Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1603105938294145027?s=20&t=BEvdeeX_mP91GF...

[gerritcole]

what is the end game here? i don't think a cold war a la syria is good for either side, is it still taboo to  bring up a negotiated settlement

[Torie]

This BenAris creature is a piece of work. In any event, even if one makes the crazed assumption that Putin went in out of fear the missiles would go in, now that Putin is in, sending the missiles in is behind the curve rather than ahead of it.

Those that do not support mitigating the living hell Ukrainians are suffering, are just evil. Whatever is necessary to stop the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure essential to survival must be done, and Biden has a bad case of the slows. If I were Lincoln, and Biden were McClellan, I would fire him.

I also disdain Biden's ham handed protectionism vis a vis Europe (the US, UK, Germany and France need to work together as one on all of this - we are at war). The shutting out of Europe from much of the US auto industry market via tax credits was poorly thought out, and now Biden is going to need to backtrack. Biden is no technocrat (to the extent he could still grasp such things even if he were), and the bureaucracy let him down. Not good.

[Storr]

what is the end game here? i don't think a cold war a la syria is good for either side, is it still taboo to  bring up a negotiated settlement

For a negotiated settlement the parties involved have to be interested in seriously negotiating. Neither side appears to be interested at the current time. [Edit:]It makes sense that this war will end in some form of settlement, as most wars end with one. I'm just don't think such an agreement will be reached anytime soon. In order for an agreement to be reached:

1) There has be a long period of stalemate which brings the parties to the negotiating table (Korea)

2) One side needs be clearly on the losing end a conflict, but not so decisively the other side feels its in their interest to push for a total victory (Iran-Iraq, Winter War)[End of Edit]

Ukraine won't accept a ceasefire or agreement because they believe doing so will simply allow Russia to rearm and rebuild its armed forces enabling them to attack Ukraine again at a later date. It's not like Putin will stop wanting to annex and/or have Russian hegemony over Ukraine just because he was forced to make a negotiated settlement due to the crippling of his military in the current conflict. Any kind of negotiated settlement with the current Russian government still in power, would set the stage for another war in Ukraine in the future.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

what is the end game here? i don't think a cold war a la syria is good for either side, is it still taboo to  bring up a negotiated settlement

For a negotiated settlement the parties involved have to be interested in seriously negotiating. Neither side appears to be interested at the current time.

Ukraine won't accept a ceasefire or agreement because they believe doing so will simply allow Russia to rearm and rebuild its armed forces enabling them to attack Ukraine again at a later date. It's not like Putin will stop wanting to annex and/or have Russian hegemony over Ukraine just because he was forced to make a negotiated settlement due to the crippling of his military in the current conflict. Any kind of negotiated settlement with the current Russian government still in power, would set the stage for another war in Ukraine in the future.

Bear in mind that Russia also has no appetite for a negotiated settlement. Even the rhetoric, which is and has been pretty disingenuous for years, only goes as far as a ceasefire.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

what is the end game here? i don't think a cold war a la syria is good for either side, is it still taboo to  bring up a negotiated settlement

For a negotiated settlement the parties involved have to be interested in seriously negotiating. Neither side appears to be interested at the current time.

Ukraine won't accept a ceasefire or agreement because they believe doing so will simply allow Russia to rearm and rebuild its armed forces enabling them to attack Ukraine again at a later date. It's not like Putin will stop wanting to annex and/or have Russian hegemony over Ukraine just because he was forced to make a negotiated settlement due to the crippling of his military in the current conflict. Any kind of negotiated settlement with the current Russian government still in power, would set the stage for another war in Ukraine in the future.

Bear in mind that Russia also has no appetite for a negotiated settlement. Even the rhetoric, which is and has been pretty disingenuous for years, only goes as far as a ceasefire.

Do any outside players have enough leverage to put in place a shotgun wedding?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

what is the end game here? i don't think a cold war a la syria is good for either side, is it still taboo to  bring up a negotiated settlement

For a negotiated settlement the parties involved have to be interested in seriously negotiating. Neither side appears to be interested at the current time.

Ukraine won't accept a ceasefire or agreement because they believe doing so will simply allow Russia to rearm and rebuild its armed forces enabling them to attack Ukraine again at a later date. It's not like Putin will stop wanting to annex and/or have Russian hegemony over Ukraine just because he was forced to make a negotiated settlement due to the crippling of his military in the current conflict. Any kind of negotiated settlement with the current Russian government still in power, would set the stage for another war in Ukraine in the future.

Bear in mind that Russia also has no appetite for a negotiated settlement. Even the rhetoric, which is and has been pretty disingenuous for years, only goes as far as a ceasefire.

