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Notes -
Your Quarterly Ukraine War check-in
Three and a half months ago, we checked in on the war in Ukraine. That post was itself a check in to follow up on dire predictions from the pro-Russia posters in fall of 2025 that the loss of Pokrovsk was heralding the collapse of Ukrainian front lines and encirclement of Ukrainian troops. Amusingly, @No_one went back and deleted all of their posts after the last check in, so I can only leave you with this:
I expected the Iran war to be a major tailwind for Russia (oil prices, sanctions relief, US distraction) but on the contrary, the western information space seems to argue that things will remain stalemated for the foreseeable future. Ukraine seems to be pumping out drones (is this all that matters now?), and has started hitting Russian oil refineries. People have been hyping up what seems to be a mostly symbolic bombing of Moscow. The map hasn't moved, supposedly Russian recruitment is down. The Russian spring offensive has been underway for several weeks and made no progress:
On the flip side, people write articles about how bad the Russian economy is, and then drop this line near the end:
I'd be interested to hear whether anyone has insight into the rhetoric on the Russian side or the pro-Russian perspective at the moment.
So - any new/modified predictions? We had @ABigGuy4U saying collapse in July-August (still a few months to go), @Lizzardspawn saying to look at the frequency of blackouts in Kiev (still unchanged at 6-8 hours a day afaict).
I feel like you are borderline nutpicking the "pro-Russian" side here, but then the nuts may be disproportionately visible because for the more realistic people on it there is nothing to be excited about. Therefore, let me just put down a prediction of "once again, nothing much will happen" for the upcoming quarter here. Maybe the Russians will finally grind their way through the rest of the ruins of Konstantinovka or Kupyansk (though the 90% confidence interval for that is more like 1 year from now), and maybe the Ukrainians will start yet another "successful" counteroffensive that will gain some 200-400km² to then be slowly rolled back over the course of the next 1-2 years at a great cost in life and treasure to Russia, Ukraine and the European taxpayer.
It is more likely that there will be some additional unpublicised backdoor decisions that will influence the longer-term trajectory of the war, such as the addition of further "gentlemen's agreements" about what sort of facilities may not be targeted by long-range bombings. From a purely military standpoint, I expect these to be detrimental to Russia (because from a purely military standpoint, I think the winning play for Russia more and more obviously amounts to escalation, now that NATO and Europe is further strained by Iran - blow up NPPs and make sure that any city in Ukraine that still can support a civilian drone workshop becomes uninhabitable for civilians, send your own leadership to the bunkers, and absorb the retaliation in kind with your superior bulk), but I do not have anything resembling a complete picture of how thin a thread the Russian economy and internal control system is hanging by, and if any greater mobilisation or damage to their own civilian infrastructure would actually result in them collapsing (in which case they maybe have no better option than to sit and wait out their gradual decline and hope for some deus ex machina).
We've had evidence since WW2 and right now we see Iran and Gaza and Lebanon all being 'terror bombed', with civillian infrastructure destroyed. That shit never fucking works. People adapt and would rather eat dirt than surrender to someone far away. Until you've got a boot on the ground, and often not even that, populations can hold out. You need full governmental capitulation on top of military defeat to force the issue, and the Russians simply don't have the mass to actually move in. Their theory of victory seems... absent? Thats the kindest way I can put it.
On the other hand, WWII "terror bombing" is generally accepted to have been useful. I don't get the impression that Iran actually has been anything near "terror bombed"; Gaza for sure and Lebanon maybe, but I'm not convinced those could be compared to a hypothetical similar bombing of Ukraine because the baseline living standard in Ukraine is much higher and both surrender to Russia and emigration to Europe would be a significant carrot that is simply not available to Middle Easterners, whose neighbours can't be assed to help them and whose conquerors want to exterminate them.
Even then, I didn't mean to suggest that the optimal strategy involves terror bombing followed by a complete occupation; instead, what they could realistically hope for is terror bombing enabling occupation of some more adjacent parts (Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Sumy and the rest of Donbass are probably an upper bound on what they could achieve with a conventional terror bombing campaign against the whole country + final push without significant conscription) and the rest being so weakened and ruined that it will not be a net threat to them even if they can not extract any negotiated conditions. (EU and NATO could then repair and rearm what is left of Ukraine, but if that much population and resources are gone then doing so might wind up costing so much that it would actually weaken the bloc.)
