Nothing shows how bought out the Republicans are to Russia more than the statement on how they didn’t want to send weapons to perpetuate war. That’s all these assholes want to ever do. The one time they don’t and it’s for daddy Putin. Half the issues with populism in the US seem to stem from the level of destructive populism Russia enjoys.
They wanted to stay in Afghanistan even after 20 years but 2 years of Ukraine is too much.
People just keep parroting this nonsense about money being allocated to Ukraine being the problem when the actual problem is lack of industrial capacity in the west to produce weapons and ammunition at the rate they’re being consumed. The west has now largely run through the existing stockpiles, and lacks the capacity to produce more in time. Mainstream western media now openly admits this https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners
Allocating more funds for Ukraine isn’t magically going to make stuff like artillery shells appear out of thin air.
That’s interesting. In one breath The Guardian is saying money but I guess what you’re showing me is The Guardian indicating it’s more of a production issue. I guess I could read the new link you’re sharing but I’m going to guess it doesn’t really cover how Russia is outpacing the western world.
The whole thesis of the article is basically that western private industry driven industrial complex can’t compete with Russian state driven industry because it’s not profitable for companies to do so. Russia was able to do things like plan for surge capacity and to keep large mothballed factories ready for use even though it didn’t make financial sense to do so. Western military defence contractors are not willing to do this because it affects the bottom line negatively.
Furthermore, as it becomes increasingly evident that Russia is winning the war and the whole thing isn’t going to last that much longer, the companies have zero incentive to invest into building large new facilities that will only be used for a short time.
This war is basically invalidating the whole free market model.
So basically another version of guerilla warfare, right? The US is trash at guerilla warfare. Thinking Afghanistan and Vietnam, off the top of my head. We don’t even fuck with Central America on the ground. Just economically. It sounds like Russia’s figured out a way to fight outside of the free market … which is honestly funny as fuck when I think about how shitty the defense contractors in the US are for perpetuating death for cash. And here’s Putin, perpetuating death for lesser.
The idea of running some sort of an insurgency has been floated around a lot. I agree that it’s a dumb idea and I imagine it will backfire spectacularly because Ukrainian nationalists will be resentful of the west when the war is lost. They will blame the west for not full supporting Ukraine and for using them as a battering ram against Russia. Europe might end up seeing a sharp rise in terrorism in the near future. Also worth remembering that a lot of the weapons sent to Ukraine ended up on the black market, and likely in the hands of far right cells across Europe.
Winning the war, that’s just fantasies. Even now when Ukraine can’t shoot close to what they need the Russians can’t make any remotely decisive offensives. They just don’t have the capability for that. Best they can hope for is to keep what they have gained and mine the hell out of all ground in-between the lines lol
I get that you couldn’t be bothered to read the article, but to comment on a thread and not even read the headline. Liberal brain rot is something else.
They are winning the war tho, they’ve been destroying Ukraine military capabilities, creating buffer zones between russia - ukraine and even developing economic alliances with the rest of the world through BRICS. Meanwhile Ukraine economy gets worse by the day, same for Europe.
The Russians don’t need to make decisive offensives because those are very costly as Ukraine discovered last summer. What the Russians are doing is a slow push of attrition all across the front using their superior artillery and air force power. Ukraine and the west are very clearly not able to keep up with that. Now we’re already starting to see the signs of the Ukrainian army breaking under pressure with the loss of Avdevka being a prime example of that.
Not really though? You’re not taking several other factors outside the actual battlefield in consideration with that arguing. Important things to consider if you’re aiming for grinding your opponent down is for how long you can keep up. Both economically and with your citizens. Now Russia has the benefit of not needing to adhere to its populations will to the same extent as Ukraine but there will be a point where the economic suffering of the Russians will reach a point where they demand change, just like in 1917.
And the ukrainans has shown time and again how they manage to beat the Russians without having the same numbers of tanks and guns. I mean just look at Ukraines fleet, they have none but are still winning the war to sea? What they consider the main hindrance for actually succeeding with their offensives is the lack of air support, so even if those F-16’s never get delivered the Russians can’t make decisive victories and are left with hoping for a frozen conflict, and that is not winning a war.
