UKRAINE WAR - 2024 thread

[Vympel]

Resume Ukraine war discussion here folks.

[Crazedwraith]

So year 3 of the war that wasn't going to happen and was just US fearmongering...

[Broomstick]

I thought it was described as "Baltic nation fearmongering", but is anyone really keeping track of the specifics?

[Solauren]

I'm sure someone could go back over the thread and posted articles to track that

[Crazedwraith]

So my bitterness about the thread of greater than two plus years ago aside. Latest news. Apologies if it came up in the last thread.

Ukraine says it has downed second Russian A-50 spy plane in weeks
Ukraine says it has downed a Russian A-50 military spy plane - the second such claim in just over a month.

The plane was hit between the Russian cities of Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar, Ukrainian military sources said, over 200km (124 miles) from the front line.

Emergency services reportedly found plane fragments in Kanevskoy district and put out a raging fire.

Russia has not commented on the claim. Saturday marks two years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion.

The head of Ukraine's Air Force Mykola Oleshchuk thanked his service and military intelligence for helping to bring down the plane - a long-range radar detection aircraft - on Friday and noted the incident coincided with a key Russian military holiday.

"Congratulations to the occupiers on the Defender of the Fatherland Day," he said on Telegram.

Video shared online shows the moment the plane appears to be shot down in the air, as well as huge flames and thick, dark smoke seemingly rising after the crash.

Krasnodar's emergency authorities later said an aircraft had crashed near the Trudovaya Armenia village, Kanevskoy district, and a fire was later extinguished. It provided no further details.

Meanwhile, at least one Russian military-aligned Telegram channel suggested the plane may have come down as a result of friendly fire. Fighterbomber wrote: "At the moment it is unknown who shot it down."

Ukraine last claimed to have shot down an A-50 on 14 January.

A previous briefing from the UK's ministry of defence said that Russia probably had six operational A-50s in service.

The plane, which detects air defences and co-ordinates targets for Russian jets, can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build.

Ukraine has struggled to make significant advances against Russian forces in the south-east recently.

In last month's incident, Ukrainian army officials said an Il-22 control centre plane was destroyed as well as the A-50.

In other developments:

• One person was killed and another three injured in a Russian drone attack on Ukraine's southern port of Odesa on Friday evening, local officials said
• Ukraine's top security official warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin would try to settle the Ukraine issue before November's US presidential election, by seizing more territory and destabilising the country[
• UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his country was prepared to do "whatever it takes" to help Ukraine prevail
• French President Emmanuel Macron said "Ukraine is fighting for itself, for its ideals, for our Europe. Our commitment at its side will not waver"
• Blasts and a fire were reported in the early hours of Saturday at a metallurgical plant in Lipetsk, western Russia, with the local governor suggesting it was caused by an "aircraft crash"

linka

[EnterpriseSovereign]

In the articles I saw, those are $330 million each. I don't know which cause is worse for Russia, that it might have been friendly fire or enemy action

[J]

Time magazine
https://time.com/6695261/ukraine-forever-war-danger/

Ukraine Can’t Win the War

The long-awaited counteroffensive last year failed. Russia has recaptured Avdiivka, its biggest war gain in nine months. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced to quietly acknowledge the new military reality. The Biden Administration’s strategy is now to sustain Ukrainian defense until after the U.S. presidential elections, in the hope of wearing down Russian forces in a long war of attrition.

This strategy seems sensible enough, but contains one crucially important implication and one potentially disastrous flaw, which are not yet being seriously addressed in public debates in the West or Ukraine. The implication of Ukraine standing indefinitely on the defensive—even if it does so successfully—is that the territories currently occupied by Russia are lost. Russia will never agree at the negotiating table to surrender land that it has managed to hold on the battlefield.

This does not mean that Ukraine should be asked to formally surrender these lands, for that would be impossible for any Ukrainian government. But it does mean that—as Zelensky proposed early in the war with regard to Crimea and the eastern Donbas—the territorial issue will have to be shelved for future talks.

