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Tesseraction posted:Crimea is another part that I would have thought of (ironically) a bridge too far, but them crippling the Russian supply line from the Kerch Strait means it's actually becoming very possible. Doubly so if they can keep the Azov sea clear and launch naval support from the western mainland... As far as I know the Ukrainian Navy is pretty much a non-factor aside from whatever secret squirrel US drone boats were handed over to them - there weren't many of them and they were wildly outclassed by the Black Sea Fleet, with the flagship getting scuttled to prevent capture. They do have land-based anti-ship missile launchers, though, which is how they nailed the Moskva.
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Oct 11, 2022 21:04
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OddObserver posted:https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1580088362991759360 Honestly, it wouldn't really surprise me if both the original inspection video and the x-ray were random bullshit pulled from somewhere to make it look like Russia is on top of things and will totally catch the saboteurs, yes sir. I dunno if either of them are worth analyzing given the uncertainty of whether they actually have anything to do with the explosion to begin with. Paracausal posted:Just to centre the ideological drive of the Russian invasion, remember that the Ukranian homonazis want to force all Russians to attend pride parades at gunpoint I'm kinda curious how many of the footsoldiers there are mentally nodding along and going "Yes, that's right, that is indeed the true face of the enemy!" and how many are going "Man, why do we gotta sit through another pointless and boring political speech?"
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Oct 12, 2022 13:59
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:"dragon's teeth" is just a generic term for concrete obstacles placed to block vehicles. its not particularly a nazi innovation or anything, except that the nazis are associated with this specific kind of "big rock you put to stop vehicle". otherwise most forces used anti-tank and anti-vehicle obstacles at some point or another As mentioned earlier I don't see that there's anything inherently wrong with digging trenches, and the fact that it's "WW2 techniques" doesn't inherently invalidate it - if it's still applicable to the modern battlefield it's still applicable, not like WW2 soldiers were scoffing about the Germans building trenches "like it was the American Civil War" or something. That being said, I'm not sure if it's just the video being really zoomed out or something, but those trenches look really really straight? Which is weird because as early as WW1 they figured out that you want to make crenelated trenches instead that don't run in a straight line because those big wide open straight lines channel shrapnel and explosive force from any shell that lands in the trench straight down the entire length of the trench, wiping out everyone within. Better to have the trenches zig-zag back and forth instead so that any explosive force is isolated to one small section of the trench. Like for comparison, have some images from WW1.   
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Oct 12, 2022 17:08
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sexy tiger boobs posted:Well for one thing, the US paid for the starlink poo poo. It wasn't just a gift that Musk should be able to gently caress with. And once he gets further corrupted by russian propaganda, what's to stop him from deactivating the whole system that Ukraine may be relying on. It's a dick move that doesn't help anything, and may make things worse. So is the US paying for Musk to provide Russians in Crimea with Starlink access? I’m not really sure what Ukraine loses and Russia gains from this.
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Oct 12, 2022 19:05
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I’m really confused by this question. spacetoaster posted:Don't you have to have the special receiver to use starlink? Also, are you saying the people of Crimea are Russians, or Ukrainians in a Russian occupied area? Well, the OP is complaining that Musk shouldn’t be allowed to unilaterally disable Starlink access across Crimea because the US is paying for it. But my understanding is that the US is paying for Starlink access to benefit Ukrainian civilians who’ve had their Internet access bombed out, or Ukrainian military operating in places where traditional Internet access is either limited or again bombed out. Neither of these factors really apply to Crimea, so which customers exactly are getting affected by the stoppage, and does the US or Ukrainian government really care? That might change if the frontline moves into Crimea but that’s a Clancychat away and they can resume access in Crimea when that happens so I’m not sure why it matters.
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Oct 12, 2022 19:43
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cinci zoo sniper posted:
Oh, I hadn’t realized it was a Ukrainian government request- that does put a different spin on thing. Though I do note the only source is apparently “Ian Bremmer said Musk told him”? Not that I’m putting it past Musk to try and act like he’s the protagonist of a RPG forging the only path towards the True Ending, but it is a little he said she said right now.
