Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Russia moment:

https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1646326136085815297?s=20

It's very fortunate, but I don't think that would have been WW3 even if the missile launched properly and successfully downed the aircraft. There were similar incidents during the Cold War, some of which included deliberate shootdowns and multiple casualties.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

It's real...

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1646622737580933121

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

You can be outraged at Carlson, but he has every right to push the envelope against the US military while the very same military continues to fund the overseas broadcasting of his show. There's plenty of MSM shows they don't do this for, but their fear of backlash is such that they won't pull his. If they're not going to take his criticisms seriously, why should he?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I still find it funny how it took days to find the person behind the Pentagon paper leaks but months later there is still no official culprit for Nord Steam 2 sabotage. 

The Nordstream sabotage required competence. This didn’t.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1647743130349780993
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1647729855587385347

I thought this kind of LARP couldn’t get more cringeworthy than Wehraboos. I was wrong.

I wonder how long it took her to learn to fake the accent.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://mobile.twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1647925079475470338
The Hague awaits you pieces of sh*t

Probably not, but they're in Russia, so some kind of court awaits. Not sure why they admitted this before fleeing the country.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The question is whether referring to the Ukrainian people as NATO's "cannon fodder" is appropriate. That the significance of this conflict can be boiled down to NATO using Ukraine as a meat shield between them and Russia, which is nonsense. It boils the Ukrainian nation down to a pawn on a chess board, the ever-present disease of the realist mind. This is wrong, the Ukrainian struggle for independence has significance beyond international chess-playing, and the Ukrainian people care about this.

This is broadly true, but the Western allies' attempts at chess-playing are happening - and they're frustrating to watch. Take, for instance, the French delaying the deal to supply ammunition to Ukraine. It's doing this on the grounds that all the ammunition must come from the EU, rather than including Turkish/British etc. suppliers. There is no way that the levels of pettiness, protectionism and bureaucracy seen amongst Ukraine's "supporters" would exist were Ukraine a NATO/EU member.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1648106855854485506

They've been getting billions annually in military aid for decades from the US - IIRC, in accordance with the Camp David agreements where they and Israel are paid to not resume warring with each other. Bad news for the US that it even came to this.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/EilishHart/status/1648363747461804033?s=20

They did it last May. It's more likely a function of vehicle shortages/resentment from the military in the last parade when top-tier equipment was being brandished in victory parades and tank biathlons (Mosin-Nagants were already in use by then).

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Lots of rumours that the long touted big Ukrainian offensive has either started or will very soon.

Heard this for months prior to the late August offensive in Kherson (historically, the biggest example is D-Day, anticipated for years before it happened). This sort of hype is used as a tool to obscure an offensive's real zero hour and any false starts.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Imagine if this escalates to Russia supplying Hamas.

https://twitter.com/301military/status/1649105384169144344

Ukraine Weapons Tracker and a bunch of more reliable sources than this point out it has the wrong number of propellers to be that type of drone and is most likely a US-supplied Switchblade 600.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Nobody knows what the real casualties are in Ukraine. High, on both sides, is a good guess. Anything else, especially when expressed in terms of ratios, is pure speculation. An accurate casualty ratio is something that we’ll probably have to wait until the third generation of historians are publishing their books on this conflict in the 2080s.

No? I mean you say that assertively, but meanwhile in reality the combined military intelligence of several Nations do in fact have a pretty good idea of what the casually rate is, and the numbers ain't good for russia.

You may now go weep bitterly in a corner at this dose of reality, while the rest of us cry out Solva Ukraine

omg so cringe. Can't even write it properly.

It's Badger's speech-to-text, and it should never change.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

PMC Wagner will not accept take prisoners of war anymore. It's kill on sight from here on out.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1650178073436774400
https://twitter.com/DrazaM33/status/1650112397179232256
Translation:

"We will never violate international laws of humanism. And the law of humanism starts from the moment you take a person prisoner. You take a prisoner - start taking care of him, treat him, don't maim him and give him back home after a while on an exchange. So we will not violate the rules of humanism. And we will just destroy everyone on the battlefield. We don't yet know the name of our guy, who was wounded and shot by Ukrainians. And we will kill everyone who are on the battlefield. Don't take any more POWs".

