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https://twitter.com/PowerVertical/status/1504239862647603205 Well timed article with the whole "mystery explosions in Belarus" thing. quote:This is consistent with a recent confidential unpublished report from the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies, which argued that due to the strong Ukrainian resistance and the poor performance of the Russian armed forces, “Minsk’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war has rapidly evolved from unconditional support for Moscow’s actions to attempts to distance itself as much as possible from Russia’s actions in Ukraine.” Probably overstating it a bit. quote:Developments in Ukraine also appear to be having an effect on Belarusian public opinion. Ryhor Astapenia, who heads the Belarus Initiative at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Program, recently posted that a poll the organization conducted found just 3 percent of Belarusians support the country’s armed forces joining the Russian invasion. This survey was posted to a telegram channel https://t.me/astapenia/423. Curious how they arrived at this conclusion and their methods for surveying an autocracy. If it's sound, that's a loving abysmally low amount of support. edit- I finally got a decent effort post snipe. Suck it, losers. Despera posted:Look at all the countries Putin hasnt invaded (leaving out georgia, chechnya etc) is such a great point! 
ummel fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 01:53
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So, no idea about what the hell is going on in Belarus? I like the party line that they are doing military exercises, across the country in the middle of the night. Totally plausible. 
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Mar 17, 2022 01:53
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ummel posted:https://twitter.com/MFATurkiye/status/1504135945859354635 Turkey is a member of NATO for starters, and a lot of rich Turks like to go on vacation in Ukraine because its nearby. Ukrainian wheat feeds many of Turkey's neighbors, and Ukraine defense firms are important to Turkey's own burgeoning defense industry. For example, Ukrainian powerplants are used in Turkish drones and will power the next generation of Turkish attack helicopters and cruise missiles. It's co-operation that also cannot be easily replaced because similar components from the US or EU would most likely involve export controls and completely cut into Turkish ambitions.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:53
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MikeC posted:The very reason why they resorted to these tactics where they shell civilians is that they have nothing left in their quiver. Unless you think the Russians are choosing to sit outside Kyiv, suffer constant attrition to attacks by Ukrainians, and watch their economy continue to burn from sanctions just for fun. They have every incentive to try and wrap this up as soon as possible if they have the strength. Maybe they have one last gasp once they get their own influx of foreign fighters and units previously not assigned the invasion gets assembled and sent in. But the Russians now have a greater proportion of their military committed to Ukraine than the Americans did in Afghanistan and Iraq during those wars. So yes, the Russians are very close to the end of their tether. close to the end of the tether is not the same as off the end of it. they clearly have one tactic left, terror bombing the war isn't going to end until they don't have that either.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:53
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Russia's active duty ground forces are like 280,000 or something. The real advantage of Russia in actually usable manpower is like 3:2 or something. What was supposed to put then over the top were its much bigger advantages in armor, artillery and air power, but so far those elements all keep eating poo poo because of turbo incompetence, hell mud and the fact that the ad copy put out by the Russian arms industry is full of poo poo lol
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Mar 17, 2022 01:55
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ummel posted:https://twitter.com/MFATurkiye/status/1504135945859354635 Part of it, other part being that Turkey is a NATO member exposed to NATO internal politics. Also, Russia has not been especially fair with Turkey, despite S-400 and whatnot.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:55
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VorpalBunny posted:So, no idea about what the hell is going on in Belarus? I like the party line that they are doing military exercises, across the country in the middle of the night. Totally plausible. Yeah the claim is there's exercises. Right now, people are claiming the exercises are too far away to have that impact, others claiming its a sonic boom (much more possible). Who knows. sean10mm posted:Russia's active duty ground forces are like 280,000 or something. The real advantage of Russia in actually usable manpower is like 3:2 or something. The most interesting thing: Look at half these photos/videos of destroyed BMPs/Trucks/etc.: A lot of them have ad hoc food/equipment. These units are in dire straights, at least in the north, Supply wise.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:55
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MikeC posted:Everyone keeps going back to that speech as 'proof' that Putin was always going to annex Ukraine and recreate Russian Empire 2. They always ignore the part where he says "whoever wants it (Soviet Union) back has no brain". "People say Putin wants the return of the Russian Empire, but how can that be so when he says the Soviet Union was bad?" Hmm
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Mar 17, 2022 01:57
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CommieGIR posted:Yeah the claim is there's exercises. Right now, people are claiming the exercises are too far away to have that impact, others claiming its a sonic boom (much more possible). Who knows. Theory I'm leaning towards is someone blew up an ammo dump and it went BIG KABOOM halifax style and different places heard it at different times.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:58
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MikeC posted:So.....the Belarussians are not joining the invasion because Putin tells them not to invade? Ok. Conquered provinces of an empire refusing to send troops when the empire has hosed up is a very old tradition.