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Oct 12, 2022 20:17
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Herstory Begins Now posted:UN Voted on condemning the annexation referenda Worth noting I think that something around half or so of the abstentions come from Africa. There are of course also plenty of African countries voting for, but it's probably worth remembering that Russia is focusing a lot of messaging on former colonized countries and finding fertile ground for an anti-Western message. Heck, I recently found out that my landlord, a highly educated upper-middle-class Indian who was raised in the UK and has been working and living here since early childhood and is generally extremely British, apparently reads Russia Today uncritically and took a lot of Russian talking points for granted. And my landlord before that, back when the whole thing kicked off, was Kenyan and also highly educated upper-middle class and had been living in the UK for a while, and he was notably pretty "both sides" about the war. They were both pretty reasonable guys and receptive to arguments, mind you, it's just that their personal media spheres, even in a privileged position in a Western country, tended towards a certain healthy (and understandable) skepticism towards the West and sympathy for Russian messaging.
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Oct 12, 2022 22:22
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NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:Question about the theoretical NATO response to a WMD attack that I've not seen answered: How do they deal with the fact that Russia's terror bombing missiles - and most likely any WMD they choose to use on Ukraine - are launched from within Russian airspace? They're not going to start shooting down Russian planes over Russia. So back in the early months of the war this was a huge part of the discussion over establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, to wit, that a lot of the general public calling for the US and NATO to "do something" like establishing a no-fly zone did not understand that establishing that no-fly zone would effectively mean bombing Russian air defenses and airfields in Russia, because the idea of establishing air superiority while allowing a SAM battery sitting on the border to pew pew at your planes with impunity was inherently silly. Presumably if a nuclear strike triggered a conventional NATO response that would go out the window and targeted strikes to disable Russian air defenses in Russia and, yes, to shoot down Russian planes in Russia would be on the table. I'm not sure if targeting cruise missile launch facilities would be in the cards given that this might look dangerously close to disabling Russia's strategic launch capabilities which could be seen as an existential threat, but it's not ENTIRELY out of the question. Edit: Oh for gently caress's sake, if he just kept his mouth shut this could have been spun as a reasonable, if somewhat odious commercial demand and nothing more, now it's hard to see this as anything but a giant pissbaby throwing a tantrum. vvv Tomn fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 10:37
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Owling Howl posted:The US/Polish governments and volunteers are financing it - just not the $5000 luxury yacht subscription. They're mostly using a basic $60 subscription. I don't know how much better yacht internet is? I would assume basic comms and sending images would overwhelmingly be the most important features - they don't need to stream 4K Netflix while playing Xbox in the trenches. Genuinely not sure of the mechanics of any of this, but streaming might actually be important? For EG live drone recon or the like? Or are drones controlled through other systems?
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Oct 14, 2022 12:40
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Regarding Russian propaganda, I think one thing worth noting is that in Brexit and the US elections, Russian propaganda didn't NEED to boost a particular position - it was sufficient to sow chaos and say "those guys are pretty bad!" and kinda let the internal hatreds metastasize from there. But now, it's not enough to suggest that NATO or even Ukraine is bad, it's necessary for Russian propaganda to take a position and justify why what they are doing is good. That's proving, well, a bit of an uphill struggle considering that what they are doing is so flagrantly not good, and even if Russia had been studiously avoiding warcrimes it would probably have been trickier anyhow because it's easier to insinuate that someone else is bad and nasty than it is to insist that you yourself are absolutely doing the right thing.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:42
