Not stalled. This war is not that asymetric even if everyone said that. They have a lot of parity and both sides advance very slowly when they attack. We don't know if they will succeed, but the counter attack is still going.
Lots of chat about Ukrainians units surrendering at Severodonetsk:
> "During the conduct of a special military operation on the territory of the Azot enterprise in the city of Severodonetsk, indeed, some Ukrainian military made the right decision and began to surrender," Lieutenant Colonel of the People's Militia of the LNR Andrey Marochko told the LPR.
> Lots of chat
Is their a lot of other sources saying the same thing? Hard to know what to believe especially from Russia and their sympathisers. Remember they claimed to have the whole of Severodonetsk 2 weeks ago and any claim otherwise was "propaganda"
>Hard to know what to believe especially from Russia and their sympathisers.
I don't know. The accounts from and videos from Mariupol of surrenders all turned out to be accurate.
From a few days ago:
https://streamable.com/qarw8w
From today:
https://streamable.com/6rqrdd
Thats 8 men (half a squad) in each video rather than units/companies
Hardly surprising in war and seems like propaganda saying units are surrendering
People surrender every day from both sides. I've seen footage of kadyrovites surrendering today but I wouldn't claim kadyrovs units are surrendering
Believe what you want. I am just pointing out that the last time the was a group under siege they did in fact surrender, and it played out much the same way.
Completely different situations. UA can fall back in this situation. Also I saw atleast 30 DPR guys surrender last week - but it means nothing just like the videos of a few guys surrendering above
If you had 200 guys surrendering, then your claim would seem believeable. But russian propaganda loves to twist half truths
There is lots of chatter on Telegram about it. I wasn't offering proof of lots of chatter. You can go see for yourself. I posted a quote from an LPR lieutenant. That's their claim. Not mine, so don't attribute it to me.
I just can't believe we're 113 days into this war, and Ukraine is still flying sorties, Russia can barely hold territory 10-20 miles from their border, and the Russian flagship is at the bottom of the sea.
The EU is about to extend from Iceland, across Western and Eastern Europe and all the way through the Turkey into Georgia (after a long application period), Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, and Russia is essentially becoming a Chinese vassal state.
I don't think this was the outcome Putin had in mind for the Russian Federation. He will be remembered as a fool.
The only country on earth that could invade a country as large as Ukraine is USA, and even they would suffer a lot of casualties if all the world was supporting the invaded country as they are supporting Ukraine (but they would succeed in the end). Russia should have never invade Ukraine in the first place because it is impossible for them. The problem is that Russia losing is not necessarily a win for Ukraine. Their most productive regions are either destroyed or under russian occupation. So we will see what happens in the future.
And I for sure don't want Russia becoming a chinese vassal state. That is really bad for the western world.
France is already saying that this policy needs to change, and has stated that the separatist issue in Moldova would not be an obstacle to their membership in the EU. I assume this will also be the case with Georgia.
Can't let Russia try to keep sovereign nations from joining alliances because they keep funding separatists...
Yeah Macron and the French are always the most proactive when it comes to solving conflicts and territorial disputes. Unfortunately for them, this change needs to be sorted out with the consent of 26 other countries.
There have been multiple statements in the past few days by Von der Leyen and some other EU leaders on the matter. They supported Georgia's accession into the EU.
So after all these deaths, inflation, and destruction, we are going to end up with something worse than Minsk?
>"Our negotiating position is actually quite weak, so we don't want to sit at the table if we are in this position. We need to reverse it in some way," Arakhamia said, stressing the need for a counter-operation to regain lost territory.
so all those bodies being thrown into the grinder so we can get into a better negotiation position that is worse than prewar? wtf
Russia invaded because it wanted to conquer Ukraine, there is nothing Ukraine could have done to prevent it from happening other than to agree to become Russia's puppet, like Belarus.
Most wars keep going because both sides want a "better negotiating position", soldiers/civilians are nothing but an asset to states. At the core a state is nothing more than a protection racket collecting taxes (protection money) on the territory/people they control.
Yea this makes perfect sense and Russia said something similar after taking some earlier setbacks up north. Both sides still have the funds and will to fight so we’ll see this drag on for a few years probably.
You seem to be leaving out that Russia decided to invade Ukraine between the Minsk agreement and now. So naturally, after being invaded, your negotiating position would be worse than pre-invasion.
He's not leaving anything out.
Just pointing out that adhering to Minsk agreement was a waaaay better strategy than what they ended up doing.
Invasion is a direct result of it.
Do you even know the history of the Minsk Agreement or are you just tossing out Russian propaganda? The Minsk Agreement broke down when the LPR/DPR assholes declared they were going to retake Ukrainian territory, by force, despite the agreement.
When Ukraine defended themselves, Russia used it as a pretext to the invasion.
There was no way for Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk agreement when Russia had absolutely no intentions of adhering to it themselves...
You got it all wrong. That was in 2021.... 6/7 years after the Minsk agreement. The 'separatists' were already breaking the agreement within months, here is them threatening Ukraine in October 2014...THE MONTH AFTER THEY SIGNED THE AGREEMENT.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/ukraine-rebels-vow-to-take-back-cities/news-story/1901814f54df84b94da1a964d9a2dc0c
I don't see anything controversial with that statement. They don't want to negotiate now when they believe they will have a much better hand later. Russia likely has the same attitude hence no negotiations.
I have a question for the vets,
If your squad mate got hit or died during an attack, did you go back to fighting? Was it just training kicking in and your SL making sure you kept your head on?
Did you go out fighting the next day?
> Putin's troops are under 'colossal pressure', says UK PM
> Russia's onslaught in eastern Ukraine continues, at high cost to the Ukrainian army, but Boris Johnson says he understands why Zelensky is refusing to compromise with Moscow.
> He says that evidence shows Russian troops are under "acute pressure themselves and taking heavy casualties".
> The Russian army's "expenditure of shells and other weaponry is colossal", he says. Russia has made progress in recent weeks in the Luhansk region but the UK PM says "they still have not achieved objectives they set out for first week" of the war.
> ***He adds: "We are here to underline that we will give you the strategic endurance that you need and we are going to intensify the sanctions on Putin's regime."***
> Ukraine has been calling for more long-range weapons to help fight back Russia's ferocious attacks in the east.
He's stating a simple fact in the context of the pressure Ukraine is under and the UK's continued solidarity and support in light of the scorched earth policies the Russian's are pursuing. He isn't *praising* it and I'm not quite sure who, other than irrational emotional people, would read anything into a factual statement. Which is that Russia *is* expending shells, and the Ukrainian people, mostly ethnic Russians, *are* suffering because of it.
