Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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Best explanations I've seen suggests the precision shooting probably took out a huge amount of the external optical and sensors and that the Bradley may have got lucky on hitting some hydraulics. Combine that with a decimation of experienced tank crews and that's how we got that result.
25mm go brrrrrrrr
Bushmaster really built a monster with that chain gun.
Hell yeah they did. That thing does solid work
For those still not grasping the importance of Ukraine defeating orcs in this war:
Be prepared for the WW3 in the upcoming years then and it will happen irrespective if you want to believe it or not. The regime in Kremlin will happily sacrifice millions of Ukrainians, are Europeans ready to die in such figures?
If you don’t then you should be doing all you can to pressure your politicians to do much more for Ukraine in arms deliveries and production.
Be prepared for the WW3 in the upcoming years then and it will happen irrespective if you want to believe it or not. The regime in Kremlin will happily sacrifice millions of Ukrainians, are Europeans ready to die in such figures?
If you don’t then you should be doing all you can to pressure your politicians to do much more for Ukraine in arms deliveries and production.
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If there was ever a vote for important threads not being intoxicated by twitter then I would agree.
Poland is about the only country that is preparing accordingly , war with Russia looks inevitable.
You think they're going to go to a hot war with Russia because of the GPS issue ?
There's quite a few members posting tweets from credible sources which help to better understand the situation there. Then you have posts like the one above yours which absolutely ruin the thread.
How's that?
Huh? Poland isn't going to start a war, they are simply preparing for further Russian aggression in their neighborhood.
More countries should do the same, Russia won't stop before they are stopped, or they get their empire back.
I see your point. On the other hand, Poland is a part of NATO, so Russia would be triggering article 5 by attacking them. Putin is somewhat delusional, but he's not suicidal. At the end of the day, he will act out of self-preservation of his own life, and attacking any NATO nation would run contrary to that.
And how are they going to achieve that when they couldn't even get their way in Ukraine?
You also do know that Poland is a NATO member, right?
Russia is going full on war-economy, they have a lot of production coming up, while EU largely does not.
They will, sadly, at this rate, eventually achieve some kind of victory in Ukraine, and will continue on to Moldova or one of the Baltic states after.
Obviously they aren't ready to do this right now, will take years, but unless EU starts taking the threat seriously, it will only get worse.
Its not about Poland in of itself, but they are building up defenses for a reason, better be safe than sorry.
Europe currently is incapable of producing anything close to what’s required to support Ukraine to hold off russia which is in a state of war economy with country full of brainwashed people willing to die for a few pennies as this is their best available social lift from the absolute poverty. Ukraine’s future is basically hinges on US industrial complex and deep storages but it looks like politics have paralyzed it completely. Let’s be clear here without the US backing those AD missiles will become scarcer and scarcer allowing russia to run havoc both on the frontlines and deep in the rear, it will be only a matter of time before it all unfolds quickly. After Putin extends his dictatorship in March sham elections chances are high for another mobilization and big push.
Also, you have German / Swedish active high ranking generals all coming out recently stating that NATO only has several years to prepare for the war with russia if you don’t take my word for it.
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The russian/belurssian border is going to be fortified on NATO’s eastern flank:
War economy is no silver bullet and can only be maitained for so long.
Furthermore the economic sanctions are hurting Russia, though not as badly as we first thought, and Iran as well as NK's support isn't infinite. Let's not even talk about the horrendous losses the Russians sustained in the last two years. I personally see the story about Russia wanting to take on NATO and western Europe as a pure fantasy. It will never have the economy nor the military means for that, no matter how hard they try. It's also one thing to "conquer" a country but a whole other to hold onto it.
I personally don't believe that it's ever been Putin's intention. It's part of the war to depict the enemy as delusional and irrational since it makes things easier for your population to swallow, but to the contrary to the popular belief, Putin's not Emperor Palpatine and certainly not suicidal. It's ridiculous to even think an invasion of western Europe is feasible given the state of Russia and its NATO counter-part and it's absolutely baffling to me that people even entertain this idea.
I do think however that if the West keeps dragging its feet, Ukraine is going to lose a part of its territory and won't be a NATO member anytime soon.
Furthermore the economic sanctions are hurting Russia, though not as badly as we first thought, and Iran as well as NK's support isn't infinite. Let's not even talk about the horrendous losses the Russians sustained in the last two years. I personally see the story about Russia wanting to take on NATO and western Europe as a pure fantasy. It will never have the economy nor the military means for that, no matter how hard they try. It's also one thing to "conquer" a country but a whole other to hold onto it.
I personally don't believe that it's ever been Putin's intention. It's part of the war to depict the enemy as delusional and irrational since it makes things easier for your population to swallow, but to the contrary to the popular belief, Putin's not Emperor Palpatine and certainly not suicidal. It's ridiculous to even think an invasion of western Europe is feasible given the state of Russia and its NATO counter-part and it's absolutely baffling to me that people even entertain this idea.
I do think however that if the West keeps dragging its feet, Ukraine is going to lose a part of its territory and won't be a NATO member anytime soon.
Putin believes the collapse of the USSR was a big mistake, he doesn't view Ukraine as a real country, and probably not any other former soviet republics either.
We know for sure though, that all of Ukraine and then Moldova, was his plan.
Listen, we aren't talking about a full-scale invasion of western Europe, they aren't going to invade Germany or France, but they will for sure try to cause instability in the "lesser" member states in the east, pick apart the baltics, piece by piece.
Sad on many levels.
But yes, I don’t know what I’m talking about…The reality is if we don’t act right now in Europe the big war is coming very soon, again despite what you want to believe in.