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Kavros posted:People have already mentioned the different markets they started refocusing their attention on, but there was an additional reason why they scaled back on a lot of their propaganda movements in most democratic republics pretty fast: when it came time for rallying visible activism or commentary to support russia, it really, really, really sucked. It was completely insufficient to task, through a combination of the arguments it was expected to use to encourage cynical nonintervention and the mediocrity of the people and groups that were to rally to the cause. A post from the old thread I thought pretty funny showing that even a random Russian milblogger type thought the choice of American experts recruited by Russia somewhat sketchy. I do find it somewhat odd that the guy feels the need to explain that pedophiles are "not forgiven there [in the US]" or that in general, the USA is a society where pedophiles are "generally not considered people." Is that...not the case in Russia, or is the translation garbling a repeat for emphasis or something? Charlotte Hornets posted:Some batshit Russian nationalist's Telegram take on Scott Ritter, I found it a bit funny tbh
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Oct 14, 2022 23:35
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Rigel posted:This "2nd shot at Kyiv" idea is not being taken seriously because it would be catastrophically stupid. It would go much worse now than it did back in February, now that Ukraine is better trained and armed. Everything of any value or significance sent down would be lit up by HIMARS. While this is true, it must be said that the first shot at Kyiv was catastrophically stupid as well and yet it happened... But in all seriousness I dunno that Lukashenko actually DOES gain anything from jumping off the fence - if Putin is truly politically doomed (and it's hard to say whether he is or isn't right now), Belarus's intervention isn't going to tip the scales in his favor, and he's probably better off protecting and cultivating his own internal support (read: not meatgrindering his army and security forces in Ukraine) than trying to rely on Putin's increasing lack of influence to protect him. Like, if it's gotten to the point where Belarus is the difference between Putin falling or not, then Lukashenko doesn't NEED Putin anymore.
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Oct 15, 2022 22:59
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saratoga posted:The loser escalates a conflict, not the winner. The point of escalation is to change the conflict into one you can win. Ukraine escalating a ground war they're winning into a bigger conflict doesn't make strategic sense. They need missile defenses to further lock Russia into an untenable ground war. I'm not sure this is always the case - it's possible, for instance, for the winner to escalate a localized conflict when they see that the loser is weaker than they imagined and they could potentially make even bigger gains if they push the limits and expand the remit of the war. Which is potentially relevant in the case of Ukraine if, having discovered that Russia is weaker than most had imagined, they start considering the possibility of, say, retaking Crimea. (Though if you want to argue this point in detail we start to get into issues of defining what escalation actually is and means, and whether changing wargoals or the expansion of the battle zone counts as escalation. Not really intending to argue semantics, just noting that there are reasons for the current winner to consider kicking things up a notch.)
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Oct 16, 2022 18:47
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FishBulbia posted:It's sucks that the switchblade is supposedly over-engineered hot garbage Now that you mention it, there WAS a lot of guff about the Switchblade when it was first shipped over but I don't think we've seen much in the thread about it since. What are the reports you're getting about it?
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Oct 16, 2022 22:30
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I'd be curious to know how geographically concentrated that 26% that wants an immediate peace is - are these mostly people who've been bombed out of house and home in the war zones, or are they more evenly distributed around the country and want peace for other reasons?
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Oct 18, 2022 17:36
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cinci zoo sniper posted:
So yeah, fairly predictable and understandable "We want the war to stop because we want to go home" sentiments. Though even then apparently only half of those in the affected area are amenable to peace. I do wonder if this is going to lead to a post-war domestic divide, but I guess there's not much point speculating about it until we have a better idea of how and when the war ends.
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Oct 18, 2022 17:59
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Somaen posted:“According to historical sources, famine used to affect the southern regions of Russia and then the Soviet Union every few decades. Ukraine and Donbass were not among the regions most affected by the 1932-33 famine, but Kazakhstan, the Volga region, and the North Caucasus were,” said Artem Bobrovsky, head of the department at Donetsk National University with a PhD in history, who was present at the demolition. Even if true, man, talk about embodying the concept of "It's not a contest!" Ireland doesn't get to feel bad about the Irish Potato Famine or put up memorials to victims of British colonialism because more people died in the Indian famines, dontcherknow. Anyways famines affecting Russia and the Soviet Union every few decades is totally fine and not worth complaining about because it happened on a regular basis.
