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Northern Ireland26078 Posts
On July 12 2022 04:33 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2022 10:32 KwarK wrote:On July 09 2022 04:29 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 08 2022 05:25 KwarK wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. ![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/1tmGVGn0/Stand-4-April-2022.png) ![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/QCVc0jqH/Stand-05-Juli-2022.png) As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. ![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/2yKc7bw1/Stand-4-April-2022-Green-Line-overlay.png) Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. No. Your argument essentially runs “Britain had an empire and also Britain could afford an empire therefore the empire paid for itself”. It just doesn’t follow. It never paid for itself. No, I pretty much explicitly wrote Britain could afford a navy and army that could influence continental Europe that it wouldn't had been able to if not for empire. But hey create a strawman to burn down of your own accord. On July 08 2022 10:49 r00ty wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. Exactly. And as if they don't have enough already. Billions upon billions of dollars are made on the backs of the Ukrainian people and by putting us all on the road to global recession. This could be ended without firing a bullet, but "the west" is too reliant on and toothless toward the autocrats in this world sitting on the oil and gas. Belarus lol. If they send troops who is gonna control the people at home? I wouldn't go so far as to say end the war without firing a bullet, but certainly if the other non-Russian OPEC members would pump more, it would be rather beneficial to Europe. Don't worry too much at throwing money at Putin though, when winter comes and Putin turns off the gas completely, there will be no money for putin either. Your new argument is also wrong. Wow, you are so clever Kwark. Don't you ever get tired of being so wrong?
Kwark is never wrong, how dare you.
That said, I’ve genuinely never heard the claim that Britain was net losing from having their lovely Empire.
In truth I’m not really even sure what that means. I’d assume there are rather a lot of economic benefits to having such a reach and scope. Plus the economic benefits you can extract via the military power you have on account on being the big Empire of the day in ‘negotiations’.
Are there areas across the globe where it cost the Empire more to maintain/subjugate than what they got back out? Now that seems eminently plausible.
I just assume that in the wider, total sense there’s a bunch of economies of scale kind of benefits from having a global, or large regional Empire. Even a mere de facto one like the post WW2 United States.
It would shatter our wee egos over here to discover not only the auld Brits colonised us, but we were a net brain on the Queen/King’s purse to boot?!
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There have been a lot of signs that the great counter offensive in the south is about to start and these HIMAR strikes are crippling everything in the rear spaces of the front from the kherson command structure to supplies and ammo.
It's just like a weapon that just spring boards into the space between cruise missiles and conventional artillery. I'm on vacation so I don't know much about the system but it just seems to be really crazy what it does
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On July 12 2022 05:19 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 04:33 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 09 2022 10:32 KwarK wrote:On July 09 2022 04:29 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 08 2022 05:25 KwarK wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. No. Your argument essentially runs “Britain had an empire and also Britain could afford an empire therefore the empire paid for itself”. It just doesn’t follow. It never paid for itself. No, I pretty much explicitly wrote Britain could afford a navy and army that could influence continental Europe that it wouldn't had been able to if not for empire. But hey create a strawman to burn down of your own accord. On July 08 2022 10:49 r00ty wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. Exactly. And as if they don't have enough already. Billions upon billions of dollars are made on the backs of the Ukrainian people and by putting us all on the road to global recession. This could be ended without firing a bullet, but "the west" is too reliant on and toothless toward the autocrats in this world sitting on the oil and gas. Belarus lol. If they send troops who is gonna control the people at home? I wouldn't go so far as to say end the war without firing a bullet, but certainly if the other non-Russian OPEC members would pump more, it would be rather beneficial to Europe. Don't worry too much at throwing money at Putin though, when winter comes and Putin turns off the gas completely, there will be no money for putin either. Your new argument is also wrong. Wow, you are so clever Kwark. Don't you ever get tired of being so wrong? Kwark is never wrong, how dare you. That said, I’ve genuinely never heard the claim that Britain was net losing from having their lovely Empire. In truth I’m not really even sure what that means. I’d assume there are rather a lot of economic benefits to having such a reach and scope. Plus the economic benefits you can extract via the military power you have on account on being the big Empire of the day in ‘negotiations’. Are there areas across the globe where it cost the Empire more to maintain/subjugate than what they got back out? Now that seems eminently plausible. I just assume that in the wider, total sense there’s a bunch of economies of scale kind of benefits from having a global, or large regional Empire. Even a mere de facto one like the post WW2 United States. It would shatter our wee egos over here to discover not only the auld Brits colonised us, but we were a net brain on the Queen/King’s purse to boot?!
The cost to manage India cost more than any economic benefits it gave the British. The roman empire sustained itself almost purely on Egypt. Spain's riches only caused inflation. Russia doesn't really exist past the urals.
Just look at France and how they maintain their empire post ww2. Sure the African countries get to pretend that they're independent but their politics currency militaries and economy are bound in a way that benefits France.
