Russia's War Against Ukraine

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, speaking of Russia doing screwy things, grain shipments, Ukraine, and Turkey (and Syria):

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-ships-going-dark-faking-paperwork-grain-crimea-2022-6

Step 1: steal procure grain from the Ukraine.
Step 2: ship the grain out of Crimea through a NATO sanctioned (-against) port.
Step 3: ship to NATO member Turkey. (Edited to add: and with Turkey's permission, through the Dards to the Med, to Syria.)
Step 4: turn off your IFF and fake your papers to deliver the goods.
Step 5: hope satellites don't exist and/or no one is interested in watching the Black Sea from cameras high above...??
Step 6: profit.


With the timing from Turkey's acceptance of the remaining Scandanavians into NATO (still to be completed), I wonder if this was supposed to be part of the backdoor favor exchange.

[JasonPratt]

This might be old news, but found this while following out a link to A-10 Warthog jockeys practicing landing/takeoffs on a country road in the Michigan woods.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/ukraine-has-himars-and-is-using-them/

Yes of course obviously I'll include the article on the A-10 jockeys: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-a-10-michigan-highway-landing/

(T&P looks pretty nice as a military mag btw!)

[Pete Dero]

Meanwhile, speaking of Russia doing screwy things, grain shipments, Ukraine, and Turkey (and Syria):

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-ships-going-dark-faking-paperwork-grain-crimea-2022-6

Step 1: steal procure grain from the Ukraine.
Step 2: ship the grain out of Crimea through a NATO sanctioned (-against) port.
Step 3: ship to NATO member Turkey. (Edited to add: and with Turkey's permission, through the Dards to the Med, to Syria.)
Step 4: turn off your IFF and fake your papers to deliver the goods.
Step 5: hope satellites don't exist and/or no one is interested in watching the Black Sea from cameras high above...??
Step 6: profit.


With the timing from Turkey's acceptance of the remaining Scandanavians into NATO (still to be completed), I wonder if this was supposed to be part of the backdoor favor exchange.

Nothing but countries showing goodwill getting the grain to a better home  >:(.

[MengJiao]

a very interesting thread to read

https://twitter.com/samagreene/status/1542468816382435328

The full article with more details (and links) can be found here: https://tldrussia.substack.com/p/why-we-fight

"But the fact that Western leaders cannot talk openly about participating in the war means that they cannot talk openly about what their aims are, about what would constitute victory, and thus why the sacrifices being asked of Western societies are worth it. As a result, there can be no open conversation, as befits democratic societies, about how this war should be prosecuted. And as a further result, when the emotional fatigue eventually sets in — and it will set in — there will be no intellectual commitment to victory."

I'm going to speculate that by June 30th, when Sam posted his article and analysis, emotional fatigue has already set in... ;)

    Ironically, the problem for the West is that they have already won.  Russia lost the moment they attacked and the West won back in 2014 when they started supporting the Ukrainians.
Even if the Russians had overrun all of Ukraine in 3 days as planned, the resulting chaos and economic disruption would not have benefitted them.  Before they attacked, they were in a
pretty good spot -- holding the Crimea and selling lots of oil and gas to Europe.
    As many commentators noted as soon as the war started, the problem was not winning the war, but getting Russia adjusted to its new status as a colony of China and a wayward client of Turkey and India.  The sad (saddish ironically, i guess) fact is that the longer Russia conducts this war, the worse the outcome is for Russia.

[W8taminute]

Good article on the A-10 Jason.

I've heard from other news sources of the military practicing landing birds on civilian roads. 

[Sir Slash]

The Russkies have lost the bid to conquer Ukraine but they're hardly in bad shape right now. The Russian economy is in the best shape in years, the Ruble's stronger than the Dollar right now and they're selling oil to everybody who'll buy it, making more than enough to continue to finance their war of attrition. Meanwhile it's the West who's scrambling to come-up with new ways to hurt them while our economies are shrinking. A serious Recession would break the will of the West to continue to support another costly foreign war for years to come without victory in sight. Sad but true.

[al_infierno]

The Russkies have lost the bid to conquer Ukraine but they're hardly in bad shape right now. The Russian economy is in the best shape in years, the Ruble's stronger than the Dollar right now and they're selling oil to everybody who'll buy it, making more than enough to continue to finance their war of attrition. Meanwhile it's the West who's scrambling to come-up with new ways to hurt them while our economies are shrinking. A serious Recession would break the will of the West to continue to support another costly foreign war for years to come without victory in sight. Sad but true.

Citation for this statement?  From what I understand their economy is in shambles.

[MengJiao]

The Russkies have lost the bid to conquer Ukraine but they're hardly in bad shape right now. The Russian economy is in the best shape in years, the Ruble's stronger than the Dollar right now and they're selling oil to everybody who'll buy it, making more than enough to continue to finance their war of attrition. Meanwhile it's the West who's scrambling to come-up with new ways to hurt them while our economies are shrinking. A serious Recession would break the will of the West to continue to support another costly foreign war for years to come without victory in sight. Sad but true.

   Our economies are not likely to shrink much...maybe a mild recession.  The Russians are selling oil at a discount to India and China so they aren't doing well there.  Plus Russia has lost an immense amount
of prestige and credibility and can't even stop Finland from joining NATO -- so they've lost whatever deterent buffer they had there.   They also are probably going to lose most of their arms sales market and their current regime is likely to collapse due to all that alone even if their economy keeps chugging.  And remember how small the Russian GDP was even before the war: about 1.4 Trillion.  China's is 14 trillion and the US is 21 Trillion.  So even without the rest of the West Russia vs. the US economy is really small.  In the end, the more attrition there is, the worse it is for Russia.  They are wrecking their army, navy and airforce to keep up a bluff that was already called.

[JasonPratt]

Also, though I don't have sources to back the idea that Russia's economy is doing better than it has for years, that isn't mutually exclusive to the idea that their economy is in shambles.

I can give a relevant example. A few days or weeks before Hitler invaded Russia, the Soviet department of agriculture reported to the Politburo, that Soviet meat production from cattle had reached the highest level since 1917.

So on one hand, the Soviet cattle economy was doing better than it had for 24 years. On the other hand, they had finally at long last leveled up their meat production to be equal to THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AT THE END OF THE PRIOR WORLD WAR WHICH COLLAPSED RUSSIA SO HARD THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY A CRIME GANG USING FALSE NAMES COULD TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT OF A GREAT POWER!

Both ways of looking at it would be totally true and useful -- in context.

[MengJiao]

Also, though I don't have sources to back the idea that Russia's economy is doing better than it has for years, that isn't mutually exclusive to the idea that their economy is in shambles.

   I don't see how they can be doing better if they are in default and production is dropping.  Plus they are running out of weapons such as missiles.

   Newsweek reported yesterday that:
1) Russia was defaulting on its debts (not good for credit)

and 2) production is dropping in manufacturing:

Above all, car production has suffered, and it's now down by 96.7 percent compared to 2021. Production of trucks plunged by 39.3 percent, that of diesel and gasoline engines by 57 percent, that of diesel locomotives by 63.2 percent and that of freight wagons by 51.8 percent.

[GDS_Starfury]

the rubles value vs the dollar is also very artificial as it cant be traded in foreign markets.

[Con]

Economies are like massive oil tankers. It takes a long time for them to crash and or take off.

Meanwhile the Russians can do things to keep It going but only by hurting themselves immensely in the long run. Think setting your house on fire when you are cold. Sure your going to be warm for the next 12 hours but after that.
Here are some aspects to consider
No company is going to invest any capital projects in Russia
They illegally seized almost all their planes which means that they have about 12 months before they start becoming unflyable. This is a huge hit to your economy if you can't fly within your own geography
All external technology has to be bought on grey markets ie chips etc. not scalable and def much more expensive
No oil and Gas investment so that kicks them out of Upto date drilling and extraction technology. The Russian homegrown programs were always inefficient and needed massive western investment and know how to run backed by an extensive list of specialized support vendors. They will be like iraq and venezuela during sanctions shortly
Massive brain drain as any young educated Russians flee for other countries
No biotech semi AI fusion or other transformational research
The list goes on and on.

[GDS_Starfury]

 <:-)

fuck russia

[Gusington]

^Hahaha it always comes back to the basics.

[Sir Slash]

There were predictions, when the invasion began, that Putin's government would collapse by summer. He's still there. I don't see any Bread Riots beginning in Petrograd. Nor any political opposition not already in jail. Nor have I heard of any recent mutinies among the military forces. I think Putin's job is safe until whatever's killing him finally catches-up with him. And until then he will continue the current low-level war against Ukraine and probably get away with it. As long as the price of oil stays high, the Russkies will have people to sell it to and money to spend on whoever they want to fight with.

Zelensky said the other day the cost of the war will be $5 Billion-a-month. Raise your hands whoever wants to pick-up that tab.