Panto_Villan

It’s just flashed up that the Russians have abandoned Lyman too (unconfirmed still), as well as Izyum. Kupyansk seems like old news now. That was, like, four hours ago? I do wonder if we’re in the stage where we’re seeing things happen in much closer to real-time though, particularly as much of the news is first coming in from pro-Russian channels. This front isn’t necessarily representative of the whole Russian war effort, of course, but it seems to be totally disintegrating.

That just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. If the trains stop running when there are leaves on the track how on earth is it going to travel the length of the country with people flinging bouquets of flowers and cards onto the rails? Would they have to fit a big snow plough on the front or something?

Because of empathy? It's the same reason why people feel sad / cry about the death of entirely fictional characters in films or tv shows. It's one of the reasons why humans are capable of building advanced societies. EDIT - I realise now this is an OLD post by the standards of this thread. I wholeheartedly apologise for necroing a post from the distant past, I just hadn't opened the thread for the last seven hours so I'd missed about 700 pages of posts.

Unconfirmed reports the Ukrainians are attacking Lyman too, which is east of Izyum and not in the area directly threatened by the current breakthrough. You may remember it from a few months back where the Russians spent weeks and an unholy amount of blood and munitions to take that area. If the Ukrainians take it back in the next few days (still a big if) then that whole front seems like it might be on the point of collapse. Feels too good to be true tbh - but I wouldn’t rule anything out after the last few days!

I'm not sure you'll see *that* much of a reduction in Russian arms sales, tbh. Sure, it's now very obvious that Western weapons are massively superior to Russian kit so you might see nations like India or the Gulf states switching away from Russia - but a lot of the customers for Russian gear are developing nations (e.g. African states) who aren't going to be fighting Western powers and couldn't afford Western gear anyway. Russian tanks are cheap and relatively easy to maintain, and perfectly good for killing your own people / fighting border wars with other badly-equipped nations. Much like an AK-47, really. Also, note that the problem isn't neccessarily the kit itself either, because the Ukrainians have made good use of Soviet equipment like T-72s and air defence systems during the war. A big part of the problem is just the incompetence and corruption in the Russian army. It's worth looking at Russian exports for a moment too, which I've pasted below. Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that Russia is a very resource rich country. Obviously oil and gas make up 40%+ of their exports and that'll fall with time as the green revolution happens, but they've still got a huge amount of metal deposits and export other raw materials like food and timber etc, and there's always a demand for that sort of thing. This is why sanctions won't cause Russia to completely collapse - lots of their economy is just based on digging stuff out of the ground and selling it. But it's also not how you become a wealthy nation in the long term.

The picture on the sanctions is really complex and ultimately I'm not sure anyone really knows. Quite a few serious financial types who have looked at the situation and come up with very different answers about how screwed Russia is in the short term. I don't think there's any question that they'll stunt Russia's growth in the long term though - but you only need to look at Iran to see that that effective sanctions doesn't necessarily lead to regime change or absolute poverty. One thing people need to be aware of though is that Russia earns FAR more money from oil exports than they do from gas exports (I think it's literally 10x more, or something to that effect). This is why Russia can happily cut off the gas to Europe and not really worry too much financially. Sure, they're burning money because it's not like they can really send that gas anywhere else, but they're making a fortune from the high oil prices too. So they're in quite a strong financial position in the short term. But as others have said, what are they hoping for in the long term? People won't want oil and gas forever. And it's not like the average Russian has a particularly good standard of life right now. @bicksterUnfortunately it seems like the capture story might be a bit too good to be true. The little "mole" on the face of the captured guy looks more like dirt in the high-res shot, and people have dug up other images of the guy wearing the hat and it seems like he's completely bald on top of his head. Plus it'd be a little weird for him to be wearing the uniform of a soldier two ranks below him. So while I do hope it's true, I'm a bit skeptical at this point.

Yeah, I sorta see what you're saying. Ultimately though I feel like you can opt into or out of the royals as much as you want - obviously you can't completely escape all mention of them, but you certainly can avoid the bulk of it. And you also can't completely escape a massive celebrity like Kim Kardashian either, just because they get so much coverage. In some regards she's been a constant presence in our lives for years too. So I sorta feel like you're picking out a strand of modern society where celebrities are foisted on your simply because enough other people in the world are interested in them and attributing it to royal priviledge. Whereas I think in reality most of this is occurring because the Queen is literally one of the most famous people in the world. I know the institution of the monarchy feels very archaic, but I think in practice the way society treated the Queen was just like any other celebrity. Does that make sense?

Bloody hell, the Russians really are collapsing!

I’m not offended, I just think you have an incredibly low bar for what constitutes brainwashing. And if you were an American (as I thought you were) then complaining about us playing our national anthem too often would certainly be a case of glass houses imo. As to the wider point I don’t personally think it’s any different from the rest of society / celebrity culture (except in magnitude). If you tune into the tv you get told about lots of things you might not care about - lots of people don’t care about sports, lots of people don’t care about politics, lots of people don’t care about entertainment, etc. Sure, it’s all very saccharine right now but then news coverage about a well-liked public figure dying always is. If Judi Dench was hit by a bus tomorrow they’d have a little montage of her on the news and you’d be told that she was wonderful and you cared about her too, whether or not you do. It wouldn’t be wall-to-wall coverage in the same way but that’s just because she’s a *lot* less famous than the Queen.

