Russia/Ukraine conflict

[nativewolf]

Elon has been described as a mix of Nikola Tesla and Henry Ford. Fords thoughts on WW2 were also..... 'misguided'

Thought this was really informative. Great recording of FDRs fireside chat discussing the 'arsenal of democracy' at the end. Hadn't considered the idea that the F16 might be prolific enough that Ukraine may be able to field a squadron manned by foreign pilots similar to how Americans aided the British and Chinese before the US formally entered WW2.

FDR saw the wars coming and was determined to get a corps of experienced aviators. He couldn't do that in Spain but he could in China. The combat experienced avaitors formed the basis of the US naval training instructors and it's a key reason why the US had very high success rates in encounters with Japanese Zero's. They understood the lack of armor, climbing, diving abilities, etc. It also enabled a new splurge of aircraft designs.

I think we are seeing the same with armed drones today. This is the testing ground and I believe the first country to really digest and employ the lessons here will change the balance of power in the air.

 

[nativewolf]

I thought because of this war people in the Donbas area went from pro Russia to hating Russia? And I thought those people voted to be with Russia under gun point?

I mean they can have a supervised vote with zero tolerance for intimidation. If Russia were not to uphold the end of the bargain if the Donbas area favors Ukraine then Nato will mobilize. I mean there's a chance, perhaps even a good chance people of Donbas wants to be with Ukraine when not held at gun point which ends bloodshed vs dragging this on forever.

They had that vote in 1991. They wanted to leave. When russian mafia and thugs and bandits and mercs are gone and the area rebuilt how will they vote. I'd be interested but I assume largely they will vote to join Europe. The men have all been pressed into service or they fled. There will be tens of thousands of families torn apart. Going to be a long slow rebuild before you have any meaningful elections as the refugees won't be able to return for years maybe.

 

[SageBrush]

I cannot help but laugh at the American posters who want a "fair" vote for Crimea, when their own electoral system is being compromised by the day with trumpers who gauge electoral integrity by the winner and actively circumvent the courts when they cannot compromise them.

It will be quite the irony if UKR becomes a functioning democracy and the USA degenerates into a fascist autocracy a la Russia

 

[lolachampcar]

I cannot help but laugh at the American posters who want a "fair" vote for Crimea, when their own electoral system is being compromised by the day with trumpers who gauge electoral integrity by the winner and actively circumvent the courts when they cannot compromise them.

It will be quite the irony if UKR becomes a functioning democracy and the USA degenerates into a fascist autocracy a la Russia

Yes and no........
The foundations of democracy are being challenged by children in the US that can not accept no and are throwing a temper tantrum. I'm am reminded by these people on a daily basis just how many they are. They are very proud of their numbers and the depths they are willing to stoop to to have their way. There there is a little yes there.

On the no side, the last election was one of our best. The shenanigans failed. Adults in a position of power on the right did the correct thing (for the most part). That would be a bit of no.

Moving forward the US needs to decide if the adults are going to be polite and tolerate these childish outbursts or if we are going to follow the harder path and address the issue head on. This goes for adults in both parties but obviously one is in much worse shape at the moment. If you do not clean up your own mess, it becomes a dumpster fire and it burns down everything. Let a President commit perjury from the WH..... Let a potential presidential candidate destroy women's lives because they had the nerve to speak the truth regarding her husband then reward that potential candidate with SoS as a stepping stone for a run and you are failing to clean your own house. Let a President torture people without consequences and you become a state sponsor of torture.

I will not even attempt to provide examples on the current Right. There are too many and orders of magnitude worse.

