Seminole

Never forget!

The Kyiv Independent news desk February 28, 2023 One in three Ukrainian refugees in the European Union ultimately wants to return home. At the same time, a similar proportion would like to remain in their host countries, according to a new survey released on Feb. 28 by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). … According to the UN Refugee Agency, since the beginning of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees have left for another European country, and about 4.8 million have applied for temporary protection in one of the EU countries. Both Russia and Ukraine were in demographic decline already, the war has only exacerbated this. The projections remain with a steeper decline in Ukraine than Russia, and Ukraine starts from a much smaller position. This matters to Ukraine too. What piqued my curiosity on this subject was an age graph I saw posted that suggested the population of 20-somethings has cratered in Ukraine. That seems militarily significant, especially when the Russians appear bent on attrition as their only hope. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-ukraine-war-bakhmut-deaths-demographic-populations-9db5hg7sq Researchers say the grinding battle and those ahead will make both Ukraine and Russia unrecognisable for generations to come. “It really is awful if you look at Ukraine’s demographic tree. There was already a really tiny proportion of the population in their twenties. Russia has a similar problem,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and an adviser to Zelensky’s administration. “Twenty years ago it was the end of the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union, really tough times, particularly in Ukraine. People just put off having children. So we were looking at losing 33 per cent of the population even without talking about the war.” The graph I was mentioning doesn’t show online anymore, but it was screen capped: This Russian ‘journalist’s’ tweet has it: https://twitter.com/vicktop55/status/1642413293896716289?s=20

But the war did happen and millions have left. One can readily find an extrapolation from a few years ago: Source UN (World Population Prospects 2019) Date 23 Aug 2021 Ukraine's population peaked in 1990 with 51.46 mn people after Ukraine's population decreased year by year. The Ukraine population is projected to reach 40.88 million in 2030 and decrease further to 35.22 million in 2050 and 24.41 million by 2100. That was prior to current stage of the conflict, which has only made things demonstrably worse and dimmed the prospects for improvement. How is it ‘misinformation’ to cite this analysis?

For some reason my phone doesn’t want to post the Russian graph as a picture. Median trend is also down: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/2_Probabilistic Projections/1_Population/1_Total Population/Russian Federation.png

Put "Putin's chef" in Google...

I don’t think it’s fair to throw Mr. Higgins in that, uh, boat. Higgins developed a reputation for being able to do the impossible. Once, the Navy asked him if he could come up with plans for a new boat design in three days. “Hell,” he replied. “I can build the boat in three days.” And that is exactly what he did.

Bakhmut is simply Verdun redux, isn’t it? It’s the only read that makes sense, that Putin/Russia are convinced they’re extracting an intolerable toll with their methods, and that Ukraine must bow at some point under attrition. I expect the Ukrainians to have the better picture of how both sides are fairing, but they have the political consideration of avoiding defeat, beyond the tactical wisdom of the position. My hope is that the predominant reason the Ukrainians are fighting so hard here is because they’re seeing favorable tactical results in it even if they’re incrementally losing terrain to Russian methods.

I’d argue America is still in an ‘imperial phase’. I’m not sure when you’d consider it to have ended. It’s nakedly acknowledged that the US still acts as a hegemon with NATO providing the imprimatur of ‘international assent’ for domestic consumption. It’s why a ‘defensive alliance’ is leveraged to compel an ethnic partition (Kosovo) or regime change (Libya). I’m using oligarch in the dictionary definition sense: a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence Historically, I’m not sure there has been something like our modern billionaire class that didn’t operate directly from the halls of power already. It takes vast wealth to create a disparity of this scale. Did the Patricians of Rome enjoy the proportionate share of wealth that the elite today control? My gut leans toward ‘no’, but I don’t pretend to know. Agree we’re more like Chimps than Bonobos when it comes to conflict. Shame really, Bonobos seem to have it figured out…

I think Smedley Butler had it right, in that you could stop war if capital was subject to conscription. If the oligarchs in any society saw their wealth subject to immediate confiscation and liquidation to fund the war we'd probably find a different way to solve most problems we try to solve with bombs today. But I think there's no chance of seeing this implemented (at home, or anywhere abroad).

I think we have to hope for him to just die, 'cause he ain't going away. I knew his favorability ratings were upside down, but I didn't realize until looking at 538 this morning that they essentially mirror Biden's.

