Ukraine Forever

[A True Kaniggit]

10 minutes ago, JGP said:

You are no true Kaniggit. That was days ago, sir. 

 

Technically you are correct. Which is the best kind of correct.

2 days. Which I suppose qualifies as days. 

Edited December 30, 2022 by A True Kaniggit

[A True Kaniggit]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

@butterweedstrover called us all mean for asking him to have an actual discussion and walked away a couple or three days back.  

I’m aware. I read through the whole thing.

I just wanted to highlight that very first post, the one I bolded. 

What brought up that in the first place?

Were we all so obviously thirsting for the blood of Russians in the last few threads?

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

@butterweedstrover called us all mean for asking him to have an actual discussion and walked away a couple or three days back.  

I'd say you're the meanest soft-spoken South Carolinian lawyer I've ever encountered, but considering my sister did her undergrad at Charleston I'm not even sure that's true.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'd say you're the meanest soft-spoken South Carolinian lawyer I've ever encountered, but considering my sister did her undergrad at Charleston I'm not even sure that's true.

CoC?

[JGP]

@A True Kaniggit

Well clearly we didn't just want the Russians to stop, we wanted them to lose.

Maybe we were twisting our mustaches a little too much, and slavering over every about turn.

Most often, I find, with people who believe such comically simplistic things about human beings in general, let them disengage out of their own cowardice. Pretty brave to come here and toss out incendiary shit like that, then whine about getting derided. Where's your commitment to the cause, tovarisch?   

Edited December 30, 2022 by JGP

[DMC]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

CoC?

Yup.  Thought it was a weird choice but she got a full ride.

[kiko]

I for one think that a further disintegration of the Russian empire is a positive outcome.
The ensuing chaos will be a bad time for everyone in the world and I'm not looking forward to more emigrations by the Russian criminal class. I'm also dreading on what will rise up once the chaos has lifted.
But the big elefant in the room is that Russia is indefeatable because of their WMDs. Regime change didn't seem to have worked for the last centuries and democracy has been rejected. So the only means to dimish them as a threat is to heavily restrict their economic power. Which  would remove their ability to project military power. I don't think sanctions are enough to achieve that, so it is up to the serfs in the subjugated provinces to improve their lot and diminsh the core empire in size and power. Currently they are sacrificed by their masters in cold calculation. How long is that acceptable for them till all other options are better than getting lead to the meat grinder?

[Heartofice]

22 minutes ago, kiko said:

I for one think that a further disintegration of the Russian empire is a positive outcome.
The ensuing chaos will be a bad time for everyone in the world and I'm not looking forward to more emigrations by the Russian criminal class. I'm also dreading on what will rise up once the chaos has lifted.
But the big elefant in the room is that Russia is indefeatable because of their WMDs. Regime change didn't seem to have worked for the last centuries and democracy has been rejected. So the only means to dimish them as a threat is to heavily restrict their economic power. Which  would remove their ability to project military power. I don't think sanctions are enough to achieve that, so it is up to the serfs in the subjugated provinces to improve their lot and diminsh the core empire in size and power. Currently they are sacrificed by their masters in cold calculation. How long is that acceptable for them till all other options are better than getting lead to the meat grinder?

I’m not sure I really understand this logic. If the Russian state collapses what do you think happens to those WMDs? I can’t think of anything good.

So far the one thing that has reduced Russia’s ability to project military power has been Russian incompetence. 
 

Honestly though I’m not sure what you think the outcome here is, especially for Russian people. 

[The hairy bear]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m not sure I really understand this logic. If the Russian state collapses what do you think happens to those WMDs? I can’t think of anything good.

A country with WMD but without significant economic strength, manpower, geostrategical sweep and international allies, is unlikely to be able to bully their neighbors effectively. They may still threaten with using the WMD, but they will have very little to build on that. In this sense, I think that having Russia losing economic might, political influence and even perhaps a few breakaway republics may be beneficial for long-term world peace and stability.

There's also the fact that Russia (or the current incarnation of the current state) ending on a worse situation thatwhen it started may end being a valuable cautionary tale for other expansionist states. It might end preventing potential aggression wars and loss of lives.

But I also understand that it's a dangerous process, and too much chaos would not be desirable at all.

[broken one]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

 If the Russian state collapses what do you think happens to those WMDs?

 

You cannot blast ICBM if you cannot upkeep whole system. The WMD's are passed to states which can handle WMDs or soon become useless / sold to terrorists to be turned into dirty bombs (which are overrated). Same thing that would have happened to Ukrainian nuclear arsenal if they had not given it away in the 90's, btw.

[kiko]

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m not sure I really understand this logic. If the Russian state collapses what do you think happens to those WMDs? I can’t think of anything good.

So far the one thing that has reduced Russia’s ability to project military power has been Russian incompetence. 
 

