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fatherboxx)
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Ok, so I'm sorry to be a bit of a downer, but it seems like a distinct possibility that the offensive probably won't gain the results that have been hoped. If it does stall out what kind of political effects could have on the war? A loss of interest from western parties in funding it? Putin trying to snatch a win of sorts if the war turns into a stalemate that can't be reasonably broken by either side at this point?
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Jun 14, 2023 18:21
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Pablo Bluth posted:It's ok, the missile attacks on Kyiv while the African delegation were there didn't really happy. Just more fake news. Any write ups on this trip people can recommend because it seems to be a confusing debacle to me. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jun 18, 2023 |
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Jun 18, 2023 01:05
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Ok, I'm sorry to slowpoke in here as usual but is there anything this might suggest about the situation on the front? A massive internal purge/attempted coup does not seem to be what you do when everything is going swimmingly on the battlefield.
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Jun 23, 2023 23:01
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Assuming that Wagner is crushed and authority is reestablished I have a hard time seeing how the Russian population wouldn't lose a lot of faith in Putin and the fact that this debacle came so close to home and is so obviously due to internal divisions riven in his regime.
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Jun 24, 2023 00:06
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Nenonen posted:Putin's party controls all of main media. They get to colour the discourse how they will, and the majority will believe it because there are no alternative takes. Historically things can change on a dime even for hardline dictatorships. Even if I'm a regular patriotic Russian that broadly believes the narrative about NATO encirclement and Ukrainian Nazis I seriously would have a very hard time squaring this with faith in the Putin regime when one of their illegal armies just tried to launch a coup, the same army that was touted as kicking Ukrainian rear end for the last year. Like just the fact that this is happening at home in Moscow, and is clearly due to the massive internal conflicts in his regime as opposed to some comfortably foreign enemy would have me start asking a lot of questions.
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Jun 24, 2023 00:20
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nimby posted:It's a civil war if the coup fails both to succeed and be suppressed. Yeah this is essentially what happened with the Spanish civil war.
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Jun 24, 2023 11:22
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OddObserver posted:Wondering about the rationale of this one --- Wagner logistics? I was talking yesterday that I don't seriously see how the Putin regime can come back from things like this, I don't care how rigidly they control the media, people know stuff like this is happening and also that its a result of the fissures in his government, the loss of faith this will result in will be absolutely catastrophic.
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Jun 24, 2023 11:27
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Nenonen posted:I'm curious how this is seen in China. Does their media even mention the existence of a private military company that recruits murderers? Imagine trying to explain all of this now. I can't imagine the CCP and Xi starting to trust Putin more when he lets this happen either. I truly believe that the Chinese have been pulling their hair out for the last 18 months at Putin's stalwart determination to make everything more difficult for them than it needs to be. I don't seriously think that Chinese policymakers perceived any advantage for them with the war in the first place and now the prospect of it turning into an attempted coup or worse an outright civil war for their largest neighbour is turning into the worst possible outcome.
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Jun 24, 2023 12:03
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Jeza posted:Ignoring all final outcomes, in the short-term this has to present an incredible military opportunity for Ukraine, no? Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding the value of that much arms and armour just leaving the frontlines to go coup. Not to mention diverting resources, attention and blocking supply lines. I'm curious about this too for two reasons: 1. I've heard people say that there are still tons of Russian troops on the frontline and if the rebellion is crushed in a few days it may not be enough time for the Ukrainians to take advantage of things while its ongoing, but surely it must be wrecking complete chaos in the Russian military in terms of things like logistics, intel, morale and command that the Ukrainians could exploit for weeks? 2. I haven't heard much about the actual progress about the counter offensive and I have been generally pessimistic about its success, but is there a possibility that Prigozhin is doing this now because the counter-offensive has mauled the Russian army and he's either reacting to people looking for scapegoats of which he is the most obvious one to blame, or hoping to take advantage of a distracted and weakened regular Russian military?
