Ukraine Crisis

[Johnny Blade]

Putin is, quite simply, a thug

So he understood that the western leaders would be willing to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder.

[Calilasseia]

More a case of using his own people as cannon fodder, if you check the attrition statistics.

Here's a suitable rundown of the statistics. Ukraine has lost around 30,000 soldiers according to estimates, but Russia has lost 315,000 soldiers killed or wounded. This is a disaster for the Red Army.

Plus, as has already been covered at length here, the Ukrainians have pulled off some spectacular successes (sinking of the Moskva, forcing the Russian Navy to run as far away as the Sea of Azov), while the Russians have racked up numerous spectacular failures. Such as that incident where, of all people, a Spetznaz commander shared photos of his platoon's bivouac on social media, complete with precise geolocation data ... which the Ukrainians thanked him for by shelling the crap out of his bivouac a few hours later.

There's also the hilarity involved in seeing Russian air to surface missiles exhibit a strange preference for blowing up outdoor toilets in Ukraine, and the Russians being seemingly unable to prevent Ukrainian drone strikes deep into Russian territory. The latest incursion struck an air base near Murmansk, fully 1,800 km from tne Ukraine-Russia border.

Meanwhile, Red Army morale is probably far from optimal, as a result of their armoured losses alone. Losing one or two tanks in Ukraine could be written off as bad luck. Losing three thousand of them looks like ineptness on a grand scale.

[Rumraket]

Putin is, quite simply, a thug

So he understood that the western leaders would be willing to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder.

Ahh the textbook kremlin talking point. What a surprise to see you regurgitating that one here. Truly. Never saw it coming. Three rubles have been deposited to your account for defense of Dear Leader on a wester message board.

The Ukrainian people are literally fighting for their freedom to not be forced to liver under a dictatorship where opposition politicians and political activists, among other concerned citizens mysteriously seem to fall out of hospital windows, and every one of us who support the Ukrainian people with whatever weapons, equipment, training, humanitarian aid and so on that we can, should be proud of it.

For once the west is involved in a conflict where we are on the moral right side instead of simply pursuing another american oil-adventure in the middle east. These people are actually fighting for their right to self-governance, to preserve their territorial integrity, and for the continued ability of their people to hold free and fair elections. To not end up under the control of the Putin clepto-oligarchy where people who dare question the rule of Dear Leader somehow keep ending up dead.

[Tortured_Genius]

Putin's gambling on a Trump "win" in November (either through an election victory or coup) and his useful idiot turning off the weapons supply.

FWIW I think he's had it in any case. With the USA out of the game the European NATO members would be under no constraint not to supply Ukraine with the "good stuff" with no obligation to limit the use the longer range weapons within Ukraine. (So far they've mostly had short to medium range 1980's tech).

Consequently I wouldn't be at all surprised if Russian TV will be showing Swan Lake later this year or early next year as the bloviating orange cretin fails to deliver.

[Calilasseia]

If we're successful at keeping the orange scrotum out of the White House, I suspect it won't be long before the various factions simmering beneath the surface start playing that favourite game of would be Tsars - chess with hand grenades.

[Johnny Blade]

Here's a suitable rundown of the statistics. Ukraine has lost around 30,000 soldiers according to estimates, but Russia has lost 315,000 soldiers killed or wounded. This is a disaster for the Red Army.

I hope it is only 30,000 and not more. But to me, these numbers dont really add up.
Ukraine had 900,000 active military soldiers and 1.2 million reservists at the beginning of the war. If they are killing 10 russian soldiers for each ukranian soldier that dies then how is it that Ukraine is running out of soldiers? Why do they say they need to DRAFT another 500,000 this year?

[Johnny Blade]

Putin is, quite simply, a thug

So he understood that the western leaders would be willing to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder.

Ahh the textbook kremlin talking point. What a surprise to see you regurgitating that one here. Truly. Never saw it coming. Three rubles have been deposited to your account for defense of Dear Leader on a wester message board.

The Ukrainian people are literally fighting for their freedom to not be forced to liver under a dictatorship where opposition politicians and political activists, among other concerned citizens mysteriously seem to fall out of hospital windows, and every one of us who support the Ukrainian people with whatever weapons, equipment, training, humanitarian aid and so on that we can, should be proud of it.

