Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Woody]

Russians are storming Azovstal again, with some units entering the plant. The legitimate mayor of Mariupol, Boychenko, has lost contact with the defenders.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/4/7343969/
https://t.me/ukrinform_news/68445
https://twitter.com/tweetsNV/status/1521839560736473088

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1521832027594633217https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1521789117088083969

[Logical]

No words. It's unimaginable to think how so many can die in one strike.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1521841170334289920

[Person Man]

No words. It's unimaginable to think how so many can die in one strike.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1521841170334289920

This is why Adam Krinzinger is correct.

[DINGO Joe]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

Escalate their presence on May 9th?  No, they have nothing to send into Ukraine on May 9th.

They might declare a mass mobilization but how they would train them and what equipment they would give them looks like a total CF.  On what timeline they could increase presence is a fantasy at this point.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Day 70 of the special military operation to denazify Ukraine because Hitler was a Jew:


While the Russian government has beef with Israel, the Russian Orthodox Church has now beef with the Vatican because of the Pope's "altar boy" comment.


https://twitter.com/josephcalogero2/status/1521874526820356099

[DINGO Joe]

Another day, another oil depot

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1521817789614411776

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

Escalate their presence on May 9th?  No, they have nothing to send into Ukraine on May 9th.

They might declare a mass mobilization but how they would train them and what equipment they would give them looks like a total CF.  On what timeline they could increase presence is a fantasy at this point.

They have a lot of ex-soldiers and conscripts who’ve done a year’s service who could be called up. There are signs that they’ll be forced to resort to older equipment, but they also have a lot of that. There are rumours that the majority of it is defective due to corruption, but even if, say, 90% of tanks in reserve were defective, they’d still have thousands of working tanks in reserve. Oryx tracks 600 Russian tanks lost (according to visual confirmation), so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d lost about 1200. As with most equipment, Russia has the numbers, and that means tank crews are more valuable than what they’re driving.

More importantly, I fear the commentariat (along with posters here) is losing sight of the fact that Russian losses do not happen in a vacuum. The Western weaponry being sent to Ukraine (with the exception of the ex-Soviet stuff) is currently small in quantity and comes with its own logistical/training challenges. Russia also has a relatively intact military-industrial complex; Ukraine does not, and even as other countries if other countries make up that capacity, it was never as wide-reaching as Russia’s to begin with (e.g.. Ukraine maintained and upgraded their most advanced weapons, but often didn’t produce them indigenously since the fall of the USSR). This means Ukraine could wind up facing ammunition issues for, say, it’s S-300 batteries that Russia is likely to avoid.

[Middle-aged Europe]

- An open letter by 57 intellectuals led by retired Green party politician Ralf Fücks and Nobel laureate in Literature Herta Müller urging the continous support of Ukraine with weapons and ammunition:
https://libmod.de/ein-anderer-offener-brief-an-bundeskanzler-olaf-scholz-pressemitteilung/

That last letter is maybe also of interest because it was signed by a few of the most prominent Germans of Russian descent: Maxim Biller, Olga and Wladimir Kaminer, Igor Levit.

^^

I signed that open letter now and donated 30 Euros to advertise it on the Web.

Yesterday and the day before I had my first "weapons for Ukraine" debate with a friend of mine on the Signal app... I started to get a bit annoyed when his final argument boiled down to "we can't just do what America expects of us!", leading to my rebuttal that this is in fact what the Poles, Czechs, Estonians, and Ukrainians "expext" of us. That was kind of a discussion ender.

My fellow Germans are starting to irritate me. Among the most hardline people I know IRL on the issue of Ukraine are an English and a German Jewish (who's maried to an American) colleague, a Polish acquaintance of mine, and a German friend who happened to grow up in Texas. I wonder what is wrong with me. While I'm not Jewish myself I do have a semi-shared history with the aforementioned colleague of mine in the sense that my grandpa was officially recognized as a nazi-persecuted person for political reasons. Maybe it's something like that, I don't know.

[DINGO Joe]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

Escalate their presence on May 9th?  No, they have nothing to send into Ukraine on May 9th.

They might declare a mass mobilization but how they would train them and what equipment they would give them looks like a total CF.  On what timeline they could increase presence is a fantasy at this point.

They have a lot of ex-soldiers and conscripts who’ve done a year’s service who could be called up. There are signs that they’ll be forced to resort to older equipment, but they also have a lot of that. There are rumours that the majority of it is defective due to corruption, but even if, say, 90% of tanks in reserve were defective, they’d still have thousands of working tanks in reserve. Oryx tracks 600 Russian tanks lost (according to visual confirmation), so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d lost about 1200. As with most equipment, Russia has the numbers, and that means tank crews are more valuable than what they’re driving.

More importantly, I fear the commentariat (along with posters here) is losing sight of the fact that Russian losses do not happen in a vacuum. The Western weaponry being sent to Ukraine (with the exception of the ex-Soviet stuff) is currently small in quantity and comes with its own logistical/training challenges. Russia also has a relatively intact military-industrial complex; Ukraine does not, and even as other countries if other countries make up that capacity, it was never as wide-reaching as Russia’s to begin with (e.g.. Ukraine maintained and upgraded their most advanced weapons, but often didn’t produce them indigenously since the fall of the USSR). This means Ukraine could wind up facing ammunition issues for, say, it’s S-300 batteries that Russia is likely to avoid.

What do conscripts get trained on?  It's my understanding that they just do menial labor and barely even shoot guns much less get trained in actual tactics. Is there and NCO structure to actually train them?  How many people in Russia are trained to drive those tanks?  Plus, what do you do with conscripts, feed them into existing depleted units or try to form new ones? 

