Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://elpais.com/internacional/2024-01-04/rusia-lanza-a-sus-soldados-zombis-contra-avdiivka-la-trinchera-mas-feroz-de-donbas.html

"Russia launches its 'zombie' soldiers against Avdiivka, the fiercest trench in Donbas"

El Pais says that the  Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka are running short of ammo.

"The 47th brigade, like many others, is on a diet of ammunition. Their arsenals are exhausted. They fight with what they have, and not always with what is best suited to hit the target," Sgt. 47th Separate Brigade Alexander.

In the long run UA all of Europe and the U.S. need to bulk up its war industry. All the spirit and resolve in the world counts for nothing if you don't have enough bullets.

Fixed your post. The Ukrainians are using more ammunition than what all of Europe can produce.

[Woody]

Mariupol 2024

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/hochu_dodomu/status/1743259525161902341
ENG Trans: “Ramzan Kadyrov offered to exchange Ukrainian POWs in return that the US removes sanctions from his family members. This message was passed through Scott Ritter who visited Kadyrov in Grozny recently”
Scott Ritter is a foreign agent 😭 😂

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1742956369848746402?s=12
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1742923100529078575?s=12

Yeah it's good this occurs, but my general problem with the Western coverage of this war as represented by images and videos shared from Twitter by anonymous people on message boards is they cover it like the Ukrainian Army has the same aims as ISIS terrorists. "Ukraine blew up a command center." Okay, the fronts are all still in the same place. Eliminating the command center helps push back the Russians if they now have worse leadership than before making worse decisions, do we think that's the case? If the Ukrainian goal is just to kill as many Russians and their equipment as possible, that's honestly not much different than how Arab partisans have carried out asymmetrical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa the past 20 years outside of the Ukrainians are obviously not terrorists/militia depending on the situation in that particular Arabic conflict. Notice those Arab partisans have never won any of those conflicts conventionally, even the ones with Western support/encouragement in Libya and Syria. Sunni militias/terrorists blew up a command center here and there too. It never changed the reality on the ground of the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. If the Ukrainian goal is to win back control of all of their territory as they have publicly stated, what are they doing that moves toward that goal right now?

Part of the issue is most people when it comes to this kind of stuff completely lack intelligence on what matters. So they point to the shiniest thing, for example video of a building blowing up, with zero context. And the state of our journalism industry for actually knowing how sh*t works, let alone on military matters, is incredibly poor.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1742956369848746402?s=12
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1742923100529078575?s=12

Yeah it's good this occurs, but my general problem with the Western coverage of this war as represented by images and videos shared from Twitter by anonymous people on message boards is they cover it like the Ukrainian Army has the same aims as ISIS terrorists. "Ukraine blew up a command center." Okay, the fronts are all still in the same place. Eliminating the command center helps push back the Russians if they now have worse leadership than before making worse decisions, do we think that's the case? If the Ukrainian goal is just to kill as many Russians and their equipment as possible, that's honestly not much different than how Arab partisans have carried out asymmetrical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa the past 20 years outside of the Ukrainians are obviously not terrorists/militia depending on the situation in that particular Arabic conflict. Notice those Arab partisans have never won any of those conflicts conventionally, even the ones with Western support/encouragement in Libya and Syria. Sunni militias/terrorists blew up a command center here and there too. It never changed the reality on the ground of the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. If the Ukrainian goal is to win back control of all of their territory as they have publicly stated, what are they doing that moves toward that goal right now?

Part of the issue is most people when it comes to this kind of stuff completely lack intelligence on what matters. So they point to the shiniest thing, for example video of a building blowing up, with zero context. And the state of our journalism industry for actually knowing how sh*t works, let alone on military matters, is incredibly poor.

Hitting a command post is not in any way ISIS tactics who strategizes are about suicide bombing a town center to kill as many civilians as possible. Strikes like this do strategic value as can be seen by the fact that the Black Sea fleet has all but stopped using Crimea as its port which makes bombing places like Odessa harder and also gives more room for Ukraine to export grain out to Turkey

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1742956369848746402?s=12
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1742923100529078575?s=12

Yeah it's good this occurs, but my general problem with the Western coverage of this war as represented by images and videos shared from Twitter by anonymous people on message boards is they cover it like the Ukrainian Army has the same aims as ISIS terrorists. "Ukraine blew up a command center." Okay, the fronts are all still in the same place. Eliminating the command center helps push back the Russians if they now have worse leadership than before making worse decisions, do we think that's the case? If the Ukrainian goal is just to kill as many Russians and their equipment as possible, that's honestly not much different than how Arab partisans have carried out asymmetrical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa the past 20 years outside of the Ukrainians are obviously not terrorists/militia depending on the situation in that particular Arabic conflict. Notice those Arab partisans have never won any of those conflicts conventionally, even the ones with Western support/encouragement in Libya and Syria. Sunni militias/terrorists blew up a command center here and there too. It never changed the reality on the ground of the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. If the Ukrainian goal is to win back control of all of their territory as they have publicly stated, what are they doing that moves toward that goal right now?

