How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Huba]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Reuniting the 'Axis of Weasels?'

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw that, and it's a load of bull manure really. Here's the outline of the plan from the article:

Quote

 

The first step in the peace plan, according to the newspaper, is a cease-fire and the demilitarization of the front lines.

The second point is that Ukraine would be a neutral country, with its security guaranteed by a not-yet-identified group of countries. The contours of this part of the plan would be discussed at a peace conference.

The third point is a bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine to clarify the future of Crimea and Donbas. The agreement would deal with cultural and language rights and guarantee the free movement of people, goods and capital. The plan, according to Repubblica, indicates that Crimea and Donbas would have almost complete autonomy, including in questions of defense, but would be part of Ukraine.

The fourth point would be a multilateral peace agreement between the European Union and Russia that would include a staged withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and the winding down of Western sanctions against Moscow.

 

Basically the proposal is that Ukraine first agrees to be burdened by two Transistrias/ Abkhazias, and then maybe Russians would retreat from it's borders. And somebody unspecified (not Italy for sure) will guarantee Ukraine's safety. It is just outrageous. 

[LongLeftFlank]

Droog, Where's My БМП?

 

 

[Haiduk]

11 minutes ago, akd said:

@sburke @Kinophile

Possibly the Su-25 shot down yesterday had a Major-General (Kanamat Botashev) at the controls:

 

Interesting, that Botashev retired in 2012 after accident, when he crushed Su-27, flying on it without permition to flights. But reportedly he was 63 years in 2022 - I doubt he could fly in such age. Maybe natural death.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[Raptor341]

47 minutes ago, Huba said:

I saw that, and it's a load of bull manure really. Here's the outline of the plan from the article:

Basically the proposal is that Ukraine first agrees to be burdened by two Transistrias/ Abkhazias, and then maybe Russians would retreat from it's borders. And somebody unspecified (not Italy for sure) will guarantee Ukraine's safety. It is just outrageous. 

That is BS - this war ends when Ukraine says its done, ideally after recapturing all of her lawful territory. 

[billbindc]

7 hours ago, sburke said:

was just reading this on conditions in India.

 

India — the world’s second-largest wheat producer after China — banned most exports last week after its hottest March on record hit harvests across the north of the country. This caused the price of wheat, already up some 60 percent this year because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to shoot up once again.

'Torturous' heat is breaking records and livelihoods in India. It's only going to get worse. (msn.com)

 

India is responsible for less than 1% of global wheat exports. Yes it's going to be a tough year but it is one factor among many

[c3k]

Global food crisis???

So, someone upstream posted something about how Ukraine's fight with Russia, if prolonged, will create/exacerbate/ or otherwise worsen some sort of global food crisis.

I was curious...so I looked at some numbers.

Ukraine's production of corn/maize was 35 million tons in 2019 (a significant improvement over the previous years).

That's a lot of corn. However, worldwide production in 2019 was...1.15 billion tons.

Ukraine produced about 3% of the total production.

Hmmm...let's look at wheat. 28 million tons vs. 765 millon tons, or ~3.5%.

Crap. Those aren't doomsday numbers. What about sunflower seeds? 15m t of 56m t, or a bit over 25%. Sweet! Now we're getting somewhere! Sunflower oil production: 5mt of 18mt, so about 1/3.

Rapeseed, sugars, potatoes, sesame, rice all are far below corn or wheat.

 

Oh...it's not a global issue, it's a regional issue because some parts of the world depend on Ukraine food production more than others? Sounds like a shipping issue. And, it'd be very specific to very isolated locales with very obvious solutions.

Yes, prices are responding to the minor shortfall. That's how the market works: prices are a form of communication (much like war is all communication). Higher prices mean less wastage of the end product by the user, and is a form of self-correction in distribution.

The US (self-caused) baby formula shortage is causing more hardship than any putative famine due to Ukraine's lack of food production.

[Huba]

Quite hawkish statement:

 

[panzermartin]

Speaking about wheat, I didn't know this but Russia is the no1 exporter not Ukraine. At least according to this tweet.

 

We are banning wheat but not russian oil, interesting logic. 

