re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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GEOTUS's

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WeeWee will appreciate this.

Suddenly there is a shortage of surgeons in Russia so any Russian MD can become a surgeon with 3 months training.

There were 406,000 immigrants from Russia to Kazakhstan from Sept 21 to Sept 30th.

Suddenly programmers/IT are short in St. Petersburg by about 100,000.

The Russian Space Agency LOST $50 billion rubbles (spelling intended) this year.

22 million new credit card holders in Russia where 30%-35% interest is charged on credit cards.

Meat and fish sales are down by 1/3

Since the sanctioned cap on insurance for crude oil cargo has begun, Russia has lost 54% of its exports. China's largest shipowner is refusing to carry Russian oil

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This sounds more involved than we even are now. What’s the plan and our expense to avoid hardliners using economic crisis and chaos from regime change to eventually repeat what the Russians have always done or to start civil wars in places like Chechnya.

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There's no path forward other than liberalization and integration with Europe proper. European Russia will likely remain stable, in a relative sense, because of the accumulated wealth, but the peripheral republics could go in any direction. Given Kadyrov's contacts in the Gulf, I'd suspect heavy Arab involvement in the Caucuses, which would just continue a pattern that started in the 90's. I think the instability that results from the possible regime change would mainly be internal, and might signal the end of the heavy, centuries long effort on the part of the Russian elite to centralize the entire country around Moscow.

Umm you forgetting about me and honestly sfp too?

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So, I follow a lot of the alt media guys. This Berletic dude gave a little primer that helped explain to ignorant people like me why it's going so slow. Military nerds, please feel free to rip him apart.

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I watched the video and read 100 or so of the comments. The first thing I would say is I would love to debate him on the topic.

The first thing that struck me in the comments is how most of them have no idea how war is waged. This is clearly a blind spot of mine. It is easy to forget only 7% of Americans are veterans and many of those, like myself, are so far removed temporally that modern warfare has passed them by.

Second, I can't argue with his description of the battlefield via his whiteboard. It is a basic view of a defensive posture vs an invading force. This has been true for centuries, the only difference is the name of the weapon systems and the ranges at which they are effective. The ranges have obviously increased over time.

Finally, mainly because I don't want to type 10,000 words, is my main issue with the video is he fails to shine a light on the reason Russia is stuck in this city by city seige warfare. While he mentions Ukraines air defense he doesn't make the point that Russia made a huge blunder in not being able to achieve air superiority. Based on the size of the militaries and their respective budgets it is ridiculous that Russia could not overwhelm Ukraine's air defense and take it out allowing them to own the skies. Had this been done the war would have been over before this thread reached 200 pages aside from partisan actions. The transfer of air defense from the West has been too small to give Russia a pass on this 10 months in. Russia's utter failures both in planning and execution are why they are having to sit at range and hopefully degrade Ukraine enough to make an offensive. I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he was just trying to explain why Russia is moving so slowly but he makes it sound like it is going to plan for them and this is how most of his commenters took it.


One last thing, though I have the desire to say a lot more just not the will, something stuck out to me in the comments and that was how the Ukrainian military is using cities and their civilians as cover. I found this a little odd but I see the disconnect. Ukraine is being invaded so what does the invader want to take? Cities, because critical GLOC (ground lines of communication) usually converge in those areas. If the invader wants the cities you have to mount your defense in or in front of the cities. Sure Ukraine could set up in the middle of 1,000s of hectares of watermelon fields but Russia would just skirt them and head straight to the cities. As I said I forget how little the average person understands war and this is not knowledge limited to those in the military* anyone with a passing interest in war knows these things but I feel like they should be intuitive to anyone with a brain and a modicum of intellectual curiosity.

In the end, I didn't find a lot to argue with based on what he actually said. However, what he left out, purposefully I imagine, lead at least those commenting on his video to see a distorted view of reality, at least IMHO.


* lots of people that have been in the military do not know much about the big picture either truthfully. I for example mainly understand war from the brigade down at least as a military man. I have a far better grasp of war on a tactical level than at a strategic level. My first-hand experience in war was all as an infantry platoon leader and all my military experience was in the brigade and lower, a lot of people here have had experience far higher in the strategic level.

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Can we take this political sewage back to the political board?

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Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to click on this thread or read this thread.

That post just reached epic level douche.

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Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to click on this thread or read this thread.

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While he was trying to keep politics out of the thread far before Chicken's edict upon tOT I think it is judicious to make a good-faith attempt to keep politics to a minimum. There are nearly daily threads on PT to discuss that area albeit with the drawbacks currently inherent in the forum.

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WeeWee will appreciate this.

Suddenly there is a shortage of surgeons in Russia so any Russian MD can become a surgeon with 3 months training.

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Damn Russia better pray than none of the wives of Russian submarine captains need an appendectomy.

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Russia is no threat to the US whether they take Ukraine or not.

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They are a threat to the Baltic countries and those countries are NATO members. That means that Russian is indeed a threat to the USA because if Russia moves against Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania the USA is committed to war with Russia.