Comments by "Sean Cidy" (@seancidy6008) on "Anders Puck Nielsen" channel.

  1. That sounds like a call for enforcing conformity. Like the Dems did.
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  2. In 1994 Mearsheimer published an article in which he opined that Ukraine would need their own nuclear deterrent to Russia. You can judge for yourself how 'pro Russian' his' nonsense' analyses was
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  3. ​ @anderstorger3211  Denmark has the most economically equal population of any country in the world America's population is extremely unequal. The political polarisation is something to do with these facts IMO.
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  4.  @rmdomainer9042  The Ukrainian general staff who authorized the cross border raids (one of which came within striking distance of a thermonuclear repository) must be very pleased with the Russian reaction. They will be indubitably be getting a congratulatory phone call from Zelensky requesting more of the same, eh?
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  5. Ukrainian anticipation of the reaction to their raids is not discussed. It almost seems like he is saying Ukraine does not need plans, because can rely on Russia to react in a way counterproductive to the interests of the Russian army.
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  6. So the fighting to take Bakhmut has stopped now that Wagner is no longer a worry?
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  7. We don't know what the ratio of attrition is but Russia mounting a another Bakhmut type operation suggest that they are willing to accept whatever that ratio is because there are a lot of casualties in this stalemate, which is purely positional. As it would reduce consumption of human resources and arms if running low on them, I surmise that Russia is not running out of men, missiles, or shells in the foreseeable future. America seems to be happy with Russia obtaining a limited victory
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  8. He understands the American people.
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  9. But at the end of the day Soviet equipment could be incorporated into Russia adaptations on the battlefield.
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  10. What Anders seems to be saying is the logistics determine the strategy
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  11.  @kiheiarima6164  Most Americans who voted disagree with you.
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  12.  @ayo8323  Anders does have areas in which he is the go to guy, but he cannot be an authority on everything.
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  13.  @duncansmith7576  Nah, Russia lacks the technology to even properly exploit its own oil and shale reserves. The massive investment required to develop a lithium mining industry is completely beyond Russia
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  14.  @squireson  When has he ever given the Russians credit for doing anything right? More than once (eg the Kremlin dome flagpole strike), he has said something cannot be a Russian false flag because the Russians are not competent enough to carry out such an operation. Or even focus the camera equipment to film it.
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  15. Not in Russia it isn't. Historically, democracy is not so much unknown as uncomprehended in Russia. As for whether the majority supports Putin, you are a naval expert. Zelensky has become more popular as a war leader; both boats rise in that tide. Putin felt secure enough to hold an election during a war.
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  16.  @jasft9746  He is genuinely popular among Russians, and now he can announce some low cost territorial gains and boost morale. The cross border raids were never going to discredit him, and have backfired spectacularly.
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  17. Pretty much as one might have expected.
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  18. Russia is most unlikely to use them because nukes are for those losing conventionally.
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  19. He is constrained, he cannot be positive about anything Russia is doing. Not that he wants to say the Russians are managing anything well, but he couldn't anyway.
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  20.  @garethamery3167  It is very clear to me, as it was intended to be, which war Anders is talking about, and which platform. It just so happens that Denmark was instrumental in getting newly independent Ukraine involved in peacekeeping and other military missions all across the globe, and Denmark did that in order to speed Ukraine's path to Nato membership.
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  21. Anders seems to genuinely believe Ukraine will win this way Not 'can' in theory but actually will. What makes him think so?
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  22. In WW2 the German army overperformed massively, and that was the problem. The Russian army is far worse than anyone expected. So Europe can quite easily defend itself; they just don't want to spend the money.
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  23.  @Soupertrouper  Thirty years ago Mearsheimer told Ukraine they would need their own nuclear weapons to deter Russia bullying.
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  24. Bakhmut was an extremely long battle with different stages in which the focus and methods altered, at least on the Russian side, so it is not amenable to a single encompassing narrative. We are not talking about Hostomel airport
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  25. The US's reactions seem calibrated more to keep Russia from panicking that help Ukraine to win in a meaningful sense.
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  26.  @balaclavabob001 The Chindit raids were followed by, and may well have been caused by, the Japanese trying the same trick, just as staff officers warned Wavell it might. Ukrainian Special Forces command orchestrating the Belgorod incursions, especially the last one that got uncomfortably close to a non conventional depot, ought to have predicted there would be a response. Anders seems to be saying this, like everything they do, has predictably gone wrong for Russia and Ukraine could (and will continue to be able to) count on that always happening.
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  27. If European countries are not willing to spend 5% on their own defence then why should US taxpayers foot that bill? Free ride is over.
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  28. "What Russia lacks more than anything else is soldiers, and it cannot afford lose people at the rate it has since the beginning of the war." So we are told but then we were told they could not afford to start the war, yet they proceeded to do just that. Russia has no other invasions in hand apart from the one of Ukraine so I suspect Russia is not going to worry about losing troops. In fact, soldiers are the one thing that the Ukrainians are not going to be given by the West, so wring down Ukrainian manpower is a viable strategy for Russia even if the Russians have to accept an unfavorable kill ratio.
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  29.  @julianbrelsford  What the Russian are mainly doing all along the line now is a scaled up version of what Ukraine was doing in Bakhmut, according to Anders, eh?
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  30. Does everything have to be about limitless Western support for Ukraine or the lack of it?
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  31.  AndyWoohoo666  If Ukraine had them now it would use them. 'Nuff said.
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  32.  @ciarandoyle4349  Russia built trenches and laid mines opposite Kharkiv. That was planning for a defensive contingency. The Ukrainians seem to have not dug in, and so lacked proper trenches, which explains why they had to fall back .
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  33.  @nozhki-busha  Is the Ukrainian defence line protecting Kharkiv so ideally placed and well fortified that they are sending good units as reinforcement to mediocre ones already on that line? Is Kharkiv, previously an area safe from enemy artillery and a useful supply hub for that reason, now in danger of being exposed to Russian fires because the defence line, such as it is, was built just right?
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  34. "The idea that a Russian victory is inevitable is prolonging the war". The Russians think that they'll win eventually; I am not sure that has anything to do with what opinion in the West is. You can tell them they won't win but unless they believe you, the war will not end even if they are pushed back inside their own borders, where with more infrastructure they can continue fighting and firing missiles. So what is Ukraine's plan for ending the war? You cannot be a winner unless you are the one that decides the war is over.
