lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
As my old employer, all I can say is what took you so long?
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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
Remember this? Putin asked Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov — who is also minister for trade and industry — why he was "fooling about" instead of procuring new planes for the country, per awkward video released by state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.
Путин раскритиковал работу по оформлению заказов на воздушные суда
Президент России Владимир Путин на первом в 2023 году совещании с членами правительства раскритиковал работу по оформлению заказов на воздушные суда на... РИА Новости, 11.01.2023
ria.ru
"There are still no orders at some enterprises ... For a long time. Too long. Enterprises must understand their prospects, orders, they must hire labor, maintain or expand production facilities, you understand? They need to understand how many military ships, how many civilian ones will be ordered. There is no order even for 2023," Putin told Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov .
Russia is building airframes, but the only planes delivered have been to the Russian air force and they were completed and in flight test last winter. I suspect the Russians had several sets of avionics completed and awaiting install when the sanctions went into place and those went into the planes completed over the winter.
One of the Su-35s crashed during flight test, probably due to pilot error or some other cause that could happen to any new airframe.
The Russians had an order for 25 Egyptian Su-35s that got canceled after they were in production and they were not delivered. There are rumors that this order was diverted to Iran, though the VDV might have taken over the Egyptian order.
Russia was able to switch production of their smart weapons to use Chinese made electronics because the electronics in them are not very sophisticated. China makes the largest volume of low end electronics in the world and they make some middle tier electronics, but they make none of the most sophisticated. All of that tech is imported.
Modern fighters require some of the most sophisticated electronics on the market for their targeting and other avionics.
Russia is building airframes so they can be completed when the electronics become available again, but I don't see evidence these new planes being produced in the last few months are flying. Though they may be doing what they did with the T-90 which is put much older tech in there to replace the latest generation electronics which make them as capable as 1970s fighters with no upgrades.
Thought everyone would enjoy a Girkin rant
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Elon not winning new friends in Ukraine at 8:58
This is both insulting and simple trolling. We don't tolerate misinformation. That 5% number is clearly bogus.
A man much, much more intelligent than those in this thread speaking the truth you lot do not want to hear.
Russia has single handidly disarmed NATO. NATO stockpiles are in Ukraine being decimated.
Had the West not gotten involved this war would be over and literally less than 5% of the population in UKR would care that they were part of Russia now.
Good job Slow Joe on sending tens of thousands of young men to their deaths to gain a tactical advantage on the world stage.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
He's intelligent in some areas but not this one.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
My understanding of his point was Russia has a shortage of parts, so couldn't complete the Iranian order, as consistent with his claim.
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
A Chinese general will know that NATO remain fearsome. Mostly because they can't send decent weapons because then it would really look like we were fighting the war. However, the Chinese etc. public won't see that...
We were right to get involved, we just didn't pick the right time to strike a deal. Weakening Russia to this extent is worth its weight in gold.
When you hear Elon talk about things he doesn't really know about, he sounds like a moron. Maybe moron is overstating it, but he clearly doesn't sound intelligent on a lot of topics that aren't at his core. Nor is he infallible, just look at how he destroyed Twitter in almost record time.
As for 5% of the population that would care if they were part of Russia or not, that was a swing and a miss. I've watched this shift over time, in person. Ukraine strongly wanted to regain its cultural identity. It is not Russia lite. For that matter, what ultimately become the Russian culture, started in Kyiv. Kyiv as a city is almost 7 centuries older than Moscow. Kyiv was founded in 482. Ukraine had a pretty proud heritage until it was forced under the iron fist of Russia as part of the USSR. There was a ton of resentment regarding Russians for years.
I went to university in the US and Russia. There were things hidden in school regarding history that I wasn't aware of for the longest time regarding Ukraine. I had heard whispers about it but you couldn't find anything about it in the textbooks. I suggest you research Holodomor. This was the first real genocide committed against the Ukrainians by the Russian. Exact numbers of Ukrainians killed by Stalin were pretty close to the number of Jews killed by Hitler. Hard to tell the exact numbers but death tolls are pretty comparable.
I suggest doing some very sad reading about all the Ukrainians who died because of Russia and come back and let's have a chat. Once you read about the Holodomor, you'll better understand why Ukraine is willing to fight this to the end.
Let's set the Holodomor aside for a while, even though everyone in the world should know about it if they don't already. Genocide on this scale should never be forgotten, let alone repeated. There is another issue at play. When Ukraine became subservient to Russia in the USSR, they pretty much gave up their language. Ukrainian, as a language, basically died as a language and never developed new words as many other languages did over the last centruy. The Ukrainian diaspora that came back to Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR want to bring back the language.
