Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3673208-is-american-support-for-ukraine-on-borrowed-time/

The American public starting to tire on this.

When an article title is framed as a question, the answer is usually, "no", "it depends", or "it's the wrong question". However, there is a relevant concern about the relative weakness of support for Aid to Ukraine among American conservatives. The smart way to pitch aid for Ukraine to Right-Wingers is:
- Instead of emphasizing the "Rules-based international order" or "liberal values", frame it in terms of borders, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, all of which are key elements of said order, but are the elements that right-wingers like.
- Hammer home relentlessly that Russia is a de-facto ally of China, and that weakening Russia causes them to become more of a drain on China
- The War finally achieves Trump's goal of getting most of Europe to invest in Defense
- Talk up the strength of American weapons. Talk about how many weapons are being transferred or deployed and what types, not how much they cost.

[Stranger in a strange land]

So a big problem with the Shahed is, ironically, its slow speed (115 MPH max speed), which is below the stall speed of almost all fixed wing aircraft, plus its low cost making MANPADS ineffecient to use against it. But there is a solution, if we dare to use it.

[Stranger in a strange land]

So a big problem with the Shahed is, ironically, its slow speed (115 MPH max speed), which is below the stall speed of almost all fixed wing aircraft, plus its low cost making MANPADS ineffecient to use against it. But there is a solution, if we dare to use it.

Ah, a fellow noncredibledefense enjoyer I see?

3000 Black Sopwith Camels of Zelensky incoming! And I'm only half joking. A better solution is for Bakyar or another low-cost drone maker to produce a drone fighter that can loiter and mimics the combat characteristics of WWI & inter-war era fighters, but with modern sensors and an improved, lighter-weight machine gun.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.ft.com/content/96611190-3c09-48b7-8ded-7b2651590f94

"Europe at risk of ‘much worse’ energy crisis next year, warns Qatar"

Supply problem could last until 2025 if Ukraine war continues and Russian gas does not return, says energy minister

The solution is obvious. Qatar will buy Russian gas and re-sell it to the EU via what is left of the NS pipelines for a price markup. Everyone wins.

A better solution would the EU conquering and annexing Qatar, the Europeans and the Qatari guest workers that make up a majority of the population win.

The core issue is more about Qatar's ability to convert gas to LNG and the EU's ability to process LNG so a takeover of Qatar will not change those realities.

Still, I wonder if the solution proposed is enacted the SJW where I live will start putting Qatar flags and "I stand with Qatar" signs next to their BLM, "I believe in Science" signs, Ukraine flags, and "I stand with Ukraine" signs on their yard.

So others have already answered the more relevant points, but on the last sentence, I've only seen a couple of Ukrainian flags and bumper stickers in my neighborhood (and I have yet to see a Russian flag, a Z, or an "I Stand with Russia" sign, but it wouldn't surprise me if a few are deluded enough to fly or post them). But one flag in particular stood out to me: it was in a back yard, and still visible from the street because it was a corner house, but it was a blue & yellow Ukrainian flag hoisted between two wooden posts. It looked more like something you would see in a frontline Ukrainian village than in Suburban NOVA. It looked more like it had been put up by young boys playing war than by tryhard "SJW" type libs.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I'm sure a crowdfunding campaign would be able to fund a replacement statue and bust. Then again, I doubt Ukraine would replace statues of Russian war heroes.

Hopefully this means the Russians are actually leaving Kherson.

Edit: The telegram post mentions "evacuating" the remains of Grigory Potemkin. It turns out Potemkin's tomb is indeed in Kherson at Saint Catherine's Cathedral

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1584307220564439040?s=20&t=4qeDcN...

It is becoming patently clear that Russian actions in Ukraine are increasingly fitting into a deliberate pattern of Genocide.

Russia's latest invasion and occupations of Ukraine, and all of the actions conducted during their latest War Against Ukraine 2.0, appear to be clearly designed to eliminate Ukraine, not only as a sovereign nation, but also to eliminate their very identity as well, from forcing children in their occupied areas to speak Russian, forced relocation of populations, practicing ruthless torture, rape, and murder for those who oppose their rule.

"De-Nazification" of Ukraine in reality is a propaganda smokescreen so that ordinary Russians, not to mention Russian soldiers can justify their brutality, while the reality is the very elimination of Ukrainian cultural identity and being completed absorbed / assimilated into the "Russian Cultural Identity".

