Putin's invasion of Ukraine

If I were a Russian, I'd sell my rank for $10 000 and get Western citizenship.
LOL! :D

I'm flirting with the idea of being too funny to be propaganda.
 
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citizenship in the west
interesting


------------------------
Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
 
Well now
It seems that the damned fool has had quite a busy week.
One might suspect that he is beginning the partitioning
of Ukraine.
...and, the question obtains: Why?

He started by banning 11 political parties, thereby removing political representation for over 1/3 of the electorate---mostly in the Russian speaking areas.
ok---autocratic?
and then: He took over the news media, effectively banning free speech
and then: He made Ukrainian the only official language.

To these old eyes, it seems that he intends to partition Ukraine
however
It has been suggested that Zelenski is a puppet
ok
if so, then what does the guy holding the strings want?
 
sculptor said:
To these old eyes, it seems that he intends to partition Ukraine
Click to expand...

The weird part is that someone so wise as you're supposed to be insists on such simplistic analysis. A lot of the political posturing is a question of tactics and strategy, such that we won't know particularly what they were doing in this or that moment until we can understand how it fits into the larger story. You already know this.
 
sculptor said:
Well now
It seems that the damned fool has had quite a busy week.
One might suspect that he is beginning the partitioning
of Ukraine.
...and, the question obtains: Why?

He started by banning 11 political parties, thereby removing political representation for over 1/3 of the electorate---mostly in the Russian speaking areas.
ok---autocratic?
and then: He took over the news media, effectively banning free speech
and then: He made Ukrainian the only official language.

To these old eyes, it seems that he intends to partition Ukraine
however
It has been suggested that Zelenski is a puppet
ok
if so, then what does the guy holding the strings want?
Click to expand...

Power , Politics , History , Military History , Tradition , Pride of country to the point of killing people to get land , cost peoples lives . War has become perpetual .
 
sculptor said:
Well now
It seems that the damned fool has had quite a busy week.
One might suspect that he is beginning the partitioning
of Ukraine.
...and, the question obtains: Why?

He started by banning 11 political parties, thereby removing political representation for over 1/3 of the electorate---mostly in the Russian speaking areas.
ok---autocratic?
and then: He took over the news media, effectively banning free speech
and then: He made Ukrainian the only official language.

To these old eyes, it seems that he intends to partition Ukraine
Click to expand...

Why has that not been a problem for you for the last 8 years when Russia was doing it? You even made a post to celebrate the completion of the fascist bridge connecting Crimea to the wasteland further east. I don't think Zelensky wants to partition Ukraine or he would have already offered territory to Putin in a deal, like you implied he should when you called him Yorick and blamed him for the war. Rather I think what Zelensky wants to do is to surround tens of thousands of soldiers from the Great White Hope army, crush them like the Russian colonel whose legs got crushed under a tank by his own men, complete the most humiliating underdog victory in modern history and retake everything Ukraine is historically and legally entitled to under international law.

sculptor said:
however
It has been suggested that Zelenski is a puppet
ok
if so, then what does the guy holding the strings want?
Click to expand...

Gee I dunno, let's go ask Rabbi Goldman what his master plan is.
 
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scorpius said:
Btw any Rambo wannabes thinking joining Ukraine fight,note that Russia treats foreign merc as terrorists and already killed 35 of them in morning raid.
Click to expand...

You've been awfully quiet of late. I wanna hear how great you and your cousins are at fighting and stuff- we still haven't seen your real army yet, just a bunch of garbage with Russian flags on it. I assume the goal is to sacrifice all the dumbest most useless Russians to eat up Ukraine's ammo, then the elite schoolchildren will be sent in to do the real damage, right?
 
i expect Putin will militarize the entire peninsula right up to Crimea & dig in.
all the hard line Russian people were in the east so the news says, so they have secured their hard liner people who will welcome the occupation.

bit concerning about the mass re-settlement
not sure how accurate that news is and what is happening to those people.

it looks like a lot of Russian military's vehicles have been hit
and the west is now pumping rockets into the front line to field test their new anti tank weapons
Putin probably wants out before he looses lots more armored vehicles as the west field tests its latest weapons.

it looks like the Swiss single use anti tank missile is doing really well.

what the Russian troops had not realized i suspect, is them coming under fire from RPG's which has completely upset their movements.

also sounds like the ukrainians are winning the electronic war

some believable video has emerged of the Russians loosing a 42 million dollar combat radar system off the back of a truck as it went over a bridge from it not being secured properly and an inexperienced truck driver and poor road conditions.

if they can reverse engineer that they can probably counter it significantly.

