The star among all the dogs in #Ukraine - Patron - is on duty as always! pic.twitter.com/dCMhiJ9AY2

Hanna Liubakova  (@HannaLiubakova) April 23, 2022

• The invasion was planned by the FSB, not the MOD
• Most units got word on extremely short notice that the invasion was a "go" - like 3 days, some as little as 24 hours.
• The initial Russian advance on Kiev was very successful, but the Ukrainians had done a great job with setting up the defenses ahead of time.
• Ukrainian artillery is responsible for most of the Russian losses even though it doesn't get mentioned a lot.
• Kiev was indeed a major plan for the Russians, and the Ukrainian defense of their East and South was severely compromised by needing to defend the capital.
• As a Ukrainian General Officer noted, 'the Russian equipment works as effectively as we feared, but it was incompetently employed'
• The Russian MOD has wrested control of the operation from the FSB with the announcement that they were giving up on Kiev and concentrating on the Donbas. There's a lot of mistrust between the two.
• Both countries have now accepted that this is a protracted war and will go well into the summer. Russia needs to do what it can to make gains before NATO materiel becomes a serious factor for Ukraine.
• Russia has done a good job asserting almost total control of the propaganda war internally.
  
• At the end of March, Russia made a decision to frame this as an ideological war and started a massive public campaign to push that narrative, trying to recreate the fervor of the Great Patriotic War.The Russian population is being prepared for a protracted war and further sacrifices. The war is being framed as NATO using Ukrainian Nazis to break Russia.
  
• Russian foreign policy aims to frame the conflict in a way that shows the US is going to crush anyone who doesn't agree with their world view.
  
• With the price of food and energy soaring, Russia is arguing that Western sanctions are imposing real hardship on many of the world's poorest, demonstrating how the West will prioritize its own interests at the expense of others.
• Russia's conscript system is not doing well. They will use May 9th to generate a fever pitch of patriotism to get people to volunteer and officially rebrand the "special military operation" as a war.
• Russia isn't necessarily running out of precision guided munitions yet, but they also need a reserve to defend against NATO and China.
  
• The article goes into detail about how much Russian most modern weapons are heavily dependent on Western-produced, COTS electronic components. There is a huge effort underway to try to bypass sanctions and get these components via other means. This is a hugely important story and too detailed to summarize here. I highly suggest everyone read the article because it's extremely fascinating.
• There's the obvious relationship between cutting off Russia's oil and gas, thus depriving them of income, while at the same time it raises the price of oil and gas, which makes them a lot of money. The outcome is uncertain.
• Russia is actively trying to manage unrest in other countries that are like-minded like Moldova. There's a detailed analysis of what the FSB has done there, and again: I suggest everyone read this.
  
• Re: Russian ideology is what drives the war summed up: When President Putin set out his reasons for invading Ukraine in a televised address, he described how the Soviet Union had been broken up by 'a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions'. Putin described how by empowering the constituent nationalities of the USSR, 'It is now that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU leadership, mistakes committed at different times in state-building and in economic and ethnic policies'.
• Ukrainian victory is possible, but will demand hard fighting for some time to come.
  
• Having first done little to set a narrative about the war, the Russian government had an opportunity to lay the groundwork for de-escalation in mid-March. It made a deliberate decision to escalate its rhetoric and ideologically mobilise its society. By banning dissent, and by holding local officials accountable for the organisation of patriotic mobilisation, the Russian government is in the process of radicalising its public.
  
• The West has considerable issues leading into the summer. When countries like Germany face economic ruin, will they stay part of the coalition?
• If Russia mobilises and eventually overcomes Ukrainian resistance then NATO will face an aggressive, isolated and militarised state.
• If Russia loses, then Putin has radicalized his population and no results to show for it. Hard to imagine he could stay in power after that.
• NATO states therefore need to consider how to manage escalation pathways that follow if Russia is not only defeated in Donbas but finds its newly mobilised and poorly trained troops, with few remaining stocks of precision munitions, unable to deliver a victory in the summer. The death of Putin's political project is plausible, but it has already inflicted immense damage internationally and risks doing considerably more.
  

