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NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On August 22 2024 00:25 zeo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2024 16:54 iopq wrote:On August 20 2024 23:47 zeo wrote:On August 20 2024 22:51 KwarK wrote:On August 20 2024 22:41 zeo wrote:On August 20 2024 22:31 KwarK wrote:On August 20 2024 22:21 zeo wrote:On August 20 2024 21:48 KwarK wrote: I think it’s useful to have a Russian around so that we can remember why we need to keep sending Ukraine weapons. Though he may not personally receive a delivery of 180,000 tungsten balls he is representative of a popular attitude in Russia. It’s a problem best treated with tungsten. When sufficient tungsten has been delivered to the necessary recipients we may have peace with the more reasonable Russians. To the last Ukrainian!  They’d fight on with sticks if all they had was sticks. They know what it is like to live under Russian rule. If they’d rather fight to the last Ukrainian than live under Russian rule then that is their right. I do see why the dignity in their struggle is alien to you though. In any event, they don’t have to fight with sticks. If they want to come for the land and the homes of the Donbass and Crimean people with sticks or whatever you want to give them then keep pushing them to do just that. Maybe when the sufficient amount have been sent we may have peace with the more reasonable Kievites left. The Donbas was at peace until Russia invaded it. Ukraine was at peace until the Obama administration sought to overthrow the democratically elected president of Ukraine in a violent coup spearheaded by neonazis thugs. The resulting kakistocracy in Kiev tore the country apart by actively and violently suppressing the 50% of the country that didn't accept the illegal coup. Crimea and the Donbass rightly took it upon themselves to bring back the rule of law from the new illegitimate government in Kiev. The peace ended when Avakov acting as the interior minister in April 2014 declared his 48h anti-terrorist operation. Well, its been almost 3800 days since then so things didn't really turn out how the unelected government planned Zelensky was making comedy shows in 2014, what are you even talking about? He was elected by 90% of Donbass voters on the Ukrainian side (the Russian side of Donbass didn't vote in the Ukrainian election) What? Where are you getting this from? Here are the results of the last Presidential, Parliamentary and local elections: 2019 Presidential elections first round:![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/Njv6nGwr/2019-Ukrainian-presidential-election-round1.png) Yuri Boyko the Opposition Platform candidate, the 'lets get along with Russia no need for war' candidate won (in the Donbas regions) but voter turnout is low (in the 30s) because most of the people there opted out of Ukrainian politics altogether and wont take part in it. 2019 Presidential elections second round:![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/bvCL4Xgc/2019-Ukrainian-presidential-election-round-2-svg.png) Maybe you were thinking about this result. Zelenskys opponent is litterally the guy that oversaw the War in the Donbass. The most hated person in the Russian speaking half of Ukraine of course Zelensky who was preaching peace would dominate him. And he did, because everyone hates Poroshenko. 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/fkn91C1h/2019.png) Again, notice anything about the Donbass region? Maybe the Opposition Platform taking all of the seats in the region? Maybe the same party becoming the second largest in the Ukrainian parliament? 2020 local elections in Ukraine:![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/TYg714dg/2020.png) And I quote from Wikipedia: Summary of 2020 local elections - combined results of all oblast (province) councils' elections, raion (district) councils' elections in Donetsk' and Luhansk Oblast and the Kyiv City Council elections. Red and orange denote oblasts (and Kyiv as the city with special status) where pro-Ukrainian and pro-West parties got the most seats, blue and light blue denote oblasts where pro-Russian and euro-sceptical parties got the most seats. Green denotes oblasts where pro-Ukrainian/pro-West and pro-Russian/euro-sceptical parties got the same amount of seats.
Yeah but imagine every time a region of country would vote differently than the rest of the country, the neighbouring country would try to invade the capital and claim those area for themselves, it would make quite a mess. So while, we understand that there is an area where people were more prorussia before the war, I can guarantee you that what Russia did, did not improve their quality of life a single bit.