As we know from Cyprus, which has been divided between the internationally recognized Greek Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 1974, such negotiations can continue for decades without a solution or renewed conflict. A situation in which Ukraine retains its independence, its freedom to develop as a Western democracy, and 82% of its legal territory (including all its core historic lands) would have been regarded by previous generations of Ukrainians as a real victory, though not a complete one.

As I found in Ukraine last year, many Ukrainians in private were prepared to accept the loss of some territories as the price of peace if Ukraine failed to win them back on the battlefield and if the alternative was years of bloody war with little prospect of success. The Biden Administration needs to get America on board too.

Yet supporters of complete Ukrainian victory have engaged in hopes that range from the overly optimistic to the magical. At the magical end of the spectrum is the notion, set out by retired U.S. Army General Ben Hodges among others, that Russia can be defeated, and even driven from Crimea, by long-range missile bombardment.

This is folly. Ukrainians have scored some notable successes against the Russian Black Sea Fleet, but to take back Crimea they would need to be able to launch a massive amphibious landing, an exceptionally difficult operation far beyond their capabilities in terms of ships and men. Attacks on Russian infrastructure are pinpricks given Russia’s size and resources.

More realistic is the suggestion that by standing on the defensive this year, Ukrainians can inflict such losses on the Russians that—if supplied with more Western weaponry—they can counterattack successfully in 2025. However, this depends on the Russians playing the game the way Kyiv and Washington want to play it.

The Russian strategy at present appears to be different. They have drawn Ukrainians into prolonged battles for small amounts of territory like Avdiivka, where they have relied on Russian superiority in artillery and munitions to wear them down through constant bombardment. They are firing three shells to every one Ukrainian; and thanks in part to help from Iran, Russia has now been able to deploy very large numbers of drones.

For Ukrainians to stand a chance, military history suggests that they would need a 3-to-2 advantage in manpower and considerably more firepower. Ukraine enjoyed these advantages in the first year of the war, but they now lie with Russia, and it is very difficult to see how Ukraine can recover them.

The Biden Administration is entirely correct to warn that without further massive U.S. military aid, Ukrainian resistance is likely to collapse this year. But U.S. officials also need to recognize that even if this aid continues, there is no realistic chance of total Ukrainian victory next year, or the year after that. Even if the Ukrainians can build up their forces, Russia can deepen its defenses even more.

The Biden Administration has a strong incentive to test President Vladimir Putin on the sincerity or insincerity of his statements that Russia is ready for peace talks. A successful peace process would undoubtedly involve some painful concessions by Ukraine and the West. Yet the pain would be more emotional than practical, and a peace settlement would have to involve Putin giving up the plan with which he began the war, to turn the whole of Ukraine into a Russian vassal state, and recognizing the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its de facto present borders.

For the lost Ukrainian territories are lost, and NATO membership is pointless if the alliance is not prepared to send its own troops to fight for Ukraine against Russia. Above all, however painful a peace agreement would be today, it will be infinitely more so if the war continues and Ukraine is defeated.

My university history professor expands on this in the interview below starting at the 36 minute mark.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Republican Party can go fuck themselves Neither they or the Democrats wants the legacy of their guy's second term and therefore presidency to be that Ukraine was lost on their watch because of Republican shenanigans.

[Batman]

The republitards might though if Biden wins so they can SOMEHOW blame something that was infinite percent their fault on the democrat in office (their standard MO-fuck it up beyond repair, than blame the democrats for not managing to fix it next term)

[Ralin]

So what I'm hearing is that the US and other NATO countries need to massively increase aid to Ukraine, including sending actual troops to supplement them.

I haven't really heard a reason why we shouldn't do this other than "Putin will totally nuke any foreigners who set foot in Russia's Ukraine provinces" based on, uhm, something something Russian clay.

The republitards might though if Biden wins so they can SOMEHOW blame something that was infinite percent their fault on the democrat in office (their standard MO-fuck it up beyond repair, than blame the democrats for not managing to fix it next term)

We keep coming back to this. That vastly overstates the amount of Republican support for Putin. Plenty of them have made it clear they're as thrilled at the prospect of fucking Russia up as anyone else in the US government.

