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Just an amazing burn https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/s...ingawful.com%2F
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Mar 2, 2022 16:20
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Alchenar posted:Doesn't really matter at this point, it's clear that Putin has chosen the dictatorship siege-state path and is locking Russia down for the long haul. Long haul. I think there are a lot of people in the west, mostly younger, who are in disbelief that he's willing to pay the price to annex Ukraine. Hence the visibility of the iPhone news. Incroyable! And it's unthinkable in their minds to return to 1945 as instructive history since that is only an old people reference. But yes. He's willing to return to Soviet-like privation and control to exercise his will. A pliant populace in service to the State is also an ideal, and while the pretty sensibilities of the comfortable young in the west might view "service to the state" as laudible, it's a jarring dissonance to observe what that really means in practice, or to see it happen in real Tik-Tok time.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:23
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GABA ghoul posted:I'm not sure if taking away a country's ability to do air travel nationally and internationally still counts as containment. It very much does. "Containment" here means "cripple their ability to wage further wars (against us)". I guess it's a bit of a euphemistic term, but imploding a countries airlines still counts.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:25
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ZombieLenin posted:Since I cannot read this map, I assume the red area is Russian annexation, the yellow area goes to Belorussia, the blue area is some Western Ukrainian rump state, and the green and purple areas are apparently the areas the Western NATO powers are going to agree to annex? Red - Novorossiya with Transnistria Yellow - Ukraine (Malorossiya) Blue - Western Ukraine (Galicia & Volhynia) Green - Bukovina (Romanian territory)* Purple - Zakarpattya (Hungarian territory)* *Protectorate (I assume Russian controlled)
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Mar 2, 2022 16:25
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KitConstantine posted:
hosed up thing is i can believe it. like convoys are hosed and so is logistics, your not getting them to a field hospital and i am sure those drones and explosives don't exactly make happy clean wounds and such.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:26
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for a dead body in the loving header but a russian senator is calling out the Russian Military for not even trying to bring back the bodies of dead soldiers.
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Rinkles posted:Huh, effective immediately the EU is banning Russia's international propaganda outlets.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:27
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It's long been a talking point that conventional wars of aggression between developed powers are effectively impossible because national economies are now too tightly tied up in a globalised economy and that doing so would never be worth it economically. Obviously Ukraine represents something of an edge case being not quite as developed and vaguely non-aligned (at at least not affiliated in a power bloc), but it's being put to the test right now. Outcomes of this conflict will huge knock-on effects around the world in terms of re-militarisation in developed nations. If Russia wins and recovers in a reasonable timeframe, it will be at the cost of one of the world's most valuable fictions. I think both sides of the talking point are getting some ammunition at the moment. For one, the economic squeeze can be rapid and extremely punitive. For the other, the global economy is never so united that condemnation is universal, and that actors can't cut an advantage by not playing ball with sanctions.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:29
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GABA ghoul posted:Germany completely disbanded a chunk of its special forces two years ago because those parts were completely overrun with neo-nazis who were stealing explosives and ammunition. The Bundeswehr continues to have periodic neo-nazi scandals. Ffs, a fascist party with close ties to neo-nazi organizations holds 10% of seats in parliament, IIRC that around twice as much as in Ukraine Ukrainian far-right holds 1 seat in ~500 seat parliament. They held real ground only in the interim post-revolution government, and their influence is mostly limited to their local communities. Chalks posted:How long will Russia be able to keep their own stock market closed for? Can they just keep it closed indefinitely? They can do that, technically speaking. Can they afford that is a different question, the answer to which is "No". OgNar posted:Does anyone have a summary/status of that long rear end column? As far as we can tell, it's barely moving, if at all. TheRat posted:Surely a carrier group can defend itself against drones??? It's not there, that was a joke about the smoke it emits.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:29
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TheRat posted:Surely a carrier group can defend itself against drones??? the joke is that russia's carrier is such a deathtrap if it was in the black sea it would probably have lit itself on fire however it is not, because it is such a deathtrap it managed to sink its drydock
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Mar 2, 2022 16:30
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I really needed to laugh this morning. More evidence my field of study is  https://twitter.com/zunguzungu/status/1499021010498387980?s=20&t=WPCdiesnMH-Vg1_VyEpm9A
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Mar 2, 2022 16:32
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CommieGIR posted:This was literally what was on the invasion map that Belarus' president leaked accidentally. This is incorrect. Batka's map had the current four Ukrainian military districts. Not the same.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:33
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Jeza posted:It's long been a talking point that conventional wars of aggression between developed powers are effectively impossible because national economies are now too tightly tied up in a globalised economy and that doing so would never be worth it economically. it seems p clear this war was not worth it economically.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:33
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cinci zoo sniper posted:They can do that, technically speaking. Can they afford that is a different question, the answer to which is "No".