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  35. Denmark has had a lot to say about Ukraine. Time the Danes got some reality therapy.
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  36. Ukraine was hardly formulating its strategy with the idea of causing Wagner to mutiny, otherwise they would have been ready, waiting and able to take instant advantage of it.
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  37.  @antimatters6283  Almost three years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later RUSSIA is doubling down and it seems to me the considerations Mearsheimer has been talking about for decades explain why. How does Anders explain what Russia is doing?
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  38. Good, but too much of a Russia versus Ukraine zero sum game analysis. Russia losing is not a win for Ukraine, it is a win for America that Ukraine is paying the price for. The Ukrainians may well be paying to much of a price for the land on the western side of the Dnieper. I suspect the Ukrainian military professionals wanted to wait until the Russians attack from that bridgehead towards Odessa, because so far Russia fights badly when mounting a swift offensive. Some people are saying the Russians deliberately give ground all the better to defend with artillery when under pressure.
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  39. Comparisons between Russia and countries like Germany, France and Britain are inconclusive. But more important than the absolute size of their collective economies is that Western Europe has massive and inexorably increasing social spending. It is unrealistic to think it politically feasible for European countries make very substantial increases to their defence budgets. Nato countries are already objectively strong enough to deter Russia, which in three years of war has been unable to capture a city that is 19 miles from the Russian border, and this in a part of the world where Russia has huge advantages in ethnic and geographical propinquity. Absent an outbreak of mass insanity in the Kremlin, they will not even toy with the idea of invading a Nato country. Europe needs to invest in projects for economic growth, not raise taxes for futile military consumption.
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  40. Russia did win a victory in Bakhmut they took it, and Prigozhini complained ceaselessly that Wagner were starved of artillery taking Bakhmut. So the type of fighting in Bakhmut suited Wagner in a way that it would not have done elsewhere. Surovikin designed the Bakhmut operation, maybe he thought it was a good use of a traditional Russian use of convicts that had been made available for some time (ie they were not an innovation or recruited for Bakhmut specifically). Philips O'Brian is more of a naval and airpower expert, and I don't think the Russian artillery advantage being big enough to win in in a set piece like Bakhmut and fight elsewhere is obvious to him. I think it is quite telling that Wagner Group is gone yet Ukraine is still trying very hard to take Bakhmut . The city would seem to have a special military value to both sides beyond tying up enemy forces or attritiing them. Wagner were unlike the Russian army in fighting as light infantry rather than as part of an artillery centric force using bombardment for everything.
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  41. Congrats to Denmark for them pushing Nato enlargement in the Baltic, it has made us all significantly safer, and now pays off big time by allowing savings on Danish defence spending.
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  42. You mean Ukraine ignoring Mearsheimer's advice?
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  43.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416 He talks about how many Ukrainians soldiers have been killed, and how great the trained reserves of Russian manpower are. Those things favour Russia, but only if it goes all out to win and the US continues holding back the longer range missiles for HIMARS. What the US's objectives are is the main determinant of what happens. So far they are being cautious about what they give Ukraine, but so far Russia has not been drawing on its full potential strength. I think the American objective is to thoroughly discourage the Kremlin by demonstrating that only the most Pyrrhic of victories for them is possible, while at the same time never quite enabling Ukraine to sweep the Russian forces away. By my way of thinking Macgregor is about as good a guide to what happens as General Ben Hodges. Macgregor does not take into account how effective new US arms could be for Ukraine, and Hodges does not seem to understand why the US will not want Russia to be so hammered with ATACMS it might panic
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  44.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  If Ukraine drives the Russians back, they will accept they have lost fair and square? Hmmm, people who thought like that would not have invaded in the first place.
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  45. The British supported the US's strong urging that Ukraine join ASAP. Most counties were willing to go along with that . The only real objection was by Merkel. Ukraine did not give up and there was increasing military cooperation with Nato, which anually reiterated the official NATO conference statement of 2008 that Ukraine would join Nato at some point in the future Was Putin supposed to wait until Ukraine was admitted to NATO and then invade?  @justmy-profilename 
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  46. Why do you think that is?
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  47. America could give Ukraine the wherewithal to push the Russians back (100 HIMARS and limitless rockets), the US apparently thinks pushing the Russians back is too risky. Because in the final analysis Russia has options that America doesn't want to Russia to start seriously considering. Isn't it rather contradictory to say Putin is not going to be overthrown, but a new leadership might reverse his policies. If not overthrown he will choose his successor. The Russian masses would have to be educated up to the necessity of accepting their country had been defeated by a medium sized country using conventional weapons. Even with new leadership, that process would take many years, because there is no Russian DeGaulle awaiting the call with his already existing prestige for abandoning a region; new leadership would consider remaining in power their first priority and a withdrawal from Ukraine would be politically risky. Even were Russia to withdraw, it is so distrusted now that its relationship with the West would not be significantly repaired anyway, and other energy supplies having been found the gas sales would not restart . The only incentive to the Kremlin would be to halt the deaths of Russian soldiers. Yet those deaths are being presented as being patriotic: for something . A withdrawal would make it look like what by then will be tens of thousand of deaths were for nothing
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  48. Ukraine attacks across the border causing the Kharkiv limited offensive worked out well for Ukraine? Hmmm.
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  49. Ukraine has had six cities destroyed. Any it takes back will be in ruins. That's the big picture.
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  50. The wedge between the US and its European freeloaders allies long preexisted the Ukraine conflict, it is that the Europeans just won't spend the % of GDP on their own defence they agree to do. Even Britain has been steadily raiding the defence budget to avoid raising taxes and Germany is now suffering deindustiralisation, but it really is a bit much to say Europe with its industial and economic power cannot support two wars, one of them completely indirect, so it would have to prioritize one, Indeed, were Russia to attack Nato counties in order to choke off the supply of weapons to Ukraine , it would only be logical for the West to give Ukraine a deluge of weapons in order to make the Russians see that their plan was not working.
