Ukrainian War Developments

Overbom said:

Good strategy from the US

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escobar said:

So it is RU vs US/NATO/UKr

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1513597249678364679

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Lapin said:

Here's an article by a Lithuanian (who grew up in the USSR), which contends, in effect, that Russians are barbarous
because they really are not European, even though sometimes they may pretend to be 'civilized' Europeans.

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"We saw this coming: For Russia's neighbors, Putin's brutal invasion came as no surprise
For Lithuanians like me, raised on Russian propaganda, all of this was expected. The West didn't want to listen."
--

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(9 April 2022)

"For Lithuanians or Poles, Russia's invasion of Ukraine did not come as a shock. It was always plausible — for more than a decade,
Russia has rehearsed attacks on its neighbors during military exercises, going as far as a simulated "cut-off" of the Baltic states from
the EU or simulated nuclear strikes on Warsaw or Berlin. As I write, children are dying, Ukrainian women and girls are being raped by
Russian soldiers, civilians are shot in the back; schools, hospitals and UNESCO-protected cathedrals are being carpet-bombed.
The death and deportation lists for thousands of Ukrainians have reportedly been drawn up, just as they were under Stalin and Hitler."

"We constantly tried to forewarn our partners — but for the most part, they thought it was an exaggeration, an example of
Russophobia. No, it was simply our fluency in their language; it was expertise and Russo-realism.

Why are so few willing to listen to this expertise? Even now, priority is given to those few Russian intellectuals who beg us not to
equate all Russians with Vladimir Putin, asking us to remember Russia's contributions to world culture. I hear their cries of despair,
but how are they constructive or relevant now? We already know, from the insights of Alphonse de Custine to André Gide to
Orlando Figes, that throughout the ages the main preoccupation of Russian intellectuals has been "What will the world think about
us? Won't the greatness of our cultural façade be diminished?" — and never mind the massacre of Ukrainian innocents."

"I feel that a cultural translation is required, as the Russian intellectuals cannot be impartial and the Western critics often lack
basic comprehension of Russian culture and language.

The latter, arguing that what is happening now is Russia's reaction to NATO expansion, are in fact supporting Putin's mindset:
There is no rule of law, no democracy and no national sovereignty; no results of national referendums are valid; the world is
just a cake to be sliced by those who happen to hold a knife."

"The main mistake made by Western countries was to accept the illusion that Russia is a part of European civilization.
This reflects Russia's capability to look like a simulacrum of European culture and to imitate its aesthetic shell while retaining
an entirely different content, often opposite to Western values."

My comment: 'The Russians are truly Asiatics' meme.

"The Russian state has historically never had a politically pluralist society nor any meaningful degree of self-governance, not even
on a low level, such as municipal or academic autonomy. It has always been a pyramid of power, enforced with violence, subjugating
its people into blind obedience. Even the notion of time in the Russian culture is different to the Western conception. It is cyclical, not
linear: Russians perceive that history is bound to repeat itself; it is predestined, and does not depend on individual human actions.
In this context, the human being is perceived as a tool, capable only of suffering; Russian culture has always glorified passive suffering (not proactive acts of kindness) as the warranty of "spirituality." Individuality and initiative were always persecuted, because
"vsiakaya vlast' — ot Boga." ("All worldly authority is from God.")"

"For decades now, Russian media has been feeding its public a stream of propaganda about their major enemy, the "rotten West"
(that's you and me) and the "aggressive Natovtsy" (i.e., NATO). The narrative repeated on a daily basis in Russia is about failing
Western societies, full of fascists and "perverts," largely meaning gays and lesbians. (They have even coined the Russian neologisms
"Gayrope" for Europe and "Liberasty," as in "pederasty," to describe liberal democracy.)

According to Russian propaganda, the nation's mission is to "liberate" Europe. We saw this all already with the "liberation" of the Baltic
countries during World War II. Millions of German women and girls were "liberated" by Russians in 1945, raped on their own soil."

Soviet soldiers (not only Russians, including Ukrainians) also raped many non-German women and girls.
Soviet war crimes were not committed by Russians alone.

"Current public opinion polls show that this view of "aggressive" NATO, the "rotten West" and the need to "liberate" Ukraine
is supported by approximately 70% of Russian citizens. Actively or passively, they are enabling what is happening."

"I had the Soviet school experience myself, and remember the content of the textbooks written to brainwash generations into
becoming uncritical cannon fodder for the fight with the rotten, capitalist West."

