Ukraine War Part 7: Delete your army

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Darzin said:

Well I mean there have been horrified "western" reactions to a lot of things over the years but there weren't weapons pouring in or thousands of volunteers and no one thought the Warsaw pact was going to annex Czechoslovakia .

The point was to keep Czechoslovakia under soviet control though, yes?

But yes, weapons and volunteers did not pour in -- you're right about that.

[Darzin]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The point was to keep Czechoslovakia under soviet control though, yes?

 

Yes, which is quite different then trying to annex a country not already under domination.

I do think that Ukriane is recieving more attention than a similar conflict would outside of Europe buut I also think this conflict is vastly different than most of the under reported third world conflicts mentioned. 

[Fez]

8 minutes ago, Darzin said:

Yes, which is quite different then trying to annex a country not already under domination.

I do think that Ukriane is recieving more attention than a similar conflict would outside of Europe buut I also think this conflict is vastly different than most of the under reported third world conflicts mentioned. 

Eritrea and Ethiopia had a full-on war in the late '90s. It wasn't a border skirmish, it wasn't a civil war (though maybe some thought of it that way since Eritrea had only been independent from Ethiopia for a few years at that point), it was a major war between sovereign nations over territory. And it's estimated that there were over 100,000 casualties in two years. It did not get anything anywhere close to this level of attention.

I think it's because it's Europe and because it involves a nuclear power, is why this has become so big.

[Toth]

18 minutes ago, Darzin said:

Yes, which is quite different then trying to annex a country not already under domination.

I do think that Ukriane is recieving more attention than a similar conflict would outside of Europe buut I also think this conflict is vastly different than most of the under reported third world conflicts mentioned. 

Mmmh... I get why you are saying this and it objectively is true, but I still feel like I have to disagree on the grounds of subjectivity. Because from Putin's POV, this is EXACTLY the same situation. The Czechoslowakian communist party was doing massive and popular reforms to get away from the Stalinist playbook, reforms that threatened to be overturned by their own momentum into a democratic movement which would open the country to the West and remove it from the USSR's sphere of influence. The USSR then militarily intervened to quickly depose Dubcek and replace him with someone who was more in line with the USSR's interests.

When Ukraine threw Yanukovych out of the country and threatened to turn towards the EU, from Putin's POV this was exactly the same situation and had to be dealt with in exactly the same way. Though unfortunately for him, in the first charge only managed to secure Crimea as his priority target and had to wait for the government deposing for a later time. A time that apparently was deemed to be now. I highly doubt this was ever truly about annexing, it was always about keeping Ukraine in Russia's sphere by force. But since the quick victory failed, Putin now is forced to improvise, which brings us all into the dangerous situation we are in now.

[Fez]

Footage supposedly from today. Not graphic, but the first one is certainly intense.

Worth noting in the second video how almost every single trooper has an anti-tank weapon or is carrying spare ammo for one. Long gone are the days of one-per-squad.

 

[Darzin]

@Toth and @Fez You both make good points. 

In other new Russian internal propoganda is now saying that the US was planning to US Ukraine a staging ground to attack Russian with biological weapons using migratory birds. This is being reported by multiple outlets which, according  to a Russian poster on another board are fairly mainstream, but I can't vouch for that, and translated by google, still it make for quite the read.

Disclaimer: the below posts are batshit propaganda and included for research purposes rather than informative ones. 

Quote

The Russian Defense Ministry claims that the purpose of the UP-4 project, which was implemented with the participation of laboratories in Kiev , Kharkov and Odessa and was designed for the period up to 2020, was to study the possibility of spreading especially dangerous infections through migratory birds. We are talking, in particular, about the highly pathogenic influenza H5N1, whose lethality for humans reaches 50 percent, as well as Newcastle disease, said the head of the RCBZ troops.

“Due to the fact that Ukraine has a unique geographical position where transcontinental migration routes intersect, 145 biological species were studied within the framework of this project,” Kirillov said, adding that at least two species of migratory birds were identified, the routes of which pass through the territory Russia.

With the help of birds, according to Kirillov, it was planned to spread especially dangerous infections, including highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza and Newcastle disease. “Of all the methods developed in the United States to destabilize the epidemiological situation, this one is one of the most reckless and irresponsible, since it does not allow controlling the further development of the situation,” said the representative of the Ministry of Defense.