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  51. The standard Western tactic in modern war is pin with fire and concentrate for maneuver against an enemy weak spot to break through to an objective. The first Russian offensive maneuver in years has no serious territorial intent and yey opening up a new front line. I think they are trying to use active defence to engage the entire Ukrainian army along an immense front line, and soak up any new Ukrainian troops that are being drafted.
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  52. I am sure Ukraine is right about its security requirements; it is far from obvious why Ukraine's agenda ought to be aligned with Nato's by Nato moving toward the Ukrainian position. Amping up the aid for Ukraine might make Russia back down, but it might not. Security guarantees for Ukraine at this point would be a step into the unknown because the issues have not been worked for decades in the way that the West overagaint Soviet confrontation along the Iron Curtain was. I would point out that the thinkers on both sides seemed to believe nuclear weapons were a deterrent to nuclear war, but Nato and the Warsaw Pact did not act as if they thought having nuclear weapons were a deterrent to conventional invasion and occupation.
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  53.  @BjornSeverinLarsen  Ukraine could hardly have predicted that
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  54. Russia is a land power, it's Naval spending has been a compete waste of money and probably explains a big part of why the Russian army consistently underperforms, except in the South in the initial stages when Naval Infantry played such a prominent role in the Russian victory in the South. Turkey is in Nato and has planes and pilots capable of using the US nukes stored on Turkish airbases. Of course Russia does nor want trouble with Turkey, which sees itself as a mediator. Ukraine is not going to run out of money because it is backed by the West.
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  55. Exactly.
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  56. Why not an economy of force operation rather than a such a rigid defence complete with counter attacks. Russian convict casualties were a feature not a bug.
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  57. The reason they did not react is they knew it was Ukraine not Russia all along.
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  58. That is the way the real world works. Everyone tries to pretend they don't care but everyone cares. Russia does and so do we.
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  59. 1:56 Fanfaronade from Ukraine about their perma imminent mighty offensive may be a ploy intended to get the Russians dedicating resources to digging in, thereby obviating any major Russian attack. Ukraine is going to throw its laboriously accumulated, superbly equipped, and trained crack brigades into a very predictable drive South against what is by now a deeply echeloned Russian defence a la Kursk(2)?
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  60. The West have zero experience of maneuver warfare against a near peer with intact anti aircraft systems and its own airforce. Western theories have been exposed as worthless. So far in Ukraine whichever side is on the defence has the advantage. Maybe an insurmountable one. If the West gives Ukraine the military wherewithal to slowly but surely wear down the Russian army, then the Russians are going to quickly realise that they can't win by conventional means. Maybe they will just lose interest and withdraw. But that seems very unlikely. as all indications are their objectives in Ukraine matters too much to the Kremlin. Ukraine is heading for 'catastrophic success' that will usher in a new era where use of nuclear weapons will be seen to have a real military purpose
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  61. Many of Russia's top commanders have been killed, and Russia conquering all Ukraine seems to be an unattainable objective now, especially given the defensive advantage conferred by the so called transparent battlefield. It would be surprising if Russia set even as a lower order objective of was trying to get men killed for an uncertain psychological or propaganda impact rather than strengthening the Russian position. Surely the more plausible explanation is the Russian commanders are being pressured to supply results and the Kremlin has a higher tolerance for the cost of those results the Russian army is actually able to achieve. In other words Russia sees neutralising Ukraine as an asset of of the anti Russian Washington alliance as essential.
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  62. Halford Mackinder was irrational? Zbigniew Brzezinski was irrational? They thought control of Ukraine was vital.
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  63.  @worldpeace1822  No, the US has VAST stocks of Abrams tanks and every other sort of thing Ukraine wants. An order of magnitude more that Ukraine has been given would be no problem if Washington really wanted to defeat Russia in Ukraine. But it doesn't..
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  64. Reasonable from their point of view. It had been quite clear what their point of view was since 2014.
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  65.  @mariaf.6601  Poles not only dislike Russia, they have abrogated their agreement to renounce claims against Germany for WW2; Poland is in the process of demanding trillions from Germany. Poland wants to be the 51st state and pursue independent initiatives that increasingly seem like trouble making.
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  66.  @Pnaraasi94  Mearsheimer has an explanation why almost three years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, Russia is going for broke in Ukraine. Not clear that Anders can explain that.
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  67. Russia is definitely the underdog, and it has 20% non ethnoRussians in a relatively impoverished population that is one sixth that of Nato and a quarter of America's. Russia's total population is comparable in number to Java's and Russia's economy is only twice the size of Taiwan's. Zelensky has openly said that Russia will split up under the stress of war, and all that will be left is Muscovy.
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  68.  @johnadam2885  Nothing that Westerners talk about has much affect on the Russian perception of the war.
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  69.  @jonlittle5032  They have a hermeneutic value if nicely done.. But your is hardly apposite. How Russia sees the war is probably a mirror image of how Ukraine and the West sees things. I very much doubt that Russia is self aware enough to have the ultratoughminded realist viewpoint that Anders is attributing to it.
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  70.  @jonlittle5032  Capone's successor Big Tuna Accardo never spent a single night in prison in his life. Anyway, the international system is not one where there is a cop to call on a sitting regieme in country such as Russia. And knowing if they lose power they are going to be hauled off to prison is the very best of incentives for Putin and company to follow through on their aggressive war to the bitter end rather than ever be convinced to relinquish power. They have nothing to gain by backing down. As Kris Kristopherson put it ''Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose'. The ICC is not achieving anything, unless their aim is to appear to be relevant.
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  71. is outer Manchuria more important to Russian that Ukraine? Not now I think.