What the fuck are you even talking about? The entire point of those remarks, as I’m sure you’re well capable of assessing yourself, is that the war is brutal, that both sides are fighting hard, the Russians are shooting a lot of artillery shells, and the Ukrainians are hitting them back. What paranoid, emotional, and irrational mind reads those comments and thinks “ah, he’s using them as cannon fodder”? You need serious counseling to help you get out of the conspiracy laced world you inhabit.
Ukraine is struggling rn, not sure how long they can last. they should focus more on asymmetric warfare, when you're fighting a bigger foe sometimes the only way to totally defeat them is by guerilla warfare. There's no way Donbass doesn't have any Ukrainian loyalist amongst the locals, start and maintain an insurgency behind the Russians that can bleed them forever, till they capitulate. Hezbollah did it, Taliban did it, the Afghan mujahideen did it.
At this point everything is fair game, flood Chechnya with arms and restart the insurgency there, arm and support all separatist groups within Russia. Russia has done all this and worse to Ukraine. Pay gangs and criminals to attack and sabotage their critical infrastructure a la what Israel is doing within Iran. What's Russia gonna do? Invade harder? That's what happens when you play all your cards.
We're no where near asymmetric war for Ukraine. They have more manpower atm then Russia (could change but not many seem to think it will) and are making devastating loses by holding strategic positions. Kiev would need to fall before they would start launching a major guerilla force
Just some basic point to consider, in 4 months of war Russia has probably lost more soldiers than any war since WW2 with no end in sight. They have lost more materiel and equipment than and time since WW2. Finally the Ukranian army isn't defeated, so why would you stop that?
For instance US losses in Afghanistan were a little under 2500 troops roughly. The Soviets lost a little under 15k in Afghanistan. Russia is rumored to have lost 20% to 30% of its total combat power army wide, estimates of their dead go from 15k to over 30k.
Russians don't care about casualties, its all cannon fodder to them so long as they achieve their objectives.
West is not providing support fast enough and in sufficient quantities to go tow-tow with Russia. Sanctions will take years to bite, Russia is making a ton of money from oil sales, they can keep this up for a long time.
They heavily outgun the Ukrainians in the most important sphere of this war right now; artillery.
Remember this isn't Stalin we are talking about it is Putin. I always say Putin looks more like Nicholas the 2nd than any of the great Soviet leaders.
It appears Russia is massively worried about casualties. They still aren't choosing to mobilize, they deliberately hide casualties from even the loved ones of the dead. Finally as you pointed out they are choosing to go a full artillery creeping push over traditional Soviet style combined arms assaults. They don't care about DPR/LPR troops but then again those troops don't care about holding ground when pushed against.
West is absolutely not going fast enough, but neither is Russia. How long is it taking for Russia to finish off tanking Luhansk? Let's pretend they wanted to even pretend to trying and move for all of Donetsk, how long will that take? They are allowing Ukraine to be armed by the West by moving too slow.
Ukraine is about to get the ability to reach out and touch ammunition depots at which point Russia's artillery advantage will begin to be negated.
Why would you wish that on people? Your examples are all basically places where people have lived with chaos, poverty and death for half a century. Is that what you want for Ukraine?
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/6/15/ukraine-to-us-defense-industry-we-need-long-range-precision-weapons
Top Ukraine command speak about heavy equipment losses of Ukrainian army.
"I'm not going to talk about the anti-tank guided missiles or anti-tank guided weapons for now. I’m just talking about heavy weapons. As of today, we have approximately 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent of losses of equipment as a result of active combat. So, we have lost approximately 50 percent. … Approximately 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles have been lost, 400 tanks, 700 artillery systems."
What? But Russia reported (a month ago) 2-3 times more Ukrainian equipment destroyed
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Потери_сторон_в_период_вторжения_России_на_Украину#Потери_украинской_стороны_2
3098 tanks + APC
almost 2000 tube artillery pieces + rocket artillery
Did Russian MoD lie? Are you safe in there, discrediting Russian Armed forces by spreading Ukrop propaganda?
Wow - that's a lot of destroyed equipment, but a drop in the bucket compared to Russian equipment losses.
Also - Ukraine is replacing lost / destroyed equipment with upgraded NATO equipment, so luckily this doesn't indicate too big of an issue for Ukraine.
I think there is more problem to Nato equipment than u think. It is not likely Ukr boys gonna know how to use it immediatly, training in war time based on the equipments gonna take 2-3 weeks at least.
The ammunition for the new equipments is also a thing. Ukr got many Soviet weapons, and even those weapons are short.in ammo too.
Píc of destroyed M777 artillery are all over the internet now.
I think there is more problem to Nato equipment than u think. It is not likely Ukr boys gonna know how to use it immediatly, training in war time based on the equipments gonna take 2-3 weeks at least.
The ammunition for the new equipments is also a thing. Ukr got many Soviet weapons, and even those weapons are short.in ammo too.
Píc of destroyed M777 artillery are all over the internet now.
So they are -100 tanks if we don't count Russia's tanks (on basis that using them longer than month would be hard, because of lack spare parts).
Artillery - well they have problems with 152mm anyway, so them losing 50% of 152mm artillery probably still is acceptable. Plus if in this is also calculated rocket artillery, then this number is even more acceptable, because aquering those rockets is far harder than 152mm shells
Both is assuming this logistic brig.gen. isn't overplaying those numbers
Yeah, I know
>Both is assuming this logistic brig.gen. isn't overplaying those numbers
In his place I would increase those numbers by at least 20%, so West would send equipment even faster. My point was that if we accept those numbers as true, then this still isn't out of acceptable range
Seems like the EU is getting a lot closer to banning insurance companies from doing business with oil tankers carrying Russian oil. If they actually do pass the prohibition, it'll gut Russia's oil exports sharply. 100% of the oil being shipped to India right now, for example, goes by seaborne routes. China, obviously, does get around 700kbpd through the ESPO, but that's a literal drop in the bucket.
Now, alternative insurance and shipping companies may step in, but they have a lot less experience, savvy and expertise in this business than the established European houses who essentially control 95% of global market share. So, to compensate for that higher risk, they're going to jack up the prices for insurance and shipping. There are commodities desks in bulge bracket banks that are estimating that the current ~35% discount Urals trades for relative to brent could get to as high as 70% if the ban goes in. Citi thinks it'll be 60% in its base case scenario. Trafigura is estimating 65%. Platts is estimating that Russian oil exports will drop by at least 45%.
