Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

This is so weird... At 0:17, you can see Putin's hand just going through the microphone. He's not in the room with those people:

https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/1500125004062679041

He is - it's sh**t Twitter compression. The BBC have verified that the video is real and you can watch a higher-quality version on Youtube.

Not the first time the bird app's bad algorithms have been conflated with greenscreens.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://www.twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1499383504265785353
Russia had about 100 of these Shilka AA guns in service in 2011, so it’s presumably cracking into the Soviet stores. The ones here are probably un-retired Soviet vehicles (last produced in 1980). The Shilka may still be viable for fighting super low-flying aircraft (although it’s even worse than even MANPADS on the whole), but in recent Middle Eastern conflicts, it’s been repurposed as an urban warfare machine gun on tracks.

Twitter consensus is that rolling out this outdated Soviet stock is a sign of weakness because these things are going to be easy to destroy. However, the ATGMs are smoking much more advanced armoured vehicles anyway, and that these vehicles are still operable after however many years in storage is a sign that Russia will be able to draw upon the vast reserves generated by Soviet overproduction for a clientele that no longer existed after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact (and then, the Union itself).

Russia has thousands of armoured vehicles in storage that aren’t used in first-rate armies but see plenty of usage in conflicts in Syria, Yemen, etc. - and in the Ukrainian army. If their army keeps advancing at the rate it has since the invasion, it may be able to brute force its way through Javelin/NLAW strikes through sheer number of tanks.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I lean towards No on this (while being persuadable to support Yes). The only way this will work is if Russia literally cannot find a place to sell its oil. And I doubt that is possible.
The intentions of such moves are noble, but these are likely to marginally increase American oil and gas prices without costing the Russians enough to justify the reduction in supply diversification. Gas is already, what, 4 dollars a galloon? And when you get past the feel-good statements on part of corporate America on this issue, this WILL likely result in higher prices for the common man in this country at the gas pump.
Just because something is a sanction doesn't mean it's worthy to do. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something. Let's not fetishize action at the expense of effective policy.

 Of course they will find some place to sell some of the Royal. No one's believing that there will be a 100% worldwide it blockade or a bargo on Russian oil and gas. The point is obvious supply and demand. The demand for Russian gas and oil decreases dramatically, that f**** Putin  Tremendously. China is right now for example buying all the gas and oil it needs from Russia. It's suddenly not going to buy more gas and oil that it doesn't need, and neither are most other countries, to take up the slack.

There's a LOT of potential and contemporary oil and gas consumers in the Third World.
I think for this to really work, we need the support of the Arab World. Otherwise, Putin can sell oil to Arab governments and then they can de facto circumvent the sanctions.

Russia is probably too deep into OPEC+ to get OPEC on side. The best that can probably be done is driving down the price of Russian energy by reducing the number of countries prepared to buy it (in the short term, at least).

In the long term, NC Yankee has it right. The best way to stop OPEC shenanigans is to stop relying on oil. Driving up the price of domestic oil a bit (a byproduct of banning Russian oil) should make nuclear and renewables (and technology to improve them) more viable.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Ukraine claims the cruise missiles launched at Vinnytsya airport today were from Transnistria, which yesterday reiterated its demand for international recognition as an independent state. If true, this would be the opening of a new front on the war.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1500502132721688577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwc...

Elsewhere, it is reported that they specified any airfield from which the UkrAF launched sorties. As demonstrated by the Su-27 returning from Romania, this is avoided by sending jets into Ukraine without arms, and letting them arm up on Ukrainian runaways.

They did not go to war with Romania after it did that, so if your source reports their statement correctly, it’s almost certainly bluster.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Yeah--- for sure. Sounds like it was cruise missile attacks (of which reportedly Russia has limited supplies of), rather than air strikes.

There was some updated info in the WP about 20-30 minutes back including video of the strikes (link below):

"Cruise missile attack ‘destroyed’ Ukrainian airport

....

In aftermath videos verified by The Post, firefighters spray down a smoking building cracked in half. They step on the rubble, chunks of concrete and burned metal. What looks like the airport’s command tower is crashed into the ground.

Local people filmed cruise missiles flying toward the airport from up to 15 miles away. While the missiles appeared to come from a southwestern direction, according to The Post’s geolocation of the videos, experts warned against drawing conclusions on the missile’s launch point.

“Cruise missiles can be programmed to fly paths that avoid sensors and defenses, at low altitude around terrain,” Scott Boston, a Russian military analyst at Rand Corporation, told The Post. “This can mislead efforts to determine where they are ultimately intended to go.”

The Russian military has cruise missiles that can be launched by from the sea and ground as well as the air, Boston said.

