Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Casual reminder that the "separatists" are really just Russian proxies pretending to be states:

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1543283196984496128?s=20&t=ec7yKhQU...

They are Russian puppet states like Poland and East Germany were, they are illegal states on sovereign Ukrainian territory.

The Donbass and Crimea are Ukrainian territory.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

https://exxpress.at/macrons-super-waffen-landen-bei-putin-nicht-bei-selenskyj/

Pro-OVP Austrian magazine reports that Ukrainian officers sold two French Caesar Howitzers  (they cost $3.5 million) to the Russians for 118k EUR each.

That's always a risk when dealing with countries with a significant corruption problem, hopefully those traitors will be executed asap.

How do we not know it is not just the Ukrainians but not



With 10% for the Big Guy.

That is fake news and Russian disinformation, like the fake story about Russia 'destroying' the HIMARs. The video 'evidence' was Russia blowing up a tree. Russia is rightfully nervous about Western long range artillery, so they want to hurt morale.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Rumor: Poland might give Ukraine its stock of custom T-72 tanks, the PT-91 Twardy, of which Poland has 232. They would then be backfilled with Abrams tanks.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1546412805821267968

Nobody has been a truer friend to Ukraine than Poland. NATO should also send in a few hundred F-16 fighter jets and a few hundred Leopard 2 tanks, you also need tanks and fighter jets to launch a big counterattack. Artillery is a big help, but it's not enough on its own.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1547974697475719170

Looks like Ukrainian F-16s could become a reality.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

The biolabs talking points have returned: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-says-losing-because-ukraine-104546288.html

Duma MPs have released a report claiming Ukrainian soldiers were subjected to secret experiments in which they were infected with diseases such as tuberculosis and gangrene, then given American drugs, so that they could lose independent consciousness and become hyper-aggressive.

To its credit, the Kommersant article cites a Russian scientist who  is brave enough to claim it’s exaggerated, but the MPs go onto suggest the US could be behind bird flu, swine flu, coronavirus and monkeypox.

That is as credible as the KGB rumor that the CIA created AIDS in a lab in the 1980s.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

This raises an interesting point...can Ukraine afford to maintain such a powerful military on such a poor economy? We might need to aid them on that front...

Ukraine has the same GDP per capita as Moldova, even Belarus has a higher GDP per capita. The Russian aggression since 2014 also scared away foreign investment.

The Western aid is a mix of financial, humanitarian and military aid.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Using Himars on bridges is so stupid.

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1552047088891985922?s=20&t=xxaQhnakPdpERn...

Ha-Ha!

The Putin bots have been getting nervous. This is the first daylight evidence of the damage the HIMARS did to the Antonovsky Bridge. Russian vehicles will not be able to cross for a long time.

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1552198330779852801

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

https://twitter.com/tarasmi/status/1552916330256400384?t=RJEVof8HAvqW08c4KCLErA&...
Well, this is what the "brave russian army" looks like

And to all those who call Ukraine to surrender, you know it is difficult to find peace with people who want to kill you and your family, and whose only goal is the genocide of Ukrainians

After Shoigu said yesterday that "there will be a great and powerful Soviet Union again", you, putin apologists, can continue to look for the reason for the war in NATO or Ukraine. In fact, the only reason is the desire of the Russians to restore the empire and destroy everything Ukrainian, including Ukrainians, Ukrainian language, and Ukrainian culture

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Empire have been trying to wipe out Ukrainian culture and national identity for centuries. It's not just a genocide against civilians, but also a cultural genocide.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Despite Russia being uncooperative or incapable of running their gas lines to Europe, the EU is well ahead of pace for filling their NG storage for winter.

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/080222-eu-wide-gas-stocks-on-track-for-nov1-target-after-july-injections

In fact if they fill as fast in August as they did in July, they'll hit their goal by the end of August instead of the end of October.

Russia is far more dependent on EU money for gas. Over 90% of Russian gas is sent to the EU, while 40% of EU gas is from Russia.

