Russia-Ukrainian War

[cubsfan]

^^^ Awful. Artillery was the big killer in WWII combat, accounting for, I believe 60% of casualties.

[John Hjorth]

13 hours ago, Warner said:

Navalny was indeed very brave and certainly dedicated to his cause. He deserves respect and admiration for this. He certainly did not deserve what he received from the Russian state.

 

But, the Russian state controls the domestic narrative and 75% of the Russian people did not know or care about him. This is really missing from the conversation. Navalny was more well know outside of Russia than inside because he had foreign support and funding. He had some support in the middle class, as these few in Russia in a way turned on Putin's gov't slightly in the past 10 years.

 

Everyone here blames all on Putin and what is left out is that he has a large apparatus in gov't that supports him and 99% of these agree with his policies. 

 

Russia does not want and will not accept to go back to the chaos of the 1990's. They are not going to throw their unabashed support around an unknown (and state media will ensure he is never known). They will stay with Putin until he decides who is the next leader in Russia as he represents stability and don't forget in his very very long time in power the lives of most Russians has improved.

 

I am not a Putin supporter, but we all need to be pragmatic and look at this from the Russian perspective.

 

@Warner,

 

Thank you for sharing, and thereby providing insights to Russian thinking [, in general] to CoBF members, also presented by you in a polite manner here.

[John Hjorth]

3 hours ago, Pelagic said:

For Russia troops are fungible. 10,000 NKs on the border with Ukraine somewhere in Russia allows them to transfer troops to occupied Ukraine. Or as some are suspecting they'll employ them in an offensive against Ukrainian held positions in Kursk.

 

Russian troops who volunteer to fight in Ukraine get paid around $4,000 a month which is part of the "allure" of joining the Russian military, as pay is significantly higher than what they can make elsewhere. And also why Russia has had some success recruiting non-Russians to join their military. I wonder if NK troops will be paid similarly or does that money just get kicked up to the NK regime.  There's also been some mention of Russian contract soldiers who signed up to fight in Ukraine not receiving benefits when fighting in Kursk (Russia) and their families being denied the death benefits they would have normally received. No doubt Russia faces an ever growing manpower shortage but perhaps there's some more nuanced issues with regards to the specific terms of contract soldiers that they think NK troops might help alleviate.

 

Awesome post, @Pelagic!,

 

Thank you! We'll eventually see how this turns out, over time.

 

I'm sure, we'll in the end eventually know, because the Russian State simply is incabable of controlling and limiting the flow of all kinds of information World Wide during a[n] <undefined> number of information channels out of control af the Russian State. [, the Russian State still 'anchored in the truth of the past'.]

[Spekulatius]

9 hours ago, dwy000 said:

Have things gotten so bad in North Korea they're now selling soldiers?

They probably can’t feed them so they may have decided they can out them to use as relatively well paid mercenaries.

 

Peronally, I think the US and NATO should encourage  South a Korea to enter the chat, because they have something that almost no western nation has any more:

 

They can mass produce decent weapons alike ships, artillery, tanks,  rockets etc like from an assembly line as was the case in WW2 on fairly short notice. My guess is they can do that because  they are an in industrial powerhouse with deep supply chains within the chaebols.

 

I do believe that with US and eastern encouragement, funding and maybe some tech help, they could do wonders to overcome the advantage the Russians have in material quantity. And while the SK we pans are not always top notch compared to US or European ones, they are overall much better then the Russian ones. They have already delivered some weapon systems to Ukraine as far as I know , but nit in large enough numbers to make a difference.

 

There is an added benefit that it would make Korea more resilient against NK and Chinese aggression.

[John Hjorth]

Here is a fairly new YouTube video by Anders Puck Nielsen [Personally, he is growing on me] :

 

YouTube - Anders Puck NIelsen [October 28^th 2024] : Nuclear weapons and security guarantees for Ukraine.

 

 

 

[Sweet]

On 10/29/2024 at 12:23 AM, Spekulatius said:

because they have something that almost no western nation has any more:

 

They can mass produce decent weapons alike ships, artillery, tanks,  rockets etc like from an assembly line as was the case in WW2 on fairly short notice. My guess is they can do that because  they are an in industrial powerhouse with deep supply chains within the chaebols.

 

This is a major problem for the West.