Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1701997802409152578

If they can hit Sevastopol again, the orcs should really consider leaving. Ukraine has tremendous reach now. I’m just hoping the US pulls the trigger on ATACMS. That bridge’s days are numbered

That naval base is why Crimea is so important to Russia.

If the Black Sea Fleet leaves, then Crimea is useless (to the Russians).

That is why I doubt that they would leave.

Crimea also has huge emotional and historical value to Russia: the Russian Empire called itself the "Third Rome", and Crimea is the only part of Russia that was under Roman or Byzantine Rule for an extended period; thus it represents territorial continuity with Rome that they won't easily relinquish, and is part of the reason why the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was such a huge victory for Putin.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Ukraine Territorial Defence Force transgender spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo announces that: " Ukraine will hunt down "Russian propagandists" around the world."

https://twitter.com/ducaena/status/1701741396363792650

[Stranger in a strange land]

It seems the goal is no longer Ukraine victory but to prevent a Russian victory and get to a "reasonable peace"

Great analysis comrade Ivan.

How would you define a Russian victory or a Ukraine victory? Personally...

Since he's not going to answer, Russia has already been defeated (in the sense that two of it's 3 main goals set out at the start of the war have failed), and the difference at this point is whether Russia suffers a marginal defeat or a major defeat. The "victory" he's referring to likely means that Russia would be allowed to keep the territory captured during the war that it still holds, but a relatively small amount of territory in Southern & Eastern Ukraine is in no way worth the human, material, strategic, and economic losses that Russia has suffered.

In his speech announcing the Special Military Operation, Putin laid out three goals: Demilitarization, De-Nazification, and Saving the People of the Donbas. Let's see how each is going:

1) Demilitarization: utterly failed: the armed forces of Ukraine are much larger, better-equipped, and more experienced than they were at the outset of the war, and Ukraine is likely to join NATO and the EU at some point
2) De-Nazification: most people take this to mean regime change, and replacement of Ukraine's current government with one aligned with Russia: this one has utterly failed as well, possibly even worse than the first. There is no way that Russia can now recapture Kyiv and topple the Ukrainian government, even if Western Aid is cut off, and if the Ukrainian government falls or is toppled at any point in the future, it'll likely be by hardline nationalists rejecting a peace deal, who will be even more anti-Russian
3) "Save the People of the Donbas": this is usually interpreted as "liberating" Dontesk and Luhansk within their adminisrative boundaries, as well as the Crimean land bridge. While this is the goal on which they've had the most success, in that they DO hold the landbridge, they don't hold all of Donetsk or even Luhansk. And they're one "Panic in Balakaliya" away from losing that.

In exchange for this:
- Russia has lost its largest and most lucrative market for gas exports
- Finland and Sweden are now in NATO, so Russia's border with NATO is now 800 km longer
- The Baltic is now a NATO Lake, and Turkey, not Russia, is the dominant power in the Black Sea for the first time in centuries
- The market for Russian arms exports is tanking, with the rather amazing *cough ahem* advertisting they've gotten
- Europe is pushed back into close geopolitical alignment with the US, NATO is suddenly relevant again, and Russia is ever more dependent on and subservient to China

[Stranger in a strange land]

In fact, Zelensky was elected on a vague "pro-peace" platform, and it was widely assumed that he was doing the bidding of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who had plenty of business interests in Russia. Indeed, Zelensky owed his comedy career to Kolomoisky's TV network. After he was elected, he started turning on Kolomoisky and purging the Ukrainian bureaucracy of those in his pocket, which led to Trump's first impeachment.

We can't say for sure, but the falling out between the two was probably what pushed Putin towards thinking that he couldn't take Ukraine without guns blazing.

