Major developments in the Russo-Ukraine war

[Yog]

28 minutes ago, no_name said:

So if a murderer gets into your house and you ask for help we should all just refuse to give you help because providing help will just “prolong the conflict”?

Even if one family member died in such a situation, I would rather do whatever will keep the rest alive and the house intact. So if I want help it would be for that end. 

If help means, the local gun dealer comes to aid and the intruder is dead, but also my family and my house is wrecked then that is not help in my book.  It's like a teenager beating up a small kid with a stick and you give the child a knife and you call it help. You will probably not, but that is the language the local arms dealer might use. It's devilry at its finest.

@StarStruck @no_name C'mon guys, no need to talk that way. Remember the forum rule " Treat this forum like a temple" Where did that go?

Or .... I am misunderstanding and you have some chemistry going on there.

[no_name]

20 minutes ago, Yog said:

Even if one family member died in such a situation, I would rather do whatever will keep the rest alive and the house intact. So if I want help it would be for that end. 

If help means, the local gun dealer comes to aid and the intruder is dead, but also my family and my house is wrecked then that is not help in my book.  It's like a teenager beating up a small kid with a stick and you give the child a knife and you call it help. You will probably not, but that is the language the local arms dealer might use. It's devilry at its finest.

So would you rather your family members be raped every day then in front of you? Intruder taking turns raping you and then your grandma and then your little kid for the rest of your life? Or would you rather die fighting trying to defend your family? 

Edited January 21, 2023 by no_name

[no_name]

20 minutes ago, Yog said:

@StarStruck @no_name C'mon guys, no need to talk that way. Remember the forum rule " Treat this forum like a temple" Where did that go?

I think the forum leader needs to lead by an example first. He is the biggest troll on the forum and the boy who cried wolf at this point.

[Yog]

1 hour ago, no_name said:

So would you rather your family members be raped every day then in front of you? Intruder taking turns raping you and then your grandma and then your little kid for the rest of your life? Or would you rather die fighting trying to defend your family? 

Well if this were the case, it means diplomacy failed, which certainly was an option. If there are no further options for negotiating and the situation is as you describe it, then I would ofc fight. It's still hard to say because extraordinary events will change you in extraordinary ways, including your behavior, so that is my best bet.

But make no mistake. I would still take responsibility for my part in it. The intruder didn't just come in and start raping out of the blue and certainly didn't come here without a reason or history. It's not some street hobo that randomly jumped in and started doing evil deeds. But a neighbor with whom you had long relations. Maybe you even lived in the same house. There were many attempts at diplomacy before and during the war, especially at the start of the war. Maybe you had the agency to not allow the situation to get that bad, but you failed. Maybe you are in the situation that you are in because you were misled by the very ones offering what they strategically call help.

To me, Russia, Ukraine, and the west are sitting at the same table of responsibility. Blame and vendetta are only possible when you are not taking responsibility.

Edited January 21, 2023 by Yog

[Tudo]

I can't believe Russia is taking this long to win this war.

[StarStruck]

2 hours ago, no_name said:

So would you rather your family members be raped every day then in front of you? Intruder taking turns raping you and then your grandma and then your little kid for the rest of your life? Or would you rather die fighting trying to defend your family? 

A lot of women have rape fantasies but no way such a scenario would play out for the rest of your life. Especially in modern day world Russia would not get away with rape on a massive scale.

3 hours ago, Yog said:

Even if one family member died in such a situation, I would rather do whatever will keep the rest alive and the house intact. So if I want help it would be for that end. 

If help means, the local gun dealer comes to aid and the intruder is dead, but also my family and my house is wrecked then that is not help in my book.  It's like a teenager beating up a small kid with a stick and you give the child a knife and you call it help. You will probably not, but that is the language the local arms dealer might use. It's devilry at its finest.

@StarStruck @no_name C'mon guys, no need to talk that way. Remember the forum rule " Treat this forum like a temple" Where did that go?

Or .... I am misunderstanding and you have some chemistry going on there.

True, Germany doesn't want to turn Europe in a blood bath. More countries should follow Germany's lead. No way Russia is pulling out so the best is to find a compromise. Russia is already hurt bad economically and in every other way, no way they will try again.

[Sincerity]

We know the topic is controversial, but please keep your posts respectful towards each other.

[Blackhawk]

2 hours ago, Sincerity said:

We know the topic is controversial, but please keep your posts respectful towards each other.

It's not controversial at all. It's like West vs Hitler, good vs bad, help Ukraine win or let evil win and get the following future wars from that.

Only evil people, brainwashed people, or useful idiots stand on Russia's side or don't want to help Ukraine because of fear or whatever.

 

"Controversial: giving rise or likely to give rise to controversy or public disagreement."

"Controversy: prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion.  "the design of the building has caused controversy"

 

If there is public disagreement about even such a easy topic, then there is no hope at all for mankind.

But luckily that's not the case. In the free world there is overwhelming support for Ukraine. Only a few people with cognitive impairment, broken moral compass, or victims for brainwashing are against strong military assistance to Ukraine.

This is also maybe the only thing which republicans and democrats in US agree about. (Mostly)

In fact, this topic is so easy and uncontroversial that even 2 neutral countries, Sweden and Finland, decided to send heavy weapons to Ukraine and join Nato.

Edited January 22, 2023 by Blackhawk

[Ulax]

@Blackhawk So, you think the Russian side are evil? If I am correct in that assumption, why do you think they are evil?

[Ryan_047]

On 1/22/2023 at 1:15 AM, Tudo said:

I can't believe Russia is taking this long to win this war.

The only way they can win at this point are tactical nuclear weapons, and maybe not even then. 