[Gandalf]

So what I'm hearing is that the US and other NATO countries need to massively increase aid to Ukraine, including sending actual troops to supplement them.

I haven't really heard a reason why we shouldn't do this other than "Putin will totally nuke any foreigners who set foot in Russia's Ukraine provinces" based on, uhm, something something Russian clay.

The scenario of NATO forces deployed to Ukraine creates a hard to quantify risk of escalation which has its end point in nuclear war. It's why NATO and the USSR favoured proxy wars in the Cold War as opposed to direct confrontation.

I highly doubt Russia would nuke a NATO force which crossed the border into Ukraine. But as soon as one side causes casualties on the other, escalating retaliation has the chance to spiral out of control and have effects far beyond the frontin Ukraine. Eventually someone has to be the cooler head and stop the process. I doubt anybody wants to take that risk over Ukraine.

[Vympel]

So my bitterness about the thread of greater than two plus years ago aside. Latest news. Apologies if it came up in the last thread.

There's no evidence that they downed the claimed first one. The Ukrainians have increasingly taken to claiming notable 'aerial' victories over high-value Russian air assets as they continue to lose on the ground. The claims are generally impossible to verify and they have been known to either invent them out of whole cloth or multiply actual Russian aerial losses by multiple times. In this case I'm thinking it happened because we have video of a distant aircraft dropping flares and then getting hit, but the shootdown location (basically off the Russia-proper coast of the Sea of Azov) is well out of range of any conceivable Ukrainain AD system. Some Russian Telegrams claimed it was yet another case of friendly fire, but who knows.

The scenario of NATO forces deployed to Ukraine creates a hard to quantify risk of escalation which has its end point in nuclear war. It's why NATO and the USSR favoured proxy wars in the Cold War as opposed to direct confrontation.

I highly doubt Russia would nuke a NATO force which crossed the border into Ukraine. But as soon as one side causes casualties on the other, escalating retaliation has the chance to spiral out of control and have effects far beyond the frontin Ukraine. Eventually someone has to be the cooler head and stop the process. I doubt anybody wants to take that risk over Ukraine.

Bears repeating over and over and over that if anyone wanted to risk nuclear escalation over Ukraine, this war would look very, very different than it does right now.

NYT:

Hard Lessons Make for Hard Choices 2 Years Into the War in Ukraine

Hard Lessons Make for Hard Choices 2 Years Into the War in Ukraine

Western sanctions haven’t worked. Weapons from allies are running low. Pressure may build on Kyiv to seek a settlement, even from a weakened position.

Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States has the capacity to keep Kyiv supplied with the weapons, technology and intelligence to fend off a takeover by Moscow. But Washington is now perceived around Europe to have lost its will.

The Europeans, in contrast, have the will — they just committed another $54 billion to reconstruct the country — but when it comes to repelling Russia’s revived offensive, they do not have the capacity.

That is the essence of the conundrum facing Ukraine and the NATO allies on the dismal second anniversary of the war. It is a stunning reversal. Only a year ago, many here predicted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive, bolstered by European tanks and missiles and American artillery and air defenses, could push the Russians back to where they were on Feb. 24, 2022.

Now, some harsh lessons have emerged. The sanctions that were supposed to bring Russia’s economy to its knees — “the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble,” President Biden declared in Warsaw in March 2022 — have lost their sting. The International Monetary Fund’s prediction that the Russian economy would shrink considerably was only briefly true; with the huge stimulus of military spending, it is growing faster than Germany’s. Income from oil exports is greater than it was before the invasion.

With the setbacks, and the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, hope has just about collapsed that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will conclude anytime soon that he can make no further gains and should enter a serious negotiation to end the war.

American and European intelligence officials now assess that Mr. Putin is determined to hold on, even at the cost of huge casualties, in the hope that a failure in Congress to fund Ukraine’s effort sufficiently or a victory by former President Donald J. Trump in November will make up for the Russian leader’s many early mistakes.

Biden administration officials still insist that Mr. Putin has already suffered a “strategic defeat.” His military is humiliated by its early failures and huge casualties, which Britain estimated on Saturday at 350,000 killed and wounded, and Russia can count on only China, Iran and North Korea as reliable suppliers.