but it seems the Russians hobbled themselves when they took out all the cell phone towers.
bad in field decision opened them up for attack as they lost comms security which resulted in a general being killed

the anti tank and other man held launched rockets are making the difference

being able to suppress the Russians electronics and communications will remove their tactical advantage add to that the availability of rockets and the front lines are now open to devastating attacks soo severe that it will be able to defeat their hold of positions

i expect Putin is pulling out before that happens and the Russian death count starts to pile up
because having those front line positions damaged soo deeply it will un nerve the russian soldiers and start to damage moral.

the only possible solution is to pull back to try and keep a distance between the rockets and their troops and armour
they can do that with the river & then hold their position with long range artillery to suppress fire points like they had been doing previously before they over ran their own supply and fortification ability.

tactically it has been a total mess from the russians but they have made up for it in sheer numbers

that number advantage is about to be lost to western rockets

so pulling back & digging in is the smart move to set to sue for a treaty and keep what they have dug into giving them a natural border of the big river that runs past kyve.
 
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From Milton: (circa 375 years ago)
...
O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand;
For what can war but endless war still breed?
Till Truth and Right from Violence be freed,
And Public Faith clear'd from the shameful brand
Of Public Fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed
While Avarice and Rapine share the land.
 
it is a race to the finish for putin
the shorter the better
the longer the far worse
the longer the war goes on the more it will undermine Russian peoples faith in their own leadership

if he holds what he pulls back to he can announce it as a decisive victory & rally the Russian people of the donbas
 
There is no doubt that waging a conventional war using tanks etc are over, and actually have been for a long time. IMO.
 
Ukraine-partition.gif
 
bit surprised by Joes statement saying putin must go
it gives media(fuel to the fire) to those who say usa want regime change in russia
bit of a gaffe(?)
its not a long shot worth taking as a political game
i doubt usa can keep out all of russias nukes
so some sort of relativism is required because russians tend to support putin still.

he needs to be speaking to the people not at the people

russians may not want the war but they dont want a change in leadership even more than a change in regime
their system is wobbling along on a mix of socialism and capitalism
no sane person would want the country driven into communism or user pay capitalism

is putin calling the shots of what is attacked etc ? probably not
thats probably the military and they appear to be un prepared for modern warfare & the Soldiers (& civilians)are paying the price.

bad decision to invade in my opinion but thats my opinion
and they certainly wont retreat from the russian donbas region where the people consider themselves russians.

Joes statement is soo close to what russia said about an existential threat
 
Quantum Quack said:
There is no doubt that waging a conventional war using tanks etc are over, and actually have been for a long time. IMO.
Click to expand...

British defense specialist Nicholas Drummond↱ posted a Twitter thread a week and a half ago that includes this note:

Most NATO armies learned long before Russia's invasion of Ukraine that tanks advancing without infantry, artillery and air support pay a heavy price for not following the combined arms manoeuvre playbook. Russia's failure does not mean tanks are redundant.​

The Russians did not establish any sort of air superiority to support the ground invasion, and part of what we're learning as the war goes on is that the invasion seems very poorly planned. There is a story about carrying dress uniforms for the victory parade instead of extra ammunition. At least a few videos have shown Russian vehicles bunched up too closely, and I just came across a bit earlier tonight when captured soldiers said their orders were just to move forward. The confusion captured soldiers showed in the early days of the war suggests they really had no idea what was about to happen. Oh, right, the Drummond thread also suggests Russian reactive armor was useless. More than the continued relevance and utility of tanks and other heavy vehicles, I think the lingering questions will have to do with war planning and management, and the poor performance of Russian gear.

There is also the point that Russia has apparently lost seven Generals in the field.

One need not be a defense industry analyst to know something about this war has gone terribly awry for the Russians, but it's a war going so badly the Canadian Armed Forces are cracking jokes↱. War isn't funny, but that tweet sure as hell was.

• • •​

RainbowSingularity said:
bit surprised by Joes statement saying putin must go
it gives media(fuel to the fire) to those who say usa want regime change in russia
bit of a gaffe(?) ....

.... Joes statement is soo close to what russia said about an existential threat
Click to expand...

Yeah, but Puti-Toots thinks gay people are an existential threat to Russia.

