Ukraine Set to Surrender 25% of it's Territory to Russia
(media.communities.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (29)
sorted by:
I'll begin with this first.
Russia is not close to losing, but there are very far from winning as well. That's my point. The idea that they have turned the tide is not borne out by the past few months.
Um, this puts it 100% on Putin. That's basically extortion. Why would you think that would be accepted?
What would you consider invading Crimea in 2014 and the rest of Ukraine in 2022? I consider that sketchy.
This sounds like rationalization after the fact. I believe Putin's goal has been to take of Ukraine. His dream goal is to undo what he has called the the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin realized in 2022 he could not take Ukraine and pivoted to a secondary goal.
Also you seem to be forgetting what American units fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. We went in pretty heavy.
The airport battle I mentioned involved
41st Combined Arms Army 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade 141st Motorized Regiment
The 6 week battle of Kiev in 2022 involved
37th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade Russian Airborne Forces 104th Guards Air Assault Regiment
These guys also fought in Feb 2022 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division 4th Guards Tank Division 47th Guards Tank Division 27th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade
So I don't think this is all reservists.
I found the Reuters article you mentioned
I found the Reuters article you mentioned. This is how they get to that conclusion. it seems pretty logical.
That's how attrition works. I believe their goal now it to stretch Europe and the US thin on available support. If Israel gets drawn into a regional conflict with some of its neighbors, along with Iran, I expect most US support to go there. Europe on the other hand is fighting over giving Ukraine $25 billion in aid.
Of course Stoltenberg would leave out that NATO has been trying to entice Ukraine into joining for years before that. This is well documented. Crimea is where the Black sea fleet is based. Would you be surprised if America reacted in kind if one of its fleets were in potential danger? Of course not. But we also have on record NATO promising, albeit verbally, that NATO would not expand east. NATO expansion is the source of all of this. How did we react when the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba? No differently.
Call it what you want, but how many conflicts has the US jand EU justified for humanitarian reasons?
First of all, if you're going to quote the man, at least get the context correct. The context of that comment is that the breakup of the Soviet Union happened and over night many Soviet Union citizens found themselves displaced in countries not formally part of the Soviet Union anymore. Try to imagine your papers/ your driver's license that say you live in whatever state or country, suddenly not mattering. Having no record anymore that you work someplace, that you can't pay your bills. That is what he was referencing if you read the context before and after that snippet. You fell for the clickbait.
Notice I mentioned special forces groups as well. Most brigades have multiple battalions, and those battalions have multiple companies. And it can be a mix match of any number of companies representing a Regiment or Brigade.
Its speculation at best. Any assessment relies on knowing how many shells Russia had to start with, and the rate at which shells are being expended. And we have seen a wide range of figures thrown around for both.
In January, CNN quoted U.S. officials saying the average rate of fire had dropped from a high of 20,000 rounds per day to an average of 5,000. They contrasted this with Ukrainian estimates of a fall from 60,000 per day to 20,000.
In March, Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted EU insider sources as saying that Russia was firing 40-50,000 rounds per day, and alongside an estimate of 20-60,000 rounds per day from the Latvian government which has been a major supplier of ammunition to Ukraine.
Also in March, in a letter to the EU asking for ammunition, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that Russian forces were firing on average about 15,000 rounds per day.
In March, Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst at Rochan Consulting returned from the front line in Ukraine with the estimate that Russia is expending around 10,000 shells per day.
But how many have they had stockpiled? We may never know. So doubling their output could be all they need, and keeps within that age old Russia logic of "good enough". Russian tanks in ww2 were technologically inferior to German tanks being built, but eventually that technology mattered less and less as Germany couldn't produce enough to keep up with the demands of the war.
This is why Russia has been hosting meetings with Hamas over the past couple of years.
