Russia's War Against Ukraine

GDS_Starfury · February 28, 2024, 06:58:03 PM

what Red Sea cable pulling? I've had a busy day.

Uberhaus · February 28, 2024, 08:56:28 PM

Well, we'll see what Putin says in his speech tomorrow as the run-up to his re-election in March. With control over almost all media and speech he doesn't really need to pause out of concern for losing the election. I doubt the Russians are ready to give up in Ukraine and their goals are still maximalist, the destruction of Ukraine. With Ukraine's current shortages of weapons and manpower, the Russians might not ever be in a better position.

Outside of Ukraine, the Russians are agitating around the world. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/top-putin-ally-pledges-russian-223157597.html

QuoteRussian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, a top ally of President Vladimir Putin, pledged on Monday to help Latin American countries counter what he described as U.S. attempts to interfere in their internal affairs.

He made his comments in Nicaragua, led by former Marxist guerrilla Daniel Ortega, after meeting Cuba's former leader Raul Castro in Havana.

Next he visits Bolivia and you guessed it, Venezuela. " which like Cuba and Nicaragua are ran by leftist governments that have had frosty relationships with Washington."

On the other southern continent, Wagner has rebranded itself. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68322230

QuoteRussia is offering governments in Africa a "regime survival package" in exchange for access to strategically important natural resources, a major new report has found.

Internal Russian government documents, seen by the BBC, also detail how it is working to change mining laws in West Africa, with the ambition of dislodging Western companies from an area of strategic importance.
This is part of the process of the Russian government taking over the businesses of the Wagner mercenary group, broken up after a failed coup in June 2023.
The multibillion dollar operations are now mostly being run as the Russian "Expeditionary Corps", managed by the man accused of being behind the attempt to murder Sergei Skripal using the Novichok nerve agent on the streets of the UK - a charge Russia has denied.

Russia is protecting these coup leaders in exchange for mineral rights and is getting the governments to change the laws to restrict access by Western mineral companies to strategic resources. It must be nice to discredit the Western powers as colonial exploiters while doing the exact same thing, but dressed up as revolutionary partners.

QuoteAccording to Dr Watling [of RUSI], Wagner was operating in a well-established tradition: "There is a standard Russian modus operandi, which is that you cover the operational costs with parallel business activity. In Africa, that is primarily through mining concessions."
In every country in which it operates, Wagner was reported to have secured valuable natural resources using these to not only cover costs, but also extract significant revenue. Russia has extracted $2.5bn (£2bn) worth of gold from Africa in the past two years, which is likely to have helped fund its war in Ukraine, according to the Blood Gold Report.

Russia isn't done, not by a long shot. They will use disinformation to make the West hesitate, waver and question its ability to confront this War on Democracy, while they play a long strategic game where they build up alliances world wide that stir up trouble while restricting the Wests access to vital resources.

GDS_Starfury · February 28, 2024, 08:59:51 PM

we'll see what happens when the Kerch bridge is hit again.

Uberhaus · February 28, 2024, 09:09:29 PM

Quote from: GDS_Starfury on February 28, 2024, 08:59:51 PMwe'll see what happens when the Kerch bridge is hit again.

I'll welcome that when it happens, but how many Storm Shadow missiles can Ukraine have left while Germany hesitates to send Taurus? They'll need to overwhelm the air defences.

GDS_Starfury · February 28, 2024, 10:14:50 PM

I don't think they'll use them en mass until they try another offensive.

Uberhaus · February 28, 2024, 10:35:02 PM

Oh, how could I possibly have forgotten these negative waves. https://www.understandingwar.org/

QuoteFeb 28, 2024 - ISW Press

Pro-Russian Moldovan breakaway region Transnistria held the Seventh Congress of Transnistrian Deputies on February 28 and adopted a series of decisions that likely aim to provide the Kremlin with justifications for a wide range of possible escalatory actions against Moldova — actions the Kremlin can pursue both immediately and over the long-term. The Congress of Transnistrian Deputies adopted seven decisions, including a request to the Russian State Duma and Federation Council for Russian "defense" of Transnistria in response to alleged increasing pressures from Moldova. Transnistrian officials specifically used "zashchita" (защита), a word that means both "defense" and "protection" in their request, likely to set conditions for the Kremlin to interpret "defense" in a military sense if it so chooses.

Good luck to them getting to Transnistria, though. If they had made it past Odessa and say 50km to the Transnistrian border in the first weeks of the war, they might have linked up with and resupplied the Russian forces there. They aren't much threat as they stand, from March 2022 https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/03/15/expired-arms-tepid-fighters-russian-ally-transnistria-may-have-little-to-offer-for-putins-war/

QuoteBut the age of the armaments would render most of them unusable in a conflict today, he said.

"We estimate 11,000 tonnes have expired and 9,000 tonnes are usable," he said, adding no recent access had been granted, making an accurate assessment difficult.

"Right before the war we had a dialogue with the Russian Federation about destroying the expired weapons. ... They said they were willing to evacuate or destroy most of the weapons. But we have not discussed the matter in the new context," he said.

The troops stationed there may not be much use either. Although local forces fought a brief war of independence with Moldova in 1992 in which 1,000 died, they reportedly do not have much will to fight today.

Of the 1,300 soldiers now stationed in Transnistria, 400 take part in a local peacekeeping mission. Of the total, only 50-100 are Russian soldiers dispatched from Russia, said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank.

Just more causing trouble worldwide.