bedpan posted:

once the war is over, we in the west need to aggressively track down the putinists and tankies inside the military who drip-fed NATO weapons and equipment to Ukraine in just enough numbers that the Russians could develop countermeasures but not enough to alter the outcome of the war

this is the biggest spy case since the Rosenbergs and no one is talking about it

bedpan posted:

once the war is over, we in the west need to aggressively track down the putinists and tankies inside the military who drip-fed NATO weapons and equipment to Ukraine in just enough numbers that the Russians could develop countermeasures but not enough to alter the outcome of the war

this is the biggest spy case since the Rosenbergs and no one is talking about it

samogonka posted:

Starsfan posted:

Seems like the goal for the Ukrainian military is to mobilize 450,000 to 500,000 additional people in 2024. Zelenskyy has some concerns with the idea:

https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-military-proposes-to-mobilize-450-500-new-soldiers/

It's an interesting number because it basically matches what the Russians are reporting as the number of new recruits they achieved for 2023 through various channels which I believe is in the area of 480,000.

It's also worth pointing out that this reads to me as a continuation of Zelenskyy's efforts to position in messaging as the reasonable adult in the room having to struggle against the Army leadership. This follows up on Zelenskyy's announcement from a few weeks back that he was ending the pointless and wasteful offensives conducted by the military and recommending a transition to the defensive with the goal of preserving Ukraine's forces.

Now we are told that Zelenskyy is weighing the mobilization plan advocated for by the military carefully, with his foremost concern being the morale and well being of the troops already at the front. Zelenskyy is claimed to be categorically against the conscription of women, which is likely not a popular idea in Ukraine. It's some good posturing by Zelenskyy I have to say, likely fully aware of his slip in popularity amongst Ukrainians and in the Ukrainian army specifically.

sum posted:

Yeah I strongly doubt that Ukraine has the ability to mobilize half a million men in a year.

Starsfan posted:

Been waiting for the NAFO crew to turn on the supporters for Ukraine for the absolutely disgraceful lack of commitment to following through with their promises for military aid. Zelenskyy needs to ditch the "we have to be grateful for what we've received" line and start calling these fuckers out for (actually) stabbing Ukraine in the back.

VoicesCanBe posted:

At this point Zelensky himself is every bit as culpable as NATO. He did not necessarily have to listen to Boris Johnson

"But he would've been couped if he sued for peace in Aprik 2022" yeah probably. If he actually gave a poo poo about the lives of Ukranians he should've taken the peace deal anyway. Never, ever trust the west. They will leave you out to dry.

VoicesCanBe posted:

At this point Zelensky himself is every bit as culpable as NATO. He did not necessarily have to listen to Boris Johnson

"But he would've been couped if he sued for peace in Aprik 2022" yeah probably. If he actually gave a poo poo about the lives of Ukranians he should've taken the peace deal anyway. Never, ever trust the west. They will leave you out to dry.

Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:

lol

I'm honestly surprised you don't see more groups surrendering in mass. Trying to Searching for "Ukraine surrender" on Google pulls up a bunch of new stories of Ukraine accusing Russia of shooting surrendering soldiers. It really feels like a story pushed by Ukraine to stop so many of their own soldiers from surrendering.

Orange Devil posted:

It's very clear Zelensky was never willing to die for his country, but very willing to sacrifice millions of his countrymen for his foreign sponsors. Any objective assessment would conclude he is traitorous scum.

Phigs posted:

I don't know that Zelenskyy could have nationalized any industry and still gotten all the Western aid. He set his country up to be a Western puppet and that's not something you get to do as a Western puppet.

gradenko_2000 posted:

that's also what the US does in the Philippines: we have a "Visiting Forces Agreement" where the US technically does not "have" or "own" a base in the Philippines, they just have an agreement by which US forces can "visit" the bases that the Philippine military already has

not coincidentally, these bases are also the same ones that the Americans did build and own and have, right up until they were asked to leave in 1991 because they didn't want to keep paying for the lease anymore

the other more recent agreement is the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, whereby the Philippines gets to build new bases, or refurbish existing ones, along American designs, with American funding, and with a proviso that Americans can use these bases as their base, but since it is still technically owned by the Philippine government, the US does not have any bases in the Philippines

