(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Micro-documentary on some of Ukraine's artillery pieces, old USSR 2S7 Pion/Peon and new German-made Panzerhaubitze 2000's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnk_bajoG48   there are some explosions but no humans visible (abandoned tank or something?)
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Apr 1, 2023 22:58
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Paranoea posted:It was set on the day Finland's NATO application was officially ratified (approved? accepted?). So: *hacker voice* I'm in. But "mukana" is with, not in. "I'm in" would be something like "olen sisällä". Should have consulted the natives  (I guess in English if you ask "are you in" and the answer is "I'm in", then in Finnish that answer would be "olen mukana" which means I'm with [you; this; the thing]. So that way you kind of get I'm in -> olen mukana. But it doesn't work the other way around) Thread title suggestion: kara pērkona nesaskaņas
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Apr 7, 2023 20:50
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Fidelitious posted:How would they even find them or suspect that it's some place worth putting resources on? Discord servers are ephemeral, can change names, and can be unsearchable. Eh, this is all kinda true, but it depends on what exactly Discord Inc does. If I were the USA govt, I would definitely lean on companies like Discord and tell them to just store all data forever, so that even if a Discord server is "deleted" the data still remains somewhere, but is only available to Discord Inc and the feds. Heck, in case that costs too much money, just ask Discord Inc to automatically quietly copy all the data to NSA servers or whatever, NSA & other such orgs should have a decent budget for that kind of thing. Or if the volume truly is too high, at least store all the metadata, like file names, file types, dates, user names, user IP addresses & emails, etc etc forever. No idea how much of this was done though and how competently etc, and of course the feds will never comment on it, so (absent another Snowden-level leak) we might never find out the details.
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Apr 12, 2023 14:55
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Ynglaur posted:There's footage on Twitter and Reddit which includes about 12 minutes of a firefight in a trench from the perspective of a Urkainian squad (platoon?) leader. It is very So I take it the Russian attackers lost? Why did they lose? Were there not enough Russians attacking - people always talk about "you should have 5 times more soldiers when attacking" or similar estimates? Hmm, Russians had artillery support you say but I guess the Ukrainians just sat in their shelter, then the Russian infantry approached and the Russians couldn't use artillery when their own troops are only 30 metres from the enemy. Are the shelters hardened enough that Russians can't just reduce them with artillery fire, without putting their infantry in danger? Or do they not have enough artillery ammo? Did the Russians also have drones for visibility?
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Apr 20, 2023 16:25
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Didn't see this posted yet, long interview/detail piece on Budanov, Ukraine's head of military intelligence (HUR). Slightly strange character that guy, interesting things in article Some excerpts quote:After the Crimean operation, Budanov often appeared on the front line in Donbas. There, he was wounded three times. quote:Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, met Budanov in March 2022. A U.S. soldier who previously conducted special operations in Iraq, wanted to contact the head of the HUR, and Ivchenko arranged the meeting. Then there were several more rendezvous, and as a result, the U.S. citizen played an important role in organizing military aid to Ukraine.
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May 26, 2023 22:30
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:I looked it up and going by google maps in the whole of Ukraine there were 14 road crossings of the dnieper pre-war which even for peacetime and just like having an economy seems like not enough What exactly do you mean by "road crossing"? What about railroads?
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Jun 7, 2023 22:58
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In NATO & Ukraine news: Nato members may send troops to Ukraine, warns former alliance chief This idea of an extra speedy NATO membership for Ukraine seems like Clancychat... not sure how seriously to take this assessment
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Jun 7, 2023 23:03
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Tuna-Fish posted:They were not lost to mines, but to the helicopter shooting atgms. Hmm, is there a source for this? Not sure if I saw anything reliable about these details, might have just missed it though Which ATGMs would the Russian helicopters be using?
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Jun 12, 2023 15:11
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Vox Nihili posted:"Six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information relation to the national defense, according to the Justice Department. Each of the charges calls for up to 10 years in prison, if convicted." So max 60 years in prison total? That seems lower than I expected. Didn't he leak many hundreds of pages of documents?
