No update today.
Somebody commented during my small break last week that I should try and insert breaks in, say, a day or so every week or two weeks, which I think I will try and do - though they might be irregular (i.e. on different days).
Happy International Day for Biological Diversity!
Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
I was thinking - who do you think knows that Russia is winning but has to keep up the image that Ukraine still has a chance? The West's intelligence agencies? Zelensky? Stoltenberg? Biden? Macron, Scholz, Boris? Leyen?
If yes to all, at what level does that knowledge run out - does Boris' cabinet all know? Biden's admin? Senators?
I think intelligence agencies know. I'm also confident that journalists and most politicians are absolutely delusional.
I think top the US leadership is full of shit and well aware that all the Ukraine is accomplishing is to have their conscripts ground into mush. They know what they're doing and hope to isolate and cannibalise western Europe while Russia will be kept occupied fighting an insurgency in the Ukraine fueled by constant supplies from the MIC.
As for Zelensky I find it more believable that he's deluding himself into believing that he's winning. Otherwise he would be aware that he was feeding his people into a meat grinder for the must cynical of reasons. Something nobody wants to believe about themselves.
Western European leaders all seem to be high on pure ideology and unaware how they are being fucked over.
I think this is pretty close but I feel like more politicians know what is up but they don't care because they are getting theirs.
I think the closer you get to the places where decisions are made, the more of reality you know.
I still think backbencher-level politicians in great imperial powers as well as the leaders of lesser European countries, those Russia with some grain of truth are dismissing as American protectorates, are completely delusional.
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At a minimum, Ukraine cannot win - the country has been wrecked, much of its economic activity rests in occupied areas, and the West is incapable of doing a Marshall Plan 2 as they shifted most of their industry abroad. Maybe China goes in there with its BRI, but that's a decades-long project. The only way that Ukraine can meaningfully not lose is to indefinitely hold back Russia using an endless supply of western weaponry and trained troops, which has sorta, kinda worked for the last month at great human cost to their Ukrainian military - but the front line is now cracking, and the weaponry is not endless. A few European countries have already had to stop (Greece, Netherlands), have meaningfully stopped (Portugal sending WW2-era weaponry), or are sending it in laughably few quantities, too late (15 tanks from Germany coming in July). The US will, sooner or later, be the only power sending weaponry in, but it doesn't even seem to work terribly well, as the Ukrainian authorities have banned criticism of western weaponry on social media.
If you take the totality of the situation, economic, military, diplomatic, on a domestic and global scale - Ukraine has already lost and Russia already won. All Ukraine can do is try and salvage what's remaining of their country, and, with an arm and a leg cut off, point and laugh at Russia for giving it a bloody nose.
Meh, ukraine according to zelenskiy has 700 k thousands soldiers already, and endless logistical support from the west. I don’t see why they couldn’t win, they are training 300 thousand in the western part to handle weaponry. They can have bigger army in 3 months than russia has right now, while sacrificing recruits to slow them down. Currently surrendering small groups are territorial defense forces without training, not artillery crews. The speed of incapacitating the army is slower than army growth in size for ukraine, so to me it seems they are favored unless this new part of army fail in some offensive
Yeah countries that lose like 50% of its population in the first months of the war usually don't win. Ten million "Ukrainians" (or at least, like, their territory) will soon be Russian citizens, makes a net loss of 25% of your population right there. Then add the 6 million refugees that are in the EU. Add another million or so who fled to Russia. I'm well aware that there's intersections between these sets, but I would need some really convincing reasoning on why the rump "Ukraine" that's still blue on those war maps currently has more than 25 million inhabitants.Probably less, I'd guess.
Also don't forget the 50-100,000 people who've lost their lives for the cokehead of Kyiv, and at least the same number in wounded, including plenty of amputees and people who will require a wheelchair for the rest of their lives....naw man, Ukraine is down and out, and for a long time too.
Hard to recover from this, even will all the Western weapons in the world (which are very limited, too - as we're beginning to see more and more).
But they didn’t lose 50 percent of population, they lost like 2-3 million in the russia controlled territories and 6 millions to immigration (like 14 percent). Recruitment in chernigov/sumy is going right now for ukraine, for example.