Part of the issue is most people when it comes to this kind of stuff completely lack intelligence on what matters. So they point to the shiniest thing, for example video of a building blowing up, with zero context. And the state of our journalism industry for actually knowing how sh*t works, let alone on military matters, is incredibly poor.

Hitting a command post is not in any way ISIS tactics who strategizes are about suicide bombing a town center to kill as many civilians as possible.

I'm talking a roadside bomb that hits a Humvee and kills 3 soldiers or a missile attack at Al-Assad's Command. The guys they can brag about 3 dead but it doesn't do anything to change overall facts on the ground. It's not like killing a commanding general means there's no general. Someone just replaces the guy. The damage is in the logistics are curtailed.

Strikes like this do strategic value as can be seen by the fact that the Black Sea fleet has all but stopped using Crimea as its port which makes bombing places like Odessa harder and also gives more room for Ukraine to export grain out to Turkey

See, that's a great paragraph that has a point, it's an action that does not help Ukraine win the war as they have defined it by getting back all their territory, but provides greater security for the rest of Ukraine they still hold. So congratulations on discussing this conflict on this board and not being effectively a Kindergartener. But why does no one with a mouthpiece outside of the Michael Kofmans of the world actually make salient points like that?

I have a very Clausewitzian view of things - I take that to mean if you're going to have military action, any military action by any group or country, there has to be a defined overriding goal that it all supports. Russia's overriding goal at the beginning of the conflict to remove Ukraine from the map has been defeated. Ukraine's overriding goal as has been publicly defined ("we will take back all of our territory") they have done nothing to advance since the retaking of Kherson which is now more than a year ago, and in the last 20 months the lines of control have hardly moved. So what are we doing? Leave your emotions to the side of who you want to win and instead look at the conflict philosophically. If Ukraine's failure is something that cannot be countenanced for the future of the world and what it would represent, if a person believes that, why are there not active American and NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine now helping them win? Don't give me this bullsh*t about escalation of conflict with Russia. We either believe that is the case of the future of the world is at stake, or we don't. If we don't, then what's the end goal? Because Ukraine I'll bet anyone any amount of money are not taking back all of it. Name your price, we can work out organizing a bet with site administrators.

Where the hell are all the Clausewitzians on this conflict in the West?

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

[Sir Mohamed]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

Should surprise exactly no one. Ukraine already has become some kind of proxy war between Western democracies and dictatorships. With latest restriction since the war broke out, Russia basically has moved from autocracy into full dictatorship.

[Open Source Intelligence]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

Should surprise exactly no one. Ukraine already has become some kind of proxy war between Western democracies and dictatorships. With latest restriction since the war broke out, Russia basically has moved from autocracy into full dictatorship.

I take it more as the post-post-World War II geopolitical consensus has frayed. The post-World War II consensus was of three worlds: the First World (West and its supporting autocracies), the Second World (Soviets and allies, China), and the Third World (unaligned, which then became a synonymous term for backwards and poor). That world died in the late 80s/early 90s. I'm not sure the next world ever got coined a term but we've been living in it for 30 years. That era everyone with a few exceptions were fat and happy due to globalization, overall increase in business, money got spread around easily, not just by the U.S. but also Europe and China, and that kept the peace. Obvious exception of the Middle East. But the U.S. in this era was military policeman.

Throw into this era and the U.S. no longer wants to be military policeman. If you're a Democrat you blame Trump for this but this was driven by the aftermath of the Iraq War, was what the U.S. population wanted, and Obama was clearly on board with this take. Nature abhors a power vacuum. You saw what happened with the Iranians and Saudis fighting a proxy war first in Yemen, then a momentary coup attempt in Bahrain erroneously termed by the media as an Arab Spring rebellion, and then we got a brutal ugly war in Syria with all of the Arabian Peninsula involved. American withdrawal means people can do things themselves to keep the local power balance. We're allies with Turkey and right now they're de facto controlling and administrating sections of northern Syria. It's part of Turkey de facto if not on a de jure map. The United Arab Emirates which has a really good reputation to the lay person (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), they don't do nasty military/militia stuff openly as the Saudis do but they use their money to heavily involve themselves in local events to increase their power (for what I say below with Ethiopia they're involved). Ditto Qatar. In the 1990-2020 era they were effectively Kuwait.

