Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 235

On September 23 2022 13:04 raynpelikoneet wrote:

Okay. I don't think we have the same view of the civilian casualties of war.

On September 23 2022 13:33 raynpelikoneet wrote:

I am pretty sure war has also rules. Which have been widely respected, except for some countries.

Summary of September 23

- The Ukrainian offensive in the south and north continued yesterday. The Russian side has focused on information operations with mobilization and fake referendums to regain the initiative at the strategic level.
- At Lyman, the Ukrainian troops have been working all the time to encircle the city and have now come very close to the goal. Although there is no official confirmation yet, yesterday's reports that Ukrainian units have moved forward around the town of Lyman can be considered reliable. In addition, Ukrainian units have penetrated Russian defenses further from the city, towards the northwest, with which Ukraine threatens to cut several supply routes of Russian forces in northern Donbas. In such a case, leaving Lyman would only be possible along smaller village roads. In addition, it would become very difficult to supply the Russian forces in Northern Donbas. Russia is trying to prevent this situation and is currently sending some units (probably from the Donbas front) to prevent the Ukrainian offensive.
Even further north, Russian forces are also trying to prevent a direct attack by Ukrainian forces on the city of Svatove with counterattacks near the city of Kupyansk. These events have not brought success. In turn, Ukrainian troops seem to have broken through the Russian defense north of Kupyansk, but there are no definite reports of their progress there yet. Thus, the Ukrainian offensive in order to break through the Russian defense in Northern Donbas is progressing quite rapidly. The Ukrainian side also informed about the wounding of a Russian general on September 20 at the concentration point of the Russian forces located in the city of Svatove, the hometown of Ukraine.
- There were no reports of active battles in the direction of Lysychansk/Severodonetsk
- In the direction of Bakhmut, the Russian units were a little more active yesterday but did not achieve significant success
- Local combat contacts at the level of intelligence units and an artillery duel continue in South Donbas. There are no movements on the front line
- There have been no changes on the southern front either
- In the Kherson region, long-range Ukrainian fireworks continue in the rear of Russian units, and movements on the front have not been detected.
Russian units are somehow trying to create some kind of background for the fake referendums starting today. They are mainly trying to organize rocket attacks on civilian objects in Ukraine in cities closer to the front. Obviously, attacks on the Ukrainian side are also seriously feared, which gives Ukraine a great opportunity for its own info-operations, as well as real attacks.
The entire referendum campaign will be built from the Russian side in the same way as the current mobilization - above all, it will be in the format of a TV show. It is a pure information operation, which is not even attempted in reality, but some election situations are simply staged. An influence operation is built on top of this, where television images of the referendums are combined with visuals of the mobilization being carried out in Russia - the impression of a larger Russian initiative is left. [I was wondering what had happened to the censorship in RU considering the volume of mobilization videos coming out suddenly. -G]
Since there was a lot of talk on the subject of mobilization in the last two days, I would like to repeat a few moments that have caught my eye from yesterday/the day before yesterday.
- During the mobilization, the quite demonstrative use of force on the streets by the Russian security forces is astonishing. Against this background, some staged patriotic scenes with the mobilized are not at all convincing. Although these shots are intended to scare, the bottom line is that Russian citizens must be forced to take up arms.
- The number of people fleeing the country can be estimated after a few months. At the moment, the panic to leave is apparently great, but considering the entire Russian population, these numbers may not have a significant impact on the situation in the end.
- The Russian media is working on fake news to show as if a large number of new and motivated soldiers were mobilized on the first day. In fact, it will be possible to evaluate the results only after two months at the earliest, when it becomes clear how many men actually reach the fronts and whether something could start to change.
The TV show can be kept up for another week. For several more weeks, you can make fast-paced reports from exercises where fire and dirt fly. Some parades can also be organized. But the decisive factor will still be which side can really arm its reserves and train them more properly.

On September 23 2022 17:51 maybenexttime wrote:

WTF, the Japanese military outright murdered some 3-10 million people. They were as evil as the Nazis. How on earth is the US nuking Japan to stop those genocidal maniacs remotely comparable to Russia committing every war crime imaginable to help them facilitate a genocide, and not stop one? It's mindboggling!

On September 23 2022 18:28 Broetchenholer wrote:


Le sigh. Turn it around then. Would you be okay with Ukraine shelling the civil center of Belgogrod, trying to maximize civilian casualties in order to end the war sooner?

The warning shots are getting closer and louder.

In a heated parliamentary session on Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz received stark signals from his coalition partners that they expect him to ramp up weapons supplies to Ukraine at what is becoming an increasingly critical inflection point of the war.

While his government coalition bought him a little more time in the Bundestag debate and temporarily fended off a critical parliamentary motion expressing a lack of faith in his military support for Ukraine, it is now looking more and more likely Scholz will have to respond to the calls for Europe’s biggest economy to pull its weight when it comes to arming Kyiv more decisively.

