Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Interesting how dead this thread is since both Hamas-Israel War plus putting (2-3) s**t posters on ignore from this very thread.

I still follow it regularly but the urge to post here to update people on [lots of dead people] or [more equipment that doesn't fundamentally move the needle] is receding. Maybe I'm just getting jaded, but there is also a part of me that doesn't want to keep engaging on this topic because of how utterly negative it is for my mental health and how futile the war effort is starting to look. It doesn't matter to me how many Russian soldiers / equipment are blown up in one suicidal operation after another if the end result is no change in territory and Russia just mobilizes more men and refurbishes more heavy weapons from its seemingly bottomless stockpiles.

I think you're having your expectations shaped by some bad Western commentary (this is actually something both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian sources are guilty of). This is clearly an attrition war now, and we should expect that stability on the front will remain the norm for a long time. People who expected a sweeping counteroffensive that would liberate all of occupied Ukraine in one fell swoop were always full of sh*t - that's just not a plausible outcome, or at least it would take orders of magnitude more tanks and artillery shells to make it plausible.

Attrition warfare is bleak and depressing, and it's totally fair to take a break from it for your own mental health, but it's not meaningless. Eventually the strain on resources becomes too much for one side. If the West puts in the resources, it's pretty much mathematically ensured that Russia will exhaust its ability to carry on the war sooner or latter (probably a matter of years, sadly, but still). If Western support weakens, things start looking a lot worse. This is why our collective resolve to support Ukraine should not falter, especially now. In a way, expending great effort in the spur of the moment is the "easy" part. The hard part is sustaining that effort in the long run, long enough to make it actually count. It's doesn't feel grand or glorious, but it is meaningful. So I'd implore everyone who wants Ukraine to win to keep pushing their respective countries to keep up and ideally increase support. Ukrainians don't have the luxury to give in to "fatigue" right now, and neither should we.

Absolutely agree...

Now thinking I might need to lobby my Republican Congresswoman from OR-CD-05 and tell her to support military spending for UKR, ISRL, TW and plus a few bucks for border security so we can get funds rolling quickly and not involve the risk of separate funding bills.

Do you think she'll be amenable to that? I don't know a ton about most Pacific Northwest congresscritters.

[jaichind]

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/01/ukraines-top-general-on-the-breakthrough-he-needs-to-beat-russia

"Ukraine’s top general on the breakthrough he needs to beat Russia"

Zaluzhny says war at a stalemate and that only a big technological leap can help Ukraine

[Hindsight was 2020]

Hey guys when you slammed your head into a wall in two different places you know what the best idea? Doing it in a 3rd place of course
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1720031216986898682

[Open Source Intelligence]

If you ask me to place a bet, I look at a negotiated settlement, timeframe of summer 2024 plus or minus a couple months, based on current lines of control because the lines of control have hardly moved the last 18 months, or a minor Russian drawback with a defined in treaty Demilitarized Zone of some kind, and Zelenskyy will give his countrymen the Sold Out Victim Narrative which based on history will manifest itself into something else by the 2040s. If Biden and others in our "Blob" foreign policy world think Trump is too big a threat, even if they think Biden will defeat Trump there's always a good-sized percentage chance he won't (they thought Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump after all), that good-sized percentage chance whatever it is is probably too large a risk for Ukraine and all of Europe looking out into the future and likely endgames..

I think freezing the conflict with the line of control will work for Russia only if Ukraine also agrees to Russia being able to veto Ukraine joining NATO.  Of course, Zelensky cannot survive a deal like that so the war will go on.  If this war took place 1000 years ago it would have ended already.  In a War of Kings and Dukes, both sides could already figure out some compromise and end this costly war.  In the War of the Peoples, this is no longer possible. 

What's the Ukrainian plan of war with reduced outside military support?

Biden, Blinken, and some other countries just have to get Zelenskyy and his staff around a table and say "you can get terms now where we can control our support for you and back you up, or wait until a year from now where we cannot 100% guarantee a person will be in the White House that will give you continued support". Even if you think Biden should win, whatever percentage chance you give he won't win because we all know it's not guaranteed, is an incredibly large risk.

