Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

The point remains that you don't win an ideological war by showing restraint or by imposing restrictions on your ally, who knows better than anyone what has to be done to win the war.

Let Ukraine do as it pleases them and let's support them without any needless hurdles.
 
From my experience, most of the people that tells you not to follow an agenda is extremely bad at hiding their own.

RedDevilQuebecois said:
The point remains that you don't win an ideological war by showing restraint or by imposing restrictions on your ally, who knows better than anyone what has to be done to win the war.

Let Ukraine do as it pleases them and let's support them without any needless hurdles.
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Well, it didn't work out that well with the Mujahidin. I think they could be doing more, but I kind of understand where that resistance is coming from.

If it helps, IMO the story about Ukraine wanting to attack russian territory and the US holding them back works pretty well as PR. It shows Ukranians as capable and determined and americans as responsibly helping them call the shots. And it probably isn't very well received by Putin and his cronies as they could or couldn't be attacked in their territory with plausible deniability anytime.
 
RedDevilQuebecois said:
The point remains that you don't win an ideological war by showing restraint or by imposing restrictions on your ally, who knows better than anyone what has to be done to win the war.

Let Ukraine do as it pleases them and let's support them without any needless hurdles.
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That's an incredible dangerous line of thought. Thankfully Ukraine has some sense.

You win an "ideological" war by winning hearts and minds in the short term. In the medium to long term by increasing prosperity of the nation.

The other way is Putins way. Try to win an ideological war by annihilating anyone and everything with a conflicting ideology.

Ukraine aren't really fighting that kind of war anyway at the minute. They are fighting for their existance as an independent sovereign state and their right to self determination in the future. A large part of that future is likely the goal of EU and NATO membership. If that's is the goal then it won't be an unconditional right to ascension to either of those.

So there won't be any "do as you please" unless they choose to go it alone as a non-aligned state. Which isn't likely to be an option given Russia's aggression and disregard for ex-Soviet states sovereignity.
 
There is a big rumor about radio silence in the near future. Many ukranian war reporter accounts pushing this image now:

 
Ragnar123 said:
There is a big rumor about radio silence in the near future. Many ukranian war reporter accounts pushing this image now:

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There is also an increasing amount of reports about Ukrainian operations on the left bank of the Dnipro. Looks a bit like they are probing Russian defences over a long front and don't want to give too much away to them, before they actually start a large scale attack.
 
stefan92 said:
There is also an increasing amount of reports about Ukrainian operations on the left bank of the Dnipro. Looks a bit like they are probing Russian defences over a long front and don't want to give too much away to them, before they actually start a large scale attack.
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Yeah, this would be the next logical step. They've been gathering information about Russian positions and fortifications for weeks and months now. Now it's time to test those informations and see how, where and with what kind of weapons the Russians respond, so they can hit the weak spots with their real offensive.

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I love watching Leopard videos :drool:
 
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Dans said:
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Would be a risky move to attack Moscow as it would not only (probably) kill civilians, it would also incentivize Putin to retaliate against Kyiv/Odesa and other cities. And by retaliate, I mean much more dangerous weapons.
 
Dans said:
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Not sure what size of drone that is, but in order to get there it must be relatively big I'd assume. Which would be disastrous news for Russian AA defence. Unless they launched it somewhere from within Moscow and its actually a small commercial drone.
 
Dans said:
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Moscow is being mentioned more and more in the last couple of weeks or so, starting from the drones falling from the sky (conveniently being painted in Ukraine flag colours etc), to now this footage. I wonder if Russia is preparing some false flag "terror attack" like they have experience in doing to justify another mobilisation wave? Because they sure as hell need to call up a lot more people and fast.
 
dove said:
Moscow is being mentioned more and more in the last couple of weeks or so, starting from the drones falling from the sky (conveniently being painted in Ukraine flag colours etc), to now this footage. I wonder if Russia is preparing some false flag "terror attack" like they have experience in doing to justify another mobilisation wave? Because they sure as hell need to call up a lot more people and fast.
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I cant see how this footage can serve as false flag, if anything its embarrassing for the defence of the capital city.
 
If it's real. Could be some existing footage with text superimposed to make it seem like something the Ukranians have done.
 
The Firestarter said:
I cant see how this footage can serve as false flag, if anything its embarrassing for the defence of the capital city.
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I don't know, that video is most likely fake it just follows the "Ukrainian drones in Moscow region" narrative pretty well.


 
Can't imagine its difficult to get a drone above the Kremlin for 10 seconds. Are they supposed to have jammers surrounding it round the clock? Maybe they do if Putin is present.
 
A collection of a lot of reports results in this map of the current situation (nothing confirmed, just a bunch of collected Telegram posts etc):
f0e1735a2b175496.jpg
So the bridgehead seems to have reached a length of almost 20km by now (however not a continuous front, these are all small infantery groups operating). Russia needs to strike back fast and get controlagain, or they are really risking losing the left bank of the Dnipro and therefore the most important natural barrier in southern Ukraine.
 
Pavel, a former general and senior NATO leader, was unequivocal, however. When it comes to Ukraine, he argued, China only wants what’s best for itself — and, for now, that’s more war.

“I believe that it is in China’s interest to prolong the status quo,” Pavel said, “because it can push Russia to a number of concessions.”

