kanisatha

The US just delivered the first batch of NASAMS.

Hardly anyone will recognize the sham referenda. Even countries that abstained in previous UN votes will reject these sham referenda because otherwise they would be supporting one country unilaterally using force to take another country's territory which will surely come back to bite them on the ass at some point in the future. So even countries like China and India will not accept Russia forcibly taking territory that everyone in the UN recognizes and accepts as Ukrainian territory. They're not gonna' want to see a similar situation vis-a-vis Taiwan or Kashmir.

Well, according to the official Russian government line, this is NOT a general draft or conscription. Under Russia's preexisting system, anyone who served in the military in any capacity and for any length of time and then left the service is in the "reserves" until a certain age is reached (40 or 50?). Russia has, on paper, 900,000 such "reservists." It is these reservists who are being "mobilized," which is to say being called back into service, and, according to Putin's and Shoigu's statements, only a select number of them accounting for one-third of all those available. Then, of the 300k being called up, the expectation is that only about 10% will be available for combat duty (so, excluding those who are physically unfit, ill, more useful in the civilian economy, better used for some non-combat role, etc.).

With respect to the mobilization numbers, I read somewhere that the Russian government itself has said that 300,000 is the number of conscripts eligible for mobilization (former service members called back to active duty) under the announced plan, but that they expect only about 10% of them will end up being usable for combat duty.

I also expect (hope?) the Russian nuke threat is just political theater. But Putin himeself, plus others (including the Serbian president?) have said since in public statements that Putin is not bluffing about using nukes to defend annexed "Russian territory." As for these mobilized geezers, yeah it boggles the mind to think Putin believes these losers can turn the tide on the battlefield. They just lost the last of their T-72 force, abandoned in Izyum. They're now relegated to using T-62s and BMP-1s taken out of storage since the 1960s. Meanwhile, Western arms supplies are only increasing, in both quantity and quality, right now. Even the Biden Administration is supposedly still, in secret, working through the details of giving the Ukrainians Patriot and F-16s. This is why Medvedev again today doubled down in the Duma saying the US is now almost a combatant in Ukraine.

Has there been any reason given for why gold dragon is being abandoned in this way?

Called it. Medvedev said in the Duma today that once the referendums are held and those territories become a part of Russia the strategic equation in the world will change because Russia will be defending Russian territory and Ukraine will be the invader. He also then added that Russia can use "all means available" to defend its own territory. So Putin's last, desperate plan is: Hold referenda in which 110% of the people vote to become part of Russia. Pass laws annexing those territories. Declare that Russia is now merely defending its own territory, and Ukraine is the invading aggressor. Demand that Ukraine stop its invasion of Russia or else Russia will use nukes to stop the Ukrainians. Count on the West not having the guts to follow through with its promise that Russia crossing the red line of using nukes would result in NATO being drawn into the war.

I think the referendums are an attempt by Putin to mollify China and India by being able to try and tell them he is only fighting to protect Russian territory and not invading Ukrainian territory (since they both are veru concerned about sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine). It's silly, though, because not even Xi is going to be fooled by any of this. Smacks of desperation in Moscow. Edit: Posted at the same time as @Elerond. We're essentially making the same point.

Same here. I also like Civ 5 and still play it, having skipped both 4 and 6.

Back on the Chain Gang is one of my all-time favs. The guitar riffs are pure awesome! Was listening to my Best of the Pretenders CD just the other day.

Interesting stories about increasing frustration with Putin in Beijing and New Delhi: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/world/europe/putin-modi-war-ukraine.html https://www.ft.com/content/48301890-c8b2-4ed9-b977-b28d52d51f02

Today NATO released an assessment that Russia's most elite and premiere large-scale army formation, the 1st Guards Tank Army, operating in the Donbas, is now effectively a ghost formation with no military capability, and that without 1 GTA Russia no longer has the capacity for conventional military operations against NATO now and for several years to come. WOO-HOO!! All you good folks in the Baltics, Finland, and eastern Europe can now relax and breath easy.