Language is a big part of cultural identity. I am not going to lie, for me it was a real pain in the arse. My Russian was probably a 9 out of 10 and about as good as you'd get being a non-native speaker who learned it later in life, but I had to start over in a lot of ways to learn. What I realized Ukrianians seemed almost like something between Polish and Russian. Some similar words in both languages but more poetic than Russian. Sort of like comparing German (Russian) to French (Ukrainian) when you listen to it. Maybe not quite as melodic as French but trending there.
Quicker than I thought it would happen, I saw Ukrainian being adopted everywhere. Even pop music in Ukrainian started to blossom and some of it was even popular in Russia. A good example is Okean Elzi. As Ukrainian took root again, the national identity strengthened. People started to identify as Ukrainian even if they might be ethnically considered to be Russians. The one sort of hold out area was Crimea. All official business was conducted in Russian while most of the country was in Ukrainian but I could even see the national identity seeping into that area.
This is all first-hand observation over my lifetime. I've probably spent at least 10 years of my life in Russia and Ukraine. My first trip to Russia was during the Soviet times before the fall. I've watched this play out for almost 50 years. I traveled from Moscow to the Kamchatka Peninsula and all over. I've been so far East in Russia I think I saw Sarah Palin's house. I've probably hit most of the oblasts (similar to states). I have been to every oblast in Ukraine. I've spoken with many people and stayed in so many homes, I gave up keeping track.
I can tell you the two nicest groups of people I met over the past almost 50 years I've traveled there have been the Siberians and Ukrainians. I guarantee all the Siberians and people not from the Russian capital cities (Moscow and St Pete) are the ones being used for cannon fodder in this war and I despise that. Russia is very good, just like the US, in letting the elites keep their kids out of war.
I may not be the biggest fan of Joe, but if someone didn't stop Putin, he would never stop. Crime just whetted his appetite. So it was just a matter of when everyone else would stand up to him. Ukraine is taking the brunt of this and they are fighting for their survival and they know it. I remember colleagues of my wife, who went to war when first attacked in Donbas. They left good-paying jobs, went into combat even when Ukraine couldn't supply them with any sort of body armor. I remember speaking to one of my wife's colleague's wife asking where she could buy body armor for her husband.
This is the outpouring of people that were CEOs, Directors of big businesses who had a pretty cushy life compared to even some here, who were willing to give it all up to defend their country. What they've done, even with the help of NATO, against one the biggest armies in the world is nothing short of a miracle. The Russian bear took a swipe at a very determined wolf. When Russia invaded Crimea, they really polarized the rest of the country against them.
I went into a cafe in Lviv (western Ukraine). My Ukrainian wasn't even at survival level yet. I walked up to the counter to ask for a menu but did it in Russian. It was a very noisy cafe right at lunchtime. The cafe instantly went quiet and everyone turned to look at me. I felt like I had the dot from a laser sight on the back of my head. I instantly knew I should carefully choose the next words I was about to speak very carefully. I apologized for speaking Russian but said I was an American who didn't know Ukrainian well enough to order. The conversation returned to normal, my heart rate went down about 100 bpm and the waitress was as nice as could be to me. I had a great lunch and tried to use as much Ukrainian as I could for the rest of my time there. I always led with it and then changed to Russian if I couldn't get my point across.
Sadly this war take a long time to play out but it was a major miscalculation on Russia's part. If I, as a foreigner, could tell how strong the cultural identity of Ukraine had become, it was a major miss by Russia. Now everyone is paying for it. At times I think by slow rolling the rollout of advanced weapons, it has just extended the conflict. At the same time there might have been benefit in getting more of the world behind Ukraine with the slower pace.
BitJam
Active Member
This is an assumption on your part. I don't think it's true. In addition, a high IQ does not magically make someone an expert in all areas. Also, this seems to be an unnecessary ad hominem attack on those you disagree with.
This is laughably false. Only a small percentage of NATO stockpiles went to Ukraine. Often it was stuff we were getting rid of anyway. One of the reasons the Ukrainian counter-offensive is going slower than some expected is because NATO hasn't given Ukraine any air power or enough long range missiles for Ukraine to conduct a war of attrition from afar.
If NATO gave Ukraine a significant fraction of their armaments (and the ability to use them) then this war would be over in a few weeks at most.
Here is a video that compares the conventional military strength of Russia and the USA: How do I think it would go in a conventional war.
This extremely well researched video by Perun highlights how far ahead the US is in air dominance: the Race for 6th Generation Fighters -- Drone, Lasers & Future Air.
