Ukraine: “I don’t need a ride, I need Ammunition”.

[Tywin et al.]

About time. Also sounds like the US, UK and some EU members are going to start attempting to confiscate the luxury items of the oligarchs. I hope they drain their accounts. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

18 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Like if we are comparing this to say any of the US-led invasions of the past twenty years, this is missing the whole bombing the country into the stone age component. Clearly without that component, the job for the ground forces will always be more difficult.

 

Yes, but bombing Kiev (a former capital of the Russian empire) into the stone age is not gonna look good. If you think Russians are unhappy now...

I mean let's be honest here for a minute. The average American hardly raises an eye brow over bombing some Arab in a place they've never heard of (USA! USA! USA!). Bombing Ukraine, in American terms, that would be like bombing Canada or England into the stone age.  

[mnedel]

16 minutes ago, Gorn said:

When your tanks run out of fuel and your soldiers have to loot houses for food on Day fucking Two, the word "embarrassing" isn't strong enough.

You actually believe that? Both Ukraine and Russia are doing massive propaganda. You can’t trust almost anything in the reports from the war. Maybe just the big news, like whether a big city or region has fallen or not. And Russians are certainly holding back for now. They probably don’t want to turn the entire population of Ukraine against them and even Russian allies (China) may balk at significant civilian casualties. Not to mention that 20-30% of Ukrainians are of Russian descent so they probably don’t want to kill the people they are supposedly there to protect (and risk a massive PR nightmare at home).

[A Horse Named Stranger]

7 minutes ago, dog-days said:

I'm guessing that it's the bigger Russian banks that will be cut off - smaller more specialised ones won't be bothered with. Really need a financial expert to go into the ins and outs of this. The announcement sounds as if it's a result of a compromise to get more reluctant parties to the sanction on board. 

Basically this. Germany apparently want to have a way to pay for Russian gas, is my  cynical take. On the brighter side, PG's buddy might get paid for his work from that website afterall.

[Winterfell is Burning]

18 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Unless he's lying about his age, Putin is only 69, which is not old enough for dementia to be reasonable yet. Fewer than 3% of 69 year olds would have any dementia, and people of the educational level of Putin would have even less chance than the general popularion.

Counterpoint- 3% of the world population is still a lot of people- that's the whole population of Brazil, and that's of people that have a diagnosis of dementia, while the real number is likely more.

Mind you, I don't think he has it necessarily, but if he suffered at least some significant cognitive decline, that would explain his behavior a lot.

[SpaceChampion]

3 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Counterpoint- 3% of the world population is still a lot of people- that's the whole population of Brazil, and that's of people that have a diagnosis of dementia, while the real number is likely more.

Mind you, I don't think he has it necessarily, but if he suffered at least some significant cognitive decline, that would explain his behavior a lot.

There were rumours his inner staff all got covid in September.  That long-covid is a bitch.

[Werthead]

14 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

And I stand by what I said, if the Russian army was operating like other armies of the past twenty years (I e. USA), and bombing the living fuck out of the country, this would be very different. Clearly they have the hardware (air and artillery) to do that.

Thank the gods that isn't the case.

On paper, yes. In practice, clearly not. There isn't a binary choice between "carpet bomb Kyiv like it's Dresden or Hamburg" and "do next to nothing," they could have utilised airpower and missiles to hit Ukrainian military bases, command and control facilities and government buildings whilst still avoiding (ish) civilian population centres. They could have unleashed a 2-5 day aerial campaign dedicated to hitting military targets before sending in ground troops, but they didn't.

They've also been sending in ground troops with limited or no air support. The couple of times they have deployed close air support, they haven't tried to deny the ground to AA forces first. This is all basic military doctrine stuff, and on paper it's all well within Russian capabilities without them going nuts and indiscriminately murdering everything in sight.

Even granted they have limited mission parameters and this awkward "minimise civilian casualties" order when their military doctrine has been partially built around "win no matter how many civilian casualties it costs," they should be having far greater success then they have achieved.

[Lord of Oop North]

11 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Yes, but bombing Kiev (a former capital of the Russian empire) into the stone age is not gonna look good. If you think Russians are unhappy now...

I mean let's be honest here for a minute. The average American hardly raises an eye brow over bombing some Arab in a place they've never heard of (USA! USA! USA!). Bombing Ukraine, in American terms, that would be like bombing Canada or England into the stone age.  

Yes, of course. There are legit reasons for the Russian leadership to not want to do that. But we shouldn't pretend that it doesn't have an affect on the effectiveness of armed forces. That sort of air and artillery bombardment are integral parts in the success of conventional armies.

