Was Azov left alone on purpose?
It seems strange that if Ukraine had a population of 45 million, 5 million refugees,
25% of remaining population men in defending age bracket, that's 10 million, where are they?
I'm not sure I follow the math here, before the war there were about 22 million males in Ukraine, with the low birth rate than most countries for some time, a higher percentage of those were adult than the rest of the world, though a fair percentage are elderly. The Ukrainians banned men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country unless they got special permission so almost all the refugees are women and children. The remaining population is at least 15 million men, probably more. There are also women volunteering to fight too.
The Ukrainians have mobilized a vast swath of the population and quite a large number are in the fight. As posted by someone else, the comments from the Azoz battalion are almost certainly fakes. When the Russians encircled Mariupol he gave the defenders an option to abandon the city or stay and fight to the death, the units there now chose to die with the city. It's been surrounded for weeks and supplies have been low for most of that time.
The Azoz battalion knew that they were probably going to all die fighting the Russians, they chose to do so.
Polish T72 MBTs on their way to Ukraine
And it appears a railway bridge in Russia between Belgorod and Ukraine has suffered a nasty accident, no apparent reason, how unfortunate
I saw a thread on this on Twitter last night. Someone who knew something about the Russian railroads said that the rails buckling like that is not unusual. The tracks don't get the kind of maintenance they should and experience large extremes in temperature throughout the year.
In the winter the steel shrinks in the extreme cold and it can cause the sleepers and bridge supports to shift a bit. When the rail expands again the wood doesn't go back to where it was the year before and the rails buckle rather than go back to their summer position. Some rails buckle all around Russia every spring. Those rails were subjected to unusually high rail traffic with unusually heavy loads in the late winter. It may have caused wood pieces to shift even more than usual which caused the rails to buckle as the steel expanded.
The pictures look kind of odd for some kind of sabotage.
If we‘ve learned anything, it’s that a non-nuclear war between NATO and Russia, would be over very rapidly, and I highly doubt we’d need to kill more than 30M - 50M Russians as you claim to win that war in that short of a period.
30M-50M Russians in a non-nuclear war? That's 1/3 the population of Russia. That sounds a bit high to me.
Will take time for the looses to percolate out to the population.
For certain the Russians have more killed in 1 month than 9 months in Afghanistan.
In about 2.5 to 3 moths the losses will be more than USA had in 14 years of Vietnam.
The cost will be staggering, however. Likely over $100 billion spent by Russia already, and will only escalate.
There were some meeting notes leaked to the west early in the war. The notes said the war was costing Russia 20 billion a day. Many interpreted that as US dollars, which would be 1/3 of Russia's annual defense budget a day. I think it was likely rubles and not USD. That's still around $200 million USD a day and that would translate into about $100 billion in about 50 days of combat. So you are pretty close to leaked Russian estimates.
For a country with a $60 billion defense budget, they will be around 2X their annual defense budget by May 9 (the day Putin wants to declare victory). That's a staggering outlay for Russia. Even if they are still making money selling oil, they costs of the war are leaving a hole in their pocket.
Sounds like Putin's propaganda to me.
I've posted this before – but it's obviously time once again:
Before Putin’s full scale invasion of Ukraine – who would even think of attacking Russia? Who? Russia has NUCLEAR WEAPONS (as we all know and are VERY, VERY, VERY aware of)!
NO-ONE WOULD EVER, EVER ATTACK RUSSIA!
IF Russia was a Democracy today this would be a COMPLETE NON-ISSUE!!!
You have a western mindset. To a westerner the Russian belief they are in constant existential threat from the west is ludicrous, but it isn't to Russians.
I have a similar discussion with my partner about racism from time to time. Her family came here from Mexico (she was born in the US and her father was by accident, but the rest of his family were all born in Mexico). She looks Celtic (red hair and fair skin), but the rest of her family look very Hispanic and she has seen American style racism second hand and thinks about it a lot. In the US racism today is almost all about white people vs non-white people.
But there is equal discrimination that happened in other countries for different reasons. For example in Canada whether you speak English or French is a major thing. I grew up in a neighborhood in Los Angeles that was 60% people from East Asian descent (some born in the US, some immigrants) and I saw a pecking order among the different Asian groups.
Populations get ideas stuck in their heads that are vitally important to that population, but look like nonsense to outsiders. This paranoia about foreign invasion really is a thing in Russia. Even though it is insane to a westerner.
It was a long time ago, but I've run O&G production on some reservoirs in Venezuela. Even a couple of decades ago they were in an absolute mess and getting worse. Since then things have gotten so much worse it is untrue. Most of their easy oil is over, long gone. This means that getting sustained large scale improvements in production will require very substantial long term external support. I'm not suggesting that support could only originate from North America or Europe, as I've seen very good field developments done of complex and difficult reservoirs by others, so the Venezuelans would have a range of options open to them for partners. However - and it is a big however - the scale and duration of the necessary effort is such that anybody in the O&G game globally would want to be assured that this was a stable long term endeavour of (say) 5-10 year duration (aka Apertura II).
Therefore, in the circumstances, I don't think we should hold our breath for large amounts of additional Venezuelan crude to hit the market. Some perhaps, and some more blind eyes being turned, but not huge amounts.
Iran on the other hand .... but there are other challenges there.
(imho of course)
What countries have the expertise? From all I know about the oil business, almost all the world's expertise in oil services is American or western European.
A question please for those with a better understanding of US legislation than I have.
Q1. I seem to recall that for Foreign Military Sales there is a Congressional FMS oversight and approval - am I right ? So the Biden administration can't fly solo, they have to get Congressional approval for anything significant ? Have I understood that correctly ? Is that a procedurally open process, i.e. can one monitor a FMS request moving through the approval system ? How quickly could something significant (e.g. F16s and their associated logistics and ordnance) get expedited through in the current circumstances ?
Q2. Are there any equivalent FMS restrictions on training ? So could (say) surplus Ukraine aviation ground and aircrew be trained in (say) the USA or other partner nation on (say the F16 packages) without needing to go through an open FMS approvals process ?
My suspicion is that the Ukraine has excess ground and aircrew in the aviation sector, with all the relevant domain expertise. Therefore it makes sense to be training them now, on the quiet, and only later to go public with the FMS sae of the kit itself. That way the "flash-to-bang" time is minimised. But going about things in this way would only be possible if the training packages could be delivered in advance. Hence my question, as I think we could be in for a long campaign and aviation is the biggest problem area for that timescale.
It's complicated. The US gives the president fairly broad powers for military matters, but Congress does demand oversight in many areas. Congress approved over $3 billion in aid to Ukraine within the last week.
I'll try to find something that explains where the lines are a bit later. I need to run to an appointment now...
