|
Ynglaur posted:Don't kid yourself. As soon as Russia evacuates--if they do--they will shell it into oblivion. Kherson is ostensibly annexed Russian territory at this point though, it might be more difficult to claim that all the people there, 98% of whom voted to join Russia, are now nazis that must not be allowed to have electricity or heating.
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2022 21:58
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 15:51 |
|
|
Dick Ripple posted:Possibly. This was the case during the retreat from Kyiv as well. There were a lot of rumours of increased Russian troop levels and shelling, then a few days later all the Russians had left. Russia has been quite good at retreating throughout the war, Kharkiv being the one big exception.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2022 14:22
|
|
|
MikeC posted:It is important to remember that the 2 biggest instances of Ukranian troops recapturing territory was either the voluntary withdrawal by Russian troops out of the Kyiv area in late March during their strategic refocus as and their fuckup falling for Kherson feint which allowed the Ukrainians to overload in Kharkov. Outside of those two instances, it has been a war of grinding inches. There are different degrees of voluntary withdrawal, it's not like things were going fine and dandy and the Russians just decided that they don't like Kyiv anymore and would prefer to bash their heads against Pisky and Bakhmut for a few months. They had severely stretched logistics that were getting attacked constantly, and their attempt at a thunder run had clearly failed. Attacking into Kyiv would be a complete bloodbath, and at best it would have resulted in the city becoming Mariupol ten times over. Calling it a voluntary withdrawal is giving them a lot of credit. Ukraine could similarly destroy logistics in other areas, by e.g. destroying railway communications (Kerch bridge) which Russian troops clearly struggle to deal with. That doesn't mean Ukraine can drive into Melitopol with a few AK47s stapled to some Ford Focuses, but Russians have shown multiple times that they will withdraw if their logistics can't sustain their presence. Sustaining the whole southern front through roads coming out of Donetsk does not sound like an easy thing to do, especially if you add hundreds of thousands of mobilised Russian troops.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2022 18:54
|
|
|
Kraftwerk posted:Also let's say the Russian military gradually loses any kind of capability to hold Ukrainian territory and retreats to 1994 boundaries. What stops the Russians from just constantly firing missiles every few months to blow up infrastructure, rebuilding efforts and scare away western investors and contractors from ever building up Ukraine? What could it possibly gain from doing that? I don't think turning Russia into an enormous Gaza strip is the goal of anyone in power in Russia. Russia will want to normalise relations with its neighbours at some point.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 17:55
|
|
|
Pook Good Mook posted:You're not wrong but there is no political will or ability to "normalize" relations left in Russia. Their whole system of power is premised on their regional and quasi-ethnic superiority over neighbors. Russia isn't just some primordial evil that is just out to kill people for the fun of it. When it commits some atrocity, it's because it's trying to accomplish something to further its interests, or to satisfy some internal demand. Lobbing missiles at Ukraine indefinitely long after the war is lost doesn't do much of anything to further its interests, but cements their position as an isolated failure. 30 years ago their entire system of power was based on the science of Marxism-Leninism, until one day it wasn't.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 15, 2022 18:25
|
|
|
piL posted:
I think Ukraine will be in a decent position for such negotiations compared to the Minsk accords, even if they're done from the same territorial conditions. Minsk was negotiated with the assumption that Russia could at any point escalate and send everything they've got into Ukraine, whereas now that has been shown not to work.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2022 09:00
|
|
|
cinci zoo sniper posted:I'm not sure it's that easy, but events on the ground should speed up in a few weeks, since it remains a notch too muddy in the popular areas. P66 is the place to watch for now, more and more Russian “war correspondents” are experiencing “unease” or marking parts of it as “grey zone”. If UAF manage to retake Severodonetsk/Lysychansk, more or less all Russian gains since March would have been reversed (not counting Mariupol, being surrounded before then).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2022 01:28
|
|
|
TheDeadlyShoe posted:i'm a bit confused what Indians thought the Russian military was like before. Perhaps a small group of glorified ice cream vans? If you fully believe the Russian propaganda about this being a full-on war with NATO, Russia holding its own against all of NATO (with occasional incremental gains!) would be pretty impressive.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2023 17:25
|
|
|
Enjoy posted:https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1629496442137243648 My understanding is that this is it. The mobilisation was useful for establishing defensive lines and preventing another Kharkiv collapse, but will not be as helpful in an offensive setting. I'm not sure what the Russian plans are for offensives in the near future, they seem to be draining the remainder of their manpower and equipment for quite insubstantial gains, again. A thousand casualties per day does not seem sustainable for several months, and despite those losses, I'm not entirely sure they're even going to get Bakhmut at this rate.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2023 17:09
|
|
|