Prigozhin runs his mouth a lot but this one might actually have some credibility. The easiest way to solve the Wagner POW execution video problem is to stop taking POWs.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1650761560166649857?s=20

Oh sh**t a trans-dneiper assault?
The mad lads are actually doing it.

Not really. They have taken some ground in sparsely populated/uninhabited swamp islands - not exactly a reliable bridge over the Dnieper. It could be a prelude to an assault but that would be difficult, and there's other reasons to take these areas.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Gazprom PMC now active in Ukraine, among others. There were always a few more groups than Wagner (smaller, but present), but they were - to my knowledge - just dedicated mercenary groups rather than the military arms of wider franchises.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1651163200732254208

A really bad omen for post-conflict Russia, and unfortunately part of a wider pattern when it comes to the 21st century PMC renaissance.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

"Good" news: the big explosion last night may have only been caused (at least in part?) by the explosion of old, denuclearised ICBMs:

https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1653008025123209219
Apparently, these were stored near a rocket factory and chemical plant along with their fuel, and were never fully disposed of due to cost issues. Like many of the larger Soviet ICBMs, they were rail-launched - hence their storage next to the train station.

The mayor insisted there was no imminent chemical danger in the aftermath of these attacks, but a lot of what is used in these kinds of ICBMs can be very toxic (not sure if age would make it better or worse).

Losing these is probably a lot better than losing S-300s or Patriots, ceteris paribus, but it's still not great.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1653838878858420255?s=20
*snip*

Most of the article reads like the result of the usual chauvinist brainworms, but I love how the ending suddenly pivots into "...and this is happening because America plans to evacuate to an occupied Russia when Yellowstone erupts."

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

[...]

https://twitter.com/treaschest/status/1654181225307807744?s=12

I wonder if this might be giving too much credit to Russia, tbh. A lot of Russia's military right now is drawing on extensive stocks of old heavy weapons kept in long-term storage from the Soviet days. And every day that goes by, those stocks get smaller and smaller, and they lose more and more of their best samples from those inventories. Russia doesn't have the money to mass-build tanks and other systems like the USSR. T-90Ms, their most modern tank that isn't the wunderwaffen T-14 Armata, reportedly costs >4 - 5 million each. How are they going to afford that while stilll likely under sanctions? They probably won't be able to rely on their arms exports subsidizing their own domestic purchases anymore as their credibility is shot with foreign customers and right now they are failing to fulfill existing contracts.

And this says nothing about the immense price tag of replacing all those artillery shells and multi-million dollar cruise / ballistic missiles. I think the future Russian military is probably going to be a shell of itself pre-2022.

They're not going to commit the entire Soviet reserve to Ukraine because their repair depots can only work so quickly. If and when they rebuild, they will do so with Soviet gear. Supposedly, there are a lot of "broken" USSR shells lying around which could be repaired, and we know this is true for heavier weapons like tanks etc.

If they want to recreate mass after the war, they'll be able to do this on a much faster timeline than most large countries, which would have to rely on new-build or imports. Will such a military be modern? In many respects, no, but it's not as if Russia was taking full advantage of their more modern platforms to begin with.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

And it looks like Wagner might not be pulling out from Bakhmut after all.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Sunday that he had been promised as much ammunition and weaponry as needed to continue the fight for the embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, two days after he threatened to withdraw his fighters because Moscow’s Ministry of Defense was failing to support them.

“We have been promised as much ammunition and armament as we need to keep going,” the Wagner group’s founder, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said in an audio statement released Sunday on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s defense ministry.

Mr. Prigozhin also said that Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the air force nicknamed “General Armageddon,” had been appointed as his liaison with the military.

If confirmed, the appointment of Gen. Surovikin, who developed a close relationship with Wagner while commanding the Russian forces in Syria, could help address the deep-seated tension between the Wagner mercenary forces and the regular Russian Army, which has repeatedly interrupted Russian efforts to push forward in Ukraine.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/world/europe/russia-ukraine-crimea.html

Threaten to (effectively) desert and get rewarded with supplies which were presumably bound for other units. Wagner has a particularly high profile, but it's still a bit surprising they pulled this off.

