Russia invades Ukraine

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Drones from this war have crossed over a few countries, either intentionally or errantly. One just recently crashed in Romania. A few months ago, one crossed over Romania and Hungary, before crashing in Croatia and leaving a big crater. Not to mention the ones that have crossed into Russia. I don't know if that is due to the nature of drones being difficult to detect and stop, or if the air defenses in these regions are just inadequate.



Yeah, there seems to be a lot of worry lately that Ukraine cannot sustain things at the current pace despite valiantly holding their own. I think there are two potential end games at this point. Russia secures the areas it currently has and Ukraine's border is redrawn before joining the EU and later into NATO. It sucks for Ukraine and I am not saying that I advocate for just cutting losses and moving forward, but I don't think countries supporting Ukraine's efforts are going to want to keep this going much longer.

The other possibility is that the war expands. There are numerous ways this could happen. Internal conflict in Russia, a revolution in Belarus forcing Russia to intervene, but more likely Russia either invading another country or another country entering on Ukraine's behalf. Moldova for one could be one to watch. There are fears that Russia intends to eventually connect the occupied regions in Ukraine with Transnistria and could occupy Moldova in the process. Russia has tried to control that area on and off for hundreds of years. Moldova's current government is pro-West and has not ruled out possibly seeking unification with Romania if it ever got to that point. Their constitution recognizes "Moldovans" as a Romanian people and the only reason why they decided to retain their independence was under political pressure to not shake the boat. A conflict there would immediately escalate the situation with NATO as there is no way Romania would stay out of it.

Not to be the conspiracy guy, but if some leaders want Ukraine to hold out longer, things could be allowed to happen to help justify expanding it. Given that the Ukraine EU talks have heated up though, I suspect that they are preparing for the first scenario.

Europeans have been doing this for hundreds of years, and it's proven to work. The surprising part is that we are seeing it in 2022.

Russia will win those areas and replace Ukrainians with Russians. 20, 40, 80 years from now people will simply view those areas as Russian, and Ukrainians who cling to the idea that those are historically Ukrainian territories will be labeled extremists. It's sad, but at this point all options are on the table (or should be) to end the human suffering.

####ing Russia. Go home.

[burn_this_city]

This war has been going on for 8 years already. Do people still believe the hoax about separatists fighting an internal war? As soon as the 2014 Maiden Revolution threw out Russia's vassal ruler they invaded the east. The point has always been subjugation of Ukraine back into Russia's kleptocracy.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Saw a news article about a job fair in Calgary for Ukrainian refugees over the weekend. 30 employers were there like the Sheraton, etc.

Any other uplifting stories about Ukrainian refugees in Calgary that people have come across?

My wife recently started a job at a European market here. We didn't attend this specific job fair, but wouldn't surprise me if her employer was there recruiting due to the number of Ukrainians now working there. When she interviewed a few weeks ago she said there was only a few other Ukrainians working there. Then the job fair happened. When she started working at the store last week she said it was now 90% Ukrainian workers there. Quite a few refugees, including one girl from Odessa who is here by herself. The workers are allowed to take most of the food that gets rotated out, but her team decided to donate most of it to this girl to help her out.

As great as it is that lots of UA refugees have arrived in Canada, I know it's also very bittersweet for most of them. Canada is a hard place to immigrate to. Not only getting approved, but supporting yourself here is hard as an immigrant once you're here. Most importantly, most of those refugees DON'T want to be here. They want to go home back to their homeland. They want to live their lives as it was prior to the war, have their same routines and deal with the same issues they had before. Ukrainians are well aware of the problems their country has. But it's THEIR problems to deal with (not Russia's business to interfere with) and they are fiercely loyal of their country. Canada is a great place to live once your accustomed to living here and if you have your ducks in a row. If you don't....well, good luck. I can't imagine boarding a plane and arriving here with nothing other than your suitcase and no plan once arriving. This city is hard-mode for many things if you don't know how to do things. It's hard enough moving toa new country on whim. But add on the issues of trauma from what you might have witnessed or experienced during the war AND the never-ending stress of worrying about your loved ones still at home? It's not easy.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

This war has been going on for 8 years already. Do people still believe the hoax about separatists fighting an internal war? As soon as the 2014 Maiden Revolution threw out Russia's vassal ruler they invaded the east. The point has always been subjugation of Ukraine back into Russia's kleptocracy.

Did a significant number of people in the West ever believe that hoax? I think they had a number of goals including vassalizing Ukraine and have now pivoted to vassalizing or annexation of as much territory as possible. They failed massively at bringing down all of Ukraine, but getting them out of the Donbass, Kherson, and of course Crimea, is going to be extremely difficult. In a stalemate situation, which side can hold out longer?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of worry lately that Ukraine cannot sustain things at the current pace despite valiantly holding their own. I think there are two potential end games at this point. Russia secures the areas it currently has and Ukraine's border is redrawn before joining the EU and later into NATO. It sucks for Ukraine and I am not saying that I advocate for just cutting losses and moving forward, but I don't think countries supporting Ukraine's efforts are going to want to keep this going much longer.

