Talk:Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Requested move 18 February 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. This move request was dependent on another article, Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: phase 4, also being moved. That move request was rejected, and so this move request is no longer valid - in the future, connected move requests like these should be opened as a multi-page rm.

It is also not moved by consensus here; while many editors disagree with the current title, there is also a consensus against the proposed title. An RM, with a different title, perhaps disambiguating with months instead of phases, may find consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 05:53, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

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• Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: phase 3 → Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: phase 3 (early operations)

– The proposed new name for the phase 3 article is a compromise for editors who object to having a numbered phase 4 article. A similar proposal will be made for the phase 4 article, which has its own Talk page. John Sauter (talk) 17:03, 18 February 2023 (UTC) –Fixed name of article to be renamed. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 02:20, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per wp:fork. Slatersteven (talk) 17:31, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

The request here is for a name change, not for a fork. The names of some subordinate sibling article currently contradict the naming conventions used in the main article. Its not a fork question as I'm reading it, but a name change request. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Ten I am confused as to why we need a rename, unless there will be another article titled "Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: phase 3 (late operations)". Slatersteven (talk) 18:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is a proposal to change the name of the phase 4 article to "Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: phase 3 (late operations)". John Sauter (talk) 18:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. The vast majority of sources do not recognize any “phase 3.” A better title would be Timeline of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (September to November 2022), using a terminology that’s widely used, intrinsically meaningful, familiar to all, and easily adjusted if necessary.  —Michael Z. 14:30, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Mzajac Your edit comments appear to be pulling in two different directions. On the main Talk page you seemed to state that you were displeased with the use on interation by numbers for the separate phases; yet here you state you are opposed to fixing the problem. I'm not sure which way to see you are pulling; do you want interated number phases for the invasion or the opposite? ErnestKrause (talk) 19:15, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I don’t know what interation means, but there and here I say the same thing: regardless of what phasing we use to organize some articles or article sections, titles should use recognizable descriptive phrases, not obscure phase numbers that are not universally or widely used and not recognized by readers and editors.

It doesn’t meet the WP:CRITERIA. I have no idea what phase 3 is. I can’t even confidently tell if it refers to part of the war, of the war since February 2022, or what. —Michael Z. 23:29, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Mzajac: Iteration refers to the sequence of Phase 1, going to Phase 2, going to phase 3, going to phase (n), going to phase (n+1), which I thought you have stated previously that you were opposed to. At this rate the article seems to be moving towards phase 11 by the end of the year. Could you reconsider, or, offer some option which works for you; the sibling articles are up to phase 4 now with no end in sight for this iteration approach by other editors? ErnestKrause (talk) 15:51, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support. This is a good idea for the renaming. The subordinate sibling articles like this one are currently inconsistent with the naming conventions in the main article, and this name change puts it all straight. ErnestKrause (talk) 18:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support. As the proposer of this name change, of course I support it. I proposed it in the hope of gaining general agreement on the organization of the timeline pages, and the consequent changes to the articles that refer to them. I do not feel strongly about the name, but I do think that the dates of each phase should be based on a Reliable Source. John Sauter (talk) 18:21, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

  We found a reliable source last month. What's with you constantly flip-flopping on this matter? Great Mercian (talk) 00:57, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. That "early operations" subtitle is confusing by not specifying whos "operations" are being described. I also feel that the whole thing about deciding that these are "phases" and further deciding that these are "operations" is wrong and something that the wiki shouldn't be making up. What high-ranking military persons, or politicians have referred to the situation as "early operations" (and the items in "phase 4" as "later operations") anyway? I haven't seen this in any source. GMRE (talk) 20:55, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose as per my comments on Phase 4's page. Great Mercian (talk) 00:55, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment - I support to rename but as cited by User:Mzajac we could better go with months in the article title. Since the early operations could be then questioned about their WP:RS Pranesh Ravikumar (talk) 16:59, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

