Russia has invaded Ukraine

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Chris

I wonder how many of these men will be ‘persuaded’ to sign a contract and remain in uniform. The Russians are absolutely desperate for cannon fodder, I can’t see them letting thousands of men demobilise so easily, whatever promises have been made.

They appear to have that covered.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/03/...says/?swcfpc=1

Olga Romanova, head of the Russia Behind Bars organization, confirms what Ukrainian military sources have been reporting since the end of last year: women prisoners in Russia are being sent to Ukraine to fill the depleted ranks of both the Wagner PMC and the Russian regular army.

She says she has been hearing about such things since the end of 2022 but now has additional evidence in the form of sightings of special trains carrying women from prisons and prison camps in the southern parts of the Russian Federation to Ukraine.

In other news, you gotta love the Britidh sense of humour.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by pip08456

They appear to have that covered.

Yes, losing their **** whilst Ukraine loses it's best and brightest at a slightly slower rate...

[joglynne]

They must also be saving money by emptying their prisons. So a win win for Russia's cash flow.

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Yes, losing their **** whilst Ukraine loses it's best and brightest at a slightly slower rate...

Ukraine’s high command still seems to think the gains are worth the losses. It’s a dreadful calculation to have to make but unavoidable in the circumstances. It’s also worth noting that Russia isn’t just losing people in Bakhmut, however poorly trained - it is losing equipment, lots of it. This is not so easily replaced as touring prisons or press-ganging peasants from the far east. However, on the human calculation, even Russia can’t quickly replace 5,000 killed or seriously wounded per week, every week for months on end. Their last desperate tactic has been to use human waves to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences and this hasn’t worked, even though they have been throwing their people into the meat grinder far faster than they can replace them.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by joglynne

They must also be saving money by emptying their prisons. So a win win for Russia's cash flow.

Well there is talk of them not being able to pay the soldiers anymore so perhaps those carefully harvested reserves have run out

Originally Posted by Chris

Ukraine’s high command still seems to think the gains are worth the losses. It’s a dreadful calculation to have to make but unavoidable in the circumstances. It’s also worth noting that Russia isn’t just losing people in Bakhmut, however poorly trained - it is losing equipment, lots of it. This is not so easily replaced as touring prisons or press-ganging peasants from the far east. However, on the human calculation, even Russia can’t quickly replace 5,000 killed or seriously wounded per week, every week for months on end. Their last desperate tactic has been to use human waves to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences and this hasn’t worked, even though they have been throwing their people into the meat grinder far faster than they can replace them.

There is a vicious rumour the T50 is about to make an appearance, things must be bad and they'll get worse from next week when Japan bans the export of metal and electronic components to them

I like the way twitters algorithm has downgraded ukraine as misinformation since elmo bought it too

[Hom3r]

I think this war will drag out until the west joins in are Putin is ousted.

https://wapo.st/3U5UBrW

Finland joins NATO, doubling alliance’s land border with Russia

Finland formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Tuesday, a historic shift for a country that once insisted it was safer outside the military alliance and a sign of how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gamble in Ukraine is upending the post-Cold War order.
Finnish membership will double NATO’s land border with Russia, adding more than 800 miles. It will also bolster the alliance’s presence around the Baltic Sea and enhance its position in the Arctic.
To justify his unprovoked attack on Ukraine, Putin cited the possibility of NATO expansion. Now, his war has brought a bigger, stronger NATO to his door.

“I am tempted to say, maybe this is the one thing that we can thank Mr. Putin for,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Brussels on Tuesday.
Russia’s invasion has caused “many countries to believe that they have to do more, to look out for their own defense and to make sure they can deter possible Russian aggression going forward,” he said.

Russia’s response on Tuesday was muted.
“We will be watching closely what is going on in Finland, how the NATO alliance will use Finnish territory in terms of deploying weapons, systems and infrastructure there, which will be close to our borders and therefore threaten us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing to journalists. “Depending on this, measures will be taken".