Do any outside players have enough leverage to put in place a shotgun wedding?

I don't know, but the biggest outside players don't seem all that interested in using the leverage they do have.

I think it will probably go on for a long time, because Biden seems to prefer an attritional approach where Russia loses its appetite rather than losing on the battlefield, and because Putin would probably rather spend longer at war (which seems better for his own position than the alternatives) even if this means a worse loss for Russia. The conduct and incompetence of the Russian army has made it much harder for Ukraine to give up on some of its people and land even if that were in their interests, ceteris paribus (and I don't think it is).

Large economies aren't isolating Russia as much as they could for one reason or another (in the cases of China and India, the war is not in their interests, but it at least means cheap oil - which may diminish with the peace), and this seems unlikely to change anytime soon. Military aid will be targeted to - at best - give Ukraine an edge, but not a decisive one.

[NOVA Green]

Good read on how Russia has been building extensive defensive fortifications in critical areas near Ukrainian front-lines.

Works better if you see the visuals associated, but here are a few snippets of text from the article.

To better understand Russia’s fortifications in eastern Ukraine, The Times analyzed satellite radar data on physical changes to the earth’s surface. That data, along with high-resolution satellite imagery from Planet Labs, reveals multiple rows of Russian defenses lining major highways just behind the Russian frontlines.

Russia remains on the offensive near Bakhmut, slamming the city with artillery and slowly gaining ground to the east and south of the city over the past two weeks. The new construction provides several defensible positions to retreat to, should the Ukrainians counterattack.

That could help Russia avoid a repeat of its costly withdrawal from the Kharkiv region in September, when it lost thousands of square miles of territory and was forced to abandon military equipment.

One network of Russian defenses near Popasna was constructed in just 11 days. Satellite data from Popasna shows new rows of defensive structures snaking north across open fields.

While trench warfare is associated with the major wars of the 20th century, trenches and obstacles can still play an important role in modern warfare by shaping where an enemy can attack, said Ben Barry, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

But trenches have modern weaknesses as well. Many of them are being built out in the open, within striking distance of Ukrainian artillery, making them especially vulnerable to being spotted by drones.

Constructing these defenses so near to Ukrainian forces has very likely led to heavy Russian casualties near the town of Svatove in eastern Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

Many of the fortifications are designed to protect supply lines that connect southern Kherson to Crimea, the peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Losing even one of the two main highways “would likely strain Russian logistics supporting operations” in eastern Kherson and western Zaporizhia, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Defensive positions can be seen every five miles on the major M14 highway that runs from Kherson to Melitopol, a city in the Zaporizhia region that Russia captured in the early days of the war.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/world/europe/russian-trench-fortifications-in-ukraine.html

[NOVA Green]

Don't believe it has been mentioned here yet, but the US GVT is looking at providing Ukraine with Smart Bomb kits (JDAMs).

Again apologies if someone brought it up previously, but I try to read every post on this thread to get caught up prior to posting updates on certain items.

WaPo frequently has "scoops" more closely connected to those in DC involved in the policy-making process, so tend to give them a pretty good "solid" street cred on these types of "scoops".

The Biden administration is planning to send Ukraine advanced electronic equipment that converts unguided aerial munitions into “smart bombs” that can target Russian military positions with a high degree of accuracy, according to senior U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The kits incorporate global positioning devices for precision and can be bolted onto a variety of weapons, creating what the Pentagon calls a Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM. The U.S. military has used the technology on bombs weighing up to 2,000 pounds, usually incorporating it with bomber aircraft and fighter jets.

It was not immediately clear whether President Biden or any of his top national security advisers have approved the proposed JDAMs’ transfer to Ukraine. Those familiar with matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, did not say whether Ukrainian forces would employ the kits on aircraft or ground-based weapons, or what specific systems in Ukraine’s arsenal would be candidates for such augmentation.

The Biden administration has previously equipped Ukraine with other advanced weaponry, including air-launched high-speed, antiradiation missiles, or HARMs, to enhance Ukraine’s ability to carry out airstrikes. But those weapons function differently than the GPS-guided JDAM, instead hunting radiation emitted by Russian units and headquarters.

A delivery of JDAMs would mark another significant step by Washington to help Ukraine repel the invading Russian force, providing a new way to target Russian units and headquarters. Since June, Ukraine has relied heavily on the U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, another precision system, for significant casualties among Russian troops and disruption of supply lines,

Thoughts Atlas Hive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/14/ukraine-smart-bomb-jdams/

[NOVA Green]

Reminder about why wars of Invasion / Occupation can be extremely problematic for the Occupier / Invader...

