Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Absolution9]

https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1488926785848946692

The crux of his argument lies in the odd assertion that the US cannot fulfil its obligations in Europe while also countering the increasing military threat posed by China. I thought the US was able to win a world war with major theaters in Europe and Asia. Maybe I'm just losing my marbles but, didn't the US also work to contain Communism in Europe and Asia during the Cold War? Didn't that effort involve massive military commitments in both regions?

In WWII the US had a similar population and 2x the GDP of Germany and Japan combined.  Also was allied with both the British Empire and the SU both of which were not drastically weaker than Germany. In this case China and Russia have 4.5x the US’s population and in PPP terms about 1.5x the US’s economy.  A challenge of a slightly different magnitude here.

[Absolution9]

Massive escalation happening.  Unfortunately I suspect that Ukraine will be surrendering unconditionally either at tomorrow’s meetings or within the next week after the introduction of Russia’s tactical and strategic air power.  It’s been completely lacking so far but Russia has about 1000 tactical aircraft and over 150 strategic bombers.  They will also be using their artillery in a complete fashion.

I’m starting to get that this has all been a planned escalation curve.  Very sadly I also understand what Putin mean by de-nazification.  Basically the destruction of Ukrainian national identity by any means at least in Eastern/Central Ukraine.

Very sad situation about to unfold.  No way to stop it unless there is a palace coup (low probability), he has been prepping this since 2014/2015.

[Absolution9]

Unfortunately, Armenia has a weak and shattered military. Without the Russian brokered peace deal in 2020, they would have been booted out of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan. Don't be surprised if Aliyev uses this opportunity to "finish the job", while Russia is preoccupied in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1507850865213911042?s=20&t=EGd8k9JmAy0...

https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1507851414034436098?s=20&t=EGd8k9JmAy0...

This doesn’t make any sense.  There are 2000 Russian troops in Nagorno Karabahk.  If Azerbaijan attacks, it may be able to overwhelm the Armenians and those troops but Russia could devastate their economy by hitting their oil and gas production/transport infrastructure on the Caspian Sea with cruise and ballistic missiles.  Would also further tighten oil/gas markets as Azerbaijan is a major supplier to Turkey/Europe.

[Absolution9]

One of the biggest question for me is how many people Russia can lose until there are serious problems.
There must be some point at which russian loses get so big that there is widespread mutiny and protests. I have no idea if that happens at 300k killed or 500k.

Almost no modern conflict has ended because one side ran out of soliders to fight with. Moral almost always collapsed long before that.


There are common comparison to the 8 million men the soviets lost in WW2. Which IMO is not a very helpful comparison. Russia now has a lot less manpower and their population is much less invested in the current conflict.

True that Russia won't be able to ask for that kind of sacrifice in an offensive war vs a defensive war for survival like WWII, but I don't get this idea that Russia's population is much less combat capable today than in 1941.  I would judge it as more combat capable qualitatively and maybe even larger in absolute numeric terms. 

In 1941 SU had 175-180M people vs 150M for Russia + Donbass Republics + Crimea today.  In 1941 SU had decades of previous fertility rate at over 4.5 per woman vs 1.4-1.7 for Russia over the past 20 years - that means that 35-40% of the SU pop in 1941 was under 18 years old.  Today Russia has more people if anything in the 18-55 combat capable age range. 

In qualitative terms 65% of the 1941 SU pop was made up of illiterate peasants (down from over 80% prior to WW1) with very little experience interacting with complex machinery.  They would have been very difficult to train to use even the equipment of 1941.  Today RF is 75-80% urbanized and 99% literate. 

[Absolution9]

One of the biggest question for me is how many people Russia can lose until there are serious problems.
There must be some point at which russian loses get so big that there is widespread mutiny and protests. I have no idea if that happens at 300k killed or 500k.

Almost no modern conflict has ended because one side ran out of soliders to fight with. Moral almost always collapsed long before that.


There are common comparison to the 8 million men the soviets lost in WW2. Which IMO is not a very helpful comparison. Russia now has a lot less manpower and their population is much less invested in the current conflict.

True that Russia won't be able to ask for that kind of sacrifice in an offensive war vs a defensive war for survival like WWII, but I don't get this idea that Russia's population is much less combat capable today than in 1941.  I would judge it as more combat capable qualitatively and maybe even larger in absolute numeric terms.  

