Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Torie]

The more important the offensive the less press coverage is allowed perhaps. We will find out soon one way of the other.

[Torie]

Russia is a strange place. A prominent politician saying something like the tweet below is normal on national television.

Imagine a politician from western Europe saying this about the nations which were once part of their country's long dead empire. They'd be considered a crackpot nutjob, laughed out of the room, and never heard from again. Not to mention they'd also immediately be called racist.

https://twitter.com/VladaKnowlton/status/1685464579168755712?s=20
 

Well, that was an interesting discussion. That Tolstoy guy is spot on when he observed that it’s down to us or them. Ukraine so hates Russia that it needs to be destroyed for Russia to get it back (with the fate of the Ukrainians who won’t fit in ominous). We need to get our people to understand that their very existence is at stake, either the Ukrainians are destroyed or we are.

The problem says the bald one with the bizarre shirt however is how to defeat the West. Enter Africa. Hey in 20 years Nigeria and Egypt will be economic giants. We need to get them into the Russian orbit and they will help to defeat the evil American empire! How did that Biden African press secretary get to where she is now anyway? Did she get lost?  

Calm down says the hard headed realist Tolstoy, their ties to the West are too strong. The place to look is the central Asian republics. They love us. They deliver our pizzas and do construction work and are having a great time. There isn’t a problem.

Some of these guys might fit in well in a Trump cabinet if he gets elected again. The one guy missing is our friend from Scarsdale who could explain with his eyeball  hurting charts that the waging of the existential war on Ukraine to destroy it before Russia is destroyed has been great for the Russian economy, and it is just going to get better and better going forward, with Zillions of pizzas delivered to everyone by those happy central Asians.

[Torie]

Repost: 🇷🇺milblogger Romanov reports that the AFU is seriously contesting Urozhaine.
...
Let’s see if anyone else picks this up 😗

Here is an extensive article on the subject. Urozhaine per my google map search appears to be pretty far south, suggesting a Russian defense line or two has been breached.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/07/29/frontline-report-ukrainians-advance-near-urozhaine-on-eastern-front-russians-suffer-supply-disruptions/



On the other hand, this NYT article makes for grim reading. It starts off with the good news where the Russians panicked and cut and run or surrendered, allowing for the capture of Staromaiorske, but then the heart-breaking bad news in an accounting by a soldier of a battle elsewhere where the bulk of his comrades died: as they run out of artillery, the Russians pin point them with drones, and surrounded by mines, they die as if targets on a shooting range. Bad, very bad. This approach is not sustainable.

“We were shot like on a shooting range,” he said. “A drone was flying above us and correcting the artillery fire.” Their positions were in former Russian positions, hemmed in by minefields, he said, and the Russian forces were able to keep them pinned down and under constant drone surveillance.

Soldiers were running out of ammunition and water but could only sneak in and out of their positions in ones or twos, on foot, when the light was poor just before dawn and at dusk, he said.

The Ukrainian troops, Oleksiy added, were unable to suppress the Russian firepower. “At first we had artillery support, and then we ran out,” he said. “We need more weapons,” he added.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/30/world/europe/ukraine-counteroffensive-russia.html

[Torie]

As a morning antidote to the indefatigable bad news bears above I commend reading this article to perk you up:

https://newlinesmag.com/argument/russians-see-ukrainian-progress-where-others-dont/

“Ukraine’s core interest is protecting Ukrainian lives, according to Kaimo Kuusk, Estonia’s outgoing ambassador to Kyiv. Kuusk told one of the authors that Western armored vehicles had done their job of keeping their occupants alive after being hit with explosives. Kuusk also said that based on his meetings with Ukrainian military officials, the Russians are still suffering more casualties, at a ratio of six for every one Ukrainian. It is typically assessed that an offensive army should lose at a ratio of three attacking soldiers to each defending one.”

I particularly liked the above paragraph, and hope that it has at least some degree of accuracy.

The article also suggests that Russia has an ordinance supply issue as it is being blown up at a very rapid rate at present. In that regard, in riposte to the above, the high Ukraine ammo burn rate is because it is being used to blow up Russian ordinance, both on the front lines and far behind. It's a logistics war. Nothing is more demoralizing than running out of ordinance.

[Torie]

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2023/08/01/no-breakthrough-yet-in-ukraines-counteroffensive-00109205

"No breakthrough yet in Ukraine’s counteroffensive"

The latest attack, which saw Ukraine throw in thousands of Western-trained reinforcements to drive south from the town of Orikhiv, has not yet yielded significant results, U.S. Defense Department officials told NatSec Daily this week, with one noting that the gains are being measured in the hundreds of meters.

This sentence from the article suggests that the first line of defense has been breached. One line of defense at a time.

“They are making mostly small, incremental gains” on all three axes, the official said. “They are still facing stiff Russian resistance — second and third layers of defenses.”

