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It seems that the Russian air defense is faltering lately. 6 of their oil refineries have been hit in January alone and it looks like the frequency of the attacks might be increasing 8, 9, 18, 19, 21, 24 January are the dates of successful strikes on the refineries on Russian territory.
There's also speculation that Russian pilots are reluctant to enter Ukraine airspace or even get close to it. Yet another plane has dropped a bomb on their own territory and had to turn around (making it a 5th such case reported recently).
On February 05 2024 18:36 sertas wrote:
Yet most Russians think this is a great success and will think this war is the greatest thing to ever happen and will support it for many more years.
And that's why you have protests in Moscow against mobilization and people being detained?
MOSCOW, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Around 20 journalists were detained by police in central Moscow for several hours on Saturday at a rally of Russian soldiers' wives calling for their men to be returned from the front in Ukraine, a Reuters witness said.
The journalists, including a video journalist from Reuters, who were covering the protest, filmed the women laying red carnations at the tomb of the unknown soldier in the shadow of the Kremlin's walls in central Moscow.
Russian police ordered about 20 male journalists, many wearing press vests, onto a bus and took them to a police station. They were released a few hours later without charge.
Moscow police did not respond to a request for comment.
![[image loading]](https://cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/5CASUD6CRVPZXDPDKGDIN6TPZI.jpg)
The writing on the ribbon says "Bring husband back."
On February 05 2024 16:25 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2024 18:56 Yurie wrote:
The main issue with the West in general has been multi year contracts with the defense industry. It has been resolved to a certain degree by now but they were sending mixed signals previously. Resulting in the companies not starting to buy new machines/plants until the war had lasted a long while already. Now we are in the phase of waiting for those investments to come online. I'm not sure that shells that may or may not arrive in 5 years is very helpful to the war today. Russia buying shells from North Korea also doesn't mean much. Obviously every bit helps. Just like how the US bought shells from South Korea to send to Ukraine at one point. Of course Russia does not have enough shells either. No one does. But I'd confidently say at this point, Russia is not in as bad a shortage as Ukraine.
I think the problem for Russia is that they're losing men and equipment at a faster rate than they can replenish them so they don't have the capability of building any reserves.
Edit:
Also there's a brief essay written by Valerii Zaluzhnyi on the modern design of military operations in this war, for people interested in such matters.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24400154/ukraine-valerii-zaluzhnyi-essay-design-of-war.pdf
And a spreadsheet with documented Russian losses in the Avdiivka region to date: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VIyACYHfnJi8cUMWjXAXDhS419l9IHcIhGJaK1RWMFQ/edit#gid=156589567
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United States44449 Posts
On February 05 2024 19:09 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2024 18:36 sertas wrote:
Also I'm in disbelief that republicans are on team Russia. I learned something new for sure, no one would have convinced me of this before the war.
I listened to a segment on BBC Radio 4 this morning that suggested the Republicans are stalling aid to Ukraine because they don't want the other problems that they've tried to tie into that aid package (such as support for Israel, concessions on the Mexican border, concessions on immigration generally, etc.) to go away. They want to keep those issues live so that Trump can run on them. It's only the opinion of the political scientist they happened to have on the show (and I've unfortunately forgotten their name), but I found the idea pretty compelling.
They literally say as much.
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I have heard several congress republicans say it aswell, which makes no sense, how can the voters belivie republicans want to fix the border or support ukraine when they openly are against it and then going to use it as a strategy to blame Biden for it the whole year? They belivie voters are that dumb?
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United States44449 Posts
On February 05 2024 19:13 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2024 10:00 gobbledydook wrote:
I don't think these tiny tactical victories matter in the long run.
War is about logistics and economy first of all. It appears that Russia is all in, and the West is losing its will to match it, even though it would be a comparatively small sacrifice.
It was said a while ago that 10 million shells are needed each month for Ukraine, but there is no way the West with all its current combined production could get anywhere close. Russia presumably also had a shortfall but they have a large inheritance of shells and they're producing more. Sanctions on Russia have had far less impact than the west had hoped, but has certainly helped strengthen Russias economic ties with China, India and the rest of the developing world.Russia is in a far better position to play out the long game.The west realises this which is why you see statements past two weeks from Head of British army Sanders calling for a return of conscription to fight Russia and Boris Johnson saying he would sign up in a war against Russia to fight for king and country and such nonsense.It really is getting ridiculous now. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13010871/BORIS-JOHNSON-fight-King-country.htmlOf course 3 months ago British Steel announced it was closing the last steel blast furnaces in England, at Scunthorpe with 2000 job losses and Tata steel announced last month it was closing both Port Talbot blast furnaces in Wales by end of year with 3000 jobs affected.Not competitive due to high energy prices? Ironic.Not good news if there was some kind of larger war, UK can't even produce steel any more.So we have war escalation rhetoric alongside news that all of the UKs current steel blast furnaces are set to shut?. OK then. https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/blast-furnace-closure-leaves-uk-woefully-underprepared-for-war
They import the steel and roll it in the UK. It’s cheaper. Steel isn’t hard to get on the international market.