The missiles probably struck fuel storage tanks at the airport, said Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader for humanitarian disarmament at the Netherlands-based organization Pax, pointing to the size of the fire ball in the video and the presence of black smoke. The attack would be consistent with Russia’s wider tactic of taking out Ukrainian fuel supplies, he told The Post.

"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/06/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-live-updates/#link-RCOLLQK3UBBM7MPI6KT4URQB2I

This was on the mark. Ukraine claimed the attack came from Transnistria at first, but Moldova has denied that any planes or missiles were launched from there today. The missiles probably came from an aircraft flying southwest, or the Black Sea Fleet.

My guess it that Russia is ramping up its air campaign to make expansion of the UkrAF difficult. That "Polish jets" have been telegraphed for so long without any concrete developments is a really bad sign for NATO/EU coordination.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Russia and Ukraine together produce 1/3 of the world's wheat.    Wheat prices have surged to twice of early 2021 levels with Ukraine export sources being cut off due to the conflict and the threat of Russia potentially holding back wheat exports.

Any chance of another Arab Spring ?

Too much cynicism for that on the regional level, I'd think.

If the Russian army is weakened enough and distracted by Ukraine, a HTS-led offensive against the Syrian government cannot be ruled out.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

This isn't something you would be doing if you were certain of imminent victory.

https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas/status/1500602398045315075

I'm going to have to wait for visual confirmation on this one.

Assad will want to keep his army intact to guard his borders with the HTS-held, Turkish-held and SDF-held areas. It has worse training and worse equipment than the Russian army (quite possibly even worse than the Russian conscripts), except for perhaps the special forces Assad will really want to hold onto. $200-$300 would seem cheap for these units, depending on how far that goes in Syria.

If Russia is desperate for any kind of manpower, I can see them resorting to recruiting some of these units against Assad's wishes, but these guys struggled against various rebel groups even with the backing of the IRGC, Hezbollah and Russia itself (all of which are more formidable than the vast majority of forces Syria fields). How many of them even speak Russian?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Seems like a fighter jet transfer is coming through with Poland.

Still unclear - it seems that the US is on board but the countries with Russian jets aren’t: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44608/poland-still-isnt-interested-in-transferring-its-mig-29s-to-ukraine

The US has about 30 MiG-29s and Su-27s (not counting the planes used by contractors and other private owners), but the military probably wants to hang onto those for testing. This would be short-sighted because they could buy more after the war, but I expect them to be short-sighted and jealously guard these ageing assets.

IMO the failure of this to get anywhere is partially filibustering discussions of other measures that could be taken and thereby harming progress on other fronts. Ukranians demanding military support (and those prepared to finance them) should highlight the need for bigger/longer-range SAMs that could also be transferred from Europe (without the problems of flying them into Ukranian airspace). These would be more expensive than jets (Poland bought some of its MiGs from Germany for €1 each a couple of decades ago) but could fit within the $10 billion budget recently announced, as there is a limited number in NATO and EU states to begin with.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Russia releases footage of their troops in snow-clad Kyiv:

https://www.twitter.com/Reuters/status/1500804706666303491
The only problem is that there is currently no snow in Kyiv. Wtf has happened to their propaganda machine?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Though it does say "Kyiv region" - how much bigger is that than the city itself?

Fair point, but the WSJ correspondent in Ukraine claims there’s none near Kyiv either (although that depends on what he defines as near, I suppose).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The Soviet Union’s last four armoured trains were retired by Russia in the mid-2000s after use in the Chechnya wars. Restoration was announced in 2015 (planned to be completed in 2019), and it looks like they’re in service here.

https://www.twitter.com/aldin_ww/status/1500838282829172742

This old kit must be quite vulnerable near the frontlines, but it could help with Russia’s logistical issues.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/Refugees/status/1500822336672608262

I suspect that Putin and Lavrov are quite happy about this because in their sick, perverse minds they probably think that this is gonna bind the West's ressources while strenghtening anti-immigration parties.

It is probably going to do this.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/Refugees/status/1500822336672608262

I suspect that Putin and Lavrov are quite happy about this because in their sick, perverse minds they probably think that this is gonna bind the West's ressources while strenghtening anti-immigration parties.

It is probably going to do this.

Yes with regards to the first part, I'm not so sure about that second part. A recent poll im Germany showed that 68% of AfD voters supported taking in Ukrainian refugees. While this was still significantly lower than the ca. 95% support from the rest of the population it shows that Ukrainians still have a better standing because as (for the most part relatively conservative?) Christians they're the "good" kind of immigrants.

I believe this will change. The wave of refugees is ultimately going to be much bigger than that caused by the Syrian crisis and Arab Winter. If the culture warriors don’t turn against Ukranian refugees first, the Thatcherites will rail against the use of the social safety net to help them survive. Among the refugees will be a small but potentially significant number of Roma, and they’ll get even worse treatment.