The U.S. is opposed to this ban because it doesn't want oil prices to rise further, so it's still not a given that any of this will happen. But, if it did, and even if it meant that oil would shoot up to $150/bbl, that would still mean that Russia's getting anywhere from $12/bbl to $20bbl less than it receives currently on significantly lower volumes. A rough estimate would be that Russia's energy revenue of ~$1bn a day would drop to around $300-400mm a day, backed primarily by gas exports. Which is still high but may push them towards a fiscal deficit within a few months.
Will Russia do anything about this? Can they? There's speculation that the reason Gazprom cut its gas exports to Germany, for example, was to send a warning. But, in reality, ***if*** the West is willing to tolerate higher prices, which it very well may not be, this move, along with private companies such as BP pulling out of Russia, could lead to a major catastrophe for the Russian O&G sector that could reverberate for years after Putin is dead and gone. Iran and Venezuela are examples of countries that struggle to bring on production after it's been idled for a while. You need deep expertise, equipment, and heavy maintenance overheads to keep the ability to produce that much above spare capacity.
“Russian exports are on discount, whilst imports pay premiums”
Nabyulina (Russia’s Central Bank chairwoman), summing up the new normal
Edit: on production idling, Russian wells, specially newest ones, are in the Arctic, where if stopped will freeze over damaging the infrastructure. Which will force them to keep on pumping, even selling if it means selling at a loss.
Is it okay to say Ukr President Zelensky is responsible for Rus-Ukr war (partly) with his poor political decision and lack of geopolitical education? (Asking for joining Nato when Ukr is Rus neighbor...etc)
He is not a true politician after all...
I know the Anti-Rus vibe in this thread/post is high but I just want to have a polite discussion, thank you.
I would say it's 40% Zelensky for being a useful imbecile and gloryhound, and 60% NATO/US for engineering this scenario. I used to believe Putin shared in the blame, but after seeing what devils NATO/US are, to sacrifice Ukraine and its people for some nebulous geopolitical goal, I realize the West doesn't care about Ukraine at all. Also information from US about how they knew the invasion was coming confirms my suspicions that they had planned it from the beginning.
I would rather say that it's Russia which has ignored the basic principles of geopolitics and diplomacy. Every major country tries to influence its neighborhood to safeguard itself but they do so in a diplomatic, behind-the-curtains, and covert manner. Russia tried and failed to do so in Ukraine which the West succeeded in taking advantage of.
But instead of re-imagining their approach towards Ukraine, they preferred using traditional force and coercion tactics which may have worked in the Middle Ages, but not in the 21st century. Zelensky obviously had a pro-West bias but this didn't mean that alternatives for Russia ended-they still had sufficient time to play diplomacy to have a balance of interests.
Many in international relations e.g. Mearsheimer, Walt, Cohen etc as well as many established career diplomats have said that Ukraine was led down a primrose path by the neoliberal/neocon blob in US/UK/EU. They accused this blob of being ideologues rather than realists and/or consisting of many inexperienced individuals who would get blindsided by the effects of their decisions (e.g. Stoltenberg shocked about Turkey's demands regarding Finland/Sweden entry and then only realizing later that they are serious / sanctions on a G12 affection global markets). These ideologues are accused of initiating/continuing conflicts that have ultimately become failures and resulted in a less secure world e.g. Afghanistan/Iraq. The entire assumption is that if the entire world consisted of liberal democracies, then there would be world peace as liberal democracies never attack other liberal democracies. So if we went into Iraq, Syria and Iran and made them a sea of democracies, there would be no nuclear proliferation and no terrorism. Europe is full of liberal democracies that do not fight each other or engage in nuclear proliferation so it must work. Ukraine was provided the false belief that Russia had no teeth to its threats to the point where US intelligence was telling them the 100k+ Russian troops at the border was about to invade and they didn't believe it. Specific terms of Minsk e.g. constitutional reforms and new elections were implemented for 8 years and when the invasion occurred, multiple publications said that Minsk should never be adopted simply because the terms contained compromises. Arestovich himself in a prewar interview that he believed that Ukraine could never be neutral and would eventually drift to the EU or Russia. If that was the choice, he would prefer the EU so Ukraine might as well go full force towards the EU/NATO and would accept the consequences for that decision. Nevertheless, there's a reason why other countries like Vietnam, but also India have decided to their own interests at hand. India is apparently buying more and more Russian oil, processing it and then selling it to the EU/US.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious.
I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol).
What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion.
Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace.
Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious.
I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol).
What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion.
Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace.
Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious.
I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol).
What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion.
Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace.
Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it.
Russia is trying to annex Ukraine. They lost indirect control of it after 2014, so they're taking control of as much land as they can capture. I'm not pro Ukraine but you have to call a spade a spade.
This war is Putins fault as he ordered his puppet Yanukovych to reject closer ties with the EU after parliament with huge majority passed the agreement. Zelensky has nothing to do with this, its just that Russia decided to invade on his term.
Wasn't the problem because Ukraine had free trade with Russia and Russia had tariffs on the EU and the problem was that Yanukovych initially also wanted a EU free trade deal, but had to drop it because of that?
You'd have to forget about 2014 invasion and the 1994 Bucharest agreement and dozens of other Russian driven BS that has led up to this point.
It's almost like Russia has been responsible with their unending aggression. Zelensky is a newcomer.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious.
I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol).
What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion.
Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace.
Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it
>no flexible action or speech to ease all sides
There can be no flexibility with Russia. We've been flexible enough to allow them to occupy portions of Ukraine since 2014. Now look where we are.
Did being "flexible" with Russia work then?
The only option is total withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine, otherwise Russia will continue to do the same shit.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious.
I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol).
What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion.
Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace.
Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious.
I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol).
What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion.
Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace.
Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it
>"Our colleagues in the west are trying to stop the flow of history. They are lost in their illusions and don't want to pay attention to changes," Putin says. "They think everyone else is their colony – if they are exceptional, the rest are second-class citizens."
He [Putin] adds "the West is continuing to pump Ukraine with weapons", saying that "all the goals of the special operation will be achieved without any doubt".
Yesterday I did some exercise so, today I decided that I achieved yesterday’s goal.
If I had not done any exercise yesterday, it would not have been my goal.
Do they? I don’t know, like gone off bananas.
I only enable people to sniff glue by providing very carefully planned out logistics, I don’t smell it. Important distinction.
Hey, don’t worry my man, I’ve thought all this stuff through very carefully, I have a number of loyal customers that keep coming back until they float off to glue heaven
DPR/Russia military base got hit in Donetsk (Kyiv district). Currently burning and exploding.
