This.
And additionally, most answers I’ve seen seem to be predicated on the assumption that Putin is predictable.
I was in the military during the cold war and we were generally comfortable in the assumption that the USSR wouldn’t just “lose it” for some arbitrary, impulsive reason. But now is much different.
As I mentioned earlier, what if Putin demands the lifting of all sanctions “or else”?
Or what if Putin demands that all NATO non-domestic military forces withdraw to their own respective countries, or else?
I would hope the West would realize that by that point, caving in would literally mean Putin gets the world on a silver platter at nuclear gunpoint.
“Hey Apple, build 10 factories in Moscow or else”
“South Korea, build seven foundries in Nizniy Novgorod or else”
“Switzerland, gimme a thousand tons of gold right now”
back to Russia.
The UN should be blunt and state this has to stop and Russia will no longer be allowed to attack the Ukraine. Additional force will continue to be applied to stop it.
They did. The vote was 141 to 5 in early March. If there is another vote, Russia will be just as impacted and moved as they were by the first vote. There is no solution to this problem that doesn’t involve Putin having a massive and permanent demotion.
Interesting fact for the day:
Russian forces are only about three miles away from New York.
New York, Ukraine, that is.
Gen Wesley Clark describes the upcoming escalation in Eastern Ukraine.
It’s going to be a different type of battle. It’s open battlefield warfare. Tanks against tanks. Air support is crucial. Imho I’m not sure if Ukraine is ready.
Dnipro will be a key city. I hope Ukraine is bolstering defenses. The shit will be hitting the fan. The eastern area could be lost if Ukrainian forces get encircled.
Another Twitter account of an American fighting in Ukraine:
https://twitter.com/RipRawlings
Previously posted one:
4 posts were merged into an existing topic: Outcome of nuclear escalation
Please, lets keep the Nuclear conjecture in the other thread.
From a couple of days ago:
The Oryx Russian tank loss count is currently at 425, so it sounds like the backlog is growing.
Farmers are notoriously slow about completing their paperwork.
According to the Magazine “The Week”- Russian precision guided missiles are failing at a 50-60% rate.
Deferred maintenance due to corruption and incompetence, I suspect.
There’s a site that turns the Oryx data into graphs, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the graphs, especially the total count, indicate the speed at which the small Oryx team can process the photos and videos, rather than indicating ebbs and flows of materiel losses over time.
There seem to have been ambushes against the retreating Russian forces in the north. The Russian departure is also allowing new, previously unseen Russian vehicle wrecks to be documented.
I fear that Oryx could be working on their backlog for some time to come.
It would be a shame if all of the Russians were killed before making it to the border.
The situation in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson is interesting. It’s on the north side of the Dnieper river and the bridges across it, which are the Russian forces only means of escape, are on the outskirts/outside the city. The Ukrainian army approaches, the citizens of Kherson are hostile. The Russian troops there must be very nervous about getting cut off, which would force their surrender.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has said that the invaders are preparing to leave Kherson:
It’s in Ukrainian, so I can’t get the context for this - whether the Russians are willingly withdrawing or whether they’re about to get kicked out.
Well, calling it a country-sized concentration camp is a bit off. The Soviets held Ukraine and the Caspian region from the outset, as they were vassal divisions of the Tsarist Russian Empire. For that matter, most of Siberia is questionably Russia, but they have been there so long that it is a bit like questioning whether the Dakotas belong in the US or Nunavut in Canada.
The Holodomor was in the late 1920s, not during the Cold War. Ukraine was a Soviet state for existence of the USSR, Leonid Breshnev was born there, and Eisenstein’s famous Battleship Potemkin takes place in Odessa. Ukraine was not ceded to the Soviets after WWII – it was already a Soviet state, partly by dint of being a part of the Russian Empire.
By contrast, we allow China to own Tibet without the same breadth of tradition because doing anything about that is next to impossible. But Ukraine established itself as an independent state and there is no logical reason to concede that it should be controlled by Russia, even with the extensive history of it being in the sphere of the Russian Empire, and helping them keeping their independence is presently far more realistic than trying to help Tibet wrest itself away from China.
The next phase of the war will be interesting. This is where Ukraine can potentially lose. They have to be careful of being overconfident and giving Russia a set piece or pitched battle in the east. That’s the kind of fight that would favour Russia. I think Ukraine is smart enough to avoid it, but if I were Russia, I would try to goad Ukraine into coming and taking the east back.
Why else do you think that Russia is executing unarmed civilians and raping women? This is part of their plan.
The Ukrainians will likely need to face a pitched battle now. In the initial invasion, Russian forces were spread out wide, like a blanket, allowing more opportunity for ambushes and attacks on supply lines. Now, the Russians are concentrating their forces, like the point of a spear, to try and push south of Izium to encircle the Ukrainian troops in the Donbas. This thrust coming from the north will need to be stopped, which will require a more conventional battle, although there could still be opportunities to attack the supply line to this thrust, or even cut it off.