At the same time, NATO has enlarged. Sweden is set to become the 32nd member state within a few days, after the addition of Finland last year, and two-thirds of its members will each spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense this year, a significant increase.

For the first time since NATO was founded in 1949, Europeans are finally taking seriously the need for a defense infrastructure independent of the United States.

Still, as recent intelligence reports in Europe indicate that NATO nations might be Mr. Putin’s target in the next three to five years, the question remains: Without a durable American commitment, can Ukraine and Europe defend against a new Russian threat?

Strategic Stalemate

At the core of the current strategic stalemate is the absence of any serious prospect of a negotiated settlement.

As recently as last summer, senior members of the Biden administration held out hope that Ukrainian advances on the battlefield would force Mr. Putin to find a face-saving way out. The most commonly discussed possibility was a negotiated settlement that left unclear the future of the parts of Ukraine seized or annexed by Russia, but which would at least end the fighting.

At the same time, at a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Mr. Biden and his aides were discussing with President Volodymyr Zelensky putting together an “Israel model” of aid for Ukraine. Even if short of actual membership, the plan aspired to provide a decade-long guarantee of the arms and training that Ukraine would need to keep Russia at bay.

But even hope for those muddled outcomes has been cast aside amid the congressional debate over renewing short-term help for Ukraine, and as pessimism sets in that Ukraine can hold out long enough to think about the long term.

As isolationism rises in a Republican-controlled Congress beholden to Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden has shifted from promising to give Ukraine “whatever it needs, for as long as it takes” to last December’s less ambitious “as long as we can.”

At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, struck an even more sober note: Ukraine would have to learn how to fight on a tight budget.

Even if the “$61 billion of supplemental aid to Ukraine goes through, I have to be honest with you, that is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield,” he said. “The amount of munitions that we can send to Ukraine right now is very limited.”

Mr. Vance went on to make a second point: Those limited resources should be saved for competing with China and defending Taiwan.

“There are a lot of bad guys all over the world,” he said. “And I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe.”

Mr. Vance’s assessment was met with a stony silence. Shortly afterward, a senior American military official who declined to speak on the record said that the Republican debate in Washington and the mood among Ukraine’s ground forces were reinforcing each other, “and not in a positive way.”

In the view of Charles A. Kupchan, a Georgetown University professor who served as a national security official in the Obama administration, that means the United States should be exploring ways to get negotiations started to end the war.

“Even if Russia can stay the course, I don’t think Ukraine can,” he said. After two years of war, Mr. Kupchan said, “there is no foreseeable pathway toward a battlefield victory for Ukraine,” even with the imminent arrival of long-range missiles or F-16s.

Mr. Zelensky faces a stark choice, he said: whether to keep every inch of sovereign Ukrainian territory, or find a way to secure an economically viable state, with a democratic future, Western security guarantees and eventual membership in the European Union and in NATO.

In private, some senior Biden administration officials say they have been trying to nudge Mr. Zelensky in that direction. But Mr. Biden has instructed his staff not to deviate from the slogan it used at the beginning of the war: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

The result is that American military officials in Europe, led by Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, have been quietly warning that the best the Ukrainians can hope for is a largely frozen conflict.

General Cavoli rarely speaks publicly, but officials emerging from recent briefings with him described a downbeat assessment, one in which, at best, the Ukrainians use 2024 to defend, rebuild and attempt another counteroffensive next year.

Even in Europe, where support for Ukraine has been strongest, public opinion is shifting, too. In a recent opinion poll conducted in January for the European Council on Foreign Relations in 12 countries, only 10 percent of Europeans said they believed Ukraine would win the war, though what would constitute a win was not clearly defined. Twenty percent said they believed that Russia would win, and a plurality, 37 percent, thought the war would end in some kind of settlement.

But if the United States withdraws support from Ukraine and presses Kyiv for a deal, 41 percent of Europeans polled said their governments should either increase support to try to replace Washington or continue support at the current level. Roughly a third said that European countries should follow Washington and pressure Kyiv to settle.

