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Russia/Ukraine conflict
- Thread starter amolina
- Start date
navguy12
Active Member
Appreciate your honesty; I am much the same…and I hate all this N-D chess nonsense.
3D chess was something a scriptwriter came up with for added character development for Spock in the 1960s Star Trek show.
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I was just struck at how the Trump wing of the Republican Party is now acting like a surprised, wounded animal; they seem to really believe the crap that they live, day and night, in their favourite Putin fuelled echo chambers.
It's great it finally happened but the circumstances blocking it are very frustrating. The votes were always there. But the will of a fringe group of lunatics were able to subvert the will of the majority for all this time. A very undemocratic thing for a democracy to have to endure.
navguy12
Active Member
navguy12
Active Member
navguy12
Active Member
From yesterday’s Toronto Star
DanCar
Active Member
ATACMS might be in transit to Ukraine by end of the week.
www.cbsnews.com
Excerpts:
... hope once this gets to the President by Tuesday or Wednesday, that these shipments will be literally launched with that longer range ATACM ...
... we've been told that there is it is the President signature, making sure Congress does its job that these materials will be in transit by the end of the week...
Transcript: Sen. Mark Warner on "Face the Nation," April 21, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that aired on April 21, 2024.
www.cbsnews.com
... hope once this gets to the President by Tuesday or Wednesday, that these shipments will be literally launched with that longer range ATACM ...
... we've been told that there is it is the President signature, making sure Congress does its job that these materials will be in transit by the end of the week...
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I'm not sure what exactly changed Johnson's mind. It happened after an intelligence briefing that really rattled him. My partner saw something today that the CIA chief briefed the Gang of 8 in Congress (the party leaders in both houses and the top two people from each house's intelligence committees) and there was something in there that rattled Johnson very deeply.
Rumor has it that it was good intelligence that Russia was developing plans to attack Finland after they won in Ukraine. And with Finland in NATO the US would be in that war, including his son who is attending the naval academy this fall. I don't think he wanted to go down in history as the guy who was responsible for the US to get dragged into the largest war since WW II.
For a little light relief. A press release from game maker Activision
How the Ukrainians got a hold of the Russians latest drone jamming tech
Ukrainian Troops Staged A Daring Three-Night Raid To Steal A Russian Tank Fitted With A New Drone-Jammer
Someone geeking out on Russian tank storage numbers
This is a recent picture of the condition of a bunch of T-72s in storage. Not a single one has a turret.
Sitting out for three decades in the snow and rain with no turret, those autoloaders are toast.
Ukrainian Troops Staged A Daring Three-Night Raid To Steal A Russian Tank Fitted With A New Drone-Jammer
Someone geeking out on Russian tank storage numbers
This is a recent picture of the condition of a bunch of T-72s in storage. Not a single one has a turret.
Sitting out for three decades in the snow and rain with no turret, those autoloaders are toast.
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I agree somewhat ... although I was surprised that a majority of Republicans actually voted against the funding. This is counter to what I understood 6 months ago when this bill was first proposed. There were always enough votes in the overall House, but I actually thought there was a majority in the Republican caucus that wanted the bill to pass as well. We can't know this of course, since the question was not called back in October, but I do believe these months of delay allowed the over-the-top Putin/Trump disinformation campaign to spread further, weakening Republican support overall for Ukraine.
This may matter, as there will be more votes needed in the future.
All that said, my impression (from this very forum) is that 2024 was the critical year. If we can slide Ukraine through this with not _too_ much more harm and loss of personnel, territory and power plants, the new European weapons and ammo production should be able to fill in much better next year and beyond.
In addition, someone here posted that Russia's prime interest rate is now over 15%? Between that and the refinery destruction, not to mention the sanctions, might the balance of power finally be shifting towards Ukraine in 2025?
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Trump has shifted in the last 6 months. He was crazy against. Now, he has given tepid approval.
A majority of Republicans favored military aid.