The other possibility is that the war expands. There are numerous ways this could happen. Internal conflict in Russia, a revolution in Belarus forcing Russia to intervene, but more likely Russia either invading another country or another country entering on Ukraine's behalf. Moldova for one could be one to watch. There are fears that Russia intends to eventually connect the occupied regions in Ukraine with Transnistria and could occupy Moldova in the process. Russia has tried to control that area on and off for hundreds of years. Moldova's current government is pro-West and has not ruled out possibly seeking unification with Romania if it ever got to that point. Their constitution recognizes "Moldovans" as a Romanian people and the only reason why they decided to retain their independence was under political pressure to not shake the boat. A conflict there would immediately escalate the situation with NATO as there is no way Romania would stay out of it.

Not to be the conspiracy guy, but if some leaders want Ukraine to hold out longer, things could be allowed to happen to help justify expanding it. Given that the Ukraine EU talks have heated up though, I suspect that they are preparing for the first scenario.

The oldest sure fact in any war, is you can replace equipment, you can't replace men at the rate that you use them.



IIRC the estimate is that the Ukrainian military is losing 200 or more people a day, so roughly 6000 a month, 72000 a year. in 2021 they had roughly 200,000 men and woman in their full time military and 900,000 in their reserves.


Right now between bringing in foreign fighters or reservists to fight, they're bringing in and probably rushing soldiers to the front. Those types die quicker.



But they are being gutted.



I mean Russian casualties are huge, we know that, but the Russians have gone away from their original tactics, and they're sitting back and pounding everything into dust and then sending their troops in. Russia seems to have the ammunition stock piles to do that. But also the Russian Military is large enough to sustain those losses longer.



The only way to really counter that is to force the Russian's to fight on multiple fronts or to be forced to stage to fight on multiple fronts which would slow down their ability to re-enforce what's in the Ukraine. But that's not likely to happen.



I think at some point as this war gets longer and longer that Ukraine is going to have to give up the idea of an actual military confrontation and go to a more asymmetrical war.

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Did a significant number of people in the West ever believe that hoax? I think they had a number of goals including vassalizing Ukraine and have now pivoted to vassalizing or annexation of as much territory as possible. They failed massively at bringing down all of Ukraine, but getting them out of the Donbass, Kherson, and of course Crimea, is going to be extremely difficult. In a stalemate situation, which side can hold out longer?

I think a decent amount of people still believe in the separatist myth. Just look how the media frames it to this day. "Russian backed separatists regions"

[burn_this_city]

EU granted Ukraine candidate status today.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1540039743152574466

[opendoor]

Sounds like Sievierodonetsk has likely fallen or will soon, as Ukraine is withdrawing from there.

In good news, it looks like Russia is now relying on the ACME Corporation for their weapons supply:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1540237527793242113

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Sounds like Sievierodonetsk has likely fallen or will soon, as Ukraine is withdrawing from there.

In good news, it looks like Russia is now relying on the ACME Corporation for their weapons supply:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1540237527793242113

Russian commanders have a history of not being so good at... you know, commanding.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The oldest sure fact in any war, is you can replace equipment, you can't replace men at the rate that you use them.

IIRC the estimate is that the Ukrainian military is losing 200 or more people a day, so roughly 6000 a month, 72000 a year. in 2021 they had roughly 200,000 men and woman in their full time military and 900,000 in their reserves.

Right now between bringing in foreign fighters or reservists to fight, they're bringing in and probably rushing soldiers to the front. Those types die quicker.

But they are being gutted.

I mean Russian casualties are huge, we know that, but the Russians have gone away from their original tactics, and they're sitting back and pounding everything into dust and then sending their troops in. Russia seems to have the ammunition stock piles to do that. But also the Russian Military is large enough to sustain those losses longer.

The only way to really counter that is to force the Russian's to fight on multiple fronts or to be forced to stage to fight on multiple fronts which would slow down their ability to re-enforce what's in the Ukraine. But that's not likely to happen.

I think at some point as this war gets longer and longer that Ukraine is going to have to give up the idea of an actual military confrontation and go to a more asymmetrical war.

On the first bolded part, that's not accurate, and only really applies to professional armies, not the kind of armies that are going at it in Ukraine right now.

Russia has been losing a ton of modern equipment it can't really replace, it's one reason why they've changed tactics, the situation was unsustainable. They have huge stockpiles of soviet era equipment, but not modern, and with the sanctions their ability to build new modern weapons is unknown and likely greatly hampered.

Same really goes for Ukraine, they're a lot shorter on heavy equipment than in men. It's one reason why UA is losing so many men, they have to be more careful with their heavy equipment because they don't have enough and they don't know when and where they'll get more.