“Things are not going well,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, said bluntly as he left the Munich Security Conference last week.

“Ukraine is starved of ammunition and forced to pull back, Europe is facing challenges which might test Article 5, and global instability emerges because autocrats are emboldened by Russia’s action and our cautious response,” Mr. Landsbergis said on the social media platform X, in a reference to the section of the NATO treaty that calls for each member to come to the aid of any member under attack. “This is not pessimism. This is fact.”
Awakening to a Larger Threat

For years, American officials have urged Europe to spend more on its defense. Now, Europeans are beginning to confront the cost of complacency.

No matter who Americans elect as their next president in November, the United States may no longer be willing to take its traditional lead in deterring Russia or defending the West. That will inevitably place more of the burden on a Europe that is not yet fully prepared.

Germany’s military is better equipped, but it is not of the size or skill level needed to face the challenges ahead, its defense secretary, Boris Pistorius, has warned. Finland adds considerable technological capability to NATO, but Sweden’s military, American officials say, will need to be rebuilt.

Meanwhile, Europe is piecing together packages of help for Ukraine that were first meant to supplement, but now may be intended to replace, aid from the United States.

This month, European Union leaders pledged another 50 billion euros, about $54 billion, in new aid to Ukraine over the next four years. In aggregate, European countries have outpaced the United States in aid provided to Ukraine.

To date, said Victoria Nuland, the under secretary of state for political affairs, the United States has provided $75 billion in security, economic, and humanitarian assistance. But, she said, “Europe and our global partners have provided even more, $107 billion, in addition to hosting 4.5 million Ukrainian refugees in countries across Europe.”

Yet to fully replace American military assistance this year, according to an assessment by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe would still have “to double its current level and pace of arms assistance.”

And European efforts to provide another 5 billion euros, about $5.4 billion, over each of the next four years to buy arms for Ukraine have stalled because of objections by Germany and France.

The Germans say they are paying too much into the fund, given their large bilateral funding of aid to Ukraine, the second largest in the world after the United States.

The French are, as ever, insisting that weapons purchased with European money should be made or at least partly made in Europe — though Europe doesn’t have the capacity to provide them.

And European promises to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March have fallen well short.

Still, European arms production has been increasing, with senior European officials saying that the continent should be able to produce a million shells a year by the end of this year, compared with about 350,000 shells 18 months ago.

While Europeans point proudly to the changes they have made, it remains far from certain that those changes are happening as fast as the world demands, especially when it comes to Ukraine.

“Strategically the goal should be to change Putin’s calculations,” said Mr. Kupchan, the former Obama administration official. “Disrupt the field. I know it’s not easy, but it is better to admit mistakes and chart a new path forward rather than to engage in empty self-congratulation.”

Random comments:

1. "Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States has the capacity to keep Kyiv supplied with the weapons"

Not at the level Ukraine needs, no, it doesn't actually. Production of artillery shells and air defence missiles in particular are well below Ukrainian needs. And there's no capacity or steps being taken to lavish Ukraine with extra combat vehicles of any meaningful quantity, either. Anything sent to Ukraine by the US is taken from finite US stocks of vehicles that are out of production.

2. "Even if the “$61 billion of supplemental aid to Ukraine goes through, I have to be honest with you, that is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield,” he said. “The amount of munitions that we can send to Ukraine right now is very limited.”

See 1. Vance is correct, no matter how much people don't like it.

3. "Mr. Vance went on to make a second point: Those limited resources should be saved for competing with China and defending Taiwan."

Vance is merely repeating something western analysts have been saying since 2022. Key US weapon stocks are simply too limited - and too expensive and hard to replace - to be run down with reckless abandon solely for Ukraine's benefit, if they're going to be preoccupied with China and Taiwan.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Poland is strengthening fortifications along its northeastern border. If it starts doing the same for its border with Ukraine, that's when to worry.

[J]

NYT article on casualties
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/worl ... unded.html

Russia Hides Its War Toll. We Pieced Together the Clues.
Interviews with wounded Russian soldiers, and with relatives of others, reveal glimpses of what injured veterans can expect when sent home from Ukraine.

