty.
If a long war will tax Russia tremendously (first thread) it is not easy for Ukraine. The fighting is on Ukrainian soil and the civilians being brutalized are Ukrainian. The fact also remains that Ukraine cannot conquer Russia, so whatever happens, there will have to be a deal.
Read 12 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 23
Thanks for this. I’m getting lots of comments from people saying it’s no good criticising the Russian military in hindsight. I agree. Though if I can say, I wrote a piece a month before the invasion saying Russia was too weak and would struggle with complex operations
And that Ukraine would fight. Article was in @TheCriticMag . Here is a screenshot of what I was arguing. Image
Here’s a link to the whole article. thecritic.co.uk/the-new-appeas…
Read 8 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 23
A very quick thread on those talking about Russia settling in for a long war and mobilising it’s resources for an extended campaign. Could they do it: possibly, but it would be a very different war with major societal implications.
The Russian Army is actually not that large. It’s around 900,000, which sounds big (though for a country of Russia’s size it’s very thinly spread) but about a third is conscript and many of the ‘professionals’ are on 12 month contracts. csis.org/blogs/post-sov…
We have pretty good intelligence that the Russians have deployed 75% of their best fighting formations to Ukraine (these are the ones wasting away now). Maybe they send the other 25%, but even that won’t make much of a difference in the short term.
Read 9 tweets
Phillips P. OBrien Profile picture
Mar 23
This is worth confirming. Russian ammo use is already far higher than anything they could have planned for and a large dump in Luhansk should be one of their most important ones for the fighting in the east. If the Ukrainians can start targeting Russian dumps it will matter.
@thetimes has a piece on ammunition shortages that are starting to bite for the Ukrainians too. Not surprising. To give you an idea of the use rate of ammo in war being far higher than anyone expected, the Ukrainians are saying that they are using a weeks supply in 20 hour
So both sides will be feeling the crunch, and whoever has the better functioning supply/logistics system will have a significant edge. So far three things seem to be favoring the Ukrainians. 1) the have generally lighter weapons which makes resupply somewhat less complex
Read 6 tweets

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