Is there a genuine possiblity now that Ukraine with the help of NATO can drive Russia out?
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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That's just diplomat foreplaying. I wouldn't read too much into it. Judge the Chinese by their actions:
Thats a huge deal -- Unionpay is massive.
Not being mad at you, but I will say that you better consider the Global Times into the "unreliable news source" category just like The Sun. In fact, they are what if North Korean propaganda and The Sun had a child.
Not being mad at you, but I will say that you better consider the Global Times into the "unreliable news source" category just like The Sun. In fact, they are what if North Korean propaganda and The Sun had a child.
Precisely. Its just state media making everything sound perfect. The reality of the ground is quite different. The reality for China will always be about the Benjamins. They have way too much at stake to allow for a fractured non-functioning global economy.
The capitalistic commie cnuts.
I hope Ukraine will be able to hold for another month. After that, they will have much higher probabilities for a win over the Russians. One factor is that they will soon be provided with long range artillery. Another factor is that the US industry is developing weapons that will help Ukrainians beat the Russians. Obviously, US industry can provide weapons much faster than the Russian industry.
I agree and think it’s mostly optics right now which don’t look great when it comes to German leadership. Basically, dragging their feet, slow on decision making when the time is of essence, no postponement of nuclear closure roadmap, also still some calls for normality to resume when the war ends etc. I think strong message would be incredibly important from Germany that there’s no coming back now for Russia under Putin when it comes to sanctions and backing it up with actions where it could be seen that you’ll try to achieve complete independence from Russian gas at the most pressing timelines possible.
Good interview here:
British Historian Antony Beevor "Putin Wants to Be Feared – Like Stalin and Hitler"
British Historian Antony Beevor "Putin Wants to Be Feared – Like Stalin and Hitler"
Russians will leave at the first chance where Putin can save face or if he is removed from power. It's that fecking stupid this shitty war. The Russians can not win this but they won't be driven out as you say either. There is a good chance this war will be going on for this whole year.
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Just on this point: I see it often mentioned in relation to Germany buying gas in Russia, but there is very little correlation between the two. Gas is rarely used in Power plants here, it is mostly used for domestic heating and in the chemical industry.
The first would only profit from nuclear power if everyone would/could replace their heating systems, which is impossible to do on short notice, and the latter has no real options to move away from natural gas as a ressource at all.
So discussing the German nuclear strategy doesn't add much to the topic of this thread.
Electric heaters aren't difficult. They're not as good as central heating but the difference only amounts to inconvenience, its not life-changing.
The problem is the delivery times are already a disaster now, forcing everyone to buy would take a long time, it isn't a short fix. Replacing Russian gas with gas from other sources is the much more efficient way now.
That totals up to 20.5k dead or missing. We can presume that most of the missing are dead, with a few being deserters. And I doubt that the missing include POWs, since I assume there's a mechanism in place - for prisoner exchanges etc - for informing the Russian authorities about those captured.
20.5k is only slightly less than the latest Ukrainian estimate of 21.2k Russians dead. I've thought for a while now that the Ukrainian figures are not that much of an exaggeration, and this seems to confirm it.
Using the Russian figures, and assuming 3 times as many wounded as dead (which is the usual rule of thumb), this means an astonishing 82,000 Russian military now out of action, not even including those captured.
Edit: I don't think the Russian figures even includes losses from troops raised in the breakaway regions, nor those from the Chechens and mercenary groups, as these are not formally considered to be Russian troops. When these are added into the mix, the above total could easily exceed 100,000.
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This could be true, but I'm not so sure of it. Consider: it costs only $6,000 to make the cheapest switchblade drone. If the manufacture of these is ramped up, it means that 10,000 of these drones could be delivered for $60 million, or 100,000 drones for $600 million. The Russians have no defence against these.
How long would the Russian continue to hold their positions with 100 switchblade drone attacks raining down on them every single day for weeks or even months on end?
I don't know what the electricity prices look like in Germany but here people would not afford to heat their homes with electricity.
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They are going up massively.
My current contract charges about 27 cent per kwH.
I get offers now to extend in October when my current contract ends of up to 56 cents.
Somehow I found one for 35 and signed up to that, but I still don't know if I have missed something in the small print there!
Are you not missing that Russia could make 100,000 of their own?
No idea what that would actually mean for warfare, I suppose no one can be sure until it happens, but it's generally the way it works, if one side develops an effective new weapon, the other copies it.
Russia doesn't have switchblade drones. And with the sanctions in place, I doubt they could get the parts needed to manufacture them.
If the electricity grids of Europe stop fecking around though and get moving quicker on renewables and storage projects then those prices will come back down again. If you're producing your electricity with Russian coal, oil and gas then obviously the price will go up massively because it's just an extra process step in converting those fossil fuels into heat in your home that you could have cut out the middle man on and burned yourself directly.
In the meantime, if you've got the cash and the space in your home, probably worth looking into domestic solar panels and battery solutions, then you are effectively largely acting as your own grid.
I don't know the technology, which bits would be unobtainable?
Control electronics would likely be the biggest problem, as Russia doesn't really have a modern semiconductor industry.
Other more complicated machinery could also be a problem, Russian engineering is mostly shit today and everything they produce at least relies on tools bought in the West that they can't replace or increase in production capacity.
If the Russians actually follow through with this dipshit idea of trying to pull a massive encirclement, they're going to take staggering losses which really could lead to them collapsing and pulling out. It's astonishing that they actually believe they have the capabilities to pull it off.
Read the article I linked to a few posts earlier. I really don't think Putin places any value on the lives of his own people - they are resources to him.