Beijing, he said in an interview late last week, can get cheap oil, gas and other resources from Moscow — in exchange for its “no limits” partnership with the Kremlin. “It is also good for China that the West is probably becoming a little bit weaker by supporting Ukraine,” he added.

“I don’t think,” the Czech leader said, that “China has a real interest to resolve the war in a short time.”

Pavel, who took office as president last month, said Beijing is using the war to learn.

“China is taking lessons out of the conflict every day,” Pavel said. “They closely follow what Russia is doing, how the West is reacting.”
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https://www.politico.eu/article/trust-china-ukraine-czech-republic-petr-pavel-nato-defense/
 
VorZakone said:
https://www.politico.eu/article/trust-china-ukraine-czech-republic-petr-pavel-nato-defense/
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Interesting but I'm not sure the west is weakened in a strategic sense because of its support for Ukraine. If anything it's stronger - alliances strengthened, resolve tested, NATO reborn, military and intel tested in some useful ways, EU long term economically disentangled from Russia. Any weakness is short term, a bit of military restocking and temporary hit to gas prices, at worst.
 
nimic said:
Isn't that literally every country when it comes to geopolitics? Nobody is supporting Ukraine just to be nice, it benefits them all in some way.
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Nato (the west) supports Ukraine because we need to stop Russian imperialism, for the safety of Europe and democratic world in general. China only supports for their own power and money reasons.

edit: First footage of the Patriot system operating in Ukraine

 
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Ragnar123 said:
There is a big rumor about radio silence in the near future. Many ukranian war reporter accounts pushing this image now:

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This sort of thing is more of a giveaway that something is a foot than not. The Russians must surely have their antennas up.
 
Ragnar123 said:
Nato (the west) supports Ukraine because we need to stop Russian imperialism, for the safety of Europe and democratic world in general. China only supports for their own power and money reasons.

edit: First footage of the Patriot system operating in Ukraine

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If the US or NATO can drive a wedge between Xi and Putin, then it will be worth it. Even if that wedge isn't a big one, it will help to further isolate Putin by cutting him off from his biggest ally.
 
Pretty impressive numbers. Ukraine also trained 8 new brigades themselves, that makes 17 new brigades (around 100.000 men) in addition to those already deployed, ready for a counter offensive with western weapons and training.
 
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Ragnar123 said:
Pretty impressive numbers. Ukraine also trained 4 new brigades themselves, that makes 13 new brigades (around 100.000 men) in addition to those already deployed, ready for a counter offensive with western weapons and training.
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Do we have the numbers for amount of men? This sounds like a bit too much? I think the west trained around 40k soldiers which would mean around 4.5k men for every brigade. So if we follow that, I would expect somewhere around 60k men.
 
dove said:
Do we have the numbers for amount of men? This sounds like a bit too much? I think the west trained around 40k soldiers which would mean around 4.5k men for every brigade. So if we follow that, I would expect somewhere around 60k men.
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Yeah, I had the number of brigades wrong in my head. According to Reuters, Ukraine trained 40.000 storm troops in 8 new brigades, so around 5000 men/brigade. With that information, the 9 additional brigades trained in Nato countries should field around 45.000 troops. So together around 85-90.000 men in 17 brigades? We don't have official numbers of course, but I still think it will be close to a 100.000 new troops trained and armed with western weapons and armor.
 
FireballXL5 said:
So, who's been paid to turn a blind eye?

UK company set up in name of top Putin official in Ukraine

Volodymyr Saldo, a Kremlin puppet in the Russian-occupied territories, listed as firm’s owner, despite being under sanctions

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...t-up-in-name-of-top-putin-official-in-ukraine
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It's UK policy to turn a blind eye to company registrations. No checks are ever done, you are free to fraudulently set up a company in whatever name and info you want for £12 and 24 hours. The only person ever prosecuted for such a thing was the guy who did it using the info of politicians, to prove a point.
 
Ragnar123 said:
Yeah, I had the number of brigades wrong in my head. According to Reuters, Ukraine trained 40.000 storm troops in 8 new brigades, so around 5000 men/brigade. With that information, the 9 additional brigades trained in Nato countries should field around 45.000 troops. So together around 85-90.000 men in 17 brigades? We don't have official numbers of course, but I still think it will be close to a 100.000 new troops trained and armed with western weapons and armor.
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Yea, it's decent numbers and 100k properly trained and equipped Ukrainian soldiers are probably worth 2-3x the amount of Russian ones, at least in the Southern Ukraine where they will not have much experience. The biggest worry is that of course Russia had a lot of time to prepare and they probably mined the hell out of fields/roads.
 
dove said:
Yea, it's decent numbers and 100k properly trained and equipped Ukrainian soldiers are probably worth 2-3x the amount of Russian ones, at least in the Southern Ukraine where they will not have much experience. The biggest worry is that of course Russia had a lot of time to prepare and they probably mined the hell out of fields/roads.
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Don't forget those 100k are only the newly formed and trained brigades. They have even bigger numbers deployed all around the front and they will take part in the counter offensive as well. If I remember correctly the Russian invasion force back in february 2022 was around 200-300k strong. I'm sure that Ukraine can field similar numbers in their counter attack. This upcoming battle will be brutal.
 
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