How many Ukrainian people do you actually know? A friend of mine actually organizes events that are specifically marketed towards Russians and Ukrainians; every weekend and hundreds of people show up and no one is fighting. We even have Chechen immigrants doing security for us. Most Ukrainians refugees I talk to, just want to go back home. And by home, they don't mean the Donbas, they just mean Ukraine.

For once the west is involved in a conflict where we are on the moral right side instead of simply pursuing another american oil-adventure in the middle east.

The conflict has already solved itself. Russia doesn't have the money to rebuild and take over a war-destroyed Ukraine, even if it wanted to. They just want the Donbas for whatever reason. (Buffer zone against Nato once Ukraine joins?) I mean, OF COURSE the west is going to tell Russia "NO! You can't have it!" That's easy for us to do. Good luck trying to find some Ukrainians to die for you! The Donbas is a shit hole and Europe has already welcomed Ukrainians with open arms. Problem solved. The people have already "voted with their feet" on this issue (that's all they can do). The BBC reported earlier this year that an estimated 650,000 have already fled the Ukraine to avoid being drafted. I suspect the real number is probably closer to one million. How many more military aged men wanted to leave but were unable? Keep in mind THE POOR WILL BE SENT TO DIE FIRST. That is the nature of a military draft whenever you have a country with a struggling economy.

https://www.ft.com/content/d7e95021-df9 ... 8c3eb8d4ef
-"Data on Ukraine’s male population, shared by the parliamentary economics committee, shows that of 11.1mn Ukrainian men aged between 25 and 60, only an estimated 3.7mn are eligible for mobilisation. The others are fighting, disabled, abroad or considered critical workers.
Authorities are also conscious of the need to tread carefully to avoid driving taxpaying citizens abroad or to go into hiding, depriving Kyiv of much-needed revenue."

There is no moral high ground here, on either side. It's just pointless killing. It's time for it to end.

These people are actually fighting for their right to self-governance, to preserve their territorial integrity, and for the continued ability of their people to hold free and fair elections. To not end up under the control of the Putin clepto-oligarchy where people who dare question the rule of Dear Leader somehow keep ending up dead.

Putin will be dead soon enough. The Ukrainian people seem to have already decided that Donbas is not worth the war and I can't say I blame them. Holding the people hostage on both sides and forcing them to fight and kill each other doesn't seem like a very democratic answer to me.

[Calilasseia]

If the Ukrainians didn't want to fight, they would have fallen some time ago.

By the way, how many Russians are leaving the country to avoid being drafted into the Red Army?

[Johnny Blade]

If the Ukrainians didn't want to fight, they would have fallen some time ago.

Good! They saved their country! And they did it without starting a world war! So we do we do now? Lock them all inside and make them fight some more? Another 10 or 20 years maybe?

By the way, how many Russians are leaving the country to avoid being drafted into the Red Army?

A lot! And good for them!
Why? It's not a pissing contest, Calilasseia. It's time for it end. No reason for anyone else to get their arms and legs blown off, on either side.

[Rumraket]

Putin is, quite simply, a thug

So he understood that the western leaders would be willing to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder.

Ahh the textbook kremlin talking point. What a surprise to see you regurgitating that one here. Truly. Never saw it coming. Three rubles have been deposited to your account for defense of Dear Leader on a wester message board.

The Ukrainian people are literally fighting for their freedom to not be forced to liver under a dictatorship where opposition politicians and political activists, among other concerned citizens mysteriously seem to fall out of hospital windows, and every one of us who support the Ukrainian people with whatever weapons, equipment, training, humanitarian aid and so on that we can, should be proud of it.

How many Ukrainian people do you actually know? A friend of mine actually organizes events that are specifically marketed towards Russians and Ukrainians; every weekend and hundreds of people show up and no one is fighting. We even have Chechen immigrants doing security for us. Most Ukrainians refugees I talk to, just want to go back home. And by home, they don't mean the Donbas, they just mean Ukraine.

