Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[oldtimer]

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.

Don't jinx it.
Most of that was correct in WW1.

The morale was low, ammunition was short, mutinies did happen, the Germans did a breakthrough, and without America the Entente was doomed.

But the part about how great the other side is that's still hot air.

[Woody]

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.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKVmAJLWsAAtdHP?format=jpg&name=small

The Ukrainian expectation is that they will hold the city for at least the summer (best case scenario).

[Arizona Iced Tea]

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.

What about WW2?

[jaichind]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/politics/ukraine-munition-shortages/index.html

"Western officials warn munition shortages could be catastrophic for Ukraine as US stalls on providing more aid"

Ukraine’s shortage of ammunition and military equipment resulting from the US and its allies’ struggle to resupply the country’s military is having an increasingly dire effect on the battlefield, US and NATO officials are warning, as Russia intensifies its attacks on Kyiv’s dwindling air defenses knowing that they likely won’t be replenished anytime soon.

[Woody]

DeepstateUA show the Russian lines inside the administrative borders and buildings of Chasiv Yar. The battle has officially begun:

https://deepstatemap.live/en#14/48.5952/37.8977

The mayor of the town defected to Russia/DPR right after the invasion in 2022 started. I imagine they'll re-install him as the mayor again when they capture the town.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1775961707648565581
😬

[lfromnj]

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.

It's also just his general posting style. See the India elections thread as well . He probably just checks the news once an hour and posts an update. Maybe the mods could force him to limit his posts to maybe one or two per day per thread but I think thats just dumb.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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.

It's also just his general posting style. See the India elections thread as well . He probably just checks the news once an hour and posts an update. Maybe the mods could force him to limit his posts to maybe one or two per day per thread but I think thats just dumb.

Well said.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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

It doesn't look particularly likely for Ukraine to get EU membership if it can't overcome this hostility to the idea in Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
The numbers are better than expected in Iberia.
Netherlands has exact same net margin as the EU as a whole.

[jaichind]

Current map in the battle of Chasiv Yar from pro-Russian sources

[Open Source Intelligence]

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

It doesn't look particularly likely for Ukraine to get EU membership if it can't overcome this hostility to the idea in Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
The numbers are better than expected in Iberia.
Netherlands has exact same net margin as the EU as a whole.

Forget those 3 countries, look at the Franco-German Alliance.

[CumbrianLefty]

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.

Luttwak is, as is often the case, an outlier.

The chances of regular NATO troops ever going into Ukraine is minimal, even if Biden is re-elected.

(though I would not rule out lesser forms of "intervention")

[Open Source Intelligence]

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.

The ISW update from April 3rd highlighted a point made by Ukrainian sources. The sources were of course talking their own book, but that the piecemeal delivery of supplies from Western countries means that the Russians adapt to previous or incoming deliveries and remove the advantages new systems bring. Citing the example of the F-16s, Russians have beefed up their air defense network in response to the expected date of them coming into service, and while F-16s were the answer Ukraine needed in 2023, it's not in 2024 as the conflict has evolved. The adaptability, while uneven and slow at times from the Russians, creates a small window of opportunity for Ukraine to be able to get max effectiveness out of any new capability.

[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.

Luttwak is, as is often the case, an outlier.

The chances of regular NATO troops ever going into Ukraine is minimal, even if Biden is re-elected.

Yeah, I think Putin knows that. The Western and Central Europeans ex-French and British are too far gone from being states that can deploy into a hot war where casualties are an everyday threat. I don't question the people in the military forces, they are good people that do what their country asks them. I question their political leaders and the population. There's no popular will there. Read a Politico.eu article yesterday talking about conscription, some eastern European states are doing it and some interviewed talking about a need to bring that back across Europe. Yeah, good luck to Belgium drafting a bunch of young men from Brussels that would rather go fight Israel than Russia.

But Ukrainian success - currently defined by Ukraine and the West PUBLICLY as Russian withdrawal from all pre-2014 Ukrainian territory - as far as the how it is achieved looks like it will require greater Western participation than what is currently going on. We're not going to sign off on the assassination of Zelenskyy like occurred in 1963 for us to attempt to achieve success in Vietnam, but the West can either fold like Obama and the Europeans did in Syria and allow the Ukrainians to lose, or choose to increase its participation in some form to attempt to help Ukraine succeed.

(though I would not rule out lesser forms of "intervention")

Think it's clear that's been going on for awhile.

[jaichind]

https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2024/04/05/news/ingresso_nato_ucraina_russia-422425005/?ref=RHLF-BG-P8-S1-T1

"Kiev in NATO after the surrender: the scenario Europe fears if Trump wins the elections"

La Repubblica talks about a possible peace deal if Trump wins which would involve Russia keeping all the territories it has captured in return for what remains of Ukraine joining NATO.  I doubt Putin would accept such a deal even if it were offered.  The reality the mere offer of such a deal would mean the fall of the Zelensky government which would make such an offer very remote.