This is for real, and all free peoples, and free-minded peoples throughout the world need to recognize this is exactly what "Mother Russia" is attempting and actually performing.

Omg, epic fail. Suvorov, Potemkin, and Ushakov are all Russians who served Imperial Russia lol.

Update:

https://twitter.com/MaksymPolyakov/status/1584461221046390786?s=20&t=eLgxuH5...

They are probably trying to prevent what the Vandals did in 455 to Rome. The stealing the minorah from the temple. Once Ukraine falls, they will lose those symbols forever.

But what's the motivation for looting the valuables from the puppet theater?

[Stranger in a strange land]

Russian spy x NDP crossover
https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/status/1584956092974567435
https://twitter.com/DevineSean/status/643588618024579074

Weird. Sean just got elected to city council. Might want to delete this tweet.

Can we be sure it's the same guy though?

[Stranger in a strange land]

Polonium tea is all the rage in Bali.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1592082594946248704

If he doesn't want to go back to Russia, I guess a health emergency is one way of doing it.

[Stranger in a strange land]

This article by a think tank about the lessons learned from the Ukraine War is interesting. While Zelensky blew off in public the US alert that Putin was about to attack to avoid panic, he did disperse munitions stockpiles, and aircraft and air-defense systems, so the Russian initial blitz left such mostly intact. Russian reaction time from target pinpointing to hitting it took a day or two, by which time the target was no longer there. Keep moving no matter what because you can’t hide from Mordor’s eye for long. And early on, what saved the day was old fashioned artillery, chewing up the long Russian line to Kyiv. And Ukraine had a ton of artillery, more than the European NATO countries, so it was all good - until it ran out of ammunition.

Low tech quantity still matters, and the West had its pants down on its supplies of that, and worse, the ability to produce it. It seems to me the entire military-industrial complex needs a revamping.

And then a discussion of the use and abuse and limitations of drones and electronic warfare. Good stuff. While the war is horrible for humanity and very dangerous, it's great for giving war colleges and think tanks new material to work with.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/11/30/what-is-the-war-in-ukraine-teaching-western-armies

One big and undersold lesson of the war (that for some reason seems to need to be relearned at the start of every major war) is the importance of having large, well-maintained, and dispersed stockpiles of ammunition, as well as production lines that can easily be started  or scaled-up.

[Stranger in a strange land]

What happens if Germany does stand in the way, and Poland sends them anyway? Perhaps Germany should get out of the arms manufacture business.

Then Poland is in breach of contract and probably doesn't get any more German weapons, but that's probably why their latest arms deals are mostly with the US and South Korea, and the Korean ones include tech transfer and co-production. The risk for Germany is that it shows itself as an unreliable partner, and many countries will no longer risk buying German weapons. However, as Poland builds up its productive capacity with South Korean help, it can step in to fill the gap and take over Germany's market share.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Was “freedom fries” a “cultural revolution?”

For me, yes.  When I heard of it I thought it was one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.  If a political movement is reduced to renaming things and tearing down monuments/statues usually it is a sign that it's tapped out and is running out of meaningful progress that it can make.

And how is that analogous to a political movement that killed millions?

While I agree that this is stupid (just like Freedom Fries was), comparing the Cultural Revolution to renaming a synthetic element which was only discovered in 2003 and which only exists for less than a second when synthesized dangerously and disingenuously trivializes the former.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.yahoo.com/now/ukraine-needs-200-multipurpose-aircraft-121300234.html

"Ukraine ‘needs up to 200 multipurpose aircraft, F-16 most likely candidate to replace Soviet-era jets’"

Ukraine list of needs now include 200 F-16s

Why not? The F-16s the US & other allies like Denmark and Norway are currently retiring as the F-35 enters service seem like they'd work just fine. Too bad so many of the parts from the F-14s were all ground up to prevent Iran from using them as spares: the Phoenix would be great for intercepting Russian bombers before they could launch cruise missiles.

[Stranger in a strange land]

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.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ukraine-summit-trip-dress-code-brussels-military-volodymyr-zelenskyy-russian-invasion-solidarity-kyiv/

"The EU’s Ukraine trip dress code: Wear a suit, not green like Zelenskyy"

It seems for the EU-Ukraine Summit the EU had a dress code where no one from the EU side is allowed to dress like Zelensky to ensure that no attention is taken away from Zelensky.