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Jun 24, 2023 12:25
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OddObserver posted:I am sure they can find information on how it was legal territory of China under some dynasty 6000 years ago or so (and some border areas were Chinese a lot more recent, IIRC). You don't need to go anywhere near as far back as 6000 years, the current border between Manchuria and the far south east of Russia was set in a couple of treaties in 1858 and 1860, prior to that the Qing Dynasty controlled a much larger territory of Manchuria that would entail basically all of the major population centres in that part of Russia today like Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, as well as Russia's most important Pacific access and some of the best arable land in the Russian far east.  The Russians essentially exploited the existential crisis that the Qing dynasty was going through with the Taiping rebellion and others to force them to cede vast amounts of territory. This has actually been a major bugbear among a lot of people in China who consider the treaty of Aigun and Beijing to be last remaining 'unequal treaties' from that era of exploitation by European imperialists and the one where China lost the most. The Sino-Soviet crisis seems to have been heavily influenced by Chinese resentment of this settlement and the two countries tethered on the edge of war as Mao was talking about how horrible an injustice this was and how it was crucially important that China defend its interests in the north even if its just some tiny island in the Amur river. Now I don't seriously think that the Chinese are going to go on a land grab and try to seize a city as crucial as Vladivostok, but it is something that is always an undercurrent in Russian and Chinese relations and a source of subtle and not so subtle tension.
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Jun 24, 2023 13:06
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Paladinus posted:It is not unreasonable, but Zelenskyy stayed in Kyiv. People are going to draw comparisons. Not just Zelensky, loving Stalin stayed in Moscow. Like Putin's hard man mystique and constant comparisons with similar figures in Russia's past will really bite him here if it looks like he's scared and saving his own behind.
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Jun 24, 2023 14:23
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As a Simcity player I have nothing but sympathy for the continued plight of Russian armies. jarlywarly posted:How is this convoy just not being road to Basra highway of deathed? Wagner AAA? No orders? Sympathetic CAS pilots? Not wanting to deploy inside Russia? I think its a game of chicken, it would be absolutely terrible for Putin to have to launch an all out air-strike to slaughter hardened Russian combatants on Russian soil a hundred miles outside of Moscow and Prigozhin is banking on that.
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Jun 24, 2023 14:43
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GaussianCopula posted:If you want to go by historic parallels, Alexander I evacuating Moscow so that Napoleon didn't get a decisive victory might be the most fitting. To Alexander's credit (or is it?), he ruined Moscow to deprive the French of anything to use, it wasn't just a mere fleeing out of fear, it was a hard nosed military decision and it worked. Skedaddling out of your capital and leaving it wide open for the rebel army to take almost entirely untouched and without a fight seems like the crowning disaster for Putin's whole career, Putin almost certainly still has the advantage but the fact that Wagner is even in the running to achieve something like this is loving insane. Imagine if anybody suggested this was going to happen even two days ago!
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Jun 24, 2023 15:12
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If this actually succeeds and Prigozhin takes Moscow, I'm kind of curious what his next course of action is, what's the procedure, its not like he has the time to organize a phony election and declare himself president, state that Russia is under some kind of special martial law or something? Like even compared to other coups I can think of this is mindblowing, at least people like Gaddafi were part of the regular military, how does a mercenary outfit justify seizing control of a country in the 21st century?
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Jun 24, 2023 15:40
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Servetus posted:Studying Medieval history never felt like a more enjoyably choice. Like that's literally the closest thing I can think of as a comparison, some Condottieri saying 'gently caress it' and seizing somewhere like Milan in the 15th century because who's going to stop him? This whole war seems so out of time, if that makes sense, it starts off with early 20th century naked aggression and massive armies trying to conquer different parts of Europe out of some hosed up 'Spheres of influence' or 'Natural Borders' view of international affairs, and now its regressed even further back to Medieval style mercenary armies literally taking control of entire countries.
