I still think Polish MBTs will happen soon because the damage to German reputation in Europe and NATO will be too much even for political masochism if they block it. Will be absolutely hated if so. It will probably take a while before Germany sends their own though, after all, some more shaming and humiliation is still needed, but imo Poles will be allowed to export.
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Still canât help but feel all of this and more would already have been in Ukraine had it not been for Germany.
I canât agree with most of that, Iâm afraid. Bad takes all around and a vague article with little substance. What are they going to do? Invade Poland through Belarus to get to Berlin? Try to take Helsinki? Go through Ukraine and invade through Hungary or south through Romania. None of those are even remotely possible as the Poles and Finns would fuck them up worse than what theyâre already are being by Ukraine. Europe is probably safer now from the risk of conventional warfare than it ever has been. Russia simply cannot muster the arms and equipment to threaten the West. Thatâs just a really bad take in all honesty. The Baltic states are the greatest at risk yet theyâre hardly the ones decrying any moves that might be âescalatoryâ while those sitting relatively comfortably with well armed buffer states between them um and ah through the likes of these guys who really should know better.
Russia can barely muster successful operations in Ukraine against an opponent that was outmanned and outgunned, and still is, because of the drip feed of arms being supplied to it. NATO combined arms and precision stand off weapons will hammer Russia to a standstill long before they can make any strategic gains while the U.S alone has thousands of tanks and armored vehicles in storage far better than what Russia can now muster in general should they ever be needed.
Europe has all but overcome the Russian energy blackmail and itâs armies have been stripped of their reputation, men and equipment. The only thing Russia can threaten Europe with a nuclear conflict. Not sure where these guys are coming with their opinions but Europe and the U.S have a massive opportunity to secure Europe from a Russian threat for decades without even having to commit a single soldier of their own or firing a shot in anger simply by giving Ukraine what it needs.
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Absolutely agree, I was meaning Wagner were absolute nonsense!
Just incredible to that, huddle in the most visible building for 100s of miles.
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What an absolutely lawless and fucked-up place that country has been allowed to become under Putin. Incredible.
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An interesting piece here on the history and significance of Crimea with regard to the outcome of the conflict. The author might be a little over optimistic , but the case he makes is nontheless a compelling one.
âRussiaâs hold on Crimea is, therefore tenuous. Any proposed peace settlement that codifies its occupation in exchange for a cessation of hostilities would be a ticking time bomb. The truth is that Ukraine will never be stable and peaceful with a Russian-occupied Crimea, and a Russian-occupied Crimea will never be resource-secure without Ukraine.â
âWe cannot afford to make the same mistake now. Half-measures and short-sighted compromises are a recipe for endless war against a state bent on savage imperialist conquest. The difficult path to lasting peace is Ukraineâs de-occupation of Crimea and an unmistakable defeat of Russian aggression.â
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You seemingly didnât understand the point these defence and security experts were making. The entire point is that this is an industrial war and what they are talking about is that we need to produce more logistical equippment and armour to stay the coarse, or supplies will dwindle and dry out, which may give Russia the chance to win. I advice you to actually read what I posted and I donât believe you have.
What they write is not controversial if you understand what they are talking about. Watlingâs article is really good all around and nothing he writes is false when it comes to facts.
And now letâs see who they are since you apparantly think it is unsubstantiated nonsense and know better than experts. Jack Watling is senior researcher for land warfare, Shashank Johsi is just the defence editor of the Economist but is a fellow at Defence Studies in the UK. He is has relevant education, but like uses experts to substantiate his writings. Konrad Muzyka is the director of Rochan Consulting and studies Russian land forces and the greatest Polish expert on Russian land forces outside itâs armed forces. He was one of the loudest voices before the war warning about the invasion, as he mapped the deployments and warned of the coming war long before US intelligence started to do so in public (this is Rochan Consulting by the way, and every expert in the West use this guy:https://rochan-consulting.com/ ) . He is regularly cited by basically everyone who researches and reports about the war and Russian forces and is seen as a formidable expert.