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Jun 15, 2023 23:54
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Chalks posted:I disagree, the Kremlin have clearly freaked out and initiated a bunch of emergency plans - all of which look like a massive overreaction in the face of zero actual armed rebellion. They've got roadblocks around Moscow and military vehicles on the streets in response to one guy sending out a bunch of voice messages. It's kinda embarrassing if literally nothing happens, I can't imagine this is orchestrated. Were the military vehicles etc in Moscow confirmed by someone reliable? Only saw what looked like random rumours so far
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Jun 23, 2023 23:15
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BungMonkey posted:Shoigu and Gerasimov escalated to a vassal war by rocketing Wagner and attempting to take over its holdings. Prigozhin did the job he was put in place to do by defending the political independence of Putin's shadow army and Putin's African assets. It would be neither politically, rationally, nor emotionally correct (within sociopath psychology) to punish Prigozhin's loyalty. They didn't do a rocket strike on Wagner, that was just misinformation by Prigozhin. Can't find it now but one of the more reliable Twitter accounts was talking about it. This doesn't invalidate your argument completely; but my gut feeling is that you're mistaken - isn't Putin supposed to be in charge? As in, surely he should have known about and proactively prevented any vassal war before it happened? Either way though, Putin is not nearly as in charge as everyone thought
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Jun 25, 2023 10:27
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MikeC posted:This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. "Don't do it" here is addressed to whom exactly? NATO didn't decide to expand eastward; rather a whole bunch of eastern European nations decided to apply for NATO membership. Sure one can be pedantic about NATO needing to then approve that, which could have been unilaterally denied by the USA, but is that really what you mean? loving hell it gets old listening to Americans go on and on about NATO deciding to encroach on Russia, getting too close to Russia or whatever the gently caress. Other nations exist and they have their own will.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:23
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Ynglaur posted:https://www.ft.com/content/c5ce76df-9b1b-4dfc-a619-07da1d40cbd3 I remember seeing this reported but can't find the exact details now - it was around a year ago, in various mainstream papers, I saw it in the Guardian I think. The message was the same: ultimatum to Russia that if they use nuclear weapons, various NATO countries will directly intervene, with conventional weapons only. This seems like the kind of message that would be more effective if it were more officially communicated, but I'm not a diplomatic expert
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Jul 5, 2023 18:21
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Moon Slayer posted:This is actually the way a lot of government-to-government messages are communicated, especially if you know it's something the other side doesn't want to hear. Mm, that's interesting. Found some related articles: From 22 Sep 2022: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/22/russia-nuclear-threat-us-options/ From Oct 2022: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2022/10/russia-is-unlikely-to-use-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine So USA has warned Russia previously against using nuclear weapons, also in private according to Washington Post. Second link has some additional analysis.
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Jul 5, 2023 21:43
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Phosphine posted:What I don't quite understand is how Sweden's Nato application is a better bargaining chip than Finland's. From a Russian perspective it seems like Finland is way more relevant than Sweden, what with the history and the border. I think the easiest explanation is that Erdogan just really personally hates Sweden. I was hoping that his hostility would be just posturing for the election a few months back, but alas, it wasn't.
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Jul 9, 2023 00:29
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It really can't be pointed out how lmao the state of most of european NATO was/is This link is about tanks only. For some reason, after USA, the most tanky countries are the ones closest to Russia. Perhaps there's a reason for this? What about air forces? Or missiles, or... Edgar Allen Ho posted:And "we spent on good things" is a bit of a bunk argument. France has been happy to bomb the poo poo out of the Not sure what you're saying here. France is militarily fairly strong yes. Sweden has had a strong military industry for 400 years or so, yes. Sweden and Germany are... arming horrible people? You mean like every country on earth with a military industry?
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Jul 20, 2023 21:31
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Toxic Mental posted:We’re looking to do a gang tag in the GBS thread for people who donate to an Ukraine based charity. Does anyone have the vetted charities list? Hmm, I'm assuming you don't mean the list in the older D&D donation thread? Which is at https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3994478 Zelenskyy says Ukraine is planning to start negotiations on EU membership this year: https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1683553025263017984 Also in a brief interview (I think it was on CNN), Ukraine's defence minister said he predicts Ukraine might win the war and join NATO by next summer. That feels overly optimistic to me though
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Jul 24, 2023 23:12
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CNN reports that western leaders are a bit spooked, apparently, regarding the slow progress of Ukraine's counter offensive: Western allies receive increasingly ‘sobering’ updates on Ukraine’s counteroffensive Eh, I think it'll eventually be ok for Ukraine if the west just has patience for the long grind. Doesn't seem like Ukraine has any alternative to this kind of very slow grinding push.  From the other side, not sure how reliable this prediction is: https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1688896256863588352 But Putin might be about to start another wave of mobilisation soon.
