Ukraine Conflict - conflict continues

[Mamoulian War]

Well, the Girkin situation is pretty interesting, as he openly condemned Prigozhin’s mutiny and voiced support of Shoygu and Gerasimov. And despite that, it is him, who ended up arrested. This might trigger some “russian patriots”. Oh, And the Article on which he was arrested is used a lot to get down political opponents. I am curious how this turns out.

[Malcador]

He went off on Putin recently and has taken shots at him, the MoD, etc. a lot in past. People used to wonder how he was still around.   Is a funny juxtaposition with Prigozhin, though

[Zoraptor]

7 hours ago, Malcador said:

Probably should have restricted that percentage to Ukraine, could be 50/50, 70/30, 10/90..

They can't because as above how the proportions resolve separately look awful if you're claiming Africa will starve when the deal ends. Knowing Turkish media somewhat they've almost certainly got their figures from a Research Institute/ Think Tank that has- absolutely deliberately- fudged them rather than done it themselves. The contribution resolves to ~94% Russian, 6% Ukrainian ie for a country that got half its grain from the two 47% of its total would be Russian on average, 3% Ukrainian. It's more for some, (Egypt, Kenya, Libya) but a lot lot less for most others. Indeed, Russia exported more grain to Africa specifically than Ukraine's total exports to everyone full stop. It's basically the same reason the EU aggregated their grain deal figures to developed: developing, it looks a lot better than 93:7 as it would be for RoW: Africa and there are no awkward questions about why Spain with 50 million people buys considerably more Ukrainian grain than Africa's 1 billion does...

(There are a few issues such as not being able to directly compare like to like, now- the closest being the Al Jazeera article linked in the previous post which is a year old. Can't see any way they'd be enough to alter things significantly though)

Edited July 21, 2023 by Zoraptor

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

They can't because as above how the proportions resolve separately look awful if you're claiming Africa will starve when the deal ends. Knowing Turkish media somewhat they've almost certainly got their figures from a Research Institute/ Think Tank that has- absolutely deliberately- fudged them rather than done it themselves. The contribution resolves to ~94% Russian, 6% Ukrainian ie for a country that got half its grain from the two 47% of its total would be Russian on average, 3% Ukrainian. It's more for some, (Egypt, Kenya, Libya) but a lot lot less for most others. Indeed, Russia exported more grain to Africa specifically than Ukraine's total exports to everyone full stop. It's basically the same reason the EU aggregated their grain deal figures to developed: developing, it looks a lot better than 93:7 as it would be for RoW: Africa and there are no awkward questions about why Spain with 50 million people buys considerably more Ukrainian grain than Africa's 1 billion does...

(There are a few issues such as not being able to directly compare like to like, now- the closest being the Al Jazeera article linked in the previous post which is a year old. Can't see any way they'd be enough to alter things significantly though)

I want to ask you a simple  but important question and if you can answer this then it make me feel much better about what Africa is going to face due to Russia cancelling the grain deal 

Lets say for argument sake 1000 tons of grain per month come through the Black Sea and only 2% of that goes to Africa. But that 2% is what they   use and UN allocates to certain African countries. Where is this grain going to come from now?

There are supply chain realities and transport issues so that is also a consideration but I am  more interested in  where additional  grain that is now blocked  is going to come from?

[Malcador]

Canada and the US wouldn't mind making a buck off this crisis.

[Mamoulian War]

After the Kerch bridge accident, While the Russians are destroying grain, wheat, barley and the oldest cathedral in Odessa, Ukraine destroyed two of the largest Russian ammo warehouses behind the front, thus hampering supply of frontlines, which already caused notable reduction of activity of RU artillery on Zaporizhzhia front.

[Malcador]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-lack-of-weaponry-and-training-risks-stalemate-in-fight-with-russia-f51ecf9

( https://archive.is/D6CQZ )

"When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day."

Sort of a comic way to start off the article.  Seems like lay people's expectations were way too high for the counteroffensive, the marketing worked too well.

 

[Sarex]

One would think that they would have learned from Cyberpunk.

[HoonDing]

"Give them what they need, but not enough so they can win"

[Mamoulian War]

Looks like Solovyov and Simonyan might be in trouble as well

 

 

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, Sarex said:

One would think that they would have learned from Cyberpunk.

Well, don't worry, it'll be fixed by DLC

[Zoraptor]

You'd have thought they would have learned to be skeptical from twenty years of 'our latest approach will work!' every six months in Afghanistan, really.

As for the article itself: if they actually thought that for the reasons stated it was monumentally stupid to let them (well, not like they could have physically stopped them if they were insistent) try. Don't have enough equipment, so let them fritter it away pointlessly instead of building it up, not enough training* so let's get those who have been trained killed and the one thing you thought they had was morale which is prone to collapsing if you (1) over promise results and (2) get a bunch of people killed for no advantage. The latter is particularly bad if your well trained/ experienced and motivated troops are now being replaced by poorly motivated conscripts who have been avoiding the draft rather than volunteering, and it potentially weakens your defence if Russia were to launch another attack.

To be blunt the implication of the article is that they were encouraged to go for an offensive that the westerners didn't think would work, now, because the situation would be worse not better, later, and a hail mary was the best option. The implications of that get even worse if the offensive fails.

*that in particular was funny after hearing for months about how superior NATO training was going to carry the day. Then the tactics were actually exactly the same as people derided Russia for. Circle complete with Western Analyst throwing Ukraine under the bus, in the article, for not actually using advanced NATO tactics when the problem is obvious and mentioned explicitly exactly one paragraph below- basically no air support, and NATO has never fought a war where they didn't have air supremacy.