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  72. Ukraine may have missed that a federalised Donbass though the Steimeier modification of Minsk would have been no real concession to Russia because the European members of Nato veto would have prevented it so the unrealism was one both sides from the begining. The Russians can destroy the Ukrainians' weapons and the West will replace them with better ones. Ukraine's fighting manpower is the thing the Russians would be better concentrating on attriting, and they seem to be doing that. Despite the fanfaronaded reiteration of Ukraine (and Georgia) joining Nato being made every year since 2008 by Nato, Ukraine joining Nato was a dead letter after the invasion of Georgia, so Russia's fears were not very rational. Yet that does not mean they were not genuine. While Zelensky was in Paris in 2019 negotiating for peace through a modified Minsk agreement that would have obviated any need for Russia to stay in a special autonomous status Donbass (because Donbass although a part of Ukraine could have constitutionally prevented it joining Nato). it was made clear to him if he signed then he would be overthrown by 2014 style mass demos. Currently, Zelensky would not be able to agree to any settlement that did not entail the return of Crimea (dubious the majority in Crimea want this), which many in the West are encouraging Ukraine to insist on as a rock bottom demand; it does not seem to me at least merely an initial negotiating position. I think there is an unspoken agreement in the West to not say anything that can be interpreted as encouraging to Russia. Nevertheless, General Milley said Russia and Ukraine have taken 100,000 casualties each. Ukrainians between 16 and 60 who have been forbidden from leaving the country constitute a reserve army of manpower and yet is Russia substantially different apart from having three times the population. Men not machinery are the best target for Russia, and overall commander Surovikin seems to approve or he would have terminated the Bakhmut operation which the Wagner boss says is an attrition one. Now if the West actual gives Ukraine troops, Russia can forget about even emerging with a draw, but it seems most unlikely those things will happen.
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  73. True but such Russians are not the stuff front line combat soldiers are made of. And them going abroad makes Putin more secure domestically.
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  74.  @AndrewBlucher  In war subpar human resources are sometimes just the ticket. Both sides are progressing by using low quality troops in small groups to draw fire so that the artillery gf the enemy can be pinpointed by drones and destroyed. The Russians invented those tactic and used the Zconvicts as cannon fodder to draw fires. but Ukraine is having to use troops who are ordinary men for such high attrition roles. Both Ukraine and Russia are going to pay very dearly in demographic consequences for this war.
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  75.  @leninstreet  The Russian have made their first decent territorial gain in years. Of course they are going to reenforce it. Lapon knows the area is open country suitable for offensives from having to retreat back through it in 2022. And most people think the offensive was prompted by the Ukrainian cross border raids, which have proved to be counter productive from Kiev's standpoint. So whose side are the most incompetent generals on?
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  76.  @harmless6813  First of all, Russia has no way of knowing what the intentions of other countries are or might become. Secondly, losing conventionally to a medium sized country like Ukraine would show Russian army as unable to win conventionally and not just in Ukraine. It is of course possible Putin would accept such a debacle, but showing such a lack of nerve when playing for the very highest of stakes would hardly leave Russia's nuclear deterrent to a conventional invasion much credibility, would it; so what would the point of having either conventional or nuclear forces, or RusFed as a unitary state to pay for them? It would break up.
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  77.  @tokeherkild8038  We'll both go on living and in a year we shall be able to agree on what happened in 2023.
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  78. An event is best characterized by how it ends. Ukraine started well ....
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  79. I think Ukraine is playing into Putin's hands with these assassinations of Russian ideologue civilians like Dugina (Anders does not mention those), and drone attacks. The latest drone attacks are on residential buildings. Russians can feel patriotic in relation to attacks on Russia proper, so is getting Putin's population to support his contention that Ukraine is a threat to Russia a path to victory for Ukraine? I think it is the quickest way for Ukraine to lose. If Ukraine has drones to spare it ought to use them on the battlefield, where it has not had a victory since November. Saddam was not overthrown by domestic dissent or armed resistance from within Iraq as a result of missile attacks he failed to prevent. No, Saddam was overthrown by a massive invasion taking his capital. That is not going to happen to Russia. Judging by the recent costly advance against heavy opposition and increasing bombardments, Russian generals do not believe they are about to run out of soldiers or arms.
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  80. Ukraine and Russia are something like near peers and they tend to go tit for tat case in point the assassination of Dugina was quite possibly in retaliation for the killing of agricultural logistics tycoon and militia funder Oleksiy Vadatursky, who was killed 3weeks ago in a targeted missile attack on his Mykolaiv home 40 km from Kherson, shortly after the Russians had agreed to let the shipping of grain resume. Ukraine ostensibly preparing in the South for a huge offensive operation would detract from establishing a defense line. The danger is the Ukrainian fanfaronade about a Southern offensive might give the Russians the idea to launch their own major attack from their west bank foothold in the South rather that having the troops pouring in to that vulnerable area just accumulating and in an untenable position. There is in fact currently a developing Russian advance towards Mykolaiv.
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  81. If this is the effect of a bad Russian plan then Ukrainians better hope Russia does not come up with a terrible one!
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  82. Ukraine knew all about the forming up of the Russian 50 thousand force near Belregod. What Kiev did not know was the lack of proper prepared positions for defence.
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  83. That Ukraine would do this suggests Ukraine is not in the slightest worried about a nuclear strike. They ought to be slightly worried, especially now.
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  84. Are the majority of billionaires populist? That would seem counter intuitive as they are by definition an elite. Are most of the super rich even neutral? I would say most of them that do donate do so to socially progressive causes
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  85. ​ @freedomfighter22222  The US could have supported an indefinite effort in Vietnam economically, but that was academic because there was no end in sight and so what was the point. Nothing is ever spelled out about how Ukraine is going to actually win. Insofar as there is a Ukraine wins scenario, it seems to be an unspoken one that that the Russians are suddenly going to realise they are losing and quit, but why would Russia be constrained to that 'we have lost' reaction to losing instead of a more pugnacious response?
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  86. Wagner is a light infantry formation with an expendable component of irregulars, they are specially designed for advancing through heavily fortified and mined urban areas. Russia is currently standing on the defence, which requires regular units with heavt weapons and engineers. Moreover, Wagner in Belarus is necessitating a diversion of Ukraine's troops from the east and south.
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  87. The morale of Ukrainians can be affected by a relatively minor tactical defeat if it is taken as a sign the tide is turning. And morale has strategic implications.
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  88.  @kalinmir  Journalists understand the strategic importance of morale. Russia's has got a boost.
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  89. The international order consists of sovereign states and Taiwan isn't one; it' is not an independent country; does not itself claim to be such. If Taiwan were to declare independence it would be invaded by China, and we know this because China has said so. After the shock of the Korean war, the US knows that China does not bluff. China did not have nuclear weapons at the time of the Korean intervention by China. A few years ago the US made veiled threats of thermonuclear weapons use against China if it attacked Taiwan. To the apparent surprise of American diplomats, China responded by pointed that it has the capacity to hit the continental US.
