X Fan
Active Member
Kherson not the only good news today. Ukr forces close to Svatove:
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
mars_or_bust
Member
Actually, the reason Thiel/Sacks are repeating the Carlson/Trump pro-Putin mantra NOW, could well be that they, as right-wing Republicans, are worried that Biden might get a lot of positive credit for the eventual defeat of Russia, putting Biden and the Democrats at a positive reputation level close to Ronald Reagan. Thus they may be trying to sabotage Ukraine now that its army started to really kick Russian ass, with Ukraine aided very generously and publicly by USA/Biden.
It is of course not to Elon's credit that he is not seeing the deeper reason for his friends' pro-Putin stance. But nobody is perfect. Still like the company and the stock, though, even if I am again ( the other time being his covid is a cold crap) dissapointed by Elon.
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nwdiver
Well-Known Member
After listening to this, I feel like Ukraine gave Crimea away to the Russians. You cannot allow a military based from a nation that has a different political system to be on your land. Imagine if the U.S allowed the Chinese to have a military base in Hawaii and even allowed the amount of military personal to accumulate into hundred of thousands. This is like border security 101 type stuff.
navguy12
Active Member
For some strange reason, Guantánamo Bay just popped into my mind.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
So Cuba should belong to the US because of Guantanamo Bay?
Ukraine should have either kicked the Russians off which would have probably provoked a war in the 90s or given them the entire peninsula?
Considering how the Russians treated Ukrainians throughout history, you either kick them out or let them have it. Or you hold on to your nukes so that mine trap wouldn't explode on your face one day if you wants to do neither.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
.... so.... because they couldn't kick them off a tiny naval base they give them the entire peninsula??? Still not very helpful logistically. At the time there wasn't a bridge. Give them everything bordering the Sea of Azov too? How much? Everything that was recently annexed? All because of a tiny naval base?
BitJam
Active Member
No wonder Elon thinks Twitter has a massive bot problem!
There's a limit, if Cuba was stupid enough to allow the U.S to accumulate a quarter of a million soldiers on their island then yeah it seems like war is imminent. Ukrainians made a lot of pro Russia mistakes throughout the last 20-30 years it seem and it just exploded in their face because Russia is Russia. They are known to be douchebags.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Looks like Kherson is falling apart like Kharkhiv, though it won't end the same way because the Russians don't really have anywhere to retreat to.
He's a bit optimistic about his readiness numbers and he assumes most of the tanks in storage can be restored to working order. We've heard stories about how many tanks in storage have optics and electronics missing. A lot of that is not replaceable in any reasonable time frame. In some cases it can't be replaced because it can't be made anymore. I think a high percentage of the tanks left in storage are not repairable. The Russians would not be bringing T-62s to the front if they had T-72s that were restorable.
He also relies on Orynx for the loss numbers. The real Russian losses are probably on the order of 2X those losses and even Orynx admits that.
Additionally Russia is out of tank crews. Their tanks have very poor crew survivability, so a lot of those tanks lost also killed the crew. There are stories of people who don't even know how to drive a car being made tank drivers. There were also stories months ago of Russian tanks going into combat with only two crew instead of three. That makes them virtually worthless in combat.
The Russians are still majority owners. It is destroying property partially owned by NATO members, but it isn't as clear cut as property 100% owned by NATO members.
Thread by @WarintheFuture on Thread Reader App
@WarintheFuture: Lots of reports currently about Ukrainian advances in #Kherson and #Luhansk. Few have been officially confirmed. However, we can draw a couple of things from these ongoing campaigns. 1/17 🧵 2/ First...…threadreaderapp.com
Good summary thread outlining the basic situation today highlighting the vastly superior UKR military strategy.
I'll take a min here to point out that as UKR penetrates further into Luhansk I believe that the russian defense could stiffen. The def responsibility shrinks, the supply is shortened, more local intelligence, etc. The principal points of the maneuver have long been understood and have taken time to be adapted to changes in technology (horseback, compound bows, true fortress citadels, sail, cannon, rifles, steel, armored mechanized units, flight, etc etc). The UKR forces are doing a brilliant job deploying in a world of new military innovations. Those will matter less and less as they push into the heart of the contested areas with less room to maneuver . The downside to the defense (from Luhansk pov) is that russia stripped off the best local fighting units and sent them to die in Kherson and holding Izium and Lyman. If those units were holding friendly territory it would have been struggle. Instead the defense may be recently mobilized units that are completely incompetent.
You're ignoring one major factor in warfare: terrain. Going into Luhansk from the north, the terrain does not favor the defender. The Russians have some pre-war trenches some distance back from the front lines, but that's basically the only defensible feature they have. Luhansk has been hollowed out by the Russians, the only civilians left are women, children, and old men. All the men capable of holding a gun have been pressed into service and a huge number have been killed. The remaining population may have been leaning Russia 8 months ago, but are probably not so pro-Russian now. Almost everyone left has a close family member who was shanghaied into the militia and if he wasn't killed, he's definitely serving against his will.
The Russians have very little to stop Ukraine taking Luhansk and if that happens, it will set off a panic among their large force in Donesk.
A great example of what I've been talking about for years. Someone who is genius in one area can often be a complete idiot in another. This is a shining example.
Yes. Crimea is going to be somewhat difficult to take back, but the rest of Ukraine is just a matter of time and effort. The Russian army is in a Lanchester Square Collapse (discussed a few pages back here). There effectiveness as an army was poor from the start, but it's now falling apart around their ears. The mobilization is a desperation move and they are trowing a lot of the mobilized into combat with no training. They have to because most of their instructors got thrown into the war months ago.
