Ukraine War

[farmerge]

My lived experience (hate that term) is what happened in Rwanda in 94. It’s absolutely mind blowing what happened in those 100 days once the genocide started. The bottom line, imo, is that you join in, or you are killed. That‘s what seems to be going on now. Agree, or you are toast. I’m not sure what thread I’m in now….

But that's Africa all over Pick a country there and population control is at the whim of whatever desperado is in power at the time.

 

[farmerge]

Sean probably moved somewhere left or right of centre

 

[Sean K]

Let it go, chaps.

It seems, as the one year anniversary of the latest westerly incursion of Russians approaches, and the weather improves, that both Russia and Ukraine are gearing up for counter offensives. The Russians seem to be aiming to take the bits of Luhansk and Donetsk not yet overrun or seized then lost, while the Ukrainians, well, who knows. Their ultimate goal is Crimea but whether that is feasible remains to be seen. And any territory retaken will come at such a cost.

Nice for you to put this back on track Dona.

While the extra tanks being sent from NATO will be useful, it’s just another incremental escalation which is most concerning to me. Necessary from NATOs perspective, but a red flag to Russia. It’s spiraling. Next will be jets. I’m surprised Russia‘s navy hasn’t been completely sunk in the Black Sea by *Ukranian* missiles. They could be wiped out overnight if *Ukraine* wanted to. The Norman Brigade, led by the Canuks are doing a fine job apparently.

 

[Sean K]

But that's Africa all over Pick a country there and population control is at the whim of whatever desperado is in power at the time.

Rwanda was a little more complicated and probably only accelerated by the Belgians who deliberately race divided the population for their own colonial control. In the hospital we occupied, doctors killed their patients based on their ID card. Way off thread now. Hope I’m not upsetting peoples Saturday.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Nice for you to put this back on track Dona.

While the extra tanks being sent from NATO will be useful, it’s just another incremental escalation which is most concerning to me. Necessary from NATOs perspective, but a red flag to Russia. It’s spiraling. Next will be jets. I’m surprised Russia‘s navy hasn’t been completely sunk in the Black Sea by *Ukranian* missiles. They could be wiped out overnight if *Ukraine* wanted to. The Norman Brigade, led by the Canuks are doing a fine job apparently.

My guess would be that Ukraine will go for Crimea first, in a sudden push over the marshy and riverine land between Kerson and Crimea, at the same time relieving Mariupol and possibly threatening Rostov on Don in nearby Russia. The ground will still be fairly firm in early spring.

Ukraine has Ukrainian and Cossack partisans in Crimea who could act as a fifth column to assist them against the Russians.

The Kursk bridge would be destroyed before or during the push from the North making it difficult for the Russians to resupply.

The Donbass is a different situation. Pushing through there first for the Ukrainians would be difficult as it is a Russian speaking area both in Donetsk and Luhansk. Although the population are somewhat annoyed with the Russians over the last 12 months, I believe sufficient at the higher levels could compel the peasants at the lower end to slow any Ukrainian push.

Dealing with Russian partisans and easy resupply of mobilised troops even if untrained would attrit a Ukrainian advance in the Donbas.

So my guess then for 2023 is Crimea occupied by a Ukrainian heavily armed force and Donetsk and Luhansk up for discussion in treaty negotiations.

gg

 

[Dona Ferentes]

Nice for you to put this back on track Dona.

While the extra tanks being sent from NATO will be useful, it’s just another incremental escalation which is most concerning.

A calibrated response. Ukraine has taken the fight to the invaders, their Soviet era arms are close to being depleted, so resupply comes from the West.

Necessary from NATOs perspective, but a red flag to Russia. It’s spiraling. Next will be jets. I’m surprised Russia‘s navy hasn’t been completely sunk in the Black Sea by *Ukranian* missiles. They could be wiped out overnight if *Ukraine* wanted to. .

The Black Sea fleet moved from Crimea to Novorussirsk. It emerges to fire off Kalibr missiles then scurries back.

Russia invading Ukraine was a red flag.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

My guess would be that Ukraine will go for Crimea first, in a sudden push over the marshy and riverine land between Kerson and Crimea, at the same time relieving Mariupol and possibly threatening Rostov on Don in nearby Russia. The ground will still be fairly firm in early spring.

Ukraine has Ukrainian and Cossack partisans in Crimea who could act as a fifth column to assist them against the Russians.

The Kursk bridge would be destroyed before or during the push from the North making it difficult for the Russians to resupply.

Feasible scenario.

The Donbass is a different situation. Pushing through there first for the Ukrainians would be difficult as it is a Russian speaking area both in Donetsk and Luhansk. Although the population are somewhat annoyed with the Russians over the last 12 months, I believe sufficient at the higher levels could compel the peasants at the lower end to slow any Ukrainian push.

