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Ukraine 21: On the Attack with a Giant Phallic Spear


DireWolfSpirit

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In actual Ukraine news this is pretty wild - shoulder-launched SAM (MANPAD) takes down a fucking SRBM. This is obviously not sufficient for overall defensive planning, but it's pretty amazing to use it in this way. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Wade1865 said:

Padraig -- not abandon, but stabilize the region under a condition of "peace", and subsequent militarization (e.g., NK vs SK; PRC vs ROC; Israel vs the Ummah; et al).

Although it would seem to grant Russia a degree of victory as a surviving competitor to the US, in reality it would effectively and indefinitely marginalize Russia, compelling it to focus only on a portion of Ukraine while ceasing all other imperial ambitions. More importantly, of course, the US will get additional benefits like military sales, weapons platform testing / experience under conventional war conditions, maintaining European dependence, and so on.

Again, I don't see how any of that follows from a US enforced "stabilisation".  Or how a US enforced stabilisation would even work, since Russia's current tactic (outside terrorism) seems to be throw enough bodies at the frontlines to stop losing ground.  Recreate 2014-2022 types borders and then rebuild and re-invade in a few more years.  Far from the end of its "imperial ambitions".

Not that the US seems particularly interested in your suggestion anyhow.

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24 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

I think this might be true in the short term, especially if Trump comes back. I think that it's not true even in the medium term and is a highly risky thing to do...

KalVsWade -- so long as Uncle Joe holds the Presidency, there's no real risk given how poorly he handled US domestic energy capabilities; i.e., yielding leverage. The God Emperor (if he somehow manages to secure reelection, which I doubt) would eventually bring MBS back into the fold by way of revitalizing big oil and its associated utility across the globe.

Although Uncle Joe made things personal, and is paying a substantial price for this, MBS is just being practical by playing both sides. He would pivot as needed, subject to the policies of the next President assuming control of the US.

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22 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Again, I don't see how any of that follows from a US enforced "stabilisation".  Or how a US enforced stabilisation would even work, since Russia's current tactic (outside terrorism) seems to be throw enough bodies at the frontlines to stop losing ground.  Recreate 2014-2022 types borders and then rebuild and re-invade in a few more years.  Far from the end of its "imperial ambitions".

Not that the US seems particularly interested in your suggestion anyhow.

I'm not sure how realistic the scenario of Russian vs Ukraine round 3 in 2029 or whatever.  Russia is getting i's ass kicked right now in Ukraine, and I'm skeptical there is going to be any appetite in Russia for another war of choice there.  Obviously a lot depends on how this war ends, but Ukraine could be part of NATO, which would obviously make another invasion a nonstarter.  In addition, given the way that the central asian post-soviet republics are turning their back on Russia, it feels a lot more likely that if a post-Putin authoritarian in Russia wants to flex his military muscles there will be much easier targets to bully than Ukraine. Russia could at least hope there would be less support from US/EU if Russia invaded a nonwhite country like Kyrgyzstan or something. 

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On 10/9/2022 at 12:37 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

@Heartofice is correct Youtube has de-de-monetised these channels again after saying it was a massive glitch affecting thousands of channel. Or at least Denys Davydov's channel has returned to normal monetisation service, per a community post he recently put up on Youtube.

de-de-monetised sounds so wrong. Why not simply re-monetised? 

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10 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Again, I don't see how any of that follows from a US enforced "stabilisation".  Or how a US enforced stabilisation would even work, since Russia's current tactic (outside terrorism) seems to be throw enough bodies at the frontlines to stop losing ground.  Recreate 2014-2022 types borders and then rebuild and re-invade in a few more years.  Far from the end of its "imperial ambitions".

Not that the US seems particularly interested in your suggestion anyhow.

Padraig -- it's not a US-enforced stability, but a -facilitated stability, which is in the interests of all parties at this point. Although it would be a difficult pill for Volodymyr to swallow, the more time that passes, the stronger Vladimir's defensive and logistical infrastructure becomes; and thus the more likely the pill will be swallowed.