Witheringly, opposition lawmaker Florian Hahn from the center-right Christian Social Union fumed that Germany was only “number 18 in the world” when comparing its military aid for Ukraine relative to the economic output. Hahn noted that Estonia was far ahead of Germany in supplying arms instead of keeping them for national defense, “even though they have a direct border with the Russian Federation.”

The center-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) opposition block had requested a vote on a Bundestag motion that urges the government to “immediately” allow the export of German battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine. That would have been tantamount to a vote of no-confidence in Scholz’s Ukraine strategy, since the chancellor has repeatedly ruled out such deliveries as long as other Western allies don’t deliver similar heavy gear.

The opposition’s maneuver was particularly dangerous for Scholz and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) because leading politicians from his coalition partners, the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), have also demanded the delivery of German Leopard battle tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles.

Timing is now of the essence. Ukraine is appealing for more weapons as it launches bold counter-offensives against the Russian invaders in the east and south of the country, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is vowing to throw hundreds of thousands of new soldiers into the conflict and is holding fake referendums in occupied territories to incorporate them into Russia.

A vote on weapons deliveries in the Bundestag would have risked revealing fatal cracks in the government unity and could even have led to a defeat of Scholz in parliament.

Following a heated 50-minute debate, however, the majority of SPD, Greens and FDP lawmakers voted to send the opposition’s motion to the foreign affairs and economic affairs committees for further discussion. That effectively delays a plenary vote on the text for a few weeks.

Still, the government now also faces the risk of renewed pressure next week as the opposition “could request a plenary vote” on another tanks-for-Ukraine motion that the CDU/CSU initially put forward in June but which was also delayed at the time by delegating it to committee level, the CDU’s Roderich Kiesewetter told POLITICO.

The SPD’s foreign policy spokesperson Nils Schmid argued that Thursday’s delay of the vote was justified because the opposition was merely orchestrating a political attack, hoping to weaken the government’s unity.

Scholz, who was not present at the debate, had said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday that Germany would support Ukraine “with all its might: financially, economically, with humanitarian aid and also with weapons.”

Pressure from coalition partners

The most striking part of Thursday’s debate was the intensity of criticism from within the ranks of Scholz’s own coalition. Senior lawmakers from the Greens and FDP expressed clear disapproval of the chancellor’s position and stressed that they want Germany to send more heavy arms.

“As Free Democrats, we believe that in the current military situation, in which Ukraine is reclaiming its territory, piece by piece, we must supply at least the Fuchs armored transport vehicle and the Marder infantry fighting vehicle — and if the situation requires it, the Leopard main battle tank as well,” said the FDP’s Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the Bundestag’s defense committee.

Crucially, Strack-Zimmermann cited the “Zeitenwende” — a historic shift in German foreign and security policy that Scholz announced in February in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — to argue that Scholz shouldn’t justify his reluctance to send tanks by arguing that other allies like the U.S. weren’t sending modern tanks to Ukraine either.

“Zeitenwende doesn’t just mean doing more for the German armed forces, it also means taking leadership and not waiting for our partners to take uncomfortable decisions from us,” she said.

The Greens’ co-leader Omid Nouripour delivered a broadside against concerns among Social Democrats that the delivery of tanks to Ukraine could trigger an “irrational” escalation by Putin — a fear that was most recently expressed by the SPD’s Secretary General Kevin Kühnert.

“There are arguments that I cannot follow,” Nouripour told the Bundestag. “That our weapons would lead to an escalation presupposes that the Russian side needs excuses for escalation. That is grotesque. Of course they don’t need excuses, the aggression is there,” Nouripour said in reference to Putin’s announcement on Wednesday to mobilize up to 300,000 reservists.

Moving up from No. 18

Germany has so far sent 30 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks, 10 Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers and three Mars multiple rocket launchers, as well as various lighter weapons, to Ukraine, according to a government list.

Following growing pressure at home and from allies, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht announced last week that Berlin would also send 50 “Dingo” armored vehicles and two more Mars rocket launchers — contradicting her own arguments from a few days earlier that Germany could not spare any further weapons in support of Ukraine.

Still, despite these increases, Johann Wadephul, deputy chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, argued that Germany had a historical and moral obligation to step up its support for Ukraine.

“If, in the light of mass graves in Bucha and Izium, we are serious in saying: ‘Never again! Germany must ensure that something never happens again’ — then we have to go a decisive step further here,” he said.

On September 23 2022 21:30 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Scholz is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to weapon supplies to Ukraine. Can Governments fall in Germany, because Scholz seems to be on thin ice more and more.



Source

On September 23 2022 21:45 zatic wrote:

There is for the first time talk about this going to a vote of no confidence within the ruling coalition over Scholz' refusal to send tanks and IFVs. Personally I doubt the current admin will break apart over this issue not even a year after it was formed, but it is possible.

I expect Scholz to cave sooner rather than later. Either from pressure within his own government, or once another NATO country sends Western tanks - which is the line he maintains Germany cannot cross alone for unspecified reasons.