Ukraine has a learning curve to, but they've been mobilizing for two months now and it seems that some long range artillery may already be in use particularly around Kharkiv.  Yes, they have limits but they seem to be to train and receive training from actual trainers.  Russia, outside of a few elite units,  merely seems to have a fodder system of training.

[President Johnson]

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1521937803394834433

[pppolitics]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

Escalate their presence on May 9th?  No, they have nothing to send into Ukraine on May 9th.

They might declare a mass mobilization but how they would train them and what equipment they would give them looks like a total CF.  On what timeline they could increase presence is a fantasy at this point.

They have a lot of ex-soldiers and conscripts who’ve done a year’s service who could be called up. There are signs that they’ll be forced to resort to older equipment, but they also have a lot of that. There are rumours that the majority of it is defective due to corruption, but even if, say, 90% of tanks in reserve were defective, they’d still have thousands of working tanks in reserve. Oryx tracks 600 Russian tanks lost (according to visual confirmation), so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d lost about 1200. As with most equipment, Russia has the numbers, and that means tank crews are more valuable than what they’re driving.

More importantly, I fear the commentariat (along with posters here) is losing sight of the fact that Russian losses do not happen in a vacuum. The Western weaponry being sent to Ukraine (with the exception of the ex-Soviet stuff) is currently small in quantity and comes with its own logistical/training challenges. Russia also has a relatively intact military-industrial complex; Ukraine does not, and even as other countries if other countries make up that capacity, it was never as wide-reaching as Russia’s to begin with (e.g.. Ukraine maintained and upgraded their most advanced weapons, but often didn’t produce them indigenously since the fall of the USSR). This means Ukraine could wind up facing ammunition issues for, say, it’s S-300 batteries that Russia is likely to avoid.

What do conscripts get trained on?  It's my understanding that they just do menial labor and barely even shoot guns much less get trained in actual tactics. Is there and NCO structure to actually train them?  How many people in Russia are trained to drive those tanks?  Plus, what do you do with conscripts, feed them into existing depleted units or try to form new ones? 

Ukraine has a learning curve to, but they've been mobilizing for two months now and it seems that some long range artillery may already be in use particularly around Kharkiv.  Yes, they have limits but they seem to be to train and receive training from actual trainers.  Russia, outside of a few elite units,  merely seems to have a fodder system of training.

Ukrainians have been training volunteers to fight Russians since 2014.

They know the day would come when they would need to defend their homeland and had been proparing for 8 years.

[rc18]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has firmly denied that Russia will declare war on May 9th.

So it's almost certain it will happen.

[Storr]

Soldiers are such snowflakes these days, asking for weapons!

Bibilov only had what sounds like was a town hall-esqe event because the South Ossetian Presidential "election" runoff is on the 8th. He is in actual danger of losing (though his opponent is still pro-Russian/secession/independence) as all candidates eliminated in the first round endorsed his runoff opponent former KGB officer Alan Gagloyev, who finished on top in the first round.

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1521696136867811328?s=20&t=rXINvzXU...

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1521696139753537542?s=20&t=rXINvzXU...

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1521696142521778180?s=20&t=rXINvzXU...

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/1522003630710312962?s=20&t=19SJ0Vx...

[Badger]

Day 70 of the special military operation to denazify Ukraine because Hitler was a Jew:


While the Russian government has beef with Israel, the Russian Orthodox Church has now beef with the Vatican because of the Pope's "altar boy" comment.


https://twitter.com/josephcalogero2/status/1521874526820356099

Francis was right.

[Badger]

EU plans to put Kirill on its sanctions list.


https://mobile.twitter.com/AFP/status/1521747145774497792

Good. Kiril is the biggest disgrace among non-indicted clergy since Crusader era popes.

[2952-0-0]

Kamil Galeev, one of the most prominent Twitter pundits about Russia, spoke (in English) to a US-based Chinese language podcast. It's worth a listen, since he gave updates about his previous tweets.

[pppolitics]

Why haven't we given them to Ukraine yet?

https://twitter.com/NBCInvestigates/status/1522000135596789763

[DINGO Joe]

Regarding the training skills of the respective armies:

https://www.thebulwark.com/i-commanded-u-s-army-europe-heres-what-i-saw-in-the-russian-and-ukrainian-armies/

My contempt for the Russian military's ability to train comes primarily from Hertling (above) and Kamil Galeev

Galeev's threads are amazing.  His one on Lukashenko is hilarious.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1518240030967406593

This is an interesting and short thread that explains how Ukraine ended up with a relatively deep well trained military kind of in spite of itself.

https://twitter.com/Jack_Watling/status/1522017525143416832

[Woody]

https://mobile.twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1522003346973990912

[Woody]

The leader of Azov, Prokopenko, has confirmed that Russians have entered the territory of the steel plant.

https://twitter.com/Diplomacy140/status/1521981913107517441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[Middle-aged Europe]

I don't know if this has been reported on here yet, but....


https://twitter.com/IlenIsmo/status/1522148996999000065


As usual, the decision making process on this one was a bit of a lengthy one, and consisted of following the lead of Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, and the United States after Scholz had been worked on by Greens, FDP, and the media for a while.

[Woody]

Pentagon official was quoted by CNN saying they are assessing around 2000 Russian/Chechen troops currently in Mariupol.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Steinmeier isn't invited. Scholz doesn't want to go because Steinmeier isn't invited. Instead the president of the parliament intends to go to Kyiv now.


https://mobile.twitter.com/My_Salute/status/1522162315814133760