How this is on point with this thread (and not just a response to the post quoted) is that ANY oxygen provided Russia and Putin is a mistake. However well intentioned any twitter poster may be, there is no negotiation. Any wavering on negotiation by anyone other than the Ukraine is an open invitation for Putin to threaten and even use nuclear weapons. Build a consensus with those tacitly supporting Russia (China, India,,) to completely blockade Russia (economically and physically) should they use even the smallest of nuclear weapons or cause a radioactive disaster in Ukraine. This is in all's best interest and should be a baseline upon which the world should agree. Do this and Putin looses any avenue to use nukes as leverage which leaves them only to slowly bleed out. The calculus changes for the better. In addition, it gives the world an opportunity to refine its understanding of nuclear weapons and how they may or may not be employed.

Any and all talk of compromise by anyone other than the Ukrainians is a very big mistake. I believe in compromise but, in this case, it will only result in more dead on both sides.

 

[unk45]

The talking heads in Russia complained about this 2 weeks ago, media (state directed) complained too. So the airforce flew and lost 10 aircraft in 2 days. Not flying again. They have not been a factor at all and AGAIN ( i can repeat and repeat) I think this war has marked the end of manned airframes. The f35 is a wondrous billing machine but even idiots in the airforce (so so many) have to be seeing that drones are starting to carry anti drone weapons.

In context, hypersonic weapons coupled with satellite imagery effectively replace all the long range bombers. Shorter range now has lethally effective drones and highly maneuverable remote control vehicles. In both cases command and control must be highly integrated and very, very fast. Ground troop operations are rapidly evolving using various robotic solutions including mine-sniffing and, allegedly, disarming. The list goes on, but is evolving so quickly that almost nobody can keep up.

This may well be one of the last major conflicts that still use mostly 1970-1980 era armament. Even here the drones on both sides are proving how asymmetric conflict advances happen. Russia using Iranian technology, Ukraine with Turkish and NATO tools.

The precise targeting from Ukraine strongly suggests the Ukrainian capture of Russian state-of-their-art command technology coupled with NATO resources are helping them deploy local initiatives while being adept at further weakening Russian forces.

All the very careful and current reporting by @petit_bateau and @wdolson , among others, shows how Ukrainian determination, training, planning and ingenuity are allowing them to outsmart the obsolete and bureaucratic Russia forces at every turn.

Just imagine what Ukraine can do when their armaments continue to improve!
These are the people who gave the Mikoyan products their fame. Not a coincidence that Novosibirsk played origin role.

Novosibirsk Akademgorodok – the scientific center of Siberia · Russia Travel Blog

russiatrek.org

Many of the best Novosibirsk educated people have fled Russia. Many of them are helping Ukraine now. Thanks to excellent communications the Ukrainians are learning from those people every day.

In this post I have gathered all the sources I have and generalized from details not readily available otherwise. My direct sources are desperately seeking anonymity. Much of the data is far beyond my technical understanding. Thus, please correct my errors, both in logic and content.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Swedish police probe at Nord Stream leak site strengthens suspicion of gross sabotage | REUTERS (19 min ago)

Swedish police probe at Nord Stream leak site strengthens suspicion of gross sabotage

Suspicions of gross sabotage on the damaged Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea have strengthened following a crime scene investigation in the Swedish exclusive economic zone, the country's security police said on Thursday.

www.reuters.com

 

[madodel]

If we had a free and fair election would Russians vote for Putin ? Is Ukraine annexation a Russian agenda or a Putin agenda?
Elon should know better …. Covid, twitter and now Russia/Ukraine…..

A lot of Russians are voting now literally with their feet.

 

[petit_bateau]

In context, hypersonic weapons coupled with satellite imagery effectively replace all the long range bombers. Shorter range now has lethally effective drones and highly maneuverable remote control vehicles. In both cases command and control must be highly integrated and very, very fast. Ground troop operations are rapidly evolving using various robotic solutions including mine-sniffing and, allegedly, disarming. The list goes on, but is evolving so quickly that almost nobody can keep up.

This may well be one of the last major conflicts that still use mostly 1970-1980 era armament. Even here the drones on both sides are proving how asymmetric conflict advances happen. Russia using Iranian technology, Ukraine with Turkish and NATO tools.

