(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Welcome to the current events thread for Russia's war with Ukraine. The focus here is on a practical discussion of news from the war with more nuance than Twitter permits. War is misery, and viewer discretion is advised. Beware of  content.code:1) Do not gratuitously share graphic violence or otherwise distressing imagery. If you have a reason to do so, do not embed it, and make sure to add the emoji and a content warning to each link.To clarify, a solid basis will need to at least make a case for one of newsworthiness, novelty, or educational value, from a current affairs perspective. Moreover, this rule does apply to any footage of PoWs or any other plausible war crimes, even when it's not evocative. 2) Do not use this thread for feuding with other goons. 3) Do not engage in Clancychat. We define it is any military particulars that need a lot of time or assumptions to be true. We have a fanfic thread going if you're into this, though. In general, don't be stupid. We're not interested in the Twitter meme of the week or someone's infatuation with Mortal Kombat. The thread doesn't offer anxiety counselling, either. code:Do not copy and paste walls of text longer than a few paragraphs, unless you wrote them – quote specific parts. If you're referencing a video, mention specific timestamps. Link to external content that you're discussing, if it's not mentioned earlier in the thread. If rules stop you from linking it, don't discuss it here at lengths, preferably at all. I recommend against making pure joke posts without workshopping them. For instance, don't rely on American TV references for your jokes, as I don't know any. code:DeepL Translator works better than Google Translate. We are running a donation drive for Ukraine, awarding the Ghost of Kyiv tag for participation.  We have a non-war thread with very chill rules. Thread history – the first thread, the second thread, and the third thread. Dubiously reliable Twitters – @CanadianUkrain1, @EuromaidanPR, @Flash_news_ua, @jmvasquez1974, @kamilkazani, @nexta_tv, @samramani2, @sumlenny, @TpyxaNews, @TrentTelenko code:Silver2195 posted:It will end by "Friday," i.e., within 18 months. Silver2195 posted:Yes. The war will end (or at least be "re-frozen") before November 10, 2023. Keisari posted:It is done. This is the beginning of the end of this imperial misadventure. code:Posting sanctions: PegLegActual (socials); Willo567, Grouchio, and Kraftwerk (anxiety) Somebody fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Mar 31, 2023 18:07
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Mar 31, 2023 18:08
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OddObserver posted:Something is a little goofy about the link from the old thread --- throws an error for me. (Maybe the action=stick in the URL?) ringu0 posted:Should link to showthread.php instead of postings.php, like this: My bad indeed, I've asked admins to edit the archived link. Tab confusion.  Fake edit: it's good now
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Mar 31, 2023 18:16
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Cicero posted:Does graphic violence just mean if you can see people being hurt/killed, or does it include "tank gets blown up (can't see anyone though)" or "aftermath of helicopter that's shot down"? This would be my interpretation of “graphic for a war thread”, meaning any obvious death, including your tank example, as well as directly visible humans getting clearly hurt. Clearly is a “zoomed in” vs “zoomed out” difference, but I do explicitly reserve the executive privilege to simply find weird gotchas or whatever as off limits. Aftermath scenes fall under “distressing” if there are corpses or like lots of gore in plain sight. Also, if it's you know, just like a massive fire or tons of screaming, or other conventionally unsettling stuff. In the context of the site-wide rules, there have been further conversations and we have more clarity now. You should feel safe about not blindly copping a haymaker for as long as your post looks like a thoughtful effort to contribute to the subject of the thread, rather than, e.g., some bloodthirsty objectification. I'll link to this post in the OP.
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Mar 31, 2023 18:33
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:damnit who let galeev into the tweep list I'm taking terminology suggestions for the shitlist if you have any. Unless you're a Galeev stan  Orthanc6 posted:Actually I do believe this is the 3rd. Almost literally 5 times shorter, from 2.2k words to 560 (+-, didn't care to tear out bbcode before word counter). Tevery Best posted:New thread! Here's hoping Russia goes home before we need another. Afraid it's not looking that conclusive for our toxxers yet. Moon Slayer posted:Jumping on the "post things that got a bit lost at the end of the last thread" bandwagon: Finger's crossed the counteroffensive is as smooth as you say, but cope triangles or not, Russia has had a lot of time to prepare fortifications in the more important areas of it. Definitely a summer to watch though. Somaen posted:Jesus christ it's been over a year and this is the third loving thread! It really was a simpler time when the thread was laughing about bad comedian #374 yelling with a fake leg in hand.