Even look at benign actions you can see the 1990-2020 consensus going away. Americans are withdrawing their influence from the Horn of Africa and we saw what happened this week where Ethiopia is going to recognize Somaliland in exchange for a port on the Red Sea. In the previous era, Ethiopia paid Djibouti and would've acquiesced American and Western countries to not do such a thing. It's an action that shows the geopolitical consensus is falling apart even though it's not a mil itary actionor troops are dying.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1742956369848746402?s=12
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1742923100529078575?s=12

Yeah it's good this occurs, but my general problem with the Western coverage of this war as represented by images and videos shared from Twitter by anonymous people on message boards is they cover it like the Ukrainian Army has the same aims as ISIS terrorists. "Ukraine blew up a command center." Okay, the fronts are all still in the same place. Eliminating the command center helps push back the Russians if they now have worse leadership than before making worse decisions, do we think that's the case? If the Ukrainian goal is just to kill as many Russians and their equipment as possible, that's honestly not much different than how Arab partisans have carried out asymmetrical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa the past 20 years outside of the Ukrainians are obviously not terrorists/militia depending on the situation in that particular Arabic conflict. Notice those Arab partisans have never won any of those conflicts conventionally, even the ones with Western support/encouragement in Libya and Syria. Sunni militias/terrorists blew up a command center here and there too. It never changed the reality on the ground of the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. If the Ukrainian goal is to win back control of all of their territory as they have publicly stated, what are they doing that moves toward that goal right now?

Part of the issue is most people when it comes to this kind of stuff completely lack intelligence on what matters. So they point to the shiniest thing, for example video of a building blowing up, with zero context. And the state of our journalism industry for actually knowing how sh*t works, let alone on military matters, is incredibly poor.

Hitting a command post is not in any way ISIS tactics who strategizes are about suicide bombing a town center to kill as many civilians as possible.

I'm talking a roadside bomb that hits a Humvee and kills 3 soldiers or a missile attack at Al-Assad's Command. The guys they can brag about 3 dead but it doesn't do anything to change overall facts on the ground. It's not like killing a commanding general means there's no general. Someone just replaces the guy. The damage is in the logistics are curtailed.

Strikes like this do strategic value as can be seen by the fact that the Black Sea fleet has all but stopped using Crimea as its port which makes bombing places like Odessa harder and also gives more room for Ukraine to export grain out to Turkey

See, that's a great paragraph that has a point, it's an action that does not help Ukraine win the war as they have defined it by getting back all their territory, but provides greater security for the rest of Ukraine they still hold. So congratulations on discussing this conflict on this board and not being effectively a Kindergartener. But why does no one with a mouthpiece outside of the Michael Kofmans of the world actually make salient points like that?

I have a very Clausewitzian view of things - I take that to mean if you're going to have military action, any military action by any group or country, there has to be a defined overriding goal that it all supports. Russia's overriding goal at the beginning of the conflict to remove Ukraine from the map has been defeated. Ukraine's overriding goal as has been publicly defined ("we will take back all of our territory") they have done nothing to advance since the retaking of Kherson which is now more than a year ago, and in the last 20 months the lines of control have hardly moved. So what are we doing? Leave your emotions to the side of who you want to win and instead look at the conflict philosophically. If Ukraine's failure is something that cannot be countenanced for the future of the world and what it would represent, if a person believes that, why are there not active American and NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine now helping them win?Don't give me this bullsh*t about escalation of conflict with Russia. We either believe that is the case of the future of the world is at stake, or we don't. If we don't, then what's the end goal? Because Ukraine I'll bet anyone any amount of money are not taking back all of it. Name your price, we can work out organizing a bet with site administrators.

Where the hell are all the Clausewitzians on this conflict in the West?

A direct confrontation like that between nuclear powers is really dangerous but furthermore Ukraine has shown throughout this war they can beat Russia when given the proper tools to win so why risk a nuclear incident like that when giving Ukraine ATACMs, HIMARS, F16s, Bradley’s and Abrams along with ammo works? Really the issue isn’t that we should send troops it’s that we should allow Ukraine to use the weapons we give to hit targets in Russia

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1742956369848746402?s=12
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1742923100529078575?s=12

Yeah it's good this occurs, but my general problem with the Western coverage of this war as represented by images and videos shared from Twitter by anonymous people on message boards is they cover it like the Ukrainian Army has the same aims as ISIS terrorists. "Ukraine blew up a command center." Okay, the fronts are all still in the same place. Eliminating the command center helps push back the Russians if they now have worse leadership than before making worse decisions, do we think that's the case? If the Ukrainian goal is just to kill as many Russians and their equipment as possible, that's honestly not much different than how Arab partisans have carried out asymmetrical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa the past 20 years outside of the Ukrainians are obviously not terrorists/militia depending on the situation in that particular Arabic conflict. Notice those Arab partisans have never won any of those conflicts conventionally, even the ones with Western support/encouragement in Libya and Syria. Sunni militias/terrorists blew up a command center here and there too. It never changed the reality on the ground of the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. If the Ukrainian goal is to win back control of all of their territory as they have publicly stated, what are they doing that moves toward that goal right now?

