Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Dr. Dwayne

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VorZakone said:
Dictatorships may be more agile as the decision-making is centralized but the quality of the work will always be worse IMO. Too many yes-men, corruption etc.
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Yep, we've seen this historically with inflated reporting during the five year plans of the Stalin era and in modern China as well.

Bad news, poor results and lower than expected numbers gets you dead in these regimes so there's plenty of incentive to fudge your reporting. What surprises me is that these paranoid authoritarians don't actually audit the results but I suppose they get a lot of mileage out of them when promoting how great they are as leaders.
 

GlastonSpur

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marktan said:
Tbf I remember saying near the start of the war that Mariupol and more of Ukraine would fall, there was a lot of posts against that opinion due to the resistance being shown by Ukraine at the time.

In general my view on the war not changed, Ukraine can resist as much as they want (and it's very noble how they've done so), but in terms of manpower, military power and general resources they're badly outmatched and it's only a matter of time before they lose. The east will fall next, and then it just depends on Putin's whims as to how far he wants to go. The only thing up for debate is the timeline, it could take months, even years, but if he wants Ukraine he can have it. We have to remember we're only a month and a half into this, it could go on for years if Russia wants Ukraine bad enough.

The only thing that could stop it is aerial capability to actual fight the Russian air force, because giving them aerial superiority lets them dictate what whatever they want. But the west doesn't want to supply planes. Or if the sanctions actually made a noticeable difference to Russia, which they don't. A complete embargo on Russian gas and oil could do it (though even then it'd probably just be sold outside of Europe), but there's no political will in Germany etc to impose another 1000 euro cost per citizen (according to estimates).
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None of this is true.

The Russian military has been severely depleted, the general quality of their troops, leadership and equipment is inferior to that of Ukraine, Russian morale is very low, weapons continue to pour into Ukraine beyond the ability of Russia to stop it (and the sophistication-level of these weapons is rising - e.g. anti-ship missiles, Leopard tanks etc), and Russia is unable to establish air supremacy (meaning unimpeded access to Ukrainian airspace).

The East is very well defended - Russia will find it very difficult to take it. Odessa is beyond their reach except for missile attacks - indeed, Russian forces have been pushed further away from it.

My prediction is that the Russia will now suffer further huge losses - beyond even what we've seen so far - in trying and failing to take the East.
 

TMDaines

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VorZakone said:
Not sure if that is a smart move by Zelensky. He needs all the help he can get.
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I’m sure Zelenskyy has more opportunities for his time than he could ever hope to fulfil. Lots are willing to visit Kyiv now, and he’s still digitally touring the Western parliaments. It’s actually quite incredible how many different countries’ elected members he has spoken to at this point.
 

Carolina Red

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GlastonSpur said:
Donbas: Battle in east Ukraine expected to be bloody and decisive - the BBC reports from the front lines.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61080476
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Good article there. I like how it highlights the Ukrainian use of deep, mobile defense. I read about this recently in a paper published by some officers at Fort Benning as being the way the US Army is trained (and how they’ve no doubt trained Ukraine) to defeat the Russian BTGs. They don’t have enough combat power in a BTG to take many losses in an offensive and then hold ground, and you need a 3:1 ratio to begin with to assault a position… and even higher ratio to assault a fixed position. I know the Russians are stacking up their BTGs for this push, but if they’ve actually already lost about 1/3 of their operable frontline tanks & tank crews, a defense in depth by the Ukrainians might bleed the BTGs dry just as the Polish, Czech, and German armor are put into the field by the Ukrainians.
 

Suedesi

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Simbo said:
I think the first thing to understand is that this is a war between Russia and Ukraine and because of the nature of this war, peace will only ever be decided on Ukrainian terms.

Do you believe there is something the US could do to enforce peace without declaring war on Russia?
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100%
 

stefan92

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VorZakone said:
Not sure if that is a smart move by Zelensky. He needs all the help he can get.
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Steinmeier is of the SPD party that historically always had close ties to Russia and has struggled to act convincingly. It is no surprise that Ukraine/Zelensky is quite unhappy about the German contribution, as our military has essentially failed to deliver weapons in the way Ukraine needed and wanted.