It may not have been in this video but at one point Perun quipped that the three most powerful air forces in the world are: the US Air Force, the US Army, and the US Navy.
The US has a two war doctrine. They plan to be able to swiftly win two simultaneous wars with their strongest adversaries. So the US alone could mop with floor with Russia and then be back home in time for tea.
Putin's stated goal is to eradicate Ukraine as a nation and as a culture. After the many atrocities, war crimes, and acts of genocide committed by Russia, Ukrainians have vowed to fight on with or without help from the West. The vast majority of Ukrainians want to fight on until Russia is expelled from all of Ukraine's land.
Russia's murder and torture in Bucha happened very early in the war. Well before significant Western aid began flowing to Ukraine. The torture was not a response to Western aid. Western aid was stimulated by the torture and other atrocities.
The US did not invade Ukraine. Russia did. Unprovoked. How is that Joe Biden's fault?
The truth is Putin started his war in Ukraine back in 2014 after Ukraine kicked out his puppet. Why? The reason sure isn't NATO expansion since Putin's 2022 invasion spurred NATO expansion. The obvious answer is that Putin sees a prosperous Slavic democracy on his border as an existential threat because it would not only show the Russian people he's been lying to them but it would serve as an example they would want to emulate but they would first have to depose Putin.
Ukraine was willing to negotiate over Crimea before the Bucha atrocities were revealed. Seeing the horrors of Russian occupation changed their mind. This mess was created almost entirely by Putin. If he had avoided talk and acts of genocide then maybe some negotiation would have been possible.
I am in awe of the incredible amount of time you and others wasted on this page replying to a troll I’ve long since placed on Ignore, in this case a maestro of pushing people’s hot buttons just for giggles while adding zero content of value.
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Buckminster
Well-Known Member
I agree that the long form replies are a waste of time. As I said before, nobody will be changing minds here. So, let me write a long form post in response...
However, he is not a troll although people often end up trolling in these situations on-line once it gets heated. Subtle difference and calling people names will only get you more trolling. There is an element of truth in his statements which you will know is held by the Twitter majority. NYT plus WSJ switching over also?
We have exhausted the conventional weapons/ammunition that we are prepared to send. We are not good at making more. How are we going to keep up?
Pretty much every war we have gotten involved in since WW2 was a mistake. Ukraine will almost certainly be an exception (even if Ukraine loses it's land) but it is not a given.
Russia do feel threatened. Russia do feel aggrieved (going back to WW2). Not all the world think alike to us westerners (BRICS is a thing and they are no evil). Indeed, we are so polarised it should be easier to understand these days.
Regarding Biden sending young men to their deaths, there is no doubt that Ukrainian (let alone Russian) lives are not held in such high regard:
Distasteful at best.
Good point but I often don't mind trolls. I do feel that what I add helps add some of the color commentary this war is missing. It helps fill in some of the blanks. Many have likely never heard of Holodomor though we have a pretty erudite group of people here participating in this thread at times. Who knows how many people are lurking and reading but maybe not posting? My hope is to inform some of them along the way as well.
I just have to be careful how much I get sucked into this thread anyway. I am surrounded by it ever day. My checks on her family all day long. I check on her family all day long. Our kid worries about grandma and grandpa and everyone else in the family. Then we live near Russians that are oblivious to the terror that has been perpetrated on Ukrainians and don't believe anything other than Russian media accounts.
The stress on local Slavic communities is huge. We have altered activities that we did with Russian families. Our child was in a Russian school program to help learn the language since their grandparents are of the generation where Russian was all they spoke. Russians can be pretty vengeful and there was often an already snobbishness of Russians toward Ukrainians anyway in a lot of cities. So we removed our child from all activities with Russians to play it safe. When you have a Russian soldier's wife condoning rape, and you have the atrocities in Bucha (near my in-laws' dacha), you start to re-assess your relationships with the people from the culture and nation that are trying to wipe you off the face of the map without any compunction.
I see the emotional toll on my wife every day. Always wondering if today is the day her parents are taken out in a missile strike. I don't know how she manages it as well as she does. At the same time watching her parents try and maintain some semblance of normalcy in their lives. Her dad was a first responder for Chernobyl when he was in the Red Army. The *sugar* he has lived with all his life as a result of this is just horrendous. He was a straight-up hero and saved a lot of lives but he has paid the price since then. These are the type of people that aren't ever going to give up defending their country. As eff'd up as a lot of things are there, and have been, they aren't apologists for what the country might have done wrong and hate their country, instead, they are patriots. Absolutely proud to be Ukrainian but also aware that on many levels they can do better. I think a lot of us could learn things from them.