By Neil MacFarquhar and Milana Mazaeva
Feb. 15, 2024

The true casualty toll in Russia from its invasion of Ukraine is an enduring secret of the war. The Kremlin maintains a policy of silence, and many Russians do not speak publicly for fear of repercussions.
But the number of Russians wounded in combat is believed to be staggering.
The Pentagon puts the Russian death toll at about 60,000, with the wounded three or four times that, totaling roughly 300,000 casualties, said a U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity.

What Russians say

One senior Russian official estimated that amputees represented more than half of those seriously wounded.
The New York Times interviewed five wounded Russian soldiers and the relatives of others to learn more about what happens to the vast numbers of injured, coming home to inconsistent treatment and little discussion of them.
One has a microprocessor to move the fingers on his prosthetic arm, but only a simple mechanical elbow: He can hold a glass, but not lift it. The arm, he said, was “more cosmetic than working.”
Another soldier lost part of his brain, and relies on his wife for care. She turned to crowdfunding, writing, “I feel like I’m putting my loved one together like a puzzle.”
A Russian who visited his brother-in-law in a Moscow hospital said the six soldiers on the ward mostly still wore battlefield fatigues, so he brought them new clothes, soap, toothbrushes and a warm meal.
Accounts of erratic care
Some laud the medical care available while others described an overwhelmed system, with shortages of everything from medicine to adult diapers.
The wounded are often pushed to return to the front quickly.
A soldier who suffered shrapnel wounds said he was told to report back to the front six days after his hospital discharge.
“It was a conveyor belt,” he said of his crowded ward.
Official praise, unofficial dismay
The wounded are not entirely hidden. President Vladimir V. Putin has made a few hospital visits, sometimes handing out medals, and state media often portrays wounded veterans as heroes.
Anton Filimonov, who lost a leg stepping on a mine, has become one such symbol in Russia of an amputee overcoming adversity.
He has said publicly that Russians were “not ready” to see amputees, and some medical workers have noted a distinct lack of public compassion, with amputees seen begging on the streets.

There goes all those baseless claims of Ukrainians inflicting millions of casualties and killing Russians at a 10:1 ratio. The Pentagon estimate for Russian deaths is around 60k, which is a bit higher than the 40k or so claimed by the Russian ministry of defence in December 2023. Neither estimate is anywhere close to the half million deaths claimed by Ukrainian sources and endlessly parroted by western media.

Russia can sustain 20-30k deaths a year for as long as it needs to complete its military & political goals. They have more volunteers signing up for military service every month than they lose in a year.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Here's the other half of the equation:
Zelensky claims 31,000 troops killed but half of all Western aid delayed

Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that there have been 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed as the war against Russia enters its third year.

At a news conference in Kyiv on Sunday, Mr Zelensky confirmed for the first time the number of Ukrainian troops that have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the war-torn country in February 2022.

The Ukrainian president declined to give the number of wounded as he said that would help Russian military planning.

Mr Zelensky said that he was providing updated death toll figures following inflated numbers pushed out by the Kremlin, adding: “31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us.”
In contrast, US officials had put Ukrainian losses at 70,000 with as many as 120,000 injured. In February, the UK Ministry of Defence estimated that over 350,000 Russian troops had been killed or injured.

Amid fears over supplies to Ukraine, Mr Zelensky went on to say that half of western military aid to the country has reportedly been delayed.

It comes after Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustam Umerov, said in a televised address on Sunday that “commitment does not constitute delivery” and that the lack of supplies meant Ukraine were being further disadvantaged “in the mathematics of war”.

Mr Umerov added: “We do everything possible and impossible but without timely supply it harms us”.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak said he supports plans to send Ukraine hundreds of billions of pounds from frozen Russian assets, writing in The Sunday Times that he wants the UK to be “bolder” with its military support and provide Ukraine with “more long-range weapons, more drones, and more munitions”.

What aid has been sent?
The UK has given almost £12bn in aid packages to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, just over £7bn of which has been donated for military assistance.

