Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[quesaisje]

https://bsky.app/profile/kevinrothrock.bsky.social/post/3k3dteojd322d

Russia's State Duma adopts legislation raising the maximum fine for failing to report to your local draft board by 10x. The law also imposes steep fines on employers for failing to keep the military appraised of staff and failing to help deliver summons. https://t.me/faridaily24/1044

I wonder if the draft is anywhere near as trivial to evade now as we were hearing it was last year.

[quesaisje]

This threaf is such a detailled collection of the war from the start, it could very well be archieved and used for future writings.

Too bad 90% of the info is just posted as links to Twitter so it will only survive as long as Twitter does.

The contents of those embeds are also unreadable to anyone who uses tracking protection when they browse the web. I don't even see them on most of my devices.

It's frustrating that the readability of much of this forum now depends on an unreliable feature that breaks ever principle of the open internet. What a waste.

The only silver lining is that much of the information shared from Twitter is unreliable, speculative, or even undisguised propaganda, so I don't mind scrolling through until someone shares a link to a real news organization.

[quesaisje]

Michael Kofman said something similar in a podcast interview that went out a few weeks ago. Russia is going into 2024 with a much larger advantage in drone power and artillery ammunition than it has had in this war so far.

[quesaisje]

Ukraine sees an offensive coming:

The race to beef up Kyiv’s defensive positions comes as Western and Ukrainian officials warn of a larger Russian offensive in the coming months. Russian independent media have reported that the Kremlin is gearing up for a new mobilization of manpower and an offensive that could be aimed at Kharkiv, the largest city in Eastern Ukraine.

Recent strikes on Kharkiv are the most severe since 2022:

Russia struck the northeastern city of Kharkiv with aerial bombs Wednesday for the first time since 2022, killing at least one civilian and wounding 16 others, local officials said.

The airstrikes caused widespread damage, hitting several residential buildings and damaging the city’s institute for emergency surgery.

[quesaisje]

The latest update from the Institute for the Study of War is about as dire as I've read from them, and identifies shortages of both manpower and materiel as critical vulnerabilities:

Ukraine is currently preventing Russian forces from making significant tactical gains along the entire frontline, but continued delays in US security assistance will likely expand the threat of Russian operational success, including in non-linear and possibly exponential ways.

[...]

Zelensky stated that Ukrainian forces are not prepared to defend against another major Russian offensive effort expected in May or June 2024, however.

The link also has some details on what Russia is doing with glide bombs and why they've been such a potent weapon as Ukraine's air defenses continue to degrade.

[quesaisje]

NYT article (published yesterday) takes an interesting angle on how individual brigades are running their own recruitment drives, saying the official mobilization process run by the army is corrupt, ineffective, and just plain bad at advertising:

Slick recruiting campaigns brimming with nationalist fervor have become ubiquitous in Kyiv, the capital, and other Ukrainian cities in recent months. They are perhaps the most visible sign of a push to replenish Ukrainian troops depleted by more than two years of a brutal war — an effort that experts and officials say is crucial for fending off relentless Russian attacks.

But most of the campaigns are not the work of the country’s political and military leadership. They are the initiatives of troop-starved brigades that have taken matters into their own hands, shunning an official mobilization system that they say is dysfunctional, often drafting people who are unfit and unwilling to fight.

“These campaigns are much more effective because we’re getting exactly the people we need,” said Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a combat medic turned recruiter in the Da Vinci Wolves battalion, which started as a paramilitary wing of a coalition of far-right political parties after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

[quesaisje]

Notably, this is the first Russian conscription cycle in this war that raises the upper age limit from 27 to 30. It will also include men in occupied Ukraine.

[quesaisje]

Yet again, I find myself torn between hatred for the Twitter embed feature and its long record of exposing the trash that many posters here are reading.