In 1941 SU had 175-180M people vs 150M for Russia + Donbass Republics + Crimea today.  In 1941 SU had decades of previous fertility rate at over 4.5 per woman vs 1.4-1.7 for Russia over the past 20 years - that means that 35-40% of the SU pop in 1941 was under 18 years old.  Today Russia has more people if anything in the 18-55 combat capable age range.  

And far fewer were over 55, since people back then didn't live as long. Now, the idea that having a life expectancy of 45 or 50 means that most people would die at around that age is incorrect. Most people who survived childhood would live to old age, but still fewer than now.

In qualitative terms 65% of the 1941 SU pop was made up of illiterate peasants (down from over 80% prior to WW1) with very little experience interacting with complex machinery.  They would have been very difficult to train to use even the equipment of 1941.  Today RF is 75-80% urbanized and 99% literate.  

But the problem is the flip side of this: the value of a working age citizen to a state in the 2020s is much higher than it was in the early 20th century, largely since birth rates are much lower. I replied to a similar point earlier in the thread (this was posted at an earlier stage in the war, but the underlying facts haven't changed):

This isn't talked about enough: unlike the USSR in the mid-20th century and the Russian Empire in earlier times, today's Russia has a catastrophically low birth rate (FWIW, so does Ukraine, but they're not the ones who instigated the war). Life expediencies are longer nowadays (though still shockingly short in Russia, especially for men, and work forces are much more specialized, meaning that instead of being mostly interchangeable farmers and factory workers, each soldier lost is another young man who can't later go on to become a programmer, plumber, technician, or business owner. Yet Putin is throwing away young men in the prime of life as though he's Stalin or Nicholas II. And it's quite telling that in a country of about 150 million, about 15% of whom are men 18-40, so 22.5 million or so of prime military eligibility, many of whom, lets face it, have poor employment or educational prospects, he struggles to find even a hundred thousand more willing to go and fight in Ukraine.

And also, I very, very much doubt 65% of the Soviet population was still illiterate in 1941. For all of its many, many flaws the Soviet government prioritized basic education for the population. Per wiki, the USSR's literacy rate in 1937 was 75%, with 86% of men being literate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union. And I would bet that illiteracy was concentrated in places like Tajikistan and remote parts of Sibera.

I should have said illiterate or semi-literate, was basing it on the rural/urban divide, I wouldn't trust the Soviet stats though, illiteracy was very high in Tsarist Russia and the CPSU had only been in full control for under 20 years by 1941, after huge dislocation in WWI and the civil war.  The youngest cohorts would have gone through schooling but most 20-50 year old rural citizens would probably have received very rudimentary instruction and then been counted as literate.  

Agree that there are more 55+ year olds now but still think Russia today has far less dependents than the SU then.  If anything, I was underestimating the proportion of minors.  Egypt right now has a 40% 18 and below share while having had over 30 years of sub 4.0 fertility rate and much higher life expectancy.  SU was consistently over 4.0 at the time coming off 6.0+ prior to WW1.  It may easily have been over 50% minors (Egypt was over 50% in 1986 according to wiki with a fertility rate of 4.4 so similar point in transition).

Completely agree on the much higher value of working age citizens due to much better skills level and general economic structure but should also say that the value of 40-55 year olds in war is also much higher today.  I see tons of video's of older looking men fighting on both sides in this conflict - some even look like they are pushing 60!  Outside the US and to a lesser extent the UK WW2 armies were still mostly unmotorized/unmechanized aside from a handful of elite units.  Men (and horses) still had to march/pull/carry all the equipment and supplies.  Now a 55 year old driver/gunner/sentry/trench filler/whatever is plenty useful compared to 80 years ago.

[Absolution9]

You repeat the same esoteric. To use the word shock in this context is ridiculous. The collapse of the USSR was a consequence of the fact that for decades the spring of nationalism of the Soviet peoples was held back, especially nationalism was overripe among Russians and Ukrainians. Now both the Chinese state and the Russian state are nationalist, they are in complete harmony with the nationalism of their main ethnic groups, and a tiny number of real liberals are excluded by all means from influencing politics. Absolutely nothing threatens either Vinnie's regime or Piglet's regime. This field has been cleared.