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On July 11 2022 23:09 Sermokala wrote:
I'm gonna take a huge grain of salt with the info coming out about HIMARS because they really can't be this effective it would just be kinda silly if they were wunderweapons just sitting around in the public like this.
You shouldn't. Because it's a double whammy of the first few days of precision long range capability in UA hands and well known lack of RU munitions handling procedures. If they'd store their ammo according to NATO standards, we wouldn't be seeing these fireworks shows from single HIMARS strikes. They'll probably adapt in a few weeks or months, but the current system of transporting ridiculous quantities of artillery ammo to the front lines via trains is impossible with HIMARS around. RU logistics will slow down and, consequently, RU fires will die down. And that was their last real advantage...
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Some economic news from Russia:
- production of steel and alloys is down 20-50%
- in some towns people are stealing toilet paper from public toilets
- automobile industry is beginning to see first bankruptcies
- there seems to be a shortage of potatoes
- analysis says it'll take Russia 30 years to become fully independent regarding hops and malts (beer ingredients) as they were mostly importing it
Not much, just tidbits from some reports. I wonder if someone is tracking all of that and could provide more info on how different industries are doing in Russia.
Bonus:
- producers of S-400 systems in Russia might face charges for "inadequate quality of product" as Russians find themselves unable to defend against HIMARS
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United States43258 Posts
On July 12 2022 05:19 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 04:33 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 09 2022 10:32 KwarK wrote:On July 09 2022 04:29 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 08 2022 05:25 KwarK wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. No. Your argument essentially runs “Britain had an empire and also Britain could afford an empire therefore the empire paid for itself”. It just doesn’t follow. It never paid for itself. No, I pretty much explicitly wrote Britain could afford a navy and army that could influence continental Europe that it wouldn't had been able to if not for empire. But hey create a strawman to burn down of your own accord. On July 08 2022 10:49 r00ty wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. Exactly. And as if they don't have enough already. Billions upon billions of dollars are made on the backs of the Ukrainian people and by putting us all on the road to global recession. This could be ended without firing a bullet, but "the west" is too reliant on and toothless toward the autocrats in this world sitting on the oil and gas. Belarus lol. If they send troops who is gonna control the people at home? I wouldn't go so far as to say end the war without firing a bullet, but certainly if the other non-Russian OPEC members would pump more, it would be rather beneficial to Europe. Don't worry too much at throwing money at Putin though, when winter comes and Putin turns off the gas completely, there will be no money for putin either. Your new argument is also wrong. Wow, you are so clever Kwark. Don't you ever get tired of being so wrong? Kwark is never wrong, how dare you. That said, I’ve genuinely never heard the claim that Britain was net losing from having their lovely Empire. In truth I’m not really even sure what that means. I’d assume there are rather a lot of economic benefits to having such a reach and scope. Plus the economic benefits you can extract via the military power you have on account on being the big Empire of the day in ‘negotiations’. Are there areas across the globe where it cost the Empire more to maintain/subjugate than what they got back out? Now that seems eminently plausible. I just assume that in the wider, total sense there’s a bunch of economies of scale kind of benefits from having a global, or large regional Empire. Even a mere de facto one like the post WW2 United States. It would shatter our wee egos over here to discover not only the auld Brits colonised us, but we were a net brain on the Queen/King’s purse to boot?!
Empire is a classic example of socialized costs and privatized profits. Take Suez, everyone got in on making a canal and everyone is having a great time with it being ruled by locals as a client right up until the investment is threatened. Then suddenly that’s the Crown’s problem, even though the Crown never got shit from the loans, and we have to nationalize Egypt.
Obviously empire is very profitable to someone, the problem is that someone is never the state purse. That makes a whole lot of sense once you remember that nobody involved was trying to make the state purse rich, they were all trying to make themselves rich. Making a lot of money for someone else is a failure.
The great European empires got too expensive to maintain. It’s much cheaper to have someone else run the place and pay the bare minimum necessary to exploit the resources. Especially when you can pit rival local groups against each other in a race to the bottom. You might not even need to give them a cut of the oil money, maybe they’ll take payment in guns and power if it lets a minority religious sect rule a majority other nation.
You can still lobby/bribe the state into bailing out your shareholders too, assuming they’re corrupt enough. Take BP in Iran or United Fruit in Guatemala. Obviously it’s expensive for the taxpayer and disastrous for the locals but you’re not accountable to them, just the shareholders.
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Another HIMARS strike apparently.
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Russian Federation614 Posts
On July 12 2022 05:37 Manit0u wrote:
Some economic news from Russia:
- production of steel and alloys is down 20-50%
- in some towns people are stealing toilet paper from public toilets
- automobile industry is beginning to see first bankruptcies
- there seems to be a shortage of potatoes
- analysis says it'll take Russia 30 years to become fully independent regarding hops and malts (beer ingredients) as they were mostly importing it
Not much, just tidbits from some reports. I wonder if someone is tracking all of that and could provide more info on how different industries are doing in Russia.
