Ukraine 19: In HARMS Way

[Gorn]

Russia: over an eight-year period violates 4 out of 5 points of Budapest memo, Minsk 1 Agreement, Minsk 2 Agreement, Helsinki Accords, Belovezh Accords, Black Sea Fleet Partition Treaty, Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty, and the Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

Chomsky: I know what we should try, let's sign a treaty with them!

[Werthead]

I'm waiting for the geolocation on this, but it seems about right.

 

[Gorn]

Wow, I didn't know T-72 could drift in turns.

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, Gorn said:

Wow, I didn't know T-72 could drift in turns.

The farce and the furious?

[Arakasi]

Fast and Furious, Kharkiv drift.

[Maithanet]

40 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I'm sure your "moral bravery" from the comfort of your armchair is going to end in far less dead Ukrainian children.

Have a nice week-end.

I don't see the post that you're quoting anywhere (in the previous Ukraine thread or the international thread).  Did it get deleted? 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

I don't see the post that you're quoting anywhere (in the previous Ukraine thread or the international thread).  Did it get deleted? 

It's in the Rings of Power thread, because of course it is

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

More… interesting… news:

 

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

It's in the Rings of Power thread, because of course it is

Of course, I should have checked there

[Werthead]

The Ukrainian forces that were surrounding Slovyansk appear to have split. One group went north to Izyum and is now taking part in the assault there, a significant portion of the the rest seems to have crossed the Donetsk and are now advancing on Svyatohirs'k, which the Russians took almost exactly three months ago during their summer offensive. There's also signs of raids and artillery strikes on Lyman, which is probably the ultimate target in this sector (assuming this is a genuine offensive and not a raid).

That's not really even on the Kharkiv front any more, this is more on the western edge of the Donbas front.

The commentary now seems to be that the Russians don't know where to send reinforcements. The forces they had heading for Izyum can't actually get there, so they'll need to divert to probably east of the Oskil River. And this new offensive means they'll have to choose between reinforcing a defensive line down the river or reinforcing Lyman, they can't do both. And reinforcing the Kup'yansk seems to be down to the 3AC, which is still in Belgorod. It might be a day or three before they can get there, by which time the Ukrainians should have additional echelons in place.

Even Ukrainian sources now seem to be agreeing that the 3,000 POWs in one go story is bullshit, but it might be 3,000 PoWs taken across the entire zone of advance (or the whole country) in the last four to five days which seems much more plausible.

[JGP]

7 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

I reject all of this logic as being self-destructive and tautological. By this logic, no one should ever try and stop Putin from doing anything that he wants - either he is a rational actor and will always escalate to more violence, or he is not a rational actor and will do whatever he wants anyway. Neither are accurate representations of facts nor do they remotely take into account any free will or desire of Ukrainian people or anyone else being attacked; they only seek to cowardly avoid a potential disaster to someone not involved in the conflict. 

I don't know about cowardly. I generally understand the sentiment from most of this mindset as based on respect for life.  Oodles of respect for you, Rip. You're smart as fuck and well informed.

Thing is whatever it's final form, a defeat of Russia is vitally important for many reasons, least of which being best path forward for humanity as a whole. Putin on his heels and a warning to everyone else won't stop bad actors [dispensing with rational or irrational] but it'll put dampers on, and we can, somehow hopefully, awkward our way forward through the messes ahead on the least chaotic footing. 

Putin skating on a light settlement, I don't know, it's hard to imagine the Ukrainians would be satisfied at that point, they'll be riding high and no doubt also expecting some meting out of justice. That said, if I'm wrong, its up to them and no other right.    

[Maithanet]

Unless something dramatic changes, the very best that the Russians are going to get from Ukraine is agreeing to 2014 borders in the east along with a referendum in Crimea on whether it should join Russia or Ukraine.  Even that might be a tough sell for Zelensky to some Ukrainian factions, who seem pretty adamant on giving Russia no land whatsoever.  But recapturing and reassimilating Crimea into Ukraine would be pretty difficult, there is definitely a significant portion (possibly a majority) of the population that seems quite happy with being part of Russia. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Here’s video of Ukrainian APC’s moving towards Lyman crossing the Donets River.  

 

 

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Here’s video of Ukrainian APC’s moving towards Lyman crossing the Donets River.  

And from Lyman Ukrainian artillery can cut off Severodonetsk and Lysychansk from the rear.

I can only imagine Putin's reaction inside the Kremlin if the entire gains of the summer offensive are lost, along with almost half the gains of the February invasion.

[SeanF]

Who cares what Chomsky thinks?  His analysis is irrelevant.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

And from Lyman Ukrainian artillery can cut off Severodonetsk and Lysychansk from the rear.