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Mar 17, 2022 01:59
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Vox Nihili posted:Russia has over 10,000 MBTs. A lot of that is stockpiled equipment, but it's not just "on paper," those tanks really exist. But if used ineffectively against a dug in defense with a near-infinite supply of one hit killer anti-tank, infantry-based weapons, that's 10,000 expensive steel coffins.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:00
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https://twitter.com/ArmandDoma/status/1504257622236561414 Putin doesn't seem quite so out of touch with the rest of his country after all.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:00
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Radio Prune posted:"People say Putin wants the return of the Russian Empire, but how can that be so when he says the Soviet Union was bad?" Especially when he says that Lenin-period Soviet Union was bad because he thinks Lenin wasn't oppressive enough to the conquered minorities. (Lenin is unusual as a Russian leader for not making cultural genocide a central tactic of his control, and actually being somewhat supportive of at least some of the minority cultures).
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Mar 17, 2022 02:00
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Grape posted:His question wasn't "who gives a poo poo?" it was "who gives a poo poo if Ukraine was inevitably going to all out defend itself regardless of support from NATO". Ah, once war was declared who gives a poo poo indeed. Ukraine has every right to defend itself. I just don't think war was inevitable.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:01
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https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1504228527264219140
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Mar 17, 2022 02:01
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Deteriorata posted:https://twitter.com/ArmandDoma/status/1504257622236561414 Given Putin has been eating his own dogfood he's been feeding Alt-Right groups in the west via RT and other stuff: Not suprising.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:01
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Deteriorata posted:https://twitter.com/ArmandDoma/status/1504257622236561414 That’s a very ambiguously worded question.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:02
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https://twitter.com/Reevellp/status/1504259800930164738 ABC news reporter per the Twitter bio. Not a specops thing, just good old prisoner swap, apparently.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:02
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https://kyivindependent.com/national/ukraine-v-russian-federation-icj-orders-russia-to-cease-military-aggression-in-ukraine/quote:Russia then went even further, reiterating that its so-called “special military operation” amounted to a self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, of which it informed the Security Council on Feb. 24. 