And you can see a clear pattern looking at the current government:
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD): Made one big speech, but isn't walking the walk so far (remember that "100 billion Euro investment in the military"? looks like he doesn't)
Minister of Defence Christine Lambrecht (SPD): Horrible performance in all this. Promised weapons out of Bundeswehr stock, didn't deliver, looks completely overwhelmed by actually having to deal with a war situation.
Minister of Economy Robert Habeck (Greens): Responsible for the first actually done weapon deliveries (Ukraine bought stuff directly from the manufacturer, he waived them through as he is responsible for weapon exports)
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens): Publicly calling for heavy weapons for Ukraine, despite the reluctance of Scholz to do so
Leader of the parliamentary defence committee Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): Calling for heavy weapons for Ukraine, publicly calling out chancellor Scholz for being a weak leader in the current crisis

So out of the three current governing parties, two are working and calling for heavy support for Ukraine, while the SPD is reluctant to do so and responsible for a lot of the appeasement politics towards Russia, Steinmeier as former foreign minister even so under Merkel's CDU government.

And by the way a level below German politicians are visiting Ukraine today, namely the leaders of the parliamentary committees for defence, Europe (Anton Hofreiter, Greens) and foreign politics (Michael Roth, SPD), but apparently they won't go to Kiew but meet with Ukrainian parlamentarians in Western Ukraine (which makes sense, as that is the same protocollary level).
 

marktan

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Raoul said:
You're omitting a lot of factors that if included, would completely undercut everything you've just said. The Russians have been generally incompetent, have terrible logistics, are losing far more troops and equipment than previously imagined, have poor morale, and will run out of resources at some not too distant point in the future. The Ukrainians on the other hand, have demonstrated they are much more adept at going after the Russians and are now armed with an endless amount of high tech western weapons and technology to go after the Russians, and have much higher morale given that they are defending their country against foreign invaders. When you factor in these variables, nothing you wrote above appears to make much sense.
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What you say may or may not be true, the hard facts are numbers wise in both personnel and military equipment, long term financing, Russia are way, way, way ahead. Another fact is that most of the coastal cities have fallen, Mariupol will be next. Given it another month, more inland cities next to those will fall.

We hear a lot of things in the western media about Russia's poor morale, which of course they want to push to readers in the west. But the hard fact is that Russia a month and a half in has made gains. It'll move all its forces to the east and another month in, they'll make more gains. Logically there's no way they cannot, when you're the only side with planes in the sky, and with more man power and equipment, what are each of those cities going to do? Eventually they will fall.
 

phelans shorts

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marktan said:
What you say may or may not be true, the hard facts are numbers wise in both personnel and military equipment, long term financing, Russia are way, way, way ahead. Another fact is that most of the coastal cities have fallen, Mariupol will be next. Given it another month, more inland cities next to those will fall.

We hear a lot of things in the western media about Russia's poor morale, which of course they want to push to readers in the west. But the hard fact is that Russia a month and a half in has made gains. It'll move all its forces to the east and another month in, they'll make more gains. Logically there's no way they cannot, when you're the only side with planes in the sky, and with more man power and equipment, what are each of those cities going to do? Eventually they will fall.
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The problem you’ve got is that you’re looking at raw numbers. Russia might have x amount more tanks, not much use if they don’t actually work though, is it? Going off what we’ve already seen so far their equipment is so poorly maintained that the majority of it just doesn’t actually work, so imagine how bad the stuff they didn’t send in for the shock and awe blitz is!

That’s aside from that we know for a fact that Ukrainians are being trained to use more modern planes as we speak. On top of the literally endless supply of weapons already coming over the border for them.
 

