Canada's UN Mission twitted a letter from the Russian UN Mission that was sent to all member countries. Canada's UN Mission decided to troll hard the letter by marking it up and returning to the Russian UN Mission.
I will leave it to Steve and BFCElvis to determine what is, or is not, acceptable on their own forum.
I can only judge Col (or is it LCol?) Macgregor on what he presented, which was "different" to say the least. His assessment that "Russia has already won" is definitely contrary to most mainstream military assessment, or media for that matter. However, Col M argues that Ukrainians are "cut off" and "in cauldrons", near a total collapse tipping point. Further he argues that the Ukrainians are only capable of "pin pricks" against the Russian offensive. His noted reason for the slow Russian advance is based on strict ROEs from Putin to "avoid/limit damaging Ukraine" as much as possible, so humanitarian bascially .
So, ok, that is one point of view. I am left wondering where Col M is getting his information to build this picture because it clearly does not match what we have been seeing - the "so what?" here is that clearly either he is very wrong or mainstream analysis/assessment is very wrong, not a lot of middle ground here. Thoughts:
- We have a very bad habit of "lack of accountability" for what gets said on the internet. Once the smoke clears on all this I can only hope that credibility of sources are held to account (faint hope). We have politicians who have said things, pundits who have said things and that needs to be remembered and assessed after this is over. If Col M is correct, or even just mostly correct, then we clearly missed some big signs or were totally taken astray, and by "we" I mean just about every mainstream venue.
- Based on what we have seen on social media, a steady stream of open source information, Col M's thesis appears the total opposite to observation. If this is all "fake news", then it merits as one of the largest and most thorough disinformation campaigns in human history. If the Ukrainians, who are according to Col M on their last legs, have managed to create enough "fakes" to show over 1500 lost Russian vehicles, and Russian damage to civilian centers rivalling the invasion of Poland, this is an incredible feat of information warfare and I am talking one that dwarfs Chinese capability. There is "fake news" and then there is mountains of "fake news".
- If Col Ms assessment of Russians adhering to strict ROEs to the point that they have delayed operational advances to the amount we have seen, then the Russian military is likely be best disciplined military force in human history. They have literally violated almost every doctrinal principle of warfare in order to meet the demands of the political level. For a professional military, in the middle of a major invasion, to delay offensive action - particularly against an opponent on their last legs - is one of the most breathtaking displays of military discipline I have ever heard of. The military risks associated with doing this are extreme, not the least of which is allowing time and space for a western-backed resistance to arm and organize. Many Russian soldiers will die because of this "restraint". Problem here is that the Russian military does not appear well disciplined; egregious attacks on civilians, videos of looting, abandoned vehicles, radio intercepts and "lost" PWs point the exact opposite way - unless of course this is also "fake news", and we are back to "how the hell did the Ukrainians pull that off?!".
So these are just a few of Col Ms points that I walked away with and I gotta say that if he is correct well we know that this has been a war changing use of information warfare on the part of the Ukrainians, and the Russian military is nearing Spartan levels of control and discipline. However, I have to quote Carl Sagan here "the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness" and one retired Col's "say so" is not enough to go on.
Finally as to "why Ukraine matters?" Well I am not going to get drawn into a country-specific political debate; however, the simple reasons are 1) it is inhumane; however that is a little to "hippy dippy" for some, 2) there is no more "over there" in a globalized world and 3) Russia has fundamentally challenged the global system that has made all of us in the west, rich, powerful, entitled and frankly "dumb and lazy".
Let's explore that last one.
The global system that our grandparents/great-grandparents fought and died for and despite all its inequities -there are many- it resulted in massive and persistent stability (crazy but true) and economic, population and technological growth orders of magnitude higher and faster than any point in human history. This did not happen because a god(s) in heaven ordained it, or weird racial theories that still float out there, it happened because we built it and defended it. Russia's actions in Ukraine are a threat to security because they challenge that system, they got out of line and they are (or at least were) a global power. Such actions do nothing for all that stability I mentioned, in fact they act as a global disruptor, and that is definitely a threat to us all. If anyone is too ignorant or thinks this is some sort of political leverage issue, they frankly deserve what happens next if we let this slide. And what happens next is a new global order being written by someone else while we most likely stand around and blame each other for it.
I have been reading this topic everyday for the last two weeks and signed up to thank you guys.
This topic is the most informative source that I have seen on the internet for understanding the realities of the war in Ukraine.
A big part of it is intelligence services have a hard telling when an Army/country is lying to itself. Or if the leader is lying to absolutely everybody. So say, for instance, some three letter agency of the U.S. government has broken in the STAVKA email system and is reading all the readiness reports and battle plans. It is really hard to tell that these are wrong because the lying originates at the very lowest levels and and just percolates all the way up. No intelligence agent thinks the way to make his career is recruiting corporals at a motor pool in some might well be nameless base on the far side of the Urals. I think they new the readiness reports, and the plans were optimistic, but they just couldn't comprehend that it was fiction from top to bottom, and no one including Putin, new it. The people who new the most were the ones stealing the money, which is an obvious and effective incentive to just lie harder.
Some of the other aspects of this particular pointless criminal slaughter, and even more relevant to Saddam Hussein in the Second Gulf War, is that the leader is lying to absolutely everybody. The U.S.thought Saddam had WMD because almost all of the Iraqi military and government apparatus thought Saddam had WMD. Most of of them were as surprised as we were when it wasn't true.
Apple, IKEA, among companies Russia considers nationalizing (msn.com)
How do you nationalize Apple in Russia? I could kind of understand China taking over the production facility there, but what is Russia going to do? Take over the genius bar?
Now that is a proper post. Well planned and well executed, leaving the reader with a better understanding of the situation and likely outcomes. Nicely done.
So this thread has been really good for following the WAR in Ukraine and seeing peoples views on tactics and operational options etc. However I would say that last couple of pages have turned into theological semantic back and forth bulls**t. He stole my toy first back in 19th century whatever. These arguments have a time and place but for me not on this thread. You want to discuss conspiracy theories, who has the moral high ground etc, then open your own thread and have at it, cause if you dont I can see this interesting thread with its wealth of information getting shutdown. Plus I cant be bothered wading through all that drivel.
A geeky part of me want to see the technology go all the way to at least 1996-1997.....So I can then play out all those fun scenarios from one of my fave RPGs, Twilight:2000.
