Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[oldtimer]

Governing constraint for both sides in this war is manpower, neither side is going to run out of any other resource for continuing the war, hence why its in Ukraine's interest to try and win sooner rather than later, net manpower flows will eventually turn negative for the Ukrainian military at which point it will begin to contract in size which will allow Russian forces to push forward and occupy the country, only question is how many years away that point is, perhaps 3-4.

At current pace of losses vs production Russia is going to run out of equipment before that happens for Ukraine

True.

At current rates Russia should run out of weapons by the end of next year, and there is no sign of meaningfull russian production increases, both sides don't look capable of a serious offensive anymore.

There is a lot of panic and excitement over nothing but a few fields.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Governing constraint for both sides in this war is manpower, neither side is going to run out of any other resource for continuing the war, hence why its in Ukraine's interest to try and win sooner rather than later, net manpower flows will eventually turn negative for the Ukrainian military at which point it will begin to contract in size which will allow Russian forces to push forward and occupy the country, only question is how many years away that point is, perhaps 3-4.

At current pace of losses vs production Russia is going to run out of equipment before that happens for Ukraine

True.

At current rates Russia should run out of weapons by the end of next year, and there is no sign of meaningfull russian production increases, both sides don't look capable of a serious offensive anymore.

There is a lot of panic and excitement over nothing but a few fields.

Russia’s on the ground notice this too
https://twitter.com/andrewperpetua/status/1775722183056121954?s=12

[jaichind]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/ukraine-tackles-gambling-addiction-within-its-military-ranks?embedded-checkout=true

"Ukraine Tackles Gambling Addiction Within Its Military Ranks"

"UAF soldiers are mortgaging military equipment to pay off debts."

[jaichind]

Pro-Russian sources say that Russias are moving in on a possible encirclement of Novomikhailovka

[jaichind]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/us-house-s-ukraine-war-aid-vote-is-likely-weeks-or-more-away?embedded-checkout=true

"US House’s Ukraine War Aid Vote Is Likely Weeks or More Away"

This is  Speaker Johnson's latest scheme to try to turn the Ukraine aid package into a bunch of loans as opposed to grants.

[jaichind]

https://tass.com/economy/1770193

Rosstat says that unemployment in Russia fell to a record low of 2.8% in February and that real wages in Russia in January 2024 increased by 8.5% in annual terms.  This is pretty much a repeat of the Vietnam war driven economic surge in the USA in the late 1960s.

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1775819752302170438?s=20

[jaichind]

https://unherd.com/2024/04/its-time-to-send-nato-troops-to-ukraine/

"It’s time to send Nato troops to Ukraine"

“Nato countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat.”

Professor Edward Luttwak advocates for NATO troops to intervene in Ukraine

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://unherd.com/2024/04/its-time-to-send-nato-troops-to-ukraine/

"It’s time to send Nato troops to Ukraine"

“Nato countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat.”

Professor Edward Luttwak advocates for NATO troops to intervene in Ukraine

Well we're reaching late 1963 in Vietnam.

[jaichind]

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/victoria-spartz-ukraine-aid-69ef4ed1

"The Only U.S. Lawmaker Born in Ukraine Is Now Skeptical of More Aid"



The only, GOP, member of the USA House that is from Ukraine is now opposed to more aid to Ukraine.  Makes sense.  It does not matter where she is from.  Her core GOP base in her district is now against more aid to Ukraine.

[jaichind]

A Ukraine poll has 45% believe that Ukraine will return to its 1991 borders.  Back Sept 2023 it was 68%

[jaichind]

https://espreso.tv/viyna-z-rosiyeyu-vidteper-prichinoyu-zvilnennya-z-viyskovoi-sluzhbi-mozhe-buti-lishe-nepridatnist-pravozakhisnitsya-denisova

"From now on, the reason for dismissal from military service can only be unfitness, - human rights defender Denisova"

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/MSZ_RP/status/1775901809120354438

We have decided to establish a NATO mission. This does not mean that we are going to war, but that we will now be able to use the Alliance's coordination, training, planning capabilities to support 🇺🇦 in a more coordinated way.

Based

[GeneralMacArthur]

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.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can you imagine how wretched Atlas would have been during World War 1?  We'd have some guy named CrownedEagle14 who posts a dozen news articles every day about how the French and British forces are at an all-time low in morale, they're on the verge of running out of munitions, there's rumors of mutiny and suicide, and meanwhile Germany is amazing and constantly on the verge of a huge breakthrough, the German people are ecstatic and happy, their economy is booming, war production off the charts, Americans are crying and in shambles, French women are secretly writing letters to German soldiers asking them to impregnate them after the war ends, British food is still terrible, and so on and so forth.

All discussion about literally the most important event in human history would be restricted to the "Serbian nationalist negotiations and related tensions Megathread", which would be 3,945 pages long and 70% of the posts would just be CrownedEagle14 chiming in every day to dump the contents of his "the Triple Entente is doomed" RSS feed.

[Hindsight was 2020]

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”

[Storr]

The latest in "truth is stranger than fiction":

"A former Massachusetts city councilor was charged with possession of child pornography in 2020. He skipped a court date in January 2024, flying to Istanbul.
In February, he was reportedly in Avdiivka after joining the Russian army (with Pyatnashka).

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/04/04/pro-kremlin-telegram-channels-share-propaganda-video-featuring-u-s-city-councilor-who-joined-russian-army-after-fleeing-child-pornography-charges"

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1775881811761016847?s=20

[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.

[Hindsight was 2020]

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

[Storr]

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries continue to effect the Russian economy:

"Diesel loadings from #Russia's three major ports on Black and Baltic Seas, including some volumes originating in Belarus, are set to fall to ~2.29m tons in April. That equates to just over 569k b/d, down 21% vs actual daily exports from same ports in March"

https://twitter.com/olyatanas/status/1775127939002081637?s=20

[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.

[Hindsight was 2020]

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.

There are also plenty of reports that dismiss Russia having the offensive capacity to do something major offensively right now that by sheer coincidence completely slip by jaichind to post here, I wonder why 🙄

[jaichind]

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/04/04/majority-of-eu-voters-in-favour-of-ukraine-joining-the-eu-exclusive-ipsoseuronews-poll-fin

"Majority of EU voters in favour of Ukraine joining the EU, exclusive IPSOS/Euronews poll finds"

Poll on Ukraine joining EU

For/Against   45/35

Finland          68/13
Portugal        68/15
Spain            68/21
Sweden         58/15
Poland          56/26  (pretty good numbers for Ukraine given recent issues with farm products)
Denmark      55/21
Romania       54/40
Netherlands  42/32
Italy             41/33
Belgium        40/37
Germany      40/41
Greece         38/43
Austria         34/50
France          32/44
Bulgaria        31/49
Slovakia        24/46
Hunhary        18/54

[jaichind]

Pro-Russian sources say that the Russians have entered into the Eastern section of Chasov Yar.  If so the battle for Chasov Yar has begun.