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Northern Ireland23828 Posts
On August 22 2024 04:36 0x64 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2024 00:25 zeo wrote:On August 21 2024 16:54 iopq wrote:On August 20 2024 23:47 zeo wrote:On August 20 2024 22:51 KwarK wrote:On August 20 2024 22:41 zeo wrote:On August 20 2024 22:31 KwarK wrote:On August 20 2024 22:21 zeo wrote:On August 20 2024 21:48 KwarK wrote: I think it’s useful to have a Russian around so that we can remember why we need to keep sending Ukraine weapons. Though he may not personally receive a delivery of 180,000 tungsten balls he is representative of a popular attitude in Russia. It’s a problem best treated with tungsten. When sufficient tungsten has been delivered to the necessary recipients we may have peace with the more reasonable Russians. To the last Ukrainian!  They’d fight on with sticks if all they had was sticks. They know what it is like to live under Russian rule. If they’d rather fight to the last Ukrainian than live under Russian rule then that is their right. I do see why the dignity in their struggle is alien to you though. In any event, they don’t have to fight with sticks. If they want to come for the land and the homes of the Donbass and Crimean people with sticks or whatever you want to give them then keep pushing them to do just that. Maybe when the sufficient amount have been sent we may have peace with the more reasonable Kievites left. The Donbas was at peace until Russia invaded it. Ukraine was at peace until the Obama administration sought to overthrow the democratically elected president of Ukraine in a violent coup spearheaded by neonazis thugs. The resulting kakistocracy in Kiev tore the country apart by actively and violently suppressing the 50% of the country that didn't accept the illegal coup. Crimea and the Donbass rightly took it upon themselves to bring back the rule of law from the new illegitimate government in Kiev. The peace ended when Avakov acting as the interior minister in April 2014 declared his 48h anti-terrorist operation. Well, its been almost 3800 days since then so things didn't really turn out how the unelected government planned Zelensky was making comedy shows in 2014, what are you even talking about? He was elected by 90% of Donbass voters on the Ukrainian side (the Russian side of Donbass didn't vote in the Ukrainian election) What? Where are you getting this from? Here are the results of the last Presidential, Parliamentary and local elections: 2019 Presidential elections first round:![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/Njv6nGwr/2019-Ukrainian-presidential-election-round1.png) Yuri Boyko the Opposition Platform candidate, the 'lets get along with Russia no need for war' candidate won (in the Donbas regions) but voter turnout is low (in the 30s) because most of the people there opted out of Ukrainian politics altogether and wont take part in it. 2019 Presidential elections second round:![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/bvCL4Xgc/2019-Ukrainian-presidential-election-round-2-svg.png) Maybe you were thinking about this result. Zelenskys opponent is litterally the guy that oversaw the War in the Donbass. The most hated person in the Russian speaking half of Ukraine of course Zelensky who was preaching peace would dominate him. And he did, because everyone hates Poroshenko. 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/fkn91C1h/2019.png) Again, notice anything about the Donbass region? Maybe the Opposition Platform taking all of the seats in the region? Maybe the same party becoming the second largest in the Ukrainian parliament? 2020 local elections in Ukraine:![[image loading]](https://i.postimg.cc/TYg714dg/2020.png) And I quote from Wikipedia: Summary of 2020 local elections - combined results of all oblast (province) councils' elections, raion (district) councils' elections in Donetsk' and Luhansk Oblast and the Kyiv City Council elections. Red and orange denote oblasts (and Kyiv as the city with special status) where pro-Ukrainian and pro-West parties got the most seats, blue and light blue denote oblasts where pro-Russian and euro-sceptical parties got the most seats. Green denotes oblasts where pro-Ukrainian/pro-West and pro-Russian/euro-sceptical parties got the same amount of seats. Yeah but imagine every time a region of country would vote differently than the rest of the country, the neighbouring country would try to invade the capital and claim those area for themselves, it would make quite a mess. So while, we understand that there is an area where people were more prorussia before the war, I can guarantee you that what Russia did, did not improve their quality of life a single bit. I would also imagine the Venn Diagram of people who want a broader closer alignment with Russia for whatever political or cultural reasons, and those who desire to be annexed into Russian territory isn’t some perfect overlap.
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zeo has been arguing this point for the last 10 years, he's not going to change his mind over this.
I don't think anyone cares about his ideas that russia can annex whatever they want and its ok because "reasons".
Ukraine might be doing another offensive into russia right now, could be false rumors I don't know yet.
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I have mixed feelings about banning pro-Russian voices from Western public spaces. People tend to have short a memory. If they stop interacting with those voices regularly then at some point they may simply forget how rotten the Russian ruling class and their supporters are, and eventually start trusting their "peace" proposals.
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they aren't getting banned for being pro-Russian. They are getting banned for shit posting.
Its just that most pro-Russian posters tend be so devoid from reality that they almost inevitable end up shit posting as their reality and the real world collide.
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On August 22 2024 05:47 sertas wrote: zeo has been arguing this point for the last 10 years, he's not going to change his mind over this.
I think Zeo still thinks MH17 was shot down by Ukraine.