I wouldn’t be shocked if this is a factor in his thinking though I more in the “he went Covid crazy after reading too many weirdo pan-Russian thinkers like Dugin (more Dugin’s contemporaries than himself tbf)” camp

It seems to be both: a lot of Putin's speeches display extremely online culture war brainrot, such as the "Parent 1 & Parent 2 on birth certificates" and the JK Rowling Gender Issues Dumpster Fire as an attack on MUH FREEZE PEACH, especially rich coming from him. He was clearly spending time in those online spaces during COVID isolation, or at least has been talking to people who were.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/us/politics/biden-israel-gaza-ukraine.html

"News Analysis: Biden Confronts the Limits of U.S. Leverage in Two Conflicts"

Mr. Biden’s aides say they have now given Mr. Zelensky every weapons system he has requested, most recently ATACMS, the long-range missile systems Mr. Biden had long resisted providing because he feared they might cross a “red line” that could lead Mr. Putin to reach for nuclear weapons. Now the fear about the ATACMS is that they will not make that big a difference because the Russians are learning how to park their aircraft beyond the weapons’ reach.

It seems the Russians came up with this totally unprecedented clever solution of moving their assets beyond the reach of  ATACMS.   Amazing !!! How did they come up with something like that?

Moving aircraft farther back decreases their sortie rate, reduces the amount of time they can spend over the battlefield, and increases their fuel consumption. It isn’t as effective for Ukraine as destroying them outright, but it still has an impact.

[Stranger in a strange land]

The reality is that Russia has a lot more cannon fodder and artillery shells to wear down Ukrainian numbers even with the latter having better morale and the benefit of Western support. Russia will most likely make gains eastward to relevant cities like Kharkov and Odessa setting the stage for their possible capture in 2025 or so. Unless NATO intervenes to actually shore up these fronts, with tens of thousands of supporting troops, the territorial integrity of the rest of Ukraine outside the current front line is bleak. Small amounts of volunteers and SOF are not enough, as is any weak amount of aerial defense.

How anyone can confidently say something this with how much time and resources Russia spends on places as small as Bakhmut, Avdiivka, or Kup'yans'k is beyond me. Obviously the co failed and Ukraine has issues with manpower and ammo right now but that does not in turn translate to the situation being great for the Russians. Especially when Russia continues to demonstrate that they refuse to learn from their mistakes in 2022 as can be seen with the dumb tactics they have deployed in Avdiivka

Edit: that’s not even addressing the actual military issues of your claims as they involved two area’s Russia is deemphasizing over consolidating the Donbas. Like taking Odessa would need to involve taking back Kherson first and that would have to involve pulling divisions away from the Zapo region along with naval support out of Crimea they don’t like committing

When Russia withdrew from Kherson, they blew up the Antonovsky Bridge behind them, meaning that they don't plan on crossing the Dnipro again anytime during the current war.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Putin said there are 617k  Russian soldiers in Ukraine right now.

and they still can't accomplish anything?  They are even more incompetent than we have been assuming then.

Can’t accomplish anything? Silly little NAFO they took over a trash heap and a tree line by Stepove at the cost of 15k causalities and 300 tanks and armored vehicles. Checkmate 😎

There are so many parallels with the British Army in World War I, down to the fact that Russia may indeed eventually "win" but the victory will come at such a high cost and bring so little benefit that the war won't have remotely been worth fighting.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Russia's MoD claims they got leaked versions of the Ukraine Summer Counteroffensive and know where the AFU would attack.

Not saying this isn't true, but they could have figured this out from looking at any map of the area.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1756980135595577361

One HIMARS confirmed damaged after almost two years and untold damage to Russian forces and supply lines is amazing for Ukraine and awful for Russia.

[Stranger in a strange land]

https://twitter.com/ELuttwak/status/1756019858603438431

Provocative but right...

prison is probably too much.  I'd just not let them back in country or tax the hell out of them if they do come back.  How can a young healthy dude flee his country when it is attacked?  Sure, maybe you're scared, fine, don't fight, there are other tasks that need accomplished (ya know, 'cause all the men with heart are fighting).  Stay and do those.  Or, if you don't like your country, fine, leave, but don't plan on coming back.  Those that flee like children and then want to come back home because they love their country?  eff that noise

I saw it mentioned somewhere that the point of the exit ban wasn't so much to force Ukrainian men into the military but to keep them at their jobs. But you're still right: one of the main lessons from the Syrian Civil War and the Central American Migrant crisis is that if you let people flee to the next safe country, but never draw a line in the sand where to stand and fight, people will just keep fleeing until there are no safe countries left.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Yes but the question remains - *why* do they so fervently support Russia?