Part of the issue is most people when it comes to this kind of stuff completely lack intelligence on what matters. So they point to the shiniest thing, for example video of a building blowing up, with zero context. And the state of our journalism industry for actually knowing how sh*t works, let alone on military matters, is incredibly poor.

Hitting a command post is not in any way ISIS tactics who strategizes are about suicide bombing a town center to kill as many civilians as possible.

I'm talking a roadside bomb that hits a Humvee and kills 3 soldiers or a missile attack at Al-Assad's Command. The guys they can brag about 3 dead but it doesn't do anything to change overall facts on the ground. It's not like killing a commanding general means there's no general. Someone just replaces the guy. The damage is in the logistics are curtailed.

Strikes like this do strategic value as can be seen by the fact that the Black Sea fleet has all but stopped using Crimea as its port which makes bombing places like Odessa harder and also gives more room for Ukraine to export grain out to Turkey

See, that's a great paragraph that has a point, it's an action that does not help Ukraine win the war as they have defined it by getting back all their territory, but provides greater security for the rest of Ukraine they still hold. So congratulations on discussing this conflict on this board and not being effectively a Kindergartener. But why does no one with a mouthpiece outside of the Michael Kofmans of the world actually make salient points like that?

I have a very Clausewitzian view of things - I take that to mean if you're going to have military action, any military action by any group or country, there has to be a defined overriding goal that it all supports. Russia's overriding goal at the beginning of the conflict to remove Ukraine from the map has been defeated. Ukraine's overriding goal as has been publicly defined ("we will take back all of our territory") they have done nothing to advance since the retaking of Kherson which is now more than a year ago, and in the last 20 months the lines of control have hardly moved. So what are we doing? Leave your emotions to the side of who you want to win and instead look at the conflict philosophically. If Ukraine's failure is something that cannot be countenanced for the future of the world and what it would represent, if a person believes that, why are there not active American and NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine now helping them win?Don't give me this bullsh*t about escalation of conflict with Russia. We either believe that is the case of the future of the world is at stake, or we don't. If we don't, then what's the end goal? Because Ukraine I'll bet anyone any amount of money are not taking back all of it. Name your price, we can work out organizing a bet with site administrators.

Where the hell are all the Clausewitzians on this conflict in the West?

A direct confrontation like that between nuclear powers is really dangerous...

Then let's stop with the lie the future of the world is at stake here if Ukraine loses. The crime of the Iraq War was the Rumsfeldian notion of you can do war half-ass and still succeed. Rumsfeld knew if we had to have a post-war occupation force of sufficient size to secure the country it would kill the whole thing before it started, thus the post-war occupation force was insufficient and we all saw what happened. While Iraq proved that wrong, Obama (Libya, Syria) Trump (Afghanistan), and Biden (Afghanistan, maybe Ukraine) still want Rumsfeldian military deployments of sending troops or supplies around the world with stuff going their way while doing as little as possible. Either do wars or don't, doing it half-ass does no one any favors. So now that's out of the way, what on January 5th, 2024, is the end goal?

...but furthermore Ukraine has shown throughout this war they can beat Russia when given the proper tools to win so why risk a nuclear incident like that when giving Ukraine ATACMs, HIMARS, F16s, Bradley’s and Abrams along with ammo works?

Read this and realize the Europeans are in even worse shape. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-america-is-out-of-ammunition?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

Should surprise exactly no one. Ukraine already has become some kind of proxy war between Western democracies and dictatorships. With latest restriction since the war broke out, Russia basically has moved from autocracy into full dictatorship.

I take it more as the post-post-World War II geopolitical consensus has frayed. The post-World War II consensus was of three worlds: the First World (West and its supporting autocracies), the Second World (Soviets and allies, China), and the Third World (unaligned, which then became a synonymous term for backwards and poor). That world died in the late 80s/early 90s. I'm not sure the next world ever got coined a term but we've been living in it for 30 years. That era everyone with a few exceptions were fat and happy due to globalization, overall increase in business, money got spread around easily, not just by the U.S. but also Europe and China, and that kept the peace. Obvious exception of the Middle East. But the U.S. in this era was military policeman.

