Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[The Mikado]

Been away from this thread for a week.

It's interesting how a few weeks ago people were saying Bakhmut would fall any day now. Russia's made gains in that area but Bakhmut is still resisting now. How many more weeks will we have "Bakhmut will fall any day now" before we finally see it happen? Will we still be having this same conversation in March?

[The Mikado]

I agree. His argument in the video that Chechnya couldn't feed, clothe, and fund public projects itself is incredibly weak.

There's a reason no nation's heroes or founders ever said: "I'd like for my homeland to be independent and free, but we get lots of money from our occupiers. So independence is not possible at this time."

To be fair, when the Soviet Union was on its last legs, the Party bosses-turned-nationalist leaders of many republics were not very keen on full independence, because they were afraid the new nations couldn't pay their bills. The August Coup then forced their hands anyways.

To me, it's shocking that he's even mentioning independence as if it was a desirable goal at all. It must be a sign that Kadyrov no longer fears Putin's wrath and can openly brag about a desire to undo the act that brought Putin to power in the first place.

I mean, he still venerates his dad and his soldiers still torture people into screaming "Ahmet is the strongest" etc. He never forgot what his dad fought for, nor did he forget his dad switching sides for power as Russia's puppet which he inherited and enjoys to this day.

[The Mikado]

Been away from this thread for a week.

It's interesting how a few weeks ago people were saying Bakhmut would fall any day now. Russia's made gains in that area but Bakhmut is still resisting now. How many more weeks will we have "Bakhmut will fall any day now" before we finally see it happen? Will we still be having this same conversation in March?

Bumping, two weeks later. Bakhmut STILL hasn't fallen yet.

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1625908798970798080?s=20&t=A3pb_T...

It seems that they are now doing the motions.

NATO doesn't admit members with ongoing territorial disputes, which one way or another Ukraine may well not have have after whatever final peace settlement emerges unless we end up going the Frozen Conflict route.

[The Mikado]

Been away from this thread for a week.

It's interesting how a few weeks ago people were saying Bakhmut would fall any day now. Russia's made gains in that area but Bakhmut is still resisting now. How many more weeks will we have "Bakhmut will fall any day now" before we finally see it happen? Will we still be having this same conversation in March?

Bumping, two weeks later. Bakhmut STILL hasn't fallen yet.

Bumping after a month. A lot of the "Bakhmut will fall any day now" confident posts from Jan/Feb look really ridiculous now.

[The Mikado]

https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-says-russia-to-deploy-tactical-nuclear-weapons-in-belarus-reports/

"Putin says Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, state media report"

Put nukes in a country whose leader grip on power is shaky at best. 12D chest from Putin again

In all fairness to Putin (something I don't say a lot), Russia would have sole possessions of the nuclear codes that make the things useable. Something most people don't mention in the historical point about Ukraine and Kazakhstan giving up the nukes they inherited from the Soviets in the 1990s is that those nukes were useless to them because the Kremlin were the only ones with the launch codes.

[The Mikado]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/26/its-time-to-bring-back-the-polish-lithuanian-union/

"It’s Time to Bring Back the Polish-Lithuanian Union"

Foreign Policy magazine article on bringing back the Polish-Lithuanian as a counterweight to Russia. Note that the old Polish-Lithuanian did include Western Ukraine which was part of interwar Poland until it was annexed to Ukraine SSR after the 1939 Germany-USSR deal and confirmed after WWII.

More to the point, it included Belarus (and modern Belarus was in fact basically the heart of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania half of the union)

[The Mikado]

The upcoming Ukrainian offensive will see it's best troops and newly arrived NATO armaments go forward.

At this point I see two options left for Ukraine, both long shots:

1. Svatove
2. Melitopol

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1643669773207707649

40k troops is way small, unless the russians have a defence force of similar size, which is possible given how small the russian army currently is.

I would expect at least 100k to be on the safe side.

Tbf this report could be a psyllium to lure Russia into either false security or to think that with only 40k they’ll attack a specific area that Russia beefs up only to attack elsewhere.

Or, more specifically, that the 40k are the Western-trained etc troops that are the spearhead vanguard for the operation.

[The Mikado]

A very unusual exchange on Russian television, containing criticism of Putin:

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1644038823368613889?s=20

I ask you gentlemen, is this stupidity or is this treason?

-Pavel Miliukov

[The Mikado]

Can we admit Ukraine into the EU and NATO already?

NATO doesn't admit countries with current border disputes.

THAT SAID, regardless of how the war ends, a finalization of the borders seems a likely part of whatever deal emerges (that'd be true in a situation where Russia takes big chunks of Ukraine, a scenario that stalemates, a scenario where Ukraine reclaims most but not all of its land, and a scenario where Ukraine totally expels Russia, IMO).

I think that it's basically near-inevitable Ukraine joins NATO AFTER the war to deter another future war. And I think this happens regardless of what the war's outcome is here on out. Ukraine will never feel safe from Russia trying to take another bite of it unless it's in NATO.

