EPTDuring winter time, Russian cities are heated by central heating, it might be the next escalation.
Russo-Ukrainian War Thread - Page 950
| Forum Index > General Forum |
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. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. | ||
|
0x64
Finland4647 Posts
During winter time, Russian cities are heated by central heating, it might be the next escalation. | ||
|
ETisME
12889 Posts
And just so happen the Vatican top envoy was in Russia for multiple days diplomatic mission regarding Ukraine war The timing is quite ominous, the Vatican acts like a third party humanity focused diplomat, with the US joining the talk so abruptly, that could mean Russia may be planning something more extreme and needed direct presence/ pressure from the US. | ||
|
Billyboy
2492 Posts
It is big that the CIA director went in person, and in a way that the world knew, it’s the CIA if they wanted to get a message covertly they could have. | ||
|
Jankisa
Croatia1778 Posts
WSJ reported that the US had collected intelligence showing that Russia was making early preparations for a possible military mobilisation for its war against Ukraine and had plans to test NATO's resolve. And: The last time a CIA director visited Russia in person was in November 2021, when William Burns travelled to Moscow to warn the Kremlin at the highest level that the US was aware of its preparations for a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. So it seems like Russia is planning a full mobilization, in 2022 they declared only partial one, for a full effor they would need to declare war on Ukraine which now seems like a real possibility. While all this is scary in general, from a practical stand point I don't think it would, at this point, change the situation on the front lines that much. Yes, it's very likely that throwing more soldiers at the problem would result in increased pace of gains for Russia, but they don't seem to be able to properly equip and train the current ones, I don't think that increasing the numbers would be the thing that makes or brakes it for them in this war. Overall, seems like a desperation move, things are not going well and even attempting a winter offensive seems very, very stupid. All these conscripts would need to be kept warm and fed, advancement is much harder and Ukraine is still quite north and frigid, seems like a great way to get a whole lot of people to die at unprecedented levels. | ||
|
LightSpectra
United States3298 Posts
| ||
|
Yurie
12175 Posts
On August 26 2026 23:42 Jankisa wrote: Source: And: So it seems like Russia is planning a full mobilization, in 2022 they declared only partial one, for a full effor they would need to declare war on Ukraine which now seems like a real possibility. While all this is scary in general, from a practical stand point I don't think it would, at this point, change the situation on the front lines that much. Yes, it's very likely that throwing more soldiers at the problem would result in increased pace of gains for Russia, but they don't seem to be able to properly equip and train the current ones, I don't think that increasing the numbers would be the thing that makes or brakes it for them in this war. Overall, seems like a desperation move, things are not going well and even attempting a winter offensive seems very, very stupid. All these conscripts would need to be kept warm and fed, advancement is much harder and Ukraine is still quite north and frigid, seems like a great way to get a whole lot of people to die at unprecedented levels. If they could do a MAJOR breakthrough in a few spots so that Ukraine can no longer man the longer front line properly they could win. Ukraine is having a hard time recruiting enough soldiers. That is basically the only way they can lose currently, too few people on too many km. Well that or nukes. | ||
|
0x64
Finland4647 Posts
On August 26 2026 23:57 LightSpectra wrote: Could not the CIA director's trip have something to do with the US calling for global sanctions against Iran? USA started to understand that Iran/Russia vs USA is real only once Iran started to use Russian intelligence. A bit of a blind spot there. Now, we can speculate all we want what he was doing there, but generally, it looks like a power move. Russia would not be in the position to send their chief of intelligence anywhere. Prisoner exchange sounds also quite a good possibility. | ||
|
Billyboy
2492 Posts
On August 26 2026 23:57 LightSpectra wrote: Could not the CIA director's trip have something to do with the US calling for global sanctions against Iran? Yes, it’s all speculation. They did bring up Iran, both the economic d day or whatever and the intelligence sharing. For the economic they suggested that it’s not in the CIA wheelhouse and would be handled by different diplomatic channels. For the intelligence sharing it was basically like, possible but why now. Whereas the Russian drone attacking on nato soil is a huge escalation on its own, let alone if it had worked, or killed some German civilians. But it’s the CIA so it’s all speculation and for all anyone knows it’s about some crazy shit in Africa or South America that isn’t even on anyone radar. It is clearly something big and about sending a message not talks because this almost never happens and he was there for such a short time. | ||
|
Artesimo
