Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[bickster]

Did anyone mention Kherson Airport?

Was that because you thought it was old news?

Explosions going off for over an hour last night as RUssia was using it as an ammo dump

The conservative estimate is episode 22 or S2 E1

[magnkarl]

1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

You've missed the point of my post(s) again. I'm going to try and explain this without any implied criticism of you and your views, so hopefully we don't have to spend the rest of eternity arguing with each other. 

Look, I very much dislike misinformation. Differing interpretations of facts are what debate / discussion is about, but it's essential to have a common set of facts to work from. I'll call out misinformation I see posted in this thread even if I 100% agree with the point it is being used to support. This argument came about because you posted that the Russians weren't making any gains at all, and that the Ukrainians weren't taking heavy losses. That's simply not true and even you don't seem to believe that any more, so as far as I'm concerned the argument is over. I didn't point it out so I could call you stupid and gloat about being right, it's just that it's impossible to have a serious discussion about the strategic implications of Russia's tactical gains if you are denying they even happened. It's not personal and it doesn't have to be a big thing. I'll happily challenge someone like @bickster on his sources when they don't look right to me, and we just compare notes and move on. There's been several occasions in various threads when I've been wrong and learned something new as a result.

Unfortunately, you usually interpret me challenging your supporting arguments / sources as an attack on your overall position, and instead of accepting the correction you write big posts supporting your overall position even though I already agree with it. At the highest level our views are not particularly different. There's no point posting the ISW report because I've already read it and it supports the views I already hold, so it doesn't prove me wrong. I think this is the main area of confusion between us; I point out incorrect information and you launch into a big defence about how Ukraine is likely going to win the war. Yes, you're right. Ukraine is likely going to win the war. But you shouldn't be posting misinformation to support that view and implying I'm a Russian sympathiser when I point it out.

Also, while you're clearly very enthusiastic about the Ukrainian cause most people are going to apply a bit of caution to any scenario with as many uncertainties as a war. Pre-war you were certain that Ukraine would win a war against Russia, which given the stance of the ISW / Pentagon etc was a pretty major outlier. When the early Ukrainian tactical victories started coming in you very quickly got aboard the "Ukraine's going to win the war!" train, even though almost every respected analyst was urging caution because there hadn't been enough evidence to extrapolate the course of an entire war from a few days of fighting. You were also enthusiastically posting every update into this thread, and obviously some of it ended up being misinformation, and I was calling that out where it had been disproved. Maybe you took that to be more personal than it was intended to be. As my views tracked pretty closely with a number of sources you now consider reliable I found it pretty frustrating that you'd continually imply I was some kind of Russian agent for expressing the sort of caution they were.

Anyway, while I will continue to correct any misinformation I see posted in this thread I'm happy to wipe the slate clean with you if you want. I get the feeling we both think the other is trying to score points off them. Hopefully this post helps explain what I'm actually trying to achieve.

I'm happy to concede that I'm sometimes extremely zealous about the things that I believe in or dislike. Be that trust of Russia's capability, the downplaying of genocide and war crimes, the appeasement policy that most of Europe has been furthering against Russia for years and the fact that withdrawals might seem like a 'win' for Russia on a map.

I get caught up in emotions when civilians are shot, put into mass graves and forcefully kidnapped and dislocated to far flung places of Russia. It's in my blood, as my great grandparents fled pogroms in the then Soviet Union, only to be caught up with their families in the Holocaust in Poland. It irks me a great deal when people say things like "Ukraine should negotiate with Russia" or "Ukraine can't hope to win this war, it'll last forever!". It's not up to political upper class douchebags like Chomsky, Corbyn, Kissinger, Macron or Scholtz to decide what Ukraine should do. It's up to them, just like it probably should have been up to the people that Hitler completely massacred through the appeasement policies in the 30's. We need to arm Ukraine to the bloody teeth so that Putin can't do what he did in Bucha to the rest of the country.

On the overestimating of Russia's army, it's not a new thing. The U.S/NATO envoys to Russia since the late 90's have always been told by Russian generals that they'll "modernise". It's never really happened, bar maybe some slight upping of the paratrooper brigades. The Russian army was rotten during the Chechnya wars, and nothing had really changed when they rolled into Georgia 20 years later. There were many voices that tried to convey this before the war, including for example the article below. They weren't always given the space they deserved, imo.

Not So Scary: This Is Why Russia's Military Is a Paper Tiger - October 2020

Quote

Certainly Moscow’s military forces will continue to modernize, but Russian military might—other than its nuclear forces—is an illusion. It’s a paper tiger.

