Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion



Big if true, mainly because of the speed they have got down there and taken back ground.

There have been opinions thrown around that Ukraine may have a much harder time on the offensive than they have on the defense, and will struggle to take back the likes of Kherson. We will see, there are (Ukrainian) reports of Russians retreating back over the antonovskiy bridge en masse. This one bridge is literally the only escape route for Russian forces, the only access to Kherson from the south/south east that Ukraine left intact for some reason.
 
I think his point is that we may already have to contemplate the Cold War 2.0 for as long as the likes of Xi and Putin want to feck the current world order up. The next cold war may well be all about autocracy vs. democracy instead of capitalism vs. communism.

Which side will the autocratic Middle Eastern states be on?
 


'Tactical retreat (for their lives) then. They won't get Kherson back at least, its an easy city to defend once Ukraine are actuallly prepared for it, which wasn't the case when it was overrun on day 2.

This means that although Russian forces may reinforce the east, Ukrainian forces will also be freed up to push east. Melitopol is the next target, if they can take that, the Maruipol attackers will have to immediately turn around to protect their rear.

Alternatively if they could just cut off the Crimean supply lines, that could pretty much shut down the western assault on Mariupol. I don't know to what extent their naval supply capability can replace it...
 
Which side will the autocratic Middle Eastern states be on?

At some point, screw all of those governments refusing to implement deep democratic reforms. I always believe the Arab Spring is still unachieved and has to be carried to the very end.
 
Russian tabloid newspaper reported 5 days ago nearly 9,000 Russians dead and more than 16,000 wounded (no mention of those surrendered, captured or deserted). The story was taken down within hours, and the story explained away as being a result of 'hacking'.

 
So, Abramovich is in Poland to meet the Americans (but not Biden).
That's fairly standard, even if he's a bona fide emissary of Russia. Presidents usually meet in an official capacity with other Presidents, Foreign Ministers, or Ambassadors to their country. Of course I don't mean like an absolute exclusivity, as Presidents meet business leaders, might be with a governor or mayor of a foreign state or city on a visit, etc. But in these sorts of high diplomacy matters meetings are generally of the nature I described.
 
A thread about why Russia isn’t gonna be able to recover from these armored losses anytime soon.


Those tank crewmen are basically riding on a powder keg. I don't know if that's done so because it's cheaper, but seeing that ammunition configuration explains why most other tanks out there have shared designs with the Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks as rounds get shelved at the back of the turret.
 
I don't know exactly what's being said here (perhaps our Russian speakers could translate?), but this is a brave woman:

 
Those tank crewmen are basically riding on a powder keg. I don't know if that's done so because it's cheaper, but seeing that ammunition configuration explains why most other tanks out there have shared designs with the Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks as rounds get shelved at the back of the turret.
It also makes the construction of the automatic loader much easier when you use such a circular design. And it keeps the whole tank smaller (yes, that makes it cheaper and easier to produce as well, but also lighter, faster and harder to spot and hit). A person can easily and quickly take ammunition from a shelve or whatever design, a simple automatic system would have trouble doing that.

And actually the Russians do acknowledge that this is an issue and changed the design for their new T-14 Armata. In that, all three crewmen sit together in the hull while the turret is fully automated, so if the turret blows off they should have a chance to survive that is similar to western designs.