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Ukraine 8


Werthead

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52 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Eh, I would read that situation more like threats haven't had much impact in the past though Putin may change his thinking going forward. I trust the reporting that he was shocked by the scale and swiftness of the sanctions. 

So does he both does not mind the sanctions but was shocked at their scale and swiftness.  Got it.  

 

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8 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I mean that could happen, it's very easy to underestimate just how far Putin is willing to go.

If Putin was willing to basically flatten Ukraine in the future, the question is what is stopping him from doing it right now? Sure they have move to their more standard approach of bombing the crap out of an area, but it doesn't sound like its on Grozny levels, and chemical weapons don't seem to have been used. 

So I have to wonder what would change in the future to make him think that was a viable strategy. 

So why is he not doing it now?

For starters, they're kinda fucked right now. They used a LOT of fuel and supplies in trying to go as fast and far as they could in the belief they'd have little resistance and could just dominate easily. That didn't happen as they wanted, but the logistics for that did. And the Ukrainians have done a good job with those super stretched supply lines to fuck them up even more. Plus, Russia decided to go everywhere at once pretty much, and that means they're spread out all over the place and cannot easily concentrate fire, and they don't have the ability or fuel to relocate at this point either.

So what would be different in 6 months? Russia starting with the idea that they will blow shit up. Not having scout and VDV forces charging well past arty lines and instead simply starting with blowing the shit out of Kyiv's outskirts, then moving slowly, then blowing more shit up. Not worrying about Donbas or Mariupol and just going for the capital right away, and working to utterly wreck it. All those anti-tank weapons don't mean shit against that artillery and Russian forces can be used as a screening system against anything trying to shoot them - massed SAM, massed EW, etc.

Basically, the entire normal playbook that Russia typically does and expected to do against NATO forces.

And doing now is not feasible, and doing it in 6 months if the US troops are in Kyiv is not super great, but doing it in 6 months with a rebuilding population and system? Yep. 

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16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

@Werthead,

Please keep us updated on the battle you mentioned upthread.

Lots of stuff coming in. It now looks like the Russians launched a column into the town from the south and it was ambushed and destroyed in detail by Ukrainian forces. The Russians vectored in air support, which was promptly taken out as well (possibly an Su-35).

It's possible the action just to the south of Izyum is separate from the taking of the town, but they're like a mile apart from one another, you'd assume they overspill.

Ah, there's a river through the town. It looks like the north is contested, the southern half is firmly in Ukrainian hands.

 

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Seems like there may be a pretty decisive battle in south in the near future. There's footage of a large Russian column heading north out of Kherson tonight; presumably in response to the Ukrainian counterattack this morning.

As for the east, Izium seems firmly in the fog of war right now. And it's entirely possible that Ukraine did ambush one column but other Russians won the battle. If it did fall, that would be a rather bad setback for Ukraine.

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50 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

So why is he not doing it now?

 

I guess the main reason is the original intention is to occupy and annex a reasonably functional province of greater Russia (or what will become a province of greater Russia). If/When there is a realisation that Russia is not going to succeed in that then a scorched earth policy might be adopted to leave as little in the way of a functional country behind as possible.

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Kind of OT but thought this was worth sharing considering it looked like Russia had successfully killed the deal just a few days ago - Top U.S. officials: Iran deal talks down to final issues

Quote

Negotiations to have the United States rejoin the Iran nuclear deal are down to the last issues and Russia backed off its demand for Ukraine-related sanctions relief, two top Biden administration officials told lawmakers Thursday — another sign the once-defunct accord might soon be revived. [...]

“The deal is close to being done, just waiting on Iran,” a Democratic lawmaker, who like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, summarized the toplines of the briefing. “Russia walked back its ask for sanctions relief.” [...]

But Russia, a party to the nuclear agreement, complicated matters in early March. Russian Foreign Minister SERGEY LAVROV said Moscow didn’t want sanctions the U.S. and its allies imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine to impede trade with Iran. Lavrov softened that stance after meeting with his Iranian counterpart this week, saying the Kremlin’s demands wouldn’t stop the deal’s revival.

Interesting that Iran reportedly got Lavrov to back off.

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7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Kind of OT but thought this was worth sharing considering it looked like Russia had successfully killed the deal just a few days ago - Top U.S. officials: Iran deal talks down to final issues

Interesting that Iran reportedly got Lavrov to back off.

Some speculation that if Russia does get into escalated tensions with NATO directly, they want Syria and Iran to start causing real trouble in the Middle-East to divide the USA's attention (possibly North Korea as well). So maybe Russia is thinking of that scenario. However, I find that somewhat fanciful: Iran and Russia are aligned on some matters but not on others, Iran is unhappy with Russia's recent cosying up with Israel and there's actually limits on what Iran can do before it risks getting into the crosshairs of Israel's own formidable arsenal.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Now this is interesting, Putin has said he is willing to talk face-to-face with Zelensky to confirm the deal, and Turkey has offered to host such a conference.