In terms of procurement, Russia has made some interesting choices—and many of its aspirations appear to be unrealistic (for example: 2,300 T-14 Armata tanks by 2020 is highly unlikely). The Russian air force, for example, is buying small numbers of modern combat aircraft built in boutique-sized batches. The country is building Su-30M2s, Su-30SMs, Su-35S and Su-34s, which are all derivatives of the same basic Flanker airframe, but don’t share a lot of commonality and that complicates logistics. It’s also buying MiG-29 derivatives—which add to the problem. Russia is also starting to develop at least three new types of aircraft, but it’s not clear how it will pay for such expensive programs.

The issue for the West is that we need to communicate that China and Russia have big strong militaries so that our armies and spend remain big. It happened much of my life through the cold war, and it's kept happening since 1990. I'm not saying we shouldn't have an army or spend, I'm saying that the spend shouldn't be based on how much we think two of the most corrupt states in the world have. I've been to Russia two times in my life, both times I've had to spend as much on a cash pool for our guide\driver to pay off different people as I've spent on the actual travel.  If just half of that goes on in the Russian Armed Forces the army is essentially not even comparable to Europe's NATO countries.

Edited May 30, 2022 by magnkarl

[NoelVilla]

Lavrov talking about Putin's health probably means he is dead. Yeah I know. Rumors.

[bickster]

 

[bickster]

Just now, NoelVilla said:

Lavrov talking about Putin's health probably means he is dead. Yeah I know. Rumors.

It's a good rule of thimb that if Lapdog says something, the opposite is true

[BleedClaretAndBlue]

Russian TV is crazy, imagine if they spoke like this on the OneShow. Olga the scab loves it

[Delphinho123]

Sberbank being cut from the Swift system today I believe. Russias biggest bank. A question to people more intelligent than me, how does this affect Russia? Why is the swift system so important to banks in general and how does it affect the average Russian?

[magnkarl]

7 hours ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

Russian TV is crazy, imagine if they spoke like this on the OneShow. Olga the scab loves it

I wonder what goes on in these idiots' heads. Do they think that they stand a chance against NATO, or even just the European NATO countries? By all accounts just the Nordic NATO countries would achieve air superiority over St Petersburg in less than two hours once Finland and Sweden join. Russia has no modern tanks left, and they're to go up against tanks that were never once destroyed by enemies in Iraq\Afghanistan?

It's beyond me that Putin allows these idiots to spout this BS on TV every day, he can't be this stupid and surely he must be starting to see how ridiculous this all is getting.

[magnkarl]

The last time Ukraine had a main supply road within artillery range it made Russia retreat from Kyiv. Wonder what will happen once Ukraine blows up the bridges in Kherson with the sad, depleted Russian BTG's on the wrong side.

[desensitized43]

4 hours ago, magnkarl said:

I wonder what goes on in these idiots' heads. Do they think that they stand a chance against NATO, or even just the European NATO countries? By all accounts just the Nordic NATO countries would achieve air superiority over St Petersburg in less than two hours once Finland and Sweden join. Russia has no modern tanks left, and they're to go up against tanks that were never once destroyed by enemies in Iraq\Afghanistan?

It's beyond me that Putin allows these idiots to spout this BS on TV every day, he can't be this stupid and surely he must be starting to see how ridiculous this all is getting.

I read this as they're prepping the Russian population for more conscription. They'll find it hard to justify that they need more men to subdue just Ukraine, but if they frame it as "look, we're not just fighting Ukraine anymore, we're fighting all of NATO" then it's something the Russian people are far more likely to understand and accept.

Putin really has **** this up massively.

Edit - Using a phrase like WW3 in the UK isn't as serious as using it Russia. Although they see it as their finest hour, it's a country that was decimated by the Nazi's. There's barely a family in Russia that didn't lose someone in the second world war. They're trying to piggyback on all of the nationalism created by victory day, but I doubt many of the Russians are up for seeing their fathers and sons thrown into the meat grinder in the way they were 80 years ago. It's such a bad miscalculation.

Edited May 31, 2022 by desensitized43

[Chindie]

8 hours ago, Delphinho123 said:

Sberbank being cut from the Swift system today I believe. Russias biggest bank. A question to people more intelligent than me, how does this affect Russia? Why is the swift system so important to banks in general and how does it affect the average Russian?

Swift is the international banking standard platform for transfers, instructions etc between banks worldwide. Cutting a bank off from it will essentially isolate it from the global system, making it much more difficult to operate with any non-local exposure of any kind, which is especially the case in respect of financial trading or major import/export - you're suddenly making those transactions take much longer and be much more work intensive, which knocks on to everything, chewing into profits etc.