The precise targeting from Ukraine strongly suggests the Ukrainian capture of Russian state-of-their-art command technology coupled with NATO resources are helping them deploy local initiatives while being adept at further weakening Russian forces.

All the very careful and current reporting by @petit_bateau and @wdolson , among others, shows how Ukrainian determination, training, planning and ingenuity are allowing them to outsmart the obsolete and bureaucratic Russia forces at every turn.

Just imagine what Ukraine can do when their armaments continue to improve!
These are the people who gave the Mikoyan products their fame. Not a coincidence that Novosibirsk played origin role.

Novosibirsk Akademgorodok – the scientific center of Siberia · Russia Travel Blog

russiatrek.org

Many of the best Novosibirsk educated people have fled Russia. Many of them are helping Ukraine now. Thanks to excellent communications the Ukrainians are learning from those people every day.

In this post I have gathered all the sources I have and generalized from details not readily available otherwise. My direct sources are desperately seeking anonymity. Much of the data is far beyond my technical understanding. Thus, please correct my errors, both in logic and content.

Hypersonics come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and flavours. They are not wonder weapons. They have some pretty damming limitations - for example they are to all intents and purposes blind and deaf most of the time as the side effects of being hypersonic make radio/light/IR transmission and reception extremely diificult*. There are other limitations. Trying to overcome these limitations to turn them into somewhat effective weapons also makes them massively expensive, so much so that one is hesitant to use them. Adversaries all over the world would quite reasonably be very concerned if one were to be launched as they couldn't be sure that it wouldn't change course away from the nominal target, dogleg through 90-degrees, penetrate their defences, and unload a nuclear device on them. Therefore everyone gets trigger-happy in a bad way (use-it-or-lose-it nuclear strategies being the most obvious consideration) when these devices are in play. In contrast a large long range & long endurance manned bomber with a good payload for a wide spectrum of weapons ranging from cheap to expensive, and good communications system can be a very attractive platform for use in a wide range of situations ranging from 'showing the flag' through low intensity warfighting, to high intensity stuff.

The underlying point I am trying to make is that the rise of any given new weapon and/or weapons platform and/or weapons system does not necessarily make the old one unattractive or unusable or unnecessary or uneconomic. For each of the many new weapons that are devised there are more or less attractive defences and counter-weapons. I'm afraid it is a reality of the nature of modern warfare that only continental-scale military-industrial complexes have the scale to field and sustain the whole suite of the modern inventory and the associated people, and develop the subsequent generation of people and weaponry. Smaller nations/groups/alliances are left with unhappy choices about what capabilities to give up and what consequences they are willing to accept. For examply you will note that no country in Europe has a long range & long endurance manned bomber - they simply couldn't afford to keeep them.

So those people saying that X or Y is proved obsolete because of A and B in Ukraine should be listened to, but sceptically and cautiously. We are so far only seeing a very limited conflict in many ways, for all that it is large scale and appalling. As just one example, no-one has used any anti-satellite weapons since the first few days .....

* see re-entry blackout for an explanation

Reentry Blackout

 

[petit_bateau]

My sincere apologies. Looks like the golden teeth story was likely a mistake. Possibly not, but likely so.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577737245695655952

 

[Singuy]

Russia is never going to agree to a free and fair election and the only reasons they would retreat have to do with either Russian politics or the army is in such a state it's clear to everyone that the remaining fragments need to be withdrawn (probably in conjunction with something involving Russian politics).

Russia is not a European country, it's an Asian country with European trappings. Saving face is very important there. The Russians expected the US to unravel when it pulled the plug on Afghanistan. There was some hand wringing, but collectively the US shrugged and moved on. To the Russians a leader who doesn't deliver a glorious victory in a war deserves to have their head on a spike. Losing a war is a major face losing thing and Putin is very scared of what comes next if he admits they lost.

Putin has been trying to cast this as a war with NATO because losing to NATO would be a more honorable (face saving) loss than losing to a country with 1/3 the population of Russia who the Russians consider inferior.

