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On August 14 2026 10:46 Manit0u wrote:
Yeah, it'll definitely be tough autumn and winter for Ukraine. But on the other hand some military analysts are saying that if this new mobilization of few hundred thousand troops won't bring Russia much success their back will be pretty much broken and it'll be much easier for Ukraine from there on out.
Let's hope they can hold.
The selling point of mobilisation is probably going to be that "We do this, take Donbas and war is over. It's a one and done deal."
Everyone wants the war to be over. The people not conscripted feels safe because they won't have to go to war (it will be over!).
The conscripted men hope that overwhelming force and limoted objectives will mean they live.
If 500k-1mn men are called up and the war doesn't end (worst case scenario for Russia they don't even achieve their objectives).
Then continuing war is a hard sell.
As stated, if you think you are dying anyway either flee or fight.
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Another great night for Ukraine. They shot 5 flamingos at the Russian space center that was building their rockets for the Russian version of starlink. 2 direct hits, going to mean 2027 is completely unrealistic and billions down the tube. They also had a big drone strike on a air field that held many of the mugs that can fine the ballistic missiles (and Ukraine can’t currently stop), no word on what they took out yet but there is video of things blowing up.
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Federov is calling for wartime elections and planning to tour the USA. Looks like Zelenskyy was right to sack him, the guy seems to be unstable.
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Well, my very amateur and preliminary reading of this new Fedorov situation would be that in his time as the leader of digital transformation of Ukraine as well as his short stint as the Defense minister he developed a close relationship with some very powerful people, including Elon Musk, which eventually emboldened him to pursue his own political ambitions.
As he was working on lying the groundwork for this, it looks like he clashed with Syrskyi and Zelenskyy saw an opportunity to get rid of him because started to perceive him as a threat, it backfired because he was fired, then he fired Syrskyi and thought he could neutralize this guy by bringing him back in to the fold, but miscalculated and now Fedorov is, likely at the encouragement of outside elements kicking his political ambitions in to overdrive.
To a guy like Musk, who I suspect might be one of the main players behind pushing Fedorov (the guy got him to turn off Starlink for Russians which he refused to do for 3 years beforehand) so I am instinctively skeptical of him, it also seems like calling for elections which is against the Ukrainian constitution and was something that Putin (and Trump and his media apparatus for a while) were calling for, which makes me even more skeptical of the dude.
All in all, shitty and depressing, even if I'm completely off on my conspiracy thinking calling for election like this is inviting instability and disunity in a state of war and still a shitty thing to do in my opinion.
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On August 20 2026 04:13 Jankisa wrote:
Well, my very amateur and preliminary reading of this new Fedorov situation would be that in his time as the leader of digital transformation of Ukraine as well as his short stint as the Defense minister he developed a close relationship with some very powerful people, including Elon Musk, which eventually emboldened him to pursue his own political ambitions.
As he was working on lying the groundwork for this, it looks like he clashed with Syrskyi and Zelenskyy saw an opportunity to get rid of him because started to perceive him as a threat, it backfired because he was fired, then he fired Syrskyi and thought he could neutralize this guy by bringing him back in to the fold, but miscalculated and now Fedorov is, likely at the encouragement of outside elements kicking his political ambitions in to overdrive.
To a guy like Musk, who I suspect might be one of the main players behind pushing Fedorov (the guy got him to turn off Starlink for Russians which he refused to do for 3 years beforehand) so I am instinctively skeptical of him, it also seems like calling for elections which is against the Ukrainian constitution and was something that Putin (and Trump and his media apparatus for a while) were calling for, which makes me even more skeptical of the dude.
All in all, shitty and depressing, even if I'm completely off on my conspiracy thinking calling for election like this is inviting instability and disunity in a state of war and still a shitty thing to do in my opinion.
Agreed. My first reaction when I read the news was that I would never vote for him. He is arguing to break the constitution and unity when his nation is being invaded. If he also argued to capitulate to Russia I would at least respect his political stance for having a coherent policy even if I strongly disagree.
The mental gymnastics required to hold a fair election when a large fraction of your population has fled the country or is drafted and will get no chance to vote due to their posting...
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United States44398 Posts
It’s a shamelessly self interested play. He demanded to be given the top job on the basis of a wave of popular sentiment. When offered other roles he refused them. Then when he overplayed his hand and didn’t get what he wanted he demands a do-over. The Ukrainian constitution is an inconvenience he wants to bypass now it conflicts with his ambition.
He may have been a competent minister in his role but I doubt he’s the only competent man in Ukraine. He’s not irreplaceable. Let him serve elsewhere or let him serve in uniform.