Dealing with Russian partisans and easy resupply of mobilised troops even if untrained would attrit a Ukrainian advance in the Donbas.

The Donbas cities are Russified, mainly colonizers sent to exploit the coal & iron, and industrialise, first by the tsars and then uncle Joe . The countryside is mainly ukrainian though many speak russian language.

Minefields and partisans... very tricky to take back and hold.

.. my guess then for 2023 is Crimea occupied by a Ukrainian heavily armed force and Donetsk and Luhansk up for discussion in treaty negotiations.

Definitely a possible scenario.

 

[Sean K]

A calibrated response. Ukraine has taken the fight to the invaders, their Soviet era arms are close to being depleted, so resupply comes from the West.


The Black Sea fleet moved from Crimea to Novorussirsk. It emerges to fire off Kalibr missiles then scurries back.

Russia invading Ukraine was a red flag.

Yep. There’s a bunch of SSNs in the Med, Black Sea and North Sea. I’m not sure why more Russia ships haven’t had accidents or sunk mysteriously. Red lines I guess.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

... Way off thread now. Hope I’m not upsetting peoples Saturday.

Are you in Canada? It's Sunday here. lol

 

[Sean K]

Are you in Canada? It's Sunday here. lol

Seychelles. I’ve got no idea what day it is.

 

[mullokintyre]

At the risk of upsetting the many people who regard Peter Zeihan in the same way that some regards the Murdoch press, I noticed a couple of interesting points he has made.

Now that the battle tank seal has been broken, expect EVERYONE to be looking through the cupboard for ANYTHING that might be of use. Europe is littered with outdated weapon models that need to be disposed of. All are about to become so "disposed".

And then, with the firming up of the resolve of Europeans, there might be enough hidden angst against Russia to see some if its very own internal conflicts start to boil


Most interesting map.
There is no love lost between some of these groups.
Mick

 

[Dona Ferentes]

Seychelles. I’ve got no idea what day it is.

Sean sees Seychelles by the seashore,
The shore Sean sees are Seychelles, I’m sure.
So if he sees timezones in the Seychelles
Then I’m sure he's not sure, until he goes ashore.

 

[mullokintyre]

Sean sees Seychelles by the seashore,
The shore Sean sees are Seychelles, I’m sure.
So if he sees timezones in the Seychelles
Then I’m sure he's not sure, until he goes ashore.

Bugger you Donna, I covered my screen and keyboard in spit trying to recite that gem.
Mick

 

[mullokintyre]

There are some who think that Moldavia will go the same way as Ukraine.
From DW.com

Russia's foreign minister has warned that Moldova could meet the same fate as Ukraine. He says that the West is stirring up anti-Russian sentiment. Moldova has rejected his comments as propaganda.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested that Moldova is the West's new "anti-Russian project." In an interview for Russian state television, he declared that the West had now "set its sights on the Republic of Moldova to have the role of the next Ukraine."
Russia's more or less direct threats against Moldova have intensified since it began the war of aggression against Ukraine almost a year ago.
In the interview, which was banned from broadcast in Moldova because of accusations of propaganda, Lavrov also stated that pro-European Moldovan President Maia Sandu had been appointed with methods that were "far from being freely democratic" and that she was pursuing a deeply anti-Russian approach. He added that she was "a president who wants to join NATO, has Romanian citizenship, is ready to unite with Romania and, in general, is ready for almost anything."
"This is one of the countries that the West wants to turn into another anti-Russia," he said.

The foreign minister continued by criticizing the Moldovan government in Chisinau for refusing to resume the 5+2 negotiations on resolving the Transnistria conflict. Russia and the separatist regime in Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway region that split from Moldova in the early 1990s after a bloody war, insist that talks should continue, especially considering the setbacks of the Russian army in Ukraine.
Lavrov said that "hand in hand with the pro-NATO, pro-EU drive," the fact that Moldova refused to resume the negotiations spoke "volumes." He added that Moldova was even planning to expel Russian "peacekeepers" from Transnistria.

There are some 2,000 Russian soldiers stationed in Transnistria, which is a narrow strip of land in eastern Moldova. Many of them are there to guard a former Soviet ammunition depot in the village of Cobasna that contains up to 20,000 tons of Soviet-era weapons. It is the largest such depot in Europe. In 1999, Russia committed to withdrawing troops and weapons, but it has not fulfilled this promise.

