Ukraine Conflict - "An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war"

[pmp10]

Russian prank call to Ukrainian official has recently been leaked.
Among a lot of minor details there is a very interesting statement that Ukraine is about to run out of S300 and BUK missiles.

Apparently they have been strongly pushing US and NATO for the old HAWK systems.

[Chilloutman]

well thats expected, they can't produce them themself and obviously Russia is not going to supply them so they need western AA missiles systems

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Another big smoking incident...

Also, another military plane crash into a civilian building (in Siberia, Russia).

We're unlikely to get the data, but I would love to see

a) the incidence of fires in Russia before and after the war began, and

b) the incidence of (military) plane crashes before and after the war began.

The latter number would be more difficult to analyse, because there are quite certainly many more military flights now than before the war, but it might be telling anyway. The incidence of these fires would be particularly fascinating. Have they doubled? Tripled? What? Not changed?

 

Later, EDIT: here's an example of what Russian TV can be like. This is the kind of the stuff that the state-funded RT shows. It is quite something.

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by xzar_monty

[Mamoulian War]

According to Denis Davydov, Ukrainian pilot youtuber, the crashes of Russian planes are much higher, compared to typical non-war days and compared to current Ukrainian non-combat crashes. But the exact numbers are impossible to get. And yes, his views might be not objective on it. Although it seems to me that his statements might be plausible… 

[xzar_monty]

Yeah -- as I said, we're unlikely to get the data.

Personally, I find the fires much more interesting, because if the numbers have gone up a lot, it suggests sabotage and stuff like that, which is encouraging in the sense that it would seem to show there is some serious resistance inside Russia as well. Whether it's Russian resistance, Ukrainian resistance or some other non-Russian resistance is of course very hard to say unless people start coming up. (But then, more than 130 people have confessed to murdering Olof Palme, and I'm pretty sure not all of them did it.)

[Malcador]

Also, can be poor maintenance combined with stress of wartime.  Not quite sure it's worth the leap to Ukrainian saboteurs and such.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Malcador

[ShadySands]

Isn't that the Night Watch/Day Watch guy?

[Sarex]

12 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Isn't that the Night Watch/Day Watch guy?

The writer?

[xzar_monty]

29 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Also, can be poor maintenance combined with stress of wartime.  Not quite sure it's worth the leap to Ukrainian saboteurs and such.

Without knowing the pre war numbers and their relation to the current numbers, I don't think it's worth leaping anywhere.

There have been several huge forest fires in Russia, some of which you could smell well outside Russia, in the 2000s. These were widely reported, at least in the Nordic countries. Apart from them, however, I can't remember a single report concerning a fire in Russia -- but that can't be seen as proof of anything, in my view. Maybe fires like the ones we've recently seen reported have always been fairly commonplace; after all, building standards in Russia are awful, maintenance is likely to be poor and the amount of care people generally afford to their surroundings is close to nil. (Ever seen a roadside rest stop or even a "national park" in Russia? Thou shalt recognize it by the rubbish, general waste, toilet paper and enormous piles of shíte everywhere. Picture the exact opposite of Japan and you're almost on your way to getting there.)

But if the incidence of fires has skyrocketed, I might at least hop a little, if not exactly leap. But we're unlikely to get the data, as I said.

Edited October 23, 2022 by xzar_monty

[Malcador]

Israel bombed a drone factory the Iranians were operating in Syria.  This is the rule based international order, right ?

But at the least maybe that'll make people stop bashing Israel for not backing Ukraine to the hilt.

[ShadySands]

25 minutes ago, Sarex said:

The writer?

Yeah

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

Isn't that the Night Watch/Day Watch guy?

If the ND Watch guy is Sergey Lukyanenko, then it is him.

[ShadySands]

It's him, realized I'm on the internet and looked it up.

[Mamoulian War]

 

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, Malcador said:

Israel bombed a drone factory the Iranians were operating in Syria.  This is the rule based international order, right ?

But at the least maybe that'll make people stop bashing Israel for not backing Ukraine to the hilt.

Its okay Malc, I  won't miss any sleep about Assad's war machine being bombed and the less Iranian drones the better 

[Zoraptor]

Iran isn't manufacturing drones in Syria. What they would be doing is assembling them from component parts sent from Iran (which is, indeed, what the SOHR says). They will definitely not be assembling them then sending them on to Russia, nor shipping them to Russia via Syria.

Those will just get flown in over- or shipped via- the Caspian.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Zoraptor

[Gorth]

11 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

But if the incidence of fires has skyrocketed, I might at least hop a little, if not exactly leap. But we're unlikely to get the data, as I said.

Considering that the number of fires, forest and bush fires in particular, but fires in general seems to have sky rocketed world wide the last decade, it would be weird if Russia didn't have more fires than usual (edit: They could just have been under reported in the past, because it didn't look good officially). Most of the world (I think, subjectively) blames it on global warming. Except Murdoch Media who blames it on sabotage, an international conspiracy to hurt the fossil fuel industry

[xzar_monty]

3 hours ago, Gorth said:

Considering that the number of fires, forest and bush fires in particular, but fires in general seems to have sky rocketed world wide the last decade, it would be weird if Russia didn't have more fires than usual (edit: They could just have been under reported in the past, because it didn't look good officially).

Oh, all that's true, and especially the under reporting part sounds perfectly plausible.

But my point was mostly along the lines of whether the fires have skyrocketed since the war started. That's unlikely to be environmental.

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Oh, all that's true, and especially the under reporting part sounds perfectly plausible.

But my point was mostly along the lines of whether the fires have skyrocketed since the war started. That's unlikely to be environmental.

Maybe the firefighters got drafted into the army (no manpower left for control fires)

[xzar_monty]

Could be. Maybe there's no manpower to control fires, even if there's birdpower to down planes. [The bird explanation could be true, btw.]

 

[Mamoulian War]

These must be birds from Ukrainian biolabs RT was talking few months ago…

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

These must be birds from Ukrainian biolabs RT was talking few months ago…

I thought those labs were creating mutant soldiers? But they clearly creating birds as well 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-says-its-losing-because-ukraine-has-experimental-mutant-troops-created-in-secret-biolabss

 

[Malcador]

Tangential but an amusing bit of entitlement -

 

[Elerond]

51 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Tangential but an amusing bit of entitlement -

 

Funny thing is that currently Iran gets almost automatic place in World Cup from Asian Qualifiers because how few Asian countries are able to run high level football league, but even though Iran has been in World Cup now 6 (1978, 1998, 2006, 2014, 2018 and 2022) times it has been able only to win two matches, one against USA (1998) and one against Morocco (2018).

Ukraine has had hard time to qualify from European qualifiers, as they have qualified only once (2006), then they advanced to knock out state where they advanced in Quarter finale where they lost to Italy, which won cup that year.

But as how qualifiers are done in World Cup, Iran isn't able to take place from Ukraine or vice versa.

World Cup is mainly just Germany vs Italy vs Brazil (as they have won 13 of 21 cups) and others are there just make it look like it is world wide event 

[Malcador]

13 minutes ago, Elerond said:

But as how qualifiers are done in World Cup, Iran isn't able to take place from Ukraine or vice versa.

Yep.  But who knows, maybe they'll change the rules