Then there is the pour encourager les autres element: at this point there is a distinct sense that the Baltics are actively flirting with the idea of baiting the Russians into attacking them, because they figure that fighting against Russia does not actually look so bad away from the frontline and if they can secure NATO or EU support early on the frontline doesn't have to be on their territory (and Estonia's feelings about Narva getting the Vovchansk treatment probably amount to "don't threaten me with a good time" anyway). Building a reputation for indiscriminate/vindictive bombing would probably dampen that enthusiasm.
The maximal case of WW2 mass bombing is the case you raised as a means to move the needle that Russia should employ to win, and my point is such terror bombing didn't work in either destroying civillian morale/resilience (adaptation is quite rapid we can go back to eating roots and huddling around smoking dry wood piles) or meaningfully degrading operational momentum independent of frontline pressure. And thats with saturation bombing actually destroying entire districts, not just the fear of bombs dropping onto a building at a time which characterizes semiprecision (or rather rate-limited) warfare.
Gaza lebanon Iran are raised as examples because they are contemporary and visible and categorized as such, but if such examples are dismissed, which I personally do as well, it introduces new definitional problems. What is this terror bombing the russians should do to effect the needle moving you state can be done? Full constant bombardments of thousands of drones every day to blow a city to smithreeens? The volume of munitions needed to level a city fully with terror bombing exceeds what Russia can generate a year. Tokyo required 2000 tonnes of firebombs to inflame wooden cities, Dresden needed something like 8000 tonnes. Russia doesn't have the airframes or depth to lob that volume, and that's even assuming every package goes through. Even targets within tube artillery range can't get saturated to death because counterbattery and better targrts exist. Severidonetsk and Adviika held out forever despite being in tube artillery range until meat could actually grind through. Citing Kharkiv Sumy or Zaporozhye is insane when the donbass prize of Slovyanks still holds and that was the target since 2014. Fuck, even Kupiansk isnt Russian anymore.
If the Russians could terror bomb Ukraines frontline cities into submission they'd have fucking done so. Its not a lack of will, since Russians gleefully document their atrocities for updoots and donations on VK and telegram, they can't terror bomb because it doesn't fucking work and they don't have the means to do so. Frankly the shahed striking stinks of trying to do something with an available asset, not a true cogent action. Maybe Poland opening all its doors to Ukraine would make people move but really everyone still left in those targets you identify are the stupid and the stubborn (this latter being a particularly slavic trait). They'll die in their soil just like their ancestors before and curse you for trying to drive them out.
You are conflating different levels of city functioning here. You need a far greater level of destruction to get a city in "fortress mode" that is being defended by a military garrison which is being supplied from the outside, than you need to degrade a city in functioning civilian economy mode to the point where its ability to operate military production facilities is significantly degraded. Severodonetsk, Avdiivka etc. were examples of the former: I doubt that, while they were under siege, a significant number of drones, military uniforms or even food ration packs were assembled in either of them. Instead, those workshops are in cities like Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Vinnitsa, where I gather civilians still can go to the supermarket to buy groceries, go to a 9-5 job in a factory (producing drones, or producing something that will be used by someone else producing drones), and stop by a restaurant for dinner after. However, would the frontline cities you listed held out for so long if the backline cities had stopped supplying them, or even if the volume of supplies had to be cut by half? This seems doubtful to me.
How much bombing does it take to significantly degrade, say, Dnepropetrovsk's civilian economy relative to its current state? I doubt it is actually all that much. We hear reports of facilities in the city being hit all the time, but usually it is repeat hits on hardened Soviet-era factories like Yuzhmash, which evidently don't have a lot of long-lasting effects (and anyhow Yuzhmash's output at this point may not be as important as that of some random drone workshop in a basement somewhere). What if everything being directed at them were instead sent to randomly chosen coordinates in the city's residential areas? Surely this would result in normal civilian life in the city becoming much more dangerous, regular businesses shutting down, and people leaving, making life harder for those who stay behind, and accordingly reducing productivity. Even having to go from "get it from the corner electronics shop" to "put in an order with the military" if your drone assembly shop is missing some widget would entail significant loss of time.
