Russia-Ukrainian War

[Sweet]

2 hours ago, Dinar said:

John is very emotional when it comes to the Russia/Ukraine war, and like many people immediately gets angry when he hears something that he disagrees with.   I know quite a few family friends with whom I avoid discussing the war since I don't want to get into a fist fights.  People cannot separation passion/what they wish would happen, from reality.

I’m European (British) and feel strongly that we should help Ukraine.  I’m very grateful for the US and all the help they provide to Europe - in return they very often get looked down on by snooty Europeans.

 

I don’t agree that the US has given too much and should stop giving money, I think it’s more correct to say we Europeans have given too little.  With respect to money I think Trump is right, the Europeans need to do more, however at the CNN town hall he refused to say he supported Ukraine and wanted them to win - a strange omission.

 

 

[Xerxes]

@Spekulatius

 

what got me animated this week is the report about Patriot intercepting an hypersonic flying Dagger. 
 

couple of days later today, more information came about. That the Dagger was being aimed at the battery location. 
 

The could/May explain it. When missiles are going head to head, there is a higher chance of interception. Otherwise how can a Patriot catch an hypersonic missile. 
 

looking forward to Aviation Week report on this. 

[cubsfan]

5 minutes ago, Sweet said:

I’m European (British) and feel strongly that we should help Ukraine.  I’m very grateful for the US and all the help they provide to Europe - in return they very often get looked down on by snooty Europeans.

 

I don’t agree that the US has given too much and should stop giving money, I think it’s more correct to say we Europeans have given too little.  With respect to money I think Trump is right, the Europeans need to do more, however at the CNN town hall he refused to say he supported Ukraine and wanted them to win - a strange omission.

 

 

Well I think that’s exactly right. Europe suffered terribly during WWII - the US suffered not at all in terms of catastrophic civilian deaths. So there has been plenty of sacrifice on both sides. The British fought the entire war in both the European and Pacific theaters paying a massive price.

 

Europe and the US need each other if we’re to counter Russian and Chinese aggression. Let’s hope there is a renewed understanding for both.

[aws]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-used-u-k-missiles-to-strike-russian-controlled-territory-russia-claims-1cf7c936?mod=mhp

 

Biggest loss of aircraft for Russia since the start of the war. Twitter is abuzz with talks of trigger happy Russian air defense, scared by the start of a Ukraine offensive, shooting down their own aircraft well behind the front lines. However it is happening I'm all for it. 

[Spekulatius]

Pretty good summary how Putin thinks about the end game:

The West is portrait as satanists in Russian TV.

The war according to Russian propaganda will last a long time ( a change from the special operations mantra early on)

Russians is not fighting Ukraine, they are fighting NATO.

Putin is afraid for his own life.

The opinions on whether Putin nuclear weapons are mixed.

Ukraine is not a country, it belongs to Russia.

 

[John Hjorth]

Vladimir Putin will eventually meet his fate and it won't be pretty, but I feel quite sure it will be violent. He hasn't even been able to take an European non-NATO member country by brute force, what should be next?

[Spekulatius]

Moldova leaving the russian lead commonwealth club :

https://tass.com/world/1617469

 

Interesting, they denied leaving just in November last year.

[james22]

We know that Putin is stacking his inner circle with sycophants for quite some time. ...

 

The two personalities that matter the most, the first one is the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, who is arguably the most incompetent person in the Russian government right now.

 

And he’s obviously in charge of the broader battle plan and the entire defense industry. And we now know that Shoigu has probably stolen personally one-third of the Russian budget that was appropriated for defense equipment manufacturer over the last several years, and probably one-third of a second third was stolen by his underlings. So whenever you see the Russians just not having enough equipment to do anything meaningful, it’s probably his fault.

 

And he’s the one in charge of the battle plan, and he’s the one who indicated there were going to be a lot more weapons shipments.

 

The second defense official, who arguably rivals Shoigu with his military incompetence, is the guy who runs the Wagner Group, Dmitry Rogozin. This guy was literally a caterer until a few years ago and then got a little bit of money from the Russian government in order to build up this parallel military group that we know as Wagner that would go around the world hiring itself as mercenaries and committing war crimes when the local governments didn’t want to.