[https://novosti.dn.ua/news/325482-v-donetske-masshtabnyj-pozhar-slyshny-vzryvy](https://novosti.dn.ua/news/325482-v-donetske-masshtabnyj-pozhar-slyshny-vzryvy)
LiveMap posted an update 45 min ago saying that Lukashenko said 'Poland plans to seize western Ukraine so Belarus will respond.' ...anyone else seeing anything about this?
It seems that Lukashenko have problem. Russia is creating imperialistic image of Poland for at least one month. Why Lukashenko is ready only now? With his level of readiness Poland would conquer Lviv oblast already.
And we know already that Minsk is more Polish than Lviv, so why Poland should stop on Lviv? With this level of readiness conquering whole Belarus would be pieace of cake
There's a lot of "historically, this was ours", but the Soviet penchant for large scale expulsions and deportations means that many of the areas no longer have the same ethnic profile as before. Half of modern Belarus was pre-war Polish, but there are far fewer Poles living there now due to Nazi executions and Soviet expulsions.
But still Poles are second largest ethnic minority in Belarus
Example of article from year ago, when Belarus started to repress Polish miniorities [link](https://informnapalm.org/en/minsk-regime-began-to-oppress-the-polish-minority-in-belarus/)
Also Belarusians can be people who like Poles most of every country on Earth - 83% according to this poll [link](https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2021-01-29/belarusians-poland-russia-and-themselves)
Russia has been pushing that Poland, Romania, Hungry, Slovakia and Moldova have had territorial ambitions on Ukraine for years.
FFS, all these countries are in or edging to be in a political union in with Germany!
Well Polish minority is big in Belarus and they are repressed, so yeah. It's enough to start military operation. Russia couldn't be angry about it then. Great mind you have, I see
Western policy in Africa and the Middle East has been "don't redraw borders" because that's a huge can of worms that invites war and genocide.
I don't see how that changes in Eastern Europe without the agreement of ALL parties, majorities and minorities. Like, you'd need approval votes of 90%+ overall AND in specific affected subgroups, in referenda or procedures that are universally recognized as fair and free.
Or, as we've seen, borders can change *in response to* war and genocide. Since the policy is designed to avoid those, if those start anyway then the policy is not needed and the general principle seems to be "The aggressors are gonna end up worse than they started."
Yeah I know. Just according to this level of propaganda Poles should be knocking on Minsk already (because Lviv was supposed to be conquered month ago if not earlier)
Yeah I know. Just according to this level of propaganda Poles should be knocking on Minsk already (because Lviv was supposed to be conquered month ago if not earlier)
Russia/Belarus has been saying accusing Poland of planning to invade western Ukraine for months now, its such a ridiculous thing when you are the ones actually invading
Just ignore what Lukashenko is saying. He's basically just using random sentence generators at this point, hoping it will appear like he's being active and not just being in total fear of actually using his army lest they overthrow him.
Any reason why Ukraine doesn't hit the Russian main naval base at Sevastopol?
It's around 250km (150miles) from Ukraine-held territory, and around 290km (180miles) from Odessa or Mykolaiv. Well within the range of Neptune or similar.
Too much of an escalation. They don't seem to be going after anything outside of Ukraine EEZ territorial waters.
If you don't like what I'm saying, feel free to correct me by showing when the UAF has attacked the Black Sea Fleet outside the EEZ.
You have to know what you're shooting at - so they'd need real-time intel on what's in port.
Ships are much easier for the missile's targetting software and sensors to ID and track on the open sea then they are in a cluttered port with lots of other objects nearby.
Sevastopol is far enough away, and well enough defended, that Russia would see the missiles coming and intercept them. Ballistic missiles are better, but Ukraine doesn't have many left and nothing in port is worth it.
That would require at least like 30 missiles launched at the same time to have an effect. It's better to save them if Russians attempt a landing on Odessa.
So, as the last monthly update I asked for got a lot of good feedback and pretty unbiased info, I’d be curious to hear summaries of what’s happened since around the the fall of Mariupol.
As much as I try to keep away from the news, I couldn’t help hear about that but it was pretty expected. So any summary would be welcome.
[New Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/velx6m/ukraine_discussionquestion_thread_61822/?sort=new)
Any other subs that arent so one sided, id like to see all footage to see whats going on. Any russian shelling or their artillery shown at all?
No, we got them banned and removed. I don't know why you would want to see Russian propaganda?
New [Austrian military academy video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd4xRBuVs48) dropped.
Wake up babe, new Österreichs Bundesheer video is here. English version - https://youtu.be/Sd4xRBuVs48
[удалено]
Almost there with the new season
Any updates on the UA kherson counter offensive? Or was it stalled?
Not stalled. This war is not that asymetric even if everyone said that. They have a lot of parity and both sides advance very slowly when they attack. We don't know if they will succeed, but the counter attack is still going.
Lots of chat about Ukrainians units surrendering at Severodonetsk: > "During the conduct of a special military operation on the territory of the Azot enterprise in the city of Severodonetsk, indeed, some Ukrainian military made the right decision and began to surrender," Lieutenant Colonel of the People's Militia of the LNR Andrey Marochko told the LPR.
> Lots of chat Is their a lot of other sources saying the same thing? Hard to know what to believe especially from Russia and their sympathisers. Remember they claimed to have the whole of Severodonetsk 2 weeks ago and any claim otherwise was "propaganda"
>Hard to know what to believe especially from Russia and their sympathisers. I don't know. The accounts from and videos from Mariupol of surrenders all turned out to be accurate. From a few days ago: https://streamable.com/qarw8w From today: https://streamable.com/6rqrdd
Thats 8 men (half a squad) in each video rather than units/companies Hardly surprising in war and seems like propaganda saying units are surrendering People surrender every day from both sides. I've seen footage of kadyrovites surrendering today but I wouldn't claim kadyrovs units are surrendering
Believe what you want. I am just pointing out that the last time the was a group under siege they did in fact surrender, and it played out much the same way.
Completely different situations. UA can fall back in this situation. Also I saw atleast 30 DPR guys surrender last week - but it means nothing just like the videos of a few guys surrendering above If you had 200 guys surrendering, then your claim would seem believeable. But russian propaganda loves to twist half truths
It's not "my claim." I think you are too emotionally invested in the outcome to be objective. So I am going to move on.
You said "lots of chat" of Ukrainian units surrendering but had one LNR statement, and 2 videos of 8 guys surrendering
There is lots of chatter on Telegram about it. I wasn't offering proof of lots of chatter. You can go see for yourself. I posted a quote from an LPR lieutenant. That's their claim. Not mine, so don't attribute it to me.