Bonus:
- producers of S-400 systems in Russia might face charges for "inadequate quality of product" as Russians find themselves unable to defend against HIMARS
From my local perspective:
1) Toilet paper is fine, there is ton of it in stores, and the cheapest one goes around for 20 cents per roll. Not that it ever stopped some people from stealing small stuff
2) Potatoes are fine as well (just bought couple of kilos few hours ago), though its price went up quite a bit (goes tricky with all this exchange rate, it generally was around 40 rubles per kilo for the cheapest one half a year ago in stores, now it's around 55-60, though you can cut costs by buying large sack on the market). There will likely be shortage of it in winter.
3) Hops and malts are imported heavily, yes. Though at the moment local beer prices are not affected this much. Maybe there are a lot of them stored, or maybe local producers are still able to buy it from abroad. My friend's father runs a beer factory, and I know that at least in April he was still buying stuff from Germany. I'll probably ask around about that.
4) Car production took a blow, that's true. Can't say much about steel.
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Northern Ireland26078 Posts
On July 12 2022 05:40 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 05:19 WombaT wrote:On July 12 2022 04:33 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 09 2022 10:32 KwarK wrote:On July 09 2022 04:29 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 08 2022 05:25 KwarK wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. No. Your argument essentially runs “Britain had an empire and also Britain could afford an empire therefore the empire paid for itself”. It just doesn’t follow. It never paid for itself. No, I pretty much explicitly wrote Britain could afford a navy and army that could influence continental Europe that it wouldn't had been able to if not for empire. But hey create a strawman to burn down of your own accord. On July 08 2022 10:49 r00ty wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. Exactly. And as if they don't have enough already. Billions upon billions of dollars are made on the backs of the Ukrainian people and by putting us all on the road to global recession. This could be ended without firing a bullet, but "the west" is too reliant on and toothless toward the autocrats in this world sitting on the oil and gas. Belarus lol. If they send troops who is gonna control the people at home? I wouldn't go so far as to say end the war without firing a bullet, but certainly if the other non-Russian OPEC members would pump more, it would be rather beneficial to Europe. Don't worry too much at throwing money at Putin though, when winter comes and Putin turns off the gas completely, there will be no money for putin either. Your new argument is also wrong. Wow, you are so clever Kwark. Don't you ever get tired of being so wrong? Kwark is never wrong, how dare you. That said, I’ve genuinely never heard the claim that Britain was net losing from having their lovely Empire. In truth I’m not really even sure what that means. I’d assume there are rather a lot of economic benefits to having such a reach and scope. Plus the economic benefits you can extract via the military power you have on account on being the big Empire of the day in ‘negotiations’. Are there areas across the globe where it cost the Empire more to maintain/subjugate than what they got back out? Now that seems eminently plausible. I just assume that in the wider, total sense there’s a bunch of economies of scale kind of benefits from having a global, or large regional Empire. Even a mere de facto one like the post WW2 United States. It would shatter our wee egos over here to discover not only the auld Brits colonised us, but we were a net brain on the Queen/King’s purse to boot?! Empire is a classic example of socialized costs and privatized profits. Take Suez, everyone got in on making a canal and everyone is having a great time with it being ruled by locals as a client right up until the investment is threatened. Then suddenly that’s the Crown’s problem, even though the Crown never got shit from the loans, and we have to nationalize Egypt. Obviously empire is very profitable to someone, the problem is that someone is never the state purse. That makes a whole lot of sense once you remember that nobody involved was trying to make the state purse rich, they were all trying to make themselves rich. Making a lot of money for someone else is a failure. The great European empires got too expensive to maintain. It’s much cheaper to have someone else run the place and pay the bare minimum necessary to exploit the resources. Especially when you can pit rival local groups against each other in a race to the bottom. You might not even need to give them a cut of the oil money, maybe they’ll take payment in guns and power if it lets a minority religious sect rule a majority other nation. You can still lobby/bribe the state into bailing out your shareholders too, assuming they’re corrupt enough. Take BP in Iran or United Fruit in Guatemala. Obviously it’s expensive for the taxpayer and disastrous for the locals but you’re not accountable to them, just the shareholders.
Ok yeah now we’re somewhat zoomed in a little in scope/my feeble brain has clicked into gear.
Yeah that makes sense. I would just tend to view the British Empire as both the state itself, plus the private actors enabled by its structures.
Those behemoths of private industry, and indeed their successors in the less formalised American Empire form such an inextricable part of the mechanisms and the exerting of soft, or indeed harder power that I personally just consider them as facets of Empire.
So I’d personally frame that as it as the state taking a lot of the cost and risk for the benefit those who really made Imperial bank, as opposed to various imperial projects not paying for their costs. Which was my initial, perhaps erroneous read.