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Aug 8, 2023 21:55
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mllaneza posted:Late in the day they show up really well on thermal sensors from drones. That still leaves the problem of clearing them, but knowing where they are is the hard part. Not the dangerous part, but a drone operator can talk a sapper onto a mine to clear it. Yeah here's a tweet about it with a picture: https://twitter.com/kms_d4k/status/1688919282061869056 I wonder how well this works though if the mines are buried a bit deeper, or if there are also non-metallic mines which might not get hot in the same way (someone said antipersonnel mines are non-metallic these days).
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Aug 15, 2023 11:52
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So as I understand it Ukraine is getting closer to the first major Russian defensive line, which is just before Tokmak. What would be the Ukrainian plan for if/when they breach the first line? Defensive lines like this are probably more vulnerable from the rear; would Ukraine try to breach and then go around, to clear out the defenses from a longer stretch of the front? But Tokmak and also the second Russian line (and all kinds of other towns etc) are pretty close to the first line so I'm not sure such maneuvering would be feasible in that space. The major obstacle so far has been minefields, but I would guess right now there aren't that many mines inside the defensive lines, which should enable easier maneuvering in theory.
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Aug 18, 2023 22:35
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fatherboxx posted:AFU General Staff posts regular updates with numbers, they are obviously inflated and are ignored by mostly everyone, only useful to see dynamics The claimed number of Russian artillery systems destroyed has been noticeably inflated for a few months now, since a bit before the start of the counterattack if I'm not mistaken. That could indicate that Ukrainian artillery has been winning the artillery duels even though the numbers are probably bollocks and/or unknowable. This same claim is also made in this tweet with a map of geolocated artillery destruction events - again, the total counts I wouldn't trust (even if geolocated, that doesn't remove systematic bias in which side is reporting more events etc) but the trend seems real: https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1691818304208281883
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Aug 22, 2023 15:52
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Eh, I read the article and there's pretty much no actual evidence presented that would implicate Ukraine (or any other state for that matter). Some facts are known but those don't point anywhere in particular. The rest is a nice well written story of what we do know, a bunch of background detail, plus lots of nameless sources speculating that surely it must have been Ukraine. The Finnlandisierung of the various German security agencies over the last 30 years has been so thorough that I'm just not going to believe any of their speculations, no offence. The frustrating thing though is that there aren't many facts available either. This makes discussing the whole thing a bit frustrating. But while we're speculating, here's an interesting counter-speculation by Nielsen (who is Danish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk-0qJXyido
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Aug 26, 2023 12:31
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Guardian article about Ukraine's counteroffensive and its current status Fits Ukraine's recent messaging that it's going fine actually even if some westerners are saying it's moving too slowly. Quote: "Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy estimated Russia had devoted 60% of its time and resources into building the first defensive line and only 20% each into the second and third lines because Moscow had not expected Ukrainian forces to get through." An interesting estimate.
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Sep 2, 2023 20:10
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Herstory Begins Now posted:eh he'd wanted reznikov gone for a long time but last time he made a move to get rid of him he just unfired himself or something Do we know why Zelenskyy wanted Reznikov gone? Corruption? Incompetence of some kind? I guess Reznikov was a bit... old, is the replacement someone younger?
