fizzy posted:

Good news for Ukraine - Ukraine has allies


https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/02/ukraines-military-strategy-and-demands-have-tested-allies-patience.html

Ukraine has tested its allies’ patience with its military strategy and demands
Published Wed, Aug 2 20231:19 AM EDT
Updated 5 Hours Ago

Ukraine’s relationship with its international partners has become increasingly complex, and it was perhaps inevitable that tensions and differences of opinion between Kyiv and its allies arose as the war with Russia dragged on.

Ukraine has to tread a fine line with its international friends. It is reliant on its partners for billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware, as well as other forms of humanitarian and financial assistance, and it needs a continuous and increasing supply of arms to fight Russia. It insists, however, that it is fighting not only for its own survival but for the West too, facing a hostile and unpredictable Russia.

Kyiv’s biggest individual benefactors like the U.S. and U.K., who have given over $40 billion and $4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, respectively, have pledged to support Ukraine till the end. The phrase “whatever it takes” has become a mantra often repeated at public gatherings of allies assessing the war and the military needs of Ukraine.

Kyiv has repeatedly thanked its partners for their help but, behind the scenes, frustrations have also come to a head and Ukraine’s ongoing needs and demands — and the military and political considerations of its allies — have clashed at times, prompting uncomfortable encounters[spoiler].

Most recently, [spoiler]tensions have emerged over Ukraine’s military strategy and demands on NATO. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is said to have angered some allies ahead of the most recent NATO summit in Vilnius in July, when he described the lack of a timetable over the thorny issue of NATO membership, and “conditions” that needed to be met before an invitation to join was issued, as “absurd.”

For some officials in Washington and London, Zelenskyy’s decision to tell his staunch backers that Ukraine deserved “respect,” as NATO met to discuss additional support for Kyiv, was a step too far.

Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, perhaps unburdened by his forthcoming departure from the role, took umbrage at Zelenskyy’s comments, saying Kyiv should be mindful of war fatigue and skeptics among its allies questioning the massive amount of continued funding. The U.K., for one, he said, was not an Amazon warehouse that could supply endless weaponry to Kyiv when it was given a “shopping list.”

Needless to say, Zelenskyy’s comments didn’t go down well in Washington either and the Washington Post reported sources noting that U.S. officials had been so roiled that they had briefly considered watering-down what Kyiv would be offered at the summit.

“The comments made by Zelenskyy before the last summit did not really resonate well in Washington ... the U.S. administration was very annoyed,” a source with knowledge of the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation, told CNBC.

The source noted that Washington had also been vexed by other episodes in the war in which Ukraine had seemingly ignored its advice, making the NATO episode more frustrating for the White House.

“So the U.S. is strongly advising Ukraine not to do certain things, but Kyiv does them anyway, brushing aside or not addressing U.S. concerns. And they come at the United States, or Washington or the Biden administration, complaining about not being involved in NATO talks,” the CNBC source said.

In the end, the NATO alliance stood firm behind Kyiv and stressed its unity, keeping its eyes on the bigger objective: Ensuring Russia does not “win” the war against its neighbor and becomes emboldened to attack other former Soviet republics. Still, the episode highlighted Ukraine’s need to tread a fine line between the demands and pressures it places on its allies and appreciating its partners’ own perspectives, priorities and political considerations.

Drawing on his own experience of working in NATO, Jamie Shea told CNBC that support for Ukraine among its allies remains strong but that the Vilnius summit had highlighted points of vulnerability, and the need for diplomacy and compromise[spoiler].

“I think [spoiler]you always have to distinguish between the strategic level and the tactical level, and at the strategic, geopolitical level then Western support for Ukraine is still remarkably solid,” said Shea, former deputy assistant secretary general for Emerging Security Challenges at NATO and an international defense and security expert at think tank Chatham House.

″[But] obviously, at the tactical level, inevitably there are going to be problems and there have been, around the time of the NATO summit there were some some issues, there’s no doubt about that.”

