News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]

@Bobko

Just tanks - Western analysts count 3,500 remaining in storage. This is data from this week. Our plants are able to restore approx 120 of these per month, and produce 20-30 new ones.

Artillery systems in storage... is simply a crazy number. In excess of 12,000+ units (including SPA and towed).

Meanwhile, Ukraine is glorying in the fact that it destroyed 250+ vehicles in the defense of Avdeevka.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I'm tired of posting stuff like that. Some CMS Neuf or Jon will make some joke in response, about a snail's speed of advance - CIA director be damned.


If approved in timely fashion, and if at least certain supplies can be made immediately available... it may help Ukraine stall the speed of advance around the Donetsk urban agglomeration.

However, in the big picture - $60B is a drop in the ocean when it comes to defeating Russia.

Ukraine is itself no slouch, inheriting a vast arsenal of weaponry. However, Russia still has the majority of an arsenal which was stockpiled by a superpower over decades. Soviet procurement always exceeded American procurement, from the 1960s on. This, despite a larger American budget. Modern Russia continues this trend, where we buy a disproportional amount of equipment, in comparison to our relatively small budget. America meanwhile has better VA benefits, but also has to pay to maintain hundreds of military bases around the world. They also have to deal with price gouging Raytheon and Boeing, while we deal with companies owned by the government.

Today, America has the world's largest defense budget - as everyone knows. But pre-1991 there were periods where Soviet expenditure on defense exceeded that of America. Look at the chart below.

Let's assume that much of it is rusted and unusable. Say half.

Now do the very crude math on what amount of investment is needed to digest the remaining half. Will $60B be enough to "digest" trillions of dollars of accumulated investment? I think any person with some math ability will say... NO.

• 
  
  

Off-Topic / What's your hobby? [158]


Are these published?

Could you perhaps DM the titles (if you're afraid of losing your wider anonymity)?

In any case - congrats!

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I suppose I would not be hurting myself too much if I said "not a civilian in the strict sense of the word".

No affiliation with state security. No affiliation with any kind of security of any kind, in fact, governmental or commercial.

Rather, a more bird's eye view. This experience in understanding Russia, I suppose, has equipped me to understand other places. Like I said - we all carry the same blueprint within. North Nigeria/Udmurtia and God's Own Country are not as different as people may think.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]

@mafketis

Rest assured dearest Mafketis... we will extract ourselves from the current morass.

If you refuse to treat us as equals, claiming we did not do the homework of the West, then we will show you who has work left to be done.

Our souls are more pure, our intentions more clear.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


This is profound. Have to think on this.


What do you think we have been in search for since 1991?

We had not been successful through our own efforts, until our enemies started helping us define who we are.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]

@mafketis

Russia is a traumatized country, almost more than any other.

My generation was raised by a generation of parents who grew up with completely autistic war-era parents. Most of our parents had either one parent missing, or were total orphans.

Civil War, Collectivization, purges, and world wars have raped my country. Add to this revolutions. Then abject poverty, and post-1991 social turmoil.

When you stop to appreciate the fact that we are still here - it's nothing short of a miracle, and testament to our innate strength.

The West never engaged with us as equals, and instead treated us beggars (but without ever offering meaningful help as it did to others).

Everything Russia does, can be understood - if you wanted to.

You seem to understand Russia, but at the same time spew toxic vitriol. What gives?

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Again - not bad.

You do seem to understand Russia somewhat better than the average civilian. Which makes me all the more puzzled at why you give us so much grief?

News / Will Poland as a NATO member be drawn into the Israel/Iran war ? [106]


You're a funny guy - I gotta give you that.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Look at this forum!

Velund, Kostya and I could not be more different.

At the same time, amongst the Germans and British it's an amen chorus. Not a millimeter of daylight between these fellas.

Russians are among the most astute political observers in the world :)

Just because we don't have much of domestic politics for the moment (there is a war going on), doesn't mean we're not able to parse the goings on in other countries.

As John Donne said:

"No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main."

That is, every man carries within himself the same blueprint that exists within every other man. This allows us to understand your hearts) Orcs though we may be.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]

@cms neuf

East - West
Poor - Rich
Immigrant - Native
Far Left - Far Right
Brussels - Berlin
Doves - Hawks

And so on, and so forth.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


You are saying you will finance an insurgency in Russia? Really?