Now imagine if the west actually starts to deliver the arms Ukraine begs for. That will be the end of Russia’s occupation.
If you bother reading the article I linked in this very thread, it answers all those questions for you. The Ukrainians also have not shown anything of the sort. They’ve literally lost every engagement so far.
Well allocating more funds for Ukraine is kinda the solution. The issue is that, even now, arms spending is not that hot. And the arms industry are “afraid” to scale up production if they don’t have long term contracts. Aka they want to profit as much as they can. So allocating funds and signing large long scale contracts will make the arms industries ramp up their production, solving the ammunition scarcity and so on.
Allocating funds is not the solution when you lack industrial capacity to convert those funds into actual weapons and ammunition. Here’s what actually happens in a scenario where you allocate funds and supply of a commodity is limited:
In October, NATO’s senior military officer, Adm. Rob Bauer, said that the price for one 155mm shell had risen from 2,000 euros ($2,171) at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to 8,000 euros ($8,489.60).
The reasoning is that arms manufacturers are not willing to “take the risk” with expanding their industrial capacity, hence their demand for long term contracts. When they start supplying the war will end and their profits will diminish.
Exactly, they’re taking all the chances to earn more money on the war.
So far, there’s been very little actual expansion of military production. There’s been a bit in the US and practically none in the EU. The reality is that even if companies committed to this, it can’t be done overnight. You need trained workers skilled in trades, you need to build factories, you need secure supply chains, and so on. All of that takes years to implement. Real life isn’t like video games.
Yeah lol. Our ammunition manufacturer could potentially triple their output with a small additional building, but they “lack the economy” to do so. Other arms manufacturers here gives the same reason. The issue is apparently not labour but profit and as you said, supply chains. They European shells manufacturing takes place in several different countries and they have issues cooperating. At least the explosives aren’t scare as that would make it by far more difficult to solve
😂
Historically the free-market has never attempted to do anything except maximize profit. The way the contracting system works in the Us, you never have to actual produce anything to get paid, all you have to do create a shell company that will produce the thing you are contracted to produce. When the shell company can’t produce the thing, you blame it on the suppliers of the shell company, and then you pocket the contract money. At no point would shells ever be produced.
Haha indeed. The whole point of capitalism and the free market is to maximize profits. Seeing increased prices for shells is neither surprising since an increased demand mean higher prices.
That wouldn’t work in the EU though, doesn’t matter if your supply company can’t deliver, you still have the responsibility to deliver and if you don’t you’re liable and have to pay back.
This is how proxy wars go. The Republicans aren’t bought out by Russia. The USA uses proxies for specific strategic goals. When the goal is achieved or becomes untenable, they cut off the proxy. That’s just how it goes.
To avoid showing voters the realpolitik they need some plausible reasons for cutting off the proxy. Usually it’s a combination of fiscal responsibility noise and isolationist noise. This is no different.
The USA was provoking Russia. Russia got provoked. The USA activated some sleeper cells, those cells got neutralized. The USA wanted to see Russian capabilities, they got what they could, including intel on hypersonic missile performance, but I don’t know if they got what they wanted.
And then multiple fronts got opened up against the West (Niger, Palestine, etc) and threat escalations emerged in unexpected locations (Iranian missiles im Venezuela). And it’s become clear the West can’t produce the war machine it needs for the conflicts that are coming. So, it’s time to cut off the proxy. Russia doesn’t have the means to occupy Ukraine. The USA is not worried about Russian expansion, so there’s no more reason to be there, except of course the rhetorical reasons that were used to mask the proxy nature of the conflict in the first place (russophobia, anti-communism, moral posturing, etc). So, to control the domestic mood, the Republicans get to play their part as dirt bags, make a bunch of rhetorical noise about why we can’t fund them anymore, and psyops adds some Russiagate flavor through networks of influence to mask the reality: the proxy has outlived its usefulness and the USA is cutting them off.
Not from the US or Europe, but I kept hearing news about Ukraine countering Russia? What just happened?
