Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Virginiá]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine selectively fires Patriot missiles at cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Chances are they will put it in an area where it at least partially overlaps with an existing IRIS-T or NASAMS battery - maybe around Kyiv. I can't imagine Ukraine would willingly use up PAC missiles on drones, and they are probably going to be strongly encouraged to not do so by the US.

Financially-speaking, I agree, they are criminally expensive, but at the same time, this would give Ukraine a capability they sorely need, especially as Russia seems likely to get ballistic missiles from Iran at some point. Also, at least over the next 12 months, I don't think it would be a financial burden on the US, so long as it is used more sparingly. Congress actually seems willing to give Ukraine more than Biden wants. I wouldn't be surprised if the limiting factor becomes the physical PAC missiles rather than the cost, as it's unclear how many US can give, especially with Saudi Arabia previously begging the US to dip into their reserves to speed up replacements for their air defenses that they are wasting on drones.

[Virginiá]

Unsure if this is actually confirmed or just more mis-translations and rumors, but for what it's worth:

https://twitter.com/FHeisbourg/status/1602741332870516736

If so, that would be a welcomed delivery, as it has notably longer range than systems like NASAMS. I think it has at least some ballistic missile capability, although not 100% on that. Like the Aspide battery being given to Ukraine, there is the question of how many missiles Ukraine can be provided with. Spain had very little to provide compared to the needs of Ukraine, unsure what kind of stockpiles Italy & France have, so we'll see.

[Torie]

.....what?

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1602324614725734403?s=20&t=0iWsfP79...

OK, blame the gays that Portugal lost a football game if you must (I did have some trouble handling the gear shift from cyborgs to non white Morocco beating white Portugal at football), but given how superior Russian culture is at stamping out the gay, and has been a champion of exorcising Western decadence in general, just why is Russia losing population, demographically?

[Woody]

Wagner/RU Prioritizing Pidhorodne to the city's northeast. Assaulted the city itself in the east, pushed AFU a few blocks, around Feodor Maksimenko street.

https://mobile.twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1602712451442696192
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1602781074114985988?cxt=HHwWiIC-9aO5nL4sA...

[Woody]

Troop rotation. The 93rd mech. brigadem stationed in the Bakhmut front for months is now finally withdrawing.

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1602006916938534912
https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1602619406030356482

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Troop rotation. The 93rd mech. brigadem stationed in the Bakhmut front for months is now finally withdrawing.

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1602006916938534912
https://twitter.com/narrative_hole/status/1602619406030356482

The 93rd got moved there after pulling off the Kharkiv counteroffensive, so they've been active duty for even longer. It is encouraging to see at least some due diligence regarding R&R/troop rotation rather than just feeding that unit into the meatgrinder until it breaks.

[NOVA Green]

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1602740637450661888?s=20&t=GAZdgzZXG_x5yI...

Speaking of Melitopol, which many of us regular posters on this thread have been watching in recent months as a potential Ukrainian Winter / early Spring counteroffensive...

Saw this early this morning from the NYT, and has now been updated since I came home from work:

Ukraine is stepping up efforts to isolate and degrade Russian forces in and around the strategically vital city of Melitopol, ahead of what is widely expected to be the next major phase of the war, a Ukrainian offensive to drive Russian forces from southern Ukraine.

Kyiv has been using long-range precision missile strikes, sabotage missions and targeted assassinations to home in on the city, which lies about 40 miles behind the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region. Melitopol is known as the gateway to Crimea because of its location at the crossroads of two major highways and a crucial rail line linking Russia to that peninsula and other territory it occupies in southern Ukraine.

A bridge in Melitopol across the Molochna River was sabotaged Monday night — an act that both Ukrainian and Russian officials attributed to Kyiv’s forces — with video showing that two pillars supporting the span had been blown up. The bridge’s destruction compromised a key Russian supply route to Melitopol from the south.

Both Ukrainian and Russian officials have acknowledged the recent Ukrainian strikes and attempts to hit Russian command centers, ammunition depots and supply routes in Melitopol, whose prewar population was about 150,000. The aftermaths of some of the recent attacks have been captured on video broadcast on social media by Russian soldiers.

It is not clear whether the strikes were intended as a prelude to an offensive or a distraction as Ukrainian forces prepare to attack the Russians from a different direction. But military analysts described them as significant and said they fit with a pattern of Ukraine’s using precision missiles to strike Russian logistical targets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/world/europe/ukraine-russia-melitopol.html

[NOVA Green]

Not to do the classic "jump to conclusions mat" from the Cult Classic comedy Office Space, it does appear that certain incidents of industrial Health and Safety issues continue to occur in Russia...



These sometimes appear to be more concentrated in areas which might provide direct material support to the Kremlin War machine, but occasionally involve areas which would be unlikely to be supported by UKR agents, but more likely domestic industrial issues or Sabotage.

Still yet another Industrial Accident within a key plant in Russia or???

https://twitter.com/TWMCLtd/status/1602699765149765632?s=20&t=3OwRkCggoQAntv...

Meanwhile my favorite Russian Hip-Artist just dumped another song as part of the start of his '22-'23 World Tour.

Props to the Russian Underground both within their own country, those in exile overseas, and the entire Russian diaspora which rejects the direction Russia has moved over the past (20) years.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1602833751649705985?s=20&t=zVo5hI...

