The Ukraine war thread
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I'm wondering how long Russia will be able to escalate short of nukes. They have to be running short of long-range precision missiles. Maybe they have a lot of non-precision missiles they can launch at civilian targets, much like the Palestinians do. I really don't know.
"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in The Ukraine war thread:
They have to be running short of long-range precision missiles.
Indeed they are. A lot of the chatter is how these recent strikes by cruise missiles and other precision weapons serve no strategic purpose. Their goal is to wither the Ukrainian people. Good luck with that.
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Russian joke for today:
Иван, что значит частичный запуск мобилизация?
Федя, это значит, что тебя заберут из дома целым и вернут по частям.
Translation:
Ivan, what does partial mobilization mean?
Fedya, it means that they take you from home in one piece and return you [from Ukraine] in pieces.
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Lawrence Freedman analysis. Worth the read.
Excerpt:
It no longer seems preposterous to suggest that Russia can lose this war. The images of late February, of Ukrainians making Molotov cocktails, have been replaced by those of highly professional forces on the move. The Russian army is a shadow of its former self, and its former self was less than it claimed. Well over seven months into the war its best units have been torn apart. Their replacements are often cobbled together using whoever happens to be available. Years of defence production have been lost, with valuable equipment captured by the enemy. Many senior commanders have been killed while the officer corps has been shredded. Troops at the front are having a harrowing experience and are consequently demoralised. The race is now on to establish defensive lines that can be held and cope with an enemy that has superior intelligence, equipment, and morale. Moscow now faces the prospect of the attrition of its armed forces continuing apace as its occupation becomes increasingly untenable..
https://samf.substack.com/p/retribution-and-regime-change?utm_source=email
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@Mik said in The Ukraine war thread:
Uh oh.
Not certain it is that big a deal. The terrain along that border -extensive marshlands and thick forest - is conducive to a defending force and less than desirable for an advancing force. That leaves the existing road system and we know what happened to Russian forces on those roads last February and March.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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In another thread, someone here mentioned a meddlesome priest. As of late, Elon Musk is turning out to be just that:
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Russia makes arrests in the Crimea bridge attack. Five are Russians. Some of the add on articles are interesting as well.
I particularly like the last one about the G7 using frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine. The Russian response?
"A Group of Seven (G-7) proposal to use frozen Russian assets to finance the rebuilding of Ukraine drew sharp criticism from Moscow.
"It’s just pure international racketeering," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. "
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The irretrievable losses of the Russian army in Ukraine can be more than 90 thousand people. Two sources told Important Stories about this: one is a former officer of the Russian special services, the second is a current FSB officer.
The irretrievable losses include those killed, missing, those who died of wounds in hospitals, as well as the wounded who cannot return to military service.
The figure voiced by our interlocutors is close to the data that the UK Secretary of Defense announced in early September . According to Ben Wallace, over 25,000 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine. The British Ministry of Defense estimated the total number of losses of the Russian army at more than 80 thousand people.
Recall that the last time the Russian Ministry of Defense reported on losses was in September. Then Sergei Shoigu said that 5,937 Russian servicemen were killed in Ukraine.
At the end of September, Important Stories wrote about the state of the Russian army seven months after the start of the invasion.
Comments from the RWEC:
ust two weeks ago I would have told you that 90,000 KIA/WIA was crazy, but with Russian forces actively digging in for the worst in most places that they aren’t retreating, I have to give today’s report serious credence.
Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers
know I’ve been erring on the cautious side since the beginning of this stupid war, discounting Kyiv’s claims, like that “63,380 dead” in the infographic above. Last week, I was willing to concede that as many as 20,000 Russians might be KIA.The real number could indeed be much higher, so bear with me while I do some back-of-the-envelope math for you.
Typically, the ratio of wounded to killed (WIA to KIA) in modern war is about three to one. Three wounded soldiers, many lightly enough to be returned to action, for every one soldier killed.
The United States is notorious — in the very best possible way — for going to extraordinary lengths to keep our wounded alive. That’s allowed us to enjoy, as it were, a WIA to KIA ratio as high as 8.5 to one in Afghanistan and 7.2 to 1 in Iraq.
Speaking frankly, Russian field medicine sucks.
Supplies are so short, particularly for Russia’s recently drafted “mobiks,” that the UK’s Ministry of Defense released video last month that “appears to show a staffer instructing soldiers to use tampons to plug wounds.”
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A friend emailed me the following article from Time. Although I am no fan of the slick journal, it is a very informed and well written editorial. The money quote:
There’s no attempt to deal with the oppressions of the Russian and Soviet past, the way the Kremlin repeatedly colonizes, ethnically cleanses, deports, starves and mass murders other nations, and the way it kills and arrests and humiliates masses of its own people too in labour camps, Gulags, and the killing cellars of the KGB. Russia is a country that makes no effort to make sense of, define who was responsible, ask for forgiveness and move on from its legacy of mass murder and institutionalized sadism.
It's striking how little mention of the future there is in the Kremlin’s propaganda. There’s only vengeance, warped nostalgia for the USSR, a mythic, cruel “Russian World”—and resentment. The Russian project has failed, so the aim now is to bring everyone down to its own level, drag all down to its cellar.
“Little by little I am learning the art of being quite content by doing very little slowly” ~ Lionel Hardcastle
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@Renauda said in The Ukraine war thread:
There’s only vengeance, warped nostalgia for the USSR, a mythic, cruel “Russian World”—and resentment.
Years and years ago, I listened to a Teaching Company course on the history of Russia. Naturally, I've forgotten most of it, but one concept stuck with me.
"Russia is an Asian country which is trying to be European."
I'm not sure if that's accurate in its entirety, but the "trying to be something else" part is probably true.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
