Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Virginiá]

So they are kidnapping Ukrainians and sending them all over Russia while moving Russians into stolen Ukrainian property to Russify the areas? What true liberators!

At any rate, seems a bit premature given the general state of the war, even if most of their losses and attrition were/are in the north and east.

[Virginiá]

Here's his segment with subtitles

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1526293852704890882
He's the same guy who gave the reality segment a week ago.  Again, it's interesting that he gets to do this. 

Not without constantly being prodded by one of the hosts lol

Most of these people only really have one thing to say and anything else is met with resistance.

[Virginiá]

https://mobile.twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1527606560041705473

After three months of thoughtful consideration, dilligently weighing all the pros against the cons, Gerhard Schröder has decided to quit his job at Rosneft.

What a brave, selfless hero!

[Virginiá]

Forced labor camps, mass deportations, wholesale rape and slaughter of civilians. Sounds familiar. Seems like Russia picked the wrong country to de-Nazify

[Virginiá]

I was looking for a comprehensive list of weapons given to Ukraine so far, and it's hard to find one fully updated to this moment since aid keeps pouring in frequently, but this one is pretty good:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/15/infographic-what-weapons-has-ukraine-received-from-the-us-and-al

This looks even more detailed but hasn't been updated in over a month:

https://www.armyrecognition.com/ukraine_-_russia_invasion_conflict_war/full_list_of_us_european_weapons_and_military_equipment_delivered_to_ukraine.html

[Virginiá]

Seriously 1940 Russia had Ukraine, all the Baltic states and Caucasus, Kazakhstan, etc apart of it with all their manpower and resources apart of it

They were also highly motivated in what was a collective fight for their lives as Nazi Germany was determined to exterminate most of the Slavic people and enslave the rest. I can't think of a more ideal situation for a country to mobilize every person who can fight without backlash.

[Virginiá]

But what about famous Kherson offensive?

HIMARS will help Ukraine no doubt. They will help in killing Russians in which place will come some new Russians. It won't change trajectory of a war. Ukraine had SMERCH systems on the begining of the war, they have Tochkas still..

A major issue with Ukraine's old Soviet weapons is ammunition. Aside from the fact that this level of warfare is going to exhaust even a well-armed country's stocks quickly (absent new production, which Ukraine can't really do), in the years before the invasion, several major Ukrainian ammunition storage facilities were catastrophically sabotaged (example), ostensibly by Russia or its supporters. These destroyed stocks most definitely included rockets. And if you believe other reports to be true, Russia has also been on a buying spree of artillery and other Soviet ammunition before the war as well, leaving Ukraine unable to replenish its stocks fully.

The limited number of MLRS systems given so far is probably both a reflection of the smaller/higher value of them, and also that the Ukrainians needed to be trained on them first. What they were given now really isn't enough but if allied countries start donating as many MLRS systems as they did M109 self-propelled howitzers, then yeah, it might, actually.

[Virginiá]

Also if Ukraine is counting on Western weapons to compensate for losses of trained men and officers I suspect the benefits of such weapons are going to be more limited than they think.  This is not a knock on these Western weapons but more about the logical implications of these new weapons systems.  In WWII, due to German successes before and in the early part of the war the Germans had a bonanza of solid Czech and French (and in some cases Polish) military equipment.  On paper, this looked really good for Germany.  But in practice having such a diversity of weapons it had to support created a logistical nightmare for Germany from 1941-1943 given the different types of ammunicton and spare parts they had to support.  And in addition that the military doctrines these weapons were based on were different than German military doctrine which made it hard for the German units to use these foreign pieces of equipment.  Just like most things in life, for military hardware, diversity is not a strength and for sure a weakness as the Germans discovered in WWII.

I've been thinking about that myself for a while now. They have a veritable smorgasbord of weapon systems in use right now. However, in terms of artillery and MLRS (rocket launch systems), the diversity isn't too bad. From a link another poster here shared a while ago:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answering-call-heavy-weaponry-supplied.html

There's been a lot of systems delivered but definitely a concentration of certain systems:

Of the 200 towed artillery, roughly 67% are M777 howitzers. (Some countries didn't specify how many units were sent for other models, and Czech didn't specify at all what it was sending. So there is some ambiguity here obviously).

