jabloomf1230
Minister of Silly Walks
There is a new Iran nuclear deal on the verge of being signed. It would lift sanctions, but guess who's holding it up? Russia. The US is also talking about lifting sanctions against Venezuela.
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
Maybe however hydrogen/ammonia production is not currently in place. Battery storage isn’t either and for UK at least would be an issue as most would object to large scale storage facilities anywhere near population. It’s one of the hurdles we have to face unfortunately. I’m not saying any of it can’t be done just not that quickly (may be quicker now though)
The housing stock in UK is not (contrary to the govs spiel) suitable for heat pumps either air or ground. Most housing in the UK is not triple glazed nor sealed well enough even new builds ( Scandinavian countries are much better at this). The best a UK average house can hope for is 1:2 ratio power in : out, in winter more like 3:1 whereas Sweden it’s 1:3 or 1:4 becasue the houses are tripleglazed, hermetically sealed. Ours leak like sieves, especially the older Victorian (or older) properties, in a lot of cases they can’t even fit double glazing due to heritage laws.
Hydrogen production will be part of offshore wind farms at some point, it’s just not there yet, same as electrical storage.
I’ll have more in the morning best get some shuteye, to be up in 5hrs
Battery storage is coming along. ESS out of Oregon (stock ticker GWH) has dirt cheap batteries for stationary storage. They are working on ramping production right now.
My partner was a little hair on fire when she read someone claim the Russian army was 900,000 in uniform. I knew that was the entire Russian military including air force and navy, and the special railroad transport service which numbers 30,000. What I found interesting when I looked for information on the service breakdown (couldn't find that) was that their officer corps number 225,000! Somewhere around 25% of the entire military is officers? WTH?
The US military has 18% officers and that's one the highest officer percentages in US history.
Why military officers are commanding fewer enlisted troops than ever before
The Russians are way too top heavy. All management and no workers.
Another thought, it's come to light the Russians are gathering their best troops for an anemic assault on Kyiv. (At least it looks anemic to me.) I would expect that probably includes the Marines who were originally tasked with taking Odesa. They probably don't have troops at sea anymore.
I was thinking this would be a good theme song for Russia right now:
In addition there are something like 40,000 foreign fighters in Ukraine 100,000 want to come, but they have enough equipment/logistics.
Also around 60,000 Ukrainians returning from overseas to fight.
Russia bas not been able to encircle Kyiv so there are ways of getting additional supplies and troops into the city.
If Urban warfare is mostly about the number of fighters with defenders having an advantage, the Russia probably doesn't have anywhere near enough troops.
They are raising additional forces which they will send into the war.
The foreign minsters are meeting in Turkey on the 10th, first time there is a meeting at that level, sanctions are starting to bite.
They may hold off any attempted invasion until the 10th, these are Russia's best fighters, which makes them more valuable, they can only die once.
For a bit of comparison, the Battle of Stalingrad a city of 450,000 in 1939, significantly smaller than Kyiv.
At start:
Germans
270,000 experienced troops
3000 artillery
500 tanks
600 aircraft
Soviets:
187,000 soldiers (quite a few green recruits)
2200 artillery
400 tanks
300 aircraft
The Germans assaulted a city much smaller than Kyiv with an experienced force that was larger than the Soviet force defending. The Russians were able to stop the Germans and hold them in a grim battle of attrition that dragged on from August 1942 to February 1943 (interestingly almost the exact same time frame of the Battle of Guadalcanal on the other side of the world).
Both sides fed in more and more troops trying to win the battle. Both sides suffered heavy casualties, but it broke the back of the German army.
The Germans had adequate supply for the assault in the first phase of the battle. There were just too many Russians holding the city to win an easy victory.
The Russians only have about 150,000 troops in Ukraine right now considering their losses. They might have as many as 180,000, but no more than that. A significant percentage of their troops are fighting in other parts of Ukraine. They might be able to scrape together 90,000 for the assault. Their supply situation is terrible which means the troops they are committing are largely underfed, they have been out in sub-freezing weather for two weeks, they are low on fuel and probably low on ammunition.
They are going up against a force that is at least 100,000 regular troops strong backed by close to that many militia with an AK-47 and a few molotov cocktails. Almost all the defenders know their terrain intimately and have had months to dig in.
This isn't an assault, it's a Banzai charge.
CyberGus
Not Just a Member
As much as I like the analysis of the unfolding of the conflict, I am disappointed by musings on how the Russian people must be hating on Putins. Hating on Putin is a minority view, (navalnys small size survey in the relatively cosmopolitan Moscow notwithstanding) and one reason why sanctions may make him move powerful in Russia.