It’s already begun in the UK, and anti-Eastern European sentiment is not limited to this island. We seem to be planning to take fewer refugees than last time (only 50 so far). Cowards who call themselves progressive or moderate will remember their electoral losses after the last crisis and quickly cut back on aid to refugees, especially if and when the Ukrainian government that could criticise this behaviour no longer exists.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1500909383491936261

Really doesn’t look like it’ll go anywhere soon. Various Polish officials hum and haw but their Prime Minister (not the President) keeps saying no. Psaki talks up the Biden administration’s work on the matter while suggesting it’s incredibly complicated: https://www.twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1500929211254640648
NATO seems kind of dysfunctional. You have to wonder if an invocation of Article 5 would be first met by days of legalistic deliberation over what it really meant in context.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1500909383491936261

Really doesn’t look like it’ll go anywhere soon. Various Polish officials hum and haw but their Prime Minister (not the President) keeps saying no. Psaki talks up the Biden administration’s work on the matter while suggesting it’s incredibly complicated: https://www.twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1500929211254640648
NATO seems kind of dysfunctional. You have to wonder if an invocation of Article 5 would be first met by days of legalistic deliberation over what it really meant in context.

Can't we just do a straight-up trade?

It would then be us, not Poland, who is sending the jets.

They’d still need to be launched from some European base and pass through a European country’s airspace. If Poland is backing off from this because it does not want to become especially hated by Russia after the Ukranian war is over, then even selling the jets to the US (which would obviously send them to Ukraine) would cause that.

I don’t think the escalation is a genuine concern (Romania had no issue returning a Su-27 to Ukraine) so much as a long-term deterioration in relations caused by Polish support. Additionally, the US claims to have administrative issues around the backfilling procedure (given Psaki’s statement). Perhaps they are haggling over which replacements Poland will get and how much they will cost. Blinker mentioned subsidies earlier, not free transfer, so it seems the US does not intend to simply write the Poles a blank cheque (which would be the fastest, albeit most expensive, way to do this).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1500909383491936261

Really doesn’t look like it’ll go anywhere soon. Various Polish officials hum and haw but their Prime Minister (not the President) keeps saying no. Psaki talks up the Biden administration’s work on the matter while suggesting it’s incredibly complicated: https://www.twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1500929211254640648
NATO seems kind of dysfunctional. You have to wonder if an invocation of Article 5 would be first met by days of legalistic deliberation over what it really meant in context.

 It's simultaneously complicated and simple. The US wants to ship Ukraine fighter planes from Holand, but Holand doesn't want to have itself be the staging point for the Planes delivery,  Is likely fearing that Russia will retaliate wis talliate with bombings if not invasion.

Wondering if Slovakia, hungry, and/or Romania all might be alternatives for NATO warplane deliveries?

It's not so simple to me - the direct threat seems empty. Poland is shipping in lethal aid already in sums that exceed the financial (though perhaps not the strategic) value of the planes. It can send in the planes without weapons attached (as Romania did) to avoid being brought into the war.* IIRC there is quite a lot of Cold War precedent here.

Maybe they are worried that sending in such large equipment will result in Lviv/the border regions inside Ukraine being bombed to disrupt supplies, but if Ukraine holds out long enough without the extra aircraft, Russia is likely to consider disrupting its supplies anyway. One way to dissuade Russia from doing this is to give Ukraine a better airforce and air defences, so that the RuAF does not feel confident it can make lots of airstrikes in the west of the country.

*What it can't do, in this case, is avoid drawing Russia's ire. It won't start a war, but it will put Poland in Putin's crosshairs if/when Russia wins in Ukraine. Russia could try to punish Poland in many ways without starting a war (it could stop selling them energy, for instance), and if they take Ukraine, they might be able to go further by funding criminals/insurgents to cause trouble on Poland's border. This would be a very risky move on Russia's part, though, and I'm not sure it would be feasibly considered by anyone.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Anyone remember this from the early days of the uprising against Gaddafi? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/libya-pilots-flee-to-malta

Wondering if we'll see any Russian pilots do this especially since getting shot down is likely the alternative. At least in Libya the opposition had no air force or air defense at all until NATO intervened.

This is what the Ukranian Su-27 pilot did on day one (his story is that he needed to land and lost contact with his base, which was being attacked at the time he flew into Romania), so we've already seen it.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

As much as Russians are suffering from the effects of sanctions, they can still take solace in McDonalds (for now):

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1500954446066593794

Maybe Thomas Friedman will try to get them to close their Ukraine locations to try to salvage his dumb theory that two countries with McDonalds can't be at war.

"My theory accounts for wars, not special operations."