It may have implications for other Russian army units and mercenary groups. Pretty much all of them want more supplies and might be willing to play this kind of dangerous game to win them, which would be bad news for the military as a whole.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

And it looks like Wagner might not be pulling out from Bakhmut after all.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Sunday that he had been promised as much ammunition and weaponry as needed to continue the fight for the embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, two days after he threatened to withdraw his fighters because Moscow’s Ministry of Defense was failing to support them.

“We have been promised as much ammunition and armament as we need to keep going,” the Wagner group’s founder, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said in an audio statement released Sunday on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s defense ministry.

Mr. Prigozhin also said that Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the air force nicknamed “General Armageddon,” had been appointed as his liaison with the military.

If confirmed, the appointment of Gen. Surovikin, who developed a close relationship with Wagner while commanding the Russian forces in Syria, could help address the deep-seated tension between the Wagner mercenary forces and the regular Russian Army, which has repeatedly interrupted Russian efforts to push forward in Ukraine.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/world/europe/russia-ukraine-crimea.html

Threaten to (effectively) desert and get rewarded with supplies which were presumably bound for other units. Wagner has a particularly high profile, but it's still a bit surprising they pulled this off.

It may have implications for other Russian army units and mercenary groups. Pretty much all of them want more supplies and might be willing to play this kind of dangerous game to win them, which would be bad news for the military as a whole.

Kadryov, who was loud but pro-Wagner until now, demonstrates the problem of setting this precedent here.

https://twitter.com/Jack_Mrgln/status/1655683353805221888

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Yesterday, Prigozhin reiterated his complaint that 90% of the promised ammunition had not yet been supplied and threatened to pull out of Bakhmut again (although he did not state 'May 10' as he did last time). Today, he decided to take things a step further and offered a very thinly veiled criticism of Putin:

https://twitter.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1655916277565730816

Worth noting that Girkin's said similar things in the past and remains alive, but Girkin doesn't command a militia anymore. In other videos released around this time, Prigozhin names and shames various units which allegedly abandoned positions taken by Wagner. I'll try to avoid spamming the thread with his various pronouncements, but I thought him aiming for the king was worth mentioning here.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Well-written reminder by Michael Kofman and Rob Lee as to the importance of taking the long view in the war: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-war-beyond-ukraines-offensive

This goes for the commentators but also the policymakers. They believe a relative lack of long-term planning on the part of Ukraine's allies has created (potentially false) hope for Russian leadership re: a war of attrition and a decline in foreign support for UKraine.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1656585441343074305

Ben Wallace has confirmed it in Parliament. The original missile has a range of 560km+, but he says they have seven times less range than the Russian ones, which means he's probably talking about a shorter-ranged export variant meant to comply with an anti-missile proliferation treaty. The treaty in question limits the range to 300km; there is an extant version of an export-designated Storm Shadow missile with a range of 250km, but I wouldn't be surprised if we are just sending over domestic stock with some kind of modifications meant to limit it to 300km.

Wallace clarifies that the Ukrainians have pledged only to use it in Ukrainian territory, and that it will be fired from aircraft. It's a notable development, but be skeptical of those talking it up before it actually debuts. The performance will be limited by lack of surprise, politically and technologically limited range, the number of missiles supplied, and performance losses due to adaptation to Ukrainian aircraft.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65550427

"Zelensky says Ukraine needs more time for counter-offensive"



My guess is that this is a cover for a smaller counter-offensive to start soon.  This retains the element of surprise and if it is not successful Ukraine can always claim that it was just a probing action and not the real counter-offensive.

If you believe the leaks, the offensive is to include brand new brigades, some of which would have had just 4 months' training at the end of April. Russia has just demonstrated the dangers of using relatively green troops in an offensive.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The story from December about the alleged arms shipment from South Africa (IIRC I posted this here) has escalated: https://www.ft.com/content/7ad94426-aafc-4f04-99d7-05f6d5e6f71d

The US Ambassador is now accusing SA of supplying arms via this shipment. Ramaphosa is claiming the matter is being looked into and will be spoken about (in time). There haven't been any others publicly observed since then, unlike the more steady Iranian shipments, which makes the story all the more strange (but the work of shadow fleets with transponders turned off isn't always easily observed). Perhaps it was some kind of corrupt one-time deal.