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January 20, 2023
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-18
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As if they won’t send tanks ‘Everybody’ wants them to be sent. They either already have enough or they are trying to get the Russians to just give up before they decide to send them. No chance the Bradley takes the stage without proper support
Posted by: OohCanada | Jan 21 2023 13:37 utc | 201
Soldiers from the Ukrainian armed forces’ 4th Tank Brigade who fled the front complained to Zelenskyy and Zaluzhny about the lack of supplies
The fighters complain that they lack absolutely everything, including uniforms, weapons, communications equipment and machinery.
They said they would only continue their combat service if they were properly equipped: “When we see it all, when we get it all, we will immediately start carrying out tasks.”
At the end of the address, the fighters boasted that they “were supposed to last as bait for three days, but they lasted as long as seven”, apparently trying to avoid being accused of desertion in this way.
Against the backdrop of increasing desertions Ukrainian authorities intend to toughen responsibility for desertion.
https://t.me/druschbaFm_en/11690
Posted by: unimperator | Jan 21 2023 13:45 utc | 202
@ SIXTUS V | Jan 21 2023 12:14 utc | 191
‘Operable’ weapons/weapon platforms in sufficient quantity, yet far more critically, sufficient shells, rounds, missiles & rockets to actually fire from them. 😉
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jan 21 2023 6:28 utc | 134
USUK snipers? Well it is war ; so Russia better get some Spetnaz in there to show those Natoist snipers what’s what . A lesson taught with extreme prejudice,maybe?
Not taking away the relevance or immanence of your article ,but it was reported that Natoist special for ces were on the Left Bank of the Dneiper and its actual estuary close to Crimea , within days of the Russian pullout from Kherson.
No word of the famed Mozart group of Western Mercs – that were in Soledar and Bakhmut? Dead, skeddadled or pows hidden away to be released soon? Hmm?
Posted by: Brother Ma | Jan 21 2023 15:05 utc | 204
Trisha | Jan 21 2023 1:26 utc | 92
Naguib Mahfouz the Egyptian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 wrote something similar
“They are liars. And they know that they are liars. And they know that we know that they are liars. Even so, they keep lying, and very loudly so.”
Posted by: cirsium | Jan 21 2023 15:47 utc | 205
@180, 184 “It seems German Chancellor Scholtz turns out to be a good guy after all with him not letting German tanks in Ukraine.
Poor old Olaf. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. I think I can see the way this is going. Olaf is going to get the blame when Russia wins.
Posted by: dh | Jan 21 2023 16:27 utc | 206
dh @ 206
Poor old Olaf. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. I think I can see the way this is going. Olaf is going to get the blame when Russia wins.
!!
The final humiliation and slap down from the Empire with all the vassals pointing and barking in chorus. Then comes the banishment.
Germany still has time to break its chains save itself and save the world. ROTFL /sarc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiwKb-x7wXQ
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Jan 21 2023 16:58 utc | 207
Peace | Jan 21 2023 1:38 utc | 96
You just have to wonder how much Russia is willing to put up with.
https://folkpotpourri.com/the-folly-of-misjudging-the-bear/
Posted by: Ozark Grandpa | Jan 21 2023 17:02 utc | 208
Oleksii Arestovych became Ukraine’s counterpart of Igor Girkin.
Posted by: Malwen | Jan 21 2023 19:27 utc | 209
dask 126:
Appreciate the link to “Best in Hell”. Riveting near-cinema verite movie. Wagner, BTW, is identified as the White group. The Yellow group is identified only as The Enemy, but it is obvious who that represents. Interestingly, the battle depicted ends in a draw. If Wagner produced this as a training/recruitment film you’d think they would have “won”. Whatever, worth watching.
Posted by: EBAH | Jan 21 2023 23:29 utc | 210
Sixtus V: here are my views on that and some reasons. Maybe outdated and wrong.
These are general explanations for why such seemingly contradictory statements might not actually be opposing. I don’t follow anyone in particular —except b! :)— so I don’t know precisely what has been claimed.