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2024/04/05/news/ingresso_nato_ucraina_russia-422425005/?ref=RHLF-BG-P8-S1-T1

"Kiev in NATO after the surrender: the scenario Europe fears if Trump wins the elections"

La Repubblica talks about a possible peace deal if Trump wins which would involve Russia keeping all the territories it has captured in return for what remains of Ukraine joining NATO.  I doubt Putin would accept such a deal even if it were offered.  The reality the mere offer of such a deal would mean the fall of the Zelensky government which would make such an offer very remote.

That would be a kind of lose-lose-lose for all 3 sides.

I don't see the Russians agreeing to that either. The territory they've taken other than the Black Sea coastline and pushing north from Crimea is not strategically important. In other words, they're not doing this for territory more than to not have a hostile neighbor oriented against them, which a Ukraine in NATO would still be.

As far as NATO and looking into the future, this is not a good deal from their perspective either. If you think these people actually believe all the sh*t they say, they will be rewarding the Russians for aggression, which they want to stop for all the future other wars out there in the world (they've already done that to an extent with Azerbaijan but that's a special case with Artsakh's unrecognized status, but leaving this there's several other potential hotbeds out there).

From the Ukrainian perspective, Zelenskyy would pretty much have to resign immediately. That or he recreates the stolen victory narrative the Germans had post-World War I to save face of "we would have won if not for France...Germany...America..." (I've always thought that endgame was a possibility.)

[jaichind]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/world/europe/ukraine-nato-stoltenberg-russia.html

"NATO Wants to Show Support for Ukraine, but Only So Much"

Admitting Kyiv is a nonstarter as long as the war with Russia is raging. But the member nations want to show they are supporting Ukraine “for the long haul.”

Again, what is the point of joining NATO if Ukraine can only join after defeating Russia?  It is like women telling a man "I will date you once you date a supermodel" 

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

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

It doesn't look particularly likely for Ukraine to get EU membership if it can't overcome this hostility to the idea in Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
The numbers are better than expected in Iberia.
Netherlands has exact same net margin as the EU as a whole.

Forget those 3 countries, look at the Franco-German Alliance.

Oh yeah the polling there isn't good for Ukraine either. I meant more that there's always going to be someone who is going to be willing to consider vetoing entry.

[Storr]

Going through Chernihiv region/oblast is the quickest and shortest route from Russia to Kyiv. Building these fortifications is obviously meant for if/when Russia once again attempts regime change by attacking the Ukrainian capital:

"Zelensky toured new Ukrainian defense fortifications in northern Chernihiv.

I wrote about these and Ukraine’s broader effort to dig in recently for @FT. More than 30bn hryvnia (about $800mn) has been allocated to building fortifications this year. Chernihiv region’s budget for defences in 2023 was $7.6mn; in 2024 it was increased to $40.7mn.

Military briefing: Ukraine digs deep as Russians advance https://on.ft.com/3TEIouv"

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1776263688095244329

[oldtimer]

Going through Chernihiv region/oblast is the quickest and shortest route from Russia to Kyiv. Building these fortifications is obviously meant for if/when Russia once again attempts regime change by attacking the Ukrainian capital:

"Zelensky toured new Ukrainian defense fortifications in northern Chernihiv.

I wrote about these and Ukraine’s broader effort to dig in recently for @FT. More than 30bn hryvnia (about $800mn) has been allocated to building fortifications this year. Chernihiv region’s budget for defences in 2023 was $7.6mn; in 2024 it was increased to $40.7mn.

Military briefing: Ukraine digs deep as Russians advance https://on.ft.com/3TEIouv"

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1776263688095244329

What waste of time and rescources.

It's full of forests and marshes with bad roads, which is why Russia failed in 2022 even without fortifications.

You can't attack succesfully with a mechanised force through there.

[jaichind]

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/04/pentagon-ukraine-weapon-shipments-00150639

"Pentagon defends pace of weapon shipments as Ukraine worries it’s too late"

[jaichind]

It's pretty funny how you can go from

2022 Dec


to

2024 April



Of course Blinken says that it is because of the PRC

[jaichind]

https://news.liga.net/en/politics/news/shmigal-za-poslednie-nedeli-rossiya-unichtozhila-80-ukrainskih-tets

"80% of Ukraine's thermal power infrastructure destroyed by Russia in recent weeks, PM Shmyhal says"

Ukraine's PM says 80% of Ukraine's thermal power infrastructure was destroyed.   Clearly Ukraine can count on net energy transfer EU states to stay afloat in term of energy

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

It does seem that Putin's manpower issues have declined significantly...

[jaichind]

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

From Bloomberg:

Russia Oil Refining Recovers in Early April as Repairs Gain Pace

Russia’s refineries processed more crude in the first days of April as some of the nation’s major plants restored operations halted by Ukrainian drone attacks. 

The impact of the drone strikes on Russian crude processing is diminishing because most of the affected facilities have been able to repair damaged equipment, partly or completely restoring capacity. Some other plants have also increased their throughput to compensate for the damaged facilities, ensuring domestic fuel demand is met.