I hope Zelenskyy is wearing gloves that are checked for radiogenic and biohazardous materials afterwards, if Putin attempts to shake his hand.

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1 minute ago, SpaceChampion said:

I hope Zelenskyy is wearing gloves that are checked for radiogenic and biohazardous materials afterwards, if Putin attempts to shake his hand.

I think it's more weird that Putin is using his MEGADESK and staying isolated from people to avoid COVID and possible personal security issues, but is suddenly willing to fly to Turkey to meet someone who'd happily see him dead.

Unless there's some oddness, like they can only see each other on screens from different rooms or the MEGADESK will be flown in as well.

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15 minutes ago, Werthead said:

However, I find that somewhat fanciful

That's..an understatement.  No way Iran is going to start shit in the Middle East just to help Russia distract the US.

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Uh-uh.  It's the Magadesk!  :P  From the days when he assumed it would be u-no-hoo would be at the other end -- or at least, he and his minions, would be, from the other side of the Atlantic, rah-rah-rah-ing him on.

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21 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Unless there's some oddness, like they can only see each other on screens from different rooms or the MEGADESK will be flown in as well.

 I do think we should preemptively sanction Russian trying to export the megadesk.

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And yet, now, Putin rails against these guys who only did what he told them to do.

"How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London
From banking to boarding schools, the British establishment has long been at their service, discretion guaranteed."

. . . Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West” (2020), a landmark work of investigative journalism by the longtime Russia correspondent Catherine Belton. Her thesis is that, after becoming the President of Russia, in 2000, Vladimir Putin proceeded to run the state and its economy like a Mafia don—and that he did so through the careful control of ostensibly independent businessmen like Roman Abramovich.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/how-putins-oligarchs-bought-london

Quote

 

. . . . When Abramovich went to Chukotka, Belton tells us, he did so “on Putin’s orders.” The first generation of post-Soviet capitalists had accumulated vast private fortunes, and Putin set out to bring the oligarchs under state control. He had leverage over government officials, so he forced Abramovich to become one. “Putin told me that if Abramovich breaks the law as governor, he can put him immediately in jail,” one Abramovich associate told Belton. A “feudal system” was beginning to emerge, Belton contends, in which the owners of Russia’s biggest companies would be forced to “operate as hired managers, working on behalf of the state.” Their gaudy displays of personal wealth were a diversion; these oligarchs were mere capos, who answered to the don. It wasn’t even their wealth, really: it was Putin’s. They were “no more than the guardians,” Belton writes, and “they kept their businesses by the Kremlin’s grace.”

Belton even makes the case—on the basis of what she was told by the former Putin ally Sergei Pugachev and two unnamed sources—that Abramovich’s purchase of the Chelsea Football Club was carried out on Putin’s orders. “Putin’s Kremlin had accurately calculated that the way to gain acceptance in British society was through the country’s greatest love, its national sport,” she writes. Pugachev informs her that the objective was to build “a beachhead for Russian influence in the UK.” He adds, “Putin personally told me of his plan to acquire the Chelsea Football Club in order to increase his influence and raise Russia’s profile, not only with the elite but with ordinary British people.”

The stark implication of “Putin’s People” is not just that the President of Russia may be a silent partner in one of England’s most storied sports franchises but also that England itself has been a silent and handsomely compensated partner in Putin’s kleptocratic designs—that, in the past two decades, Russian oligarchs have infiltrated England’s political, economic, and legal systems. “We must go after the oligarchs,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared after the invasion of Ukraine, doing his best to sound Churchillian. But, as the international community labors to isolate Putin and his cronies, the question is whether England has been too compromised by Russian money to do so.

For the past several years, Oliver Bullough, a former Russia correspondent, has guided “kleptocracy tours” around London, explaining how dirty money from abroad has transformed the city.  Bullough shows up with a busload of rubberneckers in front of elegant mansions and steel-and-glass apartment towers in Knightsbridge and Belgravia, and points out the multimillion-pound residences of the shady expatriates who find refuge there. His book “Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Oligarchs, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats, and Criminals,” just published in the U.K., argues that England actively solicited such corrupting influences, by letting “some of the worst people in existence” know that it was open for business. . . . 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

So does he both does not mind the sanctions but was shocked at their scale and swiftness.  Got it.  

 

I don't believe I've said he doesn't mind them. That's what some reporting has said, and frankly it would be smart for the Kremlin to leak that. 

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4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Russian apologists among my co-religionists are now claiming Ukraine is adopting a Chinese style “social credit score”…

The crap they spew… throwing shit to see what sticks.

Have you you heard the far right theory that Ukraine amassed bio weapons to specifically target ethnic Russians?

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