How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[akd]

Some interesting things in this.

[dan/california]

23 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

You are hitting on something extremely important here, but not just punitive reparations in the Versailles sense....

This topic risks going way OT so I'll try to keep this tweetstorm as brief as I can. I exaggerate in places for clarity, nothing is so simple of course, nor is success guaranteed:

1. Let's assume the Western master game is for the  'European frontier' (i.e. the edge of the Western economic order as well as its military boundary) to shift east from Poland to Ukraine (and Belarus).

2. For that shift to occur, and not to revert to chaos, gangsterism and mass emigration, a stable economic order must be established. That doesn't mean an immediate German or even Polish standard of living, but it must deliver reasonably broad prosperity that keeps talented Ukrainians (including the cheerful, resourceful citizen soldiers who are presently astonishing the world!) at home!

3. The aftermath of this war presents a fantastic opening to "Build Back Better!"(c). Not everywhere and not always optimally or fairly. But in addition to aid monies, private (profit seeking) capital investment is absolutely essential.

4.  Globalization 2.0 is underway right now as multinationals seek to diversify operations out of an increasingly extortionate and unreliable China. ASEAN has countless high tech parks building right now, levering their cheap talent and basic infra (where it exists). They are overwhelmed and there is room for others to play too.

5. The Ukrainian infra base remains solid, if rusty and uneven. And rebuilding isn't as hard or expensive as some folks may think. Infra and plant is modular today, and the Chinese have driven global costs (and quality lol) through the floor, the current inflation notwithstanding. That's IF an investment case is there to bring in private FDI (and not just fat cat contractors gobbling subsidies a la Haiti).

6. Talent and infra (plus low cost energy) are table stakes, but not sufficient. You must also have reliable (I didn't say good or honest -- look at Thailand) government. The post-Soviet disease of gangsta kleptocrats turned oligarchs (ref. Galeev for the short form) taking rakes off resource flows and other forms of graft afflicted Ukraine as badly as it did Russia. If it returns, it will poison the well and foreign investors will go elsewhere. Look at the Philippines and Indonesia, whose governments talk big but can't get out of their own way or manage the greed and corruption of their oligarchs. Even the Chinese have trouble making headway.

....That will be postwar Russia btw, with or without Putin. Screw 'em, let them rot in Chinese receivership, and in time take their brightest young people in as new Ukrainians!

7.  BTW, that's why I have absolutely NO sympathy for the kinds of ancient 'tribal' hatreds espoused (or at least not denied) by certain folks on this board, where everything will be just great if only our golden motherland can be, ahem *cleansed* of those horrid Mongoloid Russian orcs who take murder and rapine in with their mothers milk. That Bloodlands crap leads only to even worse evils than what Putin is visiting today, and impoverishment.

8.  Embrace Ukraine's melting pot! when Kiev and Odessa are filled with South Asian tech bros (with their Ukie counterparts shuttling to Chennai), you'll know things are going in the right direction!

9. Am I just blowing Thatcherite hopium smoke? Maybe, I don't know, it isn't my country. But the ONE good thing the Commies left behind them is solid primary education. As I once told Lech Walesa (and really p***ed him off!) to his face back in 1997, the post-Soviet game was kleptocrats playing smash and grab for the rusting hulks of the Soviet order, and then taking a rake off resources. While where the wealth really was, and is, is in the people.

10.  As a pool for talented labor, this region is quite cost competitive with the 'expensive' end of ASEAN (Thailand, Malaysia), and with the emerging tech centers of India.  Do you need a soaring birthrate society? Nope, that creates as many problems as it solves. Witness Phils and Nigeria. And once Ukrainians have stable work, they can afford things like families and kids.

....Anyway, I think I made my point.

[/hopium]

100% agree, the single best thing the EU can do for Ukraine, in addition to paying for a vast amount roads and bridges and train stations is to provide a REALLY good investment guarantee, in particular against further conflict. Ukraine was already getting a fair number of German auto part plants, I think they can get those back, and ad great deal more if the EU just insures companies against another Russian invasion. If Ukraine comes through this in fixable condition Zelensky is going to be the second coming of George Washington, with nearly bottomless access to EU money, and legal/technical expertise. I think he can get the governance and rule of law issues right. The Ukrainian "brand" is going to be sort of unimaginably positive.

