Lethaface

If ultimately there is no more Black Sea Fleet good enough to protect any Russian shipping / ports in the Black Sea and it's ports, that might become problematic for any Russian shipping in the Black Sea. (and like others said, will help allow Ukraine shipping)

You are (also) manipulating yourself here. Germany has given Leo2A6, among other stuff which aren't museum pieces. But I'll digress, I just think it is funny when people who do like bashing can't take bashing themselves.

If I had m
I think you have a fair point. Personally I feel Poland (especially the Polish people) was an important force behind the support of Ukraine after the war started and probably / hopefully still will be.

At the same time, on this forum (and beyond) it was German bashing day for quite a while because of, mostly, stupid words by German politicians. There were also lists about who has the largest support stick and Germany was frowned upon for not playing their part. 

In the meantime Germany has been growing their stick relatively and absolutely (as some had expected) and generally says less stupid stuff.
Now Polish PM says some stupid stuff, which amounts to 'our farmers will lose money because of Ukraine grain and we don't like what Ukr says, so now we will stop all military support'. (everybody lost money because of Ukraine and sometimes they can be a bit rude with their requests. But hell they are in a war).
And now 'the media' does the exact same thing to Poland as what they did to Germany earlier. If you don't like the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

And especially since the Polish government were happy to jump on German bash bandwagon themselves not too long ago, I think this is a form of tit for tat which they will just have to take on the chin like a man.  'wie een bal kaatst ...' 

 

Guilty as well. I think it would be a good name for a beer, 'Schadenfreude, best enjoyed silently'

To be honest I don't really pay much attention towards predictions anymore, nobody can predict this stuff without inside info, if even anyone with inside info can do it better compared to the average tarot card layer.
That being said, since last week orso there have been various positive developments. I think it's too early to say these developments will actually bring tangible changes beyond the intrinsic value/impact of the strikes/achievements themselves. But positive signs they are.

I agree that Aragorn, at times, can put things out of proportion and or have a certain bias I don't necessarily share. In fact, the war in Ukraine is probably one of the not so many subjects I mostly agree with him about.
At the same time there are also posters here on the other side of the spectrum, blaming all west Europeans for thinking of East Europeans as lesser (I'm not thinking about you, nor do I think that way). Among other things.
And yes part of the critics regarding Germany were very on point. I do personally think there is to be made fair criticism against Poland/PiS too, although mostly outside of their conduct in this war. 
But you know how the media work, they're going to create as much drama as possible. First with Germany, now with Poland. Since I don't like PiS, my opinion is: fair game.
There is also much critical to say about our (NL) government (at least I do), although regarding Ukraine they have done quite well so far.
All the lists have limited value. These ones and the ones about who gave the most in support to Ukraine. 

I do think it is important to realize that all the average people in EU/Europe are impacted by the consequences of the war and our support for Ukraine. If one will leave the ship (or talks about leaving), it is not unlikely others will follow. Poland playing hardball by itself, because national economic interests, is sort of openings pandora's box. 
Therefore I think criticism is very much fair, even (or especially) if it was only election rhetoric with no real consequences other than the impact from media.
If you are PM you know very well how your words will be spinned. Your PM seems above average with regards to skill in playing that game.
 
So soon? 😜 but i agree, I had my fun already.

True, but bashing is not equal to other bashing, especially when dipped in clear historical prejudice and based on some made-up facts. Also, none of us here spoke negatively about average German citizen nor throw epithets that he is greedy and arrogant, like user who started this entire issue habitually do to Central Europeans in general. Hell, not even about DE government, and if you remember we criticized it pretty strongly together with our German members trying to figure out what was driving them during Leo debate. I think you were the part of it. 😉
Not at all, this issue was adressed multiple times. Basically, such tables can tell you very little, as they describe only stiff netto numbers and not include differences in value of workforce, massive advantages in new markets, fluctuations of capital (material and intellectual), pruposful tax evasion by some countries, brain drainage etc. If somebody thinks that EU decision-makers suddelnly, collectively get out of their minds and did giant job of convincing their population to enlarge Union on pure whim - then I'd call him to read a little more on the process...
 
