Before the war everyone was saying Russia would just walk right in; now everybody makes a big kerfuffle about every Ukrainian tactical victory. What are good analyses on what the strategic situation is like?
My understanding is Russia still has an overwhelming advantage in the medium and long term?
There's not that much and the better quality sources are pretty clear that the situation is very fluid and hard to call.
Like o.m. I'll nominate ISW. Their daily updates have been pretty good at gauging evolution on the battlefield. However, they seem mostly interested in the short term, i.e. what's up in the next week or so. What's happening now.
The War on the Rocks podcast, esp the Kofman episodes which are weekly updates of about 30 minutes. He tends to have a one week back + 3 weeks front focus but occasionally lapses into longer term prognostics, all the while hedging his capacity to calling it accurately. Kofman is of Ukrainian descent but is pretty good at reminding us when we tend to dismiss Russians too quickly (more so than much of press coverage).
Update June 2023:
I'm adding some sources I've found informative, along with some I have not:
Technical, long form, deep dives into the war [ex: Jamming JDAM: The Threat to US Munitions from Russian Electronic Warfare | Royal United Services Institute. More focused on retrospective analysis than keeping track of day to day events.
Layman-friendly, short, focused on current events. You will have to search through their channel, which carries tons of unrelated-to-Ukraine videos but Clarke knows what he's talking about. (ex director of RUSI above). Good neutral coverage: if Ukraine is facing challenges, he won't be pretending otherwise.
A Danish military analyst. 10-15 minute videos on average. Informative. Will do both retrospectives (what's been happening last 3 weeks?) as well as prognostics.
Military retrospective deep dives, using animated maps. These guys have long had a military history themed documentary channel. But they've done a good job covering the war. Typically they will do an episode that covers a particular period. Here's a typical video, though longer form How Ukraine Won the First Phase of the War.
If you can manage the French (no translation), these are regular weekly Tuesday 10min videos where the guy scrolls through one of those interactive conflict maps and shows how the front line has changed from the previous week. Keep in mind that this is something Kofman warns against - reading too much into static fronts, without knowing equipment and personnel levels and losses. Things stay the same... until they change abruptly.
Covers doctrinal and organizational concepts. Typical would be how a Ukraine tank battaillon is organized.
Another deep-dive, long form, technical guy. For example, Storm Shadow & Long Range Weapons in Ukraine I watched a few of his videos early and he seems quite informative and thoughtful and has a good following so I'll mention him. However, as he also seems incapable of keeping his videos under an hour in length, I've not been following him that closely.
Disappointing - CNN.
CNN has pulled out all the stops bringing in famous pundits. One such is David Petraeus (the guy who started the successful "surge" in Iraq). With frequent opinions like "if we don't stop them in Ukraine, we'll be doing it in Poland, so let's go for no-fly zone", this is not extremely enlightening coverage and CNN is too out of its depth to recognize that. Ben Hodges, ex commander US forces in Europe, is another such old warhorse that should be more cautious about NATO-Russia escalation risks from his Cold War experience.
The point with bringing up CNN is that informative, neutral, coverage of military affairs is hard to get right and that being a big, mature, news organization is no guarantee. I am sure other media organizations fail just as much.
OK, I've listed some good YouTube channels, but the vast majority is very gung-ho, quite biased and sadly lacking in analysis value - (hint: a Russian tank column getting destroyed is spectacular to watch, but also very anecdotal). And then you have the "war geeks" crowd that just wax lyrical about weapon system X or weapon system Y. They've massively expanded their interest base with this war, but they are not much better for it.
And a lot of folk who look good by their subscriber counts and their confident delivery but on closer assessment turn out to be fairly lightweight.
I've tried to look for non-aligned coverage, but it is of very uneven quality. Straight out I'd dismiss anything of Russian origins (whic could have provided an alternative, if partisan, viewpoint): the level of censorship and propaganda means you'd need a solid background in military affairs and deep access to likely classified info to even begin to discern the wheat from the chaff.
Then I looked at India, but on the few times I did their coverage also didn't seem all that strong. It either relies on Western sources or parrots the Russian side.
Al-Jazeera seems firmly on the Western side. Until Lavrov's claims of Jewish ancestry for Hitler, Israeli press might have been a bit better.
