How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Eug85]

https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1829565718313984422?t=ezK4m_2_XMf_28dOdVAhMw&s=19

Zelensky fired the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force.

There were rumors that the loss of the F-16 was due to friendly fire from a Patriot anti-aircraft missile during the repulse of a missile attack. It seems that this turned out to be true. Unfortunately, the problem of coordinating air defense with aviation exists not only in the Russian army but also in the Ukrainian one.

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Ts4EVER said:

That may be, but liberal democracies don't need to stay that way if a major part of the national capital feels its needs would be better served by a different system. As an example, the establishment of National Socialism in Germany was in large part because the capitalists in Germany felt that their goals (privileged access to the European markets) would be best achieved by aggressive military action and the Nazis were most likely to do this.

The present day version of Germany has achieved this goal peacefully through the EU, but this does not need to stay that way for ever. In fact, the Ukraine war shows that peaceful expansion has ended and that future gains in Eastern Europe will meet Russian counter action, who are defending their own imperialist outposts (or what is left of them). So a change in German policy is not unlikely.

I would also argue that liberal democracies have many times demonstrated their willingness to start colonial wars for economic interests, so I don't see why they wouldn't start other ones as well.

Well...no, actually. Most big German businesses supported the traditional parties and for good reason. Taxes imposed by Hitler on business doubled from 20 percent in 1934 to 40 percent in 1939, and caps were placed on profits from stocks and bonds, and interest rates. But those traditional parties made alliances with Nazis and business didn't really have anywhere else to go after 1933.

 

[Ts4EVER]

No, starting in 1933 big capital switched from the old parties to the Nazis in large numbers, namely not the most modern firms, but the ones most hard hit by the 1929 recession.

[billbindc]

6 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

No, starting in 1933 big capital switched from the old parties to the Nazis in large numbers, namely not the most modern firms, but the ones most hard hit by the 1929 recession.

Hmmmm...what happened in 1933? Tip of my tongue...

[Centurian52]

The fact that Russia is still advancing in the Donbass is annoying (I want to see them losing ground, not taking it). But you can only advance so far in one area, without commensurate advances on the flanks, before it starts to become a liability. That salient extending between Avdiivka and Pokrovsk is starting to look pretty juicy.

[Ts4EVER]

10 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Hmmmm...what happened in 1933? Tip of my tongue...

I recommend the book on the topic of National Socialism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who worked within the central European economic council, including under Nazi rule, until forced to emigrate in 1936. He describes quite clearly how German capital turned to the Nazis and then started to full on supporting them after they seized power. He makes clear that fascism as a system is relatively unattractive to the most modern industries in a capitalist nation state, for example the German electrical and chemical industry of the day, but very attractive to less competitive industries (steel and coal, basically). These needed a big German internal market to make up for the international trade that went bust in 1929. As a bonus the Nazis promised to destroy the militant leftist movements, which is attractive to any firm. Also, the preparations for such a war would mean massive profits for these industries in particular.

State buerocracy and firm management grew together into a monstrum, costing the capitalists their freedom in a quasi planned economy, but ensured massive profits from guaranteed state orders. The social basis of Nazism were small shop owners, farmers etc, but it was taken over and used by the German capital to further their goals, and it would have worked if it wasn't for those meddling allies.

[Carolus]

55 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

The fact that Russia is still advancing in the Donbass is annoying (I want to see them losing ground, not taking it). But you can only advance so far in one area, without commensurate advances on the flanks, before it starts to become a liability. That salient extending between Avdiivka and Pokrovsk is starting to look pretty juicy.

The Kursk offensive took everyone by surprise. 

But for some reason I doubt Ukraine has another rabbit in the hat (even though some Ru-Nats fear so) to pincer a Russian salient. 

I hope that the movement of elite forces (like Magyar's drone unit) can help stabilize the area. 

But it certainly seems like Ukraine keeps certain front sectors super thin simply because they are starved for usable troops. 

And Kursk was both a move against the Ru regime stability as well as a move against Western governments who flirted with pushing for negotiations, because Putin would never accept any diplomacy while a proper part of Russia is occupied (of course Putin was never truly interested in diplomacy with the Ukrainian untermenschen anyway, but now it is obvious even for all but the most fervent bootlickers in the West why he won't while Ukrianians roam in the borderlands).