This is sourced from here

and other sites pushing the same narrative,

https://readovka.news/news/90619

https://vk.com/1tv

https://readovka.news/news/90619

The fact that Russia is pushing the narrative internally that the US was intending to attack Russia with a biological weapon allegedly being coded to only kill Russians via DNA markers, is uh... not great, as it's setting up some pretty nasty "reasonable" retaliation. It could just end up being noise to demonize the enemy but it provides a very troubling door to escalation should the Russian leadership choose to use it. 

 

[Ran]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

Worth noting in the second video how almost every single trooper has an anti-tank weapon or is carrying spare ammo for one. Long gone are the days of one-per-squad.

Yeah, an incredible sight. And you can see a number of weapons from different countries -- a German Panzerfaust was among them.

There was some military studies academic on Twitter who remarked that this aspect of the war shows that some rethinking is going to have to take place about the role of armored vehicles on the ground because of just how many more effective anti-tank weapons there are these days vs. in the past when a lot of doctrine was established. Although part of their proliferation is doubtless because the Russians seem to have forgotten most of their doctrine to begin with -- way too many unprotected convoys of vehicles without substantial infantry or aerial support, to suppress just this sort of thing.

[Maithanet]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

There was some military studies academic on Twitter who remarked that this aspect of the war shows that some rethinking is going to have to take place about the role of armored vehicles on the ground because of just how many more effective anti-tank weapons there are these days vs. in the past when a lot of doctrine was established. Although part of their proliferation is doubtless because the Russians seem to have forgotten most of their doctrine to begin with -- way too many unprotected convoys of vehicles without substantial infantry or aerial support, to suppress just this sort of thing.

Going a little further, we know that Ukrainian forces have concentrated on attacking Russian supply and transport columns to slow the advance, with significant successes.  I have to think that equipment losses of trucks/APCs have been extremely high in the past two weeks.  I don't know how Russia is going to solve that problem, as supply lines will only grow longer as they advance further into the country. 

[Fez]

17 minutes ago, Ran said:

There was some military studies academic on Twitter who remarked that this aspect of the war shows that some rethinking is going to have to take place about the role of armored vehicles on the ground because of just how many more effective anti-tank weapons there are these days vs. in the past when a lot of doctrine was established. Although part of their proliferation is doubtless because the Russians seem to have forgotten most of their doctrine to begin with -- way too many unprotected convoys of vehicles without substantial infantry or aerial support, to suppress just this sort of thing.

I think the Russians ignoring doctrine is a big part of this, for sure.

Also, for the time being at least, I think this is only relevant for a war where NATO is involved; either directly or as a major arms supplier like in this case. I doubt any other military, even China's, has anywhere near this amount of modern AT launchers. Though presumably there will pushes to change that based on studying this war.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Quote

China’s president Xi Jinping is “unsettled” by the Russian invasion of Ukraine because “his own intelligence doesn’t appear to have told him what was going to happen”, according to the CIA director, Bill Burns.

I'm sorry, say what now? I thought there was a whole discussion about the invasion not taking place during the Beijing Olympics between some individuals in the two nations....

At any rate, Burns also suggested that Jinping is troubled at the reputational loss that China is facing based on its implicit support of Russia so far.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Darzin said:

I do think that Ukriane is recieving more attention than a similar conflict would outside of Europe buut I also think this conflict is vastly different than most of the under reported third world conflicts mentione

For one thing, this conflict involves nations with nuclear capability; for another thing, at least two of these nations with nuclear capacity have their own oil fields within their national borders. So called undeveloped nations don't have borders either, with European nations and those with nuclear capacity, for the third thing.

But as @Toth says, this incursion with masses of weapons and armies, isn't that different in basics from the Czechoslovakia situation; Ukraine does not want to be under Russian control.  The three countries that are providing far and away the most aid to Ukraine's struggle were part of that Warsaw Pact invasion -- and they didn't want to be part of Russia's dominance either, not then, and not now.

 

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Darzin said:

 

The fact that Russia is pushing the narrative internally that the US was intending to attack Russia with a biological weapon allegedly being coded to only kill Russians via DNA markers,

 

Wait, they're literally stealing the plot of No Time To Die for this. 

[Impmk2]

4 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

The labs are real but apparently not that many as the Russian claims. They have received funding from the US DoD (instead from the NIH as usual in scientific collaboration, think on the Wuhan collaboration) but it appears to be insufficient for high tech facilities. Victorian Nuland has gone on record to assure Congress they are working with the Ukrainians to safeguard whatever materials are in there. Little else is known that it's not muddled with propaganda. 

Whether those labs are important in the great scheme of things is a different question.

