How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[MSBoxer]

12 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Basically these days they are mostly hoping that mobilization will save Putin's invasion and claiming that if Ukraine is not able to take back the territory which Russia annexed, Putin won the war. 

Did you point out that since Putin has already been pushed off of territory that he annexed, by their reasoning Russia has already lost the war?

[kevinkin]

8 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Basically these days they are mostly hoping that mobilization will save Putin's invasion and claiming that if Ukraine is not able to take back the territory which Russia annexed, Putin won the war. 

Oh my, did all those people have to suffer and die if that's what a victory means to them now? Changing the rules as you go along will not bring them back. Winning was suppose to be all of Ukraine, not just the annexed areas. 

[Zeleban]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

"Won the war"?  Russia has singlehandedly:

- Destroyed its ground forces and likely mauled its air and naval forces, if simply through funding attrition.  It credibility as a modern military power is in tatters.

- Destroyed its international credibility and driven it towards economic isolation

- Driven Sweden, Finland, and very likely Ukraine itself into the arms of NATO

- Unified Europe and the Western world (and man, that was a tall order)

- Energized western military funding for at least a decade

- Will likely wind up a very vulnerable partner with whoever will do business with them in the future.

I am sure I am missing a few, everyone feel free to jump in.

Do not forget for whom Putin unleashed this war. This category of people does not care about trade and other relations with rotten Europe and the rest of the world. They are ready to sacrifice an army for the sake of once again feeling like a formidable force capable of capturing territories and not giving a damn at what cost (don't forget that the Russians lost more than 20 million people in the second world war and this is considered a huge victory)

So yes, I agree with the opinion that if Ukraine fails to return the territories occupied by Russia, then Ukraine lost this war, and Russia won, and it does not matter at what cost it did it. After the defeat in Ukraine, the feeling of depression  will sharply increase, that all the struggle and all the losses were in vain, that our command is not able to withstand the onslaught of Russia.

The next time Russia decides to finish off Ukraine, defeatist moods will dominate in our society, and I am afraid that in this case, the Russians may succeed

Edited January 17, 2023 by Zeleban

[danfrodo]

19 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Sounds nice when you put it like that. I for one remember that I came here quite puzzled because a few days before I would have sworn that if the US president claims to have information provided by some intelligence agency then this only proves that the contrary is true. And I was disappointed, in a twisted way, about Putin because I had thought he is much smarter than that. I remember telling my girlfriend that noone actually planning an invasion would be so stupid that he parked his army in such an obvious posture at the border months in advance because one of the most important parts of a strategy is the element of surprise. And that Putin usually plays chess not Roulette. So it was totally obvious to me that he can't be planning an invasion and instead wants to gain political concessions in one way or another. Oh well.

This is just about exactly what I was thinking.  "No one can be this stupid. Why wreck all the economic ties for some land full of people who hate you?"  Count me in the "way wrong" column.

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

"Won the war"?  Russia has singlehandedly:

- Destroyed its ground forces and likely mauled its air and naval forces, if simply through funding attrition.  Its credibility as a modern military power is in tatters.

- Destroyed its international credibility and driven it towards economic isolation

- Driven Sweden, Finland, and very likely Ukraine itself into the arms of NATO

- Unified Europe and the Western world (and man, that was a tall order)

- Energized western military funding for at least a decade

- Will likely wind up a very vulnerable partner with whoever will do business with them in the future.

I am sure I am missing a few, everyone feel free to jump in.

You forgot one:

- delayed CMBS new release by who knows how long.  Not his biggest crime but certainly should be brought up as a charge in The Hague.

[Beleg85]

4 hours ago, Butschi said:

Nowadays, we are lacking a vision of what we want Europe to be. In parts that has to do with a too fast expansion and with some EECs it is obvious that they care less about values and more about Euros. But also for example Germany under Merkel has increasingly been about exploiting the free market and blocking everything else.

So, really bad timing for Ukraine, but I'd like us to sit down, develop a vision for the EU and get reforms going before we take any more new members.

Generally true, however I wouldn't agree at least from PL perspective it is "only money, no values"- it may sound strange for outsider, but Kaczyński is in fact closest in his view on European heritage to original Christian democrats from 50's who made EU project, he is just mentally stuck in time (LGBT blablabla...) and forced by internal factors to go constantly right. There is also crucial issue of how much centralisation Europe should have, economical influence and soft power of larger states (his view EU as extension of Germany, which is mainly a joke but not entirelly unsubstantiated either- ad vocem Merkel's policies you mentioned) and of course very different vectors in international politics. I wouldn't call it "valueless policy", as much as it is crude PiS is simply not progressivist and wants widened prerogatives to shape policy in its way, even for the price of being at odds with established legal order. If current PL governemnt would be "moneygrabber" only, we wouldn't invest in helping Ukraine so much but behave much more cautiosly.

As to case of Orban- agree, he is pure opportunist like his favourite historical character Matthias Corvinus. But note there are also many smaller states like Czechs, Estonians, Latvians etc. who don't seem to be overly experimenting with "illiberal democracy". Estonians are champions for well governance in many respects and long ago jumped many Western states in that regard.

Also I think you underestimate role US played in creating and extending European Union. It was not small, and from perspective of time we see the benefits of it, even from Germany perspective- Europe is more stable, Western companies had access to cheap labour, over course of time continent welfare is better distributed, and Western states have a proper buffer zone against Russia we are now seeing at work. Imagine the continent when EU and NATO did not extended...3-4 times more flashpoints on the map.

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Agreed.  The "lack of vision" thing is not unique to the EU either, unfortunately.  There's one side that flounders with the old vision of unity and another side that simply says "no" to it.  Seems to be a lot of it going around.

Yup. There is also worldwide trend that something is happening with democracy as a system in general, it seems to becoming ungoverneable in people's eyes- reasons for which are ofc. beside scope of this topic. Just regarding Ukraine, the Yugoslavia comparision is very telling- after several years of bloodshied, once US and Europe decided to seriously invest more energy to solve this quagmire, it ended relatively fast. Let's hope it will be similar here, without boots on the ground ofc.

[Huba]

Didn't know about that, they had to have a really important things to discuss to make the effort to meet in person:

 

[Beleg85]

43 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am sure I am missing a few, everyone feel free to jump in.

Probably changed Kremlin into nice thematic park for bored chinese businessmen and their Russian wives with kids as well. But that is for the future.

Interesting video, probably from Ukrainian (?) drone- soldiers below seem to hit falling granade with rifle round and change its trajectory.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Beleg85

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, Huba said:

Didn't know about that, they had to have a really important things to discuss to make the effort to meet in person:

 

Now that is a meeting I would have liked to be a fly on wall for. 

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Probably changed Kremlin into nice thematic park for bored chinese businessmen and their Russian wives with kids as well. But that is for the future.

The way China's influence over Russia develops as Russia loses almost all leverage in the relationship is one of the great unknowns of how the long term effects of Putin's disaster play out. I am particularly interested in if China has the sense and patience to play a long game, or Xi and his proxies get so greedy they create a real backlash in Russia. 

[FancyCat]

I can't think of a better way to empower extremist elements in Ukrainian society than the West throwing up it's arms and allowing Russia to hold control over some part of Ukraine.

It is extremely unlikely that Ukraine will be able to join the EU or NATO without regaining full territorial control over its de jure borders. (You can shout about the collapse of The Russian conventional power, but the nuclear power still drives headlines and worldwide attention)

It's extremely unlikely Ukrainian society would accept being forced to rewrite the de jure borders to pave the way for EU or NATO membership without at the very least, the strongest of guarantees to enter, which again unlikely to occur.

Without EU or NATO membership, Ukraine remains extremely vulnerable to Russian forces, and being constrained by the West means some sort of military and civilian aid withdrawal, leaving it severely in trouble in the future.

Russia clearly, clearly isn't out of the war, and the elements of Russian society affected so far have refused to rise up and seek a change in course. Relying on them to suddenly change course and force Russia to reconcile with the West looks to be foolish.

China has decided to stay away from supporting Russia, probably cause it finds the West and it's relations to be more useful and the West's newfound resilience has it worried for associating too closely with Russia, leaving Ukraine unable to recover economically and politically will not reinforce that view. (And yes, international capital will not reinvest in Ukraine without EU or NATO membership or the restoration of it's territory at least)

[A Canadian Cat]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This isn't to toot my horn about how smart I am, but instead show how f'n obvious Putin's plan was even within the first day.

If you look at this thread for the first few days we collectively fleshed this out to include the probable timetable, what Putin's core assumptions were, why they were wrong, how SCREWED Russia was even by Day 2, and all kinds of other things that turned out to be spot on correct.  And all through OSINT and some good brains kicking around ideas and observations.

Well done us!

https://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/source/noto-emoji-animations/344/party-popper_1f389.gif

TA-DA

Displayed as a link to not pollute the thread with animation.

[A Canadian Cat]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'll get to putting something together for this weekend.

A bone that there will be a bone.

Excellent

[FancyCat]

Recall that the proposals for avoiding the invasion, floated by France and Germany at least were to declare Ukraine off limits to NATO membership. Now I'm not opposed to the idea, I think it was worthwhile in the name of peace, but it has been clearly and consistently established NATO will not intervene in Ukraine.

Instead of a scenario preinvasion where NATO underlined to Russia that invasion of Ukraine would result in NATO forces annihilating Russian forces in Ukraine, and taking a proactive stance of saying "Ukraine is off limits" the West took the stance of "Ukraine will not be defended by Western blood".

To expect Ukraine and Ukrainians to accept a piece of paper saying "we will defend you now your country is in ruins, when you join NATO and EU assuming you meet all the requirements and all memberstates approve, just agree to this ceasefire which will let Russia restrengthen, and oh, if you don't, the aid for your country dries up" is not going to lead to Ukraine becoming this mecca of Europe, if it just agrees to lop off a arm. Lop off the arm, Ukraine just becomes a wounded animal, left for dead, reliant on aid from a alliance that has repeatedly announced it will not shed blood for it.

Ukrainians won't trust it, Russians will be assured of their dominance in Europe, and the West will be forced to handle a concurrent refugee crisis and economic disaster while Russia gets to rearm on the sidelines while prodding and keeping Ukraine from economically recovering.

Edited January 17, 2023 by FancyCat

[Bulletpoint]

 

A small Ukrainian team's hard work to recover dead bodies for identification.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Soooooo.... Steve is a Hobbit? 

[FancyCat]

 

[Zeleban]

The Russian is very sorry that he did not beat the Polish tourists at a resort in Europe. It seemed to him that the Poles looked at him without due respect. Dear European friends, if you meet a Russian on the street, show him all the necessary signs of respect, otherwise you risk being beaten

[Vet 0369]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Aw I kinda miss the pro-Russian crowd @dbsapp where are you?!

They all bolted pretty damn quick after 24 Feb as their entire Russian narratives fell apart.  It would be interesting to hear their twisted view of things, but that would just descend into none sense pretty quick.  Of course some of them could be pushing sunflowers by now for all we know.

It could also be a case of Russian internet restrictions/surveillance of which we aren’t aware. I believe there are more than a couple of forum members who have “shutdown and gone to ground” for fear of prosecutions. One that I remember stated that they had just been “interrogated” so they were going to ground. It must be pretty dangerous for someone in Russia, or one of the occupied, annexed, or “break-away” territories to post on an admittedly pro-Ukraine forum. We all have had any good and instructive conversations with those who don’t share our points of view. It’s always beneficial to know and understand the opposing points of view. As Sun Tzu said, “know your enemy!”

 

[Beleg85]

37 minutes ago, Zeleban said:

The Russian is very sorry that he did not beat the Polish tourists at a resort in Europe. It seemed to him that the Poles looked at him without due respect. Dear European friends, if you meet a Russian on the street, show him all the necessary signs of respect, otherwise you risk being beaten

It's part of this new plague among part of Russian influencers of provoking people around the world to harm them; there are plenty of these folks in Baltics, occassionally in other places too. Probably they have some benefits from Russian propaganda departments. Not worth to get involved in these provocations- he shouldn't be allowed to even enter Europe in the first place.

There is a lot os speculations as of tomorrow's Putin announcement. Probably he can talk about "red lines" for new equipment, perhaps mobilization too.

A propos:

 

[cyrano01]

4 hours ago, Butschi said:

Well said. There is one thing that should be noted, anyway. The minister of defense will not be the person who gets to decide whether or not tanks are delivered to Ukraine. His job will be to organize it efficiently if the cabinet as a whole or the chancellor alone decide to go ahead with it. And it is hard to imagine that someone could do a worse job than Lambrecht.

Ursula Von Der Leyen? The title of worst German Defence MInister in recent years is one for which the competition is pretty stiff.

[Vet 0369]

23 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

It's part of this new plague among part of Russian influencers of provoking people around the world to harm them; there are plenty of these folks in Baltics, occassionally in other places too. Probably they have some benefits from Russian propaganda departments. Not worth to get involved in these provocations- he shouldn't be allowed to even enter Europe in the first place.

There is a lot os speculations as of tomorrow's Putin announcement. Probably he can talk about "red lines" for new equipment, perhaps mobilization too.

A propos:

Well, to take a neutral stance in judgement, from the video, it appears that the conflict was initiated by the Pole when he heard the poster speaking Russian. So, it appears the Pole was looking for a confrontation. I honestly can’t say that in the same situation I wouldn’t have reacted differently to an unprovoked confrontation.

[Butschi]

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Generally true, however I wouldn't agree at least from PL perspective it is "only money, no values"- it may sound strange for outsider, but Kaczyński is in fact closest in his view on European heritage to original Christian democrats from 50's who made EU project, he is just mentally stuck in time (LGBT blablabla...) and forced by internal factors to go constantly right. There is also crucial issue of how much centralisation Europe should have, economical influence and soft power of larger states (his view EU as extension of Germany, which is mainly a joke but not entirelly unsubstantiated either- ad vocem Merkel's policies you mentioned) and of course very different vectors in international politics. I wouldn't call it "valueless policy", as much as it is crude PiS is simply not progressivist and wants widened prerogatives to shape policy in its way, even for the price of being at odds with established legal order. If current PL governemnt would be "moneygrabber" only, we wouldn't invest in helping Ukraine so much but behave much more cautiosly.

Well, I deliberately did not call out any country explicitly and I also did not say "only money, no values" but "they care less about values and more about Euros" - and immediatly added Germany in order to not make it pointing fingers. But point taken. I did think about the Visegrad countries here. The Treaties of Lissabon and the previous ones made it pretty clear that the EU is supposed to be more than a free trade zone and a mechanism to transfer money to poorer countries. The treaties explicitly underline the importance of democracy and it was always clear that economic integration was always a means to achieve more political integration. You have to admit that over the last decade or so there was much rhetoric that boiled down to "we want all the benefits but don't meddle in our affairs".

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Also I think you underestimate role US played in creating and extending European Union.

Maybe so, but I didn't even write about that? Do you refer to what I said about the US meddling in EU internal affairs? I do think that point should be mentioned. This was not about what I think but about what many less well meaning factions within the EU will make of it.

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

It was not small, and from perspective of time we see the benefits of it, even from Germany perspective- Europe is more stable, Western companies had access to cheap labour, over course of time continent welfare is better distributed, and Western states have a proper buffer zone against Russia we are now seeing at work. Imagine the continent when EU and NATO did not extended...3-4 times more flashpoints on the map.

I do agree that generally an expanded EU is a good thing. Not merely for economical reasons but also because of the increased political weight the EU has on the international floor.

[Butschi]

16 minutes ago, cyrano01 said:

Ursula Von Der Leyen? The title of worst German Defence MInister in recent years is one for which the competition is pretty stiff.

Nah. Was she really worse than zu Guttenberg? Or Kramp-Karrenbauer? None of them were so aggresively incompetent as Lambrecht, I think.

[The_Capt]

Just now, Vet 0369 said:

It could also be a case of Russian internet restrictions/surveillance of which we aren’t aware. I believe there are more than a couple of forum members who have “shutdown and gone to ground” for fear of prosecutions. One that I remember stated that they had just been “interrogated” so they were going to ground. It must be pretty dangerous for someone in Russia, or one of the occupied, annexed, or “break-away” territories to post on an admittedly pro-Ukraine forum. We all have had any good and instructive conversations with those who don’t share our points of view. It’s always beneficial to know and understand the opposing points of view. As Sun Tzu said, “know your enemy!”

 

Surprising given the levels of mis/dis information some of these guys were pushing.  I would have figured Russian-central would just let them keep rolling, just another example of Russia burning every good idea.

I am pretty sure we are well past "good and instructive conversations" once the metal started flying.  As you note, they are now "the enemy".  Probably a little while before we can re-engage in useful dialogue. 

[cyrano01]

6 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Nah. Was she really worse than zu Guttenberg? Or Kramp-Karrenbauer? None of them were so aggresively incompetent as Lambrecht, I think.

The list is long but distinguished.

Edited January 17, 2023 by cyrano01