20885

You still seem to be starting from the assumption that Russia will actually do all the things they need to do in order to win.

20886

“If Putin just takes this seriously, it’s over!”

No agency for Ukraine or the vastly better trained and equipped NATO forces supporting Ukraine.

20887

As soon as Russia fully dropped the plausible deniability about the lack of gas deliveries, all future hope of business with Russia is done. Even if the war ends tomorrow. Even if sanctions are lifted tomorrow. It’ll take a decade or two for Russia to have a hope of rebuilding a reputation as a reliable business partner for energy.

Seriously. Imagine a salesperson making commercials about how they can make you freeze to death any time they want, and then expecting more future sales. No thanks.

Before, people could talk themselves into believing Russia was all talk. But once they full on embraced “Our pipelines give us power over you MUAHAHAH” it’s done. There’s no more wiggle room. Not a reliable business partner. A liability.

20888

I wholly agree, I don’t think we can ever trust Russia again unless there is a huge regime change and they prove themselves reliable…but there are quite a few countries that see this war in a different narrative…Hungary is one of them.

20889

Sounds like a 21st century Verdun:

20890

The Russian Investigative news site - iStories - is reporting that the Russian military command is expecting 100,000 casualties (dead, grievously wounded, captured, MIA) among the newly mobilized over the next 6 months - on top of the already near 100,000 casualties from the war already they already reported on.

20891

Boy I’m jealous. Seems like it would be a cool article to read, but when I click on both links I get this message that says I’ve reached my limit of free articles and that I should pay $1 / week.

I just can’t justify paying NYT that money since they have been so crappy in other areas. I will then have to enjoy the article vicariously through you. Unless somebody knows a workaround?

20892

There is one for Chrome as well.

20893

Throwing a link into archive.is works as well if you’re unable to install plugins (say, on a locked down work PC).

20894

Thanks. Guess there may be an ethical dilemma in those. Gonna have to put on my big-boy pants and make choices.

20895

gift link

I pay for the NYT because I can’t stomach the idea of paying Bezos for the WP. It’s like all ethical dilemmas these days…

20896

Nice thing is, between those of us with subscriptions to the NYT or WaPo on the forum, there is typically enough gift links to cover most of the interesting articles. Thanks for sharing one!

Yep, I have this issue. I understand that we get what we pay for, and good journalism needs to be paid for these days. I made my devil’s bargain with the WaPo despite Bezos, but I can’t justify subscribing to multiple national news outlets simultaneously. Hopefully gift links provided by Qt3 members will be the ethical ground to stand on. :)

20897

I subscribe to the local rag (Boston Globe) and the Guardian. I know what you mean, though.

20898

Coming soon to a war near you?

20899

Thanks! Here’s the source for the 19FortyFive article, since I am not too familiar with the site and its reputation (that’s a question as well. Anyone know? I see it served up by Google fairly often):

20900

My university has a system-wide NYT subscription tied to our .edu email address, or I’d never read it any more.

20901

I think it’s reasonably legit. I’ve seen a number of legitimate experts publish articles there (and link to them from their own Twitter accounts). For example, Korean expert, Professor Robert Kelly (aka BBC Dad — from when his kids busted into his office during an interview with the BBC) publishes on the site.

Personally I hate the website with a passion. It’s got the most annoying web design I’ve ever seen and I would love it to burn to the ground. It puts a line of advertisements running all the way across the page between almost every paragraph in every article. It’s almost like it’s deliberately designed to make it as painful as possible to view articles on the website. It does look like reader view does work on it (I thought it didn’t used to and only used to display the first paragraph, but maybe I’m misremembering).

Sample — that’s a paragraph followed by a block of 6 bright, distracting, and very unattractive ads, followed by more of the article, followed by another block of ads, followed by more of the article. There’s another two sets of those banding ads cutting across the article that didn’t fit into the screenshot — and the article isn’t that long.

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It seems like a really bizarre design for a website that a bunch of academic and think tank experts publish at —same with the ad choices.

20902

Huh. I guess a good ad-blocker adds legitimacy to sites that they don’t deserve. If I didn’t block their ads I’d probably never go back to their site.

20903

Oryx is known for his tracking of both Russian and Ukrainian losses in the war., and here he is tracking specifically losses of western supplied equipment. But what I found most interesting was his tallies of western supplied equipment to Ukraine. It is much more than I was aware of:

Tanks 410
IFV 210
APC 1,000
MRAP 830
IMV 1,225
Towed artillery 270
SP artillery 200
UAV 305

Less than 10% of this has been visually confirmed to have been lost, though it is certainly higher. Though tanks and artillery get most of the headlines, I think the most interesting fact is the huge numbers of infantry vehicles provided. There’s an obvious effort to provide mobility to UA infantry.

20904

Aren’t all those tanks donated T-72s? So it’s not really NATO Equipment.