[The Mikado]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1644085904427089920
https://mobile.twitter.com/GeopoliticalGu1/status/1644101157743374337

Is it just me or is Ukraine putting any forces on the Kinburn Split f**king insane? It's totally indefensible. If this is just Ukraine using artillery to force Russia out, fine, but trying to occupy it is just ridiculous right now. You'd be trapped on a peninsula.

[The Mikado]

Wagner & Russian Army has reached the railway line, fighting currently going on near the railway station.

The AFU's presence in the city is now only measly limited to it's western district.

Hey Woody, do you think Putin will complete his conquest of Bakhmut before losing his land bridge to Crimea? Any predictions?

He won't. That opportunity is way past over now.

https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1645108874117017603?cxt=HHwWhsCzqcHzzNQtAA...

Just reminding myself to bump this in September and see how it's aged.

[The Mikado]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1AcPYNyAPo
«100 A10 Warthogs will enter Ukraine Immediately»

That should give a clear advantage for Ukraine as these warplanes have a reputation as tank slayers because in Gulf War, A10 Warthogs bombarded 1000 Iraqi Guard tanks, 2000 military vehicles and 1200 artillery pieces

The channel discloses in the comments that it is "waiting for confirmation", so I'd be skeptical.

The A-10 is arguably obsolescent and was useful 30 years ago only as a close air support platform, and only then because the Iraqi air defence network in Kuwait was mostly dismantled by other planes.

Ukraine will take what they can get (the A-10, in some ways, would be comparable to their pre-existing Su-25s), but they'd be much better with something multi-role/more survivable in contested airspace.

Any idea of pilot training would be included in the hypothetical package?

Good points about the A-10s not being a game changer in this combat environment, but I would imagine there are certain areas where Russian air defense systems are weaker than others, such as possibly the Kinburn Spit as a hypothetical.

The A-10 is a horrible aircraft. It's obsolete, slow-moving, has been responsible for more friendly fire than any other aircraft in US history, and requires the pilot to carry a pair of binoculars to identify targets that they get wrong most of the time anyway.

Pierre Sprey might be dead and the Reformers now a laughing stock, but their ghosts still haunt us to this day.

Seriously, those guys lie more than Trump does.

Who knew Lazerpig posted on this forum?

[The Mikado]

Russia moment:

https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1646326136085815297?s=20

It's very fortunate, but I don't think that would have been WW3 even if the missile launched properly and successfully downed the aircraft. There were similar incidents during the Cold War, some of which included deliberate shootdowns and multiple casualties.

The Soviets literally downed a South Korean civilian airliner with 269 people on board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

[The Mikado]

And since the “rules-based world order” doesn’t exist, or exists to be more in favor of people who look a certain way over others, we’re seeing people behave accordingly because it means we need to construct a completely new and more balanced world order. And the 1st path to this is necessarily weakening the dollar. The future is in the South and South-South collaboration..

Brazilians talking about how "BRICS realignment" is gonna break Western hegemony comes off like a third-string player who's been on the bench the entire time talking about how strong their winning team is with zero responsibility for its success. "The Global South" isn't rising, "BRICS" isn't rising, China and India are.

Brazil's economy is literally smaller than it was in 2010 and yet you're trying to tell me the USA is a fading economy? It has problems but at least its economy is in Drive and not Reverse.

[The Mikado]

Interestingly Kazakhstan also voted in favor of the resolution. The Central Asian countries had all abstained or were/voted absent in previous UN votes related to the war in Ukraine (iirc).

https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/1653036142520856584?s=20

B-but muh global south solidarity!

tbf.... Kazakhstan are also returning Russian draft dodgers back home when they caught sneaking across the border, to which they might meet a less than favorable resolution now that Russia has effectively banned military aged men from leaving the country.

There are many former Soviet Republics who are sitting on the wings a bit, waiting to see how this whole Ukraine thing plays out, and certainly not wanting to be the next in line for a Russian "Invasion", "Peace Keeping Operation", let alone a "Special Operation".

The sins of the Czars and later on in the form of Soviet "Czar" in the form of Stalin still indicate that the "chickens are coming home to roost", in the words of the great late Malcom X.

Internal colonization sometimes takes many decades before resolution, as surely the Irish might attest.

I mean, if you're the Kazakh (are we saying Qazaq yet?) government, you know perfectly well that Russia uses ethnic Russian minorities as an excuse to meddle and even invade other countries. Do you really want hundreds of thousands MORE ethnic Russians coming in strengthening Moscow's eventual claim on northern Kazakhstan?

[The Mikado]

Woody says this is all untrue, though. Who to believe?

On the one hand, we have a notorious Russian propagandist who needs to be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, we have Evgeny Prigozhin.

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/treaschest/status/1656522699588378626?s=12

It will be very revealing if Prigozhin suffers the fate of Yue Fei.

Prigozhin's an aggressor while Yue Fei was a valiant defender of home and country even when his own government didn't want him to be, and was a little too good at it. It'd be more like if Zelensky executed one of his top generals after the war.

[The Mikado]

if the people making the military decisions think it's will end the war quicker to strike inside or occupy parts of Russia, then Ukraine should do that.  Western politicians acknowledge that one of the reason autocratic societies tend to do worse at war than liberal democracies is due to leadership meddling in war, but it has never once actually stopped them from attempting the same thing.

