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Sad Panda posted:Watched this - it's an exceptional video. Enlightening and brutally honest by someone who is there. Talks openly (as someone from Donbass with parents who are buried there) about the reality of trying to 'liberate' Donbass/Crimea and is very unsure on how to re-integrate 'rotten areas' where they would not be seen as liberators but be going to a place that has been exposed to 8 years of Russian propaganda. Seconding that it's a must watch. 
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Dec 13, 2022 22:22
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Sad Panda posted:Watched this - it's an exceptional video. Enlightening and brutally honest by someone who is there. Talks openly (as someone from Donbass with parents who are buried there) about the reality of trying to 'liberate' Donbass/Crimea and is very unsure on how to re-integrate 'rotten areas' where they would not be seen as liberators but be going to a place that has been exposed to 8 years of Russian propaganda. I wonder if deportation of "rotten" residents to Russia ala the Czechoslovakian expulsion of Germans after WWII would fly nowadays.
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Dec 13, 2022 22:32
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That guy has been giving long-form interviews on the state of the war regularly for months and the past ones are a good watch, too. They're still essentially direct Ukraine MoD messaging, but the domestic messaging on the conflict is wildly different from the English language outward-directed messaging Ukraine does. The domestic stuff talks about the struggles Ukraine faces a lot more, to put it very lightly. The foreign-facing (especially English language ) stuff is super optimistic, hypes up foreign weapon systems as game changers, downplays russian's capability to basically infants rolling in the mud when they aren't busy war criming civilians or drinking themselves to death.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:11
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OddObserver posted:The German ones are heading to Poland, but maybe bringing it up helped? I think it's now very likely that they will eventually find their way into Ukraine. Still going to be a while because I think everyone wants to avoid serving NATO soldiers killing and being killed by Russian soldiers, so they will likely train Ukrainians to operate and maintain them first.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:38
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New KI piece on Bakhmut once again paints a very different picture than the "wave after wave of Russians for insignificant goal" being triumphantly celebrated online. The battle is extremely heavy with horrific losses for both sides. https://kyivindependent.com/national/understanding-russias-relentless-assault-on-bakhmut
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Dec 14, 2022 00:30
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FishBulbia posted:Life in prison for the nightclub owner unable to murder a PoW they captured. Really? This was all happening while the city was actively falling to the Russians, btw. I'm definitely not saying he's guilty, but it's surely at least a somewhat fishy story?
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Dec 14, 2022 00:52
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The Artificial Kid posted:If they "captured" him and hid him while fighting was ongoing in the area then isn't at least possible that they were keeping him safe from capture so he could be returned to Russian lines? A lot of Allied pilots spent time in closets in France during World War II. And someone who hid an enemy pilot to prevent his capture his hardly going to admit it. Ukrainian forces had already vacated the city, for reasons that the government now says is treason or at least incompetence. It happened in a confusing in between time when Russians were starting to appear in the city, but Ukrainian forces were already gone, hence the formation of the local militia to prevent pure chaos. FishBulbia fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 00:55
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https://twitter.com/J_JHelin/status/1602701567945228294?t=53xSO8mSsjVPSpm8F8KpQQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/J_JHelin/status/1602620196736454660?t=mh-oWeun24fDTPZdJz0zUQ&s=19 quote:"We estimate that Russia had about 17 million rounds of ammunition before the war started, 10 million of which have been used up," he said. "At the end of the summer, their ammunition usage was very high - there were days when between 20,000 and 60,000 [artillery] rounds were being fired, which is a huge amount." A couple of more grounded takes from the Baltics. Edit: and more work from RUSI https://twitter.com/Jack_Watling/status/1602819073032740865?t=gg1AyTbRq2MmSnjzsXCRCQ&s=19 Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 02:20
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Does used up include blown up before they leave ammo dumps? Seems like it'd be really hard to quantify how much is lost in all those gigantic explosions...
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Dec 14, 2022 02:27
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I also wonder how much of that they are actually willing to use on Ukraine. Surely even they know that they cant use it all incase it is needed elsewhere.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:31
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Ikasuhito posted:I also wonder how much of that they are actually willing to use on Ukraine. Surely even they know that they cant use it all incase it is needed elsewhere. Same thing that was said about wasting all their tank strength. I think they absolutely will. They don't *actually* believe they are threatened by anyone, and anyway the best way to show weakness is to lose the war.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:33
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They're going to run out of men before they run out of ammo.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:40
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Charlz Guybon posted:They're going to run out of men before they run out of ammo. They have 200M people and you can scrape a barrel down below what anyone thought was the bottom. They're never going to run out of bodies.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:46
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slurm posted:They have 200M people and you can scrape a barrel down below what anyone thought was the bottom. They're never going to run out of bodies. closer to 150M, but yeah, whatever goes first it's not going to be people to throw at this.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:54
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Hannibal Rex posted:https://twitter.com/jabuttee/status/1602225068469370880?t=IIYP24LelMjuJ8NIA-DEsg&s=19 This is a must watch. Thanks for sharing this.