Now after the Ukrainians liberate the occupied territories, they could bring in the UN to have a referendum. It would be an almost guaranteed win for Ukraine and it would be a good PR move. But it can only happen when the Russians are out of the picture.

Crimea was moved from Russia to Ukraine in the 1950s because it made more sense for it to be administered by Ukraine. Crimea has a land bridge with Ukraine and the main water supply comes from Ukraine. While there are a lot of ethnic Russians in Crimea, it makes sense for the Crimeans to want to belong to Ukraine.

Crimea will do far better after the war if it's part of Ukraine than part of Russia. At minimum Russia is going to face a deep economic depression after this war. It will probably also see a lot of civil unrest. Russia will never be the same again. It will probably never recover.

Ukraine on the other hand will be the darling of the west and will be getting a lot of money to rebuild. It will join the EU and become one of the economic pillars of the alliance within a decade or two.

"Losing to Nato is more honorable" is stretching. There's no indication that Putin is considering driving that narrative vs escalating to triple down.

You know better than anyone what Putin did was idiotic and doesn't have the numbers. Have we seen in the past 8 months any shred of strategic brilliancy from the man?

The only shred of brilliancy I find from Putin is all the prewar stuff. Driving polarization in thr Donbas area using propaganda and fake news, driving polarization in the US. Almost had a president willing to pull out of Nato. Making sure EU is very energy dependent on Russia, and strategically became more and more sanction proof.

However everything after the invasion started was nothing but stupidity. So we are now all hoping this stupid person will one day wake up and do what is best for his country while sacrificing his own power and admit stupidity...kind of a stretch.

 

[madodel]

Russia and Saudi Arabia pushed through dramatic cuts in production to drive up prices. Who says there is no loyalty among thieves?
OPEC announces the biggest cut to oil production since the start of the pandemic

So even if Russia has to peddle their oil at a discount, jacking up the base price gives them more profit after the discount.

 

[mekberg]

Russia and Saudi Arabia pushed through dramatic cuts in production to drive up prices. Who says there is no loyalty among thieves?
OPEC announces the biggest cut to oil production since the start of the pandemic

So even if Russia has to peddle their oil at a discount, jacking up the base price gives them more profit after the discount.

It also serves to influence US mid-term elections toward a party that is likely to scale back support for Ukraine.

 

[madodel]

It also serves to influence US mid-term elections toward a party that is likely to scale back support for Ukraine.

Win-Win for Putin.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Whenever I try to decide if someone is wrong or not I try to be generous with their arguments. Try to make them stronger rather than weaker.

What Elon said is that he thinks that UN should take control of the regions, both Russia and Ukraine agrees to leave them for a time period and then UN should hold a democratic election and both countries should respect the outcome of it. (Fwiw I think people would vote for Ukraine, even in the Russian speaking people in the regions)

Elon is not saying that Russia should hold the election and people who have been deported should not be allowed to vote.

Is it right to do this, does this set the right example? Should every part of every country be up for vote for where to belong? Should Hawaii have UN there to hold vote regarding leaving the US and becoming independent/joining Japan or whatever? This is not what Elon is saying, even if it's an interesting philosophical/political question that should be pondered. What Elon is saying is that so many lives have already been lost and so many thousands more will be lost that maybe and we are risking end of all life with nuclear winter, so this time it's worth to consider making an exception.

I am not saying that I agree with Elon, so spare me the downvotes, I am just trying to make his argument more clear and stronger, then you can debate that rather than a weaker argument.

Again that goes back to the same point I made in an earlier response, it's pie in the sky and completely unworkable, given if the UN could step in this way, this war would have never happened in the first place!

And we know for sure Russia would never agree to a vote where they had a chance of losing, and Ukraine would not agree to a vote either regardless (as they would be giving up territory for no reason other than Russia's ambitions).