VoicesCanBe posted:

Ukraine even accelerated their privatization efforts after Feb. 2022

Hatebag posted:

i don't think there was ever a chance that ol' pandora papers zelensky was ever going to make any decisions of his own accord. guy's entire career is because he got close to some billionaire media guy and he's been involved with weird embezzlement schemes for over a decade. he just does what the richest/scariest guy tells him to

Ardennes posted:

I also don't know how you would improve the efficiency of conscription at this point beyond just hiring more conscript hunters to check out cellars or whatever. It is also going to be hard for them to pass up taking bribes when people will do anything to avoid service.

sum posted:

I think the basic issue is that pretty much all the undrafted men left are soft objectors to the war. Like they might nominally agree that Ukraine should fight until ultimate victory or whatever but more importantly they very strongly do not to be on the front themselves. So trying to get 500,000 of those guys under arms is going to be extremely unpopular and the formations you end up with might be politically unreliable.

Dr. Killjoy posted:

Dunno if it's been posted yet (probably has) but I thought this was essential reading to get a good framing on just how hosed up Zels is
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/...-hybrid-regime/

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://www.rt.com/news/589355-ukraine-nazi-germany-hodges/

PhilippAchtel posted:

bedpan posted:

once the war is over, we in the west need to aggressively track down the putinists and tankies inside the military who drip-fed NATO weapons and equipment to Ukraine in just enough numbers that the Russians could develop countermeasures but not enough to alter the outcome of the war

this is the biggest spy case since the Rosenbergs and no one is talking about it

bedpan posted:

god drat these people ripping off my posts

Cao Ni Ma posted:

The contrast of "Putin is growing stronger" and "Putin is at his weakest" between the different news depending on the day it was published is so loving tiring.

Orange Devil posted:

Countries who have done the most damage to humanity, in order:

1. UK
2. US
3. Austria

Probably continues:

4. Spain
5. France
6. Germany
7. The Netherlands
8. Belgium
9. Japan

Though I'm a lot less sure on the ordering of the non-top 3 part of the list.

quote:

The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust.

Orange Devil posted:

It's very clear Zelensky was never willing to die for his country, but very willing to sacrifice millions of his countrymen for his foreign sponsors. Any objective assessment would conclude he is traitorous scum.

VoicesCanBe posted:

Ukraine even accelerated their privatization efforts after Feb. 2022

mawarannahr posted:

… the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

quote:

[....]

In the 22 months since the war in Ukraine began, Russia has largely continued getting the technology it needs to keep its economy running. After export restrictions and corporate bans initially led to trade disruptions, Russian suppliers found loopholes and cultivated workarounds. Almost no piece of commercial hardware — including basic telecom equipment, surveillance gear, microchips for advanced computing and weapons systems, and drones — has been too hard to get.

Russian authorities and companies have united to take advantage of cracks in the global response. They have tapped webs of intermediaries, including middlemen in China, and disguised their activity through shell companies, according to leaked Russian government emails, trade documents and records of online conversations between Russian engineers obtained by The Times.

They have also turned to countries that have staked out neutral positions in the conflict, such as Morocco and Turkey, and used their ports to receive goods from global tech manufacturing centers that are then placed on other ships headed toward Russia, a process known as transshipment. The prohibited tech products were then made available to buy from well-known suppliers and on easy-to-use e-commerce sites like Nag.

Flexibility has been paramount. In weekly emails, Russian trade officials shared tips on which ports would transfer goods, who would trade in rubles and where Russian-flagged ships could be repaired, the documents show. If one supplier stopped selling, they found another. If a shipping route was cut off, new ones took up the slack.

The documents offer a rare glimpse of a race in which Russian traders have reliably stayed one step ahead of U.S.-led efforts to cut them off. Their success shows how difficult it is to stop the global movement of commercial technology, raising questions about the effectiveness of Western trade restrictions and whether tech giants should better control the destinations of their products — and if it is even possible to do so.