Ok, let's go forward into more productive topics folks.

You are (also) manipulating yourself here. Germany has given Leo2A6, among other stuff which aren't museum pieces. But I'll digress, I just think it is funny when people who do like bashing can't take bashing themselves.

If I had m
I think you have a fair point. Personally I feel Poland (especially the Polish people) was an important force behind the support of Ukraine after the war started and probably / hopefully still will be.

At the same time, on this forum (and beyond) it was German bashing day for quite a while because of, mostly, stupid words by German politicians. There were also lists about who has the largest support stick and Germany was frowned upon for not playing their part. 

In the meantime Germany has been growing their stick relatively and absolutely (as some had expected) and generally says less stupid stuff.
Now Polish PM says some stupid stuff, which amounts to 'our farmers will lose money because of Ukraine grain and we don't like what Ukr says, so now we will stop all military support'. (everybody lost money because of Ukraine and sometimes they can be a bit rude with their requests. But hell they are in a war).
And now 'the media' does the exact same thing to Poland as what they did to Germany earlier. If you don't like the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

And especially since the Polish government were happy to jump on German bash bandwagon themselves not too long ago, I think this is a form of tit for tat which they will just have to take on the chin like a man.  'wie een bal kaatst ...' 

 

Poland used this war to get rid of it's old military junk, get compensated for it by the EU and order new stuff for it's armed forces. As simple as that.

The MoD will possibly do the usual bad decision and throw yet even more into the Kupiansk-Lyman theatre, hoping to force UKR to divert forces. If there's one thing Gerasimov is the king of, it's doubling down on failure.
One thing I'd like to note, after all the critique of western-trained UKR units initially failing. A lot of those units have been back in the fight and performing well. They've almost all passed through some kind of combat, and almost always heavy-duty assault.
So now, after the last 4 months of offensive, the ZSU has a wide corpus of combat experienced, well trained, motivated and very, very angry soldiers. They're kicking *** in Zaporizhia and Bakhmut. Their effectiveness is only going to increase in direct opposite track to the Russian forces and at some point, and it feels soon, they will slide past that indeterminate point where their combat power severely overmatches anything put in front of them.
Personally, many pages ago I guesstimated august-sept as when Rus would start to crack. I think that still tracks, and Oct-Nov will be the definitive crumbling of the Russian position in southern Ukraine.
I don't expect breakthroughs, more like constant hard shoves that Russia cannot stall for very long. And I'd be very surprised if the ZSU went in for any large-scale dense-urban fighting. Tokmak is not as important as the roads that go in and out of Tokmak.

Quite right. When you cherry pick a subset of a subset, you can get a quick-and-dirty rule of thumb to fail. I'm not sure anyone has quite realised this devastating insight previously.
Well done you.
I have a slightly different objection to the model; it doesn't appear to take into account global population growth. 1-10,000 casualties in the early 21st century is a tragedy, especially for those casualties and their families, but eh, it's going to drop off the front page pretty quickly. 10,000 casualties 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, 2000 years ago - that's pretty big news. We still hear about the Teutoberger Wald, and that was 20k, tops, although granted it was a battle rather than a war. Anyhoo, the point being that when global populations were smaller, smaller casualty counts had a higher proportional impact (exception: China? Over the last several millennia they seemed to routinely kill 100k - 1M in various conflicts and ... no one really cares?).
Nevertheless, I still get the point, and I think it's a useful one: if all you know about a war is the name of it and the casualty count, how do you assess it's impact. The order of magnitude scaling gives you a pretty good place to start. But, like using wikipedia for research, it's only a start. For some purposes that could be enough. But if you really want to assess the specific impact of the Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896), or the Pig War (1859), or the Football War (1969), or the Chaco War (1930s) you're probably going to need to - surprise! - look beyond just the casualty count.