There were Western sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, Communist Poland and Communist Romania in the Cold War. All of these regimes collapsed in part to the sanctions.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Geez, if they haven't knocked out the Ukrainian Air Force yet, then it's very clear something has gone badly wrong.

A new report from a local news portal that Macedonia (which presumably delivered all 31 of its tanks to Ukraine) donated all 4 of its retired Su-25 jets (originally bought from Ukraine) to the UkrAF. The Left Party of Macedonia previously claimed in June that these were being overhauled/repaired for delivery’s sake.

https://m.mkd.mk/makedonija/politika/makedonija-i-suhoite-i-gi-podari-na-ukraina

When asked, the Macedonian MOD neither confirmed nor denied, but said they’d bring transparency to the matter in due course.

It is worth mentioning the FoPo piece in July which mentioned Su-25 “in disassembled form” being sent to Ukraine. Bulgaria was widely presumed to be the supplier on Twitter, but their aid has been somewhat constrained by political concerns. Czechia and Macedonia are the only other Su-25 operators in the EU, but their Su-25s have been retired for decades. Macedonia allegedly kept its own close to working order for a while as a reserve and then made attempts to sell them as late as 2018, so theirs were probably in better condition than Czechia’s.

Why did the US block the Poles sending fighter jets to Ukraine, but not Czechia or Macedonia?

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Modern war burns ammo at an inhuman rate. Like well above the amount that can be produced. We are going to have to send Ukraine both increasingly more packages and eventually transition them to NATO kit while Russia burns it’s increasingly dubious Cold War stockpiles.

Their artillery capability is already reliant on NATO howitzers, with a limited supply of 152mm shells for their older Soviet guns. This was a big reason why they got a shipment of 155mm L119 light howitzers a month ago and have been ordering Krabs / PzH 2000s. Unfortunately, they are still in a bind because the roughly ~200 - 250+ 155mm howitzers they have received are not enough to cover the massive front lines, let alone build up reserves for a proper counterattack. The end result is less strike capability and more wear and tear on existing guns, which need replacement barrels and other parts much more often since they are basically being maxed out. Hopefully NATO is discussing more howitzers for Ukraine at some point.

After the 2014 Crimea invasion, Russia started a stealth campaign to deny Ukraine the ability to purchase Soviet 152mm shells. Russia sent in FSB agents to kill the CEOs of companies that were supplying Ukraine with the shells.

The NATO 155mm howitzers sent should be doubled to 400-500 to give Ukraine a chance to win.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

If (and when) Ukraine liberates Kherson and reclaims all the territory west of the Dneiper, they can then concentrate their forces almost exclusively on retaking the rest of eastern Ukraine that they had lost since the beginning of the Russian invasion.  And I am not just talking lost territory:

Russia now controls at least $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine's energy, metal and mineral deposits, report says

Those resources are going to be crucial in rebuilding Ukraine after Russia's defeat and the end of the war.

The Kherson region and other parts of Southern Ukraine are the agricultural breadbasket of the country. The Donbass is filled with lots of minerals and gas as well.

Most of the heavy industry in the Soviet era was built in the South and East from Kharkiv to Odessa.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

This winter will be Russia's last shot at breaking the West's resolve. While it will be bad for Europe energy-wise, it's basically as bad as it's ever going to get, and eventually a mix of decarbonization and finding alternative sources of gas and energy (a process that's already going faster than many of us anticipated) will bring energy costs down from 2023 on. Meanwhile the sanctions on Russia are the ones that will keep getting worse and worse as they increasingly run out of components they need to run so much of their infrastructure (unless you seriously think China can suddenly figure out how to produce semiconductors of comparable quality).

Basically, if come March 2023 Ukraine is still holding outside of the South and Donbas, the US is keeping up the pace of weapons delivery, and sanctions remain in place, Putin has no endgame left. He might be able to keep the war going for a while longer, but at that point he'd only making his and Russia's life worse for no conceivable benefit.

In the short term, economic sanctions can hurt the countries issuing the sanctions almost as much as Russia. In the long term the sanctions are going to devastate the Russian economy.