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Mar 2, 2022 16:33
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Grouchio posted:How would martial law in Russia affect the speed at which the economic collapse brings Putin to the negotiating table? the goal of martial law and suppressing dissent is to not need to care what the public thinks
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Mar 2, 2022 16:34
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Interesting interview here: https://twitter.com/risj_oxford/status/1499007132934582274?s=20&t=QEvqurY6vq1U1_85iwc7xw It's Bellingcat, but nevertheless. The quote that bothered me the most from reading the transcript: quote:Another big unknown is we've seen, sadly that Russia has on the Kremlin has internalized the reputation cost completely so they decided that they are the bad actor. They don't care about how they're perceived. And the example to this was the shelling of the most Russian sound Russian I sit in Russia in Ukraine, which was hard because everybody there speaks Russian and they like Russia and so on so forth. And they shell that and they ship they they shelled it indiscriminately and they killed dozens of people. So it seems like they've given up the idea of rationalizing what they're doing and they just want to terrorize Ukraine into submission.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:35
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evilweasel posted:the goal of martial law and suppressing dissent is to not need to care what the public thinks Yeah this is just a full return to full Soviet Paranoia hermit empire. It'll be North Korea giving aid to Russia soon.....
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Mar 2, 2022 16:36
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evilweasel posted:this is, incidentally, why the US army stopped doing regional regiments after the civil war iirc, specifically to avoid this "whoops an entire town's population of young men was wiped out in one go" vs spreading it out That's almost exactly what US national guard units are though.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:37
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Nenonen posted:This is incorrect. Batka's map had the current four Ukrainian military districts. Not the same. I stand corrected there.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:37
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The quote that bothered me the most from reading the transcript: Why did that bother you because reading other pieces about Putin, his goals and his perception or Ukraine. That makes complete sense.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:40
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ZombieLenin posted:Is there any source for this other than the British Foreign Secretary's off the cuff statements? Given the costs of war--this is probably costing Russia tens of billions of dollars each day--and the sanctions I doubt the Russians can afford a ten year war. https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/russia-ukraine-news-kyiv-war-putin-invasion-talks-today/#post-update-8de46653 quote:A U.S. official tells CBS News that a tactical seizure of Ukraine (e: probably meant Kyiv) is possible within the next 4-6 weeks, based on the assessments of what is currently taking place on the ground with the Russian military. drunkill posted:Well this is pretty terrifying. KitConstantine posted:A volunteer for the Ukraine defense force was recording a voice message when the city council building in Kharkiv was hit by some kind of shell In future, please read the OP before posting war footage. This pushes the borderline for what I would consider permissible without tag and spoiler.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:40
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Jeza posted:It's long been a talking point that conventional wars of aggression between developed powers are effectively impossible because national economies are now too tightly tied up in a globalised economy and that doing so would never be worth it economically. There's also "modern war is horrendously lethal and expensive", which has been true for a long time (see the 500,00 casualties sustained in the first month of WW1 alone) but after years of asymmetrical and low-intensity warfare beared repeating. If Russia truely has lost 6000 men in a week, that's 5% of their 120,000 troops who were on the border. Obviously, that's going to focus on certain formations and units, but Russia (and probably Ukraine aswell) won't be able to sustain this operational tempo forever, they just won't have the men where they need them. Thats why taking cities is so important - if they get bogged down without taking any objectives, it makes potential ukrainian counterattacks much easier if they don't have to retake any urban areas.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:42
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Is there a way we could see those scenarios or the report? Prior to the war, many defense analysts weren't exactly confident Ukraine would be able to support such a long lasting insurgency.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:43
