Nobody interested in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

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SkinnedWolf
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03 Jun 2022, 6:49 am

magz wrote:
SkinnedWolf wrote:
https://www.mei.edu/publications/russia-ukraine-war-has-turned-egypts-food-crisis-existential-threat-economy
Quote:
Even more troublesome, the war also threatens Egypt's physical supply itself since 85% of its wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine, as does 73% of its sunflower oil. With activity at Ukraine's ports at a complete standstill, Egypt already needs to find alternative suppliers.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/egypt-has-strategic-wheat-reserves-to-cover-5-months-supply-minister
Quote:
CAIRO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Egypt's strategic wheat reserves are sufficient to cover the country's consumption for five months, Supply Minister Ali Moselhy told Reuters on Wednesday.
The country has reserves of vegetable oils sufficient for 5.5 monthsand sugar for five months, he added.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/egypt-has-strategic-wheat-reserves-sufficient-26-months-spokesperson-2022-04-04/
Quote:
CAIRO, April 4 (Reuters) - Egypt has strategic wheat reserves sufficient for 2.6 months, cabinet spokesperson Nader Saad said on Monday.

Time is close.

Yup.
Railways and roads are not nearly as efficient as seaports. And the whole Middle East is a massive wheat importer.

Not only the issue of transportation efficiency.
Spring plowing was destroyed.

Europe will usher in a new wave of refugees.


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ironpony
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03 Jun 2022, 6:56 am

magz wrote:
1. NATO does not trade. NATO members do. Their military alliance does not make any binding decisions about economies.
2. The window to withdraw and go back to trade closed around the time when Bucha atrocities became known - until then, ousting Putin and dumping all blame on him would have probably worked. Now it won't.
3. Russia will stop where it is forced to stop - most likely by running out of resources, both military and economical.

The current strategy:
- International (not just Western - Taiwan, S. Korea and Japan are super important here) sanctions aimed at cutting Russia out of supplies for producing and repairing weapons (microchips!)
- International sanctions aimed at creating economical pressure on Russia so it can't finance forther agression.
- Ukraine is fighting with tactics aimed at maximizing the enemy's losses while minimizing their own (contrary to e.g. tactics focused on territorial gains). They're doing pretty good job in it.
- The West is supplying Ukraine so this tactics can be held for long time.

The goal is Russia weakened so much that even if they used "the bomb" in an act of despair, they wouldn't be able to defend themselves against conventional NATO reaction... well, actually, the goal is to weaken Russia enough for them to lose conventionally against Ukraine and not even dare to use the bomb for knowing they wouldn't stand against the reaction.


Oh okay, but after Russia is weakened that much, will the NATO Nations go back to trade with them afterwards?



magz
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03 Jun 2022, 7:23 am

ironpony wrote:
Oh okay, but after Russia is weakened that much, will the NATO Nations go back to trade with them afterwards?
Probably conditionally. However, a lot can happen and change before we reach the point of easing sanctions.


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auntblabby
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03 Jun 2022, 7:40 am

as long as the fascist bunch with megalomaniacal designs remains astride russia, the rest of the world had better not cut them any slack.



magz
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03 Jun 2022, 1:57 pm

The source is Ukrainian army so it might be part of information war... but if not, the absurd has reached a new dimension.

Russian army has been suffering from poor logistics through all the war. In Kherson district, the soldiers not receiving basic things like food - but, apparently, having significant free time - come to local farmers for work.
Picking strawberries for 50 UAH/h.
The locals say, they behave okay and their work is satisfactory.

https://www.facebook.com/okPivden/posts ... 0169728892

It may end up with some of the occupants integrating into local communities... just like my great-great grandfathers did in Poland :D


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ironpony
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03 Jun 2022, 10:29 pm

auntblabby wrote:
as long as the fascist bunch with megalomaniacal designs remains astride russia, the rest of the world had better not cut them any slack.


But what good is giving Russia an ultimatum, if the ultimatum givers aren't even going to hold up their end of it, and Putin knows that and thus he will not give up if he knows they have no intention of holding their ultimatum?



auntblabby
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04 Jun 2022, 2:04 am

ironpony wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
as long as the fascist bunch with megalomaniacal designs remains astride russia, the rest of the world had better not cut them any slack.


But what good is giving Russia an ultimatum, if the ultimatum givers aren't even going to hold up their end of it, and Putin knows that and thus he will not give up if he knows they have no intention of holding their ultimatum?

not an ultimatum but a determination to not do business with them nor give them diplomatic recognition.



