Ukraine vs Russia III

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/us/politics/biden-ukraine-russia-atacms-missiles.html

With the incoming doom and despair next year, I don't even know if this news can still be categorized as "better late than never".

 

Moments like these are the ones when Biden actually looks like the senile old fool that the Republicans portray him to be.

 

Worse. It makes him look like a despicable piece of shit. Nothing that would have ostensibly made the risk associated with allowing them to do this has changed. If you believed you had well founded reasons to fear russias response….that fear either wasn’t real or you put the world at risk.


And the world is no more at risk today than it was yesterday.

I’ll give Biden the benefit of the doubt and say that he has been poorly advised by Blinken.

 

Even worse, the leak of this permission gives Russia a few days to prepare. Do these people know nothing of war?

 

The White House is very leaky. It has been of my biggest annoyances this war

Shut the efff up and announce stuff after Ukraine at least fires the first salvo

I swear Russia does not even need spies, US newspapers leak everything

 

Too bad we waited so long that it won't help Ukraine. Despite proclamations that Ukraine had already won by various regulars here two years ago.

 

Looks like the US also lifted the limits of British/French Storm Shadow missiles, and they can be used in Russia as well.

There's supposed to be a vote in Germany to allow export of their Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Well see.

 

Your contention being we should expect Russian tanks rolling through Kyiv in... April? May?

Please provide a timeline by which you may be proved correct.

 

Rolling through Kyiv? Not until the next time Russia declares another special action. But I never said that -- that's just something you made up. And it's pretty goofy to use the status of Kyiv as a sole standard for Ukraine winning or losing. After all, no Vietnamese tanks rolled through the streets of Paris; but I think it's fair to say the French lost in IndoChina.

What I actually *did* say was that the latest of our crossings of one of Putin's red lines that we must not violate under fear of nuclear annhilation was too late to help Ukraine. If it had happened in the first six months, it might have had a significant impact on Russia's ability to resupply its troops. Now, though, Ukraine has already lost. If you still believe that Ukraine won two years ago, please describe what they've won. They've lost a lot of territory, natural resources, and vital infrastructure, lost a significant fraction of their industrial base, and lost a hell of a lot of their people. That's an odd kind of victory. If, instead, you admit they hadn't won when regulars here insisted that they had two years ago, but are confident they will, when will Ukraine turn the tide and recapture all the territory lost since this invasion began? December? January? It can't be much later than that given what you know will happen when Donald Trump's hand replaces Biden's on the aid spigot. Please provide a timeline by which you may be proved correct.

 

Ukraine doesn't need to recapture Crimea to win. As far as I'm concerned they already have won. They have absolutely annihilated their threatening neighbor's army and are truly an independent, European-facing nation. I suspect they will continue fighting to close the land bridge with Crimea even after the Russians blow through all 100k loaned North Korean troops.

I don't know when Russia's economy and military will collapse. Nobody does. But I do know that you cannot name a successful aggressor state in the last hundred years.

 

I did not reference Crimea. I referenced the territory lost since the beginning of this invasion. When will Ukraine recapture it?

Absolutely annihilated it? Who, then, is it that's holding Russia's territorial gains, and advancing out of that territory at present?

Huh? Assuming by "successful aggressor state," you mean states that have picked up territory in aggressive war, in the last century there's been (at least):

• Saudi Arabia over Yemen (acquisition of what's now SW Saudi Arabia in the 1930s)
• China over Tibet.
• India over Portugal (annexation of Goa)
• Israel over Jordan (west bank of the Jordan)
• Israel over Syria (Golan)
• Saudi Arabia over South Yemen (al-Wadiah)
• Iran over constituents of the UAE (Abu Musa and the Tunbs)
• China over South Vietnam (Paracel Islands)
• Turkey over Greece (northern Cyprus)
• Morocco over Western Sahara
• Indonesia over East Timor
• Russia over Moldova (Transnistria)
• Russia over Georgia (south Ossetia)
• Russia over Ukraine (Crimea)
• Azerbaijan over Armenia (Nagorno-Karabakh)

I wouldn't complain too much if you opposed the last one on the basis of it being too soon to tell, although I'd then ask for a time period held necessary to qualify.

If success as an aggressor does not require acquisition of territory, more can be added to that list. Also, I confess that there are situations where I think an argument can be made for success even if the aggressor state later falls. For example, if state A conquers state B and occupies its territory, and later state C invades and conquers state A in an unrelated conflict, I'm not sure I'd call state A's acquisition of state B unsuccessful, even though state A no longer exists.

Finally, even if we ignore all of the above, what specifically is it about Russia's repeated annexations of Ukrainian territory that suggest to you that they'll be ceded back to Ukraine in the end? Especially given that, unfortunately, the U.S. is likely to abandon Ukraine imminently, and may even switch sides in the conflict given both Donald Trump's loyalties and who he's putting in positions of power in the DoD and (to my highest consternation) in the IC.

 

I'm not sure you want the "annexation of Goa" in here. There's lots of reasons to quibble with most on the list but a European colonizer being forced to give up its territory is a particularly egregious bastardization of the word "aggressor."

As for the others I would quibble with:

East Timor is now independent
Nagorno-Karabakh was always officially Azeri territory, Armenia were the aggressors in the 1990s
Both Turkey and Greece are aggressors in Cyprus
Jury is very much out on Russia's ability to hold onto Transnistria and Georgia


I'll give you Sahara and Tibet. Kinda.


My attitude with Russia is that they will run out of manpower and materiel to conduct offensives in the next year, as has been shared here widely. They still have to man that frontline at an enormous cost in perpetuity to hold it. And police it. And provide services to the few people who still live there. This is hard to do if you're America manning the DMZ in South Korea! It will be near-impossible to do in the long run as a rapidly-declining petrostate.

 

I am not sure what territorial advances you're talking about.

You know how much Ukrainian territory Russia held at the beginning of their offensive on October 10th, 2023? 17.96% (and that includes all the territory they captured from Ukraine before February 2022). You know how much Ukrainian territory they hold today? 18.35%. And Ukraine actually controls a tiny bit of Kursk Oblast, as well.

So, what did Russia get for hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded lost at a record pace over slightly more than a year? Less than 0.4% of Ukrainian territory. Yes, Ukraine has, most likely won the war. Russia requires movie studios to surrender all of their T-55 prop tanks (I liked that specific piece of news) and thousands of North Korean soldiers, while Ukraine continually receives military aid from some of the best military industries in the world.

And,. let me remind you, at the end of World War I, Central Powers held a lot of Antanta land but they still lost.

 

Another piece of interesting news: Russia restructures moneys they pay injured soldiers. Instead of the uniform 3 million rubles one time payment they gave to all soldiers injured in Ukraine, they now give gravely wounded 4 million rubles, seriously wounded 1 million rubles, and lightly wounded only 100 thousand rubles. To me that suggests that they are realizing that they are starting to run out of money.

 

I'd say Austin is the more to blame for this.

 

The White House and the Pentagon are leaky when they want to be. On just about every other issue the White House is basically airtight, much to the consternation of the MSM.