War, what is it good for?

[orathaic]

I am sure that if Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland were reduced to a blasted, irradiated wasteland due to total nuclear annihilation, the Republic of Ireland would be entirely undamaged.

While this may be valid, it clearly didn't know have the same impact on ppl in the Republic.

[orathaic]

So two things:
https://youtu.be/JCR-Phtgx0k

Can Ukraine win the war?

And
https://youtu.be/Ot65x9FLY-0

Is the US capable of continuing to support Ukraine with possible bank failures?

[Octavious]

Win by retaking the Donbas and Crimea? Almost certainly not. And even if it could it would find itself fighting against not only the Russians but a civilian population that is pro-Russian, doesn't want anything to do with Ukraine, and is terrified of the new Ukrainian laws against collaboration which basically makes most of the adult population of these areas eligible for fifteen years in a Ukrainian gaol. A Ukraine victory won't resemble the allied liberation of Paris by any stretch of the imagination. You will see millions of refugees fleeing to Russia to escape the Western sponsored Ukrainian jackboot. Yay, the good guys.

[Octavious]

The truth rears its ugly head

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ ... aid-price/



By
James Kilner
17 March 2023 • 5:11pm


The battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview from the front lines earlier this week.

He revealed that all of the original 500 soldiers in his unit had either been killed or injured, a rare acknowledgement from inside the Ukrainian ranks, where losses are kept strictly confidential.

The Ukrainian high command is at pains to present a positive spin on the increasingly bloody defence of the east of the country. US officials have estimated that the Ukrainian army may have taken 120,000 casualties compared with 200,000 by the Russian army.

Kupol told the Washington Post this week that the Ukrainian army training was often poor and that some of the rookie replacements didn’t know how to throw a hand grenade or fire a rifle.

Others had abandoned their positions shortly after arriving at the front line, he said.


“I get 100 new soldiers,” he said. “They don’t give me any time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into the battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it. Do you understand why? Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some reason, he has never thrown a grenade. … We need Nato instructors in all our training centres, and our instructors need to be sent over there into the trenches. Because they failed in their task.”

Kupol said what was left of his unit was also facing ammunition shortages.

“You’re on the front line,” he said. “They’re coming toward you, and there’s nothing to shoot with.”

Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are being trained by the British Army and other Nato countries but thousands more receive more rudimentary training in Ukraine.

Kupol said that he had been motivated to speak out to try to improve training levels but furious Ukrainian generals instead demoted him. The Washington Post said he had consented to have his picture taken but admitted he could face “personal blowback” for his honest assessment.

Kupol told the Washington Post this week that the Ukrainian army training was often poor

Valentin Shevchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, accused Kupol of “disseminating false information”. “The losses announced in the unit of which he had command are significantly overestimated,” she told Ukrainian media.

Shortly after his demotion, Kupol quit the Ukrainian army.

Within hours of his reassignment to a training camp, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, politicians and journalists had voiced their support for the battalion commander.

“One of the armed forces finest commanders has just been removed,” Yuriy Butusov, a well-known Ukrainian war correspondent, wrote on Facebook.

“Instead of analysing mistakes that will defeat the Russian army, honest comments are suppressed and those who make them are punished.”

The leak on casualty numbers will be deeply embarrassing for the Ukrainian military which has diligently built up a narrative of its outnumbered but highly motivated and well-trained army taking on hordes of Russian soldiers and convicts.

It also undermines confidence in its much-talked-up counteroffensive planned for spring.

The attritional nature of the war in Ukraine has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Both sides have admitted that they are running out of artillery shells and ammunition.

Ukraine and Russia guard their casualty numbers closely, believing that they could undermine morale, although military commanders still hint at the high death tolls at their evening briefings when they boast of killing hundreds of enemy soldiers.

On Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that Ukrainian forces had killed more than 1,100 Russian soldiers in the past week. Russia’s ministry of defence said that day that it had killed 220 Ukrainian soldiers in the past 24 hours.

It is not possible to independently verify these numbers. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed.

[Octavious]

https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status ... 1uwSg&s=19

[orathaic]

https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status ... 1uwSg&s=19

As a fellow Irish leftist, i have to say i have been extremely dissappointed in Clare Daly this last year.

Wish she had stuck to national politics instead of going to Brussels.

