Ukraine Conflict - Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war

[Mamoulian War]

SBU claims that they shot three SU-34 above Kherson Area doing sorties towards Krynky. Russian channels so far confirmed one hit. It was presumably performed by Patriot. Does anyone know, hat range have the Patriots provided to Ukraine?

[Malcador]

They got the PAC2 so 100 miles or so and Germany gave them a battery recently. 

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

To be brutally blunt, we in the West - or at least our politicians - would not have to fear our elections either if our elected officials were not as incompetent, corrupt and contemptible as the very same autocrats they love to criticise.

It has been my very vocal contention for years that all the divisions we are presented with within Western societies (party, ideology, race, gender, age, etc.) are fake faultlines intentionally created to divide the public into manageable groups. The only real and meaningful line of division is the elites versus the rest of us, where the elites are the elites across all the supposedly-different political parties and factions, across all elite institions, and across all countries. And by their very nature they're all totalitarian.

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

It has been my very vocal contention for years that all the divisions we are presented with within Western societies (party, ideology, race, gender, age, etc.) are fake faultlines intentionally created to divide the public into manageable groups. The only real and meaningful line of division is the elites versus the rest of us, where the elites are the elites across all the supposedly-different political parties and factions, across all elite institions, and across all countries. And by their very nature they're all totalitarian.

I've been saying this for years, the true divide is establishment elites vs everybody else. All the other divisions, while not necessarily manufactured (some of them are flat out manufactured) are very purposely exacerbated by the ruling elites to keep the rest of us divided. This is no secret, it's been this way for the entire history of human civilization. While political and social systems may change what has always remained the same is the ruling elites exploiting the differences of the common folk to keep us divided, because we would be unstoppable if we could set aside our petty (petty in a relative sense, these divisions have merit but they pale in importance to establishment vs commoners) quarrels. As long as we're at each others' throats over this bull$#!+ or that bull$#!+ the establishment can keep us under their thumbs with relative ease. The main goal of the ruling elite is to maintain (or expand, depending on ambition) power. Everything else is secondary. Depending on how brazen their attempts at seizing, maintaining, or expanding power are we may label them dictators, although these days anyone who is a dissident is labeled as the next Hitler regardless of their political views or actions, so words like "fascist" and "dictator" have lost all meaning since they're used so liberally.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Keyrock

[Mamoulian War]

3 hours ago, Malcador said:

They got the PAC2 so 100 miles or so and Germany gave them a battery recently. 

Yeah, and it is rumoured to be stationed near Odessa, which is not far away from occupied Kherson Oblast, so I was just curious how true these rumours might be. Similar stunt was performed with the first Patriot which should have been stationed near Kyiv, but they definitelly moved it in the beginning closer to Russian borders and shot down about 4 helicopters.

[Mamoulian War]

Another look at the Dnipro bridgehead at Krynky. This time from Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/11/29/80-seconds-from-detection-to-destruction-in-krynky-russian-troops-have-just-one-minute-of-safety-from-ukraines-drones/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/12/21/the-battle-for-krynky-is-a-nightmare-for-both-sides-but-its-not-suicide-its-attritional-warfare/

[Zoraptor]

4 hours ago, Malcador said:

They got the PAC2 so 100 miles or so and Germany gave them a battery recently. 

They definitely got PAC-3s as well since a lot of images of their 'empties' have been posted from Kiev- minimally explosive so you get pretty intact distinctive 'cheesegrater' fuselage. Likely they got PAC-2s too though of course.

(Particularly funny at the time because the US was gouging Saudi for PAC-2s at $10million apiece while giving away the PAC-3s to Ukraine and couldn't understand why the Saudi's weren't appreciative of paying a 250% mark up for older tech)

[Mamoulian War]

Remember that 3 SU-34 shot down over Kerson Region? It seems like, two more jets have been shot down since then, and one of them deep inside occupied air space ove Mariupol. And with Netherlands and Denmark promising first F-16 deliveries before the end of the year, the big rumours are starting to emerge at various sources (including pro-russian Rybar) that they are already at Ukrainian hands, and these five jets, are first victims of them. 
 

Shortly after these “incidents” happened, Russia started to talk again, that they are ready for cease fire talks. OFC, only if they can keep all of the occupied territories. Which fuels the speculations even more

[Mamoulian War]

Few days ago, on a TV broadcast by RIA Novosti, Sputnik TV and Russia Today, one of a very poverful figure of Russian Ministry of “Defense” Prilepin, has stated, that the countries, which provide the most work migrants in Russia, should get Annexed. He named as an example Uzbekistan. Shortly afterward, the Uzbekistan president started first steps to derussify the country media space, and powerful Uzbek politicians demanded the arrest of Prilepin. Which Russia of course did not accept. Uzbekistan is thus starting to prepare for another Special Military Operation.