Perhaps a razor thin majority would agree to financial aid in the form of loans.
But in the package a lot of the aid is "forgivable loans" which Biden will almost certainly enforce, meaning Ukraine doesn't have to pay the loans back. A majority of Republicans are against this.
The far right wing of the party is extremely isolationist. The defense oriented Republicans are still in favor of supporting the US's allies, but they have been beaten down by the far right. There are quite a few who are not running for re-election because it's become too stressful dealing with the far right.
I think it was Perun who had some information on Russian production about a month or two back. He made the point that Russian production is at its peak now. They have retrieved the easily restored tanks and APVs from storage and they have several plants around the country restoring them and putting them back into combat. They claim they are producing something like 150 tanks a month, but in reality they includes restored tanks. Their new tank production is 20 a month or less. They only have one factory for new tank production and it isn't set up for mass production.
As the depots of old vehicles empty out and all that's left is unrestorable junk, they will have to retool the vehicle restoration plants into new vehicle production factories. That means obtaining the tooling from somewhere. They can get most of it from China, but some machine tools they need China doesn't make. The only countries that make the sort of machine tools needed to bore gun barrels and make some alloys are only made in Europe and the US.
Russian vehicle "production" will be declining as the restoration efforts get tougher with more degraded vehicles and it will go to near zero for a while until those factories are back to producing new vehicles, but converting them will take 1-2 years. Russia also has a shortage of skilled labor in some areas. Most of their machinists are in their 50s or 60s now. They have been training virtually none for 30 years. And the life expectancy of the average Russian man is in his 60s. They are literally dying off.
Meanwhile the west is ramping up production. This war has demonstrated to the western countries that they need vastly larger stockpiles of ammunition than they thought, which makes it worthwhile for arms manufacturers to ramp up production and build new facilities. If they anticipated that artillery ammo production was going to go back to pre-war levels as soon as this conflict was over, they wouldn't bother building new plants, just try to optimize production at the plants they have. However, demand for ammunition will likely remain high for several years after this war as western countries restock and build up more of an arsenal than they had.
Lockheed-Martin is so confident of demand for their missiles that they are spending their own money to expand production capacity. They have orders for HIMARS for the next decade.
Russia may collapse economically, or the populations that are bearing the brunt of this war might rise up against Moscow, or Ukraine might have enough success in strangling Russian supply that the get back the southern portion of the country and Crimea. The Donbas, unfortunately, is too easy for Russia to supply. Strangling supply there is a heavier left than it would be in the south. The south and Crimea have a tenuous supply situation and Ukraine might be able to make it vastly worse this summer wit ATACMS.
The south has three supply routes, the Kerch bridge, ships carrying supplies to Crimea, and the strip along the coast of the Azov Sea that is out of range of regular HIMARs. The Russians are limited to a road there now, but they are building a railroad. The Kerch bridge can be cut and the Russians have already lost quite a few cargo vessels. Closing down the coastal route and keeping it closed would be the toughest one for the Ukrainians. If they get enough supply to go on the offensive this summer and manage to get the coast road within 155mm range, then they can keep it shut down. If they can get all the way to the Azov coast that would be even better. All the way to the coast and Russia's entire army in the south and Crimea will be cut off.
But we saw last summer how difficult it was to advance anywhere. Getting to the Azov is going to be difficult.
In any case, there is a very strong isolationist/pro-Putin faction in the Republican party. They might be a minority of Republicans, but they have the rest of the party intimidated. Almost certainly some of the "no" vote were people who saw it was going to pass anyway and they voted no so the extreme right would leave them alone. I saw somewhere that the vote for the bill went over a majority "yes" within a minute or two of voting starting. So those voting later had the luxury of voting "no" on something they wanted to pass of they wanted the bullies to leave them alone.
Trump has shifted in the last few days. He's all over the map on a lot of issues trying to keep everyone happy. In reality I think he really does not want to support Ukraine and would probably do everything possible to stop aid if he got back into office. He is a grudge holder and he hates Zelensky for not going along with his plan that resulted in his first impeachment.