[bilaps]

Hey guys when you slammed your head into a wall in two different places you know what the best idea? Doing it in a 3rd place of course

Like in Robotine?

[Red Velvet]

Zelenskyy angry and no longer optimistic, feels betrayed by his Western allies. I just read the TIME magazine profile report and I am not surprised with literally anything there.

After his visit to Washington, TIME followed the President and his team back to Kyiv, hoping to understand how they would react to the signals they had received, especially the insistent calls for Zelensky to fight corruption inside his own government, and the fading enthusiasm for a war with no end in sight. On my first day in Kyiv, I asked one member of his circle how the President was feeling. The response came without a second’s hesitation: “Angry.”

The usual sparkle of his optimism, his sense of humor, his tendency to liven up a meeting in the war room with a bit of banter or a bawdy joke, none of that has survived into the second year of all-out war. “Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out,” says one longtime member of his team. Another tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.

But his convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message. As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians. Judging by recent surveys, most Ukrainians would reject such a move, especially if it entailed the loss of any occupied territory.

If only anyone could have predicted this from the very start, that Ukraine isn’t really seen as strategic by the Westerners themselves and they were only attempting to weaken Russia through a proxy instead of saving Ukraine… It’s all such shocking development that Zelenskyy isn’t satisfied with the Western help. Oh well!

[jaichind]

If you ask me to place a bet, I look at a negotiated settlement, timeframe of summer 2024 plus or minus a couple months, based on current lines of control because the lines of control have hardly moved the last 18 months, or a minor Russian drawback with a defined in treaty Demilitarized Zone of some kind, and Zelenskyy will give his countrymen the Sold Out Victim Narrative which based on history will manifest itself into something else by the 2040s. If Biden and others in our "Blob" foreign policy world think Trump is too big a threat, even if they think Biden will defeat Trump there's always a good-sized percentage chance he won't (they thought Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump after all), that good-sized percentage chance whatever it is is probably too large a risk for Ukraine and all of Europe looking out into the future and likely endgames..

I think freezing the conflict with the line of control will work for Russia only if Ukraine also agrees to Russia being able to veto Ukraine joining NATO.  Of course, Zelensky cannot survive a deal like that so the war will go on.  If this war took place 1000 years ago it would have ended already.  In a War of Kings and Dukes, both sides could already figure out some compromise and end this costly war.  In the War of the Peoples, this is no longer possible. 

What's the Ukrainian plan of war with reduced outside military support?

Biden, Blinken, and some other countries just have to get Zelenskyy and his staff around a table and say "you can get terms now where we can control our support for you and back you up, or wait until a year from now where we cannot 100% guarantee a person will be in the White House that will give you continued support". Even if you think Biden should win, whatever percentage chance you give he won't win because we all know it's not guaranteed, is an incredibly large risk.

I think most collective West government will suffer a domestic prestige blowback of Ukraine is viewed as "losing" the war.  As a result they will throw in enough resources to avoid Ukraine defeat even as victory is less and less likely.  Now, there will be a breaking point for this but I suspect this is a 2025 2026 thing.  I suspect Russia is mostly structuring their economy around the fact this war will go into 2025-2026.  I do think that the war going on after that will start hurting Russia. They are likely to gamble that the collective West will have their will break before then.

[Hindsight was 2020]

The Times article still probably touches on some true things but if Arestovych really was one of the main anonymous sources that does throw a lot of the more doom aspects into serious doubt
https://twitter.com/juliasskrs/status/1719465750589485443?s=12

*cough*

[Red Velvet]

If you ask me to place a bet, I look at a negotiated settlement, timeframe of summer 2024 plus or minus a couple months, based on current lines of control because the lines of control have hardly moved the last 18 months, or a minor Russian drawback with a defined in treaty Demilitarized Zone of some kind, and Zelenskyy will give his countrymen the Sold Out Victim Narrative which based on history will manifest itself into something else by the 2040s. If Biden and others in our "Blob" foreign policy world think Trump is too big a threat, even if they think Biden will defeat Trump there's always a good-sized percentage chance he won't (they thought Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump after all), that good-sized percentage chance whatever it is is probably too large a risk for Ukraine and all of Europe looking out into the future and likely endgames..

