Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Storr]

It's not a great sign for Russia's personnel situation when soldiers of the Strategic Missile Forces are being transferred to unts fighting in Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1574404206257180672?s=20&t=TIWT6jXPJOk2EZ...

[Virginiá]

[Storr]

Let's give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume metaphors are more difficult in Russian:

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1574382656908845057?s=20&t=TIWT6jXPJOk2...

[bagelman]

Let's give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume metaphors are more difficult in Russian:

[snip]

Hmm, it's easy to imagine she could just be that stupid, but there's also the possibility of "I am required by my job to continue to praise Russia, but if you can read between the lines, I'm telling my friends and family that things are bad right now"

[jaichind]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/europe/ukraine-south-kherson-russia.html

"In Ukraine’s South, Fierce Fighting and Deadly Costs"

But overall, the south remains a different story from the northeast. Interviews with dozens of commanders, ordinary soldiers, medics, village leaders and civilians who recently escaped the conflict zone portray a more difficult and costly campaign: The fighting is grinding, grueling and steep in casualties, perhaps the most heartbreaking battle in Ukraine right now.

One Ukrainian soldier, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to publicly discuss casualties, said that during a recent assault, “we lost 50 guys in two hours.”

[NOVA Green]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/europe/ukraine-south-kherson-russia.html

"In Ukraine’s South, Fierce Fighting and Deadly Costs"

But overall, the south remains a different story from the northeast. Interviews with dozens of commanders, ordinary soldiers, medics, village leaders and civilians who recently escaped the conflict zone portray a more difficult and costly campaign: The fighting is grinding, grueling and steep in casualties, perhaps the most heartbreaking battle in Ukraine right now.

One Ukrainian soldier, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to publicly discuss casualties, said that during a recent assault, “we lost 50 guys in two hours.”

Thanks jaichind---

Saw it when it was posted but wasn't quite sure which parts to quote.

Still, as I have posted previously Ukrainian casualties during the Kherson Offensive have been quite heavy, with Russian positions heavily dug in.

[jaichind]

Thanks jaichind---

Saw it when it was posted but wasn't quite sure which parts to quote.

Still, as I have posted previously Ukrainian casualties during the Kherson Offensive have been quite heavy, with Russian positions heavily dug in.

This time I made sure to check it see if you posted it already

[NOVA Green]

I had previously posted some stories about ethnic Russian minority populations, including the Tatars, being disproportionally "mobilized" to fight for Putin's war.

Here are a few more snippets from Russian Occupied Crimea:

In the Soviet Union, they were stigmatized as disloyal and driven into a decades-long exile far from their native land.

In an eerie echo of that exodus, many Crimean Tatar men are now fleeing to Kazakhstan to escape conscription in Russia’s hastily called draft to reinforce its army in Ukraine, which Tatar activists see as a continuation of Moscow’s long history of repressive policies.

In one region on the Crimean Peninsula — the Tatars’ homeland and part of Ukraine that Russia has occupied for the past eight years — all but two of 48 people who received draft notices were ethnic Tatars, according to the Ukraine-based Crimean Tatar Resource Center, a rights group.

Elsewhere on the peninsula, Russia called up Tatars in numbers far disproportionate to their share of the population, Ukrainian officials said. Dozens of Tatars sought legal help to avoid the draft.

“When we analyze the mobilization, we clearly see this is a continuation of the Crimean Tatar genocide,” Eskender Bariyev, the director of the resource center, said in an interview. “It’s a violation of Indigenous rights,” he said, adding: “There are already too few of us.”

Supporters of the Crimean Tatars say that by conscripting men from minority groups that have long been a thorn in Moscow’s side, the Russian security services can achieve two goals at once: tamping down dissent and filling its military ranks in Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/09/26/world/russia-ukraine-war-news

[Virginiá]

Russians seem to be adjusting to HIMARS

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1574537071942717440

[Frodo]

Those hundreds of thousands of brand new Russian conscripts on their way will contribute tremendously to the already high Russian body count -and little else:

Putin’s Conscripts Will Suffer: Intelligence Assessment

The conscripts that President Vladimir Putin is rushing to the front lines in Ukraine will likely suffer from unsustainably high death rates and ultimately won’t affect Russia’s chances for success, according to new Western assessments of his contentious decision to press 300,000 reservists into service. (...)

The lack of military trainers, and the haste with which Russia has started the mobilization, “suggests that many of the drafted troops will deploy to the front line with minimal relevant preparation,” U.K. military intelligence concludes in a new assessment it released Monday morning. “They are likely to suffer a high attrition rate.”

“The process will be ugly, the quality of the reservists poor, and their motivation to fight likely even worse,” independent think tank the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest regular assessment of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It adds that the self-made problems undermining Putin’s latest effort “are so deep and fundamental that he cannot likely fix them in the coming months—and possibly for years. Putin is likely coming up against the hard limits of Russia’s ability to fight a large-scale war.”

