(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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FuturePastNow posted:Perhaps he means "legal" in the sense of "fulfilling the contract that gets him paid" That might actually make sense. Capturing Bakhmut is probably some sort of contractual milestone that was defined as taking a specific % or district. Might not even have defined they must keep it
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Apr 4, 2023 08:21
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Svaha posted:Not much fanfare? Some of the bloodiest battles of wwII happened there. Crazy to think this was considered to be a protracted siege back in the day whereas the Russians have been trying to crack open Bakhmut for over a year now and failing
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Apr 6, 2023 08:56
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:What do we think is going to happen to this leaker? Is this kid going to spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth? The cynic in me thinks he'll probably get publicly crucified over being a loving imbecile + convenient scapegoat for higher-ups to cover their systematic failures, followed by some MAGA politicians trying to create traction to pardon him and whataboutism vis-a-vis Snowden en Manning. Never let a good culture war go to waste. I'm not American so the fallout only tangentially impacts me, but I'm 100% mentally primed for the above to hit the news cycle.
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Apr 14, 2023 14:20
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Maybe he’s just clicking the thing because he’s bored sitting around with his dick in hand all day
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May 6, 2023 18:38
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Not sure this was posted / discussed here yet, but the EU Parliament voted in favour of the new measure to ramp up artillery munition production across the EU (one million artillery shells over the next 12 months). https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence-and-security/news/eu-lawmakers-speed-process-to-boost-ammunition-production-across-europe/
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May 10, 2023 00:40
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Africa has no fucks to give for what colonial powers want, news at 11. Not sure what the reference to colonial powers is doing here, since they’re supplying a colonial power with arms to subject an erring colony. Or do you just mean to say cash is the only consideration in SA?
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May 11, 2023 17:40
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Let's be honest here, invading Russia proper could only risk escalation (in the sense of "Putin now has a sufficiently solid reasons to start drafting young men in Moscow and Saint Petersburg") for very little gain, since Ukraine (a) doesn't actually want to hold parts of Russia, and (b) can't really occupy parts of Russia while also liberating places in Ukraine that need liberating, and (c) doesn't want to lose Western support that would probably become somewhat tenuous once useful idiots start pointing at RT maps and going "I thought we were the good guys?? Maybe Ukrainians getting genocided isn't so bad after all?? both sides!!1". Much better to focus on recovering places they actually want without opening that can of worms.
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May 11, 2023 21:32
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Look, there’s no point discussing hypotheticals here of somebody occupying the USA and forcing Boris Galerkin here to choose whether to flee, be drafted or give up his MAGA neighbours. There are a lot of people who think “I would never fight for my country” and who are drafted and believe they have a moral duty to come through when push comes to shove. I think a lot of men would quite literally prefer to die than live with the conscience they abandoned their country, their neighbours, in their hour of greatest need. Ignoring that reality is a luxury reserved to postwar Americans and Western Europeans. For the vast majority of human existence, it was expected of men to sacrifice themselves on the altar when necessary. You can disagree with that but it doesn’t change the reality that somebody needs to do it, and many people think it is unpalatable to send women and children into the front line, so the burden falls to men. At the same time I also understand that for a lot of men, they may feel morally obliged to stay with friends and family and bring them to safety, rather than fight for a hypothetical victory. And things get muddier if you are a person of colour who is already being treated as a second class citizen by the country drafting you. I genuinely do not know what I’d do if my country were invaded. If it were being placed “under new management” as it were, like American occupation of Japan in the postwar era, I’d probably deal with it. If it were a country rounding up transgenders and throwing entire villages into mass graves while calling my language a historic mistake, I might even volunteer in an attempt to put an end to it or die trying, knowing I did the right thing. And yes I would be upset if an acquaintance told me “I actually do not give a poo poo about all that, I don’t want to die, fare thee well, moron” and skipped town. But until it actually happens to you, you don’t know how you will react. Edit: phoneposting, just saw the mod asking us to stop so I won’t continue this
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May 23, 2023 14:13
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Fidelitious posted:Let me introduce you to the idea that things occur in more shades than black and white and and that criticizing one minor decision is allowed, and that it does not in fact mean that I am calling for Ukraine's immediate surrender. “Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” Goons: “Yikes, did Eisenhower have to call this a holy war? Bad look imo”
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May 28, 2023 15:01
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A question re: modern fortifications, I feel like a lot of footage coming out of this war shows trenches that resemble moreso deep ditches than anything resembling bunkers or more connected trench systems. Is there a reason for that other than “shoddily and hastily thrown together at the frontline”? If Ukrainian forces push through a line like this tweet suggests:Chalks posted:Some details about the progress on the south eastern Velyka Novosilka axis Will they face the sme types of fortifications or something more solid?