Germany627 Posts
On August 26 2026 11:43 ETisME wrote: 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. Like I explained, its less a case of they don't want to / didn't need to and more a case of the legal framework made it a unattractive decision. If you scale up production, but don't have orders that fit that size, you cannot utilise it much. There are some loopholes that allow them to build up some stock for maintenance reasons, but this isn't enough. German arms industry is close to made to order production, not because they want to, but because of the legal framework and export restrictions. So even with an increased demand like right now with ukraine, they are ramping up production capabilities with some caution because once the war ends you risk sitting on a lot of production capability that you cannot use to leverage economy of scales unless you have the orders for it already. You also can't keep your production running at full speed/reduced speed for a while to build up storage for a bit and then slowly scale down, in the hopes of selling your stockpile later/slowly over time at higher profit margins due to the lower production costs. Its not even a question of german defence expenditure, this has much stronger impacts on the exports. The people who would be most desperate to buy some of our arms, like ukraine, or any country that fears it has to improve its military, can't afford to wait even longer just because capacity is already clogged up with a previous order. Increase military spending from germany might help here a little bit, but I don't think it makes a meaningful difference as long as the legal situation is the way it is. A big order now does not make you scale up production significantly unless you can be sure similarly sized orders will come right after, otherwise that new factory you build and all the new workers you trained become a dead weight. It is correct though that this also has implications for not being able to rapidly scale up production since a lot of your suppliers will also had no need to build up more capacity or the ability to scale up rapidly. But the core of the issue is and always has been the restriction we put on our arms industry due to our history. | ||
|
Jankisa
Croatia1778 Posts
On August 27 2026 00:39 Yurie wrote: If they could do a MAJOR breakthrough in a few spots so that Ukraine can no longer man the longer front line properly they could win. Ukraine is having a hard time recruiting enough soldiers. That is basically the only way they can lose currently, too few people on too many km. Well that or nukes. I guess that really depends on the definition of MAJOR breakthrough, something like that hasn't happened since November 2022 when Ukraine liberated Kherson, since then, everything has been very entrenched and no major breakthroughs even close to this one happened. I just don't think that in this current, depleted (when it comes to material) state either Russia or Ukraine have what it takes to achieve this, you would need a huge concentration of armor, air support and logistics that neither side has at their disposal now. You can't just send 100.000 guys into the breach and expect anything other then a slaughter, artillery, drones, HIMARS and much more await. | ||
|
Yurie
12175 Posts
On August 27 2026 05:00 Jankisa wrote: I guess that really depends on the definition of MAJOR breakthrough, something like that hasn't happened since November 2022 when Ukraine liberated Kherson, since then, everything has been very entrenched and no major breakthroughs even close to this one happened. I just don't think that in this current, depleted (when it comes to material) state either Russia or Ukraine have what it takes to achieve this, you would need a huge concentration of armor, air support and logistics that neither side has at their disposal now. You can't just send 100.000 guys into the breach and expect anything other then a slaughter, artillery, drones, HIMARS and much more await. Best strategy I can think of is to send ~200k people spread out all over the front on a single day and hope that some spots are soft enough that you get past the front and a few k survived. Those could then push the resupply of Ukrainians behind them away so you can get through with regular offensives. I don't think that likely to work and it would end the war since all front line units are dead after that. I agree massing 50k people on one spot doesn't work since you just get bogged down by artillery. | ||
|
Billyboy
2492 Posts
The threat of mobilization along is causing a ton of young men to escape through Georgia. Mobilization is extremely expensive. I don’t see how it’s a big win at this point, like 2-3 years ago it could have made a big difference. Now it just seems like you are compounding already existing problems. And possibly creating much more dissent at home. It’s one thing to have paid soldiers dying , or “criminals”, it’s another to have forced conscripts dying. | ||
|
Manit0u
Poland17850 Posts