So nothing real? We've watched China support North Korea to the point they became a nuclear power, at what real cost? They take any kind of real hit last May for vetoing additional UN sanctions on North Korea? My guess is they'd rather work with the devil they know in Moscow than the potential of new 'stans. I'm not sure I'm reading you right here. It seems that we agree. I'm completely open to the prospect it was due to their love of filthy lucre, and not humanity, that Germany and France sought to avoid a situation that led to war in Ukraine. I think they correctly viewed that outcome as net negative. Their motivation for seeking to avoid a conflict doesn't change that their effort was to avoid a conflict. Because if it wasn't to avoid a conflict, I'm wondering what else it could be. I don't think it is revisionist to say Germany and France opted for peace because of cheap gas. What's revisionist to me is the new narrative that Russia hadn't long viewed Ukraine in NATO as a hostile act. But I understand, in the words of Ambassador Burns, this "remains "an emotional and neuralgic" issue" for this board. Pointing to a contemporaneous account, for example this piece (CSIS isn't considered wild-eyed crazies, right?) from September 2021, talking about the Russian build up and exercises in April of 2021: It seems that a major driver of Russian actions was the desire to send signals to the new U.S. administration—namely that the Biden administration should not attempt to challenge the status quo vis-à-vis Ukraine by bringing it closer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or aid in the liberation of parts of occupied Donbas. The author (Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow with the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of Ukraine. Formerly he worked for the Ukrainian Institute of World Policy) even shares the opinion expressed here that Russia's actions are ultimately counterproductive: On the other hand, Russia is the only one to blame for Ukraine wanting to join NATO. The more Moscow threatens Ukraine with permanent military infrastructure or movement of additional troops and equipment, the more Ukraine wants to join NATO, as the latter sees how quickly the security environment can deteriorate without the concrete security guarantees that NATO provides. It is striking how during this war scare, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy switched his attitude toward NATO integration. His public pronouncements went from some ambiguity during the 2019 presidential campaign to full support this past spring. But he doesn't just erase their motivations (note, motivation should not be conflated with justification). Like I said before, this was conventional wisdom just 13 months ago. Hard to find a piece discussing the conflict or prospect of Ukraine in NATO without mention of it, much less saying it wasn't real. I'm not trying to 'derail' anything by mentioning it.

No, 'justified' isn't the word I'd use. No more 'justified' than JFK would have been invading Cuba because of the perceived threat of Soviet weapons closer to our border. But a decision by Khrushchev to not provoke an invasion by JFK was the better outcome, wasn't it? Irrespective of how 'justified' one thinks JFK was in imposing a 'quarantine' on the high seas. I'm still struck by how quickly the conventional wisdom about Russia's concerns regarding Ukraine and NATO went from editorials published by the likes of the Council on Foreign Relations to 'Putin propaganda', or some other dismissive descriptor, suggesting it was never real. Do people think Ambassador (now CIA Director) Burns was just carrying water for Putin in the cable that Wikileaks leaked?

The Russian response to the Joint Statement on U.S.-Ukraine relations, issued after meetings in September of 2021. Weird that the NYT reported it differently in March of 2022: Even in January, a month before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia began his full-scale invasion, tense talks among the United States, Russia and European members of NATO made one thing clear: While the Biden administration insists it will not allow Moscow to quash Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO, it has no immediate plans to help bring the former Soviet republic into the alliance. Russia sought a UN registered treaty to turn Ukraine into a neutral akin to Cold War Austria. We told'em to pound sand, so they pounded Ukraine instead. I'm sure John Bolton and Victoria Nuland would prefer the status quo over that alternative, but I'm not sure that would have been a worse outcome than what we have now.

What are they 'investing'? Do you assume they're sending munitions for free? Aside from cheap oil and a fresh reminder that Western kit is pretty bad ***, what has this war given China? Naw, man. You don't get to conflate the neocons and their aggressive and interventionist foreign policy with the U.S. as a whole. The reality is, most Americans don't want what they're selling. You dodged the question, Capt: Why did Germany and France oppose extending NATO to Ukraine, if not for the prospect of this very war? If it wasn't this outcome they foresaw and tried to avoid, then what was their reason?

The ‘corpse’ will be providing them resources at a market discount due to sanctions, an economic advantage not enjoyed by competitors in Europe. In what other sense does Russia have anything to offer China? The pols in Germany, France and other Western European countries that cautioned against expanding NATO into Ukraine (for some reason*) probably don’t look at it as ‘we didn’t do anything’ to get where we are today. * If their reason wasn’t genuine concern that Russia would launch this war in response, I’m curious what it was.

If it isn't a real worry, then why are we on the sidelines again?

