_kbh_

>> Russia have thrown everything they have at Ukraine over the last year-and-a-half.

> I don't believe that's the case. Russian military doctrine has always been to reserve the best systems for the end-game, and front 'fodder' in the beginning stages of things.

This still doesn't explain the BMP-T's, the T90's and S300's that are deployed to Ukraine and destroyed in Ukraine.

>>The cupboard is empty.

> I'm sorry, I really don't agree. You might want to take a deeper look: > https://www.cna.org/reports/2021/10/Russian-Military%20-Stra... > You must, of course, steel yourself for some whiplash. The world is not entirely as it "seems".

If the cupboard isn't empty then why are there ~80 smoldering T62's in Ukraine.

> There's no real doubt that possible Ukrainian NATO membership (and short of that, its ever closer de facto integration with NATO) were primary motivating factors for the Russian decision to invade.

Interesting if this is the case that NATO makes no appearance in the now deleted Russian victory article.

You can read the article for yourself here https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20....

Instead of talking about NATO it talks about Russia answering the "Ukraine question" and finally reuniting all "Russian" people together.

The article reads a lot more like a country conquering another then someone celebrating victory over defeating a country joining a military alliance.

> Maybe this is because you are ignorant to the extent of American war crimes?

I think you may be ignorant to the extent and type of crimes that Russia is committing in Ukraine.

>> “There are examples of cases where relatives were forced to witness the crimes," he added. "In the cases we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from 4 to 82 years."

I’m not seeing much independent thought outside the usual “America bad”. It’s interesting that a lot of those independent thinkers all have the exact same opinions.

> "The important part is that there is no scientific basis for Russia fielding old T-62/T-55s and in fact Russia is verifiably fielding three times more T-90Ms than before."

This is verifiably false, theres plenty of images of T-62's in Ukraine with Russian markings and with Russian style anti drone / RPG cages ontop of them.

You can find images of ~80 captured / destroyed Russian T-62's here.

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

> So .. what is it .. they're fielding junk because they have no new stuff, or they're fielding new stuff, and its effective?

They have limited new stuff and they are fielding literally mad max'esuqe technicals.

> Keep in mind, the Russians are quite capable of replacing every tank lost ..

And yet russia is fielding T55's/T54's and T62's.

> https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/analysis-of-ukraines-esc...

I cannot take this source seriously when it just repeats what TASS says.

They are claiming that this Subarmine.

https://news.yahoo.com/pictures-emerge-damaged-russian-subma...

Is not going to have any increased repair time compared to when it didn't have two gaping holes in it?.

Thats obviously not true.

On second look this source is literally just Russian propaganda.

> I had forgotten to post this a while back. Ukrainian journalist Roman Revedzhuk who had previously run for office and was involved in Ukrainian politics for a long time revealed that he had received an insider report from the SBU that Ukraine had more than 310,000 KIA as of July:

Who would believe such obvious nonsense?.

But they have literally fielded BMPT's, T90's and S400's.

They are literally fielding there latest stuff

What part of there doctrine says to reactivate T55/T54/T62's and to weld a random assortment of rocket systems to MTLBs in some sort of slightly more advanced technical?.

I never said Russia is weak I just said that they aren't holding anything back and that they are clearly using their most modern weapons and defences and are still getting wiped out in droves.

We have literally seen some of Russias most advanced equipment and most elite units, sent to and decimated in Ukraine.

They are fighting an all-out war, and if they aren't they are idiots considering how much of Russian territory and occupied Ukrainian territory has a tendency to explode suddenly.

> M57 and M57E1 ATACMS only has a range of about 300 km, while Moscow is 50% further at 430-460 km. Ukraine would need serious SRBMs to hit enough Russian strategic targets.

ATACMS has the range to hit Sevastopol and other parts of Crimea from Ukrainian controlled territory which is where I presume they will be put to use.

> The Air Force with an estimated strength somewhere stern that of algeria and chile?

It’s amazing that such a small airforce manages to prevent russia from gaining air superiority and even manages to effectively conduct sorties isn’t it.

Just shows you how different it is when your the invading force. russias airforce losses largely outsize Ukraines even though Ukraine has a smaller airforce and they older planes.

> Don't waste people's time with nonsense-- I can find an article in US media that also puts forward every conceivable position if I try hard enough

It’s not nonsense it’s russias own position on the war straight from there own kremlin approved propaganda outlets.

I know it’s an inconvenient article as it dispels the narrative of this war being about NATO and shows it for what it really is, russian imperialism.

> You mean like the Minsk accords that Zelensky failed to implement?