He also practically worships Putin. Michael Cohen has said that Trump would go on about how great Putin was before he ran for president.
I don't trust anything Trump says. I go by what he's done. His history is to praise dictators and attack the US's allies most of the time, but he can suddenly change his tune when he wants something. It's almost certain he gave some highly classified information to the Russians during the first meeting he had in the White House. It resulted in a number of intelligence assets getting killed.
Congress will probably have to forgive the loans, but they will probably be forgiven by the next Congress if the Democrats get the trifecta (House, Senate, and White House).
Interesting video of a tour of a Swedish artillery shell manufacturing plant in the process of expanding their production capacity.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Lots of things can change between now and next year.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi might become President of Ukraine. He is currently polling ahead of Zelenskyy.
Trump was right to harass our allies into more Defense Spending, many times to a percentage of their economy that they agreed to. Trump was right to tell Merkel/Germany not to become dependent on Russian fossil fuels.
Many past POTUS have praised dictators. You make peace with your enemies not your friends. Public praise is many times part of that process.
The Republican right wing isn't so isolationist they refuse to support Israel. But rhetorically they have climbed up a tree on Ukraine that it is difficult to climb down from.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi might become President of Ukraine. He is currently polling ahead of Zelenskyy.
Trump was right to harass our allies into more Defense Spending, many times to a percentage of their economy that they agreed to. Trump was right to tell Merkel/Germany not to become dependent on Russian fossil fuels.
Many past POTUS have praised dictators. You make peace with your enemies not your friends. Public praise is many times part of that process.
The Republican right wing isn't so isolationist they refuse to support Israel. But rhetorically they have climbed up a tree on Ukraine that it is difficult to climb down from.
Agreed that ATACMS have proven a huge thorn in Putin's side. I have only seen the vague phrase "long range ATACMS" in regard to this new bill - does anyone know more detail on HOW long range we are talking? IIRC there were several possible ranges for those missiles.
Also, @wdolson (or others) is there much hope in the fact that Armenia is showing some ... friction with the CSTO and (from their stated perspective) Russia's lack of helpfulness in fulfilling their security obligations under that umbrella? I was hoping that their overstretched military obligations might engender more unrest from the Russian Federation per se (BTW is the Federation the same as the folks in the CSTO?) and cause more headaches for Putin, but have yet to see much evidence of this. Anything that makes him take units from Ukraine seems to me to be a plus.
navguy12
Active Member
From today’s Gaurdian news feed:
Russia-Ukraine war live: EU ministers fail to pledge Patriot systems to Ukraine at key meeting
Russia-Ukraine war live: EU ministers fail to pledge Patriot systems to Ukraine at key meeting
Russia-Ukraine war live: EU ministers fail to pledge Patriot systems to Ukraine at key meeting
Russia-Ukraine war live: EU ministers fail to pledge Patriot systems to Ukraine at key meeting
navguy12
Active Member
Global defence budget jumps to record high of $2440bn
For the first time, government military spending increased in all five geographical regions, Sipri thinktank finds
www.theguardian.com
Totally agree that TFG has not changed his spots. Someone probably explained that horrendous losses by a Ukraine unsupported by the US unfolding on the news over the next 6 months would lose him (foremost) and the Republican party a significant number of votes. So he is giving it a tepid thumbs up, in an attempt to mitigate the threat to his election and therefore his legal survival.
Putler's courts accuse everyone they don't like of being NAZIs and put them in prison. Very NAZI of them.
Insta-Nazis: How Claims Of 'Rehabilitating Nazism' Are Molding A Militaristic Society In Putin's Russia
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-rehabilitating-nazism-charges-putin-society/32912689.html
Insta-Nazis: How Claims Of 'Rehabilitating Nazism' Are Molding A Militaristic Society In Putin's Russia
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-rehabilitating-nazism-charges-putin-society/32912689.html