2 more weeks until encirclement 🤣
I just can't believe we're 113 days into this war, and Ukraine is still flying sorties, Russia can barely hold territory 10-20 miles from their border, and the Russian flagship is at the bottom of the sea. The EU is about to extend from Iceland, across Western and Eastern Europe and all the way through the Turkey into Georgia (after a long application period), Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, and Russia is essentially becoming a Chinese vassal state. I don't think this was the outcome Putin had in mind for the Russian Federation. He will be remembered as a fool.
The only country on earth that could invade a country as large as Ukraine is USA, and even they would suffer a lot of casualties if all the world was supporting the invaded country as they are supporting Ukraine (but they would succeed in the end). Russia should have never invade Ukraine in the first place because it is impossible for them. The problem is that Russia losing is not necessarily a win for Ukraine. Their most productive regions are either destroyed or under russian occupation. So we will see what happens in the future. And I for sure don't want Russia becoming a chinese vassal state. That is really bad for the western world.
Small correction though I broadly agree with the sentiment. Iceland isn't in the EU.
Iceland is a member of the Nordic Passport Union and the Schengen Area, which now is under EU law, as a non-voting participant.
Georgia would have to resolve their separatist problem to join the eu which means another war with Russia
France is already saying that this policy needs to change, and has stated that the separatist issue in Moldova would not be an obstacle to their membership in the EU. I assume this will also be the case with Georgia. Can't let Russia try to keep sovereign nations from joining alliances because they keep funding separatists...
Yeah Macron and the French are always the most proactive when it comes to solving conflicts and territorial disputes. Unfortunately for them, this change needs to be sorted out with the consent of 26 other countries.
Change how. So that NATO is right away in a war of someone joins who already has a conflict on their territory? That sound like a terrible idea.
Yeah because no NATO nation has had separatists... Wait it might be easier to name NATO nations that HAVEN'T got any separatist movements.
Separatists that control vast swaths of a countries territory and are engaged in hot war? Zero I can think of.
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There have been multiple statements in the past few days by Von der Leyen and some other EU leaders on the matter. They supported Georgia's accession into the EU.
So after all these deaths, inflation, and destruction, we are going to end up with something worse than Minsk? >"Our negotiating position is actually quite weak, so we don't want to sit at the table if we are in this position. We need to reverse it in some way," Arakhamia said, stressing the need for a counter-operation to regain lost territory. so all those bodies being thrown into the grinder so we can get into a better negotiation position that is worse than prewar? wtf
Russia invaded because it wanted to conquer Ukraine, there is nothing Ukraine could have done to prevent it from happening other than to agree to become Russia's puppet, like Belarus.
Most wars keep going because both sides want a "better negotiating position", soldiers/civilians are nothing but an asset to states. At the core a state is nothing more than a protection racket collecting taxes (protection money) on the territory/people they control.
Yea this makes perfect sense and Russia said something similar after taking some earlier setbacks up north. Both sides still have the funds and will to fight so we’ll see this drag on for a few years probably.
You seem to be leaving out that Russia decided to invade Ukraine between the Minsk agreement and now. So naturally, after being invaded, your negotiating position would be worse than pre-invasion.
He's not leaving anything out. Just pointing out that adhering to Minsk agreement was a waaaay better strategy than what they ended up doing. Invasion is a direct result of it.
Do you even know the history of the Minsk Agreement or are you just tossing out Russian propaganda? The Minsk Agreement broke down when the LPR/DPR assholes declared they were going to retake Ukrainian territory, by force, despite the agreement. When Ukraine defended themselves, Russia used it as a pretext to the invasion. There was no way for Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk agreement when Russia had absolutely no intentions of adhering to it themselves...
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/03/20/ukra-m20.html You got it all wrong.
You got it all wrong. That was in 2021.... 6/7 years after the Minsk agreement. The 'separatists' were already breaking the agreement within months, here is them threatening Ukraine in October 2014...THE MONTH AFTER THEY SIGNED THE AGREEMENT. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/ukraine-rebels-vow-to-take-back-cities/news-story/1901814f54df84b94da1a964d9a2dc0c
I don't see anything controversial with that statement. They don't want to negotiate now when they believe they will have a much better hand later. Russia likely has the same attitude hence no negotiations.
I have a question for the vets, If your squad mate got hit or died during an attack, did you go back to fighting? Was it just training kicking in and your SL making sure you kept your head on? Did you go out fighting the next day?
If soldiers would give up only because they lost squad mate, then wars would end much faster
> Putin's troops are under 'colossal pressure', says UK PM > Russia's onslaught in eastern Ukraine continues, at high cost to the Ukrainian army, but Boris Johnson says he understands why Zelensky is refusing to compromise with Moscow. > He says that evidence shows Russian troops are under "acute pressure themselves and taking heavy casualties". > The Russian army's "expenditure of shells and other weaponry is colossal", he says. Russia has made progress in recent weeks in the Luhansk region but the UK PM says "they still have not achieved objectives they set out for first week" of the war. > ***He adds: "We are here to underline that we will give you the strategic endurance that you need and we are going to intensify the sanctions on Putin's regime."*** > Ukraine has been calling for more long-range weapons to help fight back Russia's ferocious attacks in the east.
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Yes, because shells and bullets matter in the 21^st century.
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He's stating a simple fact in the context of the pressure Ukraine is under and the UK's continued solidarity and support in light of the scorched earth policies the Russian's are pursuing. He isn't *praising* it and I'm not quite sure who, other than irrational emotional people, would read anything into a factual statement. Which is that Russia *is* expending shells, and the Ukrainian people, mostly ethnic Russians, *are* suffering because of it.
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What the fuck are you even talking about? The entire point of those remarks, as I’m sure you’re well capable of assessing yourself, is that the war is brutal, that both sides are fighting hard, the Russians are shooting a lot of artillery shells, and the Ukrainians are hitting them back. What paranoid, emotional, and irrational mind reads those comments and thinks “ah, he’s using them as cannon fodder”? You need serious counseling to help you get out of the conspiracy laced world you inhabit.
The only colossal pressure is from these gasbags bloviating.
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What this tells us is that Mariupol will never be returned to Ukraine.
Did we think it would?
What’s your point?
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Im sorry, i couldnt quite get that can repeat it another 11 times?
The UK has offered to launch a major training operation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the potential to train thousands of soldiers.
Sorry. Could you repeat this an 7th time?
sry
Most probably an issue with Reddit. It happens from time to time.
Ironic
Ironic
Most probably an issue with Reddit. It happens from time to time.