Obviously any rational person would rather have peace than war if they could wave a magic wand and stop Russia from attacking Ukraine and pick up their shit and leave all of Ukrainian territory. But there are no magic wands, and rational people don't want to live under Putin rule, which is evident from the fact of how hard the people of Ukraine has risen up to defend their nation. To these people, their freedom is worth fighting for. I can only respect them for that, and as long as they want to continue fighting I think we should support them.

For once the west is involved in a conflict where we are on the moral right side instead of simply pursuing another american oil-adventure in the middle east.

The conflict has already solved itself. Russia doesn't have the money to rebuild and take over a war-destroyed Ukraine, even if it wanted to. They just want the Donbas for whatever reason. (Buffer zone against Nato once Ukraine joins?) I mean, OF COURSE the west is going to tell Russia "NO! You can't have it!"

That's fantastically idiotic. The west isn't MAKING Ukraine fight Russia, the Ukrainian people rose up to defend their country, and we are simply helping them. The decision to continue fighting lies ultimately with the Ukrainian people as a whole. Unlike Russia which is a dictatorship pretending to be a democracy, Ukraine is a genuine democracy.

There is no need for a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. Ukraine could have probably remained neutral and never joined NATO if Russia had never invaded them in the first place. But now that the entire world has realized Russia is an aggressor with Putin being high on old Soviet propaganda, it's become obvious why other countries want to join NATO to get protection.

That's easy for us to do. Good luck trying to find some Ukrainians to die for you!

We''re not making Ukrainians do anything. Nobody is forcing Ukraine to fight a war they don't want to (well, except the country that invaded them, Russia). They are fighting for their own country, and my country (Denmark), like many others is simply giving them weapons, supporting them financially, with training etc.

If the Ukrainian people decided tomorrow that they didn't want to fight anymore, I would fully support them. It's their country, so it's their decision. I just support their fight because I think they have a right to defend themselves. They are the ones being attacked by a fucking shithole run by a sociopath with delusions of Soviet grandeur, and I have to respect the Ukrainian people for both being able and willing to put up a fight against a much larger nuclear-armed aggressor.

The Donbas is a shit hole and Europe has already welcomed Ukrainians with open arms. Problem solved. The people have already "voted with their feet" on this issue (that's all they can do).

Ahh yes let the Ukrainian people abandon Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea to live under a Russian dictatorship. Problem solved.

The BBC reported earlier this year that an estimated 650,000 have already fled the Ukraine to avoid being drafted. I suspect the real number is probably closer to one million. How many more military aged men wanted to leave but were unable? Keep in mind THE POOR WILL BE SENT TO DIE FIRST. That is the nature of a military draft whenever you have a country with a struggling economy.

https://www.ft.com/content/d7e95021-df9 ... 8c3eb8d4ef
-"Data on Ukraine’s male population, shared by the parliamentary economics committee, shows that of 11.1mn Ukrainian men aged between 25 and 60, only an estimated 3.7mn are eligible for mobilisation. The others are fighting, disabled, abroad or considered critical workers.
Authorities are also conscious of the need to tread carefully to avoid driving taxpaying citizens abroad or to go into hiding, depriving Kyiv of much-needed revenue."

So Ukraine should just give up because lots of people fled both Russia and Ukraine and because it's predominantly lower-income people fighting in the armed forces (incidentally true for all countries on Earth, partly because lower income make up the majority of a country's population)? That makes no sense.

None of that is a good argument for why Ukraine should give up and start negotiating to give away a large portion of their territory, not to mention the other obscene demands Russia will put on them (such as disarmament) in return for them simply stopping their continued aggression and letting them keep the land they already stole from Ukraine.

Who in the right mind would agree to such terms? Look, some wars are really worth fighting, because the long-term consequences of the alternative are going to be much worse. Wars are not just about how many people die on the front lines. They have consequences much longer into the future in terms of everything from living conditions of the people in the occupied territories (who are being murdered for being opposition to Putin rule), to international political and economics (what kind of world do we create if we just accept that big countries can invade and steal land from their neighbors?), to mention a few obvious ones.

There is no moral high ground here, on either side. It's just pointless killing. It's time for it to end.

Of course there is. Russia is the aggressor having invaded a neighboring country for no good reason, to try to control and brainwash their population and control their natural resources and exploit it economically. This just remains an unassailable fact. The Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom and right to self-governance, and they are free to decide for how long they want to continue.