Same as here then, it's insane. There are lower income people who struggle to survive with gas, electricity and everything else getting more expensive. If many Germans heat their homes with gas I fully understand the reluctance to cut the gas, the point is not to punish your own lower income citizens.
good article that discusses the role and relevance of these types of weapons: https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/loitering-munitions-in-ukraine-and-beyond/
Yeah but that doesn't actually help him any. It just results in lots of dead soldiers without actually achieving your aims.
That's the flaw in his plan according to that chap. Putin has fecked up, simply put.
Currently they're struggling to get stuff like ball bearings so I'm guessing producing drones is outside of their capabilities.
If their encirclement plan doesn't work, this will leave the Russians with no other option than a frontal assault on the Ukrainian fixed defensive positions in the east.
Until now, they've focused mainly on heavily shelling these positions in an attempt to soften them up. But if they they want to take these eastern regions (which they do) then at some point in the near future they will need to leave their own defensive positions and actually assault these Ukrainian positions with troops and armour.
This is what the Ukrainians are waiting for, because those advancing Russian forces will then have to move across open ground through a firestorm of Ukrainian anti-armour missiles, artillery fire, switchblades and more ... and will suffer massive casualties as a result, way beyond anything we've seen so far.
I think the Russian troops will not make it through the firestorm and will crack and run backwards. Those that survive will not be willing to to try again.
An easy visualization of what’s happening below. At the very top east of Kharkiv you can see the area where Ukraine was meant to counterattack that we were talking about a few days ago.
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Encirclements always look really enticing until you consider that the Ukrainians have substantial ready forces on the outside of that pocket that will have great fun cutting off and isolating the Russian advance and turning it into a smoking mess while those on the inside do the same. If the Russian had brought 500k-750k troops then this might be dangerous for Ukraine. With the maybe 100-150k they have its just nonsensical.
The BBC reports:
"UK to send tanks to Poland
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the UK is sending Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Poland to backfill for T-72 tanks that Poland will send to Ukraine.
This is in addition to the armoured fighting vehicles that the UK is sending directly to Ukraine, a move which was already announced ..."
"UK to send tanks to Poland
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the UK is sending Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Poland to backfill for T-72 tanks that Poland will send to Ukraine.
This is in addition to the armoured fighting vehicles that the UK is sending directly to Ukraine, a move which was already announced ..."
And while it looks small on a map, that's a lot of ground to control. Going by the Kyiv offensive Russia aren't great at protecting their supply lines.
You can already see a potential problem for Russia on the map. If they push south from Izyum and overstretch their lines, Ukraine could attack from the north west of Izyum to cut off their lines and effectively encircle the northern part of Russia's encirclement attack (until they can connect from the south).
Looks like there's finally an official number.
They forecast GDP to decrease by up 2%, or 5% if one factors in an otherwise projected growth of 3%.
On the other hand the CEO of Paulaner has stated that a gas embargo would severely impact their operations, so there's that to consider.
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Yes it is a good article, thank you. A sentence jumped out as it's the way I was thinking as a complete amateur "will impact the character of warfare more substantially than the introduction of the machine gun" . The known unknowns and the unknown unknowns I suppose, we can try and predict the effects but there's bound to be huge surprises. When they first started playing around with barbed wire I doubt they envisaged quite the impact it would have.
And thank you also to everyone for explaining that Russia are incapable of manufacturing anything or sourcing anything from abroad. Most reassuring.
The Russians ain't going to like this. The BBC reports:
"Moskva wreckage declared item of Ukrainian underwater cultural heritage
... the wreckage of the pride of Russia’s fleet has been declared an item of Ukrainian underwater cultural heritage. Number #2064 to be precise, falling under the category of rare scientific or technical equipment.
In a post on their official Facebook page, the Ministry of Defence wrote "80 miles from Odesa, the famous cruiser and the largest sunken object of the Black Sea floor can be admired without much diving!"
According to Ukrainian Military TV, the wreckage is at a depth of around 45-50 metres, with its last known location revealed by the British."
"Moskva wreckage declared item of Ukrainian underwater cultural heritage
... the wreckage of the pride of Russia’s fleet has been declared an item of Ukrainian underwater cultural heritage. Number #2064 to be precise, falling under the category of rare scientific or technical equipment.
In a post on their official Facebook page, the Ministry of Defence wrote "80 miles from Odesa, the famous cruiser and the largest sunken object of the Black Sea floor can be admired without much diving!"
According to Ukrainian Military TV, the wreckage is at a depth of around 45-50 metres, with its last known location revealed by the British."
Take it with a pinch of salt but the reports from Putin’s elite say that they don’t believe that any peaceful resolution without a huge win is a possibility as the propaganda did a bit too well in convincing everyone that Russia is fighting the Nazis in the final, almost apocalyptic war. Putin’s Administration has their own sociological surveys that apparently say that there would be a potential internal backlash if they simply take their losses and move out. And, as correctly noted by someone above, the loss of people’s lives, be it Russian or Ukrainian, are not really a concern to Putin, they never really were.
I don't think the propaganda about fighting Nazis would be the big problem now. Just declare that you destroyed all military equipment (demilitarization) and killed all Nazis, maybe dig in Donezk and Luhansk Oblast which Ukraine might even begrudgingly accept and declare mission accomplished, despite under high losses.
But the propaganda problem is, that they made a huge deal of NATO support for Ukraine and started to talk about being actually at war with NATO, already fighting WW3 now etc. This part of the propaganda was great to explain Russian losses, but really makes it hard to retreat, as now it looks like they have been beaten by NATO. That's a whole different story than killing some Nazis and going home afterwards.