What's the problem here? Zelensky is the leader of a country at war, Scholz and Macron are not.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1xttkphs

"Israel's ex-premier say Putin promised him not to kill Zelensky"

“I asked ‘what’s up with this? Are you planning to kill Zelensky?’ He said ‘I won’t kill Zelensky.’ I then said to him ‘I have to understand that you’re giving me your word that you won’t kill Zelensky.’ He said ‘I’m not going to kill Zelensky.’”
Bennett said he then called Zelensky to inform him of Putin’s pledge. “‘Listen, I came out of a meeting, he’s not going to kill you.’ He asks, ‘are you sure?’ I said ’100% he won’t kill you.’”

Bennett said that during his mediation, Putin dropped his vow to seek Ukraine’s disarmament and Zelensky promised not to join NATO.

It seems Bennett pointed out that after he told Zelensky that Putin made a promise not to kill Zelensky he went out to have a press conference saying "I'm not afraid!" 2 hours later.  Bennett's account seems to make Zelensky look bad which it seems to be Bennett's motivation.

Even if Bennett's story is true:
1) Why would Zelensky believe any promise from Putin? Putin has lied and broken promises repeatedly, especially on matters related to Ukraine.
2) Why would Zelensky believe Bennett? During the early days of the war, the thought was that he was trying to broker a ceasefire to enhance his personal standing and that of Israel, and even if he was acting in completely good faith, he would still have incentive to either lie or not tell the whole truth.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Even if Bennett's story is true:
1) Why would Zelensky believe any promise from Putin? Putin has lied and broken promises repeatedly, especially on matters related to Ukraine.
2) Why would Zelensky believe Bennett? During the early days of the war, the thought was that he was trying to broker a ceasefire to enhance his personal standing and that of Israel, and even if he was acting in completely good faith, he would still have incentive to either lie or not tell the whole truth.

All reasonable points.  My point is that even if true Bennett could have kept the story to himself.  I would be curious about why Bennett made this story public and told it in a way that made Zelensky look bad.

It only looks bad if you consider Bennett and Putin to be as or more trustworthy than Zelensky, which no sane or thinking person should.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Do the leadership of Transnistria even want to be cannon fodder for faraway Moscow which can't support them? If the Ukrainians do move against Transnistria, it will be after the Transnistrian leadership accept a deal they can't refuse. There's no reason for Ukraine to risk a drop of their soldier's blood for land that isn't theirs.

Over the long term, it is in Ukraine's interests to remove as much Russian influence from the surrounding region as possible.

Ohhh... so you mean to tell me after decades of supporting Russia and gladly aiding it's troops to violate Moldova's sovereignty in Transnistria for the simple reason of Slavic supremacy, only now do they suddenly care about Russian influence there?

Russia and Ukraine is equally guilty for Transnistria existing today.

Ukraine used to allow Russian troops through because Ukraine used to have a pro-Russian government. Ukraine stopped having a pro-Russian government, and stopped supporting Russia’s control over Transnistria. This is a pretty simple concept.

Ukraine and Russia are not “equally guilty” lmao. The occupying country is obviously much more guilty than the country which once allowed support for the occupier.

That this situation has changed is yet another example of how much of a self-inflicted problem Russia's Ukraine policy has been over the past few decades, especially since 2014. If Russia had simply allowed Maidan to happen, the new government would inevitably have become unpopular and been replaced with an Eastern-elected pro-Russian one, as repeatedly happened between independence and 2014, or possibly even the actual invasion in 2022, if one considers Poroshenko losing to Zelensky, the de facto Eastern Canadidate, as a continuation of this trend. Indeed, Ukraine's economic problems and issues with corruption were so severe that every new government would inevitably become unpopular and lose to the other side after one term, which paradoxically was a big part of what prevented a Putin or Lukashenko-type figure from rising to power and creating an authoritarian state around them. But now Russia has shown that it will not accept Ukraine as an independent state, causing many Ukrainians who used to regard it favorably to change their opinion. Of course, removing the most pro-Russian areas of Ukraine from the country didn't help either.

