re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Advancing too slowly? Haha OK internet general.

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dude...it took them 70 days to "take" Mariupol...which is only 55 km from the russian border and is along the Sea of Azov. 70 days for that low hanging fruit lol

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dude...it took them 70 days to "take" Mariupol...which is only 55 km from the russian border and is along the Sea of Azov. 70 days for that low hanging fruit lol

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Ukraine has a lot of great Western weaponry and have mobilized their entire country. They're still going to lose.

This isn't like 2003 shock and awe in Iraq where one side was clearly vastly inferior from a technologic standpoint. Russia isn't near the military power the US is/was and Ukraine has weapons well beyond what Iraq had.

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This isn't like 2003 shock and awe in Iraq where one side was clearly vastly inferior from a technologic standpoint.

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Uh.....




I believe that's exactly what this is resembling.


But this time, it's the invaders who are inferior.




If you haven't realised how much more superior the NATO equipment that is being supplied is to the Russian equipment, then you must be ignoring everything that goes against what you want reality to be.

Fairly interesting report from 2019 studying Putin's worldview in ISW.

ISW 28 Page PDF

Executive Summary:

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The Kremlin’s increasingly assertive foreign policy, including its illegal occupation
of Crimea in 2014 and its intervention in Syria in 2015, came unexpectedly to many
in the West. These events were nonetheless mere extensions of the worldview held by
Russian President Vladimir Putin. This worldview was built on more than two decades of
compounded dissatisfaction with the West as well as Putin’s cumulative experiences in his
ongoing global campaigns to achieve his core objectives: the preservation of his regime,
the end of American hegemony, and the reinstatement of Russia as a global power. Some
of these ambitions were tamed, and others expedited, by external events, yet their core has
remained the same and often at odds with the West. The U.S. believed that a brief period
of non-assertive foreign policy from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s had become the new
norm for Russia. This period was not the norm but an anomaly. Putin’s foreign policy has
always been assertive, similar to Russia’s historic foreign policy. The U.S. may thus find
itself once again surprised by Putin. This paper examines the evolution of Russia’s foreign
policy worldview since the collapse of the Soviet Union to help understand the likely next
priorities of the Kremlin.

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From The Conclusion:

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The West’s behavior has not altered the fundamental
principles guiding Putin’s foreign policy thought,
which has remained largely unchanged since 2000.
Putin believes that Russia is a great power that is
entitled to its own spheres of influence and deserves
to be reckoned with in all key decisions. He asserts
that the true deviation from the norm was Russia’s
moment of weakness in the 1990s and that Russia
is merely reemerging to its rightful place in the
international system.
Many of Putin’s principles are incompatible with
the rules-based order and worldview of the West.
Putin’s concept of national sovereignty, for example,
is often at odds with the sovereignty of other
nations. European states enjoy the sovereign right
to join NATO. Many of them hold
legitimate security concerns about a
resurgent Russia. Putin, however,
does not view many of these states
as truly sovereign

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Never forget the other side has a say in what happens. If in danger of encirclement, why can’t Ukraine just fall back?

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Advancing too slowly? Haha OK internet general.

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The fact that you uttered this statement and are completely oblivious to the hypocrisy here is hilarious.

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What blockades? Russia has completely abandoned any attempt to take western Ukraine. The entire western border with Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia is wide open with supplies pouring in.

Do you even know where Ukraine is? Because you seem to have no knowledge of the geography of the area.

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The naval blockade is still an issue that doesn't have a good answer yet.

In the news today is Zelensky calling for Russia to end the blockade to help with global food supply.

Guardian

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The Starlink application has totally defeated Russian attempts to hack Ukrainian communications, given the Ukrainians complete encription and protection from Russian geo-location attempts (think about directing the SF units operating inside Russia now) and allowed their artillery to obtain a 30 second time between target call-in and trigger pull (compared to 5 to 15 minutes for the US).

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That Twitter thread was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

One thing I wanted to clarify - as I understand it based on that thread, the longer time from “call to trigger pull” for US forces appears to be largely due to bureaucratic/legal factors rather than technological difficulties, no? I think it’s worth pointing out that a lot of those concerns go out the window when you’re fighting an existential war within your own borders. We can, and should, be more cautious when we are operating in other countries - particularly when mistakes can have a higher strategic/diplomatic cost than success.

The SpaceX dynamic fascinates me. On one hand, it’s a success story for western democracy and free market capitalism. On the other hand, it has somewhat terrifying implications for the future - particularly as it relates to AI. The fear has always been that technological advances will transfer power away from democratically-elected world governments and toward those who control the technology and infrastructure. That’s fine when it’s Elon Musk, who is by most accounts a “good guy” that values egalitarian principles (regardless of whether you agree with his views of the future). But he might be the exception rather than the rule.

That’s really a different topic of conversation entirely but I do think it’s interesting how this war is giving us glimpses of what the next phase of world power division might look like.

Russia can't make more tanks because of sanctions.

“Because of the export controls we’ve already put in place, Russia’s top two manufacturers of tanks are no longer in business,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said Monday. “Russia today has far fewer tanks than they had going into this invasion, and they can't make more because of the action that we're taking with sanctions.”

The White House says the controls have left Russia’s two major tank plants — the Uralvagonzavod Corporation and Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant — idle due to a lack of foreign components. And observers noticed fewer tanks than normal at the annual military parade on Moscow’s Red Square on Monday.

Yahoo link