Let us just take what is the core of Watlingâs excellent article:
The upshot is that Ukraineâs international partners are approaching a hard fork in the road. For months, they have gifted equipment they have held in storage. Although these donations have been expressed in dollar terms, few of them have incurred heavy financial costs to donors. As donations begin to push into critical fleets and stockpiles, however, Ukraineâs partners face the need to invest in regenerating their capabilities as well as supporting Ukraine. In a challenging financial environment, they have tried to defer this decision. But if they want a Ukrainian victory, then they can defer it no longer. To defer investment is to offer Russia an opportunity to protract the war.
Please tell me what you find disagreeable with this ? This is 100 % facts he writes. If you know anything about European armies then you know this is true. The entire point he and they are making is that we need to get the head out of the sand and start ramping up production and investment. Already this is being done in many countries, but at the moment, not yet enough. But Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and some other countries are in the process of ramping up production because it is a fact that in the long run, we cannot supply Ukraine if not, because our spare inventory is gone and we having started to dig into our war time storage. And European states donât have large storages, thatâs the point they are making which you did not understand (I still think you didnât read this, those sources are excellent experts), that storages are getting depleted. Armoured fleets are getting and will be depleted and we need to ramp up production for the long and short term. These are just facts. You write a long post about war with NATO, which means you probably didnât read and missed the point. The entire point is that we have to ramp up our defence industries from stable peace time era to production rates of conflict era. We currently donât produce or have even near enough ammunition in our inventory. In Ukraine, thousands of shells are fired every single day. Ukraine fires 4000 or more, Russia often more than 25 000. We have currently no where near the supply lines and production lines to sustain that ammunition spending tempo with our peace time production. This is the point they are making. If the war lasts long, we will run out if we donât do something substantial with our industry.
Let us see who else chimed in and applauded these points:
Professor at Swedenâs Defence Institute.
If you are trying to persuade readers to not read those articles and that itâs not good information you are doing them a great disservice. This is a very serious issue concerning supplies and what is in storage and production. The war might end in 2023, but it will probably not. If it doesnât and this happens instead:
, then supplies and what we in the West have in storage will become ever more crucial and important. As for now, everything points to this becoming a long grueling war and that it will continue into 2024. If it doesnât, great ! But if it does⊠Then supplies, what we produce in the West, what we have in storage will become alpha-omega and right now we have long ago started to dig into our real inventory and not just what is excess. This again means that if Ukraine is to be supported in a Long War, we truly needs to ramp up production. That is a question of both political will and (it is not 100 % a guarantee that all western countries will continue supplying Ukraine, fatigue is a real thing and not every populace understands how important it is that Ukraine wins) production. The production issues are very, very real.
This serial killer killed 80 women in Russia. I hope they donât allow him into Wagner:
Uk is very importantly shipping 30 self propelled guns ! Thatâs a great contribution. More so than Challengers that use different ammo and was always just an attempt to pressure Germany to okay Leopards. Also, for info, Sweden will send 12 Archer, but it will take a little while before they are shipped as far as I understand. The more weapon systems that use one type of ammo the better.
The dead continue to pile up after the Dnipro strike:
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My emphasis:
*âEven if the decision to send our Leopard tanks to Kyiv came tomorrow, the delivery would take until the start of next year,â Rheinmetallâs chief executive, Armin Papperger, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Rheinmetall, which manufactures the battle vehicleâs gun, has 22 Leopard 2 and 88 older Leopard 1 tanks in its stocks. Getting the Leopard tanks ready for battle, however, would take several months and cost hundreds of millions of euros the company could not put up until the order was confirmed, Papperger said.
âThe vehicles must be completely dismantled and rebuilt,â he added.*
Google translate to English:
Some bad translation such as âmanagerâ. But itâs English and understandable.
Oh dear, where to start on that rather condescending and sometimes antagonistic post. Firstly, by saying yes I read them and yes, I saw who they were, no I donât give much either way if people read them or not and finally no, I really donât agree with them bearing in mind the state of play right now and what exactly will be facing NATO armies should it come to a confrontation with Russia and where this would be confrontation would take place.