Elon Musk has become the poster child for Dunning-Kruger. He is brilliant in some areas, but he seems to think that makes him an expert in all areas and he doesn't know what he's talking about. I have said it before that he is the worlds smartest idiot.
A few of the small countries with small arsenals to begin with have stripped the cupboards to send arms to Ukraine, but the larger powers have barely scratched the surface of their stockpiles. The bulk of what the US has sent is surplus stuff it was going to get rid of or stick into storage anyway. The MRAPS are leftover from Afghanistan and were scheduled to be scrapped. The Bradleys were surplus, the Abrams are being rebuilt from the 2000 in storage.
Western artillery supplies are a bit tight as are MANPADS and ATGMs, but the rest of the NATO arsenal are in good shape. The US Navy has had essentially nothing sent to Ukraine and is at full strength. Same with the Air Force except for a few missiles. Some Army strength has been given away, but less than 5%.
Any scraps the US is likely to get into in the foreseeable future will call upon the Navy and/or Air Force to deal with. There are few scenarios where the US Army will need to be used. Even if the NATO gets drawn into a war with Russia, there is little need for the US Army, Ukraine has the Russian army fully engaged and could handle them easily if US airpower took out all of Russia's equipment Ukraine is having trouble neutralizing like the Russian air force and navy.
When you have the three largest air forces in the world, you don't have much to worry about in the air department.
The US may have struggled a bit with this before the Ukraine war, but with war production ramping in the US the US is going to make sure it's over stocked on the war goods that are in short supply now once this war is over and they have time to restock the pool.
This is a genocidal war on the part of Russia. Ukraine is fighting for the very existence of their culture.
This whole blaming the US for NATO expansion thing is complete BS. The US tried to stop eastward NATO expansion but eastern Europe knew who they were dealing with than the US did, they were under Moscow's thumb for over 40 years. The Poles and the Baltic states have been the most hyper supporters of Ukraine since day 1 because they know if Ukraine went down they were next. They understand the enemy better than anyone.
On a percentage of GDP those countries are among the most generous, but Poland has not depleted its own army. Poland has been rearming at a rapid rate the last few years. Poland has been aggressively modernizing its tanks which is why they could give their old tanks to Ukraine. Poland is also updating its air force and they gave their surplus planes to Ukraine.
Ukraine's army is mostly hand-me-downs from other countries. There are a relative handful of modern vehicles in frontline service in the donor country, but most is surplus the country didn't want.
Russia knows NATO is not depleted which is why they haven't expanded the war to include NATO.
As far as sending people to their deaths, Ukraine is fighting this war on their own terms and they consider the losses they are suffering are worth it to them. To blame this on the US or NATO is trying to take away Ukraine's agency to self determine what's best for their country.
It's playing Putin's game. Putin has said repeatedly that Ukraine is not a real country and he has the right to do with it what he wants, just like he can do things to an internal province of Russia like Chechnya. Other players than Ukraine trying to decide for Ukraine what is best for Ukraine is playing right into Putin's narrative.
Last year we had a long sub-thread on Holodomor here. I was aware of it, but I had never looked into it much. I also watched Timothy Snyder's class on the history of modern Ukraine he did last fall. It's on YouTube, I think it's about 20 lectures. He went into the deep scars Holodomor left on Ukraine.
According to the Wikipedia numbers Holodomor might be the 3rd worst genocide in history and few people in the west know about it.
List of genocides - Wikipedia
The two that beat is out are the genocide of native peoples of the Americas which lasted 400 years and the Holocaust, with possibly other German atrocities against the Soviet prisoners (which included a lot of Ukrainians) beating out the Holormor.
Ukraine knows what they face if they surrender to the Russians. Eastern Ukraine has been under Russian occupation for several hundred years and they have dealt with many attempts to Russify Ukraine and what happens to Ukrainians when they don't want to be Russified. The western commentators who are trying to end the war don't understand this, they are being played by Moscow to try and chip away at support for Ukraine.
I personally appreciate your first hand accounts. It deepens my understanding of the cultures involved.
petit_bateau
Active Member
I have similar sentiments. Not only for Schlumberger, but also for some of the other oil patch cos.
The only positive non-cynical thought might be that Schlumberger were concerned about how best to get a decent outcome for their local employees.
"Pretty much every war we have gotten involved in since WW2 was a mistake. Ukraine will almost certainly be an exception (even if Ukraine loses it's land) but it is not a given." Blatantly wrong. Post WW2 everything was related to the Cold War. Which the West won. Everything.
