Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Hindsight was 2020]

The Times has an article out about the fallout between Zelensky and Zaluzhny and apparently the start was over Kharkiv which was actually Zelensky’s brainchild while Zaluzhny wanted to do the southern offensive in 2022
https://time.com/6693718/zelensky-valery-zaluzhny-feud-over-ukraine/

[Storr]

It isn't much and we all know how Trump's opinions (especially when it comes to individuals) can change on a dime, but yesterday Trump said he likes Zelensky:

"“The greatest salesman in history is Zelenskyi, and I like Zelenskyi. Because during the impeachment hoax, he was told that I called him with threats on the phone. And when he was asked, he replied that nothing of the kind happened. It was a very pleasant call. He could have played along, but he he didn't do that, he told the truth. So I like Zelenskyi. But that war has got to end, it is a disaster. Far more people are dying than you are reading about. And you know why you are not reading about it anymore? Because they (Ukraine) are not doing well. We got to end it. And I will get it settled," Trump said during a campaign rally."

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1756759842364989876?s=20

[jaichind]

https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-arms-production-is-in-deep-sh**t-says-belgian-ex-general/

"Europe’s arms production is in ‘deep sh**t,’ says Belgian ex-general"

"Europe’s ammo production shortfalls are a symptom of a “cultural problem” to adapt to a war-ready industry, retired general Marc Thys tells POLITICO."

The core issue is the nature of the current war is a victory of the USSR/Russia war doctrine of mass artillery.  Due to that doctrine, Russia has invested over the years in the mass production of artillery shells.  NATO  doctrine is not based on mass artillery but based on "smart" weapons.  So it is hard for the USA and EU arms manufacturers to switch toward mass production of artillery shells unless they are convinced that NATO doctrine has changed.  If not, these arms manufacturers will be left holding the bag after spending significant capital to expand  artillery production.

[jaichind]

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2510-2.html

"Planning for the Aftermath
Assessing Options for U.S. Strategy Toward Russia After the Ukraine War"

[Florida Man for Crime]

USA authorities should quickly end the war in Ukraine or Ukraine will lose more territory.

Over the course of 1121 pages of this megathread (so far) you have posted a lot of dumb things. But (aside from not being what the RAND report says), this is right up there with the dumbest of them (at least that I can recall).

The report says "USA should avoid a “long and brutal” war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. It "will have long-term and likely irreversible adverse consequences for the United States."

As per usual from you, this is NOT an accurate reflection on what the report says.


What it actually says is e.g.:

A longer, more violent war would lock in adverse consequences for U.S. interests

For example, a longer war could significantly undermine Ukraine's postwar recovery.

This is a pretty obvious point they are making. And it also does not necessarily imply that Ukraine should give up. Rather it can just as well imply that the best way to avoid a long war is to increase our aid dramatically to enable Ukraine to achieve a quick and decisive victory, rather than slow walking insufficient aid in dribs and drabs as we have been doing.


Also, nowhere does it use the phrase "long and brutal," despite you misleadingly putting it in quotation marks.

If you do a search of the word "brutal" both in the summary article and also in the 153 page PDF, the word only comes up a single time, and even then it is not the word brutal, but "brutality" (and the context is in this sentence on page 13 of the pdf "Although reconstruction and economic development are not neglected as national goals, the government’s focus is first and foremost on territorial reconquest and avenging Russia’s war crimes, occupation, and brutality."

This is just one illustration of how as per usual, you are just bad faith making sh** up.

At some point when you are literally just making stuff up, you should get sanctioned by the mods for it.

How much do you get paid to do this? Is it by the hour, or by the post? Are there any job openings?

[jaichind]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/12/house-ukraine-johnson-senate/

"Speaker Johnson rejects Senate's Israel, Ukraine aid package"

Back to the drawing board for Ukraine aid.  Look, if Biden and Dems want Ukraine aid this year they better get going on passing H.R. 2 in the Senate.

[jaichind]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-13/russia-expanding-military-edge-over-ukraine-estonian-spies-warn

"Russia Expanding Military Edge Over Ukraine, Estonian Spies Warn"

Russia will likely leverage its advantage in ammunition stockpiles this year and could occupy more Ukrainian territory if crucial aid isn’t delivered to Kyiv, according to an annual report by the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service. 
The Kremlin has about three to four times more artillery than Ukrainian forces after boosting its ammunition production to as many as 4 million units last year, up from 600,000 rounds in 2022, the report said. That gap will widen, since it’s “almost certain” that Western deliveries won’t keep pace with Russia’s output. 

