Ukraine

Seeing as he rose to fame as a TV star, which in turn became the platform for his getting elected, Zelinsky is mastering the optics.

He has positioned himself, (and his nation) as defenders of democracy as much as defenders of Ukraine. I think he might have watched that movie "The 300"

I fully expect the word 'Leonidas' and the phrase 'hot gates' to come into popular usage.

Would now be an appropriate time to want a much deeper investigation into the Russian funding of the brexit campaign and the Tories/Johnson.

Jingoism doesn’t win wars. Attrition does.

The two are linked though.

How many Ukrainians speak Russian? Are the two languages mutually intelligible? This has to be an interesting factor for an occupation.

Edit: they apparently aren't mutually intelligible, they are about as different as French and Portuguese, but nearly all Ukrainians are bilingual and it's a bilingual country.

@molgrips good observation. Although the atteition gives you something to be jingoistic about. And they're doing a bloody good job of giving the Russains a spanking.

Older Ukrainians will speak Russian, it was taught in schools before the USSR collapsed.
Younger ones are more likely to speak English than older ones, and Russian is still fairly common.
Speaking English is very useful for the global media campaign

France has detained a Russian ship. This is in line with the sanctions.
Taken me surprise that something this physical would be an outcome. A bit of a worry that any mistakes here could lead to an escalation.

So from Dr Peter Caddick-Adams:

Stories emerging from Russia that their special forces were infiltrated and complete in Kharkiv, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities by 18 Feb. Putin anticipated a 3-4 day campaign, & budgeted for ten days fighting at $20bn/day. Anger that this may have misfired.

@militaryhistori on Twitter

All bodes well for a end sometime soon.

Or he roles out other weapons that I doubt the military or civilian population are equipped to deal with.

I wouldn't put it past him, but more than happy to be utterly wrong.

With his troops positioned where they are, are the mass destruction weapons an option? I'd say not, there's a good number of them in the main cities by now.

Chemical and biological munitions aren't mass destruction, but proximity of own troops should apply as a concern. But who knows?

They're in the armoury, but maybe even he and his generals aren't that batshit.

$20bn/day? Google recons that Iraq cost the US around $2tn, so Russia could spend that in 100 days rather than 18yrs?
How is it so much, and if it is accurate how long could they afford to sustain that? I heard they have $650bn of foreign reserves, but that's just over a month's worth, they could obviously spend more than that but how much more amd for how long?

With his troops positioned where they are are the mass destruction weapons an option? I’d say not, there’s a good number of them in the main cities by now.

Do we think Putin cares at this stage ?

I wouldn't bet my life on it.

I suspect that if putin uses nukes in Ukraine then he will also lose china and probably indian support.
They are sitting on the fence as it is, going that far would probably push them off that fence

Do we think Putin cares at this stage ?

I wouldn’t bet my life on it

That's end of days stuff, I can't imagine it'd do well for him with the Russian vote, but they'll be told he had no option no doubt

Does ****stan play into why India abstained?

I think more to do with significant commercial ties between Russia and India…

Can anyone explain how Russia sits in the UN? Why haven’t they been kicked out for invading another UN state?

At this point it's a lot of unknowns and watching on, how well are the Russians supported, how strong is the support chain, etc, etc, all we know is they tend to overestimate their ability.

The West can't really do much unless Russia is caught red handed doing something like using chemical weapons, which would break international law and allow NATO and others to deploy peacekeepers, or allow a retaliatory strike, which Putin would more than likely escalate due to his nature.

It's just an act of madness just now though, each day that goes by just makes Putin's ambition less and less likely, even taking into consideration the near impossible task the Ukrainian military have, i mean what is the next step, an occupation force for the entire Ukraine, that'll never end well either.

Seen the video of the old woman giving that soldier shit?

I'm very impressed with her forthright language.

Another one of an old man identifying as Russian bollocking a Russian soldier.

What twitter sources are people using?

After that Caddick-Evans quote above, I'll re-post this...

This clearly isn’t going as smoothly as putin expected/wanted so I think he has 3 options:
1. Continue and accept russian death toll as necessary; Ukrainian deaths will be seen as collateral damage.
2. Back down.
3. Escalate with objective of rapid capitulation.

Option 1 will further damage his credibility and ‘popularity’ in Russia; doubt he cares.
Option 2 is a non-starter.
Option 3 in whatever form it could take – dirty bomb, indiscriminate (carpet) bombing, limited nuclear strike – would, almost certainly, result in Nato becoming directly involved on the ground and retaliatory action; doubt he’s particularly bothered by this either.

There are other options but none of them include him taking decisions; they will be around others deciding what to do about him and enforcing their will.

The Russian army isn't organised or equipped for any sort of supply problem - so reports of ammunition running out are very believable. Good they haven't got air superiority either so I hope they're getting as many missiles as they need, and ditto antitank weapons. Russian pilots don't train much for ground attack either.
Good optics by the Ukraine to get the Red Cross to repatriate thousands of bodies so the Russians can't just disappear them.

Yes we should detain Russian ships. Sanctions should be meaningful and have effect

Just spent 20 mins browsing Caddick-Evans' Twitter (who appears glued to his phone!) and he suggests that the fact the Ukranians are fellow Slavs and can speak Russian is making it hard for Russians to 'other' them.