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Jun 11, 2023 01:48
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Not sure about his source, but the Belgian ex-colonel Roger Housen and a professor at the Royal Military School, Kris Quanten, gave an interview and claim the UA currently deployed 15% of their manpower in probing attacks, keeping 85% in reserve https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/0...FpLOLINf58g1Tk4
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Jun 14, 2023 09:54
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Herstory Begins Now posted:i am very skeptical that this is real in any way beyond prigozhin making some charged statements (and ukrainian messaging efforts seizing the opportunity to signal boosting and create reports of clashes, which no one credible on the russian side seems to actually attest to). Same, but the twitter chatter seems to be coming from the RU side as well. I don’t expect this to make much of a difference in the war even if real (outside of Wagner being dissolved and people court martialled / thrown out of windows) but maybe Ukraine can seize tactical gains here or there in the confusion? A lot of this reads like a planned controlled demolition of Wagner by the rest of Russian government
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Jun 23, 2023 21:03
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What a mess.
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Jun 24, 2023 11:49
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The best "terms" I can think of are paying off one or more Wagner guys or RUAF / FSB moles within Wagner (if they have any, I'd hope for Putin he does...) to murk Prigozhin and subsequently tell the rest of Wagner they get amnesty if they gently caress off EDIT: alternatively, some pencil pushers in the Kremlin see which way the wind is blowing and agree terms with Wagner that include booting Putin loyalists out of windows. I'm not sure Prigozhin wants to sit on the throne himself, he might be content with a deal that allows him to return to the front to warcrime Ukrainians more freely with a sack full of cash and the MOD in shambles Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jun 24, 2023 |
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Jun 24, 2023 17:50
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Prigozhin might actually be an idiot who agrees to terms and gets killed within days or weeks, it wouldn't be the stupidest decision made during this war. Let's wait and see what the actual confirmed movements of Wagner are before concluding that they actually agreed to anything substantial.
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Jun 24, 2023 18:46
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acidx posted:https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1672662959481577472 If this is true, then didn't Putin basically just capitulate to Wagner? What a shitshow
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Jun 24, 2023 18:57
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Maybe Prigozhin tried to cash a CIA cheque and it bounced
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Jun 24, 2023 19:15
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OddObserver posted:^^^ To everybody going “this wasn’t a coup, it was a mutiny, Prigozhin said so himself, why would you jump the gun and call it a coup”: this is why. Because, in practice, whatever he intended, he went too far to reasonably back out of it alive so his only real chance at survival (in my eyes) involved bumping off Putin & his friends and getting the hell out of dodge (eg by handing the reigns to somebody better placed to calm things down and trying to broker a deal with somebody in the FSB to protect him) Any deal made with Putin once he started his march would get shreddered the second Putin was out of direct danger. I’m surprised it took less than 72 hours, but yeah that’s what bad faith actors and compulsive liars do I guess.
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Jun 26, 2023 21:21
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fatherboxx posted:He has a very clean biography with starting just as an engineer at bureau in Kharkiv in 2014. A cynical take would be that he is a face of someone else's interests, but that would need investigations to prove. What? 30 is like, late “young adult” / early “adult” age.
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Jun 30, 2023 12:45
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Like I'm Belgian and I don't think being 30 is "middle aged". I also think it's possible to just be "adult" and have an adult function or role like being head of a department. I'm not shocked that a 30-something is head of anything (although it's good career prospects) but I think it's weird to call him middle aged!
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Jun 30, 2023 14:21
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IR fails to clear the very first hurdle of a legit theoretical framework by considering only states as relevant actors. Any time you ask an IR scholar about the European Union and how the Commission's interests may differ from its Member States, they cough and choke on their glass of water and avoid the question. Any time you ask an IR scholar about sub-state entities, they handwave them away. Wallonia single-handedly sinking CETA with a veto (because the Walloon Region is controlled by a socialist party under the leadership of a guy who is principally opposed to free trade deals and wanted to make a big political statement) is impossible to explain under the IR framework: it recognizes neither the EU nor Wallonia as relevant actors in international relations, nor can it explain the ideological struggle underpinning the Commission's foreign policy to push for CETA versus Wallonia's veto. From an IR perspective, Belgium acted in Belgium's interest to sign a free trade deal via the EU Commission until Belgium realized it was no longer in Belgium's interest and blew up the whole thing. So no, I don't think the IR model is really useful at explaining anything at all except maybe the AI of non-player-controlled countries in Paradox games
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Jul 3, 2023 21:47
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Maybe if he'd spent the last 20 years building a democratic country based on the rule of law, he could tell Prigozhin & co that they have to file their complaints in triplicate forms and the problem would solve itself quietly. No rules lawyering your way out of problems in a mob state.