Shea said Zelenskyy would have known that NATO would not be able to accede to Kyiv’s demands for a timetable on membership, or an invite to become a member of NATO while the war is ongoing. And by threatening to boycott the summit, Zelenskyy had played a risky strategy, Shea noted, potentially setting the meeting up for failure.

In the end, cooler heads prevailed: “The United States and the NATO allies worked overtime to convince him that he should look at the glass half full and at all the things that he was getting,” Shea noted.

“As it turned out, Zelenskyy got the message, he turned up in Vilnius and I think his advisors, because he has good advisors, told him that it wasn’t helping Ukraine and that ‘we can’t snub the only guys that are keeping us alive in terms of weapons and support.’”

Shea noted that Ukraine’s position was a difficult one, however, and that there’s bound to be a gap between what the Ukrainians want and what the West is able to provide “and occasionally, that’s going to boil over into frustration.”

“The Ukrainians are in a difficult situation. Obviously, they’re playing for their existential survival, they’re always going to be unsatisfied in terms of needing more and more more the whole time. [Meanwhile] the West will always consider that it’s doing its best ... The key thing is to manage that [discrepancy] and prevent it doing lasting damage, and I think the Vilnius summit at least managed to prevent it doing lasting damage.”

It’s not only at a diplomatic level that Ukraine has irked its allies. Ukraine’s military strategy — and the symbolic value it has put on fighting for every piece of Ukrainian territory — has sometimes collided with its allies’ military perspective and pragmatism.

Kyiv is believed to have annoyed the U.S. when it decided to continue fighting for Bakhmut, a town in eastern Ukraine that has found itself at the epicenter of fierce warfare between Russian and mercenary forces and Ukrainian troops for over a year.

Almost surrounded by Russian forces who then claimed to have been captured Bakhmut back in May, military analysts questioned whether Ukraine would, and should, beat a tactical retreat from the town that was not deemed of strategic value. Ukraine decided to fight on, however, with that decision causing consternation in the U.S., according to Konrad Muzyka, a military intelligence specialist and president of Rochan Consulting.

“The Americans were encouraging, to put it mildly, the Ukrainians not to fight certain battles in the way that Russia wanted them to fight, as it could have long-term consequences in terms of manpower losses and artillery ammunition expenditure. However, for Kyiv, Bakhmut was more than a city. It was a symbol of Ukrainian defiance even though its strategic value was questionable,” Muzyka told CNBC.

″[But] the result is that they’ve lost a lot of men, and very experienced personnel as well. They expedited a lot of artillery munition, which would otherwise be used for this counteroffensive, and lastly, they burned out a lot of barrels for their guns, meaning they are unable to fully support their forces in the Bakhmut area.”

Retired British General Richard Barrons defended Ukraine’s approach to Bakhmut, telling CNBC that, domestically, “Bakhmut matters” for Kyiv. Defending the town appeared to be part of Ukraine’s wider “starve, stretch and strike” strategy, the former commander of the U.K.’s Joint Forces Command noted, in which it sought to wear down the Russian occupiers, attacking reserves, ammunition supplies and logistics, and to stretch Russian forces along the 600-mile front line.

Now, anticipation is rising for the “strike” part of the strategy with speculation mounting that Ukraine has just started to commit a portion of its reserve forces, including NATO-trained and NATO-equipped brigades, for a big push in an attempt to break through Russian defenses in southern Ukraine.

“We think we are about to see, but not necessarily, that uncommitted force being committed in an attempt to make a major inroad into the Russian occupation,” Barrons said, but he added that Ukraine should resist pressure from its allies to produce quick results, or to commit such forces before the conditions are right.

“Ukraine feels under pressure from his Western backers, to show progress in this counteroffensive, to prove to itself and the rest of us that this war can be won on the battlefield,” he said.