GlastonSpur

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marktan said:
What you say may or may not be true, the hard facts are numbers wise in both personnel and military equipment, long term financing, Russia are way, way, way ahead. Another fact is that most of the coastal cities have fallen, Mariupol will be next. Given it another month, more inland cities next to those will fall.

We hear a lot of things in the western media about Russia's poor morale, which of course they want to push to readers in the west. But the hard fact is that Russia a month and a half in has made gains. It'll move all its forces to the east and another month in, they'll make more gains. Logically there's no way they cannot, when you're the only side with planes in the sky, and with more man power and equipment, what are each of those cities going to do? Eventually they will fall.
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It'll move combat effective forces to the east, bearing in mind that around 30% of the Battalion Tactical Groups in its original invasion force are now considered to be combat ineffective. Meanwhile, having sent packing the Russian forces that moved against Kyiv, the Ukrainians can now shift eastwards some of the Kyiv area forces.

To succeed in the east, Russia will need at least a 3 to 1 advantage - and much higher than that against the fixed defensive positions that the Ukrainians have been preparing for years now. I don't believe the Russians have enough military strength left to make it.
 

Raoul

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marktan said:
What you say may or may not be true, the hard facts are numbers wise in both personnel and military equipment, long term financing, Russia are way, way, way ahead. Another fact is that most of the coastal cities have fallen, Mariupol will be next. Given it another month, more inland cities next to those will fall.
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Not sure if serious. Mariupol may fall soon but that would be literally the only coastal city the Russians have. And I'm using the word have loosely given that the city is reduced to rubble and unusable for the Russians beyond simply utilyzing it as part of a land bridge to Crimea. Kherson is being contested (and isn't a port city anyway) and Nikolaev is with Ukraine. Odesa has barely been touched.


marktan said:
We hear a lot of things in the western media about Russia's poor morale, which of course they want to push to readers in the west. But the hard fact is that Russia a month and a half in has made gains. It'll move all its forces to the east and another month in, they'll make more gains. Logically there's no way they cannot, when you're the only side with planes in the sky, and with more man power and equipment, what are each of those cities going to do? Eventually they will fall.
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This seems to be contradicted by reality given that the Russians controlled far more land in Ukraine just 10 days ago than they do right now. They have literally fled all northern positions because their advances were humiliatingly stalled by the outgunned Ukrainians.
 
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Rajma

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VorZakone said:
Not sure if that is a smart move by Zelensky. He needs all the help he can get.
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What help? Thoughts and prayers? In the meantime we’ll block all the important weapon deliveries and sanctions. There’s nothing to be gained from this obvious PR stunt.
 

frostbite

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VorZakone said:
Not sure if that is a smart move by Zelensky. He needs all the help he can get.
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I think Zelensky did the right thing. He is helping us see that Germans are responsible for what is happening today. I hope that Germans themselves will realize what they are doing (and not doing).

Why do the Germans make so many bad decisions? I am not talking about the past 110 years, but the past 12 years, and the past 2 months too! Including bad decisions today. They are the leaders of the EU and the Euro currency... but where is their leadership? They seem to dither with everything. Spineless, no morals at all. They only think of their pockets, trying to take advantage of everyone else. They have a great economy only because USA helped them after 1945, but they are so reluctant to help anyone else. They did the same with Greece after 2008 and they are doing the same today with Ukraine. It does not matter how much Ukraine is suffering, the Germans are only concerned about the German economy! Is this leadership?

In February, they did not want to send military aid to Ukraine, because Ukraine was going to lose in a few days anyway. (And they did not want to anger Putin.) Then, after the start of the war, they did not want sanctions against Russia! Now, they do not want a full embargo against Russia!

Germany gave trillions to Putin and their support to Putin (especially since 2014), plus their spineless EU "leadership", are some of the main reasons for the deaths of so many Ukrainians. They have empowered Putin. And they still are doing very little today to help Ukraine.
 

TMDaines

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marktan said:
What you say may or may not be true, the hard facts are numbers wise in both personnel and military equipment, long term financing, Russia are way, way, way ahead. Another fact is that most of the coastal cities have fallen, Mariupol will be next. Given it another month, more inland cities next to those will fall.