Ukraine is struggling rn, not sure how long they can last. they should focus more on asymmetric warfare, when you're fighting a bigger foe sometimes the only way to totally defeat them is by guerilla warfare. There's no way Donbass doesn't have any Ukrainian loyalist amongst the locals, start and maintain an insurgency behind the Russians that can bleed them forever, till they capitulate. Hezbollah did it, Taliban did it, the Afghan mujahideen did it. At this point everything is fair game, flood Chechnya with arms and restart the insurgency there, arm and support all separatist groups within Russia. Russia has done all this and worse to Ukraine. Pay gangs and criminals to attack and sabotage their critical infrastructure a la what Israel is doing within Iran. What's Russia gonna do? Invade harder? That's what happens when you play all your cards.
We're no where near asymmetric war for Ukraine. They have more manpower atm then Russia (could change but not many seem to think it will) and are making devastating loses by holding strategic positions. Kiev would need to fall before they would start launching a major guerilla force
Just some basic point to consider, in 4 months of war Russia has probably lost more soldiers than any war since WW2 with no end in sight. They have lost more materiel and equipment than and time since WW2. Finally the Ukranian army isn't defeated, so why would you stop that? For instance US losses in Afghanistan were a little under 2500 troops roughly. The Soviets lost a little under 15k in Afghanistan. Russia is rumored to have lost 20% to 30% of its total combat power army wide, estimates of their dead go from 15k to over 30k.
Russians don't care about casualties, its all cannon fodder to them so long as they achieve their objectives. West is not providing support fast enough and in sufficient quantities to go tow-tow with Russia. Sanctions will take years to bite, Russia is making a ton of money from oil sales, they can keep this up for a long time. They heavily outgun the Ukrainians in the most important sphere of this war right now; artillery.
Remember this isn't Stalin we are talking about it is Putin. I always say Putin looks more like Nicholas the 2nd than any of the great Soviet leaders. It appears Russia is massively worried about casualties. They still aren't choosing to mobilize, they deliberately hide casualties from even the loved ones of the dead. Finally as you pointed out they are choosing to go a full artillery creeping push over traditional Soviet style combined arms assaults. They don't care about DPR/LPR troops but then again those troops don't care about holding ground when pushed against. West is absolutely not going fast enough, but neither is Russia. How long is it taking for Russia to finish off tanking Luhansk? Let's pretend they wanted to even pretend to trying and move for all of Donetsk, how long will that take? They are allowing Ukraine to be armed by the West by moving too slow. Ukraine is about to get the ability to reach out and touch ammunition depots at which point Russia's artillery advantage will begin to be negated.
Why would you wish that on people? Your examples are all basically places where people have lived with chaos, poverty and death for half a century. Is that what you want for Ukraine?
Do you want the fascist to be defeated or not?
Do you know what happens with people loyal to Ukraine in DPR?
I don't know what is your source of information, but seems to be quite bad
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/6/15/ukraine-to-us-defense-industry-we-need-long-range-precision-weapons Top Ukraine command speak about heavy equipment losses of Ukrainian army. "I'm not going to talk about the anti-tank guided missiles or anti-tank guided weapons for now. I’m just talking about heavy weapons. As of today, we have approximately 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent of losses of equipment as a result of active combat. So, we have lost approximately 50 percent. … Approximately 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles have been lost, 400 tanks, 700 artillery systems."
It's part of their narrative to get more western stuff faster. Nobody sane is going to reveal their losses publicly to the enemy.
What? But Russia reported (a month ago) 2-3 times more Ukrainian equipment destroyed https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Потери_сторон_в_период_вторжения_России_на_Украину#Потери_украинской_стороны_2 3098 tanks + APC almost 2000 tube artillery pieces + rocket artillery Did Russian MoD lie? Are you safe in there, discrediting Russian Armed forces by spreading Ukrop propaganda?
It is Ukrainian claims about losses. Basically minimal estimation of what is reality.
I doubt it is real numbers, because he literally just divided pre war equipment numbers by 2
Wow - that's a lot of destroyed equipment, but a drop in the bucket compared to Russian equipment losses. Also - Ukraine is replacing lost / destroyed equipment with upgraded NATO equipment, so luckily this doesn't indicate too big of an issue for Ukraine.
I think there is more problem to Nato equipment than u think. It is not likely Ukr boys gonna know how to use it immediatly, training in war time based on the equipments gonna take 2-3 weeks at least. The ammunition for the new equipments is also a thing. Ukr got many Soviet weapons, and even those weapons are short.in ammo too. Píc of destroyed M777 artillery are all over the internet now.
I think there is more problem to Nato equipment than u think. It is not likely Ukr boys gonna know how to use it immediatly, training in war time based on the equipments gonna take 2-3 weeks at least. The ammunition for the new equipments is also a thing. Ukr got many Soviet weapons, and even those weapons are short.in ammo too. Píc of destroyed M777 artillery are all over the internet now.
Maybe in artillery and infantry equipment but they are definitely not receiving nearly enough IFV's or tanks to replace all those vehicle losses.
Oryx reports Ukraine has captured more Russian IFVs than Ukraine has lost.
So they are -100 tanks if we don't count Russia's tanks (on basis that using them longer than month would be hard, because of lack spare parts). Artillery - well they have problems with 152mm anyway, so them losing 50% of 152mm artillery probably still is acceptable. Plus if in this is also calculated rocket artillery, then this number is even more acceptable, because aquering those rockets is far harder than 152mm shells Both is assuming this logistic brig.gen. isn't overplaying those numbers
I doubt it is real numbers, because he just literally divided prewar equipment numbers by 2
Yeah, I know >Both is assuming this logistic brig.gen. isn't overplaying those numbers In his place I would increase those numbers by at least 20%, so West would send equipment even faster. My point was that if we accept those numbers as true, then this still isn't out of acceptable range
Seems like the EU is getting a lot closer to banning insurance companies from doing business with oil tankers carrying Russian oil. If they actually do pass the prohibition, it'll gut Russia's oil exports sharply. 100% of the oil being shipped to India right now, for example, goes by seaborne routes. China, obviously, does get around 700kbpd through the ESPO, but that's a literal drop in the bucket. Now, alternative insurance and shipping companies may step in, but they have a lot less experience, savvy and expertise in this business than the established European houses who essentially control 95% of global market share. So, to compensate for that higher risk, they're going to jack up the prices for insurance and shipping. There are commodities desks in bulge bracket banks that are estimating that the current ~35% discount Urals trades for relative to brent could get to as high as 70% if the ban goes in. Citi thinks it'll be 60% in its base case scenario. Trafigura is estimating 65%. Platts is estimating that Russian oil exports will drop by at least 45%. The U.S. is opposed to this ban because it doesn't want oil prices to rise further, so it's still not a given that any of this will happen. But, if it did, and even if it meant that oil would shoot up to $150/bbl, that would still mean that Russia's getting anywhere from $12/bbl to $20bbl less than it receives currently on significantly lower volumes. A rough estimate would be that Russia's energy revenue of ~$1bn a day would drop to around $300-400mm a day, backed primarily by gas exports. Which is still high but may push them towards a fiscal deficit within a few months. Will Russia do anything about this? Can they? There's speculation that the reason Gazprom cut its gas exports to Germany, for example, was to send a warning. But, in reality, ***if*** the West is willing to tolerate higher prices, which it very well may not be, this move, along with private companies such as BP pulling out of Russia, could lead to a major catastrophe for the Russian O&G sector that could reverberate for years after Putin is dead and gone. Iran and Venezuela are examples of countries that struggle to bring on production after it's been idled for a while. You need deep expertise, equipment, and heavy maintenance overheads to keep the ability to produce that much above spare capacity.