[Maithanet]

Being the leader of Russia for almost a quarter century is bound to take a lot out of you.  There's a reason the president always looks like he aged 20 years for every term in office.  And Putin took over when Clinton was still in office.

[Winterfell is Burning]

Just now, Maithanet said:

Being the leader of Russia for almost a quarter century is bound to take a lot out of you.  There's a reason the president always looks like he aged 20 years for every term in office.  And Putin took over when Clinton was still in office.

Specially considering the worse an American president has to worry about (usually) is not being reelected or getting impeached. Putin has to worry about people poisoning him, just like he did to a lot of people.

[Lord of Oop North]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

On paper, yes. In practice, clearly not. There isn't a binary choice between "carpet bomb Kyiv like it's Dresden or Hamburg" and "do next to nothing," they could have utilised airpower and missiles to hit Ukrainian military bases, command and control facilities and government buildings whilst still avoiding (ish) civilian population centres. They could have unleashed a 2-5 day aerial campaign dedicated to hitting military targets before sending in ground troops, but they didn't.

They've also been sending in ground troops with limited or no air support. The couple of times they have deployed close air support, they haven't tried to deny the ground to AA forces first. This is all basic military doctrine stuff, and on paper it's all well within Russian capabilities without them going nuts and indiscriminately murdering everything in sight.

Even granted they have limited mission parameters and this awkward "minimise civilian casualties" order when their military doctrine has been partially built around "win no matter how many civilian casualties it costs," they should be having far greater success then they have achieved.

OK, I totally understand there is a difference between carpet bombing the country and strategic bombing.

But why aren't they doing more of the latter? It doesn't necessarily follow that because they aren't doing that, it makes them incompetent. I am sure Russian generals understand the value of air and artillery support.

There are many legit reasons they may have been ordered to avoid that, i.e. avoiding damaging a country they hope to rule, avoiding hardening Ukranian resistance and creating an insurgency, etc.

This may make the Russian leadership incompetent, but it doesn't necessarily mean the Russian armed forces are incompetent.

[dog-days]

4 minutes ago, mnedel said:

You actually believe that? Both Ukraine and Russia are doing massive propaganda. You can’t trust almost anything in the reports from the war. Maybe just the big news, like whether a big city or region has fallen or not. And Russians are certainly holding back for now. They probably don’t want to turn the entire population of Ukraine against them and even Russian allies (China) may balk at significant civilian casualties. Not to mention that 20-30% of Ukrainians are of Russian descent so they probably don’t want to kill the people they are supposedly there to protect (and risk a massive PR nightmare at home).

I share your doubts about the quality of information we have access too, but I don't think a PR nightmare is likely to be a problem in autocratic Russia, where most of the media is controlled by Putin, and social media has recently been restricted. 

As for international relations - if China can overcome its dislike of an invasion of a sovereign state to reluctantly support Putin, I don't see it having (m)any issues with civilian deaths. And India will still need weapons and gas. Albeit, if China broke with Russia, India might then feel freer to do the same, since it wouldn't then be handing such a big advantage in terms of energy supply to its uncomfortable next-door neighbour. 

[The Dragon Demands]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

On paper, yes. In practice, clearly not. There isn't a binary choice between "carpet bomb Kyiv like it's Dresden or Hamburg" and "do next to nothing," they could have utilised airpower and missiles to hit Ukrainian military bases, command and control facilities and government buildings whilst still avoiding (ish) civilian population centres. They could have unleashed a 2-5 day aerial campaign dedicated to hitting military targets before sending in ground troops, but they didn't.

They've also been sending in ground troops with limited or no air support. The couple of times they have deployed close air support, they haven't tried to deny the ground to AA forces first. This is all basic military doctrine stuff, and on paper it's all well within Russian capabilities without them going nuts and indiscriminately murdering everything in sight.

Even granted they have limited mission parameters and this awkward "minimise civilian casualties" order when their military doctrine has been partially built around "win no matter how many civilian casualties it costs," they should be having far greater success then they have achieved.

It's baffling.  This goes beyond sloppy into willful ignorance.

[Spockydog]

 

[Ormond]

16 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Counterpoint- 3% of the world population is still a lot of people- that's the whole population of Brazil, and that's of people that have a diagnosis of dementia, while the real number is likely more.

Mind you, I don't think he has it necessarily, but if he suffered at least some significant cognitive decline, that would explain his behavior a lot.

It's not 3% of the entire population -- the figure is 3% of people between ages 65 and 75 in the USA, to be precise. Since the risk goes up with every year of age, the risk for 69 year olds would definitely be no more than 3%. And having higher education is a very strong protective factor. 

[Fez]

13 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

OK, I totally understand there is a difference between carpet bombing the country and strategic bombing.