fatherboxx posted:Russia lost about 1 million people to COVID and large parts of population are still convinced that the disease was not real The demographics would make a huge difference here though. If an 80 year old pensioner in rural Russia dies of covid, it's sad, but understandable. If a 30 year old factory worker with a wife and two kids dies because of a war of choice, the entire dynamic of that family changes. Even if he comes back home after losing a leg or something, he might not be able to work. Even if he comes back without being a casualty, he might have PTSD or similar. It would be a huge shock to that family, and it would take a long time to recover.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2023 17:39
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why? They launched 15 shaheds and some missiles yesterday, so they haven't quite stopped yet.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2023 21:38
|
|
|
adebisi lives posted:Ukraine had great success in Kharkiv, and pushed Russia out of Kherson after it was clear it wasn't tenable to defend. Both of those were before Russia mobilized more manpower and were exceptions to the glacial pace both sides have made the majority of the war. Things can always change but right now it doesn't seem like throwing a bunch of tanks at the front will be a gamechanger. Kherson and Kharkiv were successful after Russia's Donbass offensive had culminated. Russia exhausted its manpower and equipment, and Ukraine had reserve brigades that were ready and equipped with largely Western equipment. It sounds a lot like the current situation, honestly. Bakhmut and Vuhledar instead of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, with the added problem that Russia culminated before managing to take the cities this time. Not saying that a successful counter-offensive is guaranteed, but this December-March have looked a lot like April-August of last year. I'm not sure what the manpower and equipment situation is like on the Russian side, but Ukraine has more going for it than "throwing a bunch of tanks at the front".
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 01:40
|
|
|
buglord posted:Genuine question: when did “the Ukraine” become a problematic phrase? Thought it was like The Gambia, The Netherlands? Or was it something that was initially okay but then some pro Russian group/Russia itself turn into a term of dehumanization? After independence. "The Ukraine" refers to the Ukraine region of the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire, etc. The country itself is called Ukraine. It mirrors a similar process in Russian where в Украине makes it sound like Ukraine is a country, and на Украине makes it sound like a region. I guess it's not controversial for the Netherlands or the Gambia (or the United States of America) because nobody is trying to deny those countries their independence on that basis. Think e.g. "the south", "the midwest", "the donbass" vs "Canada" or "Mexico".
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 02:40
|
|
|
I do miss people posting relevant articles and tweets as I personally don't feel inclined to use Twitter on a regular basis, and this thread was great for getting updates and links to articles/interviews that I would otherwise miss out on. The GBS thread has a lot of white noise and gets easily distracted by low-effort trolls and forums drama which is why I prefer this thread, but lately there haven't been as many links to relevant updates and I think huge update posts are hard to discuss since they're a bit overwhelming. It's hard for me to be the change I want to see in the world since this thread was my way of getting discussion and updates without the white-noise of GBS and the general terribleness of Twitter, so my relationship to the content has been almost strictly parasitic.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 17:43
|
|
|
buglord posted:I’m a timid poster lol, but also I thought it was redundant. Unrelated, fingers crossed Finland gets in. I hope the door isn’t shut forever for Sweden, though im curious if they are at the same level of danger Finland is is despite not sharing a land border with Russia. The only real potential target in Sweden is Gotland, which would require a serious naval invasion which would probably be far beyond their current capabilities. The risk/reward isn't really there either, it'd mainly be useful for an invasion of the Baltic states. There could potentially be cyberattacks, but the ones Russia has been running since the NATO application have been really weak. poor waif fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Mar 30, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 19:56
|
|
|
Antigravitas posted:That is deepl. It does okay with German German, but Austrian German plus lots of Konjunktiv produces results that need to be touched up a lot. It's hard to see Armenia thriving while being in conflict with Turkey and Azerbaijan. In the long term, moving closer to the west is probably the best option for Armenia. With a weak Russia and a somewhat reawakened west, now would probably be the time to make that transition, but it will be difficult. Georgia will be interesting for similar reasons. If Ukraine is wildly successful we might see major changes in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Not sure what capacity Russia has for reacting to those changes anymore.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 20:23
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 15:51 |
|
|
Haystack posted:Armenia can't really cozy up with the west due to both geography and because the west cares about Turkey 100 times more than it could ever care about Armenia, which closes a lot of doors. Aligning with Russia hasn't really worked out either. A west-aligned Armenia could potentially give it some diplomatic way out if its geographical issues, whereas a Russia-aligned Armenia probably can't. The CSTO doesn't seem to exist anymore since Russia went whole hog into Ukraine. Armenia seems to be making westward moves lately(Nancy Pelosi visit, anti-Russian protests, ICC statements), but NK will be a problem. Having the position that South Ossetia, Abkhazia, LNR and DNR are illegitimate while arguing that NK is 100% legitimate is tricky.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2023 21:00
|
|