Rishi Sunak also said he supports plans to send Ukraine hundreds of billions of pounds from frozen Russian assets, with the Prime Minister writing in The Sunday Times that he wants the UK to be “bolder” with its military support and provide Ukraine with “more long-range weapons, more drones, and more munitions”.

About $75bn (£59bn) in assistance has also reportedly been sent by the United States in the same two year span, while the EU has sent a combined sum of around $88bn (£69bn) in total aid including military, financial and humanitarian assistance.

Several other world leaders recently pledged new aid deals to Ukraine at a ceremony marking the second anniversary of the start of Russia’s invasion on Saturday, where Mr Zelensky promised they would “keep on fighting” and “never end”.

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau signed a bilateral security pact pledging $3.02bn Canadian dollars (£1.7bn) in financial and military support to Ukraine as well as a $75m (£59m) aid package for demining and intelligence gathering.

Italy’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, also signed a 10-year defence pact with Mr Zelensky on Saturday.

What has been delayed?
The European Union (EU) said in January that just over half of the promised one million artillery shells would be delivered to Ukraine by March as planned, blaming a lack of production capacity, with the full amount not expected to arrive there until the end of the year.

Meanwhile, a new US aid package which includes $60bn (£48bn) funding is reportedly stalled in Congress over concerns that Russia may still be able to win the war regardless of western support for Ukraine coming through.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive last year delivered some victories against Vladimir Putin’s forces but largely fell short of expectations, while its military was forced to withdraw from the eastern town of Avdiivka earlier this month in what was Russia’s biggest victory since the fall of the town of Bakhmut in May 2023.

Mr Zelensky said a lack of weapons was one of the reasons the counter-offensive did not start earlier, and blamed the loss of Avdiivka on declining weapons supplies from the west as well.

The Ukrainian president said on Sunday that he had “clear plans” for a new offensive.

[Solauren]

So, by the numbers, assuming they're all accurate, Ukraine and Russia are losing troops at about the same rate.

Not really sustainable, considering Russia has a massive population difference over the Ukraine.

[J]

So, by the numbers, assuming they're all accurate, Ukraine and Russia are losing troops at about the same rate.

Not really sustainable, considering Russia has a massive population difference over the Ukraine.

They're not losing troops at the same rate.

The numbers for Russia are likely not too far off, most credible sources say it's around 50-60k.

The Ukrainian claims on the other hand are completely made up. They started the war with around 800k men in their armed forces, yet they're starving for manpower and the average age of their soldiers is now 43 despite losing only 4% of their soldiers? Doesn't add up, they've lost a lot more men than they're admitting.

[Mr Bean]

So, by the numbers, assuming they're all accurate, Ukraine and Russia are losing troops at about the same rate.

Not really sustainable, considering Russia has a massive population difference over the Ukraine.

They're not losing troops at the same rate.

The numbers for Russia are likely not too far off, most credible sources say it's around 50-60k.

The Ukrainian claims on the other hand are completely made up. They started the war with around 800k men in their armed forces, yet they're starving for manpower and the average age of their soldiers is now 43 despite losing only 4% of their soldiers? Doesn't add up, they've lost a lot more men than they're admitting.

31,000 killed is not 31,000 casualties, if they had someone who's missing a leg to a Russian mine he's not exactly combat capable and he's not in that 31,000 number.

That might be 31,000 dead 100,000 total casualties or 70k or 500k but you can't fight forever, you need rotations home, you need breaks and they don't have the manpower to rotate 100k soldiers home for six months which means their army has been on a combat footing for two years now.

Also the US totals are about twice this number NY Times of 70k vs the Ukranian number.

That said the Russians have not been losing troops at the same rate. The best guess estimates are north of 400k Russians casualties (Which are again not killed just all injured AND killed) and Putin has already admitted 360k back in December complete with some fun Putin math

So my personal best guess is 4-5 Russian losses to the 1 Ukrainian loss. However Ukraine has a limit to their manpower amounts they can still recruit quite a bit but there is a limit and that limit will be hit far before the Russians hit their own.

[madd0c0t0r2]

Reading through the above, seems more likely to be a 2:1 ratio. Which is also the NATO ratio for aggressor: defender with Russia being the aggressor.