This looks like Pranesh is stating Support, though he can state it his own way. This approach would allow the discussion of a new TOC for the 2022 Russian invasion article once the names of the sibling articles are corrected. There is no phase 4 in the main article for this subject. ErnestKrause (talk) 15:53, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

• Note to closer: I originally closed this RM as not moved (Special:Permalink/1141616961#Requested move 18 February 2023). ErnestKrause, as an involved editor and against the spirit and intent of WP:RMCI, undid the close without discussing it with me first—notifying me only half an hour after the fact; they has asked Andrevan for an opinion on the close on the latter's user talk (fine by me), so I have no desire to sink more time into this. I simply note this deviation from the norm for the record. Thank you. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 18:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 6 April 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – robertsky (talk) 12:51, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

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• Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 1 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (24 February–7 April 2022)
• Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 2 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (8 April–28 August 2022)
• Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 3 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (29 August–11 November 2022)
• Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 4 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (12 November 2022–present)

– The "phase" terminology on these articles past "phase 2" is complete original research. In a discussion at Talk:Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Phase_terminology_in_this_article, editors came to a rough consensus that any "phases" after "phase 2" were not supported by reliable sources. In the words of Cinderella157 in that discussion, While sources did refer to a "new phase" for the retreat from Kyiv, we have adopted this terminology when it is not otherwise supported by good quality sources for other sections that follow. The use of "Phase x" implies authority in naming, which isn't the case - it is largely arbitrary and constructed by our editors. This is not how we are supposed to be titling articles.

As was suggested by myself and others in that discussion, I propose moving these subpages to descriptive titles with structure similar to that of Timeline of the Syrian civil war. If you go to that page, you'll see that they name each sub-article by its timespan. eg. "Timeline of the Syrian civil war (May–August 2012)", "Timeline of the Syrian civil war (January–April 2017). This is much more in line with wiki policy, and makes a lot more sense to the reader than being confronted with a bunch of terminology about "phase 3" and "phase 4" that simply does not exist outside of Wikipedia.

These new titles are not perfect. Ideally, I would like to be able to remove the days from the dates, and just have each article cover a span of months, like how the Syrian civil war page does it, because it's ugly and the exact dates that separate stages of the war aren't supported by WP:RS, but that would be really hard to get consensus on, and would require moving content between pages to match the changes in scopes, so I would like to leave that for a later discussion, and not discuss it here. Regardless, I think that these proposed titles are a clear improvement on the existing situation, and a step in the right direction. HappyWith (talk) 16:24, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Edit: I made a typo in my original post, accidentally leaving in colons where they shouldn't have been. It's fixed now. HappyWith (talk) 20:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Although the dates could be shifted, I think the proposed titles make much more sense per arguments in nom. While I conceded there have been undoubtedly different phases throughout the war (initial invasion, counteroffensives, etc.), RS as a whole have never really supported this other than vague statements like 'the war entered a new phase' and agree these phase distinctions are almost entirely a creation of editors here. These phase distinctions also just make it unnecessarily confusing to readers whereas simple dates would be much more readable. Yeoutie (talk) 16:43, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Although I think the new names are better than the old ones, I wish to comment that the phase numbering is not original research. It is based on reporting by Tim Judah, as described above. I regard Tim as a Reliable Source. John Sauter (talk) 16:49, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

  Can you link the article where Tim describes his phases? I've never been able to find the original book review or website, but as far as I can tell from descriptions of his categorization on other talk pages, Tim Judah's "stages" do not actually match this page's "phases" in terms of their scope at all. For example, he apparently treats the Kharkiv counteroffensive and Kherson counteroffensive as two different phases, and lumps together the initial lunge at Kyiv with the summer '22 Donbas offensive. HappyWith (talk) 17:15, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support, but remove the parentheses, per nom. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:26, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

  Comment: I just realized I forgot to remove the colons from the destination titles after copying in the original titles into the RM proposal. I was intending to just have the parentheses, no colons, like the Syrian war articles, but it doesn’t really matter too much whether we remove the parentheses or colons, as long as we remove one of them. HappyWith (talk) 19:10, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