Honestly though I’m not sure what you think the outcome here is, especially for Russian people. 

I just think it is the least bad option for everyone involved. Sure it would be a dangerous situation. But so is the current one. And as other have completely understood: a weaker Russia holds less threat potential 

[Secretary of Eumenes]

Yo, the less players on the nuclear chessboard the better.

Also, if U.S.S.R. collapsed today Ukraine would be fools to surrender their stockpiles. That logic applies to any potential splinter-state from Russia. 

Russian internal coherence is good for the stability of the world. 

Its organization as a thuggish despotate that abuses its people is a more mutable condition.

[Loge]

Ukraine was in possession of some nukes but Russia held the keys. Ukraine didn't have the resources to maintain those nukes either, so using them as bargaining chips was the maximum they could get out of them. Russia didn't keep its part of the bargain and annexed Crimea, but nobody recognises their claim to it.

[Secretary of Eumenes]

Yes, that is the sequence of events.

And we know now that Ukraine should have used its chips for a harder play. 

6,800 civilians and 14,000 soldiers, or thereabouts, and counting prove me right. 

I say this as the person cautioning against further nuclear scatterings.

[Arakasi]

Good translation of an article going over Russian polling of support for the war which is surprisingly higher now than it was in the summer.

[Darzin]

There was never any way for Ukraine to keep those nukes. In 1990 the idea that Ukraine would need them for defense was unthinkable and if they had tried to keep them the entire international order would have turned against them and branded them a rogue state. That era was the peak of non proliferation and belief in the end of history. 

Also I don't think Russia has any chance to collapse the way the Soviet Union did. Only a few of the Russian republics are viable independent states or would even want that. A few of the periphery republics like Chechnya and Buryatia could end up declaring independence but it would be nothing like the fall of the Soviet Union where half the country left. Random Russian majority provinces  are not going to leave and have zero desire for independence. I'm not even sure if the Russian Federation has any nukes in minority majority areas because outside the Caucuses there are not that many.

[Secretary of Eumenes]

1 hour ago, Darzin said:

There was never any way for Ukraine to keep those nukes. In 1990 the idea that Ukraine would need them for defense was unthinkable and if they had tried to keep them the entire international order would have turned against them and branded them a rogue state.

I agree wholeheartedly, in 1990

[Padraig]

16 hours ago, kiko said:

I just think it is the least bad option for everyone involved. Sure it would be a dangerous situation. But so is the current one. And as other have completely understood: a weaker Russia holds less threat potential 

I think there are way too many unknowns to be sure of anything.  It is very difficult to know how this war is going to end, never mind the consequences on Russia itself (the two are obviously very linked).  Russia can still eek out a victory of sorts, although the loss of life is going to be horrific either way.

What makes Russia so dangerous isn't its military as such (since it clearly is a mess) but its willingness to throw lives away based on pride.  I certainly don't like the idea of the Russian state itself collapsing but I don't see any clear path for it currently.  Except to keep on seeing its people die.  Whatever the result, while people may argue it was the best we could expect, I don't think anyone will be saying it worked out well in the end.  There are only bad solutions, which will see further terrible losses.

[Werthead]

I'm intrigued by the Russian Volunteer Corps, a Ukrainian military formation made up of Russian soldiers fighting for Ukraine, some of whom are POWs from this very war who swapped sides. Apparently they are coordinated with friends and sympathisers at homes in increasingly-well-coordinated campaigns of infrastructure sabotage and civil disobedience. It's not very widespread, but interesting it exists at all.

For some reason Kim Jong Un appears to be in Putin's bad graces at the moment. Unclear why. Possibly North Korea has failed to deliver the missiles and weapons Russia requested.

The situation around Bakhmut appears chaotic. Russian officers stopped relocating regularly along the trench system, because it was too cold, and the Ukrainians noted this, allowed them to stay put for a few days, and then absolutely hammered them with artillery and HIMARS. Very large numbers of casualties and officers from the look of it. Some talk that the Russian positions around Bakhmut are starting to come under such heavy fire that they might have to withdraw, but honestly the lines around the town have changed hands so many times in the last few months it's unclear if that's significant or not. It also looks like there's been some friendly fire incidents around the town, possibly down to Wagner and the regular Russian army refusing to talk to one another and sometimes mistaking one another for the enemy.

Russia did manage to cause damage in Volgograd by launching a long-range cruise missile (that's quite far from Ukraine) which came down on the outskirts of the city in fragments a couple of weeks ago. No major damage or loss of life from the look of it, but another sign that Russian military maintenance is not doing very well.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Werthead

[A True Kaniggit]

19 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

Russia did manage to cause extensive damage in Volgograd by launching a long-range cruise missile (that's quite far from Ukraine) which came down on the outskirts of the city in fragments a couple of weeks ago. No major damage or loss of life from the look of it, but another sign that Russian military maintenance is not doing very well.

What?