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Oct 19, 2022 14:31
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Edit:Outdated, ignore
Tomn fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 21:04
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FishBulbia posted:The US invading Iran and then getting bogged down would provide some beautiful symmetry to this war All we’d need is for China to break itself invading Taiwan and then we can really get this hell-decade going with the death of superpowers as a concept! slurm posted:Russia has already had to move around a lot of air defense systems just to stop Ukraine from getting a decisive upper hand, if they had to stretch to cover another large front they'd likely have huge shortages. Opening up the air war in Ukraine seems like it would be huge. Iran is not Russia with a funny flag on it and they have no obligation or real reason to divert one iota of effort from Ukraine into defending Iran, why would you think they would. Tomn fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 21:20
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Tarezax posted:Metal Gear?! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katangese_Air_Force https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes Kojima didn’t exactly invent the idea of the PMC, and I suspect he was likely inspired particularly by Executive Outcomes, given that around the same time period you also got other PMC-related games like Jagged Alliance and Strike Commander. And the idea of contracting from aboard for specialist knowledge you don’t have in-house is as old as the concept of mercenaries to begin with. It’s just that in the modern age the specific conditions that make fighter pilot mercs possible tend to be rare - notice how both those examples involved a lot of suddenly unemployed military specialists. Which incidentally ties back to that earlier article about Afghan commandos - that’s definitely a large pool of potential future mercs…
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Oct 26, 2022 22:17
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JunkDeluxe posted:[*] Putin is occupied with the war. Which means he has little time for actually running the country. During his reign he has created a state which is mostly dependent on him handling internal disputes and regional matters, when there are larger issues. Regions are starved from resources(both the corrupt kind, and the "normal" resources), and Putin is the man who can set aside resources and prop up the local regional managers when they need help. He is not doing this right now, which in turn leads to several regions having local issues. This seems interesting to me. I'm not really one for podcasts, but does he go into detail about what kinds of local issues we're talking about, and whether there's any potential for local issues to become bigger issues in the future? If Putin is hoping for a long war to erode Western support for Ukraine, it might derail those plans somewhat if Russia is itself is suffering from increasing administrative issues simply because Putin can't afford enough time and attention to keep an eye on everything that needs handling.
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Oct 27, 2022 14:50
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sharkytm posted:It's worth reading No Higher Honor by Bradley Peniston. It's about the Samuel B Roberts and the mine strike that nearly sank it. Note that this isn't a universal truth across all time. Instituional knowledge and memory is a thing and it can be lost if there isn't a lot of work put into maintaining it - the USN is only going to be good at damage control as long as it continues putting in the work to try and keep it that way (which the Forrestal fire worked to kick asses and convince leadership to take damage control seriously again). Relevantly to the current situation, the Red Army was an incredibly sophisticated and formidable institution by the end of World War 2 so it's not like Russians are always and have always been incompetent at war - the issue was that there wasn't enough effort put into maintaining and updating their institutional knowledge. They've forgotten a lot of what they once knew, and some of what they once knew is starting to get obsolete anyways.
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Oct 31, 2022 05:05
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surf rock posted:Different topic, but this reminded me or something I've been wondering: is there a good write-up about Russian military doctrine out there that's accessible to a non-expert audience? I'd especially be interested in one that included comparisons with other major militaries. I am 100% not an expert, and in fact was funnily led to this document by a cspammer of which I'll say no more lest I get probed for posting about posters, but this document here goes into some depth about Russian military doctrine as of 2017. Being a full-rear end book written for military experts that's probably not quite the accessible document you're looking for, but while searching for this specific document I also ran across this thing here from the RAND Corporation which certainly seems to offer exactly what you're looking for, even with a bunch of summarized key findings. No idea how accurate it is or not, and I've not even read both documents in full yet (the cspammer was mostly posting up individual pages off the first book and I only just found the second one by Googling), but it should probably work as a starting point for understanding, I'd guess. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 31, 2022 16:02