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Dec 14, 2022 04:29
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Scratch Monkey posted:I wonder if deportation of "rotten" residents to Russia ala the Czechoslovakian expulsion of Germans after WWII would fly nowadays. I can think of no better way to further the "fascist" narrative the "rotten" people believe/propagate than forcing them from their homes. The answer is simple, but extremely difficult to make happen: You give them gainful employment. Unfortunately, most of them want their old jobs back (coal miner, plant worker, etc.) that aren't financially-tenable in a Western nation anymore. Even if Russia up and hosed off tomorrow, Ukraine would still be mired in a civil war, and the separatists without Russian support would likely just become another Baader–Meinhof Gang or IRA, constantly blowing poo poo up and killing "fascists" in perpetuity. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 05:36
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Same thing that was said about wasting all their tank strength. I think they absolutely will. They don't *actually* believe they are threatened by anyone, Japan ramping up the Kurils again and Russia then sticking a whole bunch of missile defences there might beg to differ.
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Dec 14, 2022 05:51
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The kind of people that have been living in LDPR for 8 years and still think Russia is great can't be convinced otherwise no matter what you do, there is no point in trying to do so or worrying what they will think. Same thing as fox news/daily mail assholes in the west
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Dec 14, 2022 05:53
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Grakkus posted:The kind of people that have been living in LDPR for 8 years and still think Russia is great can't be convinced otherwise no matter what you do, there is no point in trying to do so or worrying what they will think. Same thing as fox news/daily mail assholes in the west A lot of them just don't want to start trouble and just fundamentally don't care. It was basically accepted by anyone reasonable that the conflict would need a political resolution, I don't think that the escalation of the war changes that. Reintegration of Crimea and Donbass will require political carrots and sticks, and mass expulsion would just lay the seeds for revanchism while also accepting the Russian narrative that residents of those regions are not Ukrainian.
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Dec 14, 2022 06:07
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FishBulbia posted:A lot of them just don't want to start trouble and just fundamentally don't care. It's a tricky problem, but I think everybody kinda sees where this is going and the outcome won't be pleasant. I don't think there's anybody in the Ukrainian political sphere who can call for leniency towards supposed collaborators and speed up healing, and I don't think the war is at a point where that would be something people want to talk about. How the war ends will definitely be a factor in all this, if Russia surrenders today and the national mood is euphoric, there's a much better chance of a more peaceful outcome, as opposed to something like a Mintz III or some kind of multi year stalemate where the mood is bitter and resentful. It's very hard to talk about how a recovery process can go while the disease is still raging. For something more concrete, consider the teacher, Tatyana Tomilina, discussed in this opinion piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/17/kherson-liberation-collaborators-patriots/ According to: https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2022-04-04/ukraine-new-laws-criminalize-collaboration-with-an-aggressor-state/ That's a minimum charge for propaganda which is up to 2 years in prison but easily elevated to the higher charges by an unfavorable court. WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 06:36
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Crimea and Donbas reintegration ain't happening. It's just not useful or feasible to do, and the cost would be immense, if it's even possible militarily. I think Ukraine getting their hands on a bunch of pro Russians could seriously jeopardize their support from the West bc it wouldn't be pretty. Best for everyone to avoid it. There's gonna be a ceasefire once they've all given up on the idea of gaining more through fighting and then we'll try to freeze the war Korea style wherever the line happens to be at that moment, but Ukraine will remain smaller than it was in Jan 2022.
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Dec 14, 2022 08:28
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slurm posted:They have 200M people and you can scrape a barrel down below what anyone thought was the bottom. They're never going to run out of bodies. The lines already nearly collapsed once already, that's why they mobilized an extra 300k people (while more than twice as many men fled the country). They don't have that many more mobilizations left in them. They don't have 200 million. The USSR had that many in 1940 and a much healthier population pyramid. Russia has 140 million.
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Dec 14, 2022 10:47
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And the really important thing is, your militarily useful population is in the 18-30 bracket, which is also the bit driving your civilian economy. Russia's demographics in this space are Not Good.  e: Russia has spent the last ten years struggling to deal with the costs of a rapidly aging population and an economy that doesn't really work. Mass casualties and emigation in the weakest and most critical demographic point is potentially catastrophic in the long term. e2: Ukraine's demographics look very similar. This is a war being fought on both sides by old men. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 10:51
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Enough reintegration theorycrafting.
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Dec 14, 2022 11:09
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We’ve already seen Russia not giving a poo poo about age brackets when it comes to mobilisation though. So technically they can still draft millions of men. Consequences are of course that their country will take another beating with regards to economy, infrastructure, public services, etc but at this point I’m not sure if Putin even cares about those costs. With the effectiveness of the first draft in mind, I’m not sure how much good another 300k draftees will do. There was already no gear/supplies for the first wave and earlier someone posted a link about people dying in training camps before even being deployed.
