Ukraine 21: On the Attack with a Giant Phallic Spear

[Lykos]

21 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

<snip> it's just a bunch of lies and excuses. 

Bucketfulsoflies

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

28 minutes ago, Lykos said:

Bucketfulsoflies

That’s… terrifying.

[Werthead]

Nine NATO members - Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro and North Macedonia - have backed Ukraine's membership. That's probably no surprise. Turkey have not indicated they will veto the process, and interestingly neither has Hungary (yet).

[Erik of Hazelfield]

NATO membership would be logical. After all, we’re dealing with a country that has shown blatant disregard for previously signed treaties, let alone international law and diplomatic relations. How can Ukraine trust Russia to uphold their part of any peace deal when Russia openly declared parts of Ukraine as Russian and denies Ukraine’s right to exist as a nation?
 

One way is that they don’t, with the result being an arms race between Ukraine and Russia. The other solution is some sort of externally enforced peace, with guarantees of military aid being offered if Russia would attack again. NATO is the easiest way to accomplish this because it already exists and has a thought out framework of operation.

The pre-war idea that Russia feels threatened by NATO and that expansion of NATO to the East is a violation of the Cold War era power balance seems to me like a less than compelling argument at this point. Since it’s only a defensive alliance no one should be threatened by it. One idea I’ve been toying with is that the whole world could be a member of NATO, including Russia. That way any country wanting to attack another would face the combined armies of the rest of the world. Why not? (There are probably a million reasons why not, please share if you have any!)

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

2 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

To answer this a different way - we're already seeing some issues with roads and transport for the mud. It hasn't gotten too bad yet, but it's gonna get worse and worse over the next two months. December is where it really gets bad historically though - almost double the average rainfall that November or October or September see - so chances are good Ukraine is going to have to slow down a bit then. 

That said, December also bodes very, very ill for Russia, thanks to rampant corruption making 1.5 MILLION sets of cold weather gear just...disappear. 

That must be grossly exaggerated. I bet only a handful of sets disappeared, the rest had never even existed in the first place. I mean, if Russia had paid for 1.5 million sets of winter gear, then how many could possibly have been actually delivered? 100 thousand? 200? I can't imagine it being any number higher than two hundred thousand.

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

That must be grossly exaggerated. I bet only a handful of sets disappeared, the rest had never even existed in the first place. I mean, if Russia had paid for 1.5 million sets of winter gear, then how many could possibly have been actually delivered? 100 thousand? 200? I can't imagine any number higher than two hundred thousand.

It's possible they never existed, yeah. But they're gonna become critical if they're actually bringing in another 300k people into Ukraine. 

My suspicion is that Russians are more than aware that they're hosed this way and were expecting this already. Given that people were told to bring their own bedding, use tampons to treat bullet wounds and bring food, I think all the folks being sent are 100% aware that they're getting nothing from the government. 

[Maithanet]

3 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

Oh, Elon Musk - is there anything you will not drop your uninformed, shitty opinion on?

The funny thing is that this "proposal" would have been reasonable in February.  Ukraine was ready to negotiate on Crimea, and would probably feel pretty confident about the results of any (fair, closely monitored) plebiscite in Donetsk and Luhansk.  If Russia had been willing, Ukraine would have probably accepted this to avoid war. 

But to offer it now, when the Russian army is disintegrating and the Ukrainians want reparations and war crimes trials...very strange and clueless.

Needless to say the Ukrainians and Twitter are dunking on Musk pretty hard. 

[Werthead]

Some rumours that Russia is preparing to test its "nuclear drone" in the Kara Sea off its north coast. 

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

Agreed, and apologies if I implied otherwise. Ukrainian intel has been enhanced by NATO cooperation and it helps tremendously to have allies who are competent at intel gathering and war planning, but Ukraine has been doing a ton of educating NATO themselves and have been highly innovative and competent on their own. One of the best examples of this is their use of civilian intel to collaborate where forces were, where they were moving, and how many - the crowdsourcing of military information in a useful way is an incredibly difficult thing and doing it well is remarkable. The use of drones to coordinate action, dictate action and attack via off-the-shelf components is another major innovation. 

Also, @Werthead, you really did miss your calling as a war correspondent and analyst. Great work.

