Thread by @ZimermanErik

Part II

The downside of this advantage is that you lose it if you "use it". Russia can continue to force the UA command to use vast numbers of troops to guard the enormous length international border as long as it continues to make credible that it may attack from it & doesn't.

https://twitter.com/ZimermanErik/status/1628274110932418562

That is the ironic part to the advantage. The moment #Russia advances one meter into Ukraine from the int. border, then that is now an "equal" front. Both sides can freely attack the other from it. If RU withdraws that 1 meter than it becomes an unequal border, favoring Russia.

Once RU is within int recognized Ukraine, then the line is no longer the border but an active front. RU must defend it strongly or face the UA advance through it. Because of this fact, how and when to use the advantage becomes critically important. For now Russia is using the

long border to make UA expend forces to guard it. It is likely to at some point actually break through it once again, but that decision is not lightly taken for the reasons explained above. When Russia was vastly outnumbered, this force multiplier was critical for survival of the

line. Now that Russia has mobilized and deployed a good number of the new troops, the force multiplier makes Russia's newly acquired manpower all the more useful. Troops can "rest", regroup and reconstitute while deployed along the long border, without having to be under full

combat conditions nor full alert. UA must expend the manpower to face them across the line in a much more heightened state of alert. So back to the question of when and where RU will strike along this long border. First we recognize that it must be a strike that is worthwhile,

this advantage is lost once the advance begins. Secondly, to be used appropriately it cannot be determined a priori. There are a myriad ways RU could advance from the border... another attempt at surrounding Kiev, a pincer from Zaporizhzhia to Donetsk (the dash to Pokrovsk!),

the encirclement of UA forces along the Oskil river in the Kharkhov front, an encirclement of Kharkhov itself, Sumy, and many more. For Russia to use opportunity correctly, requires leveraging the advantage itself. It depends on what how UA forces deploy. Depending on how

credible the threat is and how important stopping it is, the UA command will deploy its forces accordingly. RU cannot make the decision by the map alone, but rather by taking into account that deployment. If UA forces strongly guard an area of the border, they use up manpower

& equipment needed in the active battlefields. If they don't, then they risk the Russian advance. And the RU advance should occur at such a place. Not into the teeth of strong UA resistance, but in lightly guarded areas. The reality is a bit more complex of course, since the

level of threat UA perceives in any part of the border is related to its intel on how many and what type of RU forces have massed in the area. RU for its part must engage in ruses that pretend to show massing troops where they aren't, and hide massing troops where they are.

Secondly, UA is trying to mitigate this asymmetric disadvantage by fortifying the long border by means other than manpower. Barbed wire, mines, fortifications and trenches. We have seen that relatively few troops can delay if not stop large advances when well positioned. If the

border is well fortified, than UA needs relatively few troops to man it. If and when a section is attacked, the advance should be slow enough that reinforcements can be arrive in time without having to always guard the entire border with large quantities of manpower.

So to this extent, the longer RU tries to keep the asymmetric advantage, the smaller it gets as Ukraine tries to fortify its long border. Not that this happens without cost (money, equipment and manpower as well). These major factors along with many other lesser ones go into the

calculation of whether RU will cross the international border elsewhere again, and if so, when and where. Meanwhile, though it does not get the attention that the active fronts do, the respected border plays a complex part of the strategic picture for both sides.

Hope to discuss some of the likely (& best) routes across this long at semi-peace border that Russia may take (and hopefully get to do so before it does so).

#RussianUkrainianWar #UkraineRussianWar #Belarus