How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Bulletpoint]

17 minutes ago, Butschi said:

The thing is IMO, the Ukrainian government has somewhat brought this onto themselves. As I said earlier they have taken the moral high ground and been telling a lot of other nations what to do. Justified in many cases, mind you. But if you play that game - and Zhelensky & Co played it very well, so far - you better make damn sure you hold that high ground. You can't really afford such a PR blunder as this one. Ukraine is held to higher standards than Russia which is why such comparatively small things are so easy to exploit.

Ukraine is not pure as snow. They are fighting a just war, yes. But they won't mind telling a few porkies if it helps the cause.

Ghost of Kyiv, Snake Island... and now this "Russian attack on Poland".

It's in Ukraine's interest to get Nato involved as much as possible.

And it's in Nato's interest to get involved as little as possible, as long as Ukraine still survives.

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Billy Ringo said:

Mountain out of a molehill.  The Russians spew BS day after day regarding hundreds of situations and it's just ignored.  Zhelensky/Rhexnikov make one yet to be verified mistake and it's a major issue repeated over and over again.

In my opinion, it's the Russians intentionally driving the discussion to keep people "talking constantly on the incident"  to diminish their credibility.   Blowing up one single issue amongst hundreds of transparent and honest statements over the past 10 months to harm the Ukrainians. 

Don't fall for the BS.

1.If that is personall touch- I don't fall for anything, just refer to you what is happening  and try to figure it out; in fact I always advice calmness to people here until we know what happenned. Check my latests posts from a week or so if you don't believe.

2.Yes, muscovites will try driving the issue. That's obvious. But lack of clarity is making it much worse. It's already number 1 topic hotly discussed in PL, and I don't mean just "houswife rumours" but public discussions. Milk was already spilled, so to say; hiding it under rug will not help. It may not be obvious if one is living on other side of the world.

3.I believe you are wrong-"just get over it" attitude is counterproductive. Incident is simply too serious, and it directly undermine trust in UA or NATO, depending on which "side" of controversy one sits. This in turn influence attitude toward refugees (we can expect new winter wave coming soon), fundraising initiatives for UA (like winter clothes, drones etc., there are literally hundreds if not thousands of these) and other issues. What for example people living next to borders should do if another alarms sound across the border? Go into basements or pretend nothing happened? Should schools in those towns be open? If it was indeed UA rocket, do Ukrainians have  procedures to blow it before it hit something again, like buidling full of people? Does cooperation on lowest local military level works at it should, or it can be improved? We need at least preliminary answers for those questions asap, and lack of guidance comes from lack of clarity regarding the incident. Of course ultimate blame goes to Russians, that goes without saying.

Admitting Ukrainian investigatos into crash site seem like a good move though, it shows willingness to cooperate from both sides.

 

On other topic, interesting thread about how Russian zek culture influence organization of Wagner group..."cock division".

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1593042478235807744

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Beleg85

[womble]

46 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Ukraine is not pure as snow. They are fighting a just war, yes. But they won't mind telling a few porkies if it helps the cause.

 

Thing is, it doesn't (help the cause). Smart comms would have been to defer judgement and 'fess up if it was, indeed, UKR munitions that caused the explosion. Just asserting "it must've been Russians" when they didn't know for sure one way or the other makes them look unfortunately like Russians. Sure, in just this one case, and it's not going to break anything, but their approach was suboptimal. 

Unless they have clear tracking data to show it was a Russian bird, though why the rest of NATO would cover that up, I don't know; concrete excuses to extend an AD umbrella across the border would be gleefully welcomed, I'd've thought. 

[Bulletpoint]

5 minutes ago, womble said:

Thing is, it doesn't (help the cause).

True. I should have said "If they think it helps the cause".

[JonS]

23 Feb, 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/17/night-everything-changed-waiting-for-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-kyiv?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[Battlefront.com]

48 minutes ago, womble said:

Thing is, it doesn't (help the cause). Smart comms would have been to defer judgement and 'fess up if it was, indeed, UKR munitions that caused the explosion. Just asserting "it must've been Russians" when they didn't know for sure one way or the other makes them look unfortunately like Russians. Sure, in just this one case, and it's not going to break anything, but their approach was suboptimal. 

Unless they have clear tracking data to show it was a Russian bird, though why the rest of NATO would cover that up, I don't know; concrete excuses to extend an AD umbrella across the border would be gleefully welcomed, I'd've thought. 

Yes, all of this.

Ukraine clearly overplayed it's PR hand on this.  They should realize that and fold before they cause more damage to their reputation.  And sadly, it is easy to understand why they are, in fact, being damaged by their response.

It seems Ukraine has got its head wrapped around their mistake and I do expect things to calm down now.  Russians will keep trying to use it as a wedge, but their influence isn't what it used to be so they too will move onto something else.

Steve

[Kinophile]

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/engineers-are-setting-up-positions-using-underground-modules/

[Zeleban]

It is alleged that one Russian detachment fired on the second Russian detachment, which was destroying boats on the opposite bank of Kherson.

One of the fighters of the detachment that was fired upon shouts that he was wounded

[danfrodo]

14 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

It is alleged that one Russian detachment fired on the second Russian detachment, which was destroying boats on the opposite bank of Kherson.

One of the fighters of the detachment that was fired upon shouts that he was wounded

I am guessing friendly fire & accidents go up quite dramatically w untrained soldiers and lack of proper officers.  And RU has both of these conditions on the increase.  That was pretty terrifying episode though I don't feel sorry for them.

[Pete Wenman]

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

26 minutes ago, Pete Wenman said:

 

 

Good.  Now let's hope it gets signed.