“But a sounder approach is to do things when when the time and timing is right. The very worst outcome for Ukraine would be that they would take this uncommitted force and batter it to pieces on the front end of Russian fortifications they’ve not been able to break through. That would be a tragedy for the people taking part and a tragedy this year for the Ukrainian campaign.”

genericnick posted:

What are they gonna do with those? Sink them into the sea to build a land bridge to Taiwan?

Frosted Flake posted:

lol I thought voting was a secret ballot.

mlmp08 posted:

16-bit Butt-head was banned from the GBS war thread and voted 1 on this one. It can be hard to find a war thread that gets a decent score.

mlmp08 posted:

16-bit Butt-head was banned from the GBS war thread and voted 1 on this one. It can be hard to find a war thread that gets a decent score.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

They're not going to use them. These are an export model for Saudi Arabia.

speng31b posted:

in an absolute sense there is no good war thread because war is bad,

fizzy posted:

Bad news for Russia - For every reported case of a burnt-down draft centre in Russia, there are two or three times as many actually happening around the country.

Regarde Aduck posted:

hey, hey you, hatereader dudes

see this line here? This is how you know this conflict is bullshit and everything you've been told is a lie. These two nations have nothing but evil in their hearts and you're so loving stupid you fell for it, again. gently caress you.

OctaMurk posted:

Why T-14 so fuckin big compared to the other tanks

Russians made fun of whale sized western tanks for years then just decided to make their own whales lol

mlmp08 posted:

Ukraine is not in a “good”position in this conflict

fizzy posted:

Do you have any insight as to why the GBS and D&D forums dislike reading good news for Ukraine? I was under the impression that they were staunchly pro-Ukraine, yet they appear to be averse to good news for Ukraine.

tristeham posted:

love to hear some good news

Tsitsikovas posted:

Gresh posted:

https://twitter.com/MarkSleboda1/status/1686620016081342465

Looks like he may be hosed now and slowly being pulled apart in a Ukrainian dungeon.

loving lol if the US State Department is just totally cool with the Ukrainian SBU Gestapo kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing, and probably now murdering an American citizen(however lovely some of his views may be) for tweets/youtube videos in order to protect the facade of Ukraine being this bastion of liberal democracy/equality fighting an evil empire in order to keep western public support for this war up as long as possible.

Clip-On Fedora posted:

Coach dead pill

gradenko_2000 posted:

guess who got divided, bro

VoicesCanBe posted:

I'm glad this topic appreciates fizzy posting good news for Ukraine. It's a shame that the other topics on this site are filled with Putin-loving tankies that don't appreciate good news for Ukraine

i say swears online posted:

99% of my threadvotes are fatfingers

Frosted Flake posted:

lol more Late Antique trivia: In some surviving pagan accounts but also many early Christian martyrologies, the stories feature civil authorities perplexed by the behaviour of the martyrs, often being lenient and letting them go several times. The Christians practically insisted on being martyred and made themselves an absolute nuisance before the provincial governor or city authority got fed up and executed them. These accounts often feature the persecutors making a speech about how annoyed they were, how they had given the martyr every opportunity to get away, and how they didn't really want to do this, but if they insisted then fine, they can be executed.

It's funny because in the 3rd century everyone thought those were saintly qualities, but if you try to imagine them in the present day...

gradenko_2000 posted:

it's a TROOP. CARRIER.

bedpan posted:

iirc, this is one of the things that lead to the Donatists. roman authorities would often times make it very clear that, being honest pagans, they had no idea what christian religious materials looked like so if you gave the magistrate anything, anything at all, and said it was one of the documents subject to the edict, then the magistrate had no choice but to believe you.

OhFunny posted:

People are forgetting the Algerian Civil War that lasted a decade and ended in 2002.