Sorry, real life isn't a command and conquer game where you can 'destroy military production' and 'destroy civillian revenue generation' to stop the frontline. Again, its not like Russia hasn't been trying to degrade Kyiv with mid hundred quantities of missiles and drones. The sheer amount of destruction you need to inflict is, again, in the order of thousands of tonnes of actually on site munitions, not the low hundred if even high ten tonnes that actually make it to the backline. Russia is * already * sending bombs to random buildings both because of poor target knowledge and also because they're just incompetent dickbags. Human adaptability is really high, the history of adaptation to constant bombing has history since the blitz. Fuck, even when Berlin was actually being bombed to oblivion they didn't break, and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't kill the desire of the IJA to make a heroic last stand. Unless you've got boots pressing the ground, terror bombing doesn't work, much less at the tiny quantities Russia brags about sending but strategically are not needle movers.
Do command and conquer games model a civilian economy...? I thought they were a classical RTS, where you just have military production buildings and maybe resource extraction and upgrade research. Even if that were the case, "it's like this in a game" is not an argument that something is not the case in real life. You have to actually articulate what you believe is different. I gave concrete examples of ways in which I believe an indiscriminate bombing campaign would lower military productivity; do you have an argument against that that is not just waving your hands about adaptation and heroism? If not having public transport and shops actually had no adverse impact on military production, why does Ukraine not shut down its public transport and shops and have the people run them produce more drones instead?
You readily, even enthusiastically concede that Russia is being incompetent. Do you think that this incompetence does not extend to their choice of targets and risk assessment, so individual decisions like e.g. throwing a dud Oreshnik at Yuzhmash instead of aiming it at the Khmelnytskyi NPP or downtown Dnipro was a competent decision? In fact, can you state your theory of why they have been bombing conventional power plants but leaving nuclear ones alone? It seems to me that you would have to go through extreme argumentative contortions to fit it with this "whatever targets Russia hasn't hit would make no difference or they are incapable of hitting them" narrative.
What is the civillian economy and backline drone production you advocate for destruction jf not resource generation RTS style. As for conventional versus nuclear its because Russia is attacking power distribution substations, and Russia alreafy controls the largest nuclear power plant but still keeps it running because wars a funny bitch. And Zaphorizia NPP wasnt bombed into inoperation it was seized kinetically and held. Also, Nuclear Power Plants are actually really really really hard to destroy. https://youtube.com/shorts/xESkLydLt3Y Reinforced concrete really is magic, which explains alot about my downstream points.
My argument for the lack of effectiveness of indiscriminate bombing is literally the entirety of military history and the reality we can see right at this moment. Russia is engaging in indiscriminate volume bombing, otherwise what the fuck would you characterize the bi weekly multi hundred shahed and kalibr launches as. They are rate limited by launch platform count, this is literally the best they can do. My argument is that even literally going full out balls to the wall like they did in the beginning of 2022 and didn''t manage to actually destroy the "colocated production facilities" you say exist.
Again I read your argument and I think you seriously just overestimate both the quantity of launch platforms Russia has available to engage in this "terror bombing" you so advocate and the sheer quantity of munitions required to move the needle. I gave concrete info about how much munitions are needed to level a city in true terror bombing terms, and thats for brickwork, not reinforced concrete or soil dampened underground structures. Either Russian terror bombing needs the mass to saturate and truly annihilate a city entirly in a single alpha strike, or they need precision fires to destroy the "production hub" that would effect a military advantage which in the reality of modern warfare simply isn't how things work with distributed logistics and sustainment nodes.
I call Russians stupid because their attack decisions are downstream of incapability, launching Shaheds and Kalibr at backlines because theres a surplus of this easy to launch munition and a shortage of actually good targets combined with insufficiency to actually truly destroy the backline. You're the one just throwing magic 'terror bombing' numbers, I gave the stat of Tokyo reuqiring 1700 tonnes of explosives. The Russian long range bombing package is about 300-700 weapons (usually lower end), with a usually 70% minimum being Shahed style to distract from higher payload Kalibr/Kinzhals. At the uppermost thats 210 Kinzhals and lets generously call it 500kg of pure explosive focused poser in each. Thats not even 55 tonnes of munitions including the 30kg of explosive per Shahed. Even if you x10 that you're not getting a Tokyo firebomb which needed incindearies to create an inferno on flammable wooden buildings.
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