Although Uncle Joe and I are close, I'm not suggesting anything to the USG, I'm outlining its strategy, which is to create a balance under conditions of "peace" that leaves 1) Ukraine a client state, 2) the US relatively dominant, 3) Europe unirradiated, and 4) Russian ambitions focused (and indefinitely limited only to portions of recently annexed territory).

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3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm not sure how realistic the scenario of Russian vs Ukraine round 3 in 2029 or whatever.  Russia is getting i's ass kicked right now in Ukraine, and I'm skeptical there is going to be any appetite in Russia for another war of choice there.

Again it has little to do with actual success or failure or any rational choices; it depends entirely on how much they buy into their own worldview of Russia as Great Empire and how key Ukraine is to that. 

I do think it's a very stupid move - as we all have thought since February, though for different reasons. But 'being a stupid move' is not at all a thing that appears to stop people from doing those moves. 

I still think that the better way to try and figure out what will be done is look at what Putin says he wants and extrapolate on how Russia would proceed. Clearly things like putting Russia in a shitty place is not going to be an issue for them. So what is?

- Putin's stability. This is obviously the biggest value, and in this Putin appears to feel entirely safe for now. 

- Russia opposing the West. Fighting in Ukraine against the NATO hordes may be worth it. Costing the US and the West a recession due to energy prices may be a value to them. Both of these things mean that Russia may continue to do this for a long time. 

- Russia fucking Ukraine up. At this point I think their stated goal of denazifying Ukraine needs to be considered here - not obviously at face value, but basically ensuring that Ukraine does not have the capabilities to be an independent country. To me, this implies that Russia will almost certainly ramp up civilian atrocities and looting of infrastructure and wealth in Ukraine when they can. I expect more cheap drone strikes in civilian areas and more terror style attacks, especially against power sources. 

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Russia's logistical infrastructure in Ukraine is a smouldering ruin of its former self and it's currently depending on exactly two roads and two rail heads, and one of those roads and one of the rail heads roll across a bridge that's had some very large holes knocked in it.

If the bridge had collapsed altogether, with months of work to even partially repair it, that might have very well been game over for the entire Kherson and Zaporizhzhia fronts. You can't feed and keep stocked with ammo 70,000+ troops along a widely-dispersed front with boats alone.

The big number people have been crunching for months is Russia's cruise missile and PGM reserve and that's a very tough thing to calculate, but the general feeling up until this week was that Russia had burned through the majority of its stock allocated for this operation, and they could not employ more without dipping into their reserves allocated on other fronts, primarily for use in a potential conflict with NATO. Russia certainly can't build new ones at a speed to keep up with potential output (several times in Iraq and Syria, the US apparently almost outpaced supply with demand, for an economy ludicrously huger than Russia's, but was able to ramp up supply to avoid that; there is no way Russia can do that, probably even in peacetime without the sanctions). So Russia can carry out more attacks like this, but it can't keep it up for months on end. If they could, they would have done that already.

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4 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

- Putin's stability. This is obviously the biggest value, and in this Putin appears to feel entirely safe for now. 

- Russia opposing the West. Fighting in Ukraine against the NATO hordes may be worth it. Costing the US and the West a recession due to energy prices may be a value to them. Both of these things mean that Russia may continue to do this for a long time. 

- Russia fucking Ukraine up. At this point I think their stated goal of denazifying Ukraine needs to be considered here - not obviously at face value, but basically ensuring that Ukraine does not have the capabilities to be an independent country. To me, this implies that Russia will almost certainly ramp up civilian atrocities and looting of infrastructure and wealth in Ukraine when they can. I expect more cheap drone strikes in civilian areas and more terror style attacks, especially against power sources. 

Putin cares about his legacy, I don't think that is in doubt.  And right now, his legacy, the mythology he'd built over almost 25 years now, is teetering (in Russia) and fully collapsed internationally.  Russia as a nation is weaker, poorer and lonelier than they were this time last year.  Putin can ignore that fact, right up until the point where he can't.  But it's silly to assume that Putin can always do whatever he wants, regardless of consequences.  Just because there are no official mechanisms to remove Putin from power doesn't mean that there aren't unofficial ways for it to happen. 

