Nicdain

I imagine that currently our "friends" at the Internet research agency are being instructed by their masters to make this incident one of their priority talking points, because they know it has the potential to create division between Ukraine and its supporters.
Anyone who falls for this nonsense should just be reminded that if it was not for Russia's illegal unjustified war of aggression, no missiles would be falling in Poland or Ukraine for that matter.

Well guys, at last I got this!  Symbolically in the day of Kherson liberation ) 
Thank you @Kinophile for this initiative and enough "family diplomacy" in resolving of sudden obstacle on "last mile" 😀
Thank you @Battlefront.com - Steve, your "bribe" ) will be worked out ))))
Thank you all, who donated anonymously
Thank you, all other, who just have been reading and support our country - first two months were some nervous and psychologically hard, so this my 24/7 "marathone" here was giving me some emotional relief. 
 

Being just a lurker most of the time since February, I would like to add to the cheers for the liberation of Kherson by the UA. This is a great day!
Although the RA seems to have managed to complete a decent retreat on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, it is still a retreat;  it is evident to anyone that they have lost the only big ukrainian city conquered so far. 
This cannot go unnoticed among Russian military and citizens. Will Putin be able to keep control of the situation?
 

Being just a lurker most of the time since February, I would like to add to the cheers for the liberation of Kherson by the UA. This is a great day!
Although the RA seems to have managed to complete a decent retreat on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, it is still a retreat;  it is evident to anyone that they have lost the only big ukrainian city conquered so far. 
This cannot go unnoticed among Russian military and citizens. Will Putin be able to keep control of the situation?
 

Being just a lurker most of the time since February, I would like to add to the cheers for the liberation of Kherson by the UA. This is a great day!
Although the RA seems to have managed to complete a decent retreat on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, it is still a retreat;  it is evident to anyone that they have lost the only big ukrainian city conquered so far. 
This cannot go unnoticed among Russian military and citizens. Will Putin be able to keep control of the situation?
 

As usual for History :
 

Amazed nobody has found these yet.....
 
 
 

LOL no apology needed. There lots of types of cats. My brother's family cat is a lot like a dog - comes to meet you at the door and expects belly rubs. My avatar is all about cats and their love affair with boxes and acting like royalty. There are cats that do indeed seem to be plotting ways to kill you at all times.
Putin is like the latter type of cat.

Hi, all.  This is my first post on any forum thread for many years but I'd like to say I have been reading this one avidly since the start of the war and I very much appreciate the balance you have struck between as-it-happens commentary, critical analysis and (often extremely well) educated opinion.  I agree with those before me who've noted that there doesn't seem to be a comparable resource anywhere else online.
While I'm loathe to clutter the thread with idle speculation (I admit I occasionally find myself having to skim-read a few pages whenever someone revives the 'nuclear question') I thought this might be as good a place as any to ask a question that's been niggling away at me for a few weeks now.  Apologies in advance since I'm pretty sure I'm going to find myself tumbling down the reverse slope of Mount Stupid as a result of this post...  Still, here goes:
Is there a chance that Putin is now trying to get NATO into this war?
If Russia can probably-but-definitely-not blow up some gas lines; sabotage the odd power-supply cable to a NATO member; unleash a low-level cyber attack on a few airports and continually attack Ukrainian civilian targets can they goad NATO into an overt conventional confrontation that gives Putin the excuse he needs to withdraw from Ukraine?  Can he then claim that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine by insidious NATO, who then sprang the trap, stabbing Russia's mighty armed forces in the back?  Maybe that allows Russians to swerve the cognitive dissonance caused by a defeat to Ukraine and instead spit at the treachery employed by the Anglo-Saxon-dominated West to subdue mighty Russia?  Most importantly, maybe all that keeps Putin in power?
It has to be sold as purely NATO's plan to get involved, so provocations have to be relatively subtle and ideally plausibly-deniable.  It will lead to Russia's total military defeat but that's basically already the case, if not now then imminently so. 
I also think it could be well worth NATO refusing to grant Putin such an excuse, even if it means this war lasting longer than otherwise necessary (I hate myself for writing it, don't worry).  Our goal is to drive a long-term cultural change in Russia and for that reason we have to deny them the ability to cry foul and to resolve to try again or even to get 'revenge' in future.  In my opinion it was the denial of such plausible counter-narratives to 1940s Germany and Japan which carried a lot of weight in the post-war period.  The aggressors have to think, nay know that they tried violence, they threw everything at it and, in a square fight, they failed.
I have half a dozen other directions from which to come at this and I really don't like the way it potentially 'justifies' NATO inaction but this post is already long enough and I'm interested in what you good people think.

bd7378475759726a850ff3495985bd05.mp4    

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-the-war-in-ukraine-might-end
I just read this excellent article that billindc recommended, everyone else should read it too.

I must admit in that respect I could have been an American. 

Democracy. The will of the people. Elections. Ring a bell, dude?

Ok, so let's try and have an actual conversation about all this.  Why not?  It is "forbidden discussions" week on the thread while we wait for the UA to reload.
First, lets put the emotion to one side for a moment - we saw how well that worked last time - and try to arrive at common ground.  I am not going to comment on forum policy or poor BFCElvis' endless and thankless work in trying to keep this place from become another internet cesspool - if you have a problem with forum policy, or felt you have been wronged in some way, take it up with him and BFC.
So what to do about Russia?  Russians everywhere?  They started a land war in Europe and they are supporting it, to some extent, for 6 months while their military is, in part, committing what is pretty much confirmed as systemic war crimes.
So how will justice be served in the prosecution of this war?  How will the offenders be made to pay so that it serves as an example to those that would re-offend?
Legally.  
The whole point of this war, and one of the big reasons why we care so much is that this is not just an unjustified invasion of Ukraine, it is an attack on the entire rules based international order.  In 1949, we all sat down, even Russia within the USSR, and said that this sort of action was illegal.  Its premise and definitely in its prosecution, by Russia, have been illegal within international law and the Law of Armed Conflict.  Russia's position, beyond some very weak tea technical arguments - SMO, has been - "ya, so what are you going to do about it...we are Russia and have nukes?"
That will not stand.  It cannot stand.  It threatens the entire scheme at its heart.  That scheme, btw, pays for our lifestyles and guarantors the stability and security we need to thrive, get richer and fatter, and have the freedom to yell at each other over all sorts of stuff.
So how will we put Russia back in the box?  Well first steps are to ensure it gets the spanking it so much deserves on the battlefield.  The next step, and it is very important, is to prosecute those responsible in Russia for this atrocity, within the frameworks of the law.
"Oh but the law is so "woke", we need to get medieval here to send a real message!"
1.  Shh, grown ups talking.
2.  If we step outside the legal framework, the one we built, we will break it ourselves, which in many ways is worse.
Don't believe me, well we have a convenient historical example - Iraq 2003. 
And before anyone freaks out, let me start by saying that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not anywhere near what is happening in Ukraine.  The legal justification for that war was "thin" but it adhered to the rules far closer than what we are seeing today.  It was unsanctioned by UN, the evidence for the whole thing turned out to be incorrect; however, the US made a case for self-defence against a known international offender, one who had not only invaded another country but also threatened "the great Satan" repeatedly.  Further the US prosecuted that war under the LOAC.
However the repurcutions of that action, one the edge of legality in some places are still being felt today.  In Putin's last speech he references "terror/terrorism" 5 times as as a justification for this war.  The lesson here is that if we fracture to system of order, very bad things start to happen.
So we will hold Russia accountable.  We will demand reparations for lifting sanctions.  We will demand the turning over of war criminals for prosecution.  We will employ national security mechanisms to find and arrest anyone who supported Russia's war outside of the laws of whatever country they are in.  And we will do so within the defined limitations of the law.
Anything beyond that is a revenge fantasy that serves no real purpose in discussing this war.  Now are we able to continue on in peace and harmony?

Exactly.
 

All war is negotiation and sacrifice - all war is negotiation with sacrifice.
So Putin dropped the 'mobilization' boogey man, kinda.  And of course threatened nuclear war without saying it...oh my.
Well I think Phase 2-3 of this war were positioning for endgame - Russia's point "Imma gonna take the Donbas, cause that was what I wanted all along...well that plus Kherson and everything I did not lose in Phase I".  And Ukraine's counter-point "No you are not."  This could have gone on for some time longer but clearly things are coming to a head in Moscow.
So I think this is endgame.  What does a soft-mobilization/slightly-louder-threat-of-nuclear-war-based-on-bizarro -annexation-internal-legalities-that-no-one-else-is-going-to-recognize-for-a-century, really tell us?
- Well first it tells us that Russia is desperate. Putin and the gang are opening themselves up to significant political exposure here.  You average Russian may, or may not, have actually supported this war but they all had the luxury of staying out of it - changing that is a major shift.  We are already hearing rumblings in opposition, who knows how far that will go; however, we do know that Putin would not have pulled on this lever if Russia was winning.  This is a pretty clear sign of losses and the impact it is having on his war machine.
- Next, this is not an escalation, it is desperation.  This is an attempt to preserve military capability in the field and re-assert a status quo, not raise enough forces to re-take Kyiv.  In short, whatever the UA is doing, it is working very well.
- Russia is clearly on the defensive, and likely will stay there until this is over.  Throwing 300,000 conscripts in any variation is not going to create offensive military capability - unable to create positive decision, so at best negative and null (i.e. denial).  This signals a shift into a strategy of exhaustion, annihilation for the Russians has left the building.  This puts Russia a couple rungs above an insurgency as far as military strategy goes.  They are going to try and dig in an hold on to what they have until the other side gets tired.
-  We could be heading towards a nuclear decision point.  The battlefield use of nuclear weapons has always been a grey area in warfare.  It is an escalation but the West and USSR went around and around on whether one could have a limited nuclear war.  I suspect that Putin might be thinking about testing the norms around this by declaring all the territory they have taken as "mother Russia" - we freakin knew that Russian doctrine and law were useless to refer to because autocrats just move the goalposts.  So I suspect the redline is the Crimea, and maybe somewhere in the LNR/DPR.  If the UA push that far, we might actually see Putin try to go that way - I say "try" because he 1) might already be removed from power by then, or 2) someone will put a bullet in his dome before they drag Russia into a doomsday scenario.  If one does go off well it won't be the end of days, tactical nuclear weapons can effect a couple grid squares and were designed for heavy armor concentrations at Fulda - this war is far to spread out.  We will likely lose our minds in the West and the response will be key to what happens next. I suspect conventional escalation or other options to send a strong signal to Russia that they will be the first country in history to lose a strategic nuclear war.  Regardless, if Russia employs a nuclear weapon, we are off the map, beyond the Cuban Missile crisis; however, I also still think this actually happening is a long shot.  For those in Europe and NA, I would not start getting too excited until strange looking Patriot systems start being deployed around major urban areas and/or in the Canadian north.
  So the biggest question on the table is - "what does endgame look like?"  This is in the weird political space as militarily Ukraine has demonstrated that given time they can likely retake everything back to the pre-2014 border - the question is do they want to?  Do they need to?  Putting emotions to one side - I suspect the West will be putting a lot of incentives for Ukraine to push to 2014 borders and then stop.  Why?  Well some possible reasons:
- DNR and LNR are burned out wrecks with large sections of the population that clearly do not want to be Ukrainian, so let em go.  Ukraine gains nothing but a couple Northern Ireland scenarios if they re-occupy, that and a massive reconstruction bill.  Walk away and wish them luck with their sugar daddy.
- Crimea.  Here we could see "neutral and open" tossed around a lot more.  Without Sevastopol Russia is pretty much cut out of the Black Sea, and if they are out of the Black Sea they are out of the Med.  If Russia is going to go nuclear, it will be over Crimea...and to this guy over in NA, it is not worth it.
- Ok, so that is the unthinkable "bad", what is the carrot?  Fast tracked entry in NATO - this entire bullsh#t goes away if Ukraine has Article 5 to lean on, because that is simply too big to fail for the West.  Hell Ukraine is already armed better than most NATO nations, with NATO STANAG equipment.  Their training is US/UK standard and I have no doubt we have already built most of their ISR infrastructure.  Ukraine in NATO next week is a clear win for the west. 
Next, entry into the EU.  Bureaucratic nightmare that it is, this would cement Ukraine into Europe economically and set them up for post-war success.
Last, a reconstruction plan to rival Marshal.  The West commits hundreds of billions to turn Ukraine into a shining example of what our money can do as a counter-point to China's game these last 15 years or so.
As to Russia?  Well it made its bed. Sanctions stay in place until 1) reparation deal is cut and in motion, 2) war crimes of all sorts are investigated and prosecuted and 3) Putin regime is gone enough that we can pretend whoever replaces it is clean...or clean enough. If Russia refuses any of the above, well enjoy being a Chinese satellite with a Cold War Soviet standard of living and we will see you again in 30 years - we will risk manage Russia, we are good at that in the West.
So What War?  Well UA will likely focus on taking bights out of Donbas just to ensure 300,000 Russian conscripts don't feel left out.  They will re-take Kherson and push south over the Dnipro up to the Crimean border.  And Melitopol, cut that stupid land bridge and box the Russians and their cronies back to where they were before this nonsense started.
Anyway, crazy days and keep your head up because it might get crazier.
 

Years ago, the prime minister visited a mining town where I was employed at the time and enjoyed a BBQ. He said my name is Bob and cooked his own sausages. Wearing T-Shirt shorts and flip flops like the rest of us. 

babushkas party on
 
 

Just like in Lord of the Rings, how they filmed Gandalf and Bilbo with these forced perspective tricks. 😅

Thanks ) Just became some more of work, my wife turned back and often occupies PC because her work, also it's hard to live three months 24/7 as war news translator, so I took small vacations 

Having heard on the BBC (who just this morning got around to the famous bridging fiasco as breaking news) about how Russia is threatening to encircle Sievierodonetsk, I decided to summarise how the Russian 'threatening to encircle' reports have changed over the war so far:

What it’s like being a Chinese reporter covering the sports competition in Ukraine:
 

Hi all, I am a new account on this forum, but I have been reading this thread every day for the past couple months after getting referred to it from elsewhere. This thread, the daily ISW reports and Perun's videos are my primary sources for keeping track of what's going on in this war and why. Thank you everyone for the great contributions.
My account took a couple days to get approved, so this comment is out-of-date relative to the comment I wanted to respond to, but there have been several times the topic of China came up so I thought it would be worth posting anyway. I hope it's still interesting to someone. If not, please scroll past, I don't want to distract too much from the excellent analysis you all are sharing.
This is an area where I have a personal interest and some first-hand experience, having lived in China for several years.
I don't think it is very helpful to describe China (or any authoritarian country) as merely left wing or right wing, in particular when that statement comes from partisans in a democratic country. All too often there is a cynical incentive to try to associate the policies of the authoritarian regime with opposing political factions in the democratic system. I think it's better to assess the policies on their own.
Xi has overseen several socially conservative policies - for example broadcast restrictions on media featuring tattoos, piercings, effeminate men, same-sex relations and so on. But this is only part of a larger scale censorship effort that has also seen arrests of local citizen reporters and foreign media not only blocked at the Great Firewall but also pushed out of reporting from inside the country at all. He also spearheaded a popular anti-corruption campaign that coincidentally targeted all the senior party officials that might stand against him. And, of course, he removed term limits and will likely get a third term in the upcoming national congress. These are suspiciously autocratic moves, which is worrying in a country that since Deng has at least made a pretense of winding back the power of figureheads and trying to build more of a loyalty to the party as an abstract entity.
Xi has also allowed a populist rise of nationalism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, and he has put a strong emphasis on increasing national security and modernizing the military. One aspect of this was a revision to the national defense law that expanded the justifications for military actions, and placed more power into a military commission headed up by Xi.
On the other hand, in the past few years the party has also strengthened government controls over business. Notably it halted the IPO of Ant Financial, often portrayed overseas as a punishment for Jack Ma (co-founder of Alibaba) commenting on excessive regulation, but more likely just because the party wasn't happy that some of these tech giants are a threat to its power. Since then it has also been using anti-monopoly guidelines and other means to regulate major players in industries such as finance, tech and education. It's also hit several high-profile individuals for tax evasion, and for a brief period the official messaging seemed to be that speculation on real estate and the pursuit of excessive wealth was inappropriate, although that seems to have been tempered somewhat due to the COVID-related economic slowdown.
But a key point running through all of these policies is this: 党政军民学，东西南北中，党是领导一切的 - government, military, society and education - east, west, south, north and center - the party leads everything. And who leads the party? Recently the phrase "with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core" has become more common in the state media. This political structure isn't comparable to democratic countries where there is no singular authority and it's normal to have spirited and open debates on the issues.
I think the main thing to take away from Chinese politics under Xi is not to figure out if he represents a version of the left or the right in a democratic country, but to understand that his primary motivation is to ensure that the party retains control over every aspect of society. All policies are designed with that goal in mind. In my opinion Xi does have generally nationalist and socially conservative views, but I think he is also mindful that wealth inequality can lead to unrest and the downfall of the party, and that would be the ultimate sin.
TLDR: what Steve said
On how this affects the war in Ukraine - both the state media apparatus and the prevailing chatter on social media (which is ultimately shaped by what the state chooses not to censor) is solidly in the camp of this war somehow being a result of NATO expansion and American hegemony. I don't think there is an easy way for the party to publicly roll back its support for Putin. The issue will probably just remain in the current limbo, with the party simply claiming to remain neutral or impartial.
On what it portends for Taiwan - it's definitely useful for the party to study and learn from this war, but I don't think it will have an impact on its timeline for taking Taiwan. The party has enough problems with zero-COVID and a teetering economy right now - I don't think it is in a position to fast-track any actions. I suspect we might see some more signaling after Xi is confirmed for a third term (second half of this year) and then after the 2024 presidential election in Taiwan, which is likely to be the first where 18-20 year olds can vote (referendum on that later this year). Either way, it's interesting to see how the party has built up the mythology of Taiwan as a wayward little brother who is temporarily misguided and will someday return to the fold. That has benefits in that it creates popular support for "unification", but it might also make a full-blown invasion unpopular. Annexation is surely off the table now, after the PR disaster of Hong Kong 2019. A naval blockade is often suggested as a way to strangle the island, but that might only strengthen its people's resolve. I think if the party is to succeed in its designs on Taiwan, it will need Putin's failed "take the capital in 3 days" strategy to actually work. I would be very interested in a wargame that tackles this scenario.
Anyway, back to my lurking hole, and thanks again for the fantastic thread.