[afarrell]

Chess is a very simple game. All of the rules are known to both players. All of the information is known to both players. It is impossible for a rook to suddenly get stuck in mud or surrender because it feels hungry and confused. It is impossible for one side to roll a set of dice to request additional knights. Neither player’s cognitive abilities are impaired by sleep deprivation or fears of being murdered by a bishop. There are only two players.

> who makes a serious mistake at a time like this when they are trying to win. Nobody.

The number of examples of military blunders in human history is too numerous to count. Some examples you’ll want to look at include the British defense of Singapore, the peninsula campaign of the US civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, and the 12 battles of the Isonzo river.

[pavornyoh]

Yes, it is indeed a simple game. I do agree with everything you have said and I am very familiar with those thanks. I am too addicted to history. Let me ask you this.

Why hasn't Putin been successful with all his experience? Did he overplay his hand?

[afarrell]

I have only taken a couple graduate-level classes on military power. The answer to your questions is so detail-rich that for me to presume to know if would be the pretense of knowledge.

Would you still like my underinformed speculation?

[vimax]

My guess is two reasons:

  He vastly underestimated Ukrainian resistance

And

  Ukrainian resistance has been supported by Western intelligence and weapons

Putin's day 1 plan was to seize most of the airfields and assassinate the president. These were attempted by trained forces and could have worked. The Ukrainians managed to stop them all. I'm sure these included cyber attacks we haven't heard about.

After that the Ukrainians have had remarkable success in targeting Russian logistics efforts.

Few people were expecting such a fierce Ukrainian resistance. That is by far Putin's biggest miscalculations. Even had things gone his way, it's clear now he'd be in for a long insurgency that he wasn't anticipating.

Putin has made many poor decisions and should have been able to overcome them by force to meet many of his objectives. But, the Ukrainians have had the intelligence and tools to amplify his mistakes into the clusterfuck we're seeing.

I'm sure Russian morale is low and there were some poor logistics, but it seems exaggerated in the news.

Putin still has most of his combat forces available and estimates I've heard are he can sustain the attack for several more weeks.

[moistly]

And

    Yes men and fearful underlings lied about the real state of affairs regarding preparedness, quality of equipment, training, enthusiasm, expenditures, etc.

And

    Russia is corrupt to the core. Funding for training, equipment, maintenance, planning: stolen.

[vimax]

That seems to be contributing, but the puzzling thing is the lack of those problems in recent Russian conflicts in Syria, Crimea, etc...

How did their preparedness degrade so much in only a few years with no indication of Russian military bureaucratic breakdown from the outside?

I'd like to see satellite images of the Russian troop buildup on the border and in Belarus and see if there's any signs of the incompetence and lack of coordination we're seeing in the field.

[moistly]

A little cheat here, a little theft there, grow it like the parable of grains of rice on a checkerboard.

Next thing you know, the cheap seals in the bearings of your wheels leak because someone who was supposed to ensure QA was being applied to incoming parts pocketed the money instead. And your soldiers are freezing because someone else didn’t get them winter kit.

The corrupt leader has a dozen corrupt ministers who have a dozen corrupt public servants each managing a dozen corrupt upper management… until eventually Wade in Procurement pockets a few thousand dollarydoos by not paying employee Enum to test the seals for Quality Standard X… and ditto for the other dozen(s) under Wade’s department.

As the corruption grows, it becomes more blatant. The Wades trust one another less. Start watching their back. Become more siloed. Underlings start noticing the corruption from above. It starts to infect the workplace… right down to the guy who installs the seals and notices they’re not as beefy as the previous shipment, but doesn’t say anything to his manager because he’ll just catch shit. The guy who was runs the Personal Deploy Kit checklist ordered heavy mittens, got wool fingered gloves. It’s career-limiting to get that corrected. Boys aren’t invading anyway, it’s just exercises.

Unchecked criminality grows exponentially as it goes downchain.

[moistly]

This might interest you: https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/15026739525728...

[AnimalMuppet]

Putin seems to be growing increasingly paranoid. Even if not paranoid, he has a history of imprisoning or assassinating those who politically oppose him.

Such leaders tend to hear more and more what people think they want to hear, and less and less reality. Mistakes in judgment follow almost inevitably.

Putin very much overplayed his hand... but he may have had a flawed understanding of what his hand was.