I would put my money on Russia doing this even though Crimea is now going to struggle with fresh water supplies.
It’s extremely obvious to anyone who’s familiar with this part of the world that the United States is responsible for destroying the dam.
/Meerchimer voice
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Curious what you’re referring to here specifically.
Not quite, he said that he has an open invitation for people to send him evidence that contradicts what he’s been saying and he’ll read it. He’s not going to like argue with ikes or whatever.
I can see the Salt Lake from just up the hill above the Utah Capitol. It’s immense. Hard to imagine the scale of this.
The barrier, which is located on the Dnipro River and holds back a body of water the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, maintains a reservoir that supplies water for drinking, agriculture and the cooling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station.
The nuclear plant isn’t at risk for now, but the Russians hold that too.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that it was “closely monitoring” the situation at the nuclear plant but that there was “no immediate nuclear safety risk.”
Fortunately we’ll soon get to the bottom of this!
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had launched a criminal investigation.
There are multiple examples. One being the way he dismisses the available casualty numbers from the media and Western and Ukrainian government sources, which at least roughly agree, and replaces them with his own wildly varying series of estimates. I quoted part of this in my edit.
If he’s right, the Ukrainians may have lost a number approaching a million soldiers. I mean, the Russians should realize the Ukrainians are even crazier than they are and gtfo while they can.
Not quite
I was being mean. I can’t say I’m never guilty of a little motivated reasoning myself.
I think his dismissal of the 7-1 Russia/Ukraine casualty estimate cited by the West (Ukraine has been entirely silent on their own casualties as far as I can tell) is very reasonable. A 7-1 ratio is ludicrous. As John points out, Russia has a big advantage in firepower. And as far as I can tell, there has never been a casualty ratio anything like that in major industrial wars between closely matched forces. Verdun has often been cited as an analog for Bakhmut, well, was there a 7-1 French casualty ratio? There was not, I think the French actually lost more troops (and unlike the Ukrainians in Bakhmut, never lost Verdun).
Not sure where you’re getting a million soldiers from, estimates I’ve seen for the Russian losses are like 50,000 dead and probably two or three times that wounded. His guess of 2-1 (and he’s very open that’s more or less an estimate with no certainty behind it and puts the reasonable range of anywhere from 1-1 to 4-1) seems plausible to me based on Russian airpower and artillery superiority. 1-1 seems plausible too, I don’t know. But 7-1 in favor or either side seems absolutely ludicrous and I’d challenge anyone to cite a large scale, drawn out war where there was that sort of lopsided casualty ratio.
His starting out with the 7-1 number is itself suspicious. It is extreme. Iirc it is a Ukrainian estimate at a specific time, place, and circumstance (Russian Wagner human wave attacks in Bakhmut using prisoners who were threatened with being shot by their own soldiers if they retreated). His taking it to represent what open sources are saying about overall numbers is incredibly badly informed or just plain dishonest.
Estimates I’ve seen have the Russians at 200k casualties. If JM is saying the Ukrainians may have lost more than 4x, that’s in the neighborhood of 1M. Which is off the wall nuts.
Russian airpower and artillery superiority.
In raw numbers. They don’t have air superiority over Ukraine and they can’t approach the front to support ground troops. They are mainly using their planes to launch long range attacks on civilian targets. Their artillery is inaccurate and they have logistical problems with ammo. They may not be replacing barrels. JM has some military background. I don’t understand why he ignores that quality matters.
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this is true. his whole argument is a repetition of “everyone thinks it’s X, but i think it’s Y by just thinking about it.” like there’s actual hard accounting of visual evidence of destroyed tanks and infantry armor on both sides which is completely ignored by him. he says it’s all artillery based. which is maybe true if you are stuck in ww1/ww2 analysis and you have read a lot of soviet doctrine. and there was period last summer when russia tried to win the battle of donbass with a huge advantage in artillery. but firstly they failed to capture it, and secondly conflict moved into a positional artillery duel mode where having fewer but more accurate rounds, and controlling certain elevations became more of a deciding factor. the himars advantage comes from its mobility and ease of reloading, and to date we think russia hasn’t achieved hitting one of those. in modern doctrine rockets are considered artillery, although in this conflict it expanded to also include loitering drones. sorry john, the analysis is bunk
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Love me a good sealioning
This applies most to his comments on the war. I think he’s better talking about his theory and its implications, even though I think he’s wrong there too and his model has fundamental limitations that at times he admits and at others ignores.
Right - I probably agree with his stuff way more than most here (or at least think he makes good/interesting points in his analysis), but think he does have a tendency to view facts in a way that supports his views.
Is it plausible that Ukraine now is having 4x the casualties of Russia - sure, but he provides no support other than just saying more artillery and airpower, ignoring as has been pointed out that it’s not just about numbers and that there are plenty of other factors in Ukraine’s favor (plus there is tons of visual evidence - from both sides - that is available). He does equivocate some here, but only to it at best being 1:1, again with no support why it couldn’t be 4x in favor of Ukraine.
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4x in either direction would be unprecedented as far as I can tell for this sort of war. Anyone who believes 7x in either direction is just credulously repeating Kremlin or Ukrainian propaganda. John thinks it’s 2x in favor of Russia, and he admits the uncertainty there and is perfectly willing to accept that’s a crude estimate and it might be lower or higher. He doesn’t think the casualty ratio could be in favor of Ukraine because Russia is firing a significantly higher amount of ordinance. Seems reasonable to me.
Who doesn’t?
this war’s scale in modern times is unprecedented. but no you are once again incorrect, casualties range of 5-1 or 7-1 (depending on source) happened to russia (!) in the first chechen war. there were definite times during vietnam when casualties ran at 5-1.
you are also ignoring why deaths are as high as that. western militaries prioritize getting wounded off the front lines and into medical care. AFU is following that, because western weaponry is only good if there’s someone who can wield it. there’s nothing like that in the clusterfuck that is the russian armed forces. since the beginning of the war they haven’t even picked up their dead, much less have medical support upto european standards. in fact, in all their preparation for the war, they never conceived taking on such losses, and the medics are simply overwhelmed. but those are proper russian troops. what about the mobilized from LDNR and convicts from Wagner? they are not backstopped by the MoD, they don’t have their own supply resources for extreme outcomes like that. are you sure they are getting the same survival rates for wounds as the NATO instructors are teaching AFU?
Except for the details, which are scant, this isn’t new. I think this was reported soon after the attack. They say explosive residue from the pipeline matched what was found on the Andromeda, but they don’t say what the nature of the match is (I guess they found HMX, which has been reported before, fine, but not exactly conclusive). Anyway, Hersh said this theory was stupid and Mearsheimer will bet against it so we can dismiss it.
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Hey, if we’re allowed to make up our own evidence based on thinking about it now, I was all over this last October.
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They did it last time they were in Ukraine in WWII. Apparently they haven’t been releasing water from the dam for the last month. It’s not their land and not their dam, so they are happy to blow it. Ain’t exactly a mystery.
The Russian approach to war seems ultimately very Trumpian. Make a lot of noise, fuck some shit up, and hope things shake out to your benefit.