Given the level of ammunition and weapon usage/destruction in the war with Ukraine, I wonder how much of that original 20,000 tons remains in Cobasna?
It shows the lack of geopolitcal thinking on the part of the Russians that they it did not occur to them that invading Ukraine would not turn neighbouring countries to seek the perceived military/security protection of NATO, and the perceived financial protection of the EU.
Mick

 

[Sean K]

There are some who think that Moldavia will go the same way as Ukraine.
From DW.com

Given the level of ammunition and weapon usage/destruction in the war with Ukraine, I wonder how much of that original 20,000 tons remains in Cobasna?
It shows the lack of geopolitcal thinking on the part of the Russians that they it did not occur to them that invading Ukraine would not turn neighbouring countries to seek the perceived military/security protection of NATO, and the perceived financial protection of the EU.
Mick

Yep, complete own goal. Nordic states all formally going NATO might be Russias biggest strategic blunder. They should have envisioned that. I think their major miscalculation was in assuming that they had Germany by the balls on gas, but they’ve found a way out of it somehow.

 

[JohnDe]

“The worse things get, the more necessary war will become,” says one former mandarin.

The message that Russia is fighting for its survival against an encroaching West has become a powerful tool for repression. But it will mean ever-growing demands of the Kremlin on Russia’s long-suffering people. “They are already militarising people’s consciousness, but it’s a long-term process,” says the former civil servant. “Hitler took five years. They are only just getting started.”

Russia’s technocrats keep funds flowing for Vladimir Putin’s war

But the economy is slowly being repurposed

Vadim, a car-parts dealer from a provincial Russian town, never supported the war. Indeed, he broadly backed the West’s sanctions on Russia: how else could you stop the “monsters” intent on destroying his country, as well as Ukraine, if not by hitting their pockets? But when the West’s measures hit the supply of parts he needed from his distributors, he followed business logic and sourced them from wherever he could. The search took him to Turkey. A web of intermediaries offered him various schemes to deliver his goods for a handling cost of between $2 and $4 per kilogram. Today, they arrive in batches, often in bags labelled “personal effects”, three to four weeks after ordering. Vadim asks no questions, provided the price is right. He understands that the same applies to customs officials.

Vadim’s workaround reflects a larger story, as Russia reverts to primitive means to muddle through. Tough European and American sanctions, introduced in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine last February, were supposed to isolate the Russian economy. But with only half the world observing the measures, reality was always going to be more complicated. Traders in friendly countries like Turkey, Kazakhstan, India and China now facilitate the import of the restricted goods Russia needs, for a price. By September 2022 Russian imports in dollar terms exceeded their average monthly value for 2019. And these countries also take a large share of the raw-material exports Russia once sent to Europe—at a steep discount.

This has allowed the Kremlin to avoid economic catastrophe. gdp contracted by just 2.2% last year, smashing many economists’ expectations, made in the spring, of an annual decline worth 10% or more. Uncomfortable, perhaps, but nowhere near enough to cripple Vladimir Putin’s war effort. Unemployment remains low, even if many people are being paid less. House prices have stopped rising, but there is no sign of a crash. Consumer spending is dragging on the economy, but not by much. In 2023 the imf even predicts that Russia will grow by 0.3%—a superior performance than Britain and Germany, and only marginally worse than the eu.

Russia’s economic isolation also offers the most ruthless a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get rich quick. Before the war European and American firms held direct investments in Russia worth about $350bn. A government decree issued in the wake of the invasion obliges Western companies closing down in Russia to first obtain a permit; they can then sell their assets only at government-determined prices, set at a discount of 50% or more to their market value. A corrupt system has therefore emerged. One Western industrialist who is helping several European companies quit Russia says that opportunistic Russians and even Westerners are working their government connections to snap up bargains. “We’ve returned to the 1990s,” he says, a wild time of gangster capitalism. “You can safely assume the new owners will ignore niceties like sanctions once they take over.”

The restrictions were part of a package of extreme measures introduced by Russia’s technocrats to stabilise the economy in the months following the invasion. They have succeeded far better than their authors might have hoped. Before the invasion, many of them were clearly unhappy with the idea of an unprovoked war that risked wrecking the modernising economy they had spent their careers creating. Several—including Elvira Nabiullina, the head of Russia’s central bank; German Gref, the boss of Sberbank, Russia’s biggest; and Alexei Kudrin, a reformist former finance minister—are believed to have made representations to Mr Putin when they saw that an invasion was on the cards.

But they quickly stepped into line once the war was under way, stopping a bank run from turning into a full-blown financial crisis and getting inflation under control. Only a handful of lower-level bureaucrats resigned from the central bank and the finance ministry. One former central-bank official says he was both impressed and appalled by his colleagues’ efforts to keep the war machine afloat. “They understood what they were doing, even while they comforted themselves by pretending the people who would replace them would be worse.” One high-level source close to the Kremlin says, “The elite are prisoners. They are clinging on. When you are there for that long, the seat is all you have.”

