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aniviron posted:A question to those more knowledgeable about this conflict and military history/doctrine than I: Should we expect to see more rapid progress, or no? My understanding is that the recent recapture of territory was able to happen because cities function as strongpoints - they are both the best terrain in which to make a defense, as well as being the most valuable targets to hold. Much of the terrain outside of the cities is rolling plains, which seems both harder to defend as well as less important strategically. But for example if (hopefully when) the Ukrainian Army liberates Kherson, is it reasonable to expect much of the territory between there and Melitopol to also be liberated, at least up til a natural barrier like a river? Or is a rapid offensive like this unlikely to be repeated? The short answer is we don't know. The long answer is, as long as Russia doesn't fix its problems, it will keep losing territory. They seem to be having difficulty defending over such a long frontline, and Ukrainian MO so far was to avoid the defended strongpoints, move around them, watch the Russians flee the impending pocket and mop up. You can theoretically keep doing this to strongpoints ad infinitum until the Russians get more people that can actually defend across the entire front, or decide to focus on a smaller territory to hold so their troops they actually do have, don't get circumvented. (Or until Ukraine runs out of vehicles or supplies, I guess, but in between the captured equipment and Western aid I think they have a few more pushes left in them.)
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Oct 11, 2022 23:20
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Feliday Melody posted:It's the presence of civilians that make it an invalid target. Not the presence of war materials that makes it a valid one. Do you think munitions factories are off-limits targets on account of civilians working there? Genuine question, because I think many people would dispute that both ethically and legally. There’s a reason why intentionally parking military materiel between civilians and using them as shields is, by itself, a warcrime: because it’s unreasonable to force the enemy to choose between blowing up civilians or letting enemy materiel get use unchecked because you found “one simple trick” To return to the question of the Kerch bridge: IMO calling for the gleeful vaporisation of civilians is distasteful but also the bridge is being used as an important transport line for the Russians actively trying to genocide the Ukrainian populace. Attempts to repair it aid the war effort for Russia, and blowing up materiel that is used to repair it hinders their war effort. In an ideal world you strike it at midnight when nobody is using it but that’s not always feasible. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 13, 2022 07:13
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NeatHeteroDude posted:This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: A lot of their propaganda boiled down to taking culture war hot topics and amplifying them. Like there was a time when people were writing and posting articles about manspreading and it turns out a lot of that was being written and boosted by Russian troll farms because it riled up American conservatives. By contrast, creating an actual coherent message surrounding their war is not their forte. Russian propaganda, as many said above, focuses on disengagement: nothing really matters, both sides are to blame, the truth can never be truly known, etc. You still see it pop up half-heartedly with all the NATO whataboutism, which kinda works in Africa and Asia as far as disengagement messaging goes, but obviously does not easily convince a lot of people in Europd and America when it’s such a naked land grab.
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Oct 15, 2022 00:30
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FishBulbia posted:https://twitter.com/joshua_landis/status/1581329208235544579 Who is this Josh and should we give any attention to his opinions? What date are his figures from? It’s kind of a moot point to cite post-2014 numbers. It’d be like citing 2022 West Bank numbers to ignore all the demographic shifts happening due to colonial policies. And, all things considered, “yes because it’s legally Ukrainian regardless of who lives there”. Or does he think Mexico could invade California on the pretext that the Latino population is the largest in the state
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Oct 17, 2022 07:12
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Tartare is actually also a type of steak! https://dagelijksekost.een.be/gerechten/steak-tartaar-met-fijne-frieten
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Oct 17, 2022 07:32
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Nenonen posted:There's a possible solution, and it's nothing high end - just place anti-drone posts with heavy machine guns and listening posts around cities and other targets like it's 1940 again. The drones are not particularly fast and a hit from a 12.7mm DShK is going to break it up real good. The issue is that you need people to keep their eyes and ears open for them all day long, but you could quickly train auxiliary air defense troops without much trouble and no need to tie front soldiers down to do it. At least it would be more effective than policemen opening fire with AK's. Yeah, if the price of missiles vs cost of producing a drone is the main obstacle, then the solution is the world-war 2 style improvised AA guns where you bolt four machine guns together and just saturate the sky in machine gun fire on a slow-moving target. Still not great, you're going to need a lot of them to cover all the places you need to defend.