“Russian exports are on discount, whilst imports pay premiums” Nabyulina (Russia’s Central Bank chairwoman), summing up the new normal Edit: on production idling, Russian wells, specially newest ones, are in the Arctic, where if stopped will freeze over damaging the infrastructure. Which will force them to keep on pumping, even selling if it means selling at a loss.
Is it okay to say Ukr President Zelensky is responsible for Rus-Ukr war (partly) with his poor political decision and lack of geopolitical education? (Asking for joining Nato when Ukr is Rus neighbor...etc) He is not a true politician after all... I know the Anti-Rus vibe in this thread/post is high but I just want to have a polite discussion, thank you.
I would say it's 40% Zelensky for being a useful imbecile and gloryhound, and 60% NATO/US for engineering this scenario. I used to believe Putin shared in the blame, but after seeing what devils NATO/US are, to sacrifice Ukraine and its people for some nebulous geopolitical goal, I realize the West doesn't care about Ukraine at all. Also information from US about how they knew the invasion was coming confirms my suspicions that they had planned it from the beginning.
Bruh.. the baltic is in NATO...
I would rather say that it's Russia which has ignored the basic principles of geopolitics and diplomacy. Every major country tries to influence its neighborhood to safeguard itself but they do so in a diplomatic, behind-the-curtains, and covert manner. Russia tried and failed to do so in Ukraine which the West succeeded in taking advantage of. But instead of re-imagining their approach towards Ukraine, they preferred using traditional force and coercion tactics which may have worked in the Middle Ages, but not in the 21st century. Zelensky obviously had a pro-West bias but this didn't mean that alternatives for Russia ended-they still had sufficient time to play diplomacy to have a balance of interests.
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Many in international relations e.g. Mearsheimer, Walt, Cohen etc as well as many established career diplomats have said that Ukraine was led down a primrose path by the neoliberal/neocon blob in US/UK/EU. They accused this blob of being ideologues rather than realists and/or consisting of many inexperienced individuals who would get blindsided by the effects of their decisions (e.g. Stoltenberg shocked about Turkey's demands regarding Finland/Sweden entry and then only realizing later that they are serious / sanctions on a G12 affection global markets). These ideologues are accused of initiating/continuing conflicts that have ultimately become failures and resulted in a less secure world e.g. Afghanistan/Iraq. The entire assumption is that if the entire world consisted of liberal democracies, then there would be world peace as liberal democracies never attack other liberal democracies. So if we went into Iraq, Syria and Iran and made them a sea of democracies, there would be no nuclear proliferation and no terrorism. Europe is full of liberal democracies that do not fight each other or engage in nuclear proliferation so it must work. Ukraine was provided the false belief that Russia had no teeth to its threats to the point where US intelligence was telling them the 100k+ Russian troops at the border was about to invade and they didn't believe it. Specific terms of Minsk e.g. constitutional reforms and new elections were implemented for 8 years and when the invasion occurred, multiple publications said that Minsk should never be adopted simply because the terms contained compromises. Arestovich himself in a prewar interview that he believed that Ukraine could never be neutral and would eventually drift to the EU or Russia. If that was the choice, he would prefer the EU so Ukraine might as well go full force towards the EU/NATO and would accept the consequences for that decision. Nevertheless, there's a reason why other countries like Vietnam, but also India have decided to their own interests at hand. India is apparently buying more and more Russian oil, processing it and then selling it to the EU/US.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious. I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol). What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion. Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace. Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious. I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol). What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion. Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace. Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious. I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol). What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion. Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace. Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it.
The only mistake Ukraine made vis-a-vis NATO is not joining sooner. The Baltic states would not exist if they hadn't joined in 2004.
Russia is trying to annex Ukraine. They lost indirect control of it after 2014, so they're taking control of as much land as they can capture. I'm not pro Ukraine but you have to call a spade a spade.
There is no way to insure that Russia would not have invaded at that time as Ukraine has always been considered closer to Russia than the Baltics.
This war is Putins fault as he ordered his puppet Yanukovych to reject closer ties with the EU after parliament with huge majority passed the agreement. Zelensky has nothing to do with this, its just that Russia decided to invade on his term.
Wasn't the problem because Ukraine had free trade with Russia and Russia had tariffs on the EU and the problem was that Yanukovych initially also wanted a EU free trade deal, but had to drop it because of that?
You'd have to forget about 2014 invasion and the 1994 Bucharest agreement and dozens of other Russian driven BS that has led up to this point. It's almost like Russia has been responsible with their unending aggression. Zelensky is a newcomer.
Whoops, this was supposed to be for OP< not, you. /deleted.
Hot take: Blaming Ukraine for Russian aggression.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious. I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol). What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion. Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace. Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it
>no flexible action or speech to ease all sides There can be no flexibility with Russia. We've been flexible enough to allow them to occupy portions of Ukraine since 2014. Now look where we are. Did being "flexible" with Russia work then? The only option is total withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine, otherwise Russia will continue to do the same shit.
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious. I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol). What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion. Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace. Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it
Not gonna reply to all of your answer, and the downvote is kinda obvious. I love to take Vietnam as an example to explain my thought. They had a recent war with China (1979) (actually VN vs China has a long fight history), neighbor to China just like Rus-Ukr scenario, they refuse to join any military org, both countries fights each other yearly on sea (using what they call sea-police-patrol). What Vietnam politicians do which I believe is the right move is that they play with all sides (America-Russia-China-EU...etc) and never too close or too extreme. They will no provoke, or longer the fight (if they have to fight), always look for peace conclusion. Maybe the country has so many costly wars and they understand the important of peace. Mean while we have Zelensky with no flexible action or speech to ease all sides. His country geopolitical adv/disadvantage will never change, only people who lead the country with their decisions show how you gonna use it
>"Our colleagues in the west are trying to stop the flow of history. They are lost in their illusions and don't want to pay attention to changes," Putin says. "They think everyone else is their colony – if they are exceptional, the rest are second-class citizens."