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United States44449 Posts
On February 05 2024 21:47 sertas wrote:
I have heard several congress republicans say it aswell, which makes no sense, how can the voters belivie republicans want to fix the border or support ukraine when they openly are against it and then going to use it as a strategy to blame Biden for it the whole year? They belivie voters are that dumb?
They know that Republican voters are that dumb.
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On February 05 2024 21:47 sertas wrote:
I have heard several congress republicans say it aswell, which makes no sense, how can the voters belivie republicans want to fix the border or support ukraine when they openly are against it and then going to use it as a strategy to blame Biden for it the whole year? They belivie voters are that dumb? I mean, it would seriously appear they are indeed that dumb because the GOP has not been interested in governing for multiple elections and they still keep voting for them.
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On February 04 2024 10:00 gobbledydook wrote:
I don't think these tiny tactical victories matter in the long run.
War is about logistics and economy first of all. It appears that Russia is all in, and the West is losing its will to match it, even though it would be a comparatively small sacrifice.
It was said a while ago that 10 million shells are needed each month for Ukraine, but there is no way the West with all its current combined production could get anywhere close. Russia presumably also had a shortfall but they have a large inheritance of shells and they're producing more.
Russia was always going to have a comparative advantage in regards to mobilizing their economy for military purposes, compared to the west. There's a couple of reasons. One is that Russia embarked on the path of "autarky"(it's not real autarky and heavily dependent on western imports, but the system functions similarly in practice because it is heavily centralized and thus resistant to external shocks), they did this in around ~2005-06, after the regime decided that linkage with west is undesirable. Remember that out of all the regional powers, Russia is the only one that has ran a fiscally conservative economic policy. A combination of very low foreign debt and a sizeable sovereign wealth fund is key here. Another reason, and perhaps the most important is that Russia like other post-transition(communism->capitalism) countries inherited a political elite that was largely newly created and held a lot of power, in most other countries this elite merged with its western backers/supporters. This never materialized in Russia in any significant way. It is also one of the causes of the war, because the pro-western elites within Russia had grown stronger, and more importantly in Ukraine.
As for west's small sacrifice, the Estonian MOD estimates that the Ramstein group members would have to divert about 0.2% of their GDPs to Ukraine to meet the demands of fighting an attrition war against Russia, achieving a victory by 2026 at the latest. Even though it's a small piece of the pie, it's still a large ask; because western unity is diffused in both politics, economics, and even technology. In other words, the price of victory is very expensive politically for western backers, while it's cheap for Russia. We have to contend with Trump, Orban, LePen, AfD, Fico, etc. Same goes for lobbying groups, many of which overlap with Russian interests, and many which *represent* Russian interests. Russia started dealing with the equivalent of these political risks 15years ago+, ramped up political centralization in 2014, and has more or less removed these threats since the war started.
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On February 05 2024 21:49 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2024 21:47 sertas wrote:
I have heard several congress republicans say it aswell, which makes no sense, how can the voters belivie republicans want to fix the border or support ukraine when they openly are against it and then going to use it as a strategy to blame Biden for it the whole year? They belivie voters are that dumb? They know that Republican voters are that dumb.
I'm not very well versed in US politics so don't know if it's just a conspiracy theory or other wild fantasy but I've heard somewhere that big part of Republicans blocking the aid for Ukraine is because it's also tied to other packages that they don't want to pass because they want to run Trump on them, also that they want to spin it as Democrats going against Israeli interest in this somehow to make them lose support from AIPAC. Not sure how much of it is a stretch or not but I guess that if the Ukraine aid package is indeed tied to some domestic reform and other issues in the world as opposed to being its own separate thing I can see it being problematic on different levels for different parties (maybe "problematic" is not the right word here, it being a set of wide-spanning packages giving multiple avenues for political manipulation).
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United States44449 Posts
On February 05 2024 22:28 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2024 21:49 KwarK wrote:On February 05 2024 21:47 sertas wrote:
I have heard several congress republicans say it aswell, which makes no sense, how can the voters belivie republicans want to fix the border or support ukraine when they openly are against it and then going to use it as a strategy to blame Biden for it the whole year? They belivie voters are that dumb? They know that Republican voters are that dumb. I'm not very well versed in US politics so don't know if it's just a conspiracy theory or other wild fantasy but I've heard somewhere that big part of Republicans blocking the aid for Ukraine is because it's also tied to other packages that they don't want to pass because they want to run Trump on them, also that they want to spin it as Democrats going against Israeli interest in this somehow to make them lose support from AIPAC. Not sure how much of it is a stretch or not but I guess that if the Ukraine aid package is indeed tied to some domestic reform and other issues in the world as opposed to being its own separate thing I can see it being problematic on different levels for different parties (maybe "problematic" is not the right word here, it being a set of wide-spanning packages giving multiple avenues for political manipulation).