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Oct 17, 2022 18:22
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It never fails to amaze me that apparently the Russian military has to rely on looting/foraging so much of the local population. Do they also use billeting to provide for lodging?
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Oct 18, 2022 21:43
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Phlegmish posted:I guess you guys are right, though I was expecting the usual 'Ukrainian nazis have broken through our lines and captured villages X, Y and Z' first. What we're hearing from the Russians now just makes it seem like they're retreating before the Ukrainians have even started attacking. Grand, sweeping gestures of pre-emptive goodwill
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Oct 18, 2022 22:23
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A big flaming stink posted:Their presence has been all but assured by the US's repeated hostility and attacks on their country. I did not realize Ukraine did those things, nor that Iran's presence there is in any way hurting the USA as revenge of those things.
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Oct 21, 2022 10:10
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KitConstantine posted:Apparently it's an address to his Valdai Club think tank - currently holding it's 19th meeting, entitled "A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone" Not sure how “post-hegemonic world” in the conference’s title rhymes with the alleged death of the international rules-based system (incidentally, a crisis manufactured by unilateral bad faith actors like Russia) and a return to “chaotic competition, which can only be limited by the balance of power of the opposing sides”. The latter sounds like a pretty hegemonic world to me! The tiring thing about Russian propaganda is how it all ends up just being a word salad devoid of any real meaning. I guess that means it’s working as intended, and the only correct response is “very interesting, now how about you suck on my HIMARs until you play by the international rules again?”
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Oct 27, 2022 14:44
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KitConstantine posted:He's saying 'the west' is playing a dangerous game with all their provocations and disregard for other countries A lot of fash stuff sounds like unrelated word salad if you aren’t deep down the rabbit hole.
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Oct 27, 2022 15:38
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Xander77 posted:The Russian term is "reverse cargo cult" and it generally applies to political norms and institutions. I… am not sure how that is a reverse of a cargo cult?
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Oct 27, 2022 19:31
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Orthanc6 posted:Cool so a full 6% of the newly mobilized could become POW's in like a day if that 20K trapped is at all accurate. Even worse if a substantial number of those are from "better" trained units from earlier in the war Nothing a second mobilization wave can’t fix!
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Nov 11, 2022 00:41
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Assorted tweets: Remember that corny “move to Russia, winter is coming!” Propaganda movie that somehow implied Spain is a worse place to spend winter in than Russia? Awful poo poo, and they’re self-inflicting it.
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Dec 4, 2022 01:37
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Alchenar posted:It's a problem if the guarantees aren't reciprocal because that sets all kinds of bad precedents. If Putin isn't willing to put all the Iskanders in Kaliningrad pointed at every capital in Eastern and Central Europe on the table, why should he get any guarantees on systems placed in Ukraine? Because Russia is a second rate has-been power with delusions of the West jumping into the power vacuum they left, whereas NATO can defend itself and doesn’t require any guarantees. (At least, that would be the optics.)
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Dec 5, 2022 01:23
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fatherboxx posted:Everyone's second favorite crybaby and prolific tankie Poster turned artillery operator Murz dropped a banger outlining continuing troubles of Russian army quote:The first and main condition for any successful defense is the presence of stable command and control. The Armed Forces of Ukraine ensured this to the maximum, transferring the entire army to closed digital communications and spreading a huge number of repeaters along the front line. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation do not want to solve their problems with communication. They don’t even want to voice them, because voicing leads to broken careers, confiscation of stolen goods, and prison sentences. All they can offer the troops, who now need to dig into the ground, is wired communication, for which the troops themselves must find both cable and field telephones (there is no discussion of field switches). And, of course, these field lines are being laid… in full accordance with the guidelines for laying temporary field lines. Somewhere just across the field, elsewhere along the trees, elsewhere along the poles. TEMPORARY loving LINES! In the projects of the cyclopean “Faberge Line,” there is no place for normal underground cable communications protected from shelling! Having all the equipment, the materials, the time, all the infantry in positions will still remain without wire communication after five minutes of shelling. Exactly as it was with the Red Army in the summer of 1942 in the breakthrough sector during Operation Blau. But that is only, of course, if the infantry at all manages to find a field cable on its own in order to lay this connection at least somehow, And spare parts for field telephones are sent to the army by volunteers, bought up at flea markets. Is it... normal for 21st century armies to rely on cables for comms? Or are the RUaF uniquely hosed in this respect? 