Indeed. The Ukrainian strategy here is brilliant. Gievn RU softness currently in the Donbas the UA is hitting them hard there, including the new offensive now into Luhansk. But the Donbas is what Putin and co. have been insisting the war is ALL about now for months. So how can they justify losing the Donbas while holding onto Kherson and the southern areas? So I now fully expect the Russians will have no choice but to pull out a lot of their forces in the south, including their best forces there, and move them (back) to the Donbas. And the instant that happens, based on that awesome real-time battlefield intel from the US, the UA will launch a big push in the south to take advantage of the Russian pullout. But even in the Donbas, those RU reinforcements will end up being too little too late (and they will take a pounding from UA artillery as they move). Many Western intel analysts now say RU has lost the ability to mount large-scale offensive ops, and can barely handle large-scale defensive ops. This is why all of this could be the endgame for the war ... and maybe why Lavrov yesterday finally came out of the hole he's hiding in to say that he was 'ready' for negotiations with the Ukrainians whenever they are willing to talk. Side-note: We can now also see in Libya, Syria, and the south Caucasus anti-Russian forces on the move because they all sense Russia's conventional military weakness.

As a political scientist I am quite impressed how well, and consistently well, Zelenskiy has been with his political performance since the RU invasion. This particular line in that interview, which I had seen elsewhere, is pure political gold (and just plain awesome too): "Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your 'friendship and brotherhood.' But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food ... and WITHOUT you!" (his emphasis)

Yup, this is the biggest part of the disaster for RU forces in the east right now: that their forces are abandoning most heavy equipment in their frenzy to escape UA encirclement. Tanks, IFVs, artillery, rocket launchers, SAMs, everything being abandoned as they flee, which is not only a boon to the UA but also will make it very difficult for Russia to reconstitute new units from the remnants of their defeated forces. Bad enough they're deploying reserve units with untrained conscripts, now those conscripts will not have decent equipment either even while the equipment of the UA is only getting better and better.

According to US defense sources, the UA is operationally using only five tactical brigade groups in their offensive in the east. And they confirm that US Special Operations Command is relaying tactical battlefield intel on the Russians in real-time to the UA. So this is why my guess is the US saw the redeployment of RU forces from Khar'kiv to Kherson (which included RU spetsnaz and airborne units which are the last remaining Tier 1 RU units), and gave UA real-time intel on exactly where to attack on the eastern front. The UA in turn has been excellent in acting very fast on the intel they're receiving, and being able to make very rapid battlefield changes to their attack plans, because the US is literally telling them in real-time exactly where RU units are located and the strength of those RU units. Furthermore, read this article about how awesome the triple-7 has been in UA hands; way more of a game-changer than the much-more widely discussed HiMARS systems. The UA is now in the position of teaching us and NATO how to effectively fight a modern conventional war in an urban setting. https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/the-m777-is-deadly-in-ukrainian-hands-but-even-deadlier-in-americas/

LOL! Cannot resist the call of D&D. I even backed this game on Kickstarter. But it is definitely a case of loving it in spite of it being TB. I think that for 5e D&D, TB combat is tolerable because it can work well when done properly, as TA has done with Solasta. It's quite amazing, though, that a tiny developer like TA, using Kickstarter funds, has done a waaaaaaaaay better job of creating a decent combat system than Larian has done with BG3.

There's no "failure" in Kherson. It's a harder fight there, and yet UA is making slow but steady progress. My analysis is that the Kherson front was always the main front for the UA offensive. Then, when the Russians shifted forces from the Khar'kiv area to reinforce the south, the Ukrainians very quickly organized an opportunistic offensive in Khar'kiv. It's not just the significant quantities of relevant weaponry the US is giving Ukraine but also the high-quality, real-time intel the US is feeding them that is a game-changer.

Having finally finished the OC of Solasta, I'm now working my way through the Lost Valley DLC campaign. It, along with all the other improvements and additions to the base game from the DLC, have been excellent thus far.

Yup, and sugar too. Even restaurants put sugar into everything including their entres. So very annoying. I hate even the slightest of sweetness in my main meal. Sweetness should be limited to drinks, desserts and some breakfast foods and that's it.

Sure. And I agree. Not a fan of ZH myself (hadn't even ever heard of them until this thread). My point was entirely about Wikipedia's complete lack of credibility in talking about anyone else's ideology.

This is the fundamental problem with all social and behavioral sciences, and I have begun to question the science of social/behavioral research. And I say this as a social/behavioral scientist myself.

Wikipedia says this about anything that is not left. Wikipedia's own ideological leanings are quite well established.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/08/guerilla-warfare-ukraines-partisans-are-taking-the-war-to-russia/

Damn. Scrubbed for today. Engine bleed is dangerous, so I'd have to agree with the call. Waiting on the new launch date.