Actually, the commentary on that one has been all over the place. Caroline Orr Bueno↱ suggests:

1) I really don't think he was calling for regime change and I don't think his comments were nearly as controversial as some people are making them out to be.
2) Putin is going to accuse the US of regime change regardless of what Biden says.​

A different take, from David Rothkopf↱:

Brief, cool-headed, foreign policy analysis on why the President saying Putin has got to go is not a problem.
1.) It's true. So long as Putin is at the helm in Russia, the country will be isolated and its people will needlessly suffer.​

Both are actually better than whatever waterdown clarification the White House chose. Rothkopf is much more actively supportive of regime change, while Orr Bueno finesses the politics. But all three are actually responding to a particular aspect of the larger politics of war. Rothkopf is direct↱:

Putin called Ukraine a Nazi country. He asserted he has a claim to many of the countries of Eastern Europe. He has threatened the world with nuclear war. He's the one to whom the world should take offense.​

The current political atmosphere includes extraordinarily dense concentrations in which people abide such simplistic criteria for similarity as to preclude difference, but even this overlooks the fact that the asserted similarity does not and cannot justify what it protects. In this case, dysfunctionally simplistic comparisons of Russian and American history by which people complain that Americans would protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine do not actually justify or excuse Putin's grotesque adventure.
____________________

Notes:


@CAFinUS. "Reasons why the invasion hasn’t happened quickly: 1. Ukrainians". Twitter. 25 March 2022. Twitter.com. 27 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3ut5uaV

@djrothkopf. "Brief, cool-headed, foreign policy analysis on why the President saying Putin has got to go is not a problem. 1.) It's true. So long as Putin is at the helm in Russia, the country will be isolated and its people will needlessly suffer." Twitter. 26 March 2022. Twitter.com. 27 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3NlU9Sy

—————. "4.) The Russian outrage would have come no matter what Biden said. 5.) Putin called Ukraine a Nazi country. He asserted he has a claim to many of the countries of Eastern Europe. He has threatened the world with nuclear war. He's the one to whom the world should take offense." Twitter. 26 March 2022. Twitter.com. 27 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3IHAoBp

@nicholasdrummond. "2. Most NATO armies learned long before Russia's invasion of Ukraine that tanks advancing without infantry, artillery and air support pay a heavy price for not following the combined arms manoeuvre playbook. Russia's failure does not mean tanks are redundant." Twitter. 17 March 2022. Twitter.com. 27 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3wARFd8

@RVAwonk. "2 comments on Biden's remarks today: 1) I really don't think he was calling for regime change and I don't think his comments were nearly as controversial as some people are making them out to be. 2) Putin is going to accuse the US of regime change regardless of what Biden says." Twitter. 26 March 2022. Twitter.com. 27 March 2022. https://bit.ly/3NpwHDN
 
Anyone looking at a brief history of Russia can see that changes usually occur quite quickly; the bodies pile up and a new leader emerges.

It seems Putins' right-hand man, Shoigu, has managed to hobble the Russian military by pocketing funds and sending in inferior tanks, missiles and other ordnance. This explains partly why the Ukranian army has had relative success; it's armed with more effective and accurate weapons and doesn't suffer from the same levels of corruption.

Shoigu is off the radar; I wonder which gulag he's going to end up in? I imagine Pooped-in is quite the unhappy armchair warrior. The whole military exercise was probably doomed from the outset, but nobody tried to tell him. People who tell him things he doesn't like end up in gulags or they get defenestrated. It's the Russian way.

But with the latest "gaffes" from Biden, is he now looking at his nuclear arsenal? How functional is it, given the demonstrable non-functionality of his conventional armies? He must be starting to think the rest of the world is, at the least, not particularly impressed. The Pentagon is cheering, Xi is possibly rethinking his alliance. He (Mr P) should go, one way or the other, and I'd say it will probably be the other.

The existential threat to the current order, seems to be the current order itself. What a joke (but who's laughing?).
 
Quantum Quack said:
There is no doubt that waging a conventional war using tanks etc are over, and actually have been for a long time. IMO.
Click to expand...
Nonsense. Tanks are currently an integral part of any significant offensive, and will be for a while. But they are part of a greater whole, and what this war in Ukraine is showing is that if used without other necessary elements being in place (e.g. air superiority, logistics etc), then they are certainly not as good as they might otherwise be.

The nature of conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) war is forever changing, though, and there may indeed come a time when the role of the tank becomes obsolete, but their fundamental role as an armoured and sufficiently mobile weapons platform is still required, and will be for a while to come, I think. Tanks are part of the overall toolkit of the military: just as you (hopefully) wouldn't sand a block of wood with a hammer, you need to know when and how to use what the tank offers to greatest effect.
 
Quantum Quack said:
There is no doubt that waging a conventional war using tanks etc are over, and actually have been for a long time. IMO.
Click to expand...

Well most military commanders including those in Western militaries still believe tanks and other armoured vehicles have their place on the battlefield, it's not like advanced anti-tank weapons are a new revelation here and nowadays defenses against them are improving quite rapidly (except in Russia where the population lacks the technical know-how to make anything without importing the tech). Sending tanks into battle without infantry and air support, good intelligence, tactics, positioning, fortifications etc. is a really bad idea though.
 
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