"Those in the West who go on and on about the need to support Russian society with "democratic change" or a "new Marshall plan"
do not understand one crucial fact: There is no critical mass in Russian society who want to implement it. It is impossible to import
democracy if 70% of Russians see it as an evil from the West.

As their neighbors, we know the Russian mentality and our advice is simple: Be fearless. Each Western appeasement toward Russia,
each silence, each closing of the eyes is treated as a sign of weakness, and Russians never respect weakness. They are not pragmatic
and do not mind self-inflicted wounds if they believe there is a higher goal."

"Let us do everything to help Ukraine win: On Ukraine's land and with Ukrainian blood, the battle for Western civilization is now
being fought."

Both Russia and Ukrainian are successor states to the USSR and inherited Soviet traditions.
In my view, it's an exaggeration (at best) for the author to portray the Ukrainians as 'good civilized Europeans' and
the Russians as 'evil barbarous Asiatics' (n effect).

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Black Shark said:

The hate is predated by any of this sort by the Khazar's wars on slavic people, well not just slavic people. Please don't come up with the word "anti-semitic" the Jews are to big part from slavic nations over 1/3rd are directly from the Soviet Union and jews themselves are the most antisemitic people with their constant war rhetoric and atrocities and warmongering against Syrians, Palestinians, Iranians and Jordanians who are all semitic poeple.

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FADH1791 said:

The way Ukraine is begging for weapons is kinda embarrassing. They are begging nations for weapons like a panhandler in Time Square.

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Jingle Bells said:

Putting MICs in existing industrial bases is something China has been doing for the last couple of decades. We call it "军民融合". The Soviet MIC industrial layout/distribution is not bad at all, but it was under a different strategic consideration. They plan things out in a very distributed way. One of the main advantage of this is that it could survive large scale major war much better, than putting all you eggs in one basket. And since the USSR is a planned economy, they can do it more efficiently.

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Jingle Bells said:

For me, it is simply, I hate seeing flankers getting shot down, and not even by medium and long range SAMs. This pretty much debunks the theory of "Russian advanced jets are getting shot down because the opponent has sophisticated air defense". Well, they are NOT getting shot down by "sophisticated air defense" like medium and long range SAMs.

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Jingle Bells said:

By the standards of Russia's (perceived) peer and opponents: NATO and USA.


That's just close-minded stubbornness: "as long as Ukrainians gets it worse than Russians get, it will be a victory". Please, Ukraine is nothing but a small fry. If you think that Russia should waste energy and resources doing attrition warfare with Ukraine, you need to stop. Ukraine was an expendable acid to begin with, as envisioned by the US. Russia not only taking the bait, but also act as if they want to swallow that bait is nothing but false pride and close-minded stubbornness.

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Jingle Bells said:

This war is bad for Russia. Russia's main strategic task is to win this war with the least amount of resources, time, and energy spent as possible. Doing the opposite just to show “Russia Stronk” is just silliness!

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Jingle Bells said:

Soviet industry is distributed. They are also not market oriented. Industries in the West and China are all market oriented. Apart from top secret, high end industries like nuclear, strategic rockets, etc., most Western and Chinese MIC strives to tap in the existing industrial structure of major cities and urban clusters: this is because these existing structures will provide the work force pool, energy, transportation, industrial supporting facilities and infrastructure readily available.

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Jingle Bells said:

Putting MICs in existing industrial bases is something China has been doing for the last couple of decades. We call it "军民融合". The Soviet MIC industrial layout/distribution is not bad at all, but it was under a different strategic consideration. They plan things out in a very distributed way. One of the main advantage of this is that it could survive large scale major war much better, than putting all you eggs in one basket. And since the USSR is a planned economy, they can do it more efficiently.

However, I think these "Military Industrial Town" concept has many flaws, and it's not suited for today's world. This is because it's essentially opposite of the principle of the "economy of scale". Having a distributed supply chain is essentially the aftermath of economy of scale: instead of having multiple suppliers for the same components, you only let the most competitive ones survive, thus it's essentially "combining the production capacity of the same kind".

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Jingle Bells said:

But I guess as interconnectivity, 5G, BigData, AI are getting more proliferate, It would not be that big of problem for the future. In the future, it will be more of a "consumption of value", instead of "consumption of volume".


Which is something Russia should have started doing quite a few years ago.

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Jingle Bells said:

Depending on how Su-25SM3 is actually doing in this war, it would be nice to see whether A-10 and Su-25SM3 has a future, or whether their time has gone.

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In total, during the winter training period, pilots of Sukhoi Su-25SM3 close air support of the Southern Military District made more than 2.2 thousand sorties with the practical use of standard weapons.

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