Jump to content

How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?


Probus

Recommended Posts

38 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I agree. Mixed feelings. But probably inevitable, if we don't want to see those countries end up behind the other side of the new iron curtain. Europe should do wise not to forget that we need each other for everybody's safety and we should at the same time reduce  the role of the US in Europe as much as possible. Apart from the fact that the US has other worries, they will also always go for  their own interests. And who can blame them.

It's a historic necessity, so it has to be a bit scary ;) What's funny is that in comparison to these countries, Poland, Baltics, Czechia etc. etc are "OId Europe" too, or at least "Middle". All potential new EU members add to about 65M people. It's a lot but its not that dramatic, on par with the 2004 enlargement, and to be done more gradually this time.

And now, more trains! The idea of mobile hospital on tracks sound really good, in fact it's strange nobody implemented it yet. I'd specify it so that it's easy to switch to broad gauge if I was ordering it. I'm also not sure about the "high speed" requirement, in fact having it modular might make more sense. Also, have a battery bank and cover the roof with solar panels - I bet it could support itself without generators, baring maybe AC/ heating of the whole thing. A great idea:

 

Edited by Huba
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Calamine Waffles said:

How not to destroy captured equipment:
 

I cringed even before the trigger was pulled.  Russian Army training / SOP / general IQ - the gift that keeps on giving.  "orcs" should indeed be offended to be compared to them (meme from a few pages ago).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said:

@Huba has warned us that sometimes Visegrád 24 uses provocative language.

I would like to ask our German friends or anyone else who knows something about German internal politics if this news is true, and if it is how much influence does this man have?

 

Ernst is a member of the most left wing party in the Bundestag (German federal parliament). Die Linke only got 4.9% of the votes last time, so influence is limited. Visegrad 24 seem to have somewhat misquoted him, he did not, it seems, call for all sanctions to be lifted, only some so that the poorer people don't suffer that much, and said it should be considered to finish Nord Stream 2 so that it can temporarily go online (I guess during maintenance of Nord Stream 1?). Still even in his own party this doesn't appear to be popular.

Edited by Butschi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Civilian "Girkin" (Nesmyan) about future of RU Liquefied natural gas export

Quote

South Korean shipyard Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE) has announced the renegotiation of contracts for the construction of three LNG tankers. The firm has concluded three new "more profitable" deals to replace the old ones. KSOE justified the reason by "interruptions in the supply of parts." New contracts were signed with structures registered in Oceania, however, it is possible that the original customers of the vessels are companies from Russia, the Yonhap news agency reports.

The news in this message is as follows: if the next package of sanctions takes certain measures against Russian gas, it will affect pipeline supplies. LNG supplies are unlikely to be blocked.

But Russia is unlikely to benefit from this if the South Koreans refuse to build tankers for Russian companies. There is only one Russian tanker, the Christophe de Margerie, which carries NOVATEK gas. A Russian tanker seems to be being built at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur shipyard, but due to sanctions, apparently, changes in the completion dates are possible in its construction. Therefore, South Korea was the last lifesaver.

If she gets off, then the future of Russian LNG remains vague - gas is carried mainly by chartered foreign tankers, and they may stop cooperating at any moment.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Calamine Waffles said:

My German friend says this guy is a member of Die Linke (i.e., the German Communist Party), so he has exactly 0 influence politically.

Socialist at most. They are a fusion of the PDS which is indeed the successor of the SED, the ruling party of the GDR and the WASG, which were more or less SPD (our social democrats) renegades who were unhappy with the partly neo liberal policy under Gerhard Schröder. I think nowadays they are less Russia-apologetic than the AfD (by now basically Neo Nazis).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everything according to the plan

Quote

Workers from factories that were sanctioned began to be recruited for the war in Ukraine
In the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation and at the Lebedinsky Mining and Processing Plant of billionaire Alisher Usmanov, workers are offered to take part in military operations on the territory of Ukraine as "volunteers" of the PMCs or contractors of the Ministry of Defense, four employees of these companies told The Moscow Times. The press service of Metalloinvest Usmanov categorically refutes these allegations, the USC [United Shipbuilding Corporation] did not answer questions about the recruitment of workers for the war in Ukraine.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

😃

3 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

With EU subsidies, mainly paid for by 'the old EU' they will get there. No doubt. 

