Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[mongers]

The odds are towards Xmas I'll probably have to adjust the thread title to " + 2022-23 Invasion " ?

Honestly you should just change it to Russo-Ukrainian war 2014-2020.  The war never stopped, it just slowed down in the middle.

Well that's one argument, but in that case it should be 2014-2023 or opened ended?

But I'm leaning towards keeping it as two time periods as these are rather different conflicts given their scope, intensity and the number of external powers involved.

A more old fashioned option might be to name them the 1st and 2nd Russ-Ukranian wars?

[Threviel]

The evening standard keeps popping up when I search for Ukraine news and they're permanent optimists on things going well for Ukraine...
But they do report in a article today I note that Russia is apparently running out of artillery ammo.
A bit easier to replace than smart weapons one would think but its a wonder. In Russia anyrhing is possible.

Russia has ridiculous amounts of ammo from Soviet times. But being Russia it's at least 40 years old and probably stored horribly bad. So could be true, but probably not.

[Threviel]

Random reading on my part. Apparently the Russian carrier, the laughing stock of the naval world, the one that needed a few tugs to get to Syria and then burned in the dock and went to shit. That one.

In the 90's money were in short supply, so apparently they closed off a few of the lower decks. Just closed them up and let them be. In a ship there's all kinds of electric wires and pipes going around everywhere and a few of the broke down in the shut off decks and with years of neglect the lower decks of the ship has turned into something of a Warhammer 40K space hulk... It's grimdark.

[Legbiter]

Either an American or a Canadian M777 artillery piece in action. Followed by a remarkable hit on a Russian tank, that turret made a decent effort to launch itself into space.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1533877547112480768?cxt=HHwWgICyyZLgtskqAAAA

Also French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers doing a classic shoot and scoot.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1533915170015170565?cxt=HHwWisCyhYvux8kqAAAA

[Jacob]

You could go with "Russo-Ukrainian war 2014 - present".

[Sheilbh]

Also French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers doing a classic shoot and scoot.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1533915170015170565?cxt=HHwWisCyhYvux8kqAAAA

This is why I don't trust those charts showing France has sent basically no military aid. They're sending stuff that's really helpful, but generally pretty quietly.

[Zoupa]

Also French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers doing a classic shoot and scoot.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1533915170015170565?cxt=HHwWisCyhYvux8kqAAAA

This is why I don't trust those charts showing France has sent basically no military aid. They're sending stuff that's really helpful, but generally pretty quietly.

It's another consequence of somehow trying to be a mediator. I really don't understand Macrons obstination on this. It's as if he cannot imagine a world without Russia being a superpower.

It'll come out after the war how much France gave in terms of intel and hardware. I'm sure it'll be pretty good. I just wish Macron would wake up and try to imagine a defeated Russia. It's not science fiction.

[HVC]

I don't know, France seems to glory seeking not to let the world know how much they're contributing. It's why marcon wants to broker peace. Glory to the nation. Don't see them keeping it quiet.

[Zanza]

The EU is supposedly working on two additional measures against Russian oil export that only need a qualified majority, not unanimity: a) a high customs duty on Russian oil to price it out of the market and b) a ban on insurance / re-insurance for tankers docking in Russia. I hope they can pass those.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Also French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers doing a classic shoot and scoot.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1533915170015170565?cxt=HHwWisCyhYvux8kqAAAA

This is why I don't trust those charts showing France has sent basically no military aid. They're sending stuff that's really helpful, but generally pretty quietly.

It's another consequence of somehow trying to be a mediator. I really don't understand Macrons obstination on this. It's as if he cannot imagine a world without Russia being a superpower.

It'll come out after the war how much France gave in terms of intel and hardware. I'm sure it'll be pretty good. I just wish Macron would wake up and try to imagine a defeated Russia. It's not science fiction.

That's because France can't imagine a world where France is not a second tier power

[Josquius]

The EU is supposedly working on two additional measures against Russian oil export that only need a qualified majority, not unanimity: a) a high customs duty on Russian oil to price it out of the market and b) a ban on insurance / re-insurance for tankers docking in Russia. I hope they can pass those.

Sounds nice. Wonder if they could setup something where those Russian customs payments get directed to Ukraine too.

[Sheilbh]

It's another consequence of somehow trying to be a mediator. I really don't understand Macrons obstination on this. It's as if he cannot imagine a world without Russia being a superpower.

It'll come out after the war how much France gave in terms of intel and hardware. I'm sure it'll be pretty good. I just wish Macron would wake up and try to imagine a defeated Russia. It's not science fiction.

I agree on all of that - I think part of it is just "French President saying things French Presidents say". The whole idea of France leading Europe as a third pillar distinct from the US and Russia - and now maybe China - just seems quite deeply set. Macron always seems to me very Gaullist in his style and maybe can't escape that.

The irony of it is, as it was during the cold war, that materially there is no significant difference between European (led by France) policy and the US - it is all at the level of rhetoric where the substantial differences are.

The thing I struggle with with Macron is how much this rhetoric is causing anger, suspicion, outrage in CEE - despite material French support in military gear and intelligence - which undermines the chance of those countries ever wanting to invest in European foreign or defence policy as distinct from US/NATO.