All the agreements I speak off predate the Minsk accords by years to decades.

russia didn’t follow any of them so why should we have faith they would follow anything new?.

It’s not like russia obeyed the Minsk accords either (shocking I know).

russia doesn’t appear to follow international agreements when it doesn’t benefit them.

So once again I ask why does russia get to ignore and violate all the formalised agreements it has with Ukraine.

Where as everyone else has to obey vague not in writing promises that where never formalised?.

> This is so delusional.

I am just quoting what the Russian media said in there accidentally posted victory article early on in the war.

But I agree it is super delusional.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...

>> Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe of our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome

I suggest you read the article i think you’ll find the word NATO doesn’t even appear in it.

> they just don't want NATO setting up shop on their borders

Then they have already failed as the Russian border with NATO is now longer then it would be if you included Ukraine and Ukraine isn’t even in NATO.

I don’t think it was this though as Germany gave Russia assurances before the war that they would veto Ukraines NATO application.

> NATO has spent the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union breaking all of their assurances to Russia that it would not expand, literally encircling them.

There was never any formalised agreement to not expand NATO, so no promise was ever made.

Regardless of that Russia has multiple international agreements with Ukraine (that are formalised) that say they will never threaten their sovereignty.

Why doesn’t Russia have to follow those?.

Another question one might ask is why Russias neighbours want to join NATO it’s probably because Russia has invaded nearly all of them at some point in time.

Seems pretty reasonable to me to want to defend yourself from what at this point seems like a likely future invasion,

> These conflicts are all about preserving American hegemony, nothing more.

Should tell the Russians that they seem to think the war in Ukraine is about fixing the “mistake” of Ukraines independence.

> Looking more closely at this, the backdoor is almost certainly based on the back-doored random number generator, Dual_EC_DRBG, which is implemented as NIST SP 800-90A.

This doesn't have to be backdoored.

It could simply be a bug in their hardware RNG that uses something that isn't public to break it.

Or something that Cavium did not realise was vulnerable.

> Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month.

Unless this includes UAV's (which would be a bit strange) I don't see how this is even possible Ukraines airforce doesn't even have 300 combat aircraft.

Looking at most sources I cannot find where this number could have come from.

Going per oryx's numbers.

Ukraine (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...).

- 71 Aircraft

- 35 Helicopters

- 25 UAV's

- 166 Recon UAV's.

297 total.

But.

Russia (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...)

- 90 Aircraft

- 105 Helicopters

- 14 UAV's

- 286 Recon UAV's.

495 total.

> They went to Ukraine to take the land required to give them a buffer against NATO-aligned forces, which have called for the destruction of Russia for years - and thats exactly what they've created.

Interesting cause the victory article they accidentally posted then quickly deleted didn’t even mention NATO once.

But do you know what it did talk about?, the tragedy of Ukrainian independence and fixing that historical “mistake” of 1991.

That sounds more like imperialism than wanting a buffer state to me.

> So why on earth would they blow up a dam that would do far more damage to the areas they controlled?

Because actions like this are less about Russia winning and more about Ukraine losing.

They did this to cause decades of damage to Ukraines industry and an ecocide.

It’s the same reason they fire missiles into civilian buildings, destroy power plants during winter, rape and torture children, execute teenagers and fire on civilians. L The terror and damage destruction is the point.

Destruction of this dam was also a war crime by Russia.

They gain a lot by trying to cover up another of there war crimes and to muddy the water with their firehose of falsehood propaganda method.

Shelling was unlikely to have caused that damage. It was nearly certainly an internal explosion based on reporting by the NYTimes.

> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/16/world/europe/...

> Given the satellite and seismic detections of explosions in the area, by far the most likely cause of the collapse was an explosive charge placed in the maintenance passageway, or gallery, that runs through the concrete heart of the structure, according to two American engineers, an expert in explosives and a Ukrainian engineer with extensive experience with the dam’s operations.

> It was a coup. It was primarily achieved through covert action, which by definition avoids yielding smoking guns that would cater to your personal, precise, technical definition of "coup", but given the totality of the circumstances we can only conclude that it was a coup.

What it seems like is that there isn't much evidence or sources. Anyone could claim anything was achieved through primary covert action and has not yielded any smoking guns or real evidence.

I could claim that all the coup hubbub was started by Russia as an attempt to ferment a civil war in Ukraine as a pretext for invading as achieved through covert action.

And when that failed they used there 'little green men' to start the civil war instead.

> The simplest explanation, in my mind, is that Musk just doesn't want his stuff used to kill people in offensive actions. That is why he and the president of SpaceX have said. Trying to read too much into what Musk says won't make things clearer. Musk doesn't have the most consistent or coherent world view.