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Barrel Cactaur posted:Depends on flagging but because this isn't a war technically any naval action outside national waters is piracy, even against Ukrainian flagged vessels(and targeting shipping to neutral ports is unprecedented because random acts of war against third parties has just been beyond the pale after the distinction between warship and ship developed. This is why there was the big stink about that Iranian oil tanker. Basically anyone is within their rights to just start shooting at your flag, on the presumption. I suspect the actual response would be a US destroyer or corvette following next to the ships after they leave Turkish waters if that kind of incident occurred or seemed likely. Ehhhh...you sure about that? One of the big things about the British blockade during WW1 was that they eventually clamped down on shipping to neutral ports bordering Germany, on the basis that shipping to, say, the Netherlands so that the goods could be shipped on to Germany was essentially shipping to Germany via the concept of continuous voyage, and that as such the British had a right to inspect and detain ships whose cargo could be deemed contraband or which could be suspected of having Germany as its final destination. Something similar came up during the Napoleonic Wars as well, which was part of the grievances that triggered the war of 1812. Mind you, both times attempting to enforce that rule DID cause a lot of ruffled feathers internationally and during WW1 in the US for instance there was an argument for a time that the British blockade was as bad as the U-boat campaign. They eventually decided that killing US sailors and citizens was worse than restricting US trade, but they still weren't happy about it. Also the idea that random acts of war against third parties was before the pale since warships were a thing is kinda funny - there's a reason the English had a reputation as pirates throughout the 16th century. Granted this was more because they didn't really have the ability to restrict the actions of captains at sea far from home and didn't really want to since such captains formed the basis of their seapower when the state was unable to maintain an effective national navy, and in any event talking about what exactly international law was in the early modern period ultimately came down to ultima ratio regum (at least, more explicitly than it does now) but...yeah. Point is, it's not quite unprecedented, but it HAS been out of vogue for a while now and causes raised eyebrows. As you say, the fact that this isn't technically a war could arguably cause lawyers to say that the formal rules of blockade don't apply and the whole thing is illegal, but to be honest blockades whenever used in the past usually raised a storm of legal objections anyways and was usually ultimately justified with "We're the British Empire/United States and we want to do it, and if you want to keep trading with us and not piss us off you'd better deal with it." Thing is, Russia doesn't exactly have the leverage of the British Empire at its height and its ability to force people into accepting their right to blockade is pretty limited. If anything any hostile acts against neutral shipping or in neutral waters is likely to just make it that much easier for their governments to argue that sanctions are good, actually, and we should do more.
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Nov 1, 2022 21:04
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ZombieLenin posted:My understanding is that blockades are prima facie illegal even during a declared war between two states. Yeah, as far as I can tell the rules of international blockades in particular are something of a game of Calvinball and basically comes down to "We invested a lot of time, money, and effort in a navy and now that we're at war we are absolutely going to make use of it and we're not going to let it go to waste because of legal loopholes, so if you want us to not blockade the question is what are you going to do about it?" That's not a question people could easily answer with regards to the US or the British Empire. The answer is much simplified with Russia, as we've seen.
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Nov 2, 2022 18:30
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Bar Ran Dun posted:500 tons displacement is a boat. The way I was taught, the difference between a boat and a ship is that you can put a boat on a ship but you can't put a ship on a boat, and that's all there is to it.
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Nov 3, 2022 01:40
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If the Russians really are withdrawing it'll be interesting to see what the fallout is. On one hand, by all accounts it's a sound military decision to avoid getting pinned along the river with shaky supply lines getting interdicted by Ukrainian artillery. On the other hand, the political consequences of having given up Kherson without a fight would be pretty big - it'd be a hell of a morale boost for Ukraine and its backers, and conversely Russian nationalists will get even frothier at the mouth. Really hard to see how Putin spins this one as a positive - there's ways to mitigate the political impact but they mostly involve acknowledging that the front is in deep poo poo which makes them unlikely to be used. Don't really see that Putin has a lot of good choices here, though, Stalingrading Kherson would just make the eventual morale crash from losing it all the worse.
