dan/california

Important to keep in mind the role of the third leg of the dynamic. The Joker here is the odd polarity reversal from the Nixon-China-Soviet triangle, where Nixon undercut the Soviets by opening up to China. Today, we have Trump-Russia-China where Trump embraces Putin and the Russian criminal state model, while at least verbally jumping all over China in his usual mouthy manner. The former case seemed rather a brilliant coup. It favorably altered the Cold War dynamic for Team USA. If Trump returns to the Presidency, the current case seems at best ominous.

I've long suspected China is sitting on the fence trying to keep the door open for reconstruction contracts in Ukraine when the fighting stops. And possibly rearmament contracts with Russia - why give it away now when you can sell it to them later.

And lets not forget old fashion greed as well:
"China has been Russia’s key defense partner throughout this period, providing direct and
indirect support to Moscow’s military machine. By 2023—despite the threat of Western secondary
sanctions—Chinese supplies to Russia fully replaced imports from Europe, the United States,
South Korea, and Taiwan, as trade between the two countries hit a record high of $240 billion,
growing 26.3 percent from 2022. Chinese shipments to Russia jumped 46.9 percent from 2022 to
2023 and 64.2 percent from 2021 to 2023.64 Having surpassed the European Union and become
Russia’s largest trade partner, China now exports to Russia a significant share of dual-use items and
technologies, from much-needed electronics to drones.65"
From that Back in Stock pdf a few posts back.

I honestly think they want the same thing we do - Russia needs to lose by just enough.  China wants two things out of Russia - energy and a market.  Both of those are at serious risk if Russia completely falls apart. So they are propping up a partner..just enough. China could have flooded Russia with much higher end capabilities.  Loans, grants and gifts much like we have done in the West for Ukraine. But China does not want a full on proxy war with the US, but also wants a weak but pliable Russia.  To my eyes they are threading a similar needle here.  I also think China is also ticked off at this whole thing as it just made things harder.  We were apathetic and internally obsessed but this war made us look up, maybe only for a bit, but we looked up and out all the same.  So while China was quietly stacking the deck, suddenly the West is all paranoid and freaking out because there was a war that did not involve brown people someplace hot and tan.  We started to care and for a revisionist state that is never a good thing.

Ok, well really hard to tell what that really means.  Could be military socks for all we know - and don't turn a nose up at that one, good socks are a lifesaver in this business.
Regardless, we know Russia has started pulling and China has jumped in to an extent.  What we are not seeing are high end Chinese military platforms or systems on the battlefield.  I encourage anyone interested to take a look at what China is really producing - https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/List/ORIGIN_china--people-s-republic-of-d6ee02
If the high end stuff was getting shipped we would be seeing Chinese HIMARs show up in force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHL-03  That plugged into Chinese ISR support could make this war so much worse - the other side of the proxy escalation ladder.

Now let’s not suddenly forget the real reason why China has risen to power…western greed.  We exported manufacturing and every other hard/increasingly expensive job to China because they would do it for a fraction of what western workers were demanding nor was governed by pesky workplace safety regulations.  We wanted cheap everything from Tshirts to running shoes to cellphones.  We did not admit China into the WTO until 2001 and by then we were over-invested in China for our lifestyles that no one could slow that train down:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_World_Trade_Organization#:~:text=China became a member of,changes to the Chinese economy.
We had started this trend back in the 80s.  There was nothing altruistic or generous about any of this, it really was simply an extension of western benign (and sometimes not) imperial doctrine.  The Western Rules Based order was really designed to keep the West on top. China figured this out and used that system to rise to power.  They did it using Western money, not charitable intent.  China conducted a series of pretty radical economic reforms and the outsourced the industry we downloaded on them to places like Bangladesh and Vietnam.  They then reinvested in their own high tech and bolstered it with an historic industrial espionage campaign.
None of this was “western misguided liberalism gone wrong” it was straight up pursuit of profit and reinforcing our own consumer based economies.  By the time we realized the problem in the mid ‘00 it was too late.  No politician, even Trump, could simply “drop China”.  Since then we have seen attempts at a gradual uncoupling but we are still too dependent on Asian manufacturing and industry, the pandemic showed this in spades.  And now we are stuck.  We either keep funding Chinese rise to power or try and roll the clock back to 1960, which we can’t do with current standards of living and economic realities.
None of this was generous or high minded.  Anymore than British rule of India was.  It was a 20th century version of economic colonization, which like a lot of colonization came back around to bite.

We constantly hear stories of 'no body, no payment' out of Russia. Official stats of Russian loss counts would likely be grossly underrepresented, especially from those penal battalions. I don't think Russia would have staggered and fled back across to Dnieper if they had only sustained the losses presented in current estimates. 50,000 confirmed Russia dead would translate to what, a 3-to-5 exchange ratio?  

This government has a track record of saying big numbers on lots of things and then not delivering.
If it happens great, but they are currently lame ducks waiting to be removed in less than a year.
However I think the new lot are likely to keep supporting Ukraine depending on the state of finances which isn't great...
Ohhh to be able to have back all the lost tax revenues from the recent massive increase of red tape between us and our closest and largest trading partners. 😢 

We were all drunk in 1991, both literally and figuratively, we placed this HUGE bet at the blackjack table that if we helped China sort outs its economy and join the "rules based order" on generous terms, that its politics would naturally evolve in a more benign direction. We lost, rather badly, and the price is going to be another ~century of great power competition. Actually that is the best case scenario.
 

