Russia/Ukraine conflict

[wdolson]

Only happens in movies and fairytales:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1776494046841868347

There is the saying "keep your friends close and your enemies closer", but there is a point where this becomes counterproductive...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1776611849615654999

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China won't provide outright arms support for Russia, but they can deny they know what ingredients are being used for. "We were just providing rail cars of the ingredients, we didn't know they were making explosives with it." And as for passing on intelligence, the west is doing that for Ukraine already.

I'm not surprised China is doing these things.

 

[madodel]

Not sure if it's war related or just crappy construction. A followup said that there is an investigation for a criminal case of negligence.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1776615010845769873

 

[wdolson]

Not sure if it's war related or just crappy construction. A followup said that there is an investigation for a criminal case of negligence.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1776615010845769873

I saw an article a few months ago and think I posted it here. Russia's infrastructure is disintegrating. The people who maintain it got sent to Ukraine to fight.

 

[madodel]

I saw an article a few months ago and think I posted it here. Russia's infrastructure is disintegrating. The people who maintain it got sent to Ukraine to fight.

All for the glory of Vladimir Putin.

 

[navguy12]

From today’s Washington Post:

As Russian drones, missiles and precision bombs break through Ukrainian defenses to attack energy facilities and other essential infrastructure, Zelensky feels he has no choice but to punch back across the border — in the hope of establishing deterrence. An example is Ukraine’s drone strikes against Russian refineries over the past month. I asked Zelensky if U.S. officials had warned against such attacks on energy facilities inside Russia, as has been rumored in Washington.

“The reaction of the U.S. was not positive on this,” he confirmed, but Washington couldn’t limit Ukraine’s deployment of its own home-built weapons. “We used our drones. Nobody can say to us you can’t.”

Zelensky argued that he could check Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid only by making Russia pay a similar price. “If there is no air defense to protect our energy system, and Russians attack it, my question is: Why can’t we answer them? Their society has to learn to live without petrol, without diesel, without electricity. … It’s fair.”

https://wapo.st/3TMPxsH

 

[UncaNed]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1776611849615654999

View attachment 1036271

I'd love to know what they're really doing with Russia; it's surely to China's advantage, hopefully sticking Russia with mediocre dud electronics and chemicals... designed to keep Russia in whatever positions are most favorable to China, perhaps even sending electronics meticulously bugged by the US, if China doesn't really want Russia to win anyway, perhaps designed to prolong Russia's compromizing situation while both China and the US have it's way with Russia (bargain priced raw materials, etc).

I bet the US negotiated some favorable aspects of China/Russia trade in return for something China likes, considering that China isn't crazy about Russia either. I mean, the relationship probably isn't all pro-Russia, as much as we dislike China helping them.

 

[AudubonB]

Am I the only one thinking that Russia would, if it truly had even the slightest understanding of what the long term means, realize that it is neither NATO nor Ukraine generally, nor the USA specifically, that is Russia's utterly natural enemy; rather, it is China. The two greatest expansionists in world history - far greater than even the Roman Empire - and they share one of the world's longest borders.


China is nothing if not a long-term player. They and their predecessor "Chinese" regimes and empires span from almost the earliest Nile River civilizatons to today - and in the succeeding millennia have incrementally grown from a small river-bound state to their present size. Russia has done likewise from a far later starting point, and now, they are geographically head to head.

Here, courtesty of wikisomething, is one reckoning of longest shared borders. Include or omit Mongolia as you will:

• Canada-USA : 8,893 km.
• Russia-Kazakhstan : 6,846 km.
• Argentina-Chile : 5,300 km.
• Mongolia-China : 4,677 km.
• India-Bangladesh : 4,053 km.
• Russia-China : 3,645 km.
• Russia-Mongolia : 3,543 km.

 

[madodel]

Am I the only one thinking that Russia would, if it truly had even the slightest understanding of what the long term means, realize that it is neither NATO nor Ukraine generally, nor the USA specifically, that is Russia's utterly natural enemy; rather, it is China. The two greatest expansionists in world history - far greater than even the Roman Empire - and they share one of the world's longest borders.


