Their ability to bomb Ukraine has decreased quite dramatically, in part thanks to the weapons supplied, so yes, there is definitely improvement there. — Jabberwock

Has it? In what way?

It is your claim that Ukraine would be less destroyed if the weapons were not supplied, so it is on you to provide a realistic and likely scenario how would that happen. — Jabberwock

Negotiate and provide concessions, or seek more powerful alliances willing to fight alongside and use them as leverage.

If an enemy throws stones, throwing stones back is not a viable strategy if they have more stones.

I treat the Russians as if they wanted to occupy Ukraine, because I have no reason to think 'Putin would have just carpet bombed Ukraine for sport', him being an oligarch and all. — Jabberwock

That just doesn't make any sense. Simply being an oligarch isn't in the least bit sufficient to justify a theory that he'll want to militarily occupy any neighbouring country. It's ridiculous. The vast majority of the world's oligarchs do not behave that way.

you overlook the fact that Russia has neutered itself militarily even more. — Jabberwock

I don't 'overlook' it. I disagree with it. Tanks are not the be all and end all of military power and they're about the only major hardware that's capturable, so of course they're going to be used as the measure if that's the story you want to tell. What about artillery? What about air support? What about nuclear weapons?

is obvious from most of the campaign, with any reasonable resistance Russians are incapable of gaining ground without destroying it completely, so they would do just that. — Jabberwock

It isn't obvious at all since you have no counterfactual against which to compare it.

How far should the situation in Ukraine deterioriate before we can agree the peace accords that were on the table in March / April 2022, scarcely a month into the war, should have been carried out instead of blocked by the US?

Those were blocked by the US simply to save Washington's ego. Flipping Ukraine pro-western has been a decades-long project of the Neocon foreign policy blob, under leadership of chief blob Nuland.

How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is Washington's ego worth?

> How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is Washington's ego worth?

How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is defeating Washington's ego worth?

The decline isn't just in tanks though. The sortie and fire mission rates have plunged too, which are fairly easy to verify from satalites, allowing that when either side accidentally shells its own positions it's not always easy to sort out the attribution.





Having taken what the UA thought was inappropriately high losses the UA appears to have given up on a maneuver warfare breakthrough and is focusing on attrition of artillery, likely in the hopes that a low morale force will rout without superior fire power. This has at least been more successful than the maneuver warfare ops.

On another note, the sortie rate on the few surviving Ukrainian MiGs is absolutely ridiculously high. I saw a picture and they look like Frankenstein monsters. I suppose this is what happens when you have plenty of mechanics but no planes.

Has it? In what way? — Isaac

In every way. It is suffcient to compare the number of missiles launched in September and October. Artillery attacks are also much more limited (Count Timothy mentions that).

Negotiate and provide concessions, or seek more powerful alliances willing to fight alongside and use them as leverage. — Isaac

'More powerful alliances' would be difficult to obtain, given that the West is not willing to die for Ukraine. And Ukraine already did concessions - it let Russia have Crimea, then it conceded to Minsk Accords. It did not work that well.

If an enemy throws stones, throwing stones back is not a viable strategy if they have more stones. — Isaac

Depleting military resources of the enemy does not help in resolving military conflicts? I was pretty sure that is exactly how most of them were resolved.

That just doesn't make any sense. Simply being an oligarch isn't in the least bit sufficient to justify a theory that he'll want to militarily occupy any neighbouring country. It's ridiculous. The vast majority of the world's oligarchs do not behave that way. — Isaac

Well, the theory that 'everything he's done' is motivated by him being an oligarch was yours... So him being an oligarch is not sufficient to explain his motivations after all?

I don't 'overlook' it. I disagree with it. Tanks are not the be all and end all of military power and they're about the only major hardware that's capturable, so of course they're going to be used as the measure if that's the story you want to tell. What about artillery? What about air support? What about nuclear weapons? — Isaac

I see Count Timothy already responded to that.