This is really what I posted almost 2 years ago in terms of Russia's industrial edge in mass production of ammunition over the Collective West

UK defense thinktank Royal United Services Institute came out with "The Return of Industrial Warfare"

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare

Some of the themes mimic some of my thoughts on the need to measure ammunition burn and production rates of both sides as a proxy for the sustainability of the war for both sides.  Now that the war is no longer a war of movement the role of "smart" weapons is now less important and the article quotes a Stalin point "quantity still has a quality of its own."   The key point is the industrial capacity to produce ammunition, even if "dumb", in mass is still critical and on that point, Russia's industrial base to produce such ammunition is still very significant and that does not even count the even bigger PRC mass industrial base that in theory can eventually be used to support Russia if needed.

[jaichind]

https://www.barrons.com/news/russia-gaining-upper-hand-in-ukraine-norway-intel-4d69a86f

AFP "Russia Gaining Upper Hand In Ukraine: Norway Intel"

"In this war, Russia is currently in a stronger position than it was a year ago and is in the process of gaining the advantage," Stensones told reporters.

He said Russia "could mobilise around three times more troops than Ukraine", that "Moscow is tackling sanctions better than expected", and its industry can now produce enough munitions, combat vehicles, drones and missiles to enable its troops to "maintain their war effort all year."

[jaichind]

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/austria-seeking-end-russian-gas-import-contract-energy-minister-says-2024-02-12/

"Austria seeking to end Russian gas import contract, energy minister says"

Spoiler alert: They will not.  And even if the nominally reduce such dependency on piped Russian gas the alternative is Russian LNG through third parties especially now that Biden is making it harder for USA to expand its LNG exports.

[Woody]

Ihor Mosiychuk (Former deputy commander of Azov). Russians struck the 3rd assault brigade in Selidovo. They were the Azov reinforcements sent by Syrskyi on their way to Avdiivka.

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1757385569615696147
https://twitter.com/distant_earth83/status/1757357059878588915

[Woody]

https://t.me/s/mosiychuk72

"Selidovo

The arrivals included cluster munitions...
It's loud now too...

There is still no accurate information on the dead and wounded... I am waiting for accurate data from the place"

[jaichind]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/china-and-russia-no-longer-perceived-as-top-security-threats-research-finds.html

"China and Russia no longer perceived as top security threats, research finds"

China and Russia are considered less of a threat to Western populations now than a year ago, according to a new study which points to rising concern around non-traditional risks.
Mass migration due to war or climate change and the rise of radical Islam now rank among the top perceived risks among G7 countries.
The majority of respondents in Western countries also said they see China and the Global South becoming more powerful over the coming decade, while Western powers are more likely to stagnate or decline.

Even in Germany after a couple of years of MSM drumming up the Russia threat the perception of Russia as a threat to Germany is declining.  I guess every narrative has a saturation and reversion to the mean point.

[bilaps]

Looks like a big hit on Selidovo.

[Hindsight was 2020]

[UA] https://t.me/stanislav_osman/4797
> I just talked to the dead from the Selydove "poligon" [training ground], I waited for 2 hours until they prepare for the one-two [I have no idea, some boxing thing?].
> They say everything is ok, nice hit.

This rumor of a Selydove strike that are two biggest resident vatniks are jumping for joy on is already getting push back plus a hit that big without videos being leaked on tg would be a massive anomaly

[Woody]

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1757373612967735300

[bilaps]

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1757373612967735300

Interesting pictures in this report, interesting colors and murals and of course changed the name of the city into some "Avdiivka".

[Hindsight was 2020]

Here we go again. Waste heap vol 15. Brain function unable to process information from both sides. If Andrew Perpetua didn't endorse it, it never happened. Imagine living in that sort of environment incapable of processing basic thing outside of narrow scope, like a horse with blinkers. Pathetic.

Says the person who called a UN report on Russian war crimes in Ukraine “fake news”

If Nazi simp says this once more it won't make it truth. He only repeated it like 20 times in his last 3 posts.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=469771.msg9284456#msg9284456
Hmm let’s see what we got here:

Says the guy calling the country lead by the Jewish president with holocaust surviving grandparents “Nazis” while hand waving the country they support invoking blood and soil rhetoric, most effective fighting force being a group that loves Nazis so much they named their organization after Richard Wagner and recently had a modern day Pogroms play out

This is like when racist person says "i'm not racist, I have friend of colour". Zelensky could be Jewish, or he could be Martian, it doesn't matter. What matter is what culture he nurtures in the country and in armed forces.

Talking about pogroms, what's real pogrom is what happening in Gaza right now, you couldn't find a better example. Some Muslim gathering in airport targetting Jewish people even though regrettable isn't a pogrom. And police intervened, those idiots got arrested tomorrow, but suuuure don't let facts disturb your dumb narrative

You mean like the culture that says the nations that boarder you are “little Russians” whose ethnicities and languages were just invented by the West? The culture that encourages soldiers to castrate captured pows so they “can’t continue their blood”? The culture that has overseen the kidnapping of almost a million kids who are being beaten and abused in foster homes to unlearn their language? The the grossest  part is you know all about ^this^ because you know who people like Dmitry Utkin or Defmon are and yet you still downplay/defend it like a good little Z simp

You. Are. Making. Stuff. Up.

