Ukraine Watch...

[clv101]

Now, however Ukraine has been given international support to regain its internationally recognised territorial boundaries, and that includes Crimea.

I don't think that's true. Ukraine hadn't been given anything like the support necessary to regain the territory. The support has been 'just enough' to preserve Ukraine as an independent nation state - albeit one with less territory.

[mr brightside]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDaUIDzm2u8

First few minutes on Ukraine are thought provoking i found.

[invalid]

I personally think that Russian forces are estremely weak and Ukraine will make significant territory in the next few months, but they don't have the hardware and numbers of trained troops to push them all the way.

It wasn't only Russia that looked in its stores of old cold war weaponry and found that it hadn't been maintained to operational standards.

Russia is finished as a world power and is now another client state of China.

(May 2023)

[invalid]

Indeed, Russia's conventional forces are shattered. There is still some brute force and weight of numbers but their ground offensive is over - especially if western support continues. In my view, a defeat on the battle field increases the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used. Whether that increase is from 1% chance to 5% or 10% to 50% is harder to gauge though!

May 2023 again. The western propaganda machine really got to people!

[Forever_Winter]

Apparently AI is not a fan of Putin:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... wrong.html

German Gref, the head of the chatbot developer Sberbank, told the Sun: 'Both us and Yandex were immediately brought to the prosecutor's office. We have a model for generating the Russian flag - well, it's generative, it's trying to improve it. It also drew domes from St Basil's Cathedral on the flag.

'The deputies considered this to be a mockery of our national flag.

'We immediately stopped certain things – it no longer generates state symbols, it generates a predetermined picture.'

Expect lots of people behind this AI chatbot to fall out of windows, suddnely fall ill and die, or go bang in a ball of flame

[Default0ptions]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDaUIDzm2u8

First few minutes on Ukraine are thought provoking i found.

The deafening sound of silence in the mainstream media on all things Ukraine at the moment speaks volumes.

There are murmurings behind the scenes now about the replacement of Zelensky (i.e. throwing him under a bus) with someone who can actually discuss peace with at least a semblance of credibility.

As I’ve repeatedly said, we’ll end up with something like the Minsk agreements - but with hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily dead for a NATO vanity project that was always doomed to fail.

This was never about a very dubious and wholly corrupt ‘democracy’ in the Ukraine vs the evil Russian orcs.

It was a failed attempt to ruin Russia by fighting a NATO backed, funded and ordinance supplied war of attrition ‘to the last Ukrainian’ and a barrage of economic sanctions that have merely served to cripple Europe by cutting it off from relatively cheap Russian gas and oil - which, by the way, are currently selling above the price cap we tried to impose.

The last Ukrainians are now on the front line.

Watch this space . . .

[Ralphw2]

We are in the middle of the mud season in Ukraine. Neither side can move far in this weather, so very little new to report. Given the horrid situation in Gaza it is no surprise that Ukraine has fallen off the "front pages". The next media hotspot could be the Falklands with an extreme rightwinger just elected in Argentina.

Russia's attempt to surround Avdivka is costing them large amounts of hardware each day, and there are reports that they are reverting to the Bakhmut strategy of human wave convict attacks to flush out the defenders at huge cost in Russian lives.

[UndercoverElephant]

The last Ukrainians are now on the front line.

This comment smacks of absolute desperation. It has got nothing to do with reality.

[Default0ptions]

The last Ukrainians are now on the front line.

This comment smacks of absolute desperation. It has got nothing to do with reality.

Really?

https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volody ... rview/%22/

“At one point in early October … the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”
In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.” ”

Nothing to do with reality?

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/19/euro ... index.html

“The war is approaching the end of its second year, and Ukraine’s military needs more manpower to sustain a bloody war of attrition against Russia, a country with more than three times the population of Ukraine.

In a recent essay, Ukraine’s top military commander, Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged that training and recruiting troops was becoming a serious challenge.“

“From what I can see, there is a shortage of military personnel, sometimes a critical shortage.”

[UndercoverElephant]

You can only see one side of this. You see everything in a pro-Russian light, and have done from the start. There is no balance to your position.

There is absolutely no reason to believe Ukraine is going to capitulate any time soon. There's not even any reason to believe Russia is ever going to make any more significant gains in this war. How long it takes Ukraine to regain control of the temporarily occupied territory remains to be seen. It took a decade for the Afghans to kick the Russians out.

[clv101]

How long it takes Ukraine to regain control of the temporarily occupied territory remains to be seen.

This strikes me as unduly pro- Ukrainian, I can't see how Ukraine will ever have the resources to dislodge Russia from the Donbas, or possibly the south as well. Most likely is a long term armistice at approximately the current front line.

[Default0ptions]

More doubts about Ukraine in the mainstream media:

“Optimism is one thing, but a Panglossian refusal to face hard facts is quite another, and dangerous too. Zelensky needs to tell Ukrainians that there is a shortage of soldiers on the front line”

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/zel ... f-the-war/

[Ralphw2]

Talking of resources, a well known Russian blogger is reporting that Armenia, a member of the Russian mutual defence pact, has started shipping armourments to Ukraine, specifically soviet era long range missiles. When Armenia requested Russian military intervention under the pact after being attacked by Azerbaijan recently, Russia ignored the request. This may be the first direct evidence that. Armenia is now moving decisively away from Russia to being a Western ally, if the reports turn out to be true.

[UndercoverElephant]

How long it takes Ukraine to regain control of the temporarily occupied territory remains to be seen.

This strikes me as unduly pro- Ukrainian, I can't see how Ukraine will ever have the resources to dislodge Russia from the Donbas, or possibly the south as well. Most likely is a long term armistice at approximately the current front line.

It was intentionally pro-Ukrainian.

As I have said before, I think the situation in the Donbas is unclear, in the sense that taking back all of that territory might be more trouble than it is worth. What is abundantly clear to me at least is that the Americans will not tolerate a new status quo where Russia retains control of Crimea. It is too important, strategically. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think the Americans will withdraw support for Ukraine while Russia occupies Crimea.

[clv101]

American was happy to tolerate a Russian Crimea since 2014, with a good chance Republicans will win next year, I can't see the US making the necessary investment.