Russia has lost an incredible proportion of their tanks and armored vehicles and has had to resort to taking older models out of storage and send to the front, they have also used up a large percentage of their long range precision missiles and are finding it difficult to replace stocks hence it is clear to see by the serial numbers on missiles tagged that theyâre literally coming off production and into use meaning precious little is augmenting reserves that could be used in a war against NATO. Their ground forces are suffering enormous attrition in almost every aspect from the âmeatâ, as it were, to shortages in artillery while their close air support fleet such as Ka-52 has documented almost 20-25% loss. Even their air defense is suffering attrition, so much so that straight line drones are hitting strategic air bases way behind their lines. Theyâve committed so much that itâs well documented that bases along their border have been emptied of personnel to be used as infantry in Eastern Ukraine. Thatâs where Russia is now and Europe has given but a fraction of what it can project as a force as a whole.
Where do these experts think Russia can strike with the current forces at their disposal so as to threaten war along NATOâs Eastern flank. Iâm genuinely bemused. The Poles have been arming themselves to the teeth and have one of the most significant forces in Europe, any thrust into Poland via Belarus will be met with overwhelming force from Poland alone. Letâs face it, thatâs never going to happen. Is Russia going to invade Finland? If so, for what possible reason and again, thatâs never going to threaten mainland Europe as Russia will once again bog itself down in a war it cannot win so letâs face it, thatâs not going to happen. So that leaves what, taking the Ukraine and invading Moldova and Romania and pressing into Europe through Hungary? Come on now, all of these experts are doom mongering and over amplifying the capability of Russian power that we can see in the field.
Then one has to take into account that NATO is simply not going to fight a war with Russia without American assistance so all those 1000âs of pieces of American hardware pieces sitting in storage in someplace or another definitely come into play here. Europe can and should amp up production but the U. S spends more than all of the rest combined and there is enough stockpile there for Europe and NATO to be able to expend whatever is necessary to drive back a Russian advance. Given Russian supply shortage themselves, I donât think these experts should lose too much sleep over not having enough for themselves if they give some to Ukraine. I have not even begun to go into the overwhelming air superiority NATO will have here.
Breaking to the crux of the matter here; Russia is engaged here and is finding it hard to replace losses both of materiel and manpower. They have large reserves of manpower to call upon, yes, but this is not 1942 and while large amounts of meat waves still can have a use, warfare has moved on. An ill equipped army of a million or so is still ill equipped and a smaller, professional and well armed combined arms force with control of the air hammers it into submission every time. But Europe and NATO doesnât need to do that, it doesnât have to commit a single soldier, fire a single missile or launch a single aircraft. Europeâs war is being fought now and Russia is overwhelmingly committed in Ukraine. The point of apparently the war taking long thus eating into European stock is a false equivalency; defeat them there and now by giving Ukraine what they need and there is no way that Russia is recovering from the losses to threaten Europe with a conventional war for decades. Doing nothing to boost production, letting the war drag on and supplying Ukraine piece meal would naturally leave holes because thatâs a stupid long term strategy.
Each to their own but ja, Iâm not convinced by these experts.
Disagree. Russia doesnât appear to be slowing down and is also being supplied by its allies. Nobody knows what China is contributing to the mix, and if the pro-Russia Republicans get into power theyâll turn the supply chain off. Thatâll be the end of Ukraine
Well, before him, there was Yeltsin⊠under his watch, the country descended in a state of chaos, with mafia bosses ruling it, and hundreds of thousands losing their jobs, their housings and their lives. Pure hell.
Before that, it was the USSR. With the Siberia camps, the ideological cleanings, the mass murders all around the country⊠and before that, it was the Tsar of all Russias governing millions of serfs with zero human rights at all. Siberia camps as well, and wars of conquest throughout the centuries.
I think itâs always important to look at this country with some perspective. When compared to what it was before, the political and economical situation during the bulk of Putinâs reign is probably seen as a golden age by most Russians today, not without reason.
However, the current tendency is concerning for them, as it indicates a clear drawback towards pure and simple tyranny.
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And therein lies the great irony. A population that became accustomed to previously unimaginable levels of prosperity did so by trading away their new found freedoms , and gradually removing any pretence of becoming a modern and outward looking country.
Putin has taken the country back a generation , regressing from a nascent liberal democracy back down the road of authoritarianism and ending up , once again , with totalitarianism.
If not actually complicit in the journey , they were at least acquiescent , and the end result is the same. I find it hard under the circumstances to find much pity for them.