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spacetoaster posted:That's almost exactly what US national guard units are though. A little bit. Those are state-level units, and their sub-organizations don't typically come from the same local communities, but from across the state. Of course there are exceptions: one of the National Guard military police companies is almost entirely state police from Rhode Island, for example. Heavy casualties in that unit would be very poignant given the small size of the state and the fact that most of them have the same non-military employer. What the US doesn't do, though, is deliberately raise military units from specific towns, cities, and counties. Imagine you're a town of 20,000 people and had a 150-person company from your town take 88% casualties. The concentration of grief is terrible.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:44
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William Bear posted:I don't get what they're suggesting. Purple says Hungarian territory, green says Romanian. How would that work? Presumably to fuel Hungarian and Romanian separatism in Ukraine. And fringe nationalism in those NATO states. Anything to divide your enemy.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:44
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GABA ghoul posted:So the plan is now to let Russia rot as a hermit kingdom for 20-30 years until it completely collapses like the Soviet Union and then try to bring it back into the global community again(and not repeating the post-Soviet mistakes this time)? Jfc, this was a busy week for the world A harsh possibility but letting it wither on the vine might be the safest choice... i don't make those calls.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:45
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Is there a way we could see those scenarios or the report? Prior to the war, many defense analysts weren't exactly confident Ukraine would be able to support such a long lasting insurgency. you could get elected to the us congress
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Mar 2, 2022 16:45
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cinci zoo sniper posted:https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/russia-ukraine-news-kyiv-war-putin-invasion-talks-today/#post-update-8de46653 They are clearly more informed than I; however, I do not see how the Russian Federation can sustain it's current military operations for much more than a month, let alone 6 weeks just to take Kiev--then the rest of Ukraine--and then to sit in Ukraine for 15 or 20 years with a full-scale insurgency. Edit And that's not even taking into account the impact of sanctions.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:45
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Shes Not Impressed posted:I really needed to laugh this morning. More evidence my field of study is I don’t agree with everything Mearshimer says here but he doesn’t come off as stupidly as nearly every other Chotiner interviewee. He’s got a different, coldly analytical approach, but it’s not wrong. Mexico isn’t doing poo poo without the US approving, and nobody here thinks that’s odd.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:47
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Youth Decay posted:Love to use 17th century Russian Empire borders as the justification for carving out pieces of a sovereign state. something something China 5000 years
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Mar 2, 2022 16:48
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FishBulbia posted:It's theorized that this was a single shell from a smersh MRLS Hard doubt on that one, Smerch is what Kharkiv was being pounded with elsewhere, according to Kaufman, and it's not as impressive. KitConstantine posted:This is very bad. Every remaining nominally government-independent major news company in Russia was shut down yesterday, and now their staff are fleeing the country. The poster is the editor of Meduza, an indie news operation in Russia. Meduza is Latvia-based. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The war in Afghanistan only coat about 300 million per day. Current cost of sanctions, over 20 year horizon, is already above that.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:50
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selec posted:I don’t agree with everything Mearshimer says here but he doesn’t come off as stupidly as nearly every other Chotiner interviewee. He’s got a different, coldly analytical approach, but it’s not wrong. Mexico isn’t doing poo poo without the US approving, and nobody here thinks that’s odd. It's wrong. The whole field couldn't predict the soviet union collapsing without a world War and they didn't predict this. IR is just rife with post facto Cassandra complexes (though that's even spurious because at least Cassandra was telling the truth)
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Mar 2, 2022 16:51
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is russia pressuring belarus to join the fighting because it wants to form its own mini "coalition of the willing" to downplay their international isolation, or at this point are they actually looking to supplement their own army? if the russians are having widespread morale and logistics problems, i can't imagine that belarusian soldiers with even less operational planning and investment in the conflict are going to be very effective