[orathaic]

Where a conservative blames Biden, Obama, and Bush for the War in Ukraine:
https://youtu.be/xeX_Stsp3ho

[Octavious]

https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status ... 1uwSg&s=19

As a fellow Irish leftist, i have to say i have been extremely dissappointed in Clare Daly this last year.

Wish she had stuck to national politics instead of going to Brussels.

Disappointed in what sense? She seems to be speaking her mind and she seems to care deeply about the subject. I'm sure that her point of view is representative of a large chunk of the European population. What's depressing is how under represented that view is. A Parliament where everyone sings from the same hymn sheet, when the people it represents do not, is dysfunctional

[orathaic]

Dissappointed in seeing her take the side of Imperialists in a war of aggression.

Anti-US/Western sentiment is something i agree with, but i can't see Ukraine the same way Putin does: ie a US conspiracy to undermine Russian security.

[Octavious]

In fairness to her, when you come from a political background that paints pretty much everyone as an imperialist it becomes near impossible to not take the side of some of the imperialists in a major diplomatic spat.

As for US conspiracies, surely the US manoeuvring to maintain an advantage over Russia is a given? Regardless of the rights and wrongs of everything else, that much has been ever thus

[Octavious]

Whilst we're talking about propaganda and the unmasking of the painful reality of the situation in Ukraine behind the usual narrative that it is just Russia suffering from poor morale and sending poorly trained cannon fodder to the front, let's have a brief aside and have a look at the world of the internet meme.

I find it fascinating to see the same image being tailored for different target markets.

https://twitter.com/Dewik2013/status/16 ... X732A&s=19

https://twitter.com/inSdrc/status/16370 ... uc5Lg&s=19

In this case they are both clearly anti-NATO, with one aimed at France and the other North America.

I am just curious about what you think's going on here? Is it a coordinated effort from government funded propaganda teams, or just social media warriors taking an image they like and modifying it in a more organic way?

[Octavious]

Good news, everyone!

We're now apparently supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium ammunition, which will happily scatter this highly toxic heavy metal across Ukraine's green and pleasant land in the name of freedom! This will make a fine accompaniment to all the landmines and unexploded shells that were frankly getting a bit dull and hardly worth dying from.

Slava Ukraini!

[orathaic]

Good news, everyone!

We're now apparently supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium ammunition, which will happily scatter this highly toxic heavy metal across Ukraine's green and pleasant land in the name of freedom! This will make a fine accompaniment to all the landmines and unexploded shells that were frankly getting a bit dull and hardly worth dying from.

Slava Ukraini!

What is it you think is wrong with Depleted Uranium?

It is a fairly stable metal right? Amongst the most sense. And thus best at penetrating enemy armour.

[Octavious]

It's very good at penetrating enemy armour, and every shot scatters the depleted uranium in a little cloud of extremely toxic dust. Probably fine in small doses, but where you get higher concentrations (say, at the site of a battle) you wouldn't be particularly well advised to drink water from the well any time soon.

And, politically speaking, it carries a hell of a lot of diplomatic baggage that massively outweighs the military benefits. We are sending this things almost certainly because our ammunition stockpiles are looking painfully shallow.

[orathaic]

It's very good at penetrating enemy armour, and every shot scatters the depleted uranium in a little cloud of extremely toxic dust. Probably fine in small doses, but where you get higher concentrations (say, at the site of a battle) you wouldn't be particularly well advised to drink water from the well any time soon.

And, politically speaking, it carries a hell of a lot of diplomatic baggage that massively outweighs the military benefits. We are sending this things almost certainly because our ammunition stockpiles are looking painfully shallow.

I'm not sure what the diplomatic cost is. The UK is already in a proxy war, and so far every single 'escalation' has been met with an impotent responce from Russia, maybe China could be convinced to increase their support, but given how the visit we t, I'm not convinced.

[Octavious]

A potentially pivotal day in war with the Turkish election. Quite an interesting battle between the final two Presidential candidates.

On the one hand you have the challenger, running on a campaign of a return to orthodox economic policies, abolishing Presidential superiority, pro-Western diplomacy, and (because the Turks refuse to make life simple) sending the Syrian refugees back to Syria.

On the other you have the continuity candidate, promising to keep using the tried and tested (admittedly failing the test rather badly) maverick economics, strengthening Turkey as a regional Putin friendly power, crushing LGBT campaigners, AND sending the Syrians back to Syria.

In the battle for hearts and minds it's not a great day for the West regardless... but it could well be a really shite one