Steve

[Zeleban]

 

[Harmon Rabb]

7 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

 

I was going to make a Predator reference but I see the folks who edited this video already did that for me by putting in the Predator growl.

Really impressive stuff!

[Kinophile]

I can't tell,  did they even attempt fire suppression,  FWIW? 

Pretty chilling video. 

[Gpig]

Probably never had a clue from which direction the fire was incoming

[dan/california]

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/the-case-against-negotiations-with-russia

Excellent article!

[danfrodo]

51 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

 

What would a well trained soldier do?  I am thinking they'd go flat.  These guys stayed upright or crouched.  If they don't know where shot came from they can't do effective return fire so getting down as low as possible seems like best response.

[Fenris]

CM level 4 vision of RU T-72 on the attack being disabled by ATGM

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Fenris

[NamEndedAllen]

40 minutes ago, dan/california said:

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/the-case-against-negotiations-with-russia

Excellent article!

Yes, good points throughout. Including:
 

“Discussions about the desirability of Ukraine negotiating from a position of strength, while its forces are winning, are based on a mistaken premise.  Ukraine has liberated nearly half the land Russia has seized since renewing its invasion in February 2022—meaning that Russia still has more than half the territory it illegally occupies.  Ukraine has momentum in this conflict, but not yet the upper hand.  Its negotiating position is stronger than it was when Russian forces were advancing on additional critical cities and regions, but not yet strong enough to have created good conditions from which to negotiate.”

AND

“Freezing the conflict where it is now invites renewed Russian invasion sooner and badly undermines Ukraine’s ability to prevail in either a renewed hot war or in the new cold war. 

Allowing Russia to keep some or all the areas it currently holds also condemns millions of Ukrainians to the ongoing Kremlin efforts to Russify them; to identify, torture, and kill people who still give their allegiance to Kyiv; to abduct Ukrainian children and adopt them forcibly into Russian families; and to continue the ethnic cleansing campaign Putin is pursuing to eliminate the Ukrainian national identity everywhere he can.“

Edited November 17, 2022 by NamEndedAllen

[NamEndedAllen]

Apoears far from an official adoption, and not a legally binding measure

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/11/15/meps-mull-declaring-russia-a-terrorist-state-over-brutal-and-inhumane-crimes-against-ukrai

The European Parliament should declare Russia a terrorist state for the "intimidation and destruction of Ukrainians as a nation," according to a strongly-worded resolution being drafted by the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) and seen by Euronews.

At least two other political groups, Renew Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists, are preparing similar texts, Euronews can confirm, increasing the odds for a formal declaration to be issued by the hemicycle as early as next Wednesday.

The groups plan to put their resolutions, which could be eventually merged into one, to a vote during next week's plenary, where they would necessitate a majority of MEPs to be formally adopted.

 

Parliamentary resolutions are not legally binding but can carry a heavy symbolic weight.

 

[NamEndedAllen]

2 hours ago, Pete Wenman said:

 

 

A positive step! But not a legislative, legally binding act. See statement below:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/agenda/briefing/2022-11-21/1/meps-set-to-declare-russia-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism
By declaring Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, MEPs want to prepare the ground for Putin and his government to be held accountable for these crimes before an international tribunal.

The debate took place during the October plenary session.

Vote: Wednesday, 23 November

Procedure: Non-legislative resolution

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

What would a well trained soldier do?  I am thinking they'd go flat.  These guys stayed upright or crouched.  If they don't know where shot came from they can't do effective return fire so getting down as low as possible seems like best response.

Going flat to ground while under effective observation and fire = death.  Once they have a bead on you, going flat means you are pinned and you can expect indirect fire (mortars or grenades) to start landing on you in seconds.

Based on video it kind of looks like they were doing the right thing at first and were getting off the X in an orderly manner but then it kind of all fell apart once they started taking casualties.  In fact it was pretty ballsy for them to try and extract the first ones hit, but a bad idea for exactly what we see happen.

Where they do lack experience is in spacing.  Very human to bunch up at night especially if they lack NODs.  They should have been much more spaced out, which means if they got hit they would have a much better chance of exfil.  Some IR smoke would have come in hardly as well.

Edited November 18, 2022 by The_Capt

[danfrodo]

42 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Going flat to ground while under effective observation and fire = death.  Once they have a bead on you, going flat means you are pinned and you can expect indirect fire (mortars or grenades) to start landing on you in seconds.

Based on video it kind of looks like they were doing the right thing at first and were getting off the X in an orderly manner but then it kind of all fell apart once they started taking casualties.  In fact it was pretty ballsy for them to try and extract the first ones hit, but a bad idea for exactly what we see happen.

Where they do lack experience is in spacing.  Very human to bunch up at night especially if they lack NODs.  They should have been much more spaced out, which means if they got hit they would have a much better chance of exfil.  Some IR smoke would have come in hardly as well.

So you are saying I am a natural for the russian army since I made the worst choice possible in the given tactical situation?  Complement accepted 

[Beleg85]

Short but substantial clip about limits of small drones from US volunteer; it seems he fought before in YPG, so had unique (for Westerner) experience of being on the "wrong side of periscope" already before Ukraine. Note they needed to go on dangerous mission several times into enemy territory just to get back their mavics that were jammed behind Russian lines. That aligns well with other relations from this war: small drones are extremely useful, but still pretty rare and expensive tool.

 

Also Very worthy read from Galeev about bareness of political realism a la Machiavelli regarding Ukraine (rejoice the Twitter till it's still there, btw   )

 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Beleg85

[chris talpas]

Why the reluctance on Zelensky’s part to admit it was an accident and move on?

No one is blaming Ukraine, but continuing to say it isn’t theirs is doing them no favours.