But yeah I get what your position is now, minor quibble really.
As it pertains to this conflict/this thread, it’s not even that recent a trend that formal occupation isn’t really the optimal way to grow a sphere of influence.
I’m assuming Putin knows this and gambled on a quick Ukrainian fold militarily, possibly followed by the installation of a puppet government in best case scenario terms.
As this patently hasn’t happened, what’s the actual endgame here? Push on and don’t back down and, if you can make a military breakthrough, occupy Ukraine? That seems a crazy waste of resources.
Apologies folks as this has no doubt been hypothesised and answered many times, but I’m not especially regular in this thread/wanted to ask something more pertinent to the actual topic.
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On July 12 2022 05:28 Ghanburighan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2022 23:09 Sermokala wrote:
I'm gonna take a huge grain of salt with the info coming out about HIMARS because they really can't be this effective it would just be kinda silly if they were wunderweapons just sitting around in the public like this. You shouldn't. Because it's a double whammy of the first few days of precision long range capability in UA hands and well known lack of RU munitions handling procedures. If they'd store their ammo according to NATO standards, we wouldn't be seeing these fireworks shows from single HIMARS strikes. They'll probably adapt in a few weeks or months, but the current system of transporting ridiculous quantities of artillery ammo to the front lines via trains is impossible with HIMARS around. RU logistics will slow down and, consequently, RU fires will die down. And that was their last real advantage... Out of curiosity what is NATO's standard for storing tons of artillery shells in a hostile country your currently invading?
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On July 12 2022 06:39 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 05:28 Ghanburighan wrote:On July 11 2022 23:09 Sermokala wrote:
I'm gonna take a huge grain of salt with the info coming out about HIMARS because they really can't be this effective it would just be kinda silly if they were wunderweapons just sitting around in the public like this. You shouldn't. Because it's a double whammy of the first few days of precision long range capability in UA hands and well known lack of RU munitions handling procedures. If they'd store their ammo according to NATO standards, we wouldn't be seeing these fireworks shows from single HIMARS strikes. They'll probably adapt in a few weeks or months, but the current system of transporting ridiculous quantities of artillery ammo to the front lines via trains is impossible with HIMARS around. RU logistics will slow down and, consequently, RU fires will die down. And that was their last real advantage... Out of curiosity what is NATO's standard for storing tons of artillery shells in a hostile country your currently invading?
Think this is it:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327974988_NATO_Standards_and_Practice_for_Munitions_Safety_and_Insensitive_Munitions
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On July 12 2022 06:23 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 05:40 KwarK wrote:On July 12 2022 05:19 WombaT wrote:On July 12 2022 04:33 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 09 2022 10:32 KwarK wrote:On July 09 2022 04:29 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 08 2022 05:25 KwarK wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country.
______________
[quote]I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country.
______________
[quote]I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. No. Your argument essentially runs “Britain had an empire and also Britain could afford an empire therefore the empire paid for itself”. It just doesn’t follow. It never paid for itself. No, I pretty much explicitly wrote Britain could afford a navy and army that could influence continental Europe that it wouldn't had been able to if not for empire. But hey create a strawman to burn down of your own accord. On July 08 2022 10:49 r00ty wrote:On July 08 2022 04:35 Dangermousecatdog wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 07 2022 06:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. You can be pretty sure if you like but you’d be wrong. The British empire was a net drain on the public purse. Spanish was weird because they just looted silver from people without bothering to actually govern but as a rule empire has never been profitable. The looting part is fun but then the occupying bit is shit. The best way to do it is privatize the looting but nationalize the governing which is basically the pineapple example mentioned. Make bank from the resources and demand a bailout when the locals try to nationalize your shit. Lets go through the listed empires one by one. Portugal, small, one sole land neighbout greatly more populous than it is, first European maritime empire, powerful enough not be utterly dominated by the then Castille, though diplomatic marriage played a part. Spain which you wierdly acknowledge greatly prospered with it's empire then dismisses this, an empire allowed it to press European claims it otherwise could not had with the great wealth allowing Spain to hold massive and sophisticated armies of the time, as well as a large navy, influencing European politics greatly, though most notably affecting by fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. Twice. They lost though. Netherlands, the birth of Netherlands against the then immense armies and navy of the Spanish army is also the birth of the Dutch Empire, which allowed the nation to accrue enough wealth over the course of about 80 years to not only survive but prosper against the behemoth of the Spanish Empire at the time, with mercenaries and forts brought by control of trade by the Dutch through their empire. The lowland rebellion that would become Netherlands if not for the wealth of the Dutch Empire; they are one and the same intrinsically linked at the time, navy and army funded by the Ducth Empire. Britain, a long history but mostly speaking the wealth of Empire allowed a navy and a trained professional army as opposed to conscript army which was able to greatly interfere on the continent almost at will. Most obvious would be both world wars, being able to afford a navy that would not had existed without funds from empire, which essentially blockaded or otherwise exert sea control over almost the entirety of the Atlantic, North and Mediterrean sea and bringing hundreds of thousands of overseas troops, which otherwise would not have existed if not for empire. Lets not forget the more recent examples of that period of the land empires of the Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, which through lands conquered greatly increased the wealth and power of their nation. Throughout the dawn of history, land was power and conquering land and being an empire was immensely profitable for the nation. It's not really debateable, as it is empire which always prospered and those that could not be locally powerful became vassals or were conquered in turn. Some places were a drain on a martime Empire, mostly inland Africa which was for the most part only conquered during the relatively late