Ukraine's toe hold on Kursk Oblast is Ukraine's toe hold on Western political support after the military support seems to have pretty much petered out. There seem to be maybe a dozen Storm Shadow (export version) left, no Western country developed a mass drone production, Patriot ammo for the 4 or 5 Ukrainian batteries cobbled together from 3 different countries is throttled by low production numbers while 500 systems sit rusting on Western soil, Ukrainian F-16s with 40 year old sidewinders are the gap filler for air defense so only one or two hospitals and power plants are destroyed per week instead of five, usually with missiles filled with western dual use chips. Meanwhile Ukraine is being micromanaged on what it is allowed to target until Russian assets moved out of range. Strange that North Korea didn't give Russia such a policy for their ballistic missiles. I guess the big difference is that Russia paid for them, while Ukrainians got their donated, so obviously they have the duty to die in the way Western security advisors consider the most dignified.

I don't really get the strategic picture here.

Harris/Walz, after their win, have to pull together the oldest Republican party memebers with a burning hatred for everything Russian in their heart into a bipartisan council and try to pull the cart out of this slow genocide.

Edited August 30 by Carolus

[danfrodo]

deleted, off topic

Edited August 30 by danfrodo

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Ts4EVER said:

I recommend the book on the topic of National Socialism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who worked within the central European economic council, including under Nazi rule, until forced to emigrate in 1936. He describes quite clearly how German capital turned to the Nazis and then started to full on supporting them after they seized power. He makes clear that fascism as a system is relatively unattractive to the most modern industries in a capitalist nation state, for example the German electrical and chemical industry of the day, but very attractive to less competitive industries (steel and coal, basically). These needed a big German internal market to make up for the international trade that went bust in 1929. As a bonus the Nazis promised to destroy the militant leftist movements, which is attractive to any firm. Also, the preparations for such a war would mean massive profits for these industries in particular.

State buerocracy and firm management grew together into a monstrum, costing the capitalists their freedom in a quasi planned economy, but ensured massive profits from guaranteed state orders. The social basis of Nazism were small shop owners, farmers etc, but it was taken over and used by the German capital to further their goals, and it would have worked if it wasn't for those meddling allies.

Since we are way off topic I'll just point out that you conveniently start your narrative in 1933/34 which leaves out...well quite a bit...as well as missing my point. Finis.

[Centurian52]

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

The Kursk offensive took everyone by surprise. 

I'm not sure what Kursk has to do with anything I said. Hopefully Kursk sets the stage for further attacks by diverting enough Russian troops from other areas. But so far it doesn't look like it has diverted Russian troops from Donbass, so it's probably not relevant to a hypothetical future Ukrainian offensive in that area.

28 minutes ago, Carolus said:

But for some reason I doubt Ukraine has another rabbit in the hat (even though some Ru-Nats fear so) to pincer a Russian salient. 

I'm not exactly envisioning a pincer. Nothing so dramatic as that. Big ambitious offensives like that are probably the wrong way to go in this war. Ukraine probably needs to conduct multiple small scale offensives with very limited objectives, rather than trying to pull off a single massive offensive per year (as ISW has repeatedly pointed out, no single operation can be decisive in a war this large). They don't even really need to take significant territory. The important thing is to put pressure on Russian forces in places where they can achieve favorable loss ratios, prevent the Russians from throttling down the intensity of the fighting to something they can sustain, and continue to grind down the Russian army.  Attacking into culminating Russian offensives is a good approach to take. And a salient extending far beyond the 2023 defensive lines seems like a particularly good place to attack to me. As to when Ukraine can put together another small offensive, I don't know. Probably not soon. But not never.

42 minutes ago, Carolus said:

Ukraine's toe hold on Kursk Oblast is Ukraine's toe hold on Western political support after the military support seems to have pretty much petered out.

Western support for Ukraine is not nearly so fragile as that. If we were still in mid-April, you might have a convincing case to make about western military support appearing to peter out. But that was four months ago.

[sburke]

49 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

I'm not sure what Kursk has to do with anything I said. Hopefully Kursk sets the stage for further attacks by diverting enough Russian troops from other areas. But so far it doesn't look like it has diverted Russian troops from Donbass, so it's probably not relevant to a hypothetical future Ukrainian offensive in that area.