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  90. Of course they are going to seize on any opportunity that comes up without regard to whether it is 'not in the plan'.
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  91. I suppose it is true that malicious Russian mischief alarming the Western pubic could interfere with Washington/ Nato's effort to help Ukraine win the war, but as far I can see, Washington is not trying to end the war by helping Ukraine win the war. Superpower America has VAST stores of all kinds of useful armament not longer in service that it could give to Ukraine. Take Abrams tanks, they could easily give 300 but have only supplied 30. Washington wants Russia to get discouraged and give up with what it could claim as a sort of victory. The reason is that Ukraine really winning with American help make Russia see the US as an enemy forever more, and that cannot be allowed to happen because Russia will be needed in the future when China becomes a MEGAPOWER.
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  92. No one has been consistently right about it. Moreover, Nielsen is employed by the Danish navy and in what he says is constrained to follow the country's official policy.
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  93.  @BellaMcMill  Anders has a point about 2022, but now two years later Russia's effort in Ukraine is almost total. I think there is more than some caprice of Putin driving it.
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  94. It is questionable if Russia can win the war given the increased support the US gives Ukraine any time Russia has any success, but why can't Putin can keep the war going so as to not have to explain how it was lost? So how does Ukraine win if it cannot end the war?
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  95. If the US did not see it will one day need Russia against China, then that would be truly baffling. All indications are that America does and will not try to crush Russia in Ukraine.
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  96. Anders seems to be saying either Ukraine is free to become a member/ de jure member of Nato (with aspiration to regain occupied territories Russia says are its) and member of the EU, whereby Ukraine as poorest country in the EU necessarily gets massive transfers of funds (for economic convergence), or it becomes a Russian puppet. No middle ground, or room for compromise. Where is all the money to build a new strong Ukrainian army and rebuild Ukraine AND bring it up to EU economic convergence level? Not from America, Trump has said the US ain't paying for s**t. Poland lost a lit of its territory and had a vast number of its people die in WW2, but it has experienced a resurgence. Ukraine will too, in time. Virtually no person, no country is completely free in the absolutely inviolable way Anders is holding up as the minimal acceptable level of independent sovereign democracy that Ukraine must be raised to ASAP by the West once the fighting stops. None of this is anyone's fault because no person is responsible for being born to the parents they are or for living in the circumstances of their life and times. Like people, some countries come into being more favourably ensconced than others. Ukraine is next to a large paranoid military autocracy and parts of Ukraine are heavily larded with Russians. Ukraine might still move to relatively quickly to be a prosperous secure country in Nato and the EU of course. But that would take an enormous transfer of wealth from Western taxpayers (including from the population of countries like Poland that are accustomed to being net recipients of EU funds).
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  97. ​ @karenrobertsdottir4101  One could argue that Twitter in its pre Musk heyday did too well fore outre single issue causes with one Tweeter's outrage being retweeted massively. Ezra Kien said Obame was able to keep those factions under control but his successors could not. Lind thinks Twitter's autodidacts are likely going to do similar damage to the right as the non profits did to the left.
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  98. China was built up as a counterweight to the USSR. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the attenuated Russian power then became the unspoken counterweight to a burgeoning China. However with its Ukraine policy, Washington has brilliantly wedged Russia away from considering China as a danger, and, through huge losses in the SMO, handed the Chinese a geostrategic coup by alienating Russia forever after from fighting on the side of America. Putin falling will not alter the new alignment.
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  99.  @Luke-pp2lw  No, he just thinks they are too big for Ukraine and says so.
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  100. Does anyone?; the 'solution' Anders is talking about is a nightmare for the US. It would tie America down in Europe, and lead to it facing off against Russia in a nuclear sense. Anders needs to take East Asia into account, but people in Denmark don't seem to worry about such things.
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  101. Or maybe they just prefer death to dishonor.
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  102. Two sides calling each calling other fascist. Both convinced they are right.
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  103. Russia's standing, or willingness to stand alone depends on what Russians think, not Westerners. @justmy-profilename 
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  104. Maybe, but countries that lose wars also start new ones. Germany WW1 & 2 for example.
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  105. He is a naval guy and this is a Makinder war
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  106.  @mrbrumby3409  First use against a nuclear armed country in a conventional war is the Rubicon that has never been crossed. America cannot support Ukraine while it quietly builds and uses a nuclear weapon on Russia and then act all shocked. whatever Anders may imply. Especially mow it is already being openly discussed on YT for goodness sake. There is also the point that Ukraine would suffer unlimited devastation if it used a nuclear weapon on Russia, and the Ukrainians who issued and obeyed such on order would have to answer for what they had done to their own countryman. and their families.
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  107.  @migBdk  Emptying its junkpiles more like; that stuff would have been corroded into inoperability in a few years.
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  108. I have my doubts about whether Putin's every move is done with the intention of trying to influence the West
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  109.  @Truth4thetrue  Prigozhin's military empre was growing too big and the army was going to take it over. That, and Prigozhin ,being coked out of his skull, was why he revolted
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  110.  @xavierg8985  Know one really know, but I THINK Russia has the advantage in attritional warfare. Ukrainian are going to have an open door to the west, where refugees form a diaspora that will lower the cost of emigrating West and their country had even worse demographic woes than Russia anyway.
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  111. I don't think it is obvious that any defence experts think Ukraine can win without a truly massive donation of near state of the art US weapons, because Russia can amping up its own arms production quite a bit yet. Ukraine and its supporters do not want to let on about that and prefer to implicitly suggest that just a little more will work. What Johnson seems to be asking is the same questions as, at the inflection point of Vietnam, Clark Clifford asked the Joint Chiefs> "what is your plan for winning the war?". Ukraine's plan is to ask for better arms and guaranteed supply of as much of them as needed, whereupon they will decimate the Russian army in Ukraine I don't see the problem with Ukraine telling the US what they would do, were they to to be given everything on their wish list except their with list is so long it is thought better to not ask for it all in one go. The reason they are not given everything on the current explicit wish list is is the Pentagon don't want Ukraine to be given those things because the Pentagon think the war in Ukraine might get out of control and drive Russia to desperate measures were there to an open ended US supply of everything Ukraine needs to win.