I think freezing the conflict with the line of control will work for Russia only if Ukraine also agrees to Russia being able to veto Ukraine joining NATO.  Of course, Zelensky cannot survive a deal like that so the war will go on.  If this war took place 1000 years ago it would have ended already.  In a War of Kings and Dukes, both sides could already figure out some compromise and end this costly war.  In the War of the Peoples, this is no longer possible. 

What's the Ukrainian plan of war with reduced outside military support?

Biden, Blinken, and some other countries just have to get Zelenskyy and his staff around a table and say "you can get terms now where we can control our support for you and back you up, or wait until a year from now where we cannot 100% guarantee a person will be in the White House that will give you continued support". Even if you think Biden should win, whatever percentage chance you give he won't win because we all know it's not guaranteed, is an incredibly large risk.

I think most collective West government will suffer a domestic prestige blowback of Ukraine is viewed as "losing" the war.  As a result they will throw in enough resources to avoid Ukraine defeat even as victory is less and less likely.  Now, there will be a breaking point for this but I suspect this is a 2025 2026 thing.  I suspect Russia is mostly structuring their economy around the fact this war will go into 2025-2026.  I do think that the war going on after that will start hurting Russia. They are likely to gamble that the collective West will have their will break before then.

I don’t think the West will have lost that much “prestige” at all, at least not more than they’ve already lost for stuff like Afghanistan. They always do that kind of stuff in a recurrent manner.

And ultimately, people won’t care much and forget. Ukraine also isn’t that strategic for the West deepest interests, otherwise they would’ve already been in NATO for a long time. Ukraine’s single real function to the West is being a sacrificial lamb to stick it up to Russia.

However, it will be validation for everyone who defended peace negotiations (like Lula) over military answers in the 1st place as the BEST possible solution for Ukraine’s own survival and were still called “Pro-Russia” based simply on the crazy nationalist ~all-or-nothing~ stubborn unreasonable stance that many westerners copied from Zelenskyy as a consequence of making him this huge hero in their media.

You cannot be “half-committed” to a conflict and expect to get “everything”. If the Westerners were really committed for the Ukraine cause, they would send their own people to fight like they’ve done in the Middle East not really long ago. Then in that case their rhetoric would match their actions and you could give them credibility for meaning what they say.

However, it was always obvious for anyone with minimal geopolitical knowledge that the West WOULD NEVER have this kind of direct involvement for Ukraine out of all places because Ukraine has nothing to offer to them or their interests. Which means, their aggressive rhetoric combined with weak actions was always more about inflaming a conflict they didn’t plan to take much of a real stand on. They shamelessly sold out Ukraine, which got an extremely raw deal as being someone’s cannon fodder.

There are 2 ways which the West could’ve acted on a consistent manner that would’ve shown the opposite:

- Fully commit with a military solution if you think the war is winnable and send your people to fight on the ground.
- Fully commit to a peace solution if you don’t think the war is winnable or worth the losses, pushing for a middle ground that isn’t fully comfortable neither to Ukraine or Russia but one that at least prevents a full erasure of the Ukrainian State.

Peace negotiations were branded as “Pro-Russia” through westerners opportunistic validation of Zelensky stubbornness. Also, there is the simple reality that Ukraine isn’t that important for the West for them to get fully involved in a military solution. Which shows thar saving Ukraine was never the goal of the westerners and that the country was being used/played for their interests instead.

[Hindsight was 2020]

“I’m called Russia for simply being pro-peace and totally not because I repeat Russia talking appoints about Euromaiden being a CIA coup and dismissing Russian committing genocide on the local Ukrainian populations”

[CumbrianLefty]

“I’m called Russia for simply being pro-peace and totally not because I repeat Russia talking appoints about Euromaiden being a CIA coup and dismissing Russian committing genocide on the local Ukrainian populations”

But muh, Global South.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Ukraine is fighting for a world where siezing territory by war is unacceptable. If they lose, we will all see a lot more wars in our future. Every country that wants a free and peaceful future should be willing to back Ukraine as much as neccessary.