You don't know how to defend Ukrainian record so you are complying most awful stories you can remember some idiot posred on some twitter account.

I’m making up the kidnap kids?
I’m making this up? https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-psychologist-sexual-violence-ukrainian-soldiers-endured-the-times-2023-6?amp
I’m making this up? https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/ukraine-children-sent-russia-re-education-camps
Or this? https://www.npr.org/2022/04/30/1093339262/ukraine-russia-rape-war-crimes
Or this? https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/report-raoul-wallenberg-centre-for-human-rights-russia-genocide-in-ukraine/
Or this? https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-host-sergey-mardan-ukrainian-1838909
This made up? https://time.com/6278148/russia-erase-ukrainian-identity/

And your response:

The day I beleive Guardian and all you Business Insiders is the day I beleive Russians killed all those people in Konstantinovka with an air defense missile cpming from the west

[bilaps]

Obviously you have hard time understanding basic things. Like words. And sentences. Which are group of words.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Obviously you have hard time understanding basic things. Like words. And sentences. Which are group of words.

The link by human rights organization that UN works with is highlighted because I knew you’d play that game as a bad faith troll

[bilaps]

Ok. So it's not a UN report only organization which works with UN.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Ok. So it's not a UN report only organization which works with UN.

Before you play a dumb semantics game, the UN did a verbatim report of its very own but the HRO is the original source
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142617#:~:text=A%20new%20UN%20report%20has,a%20study%20issued%20in%20March.

[bilaps]

Again, you are not intentionally or unintentionally reading the posts which yourself wrote or what I wrote in response. You're saying 1000s of children, I see here 31 child mentioned for example.

So, no, I have never denied claims of war crimes being committed by either side in almost any conflict in human history. You just don't want to accept that much of it is made up war propaganda. And that Ukrainians have committed crimes as well. It's pointless really.

[jaichind]

https://www.wsj.com/world/zelenskys-military-shake-up-ties-him-to-battlefield-performance-8c94399d

"Zelensky's Move Ties Him to Battlefield"

"Zelensky took responsibility for everything now -- both the political and military side," said independent Ukrainian political analyst Mykola Davydiuk.

This is potentially dangerous for Ukraine.  The Zelensky-Syrskyi pair is more likely to be much more aggressive and hardliner than an alternative Poroshenko-Zaluzhny pair.  This is because the former pair has the downside of not being ethnically Ukrainian which makes them more suspect in the eyes of the Ukrainian nationalists.   To compensate for this perception the Zelensky-Syrskyi pair is much more likely to avoid making tactical retreats to preserve their forces to fight another day since doing so might create the perception that they are "weak" on the Russians.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.wsj.com/world/zelenskys-military-shake-up-ties-him-to-battlefield-performance-8c94399d

"Zelensky's Move Ties Him to Battlefield"

"Zelensky took responsibility for everything now -- both the political and military side," said independent Ukrainian political analyst Mykola Davydiuk.

This is potentially dangerous for Ukraine.  The Zelensky-Syrskyi pair is more likely to be much more aggressive and hardliner than an alternative Poroshenko-Zaluzhny pair.  This is because the former pair has the downside of not being ethnically Ukrainian which makes them more suspect in the eyes of the Ukrainian nationalists.   To compensate for this perception the Zelensky-Syrskyi pair is much more likely to avoid making tactical retreats to preserve their forces to fight another day since doing so might create the perception that they are "weak" on the Russians.

Ukrainian attitudes towards Zelensky are surprisingly cool. His approvals have fallen from 2022 highs.
It could sink further if he tales more responsibility for what's going on the ground and it doesn't go well, the fighting against the Russians.
Getting rid of Zaluzhny was a real political risk.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Again, you are not intentionally or unintentionally reading the posts which yourself wrote or what I wrote in response. You're saying 1000s of children, I see here 31 child mentioned for example.

So, no, I have never denied claims of war crimes being committed by either side in almost any conflict in human history. You just don't want to accept that much of it is made up war propaganda. And that Ukrainians have committed crimes as well. It's pointless really.

I have seen with my own eyes Russian troops execute surrendering Ukrainian soldiers, I have seen the images of returned Ukrainian pows who look like Holocaust survivors, I saw the images of Bucha. Putin got indicted for the kidnapping of thousands of kids in the ICC whose evidence is documented. Take your “war propaganda” and “both sides” crap and stick it