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  112. Anders is basically right that Ukraine has to be supported. But Ukraine's interests are not identical to NATOs. Ukraine has the very best of motives to try and get the West far more involved than it is already is or wants to be, We don't know how things actually are with the Russians' will versus their conventional capability. Anders seems to speak as if we can assume their will is relatively fragile and they'll quit long before the conflict threatens the continuation of the current system in Russia. We don't know that. If anything the Kremlin's will appears to be much stronger than their conventional military and economic power. How the Russian leadership would react to a build of of pressure is uncertain . There might be a tipping point where the suddenly flip from rhetoric and decide action as a specimen of what they can do has become necessary.
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  113. When you here about a Ukrainian victory, and listen closely. what the person is really talking about is a Russian collapse due to domestic dissent.
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  114. Russia took Bakhmut, that was not a psychological blow to Ukrainian morale and a huge boost to Russian confidence?
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  115. I don't think the evidence suggests Washington wants a total defeat of the Russian effort in Ukraine.
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  116. Deep down everyone thinks they are more sinned against than sinning. In 2013 the former head of the US National Endowment for Democracy Carl Gershman, , wrote: “Ukraine is the biggest prize" and if it could be pulled away from Russia and into the West, “Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” I think the Ukrainian were a trifle hasty in thinking that Putin was going to be scared to take military action. Even after 2014, they thought he could not be serious Anders seems to think that unless Putin agree to subject himself to whatever a Western MSM interviewer wants to subject him too, the West ought to ghost Putin, but he the leader of a poweful country that, whatever you may think, is not going anywhere. He is not in the dock of an international court being cross examined. Insulting attribution, weighted questions, interrupting answers ETC has no downside for the MSM interviewer. The Russians cannot be required to grant interview to those who think Russia owes explanations. 'He is leader of a huge aggressive state angry at what we are doing so lets ignore everything he has been consistently saying. Great thinking Anders.
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  117. America could defeat Russia in Ukraine, I don't think it wants Russia to win or be defeated . Russia is going to be needed to deal with a future megapower China.
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  118.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Russia is still going on about WW2. They are not going to forgive and forget a clear defeat in Ukraine. America is not seriously trying to help Russia win; the US could donate an order of magnitude more if it really wanted to.
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  119. ​ @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Russians are obsessed with a victory in WW2. They are hardly going to be able to just forget about a defeat in Ukraine largely down to America, eh?. And the Kremlin would become much ,much closer to China than Washington is comfortable with in the aftermath of a defeat in Ukraine. Washington has to let the Russians achieve a limited victory or draw. Really beating them in Ukraine is not an American objective.
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  120. A reasonable expectation based on the the last twelve months of the war is for the foreseeable future the Russians will fight stubbornly if not skillfully, and they are not intending to mount their own major offensive.
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  121. They (or rather the politicians in charge back then) renounced forever more Ukraine having nukes in return for money (much of it paid by Germany). Ukraine did get "assurances" but at the insistence of the US the agreement explicitly stated that there was no guarantees being given to Ukraine. This caveat was not 'small print it was made quite a thing of. The money was the sticking point the Ukrainians held out for more and signed when Germany provided it.
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  122. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnm351D9wkE
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  123. Israelis did not like him comparing Ukrainians to Jews in WW2.
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  124.  @SuezWSuezW  Israel is a jealous god. Meaning Ukraine can't get what Israel has by way of US support; there is not enough of it to go around. Ukraine wanted to become Poland, now it wants to be Israel. Which country next?
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  125.  @SuezWSuezW  They would not be talking about it, except to say they would not dream of building one if one if they were building one. Russia has them too so it would be a Mexican standoff in a nuclear sense. IMO Zelensky is trying a ploy to get the US to increase i the quantity and quality of its conventional support.
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  126. Those who voted for Trump did so in order to have better lives, and so the US president does not want to bankroll Ukraine any more. The Nato countries likely could, at a pinch, supply Ukraine with the wherewithal to defeat Russia and give security to Ukraine; that is not the problem it's how how to pay for it without negatively impacting their own economies and investing for the future of their peoples. The money for social spending in Europe without raising taxes has been coming out of defence budgets for decades (especially in Britain). European countries suffering from chronic low growth have now been joined by Germany. Some supporters of Ukraine talk as if there there is an inexhaustible, eternal mountain of surplus money to draw on. Whatever happens Ukraine will be an ongoing drain on European finances
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  127. I don't think the value to each side was equal; the Russians thought they could not leave Ukraine in possession of Bakhmut as it would expose a weak part ofthe Russian held territory to attack, but Ukraine could have used a economy of force fighting retreat in the second stage of the battle because Russia could not continue advancing after taking Bakhmut.
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  128. Do something America would surely would feel impelled to, yet it is not a combatant in the war, suddenly taking actual military action directly against Russia would be a bigger escalation than Putin using a theatre thermonuclear weapon In a war Russia is has been losing for many month and has already had by his own admission several thousands KIA in. In a situation where America is retaliating for a strike on Ukraine, Russia has already crossed the Rubicon, so it is barely plausible that after detonating one theatre thermonuclear weapon Russians are going to accept that their nuclear deterrent to conventional attack is an empty bluff and in fact worthless in relation to America. In a thermonuclear sense, China is as weak as a kitten compared to Russia, whose ICBM arsenal is essentially comparable to America's. You cannot successfully use fisticuffs on a man who is holding a loaded gun, especially if he is puny. He won't just take the pain. He will not.
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  129. It is a mistake to think it terms of breakthroughs in this war.
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  130. Logistics expert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du8IaRJWDsE
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  131. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has openly stated today that 'Ukraine would be more cooperative in halting attacks on Russian refineries' if the US provided additional support. The attacks are a political ploy, a wedge (the threat of US voters having to pay more for gas) to pry more support out of Biden though threatening him with defeat in the upcoming election.
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  132. Why is an unending war in Ukraine paid for by Europe in Europe's interest's?
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  133. There isn't going to be a rapprochement with China, so we hand China an alliance with Russia? That would be a disaster.
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  134. Ukraine is mounting a diversion in Kursk to stop the Russians taking a break in Donbass where it suits Ukraine to have Russia attacking? Sorry, I don't follow you.