  I am assuming you will withdraw this Requested Move and create a new one, perhaps after some discussion. John Sauter (talk) 20:21, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

  Eh, I think it'll be fine as is. I'd assume the closing editor will see my comment and make a judgement as needed. I don't think I need to make a whole new RM. HappyWith (talk) 20:24, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree. Since there is uncertainty about whether to remove the colons or the parentheses you should propose one or the other so people know what they are supporting. John Sauter (talk) 20:39, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

  I'll just edit the original post and leave a note that I did so. HappyWith (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support The phase thing is just weird—blindlynx 19:12, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support Per my quote in the OP. I agree that the dates should be shortened to just a month but concur with the rationale of the OP for not doing so at this time. Some sort of parenthetic punctuation (comma, colon or brackets) is required for separation and the initial use of the colon and brackets was clearly a typo. Brackets are fine but let's not get too hung up on the minute detail. The primary issue is to replace the phase nomenclature. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Both Cinderella and HappyWith have made a good rational case for this set of moves on the Talk page for the Russian invasion article. I'm thinking that their presentation and reasoning should receive this Support. ErnestKrause (talk) 00:18, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support per above. Mellk (talk) 04:21, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Edit: as long as it is just using months. Mellk (talk) 05:53, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support, though I would slightly shift the content so that the individual pages start and end with whole months, and dispense with the specific dates. One person's determination of when a "phase" of the invasion has started and ended is arbitrary. In fact, for the first one for example, I would say that the April 1, 2022 Ukranian attack on a target deep inside Russia signified a notable change in the tenor of the war. BD2412 T 13:17, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Note: my proposed outcome would be (with appropriate relocation of content):
  • Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 1 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (February–March 2022)
  • Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 2 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (April–August 2022)
  • Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 3 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (September–November 2022)
  • Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Phase 4 → Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (December 2022–present)
  • BD2412 T 13:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

    Yeah, I mentioned that in the original post, and these pretty much sync up with my preferred groupings, but I was hoping to leave that for another discussion, since I think the specifics will be harder to get consensus on. HappyWith (talk) 13:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support. If a “phase” starts in the middle of a month, I have no problem with overlapoing descriptors, e.g., April–August and August–November.  —Michael Z. 13:48, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
• Support proposed move, oppose removal of days and relocation of content. Super Ψ Dro 20:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Having arbitrary dates in the titles would just be, well, clutter. the phases are doing just fine as a demarcation. if you want to get rid of them then merge all the articles again. Great Mercian (talk) 00:14, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

  Actually, my main point in the RM was that the phases are not doing fine, and should be replaced by a non-OR terminology that describes the spans they cover. The dates are actually just the dates that each "phase" subpage covers already. HappyWith (talk) 20:35, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support - Straight forward fix compared to phases Pranesh Ravikumar (talk)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Day subheaders

Do we really need a separate subheader for every day, even when that day's events get summarized in a single sentence? eg: for 9 September, it just says "Ukrainian forces retook parts of Kharkiv Oblast". It makes the TOC very big, when there really isn't that much content in each day. Couldn't we just make the subheader describe a date range, and say "On 9 September..." before each entry. I don't know what guidelines there are about this kind of thing, if any. HappyWith (talk) 14:07, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive section

Hey, maybe we need a seperate section that for the specific link to the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, that we could name, well, "2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive". Because the "2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive" link sur doesn't deserve to be in the "second stalemate" section. 178.23.152.132 (talk) 09:56, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems like it's already there. What do you mean? HappyWith (talk) 14:43, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

It wasn't at the correct place and I could not correct it. when I posted, it was still in the "second stalemate section" and did not had the same title ^^ 5.51.183.7 (talk) 20:08, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Yep, the split was at 12:07, I postetd at 9:56 and you answered at 14:43. So it's done. 5.51.183.7 (talk) 20:10, 11 June 2023 (UTC)