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8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Russia's logistical infrastructure in Ukraine is a smouldering ruin of its former self and it's currently depending on exactly two roads and two rail heads, and one of those roads and one of the rail heads roll across a bridge that's had some very large holes knocked in it.

If the bridge had collapsed altogether, with months of work to even partially repair it, that might have very well been game over for the entire Kherson and Zaporizhzhia fronts. You can't feed and keep stocked with ammo 70,000+ troops along a widely-dispersed front with boats alone.

Agreed, but I don't think they care that much and I don't know that Ukraine is going to be able to attack enough in the next...month or so?...before the rains set in and they can't realistically go on the offensive. 

I think it's very likely Ukraine can do some serious damage right now and take back large chunks of things, but I don't know that they're going to make a decisive blow. And they aren't going to be able to stop Russia from massive atrocities during that time.

8 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The big number people have been crunching for months is Russia's cruise missile and PGM reserve and that's a very tough thing to calculate, but the general feeling up until this week was that Russia had burned through the majority of its stock allocated for this operation, and they could not employ more without dipping into their reserves allocated on other fronts, primarily for use in a potential conflict with NATO. Russia certainly can't build new ones at a speed to keep up with potential output (several times in Iraq and Syria, the US apparently almost outpaced supply with demand, for an economy ludicrously huger than Russia's, but was able to ramp up supply to avoid that; there is no way Russia can do that, probably even in peacetime without the sanctions). So Russia can carry out more attacks like this, but it can't keep it up for months on end. If they could, they would have done that already.

With the loitering munitions from Iran I think you'll see that changed. You're right that they aren't going to have a lot of PGMs left and will likely want to save some for more specific strategic attacks, but they have lots of unguided munitions for aircraft that they can use to blow holes in shit (especially if they don't care about hitting specific things and are instead happy to blow up playgrounds), and the loitering drones cost like $20k a drone and can be almost as effective since, again, they don't care about hitting certain things. 

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1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

Putin cares about his legacy, I don't think that is in doubt.  And right now, his legacy, the mythology he'd built over almost 25 years now, is teetering (in Russia) and fully collapsed internationally.  Russia as a nation is weaker, poorer and lonelier than they were this time last year.  Putin can ignore that fact, right up until the point where he can't.  But it's silly to assume that Putin can always do whatever he wants, regardless of consequences.  Just because there are no official mechanisms to remove Putin from power doesn't mean that there aren't unofficial ways for it to happen. 

I don't care about official mechanisms; I'm looking at the unofficial ones as being largely toothless and unlikely. Putin has spent nearly 2 decades methodically removing each and every threat, potential threat, or power source from Russia that wasn't under his power. It's certainly possible that those might turn, but it's incredibly unlikely. And popular support for Putin is still quite high in Russia. 

That's the other thing - the Russian legacy that Putin cares about is not on the world scale, it's with Russians. He doesn't give a shit that Germany doesn't like him as much; he cares that people genuinely view Russia as a major geopolitical threat, and more importantly that Russians feel like they are. Russia taking on the NATO forces and the rest of the world is 100% fine as far as a legacy goes for him; in some ways it's better. 

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27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Russia's logistical infrastructure in Ukraine is a smouldering ruin of its former self and it's currently depending on exactly two roads and two rail heads, and one of those roads and one of the rail heads roll across a bridge that's had some very large holes knocked in it.

If the bridge had collapsed altogether, with months of work to even partially repair it, that might have very well been game over for the entire Kherson and Zaporizhzhia fronts. You can't feed and keep stocked with ammo 70,000+ troops along a widely-dispersed front with boats alone.

Werthead -- yes, agreed (and Russia's defensive position as well)! Vladimir's situation is undeniably very grim, and his survival is hanging by a thread. I wouldn't be shocked if the effort collapsed entirely, which is why he's desperate for time to adapt. And he's taking advantage of everything, regardless of how invalid they may be: nuclear posturing, remote terrorism, mass mobilization, general winter, et al.

Here's a [warning: very graphic] dramatization of Ukraine (played by Brad Pitt) beating the shit out of the Russians.