Yes, it was ultimately nationalism that destroyed the Soviet Union. But, that was made possible because the Party's rank and file no longer felt that listening to the Kremlin served their interests. They then found another potential source of power in the form of local nationalism. Nationalism was the symptom, not the cause, of the Soviet Union's collapse.

As for China, Xi Jinping himself has repeatedly warned that the Party could very quickly fall apart due to a lack of internal cohesion. His speech about his theory on why the Soviet Union feel apart, which I previously mentioned, says it all:

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/01/leaked-speech-shows-xi-jinpings-opposition-to-reform/

The most striking part of Xi Jinping’s “new southern tour speech” is his revisiting the topic of the Soviet Union’s collapse. He said, “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken. In the end, ‘the ruler’s flag over the city tower’ changed overnight. It’s a profound lesson for us! To dismiss the history of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party, to dismiss Lenin and Stalin, and to dismiss everything else is to engage in historic nihilism, and it confuses our thoughts and undermines the Party’s organizations on all levels.”

“Why must we stand firm on the Party’s leadership over the military?” Xi continued, “because that’s the lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union where the military was depoliticized, separated from the Party and nationalized, the party was disarmed. A few people tried to save the Soviet Union; they seized Gorbachev, but within days it was turned around again, because they didn’t have the instruments to exert power. Yeltsin gave a speech standing on a tank, but the military made no response, keeping so-called ‘neutrality.’ Finally, Gorbachev announced the disbandment of the Soviet Communist Party in a blithe statement. A big Party was gone just like that. Proportionally, the Soviet Communist Party had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.”

Here's a more recent take, that more explicitly makes my comparison:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Xi-s-Gorbachev-obsession-put-China-on-a-Soviet-path

As for how the CCP could fall apart, it won't be the exact same way as the Soviet Union, where local Party use nationalism to dismantle the Party's structures. Deng Xiaoping had hoped to create a tacit agreement where market reformists and statists would take turns leading the Party every ten years. Before his death, he even declared that Hu Jintao (the one who was led away at the last Party Congress) would serve as General Secretary between 2002-2012, and that the Party would be able to select Hu's successor in a structured process.

But, by the late 2000s, ideological factions were increasingly openly sniping at each other, and that could very well have led to a split in the Party. It was in this context that Winnie came in, promising to recreate the Party's cohesion, and hence his speech on his theory on why the Soviet Union fell apart.

That also explains why the CCP chose to crack down in Hong Kong: internal documents revealed that they were aware of the Baltic republics, which, despite being the wealthiest and westernized parts of the USSR, were also the most resentful of Moscow and the first domino to fall. Hence, they viewed Hong Kong as a threat to the CCP's rule over all of China, and therefore a crackdown was the most logical option.

They also extensively studied the KMT in Taiwan, and the PRI in Mexico: two other long-time one-party dictatorships that fell apart. In both these cases, they concluded not inaccurately that a lack of cohesion within the ruling party made the party elites question whether they should continue supporting the system.

Hence, they are acutely aware of the risk to regime stability, and it is their #1, #2, and #3 priority. Everything else is subordinate to that, and the impression that the Party's rule is rock-solid forever is the product of their own propaganda. Winnie is secure for now, but I dare say that before you know it, sniping among the Party elites will become more and more difficult to ignore.

Second, I don't see why China might not want to supply the Russian army, because China has been supplying the Russian army for a long time, both itself and through its satellites. The West turns a blind eye to this, because the Western and not only the Western economy is tightly tied to China.

Here's a statistic you may want to consider: about 200 million Chinese jobs are dependent on foreign trade, about 20-25%. This is according to ex-Premier Li Keqiang, who probably did so to rain on Winnie's parade. A China that openly supports the Russian army in vast quantities (more than deniable drones or spare parts) would most certainly invite retaliation from the Western powers.