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Dec 19, 2022 23:56
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Thanks to everybody who responded to my cable question. I was under the impression that encrypted mobile comms would be standard, and cables only as a redundancy option / plan B option, but I guess it has benefits. Do militaries still fax things? Considering tge fact that those are even harder to intercept than cable telephony?
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Dec 20, 2022 14:24
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Feliday Melody posted:I always wondered what the Russians offered these wealthy westerners for their unwavering support. I know it's not money. It's probably the single least unpopular view to hold at the time, so it's not fame or glory. Nothing, they're just ideologically aligned
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Dec 27, 2022 15:04
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PederP posted:Some of you may know a Russian YouTuber who goes by the moniker "The Russian Dude". Unless I'm mixing him up with another Russian youtuber who moved abroad, I think this guy also got his mobilization papers served despite living in Canada for close to 5 years or so
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Dec 27, 2022 16:34
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Randarkman posted:I mean, there's also this to consider. RIP to the Buryats if this goes on. Are they particularly undesirable under Russian politics (compared to other ethnic minorities), or do they just have the misfortune of having a particularly zealous governor or something?
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Jan 3, 2023 15:30
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Rinkles posted:Is a tank without treads formally a tank? It is if you're a doctrine neutral and structure radical! 
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Jan 4, 2023 22:06
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Nenonen posted:Contemporary battlefield is not really conductive for this kind of tactic, though. At least if you ask the scout tank's crew's opinion about going on a suicide mission. All you need is a greeting card from a RPG-7 and that light Frenchie is toast. AMX has no advantage in this role over other light afvs. It will also have mobility issues compared to BMP's and BTR's so depending on conditions it may not be able to follow the troop transports. It's not a Wunderwaffe or what Ukraine particularly needs right now, but just getting any form of armoured fighting vehicles is welcome and a necessity in this kind of material grinding warfare. The main thing to me, appears to be that the AMX-10 RC has a 105 mm cannon which is probably more useful to take out Russian vehicles (in particular BMPs?) than the Bradleys and Marders (though maybe the latter compensate with missiles, I'm no expert). I'd guess that the AMX might be a better fit for supporting infantry in combat against Russian vehicles than the Bradley and Marder? We've seen various videos early in the war with RuAF and UAF BMPs plinking away at each other. Conversely, I thought wheeled vehicles are more useful in desert environments (with harder ground surfaces) than... Ukraine. I wonder to which extent the AMX-10 RC can deal with Ukrainian mud (or even dirt roads in adverse weather).
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Jan 6, 2023 16:03
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Ultimately Russia's actions are irrational in the sense that they do not directly or indirectly increase the chances of Russia's survival. You could say that pure, cold, hard realpolitik is rational if it increases your country's power, but funneling lives and materiel into a dark pit of a forever war at your border that you yourself unleashed (notwithstanding NATO encroachment smokescreens which are the direct consequences of your foreign policy) and could end at any time while pissing away international goodwill in pursuit of nostalgic imperialist ambitions that are impossible to realize in TYOOL 2022 is not furthering those goals. EDIT: the rational course of action might have been after the failed Kyiv offensive, to realize plan A (a hail Mary gamble of an offensive) failed and it was time for plan B (ie, some token victory and return to status quo as fast as possible since your gamble did not pay off). In that sense Russia has been acting increasingly irrationally since mid-2022, presumably because there was no plan B, and again, presumably, because Russian victory is a delusional self-evident result and the only question was how fast we got from invasion to victory, rather than taking into account the very real possibility that you might lose (that scenario was ideologically unacceptable and thus not worth considering). I guess Putin himself is acting rationally in the sense that he does not want to get Mussolini'd, which is a real risk if he loosens the reins a bit or is seen to lose the war publicly. Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 8, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2023 19:38
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm not clear on what behavior can reliably count as "irrational"; like other such frameworks, it seems extremely resistant to falsification. Depends on what you expect states to do. If we take the pure realpolitik school of international relations, states exist to compete with other states and come out on top. See e.g. this blog post explaining the "red queen" concept. quote:One way to think about this (following an IR Neorealism lens) is that the basic goal of all states is to survive. People in power generally want to stay in power; failing that, they want to stay alive. State extinctions – when the state is absorbed or destroyed – pretty much always push the leaders of the old state out of power and frequently kill them. Consequently, regardless of what the common people may want, the leaders of states who make actual decisions will almost always want the state to continue existing (because, after all, that state represents a social order that, by definition, the leaders are at the top of); they will be more attached to this goal than any other collective goal (though they may well prioritize individual advancement over collective security, but that’s a discussion for another time). Consequently, states tend to behave as if survival is their highest priority. Assuming Russia operates within this framework - and that is indeed what IR scholars argue and how they seem to act, as they project this worldview on other countries- then the irrational actions are the ones that lead to destruction of your state, whereas rational actions are those that lead to survival of your state. And, in turn, if Russia acts in a way that makes everybody think "oh boy, this is going to end poorly for them" (eg, invading Ukraine with the army they have) and is not conducive to their survival as a state, then that leads to people calling out the actions as irrational.