[jaichind]

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/02/poll-americans-support-ukraine-republicans

"Poll: U.S. public's support for Ukraine begins to wane"

[jaichind]

https://247newsagency.com/sports/269390.html

"Ukrainian chess player shook hands with Russian, bypassing ban"

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://247newsagency.com/sports/269390.html

"Ukrainian chess player shook hands with Russian, bypassing ban"

Well this is good to see.

[jaichind]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/11/02/ukraine-sent-its-surviving-leopard-2a6-tanks-to-help-save-avdiivka-and-quickly-lost-one-of-them/?sh=161364f52754

"Ukraine Sent Its Surviving Leopard 2A6 Tanks To Help Save Avdiivka—And Quickly Lost One Of Them"

In a little over a week, Kyiv’s army has written off at least a dozen, and perhaps 13, of its Leopard 2A4s, Leopard 2A6s and Strv 122s. The latter are super-armored Swedish variants of the Leopard 2A5.

It seems these Leopard tanks malfunction often and need a lot of maintenance, just like the Germany WWII Tiger tanks.   The Germans never change.

[bilaps]

Ukrainians now losing ground in Zaporozhye as well

https://twitter.com/Pouletvolant3/status/1720415492228153425

[Open Source Intelligence]

If you ask me to place a bet, I look at a negotiated settlement, timeframe of summer 2024 plus or minus a couple months, based on current lines of control because the lines of control have hardly moved the last 18 months, or a minor Russian drawback with a defined in treaty Demilitarized Zone of some kind, and Zelenskyy will give his countrymen the Sold Out Victim Narrative which based on history will manifest itself into something else by the 2040s. If Biden and others in our "Blob" foreign policy world think Trump is too big a threat, even if they think Biden will defeat Trump there's always a good-sized percentage chance he won't (they thought Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump after all), that good-sized percentage chance whatever it is is probably too large a risk for Ukraine and all of Europe looking out into the future and likely endgames..

I think freezing the conflict with the line of control will work for Russia only if Ukraine also agrees to Russia being able to veto Ukraine joining NATO.  Of course, Zelensky cannot survive a deal like that so the war will go on.  If this war took place 1000 years ago it would have ended already.  In a War of Kings and Dukes, both sides could already figure out some compromise and end this costly war.  In the War of the Peoples, this is no longer possible.  

What's the Ukrainian plan of war with reduced outside military support?

Biden, Blinken, and some other countries just have to get Zelenskyy and his staff around a table and say "you can get terms now where we can control our support for you and back you up, or wait until a year from now where we cannot 100% guarantee a person will be in the White House that will give you continued support". Even if you think Biden should win, whatever percentage chance you give he won't win because we all know it's not guaranteed, is an incredibly large risk.

I think most collective West government will suffer a domestic prestige blowback of Ukraine is viewed as "losing" the war.  As a result they will throw in enough resources to avoid Ukraine defeat even as victory is less and less likely.

Most European states (very notably not France because the French have a real military) are hitting the bottom of what they can supply and not affect their own personal defense. If Estonia for example give everything they have to the Ukrainians, there's then nothing to stop Russia coming over the Estonian border. The UK a month or two ago already announced they're there of they've provided everything they can. Procurement for everyone NATO is a bit of a shambles because it was all designed for peacetime and these Wall Street-influenced corporations that were significantly consolidated post-end of the Cold War are not built to run 100% to replenish stocks in a hot war. Here is an American-focused take on our procurement problems the Russo-Ukrainian War has exposed. http://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-america-is-out-of-ammunition

The Europeans are having an argument about what to source for procurement because they can't resupply what is being spent per day. They still have not resolved this (France wants the EU to buy French, the East wants the EU to buy American, Germany at last check did not want to spend the money).