Some are doubtless just paid to do so, but there must be genuine believers.

There's a couple things that lead people to support Russia, and often it's a combination of both.

A) They get their information exclusively from far-right sources that have since either unironically begun supporting Putin (because he's also right-wing) or been bribed and bought out by Russian oligarchs.  As a result, their perception of what's going on and what Putin/Russia are like is twisted by a web of lies.  Example -- Tucker Carlson's fanbase.

B) Similarly, they get their information exclusively from far-left sources that support Putin/Russia either because they hate America and the West, or because the Democrats are against Putin/Russia and they are against Democrats.  Example -- the entire payroll of the Bernie 2020 campaign.

C) They are habitual contrarians, so when they hear everyone in the news saying "Russia bad", they go, "but is Russia really that bad?" and then believe the very first thing they hear that says "actually the news is lying to you and Russia isn't really that bad."

D) Their brains are completely addled by conspiracy theories and their perception of the world is utterly divorced from reality.  Maybe they think there's no war going on at all.  Maybe they think American soldiers are actually fighting for Russia and the news is lying to us.  etc.

E) They bit hard on Russian propaganda about Ukrainians being Nazis, Ukraine not being a real country, the United States engineering a "color revolution", NATO being a "threat" to Russia, America only caring about Ukraine because of oil, or whatever.  At this point they've spent so much time and energy defending their position that it's impossible for them to switch.  It's just the classic ideological sunk cost fallacy.  Many of these are the same people who boasted in February 2022 that Russia would never invade and Biden was just lying about it.

F) They're just complete assholes and enjoy antagonizing and pissing off other people.  If all their peers supported Russia, they would support Ukraine.  There's nothing more to it than just picking an unpopular position and using it to try and get under your skin.

This covers most but leaving one noticeably group out:
G) They are anti-Semitic and think aid to Ukraine is some type of money laundering scam because of (((Zelensky))). See people like Elon Musk and Ben Garrison and how they talk about/depict Zelensky

These people already overwhelmingly fall into A & D, and there's a HUGE overlap between those two.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Depends. Cold War generation is dying so it’s natural that the neoliberal Anti-Russia sentiment that drove past generations will decay a lot even if won’t immediately disappear.

Populism and Nationalist sentiment being high these days in US favors Russia because both the Populist Right and Left have no reasons to see Russia as an adversary. And that’s what’s happening with the Neocons being replaced by Trump conservatives.

I buy the idea that 18-49 year olds are less hostile to Russia than their elders.  I do not for a second buy that 36% of them think Russia is friendly or an ally when this is objectively untrue and Russia itself declares so in no uncertain terms, both in word and deed.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Reminder that no matter how hard you fight or shill for Russia, they will still dump you like a used sock once you've outlived your usefulness.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1781376341750804484

LOL the most hilarious thing is that even though this guy was 63 years old he basically had the world view of a typical teenage edgelord, he claimed to be a communist and spread the same "Nazis rule Ukraine!" type garbage. Good riddance.

In view of this, it's really surprising that he was fighting for the DPR (Czarist & Fascist LARP) instead of the LPR (Soviet LARP) and might have something to do with why the other guys in his unit killed him.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Sounds like Afghanistan II

It does. For Russia.

[Stranger in a strange land]

"Gazprom has been devastated by western sanctions over the war in Ukraine, according to a report commissioned by… Gazprom! It won’t recover its lost sales for a decade and any new exports will make much less money.

New, with @NastyaStognei @xtophercook"

"The company’s exports to Europe will average 50bn-75bn cubic metres a year by 2035, barely a third of prewar levels, the research predicted.

Although Gazprom is hoping that a new pipeline to China can help make up for lost European export volumes, its capacity will only be 50 bcm a year and prices in the Asian nation are much lower than in Europe, the report said, while a deal over its construction has yet to be reached.

“The main consequences of sanctions for Gazprom and the energy industry are the contraction of export volumes, which will be restored to their 2020 level no earlier than in 2035,” the document’s authors wrote."

Also, how much will the new pipeline(s) cost to build?