Throw into this era and the U.S. no longer wants to be military policeman. If you're a Democrat you blame Trump for this but this was driven by the aftermath of the Iraq War, was what the U.S. population wanted, and Obama was clearly on board with this take. Nature abhors a power vacuum. You saw what happened with the Iranians and Saudis fighting a proxy war first in Yemen, then a momentary coup attempt in Bahrain erroneously termed by the media as an Arab Spring rebellion, and then we got a brutal ugly war in Syria with all of the Arabian Peninsula involved. American withdrawal means people can do things themselves to keep the local power balance. We're allies with Turkey and right now they're de facto controlling and administrating sections of northern Syria. It's part of Turkey de facto if not on a de jure map. The United Arab Emirates which has a really good reputation to the lay person (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), they don't do nasty military/militia stuff openly as the Saudis do but they use their money to heavily involve themselves in local events to increase their power (for what I say below with Ethiopia they're involved). Ditto Qatar. In the 1990-2020 era they were effectively Kuwait.

Even look at benign actions you can see the 1990-2020 consensus going away. Americans are withdrawing their influence from the Horn of Africa and we saw what happened this week where Ethiopia is going to recognize Somaliland in exchange for a port on the Red Sea. In the previous era, Ethiopia paid Djibouti and would've acquiesced American and Western countries to not do such a thing. It's an action that shows the geopolitical consensus is falling apart even though it's not a mil itary actionor troops are dying.

Perhaps it took the consequences of this fraying to hit a "Western" country for people to wake up.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://elpais.com/internacional/2024-01-04/rusia-lanza-a-sus-soldados-zombis-contra-avdiivka-la-trinchera-mas-feroz-de-donbas.html

"Russia launches its 'zombie' soldiers against Avdiivka, the fiercest trench in Donbas"

El Pais says that the  Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka are running short of ammo.

"The 47th brigade, like many others, is on a diet of ammunition. Their arsenals are exhausted. They fight with what they have, and not always with what is best suited to hit the target," Sgt. 47th Separate Brigade Alexander.

In the long run UA all of Europe and the U.S. need to bulk up its war industry. All the spirit and resolve in the world counts for nothing if you don't have enough bullets.

Fixed your post. The Ukrainians are using more ammunition than what all of Europe can produce.

I suppose this is also true...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I guess Zelensky thinks his next election contest will be against Zaluzhny.

Quite likely.

I thought Zelensky said a while he ago he wasn't going to run again, though the 2024 election will be delayed.

Imo there's a gap between what best practice for political survival would dictate Zelensky say about this, and what he actually plans to do.
I think it's very very likely he runs again, but him going out and saying that now would be of dubious value for him.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1742956369848746402?s=12
https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1742923100529078575?s=12

Yeah it's good this occurs, but my general problem with the Western coverage of this war as represented by images and videos shared from Twitter by anonymous people on message boards is they cover it like the Ukrainian Army has the same aims as ISIS terrorists. "Ukraine blew up a command center." Okay, the fronts are all still in the same place. Eliminating the command center helps push back the Russians if they now have worse leadership than before making worse decisions, do we think that's the case? If the Ukrainian goal is just to kill as many Russians and their equipment as possible, that's honestly not much different than how Arab partisans have carried out asymmetrical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa the past 20 years outside of the Ukrainians are obviously not terrorists/militia depending on the situation in that particular Arabic conflict. Notice those Arab partisans have never won any of those conflicts conventionally, even the ones with Western support/encouragement in Libya and Syria. Sunni militias/terrorists blew up a command center here and there too. It never changed the reality on the ground of the conflict in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc. If the Ukrainian goal is to win back control of all of their territory as they have publicly stated, what are they doing that moves toward that goal right now?

Part of the issue is most people when it comes to this kind of stuff completely lack intelligence on what matters. So they point to the shiniest thing, for example video of a building blowing up, with zero context. And the state of our journalism industry for actually knowing how sh*t works, let alone on military matters, is incredibly poor.

Hitting a command post is not in any way ISIS tactics who strategizes are about suicide bombing a town center to kill as many civilians as possible.

I'm talking a roadside bomb that hits a Humvee and kills 3 soldiers or a missile attack at Al-Assad's Command. The guys they can brag about 3 dead but it doesn't do anything to change overall facts on the ground. It's not like killing a commanding general means there's no general. Someone just replaces the guy. The damage is in the logistics are curtailed.

Strikes like this do strategic value as can be seen by the fact that the Black Sea fleet has all but stopped using Crimea as its port which makes bombing places like Odessa harder and also gives more room for Ukraine to export grain out to Turkey

See, that's a great paragraph that has a point, it's an action that does not help Ukraine win the war as they have defined it by getting back all their territory, but provides greater security for the rest of Ukraine they still hold. So congratulations on discussing this conflict on this board and not being effectively a Kindergartener. But why does no one with a mouthpiece outside of the Michael Kofmans of the world actually make salient points like that?