They realized fighting a war of artillery and attrition against Russia is a bad idea
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You have probably been reading propaganda. Russia has been clearly winning for over a year, and all indications are that time and attrition is on Russia’s side as well. This was quite obvious and clear from the start to anyone familiar with the history of wars involving Russia versus Europe; Russia has massive resources to tap into and an extremely educated population with extensive military and logistic legacy knowledge from the Soviet Union, which was the world superpower militarily in terms of land wars on the Eurasian continent. Russia is also a handful of kilometers from the frontline and capable of massive standardized domestic production of arms - Ukraine is getting a hodgepodge of expiring arms from all over the world in an uncoordinated piecemeal fashion. Of course Russia’s system of war is better. It’s also the soviet advantage in WW2, logistics and industrial production.
Pro-Ukrainian propaganda has been flooded through everywhere in the Western media world, so it’s likely all you have been exposed to. I recommend dabbling in Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern diplomatic and news sources to get a wider picture of what actually is going on. Ukraine is never getting back Donbas or Crimea, and they will be lucky to get out of this with Kharkiv or Odessa
Massive swell of people to make any progress to have something to campaign with for Putin’s re-election. Ukraine has been generally running low on artillery and can’t fully capitalize on countering large unit offenses. The Ukrainians have a lot of western equipment but are low on funds to supply them.
The average age of Ukraine’s army shot up by almost 10 years. They have depleted their troop count, a tragic example of killing off all the military aged males through war.
You can’t reload Western equipment with funds, and the West’s ammunition production capacity has proven to be lacking compared to Russia’s.
Tbf, Russia has been sourcing ammunition from North Korea.
Karma for the US constantly treating NK like shit for the gall of existing. Their ideology is literally “leave me alone and i’ll leave you alone” but that wasn’t enough apparently, they had to slam them with murderous sanctions and constant warmongering propaganda.
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and on top of sourcing ammunition from DPRK, Russia now has a massive advantage over the west in being able to produce it domestically as well https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners
Hahahahaha, good joke. Well, I suppose it’s true, if you think of rusty nails and pellets as being “ammunition”.
Russia finally admitted they were losing.
“Why won’t Russia just admit they’re losing already?!”
But you see, a bazillion Russians were killed during meat wave assaults with nothing but shovels to take this city that only has symbolic significance.
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Are ya winning son?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from the city in the industrial Donbas region to avoid encirclement, the army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday, adding that he had acted to “preserve the lives and health of servicemen”, stabilise the situation and move troops to more favourable defence lines.
The capture of Avdiivka gives Russia full control of the area surrounding Donetsk, a large Ukrainian city that was seized by Russian proxy forces in 2014, and comes as the second anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears.
The Ukrainian army had struggled on the frontline around Avdiivka in recent months during one of the most intense battles of the war, which left the city almost destroyed and caused nearly all of the more than 30,000 prewar population to leave.
The US president, Joe Biden, had warned that the city might fall to Russia due to weapons shortages exacerbated by months of Republican congressional opposition to a new US funding package for the Ukrainian military.
After the failure of Ukraine to pierce Russian lines last year, Moscow has been trying to grind down Ukrainian forces just as Kyiv weighs up a major new mobilisation and Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appointed a new commander to run the war.
It holds particular symbolism for Russia as it was briefly taken in 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists who seized a swathe of eastern Ukraine but was recaptured by Ukrainian troops who built extensive fortifications.
The original article contains 451 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
As usual, mods remove replies calling attention to discussion manipulation by a specific nationality mentioned in the post.
The votes & comments are organic. You’re just used to the voting patterns & conversations of imperial core social media platforms. Once you step outside that bubble, you may find that opinions genuinely differ.
Concerning the #BlueAnon conspiracy theory in particular:
Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away
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MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If by “core” you mean “civilized world”, yes.
So you’re just going to openly declare your imperial chauvinism like Josep Borell did?
Short Yellow Parenti clip: Not Underdeveloped but Overexploited
I’m going to declare that positioning oneself against western civilization as if a moral guardian, yet embracing cancerous regimes like NK, Chinese dictatorship or Russian oligarchic dictatorship, is the hallmark of a moron that is working against Marxist interests.
Should you ever apply for a Lemmygrad account, please include a link to your comment.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Not Underdeveloped but Overexploited
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