Scramble for Africa period (often suprisingly cheap in terms of manpower), but in terms of monetary power and in military power, the true and most important expression of wealth from the viewpoint of nation, conquering land very much paid for themselves. Of course all this is all totally irrelevant in the modern world, where wealth is no longer so much a matter of agriculture and natural resources and unlikely to be worthwhile, at least without essentially genociding the local population. Russia isn't seeking to occupy Ukraine for a notion of wealth, but for political and idealogical grounds. ____________________ On July 07 2022 15:41 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2022 06:13 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Pretty sure the Spanish, Portugese, Dutch and British Empire pretty much paid for themselves, in that all of those respective empires at their height could afford more military to defend their homeland and influence their local area that is Europe which is the point of "wealth" from the standpoint of a country. ______________ On July 06 2022 15:32 Magic Powers wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 06 2022 05:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2022 08:45 Magic Powers wrote:On July 05 2022 06:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Don't know why you are all acting so suprised that Russia is capable of taking a city that has been slowly encircled for weeks, when I did say they are learning lessons and their army is coordinating over a month ago. Can't remember where I got this from, but it was reported that Russia is throwing about 50 thousand artillery shells a day. This sounds like a lot, and it is if if you are in the target area, but for point of comparison WW1 could see a million shells on certain days. There is no chance Russia will run into supply issues as long as Ukraine cannot strike deep into Russian supply points and Russia keeps its slow rate of advance. Russia hasn't learned much of a lesson then, as they've only claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, and in the process they've depleted a lot of their arsenal. Russia is already facing supply issues, and has been for weeks at least. For us to misunderstand the situation would mean that Russia has been significantly holding back so far, which is certainly not the case, with the exception of the nuclear option. They're factually incapable of meaningfully striking deeper into Ukraine. They've directed their fire onto certain regions more than others, resulting in a success like encircling Severodonetsk and Lysychansk and that whole region, while at the same time relinguishing control over numerous other regions that nobody has spoken about in recent weeks, but it's been happening continuously. My assumption would be that Russia, in order to have that one success, ordered a reduction of manpower in those other regions. So as has been said a few times, claiming territory is one thing, but holding it is another, and I guess that's especially true during an offensive war. Hence why I'd consider this phase the special stalling operations. I don't see how you can say Russia has claimed as much ground as they've surrendered, when Russia occupies whole areas of Ukraine whereas, Ukraine controls none of Russia's territory. Or perhaps you meant from some indeterminate point of time, in which case you'll have to provide a date, preferably but not neccessarily from within a month ago, so it makes some sort of sense. Then we can compare. Some areas nearby Kharkiv has been regained, but the importance of such pales in comparison to the territory Russia now occupies. The difference in the area, and of the importance of the two cities is a far bigger gain than a few towns and villages, both in the area, and of former population sense and in strategical and logistical sense, as cities are always on major roads and crossroads, far more defensible than villages and farmland, and make for good places to store supplies. As to the rest, it is as you admit, a bunch of assumptions. Hopeful assumptions which I share the intention of, but thoughts and prayers will not help Ukraine. A few weeks ago I posted a comparison of the battle lines. The starting point was after Russia had withdrawn from the North, because I wanted to show how much progress Russia was able to make in the weeks/months since. There was no overall progress, the lines had shifted in both directions about equally. Recently I've made another comparison, but this time I didn't post it because it was the same conclusion of no overall progress. I can post it though so you can compare them. As you can see, in the Severodonetsk region Russia has made significant progress. But if you compare the entire front, Ukraine has pushed back in many other regions. In total it's roughly equal on both sides. This is how I drew my conclusion of Ukraine successfully stalling, and it's why I'm optimistic about Ukraine eventually being able to push Russia back to the borders, unless of course Putin escalates and goes nuclear. Unfortunately I think it's quite likely that it'll take years because Ukrainians are mostly fighting alone. But who knows what'll happen, it's too early to call a definitive outcome. I opened up the two pictures in new tabs, copied them into another image program for direct comparison and it looks like Russia has gained more area overall. Even if we were to accept your premise that the area of occupied territory between those two points in time are the same, the area Russia has gained is incomparable in logistical and strategic worth for reasons I had previously outlined. These are the areas gained by each side since April 4th. Dark green is for Ukraine, dark red is for Russia. To me it's clear that Russia has gained a lot more ground in mostly one region, while Ukraine has gained a lot more ground in many regions. Overall it's even. But I'll let other people be the judge. Still looks very much Russia has gained to me and very much so that Russia has gained far more important territory. Supposing that the area has remained the same ignores the importance of the occupied area, but makes for a nice story I guess. Great for morale boost, not useful for understand what has or is currently occuring. I'll note that the green areas are somewhat dubious as it seems especially for the region past Kherson to simply include any area that Russians have penetrated to, even if they never truly had control of the area, but I suppose such is the fog of war. If as you say, Russian occupied areas gained is from withdrawing soldiers from other areas, that is an indication of Russia coordinating better rather than the early stages of the war. There's really isn't anything to gain by thinking Russians cannot learn. Afterall, Colonels ultimately do not want to die, and no commander, no matter how callous Russians seem, wants the men under their command to die and will be willing to adapt to acheive their objectives. Think I, like you, will leave those words and this topic at that. ___________ On July 07 2022 17:18 r00ty wrote:
Just two thoughts:
I don't think there is enough pressure on other oil producing countries to increase/maximize production. There should be more oversight and transparency for the companies, it seems like a giant cash grab atm. Oil/gas going down is what hurts the Putin regime the most.