This is a good thread.
As a bonus, this thread gives you a lot of insight on Russians economy and why it's politics is the way it is.
This is a good thread.
As a bonus, this thread gives you a lot of insight on Russians economy and why it's politics is the way it is.
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Who cares what regular Russian people think? They clearly have no power or say in what Putin does.
The ones who will stop this invasion and/or remove Putin are the billionaire oligarch who were living a much better life 3 or 4 weeks ago.
At some point enough folks throughout the billionaires, military, and secret police of Russia will cross a tipping point and deal with this mess.
The ones who will stop this invasion and/or remove Putin are the billionaire oligarch who were living a much better life 3 or 4 weeks ago.
At some point enough folks throughout the billionaires, military, and secret police of Russia will cross a tipping point and deal with this mess.
Yes, both of these are good sources well worth a read.
But the trend is wars often start out popular, and end up unpopular, especially if they are a long war.
For this war there are 2 likely alternatives:-
- Quick settlement - best for all.
- Long protracted war - I don't think either side can win a quick victory, unless the Russian army implodes due to logistic failures.
Usually this type of invasion is more of a mismatch.
I applaud efforts by Israel and Turkey to get both sides talking constructively, a long drawn out war is good for no one.
Putin is likely to remain popular until the fighting part of the war is over, or until Russian losses really start to mount up.
Tiger
Active Member
In a BBC interview, Aleksandr Dugin tries to explain the Russian style of "alternative facts", which might explain why Russia might win their information warfare:
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
The sum of human incentive was that we needed $100 oil by any means. Now there's much more incentive to cool things out. I think humans will work together in an unconscious conspiracy to get it done.
It's possible that the sanctions won't cause a popular revolt against Putin. I also doubt the oligarchs are going to take actions against Putin. The Oligarchs already outside Russia won't go back and those inside are conditioned to always toady to Putin.
Even if Putin isn't overthrown, the sanctions as well as the world just voting with their wallets and refusing products from Russia is going to completely cripple the Russian economy. The USSR built it's own ecosystem over many decades where they produced everything necessary themselves. Since the USSR went away they have become very dependent on the rest of the world, as the second link you posted pointed out.
Even if Putin remains in power, he will be on an island that is significantly smaller than the USSR island. Russia has roughly half the population of the USSR in 1989 and their manufacturing base is much smaller. The Russians are going to lose a lot of equipment in this war and they will find it difficult to replace them. The factories are still there, but some of the parts need come from other countries.
Militarily they will be finished as a power in the world. They will shrink into insignificance on the world stage. And Putin will die someday, maybe sooner rather than later, but he has a limited shelf life.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote a book called Strongmen about authoritarians over the last 100 years. I haven't read the book, but I have seen some interviews with her. She said that it's very rare for any strongman's party apparatus to survive very long after the death of the leader. One of the things they do is work to neutralize any other strongmen in their country that could replace them, so when they go there is a power vacuum.
Russia does not have a strongman waiting in the wings to replace Putin. If Putin doesn't "fall out a window" he will not be around forever and Russia will likely change quite a bit when he does die.
Russia also can't hold this war together for all that much longer. They don't have the infrastructure to keep a large army in the field for any length of time. They will fail, it's a matter of if not when.
And another thing about Russian politics is the people get antsy for regime change when Russia loses a war.
Some of the roads point to the end of Putin sooner than later, but all the roads point to some kind of destruction of Russia as a viable economy at least short term. The only roads that point to a short term economic hit rather than a long one involve Putin being retired, one way or another.
Putin has some catching up to do. Hitler's approval rating was at 90%.
Also the sanctions were not as devastating as the voluntary corporate cancel culture that happened. The fact that master card, apple pay, and visa pulled out which accounts for 75% of their credit card transactions WHILE there's a run on the bank as the rubles crash was more devastating than any sanction last week. It was a real "oh sh?%" moment when illiquidity hit home hard.
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Putin's information warfare is masterclass. Using the power of disinformation, he got England to brexit, almost dismantled Nato under Trump, got Americans to riot on capital hill through divide, and convinced his people Ukraine is full of Nazis. You can't underestimate the gravity of their disinformation campaign through social media, MSM, and people integrated into western society causing all sorts of havoc.
His biggest mistake was this Ukrainian war which undone decades of his hard work and went completely the opposite direction of his expectations.
Tiger
Active Member
Yep. His trolls have been setting up the same with brexit and breitbart and the like in the western world.
CLK350
Member
" ...we may look back on this as the first Great Information War. Except we're already 8 years in. "
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