The role of the underground Ukrainian Resistance Movement in Russian Occupied Ukraine cannot be understated enough.

During Russia’s occupation of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, a large electronics store served Russian forces as a field hospital, barracks and storehouse for food.

One morning last summer, Ukrainian forces struck the store, completely destroying it. It was one of numerous attacks that day on Russian-controlled territory deep inside the Kherson region.

Before the blast, a small group of local Ukrainian activists had been sending photographs of the location and coordinates of the Russians over an encrypted Telegram channel to the Ukrainian military. That intelligence helped Ukrainian forces target the site, according to a military official who worked with such groups.

They monitored roads into the city, watched feeds from street cameras trained on key intersections and cycled into fields pretending to tend to livestock while clocking Russian troops.

The group had around 20 members, say those involved. After Russia disabled Ukrainian network connections, they used Russian SIM cards and VPNs to disguise their traffic. Two of them were Ukrainian reconnaissance officers who verified images and coordinates sent to the group and forwarded them to military commanders, who then alerted officers in Kyiv authorized to order a strike.

It usually took about 15 minutes for the military to act on a tip—less if a Russian Buk or another air-defense system, a priority target, was spotted. A photo or video sent by partisans was treated as evidence of a Russian position if coordinates were given, according to Andrei, who would ask the military to verify the target, sometimes using drones.

Maksym, a car repairman who was a member, took three trips to Russian-occupied Crimea with a Russian officer whose vehicle he had helped fix in Kherson. All the while, Maksym was gathering valuable information for the Ukrainian military.

Maksym took sedatives en route to keep himself calm. “It was very tense,” he said. Once they arrived in the Crimean city of Simferopol on the third trip, he was invited to drink with three other Russian officers. He passed details of the conversation that helped the military confirm that many Russian troops were living not in the city of Kherson but in Tarasivka, a place to the south.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-secret-weapon-is-ordinary-people-spying-on-russian-forces-11671012147?mod=hp_lead_pos7

[Frodo]

At least we now know for certain that NATO and the European Union are on the same page regarding the war in Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1603143075114766338

[Torie]

The article linked below about how the Russian propaganda arm mines US right wing media for footage (yes Tucker Carlson and Roger Stone are right up there as their favorite go to sources), is well known, but less well known is the mining of the Chinese media (also with the intent of blowing wet kisses to China, because without China, what do you really have going for you other than Tucker Carlson types?), such as this gem:

“As Russia became isolated, China’s importance grew. V.G.T.R.K. reporters reworked reports from Chinese state media, conveying the image of a powerful country at Russia’s side whose people backed a just war in Ukraine. One email that led to a broadcast identified a refrain said to be circulating on the Chinese internet: ‘By buying a Russian candy, you can turn it into a bullet against Nazism.’”

Russian candy is the next best thing to freedom fries I guess.

Of most interest however, is this reference to the NYT search engine. Do any of you IT nerds know how this works? How would a search engine pick up say my emails to politicians bitching about this or that?

"The New York Times created a search tool to identify material from the 750 gigabytes of files related to the buildup to the war and its earliest stages from January to March 2022, when the available documents ended. The Times verified the documents by confirming email addresses and people’s identities. In many instances, matters discussed in the emails led to content broadcast on the air."


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/russia-state-tv-ukraine-war.html

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1603356165655625730

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1603356165655625730

Lukashenko would be signing his political (and possible literal) death warrant if he did that

[Virginiá]

Fundamentally, while it would tie up Ukrainian resources and a sizable # of troops, Belarus is also a small, poor country of ~9 million people with a small military and a significant amount of civil unrest boiling under its atom-thin veneer of stability, and has already been sending a lot of their munitions and weapons to Russia to backfill their losses. And the Ukrainian-Belarusian border is also a patchwork of marshes and swamps, further limiting offensive options. There is a not-insignificant chance mobilizing and going to war could cause the Lukashenko regime to implode. So they are a threat to Ukraine, but not a game-changing one, IMO.

More likely if they participate at all is through continued weapon transfers and maybe using their troops to assist Russian forces.

[Woody]

https://insightnews.media/russia-trains-200-thousand-new-soldiers-to-attack-kyiv-again-general-zaluzhny/

ZALUZHNY: Russia will launch another offensive on Kyiv/Russian mobilization is "working"

According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhny, Russians are training about 200 thousand new soldiers. The head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not doubt that they will launch a new offensive on Kyiv again.

