TheVulture

What's interesting to me is how much both strategies are designed to subvert the supports that maintain US hegemony and how badly they perform at it:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-views-of-china-reach-historic-highs-in-many-countries/
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/22/ratings-for-russia-drop-to-record-lows/
The danger for both Russia and China...that's fast becoming the reality...is that they don't provide a model that is more attractive than the US/EU because their aims are simply to install a cruder, more restrictive hegemony for themselves.  Therefore, their interactions with likeminded nations don't turn into countervailing coalitions but simply accommodations based on mutual and typically short term interest. You can see that, not all surprisingly, mostly clearly in their relations with each other.
Perforce, they must act like insurgents on the state scale. They act as spoilers, subvert the order of things, put grit in the machinery and try to inhabit (in China's case) parts of the global economy that allow them to exert control. But this has limits. Western oriented states have resilient systems, they are easy to influence but generally hard to subvert outright. And all the while, the clock ticks for China and Russia given the profound demographic problems they face.
I get your take and in many ways I'm sympathetic to it. But over all, I think the historical record comes down pretty heavily on the side of the socially and economically dynamic nations over the episodic pulses of authoritarian states.
 

While the instruction to 'Russian warship' caught the hearts and emotions of the world, I do think "I need ammunition, not a ride" may be the defining statement of this entire war.
It hit the heart, it hit the head, it showed self-sacrifice, it demonstrated belief and it made it very very clear that Ukraine weren't going to roll over and surrender.

Agreed. His strength is in pulling together stuff from around the world to create a coherent political overview.  And he's pretty good in that realm.  But not on military stuff: he's been consistently wrong on the Ukraine war,  although not as badly as mainstream media. And he does occasionally have nuggets on information that you won't find mentioned elsewhere. 
I'm also curious about the claimed reserves training out in the East.  It's said like it's an established fact, but not one I've seen anywhere else. 

Agreed. His strength is in pulling together stuff from around the world to create a coherent political overview.  And he's pretty good in that realm.  But not on military stuff: he's been consistently wrong on the Ukraine war,  although not as badly as mainstream media. And he does occasionally have nuggets on information that you won't find mentioned elsewhere. 
I'm also curious about the claimed reserves training out in the East.  It's said like it's an established fact, but not one I've seen anywhere else. 

Ok so this is better how?  Are you telling me they picked up on the UA planning a Kharkiv offensive weeks ahead of time...and did sweet FA to stop it?!  Aaand we are back to broken operational military system.  Look I am sure these RU Nat volunteers are true believers and really cagey tough guys; however, if they have been part of this debacle then I am a little less than concerned about them walking out of a phonebooth and becoming a super army.
If they can surprise...they had better start doing it.  If this clown show picks a fight with the EU, it will escalate to NATO and frankly from what I have seen we could cut thru what is left of the RA - RU Nat volunteers included like **** through a short goose in a long weekend.
The references you are making are making it look worse for them.  They saw but were unable to do anything about the UA taking back what is now being reported 6000 sq kms, in a week.  I don't care if these guys are each super-soldiers who can do one handed chin-ups with no hands - their operational level ISR, C2 and logistics suck well beyond repair in the timeframes of this war.  They are going to be living proof that dedication and belief comes second to hot steel in the right place and right time.
And what if they are really in league with the mole people and conduct a sub-terrainian flanking?!  Like I said these a$$hats are well positioned to pull of a nasty insurgency/guerilla war in the LNR-DPR - maybe, if local support holds.  Beyond that they are living in fragmented...and getting more fragmented by the day, military organization.  What is likely to stop the UA at this point...is the UA.  They are going to need to re-set logistical lines and consolidate but so far from what I have seen the RA is not part of this equation.
In reality these clowns have the making of a VEO network that will go underground and make everyone miserable once this thing is over.  Good thing we have about 20 years worth of experience hunting humans in this context.
I gotta be honest, I am really tired of the freakin "boogy man of the week" right now.  We are jumping out of our seats because everything is really dangerous and really scary:
- The Russian Army with all that hardware
- The Black Sea Fleet & the Russian Air Force
- Spetznaz and Wagner clowns
- Russian cruise and hypersonic missiles
- Russian cyber Pearl Harbour 
- Some General Jack-in-the-Box who was a jerk in Syria.
- Russians parked around a nuclear power plant.
- Nukes!!
- the Russian 3rd Corp
- Russian mobilization!! - the other hand coming out.
- Russian escalation dominance.
- RU Nats - whoever the hell they really are
- Ukraine is going to fall
- Ukraine is going to hold on but the war will still be on when my grandkids graduate from college
- Ukraine can't possible take in all this kit and hold on.
- Ukraine can defend but could never pull off an attack
I have to be missing something.  Every week in this war we find something be be scared of, and it has all turned out to be complete and utter BS.  How about we look at the situation, as it unfolded for what it is - a historic military debacle that is likely to break the current Russian regime.  It was doomed from the start, and has only gotten worse.  Sure things could still swing and will likely get uglier but the RA in Ukraine is in death throws - it is keeling over to die, not coiling like a steel spring.  All war is negotiation and right now the Russians are negotiation just how ugly this loss is going to be.
Unless these RU Nats come with an entirely revitalized equipment fleet and logistics backbone to support it, a competitive integrated ISR system, and a completely new military doctrine...you will excuse me if I am not worried.   
 