[Battlefront.com]

  

3 minutes ago, Cobetco said:

I am a know nothing person, but is there a reason people assume its a redeployment, and not just being called that to cover a failure or being done to prevent a potential collapse?

Oh, for sure it's both.  Russia needed to withdraw troops from SOMEWHERE to beef up chances of success elsewhere.  They finally had to admit that Kiev was not going to happen and the forces there the most precariously positioned.  Withdrawing them from there and redeploying them to the Donbas area takes care of two problems at once.

As for preventing a total collapse of the forces around Kiev (especially to the west), this is pretty much a sure bet that is a major reason why Russia withdrew from around Kiev.

Just about 2 weeks into the war I speculated here that all of the conditions for a sudden collapse of Russian forces were in place.  Some misunderstood this to mean that I thought such a collapse was imminent (i.e. days).  History can be a good guide for predicting what might come next, it's not good at predicting when. 

Two recent and related examples to underscore what I'm talking about:

1. the US intel made public in February 2022 made the case that the decision for war had been made and predicted its start time.  The prediction about the timing was wrong (a couple of times), however the prediction of the invasion was correct
2. in 2014 a bunch of us in the Black Sea Beta Forum were watching events in Ukraine and eventually came to know an invasion was imminent (days, not weeks).  This was based on some rather small clues we saw in Crimea within the broader context.  IIRC the first Green Men appeared 8 days after we made the call

In both cases lots and lots of experts were "shocked" that these things happened, not when they happened.  If they had recognized the fundamentals while they were unfolding they probably would have been surprised by the timing, not by the invasion.

OK, long way to say this...

Russia, Putin in particular, has the ability to increase or decrease the chances for total collapse.  Keeping Russian forces in exposed, no-win positions around Kiev increases the chances of collapse.  Being spread too thin increases the chances of collapse.  Withdrawing from Kiev and reinforcing Donbas doesn't remove the chance of sudden collapse, but it likely decreased the chances of collapse at least for a little while.

How can Russia take this possibility of sudden collapse off the table?  Get a cease fire.  Once that takes place the stress goes way down and the reason/incentive for soldiers to mutiny goes down as well.  Which is why Putin is desperate to gain the Donbas, claim victory, and get a Minsk III type accord as soon as possible.

Note I'm not the only one to recognize the sudden collapse possibility.  According to a document released by Anonymous, the Russian MoD started warning about this as late as March 21st.  Frontline commanders that haven't been killed or wounded most likely know it even better.  The withdrawals from Kiev seem to indicate that Putin is finally listening to reality.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

You are hitting on something extremely important here, but not just punitive reparations in the Versailles sense....

This topic risks going way OT so I'll try to keep this tweetstorm as brief as I can. I exaggerate in places for clarity, nothing is so simple of course, nor is success guaranteed:

1. Let's assume the Western master game is for the  'European frontier' (i.e. the edge of the Western economic order as well as its military boundary) to shift east from Poland to Ukraine (and Belarus).

2. For that shift to occur, and not to revert to chaos, gangsterism and mass emigration, a stable economic order must be established. That doesn't mean an immediate German or even Polish standard of living, but it must deliver reasonably broad prosperity that keeps talented Ukrainians (including the cheerful, resourceful citizen soldiers who are presently astonishing the world!) at home!

3. The aftermath of this war presents a fantastic opening to "Build Back Better!"(c). Not everywhere and not always optimally or fairly. But in addition to aid monies, private (profit seeking) capital investment is absolutely essential.

4.  Globalization 2.0 is underway right now as multinationals seek to diversify operations out of an increasingly extortionate and unreliable China. ASEAN has countless high tech parks building right now, levering their cheap talent and basic infra (where it exists). They are overwhelmed and there is room for others to play too.

5. The Ukrainian infra base remains solid, if rusty and uneven. And rebuilding isn't as hard or expensive as some folks may think. Infra and plant is modular today, and the Chinese have driven global costs (and quality lol) through the floor, the current inflation notwithstanding. That's IF an investment case is there to bring in private FDI (and not just fat cat contractors gobbling subsidies a la Haiti).