On the second bolded part, it's still very unclear to what extent Russia can actually replace men long term. Their army is larger on paper, but many of those troops are very low quality or the wrong type to send to Ukraine. Huge amounts of Russian forces are also internal security forces or tied to other borders. We've already seen a wave of burnings in Russian recruitment offices, and technically speaking Russia's leadersship is not legally allowed to send soldiers in mandatory service into Ukraine, an issue which might come to a head at some point.

Based on the best predictions I've seen, this time in the war is when Russia was kind of supposed to have the biggest advantage (after the initial surprise which they wasted). The quality of equipment on the Ukrainian side is to some extent going up as they're getting supplied from the west, while it's going down on the Russian side as they're more and more reliant on their Soviet stockpile. (The actual size of which is unknown to outsiders, but could be only a few percentage points of what they are on paper.) The advantage in trained personnel is shrinking if not vanishing over time, as Ukrainian troops are constantly gaining combat experience.

Russia's logistical issues are also at their lowest during the summer.

As far as we know, it's quite possible this period is the high point for Russia, before things start turning for the worse again.

On the third point, the one prediction that's been most consistently wrong in this war are predictions of the superiority of the Russian army in comparison to the Ukrainian army. We really don't know if that's at all true or not.

Another issue of course is that Putin seems to have all but disappeared from the public (Pointman could perhaps elaborate on this?). It's also obvious that the longer the war goes on, the harder it is to keep the Russian public in the dark over what's going on.

[TherapyforGlencross]

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/li...ed-for-assault

The city of sievierodonetsk has fallen into Russian hands.

Oh, and reports of missile firings from Belarus into Ukraine.

[burn_this_city]

Seems like something is happening or has happened.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1540826103631282176

[Pointman]

If Russia is so paranoid about the west putting missiles and troops so close to its capital, why don't move the capital, like Kazakhstan did. Being the largest country in the world, Russia could move the capital 3000 miles to the east, even put it behind Ural ridge to use a natural barrier for protection. It's costly, but far less costly than a war.

[PeteMoss]

Russia has missed its bond payment and will now be in default. Likely meaningless since they are cut-off from everything already but something that has been predicted for a while.

Potentially more impactful is the G7 potentially implementing price caps on Russia oil. How that would work and if it would be effective would be a big question but could lower Russian revenue and bring down fuel prices here.

[burn_this_city]

Russia has stepped up their targeting of civilians last couple of days. Just now they blew up a shopping mall well back of the frontlines.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1541431812248969216

https://twitter.com/user/status/1541432187660247040

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

https://twitter.com/user/status/1541432187660247040

Unequivocally a war crime. But how does this person think we are to disarm Russia?

August 6, 1945 changed everything.

With 6,000 nukes, Russia will remain a pariah and rogue state. There is no intervention except for harsh sanctions.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Unequivocally a war crime. But how does this person think we are to disarm Russia?

August 6, 1945 changed everything.

With 6,000 nukes, Russia will remain a pariah and rogue state. There is no intervention except for harsh sanctions.

Seems like the same old song and dance since Russia came into being. Russia has always been uninvadable. They've always periodically wreaked havoc on the surrounding Eastern European population. What's now Ukraine has had different name and been parts of various empires over the last 1000 years, but Russia has always been invading.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

Russia has missed its bond payment and will now be in default. Likely meaningless since they are cut-off from everything already but something that has been predicted for a while.

Potentially more impactful is the G7 potentially implementing price caps on Russia oil. How that would work and if it would be effective would be a big question but could lower Russian revenue and bring down fuel prices here.

The only way to create a price cap would be to meet global demand this means withdrawal from the petroleum reserves to be sold at the capped price. This also means needing to withdraw the entirety of the Russian supply.

Europe is supposed to have 90 days supply at all times. The US has 700 million barrels and can pull out 4.4 million per day.

This appears to be just enough to offset the 7 million barrels in Russian exports but couldnt last more than 100-200 days.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by GGG

The only way to create a price cap would be to meet global demand this means withdrawal from the petroleum reserves to be sold at the capped price. This also means needing to withdraw the entirety of the Russian supply.

Europe is supposed to have 90 days supply at all times. The US has 700 million barrels and can pull out 4.4 million per day.

This appears to be just enough to offset the 7 million barrels in Russian exports but couldnt last more than 100-200 days.

They are just capping the Russian oil from what I read. Other oil is not being capped. So China and India would pay less for oil than the West would. Basically they don't want to cut the oil available overall, just cut the price on Russian oil by using the fact that all payments flow through G7 countries financial systems.

[jeffporfirio]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

They are just capping the Russian oil from what I read. Other oil is not being capped. So China and India would pay less for oil than the West would. Basically they don't want to cut the oil available overall, just cut the price on Russian oil by using the fact that all payments flow through G7 countries financial systems.

I wonder if its like a spread determined by the banks who make the payments to Russia.
I couldn't find much on market spreads on Russian oil, except that Sokol (is this their highest output oil?) is ~ 18$/bbl from Brent