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Jun 24, 2023 15:48
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The thing that really blows my mind about all of this is that there have been rumours for years that Putin is absolutely obsessed with the fate of Gaddafi and is desperate to avoid any outcome similar to being gutted in the street by an angry mob, and yet all of the events that led to this point in the last two years fall on his shoulders and the increasingly unhinged actions he took, his hand was never forced by outside actors. Everything could have been avoided if he just stopped the military build up back in February 2022 and said 'Lol, look at the dumb Americans claiming we were going to invade Ukraine, they sure have egg on their faces!', whatever potential advantages he thought he could gain with the invasion absolutely cannot have been worth the upheaval it unleashed for him personally. I hope he's stuck in siege mode right now constantly thinking 'If only I didn't do X, everything would be fine!' khwarezm fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 24, 2023 |
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Jun 24, 2023 16:39
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I heard rumours that the Ukrainians were still able to exploit the confusion to make considerable gains, any truth to this from what we've seen?
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Jun 24, 2023 19:02
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Chalks posted:I feel like Putin may be underestimating what Wagner could do if he moves against Prigozhin at this point. Obviously, nothing as bad as marching on Moscow, but I bet they could seriously gently caress some poo poo up in Russia. I assume the answer is 'not much' but if it came to it how much ability does Wagner and Prigozhin have at this point to cause further ruckus for Putin? They've lost the element of surprise and momentum they had at the start of all this of course, but can we assume they've been essentially nullified by the state as a potential threat in the last couple of days? khwarezm fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 23:31
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OddObserver posted:Medvedev is probably not important enough to attend. What does he even do these days.
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Jun 27, 2023 00:52
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Russia drops charges against mercenary leader and others involved in brief rebellion, Looking forward to somebody explaining the 8D chess Machiavellian masterstroke that's at work with incoherently going back and forth on whether or not charges are going to be pressed against a guy you called a treasonous enemy of the state a couple of days ago.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:31
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Crazy thought, could Prigozhin have considered defecting to NATO or even Ukraine? Would he have brought much of value if he did so? Also, it kind of feels like this is still an extremely unideal circumstance for Putin when he had to wait two months to do this and even then it still had to be an 'accident' rather than an official execution for treason.
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Aug 24, 2023 00:38
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Mederlock posted:Definitely not, who in NATO would willingly take in Sledgehammer murder man, implicated in war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine and Africa? Ukraine would string the guy up too. His best bet was taking all his cash and costume wardrobe, and disappearing to South America or Africa or Asia or whatever. His ego wouldn't let him give up the reins of Wagner, and he got got. Well its more the thought that even if he ends up in a relatively cushy jail its generally better than a grave. I dunno, I was just thinking of his options, if he ran off to somewhere in Asia, Africa or South America if he didn't have control of Wagner there's nothing stopping an agent with an icepick shadowing him. If he stayed in Russia, well, we see what happens. If he totally restricted himself to Belarus that might have worked. I just feel like going to Russia's most open adversaries was probably his best option if his highest priority was simply living, but then that would also mean completely abandoning any future prospects he'd have in terms of influencing Russia's political scene.
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Aug 24, 2023 00:58
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hydrocarbonenema posted:Powerful mercenary groups required to maintain overseas influence due to a sclerotic military-> waging a useless and bloody war with said military whose spectacular failure lead to bringing in the mercenary group and giving them more power-> coup attempt by mercenary group -> open assassination instead of even the semblance of using an actual state apparatus to bring the coup leader/mercenary group to “justice.” Its honestly difficult to believe that this is something happening in Europe in the 21st century, at this rate I wouldn't be surprised to hear Landsknechts are going to rebel when their payment fails to come through again and they ransack the countryside as the Janissaries prepare for another push on Vienna. Like I had some impression that there was a semblance of normality in Russia after the bad days of the 90s before this war and that Putin's regime and corruption were on a somewhat more sophisticated level, but no, it really just run as if the Mafia controls the world's largest country at the end of the day. Hell that feels insulting to the actual Mafia. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Aug 24, 2023 |
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Aug 24, 2023 02:35
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tatankatonk posted:You might be thinking of when Sy Hersh published a story that claimed either NATO commandos or Ukrainians did it, but the mainstream press pretty roundly wrote that off as a conspiracy theory Actually I think Hersh's theory was that the United States and Norway specifically were behind it, which seems to be an increasingly rickety idea by the day.