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Nov 3, 2022 17:50
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Scratch Monkey posted:The NSA and NRO have been waiting for their moment since the Cold War and conflicts like this are their dream. I’m sure they regularly intercept, analyze, and share phone data traffic with the Ukrainians so it’s not too far fetched to hear these sorts of recordings That's just supporting the possibility of successfully intercepting phone calls, though. The ability to intercept phone calls doesn't have any correlation with whether or not the Russians are actually making those calls. Or to put it another way, the NSA likely has the ability to intercept YOUR personal phone calls, but that doesn't mean that a recording of you plotting terrorist activity is necessarily real, is it? Not making a direct comment on the veracity of the phone calls, mind you, since I'm not really in a position to properly gauge that, just calling out the logical foul. PC LOAD LETTER posted:The calls alone shouldn't be enough to assess sure. But none of this is really hard proof that the Russians are surrendering in droves, is it? All the other things you suggested are proof that Russians might have good reason to consider surrender, but frankly people can and have fought on in worse conditions. The official commentary you point out actually backs this up - it notes that "two thousand people have already called the surrender hotline in a few weeks," which is a lot of people to fit into a high school auditorium but kind of a drop in the bucket compared to the size of Russian forces in the field and mobilizing. Nor is it really proof of blocking detachments used en masse - what you have here reads to me essentially like "It sounds like it could be true, so why not accept it as true?" Not directly specifically at you but I feel like this thread goes through rounds of circular logic sometimes where "The Russians have bad troops" -> "The evidence that they have bad troops is X, Y, and Z" -> "X, Y, and Z isn't verified but it's probably true because the Russians have bad troops." And yeah, there IS actually verified evidence of the Russians being bad troops but they've also not completely bottomed out yet either for the simple reason that if they HAD bottomed out the war would be over and Ukraine would be marching triumphantly into Crimea unopposed. They might not be fighting well, but they're still absolutely fighting, and as long as they continue to fight they're still entirely capable of killing Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and the Ukrainians can't afford to take them lightly. The much-vaunted superior skill of Ukrainian soldiers isn't because they're deadlier in honorable one-on-one combat, it's because their officers are better at bypassing and neutralizing Russian strengths and identifying and exploiting Russian weaknesses - and even then it's worth remembering the old saying that victory in war belongs not to the side that makes no mistakes, but rather to the side that makes fewer mistakes. The Ukrainians at least aren't treating the Russians as punching bags to knock down as they please, but rather as serious adversaries that requires careful thought, preparation, and planning to overcome - why shouldn't we do the same? Tomn fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Nov 5, 2022 17:07
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Yeah, that’s an important point about revolution: if you kick THAT off your end goal is successfully storming the Kremlin or death. Are you prepared to go that far, and do you think you can manage it or even want to manage it? Like purely on a practical level, are you prepared to figure out how to supply your revolutionaries on the road to Moscow after having rebelled against the logistical chain that was keeping you fed in Ukraine, however badly? Are you ready to figure out how to manage and coordinate army-sized forces after having shot or dismissed half of the high command who were trained to do so, however badly? Granted a revolution kicking off often has sparks in some emotional event that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but rationally a revolution is always a high risk, high stakes gamble that people don’t enter lightly into. That being said, mutinying in the sense of “We won’t rise up against our officers, but we’re also not going to attack until our demands are met” is relatively lower-stake and might even successfully win local concessions as regional officers decide it’s cheaper to give in than to face their forces becoming inert blocks of wood or making a bigger, more public fuss. You’re more likely to see that kind of mutiny than a full-scale revolution and it doesn’t necessarily presage the complete collapse of the army - keep in mind the French army mutinied in much this way during WW1 but still went on to victory in the end. But if such incidents start becoming more and more frequent that could be a general danger sign.