China is nothing if not a long-term player. The and their predecessor "Chinese" regimes and empires span from almost the earliest Nile River civilizatons to today - and in the succeeding millennia have incrementally grown from a small river-bound state to their present size. Russia has done likewise from a far later starting point, and now, they are head to head.

Here, courtesty of wikisomething, is one reckoning of longest shared borders. Include or omit Mongolia as you will:

• Canada-USA : 8,893 km.
• Russia-Kazakhstan : 6,846 km.
• Argentina-Chile : 5,300 km.
• Mongolia-China : 4,677 km.
• India-Bangladesh : 4,053 km.
• Russia-China : 3,645 km.
• Russia-Mongolia : 3,543 km.

I've always said we have to watch those Canadians with that huge unguarded border. They have secretly been invading the US for decades with their special ops hockey teams. When will the rest of their Mounties invade, eh?

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Allegedly:

Greece may transfer 32 F-16C/-D Block 30 to Ukraine while 24 Mirage 2000-5 could also end up in Ukraine. Selling to India is another option. As part of the Air Force reform plan 'Agenda 2030', Greece is planning to sell 108 fighter jets of various types.

twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1777253501795487845

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777253501795487845

 

[madodel]

From a month ago, but good to see 2 intelligent people with different political views, discuss Ukraine and the Russian invasion but not arguing.

 

[Tiger]

Interesting read/thread, unclear how accurate:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777328492566471120

 

[Tiger]

Both sides can't afford to lose the war:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777100708854354004

 

[wdolson]

Interesting read/thread, unclear how accurate:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777328492566471120

The PDA is very limited and is global. Biden only has that money to last the rest of the fiscal year and has to cover all military contingencies around the world. Spending it all now could leave a country like Taiwan or South Korea open if their enemies decide to attack.

One of the things the US uses to keep the peace is the threat that they will throw the weight of US resources into any conflict that springs up, especially in a critically sensitive part of the world. The Presidential Drawdown Authority is part of that threat. Politically it's more important than the US military itself. It's politically more viable to send arms to a conflict than to send US troops.

 

[madodel]

Battling Under a Canopy of Drones

Members of Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Battalion describe themselves as firemen. Their job is to rapidly deploy to areas along the front that are in danger of collapse. Lately, their service has been in high demand: the front is burning. A large-scale counter-offensive last year failed to achieve meaningful victories, and since then Russia has been on the attack. One of its priorities appears to be Kupyansk, a city in northeastern Ukraine, some twenty miles from the Russian border. According to the Ukrainian military, Russia has amassed forty thousand troops near the city, which it has been bombarding for months. In January, after Russian forces routed Ukrainian soldiers from an uninhabited settlement outside Kupyansk called Tabaivka, the 1st Separate Assault Battalion was directed to halt and, if possible, reverse the enemy’s advance.

 

[madodel]

This is great. Support Ukraine with weapons from one of Russia's allies.

US seizes Iranian weapons bound for Houthis, sends them to Ukraine

The US has transferred to Ukraine thousands of infantry weapons and more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition that were seized more than a year ago as they were being shipped by Iran to Houthi forces in Yemen, the US military said on Tuesday.

 

[Tiger]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777675262609518833

 

[Tiger]

Funny one:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1777675339700764939

 

[madodel]

Aid to Ukraine strengthens U.S. hand with Russia and China, U.K.’s top diplomat tells Trump

Britain’s top diplomat told former president Donald Trump that the best way for any U.S. president to inherit a successful situation in Ukraine in January is by pushing Congress to approve military aid for Kyiv as soon as possible, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Wednesday in an interview.

 

[Tiger]

Aid to Ukraine strengthens U.S. hand with Russia and China, U.K.’s top diplomat tells Trump

There goes a foregone conclusion

 

[iPlug]

It’s working, Ukraine - keep it up:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1778270563254833481