I believe Sberbank is Russia's biggest lender. Them being cut off from making transfers etc efficiently will potentially cripple them.

[ender4]

Russia has started cutting gas supplies to Germany, Netherlands & Denmark.

I guess gas prices might increase further?

[bickster]

36 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Russia has started cutting gas supplies to Germany, Netherlands & Denmark.

I guess gas prices might increase further?

Germany are going to try to get people to use less petrol  by slashing the price of monthly public transport tickets from 90 Euro to 9 Euro in a scheme called 90 for 9 (yep thats so German). Use of Public Transport for a month - 9 Euro

[ender4]

20 minutes ago, bickster said:

Germany are going to try to get people to use less petrol  by slashing the price of monthly public transport tickets from 90 Euro to 9 Euro in a scheme called 90 for 9 (yep thats so German). Use of Public Transport for a month - 9 Euro

That’s a great idea.  

But isn’t that lowering oil consumption rather than gas?

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, ender4 said:

That’s a great idea.  

But isn’t that lowering oil consumption rather than gas?

Well yes but they also got their oil from Russia

[magnkarl]

The heat is being turned up massively on Scholtz to actually stop twiddling his thumbs on delivery of heavier weapons. The FDP, which has about 10% of the Bundestag, is absolutely ripping Scholtz a new one about dancing around the issue because of his party's long standing appeasement policies towards Putin.

Article in German

Quote

Stop the chancellor 's twitching about tank deliveries to the Ukraine!

This is what the head of the defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (64), demands. The FDP politician told BILD that Germany had to “deliver 50 Marder infantry fighting vehicles directly to Ukraine as soon as possible”.

The Chancellery has been blocking the export of martens from industrial stocks for weeks. In addition, according to an internal report, the Bundeswehr has 32 martens left that could be made fit (BILD reported).

Does Macron and Scholtz realise that they're fighting on a hill which will make them lose their elections? Polling in both Germany and France show that the population is largely for giving Ukraine all that it needs, yet these two dinosaurs are trying to apply some weird realpolitk to a situation that requires urgency.

[chrisp65]

What was it about Crimea in 2014 that persuaded German and French politicians they can do a deal with Putin?

[sidcow]

US has now agreed to provide longer range rocket systems so they can start taking out some of these artillery positions which indiscriminately bomb Ukrainian cities. 

 

[magnkarl]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

What was it about Crimea in 2014 that persuaded German and French politicians they can do a deal with Putin?

For Macron I think it is that he wants to be the leader of the free world, so everything he does has to be different to the US, UK, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, the Baltics+++. It's that vain French attitude that marks almost everything France does.

For Scholtz it's down to money and his party's implications in Russia. German industry has long prospered on cheap Russian gas to become what it is. Former SDP chancellor (same party as Scholtz and Merkel) Gerhard Schröder is seriously implicated when it comes to corruption, being Putin's lapdog and essentially taking huge sums of cash from Russia to further Russian energy politics in Germany. People forgot very quickly that Angela Merkel was also heavily involved in the communist party in the then cleptocratic DDR and worked at several levels inside various party organisations. There's a reason why she managed to steer Germany's policies so heavily towards propping up Russia's economy.

Edited June 1, 2022 by magnkarl

[chrisp65]

21 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

For Macron I think it is that he wants to be the leader of the free world, so everything he does has to be different to the US, UK, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, the Baltics+++. It's that vain French attitude that marks almost everything France does.

For Scholtz it's down to money and his party's implications in Russia. German industry has long prospered on cheap Russian gas to become what it is. Former SDP chancellor (same party as Scholtz and Merkel) Gerhard Schröder is seriously implicated when it comes to corruption, being Putin's lapdog and essentially taking huge sums of cash from Russia to further Russian energy politics in Germany. People forgot very quickly that Angela Merkel was also heavily involved in the communist party in the then cleptocratic DDR and worked at several levels inside various party organisations. There's a reason why she managed to steer Germany's policies so heavily towards propping up Russia's economy.

We probably need to take a step back on the national stereotyping. We’re not in a good place for throwing those stones.

I was trying to work out if its their view that trade is more important than stopping an aggressor. Whether they genuinely believe this land grab would be the last. Whether they just feel it’s outside their sphere of interest. Curious as to where they see a satisfactory conclusion and whether they deep down believe the end of this phase will be the end absolutely. It looks fairly clear to me that if Putin gets away with having gained anything, at pretty much any price, he will see that as his victory. The line on the map moved, Russia is bigger, that’s a win in the history books.

If that is allowed to happen, why wouldn’t the Russian leader have another nibble in another 7 years?