Emboldened hardliners are agitating for more radical change at the heart of government. Some dream about removing important figures that they perceive to be pro-Western. But as long as those people keep his war effort funded, Mr Putin is unlikely to oblige. It is difficult to know how well they are doing, as many key statistics are now secret. But back-of-the-envelope calculations are possible. Russia’s 2022 budget was planned at 23.7trn roubles ($335bn). Government figures indicate that actual spending in 2022 reached at least 31trn roubles.

According to Natalia Zubarevich, an economist at Moscow State University, only about 2.5trn roubles of the extra spend are accounted for by benefits and other transfers: pensions, cheap loans, additional child allowances. That leaves roughly 5trn roubles unaccounted for; much of it, presumably, going on armaments. There are obvious signs of the economy being mobilised for war. Defence firms are working 24 hours a day, in three shifts. Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s main tank manufacturer, has enlisted at least 300 prisoners to fulfil its new orders. And steel production fell by just 7% in 2022, far less than the 15% some expected given the decimation of the car industry, heavily affected by sanctions that have interrupted the supply of semiconductors.

The Kremlin would clearly like to militarise the economy further. In October the government established a new council designed to co-ordinate government and industry. But finding fresh sources of cash is about to become much trickier. Mr Putin’s invasion coincided with high prices for hydrocarbon. In the first five months of 2022, such revenues were two-and-a-half times higher than in the year before. But lower global oil prices, as well as a Western gas embargo and an oil price cap, have hit that income stream, if less dramatically than the West had hoped.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

One of the Ukrainian cousins sent me a video clip of "Girkin" aka Strelkov discussing the necessity for Russia to keep Putin alive and in power as Csar. He also discusses the consequences of Putin's death or removal, which will be disastrous for Russia.

Just some background on Girkin.

Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin also known by the alias Igor Ivanovich Strelkov Girkin gained influence and attention, being appointed to the position of Minister of Defense in the Donetsk People's Republic, a puppet state of Russia.


Girkin was dismissed from his position in August 2014, after 298 people died when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down. Dutch prosecutors charged Girkin and three others with murder, and issued an international arrest warrant against him. Girkin has admitted "moral responsibility" but denies pushing the button. On 17 November 2022, Girkin was found guilty of the murder of 298 people, convicted of all charges in absentia, and issued a life sentence.

The video with an English subtitles is available here ( it is not yet on youtube.




gg

 

[sptrawler]

Just a personal thought, but I wonder if a Trumpism is going to be the end of this whole Russia/Ukraine/ China issue.

North Korea is throwing ICBM's around with gay abandon, one wonders if:

Donald Trump threatens to 'totally destroy' North Korea in UN speech

President castigates ‘a small group of rogue regimes’ and says Iran nuclear deal ‘an embarrassment to the United States’

www.theguardian.com

Well everything else is still playing on the Trump playbook, sanctions against China, EU having to lift its military spending, tariffs have increased, protectionist actions against allies have increased.

So maybe they are waiting on rocket man to overstep a mark, then it is on for young and old.
An isolated regime, that listens to no one and is of nuisance value.

Time will tell.

 

[Sean K]

There seems to be no stepping back now from the West against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It's impossible to cease support and allow Russia to win. I'm not sure what a 'win' is though. My initial thoughts about a year ago were that Russia really only wanted east of the Dnipro River and that might still be the strategic objective and it would be a compromise due to the historical and ethnic makeup of the population. Anything less is going to be a massive loss of face for Putin which makes his life untenable. But, it seems Ukraine and the West are not going to accept that. Fingers crossed Berarus do not get involved or Western assets don't start reaching into Russian territory because we're on a slippery slope then, if not already.

 

[sptrawler]

My guess, North Korea needs to tone it down, or they may become an example of the U.S fire power.
A direct attack on China, or on Russia would be catastrophic, a retaliatory strike on North Korea, when Trump already warned them eh.

North Korea fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Saturday, Japan's Defense Ministry said, with the weapon splashing down some 200 kilometers off Hokkaido's Oshima Island, inside Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).2 days ago

North Korea fired an unprecedented number of missiles last year, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could strike anywhere in the US, while resuming preparations for its first nuclear test since 2017.2 days ago

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com

North Korea Fires More Ballistic Missiles as It Warns US​

North Korea fires ballistic missile off east coast

Pyongyang confirms rapid launch drill after warning of strong response to upcoming US-South Korea military exercises

www.theguardian.com

North Korea fired an unprecedented number of missiles last year, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could strike anywhere in the US, while resuming preparations for its first nuclear test since 2017.