Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I do like Sean Bell & Michael Clark appraisals

Russia has a far bigger army the partial mobi never stopped and is getting plenty of weapons from many sources outside, its morale and defences that where not supposed to hold up against western equipment hasn't happen to their credit its a 600km line

Ukraine as it is will be a basket case if it stays the way it is under constant Russian attriction would it be worth rebuilding? or just use it as a buffer against an uncivilised aggressor who cannot be trusted again.

West still trades with Russia many big multinationals are not sanctioned so unfortunately we need its 160million to buy out tooth paste and pharmacy products so I think we will see a NK type partition at the end of the year.

Sadly this is not what I wanted.

My fear would be that they will damage the power plant, or critical parts of it, not destroy it. It will be just enough to cause problems but also little enough to cause Nato to dither about the response.

Add a much salt as you feel necessary but twitter igorsushko has posted

”Rumor: Ramzan 'TikTok' Kadyrov, Putin-appointed dictator and terrorizer of Chechnya is on his deathbed and can no longer speak.”

I haven't seen any reports of internal pressure causing countries that support Ukraine from halting shipments.

Some baltic countries have literally emptied their armories of artillery. There's been record arms packages announced from counties over the past few months. Since January there's been a massive increase in arms.

The shell issue is still a serious issue though. Shell production should have been put on a war footing and just pump them out for Ukraine.

The claim about Russia running out of missiles keeps getting dragged up. It's not like one day they will fire their last missile.

Before the war, they had a stockpile, that's pretty much depleted and they rely on newly produced missiles. Hence the reason the mass missile attacks occur less often and with less missiles and needing Iranian drones to accompany them. Ukraine literally use to post a monthly chart of the estimated number of Russian missiles in stock, the number produced each month and how many have been used by Russia. Hard to believe analysts didn't know that.

If there's one thing we should have learned from following this conflict the last nearly year and a half, it's that we don't know what either side truly has in reserve or what their logistical situation looks like. You know, it's almost as if that information is quite sensitive and that it's very much in the interest of the participants to obfuscate the hell out of it. With respect to that, the only way we ordinary people are going to get a really accurate picture of what the state of the forces actually looks like on this day will probably be in a history book.

Why would Sean Bell or any representative of the British armed forces, a noted ally of Ukraine, go on television and try to give an accurate picture of Ukrainian supply if that picture was a pessimistic one? What would there be to gain? All it would do is boost Russian morale and lower that of Ukraine's. It would also have major, major implications for Europe in general, essentially telling Russia (perhaps as part of a military alliance with China) that they could simply attrition warfare their way across eastern Europe - the West has not the supply to keep up. This would be a big no-no.

"Appear strong when you are weak, and weak when you are strong"

Yesterday I heard an academic who I had never heard of before, Stephen Kotkin speaking on the Ezra Klein podcast. I found him very insightful. One of those people who's talking about things that I've already heard seen and read about a bunch of times and yet he's able to impart new wisdom about them. I'd recommend giving it a listen:

Just google "Putin/Bush, Crawford Ranch" and you'll be getting a hell of a back story about how they championed Putin as an ally in their war on Terror.

Putin no doubt saw the Iraq invasion as justification to invade anywhere and anytime he wanted without fear of the US.

The invasion of Iraq was a monumental geo-political own goal with ripples to this day on how the USA is seen in this world. I sometimes wonder what percentage of tankies would be of a different persuasion had that reckless invasion not happened.

I think it actually revealed the US's post cold war attitude to the world in that it never believed in an international order and they started losing interest in Iraq once the Mission Accomplished banner was unfurled on that aircraft carrier.

Iraq wasn't reckless or an own goal if the intention was to reestablish its sense of being able to go where it liked when it liked. Bush Jr gave tacit approval to Putin to do the same in Russia's backyard. The response to Crimea should have happened when Russia bombed Georgia in 08, but the US was still keeping Putin on side as a regional ally.