I wrote this half a year ago and stand by both parts of it:

Annexing territory is insane, but Ukraine occupying Russian soil to force Russia to the negotiating table quicker would be something I think wouldn't be wrong. Maybe ill-advised, impractical, and unlikely to work, but not "wrong." If Ukrainians thought occupying Belgorod or Voronezh would compel a Russian surrender and war end quicker in return for getting them back, that'd be fair game. That said, I don't think Ukraine is anywhere near in a position to do that.

[The Mikado]

Evidently Ukraine cannot have any elections as long as martial law is in place:

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1657733973768806402?s=20

I can already smell the tankies using this to argue Zelensky is a dictator but he’s right that most countries don’t have elections during martial law not to mention the fact with the fact Russia openly targeting civilians that having election centers across the country with people waiting on line is a security risk

Better than them complaining about actually HOLDING elections when all of the most historically (I'd suspect not currently, for obvious reasons) pro-opposition parts of Ukraine are under enemy occupation and wouldn't be voting.

[The Mikado]

A. I think this is 90% chance of BS re: Prigozhin.
B. That said, at this point Prigozhin's best case scenario probably involves him surrendering, getting turned over to The Hague for a war crimes trial, and getting a relatively cushy life sentence in an ICC prison in the Netherlands where he'll be a hard target for Putin to get ahold of. Given that ICC trials take close to a decade, Prigozhin might well spend the rest of his life as an "alleged war criminal" and die before ever reaching trial.

B may sound sucky, but ICC captivity is actually nowhere near as bad as what you usually think of as "life sentence in prison."

Look at this!

The ICC currently has twelve detention cells in a Dutch prison in Scheveningen, The Hague.[3] Suspects held by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals are held in the same prison and share some facilities, like the fitness room, but have no contact with suspects held by the ICC.[3]

The ICC registrar is responsible for managing the detention centre.[4] The rules governing detainment are contained in Chapter 6 of the Regulations of the Court[4] and Chapter 5 of the Regulations of the Registry.[5] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has unrestricted access to the detention centre.[6]

Facilities
Each individual has their own toilet and washing area.[7] Each has access to a small gym and is offered training with a physical education instructor.[7]

Detainees are provided with meals, but they may also cook for themselves, purchase food from the prison shop, and have ingredients ordered in.[2][8] However, Charles Taylor's lawyers have complained that "the food which is served is completely Eurocentric and not palatable to the African palate".[8]

Each detainee has a personal computer in their cell, on which he can view material related to their case.[2] They are offered computer training, if required,[2] and language courses.[7]

Detainees are allowed to communicate in private with their defense teams and diplomatic representatives of their countries of origin.[2] They are permitted visits from family members, spouses and partners, and spiritual advisors.[2]

If I'm Evgeny Prigozhin and my choices are Ukrainian POW camp, dying in battle at Bakhmut, going back to certain death in Russia, trying to somehow escape to a Wagner regiment in Mali or CAR or some other random African country, or this...I'm picking surrendering on condition I'm sent for war crimes trial at The ICC. Far and away the best option.

[The Mikado]

So apparently Russia’s strategy is to keep pushing through Bakmut itself while letting Ukraine attack the flanks. Yeah I don’t see how that could go bad

Depends how far each side gets and how quickly, but the Wagner guys in the city probably aren't that concerned. As long as they capture Bakhmut, they're getting paid. Who cares if the Russian army loses it later?

Pushing forwards while the enemy's flanking you on both sides always works fine. Unrelated image:

[The Mikado]

Yeah Zelensky presumably wants has crossed out 22 June as an option.

Of course, given how close Ukraine's come to the USA, the UK, and France, June 6th might be a good option to launch a major offensive...

[The Mikado]

I'm still convinced that the reason for this invasion is because Putin's on borrowed time. He usually thinks fairly long term, but he has been taking more and more risks lately, including this war, and wants to be remembered as the man who rebuilt Russian dominance.

I disagree. He's always been a gambler. It's just that he made some bets that won and it made him overconfident.

Arresting Khordokovsky and breaking the Yeltsin-era elite to establish dominance was a risk. It worked nicely, allowing him to replace them with his own cronies whom he made.

War with Georgia in 2008 was a risk. The West could've intervened. It didn't.

Assassinating various opposition figures abroad was a series of colossal risks, both the Litvinenko murder and then, worse, the attempted murder of Skipral that had dozens of ordinary Brits poisoned in the process. West could've retaliated. It didn't.

Coming back into direct power after puppeting Medvedev was a risk. The Russian people could've risen up. They didn't.

Invading Crimea was a risk. It could've been a debacle. It wasn't. It was the biggest success of his Presidency.

Stirring up the revolt in the Donbas was a risk. One of his rebels could've shot down a Malaysian airliner full of Western civilians...oh, wait, that actually happened. And he still got away with it.

So why wouldn't he think he could get away with this?

[The Mikado]

So how long until Woodbury shows up to say "There is no panic in Klishchiivka. Reports that the Ukrainians are just 2km away from the town are false Western propaganda. Everything in the Bakhmut theater is proceeding according to plan."