6. Talent and infra (plus low cost energy) are table stakes, but not sufficient. You must also have reliable (I didn't say good or honest -- look at Thailand) government. The post-Soviet disease of gangsta kleptocrats turned oligarchs (ref. Galeev for the short form) taking rakes off resource flows and other forms of graft afflicted Ukraine as badly as it did Russia. If it returns, it will poison the well and foreign investors will go elsewhere. Look at the Philippines and Indonesia, whose governments talk big but can't get out of their own way or manage the greed and corruption of their oligarchs. Even the Chinese have trouble making headway.

....That will be postwar Russia btw, with or without Putin. Screw 'em, let them rot in Chinese receivership, and in time take their brightest young people in as new Ukrainians!

7.  BTW, that's why I have absolutely NO sympathy for the kinds of ancient 'tribal' hatreds espoused (or at least not denied) by certain folks on this board, where everything will be just great if only our golden motherland can be, ahem *cleansed* of those horrid Mongoloid Russian orcs who take murder and rapine in with their mothers milk. That Bloodlands crap leads only to even worse evils than what Putin is visiting today, and impoverishment.

8.  Embrace Ukraine's melting pot! when Kiev and Odessa are filled with South Asian tech bros (with their Ukie counterparts shuttling to Chennai), you'll know things are going in the right direction!

9. Am I just blowing Thatcherite hopium smoke? Maybe, I don't know, it isn't my country. But the ONE good thing the Commies left behind them is solid primary education. As I once told Lech Walesa (and really p***ed him off!) to his face back in 1997, the post-Soviet game was kleptocrats playing smash and grab for the rusting hulks of the Soviet order, and then taking a rake off resources. While where the wealth really was, and is, is in the people.

10.  As a pool for talented labor, this region is quite cost competitive with the 'expensive' end of ASEAN (Thailand, Malaysia), and with the emerging tech centers of India.  Do you need a soaring birthrate society? Nope, that creates as many problems as it solves. Witness Phils and Nigeria. And once Ukrainians have stable work, they can afford things like families and kids.

....Anyway, I think I made my point.

[/hopium]

 Nice post there!

Volumes of books will be written about this war and all of its implications.  There will be a significant subset that focuses on the impacts upon Russia short, medium, and long term.  I am confident that many will consider this war as the end of the Russian Empire.  I don't see how Russia can bounce back from this.

Steve

[BletchleyGeek]

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So we gotta get this guy playing CM

 

This video is a "must watch", very articulate and reasonable analysis of how the Ukrainian "People's War" has played out at the start of the war. Many points to think about here's some of my main takeaways:

- Territorial Defence/Irregular forces have been very useful defensively, fighting around their cities and villages, and using their knowledge of the terrain to go out at night and surprise Russian Federation forces. The counterpoint to this is that they also make "elementary mistakes" when compared to what professional forces would do (incorrect employment of anti-tank guided missiles, ambushes that are too close, etc.). While they are effective operating on their own, there is no formal structure/organisation to integrate them into a "plan". He calls this "defensive mass". His remark regarding "handing a rifle to anyone who's willing isn't a sensible national policy" echo my earlier thoughts on this thread regarding the very early stages of the Spanish Civil War.

- The not very often considered role that civilians are doing in support of the armed forces: digging, repairing & salvaging equipment, providing real-time ISR streams from the front-line, or just hauling around supplies, weapons, ammo and injured. As he says, there's 30 million eyes following every step of the Russian forces. This is a massive contribution that since it is difficult to quantify doesn't appear on any "strength comparison" charts.

- Contested airspace was the real surprise of this war for everyone. The Ukrainian mobilization plan probably was predicated on the assumption that the Russian Federation forces would dominate it (and make very dangerous impossible to move personnel and cargos along railways and highways).

- Fighting the right war is the precondition for winning wars. Fighting the right enemy, on the right place, and with the right forces. Kind of obvious, but everyone keeps forgetting. The "West" needs to consign offensive warfare to history, imho. Here I may well be proved wrong, but the technology trends and the facts of industrialised countries (urbanisation, motorisation, nuclear weapons, etc.) indicate that the defence is the superior option at the strategic level.

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[billbindc]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

How can Russia take this possibility of sudden collapse off the table?  Get a cease fire.  Once that takes place the stress goes way down and the reason/incentive for soldiers to mutiny goes down as well.  Which is why Putin is desperate to gain the Donbas, claim victory, and get a Minsk III type accord as soon as possible.