Also, as one poster poited out a couple of weeks ago my country, its politicians and people are highly unrealistic about its production and consumption of energy. If we want all electric cars, Germany would have to at least triple its electric energy production. And on top the grid is not made for that, think people coming home from work to quick charge their electric cars at basically the same time. That peak would require an amount of battery capacity or an amount of regulators (power plants) that's not cost effective or even realistic considering we don't have that much space.
It is possible with batteries and energy management systems in nearly every household but that will cost a bit.
I think that my government is still gambling on the Russian gas to be back soon and activating the 2 new Nordstream pipelines and the connected infrastructure as soon as possible. There is no real plan B. Unfortunately we're undermining
that by throwing money at Putin. Saudi Arabia seem to be refusing to pump more oil, which is a remarkable contrast to the time when Iran was sanctioned, when Saudi Arabia opened their taps and almost bankrupted Russia and Venezuela as a side effect. Turns out Saudi Arabia does prefers to do as is beneficial to them, and in this case Saudi Arabia is enjoying the benefits of higher oil prices. Exactly. And as if they don't have enough already. Billions upon billions of dollars are made on the backs of the Ukrainian people and by putting us all on the road to global recession. This could be ended without firing a bullet, but "the west" is too reliant on and toothless toward the autocrats in this world sitting on the oil and gas. Belarus lol. If they send troops who is gonna control the people at home? I wouldn't go so far as to say end the war without firing a bullet, but certainly if the other non-Russian OPEC members would pump more, it would be rather beneficial to Europe. Don't worry too much at throwing money at Putin though, when winter comes and Putin turns off the gas completely, there will be no money for putin either. Your new argument is also wrong. Wow, you are so clever Kwark. Don't you ever get tired of being so wrong? Kwark is never wrong, how dare you. That said, I’ve genuinely never heard the claim that Britain was net losing from having their lovely Empire. In truth I’m not really even sure what that means. I’d assume there are rather a lot of economic benefits to having such a reach and scope. Plus the economic benefits you can extract via the military power you have on account on being the big Empire of the day in ‘negotiations’. Are there areas across the globe where it cost the Empire more to maintain/subjugate than what they got back out? Now that seems eminently plausible. I just assume that in the wider, total sense there’s a bunch of economies of scale kind of benefits from having a global, or large regional Empire. Even a mere de facto one like the post WW2 United States. It would shatter our wee egos over here to discover not only the auld Brits colonised us, but we were a net brain on the Queen/King’s purse to boot?! Empire is a classic example of socialized costs and privatized profits. Take Suez, everyone got in on making a canal and everyone is having a great time with it being ruled by locals as a client right up until the investment is threatened. Then suddenly that’s the Crown’s problem, even though the Crown never got shit from the loans, and we have to nationalize Egypt. Obviously empire is very profitable to someone, the problem is that someone is never the state purse. That makes a whole lot of sense once you remember that nobody involved was trying to make the state purse rich, they were all trying to make themselves rich. Making a lot of money for someone else is a failure. The great European empires got too expensive to maintain. It’s much cheaper to have someone else run the place and pay the bare minimum necessary to exploit the resources. Especially when you can pit rival local groups against each other in a race to the bottom. You might not even need to give them a cut of the oil money, maybe they’ll take payment in guns and power if it lets a minority religious sect rule a majority other nation. You can still lobby/bribe the state into bailing out your shareholders too, assuming they’re corrupt enough. Take BP in Iran or United Fruit in Guatemala. Obviously it’s expensive for the taxpayer and disastrous for the locals but you’re not accountable to them, just the shareholders. Ok yeah now we’re somewhat zoomed in a little in scope/my feeble brain has clicked into gear. Yeah that makes sense. I would just tend to view the British Empire as both the state itself, plus the private actors enabled by its structures. Those behemoths of private industry, and indeed their successors in the less formalised American Empire form such an inextricable part of the mechanisms and the exerting of soft, or indeed harder power that I personally just consider them as facets of Empire. So I’d personally frame that as it as the state taking a lot of the cost and risk for the benefit those who really made Imperial bank, as opposed to various imperial projects not paying for their costs. Which was my initial, perhaps erroneous read. But yeah I get what your position is now, minor quibble really. As it pertains to this conflict/this thread, it’s not even that recent a trend that formal occupation isn’t really the optimal way to grow a sphere of influence. I’m assuming Putin knows this and gambled on a quick Ukrainian fold militarily, possibly followed by the installation of a puppet government in best case scenario terms. As this patently hasn’t happened, what’s the actual endgame here? Push on and don’t back down and, if you can make a military breakthrough, occupy Ukraine? That seems a crazy waste of resources. Apologies folks as this has no doubt been hypothesised and answered many times, but I’m not especially regular in this thread/wanted to ask something more pertinent to the actual topic. Bomb the cities, kill the men, abduct the women and children to relocate them deeper into Russian territory where they can be controlled as a minority and import new Russian labour to extract the regions resources.
