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Russia has begun a full-scale invasion in Ukraine [READ STAFF POSTS]

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KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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Nov 23, 2019
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www.thehindubusinessline.com

Russia halts rupee repatriation as India offers bouquet of investment options, say sources

RBI allows Russian entities to invest accumulated rupee balance in India, expanding investment options beyond government securities.
www.thehindubusinessline.com www.thehindubusinessline.com
Russia's payment woes with India may finally be coming to an end. Thanks to allowances made by the RBI, Russian entities now have a bouquet of investment options -- not just government securities and bonds but equity and loans — to channelise their accumulating rupee balance.

"Russia is no longer struggling to repatriate the rupee balance which is continuously accumulating in its special vostro accounts in Indian banks due to increased exports to India. The RBI, through various amendments in FEMA regulations and procedures, has made it possible for Russian entities to invest in a whole bouquet of avenues, which the country has started to make full use of now," a top level source told businessline.
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AquaRegia

AquaRegia

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Oct 25, 2017
1,711
Romania would actually have a reason to keep Patriots for themselves, but maybe a compromise of "keep it in the South/Southwest and shoot down anything approaching our border/Moldova" would work too.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

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Mar 14, 2019
18,340
Pankratous said:
... Would be nice if another bomber met the Patriots
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The ones from Olenya won'tbe flying that far S. Olenya is basically Norwegian border. The farthest they'll go is the Caspian Sea.
AquaRegia said:
Romania would actually have a reason to keep Patriots for themselves, but maybe a compromise of "keep it in the South/Southwest and shoot down anything approaching our border/Moldova" would work too.
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they would likely park it by Odessa, so so it'd be a win-win
 
Captain Smoker

Captain Smoker

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Oct 30, 2017
1,729
Is Ukraine still hitting oil refinieries in Russia?

Because I noticed that Brent Crude fell from $91 at the begin of April back to $81 as of now.
 
AzorAhai

AzorAhai

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Oct 29, 2017
6,793
KastuśKalinoŭski said:
oh yeah, sure 🤣


View: https://twitter.com/TUmarov/status/1787946225871843700

idiots

china is already in




View: https://twitter.com/vtchakarova/status/1787823639779226001
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Rule #1: don't believe anything Macron says, unless it's bad, in which case it's probably an understatement.

I don't see the war ending until Putin is assassinated (unlikely) or Ukraine crumbles (more and more likely). China could have been the middle man, but it's clear now they have chosen to side with Russia. Not really to help them take Ukraine, but to make them economically dependent.

Maquiladora said:

View: https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1788162173375598641?t=KA6KlQvuYECBqjXtwE0bsg&s=19
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Interesting.

EDIT: my bad, Lithuania is part of NATO
 
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Reckheim

Reckheim

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Oct 25, 2017
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AzorAhai said:
Rule #1: don't believe anything Macron says, unless it's bad, in which case it's probably an understatement.

I don't see the war ending until Putin is assassinated (unlikely) or Ukraine crumbles (more and more likely). China could have been the middle man, but it's clear now they have chosen to side with Russia. Not really to help them take Ukraine, but to make them economically dependent.



Interesting. If neighboring states fear they are next, they can cross their fingers not to be and watch Ukraine slowly fall, or they can all agree to help stop it. Any non-NATO country can send troops and not start a global war, and the more countries do it, the more difficult it will make it for the Russian army to advance in Ukraine and to open a new front elsewhere.
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Lithuania is a NATO country, this is just training troops.
 
maabus1999

maabus1999

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Oct 26, 2017
9,238
AzorAhai said:
Rule #1: don't believe anything Macron says, unless it's bad, in which case it's probably an understatement.

I don't see the war ending until Putin is assassinated (unlikely) or Ukraine crumbles (more and more likely). China could have been the middle man, but it's clear now they have chosen to side with Russia. Not really to help them take Ukraine, but to make them economically dependent.
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Russia has no chance of taking Ukraine now, no matter what Putin wants. Can they take the Donbass? Sure at a large cost. Can they take Kharkiv. Very Unlikely. Can they cross the Dnipro to Odessa? Nearly impossible. Can they take Kyiv? Also nearly impossible.

The concern for Ukraine is if they will ever develop the force structure necessary to take back their land by force, which at the current trend is well more than a year out from being looked at. I think Ukraine will try one more time in a year or two to go on the counter offensive, mainly when Russia is literally running out of heavy weaponry in storage and if that fails, you'd have a Korean War-style DMZ.
 
maabus1999

maabus1999

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Oct 26, 2017
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slider said:

I think there was something in the FT last week about warnings of sabotage/hybrid warfare across Europe too.

