I wrote about the Russian-Chechen conflict as part of my dissertation, and one of the starkest similarities to the current situation in Ukraine is how the Russian leadership overestimated their own capabilities and underestimated their opposition. Before the invasion, prominent Russian political & military officials, the press, all fully expected "organized resistance will melt away," believing that Dudayev & his men “will either have to surrender or transform the city into another Stalingrad and die fighting in its ruins"

It’s been 8 days and we’re already seeing articles on “how does this war end” and viral tweets on how if Ukraine will only hold on “for a few more days” the Russian military will collapse.

This is the attention span of the international community. 8 days. Urban warfare is a protracted fight that often turns into a battle of attrition. That defense has the advantage in urban warfare plus the high morale of Ukrainian forces and external aid don’t guarantee a quick victory, but more likely mean that the war will drag on.

I largely kept me emotions in check about this war until I talked to my grandma today. She was born in Nikolaev and still remembers evacuating on one of the last ships out of Ukraine in 1941 when the Nazis invaded although she was just 5 years old. She really loved that city and remembers going back there in 1966 to get away from the aftershocks from the Tashkent earthquake. My mom was a baby then, she took her first steps in Nikolaev in a 2 bedroom apartment that housed 3 families.

Ukraine is giving a masterclass in how to shape the information environment in your favor. I want to note some truly inspiring messaging and explain why unfortunately these sentiments & appeals could be clouding our assessments of whats coming. 1/10 While Russia is absolutely failing to land its false and poorly constructed messaging internationally, Ukrainians have managed to garner massive global support by linking their country's survival w/ that of democracies around the world. 2/10

What is happening tonight in Kiev is why I've been droning on about urban warfare for the last month. Because urban warfare is horrific in general and Russia's approach to urban warfare is particularly destructive. A few points about civilian casualties & displacement: Urban warfare in general is predominantly and particularly hard on civilians:
- ICRC data shows that war in cities accounted for 70% of all civilian casualties in Iraq & Syria.

Two positive developments and what to watch for as the invasion unfolds.
1. The protests against the war across Russia should tell you that many Russians oppose this war despite Kremlin propaganda. 1/4 If protests spread, we'll hear about how these aren't really Russian citizens, and that these 'riots' are being organized by disruptive, anti-Russian foreign agents from the West, esp. CIA. This rhetoric will be used to justify a crackdown & deter larger mobilization. 2/4

If this is the goal, we will be seeing a more extensive and deadly aerial bombardment campaign and possibly a siege. Thoughts on what this means: 1/4

https://twitter.com/danlamothe/status/1496889524198252547

I don’t think that Russian ground forces will try to take & hold Kiev through house-to-house urban combat. That would require a much larger force, lead to massive Russian military casualties, take months or even years and the logistics are unsustainable. 2/4

If you are trying to make sense of Russian messaging, you have to do 2 things:

1. hold 2 contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time and dispense of any need for logical consistency. 1/6 2. understand that the messaging is not meant to make sense to a western crowd that is only capable of seeing things through its US or European lens. 2/6

A few words on Russian disinformation, false flag ops, & general propaganda. I see smart people commenting on how transparently fake, false, & dumb the entire production seems. Timelines, actors, statements, signatures, nothing lines up. Thats true, but none of it matters. 1/6 The quality of disinformation is not what matters. It's the audience and the circumstances around it. If the audience is international, then the aim is to pollute the info environment b/c when people have access to too much information, its hard to decipher whats true. 2/6

I work on military technology and I swear if I read another article counting the number of Javelins arriving in Ukraine my head is going to explode. Here is what I want to know:
- How many viable bomb shelters do they have in Kyiv, Kharkiv & Odessa? 1/4 -How many hospitals ready for a massive influx of trauma casualties? Are they calling for blood donation? What's the doctor/nurses to population ratio?
-Are the local authorities preparing for food, fuel, clean water & medicine shortages? 2/4

Here is something I keep thinking about. Russian military posture & troop movements increasingly point toward a major ground offensive into Ukraine. Geography, politics, operational reality all suggest that it will be hard to avoid urban warfare. This is a nightmare scenario.1/8 I want be clear here - if this happens, we are going to witness massive destruction, displacement and death. I say this for 3 reasons.

1. Urban warfare is devastatingly violent, resulting in very high numbers of casualties, especially among civilians. 2/8

Let's pump the breaks here for a minute. I've said this many times before, but as someone who focused on urban warfare before entering the tech/AI space, I have some reservations about what high tech can and cannot do in urban environments. Some thoughts:

https://twitter.com/willknight/status/1391783674069258241

1. Urban environments are both congested in communications signals and at times inaccessible/unreliable. So you have to think about how you're going to keep these systems communicating w/ operators AND each other WHILE accounting for enemy interference, electronic warfare, etc.

Everyone is busy with budget stuff, but I have thoughts about the digital authoritarianism argument so you're gonna hear them:

1. The argument that technology is better for dictatorships than democracies is a hypothesis which remains empirically untested. 2. You can't claim that tech savvy dictatorships endure longer than their pre-tech predecessors and less tech savvy peers w/out showing me a regime survival analysis. Whats the cut-off point for pre and post tech? How do you define autocracy or dictatorship?

This is a very interesting article and I'm excited to see more scholarly writing on urban warfare, especially work that challenges some conventional wisdom. I have some quick thoughts. 1/

https://twitter.com/TXNatSecReview/status/1182379034753273856

The article argues that the urban environment, just like the jungle, is neutral - it's neither good nor bad, and it manifests differently, but with equal impact, upon all sides. I disagree. 2/

I see a lot of smart people and esp my fellow political scientists are in search of strategy & reason behind this latest attack/detract Iran story. I feel your pain. But for the love of all that is holy, please stop trying to find sense where none exists. 1/ These are not strategically sophisticated people. They don’t understand or care about how signaling to foreign powers works, if they did, we’d see consistency, minimal uniformity of msg, resolve, and/or directionality of some kind. 2/

This is wrong in an endless number of ways. Here are a few:
1. Political instability & regime transitions in non-democracies increase the chances of civil war, politicide, genocide, & severe state repression.

https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1021438019281317888

2. Iran's geography & demographic profile are a nightmare scenario for military operations; expect urban warfare in big, crowded cities to be MUCH WORSE than Mosul or Fallujah & a rural insurgency in mountains ala Afghanistan but with MANY more fighters