That it hasn't diverted troops (as far as we know) does not mean it hasn't diverted resources.  It has also certainly complicated issues at the high command.  Dissension between Putin and his generals is a very good thing.  Be fun if the UA could hack Russian media with a public safety message to the Russian generals to avoid windows.

As to a UA offensive elsewhere, I wouldn't write it off, but I also expect the UA to have other plans to put the RA off balance other than strictly ground offensives. One thing you can say for the UA, they have been very creative in this war.  That being said it is still a grind at the strategic level.  I keep hoping that we will finally see the economic edifice of Russia start to creak and the plaster start falling from the ceiling as @The_Capt had mentioned.

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

That it hasn't diverted troops (as far as we know) does not mean it hasn't diverted resources.  It has also certainly complicated issues at the high command.

'zactly.  Kursk operation hasn't diverted enough RU troops to stop big donbas attack, but how much bigger would that operation be without it?  we don't know.  How many other RU actions were subverted due to this operation?  we don't know.  We do know UKR is not currently stopping the RU advance.  If UKR is causing heavy losses then maybe RU does run low on meat & machines and the reserves they would've had won't be there.  

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

I recommend the book on the topic of National Socialism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who worked within the central European economic council, including under Nazi rule, until forced to emigrate in 1936. He describes quite clearly how German capital turned to the Nazis and then started to full on supporting them after they seized power. He makes clear that fascism as a system is relatively unattractive to the most modern industries in a capitalist nation state, for example the German electrical and chemical industry of the day, but very attractive to less competitive industries (steel and coal, basically). These needed a big German internal market to make up for the international trade that went bust in 1929. As a bonus the Nazis promised to destroy the militant leftist movements, which is attractive to any firm. Also, the preparations for such a war would mean massive profits for these industries in particular.

State buerocracy and firm management grew together into a monstrum, costing the capitalists their freedom in a quasi planned economy, but ensured massive profits from guaranteed state orders. The social basis of Nazism were small shop owners, farmers etc, but it was taken over and used by the German capital to further their goals, and it would have worked if it wasn't for those meddling allies.

I'll skip this part of the conversation because I'm waaaaaaay too interested in it.  I spent a lot of time on this topic while getting my history degree.  In fact, just two weeks ago I finally parted with a whole bunch of books on the topic of the rise of Nazism (specifically) and Fascism (generally).  I just do not have time to revisit these topics in detail and those books have already consumed significant space for 30 years!

What I will say is it is more basic than this.  Put aside all labels and ideologies.  Biologically Humans are animals and animals have baked into them a threat response.  Some people see threats or are persuaded by others than a threat exists and that threat must be met with force or dire consequences will ensue. 

Authoritarians use this as a major source of their power.  The degree of painting the threat as internal or external is adjusted depending on what the agenda of the day is.  The same is true in the Western democracies.  When you look at the right wing movements in the West you will see rallying cries against things which, really, have zero impact on the quality of life for the average person. Instead, the rallying cries are explicitly designed to distract people from the real problems by the people who benefit from the status quo.  For example, what impacts the average person's quality of life more... which bathroom or pronoun a very small percentage of the population choose to use or an economic and judicial system that is based on favoring those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom?  And no, I'm definitely no socialist.  Just someone who recognizes we do not have a free market system because those who have wealth do not want to compete to retain or expand it.

So, getting back to the point.

The West doesn't really have a unified actual external enemy sufficient enough in size or immediacy to keep its populations relatively unified around common social goals.  Those that are biologically and/or socially predisposed to being afraid are being used to undermine their own self interests by tearing apart the systems which pose a challenge/threat to the elites rather than coming together to create a fairer and more just society.  And that is the threat that democracies face because those forces are inherently incompatible with democratic values.

Steve

[sburke]

odd.  Any thoughts on this from our Ukrainian friends?

Controversial captain named chief of staff for Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, media says (msn.com)

[ArmouredTopHat]

What the Russians reported as an MLRS strike is likely a significant launcher fail from a Pantsir that can be seen on the left. 

[acrashb]

If accurate what does it mean?  Something, or nothing?