[Woody]

Largest prisoner drop for Russia in a decade. It's prisoner population is shrinking as Wagner uses these guys as "storm-battalions"

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1593712209439383553
https://twitter.com/mediazona_en/status/1593691018276265984

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/TobiAyodele/status/1602976985558515712

[jaichind]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-12/russian-budget-surplus-more-than-quadruples-on-energy-cash-spike

"Russian Budget Surplus More Than Quadruples on Energy Cash Spike"

Russian government swimming in cash

[Torie]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-12/russian-budget-surplus-more-than-quadruples-on-energy-cash-spike

"Russian Budget Surplus More Than Quadruples on Energy Cash Spike"

Russian government swimming in cash

Sir Jaic, I know it's an unexpected development, but a poster actually read your link. I will extract  from it 3 short paragraphs and leave it at that. Russia is swimming in many things, but one of them is not cash. I was hoping for a moment that Russia would have something with which to pay Ukraine reparations for its war crimes other than doublespeak, but alas no. Russia's windfall profit tax on Gazpom was less than that crypto kid fighting extradition in the Bahamas stole. Sad.

The fiscal surplus reached 557 billion rubles ($9 billion) in the first 11 months of the year, the Finance Ministry said Monday, up from 128.4 billion rubles reported for January-October.

The strain on public finances has been growing as the government supports the economy during a downturn and allocates more to meet the needs of the military more than nine months into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Finance Ministry, which was forecasting a full-year budget shortfall of 0.9% of gross domestic product, now expects the deficit to reach 2% as revenues fall and spending rises for the war effort.


You weren't trolling were you? As a pro tip, this is the wrong thread to do that because Virginia reads it every day.  

As to the post preceding yours brought to us by the chap who makes sure that we keep up with Russian press releases, it occurred to me that if Putin is going to annex Odessa, he might also annex Little Odessa while he is at it, which may well have more Russian speakers than Odessa itself. Given that it is almost winter, the beaches at Coney Island are poorly defended, so it's a very opportune time to just do it. And the parking rates in Bensonhurst for his tanks will be cheaper too in the off season.  

[jaichind]

You weren't trolling were you? As a pro tip, this is the wrong thread to do that because Virginia reads it every day.  

Clearly my comment was partly as a joke as it is clear that any country at war should clearly see fiscal strain.  It is not a joke in the sense that the surge in energy prices which is partly the result of the war actually buffered the Russian fiscal situation much better than one would normally expect for a state that is dealing with a long and ongoing military conflict.

[Woody]

Bakhmut. Wagner assaulting into the residential areas.

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603007691797970944

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1602833751649705985?s=20&t=zVo5hI...

It is a law of physics, that where there is pizza, there are dogs. Despite our best efforts, when walking Roby in Hoboken, he scores a scrap of pizza on the ground about 20% of the time. He know how to place his body to interfere with our vision line to the pizza scrap on the ground, and then makes a quick move to get it in his mouth, and affix his jaws on it like a Gila Monster. If he can get it all in his mouth, even better, because then he will defer starting to chew it until out attention is next distracted. Roby far prefers those walks to the dog park.

[jaichind]

On the topic of fiscal deficits the Western financial firm average estimates of fiscal deficits as a percentage of GDP with the parties involved is revealing

                2022        2023         2024
Russia        -2.0         -2.6           -1.7
Ukraine     -28.7       -22.1         -14.3
USA            -3.9        -3.4           -3.4
Eurozone     -3.9        -3.7           -3.1

From a fiscal point of view one would expect Ukraine to be knocked out of the war soon if not already if it not fiscal transfusions from the collective West to finance the Ukraine war effort as a fiscal deficit of -28.7% of GDP is just massive.   It seems to me the war should be over by 2024 one way or another but the expected Ukraine deficit of -14.3% in 2024 shows the clear difficult road ahead for a post-war Ukraine economic recovery.

Russia's deficit of 2.0% of GDP in 2022 and -2.6% in 2023 seems fairly muted given it is now in a long term war and clearly shows the potential for more fiscal mobilization in the future.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

.....what?

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1602324614725734403?s=20&t=0iWsfP79...

OK, blame the gays that Portugal lost a football game if you must (I did have some trouble handling the gear shift from cyborgs to non white Morocco beating white Portugal at football), but given how superior Russian culture is at stamping out the gay, and has been a champion of exorcising Western decadence in general, just why is Russia losing population, demographically?

"We're working to fix that through homophobia!" they insist as more and more people run for the border and couples forego children in times of uncertainty.

[Person Man]

.....what?

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1602324614725734403?s=20&t=0iWsfP79...

OK, blame the gays that Portugal lost a football game if you must (I did have some trouble handling the gear shift from cyborgs to non white Morocco beating white Portugal at football), but given how superior Russian culture is at stamping out the gay, and has been a champion of exorcising Western decadence in general, just why is Russia losing population, demographically?

"We're working to fix that through homophobia!" they insist as more and more people run for the border and couples forego children in times of uncertainty.

If anything, they should be thanking the gays for having them get as far as they did.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603077333736267776?s=20&t=5zKW7OQLUMlyYx...

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603077355345362945?s=20&t=5zKW7OQLUMlyYx...

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603077369261981696?s=20&t=5zKW7OQLUMlyYx...

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603077387612082176?s=20&t=5zKW7OQLUMlyYx...

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1603077406813667328?s=20&t=5zKW7OQLUMlyYx...

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1603042290280419331?s=20&t=BEvdeeX...

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1603042290280419331?s=20&t=BEvdeeX...

Meanwhile in Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/TDF_UA/status/1602974132789985281?s=20&t=BEvdeeX_mP91GF5...

[Storr]

Dagestan is one of the majority muslim regions of Russia (83% Islam), and one of the poorest with a nominal GDP per capita of $3,230 USD, ranking 77th of 83 federal districts:https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1603033501519212545?s=20&t=BEvdee...

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/IKoshiw/status/1603064212753977345
What the actual f**k

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/IKoshiw/status/1603064212753977345
What the actual f**k

That’s why they can’t give up.