Possibly slightly complicated by injury patterns and new roles. Minefields tend to lead to missing feet, but that wouldn't impede a drone pilot. Doubt it's more than a rounding error so far.

In war related news:
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/sout ... 02986.html

Sri-lanka cracking down on draft dodgers. I've previously noted some russian immigrants hiding out in Vietnam, but it seems 288krussians and 20k Ukrainians have entered Sri Lanka and IT'S not clear how many left.

The story goes that this was officially tolerated as a partial reinvigoration of tourism but has become hugely unpopular after some of the russian immigrants set up their own nightclubs,hotels
Ect with 'White only' policies....

[Solauren]

At this point, if I was a country near Russia (next to, or with one country inbetween),It's be treating any attempt by Russians to settle as a the start of Russia building up an excuse to invade.

[madd0c0t0r2]

At this point, if I was a country near Russia (next to, or with one country inbetween),It's be treating any attempt by Russians to settle as a the start of Russia building up an excuse to invade.

I think Sri Lanka is probably safe...

[Solauren]

At this point, if I was a country near Russia (next to, or with one country inbetween),It's be treating any attempt by Russians to settle as a the start of Russia building up an excuse to invade.

I think Sri Lanka is probably safe...

No doubt.

However, if you were a country anywhere near Russia, would you be letting any of them in?

[bilateralrope]

Russia orders halt on petrol exports

Coming amid attacks on refineries, ban is intended to avert shortages and spiking prices on the domestic market.

27 Feb 2024

Russia has passed a six-month ban on petrol exports from next week amid rising local demand.

The halt on petrol shipments abroad, which has been approved by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and is expected to start from March 1, was confirmed by state news agency Tass on Tuesday. A similar ban last year was introduced to avert shortages and spiking prices on the domestic market.

Russian outlet RBC said Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak had proposed limiting exports in a letter dated February 21 that noted that the domestic market will soon see increased seasonal demand for fuel.

“In order to offset excessive demand for petroleum products, it is necessary to take measures to help stabilize prices in the domestic market,” Novak was quoted as saying in his proposal by RBC.

The ban will not apply to the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to Mongolia and Uzbekistan, as well as the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia also introduced a ban on fuel exports last September, as the winter season approached, bringing in higher domestic demand that led to increased prices and shortages.

That ban had also excluded Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. Almost all the restrictions were subsequently removed by November.

However, the latest ban will be significantly longer, with suggestions that the Kremlin is keen to rein in rising fuel prices ahead of the March 15-17 presidential election.

At the same time, the export halt should help create space for the maintenance and repair of refineries, some of which have suffered attacks in recent months amid the war in Ukraine. Moscow reduced petrol exports to non-members of the Commonwealth of Independent States last month due to damage caused to its energy infrastructure.

Russia produced 43.9 million tonnes of petrol in 2023 of which it exported about 5.76 million tonnes. The biggest importers of Russian petrol are mainly African countries, including Nigeria, Libya and Tunisia, as well as the United Arab Emirates.

Russia is already voluntarily cutting its oil and fuel exports by 500,000 barrels per day in the first quarter as part of OPEC+ efforts to support prices.

Looks like the attacks on Russian refineries did do something. Enough to make Putin worried about what would happen if petrol prices rose too far.

I don't know if that's a big enough effect to matter.

[wautd]

At this point, if I was a country near Russia (next to, or with one country inbetween),It's be treating any attempt by Russians to settle as a the start of Russia building up an excuse to invade.

I think Sri Lanka is probably safe...

No doubt.

However, if you were a country anywhere near Russia, would you be letting any of them in?

Coincidentally, Russian propagandists on state media were threatening Armenia and Georgia this week

[PainRack]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/2 ... six-months



Ukranian attacks has an impact, leading to supply issues that has led Russia to ban gasoline exports so an expected seasonal spike in demand won't lead to increased fuel prices.





So, no major domestic "impact" so far, but a spike in fuel prices may cause some pain for the world. And cause income issues few months later for Russia, although their wartime boom complicates things.