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  135. According to Anders, Putin was already loosing anyway and the unnecessary SMO was doomed along with his regime. Prigozhin's echoing of Western analysis gives him clout? I think he must be mad as is anyone who really believes the Russian army is going to quit this war. To work psychological warfare needs to be in tandem with battlefield success and Ukraine has had none since November.
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  136. Russia is what it has always been: a military autocracy. You are not going to cause a political nervous breakdown of Russia by asking awkward questions about causalities as if it is a democracy.
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  137. Did America fear a Cuban invasion? No country can possibly invade the US, there never has been any danger of that.
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  138. I doubt that.
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  139. How can we square 'great powers are not above the law' ethos' theory of the West, with the US vetoing all international institutions' legal action against Israel over their armed forces behavior in Gaza? Like Israel, Russia has gone, and likely will continue to go, further that anyone in the West expected. Clearly, Putin places a much higher value on Ukraine being kept out of the Western alliance/sphere of influence than Western analyses comprehend. The job for politicians is to steer their government's policy in their country's interests. Be they large or small, the interests of no two countries are completely Identical, and so the limitations on a country's sovereignty by a world order may be theoretically absolute, yet in practice it is is always contingent on whether it violates that particular country's interests in the leadership's view. What small countries want is defence on the cheap, paid for by American taxpayers. Until recently even the huge Germany has managed to stay on the defence freeloader bandwagon without anyone noticing. Denmark giving its entire stock of artillery shells to Ukraine shows the girly men Danes have no intention of fighting anyone,
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  140. Putin wants to transform the international order? Putin' leads an 'Upper Volta with nuclear weapons' state that after two years and getting on for 100,000 KIA cannot even take Kharkiv, which is less than 20 miles from the internationally recognized borders of the Russian Federation! Ukraine is very important to Russia, but notwithstanding Western rhetoric, for the rest of the globe Ukraine is not the hinge on which the world order turns. The full on war fought by Putin that is calling into question the continues existance of his regime is not fought all over the planet, it is entirely in Ukraine and really all about Ukraine having tried to move from one sphere of influence to another, under the far from sensible expectation that Russia would be deterred by Ukraine's links with the US. States are limited by their assessment of whether their interests are being well served by peace. If you want peace, then you ought to make sure you are not compromising an another country's security interests in your interests.
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  141. https://youtu.be/UIe9UsltpW4?t=1382 The NYT published this as an op ed. Klein and Lind discusses the old Woke Twitter and the new Twitt. In Lind's Dems agenda was driven by non profits, who are not about winning elections. Hence powerful single issue progressives in the Dems and the trans issue being pushed too far in tail wagging the dog style. Trump's people were reportedly stunned by how effective their trans issue ads were.
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  142. Only a fool would say Russia will just do what it thinks is in its own interests irrespective of whether Russia comes to believe it is begining to lose . Once the loser becomes aware the tide has turned against him, he is willing to try risker strategies to rescue the situation. That is plain common sense. The ATACMs strikes into Russia proper are highly effective and Russia is going to start being outproduced in artillery in a years time; no one knows how the Kremlin might react to open ended US help to Ukraine in the context of Russia facing progressive military, geopolitical, and economic degradation. Anyway, the purpose of news is to let us know what is actually going on.
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  143. Mearsheimer would say that be they fascst or democratic arrangements of domestic politics do not matter much for a state's foreign policy . The attitude of Russia toward Ukraine has not changed in hundreds of years
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  144. It's a reflection of how countries in East Europe and the Baltic have pushed moving NATO East. Before the was in the White House Bush the Younger's minions reportedly encouraged Saakashvili to take Georgia into a confrontation with Russia in order to embarrass sitting President Obama. It was wrongly thought that Putin had backed down once the US showed support for Georgia. As President, Biden tried to correct what was thought to be Trump's lack of support for Ukraine and ended up encouraging Zelensky to stand up to Putin. How is that working out for Ukraine? I would note that the Ukrainian army report leaked today says that Wagner tactics are the most effective of any Russian force and the regular Russian army is begining to adopt Wagner methods. Wagner does have combat experience, so it is perhaps not so much privatization as quick practical methods such are used in business being shown to be more effective than Russian military culture stuck in the Soviet mindset.
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  145.  @mariaf.6601 Joining Nato was not enough for Poland, they wanted to be cocooned within Nato with member countries on all borders. So Ukraine had to join. When was Denmark conquered by Russians? Denmark pushed very hard for Ukraine's military to be part of international peacekeeping missions, as a way of showing they were up to Nato standards
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  146.  @mariaf.6601  Anders is a serving member of the Danish Navy is he not? Clinton was clear that Ukraine was different, and Yeltsin predicted war if it tried to join Nato Germany was cocooned, then Poland wanted to be. Yeltin's war in Chechenia added to the poles urgency. As Yuval Noah Harari said that is how empires grow.. Whether Poland anticipates getting some territory from all this I do not know, but Russia's invasion is not a subgoal in aid of an ultimate objective of conquering Poland. I think Putin wanted to be cocooned too. He screwed up royally, but is not the only who acted against their country's security interests. Ukraine forgot that they are an incident not an end for the US. If you doubt that why is it that Ukraine is being denied the most effective (deep strike) weapons and unable to do mobile warfare as a result, is being dragged into a rolling battle of attrition with Prigozhin's tens of thousands of expendable prisoners released from a life sentence to go to their deaths by drawing fire in Bakhmut ECT?
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  147.  @mariaf.6601  Remembering that Yeltsin said that extreme Nato expansion would lead to war. I don't really know why Demark was so keen so early to get Ukraine into Western military structures either, but they were. They, and others especially Poland had agency in creating the current situation ; it was not just Ukraine and Russia and the US. It does not seem to have proved a very effective way of ensuring security, this attempt to get Ukraine into Nato. And there was already the example of Georgia which was invaded in 2008 mere months after it was announced it would join Nato
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  148.  @mariaf.6601  Whereupon the Poles (supported by Denmark!) started agitating for Ukraine to join Nato even though everyone from Clinton to Brzezinski thought that was taking things too far for Russia standing for it.
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  149.  @mariaf.6601  I think the attitude of the US to Ukraine being brought into Nato altered from Clinton (who was dead set against it) to Bush, and while Bush had his own reasons, the East European countries had agency too.