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Mar 31, 2023 18:55
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Moon Slayer posted:The whole point of sanctions, though, is to make it difficult to impossible for them to replace a lot of stuff even if they do "fully militarize" their industry. You can convert all the Aeroflot factories to make kalibr missiles you want, it's not going to do any good when you can't get a single semiconductor. I think the sanctions enforcement at the moment is really not up to scrap for stopping Russia from getting, e.g., the semiconductors. Bloomberg did run a few nice pieces on this recently. WarpedLichen posted:So routine spring conscription is happening in Russia now: Yes on everything except the latter-ish, in that they've been “deployed” to Crimea as part of daily business of the occupation government there, including running the local conscription there, but if we narrow this to the "special military operation territory" then no, not yet, systemically. There've been one-off scenarios, but the fedelra government did actually get quite bothered to prosecute them correctly (eventually).
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Mar 31, 2023 19:04
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Pablo Bluth posted:Wouldn't that requiring fixing all the corruption and other endemic mismanagement that defines the way Putin runs Russia? They don't need to reinvent their statehood to make sure some factories work well. Corruption endemic in that the state has no regard for the common man, rather than that auditors or accountants in Russia are somehow more blind than those elsewhere. Now, inventing Russian ASML on an empty spot is going to be a rather tall order, but there are practical gains that can and are made, e.g., Russia's efforts to withstand the sanctions.
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Mar 31, 2023 21:18
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Paranoea posted:Edit: Trying to shift away from the cheese derail: Has anyone seen any reports of Ukraine using GLSDB yet? There seemed to be reports about Sweden releasing them for export to Ukraine like a month or so ago, but since then it seems to have been quiet. Probably saving them for the offensive, as the stocks were reportedly not too high? There have been disjoint rumours, e.g., from Meltipol' area, but I haven't personally seen solid visual evidence of it. To be honest, I'm not even sure if there's a good way to discern a GLSDB strike visually, unless it, you know, fails to detonate and we get the money shot.
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Apr 1, 2023 12:26
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Sounds like I need to be a bit more careful about sources, if this is just propaganda? Or just exceptionally Russian bias? Not that I should have expected less from Twitter not showing sources, apparently. Sputnik (online) and RT (TV) are the official arms of Russian state propaganda abroad. The piece doesn't seem to be carrying much more informational “value” than “we're strong, and we'll defeat the U.S. dollar”.
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Apr 1, 2023 12:42
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:I thought GLSDB probably wouldn't be available until late 2023? Like Sept, Oct or Nov or something. You're correct in that back in February the understanding was about 9 months until the 1st delivery. However, there's been a string of behind-the-frontline explosions with fairly open-ended interpretations, and Russia claims to have intercepted a GLSDB recently. I can't say that I know what was the Swedish export thing Paranoea refers to is, but it's definitely not an unfair topic to be pondering about, even with all the due reservations for the veracity of claims made by the Russian government.
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Apr 1, 2023 13:16
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:Yeah I saw that. I'm assuming they made a mistake ID'ing what they shot down. JDAM-ER are officially in use in Ukraine already, so that would be a sensible middle-groundw explanation indeed. There's a pickle of them requiring decent altitude for decent distance, but it's difficult to guess whether if that would've been a meaningful obstacle in the situation, since we don't know any much about the details of the situation. That said, it could've simply not happened, like Russia being 70 or whatever destroyed HIMARS launchers deep into the 20-something launcher arsenal of Ukraine. On the note of HLSDB launchers, they require HIMARS with a different software package than what the Ukrainian models have already, if I understand correctly, and then the question is if this is a Very Important Flash Drive kind of situation, or if the U.S. is providing designated “GLSDB HIMARS” for the GLSDB munitions.
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Apr 1, 2023 13:49
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notwithoutmyanus posted:so clearly all of the Russian propaganda is on force. They've unquestionably redoubled their efforts in recent months, roughly coinciding with the command switch from Surovikin to Gerasimov, and have been swinging quite hard, and with reasonable success, at some fences.
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Apr 1, 2023 16:12
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Hannibal Rex posted:Maybe I missed something in the tail end of the last thread. Did cinci say this new one was going to be the last Ukraine thread he'll moderate? idgi, but hopefully Russia stops giving me reasons to keep one of these open.
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Apr 1, 2023 16:19
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ahead!
