Ukraine: Breakthroughs… the vast majority of us hope…

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just now, Werthead said:

I think it's their planes they use for internal flights, mostly overseas models whose spare parts they cannot source.

They're not stupid enough to risk causing a massive crash somewhere like Delhi or Beijing and eroding more goodwill.

Even the Russia made planes use foreign made parts, tho.

Air plane manufacturing is highly specialised wrt parts. You really can't just go into the next hardware store to replace a bunch of screws. So the part shortage will also affect Russian made planes. I wouldn't board any Russian plane right now. Neither Tupolev, nor AIrbus, nor Boeing.

[Zorral]

48 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Air plane manufacturing is highly specialised wrt parts. You really can't just go into the next hardware store to replace a bunch of screws

Ya, ask my bro the (now retired) aeronautics engineer who ran the electronics lab that specialized in the parts that KEEP PLANES IN THE AIR.  At one point a supplier was off a millimeter or something with -- yes, a very small part.  The bosses said, "Why can't you just file the thing down to fit?"  My brother's blood pressure went through the roof.  It just doesn't work like that.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Even if you have something of the same size/diameter. That stuff has to withstand a lot of stress. Impurity during the production process of parts can have severe consequences. Modern planes have a lot of redudancies to keep them airborne if something fails. But putting a bunch of uncertified parts in a plane is one of those things people call disaster waiting to happen.

One of those silly parts the Russian probably struggle to get for their plane are tires.

[Maithanet]

Russia hikes their interest rate from 8.5% to 12% overnight in an attempt to shore up the weakening ruble.  That's not a great sign, and will certainly cause a lot of pain on everyone outside the oligarch class in Russia. 

[Wilbur]

Currency value destruction is incredibly insidious to those who are dependent on fixed wages or retirement benefits.  What had been a comfortable income becomes an untenable living situation as the currency value wilts, and the retired, the OAPs, the blue collar workers have to make choices between utilities or food or medical care or etc.

This is where Western sanctions may have the greatest impact, and unfortunately the blow will fall hardest on those least able to weather the storm.  Hopefully this will spur regime change, and the Ruble can recover something of its value to restore this class of Russians ability to care for themselves.

[Wilbur]

...and speaking of regime change, this analysis on Perun's channel of the possible outcomes of the war is really fascinating.

 

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

Currency value destruction is incredibly insidious to those who are dependent on fixed wages or retirement benefits.  What had been a comfortable income becomes an untenable living situation as the currency value wilts, and the retired, the OAPs, the blue collar workers have to make choices between utilities or food or medical care or etc.

This is where Western sanctions may have the greatest impact, and unfortunately the blow will fall hardest on those least able to weather the storm.  Hopefully this will spur regime change, and the Ruble can recover something of its value to restore this class of Russians ability to care for themselves.

It hits everyone in Russia that doesn't have tangible assets to sell overseas.  So basically everyone who isn't an oligarch.  If you are an upper middle class Russian, like a business owner or computer programmer, this makes paying your bills much more difficult.

Runaway inflation and the collapse of the ruble as a valuable currency were one of the biggest hallmarks of the "bad old days" in 1990s Russia.  A huge part of Putin's continuing pitch to the Russian people is that he put an end to that and if it starts coming back, that is not a good sign for his regime.  Obviously this won't happen overnight, but if inflation continues at 10+% per quarter, that is a huge problem for overall stability. 

[Werthead]

Russian sources saying there is now a permanent Ukrainian foothold on the south bank of the Dnipro. Ukrainian sources seem sceptical, suggesting that the cross-river raids may have created a "grey zone" along the bank, possibly in three areas, but a permanent Ukrainian foothold is unlikely as Russia would repeatedly attack it.

Kopani, NWW of Robotyne, and Dorozhnyanka, north of Polohy, are under heavy attack. It looks like Ukraine is grinding back a large chunk of the line between Tokmak and Polohy, which is very ambitious. Makes me wonder if the ultimate ideal objective has shifted to Berdyansk rather than Mariupol.

Edited August 15, 2023 by Werthead

[Toth]

14 hours ago, Werthead said:

Kopani, NWW of Robotyne, and Dorozhnyanka, north of Polohy, are under heavy attack. It looks like Ukraine is grinding back a large chunk of the line between Tokmak and Polohy, which is very ambitious. Makes me wonder if the ultimate ideal objective has shifted to Berdyansk rather than Mariupol.

Just saw pictures of Challengers and Marder IFVs from the front near Robotyne that appeared yesterdays. The comments are crossing fingers that this mean Ukraine is engaging with their breakthrough forces now since both vehicles had been held back until now.