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On August 22 2024 06:21 Sent. wrote: I have mixed feelings about banning pro-Russian voices from Western public spaces. People tend to have short a memory. If they stop interacting with those voices regularly then at some point they may simply forget how rotten the Russian ruling class and their supporters are, and eventually start trusting their "peace" proposals.
The problem is that so far most if not all pro-Russian voices have been spewing nothing but propaganda repeated over and over again. Ukrainians are nazis, they're the worst kind of people and need to be dealt with, DPR and LPR were oppressed and had to be liberated, Crimea is rightfully Russian etc. etc.
I don't mind arguments as long as they are somewhat based in reality. I don't know why no one can simply accept the fact that what's happening now is Putin's dream of rebuilding USSR. One could argue it'd be great for Russia to do so and become a superpower once again to rival China and the US but all they do is construct some lies and half-truths like "special military operation" instead of invasion/war etc.
But back to the topic at hand, I wonder how Russian economy will handle this. Kursk and Belogorod oblasts were not chosen randomly for the incursion. Sure, their primary strategic value is that they're expanding the distance between Kharkiv and Kyiv for a potential offensive but the biggest factor is that they're the bread basket for Russia and we're in the harvesting season now.
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Ukraine is hitting oil depots and oil refineries almost daily for the last few months, it's really incredible how much money russia has that they can afford not only to hire millions to their army, but also afford having oil depots blown up on the daily. Also many airfields hit in the last few days with many aircraft and ammunition being destroyed, which is good obviously.
Only economies that are basicly 100% oil / gas economies can afford this type of war, a normal economy would crumble super fast. Russia could be norway rich, instead it's mexico rich with a lot of weapons and rich politicians and rich army personell.
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Hydrocarbon exports are just one leg on which Russian aggression stands, the others are: massive Soviet era stockpiles of hardware/ammo and population bred to endure hardships for the Tzar.
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United States41984 Posts
In English we typically use either Czar or Tsar. Is Tzar the Polish version?
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On August 24 2024 21:46 KwarK wrote: In English we typically use either Czar or Tsar. Is Tzar the Polish version? In Polish we say "Car". "tz" is the closest to polish pronunciation I think.
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So the push on both fronts seems to have staggered. Russia is even being pushed back a little bit in the southeast, which is completely expected. This is how all pushes have gone in this war so far; one side pushes the other, their lines gets stretched, and then the meet back somewhere in the middle. It's interesting how that didn't happen up north, but Ukraine being busy blowing up not only every bridge, but also every pontoon that Russia tried to assemble, likely has something to do with it.
New hostage swap today, btw. 115 Ukrainian POWs exchanged for most likely a bunch of the conscripts who surrendered in Kursk. Some of them have been prisoners since the start of the war. The pictures of the released soldiers are reminiscent of the ww2 labour camps; barely skin and bones. This isn't anything new or unexpected, we all know Russia treats their prisoners like absolute dirt. Still makes my blood boil every time I'm reminded of it
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Here's an interesting tidbit btw, can't believe I hadn't noticed before now. Russia have, so far, fielded 900k soldiers in Ukraine. All sources indicate they have taken losses (Killed and wounded) of roughly 600k. That's 2/3 casualties of your entire invading force. It's twice as many as Russia first fielded when they invaded back in 2022. Now, of course, those numbers doesn't mean they only have 300k left, a lot of wounded soldiers go back into the field after recovery (Numbers indicate they are currently somewhere in the area of 450k). But it's still an absolutely insane number.
So how does this compare to Ukraine? This one's a bit harder to determine. We know their total military is somewhere in the ballpark 800k-1M, but we don't know how many of those are fighting on the front lines. I'm seeing articles suggests around 300k currently. Which would yield around 400k total since the start of the war when we add casualties. So a casualty rate of 1/4 in the same time period. Or 3/12 vs 8/12, if you want to compare apples to apples.
It's weird to say it, but everything indicates that Ukraine is actually winning the war of attrition. We know Russia is currently losing an average of about 1100 men a day. At this rate, the question isn't how long Ukraine is going to hold, it's how long Russia is.
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United States41984 Posts
They’re expected to run out of tanks and BMPs before meat. About 2026 for those. Running out won’t be hitting zero though, it’ll be exponential reductions in the scale of assaults as they use 20% of their total remaining stock each month etc.
We already hit that point with their missile attacks. They’re only firing with new production at this point. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Russia switches to a defensive posture and just tries to hold what it has in the Donbas. On the one hand it’ll somewhat force Ukraine to be the attacker but on the other it presents Russia with no actual win condition.