The other point - and I think this is also a contradiction in European thinking on China - is that I don't understand how you can simultaneously say that Putinism is incomopatible with Western liberalism, he's committing war crimes, he invades neighbours etc and it is necessary to bind him into the European/Western security architecture. I think you can have one of those and I don't fully get the thinking by Macron (and as I say I think this also applies to the European position on China as systemic rival who can be bound into our system) to reconcile those two positions.

[The Minsky Moment]

Agree with sheilbh + the long legacy of raison d'etat and the engagement with Russia as a chess piece on the European board.

Two things France always fears:
1) Russian strength
2) Russian weakness

[The Larch]

First Merkel interview since she left office, weighing on Ukraine.

No regrets over handling of Vladimir Putin, says Angela Merkel
Former German chancellor claims her opposition to Ukraine's Nato membership helped country

Angela Merkel has said she feels no regrets for her handling of Vladimir Putin during her time in power, arguing that Russia's president would have perceived a 2008 Nato membership plan for Ukraine that was blocked by her government as a "declaration of war".

The former German chancellor also claimed that an oligarch-run and democratically immature Ukraine would have been less prepared for an invasion then than it is now.

"I would feel very bad if I had said: 'There's no point talking to that man [Putin]", Merkel said in an onstage interview at the Berliner Ensemble theatre on Tuesday night – her first public appearance since leaving office half a year ago.

"It is a great tragedy that it didn't work, but I don't blame myself for trying," she added in an unusually frank answer from a politician who rarely spoke freely while in office.

Asked about whether she regretted opposing the US-led membership action plan for Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, Merkel said: "Ukraine was not the country that we know now. It was a Ukraine that was very split ... even the reformist forces [Yulia] Tymoshenko and [Viktor] Yushchenko were very at odds. That means it was not a country whose democracy was inwardly strengthened." She said Ukraine at the time was "ruled by oligarchs".

From the Russian president's perspective, "it was a declaration of war". While she didn't share Putin's perspective, Merkel said she "knew how he thought" and "didn't want to provoke it further".

She claimed to have blocked Ukraine's route to membership of the military alliance with the country's best interests at heart. "You cannot become a member of Nato from one day to the next," Merkel said. "It's a process, and during this process I knew Putin would have done something to Ukraine that would not have been good for it."

The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were signed by then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko to reach a political settlement in east Ukraine, but have since been criticised for forcing concessions while the country was militarily on the back foot.

Merkel defended the accords, saying they bought Ukraine time. "It calmed down the matter and bought Ukraine time to develop into the country that it has become now."

She praised president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for his wartime leadership, saying he represented a new Ukraine.

The interview with Der Spiegel journalist Alexander Osang began with Merkel talking about how she had spent her first weeks out of office going for solitary walks by the Baltic Sea, wearing a hoodie so as not to be recognised by passersby, and listening to an audiobook of William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

But the conversation inevitably turned to the war in Ukraine, and whether Germany's alleged leniency towards the Kremlin had emboldened Putin. Merkel said she felt the geopolitical problems created by the collapse of the Soviet Union had been present throughout her 16 years in power. "It wasn't possible to properly end the cold war ... the Russia question always remained."

Merkel said she had started to take seriously the possibility of a looming invasion in her last few weeks in office, when she attended the G20 summit in Rome while Olaf Scholz's successor government was still in the process of being formed.

"There were hints and we talked about it a lot," the 67-year-old said. "I realised that Putin had finished with the Minsk process."

While Merkel condemned Russia's war of aggression in clear terms, she also seemed to suggest some blame needed to be apportioned to the west.

"What happened is a great mistake on Russia's behalf ... an objective break with all rules of international law that allow us to coexist in Europe in peace. If we started to go through one century after another arguing which territory belongs to whom, then we would be at war non-stop.

"I don't share the opinion of Mr Putin, to make that very clear. But we didn't manage to create a security architecture that could have prevented this [war in Ukraine]. And we should think about that too."

She rejected the criticism that Germany under her leadership had fallen for an illusion that a militarily aggressive Russia could be democratised by expanding trade links with the west.

"I didn't believe that Putin could be changed through trade," Merkel said. But she said her belief was that if political cooperation was impossible, it was sensible to at least have some economic connections with Moscow.

Merkel's defence of expanding economic ties with Russia seemed at odds with her claiming to have warned other politicians that Putin felt animosity towards the entire western model of democracy, and that he wanted to "destroy Europe".

The former leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) conceded that European countries had failed to spend sufficiently on their militaries, even though she rejected criticism that the German army had fallen into disarray under her watch.

"What should we have enforced more strongly?" she asked rhetorically when reviewing the decisions of her last two terms in office. "It [the military] is the only language that Putin understands. He saw that we, and not just Germany but others too, no longer had the strike power of the cold war."

[Darth Wagtaros]

Random reading on my part. Apparently the Russian carrier, the laughing stock of the naval world, the one that needed a few tugs to get to Syria and then burned in the dock and went to shit. That one.

In the 90's money were in short supply, so apparently they closed off a few of the lower decks. Just closed them up and let them be. In a ship there's all kinds of electric wires and pipes going around everywhere and a few of the broke down in the shut off decks and with years of neglect the lower decks of the ship has turned into something of a Warhammer 40K space hulk... It's grimdark.

They sold another one to a Chinese magnate to be turned into a floating casino as I recall.