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Medvedev gets woken up from his crypt to threaten and talk about the total war idea. 

Regardless of how stupid you think this strategy is, and how unlikely it would be to happen, you do have to think that this is very difficult to back down from. How do you go from 'Ukraine as an entity must be destroyed' to 'we took Crimea and a bit of Donetsk'?

 

 

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7 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

I don't care about official mechanisms; I'm looking at the unofficial ones as being largely toothless and unlikely. Putin has spent nearly 2 decades methodically removing each and every threat, potential threat, or power source from Russia that wasn't under his power. It's certainly possible that those might turn, but it's incredibly unlikely.

Why?  How do you know that?  This feels like speculation.  I'm sure Putin has tried to surround himself with people who are genuinely loyal, rather than mere opportunists, but I'm skeptical he has been nearly as successful as you seem to think he has. 

Quote

That's the other thing - the Russian legacy that Putin cares about is not on the world scale, it's with Russians. He doesn't give a shit that Germany doesn't like him as much; he cares that people genuinely view Russia as a major geopolitical threat, and more importantly that Russians feel like they are. Russia taking on the NATO forces and the rest of the world is 100% fine as far as a legacy goes for him; in some ways it's better. 

It's not whether others like him, it's whether people respect him and respect Russia.  Prior to this war, Russia was both feared and respected, and their military was mentioned as the second or third strongest in the world (with China).  Now, they have been revealed to be paper tigers, incapable of combined arms that the US military achieved back in Desert Storm.  Formerly friendly nations like China and India are happy to take Russian oil at a deep discount, but won't sell Russia desperately needed electronics or parts, and are openly criticizing Russian foreign policy.  Even allies like Kazakhstan are openly snubbing Putin and seeking closer ties with China and Turkey. 

A year ago, the idea that the leader of Kazakhstan would keep Putin waiting was ridiculous.  But we saw that just last month.  Any of these countries can see that Russian promises are not worth the paper they're printed on, and if they want a reliable partner, they need to look elsewhere.  Russia's position is much, much weaker than a year ago, and even if some of the Russian public can be sold lies, Putin isn't dumb enough to not have noticed.  He LOVES the little slight of making other leaders wait for him (often for hours!), and there's no way that sort of thing has gone unnoticed. 

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4 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

Medvedev gets woken up from his crypt to threaten and talk about the total war idea. 

Regardless of how stupid you think this strategy is, and how unlikely it would be to happen, you do have to think that this is very difficult to back down from. How do you go from 'Ukraine as an entity must be destroyed' to 'we took Crimea and a bit of Donetsk'?

There's a frequently-reported story that Medvedev got absolutely reamed by Putin for "giving in" too easily over Georgia and striking a deal when Russia could have gone much further and retaken the whole country, and allegedly it's that event that encouraged Putin to return to power when he'd been genuinely considering retiring for good (as BS as that sounds). Since then, Medvedev has turned into psycho-tabloid-spouting nutter cheerleader 101 as overcompensation. This year alone he's advocated for Russia to declare war on France, attacking Britain and America and probably the Moon for the sheer hell of it. He even said Russia was going to establish a sphere of influence extending from "Lisbon to Vladivostok." His job, in as much as it seems to be one, seems to be advocating some insane, crazy policy to make even Putin seem sane in response.

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6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Why?  How do you know that?  This feels like speculation.  I'm sure Putin has tried to surround himself with people who are genuinely loyal, rather than mere opportunists, but I'm skeptical he has been nearly as successful as you seem to think he has. 

I think that's the case because Putin made that his entire career before he took power and afterwards. That is literally what he trained others to do. I don't think he cares if they're genuinely loyal or opportunists; what he understands and they understand is how they will have less power without him than with him. 

Putin is clearly paranoid to a very large degree and is taking sometimes comical steps to protect his life, but it seems very unlikely to expect someone else to be able to organize a plot against Putin without Putin finding out and taking steps against it. In that way he's very reminiscent of Stalin - no one trusts anyone else, everyone snitches on everyone else, and Putin has resources everywhere. 