There should still be mountains of stuff, however those mountains are now being dipped into (artillery shells out of Israel) and they don’t all consist of exactly what is in demand. Most or all of the stores were dedicated to specific prepositioning enabling quick local reaction times in case of urgent needs and close to what was deemed likely staging areas, fronts, and fallback positions, and for use by already trained US personnel. The idea is to be able to, if needed, send US soldiers rather than both US soldiers and all their equipment.
0. They may seem bigger than they are, they’re only meant to do so much. I don’t know of any that are sized to be able to win a conventional non-nuclear war.
1. There is a distinct shortage of trained people available to use them outside of direct US use. Enabling US troops to use them in ex-Ukraine would be a massive escalation straight into a US-Russian war. So there aren’t many (or maybe any) troops legally available. In addition not many people want to be soldiers in the US or NATO countries; they have serious recruitment problems. There are many different reasons for this but a large part is that so many were fired during the last quarter of a century, another is that those that remained and any new that arrive are treated badly despite all the fancy promotional imagery.
2. There is a distinct shortage of replenishment capability, whatever is or was in storage was built up over a long time in a carefully planner manner. There is now also a distinct shortage of affordable energy and a lack of proficient workers that still existed thirty years ago.
3. Large amounts of equipment also require large amounts of energy, infrastructure, logistics, and support to move from wherever they are (Israel, Germany, Norway, and Britain come to mind) and into ex-Ukraine. And again using them in this fashion at the scale required was never intended, planned, or prepared for and is almost entirely why they were put elsewhere in the first place: because moving them around is costly.
4. Despite being large they don’t compare well with the rate of use and loss one must have experienced with previously existing Soviet material in ex-Ukraine. See the shipment of artillery grenades from Israel; it becomes a drop in the bucket in comparison.
5. There is also some paperwork because prepositioning require diplomatic and political agreements between the US and the “ally”. It’s not a showstopper and probably not too much work based on previous examples of withdrawals of equipment, but only as long as all involved agree. Most countries are not as shoddy with their accounting as the US is (the UK might be an exception).
This is only my point of view, maybe I’m wrong on this or that or forgot something.
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jan 22 2023 1:48 utc | 211
Russian forces simply aren’t numerous enough to create and maintain a large scale cauldron. Speculation about Donbas-sized encirclements seems silly. Even assuming the Russians could penetrate deeply enough, fast enough, to create the encirclement, as long as the Ukrainian army exists as a sizeable coherent fighting force, the encircling forces will get mauled because they’ll be too sparse.
Posted by: Mike314159 | Jan 21 2023 14:51 utc | 45
————–
The population of Ukraine on 1 May 2021 was 41,442,615. The current population of Ukraine is 36,130,760 based on projections of the latest United Nations data (Wikipedia). I suspect that the current population is as high as Wikipedia suggests being a tool of the CIA and all, I assume did not subtract the four oblasts that voted to join the Russian federation in 2022.
Russia, the largest country in the world by area, had a population of 147.2 million according to the 2021 census, or 144.7 million when excluding Crimea and Sevastopol, up from 142.8 million in the 2010 census (Wikipedia). Again, this does not include the populations living in four oblast that voted to join the Russian Federation.
The current population of Belarus is 9,441,462 as of Sunday, January 15, 2023, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.
*Clearly, Ukraine does not have a large enough population to sustain a long conflict with Russia.
*Even with the EU/US contributions to Ukraine’s military and economy, Ukraine does not have the economic power to sustain a prolonged conflict with Russia.
*Ukraine does not have command of its air space, Russia does.
*Ukraine does not have an industrial base sufficient to sustain a long conflict with Russia.
*Ukraine will never have another Referendum as long as the war continues, the Ukrainian people will soon lose patience with a war time dictatorship.
*A very large portion of the AFU killed who are killed action have been left on the battlefield to bleed out and rot, they will not be declared KIA, and their families will not receive economic support from the Ukrainian government. A loyal population this does not make.
*A military that must shanghai unwilling fighters off the streets is not a military with a bright future.