I think the self-propelled artillery is probably one of the worst. Over 203+ units donated or purchased and 7 different models. 8 if you consider the M109 has two different variants being donated. No model makes up a dominant share save for maybe the Krab, except that the bulk of those Ukraine is receiving probably won't happen for a while since it was a purchase order that needs to be built (afaik).

The MLRS weapons are basically all either older Soviet models Ukraine has supplies for or are American-made M270 / HIMARS, of which they currently only have a handful although they are getting more and probably more still once enough operators are trained.

Even as far as vehicles go, there definitely seems to be an abundance of American-made Humvees and M113 APCs. Those dominate the stock they've received so far for their respective categories (or are slated to receive).

So some of this diversity is marginal only and the Ukrainian effort wouldn't be harmed too much if, for instance, they lost the ability to continue fielding Zuzana self-propelled howitzer due to maintenance issues. They have a large & growing number of other units to rely on.

Overall I think it could be worse, and a lot of the smaller donations from many western countries are probably maxed out due to their small available stocks, so future deliveries will probably consist of a smaller number of more readily available weapon systems.

[Virginiá]

Entire Lughansk region is now under Russian control. Ukrainians retreated at the end from Lysychansk and surroundings without much of a fight. Their response is to strike Belgorod with Tochkas. They killed 3 people who fled from Kharkiv.

ftfy

pls don't use the Russian names for Ukrainian towns and cities on this forum.

I'll use what I want.

You can forbid maybe someone somewhere from using something but you can't change history that quickly. Literally every single resident of Luhansk oblast is a Russian speaker.

Pls don't be so detached from reality.

NP, I can fix it for you. I'll just have the forum change it automatically before displaying posts. Let me know if you have any other preferences so I can input the opposite into the word filter.

[Virginiá]

Months ago, people noted (correctly) that it would be regrettable for things like this to become some kind of shibboleth. While you having a personal view on this is understandable, it is an Inks-tier abuse of mod authority to act in this way, methinks. In any case, Luh*nsk is in fact an exonym (in the sense it's a name given to it that most people living there would not use as a first choice to refer to it)! Spelled with a G (as it is in Russian) or an H (as it is in Ukrainian), who freaking cares? It's clear what it's referring to. Billions of people in the Third World would find this a silly line to draw in the sand (regardless of whichever stand one does take).

Okay, don't care, Tim.

[Virginiá]

[...]

https://twitter.com/GeneralStaffUA/status/1543952771631747073?s=20&t=CJHF3LS2nhQZBJk3ZXLX2Q

Now they just need to deliver 100+ more HIMARS launchers and thousands of guided rockets and it'll be even more beautiful. The 8 from the US and 6-10 from the UK/other EU countries is a good start but not nearly enough.

[Virginiá]

The quantities of rockets currently seem to matter more than the number of launchers. The US aid packages tend to be announced every 2 weeks and Ukraine got about 300 GMLRS’ worth ammunition in the last one, assuming munitions aren’t overvalued in the aid packages (which could well be the case, given precedent).

This is less than the pre-war rate of production, but (if consistent) much bigger than Ukraine’s Tochka supply.

The number of launchers is by almost any measure, inadequate, though. We're talking about 12 - 18 or so. At least 4, but probably more like 8 of which haven't even been delivered yet. It also has to be considered that some of these will eventually get destroyed or otherwise lost. Unless something has changed, Ukrainians were not given rockets capable of the maximum distance (~300km) due to concerns they would be used on targets inside Russia, so these will need to be used close to the front, introducing more risk. Right now they are just being used for high value targets, but if the overall goal of NATO here is to make a major difference in the war, this isn't going to cut it. Not that any single conventional weapon would, but as far as opinions from former defense officials go, Ukraine needs at least between 60 - 100 of these launchers.

I've read on Ukrainian news that at least the first 4 were supposed to be for learning purposes, so it's possible America started out small and intended to ramp up once they had trained enough people on how to use it, which makes sense, but this isn't guaranteed to be the case.

[Virginiá]

As helpful as NATO has been, I'm not convinced they would go beyond Ukraine reclaiming its land up to the Feb 24th lines, and Ukraine needs their continued support to wage that kind of operation against Russia. America still won't provide long range missiles to Ukraine, for fear of triggering a major escalation from Russia (whatever that even means at this point). Hard to see how invading Crimea wouldn't be worse from that perspective.

