Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Real Name said:
Russia is going for attrition and destroying all of Ukraine capabilities for deploying troops and fighting
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While this may be the current Russian strategy, this favors the defender. Successful offensives against prepared positions requires 3:1 to 5:1 numerical superiority, the Ukrainians have the advantage of shorter frontage and interior lines of supply and reinforcement, and are continually fielding better military tech.
 
Carolina Red said:
While this may be the current Russian strategy, this favors the defender. Successful offensives against prepared positions requires 3:1 to 5:1 numerical superiority, the Ukrainians have the advantage of shorter frontage and interior lines of supply and reinforcement, and are continually fielding better military tech.
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That is true.
 
harms said:
A disclaimer on why I’m so aggressive to Glaston reposting questionable stories from iffy sources is that the Russian propaganda works best by exploiting same things.

The main idea of Russian propaganda isn’t a clear & positive message (positive as in pro-active, not as good) — it’s an incoherent mess of different ideas like fear of Nazism, imperialism, resentment etc. But it’s the most effective at throwing shade on alternative versions of events, creating this picture that everyone lies (including Russia), no one can be trusted and, ergo, you shouldn’t do anything about it.

Yes, they’ll even try to paint things like Bucha as fakes, but when you give them a legitimate reason to state that the rest of the world also posts fakes & speculations, it only works for them, giving Russian propaganda more ammunition.
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I agree with this, Russian propaganda mainly tries to throw shit at the wall and create a muddled picture, not create a singular coherent counter-narrative.
 
Real Name said:
This is gonna be a long war it seems. Russia is not in a hurry, they made a tactical change and are now advancing towards occupying whole of Donbas. Ukrainian forces it seems changed approach too in the sense of making counter offensives in Kherson region in the expense of Severnodonetsk area but I'm wondering how will the whole thing work out in the future. Russia is going for attrition and destroying all of Ukraine capabilities for deploying troops and fighting, plus economic ones and the country as a whole. When they end up occupying whole of Donbas they're probably turn their attention to Odessa and try to make an encirclement of central region and Kiev and I dont think they gave up on Kharkiv too. They have numbers on their side and factories working without interruption. Sanctions will work in the long run maybe but not for now.
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That’s why is imperative to supply Ukraine with all the modern heavy and long range weapons in good quantities. Russia is scraping the barrel already and won’t be able to replace it any time soon. The are no hard defense lines, so those territories will fall back to Ukraine very quickly once those front lines will start to collapse as it was in Kiev or Kharkiv. That’s the only way out of this for Ukraine.
 
Rajma said:
That’s why is imperative to supply Ukraine with all the modern heavy and long range weapons in good quantities. Russia is scraping the barrel already and won’t be able to replace it any time soon. The are no hard defense lines, so those territories will fall back to Ukraine very quickly once those front lines will start to collapse as it was in Kiev or Kharkiv. That’s the only way out of this for Ukraine.
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Yes. They deployed ancient tanks out there recently.
Also I didnt take into account Russia not being able to hold already occupied territories without problems and Ukrainians are already waging partisan warfare and behind the lines operations.
 
Intercepted audio shows 2 Russian officers cursing out Putin and other commanders in charge of the Ukraine invasion

 
Real Name said:
This is gonna be a long war it seems. Russia is not in a hurry, they made a tactical change and are now advancing towards occupying whole of Donbas. Ukrainian forces it seems changed approach too in the sense of making counter offensives in Kherson region in the expense of Severnodonetsk area but I'm wondering how will the whole thing work out in the future. Russia is going for attrition and destroying all of Ukraine capabilities for deploying troops and fighting, plus economic ones and the country as a whole. When they end up occupying whole of Donbas they're probably turn their attention to Odessa and try to make an encirclement of central region and Kiev and I dont think they gave up on Kharkiv too. They have numbers on their side and factories working without interruption. Sanctions will work in the long run maybe but not for now.
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Its took them three months to figure shit out but it seems like they've got their act together somewhat. It helps that they are only focusing on one front, perhaps that's all they have the operational capacity for. Even if 2/3 of their invasion force has been put out of action, the remaining is more than enough to push on that front.