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04 Jun 2022, 7:54 am

But if it's not an ultimatum and nothing Putin does can make trade resume, then Putin has nothing left to lose, and you can't reason with a man who has nothing left to lose. So if he has no more trade to loose, he will just continue the war further, and cannot be reasoned with even more.

So why would NATO countries get rid of a bargaining chip and make it so he has nothing left to lose?



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04 Jun 2022, 8:51 am

It’s because we can’t just appease Putin just because he threatens us. Who is Putin, anyway—the Big Bad Wolf?

Just like we can’t appease gangsters just so they won’t shoot innocent people. They have “nothing to lose” either if the potential sentence of a murderer is death.

Like we can’t appease kidnappers by automatically agreeing to their ransom demands.



magz
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04 Jun 2022, 11:01 am

Appeasing Putin and giving him a lot to lose was the politics that led to Feb 24.
Now it's time to make him lose.


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SkinnedWolf
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04 Jun 2022, 11:44 am

Some analysts believe that the long war itself is Putin's goal(at least one of them)...


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magz
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04 Jun 2022, 12:01 pm

I think his main goal is to, ahem, Make Russia Great Again (in imperialist terms).
Regardless of the cost - even to his own people. In Donbas, they're using the old Soviet tactics of razing everything to the ground and pushing more cannonfodder, repeat until success.


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04 Jun 2022, 12:14 pm

https://thehill.com/opinion/internation ... n-ukraine/

The unpalatable truth in Ukraine

At one point in the novel “Sign of the Four,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s inimitable detective Sherlock Holmes explains and demonstrates to Dr. Watson his method of observation and deduction. Confronted with an apparently inexplicable circumstance, Dr. Watson is utterly perplexed. He simply cannot understand how the event in question came to pass, given the facts as he understands them and the laws of nature. Slightly irritated at his plodding companion’s bafflement, Holmes once again shares with him the methodological key to solving all such mysteries: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

And the truth is, once we have eliminated all the impossible scenarios, the least improbable outcome of the war in Ukraine is a Russian victory.

Note that I did not say such an outcome would be desirable. Russia’s inevitable victory is anything but. Nor did I say it would be total. The outcome of this war is going to fall far short of the Kremlin’s initial hopes and expectations. Nor, finally, did I say it would be without significant cost. Any conceivable Russian victory now will entail such a loss of blood and treasure that it will have to be judged Pyrrhic at best.

But it will be a victory nonetheless — and we in the West had better come to grips with that hard truth.

Let’s begin by eliminating the impossible.

The first unrealistic endgame is the reduction of Ukraine to a vassal state of the Russian empire. This would entail the kind of operation initially envisioned by the Kremlin: a quick decapitating military strike, the installation of a pro-Moscow regime in Kyiv and either the formal incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation or its informal incorporation into a Russian sphere of influence (like Belarus).

While perhaps the initial objective of Russia’s “special military operation,” this outcome is now obviously an impossibility. Russia did not have the ability to impose this vision in February, and it is decidedly less able to impose it 100 days later. Indeed, even the Russians themselves have conceded as much. Their rhetoric and military operations suggest that even they believe such an outcome to be beyond the realm of the possible.

The second impossible scenario is the total defeat of the Russian military and the restoration of Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders. In this scenario, the Ukrainian military, having blunted the initial Russian offensive, launches a successful counter-offensive that ultimately drives the Russians not only out of the territories they captured in 2022 but out of the Donbas and Crimea as well. The resulting political dispensation would be an independent Ukraine restored to its internationally recognized borders and free to join NATO and/or associate with the European Union (EU) as it saw fit.

While advocated by many within and beyond Ukraine, this outcome is simply impossible. Whatever the shortcomings displayed by Russian forces in the opening phase of the war – when they were first stopped at the gates of Kyiv and then driven from the north of the country altogether – recent battlefield developments suggest that they have found their footing and are not going to be pushed out of the territories taken in 2014.

Indeed, there is no reason to believe that they will even be displaced from much of the territory they have seized along the coast of the Sea of Azov. While there will doubtless be shifts on the battlefield as a result of offensives here and counter-offensives there, the correlation of forces simply do not augur a total victory for Ukraine. So, despite the willful delusions of some and the idealistic hopes others, this outcome is simply impossible.

The third and final impossible scenario is a limited Ukrainian victory that would reverse all or most of the Russian gains since Feb. 24, 2022. In this scenario, while the Donbas and Crimea remain in Russian hands, all the territory captured by Russia since its recent re-invasion would be liberated by Ukrainian forces and restored to Ukrainian control.