 

 

[Malcador]

Thought they walked back the Su-30 claim.  Pretty sure was ground based air defense doing it.  Russia claimed they downed several F16s for some reason though.

 

[Sarex]

33 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Russia claimed they downed several F16s for some reason though.

Apparently they claim that a f16 shot down their su-34 and they shot down a couple of f16 in retaliation.

[Elerond]

Which country's F-16 they shot down, as Ukraine is still waiting to receive their first 

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

Which country's F-16 they shot down, as Ukraine is still waiting to receive their first 

It was Polish, and each of them had 10 NATO generals on board

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, Elerond said:

Which country's F-16 they shot down, as Ukraine is still waiting to receive their first 

Some mythical country no doubt. Remarkable how MoDs just BS like this, although the source for the Russian claim of F-16s turned out to be some dude on Telegram, but I imagine the RuF MoD would claim that.  

[Mamoulian War]

Another Ropucha class landing ship, allegedly fully loaded with Shaheeds has been promoted to submarine after cooking of whole night at Feodosia. According to Russian MoD, the ship was damaged and all Su jets of Ukraine have been destroyed in retaliation. Again.

 

 

[Malcador]

Russians reportedly captured whatever is left of Marinka.  Deepstate's map agrees, so probably true.

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Malcador

[ShadySands]

I don't know why, especially since I don't know what the rules are anymore, but Special Kherson Cat having a blue check mark is hilarious to me.

[Mamoulian War]

@Malcador you are often asking, how would Russia go against any NATO country, if they struggle against Ukraine. Here is the simple description of one of their strategies. Russia already conquered Hungary as a NATO country. Through corruption without single shot fired and are working hard on Slovakia 
 

 

[Elerond]

1 minute ago, ShadySands said:

I don't know why, especially since I don't know what the rules are anymore, but Special Kherson Cat having a blue check mark is hilarious to me.

You get blue check mark by paying 8 USD

[Gorth]

42 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

@Malcador you are often asking, how would Russia go against any NATO country, if they struggle against Ukraine. Here is the simple description of one of their strategies. Russia already conquered Hungary as a NATO country. Through corruption without single shot fired and are working hard on Slovakia 
 

Helping Trump winning elections... the most damage he can/could do to the western world

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

@Malcador you are often asking, how would Russia go against any NATO country, if they struggle against Ukraine. Here is the simple description of one of their strategies. Russia already conquered Hungary as a NATO country. Through corruption without single shot fired and are working hard on Slovakia 
 

 

Pretty loose definition of conquered there, at least correlating with all the fear mongering in the past month. Even if Hungary and Slovakia somehow refrain from acting if Russia tries to invade a NATO member, the rest will act and those two aren't critical.

 

[Mamoulian War]

28 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Pretty loose definition of conquered there, at least correlating with all the fear mongering in the past month. Even if Hungary and Slovakia somehow refrain from acting if Russia tries to invade a NATO member, the rest will act and those two aren't critical.

 

He gave a few examples, when West would definitely not act. If local population under the influence of Russia would start something like rebellion inside a country against democratic government, article 5 would not be invoked. Why do you think Russia pays puppets like Le Pen, Berlusconi, and a bunch of neonazi parties across the whole Europe?

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

He gave a few examples, when West would definitely not act. If local population under the influence of Russia would start something like rebellion inside a country against democratic government, article 5 would not be invoked. Why do you think Russia pays puppets like Le Pen, Berlusconi, and a bunch of neonazi parties across the whole Europe?

A lot of if's tailored for a purpose.  And threatens a lot off what I still see as an impossibility, Russia taking all of Ukraine.

[HoonDing]

Technically Russia is already fighting NATO and considering they only have shovels, not doing too badly

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

A lot of if's tailored for a purpose.  And threatens a lot off what I still see as an impossibility, Russia taking all of Ukraine.

It's not that far fetched to get an armed insurrection in, say, Latvia which is highly oppressive towards its (large) Russian minority and which has utterly catastrophic demographics as well. I completely disagree with MW in terms of response though, under those circumstances NATO would 100% fight against them and whatever the NATO Charter says be damned. This is, after all, the organisation desperate to ignore its Charter limitation of the North Atlantic when dealing with China.

OTOH the chance of Green Berets and Royal Marines storming the Elysée Palace to remove Marine Le Pen from the French Presidency is pretty far fetched, but isn't something anyone should want anyway.

Well, except for the irony of it happening to France instead of France doing it to Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Burkino Faso etc