I guess nothing is off the table when it comes to love and war. The Russian government should have been added to the saying ages ago I guess.
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Honestly, if this continues, the West needs to respond in king with hostile sabotage themselves. A key rail bridge or two being destroyed would give them the hint...
 
slider

slider

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Nov 10, 2020
2,773
maabus1999 said:
Honestly, if this continues, the West needs to respond in king with hostile sabotage themselves. A key rail bridge or two being destroyed would give them the hint...
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The line from polonium, novichok and the blast in Czechia(?) at the arms storage facility - probably with a whole lot more in between that normal folk aren't aware of - has a couple of clear themes: no rules and push the boundaries of what the "rules based international order" will expect.
 
Maquiladora

Maquiladora

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Nov 16, 2017
5,173
AzorAhai said:
My bad, that's not that big of a deal then.
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It would be a pretty big deal in some ways. Any intelligence officers or special forces operating inside Ukraine at the moment to assist Ukraine are operating covertly.

So even if this was just troops sent to Ukraine for training it would be the first overt deployment of NATO troops into Ukraine since the war began. Those troops would be at significant risk of being killed in a Russian attack.

It could also begin the process of normalising the idea of NATO troops operating inside Ukraine.
 
maabus1999

maabus1999

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Oct 26, 2017
9,238
Maquiladora said:
It would be a pretty big deal in some ways. Any intelligence officers or special forces operating inside Ukraine at the moment to assist Ukraine are operating covertly.

So even if this was just troops sent to Ukraine for training it would be the first overt deployment of NATO troops into Ukraine since the war began. Those troops would be at significant risk of being killed in a Russian attack.

It could also begin the process of normalising the idea of NATO troops operating inside Ukraine.
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Eh? There is already forces in country, though most assisting in Kyiv out of embassies. The SCALPS/Shadows for example have experts assisting in country. There were supposedly some trainers in country already at the start of the war to help kick start the first mobilization but far as I know all have moved to Western locations.

A larger training group does make it an "easier" target to target if Russia so chooses though.
 
KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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Captain Smoker said:
Is Ukraine still hitting oil refinieries in Russia?

Because I noticed that Brent Crude fell from $91 at the begin of April back to $81 as of now.
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Yes.

As for price ↓

Washington's criticism is misplaced: attacks on oil refineries will not have the effect on global energy markets that U.S. officials fear. These strikes reduce Russia's ability to turn its oil into usable products; they do not affect the volume of oil it can extract or export. In fact, with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up. Indeed, Russian firms have already started selling more unrefined oil overseas. As long as they remain restricted to Russian refineries, the attacks are unlikely to raise the price of oil for Western consumers.
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Yet they can still inflict pain inside Russia, where the price of refined oil products, such as gasoline and diesel, has begun to surge. The strikes are achieving the very objectives that Ukraine's Western partners set but largely failed to meet through sanctions and a price cap on Russian oil: to degrade Russia's financial and logistical ability to wage war while limiting broader damage to the global economy. Kyiv must take wins where it can, and a campaign to destroy Russia's oil-refining capacity brings benefits to Ukraine with limited risk.
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www.foreignaffairs.com

Why Ukraine Should Keep Striking Russian Oil Refineries

Washington’s fears about energy markets are misplaced.
www.foreignaffairs.com www.foreignaffairs.com

btw, I was saying the same thing about a month ago https://www.resetera.com/threads/ru...kraine-read-staff-posts.556366/post-121476096
fuel and crude oil are different things

Ukraine has so far concentrated its attacks on Russian oil refineries, not oil fields or crude oil export infrastructure.
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The distinction is important. After oil is extracted from a well, it is transported through pipelines and other infrastructure to refineries, where it is converted into products to be distributed to end users. In 2023, Russia extracted an estimated 10.1 million barrels of oil per day. Of this, around 50 percent was exported to refineries abroad, and the remaining 50 percent was refined domestically, creating products such as gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, and chemical feedstocks. Half these refined products were consumed domestically, with a substantial proportion diverted to fuel the Russian war machine. Russia also sells refined oil products abroad—the country was responsible for around ten percent of the world's seaborne exports in 2023—but most Western countries have already stopped importing refined Russian fuel. The top destinations for Russia's refined oil products are Turkey, China, and Brazil, though Russia has also been selling fuel to North Korea, in violation of UN sanctions, in exchange for munitions.
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Russia's oil storage capacity is limited. When a refinery is destroyed or damaged, therefore, extracted crude oil cannot simply be stocked for later use. This leaves Russian producers with just two options: increasing exports of crude oil or shutting wells and reducing production.
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Both options are painful for Russia, but increasing exports is less so than scaling back extraction. Russia can sell its oil only to select countries, including China, India, and Turkey, whose facilities are equipped to use the specific oil grades produced in Russia. These countries thus have leverage over Russia to buy at lower-than-market prices. Once the oil is refined, however, the final products can be sold internationally—meaning that Russia must pay market price to meet its domestic and military fuel needs.
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If Russia chooses to shut wells instead of increasing exports, the global oil price would indeed rise—the outcome the Biden administration seeks to avoid. But Russia would then face an even sharper increase in the cost of refined products, only with lower export revenues to cushion the blow. It was not surprising, then, when Russia's First Deputy Minister of Energy Pavel Sorokin suggested in March that Moscow would choose the first option and divert more crude oil for export.
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and bump for crude oil price was mostly because tension in Middle East, not because of Russia (+ other factors too, China's economy for example) ↓