We hear a lot of things in the western media about Russia's poor morale, which of course they want to push to readers in the west. But the hard fact is that Russia a month and a half in has made gains. It'll move all its forces to the east and another month in, they'll make more gains. Logically there's no way they cannot, when you're the only side with planes in the sky, and with more man power and equipment, what are each of those cities going to do? Eventually they will fall.
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I think you are misreading most of what has happened so far.

Most of the gains Russia made nationally were defensive concessions that Ukraine granted to take up superior defensive positions. Ukraine is not an island, it has a very long land border with Russia, and it didn’t have the forces to make its entire national border to the north, east and south the frontline of the battle. It was always going to concede some territory to give them the best chance in this war. Now even much of the Russian gains have been undone through a combination of severe Ukrainian pushback and Russia retreating from battles in which they were only going to lose longer term.

What has become clear is that the Russian logistics in this conflict are beyond tragic. Ukraine has capitalised on this with exceptional small agile insurgency groups. Russia overextends and strings out its forces, they get bogged down, supplies get cut off, and Ukraine inflicts lethal damage on them at night with clandestine infantry and drones. Rinse and repeat, day after day.

The new phase of the war will certainly be different, but unless Russia reaches for chemical or nuclear weapons, they will find it tough to make swift gains. That frontline in the Donbas hasn’t move much since the start of the fresh invasion in February.
 

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frostbite said:
Why do the Germans make so many bad decisions? I am not talking about the past 110 years, but the past 12 years, and the past 2 months too! Including bad decisions today. They are the leaders of the EU and the Euro currency... but where is their leadership? They seem to dither with everything.
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Remember how many people died the last time Germany tried to assume leadership over Europe and you might understand why Germans tend to like a careful and understated approach.

I also think this is bad, but I am under the impression that this might also be a generation question - who saw the end of the cold war and lived through German reunification might remember fondly how a careful approach and a good German/Russian relationship did lots of good for us (meaning: becoming a free, democratic, unified state again).
 

hellhunter

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stefan92 said:
Remember how many people died the last time Germany tried to assume leadership over Europe and you might understand why Germans tend to like a careful and understated approach.

I also think this is bad, but I am under the impression that this might also be a generation question - who saw the end of the cold war and lived through German reunification might remember fondly how a careful approach and a good German/Russian relationship did lots of good for us (meaning: becoming a free, democratic, unified state again).
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I admire your patience
 

stefan92

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hellhunter said:
I admire your patience
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Do you think I should have mentioned that we Germans also tend to be thankful for how the Soviets/Russians handled the reunification, but still hold a grudge against UK for their behaviour? :lol:

But it's absolutely true, in the last 30 years we had better relations to Russia than to the UK I think, and that is also caused by this background.

Edit: Did I even mention how UK refused German leadership in voting for Brexit? :houllier:

It's clear Germany is responding too slow and cautious, but you should at least consider some background why Germany had those exceptionally good relations to Russia, while might be reluctant towards other states.
 

SmashedHombre

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Lukashenko has taken time out of his busy schedule begging Putin for military rank to blame Bucha on the British.
 

GlastonSpur

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SmashedHombre said:
Lukashenko has taken time out of his busy schedule begging Putin for military rank to blame Bucha on the British.
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Seeing as what happened in Bucha has been repeated in almost every area that Russia has occupied, Britain must have infiltrated several hundred hoax-staging MI6 agents into Ukraine. Who knew.
 
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TMDaines

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This is a very good and brilliantly concise TED Talk by Garry Kasparov, covering everything from previous failures to confront Putin, the necessity of “good” to confront “absolute evil” (whilst recognising that “good” will not be absolute), and how expecting diplomacy to resolve this invasion is being grossly naïve at the atrocities being committed.

 

Simbo

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For those that saw the vid of the guys taking a point-blank tank round, they were UA unfortunately.

 
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