[akd]

1 minute ago, panzermartin said:

Speaking about wheat, I didn't know this but Russia is the no1 exporter not Ukraine. At least according to this tweet.

 

We are banning wheat but not russian oil, interesting logic. 

Russia’s wheat exports are not banned.  Try again.

[kraze]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

I saw that, and it's a load of bull manure really. Here's the outline of the plan from the article:

Basically the proposal is that Ukraine first agrees to be burdened by two Transistrias/ Abkhazias, and then maybe Russians would retreat from it's borders. And somebody unspecified (not Italy for sure) will guarantee Ukraine's safety. It is just outrageous. 

Why not just have a single "just give up already so we can get back to trading with insane dictator and his gang of war criminals as before".

[MSBoxer]

11 minutes ago, Huba said:

Quite hawkish statement:

 

Administration staff have since stated that the US policy regarding Taiwan has not changed.  
This is a common occurrence for this administration with the president making an off the cuff statement that his staff later "clarifies".

“As the President said, our policy has not changed. He reiterated our One China Policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the official said. “He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself.”

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/biden-taiwan-chin-invade-military-intervention-rcna30033

Edited May 23, 2022 by MSBoxer
add link and quote

[billbindc]

9 minutes ago, Huba said:

Quite hawkish statement:

 

Yet another reason for Xi to be irritated with Putin. The invasion of Ukraine created the space for this to happen.

[Huba]

12 minutes ago, c3k said:

Global food crisis???

So, someone upstream posted something about how Ukraine's fight with Russia, if prolonged, will create/exacerbate/ or otherwise worsen some sort of global food crisis.

I was curious...so I looked at some numbers.

Ukraine's production of corn/maize was 35 million tons in 2019 (a significant improvement over the previous years).

That's a lot of corn. However, worldwide production in 2019 was...1.15 billion tons.

Ukraine produced about 3% of the total production.

Hmmm...let's look at wheat. 28 million tons vs. 765 millon tons, or ~3.5%.

Crap. Those aren't doomsday numbers. What about sunflower seeds? 15m t of 56m t, or a bit over 25%. Sweet! Now we're getting somewhere! Sunflower oil production: 5mt of 18mt, so about 1/3.

Rapeseed, sugars, potatoes, sesame, rice all are far below corn or wheat.

 

Oh...it's not a global issue, it's a regional issue because some parts of the world depend on Ukraine food production more than others? Sounds like a shipping issue. And, it'd be very specific to very isolated locales with very obvious solutions.

Yes, prices are responding to the minor shortfall. That's how the market works: prices are a form of communication (much like war is all communication). Higher prices mean less wastage of the end product by the user, and is a form of self-correction in distribution.

The US (self-caused) baby formula shortage is causing more hardship than any putative famine due to Ukraine's lack of food production.

What is important though is how much exportable corn/ wheat/ oil Ukraine produces, and those numbers are significantly higher. This video explains the whole problem in great detail, I recommend the whole channel as great source of economic analysis:

 

Edited May 23, 2022 by Huba

[c3k]

11 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I overpost Galeev, but if anyone has a better source for such things (other than footnoting whole textbooks), please link it.

Meanwhile, despairing young national-idealist Comrade Shayga -- a future Strelnikov? --

The poll is interesting. (Like any poll...it should be taken with some salt.  )

What I see is the poorest section of society, having difficulty (?) buying enough food, still support the war: 39% for vs. 34% against.  That is a stark indication of commitment.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, fireship4 said:

I am aware (I swear one of my Panthers did it once in the Red Thunder demo), what I am saying is why have we never seen the smoke dischargers in use: is it just uncommon, some statistical effect of the type of video coverage, or something else?  You would have thought we would have seen them in use given the number of times we've seen 'tanks in distress'.

Furthermore, smoke injection is more defensive compared to dischargers which I suppose can be either - and at least in some cases for the Russians they are designed to be used offensively (during the attack) as I understand.

For what it's worth, the only other time I've seen a Russian tank putting out smoke was in one of the Bilohorivka bridge videos.  There was a tank providing smoke for the third bridge (#3), which indicated yet again how ill prepared the Russians were to execute their own bridging doctrine.