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Yep, it's time for Ukraine to surrender. There's no way they're defeating an army led by *checks notes* a guy that collects wood.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1501197684119642112?s=20&t=C2kIPBX...

I’m glad a powerful man picked such an innocent/non-decadent hobby for once. It beats taxpayer-funded racing cars, castles and prostitution.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

WHAT?

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1501335043448442880?s=20&t=QI381JE...

The US claims to see a risk of war it is unwilling to take but wants Poland to take. I don’t believe that risk is significant, but even if it were, NATO’s article 5 would mean the US shared any Polish risk.

To me, this signals that the US is not ruling out a failure to honour article 5 (“Putin said giving planes would be an act of war, so Poland is the aggressor”). That may not be an intent - the mixed US messaging is likely a result of common miscommunications and disagreements within the natsec blob - but it is what is signalled.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I was wondering why the Polish government would have gone public with a plan to send their MiG-29s to Ukraine. Then I saw this video and remembered just how unpopular Russia is with the Polish people:

https://twitter.com/jelle_simons/status/1501260045505466368?s=20&t=ESyOukgGg...
Note: I also think there's at least some aspect of creating a distraction for the actual transfer of the planes. Poland announces they will send them via Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the news spreads all over. A few hours later the Pentagon declines the Polish offer, saying it "raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance". Now everybody's focused on the "failure" of that plan.

I can easily imagine that while all this public drama is occurring, the planes are being repainted and will be loaded on trucks tonight at 2am headed for the Ukrainian border. (Or at least preparations are being made for the transfer: arranging the replacement F-16s, finding heavy trucks carry the MiG-29s to Ukraine, etc.)

It’s easy to imagine, but unlikely to be the reality given how long and publicly this drama has gone on.

Use Occam’s razor.  If NATO was that organised, it would have been done before all of social media had spent two weeks speculating about it.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I was wondering why the Polish government would have gone public with a plan to send their MiG-29s to Ukraine. Then I saw this video and remembered just how unpopular Russia is with the Polish people:

https://twitter.com/jelle_simons/status/1501260045505466368?s=20&t=ESyOukgGg...
Note: I also think there's at least some aspect of creating a distraction for the actual transfer of the planes. Poland announces they will send them via Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the news spreads all over. A few hours later the Pentagon declines the Polish offer, saying it "raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance". Now everybody's focused on the "failure" of that plan.

I can easily imagine that while all this public drama is occurring, the planes are being repainted and will be loaded on trucks tonight at 2am headed for the Ukrainian border. (Or at least preparations are being made for the transfer: arranging the replacement F-16s, finding heavy trucks carry the MiG-29s to Ukraine, etc.)

It’s easy to imagine, but unlikely to be the reality given how long and publicly this drama has gone on.

Use Occam’s razor.  If NATO was that organised, it would have been done before all of social media had spent two weeks speculating about it.

I am shocked that you don’t think the U.S. could be lying about this.

They could, but it’s unlikely. There wasn’t any mention of Bulgarian Su-25 planes, which suggests the US officials pushing for this are not on the ball. Also, there’d be a high chance of a Polish or Ukrainian leak in this case, as there has been with every other development in this story. The Ukrainians would have to know about it, since their pilots would have been sent to Germany.

Assuming Biden has a secret plan just reminds me of the early days when people thought Trump had a secret plan.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Should Biden bend over on this one as the lesser evil?

No. The Saudi-caused humanitarian crisis in Yemen is still way worse than the Russian-caused one in Ukraine and will probably continue to be so through several more rounds of potential escalation of the latter conflict.

It isn’t, but that is only because Ukraine has a bigger population.

The most sensible option would be to accept higher oil prices, but if the US felt compelled to lower them in some way (besides Venezuela), the least insane remaining option would be some combination of mending relations with Iran and threatening the Saudis with this prospect.

I could go on about how Western support of Saudi Arabia over Iran has had disastrous consequences for the Middle East, but the simple version of this is that Iran needs to ramp up production to regain market share, which would mean a lot of cheap oil for a period after sanctions were eased. Of course, this would be bad for the environment, but the Biden admin probably isn’t going to prioritise that in any case.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Absolutely based, the Ukrainians hit the 5 year old "stealth" Russian patrol boat Vasily Bykov with freaking unguided land based MLRS fire on the 7th (appreciate just how difficult it is to hit moving, floating targets at sea with "dumb" rockets from land) and the ship has reportedly sunk today:

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1500759177454628864?s=20&t=GDam6C6o5...
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1501577874704379906?s=20&t=GDam6C6o5T...
https://twitter.com/MrKovalenko/status/1501582493853569026?s=20&t=GDam6C6o5T...

It was hit (and badly enough for the damage to be visible), but there’s no independent confirmation that it sunk.