But so is Russia. Russia can in point of fact simply decide to pull back all their forces and stop invading Ukraine, and give back all the territory they have stolen. That would be a way more morally correct and just end to the war. For Russia to abandon their land-grab project.

These people are actually fighting for their right to self-governance, to preserve their territorial integrity, and for the continued ability of their people to hold free and fair elections. To not end up under the control of the Putin clepto-oligarchy where people who dare question the rule of Dear Leader somehow keep ending up dead.

Putin will be dead soon enough. The Ukrainian people seem to have already decided that Donbas is not worth the war and I can't say I blame them.

No they haven't. You don't seem to understand that this is actually a war of attrition. They just haven't had the same willingness to send people in their hundreds of thousands to their deaths in Russian-style meatwave assaults to capture a few villages. This is an operational and strategic calculation, partly out of necessity, but also because it shows Ukraine values human lives more than Russia does. It doesn't mean they have given up on Donbas, it just means they have picked a more robust long-term strategy to retake it.

Holding the people hostage on both sides and forcing them to fight and kill each other doesn't seem like a very democratic answer to me.

Nobody other than Russia is forcing the Ukrainian people to fight this war. The Ukrainian people can end the war if they want, the West isn't making them fight it. Again, we are simply providing them with weapons and various forms of aid. The decision for whether to actually go into battle against the Russian aggressors lies entirely with Ukraine. Russia is the ones invading Ukraine, so the people of Ukraine is obviously feeling the need to defend themselves. Understandably so, given that Russia is a dictatorship that murders it's own people for speaking against Dear Leader Putin.

I fully support the decision of the Ukrainian people to continue fighting for the country and their freedom, and I think we should continue to give them weapons and other forms of aid, because I think their fight is right and just.

[Rumraket]

If the Ukrainians didn't want to fight, they would have fallen some time ago.

Good! They saved their country!

80% of it. Russia is currently occupying a large portion, and is still actively trying to take more. They want the whole thing if possible, and if they can't they want to put pressure on Ukraine to accept a shitty deal that gives away 25% of their territory, together with some absurd "security guarantees" that will make Ukraine a de-facto Russian vassal state like Belarus.

And they did it without starting a world war! So we do we do now? Lock them all inside and make them fight some more? Another 10 or 20 years maybe?

Nobody is forcing Ukraine to fight, other than Russia. The only actor here that has a moral obligation to end the fighting is Russia. They are the aggressor that have invaded another country to try and steal and control it. They still have lots of Ukrainian territory under Russian control. They should give it back and leave.

By the way, how many Russians are leaving the country to avoid being drafted into the Red Army?

A lot! And good for them!
Why? It's not a pissing contest, Calilasseia. It's time for it end. No reason for anyone else to get their arms and legs blown off, on either side.

But that just isn't true. There ARE reasons for the fighting to continue. There are the people already now living under Russian dictatorship rule, the long-term economic and international political consequences from allowing and accepting this sort of cleptocratic aggression, and then there is the fact that Russia can't afford to keep fighting a western-backed Ukraine for long, which will ultimately put pressure on them to abandon their cleptocratic project.

From a strategic standpoint Ukraine isn't the country that should be thinking of giving up, Russia is. You've fallen for Russian misinformation. The idea that Ukraine should give up now and go to the negotiating table and accept a shit deal is the best result Putin can presently hope for, which will further embolden him of course.

[Johnny Blade]

. From a strategic standpoint Ukraine isn't the country that should be thinking of giving up, Russia is. You've fallen for Russian misinformation. The idea that Ukraine should give up now and go to the negotiating table and accept a shit deal is the best result Putin can presently hope for, which will further embolden him of course.

Well, I hope you are right.

[Alan C]

Quite a bit of smekalka



Can skip to 7:20 where the topic of Russian incompetence here in it's many forms is discussed.

[Rumraket]

Anders Puck Nielsen with another excellent analysis of Ukraine's push into Kursk:

[Calilasseia]

I'm tempted to suggest that he's revealing a bit too much on this matter into the public domain. Discussing such issues in private out of earshot of the Russians is pertinent activity. Giving the Russians an insight into our analysis, on the other hand, I would avoid.