Or maybe if they pull some sort of Stalingrad like campaign for when Ukraine will try to liberate Crimea, but I still doubt it. 

[Blackhawk]

On 2023-01-27 at 6:30 PM, Ryan_047 said:

The only way they can win at this point are tactical nuclear weapons, and maybe not even then. 

Or maybe if they pull some sort of Stalingrad like campaign for when Ukraine will try to liberate Crimea, but I still doubt it. 

Russia using nukes would be a guarantee for Russia losing bigtime.

[Starlight321]

I've found a channel that gives a daily analysis about the situation. I've only watched a few of those videos and I see that his view is a a bit skewed towards the russian side but never the less does he give a good overview about what's happening and the strategies of both the ukrainian and russian forces because he also takes russian sources into account. 

But take all this with a little grain of salt and use this as complementary info to make sense of the situation.

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Starlight321

[trenton]

@Starlight321

Interesting channel. I have been watching TMC clips. He is skewed toward Ukraine. Other channels were skipping over bad news for Ukraine. I have been criticized on this forum for making the war sound dire. I could try to check out the channels with an optimistic view. If you check out this channel then do you think the war is as bad as this man makes it sound.

https://m.youtube.com/@tcmclips/featured

[Starlight321]

@trenton

It's hard to say due to the lack of acurate and complete info given. Also there is a lot of noise which has to be filtered.

As for being a dire situation for ukraine I think yes, but it could be worse and the russians might as well mess up their plans again due to other factors like incompetence and recklesness which is inherent to the entire russian army.

However, russia has more ressources and they have been pushing the front for months. But on the other hand the ukrainians are also preparing for a counter offensive in spring and I don't know what would be better, pull back and repositioning or hold the line and having less territory to reclaim before the negotiations.

 

[trenton]

 

[trenton]

It has been a while since I gave the update. The battle of bahkmut has been going on for months. It looks like Russia has finally managed to capture the city. At the same time their flanks are collapsing on the outskirts of the city.

It seems that Ukraine was planning a counter offensive in the south, but this information was leaked by a Russian spy. The counter offensive has now been delayed as Ukraine looks for somewhere else to start a counter attack.

It looks like the Biden administration is finally going to approve of sending f-16 fighters to Ukraine and the European nations will likely follow suit.

The war has been costly for both sides with Russia apparently reaching over 200,000 casualties and with Ukraine suffering somewhat fewer but still devastating losses. 

[WeCome1]

15 hours ago, RebornConsciousness said:

Only 2 Youtube channels worth watching for Ukraine updates so far.

Strongly disagree.

The first channel kind of reminds me of those forex technical analysis videos where folks draw arbitrary lines on stock charts to make predictions. The info on this channel appears to be factually correct and timely, but doesn't provide any kind of big strategic picture; and just observing tactical maneuvers and how Vagner troops advanced for another 50 meters today and took a bus stop is a fun spectator sport, but of little value.

The second channel is simply a textbook case of mediocre journalism. The guy obviously lacks the cultural context; his analysis of the big picture is, again, pretty shallow; has obvious biases (some of his takes made me wonder if he is on RT payroll, but naaaah); never mind the clickbaity titles.

In general, there is this issue with Western journalism on the topic of the RU/UA war which one should keep in mind: the cultural context. I've said it before, and will repeat again. Russian/Soviet mentality; what RU/UA opinion leaders said, how and when they said it, in what context, and what was in fact implied; how Russian power structures interact between themselves this particular week - all of that is 10x more important than missile strikes, troop movements or which flag is raised over which commie block in Bakhmut today. And no Western youtuber even remotely has the capacity to process all that. Even the top tier press like FT I've seen struggle with that sometimes.

The other thing that is common to a lot of YouTube analytics (this time, in the West and in RU/UA alike) is the inability to see the strategic big picture. Like, really, it is completely worthless to speak about tactical maneuvers out of the context of G7, China, India, the Grain Deal, schedules of Lendlease to Ukraine, the analysis of previous similar tactical maneuvers in this war and a thousand other factors. 

So, if you really, like really want quality analytics on the subject, I suggest checking these two guys out. Both are, obviously, in Russian, so you will have to read the auto-translated captions; I've checked, they are good enough, not much info gets lost.

Майкл Наки / Michael Nake. Provides brilliant, timely, relevant and contextual analysis of all the hot war-related topics. Often invites top experts to provide professional commentary, as well as some Ukrainian government advisors (but it's a bit tricky with those, since all their communications are obviously strategic, not sincere). Also, importantly, he has teamed up with Руслан Левиев / Ruslan Leviev from Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), which is one of the top OSINT analytics teams in the world today; Ruslan provides on Michael's channel a daily overview of the situation on the front, which is miles ahead of the two channels suggested above. Higly, highly recommended; if I had to pick one source of information on the topic of RU/UA war, this would be it, no contest.

Иван Яковина / Ivan Yakovina. An independent Ukrainian observer that has recently blown up to 1M subscribers, for a very good reason. He is based in Kiev and has an obvious pro-UA bias. However, he has an exceptional track record of making realistic long-term predictions based on strategic analysis. He is also very quick with his commentary on breaking news. Helluva guy.

[Blackhawk]

https://youtube.com/@AnnafromUkraine

https://youtube.com/@CombatVeteranReacts

https://youtube.com/@JakeBroe

https://youtube.com/@DenysDavydov

Ben Hodges

Timothy Snyder

Bill Browder

Fiona Hill

 

Most I enjoy listening to Jake Broe, and on 2nd place Anna from Ukraine.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Blackhawk

[WeCome1]

1 hour ago, RebornConsciousness said:

I have a lot more important priorities than watching Russo-Ukraine wars.

That is a valid point.

[Blackhawk]

https://youtu.be/e6G2gUk3GtU