With all due respect, what were they expecting the reality of this war would be? Besides, no one put a gun on those guys' heads to sign the contracts of service in the Russian army.
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He describes the fall of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century", which is true in a sense, because it gifted the US a free pass to rule over the world without any kind of push back. Given the human nature, it's never good to have a country, or anyone for that matter, with that much power without counter-weight because it always ends in tears. Putin also said "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain." Now we can debate the truth and intent behind this statement, but at least quote him properly.
He views the constant expansion of NATO to the East since 1991 as a threat to Russia's security. From a Russian point of view, that's not an outlandish analysis. Ukraine being part of NATO is for strategic and military reasons a big no-no for Russia, just like the US would never allow Russian or Chinese military bases on Mexican soil. That is the crux of the matter and I believe that Russia will never compromise on this point, at least not under Putin. Just to be clear, I'm not justifying the invasion of Ukraine which is fundamentally wrong. Just trying to understand Russia's motives and course of action, without giving into the laughable "Evil Russian Sauron trying to conquer and destroy the bestest civilization ever" horseshit.
No, we don't. Let's for a second abandon all logic, and say that Russia successfully manages to conquer a country as big as Ukraine with just 300,000 soldiers. By what kind of miracle would Putin be able to keep it? Do you know how difficult (and costly) it is to occupy a country which population doesn't want you there? Do you understand what it means in terms of money, manpower and military actions? History has already answered that question for us: it's impossible. You either force them out or kill them all. Or most likely, you just leave at some point. Now if you're talking about a regime change that would act more in line with Moscow's interests, that's another story.
Causing instability for countries that don't play along, as wicked as it is, has been part of geopolitics for millenia. Every single country did and still does it, the West in particular with great success and a quite astonishing number of victims around the world. And it's not going to change. People in the West are crying foul right now because they're on the receiving end for the first time in a long while.
The Baltic states are all EU and NATO members, and their populations really not fond of Russia. The latter's attempt to destabilize them during the current war, using energy as a weapon (the only one it realistically has), not only didn't work but also sped up their process to shift away from Russia as main energy supplier. All in all, it's been bad business for Putin. So what kind of trouble can Russia possibly cause, aside from nuking them?
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The Quiet Transformation of Occupied Ukraine
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/quiet-transformation-occupied-ukraine
Very good points made, I got a question for someone who knows more about this subject than me. When Putin isn't in charge anymore either by death or other means, who will take over? Is it likely Russia will continue down the same path? My image of Russia is that of a very divided nation that can easily turn on itself and descend in to a civil war.
@harms is probably better equipped to answer this.
My amateur guess is that the Russian people have very little influence on political decisions. Meaning that they'll go with the flow.
If the next guy blames it all on Putin and withdraws from Ukraine in return for lifting sanctions, or cooks up some other "we won it" narrative, I think the war can be stopped that way. But as of now, it seems more likely that Putin's successor will be another siloviki fella.
Alexey Dyumin is expected to take over from Putin (when is anyone's guess). As for your image of Russia, I've lived here for over 20 years and I don't get the impression it can "easily descend into civil war".
Thanks for the answer.
Just like with almost any totalitarian autocracy, there simply aren't any (realistic) replacement candidates available — Putin won't allow anyone from his own circle to get too popular in fear of a potential coup. The last guy who kinda tried... or, at least, thought about it (from what little we can tell), was Medvedev at the end of his hollow presidential term. But he quickly got put in his place and, later, demoted to what he is today — a pathetic clown with no real power.
Whenever putinism can survive without Putin is a question that many way smarter people tried to answer before me, often coming up with very different answers. In all likelihood, the system wouldn't collapse immediately, but would have to rapidly adapt (as so much in it is tied to Putin directly, not to an abstract presidential figure). In an optimistic scenario they'd see the pragmatic value of improving the relationships with the West and move towards that... but seeing as we don't know who'd end up in charge in that scenario, it's all pure guesswork.
The most popular figure in the opposition is Navalvy (currently imprisoned as you most likely know), I think we can say that with certainty. However, it's incredibly hard to assess his real approval rating in Russia, seeing as he & his team are labeled as terrorists, the entire country is at war and there's no independent sociological & political surveys available. In the last elections where he got a chance to participate (Moscow's mayoral elections of 2013) he got 27% with Sobyanin (Putin's man) getting 51%. Take those numbers with a pinch of salt as those elections weren't fair, both in preparation and in execution, but realistic estimates still had him as a close second. A lot had happened since 2013 though...
If we see real democratic elections right after Putin's hypothetical death I think Navalny has a more than decent chance of winning it, seeing as there aren't any strong figures at the current government apparatus who even qualify to have their own approval rating... but there's a fat chance of that happening, sadly.
That's a bold assumption. Those preemniki (successors) figures come and go but realistically nothing is getting done to really boost their individual profile. A regular (as in, not very involved in politics as, sadly, most of them are) Russian citizen not from the Tula oblast' (where Dyumin is currently the governor) doesn't even know his name, I guarantee you.
Here's the survey of trust in different political figures made by VCIOM (the biggest and, also, government-owned survey company in Russia). I won't transliterate their names but they even include Navalny (I wouldn't trust their numbers on him though) and such non-entities as Platoshkin with less than 1% of Russians trusting them to represent their interests... Dyumin is nowhere to be seen even with this low of a threshold.
Thanks for that in-depth answer.
As long as Russia occupies it, we won't know the real death toll.
Even so, the strong possibility that a quarter of the population in Mariupol may already be dead is staggering enough.
The 100k figure is completely believable given the pre-invasion population of Mariupol was about 450k, and the entire city was decimated by the Russians.