It isn't obvious at all since you have no counterfactual against which to compare it. — Isaac

Beside the very initial phase of the invasion, where in some places Ukrainian defense was very weak or non-existent, all other Russian territorial gains involved vast destruction of the places they took: it was the case in Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, Marinka, Sievierodonetsk, Soledar and Bakhmut. So yes, I think it is quite reasonable to believe that if they decided to take other Ukrainian cities, the result would be the same.

I'm sure on paper everything is looking just dandy for Ukraine.

If there are people here who are predicting imminent major successes in line with this paper reality, speak up please.

Not the best translation, "working," in particular should generally be "operating," instead.

Verified by major outlets later: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/1187644890/russian-general-fired-for-being-critical

This is the same event, aliases are sort of a common thing, Strelkov is Girkin, people go by their patronimials sometimes, etc.

One interesting thing is how the tone of Pro-War Russian bloggers has shifted re: the "musical chairs," shifting of Russian commanders on the ground. In general, early in the war it seemed like efforts to pin blame on relived commanders was quite successful, with charges being brought against a few for having maintained Afghan National Army style "ghost soldiers," and "ghost vehicles." These are essentially people or things that only exist on paper and then funds and materials for them can be embezzled, the materials sold off, etc. Pro-War folks seemed pretty accepting of the shake ups.

I think that makes sense; bad performance suggests bad leadership. But now it seems that these are increasingly being taken in a more negative light.

Also not surprising considering what happened with the last guy who began complaining about a lack of shells :rofl: . Although a behind doors rant and a stream of social media videos pouring out an avalanche of invective and gay slurs against the head of the MoD and the chief flag officer are, IMHO, kind of different beasts lol.

BTW, the memes that out of the Prigozhin meltdowns are pretty hilarious. As are the pictures of his "assets" that got turned over to him, which have a bunch of bricks of white powder next to all the fire arms (including a gold plated handgun), stacks of roubles and USD, and gold bars. If you put it in a movie people would say it is too on the nose.

Here is the Warhammer and Lord of the Rings versions.

I'm sure on paper everything is looking just dandy for Ukraine.

Not really. They've had millions of people leave, which is a drag on the economy, continued missile attacks act as a check on investment, and they are facing multiple huge ecological disasters from damage to critical infrastructure during the war.

Their air defenses seem to be holding up better than the prior leaks suggested, particularly re: longer range missiles, but their SHORAD is obviously quite limited. Their initial offensive push stalled, and they had to switch tactics, because they were unable to keep the skies clear ahead of advances.

They also still have less artillery and fewer fire missions, even if they do seem to be winning to war of attrition re: artillery due to better counter battery radars, PGMs, and longer range artillery. The artillery numbers for both sides are likely lower than stated because rear area losses are less likely to be photographed and they've likely worn out a great many pieces. I've always thought one of, if not the best things that the West could do is simply stand up large scale shell and gun production until Ukraine has a 3-5:1 advantage. That is what is needed to advance against prepared defenses without air support.

The Ukrainian air force is also extremely depleted and there is simply no way for them to maintain the sortie rate of their remaining fighters. If they aren't shot down they are going to crash from over use.

The F-16, which appears to be on the way, fixes some of these issues because there is a huge supply of them, but they will face attrition and will be very constrained in what they can do because Russian air defenses are still plenty strong to play defense. Certainly, they will be very helpful, but it's also not like they can operate in the ground attack role in most instances because SEAD can only be achieved for short windows by firing off HARMs at any radar signature.

Modern attack helicopters might be the next thing they receive, but these won't be fully effective until SHORAD assets get attrited down, something that isn't happening because there isn't anything in the sky to waste MANPADS on.

The only good news is that they are getting closer to parity on vehicles, which means a 50/50 loss ratio during offensive operations doesn't necessarily doom an attrition based offense. That and the absolute shit show that is Russian politics.

They obviously lack an effective command structure and are still reliant on sprawling geographic commands and brigade level organization. This is partly because of their absolutely insane logistical challenges, the result of using a ton of different equipment from different countries. Thus, you have a brigade that used just Czech equipment, etc. to make that easier. But by most accounts they have a very hard time doing complex operations, especially offensive ops, because artillery brigades aren't working organically with other elements.