www.aa.com.tr

Oil prices up over escalating Middle East tensions, strong demand indicators in China

- However, uncertainty over timing of US Federal Reserve's (Fed) interest rate cuts limited upward pressure - Anadolu Agency
www.aa.com.tr www.aa.com.tr
 
KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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View: https://twitter.com/cepa/status/1788224650369007629

cepa.org

Should Russia Survive Putin?

Whatever happens in the next few years, the West should stay on the sidelines when it comes to Russian state unity.
cepa.org cepa.org
... while the Soviet Union was primed for disintegration — indeed, it was structurally predisposed to disintegration — today's Russia is not. The constituent republics of the USSR, apart from being dominated by their titular ethnicity, had functioning bureaucracies, largely self-contained economic infrastructures, and firmly ensconced local political elites, held together predominantly by the coordinating power of the Communist Party and fear of the KGB. Today's Russia is held together by much more than Putinism, United Russia, and the FSB: Russia's regions are largely not self-sustainable, and local political elites are weak and broadly illegitimate.
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As strong as the centrifugal forces are likely to be when Putin leaves office, then, the centripetal forces are likely to be just as strong, if not stronger. As the battle lines are drawn and uncertainty reigns, Western governments may be tempted, and will certainly be urged, to take sides.
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Some, fearing the loss of control over Russia's nuclear arsenal, as well as the potential for inter-ethnic warfare across 11 time zones, will call for the West to tip the scales in favor of Moscow. Others, perhaps recalling George H.W. Bush's infamous "Chicken Kyiv" speech, will want to seize the opportunity to put an end to Russian imperialism once and for all.

Washington and its allies should resist this temptation, for at least three reasons.
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First, absent direct military involvement, the ability of the West to affect the outcome of such a large and complex political process will be minimal, while the potential to deepen animosities and deprive itself of leverage will be immense.
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Second, the West itself is likely to be divided over how and whether to intervene, precisely at a time when maintaining transatlantic solidarity in the face of uncertainty will be of paramount importance.
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And third, trying to shape the future of Russia — likely in vain, and likely at great cost — will only distract the West from focusing on the critical issues over which it has genuine leverage, such as providing security for Ukraine, and pushing ahead on the next round of European Union enlargement.
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In fact, for as long as the war in Ukraine continues, the conversation about whether Russia can and should survive in its current form is a harmful distraction. For those who fear Russia's disintegration, an unlikely event in any circumstance, it creates an unreasonable reticence to support Ukraine.
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Ephonk

Ephonk

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Spesi

Spesi

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I am a Bird said:
Considering how well his negotiations with Russia went, I'm sure this will be just as good.
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I'm just flabbergasted how he literally learned nothing from that humiliation. With nations like Russia & China it means nothing if you don't present any consequences to the negotiations. Being deeply disappointed might not keep Xi awake at night.
 
Maquiladora

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maabus1999 said:
Eh? There is already forces in country, though most assisting in Kyiv out of embassies. The SCALPS/Shadows for example have experts assisting in country. There were supposedly some trainers in country already at the start of the war to help kick start the first mobilization but far as I know all have moved to Western locations.

A larger training group does make it an "easier" target to target if Russia so chooses though.
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A handful protecting embassies or doing technical assistance and covert assistance is pretty different to a parliamentary approved deployment of troops for training.I think it's a much clearer signal and a much more vulnerable target as Russia is more likely to target Ukrainian training camps than foreign embassies in Kyiv....
 
EagleClaw

EagleClaw

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Dec 31, 2018
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I believe it makes more sense to fly Ukrainian troops in an couple of hours to perfect training grounds inside Europe,
but i understand that sending miitary trainers to Ukraine might have a symbolic impact.
 
KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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www.newsweek.com

Putin's NATO message is landing with Americans

A shrinking minority of Americans believe the alliance is growing its global influence, a new poll has found.
www.newsweek.com www.newsweek.com
New poll results suggest an expanding proportion of Americans do indeed believe that both the U.S. and NATO are weakening on the global stage, though few are interested in Putin's offer of future cooperation.

The results, released by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday, showed that only 23 percent of Americans believe that NATO's influence is growing stronger; a significant drop from 34 percent of respondents who believed the same in 2022.
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www.pewresearch.org

2. Americans’ opinions of NATO

U.S. ratings of NATO have dipped a bit, particularly among Republicans. And 66% say NATO membership benefits the U.S., down slightly since 2022.
www.pewresearch.org www.pewresearch.org
pg_2024.05.08_russia-nato_2_03.png



www.pewresearch.org

1. Views of Ukraine and U.S. involvement with the Russia-Ukraine war

Americans are divided on U.S. aid to Ukraine and its effect. Meanwhile, concerns about Russia defeating and taking over Ukraine have grown.
www.pewresearch.org www.pewresearch.org
pg_2024.05.08_russia-nato_1_03.png

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KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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Koukalaka said:
I saw a fantastic comment somewhere (can't remember where or who unfortunately) that anyone with that much cosmetic surgery isn't starting a nuclear war.
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not just that

paperpaper.ru

Who is “Putin's gerontologist” Vladimir Khavinson?

He promised to extend the lives of his clients to 120 years, but died at 77
paperpaper.ru paperpaper.ru
In St. Petersburg, 77-year-old gerontologist Dr. Vladimir Khavinson was laid to rest. He dedicated his work to anti-aging drugs, promised longevity to President Putin, and planned to extend human life to 120 years.
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earlier, the Project media outlet reported on the president's concern about his health. Journalists found that Vladimir Putin travels with a team of doctors, including a surgical oncologist. According to Project, the president and other members of the Russian political elite are also fond of "velvet antler baths"—a procedure in alternative medicine that uses extract from the antlers of Altai elk.
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not to mention that he aways run away like coward if something bad happens around him
 
EagleClaw

EagleClaw

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Dec 31, 2018
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KastuśKalinoŭski said:
www.newsweek.com

Putin's NATO message is landing with Americans

A shrinking minority of Americans believe the alliance is growing its global influence, a new poll has found.
www.newsweek.com www.newsweek.com


www.pewresearch.org

2. Americans’ opinions of NATO

U.S. ratings of NATO have dipped a bit, particularly among Republicans. And 66% say NATO membership benefits the U.S., down slightly since 2022.
www.pewresearch.org www.pewresearch.org
pg_2024.05.08_russia-nato_2_03.png



www.pewresearch.org

1. Views of Ukraine and U.S. involvement with the Russia-Ukraine war

Americans are divided on U.S. aid to Ukraine and its effect. Meanwhile, concerns about Russia defeating and taking over Ukraine have grown.
www.pewresearch.org www.pewresearch.org
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I believe naming it "Ukraine's war against Russia" could be part of the problem why there is not more public support.
It is "Russia's invasion of Ukraine".


View: https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1783525336027721998


Will it also be "Taiwan's war against China" if ever China invades Taiwan ?
 
DarthWoo

DarthWoo

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Oct 27, 2017
2,699
Just a bit of an aside, but I was wondering if anyone could confirm something I read about the Russian army not using pallets at any level of their logistics. I'm no logistics expert, but having worked in retail, I at least know that moving any remotely large amount of literally anything (that would otherwise fit on a pallet I mean) would be hell without them. They can't really be that dysfunctional?
 
maabus1999

maabus1999

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,238
Maquiladora said:
A handful protecting embassies or doing technical assistance and covert assistance is pretty different to a parliamentary approved deployment of troops for training. I think it's a much clearer signal and a much more vulnerable target as Russia is more likely to target Ukrainian training camps than foreign embassies in Kyiv....
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Doesn't matter as Kyiv isn't going to request them if they can get trained out of country because it is an unnecessary risk to their own troops, not just the NATO ones. Also most of those advisors aren't in the embassy, merely "attached" as the term is. They aren't programming storm shadows in those embassies.
 
KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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"prodigal son"


View: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1788324971397132312
Dmitry Evdokimov, a former convict with a history of two murders, resurfaced in Russian Petrozavodsk after being released early due to a pardon following his participation in the "SMO". Despite his criminal past, which includes killing both his girlfriend and his brother, he returned to the same neighborhood where he committed these crimes. Recently, he was spotted on the canopy of an apartment building brandishing a cleaver under the influence of drugs, causing fear among residents.
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maabus1999

maabus1999

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,238
Sharpeye said:
And with that Oryx list of Russian tanks lost reaches 3000. Still a ways to go before Russia gets to the bottom of the barrel unfortunately, but hopefully Ukraine can keep up those losses up while replacing their own losses through aid this year.
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Remember losses are higher than what is on this list, some cases much higher like artillery. Russia is probably gone through 60-70% of its usable Soviet stock with the current losses, based off these numbers and counting vehicles left in storage bases (though the remainder could have a portion completely unusable as well)
 
kmfdmpig

kmfdmpig

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
19,584
DarthWoo said:
Just a bit of an aside, but I was wondering if anyone could confirm something I read about the Russian army not using pallets at any level of their logistics. I'm no logistics expert, but having worked in retail, I at least know that moving any remotely large amount of literally anything (that would otherwise fit on a pallet I mean) would be hell without them. They can't really be that dysfunctional?
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I hadn't heard that, but in researching it I find things that support what you're saying. This one seems the most credible:

Russian Logistics and Forward Urban Defense in the Baltic States

On 24 February 2022, following a pattern it began in 2008 and continued in 2014, Russia proved once again that it was perfectly willing to start major war in Europe. Beyond the attention paid to its war, Russia has tangentially also pushed Baltic defense back close to the center of NATO’s...
www.armyupress.army.mil
 
KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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amp.cnn.com

Opinion: Russia can lose this war | CNN

Ahead of Victory Day in Russia, Timothy Snyder explores ideas of victory and defeat, and argues that Russia has lost plenty of wars over the years – it can lose in Ukraine, too.
amp.cnn.com amp.cnn.com
On Thursday Russia will celebrate Victory Day, its commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Domestically, this is nostalgia. In the 1970s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev created a cult of victory. Russia under Putin has continued the tradition.

Abroad, this is intimidation. We are meant to think that Russia cannot lose.

And far too many of us, during Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, have believed that. In February 2022, when Russia undertook its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the consensus was that Ukraine would fall within days.
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The notion of an invincible Red Army is propaganda. The Red Army was formidable, but it was also beatable. Of its three most consequential foreign wars, the Red Army lost two.

It was defeated by Poland in 1920. It defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, after nearly collapsing in 1941. (Its win in that instance was part of a larger coalition and with decisive American economic assistance.) Soviet forces were in trouble in Afghanistan immediately after their 1979 invasion and had to withdraw a decade later.
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Russia is not the USSR. Soviet Ukraine was a source of resources and soldiers for the Red Army. In that victory of 1945, Ukrainian soldiers in the Red Army took huge losses — greater than American, British and French losses combined. It was disproportionately Ukrainians who fought their war to Berlin in the uniform of the Red Army.
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Today, Russia is fighting not together with Ukraine but against Ukraine. It is fighting a war of aggression on the territory of another state. And it lacks the American economic support — Lend-Lease — that the Red Army needed to defeat Nazi Germany. In this constellation, there is no particular reason to expect Russia to win. One would expect, instead, that Russia's only chance is to prevent the West from helping Ukraine — by persuading us that its victory is inevitable, so that we don't apply our decisive economic power.
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Today's Russia is a new state. It has existed since 1991. Like Brezhnev before him, Russian President Vladimir Putin rules through nostalgia. He refers to the Soviet and also the Russian imperial past. But the Russian Empire also lost wars. It lost the Crimean War in 1856. It lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. It lost the First World War in 1917. In none of those three cases was Russia able to keep forces in the field for more than about three years.
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In the United States there is great nervousness about a Russian defeat. If something seems impossible, we cannot imagine what could happen next. And so there is a tendency, even among supporters of Ukraine, to think that the best resolution is a tie.

Such thinking is unrealistic. And it reveals, behind the nerves, a strange American conceit.
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No one can guide a war in such a way. And nothing in our prior attempts to influence Russia suggests that we can exercise that kind of influence. Russia and Ukraine are both fighting to win. The questions are: who will win, and with what consequences?
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It is normal for Russia to lose wars. And, in general, this led Russians to reflect and reform. Defeat in Crimea forced an autocracy to end serfdom. Russia's loss to Japan led to an experiment with elections. The Soviet failure in Afghanistan led to Gorbachev's reforms and thus the end of the cold war.
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The peaceful Europe of today consists of powers that lost their last imperial wars and then chose democracy. It is not only possible to lose your last imperial war: it is also good, not only for the world, but for you.
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