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Mar 2, 2022 16:52
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Shes Not Impressed posted:I really needed to laugh this morning. More evidence my field of study is quote:I was interested in that article because you say the idea that Putin may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in Eastern Europe, is wrong. Given that he seems to be going after the rest of Ukraine now, do you think in hindsight that that argument is perhaps more true, even if we didn’t know it at the time? Yeah, really needed a laugh here.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:52
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:is russia pressuring belarus to join the fighting because it wants to form its own mini "coalition of the willing" to downplay their international isolation, or at this point are they actually looking to supplement their own army? if the russians are having widespread morale and logistics problems, i can't imagine that belarusian soldiers with even less operational planning and investment in the conflict are going to be very effective The latter. Russia doesn't have enough troops, on paper, for the kind of war they need to fight now, with garrisons in every town and patrols on every supply line. It's a problem that will only get worse as they seize territory. And that's before we get into their organic cohesion issues. The Belarusian troops won't be much better, but they'll be something. They can either open a new axis of advance on Lviv to interdict military aid or help with garrison duties.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:54
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Grouchio posted:How would martial law in Russia affect the speed at which the economic collapse brings Putin to the negotiating table? It would marginally slow it down. As evilweasel notes, the introduction of martial law is mostly meant to allow Russian cops to beat people up outside detainment.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:54
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ZombieLenin posted:I remember hearing George W. talking about a conversation he had with Putin at the end of his second term, and Bush said Putin asked him, "why are stepping down as president?" Bush apparently responded, "I have to. Our constitution only allows me to be president for 8 years." This is could not be more obviously a fable than if GW had turned to the camera and said "the moral of the story is..." Unless of course you honestly believe an ex-spy with (at the end of Bush's second term) nearly two decades of political experience didn't understand how democracy works and was flabbergasted that the deeply unpopular president of a country in a financial meltdown wasn't running for a third term.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:55
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The local counter-attack in Donbas was mentioned earlier but looks like it's been wildly successful. Not enormously sure of the wisdom of attacking East when every HOI4 playing armchair general has assumed they should be getting ready to try to break out West but presumably there's a plan there. https://twitter.com/AlexandruC4/status/1499012982663229441
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Mar 2, 2022 16:55
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Shes Not Impressed posted:It's wrong. The whole field couldn't predict the soviet union collapsing without a world War and they didn't predict this. There’s a reason the US formed the OAS, and if there were a countervailing alliance intended to rein in US power and Mexico was considering joining it we would have a lot to say and likely do about that. Mearshimer isn’t wrong in the sense that this seems to be about power politics at its base, and that analysis is essentially something you have to approach pretty coldly. Right or wrong isn’t much of a factor, and I think he’s largely right on why Russia is doing what it’s doing.
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Mar 2, 2022 16:55
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That was quick. German military aid delivered. (not the helmets) https://twitter.com/gebauerspon/status/1499036607021826052?s=20&t=tjhtUaZu7ohWc-uEqs7R-Q
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Mar 2, 2022 16:57
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:is russia pressuring belarus to join the fighting because it wants to form its own mini "coalition of the willing" to downplay their international isolation, or at this point are they actually looking to supplement their own army? if the russians are having widespread morale and logistics problems, i can't imagine that belarusian soldiers with even less operational planning and investment in the conflict are going to be very effective No, Russia is pressuring Belarus (and Kazakhstan, and a few other former-Soviet republics) into fighting because Putin's goal of this war (and major goal in life) is literally to restore the Russian Empire.
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