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Aug 26, 2023 01:14
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Rust Martialis posted:And this fact also explains how North Vietnam (pop 23 million in 1974) was crushed by the US military (population 210 million in 1974). I don't think they are really comparable when Vietnam fared poorly when they tried to fight the war on more conventional terms (ie, the Tet offensive), and Ukraine has been probably the most conventional war since the Iran-Iraq war. On the other hand, its worth mentioning that North Vietnam wasn't just fighting America but also South Vietnam, Australia and South Korea, though a huge amount of nominally South Vietnamese fought for the North and there wasn't really many people doing the opposite.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:52
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Lots more people died in the War on Drugs than any drugs, so I think they're winning. America is adept at declaring war on ambiguous concepts (drugs, terror, poverty) and then losing.
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Sep 16, 2023 20:00
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Nenonen posted:I'm afraid we are not doing well in the War On Obesity, our best fighters are defecting to the Fat Federation each day and only a slim minority of them are coming back. We just don't have a match to their master tacticians, General Tso and Colonel Sanders! Should we take this at face value? This seems absolutely insane even considering the way things tend to work in Russia. Like can we be sure the footage is what they say it is? Is there any additional confirmation outside of this tweet?
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Sep 16, 2023 20:07
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In contrast we have all but won in the War Against Illiteracy, but they refuse to respond to our letters demanding them to surrender 
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WarpedLichen posted:If the Ukrainian offensive stalls out, I would imagine that some of their current gains would be ceded? I think I read somewhere a while back that the ground is being held right now because of constant offensive movements to push Russian counterattacks back, but I'm not sure if the ground they have is actually defensible. In any case, I see more articles saying that the war is likely going to be a long one, so I hope that reflects the current thinking of military planners and politicians. I don't think its much of a question on 'if' the offensive has stalled out. Reading everything I doubt the war is going to develop in Ukraine's interest anymore and in the long run its a lot easier for the Russians to wait out western interest in the war and Ukrainian fatigue to just get a truce in a few years and a frozen conflict, even if no treaty comes from it a la Korea it could last effectively indefinitely with Russia in control of a large portion of East Ukraine.
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Sep 28, 2023 20:13
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:its not that i think theres no point to trying to analyze the pop fiction When I read about the lead up to WW1 a lot of historians mention the cultural element with things like the widespread popularity of 'invasion fiction'. Even today, there's reams of text written on the context and influence of so many movies, shows and games made in America and what they say about how the War on terror was sold to the public. Seems similar here.
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Sep 29, 2023 14:33
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So I can check, its been mostly buried by the Israel/Palestine conflict at the moment but is it true that the Russians have been attempting a major offensive? How has it been going?
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Oct 15, 2023 15:47
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https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1717738123893817350 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2023.2269685 Large thread and link suggesting that Euromaiden in 2014 really were behind the sniper attacks. I don't know who Ivan Katchanovski is but his twitter feed does not fill me with confidence that he's a neutral party.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:19
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Blut posted:It doesn't matter how much of a cause the Ukrainians are dying for, sooner or later a society still reaches a threshhold of acceptable military losses and war supprt breaks. Sometimes this is higher (ie a just defensive war in this case), sometimes lower, but it will always exist. Reading about wars like this I think people vastly underestimate the ability of a state to continue fighting them long after the initial war excitement has died down. World War 1 is the example par excellence, in spite of the horrors of trench warfare every nation was able to mobilize a strong war effort for at least 3 years until things started to fray in 1917, and even then it was more sporadic mutinies concerning conditions rather than the very act of fighting the war driving them outside of the Russian armed forces. The German effort only ultimately collapsed with the total defeat of all of their allies, major battlefield defeats themselves and the complete breakdown of the Home front leading to a massive famine. 2024 will likely be a bad year for Ukraine if the Americans and Europeans start to lose interest and play up to political elements complaining about supporting the war, but I have a hard time seeing how a stable ceasefire can be established while Russia continues to occupy the areas of Ukraine it took in 2022.