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On August 20 2026 04:13 Jankisa wrote:
Well, my very amateur and preliminary reading of this new Fedorov situation would be that in his time as the leader of digital transformation of Ukraine as well as his short stint as the Defense minister he developed a close relationship with some very powerful people, including Elon Musk, which eventually emboldened him to pursue his own political ambitions.
As he was working on lying the groundwork for this, it looks like he clashed with Syrskyi and Zelenskyy saw an opportunity to get rid of him because started to perceive him as a threat, it backfired because he was fired, then he fired Syrskyi and thought he could neutralize this guy by bringing him back in to the fold, but miscalculated and now Fedorov is, likely at the encouragement of outside elements kicking his political ambitions in to overdrive.
To a guy like Musk, who I suspect might be one of the main players behind pushing Fedorov (the guy got him to turn off Starlink for Russians which he refused to do for 3 years beforehand) so I am instinctively skeptical of him, it also seems like calling for elections which is against the Ukrainian constitution and was something that Putin (and Trump and his media apparatus for a while) were calling for, which makes me even more skeptical of the dude.
All in all, shitty and depressing, even if I'm completely off on my conspiracy thinking calling for election like this is inviting instability and disunity in a state of war and still a shitty thing to do in my opinion.
Starlink was never activated in Russia, and russian troops were using it in contested region, which meant no clear boundaries and starlink satellites had a functional radius.
Elon didn't refuse to turn it off in Russia, he refused to turn it on for ukraine deep strike.
It was both starlink and ukraine effort that gone a step further to make whitelist and verification that made starlink less prone to misuse.
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Yeah, you are right, I guess I wasn't precise in my language from a technical perspective.
Musk and Ukrainians weren't able to get this resolved until 1 month in to this guy's tenure as the minister of Defense, none of us here are privy to the way these communications went through, I'm just curious about the timeline and why this pretty basic idea of "we'll only allow the terminals we know are Ukrainian" wasn't implemented before, especially since the Russian ones were smuggled and breaking their TOS.
I guess it's possible it wasn't super obvious and neither SpaceX or Ukrainians thought of it before, I'm more inclined to believe it was a matter of Musk/SpaceX not being willing to go the extra mile until someone he liked reached out.
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But of strange quirk going on now in the drone reporting . Before Russia would say Ukraine was sending almost nothing and Ukraine would report their number. Now Russias number is double Ukraines. I’m not sure if it is because then when they get hit they can claim they are knocking way more down than they are. Or if it is to set up for mobilization, something like, we need to go deeper to stop all these drones.
Strange shift at any rate. People who trust Russian numbers are going to think Ukraine has gone from like 100 drones a day to 700 in a month!
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Caught up a little with the patriot missiles system as well.
Apparently there are different tier to the system, ukraine is asking for the top end PAC-3 and the lower tier PAC-2.
Even Germany can only produce PAC-2.
I think the report about how ukriane would have made PAC-3 cheaply must have been a random remark or something.
The PAC-3 is far more complex and setting up a whole new supply chain, some parts can't scale up for a couple of years.
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On August 21 2026 09:19 ETisME wrote:
Caught up a little with the patriot missiles system as well.
Apparently there are different tier to the system, ukraine is asking for the top end PAC-3 and the lower tier PAC-2.
Even Germany can only produce PAC-2.
I think the report about how ukriane would have made PAC-3 cheaply must have been a random remark or something.
The PAC-3 is far more complex and setting up a whole new supply chain, some parts can't scale up for a couple of years.
I doubt there are any technical reasons why germany can only produce pac-2, and it got more to do with that you don't trust the competition not to peep at least a little. Same why no european fighter jets can be used as part of natos nuclear delivery: to get certified for that they would have to hand overall the specs to the US. Ukraine is at war right now and thus them playing it fast and loose is to be expected. So the concern was probably that they might come up with a patriot derivative, maybe some improvements thanks to having the ability for some hardcore "testing", courtesy of russia, and cheaper because they just took a massive shortcut by just stealing intellectual property. And maybe some of that good ol' eastern european pragmatism of getting rid of some overengineered bells and whistles that are not relevant to their use case.
It just got reframed more positively because the average joe might not take "these are our allies and they are stealing the shit we send them because they need it for survival" kindly.
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On August 22 2026 09:16 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2026 09:19 ETisME wrote:
Caught up a little with the patriot missiles system as well.
Apparently there are different tier to the system, ukraine is asking for the top end PAC-3 and the lower tier PAC-2.
Even Germany can only produce PAC-2.
I think the report about how ukriane would have made PAC-3 cheaply must have been a random remark or something.