If the West does not have any arms left to give Ukraine, how do they plan on resupplying them? The U.S. is fine, the French are probably fine, but NATO and the EU consists of a heck of a lot more than them. And they're all going to have to spend tons of money to restock when defense-building capacity is limited both by design and choice in a high inflationary environment. This was going to happen even if this war got resolved tomorrow. This war has used up stock equipment sitting in yards and that used up stock will have to get replaced by everyone that supported Ukraine, otherwise they can't support the next conflict that comes up that requires their military.

I look at support less in terms of will and more in terms of means. If you are not supplying men or machinery, your support is not worth a sh*t. If everyone supports Ukraine, they need to get going on procurement NOW. The EU can call a defense ministers meeting into one room, lock the doors, and no one is allowed to leave until they have a common consensus for procurement strategy that starts getting implemented the second the doors become unlocked. That is what Ukraine requires the next year in terms of real support. Otherwise we're just heading to inevitable stalemate and Ukraine will have lost de facto a quarter of its landmass and any coastline on the Sea of Azov in their best case.

[Frodo]

Even the Ukrainian top commander is acknowledging the obvious:

Ukrainian commander-in-chief admits the war against Russia is at a stalemate
Valerii Zaluzhnyi predicts that there will be no progress for at least a year and has compared the situation at the front to World War I

Zaluzhnyi also admits that only with a supply of the most advanced technology from Kyiv’s NATO allies, and in much larger quantities than what has been contributed so far, can the deadlock at the front be broken. “It is important to understand that this war cannot be won with the weapons of the past generation and outdated methods,” the general said. Ukraine has received tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military aid, but mostly in equipment that is not among the most advanced Western defense systems. Armaments such as German Leopard tanks or the future delivery of U.S. F-16 fighters, for example, entered into production in the 1970s.

Zaluzhnyi acknowledges that this new phase of support is unlikely to occur in the near future, so the stalemate on the front will remain in place. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” Zaluzhnyi told The Economist, with characteristic irony.

Perhaps it is time to start giving more advanced weaponry to the Ukrainians given the relative technological parity between them and Russia that now exists if we are to have any hope of a breakthrough.

[Middle-aged Europe]

If you ask me to place a bet, I look at a negotiated settlement, timeframe of summer 2024 plus or minus a couple months, based on current lines of control because the lines of control have hardly moved the last 18 months, or a minor Russian drawback with a defined in treaty Demilitarized Zone of some kind, and Zelenskyy will give his countrymen the Sold Out Victim Narrative which based on history will manifest itself into something else by the 2040s. If Biden and others in our "Blob" foreign policy world think Trump is too big a threat, even if they think Biden will defeat Trump there's always a good-sized percentage chance he won't (they thought Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump after all), that good-sized percentage chance whatever it is is probably too large a risk for Ukraine and all of Europe looking out into the future and likely endgames..

I think freezing the conflict with the line of control will work for Russia only if Ukraine also agrees to Russia being able to veto Ukraine joining NATO.  Of course, Zelensky cannot survive a deal like that so the war will go on.  If this war took place 1000 years ago it would have ended already.  In a War of Kings and Dukes, both sides could already figure out some compromise and end this costly war.  In the War of the Peoples, this is no longer possible.  

What's the Ukrainian plan of war with reduced outside military support?

Biden, Blinken, and some other countries just have to get Zelenskyy and his staff around a table and say "you can get terms now where we can control our support for you and back you up, or wait until a year from now where we cannot 100% guarantee a person will be in the White House that will give you continued support". Even if you think Biden should win, whatever percentage chance you give he won't win because we all know it's not guaranteed, is an incredibly large risk.

I think most collective West government will suffer a domestic prestige blowback of Ukraine is viewed as "losing" the war.  As a result they will throw in enough resources to avoid Ukraine defeat even as victory is less and less likely.

