Russia's War Against Ukraine

[FarAway Sooner]

Lack of emojis in the post, mebbe?  The internet is just a piss-poor vehicle for irony, I think...

[Crossroads]

I'm not an obstacle for peace at all.  I think the message has been sent, the damage has been done to Russia and now is the time for peace.  I'm not interested in sacrificing Ukraine to further damage Russia.  I think both sides should face reality and compromise for peace.

I think the beginning phase and 2014 was definitely the appeasement phase of world war 2 and even shades of the Spanish civil war.  The middle part and state were in today is the the World War One run away escalation like the guns of august 1914.  I think both lessons are relevant.

Just like Ukraine,locking the Germans into a costly regional war in 1938 could definitely had made them think twice about Poland in 1939.  Something should have been done then rather than appeasement, just like something should have been done in 2014 but we got appeasement with war in 2022.

The comparisons I have seen are mostly towards the pre-WWII and early phases of it too. I have recently seen a few saying that thanks to Ukraine, we have a prolonged 1938 and a chance to prevent 1939 from taking place.

I absolutely have no qualms about an early peace either. I just wish those responsible for the process take into account that a prolonged ceasefire will likely just have Putin rearming again. To quote Darth Putin (once again!), we will have yet another Kremlin ceasefire where "you cease and we fire," as Darth puts it. And this is not without precedents.

As for this war escalating into a larger one, I worry about that too. Less about actual events on the battlefield, as we have seen so many "red lines" crossed already. My concern is more with Russia's not-so-covert operations possibly going horribly wrong.

For instance, there's a planned gas pipeline that would reach Eastern Europe via Turkey to provide access to Azerbaijani gas, with an incentive for even Hungary who's continued to be friendly towards Russia to join as well. Russia has already been caught detonating old ammunition storage facilities with Soviet gauge shells, was it in Czechia? These are NATO countries, and some of them might actually react if something like this happens again.

[Jarhead0331]

Lack of emojis in the post, mebbe?  The internet is just a piss-poor vehicle for irony, I think...

I guess...I thought it would be a pretty obvious attempt at trying to bring levity to the subject. Maybe chuckle together for a change. The last thing I wanted to do was piss anybody off. If I wanted to that, I think people know that I would be a bit more direct about it! 

[Sir Slash]

Humor is a commodity in very short supply these days, just when we need it most. Some places, not here, a simple jest or corny joke is enough to shut-down a whole thread lest someone be insulted by it or, God forbid, people have some fun. When did we begin to take ourselves SO seriously? 

[JudgeDredd]

Got to love Putin and Kim Jong Un being described as strong men. I would categorise them as angry wee man babies.

[Gusington]

We need a sarcasm font.

[FarAway Sooner]

 

The Internet is a medium that lacks in all sorts of nuance.  Emojis are heavy-handed, and there are times when sarcasm is much less funny if people have to say, "SEE, I'M BEING SARCASTIC HERE!  REALLY SARCASTIC!!"

Jarhead, I appreciate your use of an emoji above.  What it lacks in nuance, it makes up for in clarity!

Our brains and our social constructs have all been wired by hundreds of thousands of years of living in smallish communities (maybe the size of the active posters we have here), where we all get to be around each other all the time and observe body language, hear tone of voice, groom one another, and judge posture.  We've had about 15 years to figure out how to communicate to people we've never met on the internet.

Heck, I've been told that pheromones even enhance that communication, and Gus is the only one here who has mastered the discipline of Internet Pheromone Transmission!  Maybe he can hold a seminar for us all on the topic someday, but I suspect that it's one of those things like Padwan Training where it needs to start early or it can go terribly wrong.   

It's complicated by the fact that most local news outlets have embraced the "Fear sells" mission statement and have thus embarked on doing everything that they can to titillate our sense of danger.  But that's a topic that deserves its own thread.

[Jarhead0331]

...titillate...

hehehe...hehehe...you said "titillate".

[JasonPratt]

Different pheromones.

Or ? 

[ArizonaTank]

Nice WSJ explainer on how "cheap" Russian glide bombs are changing the conduct of the war.

[JasonPratt]

Oh yeah, those are the things they keep dropping on their own territory, too!   

Still, modern glide bombs can be a very good choice. I hope the Orks get to find this out soon at a more professional level. 

[JasonPratt]

Two weeks old, but still an interesting interview with "Anna" from Ukraine, on the thesis that few nations on either side want either Russia or Ukraine to lose.

[MikeGER]

July 18 (Reuters) - The German military has ordered several hundred thousand artillery shells in a deal with Rheinmetall (RHMG.DE), opens new tab as it works to replenish stocks dented by the war in Ukraine, the defence company said on Tuesday.
Rheinmetall said it had been awarded a new framework contract for the supply of 155mm artillery ammunition, representing a potential order volume of around 1.2 billion euros ($1.35 billion).

The Bundeswehr also expanded an existing framework agreement for DM121 ammunition, more than doubling the contract from 109 million euros to 246 million euros, the company said.


June 20 (Reuters) - Germany plans to order 105 Leopard 2 A8 tanks from armsmaker KNDS for 2.93 billion euros ($3.14 billion), according to a confidential budget draft seen by Reuters on Thursday.

 

[Crossroads]

M1A1 Abrams in Ukrainian use. Interesting tidbits, on DIY added protection for instance. Maintenance a challenge as one would expect I guess.   

[FarAway Sooner]

It's curious to look at the war in Ukraine and ask the question "Who benefits where?"  I think that really helps to predict how various actors will respond as the war rages on. 

There are a lot of different factions involved.  I'd argue that the only group who's benefitted without downside are the weapons manufacturers.  Here's the list of primary actors that I see, in increasing order of the price that they've paid:

• Weapons Manufacturers:  The for-profit corporations (mostly in the West) who stand to make a lot of money/status/power and gain extremely favorable contracts not just from suppliers of Ukraine but from everybody who feels a need to (re)arm for their own security.
• Russian government:  While the failed invasion has created a lot of long-term problems for the Putin regime, it's allowed them more centralized power than any Russian ruler has held since Stalin.
• Citizens of Western Democracies:  The people of NATO countries and NATO allies, who are sympathetic to Ukraine but mostly don't want nationalist aggression (mostly Russian or Chinese) to spill over onto their own borders, have had to shoulder the tax burden of subsidizing the Ukrainians and some of the citizens have had to shoulder the millions of Ukrainian refugees.  If they have any personal upside from this struggle, I'm not sure what it is--aside from being able to curb Russian expansionism with Ukrainian lives rather than their own lives.
• Russian people:  The current majority of Russian citizens seem to favor a nationalistic/authoritarian government, and they also seem to be getting what they want.  Other Russian people don't want that but are too scared to say anything.  That said, tens of thousands of young men (each one part of a family) are being killed and many more are being ruined, their economy is a shambles, their civil society is falling apart, access to foreign exports has dried up, and they will likely spend their future as a Chinese satellite.
• Ukraine:  The people, the government, everybody is fighting for their national survival and their independence.  The country is the battlefield and much of it has paid the price, even before Russia started targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.  The only upside for the people of Ukraine is that they have fought with enough skill and determination that they will likely emerge from this war with better security guarantees than they had previously, even if this means conceding some national territory.

I think that the foreign policy interests of the citizens of NATO democracies and arms makers in those countries align to a certain point.  They only start to diverge when the civilian governments start paying too much for the weapons, and when the war grinds on for longer than it needs to because THAT is what will maximize the revenues for the private actors in the military-industrial triangle.

The people who end up with the shortest end of the stick are obviously the Ukrainians and, following that, the Russian people.