Russia temporarily bans export of petrol and diesel to stabilise domestic market - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/russia-temporarily-bans-export-of-petrol-and-diesel-to-stabilise-domestic-market

Rare video how Russian Shturm-S tank destroyer got hit with ATGM
 

During operation in Nagornyi Karabakh Azerbaijanian army hit a jeep with Russian "peacemakers" chiefs. As result were killed captain, two lt.colonels and deputy commander of "peacemaking contingent" 1st rank captain (=colonel) Ivan Kovgan. Interesting, that Kovgan was appointed to N.Karabakh from the duty... deputy commander of submarine forces of Northern Fleet. 
On the photo jeep, where 5 Russian servicemen were shot out with small arms. 
 

Among other incidents - Azerbaijanian forces have struck N.Karabakh radar post, where Russian soldiers were deployed there, also was shelled Russian observation post and shot out KAMAZ - driver was killed, other solsier was wounded. 
President of Azerbaijan Geidar Aliyev apologized to president Putin. This caused wave of angriness among Russian milbloggers: "if the country is not ready to start a war with anybody and anywere, who killed our soldiers, than we have fu..g nothing to do at all "

Ukrainians now have domestic drones that can hit Russian power grid - which will not have Patriot protecting it and bunch of donated generators from EU propping it up. If they were smart, they would not dare touch Ukrainian power grid.
Of course if the Russians were smart, we would not be reading this very thread.

While I haven't read Pinker, a limited list will always be a only a limited list. We humans often have desires to categorize stuff which isn't easily categorized into specifics. 
However fact is that unlike popular belief, 'the world' has become more pleasant for the average human to live his life; relatively you had more chance of hunger, disease, violence and or war in previous generations. At least pre-covid, I haven't really looked into the subject since. Also let's not forget that the bulk of humanity lives in SE Asia.
So yes we will probably always retain our violent nature (which isn't necessarily something 'wrong') and it is very plausible the trend will reverse at some time in the future (if it hasn't already), it is also good to realize that during the 20th century  and onwards life improved rather drastically for the average human being. 
 

Interesting thermal view of 155mm DPICM in action:
 

Hear, hear. The present regime of Poland is no reliable ally, but a threat for the European unity, same as that of Hungary. This regime only cares about it's own interests.

I guess some of us hoped that the war will help Poland to wake up and become something else than Hungary-aligned force always doing the wrong thing and always trying their best to destroy EU from within. To shake off PiS and become something more. It is obvious now it was too good to be true.
When crisis comes, people don't change for the better, they become more of what the were before.

There must be some way to blame Scholz for this?

Pretty intense, wallshaking bavovna after 0000. Massive and long. No sirens/alerts, no shelters opened. Informational vacuum in the dark of the night. Seems to be happening all over the place.
Here's to low CEP errors and reliable hardware. 

Just a some pleasure moments of past day
UKR drone hit this night fuel tank in storage in Adler airport near Sochi (Russia)
Russian Su-34 bomber of 47th bomber aviation regment, airfield Baltimor, Voronezh crashed today in Voronezh oblast. Pilots ejected

right ... except ... he's not trying to describe this - or any - specific war (singular). Instead he's describing wars (plural), and how they compare to each other (along one metric).

You and Pinker are kinda making my point.  Right so we firmly establish that this current war is indeed not A World War because it falls under a certain (arbitrary) scale on a single metric of loss of life.  So what?  Do we feel better?  Do we have a better frame or lens through which to look at this war?  How does that offer one wit of anything valuable to the analysis?  
And by fixating we are missing the larger picture: sure this isn't a World War (and no one has jumped in with legal of diplomatic definitions) - but it is a Global one.  It is having global effects on security and collective defence, food security, human security, nuclear warfare deterence and the role of the UN and global order to name a few.  This war will very likely change the cultures of Ukraine and Russia in ways we cannot even see yet.  It is shifting power dynamics in a region which again has global repurcutions.  Within the information space this war has gone global with open source and information warfare happening everywhere (even here).  In reality, I am not entirely sure if a war can be truly "small" anymore; however, this one definitely is not.  So beyond drawing arbitrary lines on narrow metrics todays fixation, like a lot of them in this vein, completely misses the point.