 

[sburke]

Mongolia obligated to arrest Putin during his visit to country - International Criminal Court (msn.com)

[Battlefront.com]

Ukraine lost an F-16 and its pilot, who was apparently involved in shooting down incoming Russian ordinance a few days ago during one of the big attacks.  Evidence suggests pilot error or mechanical failure, not hostile fire.  Which makes sense because he would have been well beyond Russian reach.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/08/30/ukraine-f-16-crash/75011222007/

Steve

[sburke]

Russia’s Military Fears for Its Secrets After Telegram Founder’s Arrest (msn.com)

Russian authorities have reacted with unusual fury to the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov by French authorities.

Telegram is more than a mere social-media app to Moscow. Russian soldiers and spies depend on it for battlefield communications, including the guidance of artillery, the coordination of movements and intelligence gathering.

“Many are joking that the arrest of Pavel Durov is essentially the arrest of the chief signals officer of the Russian armed forces,” said Aleksey Rogozin, a Russian Parliament adviser and former senior military industry executive.

The Russian military found out quickly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that its units had a hard time communicating with each other and that its unencrypted radio traffic was easily intercepted by Ukrainians. Modern communications capabilities were scarce, and remain so, given the rapid expansion of the Russian armed forces since then.
Legacy Soviet technologies, meanwhile, have proved ill-suited for a new type of warfare in which drones—and the instant transfer of images and videos—assumed a critical role.

Both the Russian and the Ukrainian militaries started relying on commercial platforms. While the Ukrainians prefer Western providers such as Signal or Discord, the Russians chose Telegram because it is based in the United Arab Emirates, which maintains good relations with Moscow. They think the app is more impervious to Western signals intelligence.

“As wild as it sounds, the transmission of intelligence, the targeting of artillery, the broadcasting of drone feeds and many other things are currently very frequently done via Telegram,” Rogozin said on Telegram. His father, a senator, is a former Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a former head of the country’s space program.

Russian troops access Telegram either through cellphone networks or Starlink satellite terminals, initially used exclusively by Ukrainian forces but now more frequently operated by Russian units in occupied parts of Ukraine.

“Telegram is not an officially condoned communications system for the Russian military, but its private chat and direct messaging systems are used tactically nevertheless by soldiers and some military units for coordination on the battlefield,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington think tank.

Russian volunteers who supply drones, night-vision scopes, vehicles and other aid to military units operate almost exclusively through Telegram. The service also has offered a lucrative social-media platform to Russian war propagandists, with millions of subscribers, who work in close cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Defense.

“The detention of Durov, by itself, wouldn’t have necessarily caused such a resonance in Russia, except for one circumstance. De facto, it is the main messenger of this war, an alternative to the classified military network,” Andrey Medvedev, a correspondent for Russian state TV and a deputy chair of the Moscow city council, wrote on Telegram.

A Russian soldier who runs a popular Telegram channel called “Callsign Osetin” expressed the alarm of many of his comrades: “If our enemies get inside Telegram, our affairs will be crap. A lot of information is flowing through chats, encrypted and not.”

While Durov has bragged about the encryption level of Telegram’s “secret chats,” they aren’t the default setting on the app and they are cumbersome to set up. Most messages on the network aren’t end-to-end encrypted, according to analysts.

The Russian government has reacted to Durov’s detention in France with far more outrage and fury than would be expected given the circumstances of the entrepreneur’s departure from Russia in 2014.

At the time, Durov relinquished his stake in VKontakte, a social-media platform he had created, to avoid having to comply with the Russian intelligence services’ demand to supply the details of Ukrainian users in groups affiliated with the Maidan Revolution against Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych.

Once the news of Durov’s detention at a Paris airport emerged last weekend, several Russian lawmakers publicly called to exchange him for Westerners in Russian custody. After leaving Russia, Durov acquired the citizenships of France, St. Kitts and Nevis and the U.A.E.

On Wednesday, French judicial authorities brought preliminary charges against Durov for allegations including refusal to cooperate with investigations into illegal activity on Telegram. He was placed under court monitoring, barred from leaving France and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Russian media have reported widespread instructions by government agencies to delete Telegram chat histories, though a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied such an order had been issued. Aleksey Zhuravlev, the deputy head of the Russian Parliament’s defense committee, said the Russian military will be easily able to substitute Telegram, a statement met with skepticism by prominent Russian military bloggers.