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https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura/status/1642068031491678208
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Apr 1, 2023 17:22
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Discendo Vox posted:cinci it's your thread and all but I think maybe this isn't the best place for april fools posts. People wanted a chiller thread, and it's the 1st of April, and I've evidently made a decision to post it. That said, between this post being the immediate response to it and that post being the last on its page, the joke will definitely land closer to the heart of your post than to its desired effect.
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Apr 1, 2023 17:32
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Maera Sior posted:It was a joke about Lukashenko's recent "Totally not going to stay in power by changing the constitution" soundbite + the new thread. Touche  WarpedLichen posted:I think we said we wanted more joke posts by funny people. They'll just sell them, to countries using the individual stuff, or for scrap.
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Apr 1, 2023 17:52
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:I've also seen on twitter multiple accounts claiming countries are buying energy from China using Chinese currency and bypassing using reserve currency (US dollar), and this is going to destroy America. You can use any currency you keep in reserve as your reserve currency. Whether if that produces a useful outcome is a separate question.
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Apr 1, 2023 17:56
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BIG HEADLINE posted:More people would've fallen for it without the "Shoigu plushie." That was just good manners from Calibre I think, since T-55 tanks are already involved in this.
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Apr 1, 2023 20:49
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Paracausal posted:Turns out Twitter has been categorising posts about Ukraine in the same suppression bucket as Election and Medical Misinfo. This looks like a pro click in general, for people who would like to have a better feeling on what makes tweets click.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:40
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Ynglaur posted:I think it highlights just how obscure information shaping operations can be. For example, it's been suspected for some time that Elon Musk's account was given special amplification. The code released shows that to be a fact. Funnily, he had it redacted since then, but this was a yet another Twitter Spaces flameout, earlier in the week, from Elon.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:52
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Slo-Tek posted:Is there any way to know that? Musk saying things are being done is a whole other thing than them actually being done. Removing "Elon is the Most Special Boy" and not replacing it with "Elon is the Very Most Special Boy" seems unlikely. I meant to say that the code was “deleted” from the public copy. Given the background context (principal engineer fired for telling Musk that people were just getting bored of him), I very much doubt that there was a parity change in the real system. Search for "elon" on these 2 pags: Old: https://github.com/twitter/the-algo...ates.scala#L225 Current: https://github.com/twitter/the-algo...redicates.scala Edit: Cleanup commit https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm/commit/ec83d01dcaebf369444d75ed04b3625a0a645eb9 cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Apr 1, 2023 |
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Apr 1, 2023 22:13
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big shtick energy posted:According to this article, russian planes have been dropping bombs on ukranian forces: https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/03/30/russians-started-dropping-guided-aviation-bombs-on-the-frontline-en-masse/ The article says that it's guided bombs flying “dozens of kilometres”, which could simply mean a positional advantage even in a nominally well-defended area. That said, they're reportedly facing serious shortages of munitions for Soviet AD systems like Buk or S-300.
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Apr 2, 2023 00:09
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The collateral casualty count is going up so far, from 6 in Fatherboxx's tweet to 15 as per BBC's latest. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65155075 I wonder who would have reasons to do just completely  assassination of Tatarskiy like that? Big Z-blogger, sure, but he was hardly a superstar.
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Apr 2, 2023 17:40
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Quixzlizx posted:United States Files Forfeiture Action Against Over One Million Rounds of Ammunition Enroute from Iran to Yemen Very good, yes. We've seen photo evidence of UAF using freshly produced Iranian munitions last year already, that didn't have a much more robust explanation available than something like this.
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Apr 3, 2023 06:10
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Dick Ripple posted:Tatarsky was not a reporter/journalist. Maybe propagandist would be an apt term? He was sanctioned by Ukraine, I cannot seem to find exactly when, so he was definitely known to them. ISW believes his death is a warning to other pro Kremlin 'bloggers', as a lot of them seem rather aggressive and extreme in wanting to wage war against Ukraine and its people. Pretty sure it's not legitimate to blow random by goers in a café, OP. Moreover, there are credible alternatives for the potential organizer of it.
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Apr 3, 2023 10:20
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Szarrukin posted:It might be borderline Clancychat, but I think FSB would benefit more by death of pro-Wagner and anti-government military blogger than Ukrainian government. I'm basically saying the same thing, that there are a bunch of local suitors that could make use of something like this happening.
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Apr 3, 2023 10:57
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Paracausal posted:Looks like Russia has continued grinding out progress in Bakhmut. Contested sure, but slowly taking ground, wonder if the 5:1 ratio the Ukranians have been claiming in that area has any solid backing https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1642854596715356161 The video is a “bit” weird. “Legally, we have conquered Bakhmut”.