If you really believe we control the AfD, the Republican Party, Konfa, Front Nationale, etc - then it is very foolish of you to even think about such things.

You'll get a civil war in Germany before you get one in Russia. God knows there are enough divisions in German society that one could exploit.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Yes, they seemingly read Ukraine better than Putin, who had sent soldiers into Ukraine with parade uniforms.

Now that the "easy" way has completely discredited itself, it's back to the true and tested "hard" way.

Law / The right to own guns: would you support such legislation in Poland? [2734]


If only. In 1917, the Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party (Bolsheviks) - numbered 240,000 members. That is, approximately 1/8th of one percent.

They numbered even less than the misnamed "Mensheviks".

It will be forever a mystery how a few thousand as*holes managed to overthrow the largest land empire on the planet.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I think the reason we were hitting substations and transformers during the Winter of '22-'23 is because:

1) We didn't want to lose points with the Ukrainian population by plunging them into cold and darkness (this season's attacks only came after the winter had ended, and the problems they'll have this coming winter will be squarely blamed on their own government instead of us).

2) We hoped to capture those places intact, like we did with the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (the largest in Europe), and the Uglegorsk Thermal Power Plant (also one of the largest in Europe).

3) The main focus was on disabling Ukraine's rolling stock (most Ukrainian railways are electrified). By disrupting rail traffic, the hope was that it would create difficulties in supplying the front in the East.

In the end, the trouble begins with the hope of winning Ukrainian "hearts and minds". As it turned out, it didn't matter what Ukrainians thought about us, so long as their criminal government remained in place.

At the same time, there have been a great many people on the Russian side that have been advocating from Day 1 that we should:

1) Strike the Presidential Administration, Ministry of Defense, Main Defense Intelligence directorate, and the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine.

2) Disable all power plants, with the exception of nuclear ones (for fear of causing radioactive fallout).

3) Destroy bridges across the Dnieper.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I don't think Belarus, or Kazakhstan, or South Africa... want nukes today. All three countries also had nukes.

Kazakhstan had the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world, after Russia, US, and Ukraine.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Russia is a federation, you know, like Canada, like the United States...

In the US, the federal government sometimes comes in and assists with disaster relief. However, most times it's up to the states to deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster.

There's also the US Army Corp of Engineers, which can come to the assistance of states, but not always.

It's the same in Russia.

I think it's you that treats Putin like a god king, who has eyes everywhere, and is responsible for each and every soul.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Putin has been proven right, time and time again. Putin has your number. He read you like school children.

The man is a genius when it comes to seeing through the West's glitzy facade, and into its rotten core.

Even I can admit, that I thought he had a few screws loose... but now he seems like one of the few sane people around.


Ehrm... what?!

No reason to hold back, except that they seem to lose a huge power plant for every little drone they crash into a refinery. Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken said as much.

They explicitly said "Ukraine would be better served by focusing on purely military targets, in part due to potential Russian retaliation against critical infrastructure".

Ukraine leaves Russia with 15% less diesel fuel, but now has 50% less power generating capacity. How is that supposed to work?

You know as well as I do, that we never hit their power plants until they started hitting our refineries. This is despite the fact that America begins every bombing campaign by turning off the lights in a country. For two years we were patient and... dare I say it - merciful.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


The hardest thing to do, sometimes, is to admit that you were wrong.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I also doubt that half a trillion dollars is anywhere close to enough for Ukraine to win this war.

One of your Senators, this guy named JD Vance - recently wrote an Op Ed on the subject for the NYTimes.

A quote from the essay:

"The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong. This $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine's favor. But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war."

Smart guy, this Vance. I enjoyed reading his book, A Hillbilly Elegy, and now I enjoy reading his essays and listening to him on the Senate floor.

• 
  
  

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I like your analogy more. Very nice.


Small problem... you cannot stand each other's guts.

France was engaged in full on Russophilia about a year ago (seems like an eternity), when it felt blindsided by the UK and US' sneaky maneuver with Australian nuclear submarines. Not being invited into AUKUS, despite being a Pacific country in its own right, further added to the ill feeling.

Germany loathes the current France, because of its constant grandstanding at German expense. Macron's rapid about-turn on Russia, where he went from being a dove to a hawk, is causing serious frustration in Berlin. Despite contributing only a pittance towards Ukraine's defense, France now wants to take on the mantle of the leader, and even muses out loud on the subject of Western troops in Ukraine. I can't imagine what Scholz thinks about him.