“Russia is gathering people and weapons for a new offensive. As early as January, but most likely in the spring, it could launch a major offensive from Donbas in the east, from the south, or even from Belarus”, Zaluzhny said.

“Russian mobilization has worked. It is not true that their problems are so terrible that these people will not fight. They will fight. The tsar tells them to go to war, and they go to war”, Zaluzhny said.

“I studied the history of the two Chechen wars – everything was the same. They may not be so well equipped, but they still pose a problem for us. According to our estimates, they have a reserve of 1.2-1.5 million people…”

“Russians are training about 200 thousand new soldiers. I do not doubt that they will march on Kyiv again”, Zaluzhny stated.

According to the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief, Russians are preparing new resources beyond the Urals, just like during the Second World War.

Transcript: https://www.economist.com/zaluzhny-transcript

[Torie]

My surmise is that this seeming buffoon chub ZALUZHNY is really a Ukrainian mole who is tying to terrify what young men (18-50) who are so foolish as to still be in Russia to flee for their lives. The idea of tooling down that road again to Kyiv wedged in between the marshes with no escape is about as advisable as over dosing on Fentanyl.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The Lancet loitering munition is undoubtedly effective, but looks can be deceiving. This is the second time their publicly released footage has featured the destruction of a "friendly" vehicle, and there haven't been that many videos released to begin with.

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603465167089635332

[Storr]

The Lancet loitering munition is undoubtedly effective, but looks can be deceiving. This is the second time their publicly released footage has featured the destruction of a "friendly" vehicle, and there haven't been that many videos released to begin with.

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603465167089635332

https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1603476777560678400?s=20&t=01L1fq0C...

[Storr]

Not directly Ukraine related, but the pro-independence Chechen movement has found new life following Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

"But while it’s true that there are a number of difficult hurdles to overcome, the circumstances presently still look better for the possibility of a free Chechnya than at any point in the past two decades. The Russian state apparatus, and the federal funding on which Kadyrov’s entire regime depends, grows steadily weaker. Already, some taboos have been broken in Chechnya itself, with the first open protest of Ramzan’s entire rule taking place just months ago."

https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1603441008901251073?s=20&t=01L1fq0C1CG...

[Woody]

Not directly Ukraine related, but the pro-independence Chechen movement has found new life following Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

"But while it’s true that there are a number of difficult hurdles to overcome, the circumstances presently still look better for the possibility of a free Chechnya than at any point in the past two decades. The Russian state apparatus, and the federal funding on which Kadyrov’s entire regime depends, grows steadily weaker. Already, some taboos have been broken in Chechnya itself, with the first open protest of Ramzan’s entire rule taking place just months ago."

https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1603441008901251073?s=20&t=01L1fq0C1CG_8oF1eDwEAw

From the same article:

Taken together, however, it’s difficult to imagine the total number of anti-Russian Chechen fighters active in Ukraine is more than the low thousands — perhaps 2,000 in all.

The second issue is perhaps more obvious: How would these fighters make it to Chechnya in the first place? The territory is landlocked, and its only external border is a stretch of high mountains shared with the South Caucasus republic of Georgia — so remote and difficult as to be virtually impassable for eight months of the year.

Yeah.. no this is just some fringe sh*t.

[Storr]

Genocide isn't the only way Russia is copying the Nazis:

 "...the Kherson Fine Arts Museum has been emptied of all its works by Russian officials. Of the over 14,000 works in its collection, barely anything remains."

"From intricate 17th century Orthodox icons to works by a multitude of Ukrainian, Russian, and other European masters including Ivan Aivazovsky, Vasily Polenov, Auguste von Bayer and Peter Lely, the museum’s collection was Dotsenko’s pride and joy."

At least there's hope in the digital age for more recoveries than after WWII: "The museum may be empty, but Skrypka is not short of work. Together with Dotsenko, she must now create a comprehensive digital account of all the looted pieces. “We need to record everything that was taken, complete with photos,” she said, “so that if anything happens to show up on a border or at an auction, it can be identified.”"

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1603428077744160775?s=20&t=01L1fq...

[Dereich]

No one actually thinks that the Russians can threaten Kyiv; they can't even capture Bakhmut.

[Nhoj]

My surmise is that this seeming buffoon chub ZALUZHNY is really a Ukrainian mole who is tying to terrify what young men (18-50) who are so foolish as to still be in Russia to flee for their lives. The idea of tooling down that road again to Kyiv wedged in between the marshes with no escape is about as advisable as over dosing on Fentanyl.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian armed forces being a Ukrainian mole is certainly a shocking development.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1603491140224835586?s=20&t=01L1fq0C1...