The best bet, IMO, is either a lone wolf who genuinely does not care about their life and only cares of Putin's death, or someone acting out of emotion. The former have been weeded out of Russian power for decades now precisely for that reason; the only loyalty and love Putin wants is for him. The latter though is possible, but unlikely. 

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

It's not whether others like him, it's whether people respect him and respect Russia.  Prior to this war, Russia was both feared and respected, and their military was mentioned as the second or third strongest in the world (with China).  Now, they have been revealed to be paper tigers, incapable of combined arms that the US military achieved back in Desert Storm.  Formerly friendly nations like China and India are happy to take Russian oil at a deep discount, but won't sell Russia desperately needed electronics or parts, and are openly criticizing Russian foreign policy.  Even allies like Kazakhstan are openly snubbing Putin and seeking closer ties with China and Turkey. 

A year ago, the idea that the leader of Kazakhstan would keep Putin waiting was ridiculous.  But we saw that just last month.  Any of these countries can see that Russian promises are not worth the paper they're printed on, and if they want a reliable partner, they need to look elsewhere.  Russia's position is much, much weaker than a year ago, and even if some of the Russian public can be sold lies, Putin isn't dumb enough to not have noticed.  He LOVES the little slight of making other leaders wait for him (often for hours!), and there's no way that sort of thing has gone unnoticed. 

And I'm sure this bothers him, but it's not the most important thing; the most important thing is Russia's standing in Russia. And that, at least so far, has been pretty great. Also, again, the idea of Russians with their backs to the wall against the West/Nazis/whatever is a very strong idea in Russia and is in some ways better than having more worldwide presence because that external threat unites Russia and allows them to justify hard times better. 

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This is also really interesting - Russia had been planning the strategic attack for weeks, Ukraine knew about it and prepared civil engineers for it, and the attack had actually been delayed and was not directly associated with the Kerch bridge attack:

 

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1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

de-de-monetised sounds so wrong. Why not simply re-monetised? 

That's the point.

Re-monetised sounds so right and reasonable that it is wrong to describe Youtube's complete mess of things in that way. De-de-monetised is the correct framing of what I think about the whole thing. Sometimes the wrong way to say things is the right way.

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19 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's the point.

Re-monetised sounds so right and reasonable that it is wrong to describe Youtube's complete mess of things in that way. De-de-monetised is the correct framing of what I think about the whole thing. Sometimes the wrong way to say things is the right way.

A goverment employee suggesting the use of newspeak to frame an issue. Nothing to see here move along. :P

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50 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

I think that's the case because Putin made that his entire career before he took power and afterwards. That is literally what he trained others to do. I don't think he cares if they're genuinely loyal or opportunists; what he understands and they understand is how they will have less power without him than with him. 

Putin is clearly paranoid to a very large degree and is taking sometimes comical steps to protect his life, but it seems very unlikely to expect someone else to be able to organize a plot against Putin without Putin finding out and taking steps against it. In that way he's very reminiscent of Stalin - no one trusts anyone else, everyone snitches on everyone else, and Putin has resources everywhere. 

It's worth noting that Russia does not have - and cannot remotely afford - the same internal mechanisms of monitoring and repression as the Soviet Union. The mechanisms for internal monitoring and control certainly exist and are to be concerned about, but they are not as all-consuming as the KGB arranged within the USSR. Apparently informants aren't very well paid in modern Russia, and most people will now ignore someone saying something "subversive" rather than report it, usually because they don't want to attract any attention to themselves. The internet, modern CCTV etc does make some monitoring very cost-effective compared to the manpower-intensive days of the USSR, but it's still not on the same level.

That said, everyone in the public sphere, certainly businessmen and associates etc do have some degree of monitoring going on, and know it.

It is worth noting we are seeing much, much more widespread criticism of the regime than we have seen in the past, in public, on television and on Telegram. So far there's not much criticism targeted expressly at Putin individually, but at his senior right-hand men and his trusted comrades from way back in the day, which is still a very bad idea. I think we're some way from this exploding into outright rebellion or wider discontent, but the level of discontent currently on display is remarkably higher than in February.

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