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Ukraine 20: We’re not bluffing and you can tell we aren’t by how we say we aren’t bluffing…


Ser Scot A Ellison

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1 hour ago, Gorn said:

I dunno, I'm still doubtful that it was the Russians, it doesn't make sense. The damage to the pipelines is likely permanent, and they could accomplish the same effect simply by cutting the flow at their end with a valve.

 

Nothing about this invasion makes sense.

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1 hour ago, Gorn said:

I dunno, I'm still doubtful that it was the Russians, it doesn't make sense

The Russians are well known for doing dangerous violent aggressive stuff that makes little sense. It is designed to intimidate people, make them think that the Russians are capable of anything and must be placated.

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From the US Embassy in Russia. https://ru.usembassy.gov/security-alert-for-u-s-citizens-in-russia/

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On September 21, the Russian government began a mobilization of its citizens to the armed forces in support of its invasion of Ukraine.  Russia may refuse to acknowledge dual nationals’ U.S. citizenship, deny their access to U.S. consular assistance, prevent their departure from Russia, and conscript dual nationals for military service.

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U.S. citizens should not travel to Russia and those residing or travelling in Russia should depart Russia immediately while limited commercial travel options remain.

 

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Will Russian women be drafted as so many men have gotten outta Dodge?  Genuinely curious.  Particularly since, according to what is posted here and reported elsewheres, many of these recruited, remobilized etc. are too old really, and were never actually trained for combat duty anyway.  So having untrained women wouldn't make a difference.

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Will Russian women be drafted as so many men have gotten outta Dodge?  Genuinely curious.  Particularly since, according to what is posted here and reported elsewheres, many of these recruited, remobilized etc. are too old really, and were never actually trained for combat duty anyway.  So having untrained women wouldn't make a difference.

Difficult to say. Russian women can serve in the modern military in very limited roles, and of course women did serve on the front line as tank drivers, pilots and snipers during WWII, which Putin likes to evoke every 5 seconds. OTOH, he's also keen to promote this idea of traditional values, which doesn't really include putting women on the front lines.

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14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

keen to promote this idea of traditional values, which doesn't really include putting women on the front lines.

Ya, one is aware of that contradiction.

But, that's the funny thing though, when it comes to something gone fully pear shaped and desperate, if there aren't men to do it, suddenly women have to.  And if  / women fail at the job the men can't do or wouldn't do, even when they make the mess, it's always the smart move to put in women to fix it, and when they don't, this goes to prove that women aren't quaified to run the show or the government. :P

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Seen on facebook, an article by two Russian economists on the effect of mobilization:

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Maxim Mironov

We wrote an article about mobilization with Oleg Yitshoki
The effect of the mobilization
A brief summary:
1. Over the next 6 months, there will be an attempt to mobilize from 700 thousand to 1 million people.
2. We estimate the target group, among which the call will primarily be carried out, at 2-3 million people. Thus, the probability of being summoned among the members of this group exceeds 25%.
3. We estimate the expected losses during the first 6 months among conscripts at 60-70%. Of them, 15-20% were killed, 45-50% were injured.
4. Demographic damage from the war in Ukraine for the population of Russia will exceed the damage from the covid pandemic.
5. We're expecting two waves of crime spikes. The first wave will be related to those returning from the war. The second wave is with orphans who will grow up without fathers.
6. Conscription sabotage and all means of avoiding military service are the optimal strategy at the individual level and make it impossible to recruit significantly more young people. But this strategy does not allow to significantly change the number of recruits in the first months of the campaign and therefore avoid the associated loss of human lives.
Disclaimer 1. The authors of this article are not military men, but economists. Our military experience is limited to two years of training in the military department and monthly military training. Therefore, all conclusions of this article are mainly based on economic logic and feasibility.
Disclaimer 2. Objective figures on the number of Russian groups, losses, planned mobilization, etc. d. that was never published. There are only grades. We will rely on the numbers we consider to be the most reliable.
1. At the beginning of the war, the total grouping of Russian troops was estimated at 200 thousand people. Since spring, the authorities have actively recruited citizens to serve on short-term contracts to replace the killed and wounded. How many new soldiers were recruited under the contract, and how much was mobilized in the LPR/DPR, is not reliably known. In June, British intelligence estimated the Russian army losses at 20,000 people. You can assume that by the end of September this number will be around 35,000-40,000. If you take the ratio of killed and wounded as 1 to 3, then the total losses of the Russian group at the end of September amount to about 150,000 people. Assuming that at least the same amount was raised, then we will have a lower donor limit during this time of 150,000 people. Even the surviving and healthy soldiers in the initial grouping must be replaced soon because they can't fight without rest.
How many troops must be called to replace 350 thousand? At the beginning of the war, mostly professional contractors were sent to Ukraine. Then they attracted motivated people who wanted to serve under contract. Mobilization involves calling in non-professionals who do not want to serve, meaning their effectiveness will be several times lower than that of professional military. In order to fill the losses, they will have to call 2-3 times more people than the original group, that is 700,000-1,000,000 people.
There has been a lot of controversy in social networks about what figure actually was in the 7th "secret" point of the decree. We think there is no point in these disputes. Authorities will appeal as much as it takes. They can change the number in the decree at any time, one way or another. You need to push away not from the formal number in the decree, but from the need. As we have shown, we estimate the need is much higher than the 300,000 officially announced.
2. We believe that the call will mostly be among young people between 20 and 30 years old. Older citizens, for the first, are in worst physical shape. Secondly, they are more likely to have children and social connections. The potential costs of their call to power are far higher than that of the young.
Because of the 1990-early 2000s demographic pit, there are now only 7.3 million men between the ages of 20-29 in Russia. The mobilization will rather be aimed at those who served. In recent years, about 250,000 people have been recruited per year. Given that some of them remained on contract, some became unfit for various reasons, we have a potential pool of 200,000 recruits per year, or around 2 million people among men 20-29 years old. If we increase the target age to 35 years, we will get a pool of about 3 million people.
Pushing away from an expected mobilization of 700,000-1,000,000 people, we get a likelihood of a call for those who meet the target above 25% within six months.
This probability is unevenly distributed by region. In poor and remote regions, they will call for more, in rich cities - less to avoid protests. After the first days of mobilization, we see that the authorities are following this exact tactic, therefore in poor regions, there is a significant chance of being called also people outside the target category.
3. The expected losses among the newly mobilized will be higher than those of the regular army, primarily because they are less physical training, lack motivation and extremely tight training time frames. Training the military requires time and resources. The Russian authorities now do not have enough officers to prepare the mobilized, neither the equipment nor the time. The mobilized will be sent to the front after months of preparation (perhaps weeks later) essentially as canned meat. The losses will be comparable to the losses of the Donetsk People's Republic troops - according to British intelligence estimates, for June (3.5 months of war) they left 55% of the original number. It can be assumed that in the next 6 months, losses among Russian mobilized may amount to 60-70%. Of them, 15-20% were killed, 45-50% wounded.
4. Excess mortality from Covid in Russia amounted to 1 million people. However, Covid hit mostly people over 60 who have already given birth and raised their own children often completing professional careers. The war in Ukraine will cause losses of about 500,000 people killed and wounded (a significant part of whom will remain permanently disabled) in a year. These are the people of the most productive age who have their whole work and social life ahead of them. This is a significant percentage of the total number of men in this group. There are currently 13 million men in Russia between the ages of 20 and 34 years old. In addition to service, several hundred thousand men of this age may decide (or have already) to emigrate. As a result, Russia may lose more than 10% of men in the 20-29 age category.
5. Returnees from war have a number of mental problems - post-traumatic syndrome in soldiers. In Russia, in the past decades, it was "Afghan" and "Chechen syndrome". The scale of losses in Ukraine has already exceeded both the Afghan and Chechen wars. After the war, Russia is expecting a boom in crime. Also, a significant number of children, especially in poor areas, will be fatherless, leading to a new crime surge in 5-10 years when these children will become teenagers.
6. Independent Russian human rights activists, journalists and politicians offer to sabotage the call by every possible way - from going abroad to failing to meet the requirements of conscription commissions. Of course, this is the minimum resistance strategy to avoid additional loss of lives in the criminal war unleashed by Putin's regime in Ukraine. In addition, this strategy exhausts the resources of the state's coercion mechanism, and in the medium term it will not allow to significantly increase the scale of the draft. Unfortunately, this strategy does not allow significant changes in the number of recruits in the first months of the campaign. With conscription potential high enough, avoiding military service allows more informed and empowered young people to avoid conscription at the expense of their less-prosperous peers. Accordingly, such a strategy does not allow to avoid the mass senseless loss of human lives related to sending hundreds of thousands of conscripts to war in Ukraine. Thus, Russian civil society now faces a choice between mass protest against mobilization and war and the loss of many tens of thousands of young lives.
Author:
Oleg Yitshoki - Professor of Economics at UCLA
Maxim Mironov - professor of finance IE Business School