[Kalbear]

Okay, this is pretty cool - mines absorb heat on hot days and cool off more slowly than the surrounding ground, meaning that with thermal imaging you can see the mines to clear:

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@[email protected]/110896706358900696

[Zorral]

As Russia Threatens Ships in the Black Sea, a Romanian Route Provides a Lifeline
A 40-mile channel, best known outside shipping circles as a magnet for bird watchers, is now a crucial route allowing Ukrainian grain to reach the sea, protected by a NATO umbrella.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/world/europe/ukraine-romania-danube-shipping.html?

Quote

 

.... The channel used to be best known outside shipping circles as a magnet for bird watchers and other nature lovers, but it now commands the attention of the United States and the European Union as a strategic choke point, crucial for the export of Ukrainian grain.

After a meeting on Friday of European and American officials in the Romanian port town of Galati, James C. O’Brien, the Biden administration’s sanctions coordinator, said the volume of Ukrainian grain exported via the Danube “will more than double.”

He did not specify a time frame. But the officials discussed measures designed to not only keep the Sulina Channel open but expand its role, including the installation of new navigation equipment so ships can use it around the clock, not just during daylight hours.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Mr. O’Brien said, Danube shipping carried 100,000 tons of Ukrainian grain per month. In the 18 months since, this has increased tenfold per month, reaching a total of more than 20 million tons.

The scene on a recent day at a beach near Sulina suggested that Russian efforts to choke off Danube delta shipping, just as it has done with traffic to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, had failed for the moment. Beyond the bathers at the beach, a swarm of ships waited at sea for a chance to enter the Sulina Channel. On Monday, more than 80 ships were waiting.

To speed traffic and relieve congestion, Romania has begun recruiting maritime pilots who know the route and its hazards from the military to supplement the roster of civilians currently guiding ships to their destinations from Sulina.

The European Commission’s top transport official, Magda Kopczynska, said in Galati on Friday that the possibility of exporting Ukrainian grain through Polish, Baltic and Adriatic ports was also being considered, but that “the Danube link has proved to be the most efficient.”

Still, for this route to work to its full potential, said Sorin Grindeanu, Romania’s transportation minister, Ukraine needs to reduce its reliance on its own river ports and start shipping more grain out of Romanian ports on the Danube. He cited Galati and Braila, ports that are close to the Ukrainian border but shielded by Romania’s NATO membership.

Mr. Grindeanu said Romania “is not trying to make money” out of Ukraine’s pain. But having invested heavily in its Danube port infrastructure — one change is a railway line at Galati that uses the same wide-gauge tracks as Ukraine — Romania is mystified that traffic to its ports by ships collecting Ukrainian grain has so far been very modest.

“We invested a lot of money in Galati,” the minister said in an interview in Bucharest. “But they don’t use it. I don’t know why they don’t use it.”

Speaking on Friday after meeting European and American officials, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said Romanian ports could see “increased volumes” of grain from his country in the future but added that this would depend on further work to improve railway lines.

A move to Romanian ports would mean that Ukraine would forfeit considerable loading fees and other revenue.

With entry to the Sulina channel so congested, Ukraine has sought to open a second route to the north by dredging the Bystroye Canal, a Ukrainian waterway connected to another branch of the Danube. But the dredged channel, Mr. Grindeanu said, is too shallow and also too hazardous because it runs through Ukrainian territory and “can be bombed at any moment.” Its use, in Romania’s view, also violates a 1948 agreement on managing traffic through the delta and protecting “the sovereign rights of Danubian states.”

Ukraine’s river ports were already playing an increasingly important role even before Black Sea waters near Ukraine became too hazardous. In the first half of this year, they shipped nearly 11 million tons of Ukrainian agricultural produce, close to the 11.5 million tons they handled in all of 2022, and drawing attention from Russia.

Efforts to keep the Danube delta open, said Constantin Ardeleanu, a Romanian historian, reprise dramas that first played out between Russia and the West nearly 200 years ago.

When the Russian Empire annexed the delta in 1829, it set up a quarantine station in Sulina and infuriated Britain and other Western nations hungry for grain produced in the region’s rich farmland by using health checks to disrupt shipping.

The disruption ended with Russia’s 1856 defeat in the Crimean War, which forced it to cede control of the delta to a consortium of European nations whose engineers dredged and straightened the Sulina Channel.

“Sulina is like a highway. It has to stay open,” said Sorin Necula, a senior manager at the Lower Danube River Authority, a Romanian state agency responsible for managing traffic in and out of the Sulina Channel.