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Nov 4, 2023 05:56
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The Top G posted:Sure, they’re both hosed in that regard God the idea that that supplies that could be going to Ukraine to fend off the Russians will instead go to an already horrendously over-armed Israel to kill even more Palestinian civilians for no gain is truly sickening.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:42
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:I think this too. The time to make a real difference is long past. The Russians are too dug in, the occupied areas are too heavily mined. I find it hard to imagine that Ukraine would actually, willing accede to Russian annexation of this territory for the simple reason that open conquest of neighbour's territory by a hostile power has not been accepted basically anywhere since the end of World War 2, look at something like the Golan Heights in Syria or the intractable territorial dispute over Kashmir, or more recently relevant the entire Israeli-Palestinian crisis and Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Not least because the Ukrainian population will probably immediately vote out any politician who makes such a thing official. That leads to long term issues for both countries, supposing this hot war ends, what stops Ukraine from spending the next decade trying to flare up and support guerrilla resistance in the occupied territories and revanchist political parties in support of such a thing? I can already almost guarantee that a political candidate making some argument that they lost 100,000 brave men trying to restore Ukraine's borders before getting backstabbed by politicians and fickle western allies will emerge in such a context and similarly, Russia will have its work cut out for it if there is continued unrest on the seized territory, especially if Ukrainian politics is increasingly and openly hostile towards Russia. Like, again, this is a monster of Putin's own making. There's basically no way that a moderate or even pro-Russian political movement will have prominence in Ukraine ever again after all of this which is a far cry from how things used to be. It will probably be at best a permanent standoff and at worst just slide into another war at some point further down the line.
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Nov 5, 2023 13:25
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NATO chief on Ukraine war: ‘Be prepared for bad news’ NATO rhetoric has gotten increasingly pessimistic about Ukraine though its hard for me to tell if they are trying to hit back at republicans and other fence sitters stalling aid in America and Europe if its a general belief that its fundamentally turned against Ukraine.
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Dec 4, 2023 23:24
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Ok, so, behind the doom and gloom what is the more realistic expectation of the next few months in terms of the west's commitment to Ukraine? The Pro-Russian side of twitter certainly is ecstatic and jumps on every comment about difficulties Ukraine is currently having as signalling the collapse of the front, and the Pro-Ukrainian side certainly has gone all doom and gloom but actually reading about things from the front progress seems almost non-existent and the Russians aren't actually making much progress accounting for their horrific casualties. Should we expect American support to conceivably evaporate or scale down or is it just Republicans being pricks but unlikely to meaningfully change American support for Ukraine over the long haul?
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Dec 6, 2023 00:21
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socialsecurity posted:I know Russia's a big country but there has to be a point where this loss of life has long term problems for their country. I mean that was already a problem for both countries with or without a war. Jesus, really it puts into perspective what a ghastly waste this all is, Ukraine and Russia have severe demographic issues, and Putin's bright idea was to start their largest war since world war 2.
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Dec 6, 2023 23:52
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Rust Martialis posted:France's proxy, the 13 Colonies. Funny way of thinking of it, but really it was! Another point to make, Russia started off this whole thing with a proxy war in (imo) a straightforward understanding of the term with the war in the Donbas, it just didn't work very well because of the issue with actual proxy wars in that it didn't have much local support and was highly dependent on their superpower benefactors who were the main thing making it happen, so they had to increasingly turn it into a non-proxy war to keep the fire going.
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Feb 13, 2024 22:59
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Bel Shazar posted:The oppressed don't need to be justified, any fault is that ifnthe oppressor. Not launching a massive attack on civilians and committing an inconceivable amount of war crimes in one day is actually something that all sides of any conflict must adhere to regardless of an oppressor/oppressed dynamic.
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Feb 16, 2024 10:28
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So, I imagine that a new Russian offensive will be gearing up for the summer, I take it that Ukraine isn't in a very good position to resist at the this point in time? I know that Macron has been making a lot of noise lately, is there any sign that its serious and France can fill the gap that America would have previously?
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Mar 15, 2024 23:22
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