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On August 22 2024 06:21 Sent. wrote: I have mixed feelings about banning pro-Russian voices from Western public spaces. People tend to have short a memory. If they stop interacting with those voices regularly then at some point they may simply forget how rotten the Russian ruling class and their supporters are, and eventually start trusting their "peace" proposals.
I think time has proven that letting them post here is only a waste of time. Yeah, it might show some insight into how deep their propaganda has taken root but just like banning nazi propaganda I think banning these people is a good thing. I don't know if they are lying and actually understand that they are defending facism, or if they actually, truly believe that Russia is trying to do good. But at this point I don't think it even matters. Both are basically equally bad.
It's voices like them that make other people believe that there is two sides to this issue, but it's rare with big geopolitical events where there is less of two sides than this. It's genocidal russians vs Ukrainians who want to live. If you defend Russias side you defend genocide and its absurdly easy to see.
I've been against western interventions in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan (among others). But this one is so obivous that intervention by western powers is a good thing that I don't know what to even say.
Ban these genocidal terrorists, like you would ban nazi calling for (or suggesting) genocide against jews. It is the same thing, just different groups involved.
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As experts on youtube have said, manpower is a non issue for both sides, at this casualty rate both sides can keep going forever. Equipment and economy are the two big things that will decide this war in the long run.
I have a feeling if kamala harris wins then russia will not be able to fight another 4 years of american support, however if trump wins then ukraine will no longer recieve american weapons and that's going to change everything, possibly leading to russia claiming a big part of ukraine.
Really crazy how one election might decide this war, normally you would have two candidates both wanting to support ukraine, but here we are.
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On August 25 2024 09:31 KwarK wrote: They’re expected to run out of tanks and BMPs before meat. About 2026 for those. Running out won’t be hitting zero though, it’ll be exponential reductions in the scale of assaults as they use 20% of their total remaining stock each month etc.
We already hit that point with their missile attacks. They’re only firing with new production at this point. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Russia switches to a defensive posture and just tries to hold what it has in the Donbas. On the one hand it’ll somewhat force Ukraine to be the attacker but on the other it presents Russia with no actual win condition.
Well, we know they're only capable of building 400 new BMPs a year, and refurbish around 600 from storage. The question is how much of that old storage is in any conditon to be used at all, which we don't know. A lot of it is rusted crap that can't be fielded, we know that much. "Independent research" (Aka, Google) seems to suggest around 3000 in ok condition, as of January this year. Russia is currently losing around 80 BMPs a month (Or, if we round up because we're generous, around 1000 a year).
So Ukraine is destroying BMPs at just about the same rate as Russia can make them, however with the still 2000 in the field as of today, + the 2700 that are in storage, we're looking at a time frame of 4.5 years quite a long time before they run out, unfortunately. Provided all the numbers are correct, which is unlikely (I bet they've started with the easiest to field first, with the condition of stored BMPs decreasing over time as they make their way down the list, which is going to increase refurbishing time drastically), but we also don't know that they won't/can't ramp up new BMP production before then. We're still looking at a significant number of BMPs to take out before this war is over.
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On August 25 2024 20:18 sertas wrote: As experts on youtube have said, manpower is a non issue for both sides, at this casualty rate both sides can keep going forever. Equipment and economy are the two big things that will decide this war in the long run. Somehow I doubt this. If by available manpower we mean - how many people are there who could potentially be sent to frontlines? - then yes.
But there are many more factors, no? Frontlines need people with appropriate health conditions and proper training, willing to fight. Russia relies on contractors, and one would think this stream is not infinite - given how it's more and more obvious that chances are high you won't come back to enjoy your high inflated salary. Another mobilization can provide bodies but not good soldiers, regardless of equipment availability. In Ukraine - just my guess - most people who want to fight are probably doing this already. There are reserves for both sides but they are very far from infinite, I would guess.
Also Russia needs people working in factories producing weapons/ammo and people to keep other industries functional. Ukraine is supported by the Western countries but it's also 3.5x smaller, so they might also have issues with having enough people keeping Ukraine's industries alive.
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On August 25 2024 20:18 sertas wrote: I have a feeling if kamala harris wins then russia will not be able to fight another 4 years of american support, however if trump wins then ukraine will no longer recieve american weapons and that's going to change everything, possibly leading to russia claiming a big part of ukraine.
I'm not sure Trump would actually shut down the aid for Ukraine despite his claims. It's way too lucrative a business right now for the US military industry and we all know that in politics money talks. Like 70% of the aid package is money being directly fed into the US industry for production.
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