If they have 30 million, at least 5 million are “militarily aged” men. As Russia continues to treat this as not a war, but an operation, they don’t mobilize themselves, so their manpower losses are much more problematic. Latest usa aid includes patriot systems, so air defense capabilities will soon rise for ukraine, and logistical system of ukraine will remain intact after that, and then you’ll have 200 thousands vs 500 k thousands well supplied troops on both sides. Kherson would be first prime target for these newly western forces, where logistical supply line is thinnest for russia
I have little faith that Zelensky is telling the truth about anything, nor that any amount of conscripts who were forced and dragged off buses to remain in the country can turn the tide. Unless you're suggesting that Ukraine is now doing the simple calculus of hoping that the number of Ukrainian conscripts is larger than the number of Russian bullets.
This is what, the fourth, fifth time that the United States has sent in weaponry that promised to turn the tide? Javelins - virtually no footage of their success, and Ukraine DEFINITELY wants footage of their success for propaganda and to boost MIC sales. Stingers? Somewhat effective during the first week, then Russia learned to fly low and now they don't do anything. Switchblades? Not a single success video. Phoenix Ghost? Haven't seen anything there either. The artillery on the front lines right now is largely towed, which almost every military in the world has long since moved past for good reason, favouring self-propelled. The heavy artillery, I have no idea if it's being useful, but there is footage of the destruction of batteries of them, and they're hard to transport in to the front - and if Ukraine had significant amounts of them, they'd be using them instead of the shitty towed artillery. At this point I just don't believe that the Ultra-Peepee MegaFreedom McMissiles will do anything significant. Either they'll be destroyed before they reach the front, or they'll be useless when they get there.
And Ukraine's fuel logistic system isn't getting any better by the day, if the fuel shortages throughout Ukraine are anything to go by.
If I was Ukraine, and I didn't want to give up, what I would do is set up a gigantic defense in depth as quickly as I could with all the western weaponry that's too difficult to get to the front, and simultaneously retreat my troops (who now have combat experience and so are much more useful than recruits and conscripts) completely out of Donbass rather than sacrificing them en masse to blunt the Russian advance for a couple weeks, and send them to defensible positions on the other side of the river, and then blow up every bridge along the Dniper in front of me so that Russia couldn't advance without great hardship past that point. Ukraine is unwilling to do this because of how bad it would make them look to lose that much territory, even if it might win them the war - whatever that even means for Ukraine at this point. Killing as many Russians as possible? Bringing their negotiators to the table? Either way, they know they aren't getting Donbass back, and even if they hypothetically could, imagine the absolute headache that would cause them on a daily basis.
They are doing defensive lines though, in the cities in the east and nikolaev, why would they sacrifice them for cheap? Not mentioning all the fortified villages.
If/when poland introduce peacekeeping force in the west, western ukrainian army will be liberated for offensive. I don’t think they can recapture donbass, but Kherson? Losing it and executing “collaborationists” will end any hope of taking future cities without resistance for russia. Why would you chill as zaporozhie, if you know that russians can be beaten, and you’ll get got over working with them?
Nothing zelensky says is truthful. The Ukrainian national forces has extremely low morale as they're being sent to die with no support. Also, the forced conscription thing.
Low morale of cannon fodder, the question is morale of prepared army/artillery teams. As I’ve mentioned, artillery works well for ukraine, and they don’t surrender
Does the proxy have to win? I've been thinking that it might not be a big deal to them as long as there's no unconditional surrender or anything. The severance of Europe from Russia has happened, so in a way the US has won, at least in the short-term.
As for the outcome of the war, it would probably suck for Russia to try to hold the western parts of Ukraine, and pushing them back from Donbass or Crimea would be pushing the nuclear equipped bear into a corner, so neither option seems desirable for anyone involved. Europe is probably expecting to drain as much of Russia's resources as possible and then try to negotiate an armistice that more or less goes back to the pre-escalation status quo.
Whatever happens on the ground in Ukraine, they can just spin it as a loss, or at most a Pyrrhic victory for Russia that shows how weak they are.
It has not happened. They have only achieved a splitting of Europe into uncertain and shaky factions. There are three blocks forming, UK/Poland/Ukraine plus smaller nations are one block forming into a wing that is trying its hardest to do America's bidding, FrancoGermany are resistant and avoiding taking part in this block while being somewhat neutral diplomatically between Russia and the US, meanwhile Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey and a number of others are resistant to the US and quite clearly unhappy.
This situation has a lot of ways it can play out. Calling Russia split from Europe is incorrect, the more accurate thing to say is that Europe itself has been split and is in a destabilised state. This is the US doctrine of the middle east ported to Europe, their target isn't simply Russia, their target very much includes the member states of the EU which they saw as dangerously close to forming relationships with both Russia and China which the US simply can't compete with due to the geographical fact that all can do well together as one land block.