re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Center for Strategic and International Studies website
"Putin's Invasion was Immoral but not Irrational."
The article lists five erroneous assumptions that led Putin in Ukraine. There's nothing surprising in the article but it is well-written.

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Assumption #1: Ukraine was deeply divided and would not provide a unified or effective response.

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Assumption #2: Zelensky was a weak leader.

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Assumption #3: The Russian armed forces were highly effective.

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Assumption #4: The Ukrainian military was weak.

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Assumption #5: The United States and NATO would be slow and limited in supplying weapons to Ukraine.

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Here comes the food and insecurity

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Wittgenstein

@backtolife_2022 · 6h Sri Lanka is in real chaos. Hungry residents are literally preying on wealthy residents and officials, burning their homes and cars. The police open fire to kill. More than 200 people have already been killed.

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Can’t remember the account, but it was a verified account that I follow said something last week about watching Sri Lanka. Didn’t think too much of it relative to this. Personally I’ve bought a vacuum sealer and started putting up some meat. Nothing crazy but incremental.

The sad part is we could ramp up production in our own country to cover the shortfall....if we weren't too busy paying farmers to grow corn for ethanol.

I missed it by a week, I thought they would start on the 9th.

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Ukraine is getting ready to kick Russia's teeth in. Tomorrow May 9th, I expect them to launch a counterattack on the weak spot in the Russian Flank between Izium and Kharkiv. They will move to cut off the supply lines into the Izium area. If they can do that, game over for Russia, it is only moving backward from there.

An attack launched tomorrow will be highly symbolic.

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https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/display.aspx?sp=102404709&s=2&p=101373605#102404709

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The sad part is we could ramp up production in our own country to cover the shortfall....if we weren't too busy paying farmers to grow corn for ethanol.

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This one gets way more complicated. I do agree that burning ethanol in our gasoline has always been idiotic. Fertilizer costs have to be factored into all this, and natural gas prices too. Taking ethanol out of corn means we need to buy more oil. Yeah, we shouldn't have to import but our idiot politicians are on board with reducing carbon emissions, and so reducing oil use, so US production is dropping. To grow more corn also means using fertilizer more heavily. And fertilizer prices are extremely high. Lots of reasons for this but our capacity is now below demand, and fertilizer plants are expensive to build, and when companies do so the price crashes because the supply has been increased. So generally they are stupid to build new plants. And now we are exporting LNG to Europe as fast as we can possibly do this. So natural gas prices in the US have more than doubled. And natural gas cost is something like 80% of the cost of producing fertilizer. So natural gas cost passes in to fertilizer cost and then into food prices. We have it pretty good, though. In Europe the price of natural gas is insane. The price of fertilizer in the world is being determined largely by European plants being able to operate at a profit. And mostly they can't operate at a profit. So when fertilizer prices drop plants in Europe shut down. And when prices rise they start back up again.

To this let me add that Ukraine produces a lot of fertilizer and food. And shutting that down is enormously important to food supply for the world. Russia is also a huge food and fertilizer producer, and I have no idea how that impacts things other than it is not good.

Hey, I'm no vet and can't contribute to that discussion. But food and fertilizer - yeah, I can do that.

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Lol this won’t impact our food supply. 3rd world and some developing countries will feel it though

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Coming diesel shortage in the mid-Atlantic, the grocery store I shop at the most has had inconsistently supply of things we regularly consume for well over a year despite actually being a safe haven during the covid shortages early on. Our Walmart has had times where it’s sparsely stocked as well. Supposedly this years crops of wheat here and in China are of some of the worst quality in many years. Of course this thread is well aware of disruptions related to the war in Ukraine. As people on this board frequently say oil is a global market and that’s how it’s priced and supplier, same for food. Global shortage still creates imbalances here.

Either way, not going hog wild, but also not running on a weeks essentials at a time. In the end if there’s no real shortages here it’s a hedge against inflation to buy it now as prices continue to rise to be able to pull it out of the freezer cheaper than buying more down the line.

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(Heading east from Kharkiv) Ukraine has crossed to the east side of the Siverskyi Donets River, and at a position that could be incredibly important: Staryi Saltiv.

The bridge at Staryi Saltiv is incredibly long, over a kilometer and a half, because the river there is not a river but a lake—a reservoir held back by a large hydroelectric dam. So of all the places that Ukraine might cross, at first glance this would seem among the least likely. However, from the moment Ukraine maneuvered around other villages and shocked Russian forces by capturing Staryi Saltiv, Ukraine began an artillery bombardment of the area directly along the eastern end of that bridge.

quote: From this bridgehead, Ukraine could go … just about anywhere. They might move north to threaten the rail and road junction at Vovchansk. They might move southeast toward the even more critical supply depot at Kupyansk. Mostly they are loose in Russia’s backfield, able to maneuver toward towns and cities in a way that will require Russia to turn still more forces away from the salient at Izyum, or the battles in the east.

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Well that’s good news to everyone but Stidham8 and the other couple drive bys

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I’ll admit that for the first few weeks of this war I thought it was complete bullshite that the Ukrainians had a chance. I challenge you to find a post of mine that said it he Russians were winning or even doing well since then. And I also challenge you to find any post of my that is pro Russian. It doesn’t exist. I live in a reality where I never underestimate opponents or overestimate myself or friends.

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I'll agree with this in spirit. Part of the problem is that this thread is getting overrun with Magastan morons who see everything from a perspective of Biden/Trump. And they come here to derail things rather than contribute. But fundamentally I can't agree with:

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So for every ambush video you see on Twitter there’s another where Russian armor overruns Ukrainian defenders.

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Because I think it's factually accurate that the Russians have been ambushed and overrun much more often than the Ukrainians. For one thing the Russians have been the ones on the offensive (until they collapsed in two areas), and armies on the offensive are the ones that get ambushed. And when you look at Russian objectives it's pretty clear that they are not fighting on an even battlefield.

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Hey, I'm no vet and can't contribute to that discussion. But food and fertilizer - yeah, I can do that.

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No need to be a vet to contribute here. Your input is the exact type of thing we need here. I have a surface understanding of agribusiness, but I'll take a back seat to folks like you who are in the mix.

Fun fact:

Went on a staff ride with our German sister battalion to all the sites of Operation Market Garden. Was interesting to discuss the battle with our fellow German officers and NCOs.

But that also says something about where we are now.