I remember that during late 2020, for 6 weeks the Second Nagorno-Karabakh war consumed a lot of my time. Every morning I was following unit movements, which village had changed hands, loses. Until finally one day Shusha was lost and Armenians were under an operational encirclement. The war was lost there.
Compared to that war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a conflict of a much larger intensity. Not all wars are created equal, this one caught the attention of western media like none in recent times. During it’s first month I was glued to the news and media. I didn’t do much besides tracking the war, there were just too many things happening at once to fully digest.
Eventually I landed into a routine. Today I spend roughly one hour per day tracking the war, unless we are on a phrase of rapid developments (read: active offensive).
Every day my routine goes more or less as follows:
- When I wake up, first thing I do is check @DefenceU to see the latest casualties of the previous day.
- Once on twitter I check @WarMonitor3 to ready the latest tactical developments.
- From there I wait until the end of the day to see what else @WarMonitor3 updated.
- I will catch up on YouTube where I will daily watch @DenysDavydov for his coverage on political developments and later @RFU for his tactical updates. @RFU normally focuses on one specific area or battle per day and I like the added detail he brings.
- After this I will see the latest movements on the Deepstate map, which I happen to use most of the time, but occasionally if there is a lot of movement I’ll also check the UA map.
- Lastly I finish up with reading the daily ISW report as I think that illustrates a lot of what Washington is thinking. Although I often feels like coverage on information warfare.
I guess it is safe to say I have become an avid consumer of OSINT.
On a more ad-hoc basis I’ll consult other sources that push information more sporadically:
- I’ll check Oryx for confirmation on loses and other articles they write.
- Every few week or so I’ll check militaryland.net unit map to see what units are deployed where. Before this war I had a general sense of how to read strategic maps from my multiple hours playing grand strategy games. But now I’d say I’m a professional at reading such maps. Vertical line? Yes that is motorized, oval in the middle? Mechanized for sure. Distinguishing between tank units, marines, artillery, sof, et all became so easy to read.
- Here various YouTubers are part of the people I watch ever so often, like @willyOAM for his interviews, @CivDiv mainly for his war footage and a few others.
- Lastly I’ll occasionally read what RT and people under its umbrella are saying about the war to not miss what people are saying on the other side, let’s call that: an acquired taste.
As someone who is very interested in history, geopolitics, foreign relations and military technology watching all 4 things unravel in real life can be truly fascinating. Yet the enduring human cost of this war has left everyone wishing a quick resolution. Naturally the escalation and it’s consequences have too been unnerving at punctual times.
What reflections do I have on the war so far? Several, in no particular order:
- The speed at which information and media spreads is lightning fast, it is hard to believe.
- A group of motivated people can achieve wonders.
- The way Russia wages war has changed very little in the last centuries. They normally just throw bodies at the problem and it tends to work out, until it doesn’t.
- Without the financial and military bloodline the west has thrown as Ukraine it seems evidently clear to me they wouldn’t had fared that well, likely would have folded by now. Regardless, I can’t help to think at times that the US is fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.
- Turkey has become a problem for NATO, it was already a problem, it has just become a larger one. Fundamentally the democratic leaning of the countries that form the alliance do not align with Erdogan’s dictatorial tendencies. Turkey is NATOs wildcard, I feel that for several years they have chose to keep them so that they don’t have to worry about having them as an ever wilder wildcard. Perhaps they are just hoping Erdogan will eventually be out of the picture.
- Blame for both world wars can be put on Germany. I wouldn’t shy away from putting partial blame on Germany for this war for their role on enriching Russia with their addiction to gas and coal. Had Germany gone nuclear decades ago things would had been different. Meanwhile anti nuclear parties in Germany are still going strong.
- Russia will likely remain an international pariah for years to come. China is learning a lot from this.
- Ukraine’s success will most likely mean the disappearance of Transnistria as a de facto state.
- Taiwan should start giving out battle rifles to every abled body and teaching them how to be proficient with them. Likewise they should be investing heavily into development of anti-ship missiles and air defenses. By my own count the inventory of anti-ship missiles they poses is decent, but perhaps not fully sufficient. That being said I do not assess China has the capability to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan at this time.
- On that note countries should start divesting from China and cut their dependencies on Chinese manufacturing. As a general rule giving power to dictators is not ideal. China has become too powerful.
- I should at the very least learn how to use a drone, because if it comes to it, I’d rather be flying a drone than digging a tench.
- I wouldn’t be too surprised if video games evolve to more heavily feature a realistic usage of manpads, anti drone warfare, as well as usage of artillery all of this as a proxy for military training.
- Dictators are dangerous to democracy, but from previous wars we also know democracy is dangerous to dictators so ideally those two shouldn’t cross paths violently.
- Neutrality has been put to the test. Switzerland’s barley survived, other European countries saw theirs thrown out of the window.
Lets hope for a world where bombs don’t level cities.