They wouldn’t pass it separately because they knew that Biden really wanted it and if Biden wanted it then they would only pass it for him if he gave them what they wanted. So it wasn’t naturally tied to the border, they were obstructing it because they wanted the border bill and tied them together. They held Ukraine ransom to get what they wanted.
Biden kept trying to pass it separately for two months but even though it had sufficient votes and support to pass bipartisan the house speaker refused to bring it to the floor for a vote. The Republicans have a rule (the Hastert rule) that basically walls out any bipartisan legislation while they’re in control of the house. They only allow bills to be read that can pass with majority Republican support. Let’s say that there are 100 seats and they’re held 52 R 48 D. There’s a bill that is supported by 24 R and 30 D. The Republican speaker would refuse to allow that bill to be read because it would be “Democratic” legislation and they refuse to allow the enemy any success in governing.
So Biden eventually gave in and agreed to pay the ransom. He had the Republicans give him their proposed border bill and agreed to fund it in exchange for his Ukraine bill. At that point Trump got mad at them because if they already got Biden to give them what they wanted then how can he campaign on kicking Biden out. And so now they have to reject the ransom payment they previously demanded and shoot the hostage.
It’s not that it’s tied to other stuff that they oppose, it’s that it’s tied to other stuff that they support. They don’t want the things that they support. It’s why they’re refusing to let any of this even go to a vote, they’d vote in favour of it and they couldn’t allow that.
If that sounds utterly insane to you then you are correctly understanding US politics.
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On February 05 2024 23:00 KwarK wrote:
If that sounds utterly insane to you then you are correctly understanding US politics.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised any more that people always put their petty own interests before the good of others, even if it means major suffering on a large scale.
It just makes me real sad 
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On February 05 2024 19:15 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2024 19:09 MJG wrote:On February 05 2024 18:36 sertas wrote:
Also I'm in disbelief that republicans are on team Russia. I learned something new for sure, no one would have convinced me of this before the war.
I listened to a segment on BBC Radio 4 this morning that suggested the Republicans are stalling aid to Ukraine because they don't want the other problems that they've tried to tie into that aid package (such as support for Israel, concessions on the Mexican border, concessions on immigration generally, etc.) to go away. They want to keep those issues live so that Trump can run on them. It's only the opinion of the political scientist they happened to have on the show (and I've unfortunately forgotten their name), but I found the idea pretty compelling. Its not just the opinion of a political scientist. Its the actual public opinion of Republicans. They are just strait up coming out saying they don't want to fix problems because it would make Biden look better. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/troy-nehls-congress-secure-border-1234958223/
I thought that the radio guest was giving an educated opinion. I hadn't read enough about US politics to realise that this was something being openly spoken about by Republicans. What a mess.
On February 05 2024 23:00 KwarK wrote:
If that sounds utterly insane to you then you are correctly understanding US politics.
Thank you for the confirmation haha!
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Croatia9571 Posts
I want to be the last person to defend Tucker Carlson, but that "I'm rooting for Russia" statement was said in 2020 I think, when no one in the US really cared about the Ukraine anyway. Not that it makes it any better, but at least it's more understandable than saying it after the war started.
He also posted a video statement on why he's interviewing Putin and it sounded reasonable to me. It's unlikely that he'll challenge him in any way, but it'll still be interesting to hear which rhetoric Putin sticks with for the western audiences.
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On February 07 2024 19:19 2Pacalypse- wrote:I want to be the last person to defend Tucker Carlson, but that "I'm rooting for Russia" statement was said in 2020 I think, when no one in the US really cared about the Ukraine anyway. Not that it makes it any better, but at least it's more understandable than saying it after the war started. He also posted a video statement on why he's interviewing Putin and it sounded reasonable to me. It's unlikely that he'll challenge him in any way, but it'll still be interesting to hear which rhetoric Putin sticks with for the western audiences. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1754939251257475555
Is it really informative to spew out whatever propaganda messages Putin wants you to hear? I mean... I'll probably watch the interview, but I'd be more likely to think it'd be informative if the interviewer were conducted by someone who is actually good at it. Tucker Carlson is very likely to just uncritically gobble up all of Vlad's talking points, rather than push and prod him. Send in Louis Theroux or Howard Stern or so, and it'll be far more likely to be an interesting interview, rather than 100% Russian propaganda. Of course, the chance of such an interview actually happening is roughly 0%: Putin wants useful idiots to regurgitate his trash, not to run the risk of being exposed.