Unlike Black Sea waters along the Ukrainian coast, the area of the sea off the coast of Romania near Sulina has so far been safe. Ships that pick up grain along the Danube mostly exit the Sulina Channel and travel to Romania’s biggest Black Sea port, Constanta, just 85 miles down the coast.

In Constanta their cargoes are transferred to bigger ships that then exit the Black Sea through the Bosporus and sail on to distant ports.

Romania’s defense ministry said in a written response to questions that Constanta “has emerged as the main alternative grain route since Moscow’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal.” To ensure it stays safe, the ministry added, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities — NATO’s so-called “eyes in the sky” are now “deployed on a 24/7 basis over Romania and its territorial waters in the Black Sea.”

For now, as the packed beaches near the port attest, there is no sign of panic in Sulina, where Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine’s Snake Island, only 25 miles away, rattled windows last year.

“Like Covid, people got used to the war,” said Ioana Tomescu, the manager of a dockside store catering to tourists interested in delta wildlife and flora.

 

 

[SpaceChampion]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Okay, this is pretty cool - mines absorb heat on hot days and cool off more slowly than the surrounding ground, meaning that with thermal imaging you can see the mines to clear:

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@[email protected]/110896706358900696

I wonder if this will begin to make mines somewhat obsolete for warfare.  Also, how well does this detection method work in winter?

[Kalbear]

Mine detection is hazardous and somewhat time consuming but is not the limiting factor - mine disposal and disarm is the slower part. So I don't see that changing much.

[Werthead]

Interesting.  Ukraine has launched an attack on Dibrova south of Kreminna. Possibly an attempt to relief pressure on the northern end of the flank where Russia remains on the offensive.

Some Russian sources claiming Ukrainian gains south of the Dnipro, west of Kozachi Laheri. That would be significant if true, and reinforce claims of a successful  Ukrainian foothold on the south bank of the river.

Heavy fighting continuing in Robotyne, but Ukrainian and some Russian sources seem firm that Urozhaine has fully fallen.

[Zorral]

Ukraine Counteroffensive Achieves Breakthrough Zelensky Desperately Needed

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-counteroffensive-achieves-breakthrough-zelensky-desperately-needed/ar-AA1fm6iT?

Quote

 

Ukraine has said that its forces have recaptured the village of Urozhaine from Russian troops, delivering an important boost to President Volodymyr Zelensky more than two months into his troops' counteroffensive.

The village in the Donetsk oblast is part of a group of small rural settlements that Ukraine has declared liberated since the push aimed at recapturing occupied territory started around June 4.

Kyiv has admitted its counteroffensive is going more slowly than expected and Urozhaine is the first village it said it had retaken since July 27 when it announced the recapture of neighbouring Staromaiorske.

"Urozhaine has been liberated," was the succinct Telegram message of Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, who added, "Our defenders are entrenched at the outskirts."

The Russian Defense Ministry, which Newsweek has emailed for comment, has not confirmed losing the settlement, but said on Telegram that its artillery and aircraft were continuing their attack on Ukrainian troops in the Urozhaine area. ....

 

 

[Zorral]

Putin deliberately developed polices to appeal to the racists, transphobes, evangelicals etc. of the US and others of the extremists in other western nations, not particularly for Russian, who didn't/don't particularily care about trans, abortion, xtianity, race, etc. -- even Ukraine.

How Wars and Revolutions Change Countries in Unexpected Ways

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-wars-and-revolutions-change-countries-in-unexpected-ways

Quote

 

One of the many interesting details in Josh Kovensky’s podcast interview with independent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar was the discussion of what often seems like Vladimir Putin’s very American culture war politics. To Americans, this can come off as almost a kind of trolling or part of some common rightist, authoritarian playbook. Zygar argued that it is, for the most part, not focused on Putin’s domestic audience. In short, Putin decided over the last decade that he needed new international allies. And those allies were less a set of particular countries — or not only that — than the right and far-right in North America and Europe. As an example, Zygar argued that Russia’s recent crackdown on trans rights had very little grounding in Russia’s domestic political dialog. It’s not that Russians are pro-trans rights. It just wasn’t something that had much salience either way. It was more something Putin was doing to deepen his bond with the global right.

Regardless of whether this perspective is accurate in all its particulars, it got me thinking about the way the Ukraine War has polarized the two countries’ global images in line with the worldwide conflict between authoritarianism and civic democracy. It’s not quite right-left. But it certainly has dimensions of that, as each country has tried to present itself to different global constituencies as embodiments of these visions of the future: civic, democratic and pluralist vs. authoritarian, traditionalist, ethno-nationalist. This isn’t new for Ukraine. A major part of Ukraine’s more-than-decade-long conflict with Russia has been about the desire of at least half the country to integrate with the economy and political culture of the European Union, the “West.”

I don’t know enough about either of these countries’ internal realities to know how much of this is real, rooted in the countries’ present realities, or having a transformative effect on each country. But wars and revolutions often do have profoundly transformative effects on countries and not simply in the obvious ways of reacting to and improvising in response to the traumas and dislocations of war. The ideological justifications for wars and revolutions often have transformative effects that far outlast the conflicts or disruptions they were devised or embraced to navigate.

There are many examples of this. One is the American Revolution itself. The rise of the modern historical profession in the late 19th century coincided with America’s rise to global power. This led many historians in the United States to search for the roots of the country’s egalitarian impulses which made it distinct not only from Great Britain but Europe more generally. So were the roots of the American Revolution in the origins of the British North American colonies themselves? This was and will likely always remain a central question in the study of the American colonies. But historical research, especially in the late 20th century, began to focus on different reality: in many ways the colonies were becoming more stratified, less equal, more British in the decades prior to the American Revolution. So whatever we make of the ideological roots of the American Revolution they seem much more like a disjuncture rather than a continuity with the colonies and the young country’s past. There’s a way of looking at American history in which the leaders of the young republic glommed on to a package of radical traditions which had a logic in the revolutionary tumult and the years of war that followed and then got embedded in the country’s national political culture in ways that were difficult to tame or control.

So is this impacting Ukrainian political culture and if so how? Is it real on the ground at all and if so how durable is it into the future? Poland is a key neighboring ally, which has been particularly militant in its support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. But the trajectory of its own political cultural has been in a more authoritarian direction. The same goes for neighboring Hungary even more, though it’s been much less clearly supportive of Ukraine during this conflict.

These are all basic questions to ask as we try to make sense of the impact of this war over time for the region and the world.

 

 

[Werthead]

The battle for Robotyne is now heating up. It looks like Russia deployed its helicopters closer to the town for fire support to engaged units, but this brought them within MANPAD range and they lost a Ka-52 before the rest retreated.

A Russian unit from Perm Krai is the latest to publicly confirm they have not been paid, and their families back home are going without food and fuel as a result. Seems to be a lot of genuine anger there.

Russia seems to be consolidating reserves and stores at Solodka Balka, and have been expanding the defensive trenches there in just the last few days. An indication that this is the next defensive strongpoint for when Robotyne falls. There are also signs that Russia is reinforcing the defensive line at Chervonohirka even further south, which is just north of Tokmak.

The T0408 motorway runs from Robotyne to Tokmak and provides a good avenue of advance, which is presumably why the Russians are going all-in on fortifying it. They do seem to be considering it likely to probable they will lose Robotyne and maybe Solodka Balka, and plan to bleed Ukraine every inch of the way so their efforts culminate before they can assault Tokmak. 

Edited August 17, 2023 by Werthead

[ThinkerX]

No money for the troops.

Army either losing or stalemated.

No food or fuel for the families of the troops.

Collapsing Ruble? (I seem to remember reading that somewhere.)

Massive corruption.

Winter a couple of months off.

Recipe for (October) revolution or attempt at such?

[Wilbur]

I am not aware of a great many historical situations where "consistently and intentionally failing to pay the troops" has resulted in positive outcomes.

[Werthead]

27 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

No money for the troops.

Army either losing or stalemated.

No food or fuel for the families of the troops.

Collapsing Ruble? (I seem to remember reading that somewhere.)

Massive corruption.

Winter a couple of months off.

Recipe for (October) revolution or attempt at such?

Money for the troops will be a massive problem, and the ruble collapsing will feed into that. However, the ruble collapsed even faster in the opening days of the war but managed to stage a comeback. That was due to short-term volatility though, whilst this appears to be a more systemic problem.

There are numerous scenarious for an internal rebellion within Russia, including Wagner Part 2, the VDV and enough people just tiring of Putin's BS. But there's also a fairly large possibility that nobody will want to stick their neck out and shit will continue to grind on.

Meanwhile, news that Klischiyivka has been liberated. That's almost due south of Bakhmut, putting Ukraine in control of an arc around the entire western part of the city. That will put the entire approaches to the city under Ukrainian fire control.

Ukraine has declared a blackout of reporting on events on the banks of the Dnipro. Russian milbloggers were claiming a Ukrainian breakthrough from the banks into the interior and heavy small arms exchanges, backed up by Ukrainian artillery. However, official Russian sources claimed a Russian victory with the entire bank cleared and several Ukrainian landing attempts repulsed in river combat (huge scepticism over that as Ukraine had been getting the upper hand in battles on the river in recent weeks). The situation there is therefore unclear.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Werthead