Funny you say that considering they are trying to launch a government version of Starlink (Starshield) that would likely be used to kill people.

> Now, countries that have nuclear weapons now know why they do and aren't going to give them up unilaterally in any case. It is not easy to develop nuclear weapons, either.

It's not hard to make simple fission bombs like fat man and little boy that do a lot of damage, its likely within the realm of most nation states to do so if they wished.

The hard part is the delivery mechanism.

A delivery mechanism is less hard if your looking to stave off enemies at your border though.

> if you cut all the "moral crap" about of the war in ukraine: > because nobody wants to die in a nuclear apocalypse!?

I actually firmly believe that leaving Ukraine on its own to be steam rolled by Russia would of increased the worlds chances of a nuclear led extinction event in the near future (10+ years) by a drastic amount.

Think about, Ukraine willing gave up their own nuclear weapons in exchange for promises/pledges/assurances whatever you want to call it really, from multiple countries including Russia that their sovereignty would be respected.

If we don't help Ukraine when that promise is being broken what we are telling all other countries is "give up your nukes and your enemies with nukes are free to invade".

No on one would ever give up there nukes willing again, and nuclear proliferation would go through the roof with every country looking to counter every other countries nuclear weapons.

> IMO "Equipment" is a very tame and benign term for the deadly munitions we're supplying being used directly against an hostile nuclear power. It's not like we're only sending medical supplies and other errands of mercy. It just seem very risky to me to assume that the Putin is forever just going to ignore the fact that his soldiers are getting blow up by American weapons.

Russia has been doing what they can regarding foreign equipment to Ukraine.

It’s not much because all they can do is not much.

Short of ending his country by attacking NATO there’s not much more they can do.

> All US weapons delivered to Ukraine are delivered with the condition that they not be used on Russian territory. Elon's policy was the same as Biden's.

The US is more then happy to see there weapons used on Crimea as they have in the past repeatedly iterated.

Crimea is part of Ukraine not Russia.

> NATO clearly justifies its existence largely as an anti-Russia organization as it denied entertaining the idea of Russia as a member

To clear this up. Russia tried to join by bypassing the typical application process, was told pretty much, no you join like everyone else and then decided they didn't want to join anymore.

> has an offensive first-strike nuclear doctrine, the US pulled out of the ABM and the INF, installed missile defense systems in former Warsaw Pact countries that are clearly part of a strategy to mitigate Russia's capabilities (when Russia has no aggressive first-strike doctrine and only has a defense of Russian territory first-strike doctrine).

Russia also has multiple different agreements / treaties / etc where they promised to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine.

Great good they did.

Russia not having a first use policy would be great if I trusted them to not make up an excuse to nuke someone if they think it would benefit them.

Like how they just chuck out international agreements / etc when it benefits them.

> Almost all of which happened when Russia was a relative "friend" to NATO when it was doing worse things in Chechnya as part of "GWOT" than it is currently doing in Ukraine, and what it is doing in Ukraine is appalling enough.

NATO is currently helping Ukraine defend itself from a country which is trying to subjugate it.

> A good offense is a good defense, but you leave yourself more open to losses when your opponent is able to effectively fight back. In this case, NATO was perfectly happy to accept those losses because they would be Ukrainian. The world is far worse off as a result.

Im confused by this statement.

Russia is the one on the offence and Russia is the one who invaded, Ukraine is the one invading itself.

With the help of NATO.

I think the world is far better of with Russia losing the current war in Ukraine.

That portion of land wasn’t won for free they lost a lot of troops, vehicles and aircraft and even a handful of boats to do that.

They are also losing it slowly piece by piece.

> In the annals of diplomacy, it would not be strange for Russia to have interpreted the near invitation and late-stage downgrade to a "will join" statement as something far from acquiescence. I think it was taken as quite provocative, just less so than an invitation. By analogy, I think a statement from the USSR that "Cuba will join our nuclear military defense pact" would not have been taken as acquiescence during the Cuban missile crisis.

I think it didn't matter what happened at the NATO conference Russia was looking for an excuse to invade and they were going to find one regardless of what was said.

The reason Russia invaded soon after was because NATO blinked when Russia dared them to, if NATO had given Georgia and Ukraine a MAP I think the situation would be very different today.

> bringing the war into Crimea is effectively opening a new theater

Considering that Crimea seems to take a cruise missile or two every month and we know that the Ukrainians have done a cross sea raid on Crimea.

How is it a new theatre? its already one.

The day things started going boom in Crimea is the day it became a theatre in the war, and that was a long time ago.