As I understand it, cyber attacks have been less effective than anticipated by some. At least I don't remember public reports of highly effective disruptions.
From the ISW:
But......the sunk costs thinking worked so well for the U.S. im VietNam, and Afghanistan.
There are losses on both sides, but higher for Russia if for no other reason than they doing most of the attacking. For Ukraine it still appears to fit under the “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake“ category.
That about sums it up.
Exactly. You don’t have to carpet bomb the entire area to hit the target, it’s less messy that way and it may even be less expensive in terms of materiel expenditure/logistics. You also don’t tear up the area to such a degree that you deny your own troops mobility.
The end game is going to be strangely challenging.
I’d say continuing to conduct sabotage, drone, missile, and artillery strikes in Russia so long as hostilities continue is valid, as are manned air strikes if the anti-air systems can be sufficiently degraded. Western propagandists may also be able to get word in on the situation on the border via radio, broadcast TV, the mail, or the Russian internet.
The end game is going to be unpleasant. Exactly how unpleasant kind of depends. The best case for Ukraine is that they substantially retake the pre-2014 borders and Putin is deposed (not necessarily in that order). The next guy cleans house and basically says that Putin was lying all along, let's sign a peace treaty and by the way can you lift sanctions? Then everyone can get back to the oligarchs grifting the system, which is the way they like it.
From Reuters. Full article here: https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...-year-old-rounds-us-official-says-2022-12-12/
Who do you think should make those “surgical strikes” against Russia and Iran? The US? The Ukraine? Some proxy nation?
If it gets to that point I don’t think it would matter.
I can't see Europe and America taking direct action against Russia. Even before the Putin era Russia was senstive to attacks on the homeland so military action could seriously backfire. We've already seen that Russia (for now) is managing to prop up its internal economy so I'm not convinced that further economic sanctions are going to have much effect. When Russian foreign exchange starts to run out (much of it is frozen and and they're burning through the rest at a fair rate) things might get much tougher inside Russia.
I agree. A west attack on Russia strengthens Putin domestically alot without any significant effect on Russia militarily.
I think the US and Europe would take direct action inside Russia if Russian troops rolled over the border with a NATO country. I don't think ground troops would cross the border, but airstrikes? Almost certainly. That's getting at one of your scenarios above. There's a whole lot of people spoiling for a fight (Poland, Baltics) if Russia gives them an excuse by crossing the border.