The rest of the post isn't even worth answering.

Just to add something to these discussions on Old/"New" EU countries- subsidies paid to 2004 members are only one side of "package deal". The other was wide access to cheap labour, new markets in fast developing economy, and relative drainage of talents (but with mutual benefits, as specialized cadres flocked to CEE) on part of Central-Eastern Europeans.

So no, subsidies are no "money for poor brothers" nor new "Marshall Plan"- they are part of multi-level transaction in ways which your graph does not show. Long-term investment, if you prefer, that to this day is very beneficial for western economies, industry and businessess, especially German. Why elites in "old" EU countries were so desparate to enlarge they actually transgressed massive historical biases and shortsighted particularisms? For the sake of pitty for historical plea of Poles, Balts or Romanians? C'mon, let's be realistic...😉

It is important question as now similar model can be teoretically used in regard to Ukraine and Moldova. However, quality of political leadership deteriorated fankly everywhere, and nowadays such long-term, mutually beneficial projects are no priority. There will be no new CEE block in near future European Union, simply because its formation would endanger position of France and Germany too much. This rift is already very visible more than perhaps ever in history of EU. So probably Ukraine will need to wait in entrance hall long years, regardless of the state of its economy, transparency and quality of political discuorse.

Of course sometimes history can gallop in very strange directions, so I hope this prognosis can be wrong.

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

Ernst is a member of the most left wing party in the Bundestag (German federal parliament). Die Linke only got 4.9% of the votes last time, so influence is limited. Visegrad 24 seem to have somewhat misquoted him, he did not, it seems, call for all sanctions to be lifted, only some so that the poorer people don't suffer that much, and said it should be considered to finish Nord Stream 2 so that it can temporarily go online (I guess during maintenance of Nord Stream 1?). Still even in his own party this doesn't appear to be popular.

Visegrad24 is populistic source of very fishy connections, frankly I wouldn't take them for their words.

But Die Linke and their vision of Russia is something interesting. Do they dwell on aging post-communist Eastern Germany sentiments or have younger electorate?

 

 

Edited by Beleg85
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Todays Russian storages being hit

Velykyi Burluk, Kharkiv oblast - reportedly large logistic center of Russian troops

Donetsk. Oil storage

Donetsk. Ammunition starage

 

Makiivka (Khanzenkove railroad station area), ammunition storage and logistic center

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@sburke @Kinophile

Lt.colonel Roman Igolnilkov. Until 2021 served in Rosgvardia mixed aviation regiment of Southern District in duty of regiment commader deputy of supply. Dismissed in August 2021, but on 7th Feb 2022 was mobilized in again to RuAF. Probably also was on duty of some aviation unit commander deputy. Got lost on 3rd of July after HIMARS strike on Melitopol airbase

 Зображення

 

Addition about the death of tank battalion commander lt.colonel Yegor Meleshenko. He was killed on 24th of June on Chuhuiv direction, Kharkiv oblast when Russian command post was hit by UKR artillery. 

PS. Thanks to @akd "targeting" :) we can find his unit - 11th separate tank regiment of 18th guard motor-rifle division, 11th Arme Corps, Coastal troops of Baltic Fleet. Dislocation - Gusev, Kaliningrad oblast.

 

Edited by Haiduk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

45th artillery brigade of Reserve Corps strikes on Russian vehicles around Ivanivka village (north of Kherson oblast), liberated sevaral days ago. 

Blue Sauron writing that is Zaporizhzhia oblast is not correct, in comments the correct geolocation is pointed

 

Edited by Haiduk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let’s Use Chicago Rules to Beat Russia
Why the U.S. adversary is a lot like Al Capone

By Eliot A. Cohen

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/madrid-nato-summit-2022-russia-ukraine/661494/
 

Quote

 

Carl von Clausewitz observed in his classic On War that “the maximum use of force is by no means incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect.” That means, in part, acting thoughtfully but with the utmost effort, understanding that war is more bar fight than chess game. Or, to put it in the simpler words of Jim Malone, Eliot Ness’s counselor in The Untouchables, “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone.”

Al Capone is an apt analogy for what the West confronts in Russia: a particularly noxious mix of Mafia mentality, hypernationalist ideology, and totalitarian technique. Elegance is not the Russian way, and it cannot be our way. This is the light in which one should measure the accomplishments of NATO’s recent gathering in Madrid.