 

That doesn’t mean he can’t run a paramilitary organization, but it means he has no experience either managing or leading or participating in a military operation himself.

 

https://zeihan.com/ukraine-war-qa-series-what-happened-to-the-500k-russian-soldiers/

 

LOL

[Xerxes]

Modern day Sergei Shoigu is as incompetent as Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel and Marshal Voroshilov

 

meaning that they are not there for their expertise but for their loyalty. 

[ValueArb]

2 hours ago, Xerxes said:

Modern day Sergei Shoigu is as incompetent as Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel and Marshal Voroshilov

 

meaning that they are not there for their expertise but for their loyalty. 

 

Interesting missile attacks last night, it appears they targeted the Patriot battery again with six "hypersonic" missiles and that all six were shot down without anyone getting hurt (though there were some ground explosions and Russia is claiming they took out the battery). 

 

Update: CNN is reporting US intelligence saying the Patriot battery took some damage.

Edited May 16, 2023 by ValueArb

[Spekulatius]

2 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

Interesting missile attacks last night, it appears they targeted the Patriot battery again with six "hypersonic" missiles and that all six were shot down without anyone getting hurt (though there were some ground explosions and Russia is claiming they took out the battery). 

 

Update: CNN is reporting US intelligence saying the Patriot battery took some damage.

The other news is that Ukrainian pilots are going to be trained in the UK and France. This makes no sense unless Ukraine also get's western jets.

[Xerxes]

2 hours ago, ValueArb said:

 

Interesting missile attacks last night, it appears they targeted the Patriot battery again with six "hypersonic" missiles and that all six were shot down without anyone getting hurt (though there were some ground explosions and Russia is claiming they took out the battery). 

 

Update: CNN is reporting US intelligence saying the Patriot battery took some damage.

If this is correct, I think there is no way the Patriots could have scored a hit against the flying Daggers, without direct U.S. involvement tactically, strategizing how to goad the daggers and doing a check-mate, and tag-and-bag. 
 

This war has generated a wealth of data, unfortunately a lot of it, and the level of U.S. direct involvement will be classified for years on. We just would not know.  

[John Hjorth]

It appears in media here in Europe that the city of Bakmuth has fallen for Ukraine and is now under control by Russian forces by yesterday.

 

I have been thinking about : "What does that mean?" The city in fact does not exist any more - it is about it's roughly totally destructed by now. [Mike [ @cubsfan ] has been posting about this fact for a long time now in this topic.]

 

What does is matter? I don't know.

 

Does any of it makes some kind of sense? I'm not sure, but I personally have a hard time to see some purpose/meaning in much related to this armed conflict by now. Add to that, it's just plain butt ugly.

 

What's next? I have no idea, but if someone asked I would suggest "It's teatime", like when Asterix was fighting the British.

 

Talks about creating a list containing damages done Russia to Ukraine, for the purpose of Russia to pay damages at a later moment. "The destruction of the city of Bakmuth" added to list - Check!" - Price? It's just so lame to me. When this is over later, Russia will not be able to pay anything to the Ukraine rebuild for a long time, because it has its own internal challenges. The bill will by necessity have to be picked up by Ukraine allies, meaning migher taxes for them.

[cubsfan]

6 hours ago, John Hjorth said:

It appears in media here in Europe that the city of Bakmuth has fallen for Ukraine and is now under control by Russian forces by yesterday.

 

I have been thinking about : "What does that mean?" The city in fact does not exist any more - it is about it's roughly totally destructed by now. [Mike [ @cubsfan ] has been posting about this fact for a long time now in this topic.]

 

What does is matter? I don't know.

 

Does any of it makes some kind of sense? I'm not sure, but I personally have a hard time to see some purpose/meaning in much related to this armed conflict by now. Add to that, it's just plain butt ugly.

 

What's next? I have no idea, but if someone asked I would suggest "It's teatime", like when Asterix was fighting the British.