Note I'm not the only one to recognize the sudden collapse possibility.  According to a document released by Anonymous, the Russian MoD started warning about this as late as March 21st.  Frontline commanders that haven't been killed or wounded most likely know it even better.  The withdrawals from Kiev seem to indicate that Putin is finally listening to reality.

Steve

 

Posting Soldatov again as I think he is the best on reading the tea leaves on Putin's judgement, the state of play in the Russian (almost wrote Soviet!) power vertical and where this is all going:  

https://octavian.substack.com/p/the-bear-breaks-down-andrei-soldatov?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

[LongLeftFlank]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

If Ukraine comes through this in fixable condition Zelensky is going to be the second coming of George Washington, with nearly bottomless access to EU money, and legal/technical expertise. I think he can get the governance and rule of law issues right. The Ukrainian "brand" is going to be sort of unimaginably positive.

Hey, and as a nice Jewish boy (let me stereotype just in case someone here has mistaken me for some kind of flabby kumbaya liberal, Russia truly went to hell IMHO when they lost their Jews), no doubt he knows who to speed dial in Tel Aviv to spin up some VC seed money for, ohhh:

1. biotech GMP plants (NOT biowarfare, FFS people, get a grip! the big money is in meds for an aging planet, not effing novichoks) and

2. chip fabs and solar panel factories

So very sorry, Great Helmsman Xi, and your Belt and Road too. And you too, Erdogan. Europe's next pool for cheap manufactures and value added services lies on its own doorstep.

Will Ukie lumberjacks be Europe's new 'Polish plumbers' for a while? Probably. And some of them will become French and Czechs. And retire comfortably in Kherson. Or Crimea, when it comes begging to be let back into Ukraine....

Does Karl Marx *hate* this whole global labour arbitrage 'exploitation' model (along with a bunch of bitter US Rust belters)? Sure, and too bad. May as well repeal gravity. Anyway, ask a Thai or Malaysian uni grad whether he prefers his country today over the one his dad grew up in. It's worth it, and I'll bet the Ukrainians have the mojo to climb the ladder swiftly, as they are showing us now.

Edited April 2, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[dan/california]

LivemapUA is quoting Ukrainian Joint forces as saying the destroyed 78 Russian vehicles of various types today in the Donbas. There may another whole battle the Russians are busy losing that we aren't hearing much about because the Ukrainian regulars don't put everything on social media. Just discovered Livemap so I can't vouch for accuracy one way or another.

[Battlefront.com]

17 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Does Karl Marx *hate* this whole global labor arbitrage 'exploitation' model (along with a bunch of bitter US Rust belters)? Sure, and too bad. May as well repeal gravity. Anyway, ask a Thai or Malaysian uni grad whether he prefers his country today over the one his dad grew up in. It's worth it, and I'll bet the Ukrainians have the mojo to climb the ladder swiftly, as they are showing us now.

Same applies to all the ex-Soviet dominated European states.  Romania and Hungary were, in particular, exploited by Western companies for their cheap labor.  But the investments Western companies made in those countries have done a lot of good for their economies.

Romanians today have 4x more GDP per capita today than they did 20 years ago, double what they had going into the EU in 2007.

Ukraine was already headed in a good direction before the war happened.  I expect it will bounce back relatively quickly after the fighting is over.  Russia?  Not so much.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Ambushing retreating Russian forces in Chernihiv:

 

[Battlefront.com]

51 minutes ago, billbindc said:

 

Posting Soldatov again as I think he is the best on reading the tea leaves on Putin's judgement, the state of play in the Russian (almost wrote Soviet!) power vertical and where this is all going:  

https://octavian.substack.com/p/the-bear-breaks-down-andrei-soldatov?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Good interview.  A few military things early on raised my eyebrows, then I read this:

Quote

OR: Say a little bit more about why Russia’s military performance has been so bad.

Soldatov: Well, there are things that are still not clear for me.

I think Soldatov needs to spend some time reading this thread

It seems that he is still under the illusion that the Russian military isn't all that bad.  In his view it is the political interference and the idiotic invasion plan that has really messed up the Russian Army in particular.  While I absolutely agree that better leadership could have made things go much better, I don't think it would have been better enough.