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Jul 13, 2023 22:55
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The Artificial Kid posted:Edit - imagine managing your country in such a way that here are regions you essentially have to send paid colonists too, anda at the same time considering yourself a 21st century world power. Not to really equivalents to Russia's policies, but for example the USA has economic programmes to incentivize people to live in Alaska, and South Korea has programmes to incentivize people to live in the DMZ and farm there. Sometimes places just kinda suck to live, but you need to incentivize communities to live there for geopolitical reasons (supporting resource industries or soft power)
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Jul 16, 2023 13:06
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Charliegrs posted:If you're a defender and you plant a billion mines to keep an attacker from reaching you, then doesn't that also mean that you've prevented yourself from advancing on them in the future because now you'd have to try to get through the same minefield? Or would you leave lanes through the minefield free of mines just for that very reason? But wouldn't that also make a chokepoint that the enemy could easily target? I was thinking the same thing. There HAS to be some route or avenue that is unmined, or some weak spots in the stretches of minefields, otherwise Russia's own attacks would get bogged down in the minefields while Ukrainian artillery shoots at them. Either the Ukrainians haven't found them, or the Russians have definitively given up on attacking in those areas?
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Aug 15, 2023 09:59
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Belgian media are reporting that Prigozhin made a new video, claiming to be in Africa. https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/08/22/prigozjin-afrika/ Guess he isn’t banished to Belarus after all
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Aug 22, 2023 16:20
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Deltasquid posted:Belgian media are reporting that Prigozhin made a new video, claiming to be in Africa. I’m skeptical Prigo died, because of this. Did he fly from Africa to Moscow today? Or was this a video filmed some time in the past?
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Aug 23, 2023 20:23
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SamuraiFoochs posted:So entirely hypothetically, if Ukraine made some gains in Crimea, how big of a deal would that be? Like, if these reports are legit, how much does this matter if at all? There’s no way this is an invasion force occupying land. We would have seen a big invasion fleet with landing craft if that were the case. These guys are just doing sabotage behind enemy lines.
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Aug 24, 2023 12:12
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Dirt5o8 posted:Not doubting what you saw but do you have the source? That a pretty significant claim by Ukraine and a spot on assessment of a huge problem for Russia if true. https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1694624127720587377 No idea how reputable this guy is, haven’t heard of him before and phoneposting so I won’t dig into his credentials right now
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Aug 24, 2023 13:26
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Saw this on Reddit, can't vouch for its accuracy. Somebody earlier in the thread was wondering where the labor force shortage of 300k people comes from if casualties were half of that. I'm guessing this has a hand in it. I had a friend in Georgia last week and he told me the place (Tbilisi in particular) is flooded with Russian expats. They're apparently opening a lot of Russian-Italian restaurants (as in, Russians who have no Italian background whatsoever are opening Italian restaurants and selling the food they remember eating in Rimini and reproducing the dishes by memory and via googling recipes) He talked to some of them. Most seemed to be anti-Putin but still thought Russia was the greatest country in the world. Georgians' opinions ranged from mildly annoyed to livid at the situation
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Aug 28, 2023 08:21
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Just Another Lurker posted:I'm sure they will make excellent conscripts. quote:Russia is hiring young Cubans to sign contracts and go to Ukraine, at arrival in Russia they take the passports and documentation, make them sing contracts without translation and send them to die and work digging trenches, they end up not being paid also, and are asking for help to escape. https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1620eoy/russia_is_hiring_young_cubans_to_sign_contracts/
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Aug 28, 2023 17:09
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Regardless of semantics, the aggressor having 3x the population you have does not appear to be a significant advantage in industrial war, in my opinion. Getting those people in the field, armed, and doing something useful is not guaranteed (especially not in Putin's Russia...) and neither country is fighting to the last man. It's much more relevant to look at numbers of soldiers mobilised, and potentially mobilised in short and medium term. Millions of Russian men of conscriptable age are moving abroad because they don't fancy dying in Putin's trenches.
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Sep 4, 2023 19:54
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Tomn posted:Do you have some sources of the numbers of people moving abroad? I know it's happening at scale, but I'm not aware of specific numbers involved. I may be exaggerating, the figure I had in mind was actually "more than a million" but that presumably includes their families. Deltasquid posted:Saw this on Reddit, can't vouch for its accuracy.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:08
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Nenonen posted:Finding motivated able bodied men for a war of aggression is not easy, though having a larger reserve pool to draw from makes it possible to replace losses - but for every grunt replaced, you need both some very expensive personal equipment and months of training for them to be any use in combat. Though Russia's size allows for even some unorthodox recruiting tactics, like offering pardon to prisoners who volunteer. It takes a country of certain size and with enough population in prisons to quickly get 50000 new men, many of whom have killed before. Regardless, the size difference means that Ukraine is going to have far more disabled people per capita than Russia, not least because Ukraine's civilians are also under fire. I recall many Ukrainians initially fled but returned since then. I can't find reliable sources with numbers but this website (https://visitukraine.today/blog/1825/why-ukrainian-refugees-are-returning-home-important-reasons) claims 18 million initially fled while 10 million have since returned. Another question is whether the Ukrainian refugees are all men of fighting age or not. The media perception certainly was that these were overwhelmingly women and children (OECD estimates that at least 70% of adult Ukrainian refugees are women: https://www.oecd.org/ukraine-hub/policy-responses/what-are-the-integration-challenges-of-ukrainian-refugee-women-bb17dc64/) I can't be certain, but I expect the Russian emigration numbers to skew towards men (dodging the draft) whereas Russian women have no particular reason to flee unless they're joining their male relatives, and Ukrainian numbers to skew towards women and children (fleeing the war coming to their doorstep) while a lot of men of fighting age chose or were forced to remain in Ukraine.
