Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

50% of Russia’s ammunition now comes from supplies from the DPRK, — Budanov

Gonna get messy when they burn through the NK stockpiles although South Korea will be glad to see it reduced. Budanov reckon Russia needs to get out of this war by 2026.

And good news from Germany. Merz better live up to his promises for Ukraine! I want to see 4 or 5 Taurus smash into the Kerch bridge.

The us deal with Ukraine on minerals could well be the handy out for Russia, well planned I think, us and Ukraine mining personnel together, deal done .

looks like Ireland . The two ‘establishment’ parties put back in power. And SF increased its vote - over the last no of years to a significant level but it has hit a ceiling recently and probably stuck at the t for the foreseeable future

Brilliant news for Ukraine

Unlike his weasel of a predecessor whom flipped flopped from inaction to incompetence, this guy has been for month very strong on subject of helping Ukraine

more importantly the far right neo Nazi Russian party from ex Russian colony of DDR is being kept out, Musk shouldn’t have stuck his snout into elections in another country all he did was as predicted

Putin and Trump gambled everything in last few weeks on the wrong horse in Germany

No more scholzing hopefully. Will he have much say as a junior coalition partner?

TBH it’s not a difficult political problem

1. Main EU leaders (forget about Ireland, Hungary and Austria) and those directly in line for future Russian aggression and UK and Canada get together and say “We stand behind Ukraine and will support them until the Russians turn around and go home”
2. Ignore all the noises from US, the orange clown will move onto some other outrage in a week or so, probably checking genitalia of people before they enter toilets or something, leaving status of US involvement in NATO ambiguous
3. Start digging into the Russian 300bn that’s still untouched to help Ukraine
4. Directly target Russian propaganda whom are spreading “concerns” which plays to the far left of “oh look they spending on military instead of social causes” by saying to people of Europe we are gonna spend Russian own money to fight the biggest threat to Europe which is Russia
5. Make it clear to population that each euro spent on helping Ukraine is better than having to goto a war economy when next EU country is invaded, and invaded it will be of Ukraine falls
6. Ramp up more sanctions, Russia thinks they can leave Europe from the table yet forget that it’s Europe and not US whom made their fortunes for them

But still Russia has the upper hand militarily, every single respectable media outlet agrees on this, the Ukrainians basically admit as much, and all the sneering in the world doesn't change it.

Reasons include things like this:

If the US stop arming Ukraine (more a question of "when"), then they're down to about half of what was coming before. But that's still enough to ensure that the Russians cannot disengage from Ukraine.

Can you be absolutely sure of that? a stalemate or state of grinding progress for one side can turn into a rout very quickly in war if the balance of forces changes substantially within a brief period…

Ukriane and Europe can outlast the Russians in this. It might still take time,

But will they get that time? Looking like they might have to fill the gap left by a sudden American plug-pull in a matter of months or even weeks…

You ask about balance of forces, are you expecting Russians to suddenly become more numerous, dig out equipment out of somewhere and become smarter?

Aren’t you just making a variation of “Russia hasn’t tried hard enough, wait and see” argument that’s regularly trotted out.

Despite all the noise in the last week in media the situation on ground is same, if anything it looks like slow Russian advances have come to a complete halt now

It is true that it wouldn't take much for a rout on either side, but the key to all of this is keeping the AFU frontline supplied with everything they need to exhaust Russian meatwave attacks. That most involves the basics in terms of daily supplies, but also small round ammo.

The meatwaves are designed to use up the AFU's rounds. You get severely injured or underqualified Russians being sent against prepared AFU positions because the Russian commanders know that these troops are intended to be little more than bullet recepticles. This is the main reason the AFU end up having to pull back. They can't hold a position without bullets, and so they have to pull back to the next supply line. HIMARs, and Bradleys and F16s of course help, but it's the bullets that will keep Ukraine in the fight, and it's the bullets that Europe can definatly keep them equipped with. (Amoung all of the other advanced weaponry that is available).

In regards to "time". Keep in mind that Europe had already been planing for the contingency of a hostile Trump White House. There might be press-talk of "shock" and "panic" and "ringing of hands", but I suspect that little of this came as a surprise and that the positions we're seeing European countries taking now, are positions that many of them assumed they would have to take anyway if Trump had won in 2024. They might have been a degree of hope that Trump would be less of a poodle to Putin, maybe even helpful to the cause, but I suspect that his current actions are what had been expected for a while.

Ukraine of course are going to have a harder time of it, but with support or relief the Russians have it much harder. If Trump fails to do anything substantive to actually help the Russians beyond "talks" and bluster about Zelensky…their window for enduring this conflict is potentially much shorter than Ukraine's

Around 85% of all damage being inflicted by Ukraine is coming from the use of drones, and they now have the capacity to manufacture 4 million drones a year. Trump can cease assistance but those numbers would suggest it wont render Ukraine anything like toothless.

Putrid got agent Krasnov to do this whole BS 'peace' thing because his fiefdom is in dire straits and their economy is teetering. If any country in Europe gets brave enough to put their planes in the air in Ukraine, such as the UK who were first with tanks, the tide will change in Ukraine's favour.

Ironically, a fair bit of good might come out of Trump and Musk going rogue and going over to the dark side. It's helping the EU / Europe to redefine itself and find a new place for itself in the global order. Minds are being focussed and inertia is going out the window. Certainly, many mistakes were made re. Ukraine in the last three years, but that is forgivable….there was so much uncertainty in the first year after the invasion and people were very unclear what the long term outlook was or what the strategy should be.

those consequences of course being Donkey’s now being used by Russia on the frontline, which is miles behind their frontline 3 years ago…

All bluster, and the fecked up thing is people are still afraid of him!!

Unfortunately, I'd say they were planning for Trump to cut all the aid at worst (and make Europe/UK/Ukraine pay for things instead), not for this invective against and extortion of Ukraine + romancing of Russian dictatorship combined with a pull back from NATO that the US seems to be doing.

Could be looking at (going by the noises) an end to sanctions and even business deals with Putin etc. I am fearing the US sanctions are going to be lifted, no matter what happens with the war.

I worry the Trump admin won't even care whether Russia has stopped attacking Ukraine or not! After all, didn't Ukraine/"dictator" Zelenskyy start it and are to blame etc.?

It is the European (or Eurozone?) countries that hold almost all of it as far as I understand, so don't think Trump can "give it back" to Putin as a favour anyway. Biden and maybe UK as well were pushing for it to be seized a few months ago, but the Eurozone members of G7 didn't want to do that (I think they are taking the interest to help pay for support to Ukraine).