For starters, I can see the EU, US, Canada, UK, Japan, etc imposing a 10% (or something) tariff on imports from China, which would go towards supporting Ukraine. The Trump Administration's tariffs on Chinese imports did cause some economic costs to the US economy, but the costs to the Chinese economy were greater, and that's why the Biden Administration kept them. Such a Ukraine tariff would cause some cost to the western economies, but it would be a fraction of the cost of just a fraction of the many millions of Chinese jobs that would be lost. If you want to give the CCP any credit, it's that they will do whatever it takes to prevent domestic mass unemployment. Unfortunately for them, their room for error is shrinking: China's export manufacturing sector is ailing even according to its official statistics.

And that's just the direct employment aspect. Until recently, the US has been struggling to convince its allies to go along with its efforts to restrict the flow of advanced technology to China. A major reason for this was that the Europeans had been skeptical about Washington's agenda, and wanted to assert their strategic presence. A China that abandons the pretense of neutrality will make it much easier for Washington to co-ordinate technology sanctions. What happened recently in the semiconductor sector could very easily spread to other sectors. It won't immediately threaten the CCP's regime, but they're very vocal that they view these sanctions as a direct attack on their core interests.

Winnie himself wants to be another Mao, but he lacks the cunning or intelligence of Mao. He obviously has a man crush on bunker grandpa, but he's constrained by the Party structures and China's vast size in his ability to micromanage affairs. He's also constrained by the fact that, while China's economy is vastly wealthier than Russia's, that's because it's far more globalized and more vulnerable to external factors.

China's economy isn't even vastly wealthier than Russia's it just has 9-10x the population.  Its nominal GDP pc is just under 90% of Russia's and its PPP GDP pc is at about 65%.

It hasn't yet even achieved the Soviet Union's peak estimated GDP per capita relative to the US of about 35% in the early 70's.  Still pretty far from that even on a PPP basis.

[Absolution9]

This page has 17 posts on it and 11 of them are jaichind.

He never responds to anything anyone else is saying in the thread, and nobody ever responds to him.  There's no contribution to the discourse.  It's just taking up space -- a lot of space.

I'm assuming 90% of the forum has him on ignore at this point.  Because it's just spam.  Every single day a flood of posts "Ukraine is doomed!  Soldiers are fleeing!  Europeans in shambles!  Russia's economy is booming!  War production is off the charts!"  and it's been like this for over a year now.

It makes it difficult to have a real discussion in this thread.

Why do the mods continue to allow this?

And in general, why do the mods allow megathreads like this one to be taken over by one guy just dumping his RSS feed every single day?  This is far from the first time this has happened.

Funny enough because he barley responds to anyone he never really explains how despite as you said his year long “Ukraine is doomed” spam dump that the front lines barley move? It’s kinda hard to reconcile his “Ukraine military is falling apart and Russia’s mic is booming” with the daily frontline reports of “Russia monke runs at small village in the Donbas and losses 25 tanks and armored vehicles for no gains”

This is incredibly misleading, I would ask you to find a single post where he says the Ukrainian army is collapsing or on the verge of collapse?

He has been pretty clear in multiple posts that he views this war, materially not morally, as similar to Union vs CSA.  In terms of relative demographic and industrial capacity that’s pretty close to spot on with the exception, of course, that Ukraine is not successfully blockaded and is receiving major material support from the West.  Still a nearly 1-4 demographic and 1-8 economic deficit will be very hard to overcome for Ukraine in the long term.  

These types of wars of attrition over the past few hundred years generally follow the pattern of the weaker yet pluckier side winning some major but not decisive victories prior to the stronger side mobilizing its full resources and eventually forcing the military collapse of the weaker side.  You could argue wars from Napoleonic to US Civil to WW 1/2 fitting that pattern.

Remains to be seen if that’s what happens here, political factors could get in the way,but certainly not an unreasonable expectation if Russia is fully committed to victory.

[Absolution9]

This page has 17 posts on it and 11 of them are jaichind.

He never responds to anything anyone else is saying in the thread, and nobody ever responds to him.  There's no contribution to the discourse.  It's just taking up space -- a lot of space.

I'm assuming 90% of the forum has him on ignore at this point.  Because it's just spam.  Every single day a flood of posts "Ukraine is doomed!  Soldiers are fleeing!  Europeans in shambles!  Russia's economy is booming!  War production is off the charts!"  and it's been like this for over a year now.

It makes it difficult to have a real discussion in this thread.

