Mmm, I see. Many people are critical of how NATO is conducting themselves in this war. That they did not start. And are not a combatant in.
The website traces back to NATO in Brussels, ROFL…
Janster
22254
Amazing to see Laserpig and Destiny talking to Gonzola, he’s such a fucking retard…I love the pig he is awesome anyday.
The sheer mindfuckery of that convo is unbelievable, only view if you can stomach this stuff.
Go watch other Laserpig videos, he’s got some really good stuff.
I don’t think it’s 1:1 in Bakhmut, but ultimately it comes down to the nature of the fighting. There are too many variables to know. Every report I’ve seen that isn’t from an official Ukrainian source says “Major/considerable/heavy losses on both sides”, whatever that means.
I listened to a conversation from two months ago, where Kori Schake (who is a right-wing hawk) suggested that it could seem like the Ukrainians are stuck over the coming months, but that’s only because it’s hard to maneuver.
She thinks they’ll push the Russians to Crimea by summer, and has some pretty wild notions of how we should deal with Russia after that, which I would not recommend.
Obviously a lot can happen before summer.
Dejin
22256
Ben Hodges keeps on insisting that Ukraine will kick Russia out of Crimea by the end of the year. No idea if he’s right, but he is a former commanding general, US Army Europe, and he’s made the claim repeatedly and publicly, so he’s at least willing to put his reputation on the line.
Here’s an article where he hedges a little on whether victory includes Crimea or not.
sharaleo
22257
Yep that convo was whack. Pretty much Gonzalo putting loaded questions in front of them, asking for a black and white true/false response, then talking over them when they answered telling them they were wrong and were lying. Destiny noped the fuck out of there after 30 minues. Pig lasted 90 minutes before Gonzalo ended the conversation, closing with ‘Die painfully’.
Grifman
22258
China plays both sides of the war:
KevinC
22259
I’m sure everyone in this thread will be shocked to hear that Russian claims of success in Soledar may have been overstated. From ISW’s update:
Also interesting to note that the Russian general in charge of great Russian successes like the ass kicking in Kharkiv, the infamously disastrous river crossing in May that saw something like a hundred tanks lost, and the failed defense of Lyman has been promoted by the MoD. It sounds like it’s going over about as well as you would imagine.
Criteria for promotion in corrupt autocracies are always loyalty to the leader as the first, second, third…the only real criterion, actually. With, yes, predictable results. There’s a good reason why so many tin-horn dictatorships that make a huge show of military prowess end up being paper tigers when it gets real.
Enidigm
22261
Thirty years ago Heihe was a small village. Today its population has overtaken Blagoveshchensk’s 200,000. Yet a thick, unending parapet of trees hides any human life or traffic there. This, and the wide river, seem to seal it in its own world: less a city than a distant apparition of prosperity. At night its nearer buildings shed multicoloured curtains of light over the water, and sometimes the amplified lilt of music sounds, as if all its inhabitants were dancing.
…
This evening I switched on my flickering bedroom television and lighted on a Moscow news programme. Its panellists spoke ponderously for five minutes at a time. They were discussing China. They repeated the regime mantra that relations were excellent, and beneficial for both economies. Somebody praised the joint military manoeuvres which I had escaped a month before. Then, to my surprise, one of the speakers complained vehemently: China is extracting precious Russian gold, timber and oil, he said, and giving nothing back. Siberia is being plundered. The invited studio audience answered with silence. Then the host deflected the intrusion into absurdity, into laughter. The audience clapped whenever he spoke. The exchange –a choreographed illusion of free debate –ended with a clip of Putin meeting Xi Jinping: twin inscrutabilities, the Russian president flintily cordial, the Chinese leader impassively smiling. Perhaps it is only my imagination that discovers in Putin’s stony stare a wan anxiety, and in Xi’s smile the condescension of China’s ancient centuries. But it was Putin, soon after his inauguration as president in 2000, who warned that within a few decades, if nothing was done, the Russian inhabitants of the country’s Far East would be Asian-speaking. Realizing the vast disparity between Russia’s regional populace and the burgeoning Chinese millions just south of the river, government officials, academics and army generals sounded spine-chilling warnings. China was moving to world dominance, wrote a leading economist, and would eventually seize Siberia’s resources. And an oft-repeated warning by demographers stated that ‘China has huge territorial claims against Russia and stimulates in every possible way the penetration of her citizens into Russian territory, building a basis for their legal presence.’ A prominent Sinologist contended that China saw in Russia a weakened military adversary. Underground passages beneath the border could already channel millions of Chinese northward, ran the rumours, while a leading general feared that by the middle of the century all Siberia would be lost, and China would be facing Moscow over the Urals.