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On February 07 2024 19:19 2Pacalypse- wrote:I want to be the last person to defend Tucker Carlson, but that "I'm rooting for Russia" statement was said in 2020 I think, when no one in the US really cared about the Ukraine anyway. Not that it makes it any better, but at least it's more understandable than saying it after the war started. He also posted a video statement on why he's interviewing Putin and it sounded reasonable to me. It's unlikely that he'll challenge him in any way, but it'll still be interesting to hear which rhetoric Putin sticks with for the western audiences. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1754939251257475555
Cucker Tarlson can't utter a sentence without lying. It's not surprising, considering he built his whole career on lying. It's interesting that he claims the Western audience hasn't been able to hear Russia's side of the story, considering the fact that Putin's rambling speeches were broadcasted live in all mainstream media in the West.
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On February 08 2024 00:22 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2024 19:19 2Pacalypse- wrote:I want to be the last person to defend Tucker Carlson, but that "I'm rooting for Russia" statement was said in 2020 I think, when no one in the US really cared about the Ukraine anyway. Not that it makes it any better, but at least it's more understandable than saying it after the war started. He also posted a video statement on why he's interviewing Putin and it sounded reasonable to me. It's unlikely that he'll challenge him in any way, but it'll still be interesting to hear which rhetoric Putin sticks with for the western audiences. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1754939251257475555 Cucker Tarlson can't utter a sentence without lying. It's not surprising, considering he built his whole career on lying. It's interesting that he claims the Western audience hasn't been able to hear Russia's side of the story, considering the fact that Putin's rambling speeches were broadcasted live in all mainstream media in the West.
Back in my country we call useful Putin idiots "kopeyka" (named after kopeck/kopeyka coin). They do nothing but spread Kremlin's propaganda. Marine Le Pen of France is another such example, they are all around Europe. Luckily, in small amounts still.
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Well, Tucker got invited to join the Russian media agency (after they got rid of all the independent journalists). And I think he might be going to Russia to interview Putin just so he can get his paycheck since they can't wire him the money any more XD
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On February 08 2024 02:43 SC-Shield wrote:
Back in my country we call useful Putin idiots "kopeyka"
In out country it's "onuca" ("a footwrap", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footwrap) as its is said that from someone speaking in vatnik language there goes smell of solviet's army footwraps.
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Seems like the defence in Avdeevka is collapsing rapidly after the Russians entered the urban area under the coke plant. If they take the motor depot thousands of Kiev government troops will be cut off with no real roads and will be forced to take the rasputina route through their mined fields.
If the Russians can close the lid on the encirclement... Thats huge, and a lot of reports comming in that Russian forces are bombing the hell out of every route
That said, I doubt the Russians will be able to exploit the capture of Avdeevka into a strategic push to Krasnoarmiysk any time soon but it pushes conventional artillery out of range of the civillians in Donetsk and obviously it was by far the most fortified area on the front
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On February 05 2024 21:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2024 19:13 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On February 04 2024 10:00 gobbledydook wrote:
I don't think these tiny tactical victories matter in the long run.
War is about logistics and economy first of all. It appears that Russia is all in, and the West is losing its will to match it, even though it would be a comparatively small sacrifice.
It was said a while ago that 10 million shells are needed each month for Ukraine, but there is no way the West with all its current combined production could get anywhere close. Russia presumably also had a shortfall but they have a large inheritance of shells and they're producing more. Sanctions on Russia have had far less impact than the west had hoped, but has certainly helped strengthen Russias economic ties with China, India and the rest of the developing world.Russia is in a far better position to play out the long game.The west realises this which is why you see statements past two weeks from Head of British army Sanders calling for a return of conscription to fight Russia and Boris Johnson saying he would sign up in a war against Russia to fight for king and country and such nonsense.It really is getting ridiculous now. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13010871/BORIS-JOHNSON-fight-King-country.htmlOf course 3 months ago British Steel announced it was closing the last steel blast furnaces in England, at Scunthorpe with 2000 job losses and Tata steel announced last month it was closing both Port Talbot blast furnaces in Wales by end of year with 3000 jobs affected.Not competitive due to high energy prices? Ironic.Not good news if there was some kind of larger war, UK can't even produce steel any more.So we have war escalation rhetoric alongside news that all of the UKs current steel blast furnaces are set to shut?. OK then. https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/blast-furnace-closure-leaves-uk-woefully-underprepared-for-war They import the steel and roll it in the UK. It’s cheaper. Steel isn’t hard to get on the international market.
So you don't think domestic production is important in times of war? I guess they can just keep importing 50% of the food they need during wartime as well.
Top steel exporter (2022) is China who would probably side with Russia, Russia is sixth largest exporter, Turkey fifth (A wildcard I guess considering it's the third largest market for Russian oil right now).Japan and South Korea which are both very close to China and Russia make up five of the top six.That leaves Germany, who may need more steel for itself than before.
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EPT