Taking back the Crimean Peninsula would almost surely have to come later in the war (implying Ukraine has nearly pushed Russia out), given how much control Russia has over Southern Ukraine and how much of Ukraine's forces are tied up elsewhere, at which point it's easy to see Russia refusing to concede Crimea no matter what it takes, nuclear weapons included. Actually, as far as nukes go, the perekop isthmus is pretty ideal for halting an invading force, particularly given that Ukraine doesn't have the ability to conduct an amphibious invasion. I don't know if it would ever come to that, but I just can't see Russia giving up Crimea.

[Virginiá]

Talking about Ukraine taking back some territory is pure delusional at this point. Talking about Crimea while they are losing ground still. And they WILL continue to lose the ground in the East at least.

I didn't make a prediction about what was actually going to happen, only my thoughts on what would have to happen first before Crimea could even be considered.

So you can put away the strawmen, because a reminder of the status of the front lines is not needed from this forum's biggest Russian fanboy.

[Virginiá]

Do you care to speculate for me what what kinds of escalation America fears arising from giving Ukraine long range missiles that it needs to put an end of the asymmetry where Russian fire power can reach Ukraine assets while Ukraine's fire power cannot hit back at the source of that fire power? I have read about the concern that Ukraine would shoot them into Russia itself, but presumably Ukraine would agree to get permission first before doing that. It is not as if America does not have huge leverage in influencing how Ukraine goes about conducting its defense. So I am wondering what else might be out there on the fear menu, that has not crossed my radar screen but may have crossed yours.

One thing that I suspect Ukraine and America do agree on is that that this war needs to wind down this year, rather than drag on through the next with all the economic disruption and food shortages, and, nukes aside, incurring the  ongoing higher risk of through calculation or miscalculation of a major clash of the titans where troops of more nations get actively involved.

I'm honestly not sure, but I think NATO in general is very wary of doing anything that could result in a clash between NATO and Russian forces, and America believes that if they arm Ukraine with long range guided munitions for rocket launch systems, or even cruise missiles, that at some point or another, they will be used against targets within Russia. It doesn't have to be done out of desperation. It could just be field officers who take liberties of which they don't quite comprehend the consequences of.

The thing is, Russia doesn't have much soft power to use at this point. Most of what they can do would hurt themselves just as much, if not more, such as cutting off oil/gas completely to shock world markets, or withholding grain and other food exports. They need the money as much as the world needs those resources. Other than that, as far as hard power goes, everyone already sees that their military is near exhausted. They are struggling to capture Eastern Ukraine, so what possible hope do they have by threatening NATO forces? It's why they haven't already attacked supply lines outside of Ukraine. They would be decimated by NATO forces, and the world knows this too, so Russia absolutely cannot draw them into the conflict. All they have are nuclear weapons. And they already sabre rattle about those enough as it is.

Realistically, I don't think Russia would attack NATO, but I do think if they had to escalate in a major way due to NATO overstepping, it could be nukes used against Ukraine. It's not that different than how North Korea threatens South Korea whenever they feel threatened, as if SK is their own personal whipping boy. They know they don't have a lot of other options. I think the west in general is trying to avoid that level of warfare ever making an appearance due to how quickly a situation like that could spiral.

I don't know how likely any of this is, but Russia knows they don't have a lot of options. Depending on how you look at this, that is a good or bad thing.

[Virginiá]

I mean, if they feel that they want to go out on their terms, they can take a lot of us out with them. If that were to happen, at least it happened then and not later.

As I understand it, Soviet battle plans for a war with NATO involved a lot of tactical nuclear weapons used to blunt enemy formations and armor as well as to destroy bases, air fields, ammunition storage, etc. The Soviets needed weeks to fully mobilize their army within the Warsaw Pact nations and the USSR, and nuclear weapons would be used to give them that time. I don't think any government wants to end humanity. And even when nukes were more of an option than they are today, leveling entire population centers was usually the last thing any country wanted to do.