As I've stated before, if your enemy is shooting himself in the foot, you let him do so unimpeded. If your enemy is incompetent, your job is to capitalise upon that, not educate the enemy to be a better and more dangerous opponent. Your interests are served by ensuring that your enemy remains visible, stupid and easy to deal with.

If your enemy is so stupid, that they've invented a whole new word to encapsulate that stupidity, so much the better.

[Tortured_Genius]

I'm tempted to suggest that he's revealing a bit too much on this matter into the public domain. Discussing such issues in private out of earshot of the Russians is pertinent activity. Giving the Russians an insight into our analysis, on the other hand, I would avoid.

If Putin and his cronies paid a blind bit of attention to what was being said outside their own little information silo they'd never have invaded Ukraine in the first place. As it is, I think we can be safe in the assumption that even if a master plan that would enable Putin to conquer the world were to be published in the public domain it would get lost among the noise being generated by bot farms, spam armies and an amazingly ignorant portion of humanity.

Let's face it, in a world where Putin will pay more attention to Donald Trump, we don't need to worry about some anonymous latter-day Sun Tzu dropping strategy hints online.

[Calilasseia]

One of the weirder aspects of this whole affair, of course, being that Putin himself hails from a background in the intelligence services. He spent much of his adult life working withing the former KGB, an organisation that enjoyed a few notable Cold War successes, in spite of its internal bureaucracy and sometimes dangerous connection with the Politburo.

One of the pre-requisites for even modest levels of success in the world of intelligence agencies, is development of an effective means of distinguishing between fact and bullshit. Said faculty development being particularly imperative, in an environment populated by competitors seeking actively to undermine your operations via active and relentless deception.

Putin must surely know this. If he doesn't, it points to some very interesting mental processes operating in Russian intelligence services. Possibly something along the lines of stepwise censorship of embarrassing facts for different stages of the command chain. Junior minion publishes a report for immediate supervisor, who snips out a small part he knows his immediate supervisor won't want to see, and so on and so forth until the original report reaches the very top, and is mangled beyond recognition.

There's also a likely contribution from that well known Soviet malaise of having to look busy and occupied in the presence of higher ups, even if nothing immediately demands attention and effort. Which could result in editing for editing's sake messing with reports.

Putin has spent time in the past, at sufficiently humble levels of the command chain, to know all of this, and how it could adversely effect policy and strategy decisions. Anyone cynical enough to succeed in Russian "chess with hand grenades" politics, with that background knowledge, should be operating accordingly.

So the question to be asked is ... why is Putin not doing this?

The heart of power in Russia is, from where I'm looking, affected by a particularly nasty variety of political coronary disease. People who are ruthless enough to further their own position on the power chessboard, seem to forget all the tricks they applied thereto, when grappling with admin or military problems that in some cases demand a similar level of ruthlessness. Though that's probably an inevitable outcome when the system favours the participation of at least partly chaotic sociopaths.

But someone, somewhere in this mess must surely be thinking that there's a better way of conducting business, and trying to free up in their own small but possibly consequential manner the logjam of spanners in the political machine cogs? There must be some basic level of competence still within the system, or it would have disappeared completely up its own arse some time ago. If there is, it's operating at tickover level, and that's going to have consequences for Putin's dreams.

[Alan C]

Is there anything going along the lines of Putler surrounding himself with yes men with an appropriate combination of loyalty and competence sufficient to not present a challenge to his authority, that such a balance is weighted more towards loyalty/low ambition than competence?
Similar to what Mango Mussolini favours?

[Rumraket]

The list of people soon to fall out of windows is proportional to the Ukrainian advance in Kursk it seems:

qriuqndukcid1.jpeg (554.21 KiB) Viewed 310 times

[Cito di Pense]

Putin yesterday: «We are watching with great pain and concern the humanitarian catastrophe that unfolded in Palestine. We are doing everything to support the Palestinian people.

— What about people from Kursk Oblast?

Putin: "Is there a threat to the Palestinian people in the Kursk Oblast?"

https://www.youtube.com/@daniilorain/community

This fellow's dry humor makes me smile with every new post and video: