Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Dans said:
They are going up massively.

My current contract charges about 27 cent per kwH.

I get offers now to extend in October when my current contract ends of up to 56 cents.

Somehow I found one for 35 and signed up to that, but I still don't know if I have missed something in the small print there!
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If the electricity grids of Europe stop fecking around though and get moving quicker on renewables and storage projects then those prices will come back down again. If you're producing your electricity with Russian coal, oil and gas then obviously the price will go up massively because it's just an extra process step in converting those fossil fuels into heat in your home that you could have cut out the middle man on and burned yourself directly.

In the meantime, if you've got the cash and the space in your home, probably worth looking into domestic solar panels and battery solutions, then you are effectively largely acting as your own grid.
 
711 said:
I don't know the technology, which bits would be unobtainable?
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Control electronics would likely be the biggest problem, as Russia doesn't really have a modern semiconductor industry.

Other more complicated machinery could also be a problem, Russian engineering is mostly shit today and everything they produce at least relies on tools bought in the West that they can't replace or increase in production capacity.
 
If the Russians actually follow through with this dipshit idea of trying to pull a massive encirclement, they're going to take staggering losses which really could lead to them collapsing and pulling out. It's astonishing that they actually believe they have the capabilities to pull it off.
 
Kentonio said:
If the Russians actually follow through with this dipshit idea of trying to pull a massive encirclement, they're going to take staggering losses which really could lead to them collapsing and pulling out. It's astonishing that they actually believe they have the capabilities to pull it off.
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Read the article I linked to a few posts earlier. I really don't think Putin places any value on the lives of his own people - they are resources to him.
 
Dans said:
They are going up massively.

My current contract charges about 27 cent per kwH.

I get offers now to extend in October when my current contract ends of up to 56 cents.

Somehow I found one for 35 and signed up to that, but I still don't know if I have missed something in the small print there!
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Same as here then, it's insane. There are lower income people who struggle to survive with gas, electricity and everything else getting more expensive. If many Germans heat their homes with gas I fully understand the reluctance to cut the gas, the point is not to punish your own lower income citizens.
 
Dans said:
Read the article I linked to a few posts earlier. I really don't think Putin places any value on the lives of his own people - they are resources to him.
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Yeah but that doesn't actually help him any. It just results in lots of dead soldiers without actually achieving your aims.
 
Kentonio said:
Yeah but that doesn't actually help him any. It just results in lots of dead soldiers without actually achieving your aims.
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That's the flaw in his plan according to that chap. Putin has fecked up, simply put.
 
711 said:
I don't know the technology, which bits would be unobtainable?
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Currently they're struggling to get stuff like ball bearings so I'm guessing producing drones is outside of their capabilities.
 
Kentonio said:
If the Russians actually follow through with this dipshit idea of trying to pull a massive encirclement, they're going to take staggering losses which really could lead to them collapsing and pulling out. It's astonishing that they actually believe they have the capabilities to pull it off.
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If their encirclement plan doesn't work, this will leave the Russians with no other option than a frontal assault on the Ukrainian fixed defensive positions in the east.

Until now, they've focused mainly on heavily shelling these positions in an attempt to soften them up. But if they they want to take these eastern regions (which they do) then at some point in the near future they will need to leave their own defensive positions and actually assault these Ukrainian positions with troops and armour.

This is what the Ukrainians are waiting for, because those advancing Russian forces will then have to move across open ground through a firestorm of Ukrainian anti-armour missiles, artillery fire, switchblades and more ... and will suffer massive casualties as a result, way beyond anything we've seen so far.

I think the Russian troops will not make it through the firestorm and will crack and run backwards. Those that survive will not be willing to to try again.
 
An easy visualization of what’s happening below. At the very top east of Kharkiv you can see the area where Ukraine was meant to counterattack that we were talking about a few days ago.
 
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Encirclements always look really enticing until you consider that the Ukrainians have substantial ready forces on the outside of that pocket that will have great fun cutting off and isolating the Russian advance and turning it into a smoking mess while those on the inside do the same. If the Russian had brought 500k-750k troops then this might be dangerous for Ukraine. With the maybe 100-150k they have its just nonsensical.
 
The BBC reports:

"UK to send tanks to Poland

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the UK is sending Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Poland to backfill for T-72 tanks that Poland will send to Ukraine.

This is in addition to the armoured fighting vehicles that the UK is sending directly to Ukraine, a move which was already announced ..."
 
Kentonio said:
Encirclements always look really enticing until you consider that the Ukrainians have substantial ready forces on the outside of that pocket that will have great fun cutting off and isolating the Russian advance and turning it into a smoking mess while those on the inside do the same. If the Russian had brought 500k-750k troops then this might be dangerous for Ukraine. With the maybe 100-150k they have its just nonsensical.
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And while it looks small on a map, that's a lot of ground to control. Going by the Kyiv offensive Russia aren't great at protecting their supply lines.
 
Maagge said:
And while it looks small on a map, that's a lot of ground to control. Going by the Kyiv offensive Russia aren't great at protecting their supply lines.
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You can already see a potential problem for Russia on the map. If they push south from Izyum and overstretch their lines, Ukraine could attack from the north west of Izyum to cut off their lines and effectively encircle the northern part of Russia's encirclement attack (until they can connect from the south).
 


Looks like there's finally an official number.

They forecast GDP to decrease by up 2%, or 5% if one factors in an otherwise projected growth of 3%.

On the other hand the CEO of Paulaner has stated that a gas embargo would severely impact their operations, so there's that to consider.
 
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PedroMendez said:
good article that discusses the role and relevance of these types of weapons: https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/loitering-munitions-in-ukraine-and-beyond/
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Yes it is a good article, thank you. A sentence jumped out as it's the way I was thinking as a complete amateur "will impact the character of warfare more substantially than the introduction of the machine gun" . The known unknowns and the unknown unknowns I suppose, we can try and predict the effects but there's bound to be huge surprises. When they first started playing around with barbed wire I doubt they envisaged quite the impact it would have.

And thank you also to everyone for explaining that Russia are incapable of manufacturing anything or sourcing anything from abroad. Most reassuring.
 
The Russians ain't going to like this. The BBC reports:

"Moskva wreckage declared item of Ukrainian underwater cultural heritage

... the wreckage of the pride of Russia’s fleet has been declared an item of Ukrainian underwater cultural heritage. Number #2064 to be precise, falling under the category of rare scientific or technical equipment.

In a post on their official Facebook page, the Ministry of Defence wrote "80 miles from Odesa, the famous cruiser and the largest sunken object of the Black Sea floor can be admired without much diving!"

According to Ukrainian Military TV, the wreckage is at a depth of around 45-50 metres, with its last known location revealed by the British."
 
Kentonio said:
If the Russians actually follow through with this dipshit idea of trying to pull a massive encirclement, they're going to take staggering losses which really could lead to them collapsing and pulling out. It's astonishing that they actually believe they have the capabilities to pull it off.
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Take it with a pinch of salt but the reports from Putin’s elite say that they don’t believe that any peaceful resolution without a huge win is a possibility as the propaganda did a bit too well in convincing everyone that Russia is fighting the Nazis in the final, almost apocalyptic war. Putin’s Administration has their own sociological surveys that apparently say that there would be a potential internal backlash if they simply take their losses and move out. And, as correctly noted by someone above, the loss of people’s lives, be it Russian or Ukrainian, are not really a concern to Putin, they never really were.
 
harms said:
Take it with a pinch of salt but the reports from Putin’s elite say that they don’t believe that any peaceful resolution without a huge win is a possibility as the propaganda did a bit too well in convincing everyone that Russia is fighting the Nazis in the final, almost apocalyptic war. Putin’s Administration has their own sociological surveys that apparently say that there would be a potential internal backlash if they simply take their losses and move out. And, as correctly noted by someone above, the loss of people’s lives, be it Russian or Ukrainian, are not really a concern to Putin, they never really were.
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I don't think the propaganda about fighting Nazis would be the big problem now. Just declare that you destroyed all military equipment (demilitarization) and killed all Nazis, maybe dig in Donezk and Luhansk Oblast which Ukraine might even begrudgingly accept and declare mission accomplished, despite under high losses.

But the propaganda problem is, that they made a huge deal of NATO support for Ukraine and started to talk about being actually at war with NATO, already fighting WW3 now etc. This part of the propaganda was great to explain Russian losses, but really makes it hard to retreat, as now it looks like they have been beaten by NATO. That's a whole different story than killing some Nazis and going home afterwards.
 
harms said:
Take it with a pinch of salt but the reports from Putin’s elite say that they don’t believe that any peaceful resolution without a huge win is a possibility as the propaganda did a bit too well in convincing everyone that Russia is fighting the Nazis in the final, almost apocalyptic war. Putin’s Administration has their own sociological surveys that apparently say that there would be a potential internal backlash if they simply take their losses and move out. And, as correctly noted by someone above, the loss of people’s lives, be it Russian or Ukrainian, are not really a concern to Putin, they never really were.
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Plus how will ordinary Russians feel when 100000 Russians have been killed or injured to no end?
 
harms said:
Take it with a pinch of salt but the reports from Putin’s elite say that they don’t believe that any peaceful resolution without a huge win is a possibility as the propaganda did a bit too well in convincing everyone that Russia is fighting the Nazis in the final, almost apocalyptic war. Putin’s Administration has their own sociological surveys that apparently say that there would be a potential internal backlash if they simply take their losses and move out. And, as correctly noted by someone above, the loss of people’s lives, be it Russian or Ukrainian, are not really a concern to Putin, they never really were.
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This is where the fear of Putin using a tac nuke comes in. Because without it the likelihood of them getting a major win is pretty unlikely. Of course using one also doesn't give them a huge win either because the response from the west will be overwhelming, but I can see him doing it regardless.
 
stefan92 said:
I don't think the propaganda about fighting Nazis would be the big problem now. Just declare that you destroyed all military equipment (demilitarization) and killed all Nazis, maybe dig in Donezk and Luhansk Oblast which Ukraine might even begrudgingly accept and declare mission accomplished, despite under high losses.
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Based on? Putin & the propaganda have already changed their assessment of Nazi’s presence in Ukraine (from a limited presence in country’s leadership to a country-wise “infection”).

While the actual support of the operation is not really easy to evaluate you certainly don’t seem to grasp the sheer scale of this public obsession.

And at this point it’s highly unlikely that Ukraine will accept any outcome that will see them losing any land at all (seeing that you’ve used “Oblast” you probably mean the borders of Donetsk’ & Luhansk oblasts’?).
 
harms said:
Based on? Putin & the propaganda have already changed their assessment of Nazi’s presence in Ukraine (from a limited presence in country’s leadership to a country-wise “infection”).

While the actual support of the operation is not really easy to evaluate you certainly don’t seem to grasp the sheer scale of this public obsession.

And at this point it’s highly unlikely that Ukraine will accept any outcome that will see them losing any land at all (seeing that you’ve used “Oblast” you probably mean the borders of Donetsk’ & Luhansk oblasts’?).
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The Nazi infection isn't real but propaganda, so it would be possible at any point to declare all Nazis died, job done, I think.

And yes I specifically talked about the oblasts because Putin could sell this as a real win - ensuring that DPR/LNR really get control over all territory they claim.
 
Wasn't there rumours that Putin had some serious illness when the war broke out? Could be rubbish but you never know.
 
sglowrider said:
He was


Looks more like he had one too many puff of MJ before the meeting -- and was holding on to the table before it 'slides away' from him. He was gripped with fear that people would noticed.
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The way he holds on to the table for the entire convo is just strange.

 
Suedesi said:
Come on Raoul, we're discussing the absurdity of sanctions on a bunch of Russian/Belarussian tennis players as a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

I thought the goal of sanctions is to make Putin's war more difficult to wage, and don't see how banning tennis players who don't even compete under the Russian flag accomplishes that.
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I figured the idea was to put pressure on the regime to normalize relations and stop breaking the Geneva convention.

Russia thinks all the former Soviet states should be under their power, you could say that Russia is at War with all of them, but they’re only attacking within one right now. Thus they’re the countries that are the leading voices in Europe against Russian aggression.
stefan92 said:
I don't think the propaganda about fighting Nazis would be the big problem now. Just declare that you destroyed all military equipment (demilitarization) and killed all Nazis, maybe dig in Donezk and Luhansk Oblast which Ukraine might even begrudgingly accept and declare mission accomplished, despite under high losses.

But the propaganda problem is, that they made a huge deal of NATO support for Ukraine and started to talk about being actually at war with NATO, already fighting WW3 now etc. This part of the propaganda was great to explain Russian losses, but really makes it hard to retreat, as now it looks like they have been beaten by NATO. That's a whole different story than killing some Nazis and going home afterwards.
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It may develop into a “line of actual control” like the border between China and India in places.

Fair to say Russia have obligated themselves to try to break through, from a propaganda perspective.

Even if Ukraine can push all Russian troops back into Russia, surely it will mean Ukraine have to militarize the border, and Russia will make incursions into Ukraine. Unless the Putin regime falls.
 
stefan92 said:
The Nazi infection isn't real but propaganda, so it would be possible at any point to declare all Nazis died, job done, I think.

And yes I specifically talked about the oblasts because Putin could sell this as a real win - ensuring that DPR/LNR really get control over all territory they claim.
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Not really, no. If Ukraine remains the same state that doesn’t suddenly warm up to Russia, rethinking their country’s entire political affiliation (which won’t happen, obviously), he won’t be able to claim that goal to be achieved.
 
harms said:
Not really, no. If Ukraine remains the same state that doesn’t suddenly warm up to Russia, rethinking their country’s entire political affiliation (which won’t happen, obviously), he won’t be able to claim that goal to be achieved.
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Maybe I overestimate the power of the Russian propaganda machine then, I am sure you know better about this.

And by the way good to read from you again, hope you aren't in big trouble?
 
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