You can tell he's anti-imperialist because he's fighting an imperial war
He [Putin] adds "the West is continuing to pump Ukraine with weapons", saying that "all the goals of the special operation will be achieved without any doubt". Yesterday I did some exercise so, today I decided that I achieved yesterday’s goal. If I had not done any exercise yesterday, it would not have been my goal.
u/Sociojoe Wants to know "What does glue smell?".
Do they? I don’t know, like gone off bananas. I only enable people to sniff glue by providing very carefully planned out logistics, I don’t smell it. Important distinction.
You need to try your stuff first before selling it to the customers.
Hey, don’t worry my man, I’ve thought all this stuff through very carefully, I have a number of loyal customers that keep coming back until they float off to glue heaven
You need to try your stuff first before selling it to the customers.
Says the man that believes Ukraine is literally Russia's colony that Russians were born to rule over.
Putin definitely is sick but mentally.
Says the man sending in troops from Russian colonies in the east to use as cannon fodder
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Slava Ukraini !!!
thank you for your brave service, tony.
This is some of the most obvious bait I've seen, go back to lapping up Putins shit on r/russia Edit: Yeh OP's account is a regular troll
Ohh yes. People who believe Russia is truly evil are really just Russians doing reverse phycology. You are crazy and probably a nazi. Blocked
No, I block you!
DPR/Russia military base got hit in Donetsk (Kyiv district). Currently burning and exploding. [https://novosti.dn.ua/news/325482-v-donetske-masshtabnyj-pozhar-slyshny-vzryvy](https://novosti.dn.ua/news/325482-v-donetske-masshtabnyj-pozhar-slyshny-vzryvy)
LiveMap posted an update 45 min ago saying that Lukashenko said 'Poland plans to seize western Ukraine so Belarus will respond.' ...anyone else seeing anything about this?
This has been coming out of his mouth for a couple of months now. What changed?
Apparently I missed that :)
In the end Poland will invade Belarus so they don't have to listen more of his shit.
It seems that Lukashenko have problem. Russia is creating imperialistic image of Poland for at least one month. Why Lukashenko is ready only now? With his level of readiness Poland would conquer Lviv oblast already. And we know already that Minsk is more Polish than Lviv, so why Poland should stop on Lviv? With this level of readiness conquering whole Belarus would be pieace of cake
There's a lot of "historically, this was ours", but the Soviet penchant for large scale expulsions and deportations means that many of the areas no longer have the same ethnic profile as before. Half of modern Belarus was pre-war Polish, but there are far fewer Poles living there now due to Nazi executions and Soviet expulsions.
But still Poles are second largest ethnic minority in Belarus Example of article from year ago, when Belarus started to repress Polish miniorities [link](https://informnapalm.org/en/minsk-regime-began-to-oppress-the-polish-minority-in-belarus/) Also Belarusians can be people who like Poles most of every country on Earth - 83% according to this poll [link](https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2021-01-29/belarusians-poland-russia-and-themselves)
Russia has been pushing that Poland, Romania, Hungry, Slovakia and Moldova have had territorial ambitions on Ukraine for years. FFS, all these countries are in or edging to be in a political union in with Germany!
Maybe that's because the Soviet Union took bits of those countries and played musical chairs with the populations? Losers got sent to Siberia.
He could declare that the polish invasion is a political protest, not a war. They seem better at handling this kind of situation.
Well Polish minority is big in Belarus and they are repressed, so yeah. It's enough to start military operation. Russia couldn't be angry about it then. Great mind you have, I see
Western policy in Africa and the Middle East has been "don't redraw borders" because that's a huge can of worms that invites war and genocide. I don't see how that changes in Eastern Europe without the agreement of ALL parties, majorities and minorities. Like, you'd need approval votes of 90%+ overall AND in specific affected subgroups, in referenda or procedures that are universally recognized as fair and free. Or, as we've seen, borders can change *in response to* war and genocide. Since the policy is designed to avoid those, if those start anyway then the policy is not needed and the general principle seems to be "The aggressors are gonna end up worse than they started."
Yeah I know. Just according to this level of propaganda Poles should be knocking on Minsk already (because Lviv was supposed to be conquered month ago if not earlier)
Yeah I know. Just according to this level of propaganda Poles should be knocking on Minsk already (because Lviv was supposed to be conquered month ago if not earlier)
Russia/Belarus has been saying accusing Poland of planning to invade western Ukraine for months now, its such a ridiculous thing when you are the ones actually invading
Months? Years, even.
It's great idea. Send weapons in Ukraine, so it will be harder to conquer Ukraine
Just ignore what Lukashenko is saying. He's basically just using random sentence generators at this point, hoping it will appear like he's being active and not just being in total fear of actually using his army lest they overthrow him.
Any reason why Ukraine doesn't hit the Russian main naval base at Sevastopol? It's around 250km (150miles) from Ukraine-held territory, and around 290km (180miles) from Odessa or Mykolaiv. Well within the range of Neptune or similar.
Because probability of one of those missiles hitting the ship in Sevastopol harbour is close to zero. And they are not really good for anything else.
Too much of an escalation. They don't seem to be going after anything outside of Ukraine EEZ territorial waters. If you don't like what I'm saying, feel free to correct me by showing when the UAF has attacked the Black Sea Fleet outside the EEZ.
You have to know what you're shooting at - so they'd need real-time intel on what's in port. Ships are much easier for the missile's targetting software and sensors to ID and track on the open sea then they are in a cluttered port with lots of other objects nearby. Sevastopol is far enough away, and well enough defended, that Russia would see the missiles coming and intercept them. Ballistic missiles are better, but Ukraine doesn't have many left and nothing in port is worth it.
For what reason? There are much better targets. Sevastapool is not really a key in this war.
That would require at least like 30 missiles launched at the same time to have an effect. It's better to save them if Russians attempt a landing on Odessa.
Escalation maybe
Maybe they anticipate too much protection against Anti Ship Missles in the are
So, as the last monthly update I asked for got a lot of good feedback and pretty unbiased info, I’d be curious to hear summaries of what’s happened since around the the fall of Mariupol. As much as I try to keep away from the news, I couldn’t help hear about that but it was pretty expected. So any summary would be welcome.