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

Just now, c3k said:

What I see is the poorest section of society, having difficulty (?) buying enough food, still support the war: 39% for vs. 34% against.  That is a stark indication of commitment.

Or else a large proportion of Russians rapidly apply the 'What Good Thing Do I Expect Will Happen If I Give My True Feelings On This Matter' test, and say the 'patriotic' thing?

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Of course, they had own defense lines - it' impossible not to have it, when you have position warfare sinse 2015. Though, many Russian sources all time criticized quality of most of theese fortifiacations in comparison with Ukrainian.  

Thanks!  That is what I was thinking.  Whatever fortifications exist in the deep rear are likely not very good or very consistent.

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

PS. about video with two tanks - "Zirkuni" = Tsyrkuny

Thanks!  I take it Zirkyuni is an older Soviet era name?  I've seen a bunch of those cited lately and they are very confusing because Google Maps doesn't reference them at all.

Steve

[kraze]

19 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Or else a large proportion of Russians rapidly apply the 'What Good Thing Do I Expect Will Happen If I Give My True Feelings On This Matter' test, and say the 'patriotic' thing?

Nothing will happen to any russian that will give true feelings on this matter. Hence why they give true feelings on this matter.

It's almost 90 days since the full scale invasion began and we still see zero opposition to war or warcrimes. You could've argued that "good russians" exist in the first week or two - but now it's time to be realistic. Because really it's been 8 years and 90 days.

Edited May 23, 2022 by kraze

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

So is this Excalibur or what? I'm not sure if the news was posted here, but I just found out that Canada allegedly sent a batch of Excaliburs together with it's M777s, back in April.

 

Looks more like a Javelin to me.  And we do know that Ukraine has lots of them, so it is a more likely candidate.

The slow motion portion shows that the direction the round came from very likely had clean LOS to the impact area.  If this was in the middle of a forest then Javelin would be ruled out because of LOS requirements.

Steve

[TheVulture]

27 minutes ago, akd said:

Russia’s wheat exports are not banned.  Try again.

But Russia has previous chosen to block its own wheat exports to its Eurasian Economic Union in response to sanctions, although IIRC it rolled back on that after a while.

[DesertFox]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

I saw that, and it's a load of bull manure really. Here's the outline of the plan from the article:

Basically the proposal is that Ukraine first agrees to be burdened by two Transistrias/ Abkhazias, and then maybe Russians would retreat from it's borders. And somebody unspecified (not Italy for sure) will guarantee Ukraine's safety. It is just outrageous. 

Yeah, whole lot of bullcrap from Putinlovers!

[Huba]

TOS-1 rockets landing amid single-family dwellings in Lyman.

 

[Battlefront.com]

39 minutes ago, c3k said:

Global food crisis???

So, someone upstream posted something about how Ukraine's fight with Russia, if prolonged, will create/exacerbate/ or otherwise worsen some sort of global food crisis.

Most of the stuff I've been listening to and seeing is, thankfully, not saying we're in for mass starvation events.  Higher prices at a time when everything, including food, was going up is the primary problem.  However...

Food is one of those things which gets situations to go from bad to worse rather quickly.  I agree it's still a regional issue by-and-large, but we're all on the same ball of rock and water, so it's going to have some effect everywhere even beyond pricing.

There is a general, overall problem with the world we inhabit today... too many f'n people consuming way too much stuff.  As the pandemic clearly demonstrated, the entire world is to a large extent living day-to-day with little in reserve and limited ability to quickly ramp up production.  Oil prices are going up because suppliers are largely maxed out, fuel prices are going up because refinery capacity is less than product demand, food prices are soaring because excess production isn't practical any more, budgets are under strain from climate change, can kicking on major infrastructure replacement is at an end, etc.

It's never a good time to have a murderous war of aggression, but Putin's timing for launching this one definitely sucks.

Steve

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

Col. Alexei Smirnov, Chief of Communications for 98th Guards Airborne Division:

 

[Battlefront.com]

Another preview of where drone warfare is headed.  Precision bombs vs. missiles.  Allows a drone to be smaller or to have larger drones carry more munitions.  This allows a drone to attack multiple targets simultaneously.