Russia's War Against Ukraine

[JasonPratt]

Anyway, NATO exercises kicking off in the Baltics -- and then next week, in the Black Sea!

(Among other news.) The US and Romania will be doing joint exercises with Ukraine and in the Danube Delta. The same Danube delta area that Russia hit again with a drone recently.

[FarAway Sooner]

Seems like the kinda fight the Leopard would be likely to win, but it's still good to see!

[JasonPratt]

A few Ukrainian troops have made it into the northwestern side of Novamayors'ke, which is increasingly bad news for Russian supply going into anywhere southwest of Donetsk City.

...where Ukrainian soldiers kinnnnnnda sorta flew a nice large Ukrainian flag! Rather literally!

[GDS_Starfury]

when you have to sell everything you have to keep your shit economy and war effort going....

[GDS_Starfury]

more on this:

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/08/22/7416591/

[JudgeDredd]

Wasn't a "fuel shortage" the basis for the book Red Storm Rising? Although as I understand it, Russia is nowhere near the required capability to attack the west as in the book.

As I said in a previous post - I'm shameful of Europe not just saying "fuck it" and getting in there.

I'm worried about America's future election and the possibility they will pull out of supporting Ukraine because ultimately, for very embarassing reasons, it would likely mean Europe would pull it's support.

I hope - I so hope - that Europe will not pull their support and actually try and ramp up that support, as best they can, should America pull out - but honestly, I fear after America gets tired of supporting Ukraine, the Wests support for Ukraine will follow and that will be the end for Ukraine...they'll be left alone and isolated.

How that will leave Russia is....unknown. Certainly weaker - but they WILL know that the threat of a nuclear strike - however veiled and false - will result in the rollover of the west in whatever conflict Russia decides to get involved in and NATO does not.

What a sad state of affairs that you can be so strong, and yet so weak.

[Crossroads]

^ Alas, Lawrence Freeman in his latest blog post discusses the arguments for and against support for Ukraine.

American Grand Strategy, Realism, and the Russo-Ukraine War - No, it's not another Vietnam

A recommended read, once again, I do like his calm and objective approach to various topics around the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

He concludes:

Choices in foreign policy are never simple and are always sub-optimal. The choice faced now is whether to continue to support Ukraine fighting a messy, tragic war, which it may take time to win, or to let it carry on alone, with the prospect of an even more tragic conclusion from which the Western Alliance, let alone Ukraine, might never recover.

As Western countries are not actually doing the fighting and have the resources to sustain Ukraine in its struggle, in the end this is not that difficult a choice to make.

Prior to this, however, lots of arguments worth a look imho.

[JasonPratt]

Yes, in RSR Islamic terrorists struck one of the USSR's only three key oil refineries, destroying it sufficiently to cause an oil panic. They would need to conquer serious portions of the Middle East to recover capacity in time to stave off social anarchy and political collapse; but to do that they needed to remove NATO as a threat on their flank, so etc.

Ironically, modern Russia is so bad off that they can have crappy oil production and still survive! -- but it's still pretty bad, and only in the last year or two before their invasion had they managed to get the Siberian lines running again after the technical collapse in the wake of the fall of the USSR.

They need Ukraine for many demographic reasons, simply to survive (it really is an existential crisis for their government); but arguably they need to loot or bully Romania and its more developed and climate-stable oil production, and that ain't happening until they can get force deployed to lots of the Ukrainian border, a la Stalin (who didn't really need Romanian oil but knew that Hitler needed it).

If you ask why modern Russia doesn't just bootstrap up the oil production in the Caucases that Hitler and Stalin ended up fighting over, my answer boils down to pointing at modern Russia's governmental competency and making Donald Sutherland's face-meme from Invasion of the Body-snatchers.

[Uberhaus]

Hey Judge Dredd:



Also Poland, the Baltic and Scandinavian states as well will continue to support Ukraine as a bulwark against Russia.

[GDS_Starfury]

If you ask why modern Russia doesn't just bootstrap up the oil production in the Caucases that Hitler and Stalin ended up fighting over, my answer boils down to pointing at modern Russia's governmental competency and making Donald Sutherland's face-meme from Invasion of the Body-snatchers.

um, theres also the problem that there are two other countries that now exist there.
and neither is particularly fond of russia.

[GDS_Starfury]

[GDS_Starfury]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1701324009151799631

[GDS_Starfury]

and this weeks luckiest Ukrainian award goes to:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1701001962836430980

https://twitter.com/i/status/1701001964484714892

[JasonPratt]

If you ask why modern Russia doesn't just bootstrap up the oil production in the Caucases that Hitler and Stalin ended up fighting over, my answer boils down to pointing at modern Russia's governmental competency and making Donald Sutherland's face-meme from Invasion of the Body-snatchers.

um, theres also the problem that there are two other countries that now exist there.
and neither is particularly fond of russia.

I accept sucky-ass foreign policy within the overarching ambit of modern Russia's governmental incompetency, thus still boiling down to Donald Sutherland's face-meme. 

[ArizonaTank]

Putin wakes up one morning and suddenly says the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary were wrong.

More likely this is Putin pandering to Slovakia and Hungary...hoping for cracks in NATO solidarity.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hungary-czechoslovakia-invasions-were-wrong-putin-says/ar-AA1gAYtM?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=54290f26f4f647a6ad0b5a8123f96fb0&ei=18

I doubt this message goes far with those in the western leaning sections of Budapest and Bratislava. Kind of like saying: "I think it was wrong that my grandfather raped your grandmother and stole her house." Saying it was "wrong" is understatement that will be sure to induce eye-rolls for quite some time.

But Putin's message is not for those who look west. It is aimed at those who may be persuaded to lean toward Putin's orbit; Orban for example.