Following War

This is who I've been reading to try to get some balanced assessment of the military aspects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Wayne WS Hsieh

Rob Lee 

Oryx 

Stanimir Dobrev

I'd already been reading Wayne Hsieh but the others have just been added in the past three days.  

As with Covid and other topics where I've quickly put together initial reading lists, I suspect it will also quickly change.  Over time you observe which sources follow the evidence regardless of where it leads and which have a preferred narrative they are selling into which they fit what is convenient so, at this point, I read my current list with caution.

We already see this in the effort of some to impose their chosen narratives about the course of the war.  It is too early to tell who is winning and who is losing, at least as to the future of Ukraine.  I think it clear that due to Putin's miscalculation(1) and the resistance of the Ukrainians, he has lost the bigger strategic issue, mobilizing and uniting a previously inert Europe against him.  Regardless of your analysis of the causes of the war, President Zelensky and many Ukrainian citizens have proven to be exemplars of physical and moral courage.

With his decision to launch an invasion of the entire Ukraine, Putin has raised the stakes and the dangers for all of us. 

As pointed out at the end of my previous Ukraine post, what happened before February 24 is now academic.  We are in a new world and Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. are each faced with a new set of options and decisions.  And it is difficult to predict whether Putin is more dangerous as victor or if he is facing defeat, which, in turn, places an obligation on European and U.S. decision makers to be prudent and calm in their actions and in their rhetoric.  Things could easily get much worse.

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(1) By miscalculation, I refer to Putin's decision not to be satisfied with detaching the Donbass from Ukraine.  If he had stopped there Ukraine would have been militarily powerless to reverse the situation, and Europe and the U.S. would have sighed in relief and done nothing meaningful in response.