Finally - Britain itself. Your country is an absolute joke, in both Brussels and Washington. The recent publishing of Liz Truss' memoir, has made fresh again all the recent foibles of your government. People have lost count of how many times your government has collapsed in the last few years. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak - am I forgetting anyone? What a parade of wunderkinds that was!

The main water utility company in your country is bankrupt (Thames Water). You've spent a decade trying to build 140 miles of high speed rail, and have now all but abandoned the project (HS2). Your economy is in a recession (among the worst performers in the whole developed world).

You are telling me you're going to go and pour half a trillion dollars into ensuring Ukraine wins?

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


I think that it is highly foolish to assume that a war's progress can only take place in linear fashion.

Most conflicts from history teach us that wars can shift from a seeming stalemate to an unexpected collapse - with astonishing speed. A careful observer might have been able to identify the cracks in the edifice, but for most other observers it nearly always comes as a surprise.

No need to go far back in history, let's look instead at the 20th and 21st century.

1) Russia had a rough start in WW1, but by the Fall of 1916, had largely regained its strength. Then, it staged the Brusilov Offensive. According to historian John Keegan, "the Brusilov Offensive was, on the scale by which success was measured in the foot-by-foot fighting of the First World War, the greatest victory seen on any front since the trench lines had been dug on the Aisne two years before". In that offensive Russia liberated all of Eastern Galicia and Northern Bukovina.

None of it mattered, because a few months later the February Revolution happened, and everything went to sh*t. Imagine the surprise of people tracking events that year.

2) America spent years convincing everyone with weekly "kill counts" that soon there would not be any NVA left to fight for Communism in Vietnam. America had essentially not lost a single critical battle of that war - emerging largely unscathed even from the Tet Offensive. However, when it pulled its support, things collapsed so quickly that people had to be lifted by helicopter from the roof of the US embassy.

3) Even as American forces prepared to depart Afghanistan, the Taliban were still being contained to peripheral provinces, and their advances were claimed as "gradual" and "not operationally threatening". Fast forward a few weeks, and people are grabbing onto the chassises of US cargo planes as they take off.

War is not a computer game. It's more like building a house. It may take some time to pour the concrete, and then more time to let it settle. But once the foundation is in place, then work can begin in earnest.

Off-Topic / 75 Years of Israel and the War - part 2 [363]


Sometimes, it's helpful to talk in the categories of national characteristics.

However, when you are talking about the conversation between a Polish individual and Russian individual - it would be very stupid indeed to assume that the Russian by default assumes the position of a domineering bully, and the Pole that of a plucky upstart.

The Russian might be shy and unsure of himself, and the Pole charming and confident. It could be the reverse, or a thousand other ways.

Please don't inject diplomatic history into personal relations.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Does Israel pay you?

What makes you so deliriously happy about them destroying Iran?

Just an honest question in an attempt to understand your interest.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Funny you don't do that. Even America does it. The French too, with their Foreign Legion.

uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-military-service#:~:text=If%20you%20served%20honorably%20in,not%20apply%20or%20are%20reduced.

What is better, to be German by blood, or German because you spilt blood for Germany?

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Most Russians sit on their fat ass at home, and open the newspaper once a week to read about the movements of the frontlines.

These guys are risking their skin, in exchange for a passport.

They are more Russian in my eyes, than civilian Russians. Anybody that says otherwise, should get punched straight in the face.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]

@BB

Didn't you see Maf and Co. giving me sh*t because there are Nepalis, Indians, and Sudanese fighting in our army for the promise of a passport?

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


This gives me absolutely no joy.


Again, you show some lack of knowledge.

Until recently, the number two emigration destination in the world after the United States, was... Russia. Receiving at some points approximately 2M people per year. More than Germany.

We receive more immigrants than China, India, Brazil and Indonesia combined. Haha!

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-the-worlds-second-largest-immigration-haven-11053

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]

@Bratwurst Boy

I thought you knew.

Here, read something from Harvard's Davis Center:

daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/russia-west-and-world-majority

Also, there are thousands of other articles regarding how the West has self isolated through its stance on Russia.

Simply, nobody else sees this war the same way you see it.

The world does not have amnesia. They remember how you treated country A, B, C, and D worse than we treat Ukraine. That's why nobody believes your crocodile tears over the dead children of Ukraine.

News / Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 10 [2062]


Are you talking to me?