I wonder if they actually want to occupy the entire Ukraine at this point, probably more aiming to secure territory and then aim for a stalemate/cease fire/peace where they keep the occupied area (and yet Ukraine has ruled that out for obvious reasons).
The big question I don't know if Russia can answer is what you do when Ukraine doesn't accept peace/cease fire and just keeps bombing Russian forces with Western supplied ordnance until Russia runs out of forces to stop a counter attack.
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United States43258 Posts
On July 12 2022 06:23 WombaT wrote:
I’m assuming Putin knows this and gambled on a quick Ukrainian fold militarily, possibly followed by the installation of a puppet government in best case scenario terms.
As this patently hasn’t happened, what’s the actual endgame here? Push on and don’t back down and, if you can make a military breakthrough, occupy Ukraine? That seems a crazy waste of resources.
Apologies folks as this has no doubt been hypothesised and answered many times, but I’m not especially regular in this thread/wanted to ask something more pertinent to the actual topic.
That seems to be the new plan, yes. Or get close enough to a breakthrough that Ukraine sues for peace. It’s not a good plan.
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On July 12 2022 06:47 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 06:23 WombaT wrote:
I’m assuming Putin knows this and gambled on a quick Ukrainian fold militarily, possibly followed by the installation of a puppet government in best case scenario terms.
As this patently hasn’t happened, what’s the actual endgame here? Push on and don’t back down and, if you can make a military breakthrough, occupy Ukraine? That seems a crazy waste of resources.
Apologies folks as this has no doubt been hypothesised and answered many times, but I’m not especially regular in this thread/wanted to ask something more pertinent to the actual topic. That seems to be the new plan, yes. Or get close enough to a breakthrough that Ukraine sues for peace. It’s not a good plan.
But i think at this point, there is no other plan possible either. The important thing here is that it is not Russia who is making the decision, it is Putin. And Putin cares mostly about Putin, and only secondarily about Russia.
If Putin just stops the invasion right now, retreats, and returns to the status quo pre 2022 invasion (assuming Ukraine would accept that), he will not stay ruler of Russia for long, and he also will not stay alive for long. His legacy would also suck.
It is always the same sunk cost in war. Lots of Russians have died. If you just abort the war, they have "died for nothing", which reflects really badly on the leadership.
Which means that we are all stuck in this shit for a long time.
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On July 12 2022 06:42 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 06:39 Gorsameth wrote:On July 12 2022 05:28 Ghanburighan wrote:On July 11 2022 23:09 Sermokala wrote:
I'm gonna take a huge grain of salt with the info coming out about HIMARS because they really can't be this effective it would just be kinda silly if they were wunderweapons just sitting around in the public like this. You shouldn't. Because it's a double whammy of the first few days of precision long range capability in UA hands and well known lack of RU munitions handling procedures. If they'd store their ammo according to NATO standards, we wouldn't be seeing these fireworks shows from single HIMARS strikes. They'll probably adapt in a few weeks or months, but the current system of transporting ridiculous quantities of artillery ammo to the front lines via trains is impossible with HIMARS around. RU logistics will slow down and, consequently, RU fires will die down. And that was their last real advantage... Out of curiosity what is NATO's standard for storing tons of artillery shells in a hostile country your currently invading? Think this is it: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327974988_NATO_Standards_and_Practice_for_Munitions_Safety_and_Insensitive_Munitions cool, thank you. I'll read that later when I'm not so tired and all the acronyms don't make my head spin :p
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On July 12 2022 06:51 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 06:47 KwarK wrote:On July 12 2022 06:23 WombaT wrote:
I’m assuming Putin knows this and gambled on a quick Ukrainian fold militarily, possibly followed by the installation of a puppet government in best case scenario terms.