[Torie]

https://www.bild.de/bild-plus/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/riesen-sorge-in-berlin-deutsche-regierung-fuerchtet-putins-armee-plan-84898514.bild.html

"German government fears Putin's army plan"

Bild:  “Russia is ready to wage war in Ukraine for another two or three years, according to experts from the German government

"Ready" is different from "able," which is the point. Focus on the "able," and wage war until "able" becomes "unable," or there is a regime change. The longer Putin wages war the way he does, the less likely there will be any peace deal ever that splits the pie, absent a regime change. I hope Biden understands that. He needs to ramp this up, and get a change of atmosphere in the next year, not only for Ukraine, but for himself, if prudently possible.

[Torie]

"Russia's unemployment hits record low"

Diverting the work force, at least the male work force, to the killing fields, does have that impact yes. Clearing the prisons out as cannon fodder is just frosting on the cake.

[Torie]

George Kennan in 1998 as someone in the Putin camp

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Yes, of course, Putin decided to annex Ukraine (the place that is not really a country and was part of Rus back in the Middle Ages), because of NATO expansion. Garbage. I wonder what Kennan would say now. All we have now is that fossil Kissinger, and his schtick is as a PRC symp, so he's busy.

[Torie]

George Kennan in 1998 as someone in the Putin camp

...

Yes, of course, Putin decided to annex Ukraine (the place that is not really a country and was part of Rus back in the Middle Ages), because of NATO expansion. Garbage. I wonder what Kennan would say now. All we have now is that fossil Kissinger, and his schtick is as a PRC symp, so he's busy.

I believe their problem was having only Poland in, but not Russia in.

America invited both Greece and Turkey in NATO at the same time, because it knew that inviting only one guaranteed war with the other.

Same reason for having Britain, France, and Germany on the same team.

So inviting only Poland in NATO, meant war with Russia down the line.

Russia wanted to join NATO?  Anyway, the idea that Putin went wild because Poland was in NATO is equally incredible.

[Torie]

More on Russian labor issues:

Russia is resorting to desperate measures to recruit soldiers

Trickery and coercion are the Kremlin’s methods

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/08/01/russia-is-resorting-to-desperate-measures-to-recruit-soldiers

Putin is getting desperate. I copy and paste the final paragraph:

“One limiting factor in the mobilisation is the number of training centres. Even more acute is the shortage of officers. This is why the Kremlin raised the age of former professionals who can be called up to the age of 65. Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, says that “they are combing through the last Soviet generation.”

Potential cannon fodder of Russia:

Lek! Leka!

[Torie]

George Kennan in 1998 as someone in the Putin camp

...

Yes, of course, Putin decided to annex Ukraine (the place that is not really a country and was part of Rus back in the Middle Ages), because of NATO expansion. Garbage. I wonder what Kennan would say now. All we have now is that fossil Kissinger, and his schtick is as a PRC symp, so he's busy.

I believe their problem was having only Poland in, but not Russia in.

America invited both Greece and Turkey in NATO at the same time, because it knew that inviting only one guaranteed war with the other.

Same reason for having Britain, France, and Germany on the same team.

So inviting only Poland in NATO, meant war with Russia down the line.

Russia wanted to join NATO?  Anyway, the idea that Putin went wild because Poland was in NATO is equally incredible.

It's a matter of long-term foreign policy.

If 2 sides are inevitably going to go into conflict and you don't want to get drawn into it, you either stay away or invite both in to play referee.

In the case of Greece and Turkey : Cyprus and the Aegean.
In the case of Poland and Russia : Eastern Europe.

So if America wanted to avoid getting into a war it had to choose between inviting none or both.

In 1998 it was perfectly possible to invite both.
 
Now Poland will always veto, and there will always be conflict between Russia and Poland over Eastern Europe, which will drag NATO and the EU in even if it's other members don't want to.

Poland covets Russian territory, and a bunch of Russians living in an expanded Poland? Who knew?

[Torie]

All I can say is too many delusional paranoid sociopathic power trippers who played way too much Risk as kids have way too much power, which is why this planet is far closer to the fictive hell than heaven, imo. It's all f'ing crazy to wage war and kill and wreck the lives of citizens, yours and the foe, because you want to rule people who hate you, or "influence" them. The problem with NATO in hindsight is it thought the planet where it counted had gone sane post USSR and Mao. Wrong! It's as toxic as it has ever been. Our species sucks.

[Torie]

What do y'all make of this?
https://bnn.network/politics/lithuanian-polish-language-dispute-sparks-diplomatic-tension/

There may be exceptions, but it is just further evidence that language chauvinism is bad policy. The idea in particular that citizens cannot spell their names the way they want as reflected on their birth certificates or otherwise, is ludicrous.

[Torie]

Ukrainians apparently knocked the dragon’s teeth near Verbove too. Robotyne is being surrounded

You said a few weeks ago Andriivka and Klischiivka was a day away from collpasing, so who knows what this is supposed to mean.