I have a very Clausewitzian view of things - I take that to mean if you're going to have military action, any military action by any group or country, there has to be a defined overriding goal that it all supports. Russia's overriding goal at the beginning of the conflict to remove Ukraine from the map has been defeated. Ukraine's overriding goal as has been publicly defined ("we will take back all of our territory") they have done nothing to advance since the retaking of Kherson which is now more than a year ago, and in the last 20 months the lines of control have hardly moved. So what are we doing? Leave your emotions to the side of who you want to win and instead look at the conflict philosophically. If Ukraine's failure is something that cannot be countenanced for the future of the world and what it would represent, if a person believes that, why are there not active American and NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine now helping them win?Don't give me this bullsh*t about escalation of conflict with Russia. We either believe that is the case of the future of the world is at stake, or we don't. If we don't, then what's the end goal? Because Ukraine I'll bet anyone any amount of money are not taking back all of it. Name your price, we can work out organizing a bet with site administrators.

Where the hell are all the Clausewitzians on this conflict in the West?

A direct confrontation like that between nuclear powers is really dangerous...

Then let's stop with the lie the future of the world is at stake here if Ukraine loses. The crime of the Iraq War was the Rumsfeldian notion of you can do war half-ass and still succeed. Rumsfeld knew if we had to have a post-war occupation force of sufficient size to secure the country it would kill the whole thing before it started, thus the post-war occupation force was insufficient and we all saw what happened. While Iraq proved that wrong, Obama (Libya, Syria) Trump (Afghanistan), and Biden (Afghanistan, maybe Ukraine) still want Rumsfeldian military deployments of sending troops or supplies around the world with stuff going their way while doing as little as possible. Either do wars or don't, doing it half-ass does no one any favors.

...but furthermore Ukraine has shown throughout this war they can beat Russia when given the proper tools to win so why risk a nuclear incident like that when giving Ukraine ATACMs, HIMARS, F16s, Bradley’s and Abrams along with ammo works?

Read this and realize the Europeans are in even worse shape. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-america-is-out-of-ammunition?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

There’s a happy medium between us having to send our troops or the world ends and somehow Ukraine losing not being a big deal. Also I’m well aware of the horror stories on US and European ammo production and storage but both are making strides to fix it especially with Europe as the UK is ramping up production big time and France is easing up on the restrictions they were placing on the EU’s ammo shipments. Also it’s not like this is a one way street because if you follow people like Kofman you should be well aware of the horror stories coming out on Russia’s end about its lackluster production that can’t keep up with the losses they sustain

[Open Source Intelligence]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

Should surprise exactly no one. Ukraine already has become some kind of proxy war between Western democracies and dictatorships. With latest restriction since the war broke out, Russia basically has moved from autocracy into full dictatorship.

I take it more as the post-post-World War II geopolitical consensus has frayed. The post-World War II consensus was of three worlds: the First World (West and its supporting autocracies), the Second World (Soviets and allies, China), and the Third World (unaligned, which then became a synonymous term for backwards and poor). That world died in the late 80s/early 90s. I'm not sure the next world ever got coined a term but we've been living in it for 30 years. That era everyone with a few exceptions were fat and happy due to globalization, overall increase in business, money got spread around easily, not just by the U.S. but also Europe and China, and that kept the peace. Obvious exception of the Middle East. But the U.S. in this era was military policeman.

Throw into this era and the U.S. no longer wants to be military policeman. If you're a Democrat you blame Trump for this but this was driven by the aftermath of the Iraq War, was what the U.S. population wanted, and Obama was clearly on board with this take. Nature abhors a power vacuum. You saw what happened with the Iranians and Saudis fighting a proxy war first in Yemen, then a momentary coup attempt in Bahrain erroneously termed by the media as an Arab Spring rebellion, and then we got a brutal ugly war in Syria with all of the Arabian Peninsula involved. American withdrawal means people can do things themselves to keep the local power balance. We're allies with Turkey and right now they're de facto controlling and administrating sections of northern Syria. It's part of Turkey de facto if not on a de jure map. The United Arab Emirates which has a really good reputation to the lay person (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), they don't do nasty military/militia stuff openly as the Saudis do but they use their money to heavily involve themselves in local events to increase their power (for what I say below with Ethiopia they're involved). Ditto Qatar. In the 1990-2020 era they were effectively Kuwait.

Even look at benign actions you can see the 1990-2020 consensus going away. Americans are withdrawing their influence from the Horn of Africa and we saw what happened this week where Ethiopia is going to recognize Somaliland in exchange for a port on the Red Sea. In the previous era, Ethiopia paid Djibouti and would've acquiesced American and Western countries to not do such a thing. It's an action that shows the geopolitical consensus is falling apart even though it's not a military action or troops are dying.

Perhaps it took the consequences of this fraying to hit a "Western" country for people to wake up.

