Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1659911694724870144

Would it go through Iran at that point, or continue through Turkmenistan and over the Caspian?

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1659911694724870144

Would it go through Iran at that point, or continue through Turkmenistan and over the Caspian?

Apparently it does go through Iran.

[The Mikado]

Are there really 100k Russian casualties in Bakhmut or did Biden just mispeak?

https://[b]https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1660252019225948160?s=20[/...

Who the hell knows, but:

A. (I know YOU know this, but just stating the obvious) Wounded count as casualties. If you take estimates that Russians lost 20,000ish dead in Bakhmut (oof), 100k casualties starts sounding pretty reasonable.

B. More importantly, one of the reasons the Russians use auxiliaries like the LNR/DNR forces or, in this case, Wagner is that their deaths are sort of "off the books." Dead Wagner troops were never officially Russian soldiers and aren't getting government death benefits and such. I'm sure that given that the DNR territorial forces especially and now Wagner have both been absolutely pounded in this war that between them Russia's suffered like 30-50k deaths that "don't count" in the eyes of the Putin regime as real KIA because they're auxiliaries, not proper regular Russian soldiers.

[The Mikado]

I'm not willing to allow the idea of what is and isn't a war crime hamper the effective usage of our military in an intervention we actually would need to do.

War crimes laws exist for a reason, and that reason is life was way way worse when all of this kind of stuff was a common part of warfare.

If a Russian commander ordered the dam blown, he should end the war in a dock in The Hague. If a Ukrainian commander ordered the dam blown, he should end the war in a dock in The Hague.

[The Mikado]

Thoughts?

The person making this vid probably doesn’t mean it in the same way some jerk vatnik like CodePink or Red Velvet do but referring to this war as a “US proxy war” will never not sound douchey and come off as incredibly tone deaf and out of touch with the geopolitical reality and history between Ukraine and Russia

On the one hand there's some truth to that. On the other hand no one doubts the sincerity of the Afghans fighting the USSR but they did it armed to the teeth by the USA, or vice versa the Vietnamese and the USSR. North Vietnam would've never beaten the USA without massive amounts of Soviet and Chinese hardware and know-how, but that alone didn't do the trick, the North Vietnamese willingness to endure a decade of pounding by superior forces did. The Afghan willingness to lose TWO MILLION civilians over eight years of the USSR pulverizing any signs of civilization is what won that war, but they couldn't have done it without the American kit and intel they fought with.

That's just the nature of proxy wars. Always has been. The massive amount of foreign kit doesn't win a conflict without local willpower (if the Ukrainians ACTUALLY wanted to give up, there's nothing America could do to keep this war going even if we wanted to), but local willpower doesn't win without massive amount of foreign kit. BOTH are necessary.

[The Mikado]

On the one hand there's some truth to that. On the other hand no one doubts the sincerity of the Afghans fighting the USSR but they did it armed to the teeth by the USA, or vice versa the Vietnamese and the USSR. North Vietnam would've never beaten the USA without massive amounts of Soviet and Chinese hardware and know-how, but that alone didn't do the trick, the North Vietnamese willingness to endure a decade of pounding by superior forces did. The Afghan willingness to lose TWO MILLION civilians over eight years of the USSR pulverizing any signs of civilization is what won that war, but they couldn't have done it without the American kit and intel they fought with.

That's just the nature of proxy wars. Always has been. The massive amount of foreign kit doesn't win a conflict without local willpower (if the Ukrainians ACTUALLY wanted to give up, there's nothing America could do to keep this war going even if we wanted to), but local willpower doesn't win without massive amount of foreign kit. BOTH are necessary.

but a proxy war is a war fought on behalf of or at the instigation of a foreign power, not just one with substantial assistance from a foreign power.

That description doesn't fit Korea (Kim Il-Sung wasn't fighting at Stalin's instigation, he BEGGED Stalin to attack and Stalin gave him permission fairly reluctantly), Vietnam, or Soviet War in Afghanistan. The Soviets didn't instigate North Vietnam or North Korea and the US didn't instigate the mujahideen (and anyone who tells you otherwise about the mujahideen is full of s**t).