 

You are right in general but in specific details it is not as clear cut as you stated.
RU lost. RU lost even before the war started Despite this fact the war in Ukraine is still going on and it might turn to the worst As i said - we (me included) consistently underestimate RU Nat capability to prolong and male bloody any conflict they are involved in  Let me give you an example of how you underestimated RU ISR capabilities
What if I tell you RU Nats saw it weeks before it started?
Here is an example from 31-Aug 8 AM
This is from 30-Aug. Note Balaklya. 
But actually, they noticed UKR preparations in Kharkiv direction at least one month before the offensive started: 
22-Jul
7-Aug
Balaklya and Sukhi Yar are on the roads from Chuhuev to Izum. He basically described UKR offensive intent. 
You are telling me how bad RU ISR is while I was looking for a weeks at RU Nat writing - UKR are concentrating forces at Kharkiv direction for offensive most likely aimed at Izum. 
What if tomorrow RU Nats blow up Nuclear station. What if tomorrow you will have to fight them? What your estimations will be? That their ISR is crap? And what if it is not? What if they have a lot of civilian eyes looking at your every move? What's if they have Telegram based network of volunteer agents all over Ukraine? What if it is incompetence of RU MOD that mask their true HUMINT capabilities? 
Do not underestimate RU Nat ability to take lives of our boys if RU crap hits EU fan.  I cannot be there with boys but at least I try to warn you and others here not to dismiss RU Nat volunteers. It is their turf as well. They can and will surprise you.  

no actually not.  As divisive as things are here any mention of either side here is heading into US politics.  How about "Russian soldiers are about as disciplined as a herd of cats".  or sumfink
 
^edit That is probably unfair to cats but you get the idea.

You can cut that right out. This isn't a US political thread. 

This does not really track.  Sure, there is an element of Russian erosion, and it plays well to the conspiracy crowd; however, the risks are simply too high.  We are a couple mistakes away from WWIII right now.  It is not likely, so long as we are being rational but human error is a real thing right along with irrational.  Everyday this war drags on is another high-risk dice roll and all those in power in the West know it - this is why the fear-narrative is "this war will never end". 
Then there is the collapsed Russia problem.  We have bounced this one around a lot here but I have yet to hear one coherent theory as to what we are going to do about a collapsed Russia and its 6000 nuclear weapons.  We have "who cares, let em burn", which is insane because 6000 f#cking loose nuclear weapons.  And we have "it will be ok, it was in the 90s"...talk about hope as the option. Conditions in the 90s were pretty different.  I have also heard "the nukes will be controlled based on where they are stored now"...thing about collapse, it makes "safe" anything really hard.  Non-state actors get involved, rogue new semi-states etc, all with a possibility of being armed like a superpower...sure that sounds fun.
No, the best case is a rough but stable transition to a new set of a$$holes in charge we can at least count on not to invade anyone for a few decades, keep a grip on the nukes and the country, and then we risk manage the rest...and we are back to hope.  We spend trillions on defence and the Ukraine - making it a nasty well armed member of the western club, the one we threaten Russia with for a century.  All the while we try and manage whatever the Chinese are doing as we re-write the global order.
None of that works well for a very long drawn out war with a fragile former-super power, no the west wants a short one that stops those damned dice from rolling every morning.
That line plays very well in military circles...right up to the strategic line.  Then when one starts to mingle with political reality you quickly learning that hope is very often the only plan, and everyone works very hard for the best-hope scenario.  The reason is that once you begin to encounter factors that are completely out of your control, the best one can do is build the best hope one can.  For example, Canadian security is entirely built on hope - we hope the US will protect us, and remain the biggest guy in the room.  We have no plan to for this, there can't be one as we cannot control the US, at best we can try to influence.  However, that influence is also hopeful as we cannot guarantee it in any way shape or form.
With respect to Russia, we are very much at the hope stage.  We are pouring support into Ukraine, hoping they will win.  We are putting as much pressure on Russia as we can, hoping it will induce change.  Russian regime change/political change, that is the biggest hope-campaign of them all.  Considering that the Russian people will have to decide the outcome, trying to build a plan for that is not a plan, it is a hallucination.  We can try to influence (there is that word again) and some of that influence can be quite direct. But we cannot make a plan for it, or at least one that will work with any accuracy.
I always go with: X+Y=Z, solve for X.  That is the strategic political problem.  You can't solve for it.  All you can pull from this is what you know - the relationships between X,Y, and Z.  So that when Y and Z eventually pull out of the fog, we can finally see what X is - if you aren't doing that, and it is incredibly hard, you are at X,Y,Z, solve for X.