If WW3 is the goal, then we definitely have escalation dominance. Not sure the 'internal support' for WW3 though. 1987 That time a Soviet Su-27 Flanker Collided with a Norwegian P-3 Orion over the Barents Sea The P-3B serialled 602 and named ‘Gunnar lsachsen’ (ex-US Navy BuNo 156602, c/n 185C-5304) was shadowing a group of Soviet Navy ships in the Barents Sea; another account of the story says it was chasing an A-50 AWACS over international waters and trying to prevent it from fulfilling its mission. Lt. (SG) Vasiliy Tsymbal flying Su-27 ’36 Red’ (c/n 36911016816) was ordered to make a practice intercept. Trying to ‘squeeze’ the Flanker out as the fighter moved in close, the Orion's captain 1st Lt. Jan Salvesen reduced speed by extending the undercarriage and moved to position his aircraft directly above the Su-27. However, he was unaware of the Flanker's low-speed handling capabilities, and as the Su-27 slowed down as well to keep formation the Norwegian crew briefly lost sight of it. Tsymbal manoeuvred the fighter dangerously close to the Orion and the port fin struck the No. 4 propeller. The dielectric fin cap shattered immediately, but so did the propeller and the debris punctured the fuselage skin, causing decompression; the damaged propeller caused violent vibration, forcing the crew to shut down the engine. Some accounts say that Tsymbal was not content and positioned his Su-27 ahead of the P-3, dumping fuel on its fuselage! Anyway, both aircraft made for home, landing safely at their respective bases.

White House messaging on this seems mixed. Blinken one month ago: A Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would be a red line for Vladimir Putin that could lead to a wider Russian response, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Zoom call with a group of experts Wednesday. Two days after that: The U.S. supports Ukrainian strikes on military targets in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, said U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. "Russia has turned Crimea into a massive military installation…those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that," Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "No matter what the Ukrainians decide about Crimea in terms of where they choose to fight, etcetera, Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum demilitarised," she added. The Russians accepting to ‘demilitarize’ the home of the Black Sea Fleet?

I think all the moves are calculated, but all the players assign different values to the variables, so the same situation leads to different ‘calculated’ expectations and responses.

After the fuel dump trick didn't do anything I imagine the Su-27 sidling up next to the drone like a Spitfire chasing a V-1, putting the missile rail on his wing tip into the prop on the back, and thus killing the bird. The fuel thing reminded me of this story: After returning from a Vietnam combat hop, I was briefing my plane captain on the reasons why Sunglass 691 had two holes in the engine compartment and what they contributed to the flight characteristics of the Skyhawk, when the "Bonnie Dick" (CVA-31 USS Bon Homme Richard) began a hard turn to starboard and we still hadn't completed landing the air wing. As I grabbed onto the boarding ladder to steady myself on the now 15 degree slope of the deck, a "Whale" (A-3 tanker) went roaring close overhead in a wave off. It was "The Red Baron" (Cdr. John Wunche) making a wave off after the duty Russian trawler crossed our path. He continued on line up, at about 100' altitude and just before arriving overhead of the trawler turned on all the fuel dumps the A-3 had for its impressive fuel load. As he roared over the trawler, the JP-4 was glistening off the whole trawler and several of their crewmen thought it prudent do depart the boat via a swan dive. Needless to say, the trawler left us alone for over a week before they tried to disrupt another landing sequence!

No, I think I see the cause and effect well enough. If Khrushchev stuck with the plan to put nukes in Cuba everyone understood that JFK would wage a war of aggression against Cuba to try and prevent it. For some reason, some people can’t imagine that another nation would draw a line like that, beyond their own border, but drawn to affirm their own sense of security, and actually mean it. Imagine if Khrushchev had pointed out that the US had no right to dictate the security arrangements of their neighbors, and that they would press on regardless of US threats. What do you think the US would have done? Just impotently watched?

It’s not just Putin saying it, you spent the next paragraph pining for it. We can acknowledge it is a goal in the West, without that being labeled ‘Putin propaganda’, right? I’m baffled people can see how NATO partitioned Kosovo, can point to the potential ethnic conflicts inside the borders of the Russian federation, but claim that they simply can’t perceive how Moscow could ever feel threatened by NATO. The ‘duty to protect’ framework is how NATO would justify helping a separatist/insurrection movement. We’ve seen it before. Only question is whether they’d put the Russians in a situation where they thought nukes were the only way they could avoid ‘losing’ (however defined).

The ‘rules based order’ being what it is…

You don’t think it’s absurd to label George Bush and everyone that followed his orders to illegally invade Panama as war criminals? Interesting concept. Bush is dead, but there are still thousands alive, do you think we should prosecute them according to your principles? Or would that be absurd?

I can’t put bombing the radio station on the same plane as carpet bombing cities or throwing people in gas chambers. It strikes me as a normal and natural target in war. Not genocidal. If the illegal nature of the war make everything that happens in its course a war crime you just indicted hundreds of thousands, (millions?) of Americans. It’s absurd.