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Nov 8, 2022 20:59
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Charlz Guybon posted:The soldiers in WWI on both sides were generally ideologically committed to the war due to nationalism. The situation in this war is different because the Ukranians have that and the Russians generally don't. Nationalism is just another form of political ideology, and while it is the one ideology that is superficially allowed in Russia, Putin’s regime enforced apathy undermines that along with everything else. I dunno that describing the soldiers of WW1 as “ideologically committed due to nationalism” is really accurate. Maybe in the first flush of enthusiasm but most of the particularly enthusiastic ones got themselves killed early on and many of the rest ended up disillusioned. This is to say nothing of multiethnic empires where nationalism could even potentially be an anti-motivator - and even then they still managed to drag things out for years before collapsing. In general my understanding of combat morale is that while big picture issues like ideology and nationalism can be a factor, usually the considerably bigger factor is “My buddies are relying on me to do my bit, and if I don’t they’ll die.” Command can be hosed, supplies may be scarce, your cause may be unjust and your situation hopeless but if you give a poo poo about the guys around you and they give a poo poo about you, units have been known to hold out a surprisingly long time. Of course that kind of cohesion is easier to build in a well-run military that actually makes a point of encouraging such cohesion but it can still pop up sporadically in a badly run one if there are inspirational lower level officers or NCOs or even enlisted. Point is, I wouldn’t really put a huge amount of stock in the ideological superiority of the Ukrainian soldier. It can help, but by itself it’s not usually the deciding factor - and in any event morale is mostly helpful for ensuring that you continue to stand and fight even when getting ripped to pieces. It doesn’t help as much with the “getting ripped to pieces” bit.
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Nov 9, 2022 04:06
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I will say, it's pretty funny that trust in Russia has gotten to the point where when they openly say they're eating poo poo and intend to retreat, people don't believe them despite "eating poo poo and retreating" having been a thing they've been doing for a while now, and in fact a specific thing they were accused of doing earlier when they were claiming that they were holding firm and there were no problems, and despite the specific circumstances in which they're retreating having been predicted repeatedly earlier. I mean, yeah, some caution is warranted all things considered but we seem to have gotten to the point where if Putin says the sun rises in the east, everyone peers suspiciously to the west come daybreak.
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Nov 10, 2022 00:36
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Kchama posted:This is never how reality works. A dead commander isn't inherently an incompetent commander, and the replacement isn't inherently a more competent commander. Not in absolute "This is always the case" terms, but I think it's fair to suggest that incompetent commanders do in fact tend to be the ones doing stupid things that leave their CPs vulnerable, creating a natural selection process against that kind of incompetence at least and encouraging more careful planning and thinking. As well, it's not I think that the replacements are NECESSARILY more competent, but rather that at that particular level political factors aren't as important and it's more likely that people are tapped on the basis of perceived competence as opposed to "How loyal to Putin they'll be." Especially if whoever's in charge of picking the replacement really, really wants to see results that HE can show to superiors up the line, and is aware he needs competent people to do that. I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that an army in wartime does tend to natural select towards increasingly competent people rising up the ranks, even if they rise slower in some armies than others, and even if political considerations might block the very top spots from getting replaced. It's also not a question of simple talent, either - presumably EVERY surviving Russian commander is getting at least a little bit more competent as they gain direct battlefield experience. Yes, the absolute stupidest might be going full Cadorna but on a practical level lower level officers are getting more and more of a grip of what works, and what doesn't, and what gets everyone killed - and some of those might be tapped to replace their superiors when a vacancy opens up. Point is, I don't think we can assume that the Russian army is completely and permanently pants-on-head idiotic and do have to allow for the fact that, being human and possessing a survival instinct, some of them are in fact capable of learning and becoming more dangerous.
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Nov 10, 2022 19:00
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As a general aside, I don't know how well claims of "massive Ukrainian victory and thousands of POWs" lines up with Ukrainian official statements about their caution entering Kherson and the possibility of a trap. If Ukraine was publicly being slow and careful about their advance, the only way the Russians could have lost that badly was if the damage was mostly self-inflicted. Which given Russian performance so far isn't ENTIRELY to be ruled out, but... Also, even if there are troops that are panicking, the thing about panic is that it magnifies defeat. Talk to the first people running away from any battle throughout history and you'll find that it was a complete, total, utter defeat, an absolute massacre, no matter which side you're talking to. Private Ivan Ivanovich might only be seeing the folks immediately around him panicking and then extrapolating that to mean the entire army had lost control, despite not actually being aware of the state of the rest of the army.
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Nov 11, 2022 17:04
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Saladman posted:I don’t remember any LGBT characters in any of the AC games and I played most of them. Definitely don’t remember any in AC1. Not incredibly relevant but I vaguely recall that there were suggestions in AC2 that da Vinci might have been queer, and possibly had a thing going on with his assistant.