[pmp10]

11 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-lack-of-weaponry-and-training-risks-stalemate-in-fight-with-russia-f51ecf9

( https://archive.is/D6CQZ )

"When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day."

Leaked US documents said as much.
But then Ukraine would never be armed to this extent without promising a successful counteroffensive.

[Zoraptor]

Dunno about the last bit, I suspect they'd still be getting most of the arms supplied so long as they had a stalled front and weren't obviously about to collapse. The justification for it would just shift to helping Ukraine defend herself rather than helping her recapture territory.

[xzar_monty]

Interesting tidbit concerning the ever-increasing militarization in Russia:

 

[BruceVC]

8 hours ago, pmp10 said:

Leaked US documents said as much.
But then Ukraine would never be armed to this extent without promising a successful counteroffensive.

That doesnt seem true or likely , no one can predict military success around timelines in this type of war especially when Ukraine is only now on the offensive

The military  aid has always been explained why it  was supplied by the West\NATO , its to defend Ukraine and for the offensive but military aid was supplied long before the offensive 

[xzar_monty]

20 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

That doesnt seem true or likely , no one can predict military success around timelines in this type of war especially when Ukraine is only now on the offensive

An offensive that, sadly, doesn't appear to go all that well, especially in relation to what has been expected. So the main problem has been in the expectations, not in the offensive itself, I suppose, although obviously the offensive could have been more successful than it has been.

Anyway, we obviously don't know what's going to happen, but I have an increasing sense[*] that "the West" is ultimately going to (have to) assist Ukraine far more than it has so far, and this will, in the end, serve to demonstrate that it would have been much more effective and much more life-saving to provide all that assistance right from the start. And that line of reasoning is going to be both annoying hindsight and vindication of the view, held by some right from the start, that Russia is only ever going to stop when it's comprehensively beaten, so it should have been beaten straight away. "The West" is going to look at this and think that whatever the cost of properly assisting Ukraine is, the cost of not doing that would be significantly higher and its results much worse because it would demonstrate the weakness of "the West" and the fact that Russia's chosen policy is successful and works and can be imitated by other countries.

 

[*] To reiterate: I could be completely wrong.

[Zoraptor]

The issue with an 'all in' approach is what it has always been- the effort required to comprehensively defeat Russia would absolutely require direct intervention, ie war, and while Russia would undoubted lose a conventional war under those circumstances there is zero chance of it remaining conventional, in those circumstances.

Of course, some people have convinced themselves that Russia's nukes won't work- the same people also convinced themselves that Ukraine would stroll through Russian lines to Mariupol in a week- or that they wouldn't use them even in extremis. But they would use them, that's the whole point of having them; unless people can convince themselves that the US/ Britain/ France/ Israel wouldn't if someone was aiming for their comprehensive defeat.

[pmp10]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

"The West" is going to look at this and think that whatever the cost of properly assisting Ukraine is, the cost of not doing that would be significantly higher and its results much worse because it would demonstrate the weakness of "the West" and the fact that Russia's chosen policy is successful and works and can be imitated by other countries.

Stopping Russia at this point means (at the minimum) financing a stalemated forever-war for many years.
Even UK has balked at the idea and they are among the more hawkish supporters of Ukraine. 

I'd expect that freezing the conflict is far more likely, even if it's certain to reignite later on Russian terms.

[Malcador]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/24/russia-says-it-foiled-a-ukrainian-drone-attack-on-moscow

Guess they missed with one

Edited July 24, 2023 by Malcador

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

The issue with an 'all in' approach is what it has always been- the effort required to comprehensively defeat Russia would absolutely require direct intervention, ie war, and while Russia would undoubted lose a conventional war under those circumstances there is zero chance of it remaining conventional, in those circumstances.

Yes, precisely this is the other side of the conundrum.

I would argue that there are two points there that possibly aren't as definite as you make them sound, although there's no way for either of us to know it; i.e. whether a war is absolutely required and whether there's zero chance of it remaining conventional. Now, I wouldn't want to see anyone test either of those, mind you. To the extent that I have hope, I am placing it on something currently unexpected happening inside Russia.

One less than encouraging fact about particularly nasty school bullies is that they will absolutely take every inch of psychological and other kind of space they are allowed, and they will not stop of their own accord. Russia, as we know, has persistently followed this same path for a very long time now, and it's the West who's been the softie and swallowed the bait and remained a fool for far too long -- France and Germany in particular are culpable here. It's got us into a place that is not very good at all.

Edited July 24, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Malcador]

10 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Interesting tidbit concerning the ever-increasing militarization in Russia:

 

 

[BruceVC]

https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/russia-under-pressure-un-security-council-ally-china-revival-ukraine-grain-deal-global-food-crisis-wheat-exports-war-port-attacks-latest-updates-2023-07-22-882364

China putting pressure on Russia to restore the grain deal to avoid a global food crisis that will particularly impact the developing world 

 

 

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

China putting pressure on Russia to restore the grain deal to avoid a global food crisis that will particularly impact the developing world

The fact that it's the Security Council reminded me of the fact that for almost the entire 2000s, Russia has staunchly opposed various Security Council initiatives to better recognize and deal with sexual violence in conflicts. They have had a "Why are we even talking about stuff like this?" approach. It's awful -- but to be expected. (They have, luckily, been outvoted several times.)

Edited July 25, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Malcador]

8 hours ago, BruceVC said:

https://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/russia-under-pressure-un-security-council-ally-china-revival-ukraine-grain-deal-global-food-crisis-wheat-exports-war-port-attacks-latest-updates-2023-07-22-882364

China putting pressure on Russia to restore the grain deal to avoid a global food crisis that will particularly impact the developing world

China probably wants the grain they were getting from Ukraine.