IDK, the middle of a war is not the time to do a reorg, but this obviously shows the limits of brigade centric doctrine (and even more so the limits of Russian battalion tactical groups). It's sort of a lesson on the advisability of moving away from division centric thinking, which I think comes from taking the wrong lessons from the GWOT, which was not a peer conflict. Ukraine really needs a way to pull off coordinated corps level ops and there is a very long road to that.

The inability of either side to conduct successful large ops is a weird thing. Communications equipment has come a very long way since 1950 and it should make this easier.

In China's initial spectacularly successful offensive against US led UN forces they were coordinating operations between two field armies of 6 and 3 corps each, each corps comprising 3 divisions and ancillary attached supports. They conducted complex and highly effective maneuver operations against a UN force with a huge firepower advantage using, incredibly, using largely just small arms and mortars and almost entirely man hauled supply lines.

Obviously MacArthur being an absolutely atrocious commander was a determining factor in how badly the UN forces fared, but it still required excellent coordination by the Chinese, who could not use aerial reconnaissance either. I mean, the Chinese offensive was, IMO, the worst out and out rout the US military has experienced in its entire history by a solid margin.

Maybe it is that surveillance and recon have advanced more relative to comms and this makes large ops harder? And obviously China had been at war non-stop for almost half a century then, so they also had an extremely veteran force.

How many thousands of lives and billions in damages is defeating Washington's ego worth? — neomac

Not that many. This isn't some unknown quantity we might as well toss a coin over.

We know how many are dying as a result of this war, we know with some certainty that it will be a long process even if Ukraine can ever win. It's definitely in the hundreds of thousands of lives, and the billions of damages. No doubt there.

We also know quite well how many more are dying in Russia because of their more authoritarian direction than in Ukraine. We know how many more die on Russia's borders with it's militarism is not restrained. It's in the low thousands of lives and the low millions in damages.

It's not to the penny accounting, but it's just dishonest to present it as if we just don't know. We do know. We can see how many have died in the occupation of Crimea, we have a very good idea of what appeasement brings, and we have a very good idea of the costs of war, and of the likely length of time those costs are going to have to be endured for.

This isn't a calculation anyone would be making blind. A decision has been made to cost at least tenfold as many lives and a thousandfold as much economic indebtedness simply in order to profit from the chaos.

Right. Thanks for the numbers. So in about 17 months we've had nearly 100,000 dead, 6.3 million refugees, $143 billion in damage, wheat and fertiliser production almost causing the starvation of another 10-15 million... and what have we got. Ukraine are nearly half way to wearing down Russian ability to cause more damage.

So after another 100,000 dead and nearly $300 billion in debt they maybe equalise...?

:point:

If there are people here who are predicting imminent major successes in line with this paper reality, speak up please. — Tzeentch

No one?

No one? — Tzeentch

Surprised?

Not in the slightest.

makes a good point here:

Convincing people that Ukraine has a chance of 'winning' is the main method by which continued drip-feed sales of weapons are justified (making the arms manufacturers an unrivalled fortune). Since Ukraine is actually being destroyed (economically, but also literally), it takes quite the major advertising effort to keep this illusion up. Hence the massive social media campaign, of which your posts (wittingly or not) form part. — Isaac

Since so many of you are happily contributing to said ad campaign, isn't there anyone among you who believes enough in this theoretical chance of winning to make a prediction of the how/when of Ukrainian success?

It appears not, and that is no surprise, but it does beg the question what it is exactly that those people are doing here.

Entertaining a notion for sport?

It appears those who would post lengthy and strongly-worded posts on how the Ukrainians must continue to fight and die, themselves lack the courage to risk something so trivial as being wrong.

There's something rather icky about that, and it doesn't suggest any kind of confidence in one's views either.

Convincing people that Ukraine has a chance of 'winning' — Isaac

it takes quite the major advertising effort to keep this illusion up — Isaac

Hence the massive social media campaign, of which your posts (wittingly or not) form part — Isaac

It appears those who would post lengthy and strongly-worded posts on how the Ukrainians must continue to fight and die — Tzeentch

You dudes think to make a point just by caricaturing opponents' views.
That's intellectually abhorrent. You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency.
And you are quite good at that. Hands up.