I was frankly stunned by the graph I saw passed around yesterday.
 

Was this news mentioned recently?
 

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2318
 
 

Excellent breakdown of numbers but I am not sure "what it means for the ongoing conflict".  I do not see and assessment compared to losses etc.  
One thing I am interested in is the quality of these new vehicles.  On one hand the Russians are known for simplicity in military vehicle production but I have to wonder the state of high end components such as sights and communications.  Is a BMD produced in 2024 in the same league as one produced pre-war? Given survival times of some of these vehicles, it even begins to make sense to make cheaper, simpler variants.

More like a cluster munition. The Russians hit the Odessa embankment with cluster ammunition to hit more civilians

Saw this on the Guardian when I woke up this morning ... I genuinely thought the reporting was about the US state, not the nation in the Caucasus. All the elements of the story - corruption, protests, right-wing wet-ons for Putin, fvckery with laws and legislation - fit either place, and for whatever reason the Caucasus didn't pop top of mind.

Georgia now looks like Ukraine 2013...
 

Yes. And it is pretty much part of his strategy as well - let me win or else.

Agreed. But of course, while the USMAAG bodycount metrics (e.g. 'the Five O'Clock Follies') were pants for countless reasons, the Viet Cong were indeed being steadily bled white, as everyone from Giap on down admitted after the victory.
I don't know if there's a strict correlation from buckets of blood to territorial losses; we believe that the boundary fortifications built from 2014-2022 are a lot harder to replace once lost, and that seems to make intuitive sense.
...But beyond that, who the hell knows what a square km, or a shattered hamlet, is worth militarily? As @The_Capt noted thousands of pages ago, just how valuable is 'high ground' nowadays in the FPV era?  A nice marshy streambed or wooded balka, otoh, is still tactically useful.

Probably Russians are pissed with the latest ATACMS strikes and hitting in blind revenge mode 

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-russia-diesel-prices-skyrocket-ukraine-war-drone-strikes-oil-refineries/

Indiscriminate brutality vs a photogenic target?

Nothing like kicking US military aid out of the headlines and getting back to how the war is horrible and the Russian behemoth isn't going to stop.

I guess a problem for reporting losses by respectable media outlets is that you can't really verify the numbers. Both sides lie, and they would be nuts if they didn't. So there are basically only rumors to report, and it's IMHO better that they don't.
Another problem is sources. If the news channels don't have their own teams, they have to use 'official' material. Again, that will be propaganda from both sides, some side more than the other (ahem).
We are used to watching Twitter videos. But those are all 'unverified' and you can understand them only in context. Another thing that makes them unusable for mass media.
This war is a difficult topic. Even though this is the one war since WWII where it's clearest which side are the baddies.

Let's hope these are headed for Ukraine soon:
https://www.idf.il/אתרי-יחידות/יומן-המלחמה/כל-הכתבות/כתבות-ייזומות/מערכת-הנשק-פטריוט-מסיימת-את-שירותה-בחיל-האוויר/
 

The counter point to this is that Russia has somehow managed to survive as an inherently unstable imperial state (in its current size) for over 300 years. It has collapsed twice before but always has come back as an imperial state.  There are more than a few theories on how this keeps happening; my personal favourite is that Russia exists because geopolitically it has been rejected- not European, not Asian, not Persian. That rejection has become an identity in itself: Russia - the original punk-state.
Regardless of how it happened, one has to admit Russia keeps going long after it should.  That quality appears baked into the culture and identity. I also think this war may likely break the current incarnation of the Russian state.  Pressures that have been set in motion may unite a people in the short term but will very well break it in the long term. Russia is very likely going to remain isolated from the West for a long time after this war.  It will also very likely be pulled into the Chinese power sphere - although that relationship has always been weird.
Bur what is very important here is the speed of a Russian collapse.  A slow rattling decline is something we can manage.  A collapse that takes 20-30 years can be boxed up and contained.  When it hits the tipping point it will still seem dramatic but a slow motion collapse, much like the last one with the fall of the Soviet Union is always the preferred option.  It is the fast uncontrolled collapse that must be avoided.  A collapse without mitigations in place.  Too many unknowns, too much energy released too fast.  
The strategic options spaces get far too stark and frankly untenable in this scenario.  We will very likely fail to make the brutal decisions required if Russia plummets suddenly. The result risks runaway mechanisms that could wind up making the entire region (if not the globe) much worse.  And there has been far too much hand waving on this point - “Ya,ya, whatever…but Ukraine!” This reality is why we are not conducting NATO airstrikes into Russia and putting western troops on the ground.
So we take the slow road. Contain but fuel the conflict. Hoping Russia runs out of gas slowly. Hoping Putin will have a sudden “health crisis”.  It is often said in military circles that “hope is not an option”.  I always smirk at this one because historically it has very often been the only option.  We keep things rolling in the hopes a better option will emerge.  Hope is a child of uncertainty, and we are very uncertain right now.