Not sure how it can be put back in a box. Looking at Biden I think from an international relations standpoint his presidency is just as much a rejection of Obama as it is Trump. You can make a strong case events forced his hand, but Biden has pretty aggressively reached back into that old 1980s world. I commend him compared to the complete dumbasses the younger Bush, Obama, and Trump all were in foreign policy. But once you're committed to the post-American world, how can you go back? Biden early in his presidency continued an action started in the Trump administration making a strategic step away from the 1980s toward the geopolitics of now by announcing AUKUS, which just due to its connotation was negative for European power moving forward. But look at Europe, even if Biden wants to go back to how things were, he can't, Europe as a collective is the Ottoman Empire circa 1900. They're chronically weak and their institutional power they have globally now is nowhere near their actual power in the modern-day world. Then this Russia conflict in Ukraine came and kind of saved European relevance in a way.

I have a family relation with a bachelor's and master's in history looking for a Ph.D. thesis, so maybe I'll hand this to him, but the new world is coming even if Biden who oddly here is the reactionary and fights it, his party will do the change after Biden passes on, and what it's going to look like is an interesting question. Putin's just as much a reactionary as Biden fighting against the 1990-2020 world, but he wants the post-2020 world to look more like the pre-1990 world while Biden is fighting against the post-2020 world coming into existence and keeping the post-1990 world going. The question is not so much Putin to me for Russia as it is who replaces Putin. The main problem for the U.S. and allies is I think every other country in the world wants to move on from the 1990-2020 era where the Europeans and Americans have less say in their local region, which means multipolarity but also that stuff that we consider "settled" will change. Perhaps Turkey will increase their territory taking away from Syria, perhaps Somaliland does become recognized, perhaps Ukraine and Georgia lose a third of their territory to Russia, perhaps the Iranians and Saudis can get along. Hell, perhaps Israel annexes Gaza. Not everything is on the board right now but a lot is on the board compared to the recent era.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

Should surprise exactly no one. Ukraine already has become some kind of proxy war between Western democracies and dictatorships. With latest restriction since the war broke out, Russia basically has moved from autocracy into full dictatorship.

I take it more as the post-post-World War II geopolitical consensus has frayed. The post-World War II consensus was of three worlds: the First World (West and its supporting autocracies), the Second World (Soviets and allies, China), and the Third World (unaligned, which then became a synonymous term for backwards and poor). That world died in the late 80s/early 90s. I'm not sure the next world ever got coined a term but we've been living in it for 30 years. That era everyone with a few exceptions were fat and happy due to globalization, overall increase in business, money got spread around easily, not just by the U.S. but also Europe and China, and that kept the peace. Obvious exception of the Middle East. But the U.S. in this era was military policeman.

Throw into this era and the U.S. no longer wants to be military policeman. If you're a Democrat you blame Trump for this but this was driven by the aftermath of the Iraq War, was what the U.S. population wanted, and Obama was clearly on board with this take. Nature abhors a power vacuum. You saw what happened with the Iranians and Saudis fighting a proxy war first in Yemen, then a momentary coup attempt in Bahrain erroneously termed by the media as an Arab Spring rebellion, and then we got a brutal ugly war in Syria with all of the Arabian Peninsula involved. American withdrawal means people can do things themselves to keep the local power balance. We're allies with Turkey and right now they're de facto controlling and administrating sections of northern Syria. It's part of Turkey de facto if not on a de jure map. The United Arab Emirates which has a really good reputation to the lay person (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), they don't do nasty military/militia stuff openly as the Saudis do but they use their money to heavily involve themselves in local events to increase their power (for what I say below with Ethiopia they're involved). Ditto Qatar. In the 1990-2020 era they were effectively Kuwait.

Even look at benign actions you can see the 1990-2020 consensus going away. Americans are withdrawing their influence from the Horn of Africa and we saw what happened this week where Ethiopia is going to recognize Somaliland in exchange for a port on the Red Sea. In the previous era, Ethiopia paid Djibouti and would've acquiesced American and Western countries to not do such a thing. It's an action that shows the geopolitical consensus is falling apart even though it's not a mil itary actionor troops are dying.

Perhaps it took the consequences of this fraying to hit a "Western" country for people to wake up.

Not sure how it can be put back in a box. Looking at Biden I think from an international relations standpoint his presidency is just as much a rejection of Obama as it is Trump. You can make a strong case events forced his hand, but Biden has pretty aggressively reached back into that old 1980s world.

Realistically it won't be.
The world order as it existed in the 90s, and unipolarity, is dead. The realistic way forward is trying to preserve it as much as can be sustainably done, not bringing it back part-and-parcel.

[Storr]

No one seriously following the war believed Putin's narrative that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a peace deal in early March 2022, only for US/UK to scuttle it. Nevertheless, this article definitively refutes that claim:

"According to Putin’s version of events, Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul had accepted most of Russia’s demands. “The agreements were practically reached,” he lamented months later. “Our troops left the center of Ukraine, Kyiv, to create conditions” for further talks to finalize that accord, he said.

Ukraine has vehemently disputed that account. Neither side made binding commitments in Istanbul, according to Kuleba. “There was no deal,” he said. “To engage in a conversation and to commit yourself to something are completely different things.” As for the Russian pullback, Ukrainian and American officials say Putin had no choice but to withdraw [from Kyiv Oblast and other areas of northern Ukraine] by late March because of Ukrainian military successes on the ground."

...


"In the Kremlin, Putin was certain that Washington, rather than London, had forced Zelensky to abandon talks in the hope of exhausting Russia in a protracted war. Senior Russian officials kept angrily raising this point in meetings with their American counterparts. “Utter bulls—,” a senior Biden administration official told me. “I know for a fact the United States didn’t pull the plug on that. We were watching it carefully.”

Zelensky’s new position, which hasn’t changed since, was to demand a full withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian lands conquered since 2014, including Crimea, and the prosecution of Russian officials suspected of war crimes.

“In Istanbul, we still didn’t understand the type of war that Russia was waging, its genocidal intent,” Podolyak explained. “Once we returned from Istanbul, and the Russians left the Kyiv region, we saw the beastly crimes that they had committed there. And we understood that Russia will try to annihilate Ukraine no matter what.”"

https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1743249397658308806?s=20

[jaichind]

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3631953/pentagon-press-secretary-maj-gen-pat-ryder-holds-a-press-briefing/

"Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder Holds a Press Briefing"

Q: Final one. F-16s to Ukraine, what's the latest in terms of when they would plan to show up there?

GEN. RYDER: Sure. I don't have any specific dates to provide. That training does continue in Arizona. As you know, that, you know, again, depending on the skill level of the pilot, that can range from five to eight months. And so, I would expect, you know, sometime later this year we'll start to see those pilot's graduate. But I don't have any specifics for you.

Looks like F-16 training for Ukrainian pilots is unknown but most likely a while.

[Hindsight was 2020]

SNIP

The people who push that talking point unfortunately won’t be swayed by this

[Beet]

At this point, the front line has been essentially stalemated for over a year, with no end in sight, and horrendously massive casualties. The West should frankly seek a cease-fire at the LOAC, similiar to the one negotiated on the Korean peninsula in 1953.

Neither side has to recognize the other's claims. This would have certain advantages for Ukraine. For one, it successfully defended the vast majority of its territory. It did far better than anyone expected and humiliated Russia. For two, it gives it more time to build up its defenses, rebuild its economy, and further integrate into Europe. It gives society a break from the constant death and destruction. Endless WW1-style trench warfare is just destroying an entire generation of kids for no gain, it's heartbreaking, and no one should wish this on anyone.

[PSOL]

No matter if it ended by a ceasefire, Russia will just keep on going with escalations little by little till they conquer the whole country.

[jaichind]

Not sure it’s been mentioned here yet, but the claims about NK sending missiles to Russia have apparently been confirmed: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hit-ukrainian-region-with-non-russian-missiles-governor-2024-01-05/

Does not surprise me. 

After

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20231205000300315

"S. Korea indirectly supplied more 155-mm shells for Ukraine than all European countries combined: WP"

I can see a lot closer to Russia-DPRK military cooperation in response to this and DPRK getting more advanced Russian military technology.  And yes that will also mean DPRK shifting some of their missiles to Russia.

[jaichind]

No matter if it ended by a ceasefire, Russia will just keep on going with escalations little by little till they conquer the whole country.

Russia's fear would be if they agree to a ceasefire and the conflict comes to a "close" the very next day a NATO fleet will show up in Odessa to create a fait accompli.  So a ceasefire will have to address such fears om both sides.  I just do not see how there can be such conditions being considered on both sides to get to such a ceasefire with guarantees against the worst fears on both sides.  The net result would be a protracted conflict going well into the future.

[Beet]

No matter if it ended by a ceasefire, Russia will just keep on going with escalations little by little till they conquer the whole country.

Russia's fear would be if they agree to a ceasefire and the conflict comes to a "close" the very next day a NATO fleet will show up in Odessa to create a fait accompli.  So a ceasefire will have to address such fears om both sides.  I just do not see how there can be such conditions being considered on both sides to get to such a ceasefire with guarantees against the worst fears on both sides.  The net result would be a protracted conflict going well into the future.

What's to stop a NATO fleet from showing up today if they wanted to? Nothing. Nor does one have to show up tomorrow if there's a cease-fire.

Russia may continue to poke, but the point is a significant reduction in the tempo of fighting would benefit Ukraine.