The director of Russia’s SVR external intelligence service, Sergey Naryshkin, said recently that he expects Durov not to share with French and other Western governments any information that would harm the Russian state. “I very much count on him not to allow it,” the Russian spymaster said in an interview with TASS news agency.

A senior Western official said damage to Russia’s security establishment could be substantial—if Durov decides to cooperate, which is by no means certain.

An intelligence official in another Western country said Telegram, in addition to the battlefield in Ukraine, has been particularly vital for Russian intelligence operations to carry out sabotage in Europe. “Looking at the level of alarm with which the Russian government has reacted to this, it looks like they have genuine worries,” the official said.

French and other Western law-enforcement agencies are unlikely to press Durov to relinquish Telegram’s source codes, said Christo Grozev, an open-source intelligence researcher. Grozev testified for the prosecution at the trial of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian intelligence officer who killed a Georgian-born Chechen activist in Berlin in 2019 and was returned to Moscow as part of a recent multicountry prisoner swap.

“But the Russians will be projecting, and they will be paranoid about what the French and the Americans are likely to ask of Durov,” Grozev said. “This fear would make it look like a very dangerous thing to the Russians. And raising this so publicly is a message to Durov that he shouldn’t cooperate with anyone.”

Durov has boasted about how the encryption for Telegram messages is superior to what is offered by such platforms as Signal and Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp, both of which are blocked in Russia. In May, Durov reposted an article alleging that Signal is penetrated by U.S. intelligence and that its leadership had fostered “U.S.-supported color revolutions abroad”—a favorite Kremlin talking point referring to popular protests that ousted authoritarian rulers in Russia’s neighborhood and the Middle East.

In April, Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency complained that Telegram blocked the bot it had used to collect intelligence tips in Russia and the occupied territories. Several similar Ukrainian bot accounts used for recruitment were also blocked, with some of them later reinstated.

“We don’t want Telegram to be a tool for violence,” Durov posted on his platform at the time.

While Telegram was blocked in Russia in 2018, when Durov complained about his inability to visit his parents there, he came to Russia in 2020 and Russian regulators removed the restrictions. The following year, the Russian state bank VTB helped Telegram raise $1 billion in bonds, some of them purchased by Russian investors.

“We know that Durov did a lot, and sacrificed a lot in 2013-2014 not to disclose the data of Maidan activists,” said Andrei Soldatov, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “What we don’t know is what are the conditions of his agreement with Russian officials in 2020, under which the ban on Telegram was lifted.”

At the time, Durov said that the lifting of the ban would have a “positive impact” on Russia’s national security, and he added that Telegram had developed ways of removing “extremist propaganda” without sacrificing users’ privacy.

 

[Astrophel]

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/

Telegram privacy seems entirely dependent on the goodwill of Durov and friends.

Elsewhere is suggested Russia is using Telegram to make payments with crypto now Chinese banks are less cooperative.

[Joe982]

37 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

Elsewhere is suggested Russia is using Telegram to make payments with crypto now Chinese banks are less cooperative.

But for those selling crypto, who would accept rubles?

[sburke]

Ukraine General’s Plan Surprised the Russians—and His Own Troops (msn.com)

pretty good article on the planning for the offensive.

[Astrophel]

19 minutes ago, Joe982 said:

But for those selling crypto, who would accept rubles?

Telegram are in the crypto business themselves, Toncoin.  Curiously just before D. was arrested they sold a bunch.  When news of the arrest hit the street the price dropped 10-15%.  There is also gold, plus whatever else russians are mining in Africa.

[LongLeftFlank]

19 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

Busted!!!!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-26/tanker-carrying-sanctioned-russian-lng-attempting-ship-transfer

[Lethaface]

On 8/30/2024 at 10:43 AM, kraze said:

Also I'm one of the most radically pro-Western Ukrainians out there. I know that it's either EU/NATO or we are dead. But I won't hold my breath when I see how people in high places in the West keep looking for "good" russians.

There are morons (and non-morons) everywhere, so also in high places in the West. But not subscribing to your extremist adagio 'only good Russian is a dead one' doesn't mean the West is looking to one up Russia's empire aspirations; nor does North Korea calling it's self Democratic mean that 'we' see it as a democracy.