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Apr 3, 2023 12:55
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VostokProgram posted:Could it be some quirk of translation or hyperbole? Like in English you might say "so-and-so is 'officially' canceled" even though that's not a real thing No, I'm a native Russian speaker.
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Apr 3, 2023 22:55
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Vox Nihili posted:I hear the daily attrition is (very roughly) in the 1:1 to 2:1 range now. The days of a 5:1 attrition ratio there have long since passed. Anywhere you'd recommend reading about a more current analysis of this?
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Apr 4, 2023 10:24
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WarpedLichen posted:Is the Patriot in Ukraine already active? We don't know. It was in the coming weeks as of the 21st of March. Edit: Finished reading the new aid package, fuel and SATCOM stuff seems to be standing out a little bit. Also, how much ammo 23 million rounds are, really - how quickly is infantry expected to be spending normal bullets? cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 21:22
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Kraftwerk posted:Is there any news about Ukraine switching their service rifles to NATO 5.56.mm variants or are they still using Soviet/Russian 5.45mm and these "millions of rounds" are being procured through some other means? Still on 5.45 and 7.62 I believe. They tried switching away from the AK like 5 years ago, and made an M4-style 7.62 gun too. Now, of course, the calculus could very well be different, but AK is not artillery, and that stuff should be a dime a dozen.
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Apr 4, 2023 22:03
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madeintaipei posted:As an aside, does anyone remember when Ukrainian MPs (parlimentarians, not military police) all got rifles? Wood-forend, short barreled AKs with folding stocks that I'm unfamiliar with. IIRC that was 1 MP posting an FB post with an AKSU-74.
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Apr 5, 2023 00:57
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Nenonen posted:Finnish combat ration for assault rifles is 6x30 rounds, so if we take this as an average consumption per fighter then you are able to equip 128 thousand men to go into combat once. Or a few brigades to participate in combat for a week once a day. But this is a very simplistic calculation, in reality you don't expect cooks and mortar men to fire their rifles a lot but front soldiers especially in urban combat will use a lot more ammunition. Alright, what I'm taking away from this is that 23 million rounds is quite a bit, since this probably is backfilling spending in Bakhmut, and the number of soldiers there should be closer to 10k than to 100k.
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Apr 5, 2023 09:38
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Kikas posted:this is Zelensky's first fully official visit somewhere What do you mean by this?
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Apr 5, 2023 14:54
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WarpedLichen posted:I think the EU has also announced more aid in the press conference yesterday. Nope, at least that not that I've seen.
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Apr 5, 2023 19:59
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WarpedLichen posted:I thought Blinken said this: kemikalkadet posted:Which definitely isn't 2 billion euros worth of ammunition and isn't really 2 billion euros worth of extra aid. quote:EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said this week that he secured approval for earmarking 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to encourage member nations to provide artillery shells from their existing stocks and any pending orders. Another 1 billion euros would go toward accelerating new orders and encouraging countries to work together on making purchases through the European Defense Agency or in groups of at least three nations.
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Apr 5, 2023 20:43
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kemikalkadet posted:Oh interesting, the original quote referenced the European Peace Facility so I went through their press releases and there wasn't any reference to that, just those two articles I quoted which made it look like Blinken was misquoting figures. There's so many layers of orgs, groups and councils in the EU that it's hard to keep up: European Peace Facility, European Defence Agency, several flavours of European council etc. The funding for the artillery plan is kind-of complicated. There are several problems that are being solved at once: A) Ukraine needs artillery ammo immediately because the steady supply is low B) Steady supply of ammo needs to increase to avoid crisis situations C) Steady ammo supply can come out of factories, if there were free factories D) Since there aren't any free factories, with EU-wide order on a 1-year wait, steady ammo supply can only come out of member state armouries E) Member states don't want to send much more ammo than so far because reserves/money/can't be arsed So, what is now going to happen is that the EU executive is now taking 1 billion out of the European Peace Facility (EPF), a shared emergency piggy under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). They're using this 1 billion to pay off member states with money/reserves objections to send shells to Ukraine immediately. Immediately was meant to mean March, but, as of today, the status is “late May, ideally”. The reason the status is “late May, ideally”, is where the other 1 billion from EPF comes in. My understanding of the negotiations around the artillery plan was that the member states ended up learning that even for the super-EU-order of artillery shells, there's going to be a wait time of around a year. Unless