…
Dusk is settling over the waterfront when I wander out. The air is cold. A troupe of women in peasant skirts is singing folk songs, accompanied on the accordion by an elderly Cossack covered in even more medals than Alexei. But in the half-darkness on the promenade, there is hardly a soul to listen. Across the water the lights and music are starting up in Heihe. I sense its pulsing life. Russians no longer talk of it as a theatre set rigged up to torment or dupe them, but as a city grown rich selling them shabby merchandise. I look across at it with a tingling curiosity at what I cannot predict. The whole Chinese Amur, it is said, bristles with defence like its Russian counterpart. But Heihe gives no sign of this. It is lit like a funfair, whose columns of reflected neon tremble across the water to my feet.
Source: The Amur River: Between Russia and China. Colin Thubron (2021).
The UK government has confirmed its intention to send tanks to Ukraine, but the spokesman was still using language about “work[ing] with partners”, which suggests to me they don’t want to be the first to commit to it.
Britain discusses how to send ‘game-changing’ tanks to Ukraine – POLITICO.
Quotes the British almost-but-not-quite-yet sending tanks to Ukraine, with a very similar quote from the Polish president: “A company of Leopard tanks for Ukraine will be transferred as part of international coalition building. Such a decision is already [taken] in Poland,” The implication of that phrasing being, I think, that Poland has decided what it wants to do, but is waiting for German approval.
I don’t know much about military stuff, but are tanks really a game-changer? Aren’t there handheld weapons that can take out tanks?
And isn’t it almost a theme of this war that small arms are much more powerful now, and can act as anti-armor and anti-aircraft weapons?
Yes, but tanks can do things that nothing else can (assault fortified targets), so they are still necessary.
Also, for as long as tanks have existed, they’ve been vulnerable to anti-tank weapons, and need to be used carefully, with (infantry, etc) support. This is not new, and the fact that Russia failed spectacularly at combined arms tactics in this war doesn’t mean tanks are obsolete. (But it is true that there are more cheaper and more effective anti-tank weapons than there used to be.)
KevinC
22266
More effective anti-armor but I don’t know about cheaper, if we’re talking the handheld stuff. I would think a Javelin is more expensive than a panzerfaust, PIAT, or RPG? I’m no subject matter expert so I’m probably overlooking something.
But regardless of cost, you’re absolutely right that tanks need to be properly supported and used in a combined arms environment. You don’t just roll a column of 100 tanks down a contested highway (or across a river, hah!) without support but that is exactly what Russia has been doing. Russia has just proven themselves to be really really bad at modern warfare.
Grifman
22268
Properly supported, only armor can break through and exploit openings in an enemy line of defense. Guys carrying AT missiles aren’t very mobile.
KevinC
22269
Early on this conflict, Gerasimov was held up as some sort of talented military mind. I believe I recall a video talking about his visit to the front lines and how Ukraine tried to take him out, but he had already left, and that it was unfortunate because it would have been useful to deprive Russia of him.
Is that still the understanding, that the problem with Gerasimov’s doctrine was that he wrote it for a military he had on paper rather than the one he had in reality? Or has he been EXPOSED, as the Youtubers love to shout whenever someone screws up?
EDIT: Assuming I’m not mixing up people. I admit, Russian names often get mixed up in my head, especially when trying to recall something from almost a year ago. :)
Grifman
22270
Wasn’t Gonzalo living in Ukraine at the beginning of the war? I seem to remember him being one of the early and most obnoxious Russian supporters, constantly denigrating his host country. I never understood him living in Ukraine, if Russia was so great.