It's not to the penny accounting, but it's just dishonest to present it as if we just don't know. — Isaac

The problem is not what we know but what we can infer from it.

Not that many. This isn't some unknown quantity we might as well toss a coin over. — Isaac

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation.

You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency. — neomac

Coming from you, that's rich. :rofl:

You dudes think to make a point just by caricaturing opponents' views.
That's intellectually abhorrent. — neomac

Uh huh... Something like...

your helpless craving for pinning roughly everything bad is happening primarily on the US. — neomac

... would be an example of caricaturing your opponent's views, yes. I'll be sure to try and avoid that kind of thing in future.

Funny how this has only just occurred to you after nearly 500 pages of having every single opposing view caricatured as Putin-loving, Putinistas, Russiophiles etc... but it's good that you're on top of it now.

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac

I just did.

It appears those who would post lengthy and strongly-worded posts on how the Ukrainians must continue to fight and die, themselves lack the courage to risk something so trivial as being wrong. — Tzeentch

Who exactly wrote that Ukrainians must fight? I certainly did not. However, if they do want to fight and risk their lives against the agression, I believe they should be helped as much as possible. I do hope they win, but I am far from certain that they will.

your helpless craving for pinning roughly everything bad is happening primarily on the US. — neomac


... would be an example of caricaturing your opponent's views, yes. I — Isaac

No dude, that's not a caricature at all. Quote a claim of yours that contradicts it.
It should be pretty easy for you to do it, since mine is a very general claim.
Who is primarily to blame for starting the war ?
Who is primarily to blame for continuing the war ?
Who is primarily to blame for food crisis related to the war?
Who is primarily to blame for NATO policies toward the war?
Who is primarily to blame for the misinformation we get on the war?
You didn't lose a single occasion to blame American media, American political elites, American military-industrial-finacial complex. Where is the caricature? Maybe you are a caricature.

You even had your sidekick claiming
We are literally in a 6th mass extinction event heading towards civilisational collapse that is entirely due to US policy and acquiescence of their fellow Western acolytes, not to mention pollution of various other forms as well as neo-colonialism and US imperialism (however "soft" you want to call it -- being smothered by a pillow can have the exact same end result as being stabbed in the chest).

Now, if you want to argue that the Soviet Union, China and India weren't and aren't any better and would have done equally bad or worse things (and did and do their best to help destroy the planet as second and third fiddles) had they been the dominant super power and setting the terms of world trade, I'd have no problem agreeing to that.

But the reality is that the dominant power since WWII setting most economic policies on the planet (what and how things are produced) has been the US, and the consequence has been destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale.

Unsustainability literally equates to destruction, that's what it means: destroying the ecosystems we require for survival, not to mention a host of other species.

And global unsustainability has been a Western choice, championed by the US and supported by their vassals. The policies for sustainability are pretty easy and known since the 60s (public transport, renewable energy, less meat eating, sustainable fishing, strict care what chemicals are allowed in the environment and how much, and farming in ways compatible with biodiversity and soil protection) and since the 60s the policies critical to sustainability could have been easily implemented to create a smooth transition. (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/801709)

Funny how this has only just occurred to you after nearly 500 pages of having every single opposing view caricatured as Putin-loving, Putinistas, Russiophiles etc... but it's good that you're on top of it now. — Isaac

If you think I caricatured your views, quote exactly where. This time you failed.

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac


I just did. — Isaac

Quote where you did it.

You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency. — neomac


Coming from you, that's rich. :rofl: — Tzeentch

It's laughing the guy who is so desperately in need to score a point that he wishes his opponents to answer a ridiculously framed challenge like "If there are people here who are predicting imminent major successes in line with this paper reality, speak up please." and even insisting on it.

I believe they should be helped as much as possible. I do hope they win, but I am far from certain that they will. — Jabberwock

...doesn't chime with...