Ukraine in its pre-2014 form was never going to join NATO: NATO membership was unpopular in every poll before then, and other NATO members - notably Germany - would have blocked it. Many, if not most, Ukrainians still held favorable views of Russia. EU membership was also very far off, and by the time it might have been feasible, Russia in this alternate reality might have been contemplating membership in the EU itself, as was indeed semi-seriously talked about in the early 2000s, albeit as something very far off.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/24/china-calls-for-russia-ukraine-cease-fire-proposes-peace-talks

"China calls for Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, proposes path to peace"

The PRC peace plan seems to be
a) End to fighting ASAP
b) End all sanctions
c) Talks to resolve issues

The PRC seems to have came up with this plan to get to the following result
Russia: Interesting, we are thinking about it
Ukraine: NO!!!
Collective West: NO!!!

PRC to Global South: See, Russia is being reasonable while Ukraine and the collective West are not.  We tried.

You're probably correct that this is the goal of the Chinese peace plan, but it doesn't have much for Russia to like, aside from the lifting of sanctions. This is precisely because, as others have noted, it's mostly meaningless word salad. Notably, it doesn't address any of Russia's war aims:
- Nothing about Ukraine agreeing to not join NATO (arguably point 2 addresses that, though not explicity, and such a requirement could also be seen as going against point 1)
- Nothing requiring Ukraine to "de-militarize" or "de-Nazify"
- Nothing about the final status of Crimea, Donbas, or the other occupied regions

[Stranger in a strange land]

Been away from this thread for a week.

It's interesting how a few weeks ago people were saying Bakhmut would fall any day now. Russia's made gains in that area but Bakhmut is still resisting now. How many more weeks will we have "Bakhmut will fall any day now" before we finally see it happen? Will we still be having this same conversation in March?

Nobody said that.

Anyways, I think it's okay to make predictions at this stage, as most of the roads leading to the city is under fire control or soon under Wagner control. Likely Bakhmut will fall around mid-February. Safe to say the AFU will withdraw next month to other lines.

now maybe mid March?  Remember, they started attacking the city in August.  What is the exact opposite of a blitzkrieg?  langsamerlrieg?  Or maybe Krieg, wie er von einem geistig Behinderten geführt wird ?

Uhm, is this supposed to be an own? You do realize that was based on Ukraine withdrawing (common sense) after their flanks were exposed to save their own guys lives? That I was wrong is actually bad for the Ukrainians stationed there.

The fact they didn't leave the city and they're are still in the city is not good, that's the point. There are guys there right now who are dying for no reason, when they could be retreated to much safer Chasiv Yar.

After Paraskoviivka fell the advantages of holding Bakhmut was gone.

maybe

and maybe the professionals military people in Ukraine (and the military professionals from the West advising them) have a different opinion.  Perhaps there are facts on the ground you (and I) are not aware of.

It isn't guaranteed this is true or that these two groups are in agreement.

Military leadership is (understandably!) subject to political interference and high-ranking generals in any army are arguably powerful politicians in their own right. They may not be making what they recognise to be the most tactically sound move for one reason or another.

Additionally, a lot of Ukrainian generals who were laid off or retired after the post-2014 reforms have likely returned to service as the army has expanded and casualties have been taken. These guys may be more likely to share the approaches of their Russian counterparts (many of whom studied in the same Soviet academies) than their Western allies.

The fog of war is thick and armchair generals are more often wrong than the people invested with the power to make difficult calls, but I would rather listen to the assessments of a select few trustworthy analysts than assume that what the generals are doing is right.

Do we have any confirmation that this is happening, or if so, that they've been given field command positions? These guys were laid off or forced into retirement precisely BECAUSE they shared the Soviet & Russian approach to War, or worse, because there were doubts about their loyalty to Ukraine and fears that they might secretly wish to see the Soviet Union restored. One striking thing that I've noticed in war coverage is how young Ukrainian officials and officers are, despite Ukraine being an old country. 

any month now! (just like for the last 6 months)

Please bring up a quote from before January from anybody that predicted Bakhmut was going to fall anytime soon.

I'll go look for quotes in a minute, but Russia has been "advancing" on Bakhmut for months, and for all the constant reports, you'd think they'd have crossed hundreds of kilometers by now. But no, most of the reported Russian advances consist only of a few meters, a small field, or often even a single building.

[Stranger in a strange land]

For perspective: the Putin simps are gloating about taking half of a city with a prewar population of about seventy thousand after seven months.

After having lost probably tens of thousands of dead.

