The Ukraine Crisis

[Silenoz]

First-hand account of the battles. Fun stuff:

https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukrainian- ... 97285.html

[SeattleGriz]

This is what I've been saying about capabilities if true. If you don't know what is happening, here it is. Ukraine has been relying on US drones and other aircraft to give them early warning when a missile attack is coming. That way, Ukraine can leave their air defense off until it needs to be switched on as late as possible.

The point is by keeping air defense off, the Russians can't pinpoint and take them out. Once again, if true, it now looks as if Russia is able to "jam" US surveillance and Ukraine won't get that heads up.

[SeattleGriz]

Institute of War is a propaganda group for neocons. More grift for Bill Kristol and his Lincoln Project type buddies. Didn't mean to imply they were MSM, but the MSM is full of shit and after the last five years of you buying everything they sell, can't understand why you would keep trying to kick that football Charlie Brown.

My main source of information is retired Col Douglas Mc Gregor. Stated that a long time ago.

M

Jesus…get better sources.

Let me guess. You've got better sources.

[kalm]

Jesus…get better sources.

Let me guess. You've got better sources.

Than Sachs? Christ yes!

[SeattleGriz]

Let me guess. You've got better sources.

Than Sachs? Christ yes!

So who you got? Let's see 'em

[kalm]

Than Sachs? Christ yes!

So who you got? Let's see 'em

From a broad perspective, Anders Aslund and Anders Ostlund among others I’d have to jog my memory for.

My buddy who is married to Ukrainian woman and escaped Kharkiv one week into the war (he was the one who told me early on that at most 30% of the Eastern provinces were pro Russia at that time).

Beau of the Fifth Column and my oldest friend who was infantry and worked with M11 Bradley’s in the guard and is total war and geography nerd for both broad view and military strategy and tech.

There are also several reporters on the ground who hit my feed and were proven to be accurate in reporting all along (skelly has mentioned one of them). I haven’t seen them in awhile so I don’t know if they left Twitter or not.

Edit: also Alexander Stubb, former Finnish PM and finance and foreign affairs director.

[UNI88]

So who you got? Let's see 'em

From a broad perspective, Anders Aslund and Anders Ostlund among others I’d have to jog my memory for.

My buddy who is married to Ukrainian woman and escaped Kharkiv one week into the war (he was the one who told me early on that at most 30% of the Eastern provinces were pro Russia at that time).

Beau of the Fifth Column and my oldest friend who was infantry and worked with M11 Bradley’s in the guard and is total war and geography nerd for both broad view and military strategy and tech.

There are also several reporters on the ground who hit my feed and were proven to be accurate in reporting all along (skelly has mentioned one of them). I haven’t seen them in awhile so I don’t know if they left Twitter or not.

Edit: also Alexander Stubb, former Finnish PM and finance and foreign affairs director.

None better than SG's Col Mustard who killed Zelenskyy in the study with a candlestick.

[SeattleGriz]

Put Bill Kristols ISW into this group. He must make great money spinning the Ukrainian casualties as victories and thus continuing to drum up support for sending more Ukrainians into the meat grinder.

Outside of that, pretty good summary.

https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-u ... dium=email

Since Russia’s surprise decision to voluntarily withdraw from west bank Kherson in the first week of November, there has been little in the way of dramatic changes to the frontlines in Ukraine. In part, this reflects the predictable late autumn weather in Eastern Europe, which leaves battlefields waterlogged and clogged with mud and greatly inhibits mobility. For hundreds of years, November has been a bad month for attempting to move armies any sort of significant distance, and like clockwork we started to see videos of vehicles stuck in the mud in Ukraine.

The return of static positional warfare, however, also reflects the synergistic effect of increasing Ukrainian exhaustion along with a Russian commitment to patiently attriting and denuding Ukraine’s remaining combat capability. They have found an ideal place to achieve this in the Donbas.

It has gradually become apparent that Russia is committed to a positional attritional war, as this maximizes the asymmetry of their advantage in ranged fires. There is an ongoing degradation of Ukraine’s warmaking ability which is allowing Russia to patiently maintain the current tempo, while it organizes its newly mobilized forces for offensive action in the coming year, setting the stage for cascading and unsustainable Ukrainian losses.

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, a formerly wealthy, now down on his luck character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways”, he replies, “gradually and then suddenly.” Someday we may ask how Ukraine lost the war and receive much the same answer.

Verdun Redux
It is safe to say that western regime media has set a very low standard for reporting on the war in Ukraine, given the extent to which the mainstream narrative is disconnected from reality. Even given these low standards, the way the ongoing battle in Bakhmut is being presented to the population is truly ludicrous. The Bakhmut axis is being spun to western audiences as a perfect synthesis of all the tropes of Russian failure: in a nutshell, Russia is suffering horrible casualties as it struggles to capture a small town with negligible operational importance. British officials, in particular, have been highly vocal in recent weeks insisting that Bakhmut has little to no operational value.

The truth is the literal opposite of this story: Bakhmut is an operationally critical keystone position in the Ukrainian defense, and Russia has transformed it into a death pit which compels the Ukrainians to sacrifice exorbitant numbers of men in order to hold the position as long as possible. In fact, the insistence that Bakhmut is not operationally significant is mildly insulting to the audience, both because a quick glance at a map clearly shows it at the heart of the regional road network, and because Ukraine has thrown a huge number of units into the front there.

[kalm]

Put Bill Kristols ISW into this group. He must make great money spinning the Ukrainian casualties as victories and thus continuing to drum up support for sending more Ukrainians into the meat grinder.

Outside of that, pretty good summary.

https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-u ... dium=email

Since Russia’s surprise decision to voluntarily withdraw from west bank Kherson in the first week of November, there has been little in the way of dramatic changes to the frontlines in Ukraine. In part, this reflects the predictable late autumn weather in Eastern Europe, which leaves battlefields waterlogged and clogged with mud and greatly inhibits mobility. For hundreds of years, November has been a bad month for attempting to move armies any sort of significant distance, and like clockwork we started to see videos of vehicles stuck in the mud in Ukraine.

The return of static positional warfare, however, also reflects the synergistic effect of increasing Ukrainian exhaustion along with a Russian commitment to patiently attriting and denuding Ukraine’s remaining combat capability. They have found an ideal place to achieve this in the Donbas.

It has gradually become apparent that Russia is committed to a positional attritional war, as this maximizes the asymmetry of their advantage in ranged fires. There is an ongoing degradation of Ukraine’s warmaking ability which is allowing Russia to patiently maintain the current tempo, while it organizes its newly mobilized forces for offensive action in the coming year, setting the stage for cascading and unsustainable Ukrainian losses.

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, a formerly wealthy, now down on his luck character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways”, he replies, “gradually and then suddenly.” Someday we may ask how Ukraine lost the war and receive much the same answer.

Verdun Redux
It is safe to say that western regime media has set a very low standard for reporting on the war in Ukraine, given the extent to which the mainstream narrative is disconnected from reality. Even given these low standards, the way the ongoing battle in Bakhmut is being presented to the population is truly ludicrous. The Bakhmut axis is being spun to western audiences as a perfect synthesis of all the tropes of Russian failure: in a nutshell, Russia is suffering horrible casualties as it struggles to capture a small town with negligible operational importance. British officials, in particular, have been highly vocal in recent weeks insisting that Bakhmut has little to no operational value.

The truth is the literal opposite of this story: Bakhmut is an operationally critical keystone position in the Ukrainian defense, and Russia has transformed it into a death pit which compels the Ukrainians to sacrifice exorbitant numbers of men in order to hold the position as long as possible. In fact, the insistence that Bakhmut is not operationally significant is mildly insulting to the audience, both because a quick glance at a map clearly shows it at the heart of the regional road network, and because Ukraine has thrown a huge number of units into the front there.

Who is big serge?

[SeattleGriz]

Put Bill Kristols ISW into this group. He must make great money spinning the Ukrainian casualties as victories and thus continuing to drum up support for sending more Ukrainians into the meat grinder.

Outside of that, pretty good summary.

https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-u ... dium=email

Who is big serge?

Not sure, but you can tell he's a Russian Orthodox. He's a new one to me, but let me keep looking for his profile.

[SeattleGriz]

AWOL Navy Seal killed over in Ukraine. Not sure I'm buying the AWOL part.

[Skjellyfetti]

Who is big serge?

Not sure, but you can tell he's a Russian Orthodox. He's a new one to me, but let me keep looking for his profile.

