Ukrainian War Developments

Kich said:

Picking up from this.

I think he's not in Kyiv, maybe in Poland. He was suppose to address European council today but instead sent his Prime Minister in a last minute emergency. At this point, he's not in control of his tweeter account and all the videos are stocked footage. They are trying to keep this a secret. It might explain why Ukrainians are willing to keep talking to the Russians.

Once it is public that he's left the country, the Ukraine military will fold and the Ukrainians will lose all leverage in their negotiations.

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Intrepid said:

How does the government explain this? Russia is not at war. It is forbidden under penalty of punishment to call the current state of affairs war.

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FriedButter said:

Chances are. They will likely be used in a prisoner exchange or swap behind closed doors. A more cruel option is 100 years in Siberia penal colony + unmarked grave.

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Overbom said:

If the report is true then,
I think they can produce them but most probably they lack production capacity to produce them in high numbers

Its one thing for example to build 10 drones per year, and another thing to be able to build 200 (made up number) drones

You can have the production capability but then lack the production capacity

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Overbom said:

Demetri is a CIA-front, so consider this tweet as a CIA press release
"#NewChinaRussiaScoop – US told allies that Russia requested 5 types of military gear from China, including #SurfaceToAirMissiles. Also #drones, armored vehicles, logistics vehicles & intelligence-related equipment. US did not provide underlying intelligence in cables to allies."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1503484449987743746

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Jingle Bells said:

Speaking of hypothetical Chinese military aid to Russia. I think it is possible, for China to send an PLAAF task group, consisting of a fleet of (24) J16, a fleet of drones, plus the C4ISR platforms and equipment, and a shit ton of PGMs.

Since Russia did NOT yet officially declare this a war, Russia can conduct joint drills and trainings with this PLAAF task group for a few days, and let the PLAAF aircraft engage in large scale precision guided bombing of, say, Kharkov. Because the city center of Kharkov is literally only some 30 km away from Russia/Ukraine border. J-16 will only need to enter Ukrainian air space very briefly, or can even stay within Russian border and deploy the munitions.

This can be coordinated with a Russian ground offensive.

However, I don't see this as something very likely.

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Jingle Bells said:

Speaking of hypothetical Chinese military aid to Russia. I think it is possible, for China to send an PLAAF task group, consisting of a fleet of (24) J16, a fleet of drones, plus the C4ISR platforms and equipment, and a shit ton of PGMs.

Since Russia did NOT yet officially declare this a war, Russia can conduct joint drills and trainings with this PLAAF task group for a few days, and let the PLAAF aircraft engage in large scale precision guided bombing of, say, Kharkov. Because the city center of Kharkov is literally only some 30 km away from Russia/Ukraine border. J-16 will only need to enter Ukrainian air space very briefly, or can even stay within Russian border and deploy the munitions.

This can be coordinated with a Russian ground offensive.

However, I don't see this as something very likely.

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Lethe said:

The more I think about the prospects for conflict resolution, the bleaker it looks.

At first glance there is reason to be optimistic. Russia now has a clearer sense of the costs of pursuing their strategic aims, in both military, economic, strategic and political terms, while Ukraine now knows how serious Russia is about enforcing its "red lines", and the limits of western support that it can expect.

On closer examination, however, it is the raft of western sanctions that have been applied, and the rhetoric behind them, that threatens the prospects for peace. These sanctions do not apparently serve a coercive purpose, but rather a punitive one. That is to say, the sanctions are not intended to encourage Russia to change its behaviour, but are rather intended to punish Russia for actions already taken, and weaken it going forward. The distinction is important. Even if certain key figures such as Biden were minded to offer Russia an "off-ramp" (i.e. do X and Y sanction will be removed), the number of actors/institutions and sanctions/mechanisms involved, many of which are now subject to the vagaries of domestic opinion, severely undermine the credibility of any such proposal. Would Putin (or his successor) really believe that, for example, by withdrawing from Ukraine the EU will abandon its strategic drive for freedom from Russian coal/oil/gas/etc.?

The consequence is that Russia will likely treat the sanctions that have been imposed, and the new strategic/geopolitical reality they promise to create, as a cost already incurred, with the prospect of any revision playing little role in the Russian strategic calculus. Accordingly, Russia will see little reason to deviate from its goals in Ukraine, and indeed is likely to seek a more complete Ukrainian capitulation than would've been accepted before the war began. "This has already cost us so much, we must ensure it was worth it." While it is tempting to imagine that higher than expected combat losses and greater than expected Ukrainian resistance may encourage a softening of Russia's position, it must be remembered that Russia can escalate so much further. Russia can move to a true war economy and put millions of men under arms, they can bring nuclear weapons to bear. With a vital strategic interest at stake, and plausibly the very survival of the present regime, and no more bridges left to burn, it is likely that Putin will double, triple, quadruple down on this invasion and seek the total capitulation of Ukraine.

The final point to note is that many in western decision-making circles know all of this. They know that the present path, whereby Russia is having great difficulty achieving its objectives but no plausible alternative, will see Ukraine reduced increasingly to ashes, with a horrific toll in human lives and culture, and they do. not. care. I'm not sure where the phrase first came from: that NATO is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, but it captures an ugly truth. Russia will likely emerge from all this a shadow of its former self, and that is precisely what many decision-makers in the west intend. Ukraine may not emerge at all, and nobody is very concerned about that.

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Jingle Bells said:

Speaking of hypothetical Chinese military aid to Russia. I think it is possible, for China to send an PLAAF task group, consisting of a fleet of (24) J16, a fleet of drones, plus the C4ISR platforms and equipment, and a shit ton of PGMs.

Since Russia did NOT yet officially declare this a war, Russia can conduct joint drills and trainings with this PLAAF task group for a few days, and let the PLAAF aircraft engage in large scale precision guided bombing of, say, Kharkov. Because the city center of Kharkov is literally only some 30 km away from Russia/Ukraine border. J-16 will only need to enter Ukrainian air space very briefly, or can even stay within Russian border and deploy the munitions.

This can be coordinated with a Russian ground offensive.

However, I don't see this as something very likely.

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