 

Talks about creating a list containing damages done Russia to Ukraine, for the purpose of Russia to pay damages at a later moment. "The destruction of the city of Bakmuth" added to list - Check!" - Price? It's just so lame to me. When this is over later, Russia will not be able to pay anything to the Ukraine rebuild for a long time, because it has its own internal challenges. The bill will by necessity have to be picked up by Ukraine allies, meaning migher taxes for them.

Yeah, terrible news. Seems the first victory in a while for Russia.

 

I’d be surprised if Russia ever rebuilds anything in Ukraine. I think Chechnya is pretty much a wasteland. Not sure about Georgia? If Ukraine is able to remove the Russians for good, the costs of rebuilding the country are going to be astronomical.

 

 

Edited May 21, 2023 by cubsfan

[Spekulatius]

Bakmuth has little strategic value, so the fact that is has fallen doesn’t really mean much. Wagner wanted this as a trophy to show that are capable to do something, the terrible cost in term of losses notwithstanding,  while the rest of the Russia army hasn’t been able to do any offensive whatsoever. The war will be decided elsewhere.

[Xerxes]

No matter who “wins” Bakhmut, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. And Pyrrhic victories are what they are. A tax on the whole system. Everyone looses except for merchants of death. 

[formthirteen]

John McCain knew Putin's end game in 2015:

Weak leaders and nations provoke Putin and Russia.

Edited May 24, 2023 by formthirteen

[Spekulatius]

Looks like there was a special military operation near Belgorod, this time in Russia itself. I think it was basically a Psy-op, somewhat deflecting from the Bakhmut loss.

 

The fact that people were hauling ass from Belgorod with their cars 65km away  after news about the incursion tells you all, you need to know about how the Russian living there think.

It seems to take just a couple of armored vehicles and one or two tanks to get 20km deep into Russia. It also looks like most of them made it back into Ukraine. From a military POV, this is a nothingburger, the action is going to be somewhere else.

[Spekulatius]

48 minutes ago, formthirteen said:

John McCain knew Putin's end game in 2015:

Weak leaders and nations provoke Putin and Russia.

He got just about everything right 7 years before it happened.

[Viking]

Great discussion on all topics related to Ukraine. Gets to the core of many issues.

 

 

[Sweet]

1 hour ago, formthirteen said:

John McCain knew Putin's end game in 2015:

Weak leaders and nations provoke Putin and Russia.

Dam, that’s a prediction.

[Spekulatius]

Another prediction - one of the two Prigozhin Wagner) or Putin will not be alive any more a year from now. My guess is that Prighozhin will have an accident, but it could go the other way around.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Spekulatius

[Xerxes]

Not much of a prediction when the guy is telling you about NovoRussiya. Not much of a prediction when the ultranationalists running Tel Aviv what are their deepest desire are vis a vis settlement expansion. Oops … did I mention Israel ? We cannot be talking about Israel. everything they do is 100% correct and we must be kissing their ass all the time. If we do not that means we like Hitler. 

 

I said my piece on this pages ago. If Putin wasn’t there that desire to restore the empire would have come differently. That phase is always there and need to work itself through. Even Portugal went through that post-empire “who am I” phase. 

[John Hjorth]

14 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Another prediction - one of the two Prigozhin Wagner) or Putin will not be alive any more a year from now. My guess is that Prighozhin will have an accident, but it could go the other way around.

 

I would certainly not take the other side on such a bet with you. Which reminds me : "Why not put a contract out in the open on the head of such a person? - One page contract, simple terms, Buffett style? A drop in the sea compared to the US military budget.

[Spekulatius]

15 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

I would certainly not take the other side on such a bet with you. Which reminds me : "Why not put a contract out in the open on the head of such a person? - One page contract, simple terms, Buffett style? A drop in the sea compared to the US military budget.

Prediction are hard, but Prigozhin has become very outspoken to state it mildly and people in Putin's circle have fallen out of windows, slipped and broke their neck or became suddenly ill for far less.

 

Everyone outlives their usefulness eventually.