Well first off I am very wary of western analysts declaring anything "settled" in this war considering how much they got wrong in the first place.  By their metrics of tank-power Ukraine should be a puppet state of Russian by last Apr.
So I am curious as to how the tanks have been essential or have been employed.  For example, "15 tanks did the break in battle at Balakliya", that is a single Company, so what/how were they integrated into a break in battle that was kms wide?
It is not so much that the "tank is dead", it looks more like its role is evolving.  Nothing we have seen in this war looks like it was supposed to wrt mech and armoured warfare - so here we have a successful breakout battle and I am still not sure how it was integrated into it.  And then there is "what the hell happened with RA armor?", but by this point I doubt the Russian can keep theirs in gas, let alone in combat.
And then we have this Light Infantry/SOF breakout, unless some of these maps have been wrong.  We wont answer it here but the most dangerous thing we can do with this entire experience is validate pre-existing biases and promptly ignore all the other weird signals.  Especially when the validations might be the weird signals, not the main.

Nothing wrong with "cohered" - it's a perfectly good word and used correctly.  But used rarely enough that a fair number of native English speakers don't know it. So Cederic is complementing you for being a Ukrainian who knows more  English words than he does. 

@sburke
Sorry, but I have to wade into this, because you guys are getting into 'crazy' territory.
For the record, I'm fully opposed to Erdoğan and all his oppressive policies, including the ones against Kurds. I also recognize that the secularists governments that preceded Erdoğan's Islamists also led oppressive policies against Turkey's Kurds, and I would like Turkey to apologize to its Kurdish citizens for the policies of the military junta of 1980, in particular.
That being said:
Turkey has had two Kurdish presidents.
The head of the current secularist opposition - whom I vote for - is a Kurd.
Moreover, all Turkish Kurds - unlike Syrian Kurds and Palestinians in Israel - have Turkish citizenship.
Can you please direct me to any Palestinian president of Israel, or a Palestinian leader of the Knesset?

I have spent just over a week in Medyka  and in the Ukraine, with an Aid Agency, been back a few weeks now. Besides the crossing being busy, but well organised id say, where we went to deliver aid/pick up refugees, the one soldier i spoke to, was adamant that they would beat the Russians. Not casual bravado, but a real chest beater.  The area we were in had been liberated by the Ukraine Army. If i was a scrap dealer id be heading south   Saw a lot of damage, shot down Russian plane, came under Russian shell fire (2-300 metres away) still felt like the countryside was still in 1941 with a homage in places to 2022.

Another very good Perun video,  this time on what Finland and Sweden joining NATO would mean.  Also contains a description of Finland as "basically a giant bomb shelter".
 
 

right after Steve gives us bridging equipment.  

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

See, that's what the problem is with Germany's perceived position. You have every right to declare not doing anything or to squabble internally and in effect also do not do nothing. What Germany is not entitled to though is to demand that it's position is accepted and understood by the others ( including Ukraine). It isn't, it makes Germany look weak, indecisive, for sure not a political leader for anybody east of the Oder. It will be pointed out repeatedly by all interested parties, the price for doing what Germany does is losing face. The same of course goes for France, who also somehow expected to be a political leader of the EU and proves that it can't be expected to assume this role.

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine:
 
 

Some good sense from the Advisor to the Office of President of Ukraine: