How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

Superb,  thank you @Zeleban

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, Zeleban said:

It seems the world is feeling the weakness of the existing world order and more and more old conflicts are starting to resurface

No, it's "business as usual".  I bet you would lose track of how many border disputes have been fought in South and Central America since 1945 if you started counting.  And if you did manage to keep track of all of them, then I doubt you'd be able to keep track of all of the civil wars.  If another one gets added to the list it would hardly be an indication of anything related to Ukraine/Russia.

Seriously, this is how the Russians operate their disinformation propaganda.  Take something usual and distort it to become unusual.  Mountains of disinformation from molehills of truth.  Don't fall for it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Zeleban said:

Okay, that's enough bad news for today.

A few memories of the battles for Sil station (in the Soledar area), which took place last winter from the company commander:

We fall out of the armored personnel carrier at the burnt-out train station. In the background, the fading sounds of battle. A shootout is going on in the distance. However, this is a constant phenomenon. The main thing is that it is quiet here and now, although the first thought was why was there such a hurry?. I place people on the sides of the station and start unloading property. We are making ammunition storage at the station. Everyone bustles about like ants in the dark. We open the zincs with ammunition in the boxes and slam them back. I call the commander of the 1st platoon:

"The cavalry has arrived."

He is genuinely happy. We are waiting for the guide. When he comes, I go with the first group. At first, we move to their resting point. This is a heated house. I tell my guys it's not for us. Novoselovka has set the bar for shelling, so go to the basement in the neighboring yard. No one is against it. When the village disappears before your eyes, it makes you cautious. Next, we move to point A. This is just a house on a hill. I ask where your positions are. They say that they shot from around the corner. The guys were in character (without equipped positions). I respect that, but war is an art. And art dictates its own rules. The basement can accommodate only up to 6 people, and I brought a dozen more of my own to their group. Shyba's body lies nearby. He was a cool guy. Unlucky. A crazy bullet flew under the bulletproof vest. I say get out of here, we'll just take over your position, and you leave. It makes no sense to gather in one place. I bring the second group to the other end of the village to point B. It turns out such a concave letter v. Quickly realizing that at -15 all we can do is break the ground, I make a request - we need crowbars. The necessary tools are brought by armored personnel carriers who came in the morning to pick up the boys from the 1st platoon.

Next to point B, I find a subdivision in one house. It turns out that I have extra eyes for the north. Cool. I do everything according to the old classics - at each position I assign points for fighters with overlapping sectors of fire. We knock out embrasures with crowbars, making small loopholes. We mask all this and go to the basements. Observers remain at the top. The idea is simple - the battle begins, and our forces are deployed. We have already done this, nothing new.

Around 8 in the morning, Johnny asks if it's not our guys sitting in the nearby forest strip, which is 450m away. I take binoculars - they are enemies. they are walking in droves - 5 men loaded with ammunition. I say drag PKM. Johnny takes the PKM and plans to shoot while standing. I say, take the binoculars and adjust my fire, now I'll show you how we'll work.We open a part of the iron gate and from the middle of the yard, lying down and recovering. Rear sight - 5. I aim below the knee. I start working by cutting the first two. Then he adjusts and I fill the rest with lead. It seems that the bastards, having been kicked at night, when attacking the front, changed the vector of the attack.

Half an hour later, the second group comes out in exactly the same way. I command Murasi to work, Johnny corrects his shooting. These enemies are smarter and some of them lie down. At this time, a fierce wind blows and fragments of phrases fly to us. A couple of shots from the GP-25 did not give results.I transfer the coordinates and call AGS. And I give the command to Jackson to hit there with an RPG. Even he doesn't hit. AGS begins to fall and does not give results. A mortar is connected with the same negative result. I am reporting that all this does not make sense now. ****ing Dombasian wind. A drone hovers over our position on the edge of the village. Jackson sees him and tries to shoot him down, I can't see him but I have a ****ing gun with an eotec. I give him my weapon and he shoots down the drone. The bastards are offended by this fact and they start shooting off-target with the SPG in the area where the drone is hovering.

I left Murahu as senior on point, Jackson and I go looking for a drone. The passage to the garden where he fell is blocked by a wooden fence. We simply break through the bottom of the fence and begin to crawl under the fence, and a grandmother who came out of a half-destroyed house looks at us:

"- We apologize for the fence, we need to pass quickly."

"- It's okay, my son. it's OK."

And the grandmother disappears in the ruins. In the background, the SPG continues to fire.

Muraha makes a report - the bastards are crawling in the grass and are already in the trees, little by little accumulating in the forest. Okay. I have an ace up my sleeve. I'm going to call the ATGM crew. These boys are 20 years old. They've been dragging this **** for more than six months and haven't fired a single shot. We go to the hill and shoot. Three birches are a good reference point. Tom lays a rocket right into a bunch of bastards. At least that's what those who stood at point A say. For a while, the bastards' activity subsides. Jackson at the point says that shooting ATGM at infantry is cool, but it will be difficult for the guys to write off a missile for such a target. Hmm, okay, what won't you do for a chance to kick some bastards' ***. I shout into the radio, “We have detected SPG. Working with ATGM" and they answer "Where's the SPG? - We suppressed him" We are laughing, but we have done our job.

The drone was not found, but that part of the village was scouted normally.

In general, three of our platoons occupied this part of Soledar, nicknamed "Sil". I initiate a meeting of platoon coms at the railway station + I take the guys for additional ammunition. We begin to drag the ammunition to point C. Having met with the Marker and the Archaeologist, we establish interaction. Marker's platoon is scattered between points D and E, the Archeologist holds the northern edge of the village behind the railroad and is a reserve. 

The radio is transmitted to point D. Get ready - the bastards have accumulated a lot, an attack is possible. The SPG continues to fire aimlessly, and since it was possible to try to sneak into the village from the forest strip due to the height difference, I take Jurist's PKM crew from point C and a couple of infantrymen and place an ambush at point G. After an hour or a half at point D, the battle begins.

About an hour later, I hear the bastards in the D1 area on the radio. District D itself was a cluster of three-story buildings and an adjacent depot. D1 is the nearest house to the road along which we carry our ammunition to the position. This is my logistics sleeve. Don't think that this situation will go away by itself. It is clear that when the boys from point D are destroyed, I will be next. I'm gathering a team to attack, a little bit from each point. I and 4 other soldiers sneak up to the depot, they shoot at us a little, but that's okay. Assessed the situation, called the Jurist's crew. I organize classics with maneuver and fire groups. I sat a little longer thinking no, we are too small for such an attack. I also invite the Archaeologist's group. He rolls with another five. We begin the attack on the depot. We are going slowly, clearing the territory. In the course of this, a projectile flies from the tank into the roof of the depot. The depot is collapsing in places, but in general remains standing. Archaeologist attacks and slowly clears building D1. We go beyond the depot and see movement in the house. I'm calling the guys from point D - whose house is D2? This is the house of bastards. Calling Leo, let's hit right away with our coolest thing - a trophy thermobaric shot. "Boss, where should I shoot" he says without fuss. Shoot there, at the window on the second floor. It's a stupid question, and that's where this hellish thing flies. Jackson then fires two more RPG shells into it and one of them launches Leo. I report - 4 charges were fired. Bastards suppressed? You guys hit right on us. ****. A cold breeze ran down my back. Are you alive? So. I say, you idiots, you didn't name the right point. As it turned out, they looked out and went to the neighboring room. Thank God. 

We break into the building. The Archeologist's group breaks through next. Everyone has ice from the water at that moment. The archaeologist brought a backpack with ammunition. Everyone took care of themselves and licked the ice. I put the soldiers at the entrance, I go upstairs to talk to the senior. A battle rages in the building. Talked with the senior at this point - Doc. He complains that they are shooting from the house opposite. I see that he has two PCM loaded with tracers. So that you understand, tracers were loaded with PKM at the beginning of the war because there were no other 7.62x54 cartridges in the warehouses. I understand that they haven't fired since the ****ing beginning of the war. But this is the rare case when it plays into our hands. I suggest he set this house on fire. I run into the next room and start shooting at the next building. The calculation is simple - it will not be possible to shoot from a burning house. PKM jams, I pass it to Jackson, he throws me the second one and I continue. Then I take the first again and continue firing. Soon, the entire third floor begins to burn. The shooting stops from there. Okay, it got easier. I leaned out the front window. I slip on the move and the ceiling breaks through where I was supposed to stand. Lucky There is no reason to hang around. We start throwing grenades from above. Talked to Doc. He asks to attack D3's house as well. We sneak up and start shooting. Jurist starts shooting with PKM while standing. I'm already starting to go crazy. I throw my rifle at him, pick up the PKM. I scream at him what the hell. I lie down and start shooting lying down. I'm sorry, but I think standing shooting sucks and I just went crazy at that moment from the intensity of the battle. Then I tell him to continue. We shoot all the upper floors methodically. Silence. We turn back, the D4 house is on fire. I post two soldiers at the corner of the house to control the entrance to the entrances. All this time the battle continues. Muraha with Johny at point A shoot almost non-stop. During all this, a projectile from our artillery arrives at point A. Muraha was so badly contused that he walks a couple of meters and falls, and Foma, who was covering him with the RPK, is covered with a brick. Before this event, I heard on the radio: "Now, we will strike." I tell them, you hit my boys. They answer - we did not shoot. Of course, damn it. Muraha refuses to evacuate.

Thanks for the translation and the supporting videos/images.  Good details.

Steve

[Centurian52]

It looks like the Leopard 1s are finally going into action. I just refreshed my Oryx tab for Ukrainian equipment losses and I see that they've lost one Leopard 1A5.

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, Zeleban said:

Some sobering news for adherents of the “victory of Ukraine”

Looks like the expected Donbas focused Russian winter offensive is starting up.  Hopefully it will go similarly to previous offensives.  Roughly speaking:

1.  Russia attacks with accumulated, but understrength, forces against Ukrainian troops already positioned defensively.

2.  Initial attacks are pre-planned Soviet style set piece affairs.  Minor details planned according to time tables.

3.  Some progress is made in several areas, likely due in part to concentrated accurate artillery.  Other places attacks fail for any number of reasons.

4.  The attacks are not bloodless for the Russians.  Sometimes they are, in fact, quite "expensive" in terms of manpower, equipment, and supplies.

5.  Attacks continue for several weeks with some Ukrainian positions holding out against repeated attacks, others being lost due to untenable conditions.  However...

6.  As time goes on the trend for Russian attacks is to be more costly and less successful.  Put another way, slower gains with bigger piles of casualties.  This is for a variety of reasons, including Ukraine committing reserves, Russian forces become less combat capable, and progressively more fluid situations for which the Russian command structure isn't as capable of handling as it is the initial pre-planned attacks.

7.  Conditions worsen and Russia scrapes together more depleted/spent units to throw into the mix.  Maybe occasionally a unit that isn't total crap.  But the positive effects of this aren't enough to change the basic trend of slower progress and higher casualties.

8.  Russian forces become exhausted and are pushed to attack instead of pause.  This results in even slower progress and even more casualties.  Russia doesn't care so it keeps this up until...

9.  The offensive is effectively over.  Some gains, some non-gains, and even a few places where Ukraine managed to push back a little.  But operationally?  Not much different than when the offensive started, expect the forces engaged are no longer capable of offensive combat operations for at least 3-6 months.

Obviously this all comes at a cost to Ukraine in terms of lives and resources, but in the past the ratios were favorable to Ukraine and so there's at least that.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

This is not BAM (Baikal-Amur Magistral), but TransSib. BAM never connected Russia and China.

Photos of this tonnel (not related to incident). Reportedly a railway tank car either was set on fire or blew up. According to other information four explosives were set in tonnel and activated, when the train passed through tonnel. Still no confirmation.

This is the sort of thing Ukraine needs to do a LOT more of.  Russia's war effort is dependent upon fairly distinct and non-redundant infrastructure.  Identifying weak points and putting in the effort to disrupt or (hopefully) destroy them is good any day of the week, but it becomes especially important if the frontlines aren't producing positive results.

I hope we will see more of this in the coming months.  There's all kinds of things Ukraine can do to make it more difficult for Russia to function.  Ukraine's past track record is really good, so I'm hoping for a lot more in 2024!

As for the Transnistria situation, I understand the limiting factors that both Moldova and Ukraine have to take into consideration.  However, I still think that on balance causing trouble for Russia there is better than leaving them alone.

In prior conversations about the artillery shell depots, my assumption is they are wired to blowup on a moment's notice.  I doubt Ukraine will get their hands on them.

I just reminded myself about this website tracking infrastructure damage reports (regardless of cause):

https://eyesonrussia.org

Steve

[Astrophel]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Useless. "We are besiged fortress, sell our lives at higher price!" - this is their credo along centuries. All what it needs - to  suffocate money river, flowing to Russia. Without huge money their beggars will not sign contracts by own will. Putin's regime tries to "cosplay" Stalin's one now, but this is even not near. "For motherland, for Putin, beat up fascists!" this will work on relativelyt small part of population. Take back money from Russian servicmen and you will get 1917 throughout several months.

I take your point, I think.

Starving the russian war machine of money is not something I believe in as a tactic.  This war was well prepared financially and russia has deep resources when it comes to commodities that can be traded for hard cash and influence.  It might make a difference were the Opec States to increase production but they are intent on raising prices rather than supply.  The West should increase the policing of strategic supplies to starve the russian war machine but this is not going to be decisive - russia is not completely incompetent.

Surely intelligent people in russia are realising that this war is a disaster?  And it is surely becoming painful increasingly, depending where you live and what you do.  The intellectual argument needs to be advanced in terms russian people are used to debating - they are not stupid people.  The rest of the world is happy they stay on their island as long as they stop attacking others.  Make peace and dig your trench and sow your mines - but a few kilometers further east please and you will be left alone for eternity.

[Astrophel]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

Don't regret Kissinger's passing. He was of the realist school and did not hesitate to endorse a breakup of Ukraine and it's consignment into a Russian sphere of influence. He only changed his tune when it became untenable in the face of the unified disgust of the foreign policy establishment in DC. Being Henry Kissinger in the end was a business and Kissinger Associates takes money from everybody. 

I would also disagree that US intelligence agencies are being passive at all but that's not something we will understand fully for a decade or more. We do know right now that Putin certainly wouldn't agree with that depiction.

I hope you are right concerning the active engagement of US agencies.  I agree about Kissinger - he created a wall of opposition to western policy, unintentionally perhaps, but he was always focussed more on next week than next decade.

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

I take your point, I think.

Starving the russian war machine of money is not something I believe in as a tactic.  This war was well prepared financially and russia has deep resources when it comes to commodities that can be traded for hard cash and influence.  It might make a difference were the Opec States to increase production but they are intent on raising prices rather than supply.  The West should increase the policing of strategic supplies to starve the russian war machine but this is not going to be decisive - russia is not completely incompetent.

Surely intelligent people in russia are realising that this war is a disaster?  And it is surely becoming painful increasingly, depending where you live and what you do.  The intellectual argument needs to be advanced in terms russian people are used to debating - they are not stupid people.  The rest of the world is happy they stay on their island as long as they stop attacking others.  Make peace and dig your trench and sow your mines - but a few kilometers further east please and you will be left alone for eternity.

I am going to repost this excellent Russian perspective on why there's strong support for the war pretty much everywhere but St. Petersburg and Moscow.  This is nothing new to regular readers of this thread, but it is still an excellent review of reality in Russia's vast rural areas:

https://russiapost.info/regions/majority

Basically, it lays out the case that Russians in rural areas were already living at the poverty level and so they aren't noticing anything really different than before the war started.  The message is someone won't notice something taken away if they never had it to begin with. 

Closely linked to this is Russia's massive financial incentives for volunteers to fight in Ukraine.  Earlier in the war Russia tried to avoid doing this and instead went with the partial mobilization.  That didn't go over so well (see my post a few pages ago with polling data) and it wasn't cheap to have all those police running around grabbing people.  So it seems that someone at the top finally figured out it was more efficient and cost effective to bribe people into joining.  And for Russia's rural poor it doesn't really take all that much to get them to sign up because they have so little prospects of earning more any other way.

So Haiduk's point is if there was a way to cut off the money supply used to induce volunteers to fight, the war would collapse immediately.  There's two ways to do that:

1.  force the Russian government to prioritize other spending priorities over paying volunteers

2.  collapse the domestic value of the Ruble so that inflation makes it increasingly difficult to come up with the cash (basically a variation of #1)

There is no direct way for anybody to make this happen.  Sanctions help.  Blowing up expensive infrastructure helps.  Causing Russia to divert major spending into replacing things like tanks and AD systems helps.  But ultimately it is Moscow that determines spending priorities and if they can rob one part of the economy to pay for volunteers, there's nothing anybody can do to change that.  Hopefully over time people will notice a decline in public services, in particular health, that even by Russian standards is unacceptable.  That will take a LONG time.

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, Astrophel said:

I hope you are right concerning the active engagement of US agencies.  I agree about Kissinger - he created a wall of opposition to western policy, unintentionally perhaps, but he was always focussed more on next week than next decade.

 

 

8 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

"Power is the greatest aphrodisiac" was the loathsome, lecherous old toad's consulting business strategy as well.

Kissinger was the archetypical DC Insider and 'celebrity intellectual', constantly cross-trading on innuendo deriving from his universal 'access'.

But if you read transcripts of any interview or opinion piece, there's simply... nothing there. Any rando off the street would have been laughed out of the room for banality. But not the Good Doctor.

Ed Luttwak, whom I've cited a few times on here (to the annoyance of my esteemed friend @billbindc) is a variant of the same animal. Ed's fatal error though was/is always to be too fond of his own views, exposing himself to actually being proven flat wrong. Not Henry.

I will close my malediction with a pungent anecdote from apostate CIA officer John Stockwell's memoir "In Search of Enemies", lovingly enclosed in a quote bubble for those who don't care a toss about Kissinger.

*****

John Stockwell, “In Search of Enemies”:

The Kissinger Grunt
December 2, 1975.

At 2 :00 P.M there was to be a meeting of the Interagency Working Group on the third floor, “C” corridor, of the Central Intelligence Agency at Langley, Virginia. The civil war in Angola was going badly for our allies, and the CIA had formally recommended a major escalation-the introduction of American military advisors-to the secretary of state, Henry Kissinger….

Using a pointer, I started at the top of the map and talked my way down through the battlefields, bringing everyone up to date since the previous week’s meeting. In the north our allies, the FNLA and the elite Zairian paracommando battalions, had been routed and were now a broken rabble….

On November 24, the CIA had presented the 49 Committee with optional plans costing an additional $30, $60 or $100 million, but with the Agency’s reserves expended, there were no more secret funds….

Kissinger was, as always, preoccupied with other matters of state and his rather complicated social life. Ambassador Mulcahy had had difficulty gaining an audience, but had, finally, succeeded. We would soon know with what result.

At the outset, Potts had confided a desire to make the working group sessions so dull that non-CIA members would be discouraged in their supervision of “our” work. He had succeeded brilliantly. Working his way laboriously down a long agenda, he generally took three hours to cover one hour’s material, while his listeners struggled with fatigue, boredom, and the labor of digesting lunch in the poorly ventilated conference room. Inevitably breathing grew heavier, heads would nod, bounce up, then nod again.

I myself never dared to sleep; a colonel in a room full of general officers. Today, at least, there ought to be enough interest to keep them awake for a while; after all, we were meeting to plan a major escalation of a war. I finished my presentation and sat down.

Potts turned to Mulcahy and spoke pleasantly. “Well, Ed, what did Kissinger say?”

Mulcahy tamped his pipe and sucked on it for a few moments, apparently having trouble framing an answer. Potts watched him quietly. Finally Mulcahy spoke, “He didn’t exactly *say* anything.”

“Did he read the paper?”

“Oh, yes. I took it to him myself just a few minutes before he left for Peking. l insisted he read it.”

“You mean he didn’t make *any* comment? He just read it? and took off?” Potts looked baffled, exasperated.

Mulcahy nodded ruefully. “He read it. Then he grunted, and walked out of his office.”

“Grunted?”

“Yeah, like, unnph!” Mulcahy grunted.

“He’s going to be gone ten days!” Potts scowled. “What are we supposed to do in Angola in the meantime? We have to make some decisions today!”

Mulcahy shrugged ·helplessly. They looked at each other.

“Well, was it a positive grunt or a negative grunt?” Potts asked.

Mulcahy studied for a moment, considering. “It was just a grunt. Like, unnph. I mean it didn’t go up or down.·”

This group of somber men were supervising the country’s only current war. They were gathered today to discuss steps that could affect world peace. No one was smiling. Mulcahy grunted again, emphasizing a flat sound. Down the table someone else tried it, experimenting with the sound of a positive grunt, then a negative one, his voice rising, then falling. Others attempted it while Potts and Mulcahy watched.

“Well,” Potts said. “Do we proceed with the advisors?”

Mulcahy scowled and puffed on his pipe, uncomfortable in his position as Kissinger’s surrogate.

“We better not,” he said finally, “Kissinger just decided not to send Americans into the Sinai.” Everyone nodded in agreement. Inaction was safe, and easier to correct.

2 hours ago, Astrophel said:

 

My malediction to Henry is all in the quote bubble above, as it's lengthy and not everyone cares. Apologies for the formatting issues.

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Astrophel]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I am going to repost this excellent Russian perspective on why there's strong support for the war pretty much everywhere but St. Petersburg and Moscow.  This is nothing new to regular readers of this thread, but it is still an excellent review of reality in Russia's vast rural areas:

https://russiapost.info/regions/majority

Basically, it lays out the case that Russians in rural areas were already living at the poverty level and so they aren't noticing anything really different than before the war started.  The message is someone won't notice something taken away if they never had it to begin with. 

Closely linked to this is Russia's massive financial incentives for volunteers to fight in Ukraine.  Earlier in the war Russia tried to avoid doing this and instead went with the partial mobilization.  That didn't go over so well (see my post a few pages ago with polling data) and it wasn't cheap to have all those police running around grabbing people.  So it seems that someone at the top finally figured out it was more efficient and cost effective to bribe people into joining.  And for Russia's rural poor it doesn't really take all that much to get them to sign up because they have so little prospects of earning more any other way.

So Haiduk's point is if there was a way to cut off the money supply used to induce volunteers to fight, the war would collapse immediately.  There's two ways to do that:

1.  force the Russian government to prioritize other spending priorities over paying volunteers

2.  collapse the domestic value of the Ruble so that inflation makes it increasingly difficult to come up with the cash (basically a variation of #1)

There is no direct way for anybody to make this happen.  Sanctions help.  Blowing up expensive infrastructure helps.  Causing Russia to divert major spending into replacing things like tanks and AD systems helps.  But ultimately it is Moscow that determines spending priorities and if they can rob one part of the economy to pay for volunteers, there's nothing anybody can do to change that.  Hopefully over time people will notice a decline in public services, in particular health, that even by Russian standards is unacceptable.  That will take a LONG time.

Steve

Thanks for the link.  I will read it a couple more times before the day is finished

Russia is splashing the cash for mercenaries and they have cash to spare for the time being.  Last time I looked their debt to GDP ratio was very sympathetic for ramping up domestic spending - well prepared, as I said, with several years of preparation..

The war will not be won via financial pressures - at least not short term.  Ukraine has to win on the battlefield which looks both difficult and ill advised - the lines are frozen whether we like it or not.  The remaining option is to get inside the  russian heads.  Even in Siberia being dead is less preferable than having a new car?

Your point on forcing the russians to spend elsewhere is a good one, despite their reserves.  One way would be to foment insurrections.  Another way would be to destroy vital infrastructure.  A third way would be to attack profit making enterprises.  Probably these three would deliver higher dividends than appealing to ukrainian troops to attack russian trenches through the minefields.

The ideological battle needs to be fought actively.  Hearts and minds!  The future looks a lot brighter when russians have the same impulse as happened in USA after Vietnam.

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Astrophel said:

I hope you are right concerning the active engagement of US agencies.  I agree about Kissinger - he created a wall of opposition to western policy, unintentionally perhaps, but he was always focussed more on next week than next decade.

A brief Kissinger anecdote:

At 28, Kissinger started a magazine called Confluence at Harvard in part to bring in Weimar Era folks like Hannah Arendt, Neibuhr, etc for both academic reasons and because he wanted the cachet he could accrue from collecting resistants to Nazism. He then realized that these folks weren't going to do much to get him into the corridors of power so he hit on the now common idea of cultivating the image of a maverick, willing to buck the establishment. So he ran an article by Ernst von Salomon...Strasserite, one time member of Organisation Consul and critic of de-Nazification. 

As he later said “if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."

Don't buy any of the hagiography of Kissinger. He was all about proximity to power and utterly callous to anyone and everyone.

[billbindc]

39 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

My malediction to Henry is all in the quote bubble above, as it's lengthy and not everyone cares. Apologies for the formatting issues.

 

 

The Luttvak/Kissinger comparison is entirely apt. They are both courtiers who specialize(d) in telling elites what they want to hear under a veneer of respectability and a scrim of intellectual verbiage. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by billbindc

[LongLeftFlank]

1 minute ago, billbindc said:

The Luttvak/Kissinger comparison is entirely apt. They are both courtiers who specialize(d) in telling elites what they want to hear under a veneer of respectability and a scrim of intellectual verbiage. 

Yup, just like every successful c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶ie̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶e̶s̶a̶n̶ consultant, ever!

[Battlefront.com]

36 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

Thanks for the link.  I will read it a couple more times before the day is finished

Russia is splashing the cash for mercenaries and they have cash to spare for the time being.  Last time I looked their debt to GDP ratio was very sympathetic for ramping up domestic spending - well prepared, as I said, with several years of preparation..

The war will not be won via financial pressures - at least not short term.  Ukraine has to win on the battlefield which looks both difficult and ill advised - the lines are frozen whether we like it or not.  The remaining option is to get inside the  russian heads.  Even in Siberia being dead is less preferable than having a new car?

Your point on forcing the russians to spend elsewhere is a good one, despite their reserves.  One way would be to foment insurrections.  Another way would be to destroy vital infrastructure.  A third way would be to attack profit making enterprises.  Probably these three would deliver higher dividends than appealing to ukrainian troops to attack russian trenches through the minefields.

The ideological battle needs to be fought actively.  Hearts and minds!  The future looks a lot brighter when russians have the same impulse as happened in USA after Vietnam.

An interesting form of warfare would be to identify Russian private enterprises that are struggling financially due to sanctions and hit them with cyber or physical attacks.  Government institutions do not fold up when the going gets tough, they just become worse at their jobs.  Private enterprises, on the other hand, will fold up when things seem to be hopeless.  A manufacturing company that is struggling to make ends meet is more likely to shut down than rebuild if, for example, someone was carelessly smoking next to something flammable/explosive

There must be a lot of Russian companies that are in the high tech field (in part or in full) that are struggling to keep going.  We've read about some specific ones earlier in the war.  Now imagine a company in debt and trying to make payroll has a $10m facility burn to the ground.  If they don't close up shop they will at least likely need government bailout.  Resources diverted from the state to the private sector is a good thing for Ukraine.  Even better if the state takes over the failing company completely.  Russian state control means increased theft (corruption), which is helpful!

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

 

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Yup, just like every successful c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶ie̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶e̶s̶a̶n̶ consultant, ever!

Well, yeah but all those above do not necessarly are being universally cherished as geniuses.

I think one of sources of Kissinger influence is he was rare example of actual university intellectual doing career in highest politics. "Professors" (especially of political sciences) at least from times of Plato like to think of themselves as advisors to Very Important People, while in reality they are rarely ever noticed. He represented such impossible figure, so even when Academia hated him, a lot wanted to be in similar position.

 

Not sure if this clip was not posted before...reportedly SU-25 being hit by Lancet. Could be a decoy and date is unknown.

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Beleg85

[LongLeftFlank]

1. Strykers in action! (I think - this may be training footage, say the comments)

Are those antimissile flares they're firing?

2.  Financing?????? WTAF!!!! How does one make a fortification in a war zone a 'bankable' infra asset?

Separately, they talked about attracting resources, financing the construction of fortifications, and formats of cooperation with private business. 

I mean, Lt. Minderbinder had a revenue-generating solution, but that's fiction.

 

Perhaps Zelenskyy really has taken a few too many hits off the neoliberal privatisation bong....

3.  Russian-side drone footage from early Nov, grainy but some tolerably long takes.

4. Up close and personal on the Krynki bridgehead. Nothing 'sensitive' in this footage, just X being X.

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Battlefront.com]

29 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Well, yeah but all those above do not necessarly are being universally cherished as geniuses.

I think one of sources of Kissinger influence is he was rare example of actual university intellectual doing career in highest politics. "Professors" (especially of political sciences) at least from times of Plato like to think of themselves as advisors to Very Important People, while in reality they are rarely ever noticed. He represented such impossible figure, so even when Academia hated him, a lot wanted to be in similar position.

 

Not sure if this clip was not posted before...reportedly SU-25 being hit by Lancet. Could be a decoy and date is unknown.

 

Decoy.  You can see in the freeze frame just before the hit that the wings already have significant damage to them.  Looks like shrapnel damage.  Probably an aircraft damaged from the very beginning of the war or from one of the more recent strikes.

The question is... why was even a decoy within Lancet range?

Steve

[LuckyDog]

Several pages ago, someone mentioned that Ukraine works with ClearView for facial recognition for IDing senior RU commanders and war criminals. Have they started to identify the dead RU soldiers, catalog them on a website, and target relative's social media feeds? It would make the Russian attempts to avoid paying death benefits more difficult, bring the reality home to the civilian population, and reduce state coffers. Or would this have the unintended consequence of raising support due to the payments? 

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, LuckyDog said:

Several pages ago, someone mentioned that Ukraine works with ClearView for facial recognition for IDing senior RU commanders and war criminals. Have they started to identify the dead RU soldiers, catalog them on a website, and target relative's social media feeds? It would make the Russian attempts to avoid paying death benefits more difficult, bring the reality home to the civilian population, and reduce state coffers. Or would this have the unintended consequence of raising support due to the payments? 

That's a very good question.  A composition of dead faces and names, thousands long, hacked onto Russian TV would be impactful, I think.  Having a website with all the names, with various ways to sort (home, unit, place died, date, etc.) would be interesting.  Combining that with the BBC's independent identifications would be a good idea too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-829ea0ba-5b42-499b-ad40-6990f2c4e5d0

The only possible downside is people thinking that this is a complete list.  No matter how many times the authors qualify it, some will say "you said there were 200,000 dead and all you can show is 35,000?".  That sort of thing can become a problem.

What I really want to know is how many Russian POWs Ukraine has taken in since the start of the conflict and how many are still in Ukraine.  This is a REAL number, as opposed to casualty estimates.

Steve

[Zeleban]

39 minutes ago, LuckyDog said:

Several pages ago, someone mentioned that Ukraine works with ClearView for facial recognition for IDing senior RU commanders and war criminals. Have they started to identify the dead RU soldiers, catalog them on a website, and target relative's social media feeds? It would make the Russian attempts to avoid paying death benefits more difficult, bring the reality home to the civilian population, and reduce state coffers. Or would this have the unintended consequence of raising support due to the payments? 

The Russian Ministry of Defense does not care about the data posted on some website. They also don't care about the testimony of artificial intelligence. They will declare that all this is Western manipulation and will easily avoid the need for payments

[JonS]

3 hours ago, Astrophel said:

One way would be to foment insurrections.

While they're a lot of juvenile fun to think about, I gotta say that I'm not a huge fan of formenting insurrections. Aside from the deliberate cruelty you're intentionally unleashing on the world, thet almost invariably create bigger problems than the one they seek to solve. See, for example, Ho Chi Minh and Osama Bin Laden.

Edited November 30, 2023 by JonS

[JonS]

44 minutes ago, LuckyDog said:

Have they started to identify the dead RU soldiers, catalog them

Would the average Ivan-Sixpack soldier have a sufficient presence online to reliably identify a photo of a corpse from years-old high school photos and drunken 2am photos? I mean ... maybe? Some of them?

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

Not sure if this clip was not posted before...reportedly SU-25 being hit by Lancet. Could be a decoy and date is unknown.

 

Decoy