That's Mikhail Khodaryonok. Out of all people in the room he is the most sober one. Why? Well, may be because he's the only one with the substantial military experience. He's a career officer of the air defence who turned to a pundit career only after retirement (not a thread)
Khodaryonok used to be a senior operative officer in the Russian General Staff. Most Russian pundits judged the military capacity of the Russian army based on official propaganda. Khodaryonok - on his lived experience. Now wonder he is way more pessimistic about the war
Khodaryonok published a pessimistic prognosis about the Russian invasion of Ukraine back on February 3, long before it started. Many pundits expected a quick Russian victory. But the one who actually worked in the Russian General Staff didn't believe in it nvo.ng.ru/realty/2022-02…
Some Khodaryonok's points he raised back on February 3, three weeks before the Russian invasion:
- Pundits are wrong about the political situation in Ukraine. Many claim that nobody iwould defend the "regime in Kyiv". That's false. They will, including the Russian-speakers
- Pundits claim that Russia can win in a few hours by destroying Ukrainian army with "a mighty artillery strike". Well, even a term "mighty artillery strike" suggests it were the Politruks who made it up and not the military. It's propaganda. It's also factually wrong. They won't
- Pundits claim that Ukrainian army is in disarray. Well, it used to be back in 2014. Back then it used to be a very much deteriorated version of the Soviet army. Since then it improved immensely. It is now organised on very different principles and largely by NATO standards
- Pundits claim that the Western countries won't send a single soldier to die for Ukraine. Probably they won't. But they will support Ukraine massively "There is no doubt that in the case of war, the USA and NATo will reincarnate some version of lend lease much alike WWII"
- Pundits expect Russia to win in days or hours. They forget that the USSR spent more than 10 years exterminating guerrillas in Western Ukraine. Now Russia will face guerrillas in urban landscapes that naturally favour a weaker and less heavily armed side of the conflict
- Conclusions. There will be no Blitzkrieg in Ukraine. Experts who claim that Russia will defeat Ukraine in "8 minutes", "10 minutes" and even in "30-40 minutes are wrong". Best of all, forget about your jingoist fantasies and never bring them up again
I very much recommend to translate Khodoryonok's prognosis from back on February 3 and publish it as a full length thread. It's really the most astute, detailed and shockingly precise prognosis of the future war that I read. That's literally Cassandra-level of prophesying
Some wrote that my prognosis from Feb 27 aged well and I take this as a compliment. But Khodoryonok's article was *waaay* more precise and came out 3 weeks earlier. He predicted the course of this war before it even started. That's the power of a true expertise & lived experience
TL;DR Out of all predictions and prognoses about the Z-war that I ever read or hear about, Khodaryonok's one was the most precise, like unbelievably precise. I don't exclude the possibility that this guy understands the situation better than anyone else. The end of not a thread
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Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.
Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.
(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
As a person from a post-Soviet country, I could not but find the institutions of People’s Republic of China oddly familiar. For every major institution of the Communist Russia, I could find a direct equivalent in Communist China.
With one major exception:
China had no KGB
For a post-Soviet person, that was a shocking realisation. For us, a gigantic, centralised, all-permeating and all powerful state security system appears to be almost a natural phenomenon. The earth. The sky. Force of gravity. KGB
All basic properties of reality we live in
It was hard to come up with any explanation for why the PRC that evolved in a close cooperation with the USSR, that used to be its client state, that emulated its major institutions, failed to copy this seemingly prerequisite (?) institution of state power
Soviet output of armaments was absolutely gargantuan, massive, unbeatable. “Extraordinary by any standard” , it was impossible for any other country to compete with.
From 1975 to 1988, the Soviets produced four times as many ICBMs and SLBMs, twice as many nuclear submarines, five times as many bombers, six times as many SAMs, three times as many tanks and six times as many artillery pieces as the United States.
Impossible to compete with.
Which raises a question:
How could the USSR produce so much?
It is not only that the USSR invested every dime into the military production. It is also that the Soviet industry was designed for the very large volumes of output, and worked the best under these very large volumes
We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).