The Soviet Union was a corrupt communist dictatorship that was literally ruled from Moscow by the successors to the Bolsheviks, a totalitarian Marxist-Leninist state famous for its gulags, command economy and lack of liberty, a dictatorship, Putin happily served as a KGB officer. It's not surprise many of citizens wanted to be free of it. Half the population was outside Russia.
**Displaced? **
If you lived and worked in Latvia or Uzbekistan, you still lived and worked in Latavia or Uzbekistan.
The USSR remember? The R stood for Republics, it was supposed to be a federation of individual republics. Millions of Soviet Citizens were in different countries before the Soviets took them over. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia were invaded and taken over in WWII. Eastern Poland was taken over when the Soviets and the Nazis divvied up Poland
It wasn't like someone shook an etch-a-sketch and everything was just erased. People who lived in Minsk and Vilnius and Baku and Odessa still used their old papers. The papers weren't magic, they didn't make people forget the USSR just broke up.
Notice that Putin called it a "geopolitical" catastrophe, an not a humanitarian one. He was upset by Russia's loss of power. And I mentioned he wanted to undo this catastrophe by all his others actions specifically celebrating and rehabilitating Stalin and the czars.
And it didn't happen overnight. It was the culmination of years of reforms and calls for liberation. There was a law passed on that allowed Republics to secede from the Soviet Union. Where people could vote to leave.
https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1991-2/shevarnadze-resigns/shevarnadze-resigns-texts/law-on-secession-from-the-ussr/
The KGB that Putin served that tried a coup against Gorbachev to prevent his reforms.
Artillery Shells
Yeah, it's speculation. But the logic is sound and like you I found various counts of shells used. I have seen higher figures than 10 Million in 2022, so it didn't seem off base.
It's also based on analysis, of changes in how many Russia is firing. The Wagner mutiny came after weeks of begging for more ammo.
Yes, while some would dare say in response to the alleged ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Yes yes, that's what the given story is, but what Russians evidently recall is different from what you're describing.
And you know for a fact that those laws of secession were followed to a T? And what about Ukraine preventing ethnic Russians from crossing the conflict line to renew their papers?
You seem to know a lot about this and are clearly impassioned about this subject. Perhaps you can shed some personal light from the ground?
Gorbechev's economic reforms (because that's what many Putin included opposed) are akin to what Joe Biden and the Democrats are trying to do right now. And it didn't work out for Gorbechev. In fact it hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course that's a good thing, but it didn't exactly feel good for the regular people that lived there day to day who really had no alternative.
Let's not pretend the Gorbechev was some Saint. He was firmly behind saving the Soviet Union is some form or fashion. Yeltzin was the one to undermine everything Gorbechev tried to accomplish between 1989 and 1991.
It's sad that I can take everything you say here, and it pops up as a headline for The Guardian, or Reuters/the AP.
The USSR was in pretty terrible shape when Gorbachev came. It was called the era of stagnation. It needed not just economic reform, but also political reform. It needed to be less oppressive, but basically what Gorbachev found out is repression was the only thing holding the USSR together. If you argued for some reform, the people, especially outside Russia, especially in the conquered republics would want REAL reform and unless you were willing to send the tanks back in, it wouldn't hold.
Gorbechev's reforms went WAY beyond economic.
Perestroika
This referred to the restructuring of the political and economic systems. Gorbachev tried to decentralize decision making in the USSR.
Glasnost
This was the big one. Glasnost referred to openness and transparency and was an easing of Soviet censorship. It let citizens actually criticize the government and suggest solutions. How bad was censorship, the USSR had been jamming foreign radio broadcasts for 40 years, they banned photocopiers. They actually begun to discuss the crimes of Stalin. A reporter who was there said
Demokratizatsiya
They actually had nationwide elections in 1989. Where people could select from multiple candidates (within the Communist Party) Yeltsin got elected over a the Communist Party's endorsed candidate. And this election led to an actual opposition block in their congress for the first time ever
I don't think I was. Let's not pretend Yeltsin is a saint either.