While once viewed as a realistic outcome, by now it should be obvious that this is impossible. Just as Ukraine lacks the ability to liberate all its pre-2014 territory, it also lacks the ability to liberate the recently conquered territory in the Donbas or along the Azov coast. Unlike in the north of Ukraine, these territories are central to Russian interests in Ukraine and, as such, Russia simply will not withdraw from them as it withdrew from Kyiv earlier in the war. Nor will Ukrainian forces – themselves, it should be noted, suffering terrible attrition all along the battle front and growing weaker with each passing day – be strong enough to compel them to do so. No, like the previous two scenarios, this one is simply an impossibility.

And that leaves only one other conceivable outcome: a fragmented and partly dismembered Ukraine, neither fully part of the West nor entirely within the Russian sphere of influence. A Ukraine fragmented in that the whole of the Donbas and perhaps other territories will be left beyond Kyiv’s control; partly dismembered in that Crimea will remain part of Russia (at least in Russian eyes); and not fully part of the West in that it will not be free to join NATO or even to have a meaningful partnership with the EU. Simply put, this outcome is not only not impossible, it’s not even improbable.


...


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magz
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04 Jun 2022, 12:24 pm

Mikah wrote:
And that leaves only one other conceivable outcome: a fragmented and partly dismembered Ukraine, neither fully part of the West nor entirely within the Russian sphere of influence. A Ukraine fragmented in that the whole of the Donbas and perhaps other territories will be left beyond Kyiv’s control; partly dismembered in that Crimea will remain part of Russia (at least in Russian eyes); and not fully part of the West in that it will not be free to join NATO or even to have a meaningful partnership with the EU. Simply put, this outcome is not only not impossible, it’s not even improbable.
And then, inevitably, after a decade or two, another attack on Ukraine, also inevitably victorious, and then Moldova, also inevitably victorious, and then NATO will have to give up Estonia, and then... it's inevitable.

Mikah wrote:
The third and final impossible scenario is a limited Ukrainian victory that would reverse all or most of the Russian gains since Feb. 24, 2022. In this scenario, while the Donbas and Crimea remain in Russian hands, all the territory captured by Russia since its recent re-invasion would be liberated by Ukrainian forces and restored to Ukrainian control.

While once viewed as a realistic outcome, by now it should be obvious that this is impossible. Just as Ukraine lacks the ability to liberate all its pre-2014 territory, it also lacks the ability to liberate the recently conquered territory in the Donbas or along the Azov coast. Unlike in the north of Ukraine, these territories are central to Russian interests in Ukraine and, as such, Russia simply will not withdraw from them as it withdrew from Kyiv earlier in the war. Nor will Ukrainian forces – themselves, it should be noted, suffering terrible attrition all along the battle front and growing weaker with each passing day – be strong enough to compel them to do so. No, like the previous two scenarios, this one is simply an impossibility.
That's why they're asking for heavy weapons - and that's why they're getting heavy weapons.
To make it possible.

This analysys would have made sense if Ukraine wasn't receiving support. It does and there are several countries with vital interest in making all the assumptions of the analysis above void.


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goldfish21
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04 Jun 2022, 12:35 pm

magz wrote:
The source is Ukrainian army so it might be part of information war... but if not, the absurd has reached a new dimension.

Russian army has been suffering from poor logistics through all the war. In Kherson district, the soldiers not receiving basic things like food - but, apparently, having significant free time - come to local farmers for work.
Picking strawberries for 50 UAH/h.
The locals say, they behave okay and their work is satisfactory.

https://www.facebook.com/okPivden/posts ... 0169728892

It may end up with some of the occupants integrating into local communities... just like my great-great grandfathers did in Poland :D


I skipped reading the last dozen pages of this thread. Figured since I've read headlines and kept up on Facebook Watch I haven't missed much. This I hadn't heard of though - a bit of a nice bit of news. 8)


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04 Jun 2022, 12:37 pm

SkinnedWolf wrote:
Some analysts believe that the long war itself is Putin's goal(at least one of them)...


I recall reading that it may be the USA's goal to let it be a long war.. NATO & USA could surge everything needed to Ukraine to crush Russia if they REALLY wanted to. They may say they won't so as not to trigger a nuclear response from Russia.. but the real reason may be to only supply what's needed to keep the war going as long as possible.. because the longer the war lasts, the more Russia's military gets depleted and the threat of them attacking anyone else becomes lesser and lesser. Makes sense.


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