The Russian forces running around looting, raping, and murdering civilians is a clear sign that the soldiers are not focused on their mission. The poorly maintained equipment would still be poorly maintained.  The problems with conscripts would still be there.  The deficiencies in key equipment, organization, and training that have plagued Russian forces since the days of the Czar aren't an accident.  So on and so forth.

It is hard to imagine them fighting all that much better if they were part of a better plan.  Less losses?  Yes.  More gains?  Yes.  But we'd still be seeing poor performance overall.

Soldatov's final observation is interesting:

Quote

OR: How, then, do you see the war ending?

Soldatov: Putin’s usual way out of trouble is to escalate even more. I think that people in Moldova and in the Baltics should be extremely, extremely nervous right now. I think it’s absolutely possible that he might start something there, just like he did with the Donbass as a way out of Crimea.

Possibly, but so far this has been more like Chechnya than Crimea.  The escalation has been the same so far.  I'm not saying he might not be thinking of Moldova, Baltics, or even Serbia... but really, what good would that do him?  There's more than enough NATO forces in place and ready for action if he tries anything like that.

Steve

 

[kraze]

10 hours ago, Lethaface said:

I don't get the focus on polls performed with unknown methodology, in an unfree state about an imaginary subject (there is no 'special operation', it's called war).

Even in peacetime in free countries polls are often problematic. No control questions, non-representative samples, insinuating methods of interview, unclear questioning/interpretations, etc.

Every single russian knows full well this is a real war. It's just not war legally for obvious reasons - because if they called it a "war" officially - that would mean curfews, draft and totally obliterated economics.

Sociology is science and even in Ukraine polls always represented a real state of things.

In fact you could compare the results of "non-free" state polls with reality in the country and see they don't need to falsify those. 

Russia is a 140 mln pop country and even 1% of those being anti-war would've been enough to completely dethrone putin and eliminate his regime.

Yet you don't see anyone opposing the war. 

And yes - being apathetic is literally the same as supporting the war. For reasons pretty obvious.

[sburke]

36 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Possibly, but so far this has been more like Chechnya than Crimea.  The escalation has been the same so far.  I'm not saying he might not be thinking of Moldova, Baltics, or even Serbia... but really, what good would that do him?  There's more than enough NATO forces in place and ready for action if he tries anything like that.

Steve

Question is - what would he do it with?  Problem when you go all in is... you went all in.  If anything goes wrong your pockets are empty.  Maybe some lint, old rubber band, gum wrapper....

[Baneman]

"I think that people in Moldova and in the Baltics should be extremely, extremely nervous right now."

I tend to think that it's the Russians in Moldova, Georgia etc. who should be extremely nervous.

 

[womble]

1 hour ago, kraze said:

Russia is a 140 mln pop country and even 1% of those being anti-war would've been enough to completely dethrone putin and eliminate his regime.

 

Rubbish. Utter poppycock. Sure, 1.4 million people all working together would be a big lever to unseat Putin, but he has more than half that number in the Federal Police alone, and has spent the last 20 years breaking up the opposition so it can't work effectively together. Also, that "1%" would be diluted among the entier population, so it would only take 2% actively opposing them to shut them down completely.

Don't get me wrong. I have great difficulty understanding how the Russian population as a whole can swallow Putin's self-contradictory nonsense justifications for the war to a sufficient degree that we see the bellicose support that we do, and I'm sure there are die-hard Russian Nationalists who truly think that Uncle Vlad is a saintly figure incapable of error, served by Angels. I think there does remain a sense of Russian exceptionalism that underlies their self-serving internal justifications for not "fixing or doing somefink" ever since the kleptocrats' thievery started undermining the initial successes of throwing off the old Soviet shackles. But I don't live there, and I can empathise with the wish to not be hospitalised by riot police thugs or sent off to the gulags. It must be difficult to see a way through for your average Russian-on-the-street, same as it does for your average Belarusian-on-the-street. And their leaders have been murdered, imprisoned or exiled as fast as they come forward, so there's nothing for opposition to crystallise around any more.

Edit: Russian opposition is another frog that has been gently warmed up and is about boiled to death by now.