Only if it has more chance of winning that defence than it does of being destroyed by it. Otherwise to provide weapons (alone) is monstrous. — Isaac


I agree. — Jabberwock

You agree above that it is "monstrous" to provide weapons (alone) to a country that doesn't have more chance of winning that defence than it does of being destroyed by it.

Yet here, you say you're "far from certain" they'll win, yet you think supplying arms is the right thing to do.

Which is it?

You know what a caricature is, right? It doesn't just mean 'got wrong'.

You agree above that it is "monstrous" to provide weapons (alone) to a country that doesn't have more chance of winning that defence than it does of being destroyed by it.

Yet here, you say you're "far from certain" they'll win, yet you think supplying arms is the right thing to do.

Which is it? — Isaac

'Far from certain' is even further from 'no chance of winning'. Besides, as we have already discussed, Ukrainians already succeeded in stopping the progress of invasion and then significantly reversing it. They have also significantly limited the offensive capacities of Russians, so the chance of destruction of Ukraine is already much lower. All that would not be possible without the Western support.

Putin's hold on power seems rather tenuous lately. I don't see Zelensky having to fight off a coup. Who knows what can happen with another 100,000 Russian casualties? Eventually the Russian people will tire of this and Putin, esp. when their forces keep losing ground.

"Using its own data, the ISW has calculated that Ukrainian forces have recaptured about 253 square kilometres of territory since the start of the counter-offensive on 4 June which, it says, is about the same amount of territory as Russian forces have captured in the past six months."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682

You know what a caricature is, right? It doesn't just mean 'got wrong'. — Isaac

I have no idea why you call it a caricature then. In what way what I wrote distorts your claims? When I'm accusing you and others to make a caricature of my views I'm referring to what you got wrong about my views and yet you need to make a point against my views. I don't need to distort your views to question them. You do.

Besides I'm still waiting for your math:

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac


I just did. — Isaac


Quote where you did it. — neomac

How far should the situation in Ukraine deterioriate before we can agree the peace accords that were on the table in March / April 2022, scarcely a month into the war, should have been carried out instead of blocked by the US?

Those were blocked by the US simply to save Washington's ego. — Tzeentch

Scarcely a month into the war Russia was speaking of denazification of Ukraine and on the offensive, so your argument that it was Washington’s ego that blocked peace talks is hilarious. (Or actually, very typical to you…)

Hilarious as you may find it, there are independent people giving acounts of the negotiations, and that's the picture they sketch.

Here's what Jeffrey Sachs had to say, based on his direct contact with the diplomats involved:

The war broke out, and within a month Zelensky said: "[Ukraine] could be neutral." And negotiations started in Ankara with Turkish mediation. And I spoke to the Turkish mediators. I spoke to people who were deeply involved in this. There was rapid progress made on the basis of Ukrainian neutrality.

Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]. The best estimate given to us by former prime minister Naftali Bennett in a very interesting, long interview he gave online a couple months ago, said: "The US stopped it. I didn't agree with them, but they thought they needed to be tough towards China. That it would be a sign of weakness to go along with [the peace negotiations]."

Honest to god. It's worse than five-year-olds.

The Russians and the Ukrainians were ready for peace. The US wasn't, because they feared how it would reflect back on them in the eyes of the Chinese.

The Russians and the Ukrainians were ready for peace. — Tzeentch

And on what terms were they (the Russians) negotiating with the neonazis they were meant to denazify back then?

Apart from the anti-US stance where everything revolves around the US, the reality looks a bit different:

But what really ended efforts to bring about peace – which had continued since the 24 February invasion – was the proclaimed annexation of the Ukrainian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Cherson. Since his election in 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on Putin to agree to a personal meeting, even in the first weeks of this year’s Russian invasion. But on 4 October 2022, in response to the actions of the Russian side, he signed a decree rejecting direct talks. Ever since the beginning of the Russian aggression in 2014, and all the more so since 24 February 2022, the course of Ukrainian-Russian negotiations has been highly dependent on the situation in the battlefield and the broader political context.

In fact, things like the mess that the Russian army is in after the Prigozhin debacle and their inability to go on the offensive can lead to peace talks/armstice in the future.

the reality... — ssu

And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...?