Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally Lukoil calling for an end to the war strikes me as a big deal. Russian gas is still very in demand but from what I've seen despite huge discounts no-one is buying Russian oil. Given that's the one sector left it has to be a worry.

[The Brain]

IKEA to temporarely close all its shops in Russia and Belarus.

Finally. Good.

Appparently they only close their IKEA stores, not their "Mega" brand stores, which remain open. And they refuse to condemn the invasion. Guess I won't buy anything from IKEA anytime soon.

[mongers]

Putin has a few cards left in his hand to play:

Are Westerm Europeans willing to be a bit cold this Spring, see some power cuts and accept possible fuel rationing?

One big card he's already playing its the weaponised refugee crisis, from his perspective the more Ukranians who leave the better, that way there are less people who have to be suppressed and terrorised in an occupied Ukraine. 
45 million Ukrainians is a huge task to manage, but if 10-20 million of them have fled to the west then the rump population, including many of the more easily cowered people would be more managable.
And the flipside is Europe has to settle 10-20 million refugees, can anyone see Johnson's Brexit admin willing to take around a million of those desperate people?

The exercise of unrestained brutality in Ukraine serves Putin's aims.

[Savonarola]

Has Tucker Carlson changed his tune or is he still spouting pro Russian gibberish?  My fear is that while all of us recognize this, I am not sure it is accepted across the political divide.

Here's the Ukranian portion from his latest opinion piece on Fox News.

Joe Biden delivered this country's first-ever State of Ukraine address last night. Biden spoke for a little more than an hour before a joint session of Congress. He talked far more about Ukraine and with much greater passion than about any other topic. If that sounds strange for an American president in a speech that's supposed to be about America, it didn't seem weird at all within the context of last night. Biden delivered exactly the speech his audience wanted to hear. Virtually every lawmaker in the room last night from both parties arrived wearing some version of the Ukrainian flag. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy came with both a Ukrainian-themed pocket square and a Ukrainian flag lapel pin. That's about as Ukrainian as you can get. Even the president of Ukraine doesn't do that very often.

What McCarthy conspicuously didn't do was don an American flag pin. No, not at all. And many others went without that, too, because within the context of last night, the American flag was literally irrelevant.

Lots of our leaders feel that way, all of a sudden. At this stage, the full force of America's federal government, the White House, the Congress, the intelligence and defense and law enforcement agencies, all of it has been redirected to avenge the invasion of Ukraine.

Notice the verb - avenge, not defend. Now, ideally, you'd like to think there would be some way to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression that might be worth doing. But at this point, there isn't. It's too late. Joe Biden's deterrence strategy failed. Putin already invaded the country. Short of destroying Ukraine, there is no way to liberate Ukraine by force. All we can do is punish the Russians for what they've already done, and that, Joe Biden told us last night, is exactly what he plans to do.

JOE BIDEN: The ruble has already lost 30% of its value. Russia's stock market has lost 40% of its value, and trading remains suspended. The Russian economy is reeling and Putin alone is the one to blame.

So, the Russian economy is being destroyed, is destroyed, imagine living in a country where the currency drops 30 points in a single day, what would that feel like? Well, 143 million Russians now know. They're much poorer than they were two days ago. Only a relative handful of those Russians had any role in the invasion of Ukraine. Many of them opposed it. But all of them are being hurt as their economy comes apart.

And that's fine because they all deserve it. Michael McFaul, Barack Obama's former ambassador to Moscow, who now teaches at Stanford University, announced today that every single person in Russia, every single one, bears the guilt of the Ukraine invasion. "There are no more innocent, neutral Russians anymore. Everyone has to make a choice, support or oppose this war."

So to restate and be clear, there's no such thing as an innocent Russian, one of our foremost Russia scholars has told us so. Putin may have given the orders to invade Ukraine, but six-year-old girls in St. Petersburg should pay the price for it because they deserve it. Their 80-year-old grandmothers deserve it, too.

In order to fight tyranny, the United States must embrace collective punishment, hurt the children to bring justice. These are our values because Vladimir Putin is a moral monster. Now, these are not traditional Western concepts of justice, but Joe Biden wholeheartedly endorses them, and so does a dominant bipartisan coalition in the United States Congress.

The question is: Is this a wise course? Now we can't say. Far be it from us to suggest thinking through world-changing policies in any way before enacting them. Pausing to reflect, we have learned, is disloyal. Adult moral calculations are treason. Thinking about your own country is a crime. Act now or be denounced. So we're going to withhold judgment on all of this.

But we did notice one question that Joe Biden failed to answer last night or even address. And that is: What's the point of all of this? Putin is bad. No one in America is going to argue with that, but will destroying the entire Russian economy make Putin less bad? Will it force Russian troops to withdraw from Ukraine? And if it will, how exactly will that work? And how long will it take? Or is the plan bigger than that? Is the idea that we can force Vladimir Putin from office entirely? OK. Will that work? And if it does work, what happens to Russia after Vladimir Putin leaves? Would the next Russian president be an improvement over Putin? Or would Russia descend into barbarous chaos like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan did once we overthrew their governments?

Now, you may not care what happens to Russia, but you have to wonder what would become of Russia's enormous nuclear stockpile under those circumstances. Take a moment and think. Are there potentially ways that thousands of unsecured Russian nukes might pose a long-term threat to the United States? Something to think about, not that anyone is.