I can only imagine Putin's reaction inside the Kremlin if the entire gains of the summer offensive are lost, along with almost half the gains of the February invasion.

Perhaps his buddy the losing one term former President who lives in Florida and loves him so very much will ship him some ketchup to toss?

[Werthead]

The inventor of the Bayraktar drone (well, the head of the company) getting a hero's welcome in Kyiv.

What's interesting is that the company are working on two next-generation versions of the TB-2, one is a next-gen stealth version which is apparently immune to anything but the most sophisticated radar systems and another one which is about three times the size and is basically an unmanned fighter/bomber. Some speculation one or both might be field-tested in Ukraine.

 

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

59 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Unless something dramatic changes, the very best that the Russians are going to get from Ukraine is agreeing to 2014 borders in the east along with a referendum in Crimea on whether it should join Russia or Ukraine.  Even that might be a tough sell for Zelensky to some Ukrainian factions, who seem pretty adamant on giving Russia no land whatsoever.  But recapturing and reassimilating Crimea into Ukraine would be pretty difficult, there is definitely a significant portion (possibly a majority) of the population that seems quite happy with being part of Russia. 

Can't Russia relocate those Crimeans who would rather be Russian? They do the same with unwilling Ukrainians. 

[Werthead]

20 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

Can't Russia relocate those Crimeans who would rather be Russian? They do the same with unwilling Ukrainians. 

One of Putin's headaches is that one of the reasons he was able to take Crimea so easily was by appealing to the Crimean Tatars, who make up a small but notable minority (10-11% of the population), and spent some considerable time after 2014 wooing them. But that's dropped off in the last few years and the Crimean Tatars now seem annoyed with their treatment by the Russians (the Tatars in Tatarstan itself are not thrilled either), particularly the near-total elimination of their language. So they'd probably be happy with a return to Ukrainian control as long as they had protection for their language and culture (Ukraine wasn't really fantastic with this either in the years they were in control of the peninsula, to be fair).

That probably still leaves ~60% of the population as Russian. Some of them, despite being ethnically Russian, do seem to have preferred being under Ukrainian rule for whatever reason, but there does seem to be a feeling that in an actual real referendum, maybe 55%+ of the population would vote to be part of Russia, that's not counting transplantees since 2014, many of whom have left recently anyway, and even assuming Ukrainian Crimeans who fled in 2014 would be allowed to vote as well. That's why I think Ukrainian threats to Crimea are more to create diplomatic groundwork to end the war with recognition of Crimea in return for a full withdrawal from the rest of the country. The defensive lines in Crimea and the natural terrain are both pretty formidable obstacles to taking the peninsula without a navy (and even with a navy it's no cakewalk, as the French and British can attest).

[Knight Of Winter]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Considering some of the things that were said to me, I've decided to post Chomsky's thoughts on Ukraine (which I almost 100% share) here on a regular basis.

I dislike ganging up on lone poster arguing against almost everyone (and the comment directed at you mentioning betting on dead Ukrainian children truly was distasteful) so I'll try a new approach and respectfully bring one fundamental error I see with Chomsky's point of view here.

He says how, given choice between utter destruction of one party and negotiated settlement we should always choose the former. The thing is - it's kind of a moot point - since pretty much everyone agrees with it already. If Ukraine and Russia entered peace negotiations - you can bet it would be hailed all across the world. And despite the animus many of us feel toward Putin and his politics, few actually root for the war and all the catastrophic consequences which go along. So if his point is that peace talks would be a good thing - then most of people already agree with him.

Now, where Chomsky goes wrong is when he puts onus on wanting diplomatic settlement onto "us" - with "we" presumably being the West. And I think this is one fundamental error which underlines all of his writings on this subject: that he vastly overestimates western ability and influence to do anything in his particular case. EU or US are not militarily participating in this war, so I don't see how they have the responsibility to end it. If he's so concerned about finding diplomatic solution- why isn't he blaming Putin (instead of West) for not initiating peace talks - for he may be the only one with actual power and ability to actually do it. 

Instead: he thinks the West should do something to end the war - although it tried to dissuade Russia from starting it in the first place and isn't actively participating in it. If you reverse the situation: imagine that USA attacks Mexico, and e.g. China imposes sanctions of the US and starts giving Mexico free weapons. In that hypothetical case, what would Chomsky say, who has the responsibility to end the war - US who started it, or China who is arming the attacked party?

So, if I could sum it all up in one sentence, it's this: Chomsky goes on and on about appeasing Putin and wishing for diplomacy instead of war - but I find him being pretty vague about any kind of action plan. So my question for him and you would be this: what should West actually do? What actual actions should in undertake to achieve his preferred solution?