The Ukraine war thread

[Renauda]

@Mik

I trust the Kremlin would interfere to undermine the US electoral process regardless of the state of US Russia relations on Election Day.

[Mik]

I suspect you are right.

[Horace]

The only thing Russia needs to do to interfere is to give the appearance of interference, and wait for American corporate tribal media to run with it.

[George K]

I was just looking at the running total of equipment losses on both sides here.

Looking at Russian losses, what's amazing is the amount of stuff that's been captured, and, presumably, can be used by the Ukrainians.

• Tanks (476, of which destroyed: 236, damaged: 8, abandoned: 40, captured: 192)
• Armoured Fighting Vehicles (256, of which destroyed: 122, abandoned: 28, captured: 106)
• Infantry Fighting Vehicles (497, of which destroyed: 291, damaged: 2, abandoned: 32, captured: 172)
• Armoured Personnel Carriers (96, of which destroyed: 31, damaged: 1, abandoned: 17, captured: 47)
• Towed Artillery (53, of which destroyed: 10, damaged: 4, abandoned: 5, captured: 34)
• Self-Propelled Artillery (96, of which destroyed: 41, damaged: 2, abandoned: 15, captured: 37)
• Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps (787, of which destroyed: 484, damaged: 14, abandoned: 61, captured: 228)

About 40% of the "stuff" that the Russians have lost is potentially still serviceable and usable by the Ukraians.

As far as Ukrainian materiel goes, it looks like the percentage captured is higher than the Russians'. However, their total losses are much, much smaller.

• Tanks (103, of which destroyed: 42, damaged: 1, abandoned: 9, captured: 51)
• Armoured Fighting Vehicles (70, of which destroyed: 28, abandoned: 4, captured: 39)
• Infantry Fighting Vehicles (82, of which destroyed: 37, damaged: 3, abandoned: 9, captured: 33)
• Armoured Personnel Carriers (33, of which destroyed: 6, damaged: 1, abandoned: 2, captured: 23)
• Infantry Mobility Vehicles (51, of which destroyed: 16, damaged: 1, abandoned: 1, captured: 33)
• Towed Artillery (25, of which destroyed: 8, damaged: 3, abandoned: 3, captured: 11)
• Self-Propelled Artillery (20, of which destroyed: 8, damaged: 4, abandoned: 1, captured: 7)
• Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps (224, of which destroyed: 97, damaged: 5, abandoned: 5, captured: 117)

Overall:

• Russia - 2771, of which: destroyed: 1456, damaged: 39, abandoned: 234, captured: 1042
• Ukraine - 740, of which: destroyed: 340, damaged: 23, abandoned: 35, captured: 342

[George K]

Putin purges more than 100 FSB agents

Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears not to be going according to plan, and President Vladimir Putin seems intent on blaming his old colleagues at the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – the intelligence agency successor to the KGB – for the quagmire.

Putin reportedly purged more than 100 agents from the FSB, and his government sent the head of the department responsible for Ukraine to prison.

About 150 FSB officers have been dismissed, The Times of London reported Monday. The ousted agents belonged to the Fifth Service, a division that Putin – then director of the FSB – set up in 1998 in order to carry out operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union, aiming to keep those countries in Russia's orbit.
Authorities placed Sergei Beseda, the former head of the Fifth Service, under house arrest last month. He has since been moved to the FSB-run Lefortovo prison in Moscow, The Times reported. The NKVD, the KGB's predecessor, used the prison for interrogation and torture during Stalin's 1930s Great Purge.

This move sent a "very strong message" to other elites in Russia, Andrei Soldatov, an expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told The Times.

At least in the US these guys could get jobs as talking heads on cable tv "news" shows.

[Renauda]

[George K]

[Renauda]

@George-K

As they should, it is serious. I do not dispute the very real possibility (or for that matter, very real probability) of deployment. Still, verification either way is paramount.

[George K]

@Renauda

[Renauda]

[Aqua Letifer]

@Renauda said in The Ukraine war thread:

@George-K

Until the experts have weighed and a chemical agent or agent are identified nothing is confirmed.

What do you think will happen if it is confirmed?

[Renauda]

@Aqua-Letifer

Don’t know other than the big hand moves that much closer to midnight.

[Mik]

@Aqua-Letifer said in The Ukraine war thread:

@Renauda said in The Ukraine war thread:

@George-K

Until the experts have weighed and a chemical agent or agent are identified nothing is confirmed.

What do you think will happen if it is confirmed?

Probably nothing military, like in Syria. More sanctions.

[Mik]

With a Ukrainian marines unit in Donetsk.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ukraine-war-marines-front-lines-1334770/?fbclid=IwAR0gFNe3O1KwELsLpKCF43HRIvmznNe7c071TT1ue3I4FhHRjPqpkIif4fo

[Renauda]

@Mik

As your link points out, weight of numbers certainly do not favour the Ukrainians.

Finally a friendly state and its people are willing to sacrifice their young and old alike in the name of freedom, and we, in the West, find ourselves with all our might, in held check by a despot that has declared war on us all.

[Mik]

@Renauda I cannot help but wonder what would happen if NATO declared Ukraine, Sweden and Finland members and gave the murderous bastard his eviction notice.

[Mik]

Incidentally, I heard tonight we are going to be giving them helicopters. What, pray tell, is the difference between that and fixed wing aircraft in terms of Russian response?

[Aqua Letifer]

@Mik said in The Ukraine war thread:

Incidentally, I heard tonight we are going to be giving them helicopters. What, pray tell, is the difference between that and fixed wing aircraft in terms of Russian response?

Biden called it genocide. Macron said he wasn't willing to go that far. Then Biden explicitly doubled down.

[Renauda]

@Mik said in The Ukraine war thread:

@Renauda I cannot help but wonder what would happen if NATO declared Ukraine, Sweden and Finland members and gave the murderous bastard his eviction notice.

Personally, I believe both Finland and Sweden will soon apply for NATO membership. Putin can and will rattle his sword all he wants but it will be a done deal. Putin will bark but won’t bite. Be interesting though if LePen, a Putin groupie, becomes President in France and Putin uses France and his buddy, Viktor Orban in Hungary to try and block their membership. It’s possible, we’ll see.

Ukraine is another matter. The time to have brought Ukraine into NATO was during the Bush II Admin prior to Putin’s infamous Munich tirade in 2007 and invasion of Georgia the following year. Throughout the Obama years there was no appetite either in Washington or with the other founding members of the alliance other than possibly the UK to bring in Ukraine. After the annexation of Crimea and subsequent civil war in the Donbas in 2014; Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO were in any case dashed by virtue of the fact there were border regions in dispute with an immediate neighbour. One of the founding conditions of joining NATO is that all border issues with neighbours must be settled and closed.

Any direct military action NATO or any of its members take in support of Ukraine risks an all out confrontation with Russia. That confrontation could be limited to conventional weapons. It could also just as easily cross the nuclear threshold.

Once that threshold is crossed, our Cold War experience of the last century has taught us that nuclear deterrence has failed and the time has arrived to think about the unthinkable viz. the probability of a strategic nuclear exchange is likely if not certain. That is the price of total war.

[Mik]

Yes, I get all that. But I still wonder.