Posted by: Ed | Jan 22 2023 2:50 utc | 212
Apologies if this has already been posted. I’m flabbergasted.
The U.S. wants to take Russian military equipment from Russia’s Latin American allies and “donate it to Ukraine”.
Posted by: farm ecologist | Jan 22 2023 4:03 utc | 213
Re: Demographics
A rough estimate of the population inside Ukraine subject to Kiev‘s rule is between 15-20 million.
The UNHCR data only covers ‚refugees‘ who fled in 2022. The really big exodus occurred between 2014 and 2022 when 2/3s of the working age population left to work overseas. Recall that Ukraine went from being the most prosperous region in the USSR to the poorest place in all of Europe. Ukrainians already voted with their feet.
Posted by: Exile | Jan 22 2023 7:32 utc | 214
dh | Jan 21 2023 16:27 utc | 206
Will be interesting to see if Olaf is as light on his feet as Erdogan. Erdogan looked like rabbit looking for a hole in the fence to dart through when Russia moved into Syria, but in the years since has proved to be a player.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jan 22 2023 7:43 utc | 215
reading all these posts I notice that there is a great effort and waste of resources by Russian trolls in an attempt to hide what is the reality. the war for Russia, at least as he had thought of it, ended as soon as it began. when Russian special troops sent to kill Zelensky were ambushed at Hostomel airport and destroyed. then we saw the rest … it was supposed to last 3 days, we’re at over 300. but there is one aspect that everyone hides, the writer only plays with toy soldiers … the Russian economy is worth 1.5 trillion dollars, the economy of the countries against russia 150 trillion dollars …what are we talking about? China has obviously made its choice in Davos and the latest Ramstein as well. russia knows that the end is near … the question is how will the russian federation be divided … and how to solve the problem of nuclear warheads? the rest is quite clear, the new russia will become one big gas station
Posted by: Giuliano l’Apostata | Jan 22 2023 10:21 utc | 216
#FreetheLeopards!!!
War in Ukraine: Germany will not “oppose” the sending of Leopard 2 tanks by Poland
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she had not received any official request from Poland, which on Sunday described Berlin’s refusal to supply Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev as “unacceptable”.
“If we were asked the question (of sending German Leopard 2 tanks, editor’s note), we would not oppose it,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in an interview with LCI in the company of her French counterpart Catherine Colonna on Sunday.
Posted by: Leuk | Jan 22 2023 23:19 utc | 217
Posted by: Leuk | Jan 22 2023 23:19 utc | 217
Obviously, Scholz is just trying to posture and give the false impression that they are not completely bowing down to the US.
According to some accounts, Israel would use a nuclear bomb at any minimal threat (although there is no explanation for not having any nuclear countermeasures against an Iranian bomb that could allegedly be produced within a month), but somehow these centrist Zionist-European settler-colonists in the Middle East simultaneously believe that a larger nuclear arsenal, a warring and once-dismembered Russia is completely unlikely to use nuclear weapons, and instead just scream “Russian talking points,” “NATO is just an excuse,” and “separatists are unpopular” to change the subject.
Posted by: Colin | Jan 23 2023 7:31 utc | 218
Hi. Can´t resist this one. A few moments ago, an invited “specialist” of SIC Notícias (SIC News), a Portuguese affiliated of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (Weapon of Mass Manipulation) referred to German “tanks” as “Leonard” tanks. I don’t know what you think about this, but if Germany authorizes Leonard tanks to go to Ukraine, the war will soon be over.
Posted by: Jooa Gusmao | Jan 23 2023 15:27 utc | 219
I don’t know what you think about this, but if Germany authorizes Leonard tanks to go to Ukraine, the war will soon be over.
Posted by: Jooa Gusmao | Jan 23 2023 15:27 utc | 219
What’s next, leotard tanks?
Posted by: David Levin | Jan 23 2023 18:35 utc | 220
Three- digit losses have been reported! Would that be 100, or 999? Maybe they could be a little more precise? Just saying!
Posted by: Useyourhead | Jan 25 2023 12:21 utc | 221