Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Good to see. The EU needs to use it's trading power to put pressure countries trading with Russia.

This catchey donkey, easy does it approach by the UAF seems to be yielding results. Fascinating really.

I have a phone, went to the bottom. Never worked again, lol.

There's two or more versions of Putin. One has the puffed out cheeks and the other doesn't.

There'll be one pictured one day and the other the next day.

Bloomberg article on Artillery shortages not going away, western Europe has really dropped the ball on the manufacturing chain

the Tweeter's post, the bloomberg article is behind a paywall

The NATO was negligent in the face of such a complex task. I have been writing about this for months, discussing the unrealistic numbers from Rheinmetall and its CEO. The problem with ammunition in the western region is more serious than just one million shells for Ukraine. It relies on the loss of production capacity, as well as the supply chain. Arm industries from countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland have been saving the western face by supplying a few hundred thousand shells to Ukraine. To get an idea of the severity of the situation, the Louisiana factory was the sole producer of black powder in the US, but it exploded in 2021 and has yet to be repaired to restart production. Recently, the US had to ask Japan for TNT due to a lack of chemical compounds needed to manufacture sufficient TNT. And I am referring to the US, because the situation in Europe is even worse. The chemical chain required for manufacturing explosives is not under Western control. For example, ammonium nitrate is mainly produced in Russia, while the Australian government recently had to import hexamine from Iran. Other compounds like aluminum powder and others rely on various countries, but none of them are within Western hands. The NATO wasn't able to organize the supply chain to support Ukraine, and we must face this truth. This entire situation shows that the threats against China may just be empty threats, considering that Western forces do not have enough ammunition to sustain a few weeks of war. In the next weeks, the situation may worsen, especially as Israel is shifting its focus and Chinese and Russian forces are securing contracts with a number of countries, some in central Asian and Africa to ensure chemical supplies. The overall picture is not optimistic, but it is clear that Western countries need to reestablish ties and apply more diplomacy to secure supplies.

The article is about the future and you post something about the past, not a logical response

“Cheek watch”

Just one simple question, all that Russia need's to maintain it's war footing in most but not all cases, can be bought by Russia, but buying something means paying for it, and that means having cash, plenty of cash, in this case even more than plenty, astronomical amounts in fact. And for all of everything else that Putin has, especially manpower ( for now) his cash reserves are rapidly running out. And that's the one ingredient he really needs. While the Russians were defeated militarily in Afghanistan, another reason they pulled out was because the war was driving them to bankruptcy. Talk about history repeating itself.

The Russians have natural resources to sell, but critically they had a European market to sell to and delivery infrastructure geared specifically to go that way. Much of Europe is now restricted or closed entirely to them, leaving them to sell to other nations who know that they can get away with paying the Russians bottom-dollar for their wares, with the additional pain / cost of not having optimal delivery methods.

They have to resort to the grey market for parts, but there again the suppliers know that Moscow can’t go around shopping for better deals. They can fleece the Russians and offer them sub-par / crap equipment for their trouble. That’s not a great situation to find yourself in when your army are up against high-standard NATO kit operated by an opponent who has essentially all of Western Europe to its back supplying it.

I just see the Russian economy adapting and muddling through, its better to view the war on the assumption that russia is a strong opponent and judge Ukraine's chances based on what is in their domain, weapons available and men. I guess one of the worst assumptions to make in global politics is to assume people around the world think like your average yank or European taxpayer. Afghanistan has thought all the powers and they dont think like westerners and that their concerns are not in the same order, Russians dont either by all accounts

So has the war in Ukraine then become a proxy war between North and South Korea?

Essentially yes

The article you posted however is still horsesh**t as it implies putin can take advantage of mineral wealth to build some success in Ukraine when he has destroyed the fighting machine that you think he can continue to feed into a meat grinder without consequences. In world war two soviet russia had millions of Ukrainians to fight on their side and vast resources shipped into their country from the west to help them fight off invasion from hitler and it still cost them millions of people dead to finish that war. They have continued to fight regular wars since then and lost vast numbers of additional young people to currently stand as the largest land area country in the world with just 9 people per square kilometer with its close neighbour Finland having almost double this number. I posted something about the past which was one days losses of putin's forces in Ukraine and the reason for that is that the past can be used to predict the future and those figures I posted look very similar to the following days losses that I post below. My point is that each day putin sends his war machine into so much destruction the chances of his country using any of their vast natural resources for anything positive dwindle. Even if putin could keep manufacturing shells that they need to keep occupying Ukraine they may not have sufficient artillery pieces left to fire them when Ukraine does see a chance to drive them out of their country. I fail to understand how you can't see the logic of my response.