Ukraine Invades Russia

This week we talk about Kursk, asymmetric warfare, and Russian politics.
We also discuss HIMARS, supply lines, and Kyiv.
Recommended Book: The Disappearance of Rituals (amzn.to/3yKHLsO) by Byung-Chul Han
Transcript
About two and a half years ago, on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine.
This invasion had been forecasted for a while, as Russian forces had at times surreptitiously, at times more overtly supported separatist factions in the eastern and southeastern portion of Ukraine for about a decade, eventually invading and them annexing the Crimean Peninsula back in March of 2014 using what became known as the "little green men" strategy because the invading soldiers had their flags, patches, and other insignia removed, which gave the Russian government deniability, saying basically some patriotic members of their military might be inclined to help their fellow travelers in parts of Ukraine that are being repressed for their Russian heritage, and who crave freedom from an oppressive central government; how these patriotic soldiers acting on their own behalf, without support from the Russian government, supposedly, were able to bring so much heavy artillery and tanks with them was never formally addressed.
So Russia had been chipping away at Ukraine for a long while leading up to this more conventional attack in 2022, grabbing an important port when they took Crimea and leaving the Ukrainian government, which had been tilting toward Europe and away from Russia's sphere of influence-which is part of what triggered that pseudo-invasion of Crimea-and all of this left Ukraine fighting those separatist groups on their eastern flank pretty much continuously for the decade leading up to that bigger invasion a few years ago.
When that invasion was launched, Russia was expected by pretty much everyone to basically waltz right into Kyiv with little opposition, as it was this huge, powerful country with nukes and a massive conventional military apparatus, so it stood to reason it should easily defeat its weaker, former supplicant neighbor.
But that's not how things played out.
Ukraine managed to hold off an initial, ill-planned but large invasion force, and for the past two and a half years they've continued to hold those lines, despite huge drafts of soldiers and new investments in wartime materials, including drones and missiles that have been near-continuously lobbed at Ukrainian cities and towns, by the Russian government.
For the past year or so, following some back-and-forth pushes by Russian and Ukrainian forces in mostly the eastern part of Ukraine, at least following that initial unsuccessful incursion toward the capitol, Ukraine's efforts to reclaim its captured territory have been fraught.
It launched a successful counterattack a little while back, retaking some earlier captured territory, but after plowing through Russian forces and arriving in the eastern portion of the country, it's next-stage offensives basically collapsed as soon as they were launched.
The Ukrainian government is still making fresh attempts in this regard, as any stagnation and seeming lack of progress could serve as justification by its allies to stop sending money and weapons to bolster their war effort, but these have been relatively small and haven't accomplished much-not for the last year, at least.
The same was generally true for Russia up until recently, it's troops on the ground exhausted and undersupplied, their pushes deeper into Ukrainian met with stern-enough resistance that they've had to pull back, or they've persisted in shouldering their way through a meat-grinder defense, capturing little tiny bits of territory, but with huge costs in terms of lives and military hardware.
This past year they've seen some decent gains, though, as freshly drafted and trained troops have subbed-in for exhausted and wounded ones, and as Ukraine's forces have suffered the consequences of delayed support from the US in particular, and as their own forces have been unable to tap-out, rest, and recover, because of the difference in the size of the two countries' populations, but also because of the nature of the conflict, Ukraine being invaded, while Russia has remained a safe-haven for the most part.
As of the day I'm recording this in late-August 2024, Russia's military controls about 20% of Ukraine's total territory-and that includes Crimea and other chunks that were taken in 2014-around 8.2 million of Ukraine's 41 million population before the invasion had already fled the country by mid-2023, some having returned in the year or so since, but millions of people are still scattered throughout Europe and the rest of the world, making this the continent's largest refugee crisis since WWII.
About 8 million Ukrainians are now considered to be internally displaced, which means they're homeless within their own country, often because their cities or towns have been captured or destroyed.
Estimates on...