[Splash]

The Ukrainians continue their advance along the Kharkiv-Donetsk border.

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1574530518195978245

https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1574521831188406272

[Torie]

Russians seem to be adjusting to HIMARS

Depressing news. Ukraine needs to substantially clear its skies of bad things, in order to remove the enemy beyond. Absent that, the risks of this war will increase, rather than decrease. It must be made more clear, sooner rather than later, just which side will "benefit" from an elongation of this war. This high risk incredibly dangerous and expensive and sanguinary madness cannot long endure as an equilibrium of death and destruction. It will evolve into something far better or worse, as the value of strategic ambiguity wanes.

That is what I see in my crystal ball.

[Storr]

For the mobiks:

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1574403779939962881?s=20&t=2XM68D...

[NOVA Green]

Thanks jaichind---

Saw it when it was posted but wasn't quite sure which parts to quote.

Still, as I have posted previously Ukrainian casualties during the Kherson Offensive have been quite heavy, with Russian positions heavily dug in.

This time I made sure to check it see if you posted it already

We cool man!

Just live in different time zones and there is a lot of activity going on with Russia-Ukraine.

Hopefully I wasn't too much of a jerk the other day.

Honestly not an expert on global financials, like you are, but still value your contributions to the thread.

[NOVA Green]

Really good thread from Mike Ryan on a theoretical Ukrainian Victory within the context of the 2022 War:

Link to his full article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at the bottom of the thread.

Here is a link to his tweet thread:

https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1574546077042155520?s=20&t=jef1pBH...


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-27/russia-ukraine-post-war-planning/101473304

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

More details on the conscription office shooting:

https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1574434996630261762

[Storr]

Another muslim majority region (~70% muslim according to wikipedia) in Russia with protests against mobilization:

https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1574411589213642755?s=20&t=c7TCzXf0CDA...

[Storr]

The Ukrainians continue their advance along the Kharkiv-Donetsk border.

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1574530518195978245

https://twitter.com/auditor_ya/status/1574521831188406272

https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1574549888326590464?s=20&t=WeCk6Tq0W_-...

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

A protester read an anti-war poem in Moscow. In response, police kidnapped him and tortured him by shoving a dumb bell up his rectum. They then kidnapped his girlfriend and brought her to the next room over to hear the torture while they superglued her mouth shut and threatened her with gang rape.

https://twitter.com/svtv_news/status/1574490380481052674

https://twitter.com/Andrew__Roth/status/1574272320071426049?s=20&t=dVYAl_CQk...

Reminds me of the Belarussian Andrei Zeltser, who obliterated a KGB agent raiding his apartment with a shotgun. Yet another example of why an armed society is the last defense against totalitarianism.

https://twitter.com/MishaKononovich/status/1442919434050433024

[Aurelius]

How seriously should Putin's nuclear talk be taken at this point?

[AndyHogan14]

How seriously should Putin's nuclear talk be taken at this point?

I have to imagine that he's bluffing. Unless he's completely off the rails, he has to know that using nuclear weapons in this case would lead to the end of his regime. Every country that has tried to be neutral on this conflict thus far (looking at the PRC and India specifically) would likely get off the sidelines and there would probably be a NATO military response. I would assume that the US would also use all covert assets in Moscow (if such assets exist) to eliminate Putin even before the "red button" is pushed. Our intelligence agencies would certainly know, before the fact, if the Muscovites were going to cross that line.

[Oryxslayer]

Really good thread from Mike Ryan on a theoretical Ukrainian Victory within the context of the 2022 War:

Link to his full article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at the bottom of the thread.

Here is a link to his tweet thread:

SNIP


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-27/russia-ukraine-post-war-planning/101473304

This is what I meant a while back by Ukraine is ideologically fighting a war for independence. Their war aim is freedom of movement without Russia, likely involving NATO and the path towards EU membership through non-Russian ordained reconstruction. Whether this is achieved with or without Moscow's compliance, or with or without the entirety of her pre-2014 territory are unknowns. The only way these goals are not achievable is if the conflict freezes like after 2014, which is why Putin has been losing this war ever since Russia retreated from Kyiv. I can only hope our leaders recognize and are ready to repay out debts to the soldiers of Ukraine with security and prosperity when the day comes.

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1574534283749834752
https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1574676354880126976

[jaichind]

TASS reports turnout after 3 days of referendum voting are

Luhansk         83.6%
Donetsk         86.7%
Zaporizhzhia   66.4%
Kherson         63.6%

I wonder how Russia will explain annexing all 4 regions when in 3 of them the referendum only took place in a part of the region itself.  I am sure they will come up with some legal mumbo jumbo to justify this.  Another alternative is to only annex what they control and hold more referendums later?

[CumbrianLefty]

Another muslim majority region (~70% muslim according to wikipedia) in Russia with protests against mobilization

There has to be a chance that a significant number of these "mobilised" troops simply refuse to fight once sent to the front line?