As this patently hasn’t happened, what’s the actual endgame here? Push on and don’t back down and, if you can make a military breakthrough, occupy Ukraine? That seems a crazy waste of resources.
Apologies folks as this has no doubt been hypothesised and answered many times, but I’m not especially regular in this thread/wanted to ask something more pertinent to the actual topic. That seems to be the new plan, yes. Or get close enough to a breakthrough that Ukraine sues for peace. It’s not a good plan. But i think at this point, there is no other plan possible either. The important thing here is that it is not Russia who is making the decision, it is Putin. And Putin cares mostly about Putin, and only secondarily about Russia. If Putin just stops the invasion right now, retreats, and returns to the status quo pre 2022 invasion (assuming Ukraine would accept that), he will not stay ruler of Russia for long, and he also will not stay alive for long. His legacy would also suck. It is always the same sunk cost in war. Lots of Russians have died. If you just abort the war, they have "died for nothing", which reflects really badly on the leadership. Which means that we are all stuck in this shit for a long time.
Personally I don't think Ukraine is interested in suing for peace or any such negotiations. Especially that they've announced they're readying up a million new men. Zelensky also presses his military to increase efforts in southern parts of Ukraine and Ukrainian government told people in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to evacuate the cities.
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On July 12 2022 06:39 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 05:28 Ghanburighan wrote:On July 11 2022 23:09 Sermokala wrote:
I'm gonna take a huge grain of salt with the info coming out about HIMARS because they really can't be this effective it would just be kinda silly if they were wunderweapons just sitting around in the public like this. You shouldn't. Because it's a double whammy of the first few days of precision long range capability in UA hands and well known lack of RU munitions handling procedures. If they'd store their ammo according to NATO standards, we wouldn't be seeing these fireworks shows from single HIMARS strikes. They'll probably adapt in a few weeks or months, but the current system of transporting ridiculous quantities of artillery ammo to the front lines via trains is impossible with HIMARS around. RU logistics will slow down and, consequently, RU fires will die down. And that was their last real advantage... Out of curiosity what is NATO's standard for storing tons of artillery shells in a hostile country your currently invading?
You jest, but the answer is the NATO Guidelines for the Storage, Maintenance and Transport of Ammunition on Deployed Missions or Operations (AASTP5). It's unclassified so you can read it in full if you're absolutely insane, that is..
Thanks, StealthBlue, that was a nice overview paper.
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On July 12 2022 05:37 Manit0u wrote:
- in some towns people are stealing toilet paper from public toilets
They've been doing this since the revolution...
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On July 12 2022 07:13 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2022 06:51 Simberto wrote:On July 12 2022 06:47 KwarK wrote:On July 12 2022 06:23 WombaT wrote:
I’m assuming Putin knows this and gambled on a quick Ukrainian fold militarily, possibly followed by the installation of a puppet government in best case scenario terms.
As this patently hasn’t happened, what’s the actual endgame here? Push on and don’t back down and, if you can make a military breakthrough, occupy Ukraine? That seems a crazy waste of resources.
Apologies folks as this has no doubt been hypothesised and answered many times, but I’m not especially regular in this thread/wanted to ask something more pertinent to the actual topic. That seems to be the new plan, yes. Or get close enough to a breakthrough that Ukraine sues for peace. It’s not a good plan. But i think at this point, there is no other plan possible either. The important thing here is that it is not Russia who is making the decision, it is Putin. And Putin cares mostly about Putin, and only secondarily about Russia. If Putin just stops the invasion right now, retreats, and returns to the status quo pre 2022 invasion (assuming Ukraine would accept that), he will not stay ruler of Russia for long, and he also will not stay alive for long. His legacy would also suck. It is always the same sunk cost in war. Lots of Russians have died. If you just abort the war, they have "died for nothing", which reflects really badly on the leadership. Which means that we are all stuck in this shit for a long time. Personally I don't think Ukraine is interested in suing for peace or any such negotiations. Especially that they've announced they're readying up a million new men. Zelensky also presses his military to increase efforts in southern parts of Ukraine and Ukrainian government told people in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to evacuate the cities.
I don't think this has anything to say since ukraine would be posturing to be in a position of strength / resistance, even if they where holding on to their absolute last soldier. You always want to negotiate from a position that is as strong as possible, so ukraine has to appear strong no matter if they plan to kick russia out, or if they are planning to sue for peace. I too think that ukraine is not interested in suing for peace at the moment, but that is purely based on my general feelings, as it is impossible for me to gauge ukraines ability to continue the fight or to accurately determine their position.
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EPT