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Dec 14, 2022 11:11
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The ages from 18-40 seem to average around 1 million per year, giving a theoretical pool of 22 million men. So if they are about to reach 100k dead, missing and disabled due to war soon, conventional wisdom says that they then also have about 300k wounded. And untold amount of mentally shaken on top of that. What I am trying to say that those numbers start to add up; half a million ex-soldiers who are either dead, disabled, scarred for life, or with varying mental issues is a lot on a group of 22 million. That is a huge burden for the society to carry, made worse by the age structure of losing young people. And that doesn't even acknowledge the 900 000 that have left the country due to this war. These are usually educated and young people who leave never to come back. Der Kyhe fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 12:06
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aphid_licker posted:Crimea and Donbas reintegration ain't happening. Most Ukrainians want to continue the war. https://twitter.com/OxanaShevel/status/1602840407167176705
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Dec 14, 2022 13:35
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I can imagine that Ukraine not going past the February 2022 borders could end up being traded as part of a peace deal. But there's no reason to just give that up for free, especially when Putin is still demanding vast swathes of land that Russia has never even occupied during this conflict.
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Dec 14, 2022 14:00
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The issue is Ukrainians recognize there's no meaningful negotiated peace: the Russian government wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation-state and any ceasefire is just temporary. The war ends when Russian power is broken for multiple generations. If you're going to do that, why not just grab Crimea?
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Dec 14, 2022 14:49
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Irony Be My Shield posted:I can imagine that Ukraine not going past the February 2022 borders could end up being traded as part of a peace deal. But there's no reason to just give that up for free, especially when Putin is still demanding vast swathes of land that Russia has never even occupied during this conflict. The Feb 22 boarders are just where the previous front lines were. They're not political or even geographic boundaries, so while people color them differently on a map to indicate progress of armies, they have no significance on the ground and would be unlikely to be discussed in negotiations. It would be similar to Ukraine agreeing to the summer lines around Kherson, not going to happen now that the line is moved the old one is irrelevant. Realistically either Ukraine retakes Donbas and restores the old political borders, or the new borders will be drawn as the pre-2022, wherever the lines were when the conflict stalemated badly enough that everyone wanted out (possibly with some minor trades to make them more practical).
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Dec 14, 2022 14:59
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saratoga posted:The Feb 22 boarders are just where the previous front lines were. They're not political or even geographic boundaries, so while people color them differently on a map to indicate progress of armies, they have no significance on the ground and would be unlikely to be discussed in negotiations. It would be similar to Ukraine agreeing to the summer lines around Kherson, not going to happen now that the line is moved the old one is irrelevant. Ya the closest to a coherent "compromise" with Russia gets is ceding Crimea, and it seems that there is no political will for that.
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Dec 14, 2022 15:30
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Alchenar posted:e: Russia has spent the last ten years struggling to deal with the costs of a rapidly aging population and an economy that doesn't really work. Mass casualties and emigation in the weakest and most critical demographic point is potentially catastrophic in the long term. The wildly large "draftable age" group also probably ensured some degree of intensification in brain drain. Those with the means have just ... gotten out.
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Dec 14, 2022 15:49
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https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/12/14/7380716/ Torture chambers for children... One of those things that, yes I know it's not practical, but forced regime change in Russia would be justice. "See NATO wants to control Russia this whole time!" "yeah their government is blatantly evil, why should anyone on the other side care about optics"
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Dec 14, 2022 19:27
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Kavros posted:The wildly large "draftable age" group also probably ensured some degree of intensification in brain drain. Those with the means have just ... gotten out. Yep. Friend's employer managed to move all their draft-age guys to Turkiye. There is no chance they are going back for the next few years.
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Dec 14, 2022 22:15
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https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/12/14/ukraine-war-and-popularity-worries-why-putin-is-skipping-his-annual-press-conference-a79702 Moscow Times with a scoop on the cancellation/rescheduling of events. Looks like everything except the 31st of December congratulations blurb is confirmed to not be happening until Putin is sure that he can control the optics, or the narrative at least.
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Dec 14, 2022 23:12
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https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/1603216293959712769
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Dec 15, 2022 03:53
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Were they not targeting the weapons the US had already given Ukraine in the past? What a weird thing to say.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:03
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What an incredibly dumb idea to try to turn into a story. God the New York Times suck so bad. No poo poo Russia would target military equipment in use by the Ukraine Military inside Ukraine.
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Dec 15, 2022 04:04
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Eric Cantonese posted:Were they not targeting the weapons the US had already given Ukraine in the past? What a weird thing to say. Exactly. It's not like the Americans are going to be manning the systems. How is this different to a HIMAR?
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Dec 15, 2022 04:05
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