Mentioning this idea while Russia just did scam referendums just gives legitimacy to the idea at all that Ukraine should be forced to give up territory based on votes by a local population.

 

[madodel]

Military support for Ukraine
Germany provides support for Ukraine by supplying equipment and weapons, these come from supplies of the Federal Arms Forces and from deliveries from industry financed from the Federal Government’s funds for security capacity building. An overview.

Updated as of October 5th. Quite a list, though mostly non-lethal assistance.

 

[X Fan]

Whenever I try to decide if someone is wrong or not I try to be generous with their arguments. Try to make them stronger rather than weaker.

What Elon said is that he thinks that UN should take control of the regions, both Russia and Ukraine agrees to leave them for a time period and then UN should hold a democratic election and both countries should respect the outcome of it. (Fwiw I think people would vote for Ukraine, even in the Russian speaking people in the regions)

Elon is not saying that Russia should hold the election and people who have been deported should not be allowed to vote.

Is it right to do this, does this set the right example? Should every part of every country be up for vote for where to belong? Should Hawaii have UN there to hold vote regarding leaving the US and becoming independent/joining Japan or whatever? This is not what Elon is saying, even if it's an interesting philosophical/political question that should be pondered. What Elon is saying is that so many lives have already been lost and so many thousands more will be lost that maybe and we are risking end of all life with nuclear winter, so this time it's worth to consider making an exception.

I am not saying that I agree with Elon, so spare me the downvotes, I am just trying to make his argument more clear and stronger, then you can debate that rather than a weaker argument.

"Whenever I try to decide if someone is wrong or not I try to be generous with their arguments. Try to make them stronger rather than weaker."

Upvote for your open approach with your willingness to listen to other points of view.

The world would be a much better place if there was less tribalism with folks lampooning or rejecting out of hand with anger people with different ideas.

 

[X Fan]

My sincere apologies. Looks like the golden teeth story was likely a mistake. Possibly not, but likely so.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1577737245695655952

Saw that but the fact still remains that there are perhaps tens of thousands missing children and residents that have been taken from their homes by the Russians. That does mirror the actions of the Nazis, Stalin, Mao.

 

[iPlug]

Good to have honest/constructive discussions here with the vast majority of participants.

In the interest of reporting events of both sides, some may have heard:

United States intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/us/politics/ukraine-russia-dugina-assassination.html

We discussed before if this would be morally just for Ukraine to do. West is not condoning this. Would argue any way we look at the big picture, Ukraine moral high ground remains >>> Russia.

 

[Singuy]

And we know for sure Russia would never agree to a vote where they had a chance of losing, and Ukraine would not agree to a vote either regardless (as they would be giving up territory for no reason other than Russia's ambitions).

And this lies the problem. We are pretty sure Russia wouldn't even consider the compromise Elon is suggesting. Ukraine is shutting down anything Elon has to say. People hoping for Russia's unconditional surrender is laughable. Maybe if Ukraine points their non-existent nukes at a few cities in Russia then perhaps there's a chance.

The only outcome I see if we don't escalate into WW3 or any kind of nuclear exchange is keep fighting for a few years until Putin dies and Russia reassess. This is perhaps the best case scenario.

 

[petit_bateau]

Saw that but the fact still remains that there are perhaps tens of thousands missing children and residents that have been taken from their homes by the Russians. That does mirror the actions of the Nazis, Stalin, Mao.

Yes, and this is well documented. I think the numbers are actually a couple of million or more as one has to include all actions from approx 2014 onwards by Russia.

Good to have honest/constructive discussions here with the vast majority of participants.

In the interest of reporting events of both sides, some may have heard:

United States intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/us/politics/ukraine-russia-dugina-assassination.html

We discussed before if this would be morally just for Ukraine to do. West is not condoning this. Would argue any way we look at the big picture, Ukraine moral high ground remains >>> Russia.

The Russians have shown no hesitation in going after the senior leadership team of Ukraine, not just the central government team. Ukraine returning fire is warranted imho.