They are still reportedly taking heavier losses than Ukraine however (difficult to know this for sure ofc) and it is costing them elsewhere. They are all-in on the eastern front.

After their collapse in Northern Ukraine I think most observers were hoping Ukraine would carry on their success elsewehre, its disheartening that hasn't happened but I think its also led to these Russian gains being overblown a bit by commentators and the media.

I don't see any scenario where they'll ever get anywhere near Odessa, personally. They are going to have to weaken their eastern forces now just to hang on to Kherson.
 
Real Name said:
This is gonna be a long war it seems. Russia is not in a hurry, they made a tactical change and are now advancing towards occupying whole of Donbas. Ukrainian forces it seems changed approach too in the sense of making counter offensives in Kherson region in the expense of Severnodonetsk area but I'm wondering how will the whole thing work out in the future. Russia is going for attrition and destroying all of Ukraine capabilities for deploying troops and fighting, plus economic ones and the country as a whole. When they end up occupying whole of Donbas they're probably turn their attention to Odessa and try to make an encirclement of central region and Kiev and I dont think they gave up on Kharkiv too. They have numbers on their side and factories working without interruption. Sanctions will work in the long run maybe but not for now.
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Russia made a push towards Odessa after the retreat from Kiev, and some US official commented that it's failure was huge because Russia wouldn't be able to make another push like that due to dwindling reserves and equipment. No idea if that's really true, of course. Here's an article about attacking Odessa being too difficult but it's not very informative.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/04/a-russian-attack-on-odessa-could-be-naval-suicide/
 
NotThatSoph said:
At no point has DT12 defended any war crimes, and what they're saying is far less crazy than what several people are spouting and spamming here. Paxi has had a bit of a mare, and is clearly denying the massacres/torbure/executions, but if you read the Israel-Palestine thread you'll see that defending crimes that would be war crimes if it was an official war is not blanket banned on Redcafe.
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I agree. People don't like reading what @DT12 writes, but he's not defending anything, just providing a different perspective on current and future developments based on different information. At no point did @DT12 say that the war is justified, that Putin is right, or that there are no war crimes. In fact, he has clearly stated the opposite (might have been in the Newbies thread). Given how the thread has turned into a echo chamber for all wishful thinking about Ukrainian success (a good part of it unreliable, and another good part of it too one-sided to give a fulsome view of developments), I think it's good to have that counter-perspective.

I mean, I hope @DT12 is wrong about most things he says and that most tweets in here are true, but what I want doesn't determine reality, and I'd rather have a somewhat better idea of what's really going on.

@Paxi is a different case. The Isreal/Palestine comparison is a good one, and I am not sure how I'd deal with that if I were making the decision. There is a clear (unpleasant) moral component to those posts though (like justifying racists), so the thread time-outs seem like a good solution to me.
 
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Beans said:
Russia made a push towards Odessa after the retreat from Kiev, and some US official commented that it's failure was huge because Russia wouldn't be able to make another push like that due to dwindling reserves and equipment. No idea if that's really true, of course. Here's an article about attacking Odessa being too difficult but it's not very informative.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/04/a-russian-attack-on-odessa-could-be-naval-suicide/
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Thanks mate, will give it a read.
 
Simbo said:
Its took them three months to figure shit out but it seems like they've got their act together somewhat. It helps that they are only focusing on one front, perhaps that's all they have the operational capacity for. Even if 2/3 of their invasion force has been put out of action, the remaining is more than enough to push on that front.

They are still reportedly taking heavier losses than Ukraine however (difficult to know this for sure ofc) and it is costing them elsewhere. They are all-in on the eastern front.

After their collapse in Northern Ukraine I think most observers were hoping Ukraine would carry on their success elsewehre, its disheartening that hasn't happened but I think its also led to these Russian gains being overblown a bit by commentators and the media.

I don't see any scenario where they'll ever get anywhere near Odessa, personally. They are going to have to weaken their eastern forces now just to hang on to Kherson.
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Yeah, my take was grim and overly pessimistic one. Even if they're making tactical advances and successes its still at a great cost and that's a big plus for the Ukrainians.
 
TwoSheds said:
Well it's my colleagues in China, I'm sure Google has better sources though. On reflection it may be not so much that they teach it didn't happen, more that they don't teach it at all.
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Yes, I think this is probably more accurate. In Asia, most of the textbooks on WWII history is focused on the Pacific theatre, rather than the European font, so it is not surprising that very little about the holocaust is taught.

Off topic but I visited China's official WWII memorial next to the Marco Polo Bridge. They have a timeline of the important milestones in the war against Japan, and they conveniently left out the two atomic bombs. The version of history they teach is quite warped.
 
Cheimoon said:
I agree. People don't like reading what @DT12 writes, but he's not defending anything, just providing a different perspective on current and future developments based on different information. At no point did @DT12 say that the war is justified, that Putin is right, or that there are no war crimes. In fact, he has clearly stated the opposite (might have been in the Newbies thread). Given how the thread has turned into a echo chamber for all wishful thinking about Ukrainian success (a good part of it unreliable, and another good part of it too one-sided to give a fulsome view of developments), I think it's good to have that counter-perspective.

I mean, I hope @DT12 is wrong about most things he says and that most tweets in here are true, but what I want doesn't determine reality, and I'd rather have a somewhat better idea of what's really going on.

@Paxi is a different case. The Isreal/Palestine comparison is a good one, and I am not sure how I'd deal with that if I were making the decision. There is a clear (unpleasant) more component to those posts though (like justifying racists), so the thread time-outs seem like a good solution to me.
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I disagree with much of what @DT12 says, and the way it is presented, but I still want to hear their perspective.

And if they were really getting hateful PMs, that’s bang out of order.
 
Organic Potatoes said:
I disagree with much of what @DT12 says, and the way it is presented, but I still want to hear their perspective.

And if they were really getting hateful PMs, that’s bang out of order.
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Yeah, I was really disappointed to read about those PMs. Apart from that it's disgraceful, I think there's also a lot of 'confusing the messenger with the message' going on there.
 

Ukrainians apparently have lured Russians in some sort of the trap in Severodonetsk which resulted in heavy Russian losses unprepared for urban fighting. You have to admire the tactical nous and bravery of Ukrainian armed forces, real heroes these guys.

 
From the BBC:

"Earlier we brought you comments from the Ukrainian governor of the Luhansk region, saying Ukrainian forces had driven Russian troops back in Severodonetsk, recapturing 20% of lost territory.

Now we have some more from Serhiy Haidai - who says the Russian military has lost a lot of military hardware and personnel in the city.

"I have personally heard many times that the Russian army has captured Severodonetsk completely," he says, via Interfax-Ukraine. "I want to tell you no, not completely."

He says Russia is "trying to redeploy certain forces" to capture the eastern city - but says [self-proclaimed] Donetsk People's Republic fighters are refusing to fight for the [self-proclaimed] Luhansk People's Republic.

Haidai adds the Ukrainian army does not have long-range weapons for a full-fledged counter-offensive, but says as soon as they receive enough of weapons from Western partners, the "enemy artillery will be moved away from Ukrainian positions".

The BBC has not been able to independently verify his claims. You can read our earlier story about some Russian troops refusing to return to the front line here."
 
Beans said:
Russia made a push towards Odessa after the retreat from Kiev, and some US official commented that it's failure was huge because Russia wouldn't be able to make another push like that due to dwindling reserves and equipment. No idea if that's really true, of course. Here's an article about attacking Odessa being too difficult but it's not very informative.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/04/04/a-russian-attack-on-odessa-could-be-naval-suicide/
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Unless something dramatic happens, Putin's chances of taking Odesa are slim to none at this point. His best bet at attempting to frame this mess as a success would be to claim Mariupol and a few more towns in Donbas then abruptly call for negotiations.
 
Raoul said:
Unless something dramatic happens, Putin's chances of taking Odesa are slim to none at this point. His best bet at attempting to frame this mess as a success would be to claim Mariupol and a few more towns in Donbas then abruptly call for negotiations.
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I’ve read the same, couldn’t dig up any links though.
 
Cheimoon said:
I agree. People don't like reading what @DT12 writes, but he's not defending anything, just providing a different perspective on current and future developments based on different information. At no point did @DT12 say that the war is justified, that Putin is right, or that there are no war crimes. In fact, he has clearly stated the opposite (might have been in the Newbies thread). Given how the thread has turned into a echo chamber for all wishful thinking about Ukrainian success (a good part of it unreliable, and another good part of it too one-sided to give a fulsome view of developments), I think it's good to have that counter-perspective.
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Thank you for writing this. Because yes, the lengthy post I wrote in the Newbies section very clearly stated that I do NOT support Putin (I wrote about the sense of bewilderment that existed here in St Petersburg in the days after February 24th, and how almost everyone here has either a friend, relative or colleague over in Ukraine in danger of getting shelled by Russian bombs now), I wrote that Putin's stupid, rambling, hour-long faux-intellectual lecture on Ukraine's legitimacy as a sovereign state falls apart if you go further back than his convenient starting point of 1922, I wrote about how his promise to de-Nazify Ukraine of its Jewish-installed (Kolomoiskiy) Jewish president was dumber than sh*t, and - it may not have been here but it was certainly somewhere online, I'll write it now anyway - ANY moral authority Putin may have ever felt he had over 'the West' and its war-mongering was napalmed when his bombs killed Ukrainian children in - among many other places - the theatre at Mariupol.

Let me state clearly: Putin is in the wrong here. And I don't write that because of any childish moral bullying in this thread about "you're defending war crimes!", but because my entire reason for posting on this forum having only lurked on the forum for 8 years was to offer a perspective that simply isn't getting posted here, but it needs to be. All I have done is offer my opinion on why Putin is going to win this war. And for that, I've been publicly called a "c*nt" by that guy who announced he's putting me on ignore (what is it with proponents of 'freedom and tolerance' and instantly shutting themselves off from alternate viewpoints while calling people "c*nts"? Is this what Western liberal democracy looks like these days? Is this what you're calling upon Russia to become?).

Europe does actually need to start at least considering that Putin is going to win this. And that in the years to come they are going to have extraordinary economic problems because of the decisions they are making now out of emotion and not calm analysis. I'll say what I said earlier: for all the US and the UK are congratulating the EU for irreversibly cutting themselves off from Russian energy (because it suits the US and UK economically that Europe is doing this; Boris Johnson in particular can't believe his luck in how utterly stupid his old enemy the EU is being right now), the US is still quietly buying all it needs from Russia, including Uranium.

Europe needs to ask itself this question: what would America do now if they were in our position? And the answer would be: not this. This is a country that a month after Saudi Arabia chopped up Khashoggi was selling half a billion dollars of weapons to the regime that did it so they could bomb Yemeni civilians. It's a country that invaded Grenada over a fruit company and Panama over a canal. And I don't write that in any condemnatory way but just as a fact. America is as successful and as powerful as it is because everything it does is in its economic interests. They never make cataclysmic decisions based on emotion or morality. Yet Germany is currently doing that very thing. As is France. And as is Italy. Last week the Prime Minister of Latvia was asked about potential economic problems for his country if the 6th round of Russian sanctions went though. You know what he said? "It's only money". An astonishing reply (but more understandable when you recognise that Eastern Europe's hopeful economic strategy is: "the United States will continue to bankroll us until the end of time"). Can you imagine an American politican saying that? "Sure our people are ready to suffer on behalf of another country, it's only money!" His career would be over the next day. This is a country whose elections are essentially decided on gas prices, not morality.

So my points here have been twofold. Firstly, Putin is going to win this war and it is long past time Europe starts to at least entertain this idea and figure out what will come next. And secondly, the prosperity that Western Europe - in particular Germany - has seen over the last 30 years has been due to their supposedly "unreliable" (and oh by the way unremittingly constant) flow of cheap Russian energy (CNN today had an article about how Europe is going to see a shift from the West to the East in terms of power dynamics within the EU). Without this, Germany would not have become the industrial powerhouse it is today. A decade from now Germany and France will be shells of what they were even 5 years ago in terms of the power and influence they have over European politics and business (don't forget, the politically friendless UK is hovering like a vulture ready to swoop in and feed off the EU's weakness). It is a misconception that non-Europeans have that the EU is a united bloc that helps each other out. It isn't, they are all suspicious rivals of one another (you'll notice how silent Poland and Bulgaria have fallen over the last week now that all these Ukrainian refugees are starting to complain about conditions). Putin knows this and is going to create havoc on the European continent in the years to come. And trust me, America is laughing its ass off right now at what Europe is doing, I mean their insane self-sabotage and willingness to float mouth-first onto a massive US energy hook. America is going to profit enormously from this war in the long term which is why they are going to do everything they can to prolong it, against the stated wishes of France and Germany, who will suffer most from it.