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Mar 17, 2022 02:04
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ChaseSP posted:Putin's action makes perfect sense if you believe the west won't do anything which has largely been the case up until recently, when the crimean annexation had no real repercussions for him. yeah my view is he has been doing the "quietly escalate poo poo behind the scenes in his neighbors and then swoop in and smash the survivors or bribe the biggest assholes to join him, it happend in chechnya, it happened in georgia and its states and it happened in Ukraine/Crimea. the west didn't do dick before outside some mild sanctions with obama. he has also be stiring up various nutjobs in the west/nato countries in hopes that it breaks NATO and EU and it could have worked, he also saw the US leave Afghanistan after a almost 20 year shitshow last summer in a botched withdraw. I can see where he thought it would just be "in and out operation" except as various twitter threads have pointed out, he hosed up, bad.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:04
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Deteriorata posted:https://twitter.com/ArmandDoma/status/1504257622236561414  ...Ya know, it makes sense that the Cold War Generation's brains in both the US and Russia are utterly loving broken. Don't know why I hadn't thought of that connection before.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:04
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Deteriorata posted:Putin doesn't seem quite so out of touch with the rest of his country after all. Do we know if polls taken in Russia are legitimate or accurate? Are Russians speaking honestly in these or out of fear? Honest question. I tried googling "Active Group" which appears to be the people who ran this.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:06
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Gorman Thomas posted:Ah, once war was declared who gives a poo poo indeed. Ukraine has every right to defend itself. I just don't think war was inevitable. And ... NATO support unquestionably came after the start of the war.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:06
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MikeC posted:Do we know if polls taken in Russia are legitimate or accurate? Are Russians speaking honestly in these or out of fear? Honest question. I tried googling "Active Group" which appears to be the people who ran this. https://activegroup.com.ua/2022/03/16/survey-says-86-6-of-russians-support-the-armed-invasion-of-russia-in-other-european-countries/ This is the poll. It was run by an Ukrainian company.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:07
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OddObserver posted:Especially when he says that Lenin-period Soviet Union was bad because he thinks Lenin wasn't oppressive enough to the conquered minorities. (Lenin is unusual as a Russian leader for not making cultural genocide a central tactic of his control, and actually being somewhat supportive of at least some of the minority cultures). Wait... let me guess: he feels the ethnically inferior undesirables stabbed Russia in the back and he wants revenge? And calls for ethnic cleansing to true Motherland Ary-Uh, Russian stock? I really can't figure out who this guy reminds me of.. WAIT, But that would be impossible! He worked in the USSR!
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Mar 17, 2022 02:09
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sean10mm posted:Russia's active duty ground forces are like 280,000 or something. The real advantage of Russia in actually usable manpower is like 3:2 or something. The assumption was also that those 280k active duty troops were well trained professionals and not the conscripts actually sent to the front. It was well known that Ukraine could draw upon reservists but the quality of those would be significantly worse than the expected professional Russian troops they would be facing off against. In light of that, Ukraine probably has numerical superiority by this point and the difference in skill level is unlikely to be as great as initially thought.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:09
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MadJackal posted:But if used ineffectively against a dug in defense with a near-infinite supply of one hit killer anti-tank, infantry-based weapons, that's 10,000 expensive steel coffins. They might be the mobile crematoriums everyone keeps talking about.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:11
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MikeC posted:Do we know if polls taken in Russia are legitimate or accurate? Are Russians speaking honestly in these or out of fear? Honest question. I tried googling "Active Group" which appears to be the people who ran this. Self-censorship under authoritarianism is a well studied phenomenon. There are ways to correct for it, but they’re far from bulletproof. Government pollsters I would avoid (e.g., VTsIOM), and I would likewise avoid entirely foreign pollsters. Local private pollsters, like Levada, tend to be decent - but I wouldn’t expect miracles in the current crackdown on civil liberties.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:11
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Trading a much-beloved mayor for nine conscripts? Cheap deal. Do the Russians not yet realize how much inflation is hitting the conscript prisoner market?