On August 27 2026 05:11 Yurie wrote: Best strategy I can think of is to send ~200k people spread out all over the front on a single day and hope that some spots are soft enough that you get past the front and a few k survived. Those could then push the resupply of Ukrainians behind them away so you can get through with regular offensives. I don't think that likely to work and it would end the war since all front line units are dead after that. I agree massing 50k people on one spot doesn't work since you just get bogged down by artillery. This wouldn't work either. Sure, you might get some breaches but with your forces spread so thin it's impossible to capitalize on that. What, you'll have a few thousand men going through some empty fields, potentially capturing some minor villages all the while being harried by artillery and drones? Ukraine can then simply defend the places it can and send reinforcements to other fronts as pressure lessens on the defended parts. The frontline is simply too large for this to work, especially considering the abysmal state of Russian logistics. It majorly favors the defender. Big and sudden breakthroughs are extremely unlikely in the current state of the war. Drones see everything, small groups have trouble taking entrenched positions and big concentrations of armor and manpower get instantly targeted before they can even reach the front proper. Unless something happens that would really change the game (like an actually working anti-drone system that can be mounted on vehicles) this war will just continue to be the slow grind it's been for the past couple of years until one of the countries is unable to grind any more, then I suspect it'll fall slowly all at once. | ||
|
Jankisa
Croatia1778 Posts
So I guess this is a follow up "really, this is a bad idea Vlad" meeting after the initial leaks/warnings from USA Intelligence that Russians are planning a probing attack against a NATO member. Even dumber idea then to try to go with full mobilization, not sure what could be achieved except to get the surrounding NATO members to really put support for Ukraine into next gear and help NATO rally around the flag and invalidate all the shit work Trump put in trying to destroy the coalition. The absolute best case scenario he might have in mind is that whichever country is attacked/provoked invokes article 5 and USA and a few others refuse to honor it, but for an unprovoked attack from a haggered enemy, eh, good luck with that Putin. | ||
|
Manit0u
Poland17850 Posts
On August 27 2026 21:46 Jankisa wrote: WSJ says CIA visit was to warn against NATO attack. So I guess this is a follow up "really, this is a bad idea Vlad" meeting after the initial leaks/warnings from USA Intelligence that Russians are planning a probing attack against a NATO member. Even dumber idea then to try to go with full mobilization, not sure what could be achieved except to get the surrounding NATO members to really put support for Ukraine into next gear and help NATO rally around the flag and invalidate all the shit work Trump put in trying to destroy the coalition. The absolute best case scenario he might have in mind is that whichever country is attacked/provoked invokes article 5 and USA and a few others refuse to honor it, but for an unprovoked attack from a haggered enemy, eh, good luck with that Putin. I guess we'll never know for sure. There are also reports he went there to try and broker some kind of deal like US won't be helping Ukraine if Russia won't be helping Iran. | ||
|
Billyboy
2492 Posts
| ||
|
Artesimo
Germany627 Posts
On August 28 2026 03:50 Billyboy wrote: Sounds very unlikely given his history. My guess is that’s pro Russian hope rather than a real thing. Also, would happen behind closed doors and way longer. This was meant to send a very clear message and have the world know they sent one. I mean the history of the man doesn't really matter much when he still has to work for trump, though I haven't really seen any credible source claiming that it was for such a deal. I can see the current administration being more concerned with what russia does to support iran than what they might do to a nato country as long as it doesn't force them to react, but I don't think they are reckless enough to not care at all. They can't afford another conflict right now, so I can see even the trump administration being concerned with any russian escalation with nato - though one wonders what that might even look like given the attempted drone strike on a cargo plane. | ||
|
Billyboy
2492 Posts
On August 28 2026 18:27 Artesimo wrote: I mean the history of the man doesn't really matter much when he still has to work for trump, though I haven't really seen any credible source claiming that it was for such a deal. I can see the current administration being more concerned with what russia does to support iran than what they might do to a nato country as long as it doesn't force them to react, but I don't think they are reckless enough to not care at all. They can't afford another conflict right now, so I can see even the trump administration being concerned with any russian escalation with nato - though one wonders what that might even look like given the attempted drone strike on a cargo plane. Could be, seems like every analyst in the know suggests it’s about Russia and not Iran. Including WSJ that says it was don’t mess with NATO and the NY times that says it was laying out how bad it is going for Russia and that they should be serious about negotiating. Some analysts are teasing that there is a big map update coming as early as today but likely this weekend. Hopefully it’s really good news. | ||
|
TropicalHaze
Finland76 Posts
| ||
|
Billyboy
2492 Posts
| ||
| ||