You think it’s brainwashing to play the national anthem after our head of state dies? You guys play your national anthem at literally every sporting event ever, don’t you? Including school sport?

Fair enough. It really depends what countries you’re comparing it to, imo, but I won’t derail the thread by expanding any further on that!

In what world could you ever describe Australia as “progressive”?

I think he needs to be relieved of his playing duties because they’re interfering with his role as captain.

Well, RIP Liz. I suspect she was the only thing holding the monarchy together and we’ll be a republic before I end up in the ground. I know it’s not a sentiment many share on here but I liked the Queen and had a lot of respect for her 70 years of service. Not a job I’d have taken if offered, even if I’d also have got all the castles and butlers that came with it. Certainly one of our greatest monarchs (albeit a low bar from some perspectives).

For anyone not spending quite so much time on Twitter as us nerds, the significance of Kupiansk becomes quite obvious when you look at where the river next to Izyum runs. And then this map of the railway network in that part of the country is also helpful - bearing in mind the Ukranians control Kharkiv already, cutting off Kupiansk means that Izyum is cut off and a lot of important cities like Lyman would only be able to be supplied through a roundabout route via the south. @bickster yup, saw that. Hopefully it means the reports of them already being significantly further down that road are true too!

Indeed. Although I think getting the city into artillery range was probably the baseline aim of the operation, physically taking control of the city probably represents things going better than expected! (Assuming it actually happens)

Taking Kupiansk would effectively cut off the Russian forces in Izyum to the south, so if the second tweet is true then it’s really big news.

It’s nice to see Klopp is only considered “somewhat better” than Gerrard on here. Given Gerrard is apparently considered one of our worst managers ever, does that make Klopp about as good as Paul Lambert then?

As some of the other posters have alluded to, the Ukrainians attacked around Kharkiv in the east of the country today (alongside their offensive in Kherson further to the west). It looks like they’ve broken through the Russian lines with tanks and they’ve taken quite a lot of land and killed a lot of Russians. I’m following mostly on Twitter but I’m sure it’ll be all over the proper news in a few hours once the frontlines settle down.

I didn't necessarily mean into Melitipol itself per se, I just meant in that general direction - i.e. an attack south from the other side of the Dnipro. That could concievably even be a strike in the Mauripol direction rather than towards Melitipol. As you say, Kherson is important to Ukraine - but if they can take out the Kerch bridge, then the only easy way to supply most of the occupied territory in the south is through the land bridge running through Mauripol and Melitipol along the coast. Severing that would certainly make it harder for the Russians to resupply, especially as it would threaten naval resupply via the Azov sea. And they're eventually going to have to attack in that direction anyway - even if they take Kherson, there's no way they'll ever attack across the river. But yes, that's all reliant on what forces the Ukrainians have available. It depends how deep their reserves are in that particular theatre and if they've got a reasonable amount present, a push in that area might well be equally successful as Kharkiv. But if they'd moved most of their reserves to Kherson and Kharkiv to support those attacks then it wouldn't be a realistic prospect. I got the impression they had a decent amount of troops in the area, though I might be wrong on that count.

It seems like the war has finally turned decisively in Ukraine's favour. This is especially good news because it means they probably now have the full confidence of their Western backers as we approach winter and the West starts to suffer from the gas shortage. The news today has been great - I'm spending way too much time checking twitter and watching the villages fall in quick succession. Given that the Ukrainians seem to be making huge gains in Kharkiv, I'd be quite surprised if we don't see another attack down towards Melitipol in the next few weeks too. Seems like the Russians are stretched incredibly thinly already and the Ukrainians have been hitting supplies in that area for a long time now.

Yeah, come to think of it, you're probably right about most of them. I think the guy who played Jaime was good, and Sansa was passable given her age and how annoying her actual character is (although Joffrey is a great example of how good the really good child actors can actually be), but I was never really convinced by Emilia Clarke and Kit Harrington in particular. I think I just forgot because they became such big stars and they all improved a bit with time. There's so many great characters played by great actors, especially in the early seasons, that the bad ones kinda just fade into the background. Anyway, I'm off to youtube to watch a Tywin Lannister highlight reel...

Who do you think was a weak actor in GoT? I know the show didn't quite hit its stride in the first season but I thought the acting was one area where the show was pretty strong, personally.

I'd still be perfectly happy with Gerrard losing his job after this result (impressive though it was), simply because you have to assess a manager on a longer time frame than a single match and frankly we've been dire for a long time. However in practice I now think it's very unlikely he'll get fired before next match. Best case scenario is that he's learned his lesson and McGinn will be on the bench and we'll name a stronger midfield from here on out, and our results will continue to improve. Clearly he hasn't lost the dressing room as some have speculated previously, and if this turns out not to be a false dawn then I'll swing back behind him. However I just feel it really didn't need to be this hard. If all we're hoping for is that our manager puts out a sensible team then I feel like the best we're now hoping to get from Stevie is him not actively sabotaging the performances of the talented squad we've assembled, whereas a top-class manager would actually be adding value.

There’s been plenty of players that looked shite in a Villa shirt but much better elsewhere.