Russia is far more reliant on exporting oil and gas to the EU, then the EU imports from Russia. Russia is a petrostate, and it's economy would collapse without energy exports.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1561767435283451910?s=20&t=wYIOboUoZy...

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1561766992767483908?s=20&t=wYIObo...

Kherson is 93% Ukrainian speaking and Zaporizhzhia is 86% Ukrainian speaking. There will be a lot of partisan hell the Russian fascists will suffer in these regions.

Groups of Ukrainians civilians in the South are attacking Russian soldiers with knives.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

The whole Western world is sending aid, even Taiwan.

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1562877892874252290

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

I hope after the war is over the US, UK, Germany and France issue a defense guarantee to Ukraine.  They should have done it in 2014 after the Russian invasion of Crimea.

The US has said to China that they will defend Taiwan, they should do the same with Ukraine.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1564341780769824768

If Ukraine liberates Kherson, they should move into Melitopol and the Zaporizhzhia Oblast afterwards. Russia wants to illegally annex these regions, so they should be the first to be liberated.

https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1559923712174051328

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

https://twitter.com/Italo81740918/status/1565942324546490370

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Well one reason the Kherson referendum process may have slowed down, is the Ukraine blew up the ballots apparently. Why stuff a ballot box when you can burn it?

"'The place where the ballots were stored for the pseudo-referendum was destroyed. The warehouse was blown up by an explosion from inside the premises. All existing printed materials have been destroyed,” the statement read. “The headquarters of the Russian FSB unit, which guarded the ballot warehouse, was destroyed as well.'"

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-09-05-22/index.html

The Soviets did the same dirty trick with rigging referendums to join the USSR in the Baltic states in 1940, They also rigged elections to set up communist puppet governments in Eastern Europe in the Cold War.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Russian lines in Kharkiv has collapsed faster than I thought was possible. Volokhiv Yar has been liberated and Ukrainian scouts are pushing onwards to Semenivka to the north. Russians in Balakliya are encircled and fighting to the last man.


UPDATE: Russian Su-25 shot down near Volokhiv Yar
[tweet]https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1567424375019683840[/t-+weet]

I assumed that Ukraine would be cautious and only launch one counteroffensive at a time. This is fantastic that Ukraine pushed forward 20 kilometers in the Kharkiv region as well as Kherson.

There was a bunch of 'elite' Russian paratroopers and Spetsnaz wiped out and surrounded in Balakliya.

 

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Hello

https://mobile.twitter.com/LvivJournal/status/1567974442856513536

If Bilaps weren't banned, he would have left by now. The Putin bots have run out of disinformation.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Let's be honest. It is a question of Time now that Russia fully loses the War.


How would the peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine would look like ? Huge reparations ? Or maybe annexing some russian territories?

Russia would have to return Crimea and the puppet states in the Donbass. The war started with Russia occupying Crimea, so it should end with Crimea returning to Ukraine.

I don't think Russia would agree to reparations, you would have to seize Russian assets and send the money to Ukraine. The West has already seized hundreds of billions in assets.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Unfortunate, but not unexpected:

https://twitter.com/spook_info/status/1570513933177597952?s=20&t=pY5eLEKGgte...

Izyum isn't really a town imo. It's prewar population was 46,000 which is larger than Bucha's prewar population of 37,000.

https://twitter.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1570341055224221696?s=20&t=pY5eLE...

The West by being too timid to send heavy weapons such as tanks, ATACMS missiles and fighter jets, is causing the war to last longer and more Ukrainian civilians to be massacred.

Each day the West dithers causes more Ukrainian destruction. The quickest way to end the war is sending more heavy weapons, not diplomacy.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

This is not the actions of a army that is prepared to stay for the long term in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/motytchak/status/1571151180352622594

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

You would really have to wonder how this going to further ruin the Russian economy with so many people leaving.

There have already been 3.8 million Russians who have fled the country since the war started, even before mobilization was announced. The new panic about mobilization could lead to another 1 million Russians leaving.

After the fall of the USSR and the economic collapse, around 2 million Russians left the country.