MuffinsAndPie posted:

I have a vague recollection of there being a period of people reposting nafo tweets and not much else, so I broke down and had no choice but to click 1. That or fatfinger

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

The immediate state where every social group will encounter Capitalism with its mask off is in the purposeful annihilation of the professionalism that group considers its prerogative. The very existence of professionalism is fundamentally contrary to the ultimate goal of Capitalism, as professionalism means Labour with some degree of freedom to direct itself - Labour not wholly alienated, Labour with some degree of power, Labour not wholly exploited - and that is an existential thorn in the side of Capital that it will not abide.

i say swears online posted:

90% of my threadvotes are fatfingers

ddinkins posted:

exactly. I have nothing against this thread. in fact, I come here often to read about good news for Ukraine. there isn't anywhere else to do that

mawarannahr posted:

🇷🇺

Megamissen posted:

why did you edit out what general ty guy said?
e: wait no i got confused that was th other thread

speng31b posted:

cant find the page but just remembering someone asked to see the votes on this thread recently. there a lot but i think rankings 1-3 are the funniest so i am posting those

quote:

In Ukraine, Amputations Already Evoke Scale of World War I

In February, Ruslana Danilkina, a 19-year-old Ukrainian soldier, came under fire near the front line around Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. Shrapnel tore her left leg off above the knee. She clutched her severed thigh bone and watched medics place her severed leg into the vehicle that took her to a hospital.

“I was holding the bone in my hands… there and then I realized that this was the end, that my life would never be the same again,” Danilkina said.

Danilkina is one of between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians who have lost one or more limbs since the start of the war, according to previously undisclosed estimates by prosthetics firms, doctors and charities.

The actual figure could be higher because it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure. Some are only amputated weeks or months after being wounded. And with Kyiv’s counteroffensive under way, the war may be entering a more brutal phase.

By comparison, some 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons had to have amputations during the course of World War I, when the procedure was often the only one available to prevent death. Fewer than 2,000 U.S. veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions had amputations.

Ukraine’s government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the figures. Kyiv has kept precise casualty statistics secret so as not to demoralize the population. But even as a rough estimate, the number casts light on the staggering human cost of Russia’s 17-month onslaught—a cost that will linger for decades.

Germany’s Ottobock, the world’s largest prosthetics manufacturer, which is working with Kyiv to help amputees, estimates the number of amputees at about 50,000 based on data from the government and medical partners. At the lower end, the Kyiv-based charity Health of the Ukrainian People ICF puts the number of serious injuries caused by the war at 200,000. About 10% of serious injuries typically require amputations, according to the foundation.

Such numbers reflect how Russia wages the war, with heavy use of mines and artillery, missile and drone attacks targeting soldiers and civilians alike.
...

Before the Russian invasion last year, Ukraine had several thousand amputations annually, but its healthcare system is now overwhelmed, according to Ukrainian doctors and specialist clinics, with many patients waiting more than a year for a new limb. Doctors in Lviv alone performed over 53,000 surgeries in the past year, said Oleksandr Kobzarev, an executive with Unbroken, a network of medical rehabilitation centers.

Superhumans chief executive Olga Rudneva says her foundation only has the capacity to admit some 50 amputees each month. She estimates the number of amputees as at least 20,000 since last year.

...

Out of 100 soldiers wounded within about 3 miles of the front line, 36% suffered very severe injuries, while between 5% and 10% of all deployed troops were killed, according to Ukrainian military estimates shared with a group of U.S. military surgeons. In comparison, only 1.3% to 2% of U.S. troops deployed in recent conflicts died in action.

Western military surgeons haven’t seen such injuries on this scale since World War II, said Dr. Aaron Epstein, head of the Global Surgical and Medical Support Group of former military surgeons who train Ukrainian military medics.

While artillery and missiles were the main causes of amputation early in the conflict, some of the worst casualties now come from mines laid along the 600-mile front line. Between 40 and 80 patients report to hospitals in the city of Zaporizhzhia with traumas each day, including amputees coming from the front line some 25 miles away, said Dr. Kostyantyn Mylytsya, medical director of the private KSM Clinic.

Mylytsya focused on cosmetic surgery before the war. Now his clinic treats and rehabilitates amputees. Such centers, he says, are needed “in every town across Ukraine; they must be as common as dentists.”

...