Most European states (very notably not France because the French have a real military) are hitting the bottom of what they can supply and not affect their own personal defense. If Estonia for example give everything they have to the Ukrainians, there's then nothing to stop Russia coming over the Estonian border. The UK a month or two ago already announced they're there of they've provided everything they can. Procurement for everyone NATO is a bit of a shambles because it was all designed for peacetime and these Wall Street-influenced corporations that were significantly consolidated post-end of the Cold War are not built to run 100% to replenish stocks in a hot war. Here is an American-focused take on our procurement problems the Russo-Ukrainian War has exposed. http://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-america-is-out-of-ammunition

The Europeans are having an argument about what to source for procurement because they can't resupply what is being spent per day. They still have not resolved this (France wants the EU to buy French, the East wants the EU to buy American, Germany at last check did not want to spend the money).

If the West does not have any arms left to give Ukraine, how do they plan on resupplying them? The U.S. is fine, the French are probably fine, but NATO and the EU consists of a heck of a lot more than them. And they're all going to have to spend tons of money to restock when defense-building capacity is limited both by design and choice in a high inflationary environment. This was going to happen even if this war got resolved tomorrow. This war has used up stock equipment sitting in yards and that used up stock will have to get replaced by everyone that supported Ukraine, otherwise they can't support the next conflict that comes up that requires their military.

I look at support less in terms of will and more in terms of means. If you are not supplying men or machinery, your support is not worth a sh*t. If everyone supports Ukraine, they need to get going on procurement NOW. The EU can call a defense ministers meeting into one room, lock the doors, and no one is allowed to leave until they have a common consensus for procurement strategy that starts getting implemented the second the doors become unlocked. That is what Ukraine requires the next year in terms of real support. Otherwise we're just heading to inevitable stalemate and Ukraine will have lost de facto a quarter of its landmass and any coastline on the Sea of Azov in their best case.

German arms deliveries currently planned and intended for Ukraine in the near to medium term future:

- 115 Leopard 1 A5 main battle tanks (20 delivered in the past)
- 40 Marder infrantry fighting vehicles (60 delivered in the past)
- 50 BATT UMG mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (16 delivered in the past)
- 18 Bandvagn 206 all-terrain vehicles (46 delivered in the past)
- 18 RCH 155 self-propelled howitzers
- 14 Zuzana 2 self-propelled howitzers (2 delivered in the past)
- 3 Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (49 delivered in the past)
- 5 IRIS-T SLM air defence systems (3 delivered in the past)
- 1 MIM-104 Patriot air defence system (1 delivered in the past)

It's true that the reserves of the German military are pretty much depleted at this point. This is why arms deliveries are increasingly coming directly from the factories of the arms industry, financed by the German government. Great times to be weapons manufacturer, I guess. This is why Rheinmetall managed to enter the DAX stock market index in March of this year.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Zaluzhny interview characterizing the war as a  WWI-style stalemate. No surprise there, but it's heartening (in the sense of Ukraine having a realistic strategy and expectations) to see him say it.

[Middle-aged Europe]

AfD Bundestag MP Robert Farle has left his party. Reason: His party is still not pro-Russia enough, specifically mentioning the admittance of Finland and Sweden to NATO which the AfD had largely voted in favour for.

Before joining the AfD in 2015, he used to be a member of the German Communist Party from 1975 to 1992, having received secret payments from the East German regime during that time in order to influence the GCP's course in favour of a more orthodox Marxist-Leninist stance. Horsehoe theory in action, I guess... or: once you work for Russia, you always work for Russia.

https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen-anhalt/landespolitik/afd-bundestag-abgeordneter-farle-austritt-100.html

[jaichind]

Anti-Putin Russia media outfit Mediazona's joint effort with BBC to track obituaries in Russia shows that Russia casualty rate continues to fall after peaking in Jan-Feb of 2023

[Hindsight was 2020]

What a solid research basis it’s not like Russia would underreport their causalities via obituaries or something 🙄

[jaichind]

What a solid research basis it’s not like Russia would underreport their causalities via obituaries or something 🙄

Of course, they might and most likely would.  The key question is that unless the rate they underreport is going up the narrative is still there that the Russian casualty rate is falling since early 2023.