In the meantime, the Russian Army has been attempting to advance across a field in Vulhedar for the past month, and failing to do so at the cost of hundreds of armored vehicles.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I like the theory of what happened but still don’t have a clue how it hit the nets unless there was a anti Putin mole in the Russian food chain on this one. It’s really bad, bad or for Putin’s cause.

Russian soldier records video > posts in private RU soldier groups (as is often the case) > UA searches phones of a captured or KIA RU soldier & finds video.

UA intelligence then saves the video for a "rainy day". (There are indications the video was released by the SBU or similar org)

Ukraine is currently in a difficult position now around Bakhmut, so releasing it now provides somewhat of a distraction, whilst helping boost the message abroad for continued support.

Does not seem very farfetched if we think about it like that.

I don't find it that far-fetched that Russian soldiers or war supporters spread it among themselves (HUH HUH look how we shot the Nazi) having no idea how it would look to the rest of the world if it got out. It likely then hit Telegram or another social media app where pro-Ukrainian or anti-War members saw it and then publicized it. Wouldn't be the first time that propaganda of this nature backfired. Think back to the infamous story of the "Polish cavalry charging the German tanks":

German Newsreel: HA HA! The Poles' equipment is so outdated that they charge our tanks with their lancers on horseback! Look how stupid they are!"
Poles: "Yes. We only had horses and lances but we still charged your tanks. Look how brave we are."

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://twitter.com/TruthPuke/status/1633513142507704320

Aww, so wholesome!

I bet those men certainly don't work for a genocidal state you have a fetish for.

Many, if not most, American Iraq & Afghanistan veterans will tell you that this sort of small-scale "hearts and minds" humanitarian activity is at best useless and at worst counter-productive. It wastes the troops time, exposes them to enemy attack, and any small gifts they pass out, be it flowers, candy, or bottled water, can't possibly compensate for the death, destruction, and disruption to local life that the war and occupation are causing, breeding further resentment.

Worse, if a Ukrainian partisan wants an excuse to get rid of a personal enemy, accepting gifts from the occupiers is a good one. Ukraine may not be a tribal society with generations-long family vendettas, but I also don't imagine that Europeans are above this sort of behavior.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://mobile.twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1636256856795488258
The past 2 weeks Russia has been losing on average 1k a day not to mention the spike in tank and artillery losses.

In case you didn't know, those are cope numbers.

Even if you cut them in half (which, IMHO, based on visually confirmed losses, the intensity of the fighting, and studies of claimed vs confirmed losses from past wars, probably gets us close to the real figure), this is still devastating and unsustainable in the long term.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://mobile.twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1636256856795488258
The past 2 weeks Russia has been losing on average 1k a day not to mention the spike in tank and artillery losses.

In case you didn't know, those are cope numbers.

Even if you cut them in half (which, IMHO, based on visually confirmed losses, the intensity of the fighting, and studies of claimed vs confirmed losses from past wars, probably gets us close to the real figure), this is still devastating and unsustainable in the long term.

Thankfully I put the bootlicker on ignore so I didn’t see his response but unfortunately got to see it through you but to claim Ukraine is making up causality is kinda ironic as they’re estimates are conservative compared to western intelligence assessments of Russian causalities which they had at 200k back in January

I've been operating under the impression that "liquidated" meant "killed in action", because if it means "casualties", then if anything it's probably an undercount, and I doubt they'd do that.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Putin visiting Mariupol, inspecting the reconstruction:
[snip]

How is Ukrainian media taking all this?

Don't know. Malding probably.

This is the first time I believe Putin has visited his newly acquired territories, with the exception of Crimea of course.

SirWoodbury

What is on Россия-1 (Russia-1) right now?

The Brave and Glorious Leader is visiting the liberated territories! The fact that he's making his first visit to the Former Ukrainian Territories in the middle of the night with heavy security and not going anywhere near the front line clearly shows everything is going to plan, and the Special Military Operation will very soon reach a victorious conclusion!!!

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://mobile.twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1637854075386580996
It looks like Ukraine is making moves to start self producing western style weapons probably as a back up if the war does indeed drag on and western aid starts to diminish

The infamous Iranian-made Shahed drone is cobbled together from consumer electronics and very crude explosives, engines, and spare parts. No reasons Ukraine couldn't do the same to strike back against Russia.