- Overall COLD WAR- terrible for many peoples in many countries but in the end ..in 1989 we no longer shivered in horror at the threat of nukes. It was horrible...but brilliant and it worked. The USSR fell. Peoples obtained freedom from Ethiopia to Poland to even (briefly) Myanmar. Some small instances of that conflict.
- Korean War
- Malaysian Communist Insurgency
- Ethiopian Civil War (ended 91)
- Chinese/Russian cold war in 60/70s
- Most Israel conflict from statehood to now - the war literally hinged on arms deliveries - sometimes from Israel efforts sometimes USA. Israel never had stocks sufficient to fight the larger wars without dramatic infusions of aid.
- Ukraine conflict = already frozen chinese attempts to launch an armed attack on Taiwan. Might freeze things for a decade or more as lessons learned are digested. That may or may not give China time to start moving on from the current nationalistic phase of things and answer the larger question of WHY?
- Balkans in post Yugoslavia- USA tried to force Europe to intervene to stop genocide. Didn't work and the USA military did not want to put troops on the ground so we bombed . The threat of more bombing and more intervention eventually won out combined with arms supplies. In Yugoslavia they hate...the hates go back centuries. I personally refused to serve in the balkans. In such a situation a ruthless amoral group such as ISIS or Russian GRU/KGB can easily cause havoc. Sort of hopeless but our intervention at least stopped genocide.
- First Iraq war. So clearly the correct thing to do even Russia did not object. Nor did China. The aftermath could have gone a bit better but we had no end game there and not ask me why.
- I could go on and on. Some have been terrible mistakes but most, including Vietnam, were unfortunately not mistakes but terrible nonetheless. It should not have gone to war but that was the difference between Roosevelt and Truman. I would sadly state that very very few were mistakes. Terribly executed? Maybe. Part of the Cold War that was burning hot elsewhere on the globe.
Regarding ammo supplies. The USA and allies have such vast vast stocks of munitions it is not funny. However we keep a giant inventory to assist Israel, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc etc. In a year the USA will be pumping out munitions at a sufficient rate to support a long term conflict in the Ukraine. We'll also be unlocking munitions of which we have a deep supply but currently are unavailable to Ukraine- armaments for aviation. Our aviation munitions inventory is ...huge. We are getting Korea to send ammo and you can bet that the visit by the Korean president was about this and the involvement of the Korean Chaebol in arming Ukraine (as they are now partnered with Poland).
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Definitely dropped in market cap but MANY would say it’s better. Not to mention it being a case study in how to slash the workforce and still be in business. Many CEOs took notice. Yes mistakes were made but will survive and In a few years, the worth of twitter will be back to ATH. Threads is the one that’s truly crashing.
Speaking of Ukraine on Twitter, interesting viewpoint from a retired army officer…
lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
Regarding responding to Srotom, consider it an opportunity to counter nonsense/propaganda with fact and reason as a lot of posters have done. Like Buckminster, I see the openings as an opportunity and I appreciate people's efforts to politely address the issues.
I take less of an educated debunking approach (likely as I am less educated than most on this thread) and more of a sniff test approach. The concept that there would have been less raping, torture and murder if the Ukrainians would just have laid down and let Russia have its way is ludicrous on its face. You can sprinkle your argument with small factoids all you want to give those that share your views something to hang their hat on but the bottom line is that the core of the argument is morally and factually/operationally/financially bankrupt. Torture is not an option and people should be held to account (including Bush). Operationally, allowing Russia to succeed only invites more of the same behavior. Financially, this is the single most cost effective way to degrade Russia's capabilities but it comes at a huge price to the Ukrainians.
I take less of an educated debunking approach (likely as I am less educated than most on this thread) and more of a sniff test approach. The concept that there would have been less raping, torture and murder if the Ukrainians would just have laid down and let Russia have its way is ludicrous on its face. You can sprinkle your argument with small factoids all you want to give those that share your views something to hang their hat on but the bottom line is that the core of the argument is morally and factually/operationally/financially bankrupt. Torture is not an option and people should be held to account (including Bush). Operationally, allowing Russia to succeed only invites more of the same behavior. Financially, this is the single most cost effective way to degrade Russia's capabilities but it comes at a huge price to the Ukrainians.
He raises a good point. Long before the current controversy, the US has been supplying cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia for use in "their" invasion of Yemen. But of course, the Yemenis aren't white.
Yemen: Saudis Using US Cluster Munitions
Saudi Arabia has used US-made cluster munitions near civilian areas in Yemen, leaving behind unexploded submunitions, Human Rights Watch said today. The United States should cease its production and transfer of cluster munitions to conform with the widely accepted international ban on the weapons.