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Mar 17, 2022 02:11
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gay picnic defence posted:The assumption was also that those 280k active duty troops were well trained professionals and not the conscripts actually sent to the front. Yeah, Ukraine is understandably very cagey about their actual strength right now (along with literally everything else about their forces locations, numbers, etc.), but their initial entire army was nominally around ~200k and between reserves, territorial defense forces, and new recruits, it basically has to be significantly more people than the remaining Russian forces.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:14
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Grape posted:And ... NATO support unquestionably came after the start of the war. The US, the big dog in NATO so to speak, provided $450 million in "defensive aid" in 2021 and $200 million more in 2022 (dont know how much of that was delivered before the invasion). The Baltic states also sent over anti-tank/aircraft weapons in Jan. Assuming by support you mean military aid. Source https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-nato-ukraine-weapons-defense-russia/
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Mar 17, 2022 02:17
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Zak2k12 posted:https://activegroup.com.ua/2022/03/16/survey-says-86-6-of-russians-support-the-armed-invasion-of-russia-in-other-european-countries/ Thanks, that last question on nuclear weapons was also interesting. Americans have a 68% approval on the potential first use of nuclear weapons in certain situations for comparison. https://publicconsultation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Nuclear_Weapons_Report_0519.pdf
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Mar 17, 2022 02:18
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Part of it, other part being that Turkey is a NATO member exposed to NATO internal politics. Also, Russia has not been especially fair with Turkey, despite S-400 and whatnot. To add to this: Putin invading Ukraine is not great for Turkey. Erdogan dipped his toe into playing both sides and diverged in goals from much of NATO over the last two decades when the region was mostly at peace and it was useful to broadcast independence to a domestic and regional audience - but when Russia starts steamrolling the neighborhood you better believe Turkey's NATO membership and the good will of the rest of NATO is going to look a lot more important than short term regional goals. Also see the current talks between Greece and Turkey. The other factor would be Russia and Turkey being mostly at odds in the region. Aside from the more visible stuff like Russian planes playing chicken on the Turkish border and the Russian backed SAA attacking the Turkish backed groups, Russia was a big part of the campaign of displacement that caused a refugee crisis Turkey got to bear the brunt of and Russian attacks through Wagner were a big part of the big push into the Turkish-supported areas in Northern Syria a few years back. They were also backing opposite sides in the Armenian-Azeri war. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 02:19
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I was wondering about a phrase I keep seeing- "Russia expected a cakewalk, why bother planning for the enemy actually fighting back?" What have Russian staff officers been doing for the last decade, if not drawing up contingency plans for war against their rivals? Like, that's their job, isn't it?
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Mar 17, 2022 02:21
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eke out posted:Yeah, Ukraine is understandably very cagey about their actual strength right now (along with literally everything else about their forces locations, numbers, etc.), but their initial entire army was nominally around ~200k and between reserves, territorial defense forces, and new recruits, it basically has to be significantly more people than the remaining Russian forces. There were 400k veterans who had been drafted over the last 8 years and rotated through the fighting in the Donbas. Presumably a large number of them have returned to the armed forces since the invasion. The other number I saw was the reports that of the 4 million plus refugees, 90% are women and children. That implies that there’s an extremely large number of people who are volunteering to stay behind and presumably contribute to the war effort in some way.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:22
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gay picnic defence posted:They may well exist but without a means of getting them to the fighting, filling them with a well trained crew, maintaining them, keeping them supplied with fuel and ammo, and giving them effective infantry support they might as well as be just a number on a piece of paper. Also, I haven't seen much about units being rotated. Are they going to the "rear", wherever that is, or to Russia proper?
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Mar 17, 2022 02:22
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NATO countries, including the US, were still tiptoeing around Russia's feelings and largely did not provide the things that could have helped Ukraine even more (more modern anti-tank weapons and AA systems) until the invasion was underway. Until that point eg. Germany was sending some helmets and (parts of) a field hospital. Also, supplying stuff in January was when it was obvious Putin was setting up the invasion for real.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:22
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My guess is the prison guards probably told him "look give us cash, food and these dudes back and we will look the other way and give him to you".
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Mar 17, 2022 02:22
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eke out posted:Yeah, Ukraine is understandably very cagey about their actual strength right now (along with literally everything else about their forces locations, numbers, etc.), but their initial entire army was nominally around ~200k and between reserves, territorial defense forces, and new recruits, it basically has to be significantly more people than the remaining Russian forces. It’s around 580k + 120k cops, if we include all paramilitaries (national, border, and territorial guards) and active military reserve. In addition to this there’s an unknown pool of reinforcement reserve and general reserve troops mobilised, and unknown amount of territorial defence volunteers (the count above includes just the 40k professional service members of it). The best guess I have for territorial defence volunteers right now - at least 200k.
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Mar 17, 2022 02:23
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Tree Bucket posted:I was wondering about a phrase I keep seeing- "Russia expected a cakewalk, why bother planning for the enemy actually fighting back?" Dreaming up contingency plans is time that can be better used banging mistresses and skimming equipment allowances for that little dacha near St. Petersburg.
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