Also suggesting that Putin duped a lot of Russian MPs who say they voted to recognise the separatist regions rather than invade Ukraine; and the Russian public who thought they really were just exercises and are now quite surprised.

PCA’s stuff is super insightful. He doesn’t seem to have much faith that the Russians will prevail, in spite of the US and various other intelligence services saying that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable.

I wonder what affect blocking all Russian ships and aircraft from territorial waters and airspace would have if all NATO/EU members implemented it.

Then again, Russia would start Naval escorts, so back to the starting WW3 problem again.

the US and various other intelligence services saying that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable.

I hadn't seen that (I'm not looking hard, this thread is my primary source) but the MoD did tweet that it wasn't going well for the Russians.

I can’t imagine it’d do well for him with the Russian vote, but they’ll be told he had no option no doubt

Nuking a civilian population he was supposed to be liberating from 'neo-nazis and ultra-nationalists' doesn't seem to be a good look, even for him.

As for Chemical/Biological, I would be very surprised if anything below his elite units was suitably equipped to deal with it.

Putin's endgame? I wouldn't be surprised if he considers trying to take the land east of the Dinipro, former a 'border' there, and claim that was his goal all along. I'm not sure even that is a long-term possibility, he has to subdue and hold cities such as Kharkiv and Donetsk.

The longer it lasts the harder it's going to be for him to back down.

The longer it lasts the easier it will be to replace him.

It's a shit show

‘The days of tank battles in Europe are over’ is a quote that I hope haunts those etonian clowns out of the HoP.

The Etonian clowns with oligarch class mates or friends,I think it was telling when Starmer mentioned shell companies in his speech.

That lot are complicit in allowing London to be bought and sold by the dirty money, wasn’t that the tell with the Russia report, that they didn’t actually bother to investigate.

The Russian blocks on Facebook and Twitter - can they be circumvented by the general public?

Can anyone explain how Russia sits in the UN?

Because when the UN was formed none of the major countries, at the time, wanted to give it to much power to either hurt them directly or hurt their client states.
It was deliberately designed to be weak. Just think about how people would respond if the UN got given serious power and hence sovereignty over the various nations.

The BBC are reporting that captured Russian soldiers are saying they’ve no idea what they’re actually doing there. There is no strategy and no clearly stated aims. No end game. They’re making it up as they go along.

Sounds like Iraq. That went well

It is much worse than that. The initial Iraqi invasion was relatively smooth (it was a major military action so was a massive mess), with clear, well briefed tactical objectives. The strategic arena is where it all fell apart. By the reports coming out of Ukraine it is a tactical and logistical and financial mess for the Russians, as well as having severe and unforeseeable strategic outcomes.

I've just seen a post on our local FB asking if anyone knows a place that has diesel... Related?

I’ve just seen a post on our local FB asking if anyone knows a place that has diesel… Related?

Depends. Was it made by a Russian tank operator ?

Watching Zelensky’s defiance must be winding Putin up no end

I'm seriously concerned that Putin is deranged enough to just obliterate Kyiv using air power in his anger at the resistance.

Wonder if someone in the Kremlin would stop him launching a nuclear attack on Ukraine if he really lost it. Not as if there's any logic to his planning or decision making so far. Alzheimer's?

Looking at Zelensky's twitter account, he's not for backing down at all eh? You've got to imagine Putin's plan would have been to be at the negotiating table by now, negotiating the terms of a subservient gov, or at least in short order after the encirclement of Kyiv.

Zelensky seems to have big balls though, is all in on the EU shout, and is going to force Putin to take Kyiv, and who knows how that ends, you wonder what the strength of feeling in Russia would be about that..What's the chance of that backfiring spectacularly and something big happening in Russia in that regard?

Interesting points earlier about the cost of this to russia in real terms, a long war is an expensive business.

The Russian blocks on Facebook and Twitter – can they be circumvented by the general public

Wow re Tor access points.

Looking at Zelensky’s twitter account

Wartime leaders on Twitter is quite something. A world first? Can you imagine Churchill, Stalin, Hitler and Eisenhower on social media?

I’ve just seen a post on our local FB asking if anyone knows a place that has diesel… Related?

No diesel at our local Tesco yesterday

@molegrips nope

Bad weathers stopped the boats coming into dock at the refineries.

There's lifting allocations in place at certain refineries. It'll clear by Monday now the winds dropped

You'd not risk parking a tanker in high wind

I’m guessing we’ve seen the video of the guy asking the guys with the out-of-fuel tank if he can offer them a tow back to Russia? 😀

Turkey have agreed to blockage the Black Sea. I'm very surprised by this.

captured Russian soldiers are saying they’ve no idea what they’re actually doing e

Sounds like what my old boss, a Czech, said about the Russians in Prague in 1968. A lot of them thought they were in Germany.

According to my armchair military expertise, I’d imagine that a lot of Western generals are looking at this with interest, as it seems that the mighty Russian army is not so great after all, and a battle with an enemy with a functioning Air Force might not end up well.

piha
Free Member

Turkey have agreed to blockage the Black Sea. I’m very surprised by this.

Just saw that too. 2 things sprung to mind 1. Do you trust Erdogan? 2. Apparently stopping a shop getting to its home port is against international law, so potentially messy

Also, is it just me or does the Russian strategy look a lot like Zap Brannigan?