The immediate goal, again, the bipartisan goal is to turn Russia into a pariah state. Now again, the question isn't whether Vladimir Putin deserves that. It's more than a moral question. The question is how will that work out for us and for the world? American citizens have a right to ask that question.

Start with history. How has that worked with Iran and North Korea? Now that those countries are cut off from the fraternity of civilized nations, are they more or less predictable? Are they more or less dangerous to the United States? Could it be possible that some of these steps in the end turned out to be counterproductive to our interests? That's something to consider.

Keep in mind the very people proposing all of this are the very same people who defunded our police departments and destroyed our schools and tore down the Teddy Roosevelt statue in New York City. They're the ones who armed the Taliban. They're the ones who devalued the US dollar. They're the ones who brought human slavery back to Libya. They're very good at wrecking things. It's what they do. They planned the Iraq War, and they never apologized for it.

So we might to make sure they don't wreck anything else ever again, especially this country. But once again, Joe Biden didn't address any of that last night, he was too deep in his World War II fantasies with himself playing FDR. For all of his moral outrage against Russia, well deserved, though it may be, Biden made no mention of China's role in the invasion of Ukraine, and that's weird.

More than any other country on Earth, China made this invasion possible. China is Russia's most important ally in this war against Ukraine. So you have to ask yourself, as long as everyone's culpable who was involved, why aren't we tanking China's currency? Why aren't we banning Chinese planes from American airspace? Why aren't we confiscating the yachts of Chinese oligarchs? Biden never told us. Maybe some more ask him.

This is toned down quite a bit; earlier Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe, not a real democracy and never had been independent of Russia.  So he's moved from advocacy for the devil to sympathy for the devil; I guess that's an improvement, sort of.

Even at his worst Carlson was never as vile as Steve Bannon:  "Ukraine's not even a country. It's kind of a concept. It's not even a country .. It's just a corrupt area that the Clinton's turned into a colony where they can steal money out of."

[Sheilbh]

Rain - an independent Russian channel that was shut down today by the government - went out with a bang:
https://twitter.com/annavellikok/status/1499402876988248065?s=20&t=N3Z4BTRt6_DKnWMvhhECyQ

Their last broadcast: the Swan Lake performance that Soviet TV aired during the attempted coup against Gorbachev

[Legbiter]

That immense Russian column in the north is still not moving. That's it this is a total failure.  Sure they'll level Ukraine, someone will someday sign a piece of paper but they're in deep shit.

[Josquius]

That immense Russian column in the north is still not moving. That's it this is a total failure.  Sure they'll level Ukraine, someone will someday sign a piece of paper but they're in deep shit.

Why has it stopped?

[Jacob]

That immense Russian column in the north is still not moving. That's it this is a total failure.  Sure they'll level Ukraine, someone will someday sign a piece of paper but they're in deep shit.

Why has it stopped?

There was a post about a bit earlier. Their tires are shit, basically.

I think food and fuel is low as well.

Seems like they didn't intend to send a massive column, but rather that multiple convoys got mashed together and stuck. It's a traffic jam, not a doomstack.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

That immense Russian column in the north is still not moving. That's it this is a total failure.  Sure they'll level Ukraine, someone will someday sign a piece of paper but they're in deep shit.

not sure if true but I've heard they stopped at what is the range of their artillery...

[Razgovory]

That immense Russian column in the north is still not moving. That's it this is a total failure.  Sure they'll level Ukraine, someone will someday sign a piece of paper but they're in deep shit.

Why has it stopped?

There was a post about a bit earlier. Their tires are shit, basically.

I think food and fuel is low as well.

Seems like they didn't intend to send a massive column, but rather that multiple convoys got mashed together and stuck. It's a traffic jam, not a doomstack.

[Legbiter]

Why has it stopped?

Catastrophic supply issues. Putin expected the Ukrainian army to surrender so they're...stuck.

[Jacob]

According to Military Times, the Ukrainians are striking the column: https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/03/02/ukraine-jets-hit-russian-column-russia-has-used-thermobarics-ukraine-military-says/

Ukraine armed forces have been striking that long line of Russian troops heading to Kyiv while the Russians have used thermobaric weapons against Ukrainian cities, the head of Ukraine's defense intelligence agency tells Military Times.

"We are striking the enemy's columns," Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told Military Times in an exclusive interview Wednesday morning. "We burn many columns of the enemy."

The strikes, he said, are being conducted by Ukraine Su-24 and Su-25 fighter jets, artillery and missile barrages.

"My intelligence officers and agents are directing and calling the strikes," he said.

[viper37]

Meanwhile, Russian banks won't be cut off from swift until march 12th as the corrections can't be done until march 8th.

[Admiral Yi]

How tough would it be to get a bunch of foot infantry within Javelin or NLAW range of that road? 

[Berkut]

How tough would it be to get a bunch of foot infantry within Javelin or NLAW range of that road? 

nlaw range would be tough - if you are in NLAW range, you are in small arms range. So the question is really, how tough is it just to get enough infantry in place to attack the column period, with whatever weapons infantry carries?

If you can shoot it with an NLAW, you can shoot it with a machine gun. I suspect the machine gun could do quite a bit of damage as well.

I think the Javelin has much longer range, but still you are looking at getting within a 1000 meters I am sure. EDIT: Looks like Javelin is good out to about 2000m.