Edited April 2, 2022 by womble

[kraze]

1 minute ago, womble said:

Rubbish. Utter poppycock. Sure, 1.4 million people all working together would be a big lever to unseat Putin, but he has more than half that number in the Federal Police alone, and has spent the last 20 years breaking up the opposition so it can't work effectively together. Also, that "1%" would be diluted among the entier population, so it would only take 2% actively opposing them to shut them down completely.

Don't get me wrong. I have great difficulty understanding how the Russian population as a whole can swallow Putin's self-contradictory nonsense justifications for the war to a sufficient degree that we see the bellicose support that we do, and I'm sure there are die-hard Russian Nationalists who truly think that Uncle Vlad is a saintly figure incapable of error, served by Angels. I think there does remain a sense of Russian exceptionalism that underlies their self-serving internal justifications for not "fixing or doing somefink" ever since the kleptocrats' thievery started undermining the initial successes of throwing off the old Soviet shackles. But I don't live there, and I can empathise with the wish to not be hospitalised by riot police thugs or sent off to the gulags. It must be difficult to see a way through for your average Russian-on-the-street, same as it does for your average Belarusian-on-the-street. And their leaders have been murdered, imprisoned or exiled as fast as they come forward, so there's nothing for opposition to crystallise around any more.

Most of the time Maidan had only 5 digit number of people staying there tops, with it becoming 4 digit number at night. That's way way less than the amount of police Yanukovich had... in the whole country. But he didn't have that amount in Kyiv. Just like Putin doesn't have anything close to that in Moscow.

Yanukovich had to pull the police from other regions which utterly exposed them and allowed for local protests to rise up and snow ball from there.

The level of violence from police during Maidan? From broken bones to dead people with as far as police cutting off head of one of protesters so he couldn't be recognized.

Furthermore Maidan had no central political leadership whatsoever. It was literally people bunching up into separate groups that fought wherever the fight was.

Yanukovich got dethroned by 1%.

In Belarus and Russia people have not tried to dethrone their dictator even once.

[Taranis]

4 hours ago, akd said:

Some interesting things in this.

A little number juggling for fun :
In 2020 :
  UKR spend 6 B $ in military. GDP = 155 B $ = 3.8 % in military

 RUS spend 67 B $ in military. GDP = 1483 B $ = 4.5 % in military (how much corrupted is a good question )

 USA spend 766 B $ in military. GDP = 20 936 B $ = 3.6 % in military

So 300 M $, it's a 5% bonus for UKR of it's military expenditure and only 0.04% of US military expenditure.

I haven't keep track of all assistance since the beginning of the invasion but I wouldn't be surprise there is a at least 50 % bonus expenditure for UKR.

source : Trading economics

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by Taranis

[womble]

2 minutes ago, kraze said:

Most of the time Maidan had only 5 digit number of people staying there tops, with it becoming 4 digit number at night. That's way way less than the amount of police Yanukovich had... in the whole country. But he didn't have that amount in Kyiv. Just like Putin doesn't have anything close to that in Moscow.

Yanukovich had to pull the police from other regions which utterly exposed them and allowed for local protests to rise up and snow ball from there.

The level of violence from police during Maidan? From broken bones to dead people with as far as police cutting off head of one of protesters so he couldn't be recognized.

Furthermore Maidan had no central political leadership whatsoever. It was literally people bunching up into separate groups that fought wherever the fight was.

Yanukovich got dethroned by 1%.

In Belarus and Russia people have not tried to dethrone their dictator even once.

I have immense respect for your countryfolk and the way they managed to stand up to the Russian puppets. However, you're an, if not the exception. Look around the world and see the autocrats manipulating their populations, and realise that successful overthrow like that is very rare indeed. You paint a simplistic picture, with a broad brush and that doesn't lead anywhere good.

[Nicdain]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60949791

 

I don't know if it has already been reported.  this is absolutely criminal.  they will have to pay for it

[kraze]

26 minutes ago, womble said:

I have immense respect for your countryfolk and the way they managed to stand up to the Russian puppets. However, you're an, if not the exception. Look around the world and see the autocrats manipulating their populations, and realise that successful overthrow like that is very rare indeed. You paint a simplistic picture, with a broad brush and that doesn't lead anywhere good.

