re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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This is Putin's war. It he who has to win it. Not Ukraine. All Ukraine has to do is not lose. Stay the course and let Russia wear itself out.

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Not according to Zelensky

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Biden instructed his team to secretly include the long-range ATACMS in package for security reasons and "to maintain the element of surprise for Ukraine," Reuters reported, citing an unnamed U.S. official.

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Good

It's a multi-part tweet if you click on it.

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??In summary, over the past few days, the following has been noted:
?Increased activity of NATO reconnaissance aviation
?Launches of decoy missiles towards Crimea
?High-intensity aerial photography of the surface of Crimea

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In summary, over the past few days, the following has been noted:
?Increased activity of NATO reconnaissance aviation
?Launches of decoy missiles towards Crimea
?High-intensity aerial photography of the surface of Crimea

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The Ukes know long range ATACMS are coming. So they are gathering intelligence for their next wave of strikes.

I'm not really sure this is breaking news.....

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war, its more about supply chains, amount of resources (people, guns, even basic stuff like food) and the allocation of those resources than anything else.

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One thing I didn’t say, and is worth at least mentioning is adaptation

When you introduce a new capability, there’s a period where the enemy doesn’t have an answer to it. And you can achieve dramatic results in the short term. The enemy is a learning animal though, and they will find a way to respond to it, mitigating its effectiveness.

Also, when you’re looking at Ukraine, the relative quality of a system like the HIMARS vs let’s say the Russian Tornado doesn’t really matter compared to the absolute quantity of either, and the amount of ammunition that’s available.

A war on this scale is just a question of numbers.

The caveats to adaptation is attrition. If you lose enough air defense systems, for example, then you can no longer ward off Russian aircraft, and you have the problem they have now, where the Russians are able to drop bombs from outside the range of air defenses, and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

Rezident quoted an unarmed source who describe Avdiivka as a battle where the Russians would drop bombs all day, annihilating whatever unit was holding the position, and the Ukrainians only option if they wanted to hold on, was to feed another unit into the line, but with the understanding that they wouldn’t last any longer than the unit that came before them, and that the outcome would be exactly the same. And that while you’re getting weaker, the enemy isn’t, not appreciably, because you really can’t do much to hurt them.

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FYI.. this is a red herring issue because anyone in any state can order abortion pills online and be done with it without any further medical procedure..

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I guess you missed that there's lawsuits against that pill... the SCOTUS just issued a stay recently to keep it legal until those cases are decided, but those cases are ongoing, and that is another front in the Abortion debate.

Sorry," the media outlets."

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Then suddenly they cannot just lob bombs because AMRAAM has a 100 plus mile BVR bubble over the front line. Point. Counter Point.

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We’re sending, what, 60 old aircraft? That’s grossly insufficient, this is where numbers matter, and there’s no obvious way to protect those aircraft at the airfields they operate from. I don’t know how you keep them flying for any length of time, given Russias advantage in long range missiles, given their very dense network of air defenses, and given their overwhelming advantage in aircraft.

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They can't win with Naval power. Ukraine has won the Battle of the Black Sea. It's over.

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The Black Sea fleet was useful, insofar as the threat of an amphibious landing tied down Ukrainian forces early in the war, and that they could use those ships to launch missiles. Ultimately the Russian Navy doesn’t matter though, compared to the army and the aerospace forces. It’s not significant.

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They can't win with armor.

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They’re relying on artillery and bombs at this point to grind their way through the Ukrainian Army.

And it has worked, they’ve killed half a million men, and the Ukranians are now facing manpower shortages. The Ukranians are talking about, at minimum, large territorial losses and the loss of Kharkov, to worst case scenario falling back to the Dnieper.

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And now Ukraine has Patriot and freaking F-16s on the way.

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The Ukrainian air defenses appear to be gone, at least from the front lines. They’ve lost most of what they had. You can see that in the footage of Russian attack aircraft over Chasov Yar recently example, they look unchallenged. But you can also tell from the complaints of the Ukrainians, we can’t do anything about this, and the number of bombs the Russians are dropping daily, and the way that total is increasing.

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And they're gonna run out of something at some point.

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They make everything they need in much greater quantities than we do. We’ll run our first, and in some ways we already have. The shortage of artillery shells is a good example. Or the shortage of interceptors for the Patriots.

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Eventually China will turn its back. North Korea will run out of shells. India will get tired of being pressured. etc.

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They all have a fundamental and vested interest in a Russian victory. Supporting Russia is also at the very least cost free for them, and when you look at it, you can see substantial benefits to them. Perhaps it’s the way a Russian victory weakens the West, increasing their own relative power, perhaps it’s access to weapons technology, or perhaps it’s the opportunity to purchase resources cheaply. They’re all getting something out of this.

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Not to mention that Putin has intergrated his government into the Russian Orthodox Church.

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That goes back to Byzantium.

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The Patriarch of Moscow wants to overshadow the Patriarch of Constantinople so that the Russian Orthodox Church is the head of Orthodoxy instead of “Greek Orthodoxy.”

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Orthodoxy doesn’t have a head, it’s not Catholicism.

Constantinople has been a largely powerless seat since 1453, we did something clever though, and we played on Bartholomew‘s vanity, and his desire for influence. Bartholomew has committed a sin though with his schismatic actions.

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Russia … can’t allow the Ukrainian women to continue to enter churches without head covers and for Orthodox worshippers to sit down.

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Good