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Jan 8, 2023 19:51
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Obviously setting up a fall guy for when Wagner goes “mission accomplished” and leaves the area undefended
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Jan 12, 2023 00:07
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I also wonder to what extent the figures are accurate. If you publicly say “I am giving Ukraine 12 MBT’s” then Russia can’t really flip its poo poo over this salami slice. And if you actually give them 60, Russia might knock out 13 of them before they start suspecting you actually gave more than 12, and even then they’d need to identify even more to be 100% sure. This gives Ukraine a head start. Russia might claim to have killed 18 himars and we say “what liars, there are only 12 in Ukraine” but maybe the USA secretly shipped 40 of them? There’s no real way to know for sure.
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Jan 14, 2023 23:39
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Man I remember a bunch of pro-Russian people 4 months ago insisting that Europe was going to be freezing and unable to afford gas all winter and that western support for Ukraine was on the verge of drying up. Global warming sucks so it's hard to cheer for this silver lining, broadly speaking, but this might be a wake-up call for chuds like the Russian bootlickers that "gently caress around and find out" applies to literally everyone on the planet.
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Jan 18, 2023 10:46
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https://www.politico.eu/article/bulgaria-volodymyr-zelenskyy-kiril-petkov-poorest-country-eu-ukraine/ quote:While the Socialist Party in Sofia called Bulgarian arms deliveries to Ukrainian forces a “red line,” Petkov’s officials avoided government-to-government transactions and used intermediary companies in Bulgaria and abroad to open up supply routes by air and land through Romania, Hungary, and Poland. I didn't realize Bulgaria was sitting on so much Soviet stock
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Jan 18, 2023 19:53
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Interesting, but now I do seem to recall that being discussed earlier in this thread.
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Jan 18, 2023 20:20
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bird food bathtub posted:Possibly an America-centric point of view on the topic, so keep that in mind. My biggest concern with mandatory service is that it ends up as yet another thing that fucks over poor people and rich people abuse. A years-long time tax on people who are already dealing with the inconceivably lovely situation of being poor in America, while the rich will doctor-shop around to find excuses to get out of it or, if by some miracle actually forced in to doing it, will find a way to purchase all the best forms of service for themselves. Depends on how it’s implemented, as always. In most cases the upper classes (or, at least, the well educated) did military service as officers but were not exempt. It’s still the case in eg South Korea where Kpop idols and stuff do not get exempted either (only some athletes, which is the main backdoor afaik) However, mandatory service absolutely puts men on the backfoot compared to women of similar social standing / education because in most countries, women are exempted. A number of mitigating measures in South Korea have recently become points of contention as women wonder why men get transitional measures and men defend them, stating they are necessary to bridge e.g. experience or education gaps due to their mandatory service.
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Feb 1, 2023 15:41
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Slashrat posted:Isn't China's policy toward Taiwan self-contradictory in the first place? Considering the history of China, the PRC still considers Taiwan to be a part of China that is temporarily occupied by the illegitimate regime the PRC ousted. It's the same reason why, initially, Taiwan still claimed sovereignty over the entirety of (in their eyes, occupied by an illegitimate rebel group) continental China but also parts of Mongolia etc. which were part of the Chinese state way back in the interbellum. It's a fairly recent development in Taiwanese society that they started considering themselves a separate nation rather than a government in exile that one day wishes to resume control over the mainland. So in that respect it is coherent in the sense of "we have consistently been saying Taiwan is ours since 1945. As a matter of fact, it was part of China when we began our revolution" (in more diplomatic language). China's fuckery elsewhere in Asia (in particular, building islands in the South China Sea and so on to extend its territorial waters) is basically contradictory with their messaging of respecting sovereignty though
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Feb 13, 2023 12:31
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Failed Imagineer posted:I'm not saying he's surrounded by a phalanx of John Wicks but they probably don't put you on warzone detail when you're fresh out of...Secret Service training school Dunno, haven't you seen The Recruit?
