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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

The 2024 Presidential election might provide an inflection point. You'll have the FSB/GRU trying to engineer a Trump victory and the SBU working on a Biden win.

If Trump wins Ukraine are fucked. They will be told to chill and take a deal unless they can come up with something that can be used to indict Biden. They would be well advised to start working on this.
Is a Trump win likely though? The Democrats are a shower of bastards, but I don't see them making the same mistake twice (they didn't in 2020). And ultimately, Ukraine is going to be told to take a deal of some kind, sooner or later, regardless of who is in power in Washington or Berlin - at least, unless the direct US/China war comes along to see everything else being "overtaken by events".
 
Is a Trump win likely though? The Democrats are a shower of bastards, but I don't see them making the same mistake twice (they didn't in 2020). And ultimately, Ukraine is going to be told to take a deal of some kind, sooner or later, regardless of who is in power in Washington or Berlin - at least, unless the direct US/China war comes along to see everything else being "overtaken by events".
2025 here we come
 
Irish News had a story today quoting this figure from the Wagner guy's mouth itself.

Quite a few have noted that it's in Progozin's interests to inflate the figures on both sides as much as he can - that said, Wagner had almost no medical support, had little fire support, and indulged in human wave attacks with prisoners with no military training, and some of the 'waves' had one rifle between two or three. It wouldn't be surprising if they had taken appalling casualties, with perhaps a 50% fatality rate...
 
Quite a few have noted that it's in Progozin's interests to inflate the figures on both sides as much as he can - that said, Wagner had almost no medical support, had little fire support, and indulged in human wave attacks with prisoners with no military training, and some of the 'waves' had one rifle between two or three. It wouldn't be surprising if they had taken appalling casualties, with perhaps a 50% fatality rate...
What about their shovels?
 
Quite a few have noted that it's in Progozin's interests to inflate the figures on both sides as much as he can - that said, Wagner had almost no medical support, had little fire support, and indulged in human wave attacks with prisoners with no military training, and some of the 'waves' had one rifle between two or three. It wouldn't be surprising if they had taken appalling casualties, with perhaps a 50% fatality rate...
they're really there to relieve the ukrainians of their ammunition and empty the russian prisons
 
And ultimately, Ukraine is going to be told to take a deal of some kind, sooner or later, regardless of who is in power in Washington or Berlin - at least, unless the direct US/China war comes along to see everything else being "overtaken by events".
Not sure exactly what you're getting at, i.e. implying that Ukraine will eventually have to agree to give up some territory, or something else, but you reminded me of a good Twitter thread I read recently that talked about what negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would look like, and how good or bad a deal that Ukraine could be forced to accept might be.

I recommend clicking through to read the entire thread, because it covers a lot, but the gist of it is that Ukraine negotiating or accepting some kind of deal doesn't have to mean giving up territory to Russia. Indeed, Ukraine has far more than just territory to use as leverage in any negotiation with Russia, but the preconditions for those negotiations mean inflicting as great a defeat on the Russian military as possible.

 
There were 17 schools, 29 kindergartens, 3 trade schools, 2 colleges, 5 cultural centers, 12 libraries in Bakhmut.

There was a salt mine nearby and the largest in the world underground concert hall.

There was the largest in Eastern Europe factory producing sparkling wines.

There is no such town anymore.

It was home to 70,000 people. It was important to them.

It was not important to Russia. Russia came and destroyed their town, destroyed their lives. And now Russia celebrates it.
 
There were 17 schools, 29 kindergartens, 3 trade schools, 2 colleges, 5 cultural centers, 12 libraries in Bakhmut.

There was a salt mine nearby and the largest in the world underground concert hall.

There was the largest in Eastern Europe factory producing sparkling wines.

There is no such town anymore.

It was home to 70,000 people. It was important to them.

It was not important to Russia. Russia came and destroyed their town, destroyed their lives. And now Russia celebrates it.
Exactly ... hopefully wagner being replaced by the "normal" army means that the armed forces of ukr can recover possession sooner rather than later.
Which oligarch'e assests should pay for the reconstruction ?
 
Not sure exactly what you're getting at, i.e. implying that Ukraine will eventually have to agree to give up some territory, or something else, but you reminded me of a good Twitter thread I read recently that talked about what negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would look like, and how good or bad a deal that Ukraine could be forced to accept might be.

I recommend clicking through to read the entire thread, because it covers a lot, but the gist of it is that Ukraine negotiating or accepting some kind of deal doesn't have to mean giving up territory to Russia. Indeed, Ukraine has far more than just territory to use as leverage in any negotiation with Russia, but the preconditions for those negotiations mean inflicting as great a defeat on the Russian military as possible.


For the record, I think partitioning Ukraine would be a very bad idea, as would ceding any Ukrainian territory to Putin's Russia.

Unfortunately. . . nothing can stop an idea whose time has come - even if it is a really bad idea.

Maybe in principle, Ukraine negotiating an end to the war need not necessarily involve surrendering any part of the Ukrainian lands. But in regards to the concrete situation. . . principle may have nothing to do with it.
 
I might get "What about [things that don't negate any of what was posted]?"

Beyond angry with Red-Brown BS, just genuinely sad and disappointed that so many on the supposed left buy it. Maybe they believe the Kremlin will bring communist Utopia, or else they just love authoritarianism.
They don‘t believe anything generally, they’re on fucking rails. Same bad takes on Syria, Covid, Ukraine etc. All programmed by the same input (youtoob etc) producing the same contrarian bullshit output. Waste of time, they’re lost.
 
Ukraine open-sources its government services app. There in an interesting comparison with the UK in the article.

Funnily enough, I just finished reading this article about the same app

 
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