Russia has lost the ability to raise a competent force to counter an army that is now numerically superior and qualitatively much better trained. The outcome of this war will go one of three ways according to Kamil Galleev:
1) Putin will hang on and Russia will turn into a giant North Korea
2) Putin will be removed and replaced with someone who pulls the remains of the army out of Ukraine and manages to hold the country together
3) Russia balkanizes into many new countries and the army will either be withdrawn early in this process to try and hold the union together, or will be after the army is ground to dust in Ukraine.
The UN exists to essentially keep world borders where they were in the late 1940s. That is the world agreement for the most part. The only exception being countries that split apart on their own. Russia has shown a disregard for that agreement and the world needs to address it in unambiguous terms. Musk doesn't grok that.
I agree. I think Musk is more a liability than a boon for the brand. It's past time Tesla replaced him with an engineer who will steadily grow the company and be non-controversial.
It will likely do more harm than good. It's going to get a lot more Russians killed, which will engender more ill will towards Putin from their families.
But most of the world agreed that the line redrawing should stop in the late 1940s and most of the world has stood by that agreement. The borders of Ukraine are the borders it had when it broke away from the USSR and that's where most of the world agrees they should stay. Russia is one of the few who don't understand that.
And more importantly he has a lot of money wrapped up in new factories that need to scale up to be profitable which won't happen any time soon of there's a world-wide recession.
KBF
Model X owner (formerly Cdn Signature Model S)
Except it wasn't 'Ukraine' - it was the Russian puppet Yanukovich, installed by Putin, who accomplished these idiotic decisions. Ukraine has come a long way since then, and Zelenskyy appears to have made some progress reducing corruption...
Well yeah, Ukraine had to fall in line or else gets slapped because you know, hundreds of thousands of troops already occupy its land! So overthrowing the pro-Putin puppet naturally results in retaliation.
Giving up those nukes was mistake #1. If Ukraine had nuclear capabilities then most likely there's nothing Russia can do.
There is fog of war so it's hard to say what is happening or what will happen. But let's just start with what seems obv. In the early war Russia made lots of progress. Many people believed Russia was winning. Then things slowed down. Here people speculated both ways. Then things ground to a halt. People speculated both ways. Then Ukraine made some massive progress in the north and some minor in the south. More people speculated that Ukraine might win. Then Russia mobilized and now some people speculate Russia, but many still speculate that Ukraine is winning.
So will mobilization work? More soliders = won war?
Imo what we see now is Modern warfare from Ukraine. From Russia semi-modern warfare. So we can observe how modern warfare between two mostly modern countries is fought. And what we see is that modern trenches are hard to beat with manpower. What seems to be needed needed is lots of long range artillery/airforce to soften the trenches and then later you can blitz through them. And here Ukraine has slowly been increasing their capacity to soften trenches, and they are still increasing their ability with more artillery arriving and little being lost. Meanwhile Russia has been slowly decreasing their amount of cruise missile attacks, artillery attacks etc. Russia got a few new drones from Iran, but many of them get shot down by new anti drone technology given to Ukraine.
Generally it seems that Ukraine has the better equipment, mainly donated from the west. And the west has not really been tapped that much, mostly the west gives things they no longer need or were gonna scrap anyway. US has much better drones they could donate to even the balance more if they wanted. Not to speak of the air power that US has...
What would more Russian infantry do? Probably just shoot a little from the trenches, then be killed by drones, HIMARS and Howitzers. What Russia needs is more drones, more HIMARS etc. Can they build this if they just mobilize their industry? If you believe that communists/fascists war time economies can industrialize well then maybe. With current embargos it will be very tricky. Meanwhile the engineers are fleeing in full force, I am very skeptical that they can just make the country into a weapons industry powerhouse in a few months/years..
So for good and bad I think that Russia will lose the war, at least if it's fought conventionally. They will bleed their army 2-600 killed soldiers/day for a few more months, meanwhile Ukraine will gain a little territory. If Russia starts using nukes on Kiev etc maybe Ukraine will surrender, but the economic cost would be massive to Russia... If not then eventually Russians will get tired of dying and someone will take out Putin. But a lot more Russian will likely die before it gets to that point...
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Elon clarifies his view:
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That was kind of my point. Fact-challenged opinions and distracting tactics go hand-in-hand.
That (and the lack of civility and the loss of respectful dialog) seems to be a worldwide problem. For now. Until Elon gets to Mars, then it will be a galactic problem.
Most major wars are won by factories churning out war materials.
Currently more and more factories and stockpiles of weapons are being made available to Ukraine from many other countries, as well as their own.
Russian factories are being choked to death by sanctions on the items they need to produce additional weapons to replace those lost in the war.
Inevidible that Russia will loose to attrition or resort to using Nukes. If they use Nukes many more nations will turn actively to support Ukraine and neutralize Russia.
Currently more and more factories and stockpiles of weapons are being made available to Ukraine from many other countries, as well as their own.
Russian factories are being choked to death by sanctions on the items they need to produce additional weapons to replace those lost in the war.
Inevidible that Russia will loose to attrition or resort to using Nukes. If they use Nukes many more nations will turn actively to support Ukraine and neutralize Russia.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
If Russia thought they had a very good chance of winning the War by nuking Kyiv they would have already done so.
Retired US Gen and former Director of the CIA David Petraeus says if Russia uses nukes in Ukraine then US/NATO will sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet and neutralize all Russian assets inside Ukraine. I tend to believe him.