We are not an exception. Whole EU got to where it is through very bloody tyrant dethroning revolutions. They weren't successful by luck, they succeeded by people fighting and sacrificing a lot.

Bloody revolutions are what made EU democratic and not them somehow lucking into benevolent politicians.

USA too, being a prime example, of a mere colony sticking it up to a huge empire that controlled 25% of planetary landmass at one point - and becoming what it is today by people never being afraid to voice their concerns.

A revolution, like that in Syria or Kazakhstan, may fail, however, due to way more powerful outside force (or to be precisely - russian invasion in this case) - but it didn't fail because people didn't do well enough. Both aforementioned cases would've been a sure win if not for russians.

But when you are just walking around for months and literally applaud your murderers, while claiming you don't want to end up being like Ukraine - that's not doing it well enough.

Edited April 2, 2022 by kraze

[Maquisard manqué]

1 hour ago, kraze said:

We are not an exception. Whole EU got to where it is through very bloody tyrant dethroning revolutions. They weren't successful by luck, they succeeded by people fighting and sacrificing a lot.

Bloody revolutions are what made EU democratic and not them somehow lucking into benevolent politicians.

USA too, being a prime example, of a mere colony sticking it up to a huge empire that controlled 25% of planetary landmass at one point - and becoming what it is today by people never being afraid to voice their concerns.

A revolution, like that in Syria or Kazakhstan, may fail, however, due to way more powerful outside force (or to be precisely - russian invasion in this case) - but it didn't fail because people didn't do well enough. Both aforementioned cases would've been a sure win if not for russians.

But when you are just walking around for months and literally applaud your murderers, while claiming you don't want to end up being like Ukraine - that's not doing it well enough.

Kraze. I know it doesn’t suit your own apparently racist credo but read a bit more history please. Or stop posting your racist crap about all Russians being evil. I am not sure why it’s getting a  free pass here.

War criminals are war criminals and the Russian army and govt is clearly barbaric. It’s treatment of Ukrainian civilians is inhuman, unlawful and evil. It’s assault on Ukraine is equally illegal and morally wrong. The Russian public, like the post ww2 Germans, will have to face a reckoning with what they knew or didn’t want to. But if you think of them all as fundamentally evil, you’re just playing to Putin’s fascist crap about races and civilisational conflict. You start to sound like your own little putin. You prevent the redemption by Russians of their own country and make a repeat of this even more likely. You make Russian claims about Ukrainian nazis seem that little bit closer to the truth.

Revolutions are not easy. They are usually not a single event and last a long period, with all sorts of interference from outside forces. They also continue being contested long after and between the actual fighting. History looks a lot simpler from far away. The EU’s revolutions that you suggest were done rather simply took hundreds of years. The US didn’t do it by itself either! France bankrupted itself supporting the US revolution. 

 

[Haiduk]

12 hours ago, Kinophile said:

@Haiduk you might enjoy this

A lot of "****s" said, zero ****s given!

Ona relevancy note, it's descriptive of how complete the destruction is of so many RUS mech units.

In what Russia is really great is in their rich juicy obscen lexis, which firmly infiltrated not only in Ukrainian and Belarusian (and other post-Soviet space languges), but even in Polish language. There is just impossible to translate this in Englisgh equilvalent .

There is a joke - English is for communication, French is for socialite tlaks, Italian is for singing, German is for command, Russian is for dirty swearing. The backside of language of Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoyevskyi.... 

I think, this video was filmed in first days of war.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Haiduk

[c3k]

6 hours ago, Cobetco said:

I am a know nothing person, but is there a reason people assume its a redeployment, and not just being called that to cover a failure or being done to prevent a potential collapse?

Well, they are being redeployed because the attack on that axis has failed. That is, I think, the interpretation everyone is using. Since some of these units have already been found fighting on the east side, they have not just been withdrawn, but are actually back in the fight. 

 

[BornGinger]

6 hours ago, akd said:

The Pentagon announces $300 million in new security assistance to Ukraine. Some interesting things in this.

It's going to be interesting to see how many million dollars that go into the pockets of greedy Ukrainian officials all right.

[The_MonkeyKing]

7 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

It's going to be interesting to see how many million dollars that go into the pockets of greedy Ukrainian officials all right.

And how would that happen exactly? Officials selling the Javelins to god knows where?