the EU agrees to payroll new factories (some German MIC guy had asked EUR 800mn for that, for reference). Which is to say that if the initial plan was “send a little bit from own stocks and plug factories into Ukraine”, then now the plan is “send a lot and then refill from factories”. Since member states have decided that building these new factories would yield excessive profits to the MIC, the focus is now on just securing proper delivery commitment as a group. When that is secured, countries like France (reportedly one of the louder complaining about money countries) are expected to offload a larger chunk of their active reserve stock of shells to Ukraine. However, this does gloss over the actual deal itself, a bit. The second billion is not just buying a billion worth of shells for EU member states. What it is doing instead is reimbursing artillery shell orders that are made to replace shells supplied to Ukraine, or that are just placed in Ukraine's name directly. There are also some important technical details. This is a reimbursement procurement action, with the reimbursement rate maximum indicated at 60% (the exact number will be decided later by the EPF Committee). Which means that the total financing on the table is up to 2.5 billion euros for drawing on the national armouries, and up to another 2.5 billion euros for joint procurement. “Artillery shells” for the purposes of this order does also mean missiles. And there are Council deadlines of September 30 for making the joint procurement, and of May 31 for delivering into Ukraine existing if they want to be paid for it as per the first billion. Furthermore, as this targets 1 million of shells delivered rather explicitly, if there's 60% reimbursement and 5 billion on the table, and they do it in 1 billion, then the remaining 4 billion can be spent as per the following sentence: “Any unused funds may allow for the reimbursement of all lethal equipment, in accordance with the priorities set in Ukraine’s list of requirements.” In other words, this a fairly EU, as an adjective, manoeuvre with some off-budget money. Especially if we consider that Norway counts as the EU for this spending exercise. As for the acronyms and who is who, it's straightforward if you just memorize 10 things that don't make sense in any naturally occurring way of looking at them. I guess we can start here:  This is the separation of powers in the EU. “European Council” (formal name, informally EUCO) means head of every state (all presidents). “Council of Ministers” (informal name, formally Council of the European Union, and more commonly informally – “Council”) means the X minister from every state (e.g., all foreign affairs ministers). “Council of Europe” (CoE) which is not there on the chart because it doesn't have anything to do with the EU, and the job you know it for most likely is as the host of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The European Peace Facility (EPF) is an off-budget mechanism of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) which alongside with the Common Defence and Security Policy (CDSP) is the job of the European External Action Service (EEAS). Kind of, since the European Defence Agency (EDA) is the internal controller of the CDSP. EEAS and EDA together form the secretariat of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), which is an opt-in mechanism of enhanced cooperation between the national armed forces of 25 of 27 members states. Maybe to clarify that, CFSP is the big thing, with CDSP being one pillar of it. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP) is the coordinator of CFSP, meaning that this person chairs EEAS and EDA while strictly speaking not being bureaucratically prescribed to hold either executive role. In part since, as foreign policy decisions in EU require unanimity, HR/VP is a member of the European Commission (EC, informally just “Commission”) who does also happen to chair the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC), which is the official term for a Council session where foreign affairs ministers meet. A somewhat (well, not really just somewhat) simplified view would be to treat the HR/VP as the sole minister EU has “as a country”, the minister of defence and foreign affairs more specifically. This is all kind of peacetime EU stuff, and then from last year you also have Defence Joint Procurement Task Force, which is a collaboration between EC, EEAS, and EDA, that coordinates military aid to Ukraine and makes sure that it doesn't cause a bidding war between the member states. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 5, 2023 23:26
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They've been saying this stuff since like summer, every month.EasilyConfused posted:I mean, I still wouldn't say I actually understand what half these groups are. I mean, that's what I tried leaning into with “things that don't make sense in any naturally occurring way”. A lot of EU bureaucracy is vaguely overlapping ways of doing the same thing, built so that the sum of these overlaps does satisfy multiple some sum of probably mildly contradictory historical grandstanding. Which ends up being big enough that you can get a college degree in being an EU Org Chart Understander, what is there to say about stuff like EU English.
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Apr 6, 2023 00:09
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Willo567 posted:I get that it's just talk, but would his time frame actually be realistic or not? Not based on public information.
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Apr 6, 2023 00:27
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 03:14 |
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EasilyConfused posted:Yeah, I didn't mean that as a criticism of your explanation or anything. No worries, all I'm saying is that the inscrutability is a feature.
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Apr 6, 2023 01:23
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