The PAC-3 is far more complex and setting up a whole new supply chain, some parts can't scale up for a couple of years. I doubt there are any technical reasons why germany can only produce pac-2, and it got more to do with that you don't trust the competition not to peep at least a little. Same why no european fighter jets can be used as part of natos nuclear delivery: to get certified for that they would have to hand overall the specs to the US. Ukraine is at war right now and thus them playing it fast and loose is to be expected. So the concern was probably that they might come up with a patriot derivative, maybe some improvements thanks to having the ability for some hardcore "testing", courtesy of russia, and cheaper because they just took a massive shortcut by just stealing intellectual property. And maybe some of that good ol' eastern european pragmatism of getting rid of some overengineered bells and whistles that are not relevant to their use case. It just got reframed more positively because the average joe might not take "these are our allies and they are stealing the shit we send them because they need it for survival" kindly.
Germany can't even scale up PAC-2 production, let alone PAC-3 which is said to be significantly harder to produce.
Apparently it has over 400 suppliers and still with significant bottleneck at some parts.
I don't think you can just dupe a patriot system like duping a car if that's the case.
Hard to say how much gov red tape inefficiency is at play here. And I certainly wouldn't trust eastern Europe having their hands on these tech wouldn't leak to Russia and China personally
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Oh letting ukraine steal the specs and hack something togeather means that NATO doesn't have to pay a licence fee in return for making it themselves.
The PAC radar system is a wild hoodo tech, it can just talk to anything else that you want to. Having a parallel system of some PAC-2's that can take down planes and cruse missles while the shiny PAC-3's are the hypersonic and ICBM hunters would adapt it to modern times.
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On August 22 2026 09:31 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2026 09:16 Artesimo wrote:On August 21 2026 09:19 ETisME wrote:
Caught up a little with the patriot missiles system as well.
Apparently there are different tier to the system, ukraine is asking for the top end PAC-3 and the lower tier PAC-2.
Even Germany can only produce PAC-2.
I think the report about how ukriane would have made PAC-3 cheaply must have been a random remark or something.
The PAC-3 is far more complex and setting up a whole new supply chain, some parts can't scale up for a couple of years. I doubt there are any technical reasons why germany can only produce pac-2, and it got more to do with that you don't trust the competition not to peep at least a little. Same why no european fighter jets can be used as part of natos nuclear delivery: to get certified for that they would have to hand overall the specs to the US. Ukraine is at war right now and thus them playing it fast and loose is to be expected. So the concern was probably that they might come up with a patriot derivative, maybe some improvements thanks to having the ability for some hardcore "testing", courtesy of russia, and cheaper because they just took a massive shortcut by just stealing intellectual property. And maybe some of that good ol' eastern european pragmatism of getting rid of some overengineered bells and whistles that are not relevant to their use case. It just got reframed more positively because the average joe might not take "these are our allies and they are stealing the shit we send them because they need it for survival" kindly. Germany can't even scale up PAC-2 production, let alone PAC-3 which is said to be significantly harder to produce. Apparently it has over 400 suppliers and still with significant bottleneck at some parts. I don't think you can just dupe a patriot system like duping a car if that's the case. Hard to say how much gov red tape inefficiency is at play here. And I certainly wouldn't trust eastern Europe having their hands on these tech wouldn't leak to Russia and China personally
Reverse engineering a patriot missile by taking it apart? Sure that would be tough. When you get the full on technical specs and get trained to build the thing? Yeah I trust just about any country with an already existing arms manufacturing to work from there.
The scaling issues for pac-2 in germany are also once again most likely due to our legal framework and not any question of competence. Arms manufacturing in germany is a bit hypocritical where we do have a strong defence sector, but we also like to delude ourselves for how and why they are used. The crux here would be that it is extremely difficult for an arms manufacturer in germany for weapons of war to produce more that what is needed to full fill existing orders, You almost can't produce to stockpile, which already had some pretty negative consequences for the bundeswehr where fulfilling an order gets more expensive and takes longer because the arms industry needs more to justify expanding their production capabilities than "oh you got a big order now, but after that you will have to scale down/close that 2nd plant again because you can't get enough orders to be allowed to produce at that scale". I bet you now with ukraine its the same shit again, nobody can scale up, be it production or suppliers, when they have to worry that shortly after this war ends all that investment into scaling up becomes useless due to the legal framework in place.
On August 22 2026 09:31 Sermokala wrote:
Oh letting ukraine steal the specs and hack something togeather means that NATO doesn't have to pay a licence fee in return for making it themselves.
The PAC radar system is a wild hoodo tech, it can just talk to anything else that you want to. Having a parallel system of some PAC-2's that can take down planes and cruse missles while the shiny PAC-3's are the hypersonic and ICBM hunters would adapt it to modern times.