 

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Looks like the formal annexation will take place tomorrow afternoon with a big speech and lot of palava.

A lot of other countries have already condemned the annexation, including close allies, even Serbia. So the question is if Putin will want to make some kind of additional threat or demonstration, or will be content to see how the mobilised troops do first.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Looks like the formal annexation will take place tomorrow afternoon with a big speech and lot of palava.

A lot of other countries have already condemned the annexation, including close allies, even Serbia. So the question is if Putin will want to make some kind of additional threat or demonstration, or will be content to see how the mobilised troops do first.

Serbia doesn’t want to legitimise regions breaking away by referendum because of Kosovo

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On 9/28/2022 at 7:49 AM, broken one said:

I think Russians are spreading confusion.

We know they sabotaged those lines, that it was an act of malicious spite, that it was senseless and some "tavern room" logic.

We just currently lack that definitive explanation of the "how and why".

But i dont think there can be any serious doubt who the craven culprits were that committed this terrorism.

Eta: Putin still photo on a news story today, he looked like a ghost or a sort of undead creature. Extreme heavily blackened areas all around his eyesockets.

Looked almost like a person they shook awake from an ICU bed and slapped a suit on for a snapshot, truly creepy image. He looks like someone that will be leaving this world before the end of the year (hopefully).

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1 hour ago, Padraig said:

Hmm.  I wonder is it possible for Ukraine to do something tomorrow to steal the spotlight from Russia.   This annexation is the kind of news you'd want to be treated as a non-event.

Or host another UN General Assembly meeting and vote down the recognition of the regions as part of Russia. China would abstain, and I suspect there'd be at least a nod to to agreeing with the vote because of Taiwan (and China might feel it needs to send at least a minor message of growing discontent with Russia's actions).

Alternatively, maybe Biden needs to make some kind of address directly spelling out that US military intervention is on the table if Russia uses WMDs on the territory of Ukraine within the pre-February 23 borders (or even pre-2014 borders).

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Just now, DireWolfSpirit said:

Looked almost like a person they shook awake from an ICU bed and slapped a suit on for a snapshot, truly creepy image. He looks like someone that will be leaving this world before the end of the year (hopefully).

The "last photo of Prince Philip in the car" syndrome. Even with the last few photos of the Queen in the last week or two before she passed, it looked like there'd been a sudden decline.

Still, I doubt very much anyone would get off that easily. In some respects it might even be worse, if Putin feels he's heading out the door in a few weeks or months maybe he'll give far less of a shit about the consequences of his actions (conversely, people around him might be far less likely to pay attention if they feel he's already effectively checked out).

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16 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Or host another UN General Assembly meeting and vote down the recognition of the regions as part of Russia. China would abstain, and I suspect there'd be at least a nod to to agreeing with the vote because of Taiwan (and China might feel it needs to send at least a minor message of growing discontent with Russia's actions).

Alternatively, maybe Biden needs to make some kind of address directly spelling out that US military intervention is on the table if Russia uses WMDs on the territory of Ukraine within the pre-February 23 borders (or even pre-2014 borders).

Have we not learned yet that toothless half measure don’t work? Force the UN to address Russia’s legal standing as a member already.

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