What's Putin's plan to keep the supply lines open to Crimea, Woody, when the half life of that bridge is even shorter, far shorter, than mine, with drones blowing away the Russian navy, and now the foe is getting near to dropping ordinance on the remaining rail and road lines to the beach resort on a daily basis? What's plan B per your sources? That is Russia's Achilles Heel - the land snatch they understandably love the most that is the hardest to defend.  Geography can be a harsh mistress. 

[Torie]

Page 1,000. I fear it may hit page 2,000 before it is over.

I see it is already noted with a cup half full take rather than half empty take. I am a gloomy cuss these days. Pray for me Ukraine.

[Torie]

Page 1,000. I fear it may hit page 2,000 before it is over.

I see it is already noted with a cup half full take rather than half empty. I am a gloomy cuss these days. Pray for me Ukraine.

I’m generally one the most pro-UA posters here (most might go to Lykaon lol) and even I think this war is 2-3 years away from ending. Which one of the big reasons why I’m fine with UA taking this slower pace with the counterattack as they are by all accounts inflicting more losses on Russia than receiving and if they at minimum can either get in artillery/Himar range if not outright recapture Tokmak by end of November then this is a successful campaign

Did you find that US poll about cutting Ukraine loose a cold shower?

[Torie]

Why is SA doing this again? I ask because they last thing it did was prop Putin up by cutting oil production. Is it because they are annoyed that Putin is cheating in the deal by exceeding his quota or something else?

How dependent is Russia on the Black Sea for trade? Up go the insurance rates anyway, way up.

[Torie]

Why is SA doing this again? I ask because they last thing it did was prop Putin up by cutting oil production. Is it because they are annoyed that Putin is cheating in the deal by exceeding his quota or something else?

How dependent is Russia on the Black Sea for trade? Up go the insurance rates anyway, way up.

Do they (or their regional allies) get a lot of grain from Ukraine perhaps?

If that were the case, a more direct path would be for SA to tell Russia to stop f'ing with Ukraine's grain, or it would flood the market with oil, and cut off Russia's cash flow.

[Torie]

https://www.ft.com/content/8e831ab5-c99f-4b59-9b9b-125697f86cf4

This article linked above and embedded in a tweet posted above is one of the best I have read as to what is in play on the battlefield.

[Torie]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/world/europe/putins-forever-war.html

This is a depressing article with some very compelling images (the NYT is really good at that these days, the grey lady no more), about Putin being in the war for the long haul, seamlessly insulating the elites in Moscow from it all*, while using the impoverished men from the hinterlands, by offering them contract wages at 5 times the rate of their otherwise paltry wages of $500 a month.

*There is an image of a chic area in Moscow where the ambiance and sartorial presentation of its denizens would fit right in with the hippest and richest zip codes of NYC, bracketed against another of a city in the hinterlands (the cannon fodder supply zone) that could be mistaken for a third world hell hole.

Another depressing statement is that the 200,000 dead from the war are about equally divided between the two sides, per estimates from American diplomats in Moscow. Ouch.

Putin was passive when the Wagnerites moved on Moscow because he feared his guys would refuse to fire on them if ordered to do so.

The article has images of scenes in Moscow where the ambiance and sartorial presentation would fit right in with the hippest and richest precincts of NYC, and other images that look like some urban hell hole in the third world.

Here are some snippits of interest (culled down to the 200 word copyright quota - I always do a word count on Word and so should you),  the most arresting being the news that Europe is helping to finance Putin’s war by buying refined oil from India. I did not know that. Does Biden know that?

Sitting at a cafe overlooking the Patriarch’s Ponds in one of the toniest areas of central Moscow, Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy chairman of the State Duma and a direct descendant of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy, exuded confidence as a moneyed crowd ate large crab claws and other delicacies.

When I asked him how Russia proposed to pay for a prolonged war effort, he shot back: “We pay for it all from our sales of oil to Europe via India.”

This was bravado, but it had some truth to it. Russia has rapidly adjusted to the loss of European markets with oil sales to Asia — and India has sold some of it on to Europe in refined form.

“Our values are different,” Mr. Tolstoy said. “For Russians, freedom and economic factors are secondary to the integrity of our state and the safeguarding of the Russian world.”

The Kremlinology of the Cold War has been replaced by the equally arduous pursuit of trying to penetrate the utter opacity of the Kremlin to read the mind of a new czar, Mr. Putin, now in the autumn of his rule.

[Torie]

Is prudent risk management (now more important than ever given global interdependence), more a function of the merchantile or the sage?  What will happen if the US suddenly (and sometimes these things happen suddenly and without much warning) can't borrow any more money (further increase its debt balances) and ceases to be back-stopped by having the world's reserve currency?

Prudent risk management is job one in my world view, which perhaps is what makes me an establishment type more than anything else.

[Torie]

Fag robot warriors going after the evil demon is not something I thought much about before, but I like it!