[jfman]

And that’s why Ukraine’s best and brightest are going to the meat grinder. An easy decision in Langley.

Originally Posted by jfman

And that’s why Ukraine’s best and brightest are going to the meat grinder. An easy decision in Langley.

Easier decision in Kyiv - the other option was to be subsumed by Russia…

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Easier decision in Kyiv - the other option was to be subsumed by Russia…

Unfortunately not a decision Zelensky’s conscript army was allowed to make for themselves, of course.

Originally Posted by jfman

And that’s why Ukraine’s best and brightest are going to the meat grinder. An easy decision in Langley.

Yeah, I’m sure the desire not to have their language and culture erased, or watch their wives and daughters getting raped by gangs of Russian mobiks has had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it. Those Ukrainian lads are only heading down to Bakhmut at gunpoint.

Originally Posted by jfman

Unfortunately not a decision Zelensky’s conscript army was allowed to make for themselves, of course.

Do you mean just like the U.K. and the USA during WW1, WW2, and the Korean War?

Conscription is normal practice when an existential threat is happening to your country…

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Chris

Yeah, I’m sure the desire not to have their language and culture erased, or watch their wives and daughters getting raped by gangs of Russian mobiks has had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it. Those Ukrainian lads are only heading down to Bakhmut at gunpoint.

What about the men whose wives and daughters are over here, never to return?

---------- Post added at 17:41 ---------- Previous post was at 17:31 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Do you mean just like the U.K. and the USA during WW1, WW2, and the Korean War?

Conscription is normal practice when an existential threat is happening to your country…

I lose track are we back at all powerful Russia that could march on Berlin within weeks or Russia on the brink of defeat if only Europe would donate more American weapons?

Here I thought the notion of young men being sent to the slaughter in the name of competing global ideologies died out after Vietnam but I guess as long as it’s not American blood dying for their interests that’s fine.

---------- Post added at 17:45 ---------- Previous post was at 17:41 ----------

Originally Posted by Hom3r

I think this war will drag out until the west joins in are Putin is ousted.

It’ll never end. Ukraine ends up a hollow shell of a state acting as a de-facto NATO outpost. It’s women and children in Europe and it’s men in graves.

America will hyper-privatise everything to US multinationals to pay off the ever increasing amounts of debt it is accumulating.

So do you think Ukraine should have just allowed Russia to take their country?

Originally Posted by Damien

So do you think Ukraine should have just allowed Russia to take their country?

J.F. is trapped in a great powers mindset, pretty much like Russia itself. Minor states have no agency, they are only allowed to be pawns on someone else’s chessboard. The idea that the strategic interests of sovereign democracies might coincide and align just doesn’t compute.

In reality, the pattern of military training and equipping undertaken by Western nations between the 2014 and 2022 invasions shows pretty clearly that the USA/NATO/Collective West had no intentions of trying to destroy the Russian army if/when it tried to overrun Ukraine. The AFU was trained and equipped to fight an insurgency against a presumed Russian puppet regime. To the extent that Great Power Politics were at play, they were aimed at keeping Russia off balance, and no more.

Western nations have only moved to supply and train Ukraine with heavy weapons as it has become clear that Ukraine has the will and the capacity to fight. Notably, they are still not supplying Ukraine with systems that might *actually* destroy the Russian military (ATACMS long range artillery rockets, F-16 fighters, anything that can reach a significant distance into Russia itself and start taking out airfields and other strategic assets). Aid is confined to that necessary to push Russia back to the Feb 2022 ceasefire lines, while admitting the possibility that Ukraine may wish to go further, into the eastern Donbas and Crimea.

There is a happy strategic realignment in that Ukraine wishes to continue to exist and America would like to see Russia dissuaded from creating mischief in the west, leaving America free to think about China. However, if Putin were to order his forces out of Ukraine, the war would end there and then. It is Putin who is sending Russian people and equipment to destruction, not Joe Biden.