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Sep 3, 2023 22:39
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Djarum posted:Doing this now before the wet/mud season comes in that Russia won't be able to reposition GBAD quickly or easily as well. So whatever holes they have created will continue for a time and any attempt to plug those holes can be seen and destroyed quickly. If they are able to field F-16s by winter like they are saying it could very well be a turning point in the air superiority war for Ukraine as Russia would have to attempt to field fighters to defend the airspace which will be interesting to see how they would do. Eh, aren't the S-300 systems Russia has long-range enough that slightly limited mobility due to mud shouldn't matter too much? I do wonder how many of the properly good air defence systems Russia has left though. We probably can't know that very accurately
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Sep 12, 2023 20:23
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Article about a combined cyberattack & missile attack by Russia against Ukraine (new article, about attack last year): https://www.wired.com/story/sandworm-ukraine-third-blackout-cyberattack/ I wonder how Ukraine's cyber defences (and well, also missile defences) are this year. Russia has been saving up missiles, perhaps to try to saturate Ukrainian anti-air so that they can maximise the damage to the civilian infra
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Nov 9, 2023 22:48
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Latest video from Anders Puck Nielsen talks about the current media climate re Ukraine, which right now is heavily affected by the situation in Israel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UluV9n2LtL4 To me it feels like there are two very different separate things, how the war is actually going on the ground in Ukraine and how it's being talked about in the (western) media; and damned if I know how close the latter perception is to the former actuality. There was Zaluzhnyi giving a rare interview where he seemed to be saying Ukraine needs more aid to properly win, which kinda also sounded like it'll be an eternal stalemate; not much progress has been made recently which reinforces this; and then Israel takes all of everyone's attention so this vague idea of stalemate remains. Personally I'm not too worried on Ukraine's behalf right now; but over winter things might change, if Russia manages to terrorise the civilian infra more effectively with missile & drone attacks, and as we go into next year hopefully Ukraine's ammo supplies (mainly 155 mm ammo I guess) will remain sufficient, though with EU production who knows if that will be sufficient.
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Nov 10, 2023 15:20
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EU Says Highly Unlikely It Will Meet Ammunition Pledge to Ukraine (paywall though) This was already known before I think. Frustrating for sure.
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Nov 11, 2023 12:00
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Didn't see this posted, it's a month old, interview with Stephen Kotkin re Ukraine and strategy: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/should-the-west-threaten-the-putin-regime-over-ukraine This Kotkin guy has some weird ideas, for example he's saying the west should be threatening Putin with regime change: quote:The threat of regime change in Russia—to force Putin into an armistice to preserve his regime, or to encourage others to do it—is among the ways to get Ukraine on a path toward peace. It might look like a bad idea, based on historical examples. It would not be easy, that’s for sure. But what is the superior, realistic alternative? More tanks that have limited battlefield utility because they lack air cover, while even F-16s would have limited effect because Russia has saturation S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft batteries and a large inventory of missiles? Are we going to bomb Russian territory, where many of those batteries are located? Are we going to bomb factories located in Russia producing replacement batteries and missiles and other weapons? Are we going to blockade all of Eurasia, from Turkey through the U.A.E., Kazakhstan, and North Korea, not to mention China, to prevent easy sanctions-busting? Conjure munitions for Ukraine out of thin air? Watch a much smaller country fight a war of attrition indefinitely, costing lives and treasure? Interesting stuff though, food for thought. Overall somewhat pessimistic tone. My ideas for ending the conflict aren't actually better than this guy's, so dunno
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Nov 21, 2023 00:13
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Ms Adequate posted:How does he reckon we'd do a regime change on ol' Vladdy boy without exerting at least the level of effort of all those things combined, if not uhhh you know getting into WW3? I think his idea is something like, the various spy agencies could put pressure on Putin in a cheap way, since they have the skills and resources for that already, just need to be a bit more active and much more public. But yeah the risk calculus would be interesting
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Nov 21, 2023 19:02
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Pook Good Mook posted:And on the topic of "world police," if the same countries that (rightfully) raged about America's forever wars in the Mideast are now angry that the same loving government is unreliable, I don't know what they expected. It's not the same government. George W Bush, who invaded Iraq on fraudulent premises, was a Republican. You're right though that the Dems have been spineless and lazy enough to not really achieve a proper undoing of all the Republican bullshit of the last 60 years. But I would still argue the problem isn't necessarily just the US government, the problem is Republicans
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Dec 5, 2023 18:21