[kalm]

Not sure, but you can tell he's a Russian Orthodox. He's a new one to me, but let me keep looking for his profile.

[SeattleGriz]

Not sure, but you can tell he's a Russian Orthodox. He's a new one to me, but let me keep looking for his profile.

So you're saying Ukraine is currently winning and Russia is going to lose?

[Skjellyfetti]

So you're saying Ukraine is currently winning and Russia is going to lose?

I'm saying Ukraine took back Kherson and Lyman and "Big Serge" doesn't have a great track record.

I also said it when it started: this war has no winner. Neither Ukraine or Russia is going to come out of this ahead.

Russia is "winning" in that they have gained territory so far... but, imo... they have lost far more beyond their territorial gains and they aren't going to be able to gain enough to compensate the blood and treasure spent.

It's also hard to imagine a scenario where Ukraine comes out of this ahead. Even if they were to recapture everything Russia has taken, they will be recovering from this for the rest of any of our lives.

[BDKJMU]

Just another reason not to be aiding Ukraine.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine ... zelenskyy/

[kalm]

Just another reason not to be aiding Ukraine.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine ... zelenskyy/

Corruption is everywhere including here. We just call it things like campaign finance and government contracting. Not a reason to not support democracy and autonomy. Good on Ukraine for taking action against it.

[houndawg]

This is what I've been saying about capabilities if true. If you don't know what is happening, here it is. Ukraine has been relying on US drones and other aircraft to give them early warning when a missile attack is coming. That way, Ukraine can leave their air defense off until it needs to be switched on as late as possible.

The point is by keeping air defense off, the Russians can't pinpoint and take them out. Once again, if true, it now looks as if Russia is able to "jam" US surveillance and Ukraine won't get that heads up.

...yeah, this is the beginning of the end.

[SeattleGriz]

Never looks good to swap leadership in the middle of a war.

Several senior Ukrainian officials, including five front-line governors, lost their jobs Tuesday in a corruption scandal plaguing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as it grapples with the nearly 11-month-old Russian invasion.

[SeattleGriz]

This is what I've been saying about capabilities if true. If you don't know what is happening, here it is. Ukraine has been relying on US drones and other aircraft to give them early warning when a missile attack is coming. That way, Ukraine can leave their air defense off until it needs to be switched on as late as possible.

The point is by keeping air defense off, the Russians can't pinpoint and take them out. Once again, if true, it now looks as if Russia is able to "jam" US surveillance and Ukraine won't get that heads up.

...yeah, this is the beginning of the end.

Ukraine is on their third army. They just keep sending men and equipment into the grinder.

[houndawg]

...yeah, this is the beginning of the end.

Ukraine is on their third army. They just keep sending men and equipment into the grinder.

Thats what you do when your country is invaded by a hostile neighbor - and guess what? Putin has no way out of this alive.

You can't be so dim as to seriously think that NATO is going to spend the kind of money we have been spending on Ukraine just to let some third world punk have control of Europe's Breadbasket. Can you?

[kalm]

Never looks good to swap leadership in the middle of a war.

Several senior Ukrainian officials, including five front-line governors, lost their jobs Tuesday in a corruption scandal plaguing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government as it grapples with the nearly 11-month-old Russian invasion.

But I thought we weren’t supposed to be supporting them because of corruption!

[houndawg]

Just another reason not to be aiding Ukraine.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine ... zelenskyy/

Better Red Than Donk!


BDCMSYMP

[houndawg]

...yeah, this is the beginning of the end.

Ukraine is on their third army. They just keep sending men and equipment into the grinder.

Russians are third world amateurs who don't believe in what they're fighting for and are only servicable against civilians. And their shitty tanks are going to be like batting practice for NATO's stuff - maybe even send them some A10s......

This is going to be like Clay vs Liston...

[SeattleGriz]

Ukraine is on their third army. They just keep sending men and equipment into the grinder.

Thats what you do when your country is invaded by a hostile neighbor - and guess what? Putin has no way out of this alive.

You can't be so dim as to seriously think that NATO is going to spend the kind of money we have been spending on Ukraine just to let some third world punk have control of Europe's Breadbasket. Can you?

I have no clue how stupid the neocons are in this regard, but it should have sane people worried. It's much more than just control of Ukraine that is at stake here.