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Sep 4, 2023 20:48
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Reminds me of the early days of the war when people, some of them surprisingly high ranked public officials or institutions, were trying to compare Putin to Voldemort in an effort to drum up Western support. It was so cringe I almost believed it was reverse psychology by Russian agents
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Sep 6, 2023 12:21
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Antigravitas posted:A dangerous thing to demonstrate, too. Like with Covid, showing that a large body like the EU can actually get poo poo done flies in the face of long-standing dogma of several large parties in member states that are firmly opposed to the idea of government solving people's problems. Better yet: showing that a large, international body like the EU can actually get poo poo done flies in the face of even longer-standing dogma of several large parties in member states that it is not necessary, and perhaps even counterproductive, to weaken international organisations and attempt to solve everything at the national level.
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Sep 8, 2023 13:12
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Icon Of Sin posted:Impossible, unless Elon and Willo are one and the same. Has anyone ever seen Elon and Willo in the same room together?
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Sep 9, 2023 00:00
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Cpt_Obvious posted:That's an interesting point to bring up, how many capitalists have been tried and punished by the ICC? I mean, none? I don't see how any non-military or governmental people could fall within its scope of jurisdiction (genocide, crimes agains thumanity, etC.) unless you were to make a fairly difficult case of charging them with ecocide. It's already difficult enough to sue directors for companies lying in their greenwashing claims, nevermind crimes against humanity
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Sep 12, 2023 14:17
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Szarrukin posted:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-21/poland-says-it-s-still-supplying-ukraine-with-weapons?leadSource=reddit_wall I'm honestly very confused by this messaging by the Polish PM. When they originally said they didn't have weapons left and they are fighting with the weapons they have, my thinking was something went lost in translation and the Polish PM was doing some weird strong man talk about how banning Ukrainian grain imports was a "weapon" they had to use to "defend" themselves against dumping prices. But the point got taken totally literally in international media which is probably why they walked back to quickly now. Basically don't try to be poetic when you're launching a one-paragraph sound byte onto the internet by comparing your weapon shipments with economic measures taken as "weapons" to "defend yourself"
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Sep 22, 2023 10:24
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lilljonas posted:Poland is ruled by right wing populists. There's an election soon. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Having a scapegoat for everything bad is a part of core of populism. That scapegoat being "the other" is a core of right wing populism. Being able to blame economic problems on Ukranian foodstuff imports is just such a simple option here. I mean, sure, I get that. I understand the cause of the grain dispute (or, at least, Poland drumming it up on the curb of an election). What I don't understand is the PM's weird take about being out of weapons or otherwise no longer sending weapons to Ukraine. Even to a Polish nationalist that sounds ridiculous and undermines their own nationalistic messaging over the past year. Hence why I think he got carried away in trying to frame the grain deal as some sort of economic warfare fought with lawsuits as "weapons" and the message got completely misinterpreted. Or maybe he's a moron who really tried to pull the plug on arms aid to Ukraine over this grain spat, and the rest of his party had to scramble to reel him in.
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Sep 22, 2023 10:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What if gerrymandering but not adjusted for population and permanent? I understand the senate as a principle. From the perspective of an EU citizen, it would be pretty hosed up if the French, German and Italian members of the EP could just ram everything through due to the populations of their member states while the Baltics, Benelux and Malta get told "sucks to be you, maybe your populations shouldn't have been so small". It would not make joining a union a very appealing prospect for those smaller states. (I am making total abstraction of the fact that the EU Commission has the power of initiative in the EU, not the EP, but you get my point. Even the EU Commission has one commissioner per Member State; France, Germany and Italy don't get half of them on account of their populations). Whether the US senate's raison d'être is still as relevant in 2023 as it was in 1800 is debatable. But Americans are weirdly touchy about changing their constitution so I guess you're stuck with a political compromise that dates literal centuries.
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Sep 27, 2023 08:42
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