Finally: in an earlier post on here I said Donbas would fall to Russia by the end of June. I was mocked for writing it. Today the UK Ministry of Defence projected that Russia will take all of Luhansk within the next 2 weeks and after that Donesk will soon fall. You see, unlike Glaston's tweets, my posts on here are actually based on sober analysis of what's actually going on. For this I'm prepared to be unpopular but I'm not sure I warrant the "war-crime endorsing c*nt" epithet.
 
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DT12 said:
Europe does actually need to start at least considering that Putin is going to win this. And that in the years to come they are going to have extraordinary economic problems because of the decisions they are making now out of emotion and not calm analysis.
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Perhaps its you who should instead consider the reality that Putin cannot win this. The US and Europe aren't going to remove sanctions as long as he's in power and the Europeans have already begun to diversify away from Russian energy. The Russian economy cannot indefinitely survive with deep international sanctions inflicting massive losses in every sector, while the Ukrainians can easily recover from this through the same international investment currently being blocked in Russia, not to mention endless arms from the west. There's no way out for Putin other than death by illness or being overthrown from within.
 
Raoul said:
the Ukrainians can easily recover from this through the same international investment currently being blocked in Russia
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You have absolutely no idea how any of this works (would you like me to pull up some of your similarly confident pronouncements in this thread from back in March?). But anyway I look forward to revisiting this question around September time. I'll be sure to quote in full what you've just written.
 
Ukraine war: Hungry Africans are victims of the conflict, Macky Sall tells Vladimir Putin

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-61685383

African countries are innocent victims of the war in Ukraine and Russia should help ease their suffering, the head of the African Union has told Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Russia.

After talks in Sochi, Macky Sall said the Russian leader had promised to ease the export of cereals and fertiliser, but gave no details.

Mr Putin denied Moscow was preventing Ukrainian ports from exporting grain.

Over 40% of wheat consumed in Africa usually comes from Russia and Ukraine.

But Ukraine's ports in the Black Sea have been largely blocked for exports since the conflict began. Kyiv and its allies blame Moscow for blockading the ports, which Ukraine has mined to prevent a Russian amphibious assault.

"Failure to open those ports will result in famine," the UN's crisis coordinator Amin Awad said in Geneva.

He said a grain shortage could affect 1.4 billion people and trigger mass migration.

The war has exacerbated already existing shortages in Africa caused by bad harvests and insecurity.
 
DT12 said:
You have absolutely no idea how any of this works (would you like me to pull up some of your similarly confident pronouncements in this thread from back in March?). But anyway I look forward to revisiting this question around September time. I'll be sure to quote in full what you've just written.
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For someone who professes to want Putin to lose that is an odd thing to look forward to.
 
DT12 said:
You have absolutely no idea how any of this works (would you like me to pull up some of your similarly confident pronouncements in this thread from back in March?). But anyway I look forward to revisiting this question around September time. I'll be sure to quote in full what you've just written.
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I noted from the beginning that Putin has made a massive mistake, which it appears he has. NATO has expanded and he has been severely weakened, as have Russia’s so called interests under his totalitarian dictatorship. Time to pull off the mask and concede this has clearly not gone to plan and Russia is far weaker today than it was 100 days ago.
 
WI_Red said:
For someone who professes to want Putin to lose that is an odd thing to look forward to.
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This thread will improve immeasurably if fatuous stuff like this stops being written, i.e "Ooooh you're posting heterodox, it means YOU WANT PUTIN TO WIN!"

What I am saying is that Raoul is living on a separate planet (and has been since March if his posts in this thread can be reliably judged) if he thinks the West is going to keep on writing blank cheques for Ukraine, or that anyone in the West actually cares about that country beyond its ability to be used as a sacrificial pawn to weaken Putin's army.
 
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