Why do the mods continue to allow this?

And in general, why do the mods allow megathreads like this one to be taken over by one guy just dumping his RSS feed every single day?  This is far from the first time this has happened.

Funny enough because he barley responds to anyone he never really explains how despite as you said his year long “Ukraine is doomed” spam dump that the front lines barley move? It’s kinda hard to reconcile his “Ukraine military is falling apart and Russia’s mic is booming” with the daily frontline reports of “Russia monke runs at small village in the Donbas and losses 25 tanks and armored vehicles for no gains”

This is incredibly misleading, I would ask you to find a single post where he says the Ukrainian army is collapsing or on the verge of collapse?

He has been pretty clear in multiple posts that he views this war, materially not morally, as similar to Union vs CSA.  In terms of relative demographic and industrial capacity that’s pretty close to spot on with the exception, of course, that Ukraine is not successfully blockaded and is receiving major material support from the West.  Still a nearly 1-4 demographic and 1-8 economic deficit will be very hard to overcome for Ukraine in the long term.  

These types of wars of attrition over the past few hundred years generally follow the pattern of the weaker yet pluckier side winning some major but not decisive victories prior to the stronger side mobilizing its full resources and eventually forcing the military collapse of the weaker side.  You could argue wars from Napoleonic to US Civil to WW 1/2 fitting that pattern.

Remains to be seen if that’s what happens here, political factors could get in the way,but certainly not an unreasonable expectation if Russia is fully committed to victory.

He posted a clickbait article literally titled “Ukraine are on verge of collapse” also comparing this to this civil war is ridiculous for several reason the most obvious being that the CSA didn’t have the whole of Europe backing them also by this point in the war the Union was on the verge of controlling the Mississippi River and splitting the south in two so Russia is woefully behind in progress. Also Russia has been fully committed for 2 years now and net the two victories in Bakhmut and Avdiivka at a massive cost and they’re currently losing equipment at a rate there mobilized MIC can’t keep up with so any argument that they can just attrition Ukraine to death because “well now they’re taking it seriously” is not backed by the facts

He posted an article from a major mainstream news source, quoting Ukrainian officers, about the possibility of Ukrainian lines collapsing if Russia actually manages to launch a major relatively combined arms offensive.  The threat is real precisely because of the major human/material constraints Ukraine is facing, though Russia also has to achieve something it hasn’t managed to do since at least the start of the war.

Ukraine has survived somewhat better than the CSA due to Western support but it’s still is in a precarious position with significant territorial losses.  Meanwhile Russia is only slowly mobilizing.  Most estimates are showing only 6-8% of GDP currently going up the military, less than the US in a much less intense war in Vietnam (granted that included a much more global footprint for the US).  RUSI estimates about 450k Russian combat troops in Ukraine up from under 200k in late 2022 and that figure is very likely to grow through 2024 along with overall military spending into 2025.

In comparison the Soviet Union averaged 15-20% of GDP toward defense and more than twice the population adjusted troop mobilization levels as Russia currently for the entire post war Soviet period and that was mostly during peacetime or fighting small wars like Afghanistan (never more than 80-100k troops deployed).  Russia still has a significant amount of mobilization potential but seems to be going slow and steady maybe to boil the internal resistance frog slowly as well.

I’m not saying Russia will certainly win but the result will depend on Ukraine being able to fully mobilize its human potential (something it hasn’t come close to doing yet either) and substantially increasing not stagnant or declining Western material support.  The war is still escalating in scale so resource inputs from the West/Ukraine will have to continue to rise.  Given those factors and Ukraine correspondingly much smaller room for error, I have to give Russia the better odds if it has the political will to escalate its involvement for several more years.

[Absolution9]

Also I think people fail to appreciate (and this based on quality western sources like RUSI, Mike Kofman/Rob Lee, etc) that Russia, despite major firepower advantages, had a substantial and sometimes very substantial disadvantage in front line infantry troop numbers in the first year of the war.  Troop numbers then roughly equalized in the second year, and now are moving in Russia’s favor in the third year.  It’s going to be pretty significant if Russia can start consistently deploying 1.5/2 to 1 quantities of frontline troops in Ukraine on top of its artillery/glide bomb firepower advantage.