That's kind of what I was getting at with Russia deploying nukes in the event they exhaust their ability to fight and Ukraine is able to push them out. If they went for Crimea too, and/or started bombing targets on the border within Russia to prevent them from re-grouping, Russia could feel compelled to deploy nukes to force a stop to the war without losing anything else - aka closing out the conflict on their terms. I mean, really, there is nothing stopping them from doing that now - to prevent the loss of the Donbas, Southern Ukraine and Crimea. It would come with major consequences, but there is a good chance that Russia could use nukes to essentially freeze things where they are now - so long as NATO considers it time to get Ukraine to the negotiating table to prevent further escalation. I suppose it could also result in a huge increase of military aid, but I'm skeptical of that.

How much would Russian mobilizing out of desperation truncate the half life of the current Putin plan? Has the Oracle of Delphi cryptically opined about that in the mist of the sulphur fumes?

I'm not convinced Russia has the logistical capacity to support a full mobilization. They don't have the industry to start mass producing advanced weapon systems or munitions, either. Hell, they don't even have the ability to mass produce regular cars! They relied on imports of certain parts because they lacked the ability to produce them themselves. So they could try and pull up a bunch of poorly trained citizens, but they wouldn't necessarily have the same amount of military equipment to use nor would they have the ability to capture Ukraine any faster than when the war first started. There's just way too many soldiers with inadequate training, too much corruption, and not enough working trucks or other supply vehicles. If there were, they wouldn't have been bringing in consumer vehicles by train. It's also politically risky, too. But that's another conversation.

[Virginiá]

Generally agree, esp with the bolded statement, but still it appears that the Russian Armament Factories are able to continue to produce certain types of munitions with their factories allegedly now running 2nd and 3rd shifts.

Yeah, those are good points from the article. It's understandable, too. We have no need to have huge production lines of those kinds of munitions. If we planned to go to war, we would spin up the industrial capacity to prevent supply issues, but as far as a sudden (relatively speaking) war like this one goes, it still takes time for decisions to be made and resources to be gathered and put to use.

Speaking of production capacity, regarding consternation over America not wanting to send long-range rockets for the HIMARS, and I still disagree with that myself in general, but the reality is, NATO doesn't actually have a ton of those rockets to give Ukraine. The ATACMS surface-to-surface missile is what is being referenced, with a max range of 500 km. Only ~3,000 have been made and they are no longer producing it (and haven't for a while). It also costs a ton per unit (hence the program being ended) and each HIMARS pod can only fire a single one at a time. The successor to this is still in development I think, and even if it weren't, it's so new they couldn't possibly have enough stock to load Ukraine up with. That being said, they could still send some ATACMS missiles for very high priority targets.

Russia might be able to pump out quite a bit of artillery munitions themselves, but until they figure out a long-term solution for their semiconductor crisis, virtually all their advanced systems are going to be near-irreplaceable. And honestly, this isn't even really just a Russian problem. The semiconductor production industry has long been dominated by Taiwan's TSMC (for the most advanced chips) and foreign sources in general. It's only within the past 5 years that America has seriously made headway in moving a lot of production stateside, and that still isn't a done deal. So America could find itself with its own weapons production crisis if, say, China were to try to reunify annex Taiwan within the next ~5 years. It would be even worse for us because of how advanced our military tech is.

[Virginiá]

Russia might be able to pump out quite a bit of artillery munitions themselves, but until they figure out a long-term solution for their semiconductor crisis, virtually all their advanced systems are going to be near-irreplaceable. And honestly, this isn't even really just a Russian problem. The semiconductor production industry has long been dominated by Taiwan's TSMC (for the most advanced chips) and foreign sources in general. It's only within the past 5 years that America has seriously made headway in moving a lot of production stateside, and that still isn't a done deal. So America could find itself with its own weapons production crisis if, say, China were to try to reunify annex Taiwan within the next ~5 years. It would be even worse for us because of how advanced our military tech is.

A recent seemingly well-researched article from Reuters claimed Taiwan produces 92% of the most advanced semiconductors and South Korea the remaining 8%, so the US production currently doesn't include the most advanced ones.

Yeah, I meant more like America plans to move foundries here. Intel is building out, Samsung is looking into additional plants, and TSMC is as well. Although if I recall, TSMC isn't building a 4nm foundry here, so their most advanced and cutting edge processes will still happen overseas. Also, at least some of these potential operations are to varying degrees contingent on inducements from Congress (allegedly), which is still in debate.

