Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "TLDR News EU" channel.

@bololollek9245 Rather like Revolutionary France, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. You don't criticize the government openly because you don't know who might turn out to be a government informer. Given Lukashenko barely weathered a populist uprising a couple of years ago (and was saved by Putin's intervention), he cannot be that popular. It's more a case of people begin very guarded about what they say, not about what they truly think.
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1) Losing Tokmak and Melitopol would cut off the land route to Crimea. If Ukraine can then destroy the Kerch Strait bridge and cut all ferry traffic going to Crimea using Neptune missiles, the region becomes completely isolated with few sources of potable water. Ukraine can starve the region to submission, or destroy so many supply dumps that the Russians cannot defend themselves from the Ukrainian forces. That then leaves the Donbass. Losing Crimea could also end up being a major political blow to the current Russian regime, and could lead to Putin's downfall. 2) No, Wagner cannot go to Kyiv, because Ukraine keeps at least 50K troops along the Belarussian border (I suspect it may be their R&R region for units that have left the Donbass front lines). Wagner would run into the exact same issues with supplying its troops that Russia did back in February and March of last year. 3) Acquisition of aircraft will certainly help by giving Ukraine a bigger punch on the front lines than before. However, the Russian S-300 and S-400 systems, plus their other anti-aircraft missile systems, still present a problem. F-16s will still not have the capability of penetrating into Russian-held territory until these systems are neutralized. So, they will help, but Russian AA fire must be completely suppressed for them to have a real effect. Hope this helps answer some of your questions.
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@ThePandafriend Very true. You also forgot to mention that if they are asked to leave, the US will depart (good examples are Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines). Legitimate governments don't have to push the US by force. Russia, on the other hand, if told to leave an area will try to overthrow the government.
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Lukashenko needs Putin. It is only the Russian military and FSB that are keeping him in power. If he loses those things, I doubt he would last 5 years. And unlike most dictators, he knows it.
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Two terms come to mind, FSB and Russian military presence.
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@malakopitouras2786 Sounds nice in theory, but in practice you need governments when you want to organize large projects. Centralized authority of some form is needed to organize the distribution and use of resources. Nor does it protect you from organized states. Ask the peoples who were overrun by organized nations like the Romans, Greeks, Chinese emperors, Zulus, Arabs, French, British, Americans, etc., during their imperial expansion phases.
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@SilisAlin Agreed. But in this case Ukraine is playing a smart game and not expanding a conflict where they are fighting for survival. Given how the Belarus military acted earlier this year, they may conduct "exercises", but I don't think they will invade because the bulk of their people (military included) actually support Ukraine. Turning the other cheek to Belarus' involvement is the best option at this time. Although Ukraine will still keep an eye on what Belarus is doing, just in case.
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Who knows. Depending on what happens, this might come to pass.
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If Russia is thinking about how many times they have been invaded over the last 500 years, perhaps they should look at the histories of Germany, France, Portugal, Czechia, Poland and other European countries and do a comparison. I think they would be rather surprised at how seldom they have been invaded in comparison to their neighbours. The issue is that NATO blocks Russian expansion into the rest of Europe, or as Stalin once complained when complimented on his success on reaching Berlin, said, "Czar Alexander got to Paris".
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It is not just the rain, but the extensive minefields that are holding up Ukraine's attacks. The rain just means that Ukraine has more problems exploiting their gains, it does not prevent them from making gains.
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Looking at the damage at the dam, I would say the dam suffered from hydraulic uplift rather than a planned demolition. If you look at images of the Dnipro Dam from 1941 (deliberate sabotage using 20 tons of TNT) or the Moehne Dam in 1943 (RAF Lancasters dropping 3 ton bouncing bombs), both deliberate acts of sabotage using explosives, there is a large breach to be sure, but the remainder of the dam is intact. Novo Khakovka Dam looks like large sections of the structure have been unseated from its foundations (part of the section on the north bank, the power house, etc.). To me this suggests the dam suffered from a phenomenon called "hydraulic uplift", where water is able to get under the dam itself and allow the pressure of the reservoir to break the dam. By the way, this does not absolve the Russians of guilt. They allowed water in the reservoir to achieve and remain at unprecedentedly high levels. The Ukrainians have never allowed water levels to get that high or remain exceedingly high previously, likely because they knew from other dam collapses this was a recipe for disaster. So, although I think this occurred by accident, Russia still wears this one, and should be called to task for it.
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@gigacanno750 Yes, I noticed the same thing. It's a bot or a troll, because this is identical, word for word, to a comment that was made above.
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@rob5197 It is a matter of degree. A central government can make decisions and coordinate activities that a mass of individual groups cannot. On the other hand, if you have a central government that wants to control and micromanage everything, you have problems. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you need both. You need the flexibility that a non-organized group has, combined with the ability to coordinate and direct actions that a central authority has. If you look at is reasonably, democracies have this mode of operating, as do mixed economies. As with many things, the most serious problems arise at the extremes of the spectrum, in this case chaos and anarchy versus dictatorial order.
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It would siphon off troops from the Donbass front. At least in theory.
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@mnoorkhan Apparently Russia has been recruiting people in Transnistria, but what good that will do is anyone's guess. If by the Dependent States you mean nations that were part of the former USSR, they have said "no" to helping out.
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Yes, but Ukraine is being very smart and not stirring up the pot more than it has to. Besides, they also know the Belarussians are being held captive by their own government and Putin. Why create trouble when you don't have to? Why make yourself out to be an aggressor and pointlessly feed Putin's propaganda machine? At least this way the Ukrainians still have the support of the bulk of Belarus' population. Best to leave sleeping dogs lie.
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One youtuber, Joe Blogs, says that Putin and the government stopped releasing reliable figures for the Russian economy around March 2022. The figures that have been released are extremely questionable. News items, such as reports that convicts are being employed in tank factories, suggest things are not as rosy as the Kremlin tries to paint things. The Russian central bank has been propping up the ruble using their reserves, which may run out between March and May this year. In addition, there was major unrest in Dagestan in September, There are also people from Ingushetia in exile in Turkiye who have made a declaration that they will seek independence from the Russian Federation. Wonder how Putin will react to this declaration over the next couple of days. And will the citizens of Ingushetia react to this declaration?
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In one sense, I doubt Lukashenko had many options. He is only in power because of Putin, and was either facing being replaced or being a compliant puppet. He chose the latter. Do I feel sorry for him? No, he made his bed, now he has to sleep in it. Ugh, I just had a mental image of Lukashenko sleeping with Putin! 😱🤮
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Well, it could be Ukrainian missiles if they were using the old Russian systems. There are a couple of really good videos of Russian missiles turning back shortly after launch and almost taking out their own launchers. When a missile system has a 50% failure rate, anything could happen.
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