...

What the Biden administration still struggles with is the ultimate purpose of Western assistance to Ukraine. At his press conference, the president said that the United States and its allies would not “allow Ukraine to be defeated.” That is the wrong objective. It should be, rather, to ensure Russia’s defeat—the thwarting of its aims to conquer yet more of Ukrainian territory, the smashing of its armed forces, and the doing of both in a convincing, public, and, yes, therefore humiliating way. Chicago rules, in other words.

...

The Western allies will not invade Russia, nor will they overthrow its regime directly—one day, hopefully, Russians will do that. Putin is motivated by imperial fantasies of imitating Peter the Great and other, even less savory Russian leaders. And Putin’s successor, should the Russian leader die or become incapacitated while in office, will likely be no better. For evidence of that, one need only consult the ravings of key advisers such as Nikolai Patrushev. If and when the battles cease in Ukraine, Russia’s intentions to expand and subjugate its neighbors will remain.

The good news here is that if one sets aside misleading memories of World War II and the Cold War, and disregards the ominous mutterings of experts who exaggerated Russian capacity before the war, then it becomes obvious that Russia is a weak state.

Russia’s GDP is less than that of South Korea. Its leadership is afraid to openly mobilize its middle class, so it refuses to declare war and send young men from Moscow and St. Petersburg to the slaughterhouse that is the Donbas. Its generals are, for the most part, incompetent, which is why purges of them continue. It is scraping the bottom of its manpower barrel and so raises to absurd heights the age level of potential service members. Corruption and indiscipline have rotted out its maintenance and low-level leadership. What it has is Cold War–era stockpiles of weapons and munitions (and those are huge, but finite); some pockets of excellence, for example its railroad units; and utter disregard for human life throughout the chain of command.

...

The solution—which cannot be publicly declared—is a NATO-within-NATO. Germany, France, and Italy have the largest economies in the European Union and in theory should carry the most weight in European-security decision making as well. But they cannot. Germany, the proverbial Hamlet of nations, is fatally compromised by its unwillingness and inability to make good on military commitments, and its recent sordid past in enabling Russia’s growth and stranglehold on European energy supplies. France is domestically torn, while the overweening vanity of its presidents makes it difficult for them to get a receptive hearing from lesser mortals. Italy, as ever, produces statesmen on occasion, but not statesmanship.

A nascent coalition of powers is, however, willing to take Russia seriously and has the muscle to thwart her while bringing less resolute European states along. The Eastern European and Baltic states, with Poland in the lead, know Russian tyranny firsthand, and are ready to stand up to it; the Scandinavian states, in particular Finland and Norway, are almost as intent; the English-speaking external powers, including the United Kingdom and Canada, are similarly alive and determined. It is to this core group that American statecraft must look.

The British chief of the General Staff recently described the Ukraine crisis as a 1937 moment for the West. It was an acute historical comparison. In that year the Sino-Japanese war began, setting the stage for World War II. In that year the West had before it choices that could have avoided the horrors of a far worse conflict, but it ducked.

To their credit, in the current moment, Western leaders are performing far better than did their counterparts 85 years ago—but not yet well enough. We’re dealing with Capone, and while, like Eliot Ness, we need to stay within the constraints of law and basic decency, we also need to apply Chicago rules.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Addition about the death of tank battalion commander lt.colonel Yegor Meleshenko. He was killed on 24th of June on Chuhuiv direction, Kharkiv oblast when Russian command post was hit by UKR artillery. 

Haiduk, can you tell which unit he was in based on the video added to Necromancer’s tweet?  The “tank regiment commander” that speaks at his funeral is Maj. Andrei Konchakov.  In 2019, it seems he was Chief of Staff of the 11th Separate Tank Regiment (and given rank may still be same?).

https://gusev-online.ru/news/obshestvo/17943-na-territorii-allei-slavy-chestvovali-srochnikov-uhodjaschih-v-zapas.html

Edited by akd
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Machor said:

Let’s Use Chicago Rules to Beat Russia
Why the U.S. adversary is a lot like Al Capone

By Eliot A. Cohen

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/madrid-nato-summit-2022-russia-ukraine/661494/
 

 

Great article. I've said it before, Putin's government acts like an organized crime syndicate. We should start treating his government like one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, akd said:

Haiduk, can you tell which unit he was in based on the video added to Necromancer’s tweet?  The “tank regiment commander” that speaks at his funeral is Andrei Konchakov.  In 2019, it seems he was deputy commander of the 11th Separate Tank Regiment (and given rank may still be same?).