This is still going to take years to come to fruition even if all these plans go full steam ahead, though. Also, it's not exactly clear what level of technology military systems need. For example, many of these advanced weapon systems might use older chips that are still by any measure sophisticated, but not on the bleeding edge of available technology. Considering the rapid pace at which CPUs have been designed, that's probably a reasonable assumption.

[Virginiá]

As for Russia's domestic semiconductor capabilities, JSC Mikron's fabs are able to churn out transistors on a .... 90 nanometer process. Possibly 65. Meanwhile the newest modern consumer chips from the likes of Intel and AMD are based on 7 nm and 5 nm processes, respectively. It's not even close. Russia really doesn't have the wherewithal to generate their own supply here, and the brain drain they've been experiencing is not going to help matters. And even if they could design their own chips, they don't have the highly sophisticated equipment to build them. Most countries don't. There is a reason even the top CPU designers in the market still contract out fabrication services to TSMC. Actually building these chips is extremely difficult.

[Virginiá]

Sure, but 7nm and 5nm are mostly use for smartphones and sometimes laptops due to their low power usage.  As long as Russia have to accept they will have to import smartphones (there is no real Russian domestic producer of smartphones anyway).  It is not like the older technology chips are not usable.  It is just they will eat up more power making the hardware that use them not as energy efficient.  Russia will either import finished products that use 5nm or 7nm or just produce less efficient hardware using older chips.  Less efficient is not great but it is not fatal.

Right, I touched on that earlier. Thing is, Mikron's proven abilities are related to processes from pretty much the early aughts to the late 90s. A major investment by Russians to catch up to 28 nm processes is by their own statement not expected until 2030. I would also question exactly how reliable their mass production of anything usable in their weapons will be.

In the meantime, their weapons are all designed around using foreign chips. They aren't just going to be able to swap them out like they were building a new computer. In the interim, I would expect their efforts to continue procuring the same chips on the black market and through recycling programs to fill in at least a small amount of this gap. Either way, they have quite a problem here.

[Virginiá]

I mean, the existence of globalization and the supply chains that feed all these materials and constituent components for these highly advanced machines pretty much goes without saying. The goal for major powers right now seems to be to consolidate as much of that as reasonably possible within their own borders.

[Virginiá]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/08/biden-artillery-ukraine-kyiv-russia-00044735

President Joe Biden has approved sending a new type of precision-guided artillery round to Ukraine that the administration believes will give Kyiv a technological edge in its battle against Russia, according to a senior defense official.

The 1,000 rounds of the new 155mm ammunition is part of a new $400 million aid package the White House is set to announce on Friday, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The package also includes four additional rocket launchers and ammunition, bringing to 12 the number of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems the U.S. is providing to Ukraine, the official said, noting that out of the total promised, 8 HIMARS have already been delivered to Ukraine. Upwards of 100 Ukrainians have been trained on the system to date, a senior military official added.

4 more HIMARS systems as well as 1,000 precision 155mm artillery shells, among other equipment.

Defense officials also confirm that all the previously donated HIMARS are accounted for, so the Russian claim about destroying 2 probably a bit of an exaggeration.

[Virginiá]

The XM1156 kit to make dumb shells smart is probably the more economical option. Retrofitting standard 155mm shells costs <= $10,000, while the M982 Excalibur is anywhere from $60,000 - $112,000 (seeing multiple price points so not sure which is right).

Honestly, costs aside, these are much better for Ukraine for so many reasons, such as actually hitting your target and reducing counter battery risk, but also because Ukraine hopes to, you know, live in these areas when all is said and done. Better they not be littered with blast craters and rubble. Russia is doing enough of that by itself.

[Virginiá]

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

[Virginiá]

They already paid in full for the Abrams (pre-war), although one of the Ukraine bills had provisions which could speed up the delivery of these tanks by a couple of years.

The backfill would be additional, per the tweet. So Poland would end up with nearly 600 Abrams tanks. Although I guess you could also interpret that tweet to mean that they get the 250 M1A2s they ordered, and an additional 50 (give or take) used Abrams for the ~235 PT-91s they give to Ukraine. But that doesn't seem likely.

edit: I did manage to find an article about this that did clarify that it was 50 used Abrams tanks in addition to their previous order of 250. So yeah, it is 300.

Poland is really going to the mat for Ukraine. As far as tanks and other Soviet-era heavy weapons go, they've donated quite a bit relative to their existing stocks.