The trouble is that military analysis is a fairly narrow field involving not that many knowledgeable players. For example, take this article on The Guardian. Guy looks impressive, has Russian coverage credential, but of political content previously and knows little about military (and has sometimes appealed to appeasement).
Sources like Defence News or Jane's generally are gung ho about equipment analysis. But equipment is not the only thing that's driving this war, much more morale, strategy and tactics. And equipment quality as well, LOL (I wonder how much I should believe that vid btw).
Russia still has an overwhelming advantage in the medium and long term
Yes, and no. On paper their army dwarfs Ukraine's. But Ukraine is mobilized, while Russia is fighting a war with a conscription+reserves-based army staffed at peacetime levels. If Russia mobilizes, which would require declaring a state of war, putting the lie to "special military operation", then they get their numerical edge back. Until they do, they are progressively running out of steam.
Kofman's take on his most recent one is that the current "special military operation" approach has one offensive left in it: what they're trying to do in Donbas. He says it can succeed or it can fail but they can't really attack more after that. Which is not to say it can't just develop into a war of attrition - trenches, artillery duels, etc. At that point, Kofman puts his future prognostics hat back on and says it's difficult to gauge whom a war of attrition favors. He calls the, current, Russian army equipment-rich but personnel-poor. i.e. they lack enough boots. He figures for example that their BMP infantry vehicles may right now be operating mostly with a 5 people payload: 3 crew + 2 infantry. That's... just not what armored infantry is supposed to be like (BMP2s should carry a 7 man squad plus crew).
Then, if Russia does mobilize, that shifts the calculations all over again.
And a big part of this is very, very, intangible so necessarily relies on opinions: how quickly can Russia improve its tactics from their current nadir? For example, they got their butt whupped by Finland for 3 months but eventually learned and won. Will they this time? Ukraine is getting much more support than Finland ever did, Ukraine is much bigger than Finland and the Red Army in 1940 was massively bigger than Russia's. Then again, wars, at least ones of aggression, against Russia have been losing bets so far.
Even if Russia does win, it risks only getting to what everyone expected on February 25th: a military occupation of an Ukraine with significant armed resistance movement. Look at Afghanistan 80-89, 01-21 and Vietnam for how that can work out.
I've been reading the ISW updates, after finding them quoted repeatedly on the BBC. One could argue that they are partisan because of their ties to the United States, which is technically not at war with Russia but certainly biased towards one side. But then articles which go for raw data are limited by not being on the ground, and also hard to put into context.
Regarding the medium and long term, this depends strongly on the kind of aid Ukraine is getting from the West. Currently Ukrainian infrastructure is under intensive attack, Russian infrastructure is getting attacked on the margins but mostly safe, and Western infrastructure enjoys sanctuary. Russia has more tanks, presuming those in storage haven't been cannibalized by corrupt officials (see below), and more tank factories -- which seem to suffer supply chain issues because of sanctions. In the long term, the West can out-produce Russia if it wants to.
Another important issue is morale and professionalism. It appears as if Russian soldiers are both unprofessional and badly motivated. There has been a news report that Russian troops looted agricultural machinery, using military trucks. Even if Russian officials do not care about theft from Ukrainians, they should be seriously upset that their military trucks were used carry farm implements to Chechnya and not damaged tanks to the repair depot. (If one does not dismiss CNN as partisan and hence unreliable.)
The defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Americans in Vietnam was not a defeat in battle. The superpowers lost because the domestic populations were no longer willing to accept the dead troops, and the economic expense -- but mostly the dead troops. While the Vietnamese, and the Afghans, and now the Ukrainians fought for their homes. It appears as if Russia has been downplaying the extent of their fatalities, even if one assumes that Ukraine has been inflating their claims.
Fact checking projects maybe? Sites like StopFake.org may take sides but anyway they focus on some statement or report and aim to prove with unbiased analysis why and if it is questionable.
Also, most of the various sources finally agree about the current positions, towns and even villages taken. This may fall out of sync but usually not for long. Other information may be very biased, but if the army is highly superior and bears no casualties, some special explanation would be needed if it keeps retreating.