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Feb 20, 2023 11:56
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cinci zoo sniper posted:That said, “just” making headquarters a Cyprus tax resident would’ve been enough, if the game was self-published, since the business taxes on their activity would’ve been then paid into the coffers of the Cypriot government. Is that true? I thought the sanctions didn't just target the company's place of residence itself, but also Russian UBO's (ultimate beneficiary owners). Or would that only apply if the UBOs were oligarchs who are themselves on the sanctions list?
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Feb 22, 2023 15:52
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Shaking my smh, I'm trying to workshop a bad no-fly zone joke here, and you just drop spoilers like that. Thank you for safeguarding the legitimate security concerns of this thread
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Feb 25, 2023 19:49
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Charliegrs posted:When Russia pushes the "Ukrainian government is a fascist neo Nazi government" narrative do they ever point to any particular individuals in the Ukrainian government as being Nazis? Or is it just "the regime"? Like do they actually claim Zelensky or any high ranking military officials are literal Nazis? Do they ever provide evidence? (My guess is either they don't or it's just fabricated crap). It’s none of those things. To them, nazism just means “anti-Russian”. So little Russians rejecting mother Russia are nazis regardless of their actual beliefs or ideology.
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Feb 25, 2023 21:48
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Tomn posted:It's a bit grim, but I can't help but wonder how Russia's overall ideological makeup will be altered over time if Putin actually has been leaning on ultranationalist influencers to find volunteers - what happens when the most die-hard types go into a conflict where the odds of injury or death are very high, and the survivors have a good chance of walking away with trauma? Honestly? I'm fearful that a stab-in-the-back myth is all but unavoidable in Russia now. There's basically no realistic way for Russia to achieve its objectives, so at some point they will have to satisfy themselves with a partial victory that will leave the ultranationalists screeching or a straight-up defeat. In both cases you will get "we were this close to total victory but the chickenshit bureaucrats wouldn't make the hard decisions™ necessary to let us win" and the political fallout won't be pretty.
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Feb 27, 2023 17:57
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I'm starting to wonder if the Ukrainians are ever going to pull back from Bakhmut. I'm no longer convinced they will. Assuming that Bakhmut's main strategic relevance is indeed its ability to tie up Russian troops who cannot be deployed elsewhere, the intention might be to willingly turn it into a second Mariupol that buys time for the Ukrainian counteroffensives later this year (probably elsewhere in the country, but perhaps even a counteroffensive to liberate or envelop Bakhmut before the Russians can properly dig in?) instead of pulling back.
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Mar 3, 2023 13:30
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I don't think they would be keen on losing hundreds or thousands of troops in the town. That's what I thought as well, but the city's supply lines appear to be hanging by a thread and mobby_6kl posted:They said they'll reinforce it for strategic reasons. Whether that's true or just cover to help with the retreat is another question though. The situation looks pretty sketchy.
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Mar 3, 2023 14:32
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cinci zoo sniper posted:It appears that the decision has been made to say in Bakhmut. CNN's NATO sources say that AFU are trading at least 1:5 with RuAF in Bakhmut, so I guess that is the point of it. https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-06-23/h_265c92682c57b8228fbbf082fb3b6888 That appears to indicate that Russia lost 5x as many troops over the course of the whole battle, but that ratio may no longer hold true on a day-to-day basis now?
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Mar 7, 2023 10:03
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Somaen posted:More evidence that Russia is running out of money Speaking of, what's the current situation with the nuclear power plants in Hungary? I thought they relied on a substantial Russian loan to finance them, haven't the sanctions put a dent in that plan? Can the Russian state or banks just provide the loans and receive the interests because the loan was granted before the sanctions entered into force? On the basis of a quick Google search it seems they're still going ahead as of December 2022: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63964744
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Mar 10, 2023 12:02
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