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Nov 11, 2022 17:23
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mmkay posted:I'm guessing stopping the sanctions will be the carrot that will be dangled in front of Russia to dissuade them from doing that and prodding them to behave like sane neighbours. I'm honestly kinda curious how effective the carrot of "we'll stop sanctions" will be exactly. Even if people are legally allowed to trade with Russia again, I have to think that corporations are going to be considering it something of a high-risk investment given the possibility of Putin doing something stupid that zeroes out their investment again. In particular civilian aircraft companies are probably not at all happy about Russia's nationalization of their planes. In the long term capitalism will probably flow where it will, but even then Europe in particular is almost certainly going to be pivoting away from Russian gas regardless as a strategic measure, and most governments are likely going to be checking that they don't have too many Russian dependencies that could be leaned on in the future. In the near to medium term future I suspect that Western/European economic links to Russia will never reach pre-war peaks even if Putin pulls out immediately and agrees to 2014 borders with no conditions.
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Nov 15, 2022 18:40
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I don't know if NATO's credibility is going to be seriously threatened by failing to go to war over a most-probably-accidental missile that killed two people. If it happens again then yeah, the probabilities start getting increasingly fuzzy, but for now some combination of diplomatic assurances that this will absolutely not happen again and defensive military measures to shoot down further missiles should demonstrate that NATO is taking this seriously while maintaining a level of proportionate response.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:37
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Shes Not Impressed posted:Cooler heads will prevail "Poland started WW2 because it didn't roll over for Hitler" is one hell of a hot take. Is that remotely common in Russian popular history or was this take specifically created for current events? KitConstantine posted:Note that Hungary and Moldova are also having emergency meetings - their own power infrastructure was affected by the strikes in Ukraine I wonder if this is going to have any effects on Orban's stance on Putin. cant cook creole bream posted:So what if the police goes after the robber and hits the civilian instead? Is that the robbers fault? I am not a lawyer, but I think in the US it might actually be legally chalked up as the robber's fault (in part), yes, on the basis that "the robber created the situation in which one might have reasonably predicted this happening." Doesn't mean the police officer gets off scot-free, just that the robber gets part of the blame for that on top of everything else he's blamed for.
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Nov 15, 2022 21:59
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cant cook creole bream posted:So what if the police goes after the robber and hits the civilian instead? Is that the robbers fault? Just dug this up to confirm - but yes, in most states in the US, if as in the example the guy used here, a security guard shot at an armed criminal during a bank robbery, missed, and killed a baby outside, the criminal would be liable for felony murder as long as the crime was dangerous to begin with, and the death was foreseeable (the linked page and the next page after goes into this). So to bring this back to Russia, if US law was applied then if Russia was shooting missiles at the Ukrainian/Polish border and Ukraine's air defense network ended up missing and hitting Polish civilians, then while Ukraine may or may not be prosecuted separately for the deaths, Russia would be liable since firing missiles is inherently dangerous and since firing missiles near a national border has a predictable possibility of accidentally spilling over the border. Not of course that US criminal law is applicable here or that geopolitics isn't going to be the ultimate deciding factor in how this gets resolved, but just noting that at least according to the principles of some legal codes Russia would indeed still be considered responsible for the deaths, though perhaps not solely responsible.
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Nov 15, 2022 22:24
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Moon Slayer posted:Unrelated to everything else, but finally some good news for Mariupol! Wait, uh...freedom from who, exactly? The defenders of what? Are they referring to WW2-era events, or are they celebrating the few Russian collaborators there were, or are they actually shameless enough to be praising the city for their boundless courage in defending against their own invasion?
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Nov 16, 2022 02:24
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I mean the weird thing about all this is that I feel like Ukraine would be more than happy to declare Mariupol a Ukrainian Hero City or similar, all things considered. God knows they've deserved it. To have Russia come swooping in to give them the label for their own deeply cynical purposes is kind of a weird case of whiplash.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:14
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