It would also mean that you directly tell any nato member that industrial espionage against your allies is ok. I am sure that would do really well for international relations and unity of nato in general, not even thinking about the the reaction from the US alone. We've seen trump repeatedly break with conventions for international relations and the damage it does, especially the self damage. The lesson we should take from that really isn't "oh right you can just do that".
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You would be telling every NATO member that in times of war security is more important than economics.
Saying that Germany is acting like Trump in reguards to Ukraine is wild. Germany and NATO are telling Ukraine that there are no PAC-2's to spare and if they want to make more they can. What happens after the war is a vastly different case than what happens during it.
"Legal framework" I assume is code for getting and paying for licensing deals?
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On August 23 2026 02:02 Sermokala wrote:
You would be telling every NATO member that in times of war security is more important than economics.
Saying that Germany is acting like Trump in reguards to Ukraine is wild. Germany and NATO are telling Ukraine that there are no PAC-2's to spare and if they want to make more they can. What happens after the war is a vastly different case than what happens during it.
"Legal framework" I assume is code for getting and paying for licensing deals?
Where am I saying that germany is acting like trump in regards to ukraine? We might have misunderstood eachother. I read your response as why ukraine stealing industry knowledge might be good for nato and thus as an incredibly short sighted assessment of why that wouldn't be a bad thing.
But I am pretty sure neither germany nor "nato" can tell anyone that its ok to build a missile that belongs to a US company, but not 100% sure on that / how these licences are done.
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In three days they are up to 6 ozon warehouses hit, massive fires so I’m guessing they will be completely destroyed or close . They are wildberries main competitor and also carry over 20bn in debt that they will never be able to repay. Russian banks are going to have even bigger struggles as they have to write down these two companies monster debts.
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They had plans to open up 15 in this year. I'm sure they're going to continue to burn, and then they will go down to the next distributor down the line.
The russian military relied on these hubs for conscripts to get their gear so that the government didn't need to provide it. Things will get bad this winter as it gets harder and harder to get basic things around. The footage of gas shortages is everywhere, I can't imagine heating oil is going to do much better.
Numbers I got online are between 5 and 20 deaths so far in the warehouse campaign. This is 1000% going to be the first target in any new world war.
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On August 25 2026 08:43 Sermokala wrote:
They had plans to open up 15 in this year. I'm sure they're going to continue to burn, and then they will go down to the next distributor down the line.
The russian military relied on these hubs for conscripts to get their gear so that the government didn't need to provide it. Things will get bad this winter as it gets harder and harder to get basic things around. The footage of gas shortages is everywhere, I can't imagine heating oil is going to do much better.
Numbers I got online are between 5 and 20 deaths so far in the warehouse campaign. This is 1000% going to be the first target in any new world war.
Naa warehouses will be a target of opportunity after the most important military ones are tried first. If you can hit a military target while the missiles are still in the launch vehicle that is the top priority. You want to achieve air superiority and then decide if the war is won. If it will continue then logistic targets makes perfect sense.
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On August 23 2026 02:30 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2026 02:02 Sermokala wrote:
You would be telling every NATO member that in times of war security is more important than economics.
Saying that Germany is acting like Trump in reguards to Ukraine is wild. Germany and NATO are telling Ukraine that there are no PAC-2's to spare and if they want to make more they can. What happens after the war is a vastly different case than what happens during it.
"Legal framework" I assume is code for getting and paying for licensing deals? Where am I saying that germany is acting like trump in regards to ukraine? We might have misunderstood eachother. I read your response as why ukraine stealing industry knowledge might be good for nato and thus as an incredibly short sighted assessment of why that wouldn't be a bad thing. But I am pretty sure neither germany nor "nato" can tell anyone that its ok to build a missile that belongs to a US company, but not 100% sure on that / how these licences are done.
I am guessing here like many others, but I reckon the biggest problem is they never needed to scale up and as everyone knows, it's unpopular to increase military budget.
They are expanding but not expanding quick enough, it takes a long time to approve new vendors, but it takes even longer to get them into production capable deliveries.
This is why I am not too fuss about US and Iran situation; the US needs to know the bottleneck and battletested, especially in drone and new missile defense capabilities.
Look at the UK royal navy, it had 43 active vessels and now they only have 23 vessels.
Partly due to the lack of orders, for like multiple decades.
China on the other hand is building 39 warships in just 5 years, and in terms of ship weight, that's the entire royal navy size.
These are not those cheap unusable ships, the very recent new nuclear carrier type 004 is said to be quite capable.
Hopefully there are a bit more pressure and incentives for companies to invest and expand.
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EPT
