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Ukraine 19: In HARMS Way


Werthead

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The Ukrainian spokespeople have been surprisingly honest this war, so this is probably really happening.  If a Russian unit offered to leave all their equipment behind in exchange for crossing the Antonovsky bridge on foot (with whatever they can carry), I'm sure the Ukrainians would take that deal. 

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I saw some claims about a large pocket of Russians (10,000 +) negotiating surrender near Izyum?  Was that BS?  I haven’t heard anything else about that.

I haven't heard of anything near that amount of prisoners taken.  I heard of "hundreds" of prisoners captured in Izyum and maybe a couple other places, but nothing like 10k. 

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38 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I saw some claims about a large pocket of Russians (10,000 +) negotiating surrender near Izyum?  Was that BS?  I haven’t heard anything else about that.

BS, most of the Izyum operating group pulled out via Lyman, while leaving their heavy equipment and ammo stockpiles behind. Hundreds of stragglers were captured however, and some of them are still in the woods.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I saw some claims about a large pocket of Russians (10,000 +) negotiating surrender near Izyum?  Was that BS?  I haven’t heard anything else about that.

10,000 troops were reportedly in Izyum when the fighting there kicked off. Most of them fled, some were killed or captured and some negotiated a surrender.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Are the Russians about to back… all the way out?  Will “Swan Lake” play?

 

I'll believe it when I see it from more than that 1 source - it's too huge to take just his word for it, even if he typically backs away from being too optimistic

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One question I find my mind turning to, not to put a downer on things, but: if Ukraine kicks the Russians out, what happens to those Ukrainians who found themselves forcibly displaced to parts of Russia? Can they be repatriated?

Part of me doubts the Russian state has the ability to undertake that operation even if it were willing - or forced - to do so.

Anyway, might be premature yet to be contemplating victory conditions.

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2 minutes ago, mormont said:

One question I find my mind turning to, not to put a downer on things, but: if Ukraine kicks the Russians out, what happens to those Ukrainians who found themselves forcibly displaced to parts of Russia? Can they be repatriated?

Part of me doubts the Russian state has the ability to undertake that operation even if it were willing - or forced - to do so.

Anyway, might be premature yet to be contemplating victory conditions.

Some of them have been. The Russians had no organised system for carrying people off to Russia, so in some cases the Ukrainians deported waited until they'd crossed the border and offered the bus driver money to simply drop them off somewhere. Then they simply used Russia's internal transport system (and the fact a lot of them speak flawless Russian, and had been given Russian passports) and rotated out again via Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia or Finland.

But yes, there are likely a fair few thousand who weren't so lucky and there'll need to be some thought of how they're going to get home, and the worst bit will be the Ukrainian orphans who were sent to Russian homes in Russia and their prospects of going home might be slim to nonexistent.

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I've seen dramatically different estimates of the number of people abducted by Russia.  One estimate was as high as 1.5 million, which would be like 4% of Ukraine's prewar population.  I don't see how that could possibly be right.  But I have heard lots of estimates that the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands and I feel confident saying that most of those people (many of them children) do not have the means or ability to bribe bus drivers or navigate their way across Russia into the Baltics. 

I am sure that is something that will be part of negotiations when this war ends, but it will be extremely difficult to make Russia actually look for and find these people.  I expect that even if Russia were to admit that it did forceably migrate many Ukrainians, they would just say they could only find and return some tiny percentage of them.

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7 minutes ago, mormont said:

One question I find my mind turning to, not to put a downer on things, but: if Ukraine kicks the Russians out, what happens to those Ukrainians who found themselves forcibly displaced to parts of Russia? Can they be repatriated?

Part of me doubts the Russian state has the ability to undertake that operation even if it were willing - or forced - to do so.

Anyway, might be premature yet to be contemplating victory conditions.

I don't think it's premature to contemplate victory conditions. I think this is exactly the right time, because you want to have a good idea of what to do in various situations before those situations come up, and honestly up until recently the notion of a Ukrainian victory was something foreign for most people (myself included). 

The Ukrainians who have been forcibly displaced are going to suck; Russia loves using hostages like this. 

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If Eddie Hall can have a tank certainly this guy deserves it. I do wonder on security with these tanks/etc. we’ve even heard of rocket systems and such being captured. Do they just like have no keys or is it just considered once you’re in it you can control it? I guess these are older systems without digital stuff and probably just analog and mechanical but it’s amusing that they can find abandoned tanks and just drive away with them.

 

Why couldn’t they take a few minutes to sabotage the vehicles. Or at the least you know blow their own ammo depots to deny them to their enemy? Very weird they just let everything be captured.

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9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Erodgan is already pushing against Greece.

I believe the assumed rule is that if a NATO country attacks a second NATO country, the second NATO country can evoke Article 5 and the rest of NATO has to come to its defence even against another NATO member (who presumably won't be a NATO member for much longer). So that's just almost certainly just posturing. Erdogan has gained a huge amount from the recent crisis, he's not going to waste it almost immediately.

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