But why aren't they doing more of the latter? It doesn't necessarily follow that because they aren't doing that, it makes them incompetent. I am sure Russian generals understand the value of air and artillery support.

There are many legit reasons they may have been ordered to avoid that, i.e. avoiding damaging a country they hope to rule, avoiding hardening Ukranian resistance and creating an insurgency, etc.

This may make the Russian leadership incompetent, but it doesn't necessarily mean the Russian armed forces are incompetent.

There's quite a lot of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of mistakes being made by the Russian armed forces as well. At the trooper level, there's apparently been a lot of cases where infantry refuse/are slow to leave APCs to provide screening, which has allowed Ukrainian ATs to get so many kills. And at the command level, there's been a lot of use of vulnerable aircraft (helicopters and transport planes) when Ukraine AA is still active. 

There's also been rather baffling decisions like not knocking out cellphone towers.

[House Balstroko]

Somewhat off-topic

Whats the view in Kazakhstan? They’ve got a large Russian population. A while back, Putin even claimed that Kazakhstan wasn’t a real country. 

 

[Lord of Oop North]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

There's quite a lot of (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of mistakes being made by the Russian armed forces as well. 

Honestly, I hope that is true.

All I am saying is that this has been going on for only a few days, and realistically none of us know the true story at all. There is surely a lot of misinformation, and certainly a lot of the social media information from the Ukranian side will be framed in a way to inspire resistance. Which is fine, that's their job after all.

We are here saying they are incompetent, this is a disaster for them, etc, but really we don't know that at all. It is great to be optimistic, and I hope all this is true, but we should temper our expectations as well.

[Werthead]

The Russians have hit Vaylkiv's oil depot south-west of Kyiv with cruise missiles, which has caused one hell of an explosion which can be seen from the city.

27 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

There's a lot of scepticism flying back and forth about this on Twitter - 56 is a lot - but some claims it's 56 tanks and other vehicles (so maybe 1 tank and 55 Russian light vehicles for all we know). Also, the Chechen general was and some of the vehicles were on a train, which makes it a mite more plausible to do a lot of damage in one go.

The Chechen opposition said yesterday they were sending volunteers to Ukraine as well as the Chechen government sending troops to support Putin, and there's always the risk that the Chechens just say fuck it and go for broke again. Whilst they've been out of the Western news for years, there's a lot of simmering anger down there and there could be a resurgence of violence. Chechnya blowing up as a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine would be rather ironic.

Quote

There's also been rather baffling decisions like not knocking out cellphone towers.

There seems to be different views of this. One is that they want to spread pro-Putin/Russian/quisling government propaganda after a victory, which destroying them all runs counter to. The other possibility is that, in some cases, Russian units seem to be using their personal mobile phones to stay in contact with headquarters, which would seem to support the view that the logistics of this operation are not great. In some cases, Ukrainians have reported identifying Russian troops nearby through their Tinder profiles (!).

 

Quote

 

Somewhat off-topic

Whats the view in Kazakhstan? They’ve got a large Russian population. A while back, Putin even claimed that Kazakhstan wasn’t a real country. 

 

Kazakhstan has not recognised the two separatist republics and has not sent forces to support the invasion. That's not hugely surprising, though, they did the same with Georgia in 2008. They're sort of mildly pro-Russia but not to the point of doing anything about it.

It looks like the Russians may be hitting Kharkiv really hard as well. That's another probable Day One target that they failed to achieve.

ETA: Seeing a lot of replies that this was from earlier tonight and the attack has stopped. Kharkiv remains in Ukrainian hands and the damage was not as heavy as it looked.

[Fez]

Just now, Lord of Oop North said:

Honestly, I hope that is true.

All I am saying is that this has been going on for only a few days, and realistically none of us know the true story at all. There is surely a lot of misinformation, and certainly a lot of the social media information from the Ukranian side will be framed in a way to inspire resistance. Which is fine, that's their job after all.

We are here saying they are incompetent, this is a disaster for them, etc, but really we don't know that at all. It is great to be optimistic, and I hope all this is true, but we should temper our expectations as well.

I agree that there's likely a ton of misinformation, intentional and otherwise. But there are things we do know for sure: No major cities have fallen yet, Ukraine still has some amount of air defenses, Ukrainian telecommunications have been mostly unaffected, and Ukraine is overwhelmingly winning the global propaganda war.

The last one is somewhat out of Russian hands, but none of this speaks well of Russian military capabilities. Considering the disparity in Russian and Ukraine military might. even if Kyiv falls tonight this war has broken the illusion that Russia is a major conventional military threat. Poland+the Baltic states alone might be able to defeat them, NATO would crush them. So would China if that conflict somehow came about.