Understaffed government investigators in the United States and Europe cannot keep pace with the often shadowy flow of goods, said Elina Ribakova, an economist who has studied sanctions evasion at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a U.S. think tank. Major tech companies, she added, must do more to cut off supplies to Russia.

“It’s an endless Whac-a-Mole game,” she said. “There should be alarm, particularly among the policymakers, that we have announced a lot of sanctions and may believe they are working but in reality they are not.”

As sanctions against Russia took effect last year, ProSoft, a Moscow-based electronics provider, experienced the fallout.
Officials at the company, which sells biometric surveillance equipment and tech for heavy industry and critical infrastructure, emailed the Russian government trade mission in Morocco for help, according to a message reviewed by The Times.

“Just a week ago, it was not difficult to ship them to us from American and European suppliers,” a ProSoft executive wrote, referring to now-banned tech. Now “we run the risk of starting to reduce production (there are small reserves in the warehouse).”

A spreadsheet attached to the message listed hundreds of American, European and Japanese microchips and sensors that ProSoft needed.

[....]

In Morocco, Russia’s trade office, which looks after the country’s economic interests overseas, also helped Russian companies regain their footing. After ProSoft reached out for help, trade officials jumped into action.

“We’re in constant contact with the general director” of Morocco’s state-run port of Tanger Med, one Russian official wrote in an April 2022 email. “In the event of ships entering under the Russian flag, there will be no problems with maintenance.”

A spokeswoman for Tanger Med, which hugs the Strait of Gibraltar, said the port leased space to shipping companies and had “no information nor responsibility” about vessels moving through the complex. The port, which handles more than eight million containers annually connecting to 180 international ports, was “not aware” of shipped goods calling at Russian ports before or after being at Tanger Med, or maintenance of Russian ships being performed, she added.

By November 2022, Russian trade officials in Morocco were bragging that their “direct support” had turned the African country into an electronics transshipment hub. Goods from Taiwan, China and other manufacturing centers were offloaded at Tanger Med and then placed on other ships headed to Russia.

[....]

An analysis of ProSoft’s offerings found nearly 300 products for sale that contain Intel chips, as well as components made by Nvidia and an A.I. optimized computer chip designed by Google. Although it is unclear how the imports were ultimately used, American chips have been found on Russian missiles and drones, according to weapons experts.

[....]

In October 2022, Russian trade officials said they had established 20 operators at the Tanger Med port to "promptly carry out" the logistics of getting cargo loaded onto “feeder” vessels ultimately bound for Russia, according to a weekly shipping report. Another report noted that ports in Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, had accepted payment in rubles.

“The sanctions restrictions have been successfully overcome,” one government report said of a Turkish trade route this March.

[....]

China and Hong Kong supplied 85 percent of semiconductors imported to Russia from March 2022 to September 2023, up from 27 percent before the conflict, according to the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a nonprofit that studies Russian trade routes.

Nag, which sells hardware to regional telecoms and surveillance contractors, is one major platform. Through intermediaries, it has bought roughly $100 million in restricted American tech since the war began, according to trade data. In total, it imported $150 million in hardware from China this year, the data show. Communications gear, which has ostensibly been prohibited from reaching Russia, is readily available on its site, filtered by price, product type and quantity.

Nag employees have talked about logistical challenges that international sanctions have caused, according to internal communications. In May 2022, a Nag employee wrote to a Russian customer that “the old transit system has ended,” delaying delivery of $20,000 of Juniper equipment. A month later, Nag followed up to say that the problem had been resolved and that the gear would arrive in the coming months.

[....]

At the F.S.B. offices in Yekaterinburg, the Cisco gear that Convex engineers installed sat alongside routers made by Juniper, according to Convex’s records. Less than a year later, the availability of Western tech was so abundant that Convex’s engineers could shop around.

In a conversation on Convex’s internal messaging system this year, engineers focused on a new supplier that they had “spotted.” Operating under the name sale-server.ru, the supplier had plenty of restricted name-brand technology from HP, IBM and others. More important, the price was right.

“Cheaper than Nag,” one Convex employee wrote.

BULBASAUR posted:

[Ukraine] I'm sure the USA will not betray us