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Some random person on Twitter claims that artillery ammo production by BAE Systems in the UK will be drastically increased "in the near future": https://twitter.com/cameron19460429/status/1733670684700594436 I can't find a good source for this though, so not sure how true it is. What is true is that Ukraine needs the west to actually start making more ammo for them, the Russians have definitely already ramped up their production. It was also in the news recently that Finland will increase its artillery ammo production to aid Ukraine, however that won't be enough by itself
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Dec 10, 2023 14:48
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In Finland there's this crazy putinist guy, who earlier in his life got a legit PhD and docenture from Uni Helsinki, but then went insane and was hired by (probably) Putin and started spewing massive amounts of Putin's propaganda. Article (in Finnish) about his latest claims The main interesting thing about this is that Russia, as is known, always accuses others of doing the exact same things it is doing itself; and one of the accusations is a planned terrorist strike against a western passenger jet. Says Bäckman: "The West plots to crash a Finnish or Swedish airliner near the Åland Islands. According to Bäckman, Russia could then be blamed for the crash, just as it happened with the downing of MH17 over Ukraine, giving it an excuse to occupy the Baltic Sea and Åland." So if you switch "The West" and "Russia" in the above, you get Russia's plan. Luckily Russia is not, realistically, in any position to be able to occupy Åland or anything else in the Baltic
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Dec 10, 2023 21:05
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"In priority frontline sectors, we have the following ratio: one of our drones to five or seven enemy drones", says some Ukrainian army guy This seems pretty concerning - even if Ukraine gets more aid etc, how would they attack into such a mass of drones? Maybe just have to... go around? As I understand it anti-drone tech isn't exactly great yet on either side, so not sure if a remedy even exists. Here's some random guy also saying that drones have already become a big deal especially on the Russian side (short thread): https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1734328740610511296
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Dec 13, 2023 09:15
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Thread has been somewhat quiet lately, is it due to winter weather in Russia/Ukraine? I think an easier explanation is that all the big western countries have apparently decided that the war is in a stalemate and also that Ukraine doesn't really need any more help (in the form of artillery ammo etc). Both of these assumptions would be wrong, which is depressing. In this thread, some guy (who is an economics professor and thus might be a relatively decent source) talks about the debate in Ukraine about further mobilisation: https://twitter.com/mylovanov/status/1743591462162288716 Apparently Zelenskyy has said that according to the army Ukraine will need 400-500k more soldiers in the army. This is a lot. Now the Ukrainians are talking about how to decide who gets drafted and so on. One issue is that the Ukrainian economy is obviously rather devastated (and also western aid might not be as reliable any longer). The war isn't over by any means but right now it seems a bit uncertain how it will go.
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Jan 8, 2024 20:36
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Thread about a new book by some journalist from Time magazine: https://twitter.com/mylovanov/status/1744316501228650858 Book is The Showman by Simon Shuster. Apparently contains interesting stories about behind-the-scenes happenings in earlier stages of the Russian full invasion: "Around the 55th day of the invasion, the battle for the Donbas had started, and Zelensky invited me to his office to talk. His aides warned that his schedule was erratic. Lately, they said, so was his mood." "A rift emerged between Zelensky and top general Valerii Zaluzhnyi over military strategy, with the commander gaining a cult following that challenged the president's standing as Ukraine's hero" "But as the Russians went into retreat, Zelensky grew more confident. He formed his own military priorities, and they were not always aligned with the General’s. Soon the rift widened." Other books about the war, in English: https://kyivindependent.com/10-ukrainian-books-about-russias-war-available-in-english/ Now all I need is to have more time (and be less lazy) to read some of these
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Jan 9, 2024 23:15
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Dull Fork posted:I'm not gonna say that Ukraine should or shouldn't do things like this, but one does wonder if assassinations like this one will increase, or even become a new expected norm in this war. Hm, how much evidence is there about which of these killings are by Ukraine? Most of the oligarch murders for example seem obviously done by other Russian oligarchs (including Putin)
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Jan 10, 2024 21:02
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An interview with British international relations pundit and Russia knower Mark Galeotti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ttIxO9oWQY The interview is by some Finnish podcast guy (in English) and they talk about the relationships Russia has (or had) with Finland, with the Baltic countries, etc and Russian imperialism in general. Some interesting points made, mostly about the historical backgrounds
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Jan 21, 2024 12:53
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mutata posted:Medvedev tweets crazy stupid poo poo all the time though. Yeah it feels like some kind of good cop/bad cop act, with Medvedev as the bad cop. Though maybe it's more like crazy & turbo-insane. Or dumb & dumber
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Jan 23, 2024 22:24
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 02:06 |
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Bloody 'ell, I hope that plane wasn't actually full of PoWs. Is there any confirmation about how the plane fell? Apparently there's video which points to maybe a missile but I don't know how reliable that is. Could it have been a malfunction?
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Jan 24, 2024 13:45
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