11th separate tank regiment belongs to 18th guard motor-rifle division, 11th Army Corps, Coastal troops of Baltic Fleet. Division was establishing during 2020 - 2021. Though, 11th tank regiment was formed as far at the end of 2018 and had T-72B

Konchakov on the video has a chevron of 18th GMRD - an anchor with sabres

Edited by Haiduk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

11th separate tank regiment belongs to 18th guard motor-rifle division, 11th Army Corps, Coastal troops of Baltic Fleet. Division was establishing during 2020 - 2021. Though, 11th tank regiment was formed as far at the end of 2018 and had T-72B

Konchakov on the video has a chevron of 18th GMRD - an anchor with sabres

I used to think that my inability to make any sense of the structure of the Russian military was just me. I assumed the the Russians understood this whole coastal, guards, tanks commanded by fleets thing. But after watching them try to fight a war it is now clear the Russians don't understand it either. Brilliant effort though Haiduk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Machor said:

At his press conference, the president said that the United States and its allies would not “allow Ukraine to be defeated.” That is the wrong objective. It should be, rather, to ensure Russia’s defeat—the thwarting of its aims to conquer yet more of Ukrainian territory, the smashing of its armed forces, and the doing of both in a convincing, public, and, yes, therefore humiliating way.

I believe that the actual objective is in fact to ensure Russia's defeat, but it's a goal that cannot be stated publicly for diplomatic reasons.

It would be a major boost to Putin's popularity if the US openly declared that they were plotting Russia's humiliating defeat.

Imagine if during the US stay in Afghanistan, Pakistan had come out and said "Our objective is to ensure American defeat - thwarting their aims to hold on to Afghanistan and smashing its armed forces in a convincing and humiliating way".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Abouit Zaporizhzhia axis, "blanc spot" of this war. 

As I told in previous post about Kherson oblast, Russians had a plans to develop own advance toward Zaporizhzhia from Vasylivka - Polohy line, but likely UKR Inhuleys crossing and preventive artillery strike on concentrated forced, ready to attack foiled Russian plans. So, since start of June Zaporizhzhia direction became minor in Russian priorities and also became a source of reinforcements for Kherson grouping. 

If in previous times Russians fiercely shelled and assaulted our positions on Orikhove - Huliaypole line  - most useful place for attack on Zaporizhzhia, then now situation changed and UKR forces are very slowly but steady pushing Russians back. The war in this area also is going on like series of artillery duels and limited infantry probes "from this tree-plant to next tree-plant" if artillery strikes were successfull. 

Now Ukrainian troops are trying to approach to Vasylivka and Polohy, but Russians in the same way fiercly defending around Shcherbaky, Stepove and Nesterianka villages on Vasylivla direction and near Inzhenerne on Polohy direction.

The main burden of warfare from Russian side here is borne units of 58th CAA, particulary 42nd GMRD and 19th MRD. Interesting, that 42nd division being dislocated in Chechnya and 19th in Northern Osetia, so there are many Caucasians serve there and population of occupied territories often thinks that this is "Kadyrov's troops", but this is not true. 

There is knowingly that 503rd GMRR of 19th MRD fights for Polohy and 83rd air-assault brigade fights in area of Shcherbaky - Stepove, but as I told yesterday BTG of this brigade removed to Kherson direction as well as BTG of 429th MRR of 42nd division from Tokmak town area. Also knowingly about 177th separate naval infantry regiment BTG(s?) of Caspian Sea flotilia and 22nd Spetsnaz brigade (Southern military district) involvement on Zaporizhzhia front.

The length of southern front is too wide, Russians also need a forces to defend rear objects like Tokmak, Melitopol, Vasylivka, I don't tell now about eastern part of this front from Velyka Novosilka to Vuhledar, where Russians also have problems. And only relatively small number of Ukrainian troops there doesn't allow us to make decisive breakthroughs. 

 

 

Без-назви-1.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...