• The invasion was planned by the FSB, not the MOD
• Most units got word on extremely short notice that the invasion was a "go" - like 3 days, some as little as 24 hours.
• The initial Russian advance on Kiev was very successful, but the Ukrainians had done a great job with setting up the defenses ahead of time.
• Ukrainian artillery is responsible for most of the Russian losses even though it doesn't get mentioned a lot.
• Kiev was indeed a major plan for the Russians, and the Ukrainian defense of their East and South was severely compromised by needing to defend the capital.
• As a Ukrainian General Officer noted, 'the Russian equipment works as effectively as we feared, but it was incompetently employed'
• The Russian MOD has wrested control of the operation from the FSB with the announcement that they were giving up on Kiev and concentrating on the Donbas. There's a lot of mistrust between the two.
• Both countries have now accepted that this is a protracted war and will go well into the summer. Russia needs to do what it can to make gains before NATO materiel becomes a serious factor for Ukraine.
• Russia has done a good job asserting almost total control of the propaganda war internally.
  
• At the end of March, Russia made a decision to frame this as an ideological war and started a massive public campaign to push that narrative, trying to recreate the fervor of the Great Patriotic War.The Russian population is being prepared for a protracted war and further sacrifices. The war is being framed as NATO using Ukrainian Nazis to break Russia.
  
• Russian foreign policy aims to frame the conflict in a way that shows the US is going to crush anyone who doesn't agree with their world view.
  
• With the price of food and energy soaring, Russia is arguing that Western sanctions are imposing real hardship on many of the world's poorest, demonstrating how the West will prioritize its own interests at the expense of others.
• Russia's conscript system is not doing well. They will use May 9th to generate a fever pitch of patriotism to get people to volunteer and officially rebrand the "special military operation" as a war.
• Russia isn't necessarily running out of precision guided munitions yet, but they also need a reserve to defend against NATO and China.
  
• The article goes into detail about how much Russian most modern weapons are heavily dependent on Western-produced, COTS electronic components. There is a huge effort underway to try to bypass sanctions and get these components via other means. This is a hugely important story and too detailed to summarize here. I highly suggest everyone read the article because it's extremely fascinating.
• There's the obvious relationship between cutting off Russia's oil and gas, thus depriving them of income, while at the same time it raises the price of oil and gas, which makes them a lot of money. The outcome is uncertain.
• Russia is actively trying to manage unrest in other countries that are like-minded like Moldova. There's a detailed analysis of what the FSB has done there, and again: I suggest everyone read this.
  
• Re: Russian ideology is what drives the war summed up: When President Putin set out his reasons for invading Ukraine in a televised address, he described how the Soviet Union had been broken up by 'a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions'. Putin described how by empowering the constituent nationalities of the USSR, 'It is now that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU leadership, mistakes committed at different times in state-building and in economic and ethnic policies'.
• Ukrainian victory is possible, but will demand hard fighting for some time to come.
  
• Having first done little to set a narrative about the war, the Russian government had an opportunity to lay the groundwork for de-escalation in mid-March. It made a deliberate decision to escalate its rhetoric and ideologically mobilise its society. By banning dissent, and by holding local officials accountable for the organisation of patriotic mobilisation, the Russian government is in the process of radicalising its public.
  
• The West has considerable issues leading into the summer. When countries like Germany face economic ruin, will they stay part of the coalition?
• If Russia mobilises and eventually overcomes Ukrainian resistance then NATO will face an aggressive, isolated and militarised state.
• If Russia loses, then Putin has radicalized his population and no results to show for it. Hard to imagine he could stay in power after that.
• NATO states therefore need to consider how to manage escalation pathways that follow if Russia is not only defeated in Donbas but finds its newly mobilised and poorly trained troops, with few remaining stocks of precision munitions, unable to deliver a victory in the summer. The death of Putin's political project is plausible, but it has already inflicted immense damage internationally and risks doing considerably more.