@Werthead’s reports have been better than anything I’ve seen in mainstream media.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Some rumours that Russia is preparing to test its "nuclear drone" in the Kara Sea off its north coast. 

In violation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty?

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In violation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty?

I'm guessing so, or they're going to try to get around it by actually testing it underground but underwater or something.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

The funny thing is that this "proposal" would have been reasonable in February.  Ukraine was ready to negotiate on Crimea, and would probably feel pretty confident about the results of any (fair, closely monitored) plebiscite in Donetsk and Luhansk.  If Russia had been willing, Ukraine would have probably accepted this to avoid war. 

But to offer it now, when the Russian army is disintegrating and the Ukrainians want reparations and war crimes trials...very strange and clueless.

Needless to say the Ukrainians and Twitter are dunking on Musk pretty hard. 

Let's not pretend Musk is an all-around smart guy. He's very gifted in the math and tech spheres, and to a lesser degree marketing, but on most other issues he's no different from the average person. Just look at him trying to buy Twitter. People who've never taken a course or even read a book about business knew how dumb it was for him to try to massively overpay for it.

[Werthead]

It's stupid because of his Starlink project he was basically seen as a hero in Ukraine. Starlink has been credited as being essential in keeping both military and civilian communications open. 

[Kalbear]

Oh good, I found this again. This is a long-form video that talks about the combined arms Ukraine was using, but the really amazing thing to me is how their commander used drone spotting to guide tanks absurdly precisely, in a way that reminded me eerily of playing command and conquer or starcraft.

 

[Rippounet]

Wrong thread, apologies.

[The Anti-Targ]

If Musk is a bona fide pacifist and he believes he can clearly see the writing on the wall wrt Russia and Ukraine having new and different borders when this thing all blows over, then I can understand the sentiment of wanting to avoid death and destruction and achieve that obvious outcome with no further loss of life. But it is obviously not obvious what borders Ukraine and Russia will have at the end of all this, given the borders represented by the front lines right now are changing daily. And in calling for Ukraine to be neutral the same should be called for Russia. If indeed his call is for the self-determination of the (pre-invasion) Ukrainian citizens resident in the invaded regions, then all military presence should be withdrawn and appropriate democratic and political processes be followed. And given in the invaded regions the vast majority of the area is occupied by Russian forces then it is clear that it should be Russia put under the most pressure to withdraw and be neutral.

So even giving the benefit of the doubt of being a fully fledged pacifist his Twitter advice is all arse about face.

[Kalbear]

He's not a pacifist. He's just a coward who fears the destruction of the earth before he can flee to Mars. It's especially weird because he's supposedly doing this to avoid countless loss of lives despite buying into Bostrom's super sketch theories of maximizing future virtual human happiness at the cost of almost any ethical decision right now. 

 

[Jace, Extat]

Folks, rich people have their own world. It relates to you in only the most distal (geologic usage) of ways. 

Mr. Musk gave his starlights (or whatever) to Ukraine's use because it benefitted him to do so at the time. He makes this new advocation because it benefits him newly. 

Your conceptions of rightness, wrongness, morality, or consistency has nothing to do with the way Mr. Musk and your masters live their lives. Discussing it at all is a fools errand. Keep your eyes on the ground and stop looking at the motives of your betters. You'll be happier for it. 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

40 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

when this thing all blows over,

Safe bet this never just blows over, hence why I said from the jump to expect a long war, and that's when Ukraine was heavily outmatched. This war will likely be the most impactful event in every Ukrainians' life and will affect how they view the world for decades to come.

[Kalbear]

It's going to be one of the most impactful things we experience for the next 15 years or more - not just Ukrainians. This is going to change how Russia, Europe, China, the previous Soviet republics, the Middle East and the US all operate for easily a decade, even if the war ends now. Simply entirely removing the gas and oil Russia provides from the West is a major change to status quo that is hard to predict the outcome of. It could lead to a significantly greener world or a significantly gas-fueled world and neither would be that weird. 

It is also very likely to change the face of war in ways we really aren't ready for. Azerbaijan showed us a lot of this in 2020 against Armenia, but we're going to see this at a grand scale. The cost of warfare and it being effective is going to change, the value of high-cost targets is going to reduce, the requirements for good combatants is going to radically change. 

Elon Musk will remain a douchebag though.