 

I'm unfamililiar with how the US DoD grants operate, but defense grants for biological research are not at all unusual. I don't think I've worked at an institution where someone wasn't receiving some kind of a defense money. It's almost always for some kind of vaccine / treatment for something which is considered a wartime threat. And with all grants money is often split between multiple collaborating labs as projects will often far exceed the capacity / skills found in a single lab. So yeah money does go offshore occasionally.

Can't really see any reason this would be different for DoD funding - so yeah I find it plausible that there's labs all over the world recieving some kind of DoD money, and I don't find that particularly surprising or sinister tbh.

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

Going a little further, we know that Ukrainian forces have concentrated on attacking Russian supply and transport columns to slow the advance, with significant successes.  I have to think that equipment losses of trucks/APCs have been extremely high in the past two weeks.  I don't know how Russia is going to solve that problem, as supply lines will only grow longer as they advance further into the country. 

Quoting myself because I wanted to finish this thought and I got pulled away and only posted the first half.

We see that the Ukrainian military is well stocked with anti-tank weapons, and that is likely to continue given NATO support.  Those weapons are more than adequate to knock out supply trucks and other vehicles.  The typical strategy to protect vehicles from anti-tank weapons is to have infantry support, but that isn't going to be possible with supply trucks along miles and miles of Ukrainian roads.  I don't know what else you can do because these attacks are just so easy for Ukrainian troops.  I'm sure the US military had some experience with this in Iraq and Afghanistan although it seemed like IEDs were a much better problem than handheld anti-armor weapons. 

[Zorral]

This woman's been following Russian political, economic and cultural matters for years.  The entire piece is interesting, and so his her conclusion that Putin went around the bend from the massive isolation he practiced due to covid.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/julia-ioffe-3/

[Kalbear]

The goal of authoritarians is not to present a particularly compelling lie. The goal is to simply make it so hard to determine the truth that people give up.

[Werthead]

Yeah, it's entirely possible that Putin did not "go round the bend," as such, he just got it locked into his head it was now or never with his plan to reunite Russia and Ukraine. If he thought he might have another 20 years in power, I think he might have considered another long-term stratagem to do it through politics or intrigue or something, but he doesn't necessarily have that long (the average male lifespan in Russia is only 73, but Putin of course has the best healthcare and isn't a walking timebomb like Yeltsin was, and he still made it to 76).

The one thing I do agree with is that I think he badly underestimated the degree to which Ukraine would resist and was simply unwilling to even entertain the idea of Russian rule, and I think that has confounded him in a very unexpected way. That's why I think the various leaders lining up to court him and offer him potential ways out which he can sell as a victory is important, but he's also not quite in the mode to do that yet. I think he may very well escalate to then de-escalate and get a better deal. Hopefully through conventional means and not "a spectacular."

It does sound like he's not willing to mobilise or enact conscription, which raises the possibility that the Ukrainians could simply defeat the forces in the country at the moment. And if that happens, that will be the moment of maximum danger because he won't like that at all, and he will not want to admit he's lost. 

[Zorral]

10 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think he badly underestimated the degree to which Ukraine would resist and was simply unwilling to even entertain the idea of Russian rule

That Julia Ioffe interview goes deeply into this -- his extreme isolation played to that.  There are only 2 - 3 people he talks to, and "They are even more crazy than he is," she quotes her Russian Kremlin journalist friend of many decades.

I cannot recommend reading that interview highly enough.  She is so plugged in, for so very long, longer and far more deeply than any of us here, certainly, and most other venues as well.

It's frightening too, because as she points out from his past actions and behaviors, when Putin says and threatens to do something, he has always done it.  So don't even think he won't go nuclear.  One thing she points out which, I for one never thought of: at 70 Putin is quite a bit older than almost all Russian men, who generally die so early from drink and other behavior causes.

[Werthead]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It's frightening too, because as she points out from his past actions and behaviors, when Putin says and threatens to do something, he has always done it.  So don't even think he won't go nuclear.  One thing she points out which, I for one never thought of: at 70 Putin is quite a bit older than almost all Russian men, who generally die so early from drink and other behavior causes.

In real terms Putin has much better healthcare and more resources than most Russian men, so based on his clear (and much-bandied-about) fitness, he could probably expect to last well into his 80s or even 90s. But expecting to rule to that age is another matter.

There are of course rumours that maybe he discovered he did have a terminal health problem, and I've seen speculation that the long tables are because of that rather than COVID. And of course the stress he must be under must be enormous, although as others have noted it's distressingly rare for that to take someone out quickly in this kind of situation.