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  150. Yeltsin never anticipated when he let Ukraine leave with Crimea that Ukraine would try to join Nato, but I think his and other Russian's attitude to that was no surprise. And Putin began warning what he would do in 2008. So what was the point of trying to get Ukraine in Nato?
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  151. Of his successor Eden launching the Suez debacle (invading then withdrawing under pressure in the terminal folly of the Empire), Winston Churchill said : “I would never have dared; and if I had dared, I would certainly never have dared stop". After Suez Britain ceased to be thought of as an Independent Great Power, even by British establishment insiders. Putin surely understands he made a profound miscalculation in launching the SMO, but that barely touches the nasty reality that Russia's credibility as a country willing to go (not merely conventionally) to the final extremity is in grave peril if it accepts anything Ukraine can accept as a win for them. An occupant of the Kremlin who withdrew would have to face questions about the cost in blood and treasure already sunk into the war: 'was all the sacrifice of our boys for nothing?'. Ukraine's leadership has a clear motive to inveigle America and the rest of the West into less and less indirect conflict with Russia. From Ukraine's point of view the worse they are doing, all the better to pressure the Americans to help with deep penetration strikes against key installations; I speak of targeting , which is certainly something Ukraine needs America to provide the coordinates for. Maybe Kiev has the idea that eventually they can provoke Russia into doing something silly by using Western weapons and intel for deep strikes on highly sensitive targets. However, at the end of the day no one is going to attack Russia whatever it does to Ukraine. The weapons supply to Ukraine ought to continue in a measured way to make the conflict pyrrhic for Russia, but Ukraine should be disabused of the idea that escalation would be in their interests. No more strikes on the Russian early warning ICBM radars please.
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  152. But Ukraine signed up to the international non proliferation convention and renounced them forever, so it would be in violation of its obligations were it to try and develop them.
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  153. You have to bring some to get some. In other words Ukraine was tying down its own units too and those troops needed resting and refitting after the battle ended. Also confidence building training because hiding un bunkers from mass effect artillery was not much of a preparation for swift mobile advances.
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  154.  AndyWoohoo666  Nato doctrine in the Cold War was LOL
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  155.  AndyWoohoo666  Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons for 'assurances' , that was LOL.
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  156.  AndyWoohoo666  FAB bombs
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  157. I think some of the Ukrainian generals thought the battle initially made sense but the returns on the investment of manpower rapidly diminished as Russian tactics evolved towards the use of ex con expendables to bear the brunt of Ukrainian firepower and mines.
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  158.  @lancehilt7536  The announcing of Bakhmut to be such a symbol was a dangerous thing for morale especially if it was in fact lost after an appreciable loss of good troops KIA defending it. Surviving defenders would hardly be sharp in the skill set for combined arms attack of be psychologically ready for participating in a mobile offensive. Russian troops on the other hand must have gained in from their first victory in over a year, be it ever so hard fought.
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  159. It is good that you learned your lesson from getting completely fooled by the Ukrainians' destruction of the NordStream pipeline (you clearly thought it was a Russian operation). Denmark was an early supporter of Ukraine joining NATO; Danes may comprehend Russian slapdash methods, but Russian anxieties are a closed book to Danes.
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  160.  @antimatters6283  Which country's leaders ignored Mearsheimer, took money from the West and put it in their personal Swiss bank accounts to leave their country dependent on empty promises from Nato? Not Russia. If the Ukrainians had listened to Professor Mearsheimer there would not have been an invasion of Ukraine. It really is a bit much to BLAME him for a war he tried to prevent.
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  161.  @williamrobin2638  I don't think that Mearsheimer failing to predict the decision of Putin as an individual to go ahead with the invasion he had prepared invalidates Mearshemer's theory about states.
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  162.  @morongovalley940  Mearsheimer has not influenced Russian policy. Or US policy. He has tried to explain Russian actions in Ukraine and the Kremlins determination to not lose there as something other than a outbreak of mass insanity. Russia has came in handy for fighting Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. In all likelihood they could be an ally against a future mega power China, as long as Russians don't see the West as the enemy that defeated them in Ukraine. Using Ukraine to indirectly inflict a total defeat on the Russian invasion and force their withdrawal would be great for Ukraine, but not so great for Europe in the final analysis. Europe is a fading backwater in the eyes of America you know; yet Europe is still a very valuable ally.
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  163.  @rmdomainer9042  No reason to stop the border raids and cause the Russians to stop needing to enlarge the buffer zones right along the border then.
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  164.  @MarcosElMalo2  Defence in depth is having to be used because the continuous concrete fortification line is lacking. Does Ukraine have a shortage of cement or troops?
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  165.  @pseudonym745  The Rissians are so predictable Ukraine ought to have been able to predict the effect of Ukraine trying to join Nato on Russia. Russia's job was to prevent Russia from being invaded; Ukraines job was to keep Ukraine safe. The Kharkiv offensive WAS anticipated, it is just silly to think only Ukraine can have sucess in that open terrain.
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  166.  @noahway13  Standard Soviet tactics a la Kursk.
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  167. Ukraine likely shook down the US for the halt, It is prolly fear that Ukraine will try to repeat the extortion the got Austen complaining about the attacks.
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  168. Ness never met Capone, who was convicted because years before his lawyer had made admissions to the IRS about Capone's income during abortive negotiations about regularising his tax liabilities
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  169. Let say in early 2022 Ukraine was given any arms they wanted and permitted to hit inside Russia with them. A million Russian soldiers would have been killed and injured. Anyone saying s they know how the Russian would have reacted is making bold assertions. The rules are simple the better the Russians are doing the more the US gives Ukraine effective weapons, but it is never going to be enabled to hit the Russian army really hard.
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  170. In the real world you cannot always get rid of a bully.
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  171.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  America has painted itself into a corner with statements about how Putin cannot be allowed to get any result he can consider a win. Putin has burnt his domestic political bridges by making territory captured and since lost back to Ukraine deemed part of Russia, and even making territory never occupied by Russia and still controlled by Ukraine in Russian law officially part of Russia. The Russian army has no problem retreating; that makes them difficult to destroy, impose prohibitive attrition on. All indications are that even if they strategically withdraw back to the borders of Russia they intend to end the war only when that have much more territory than they have so far occupied. The workarounds for a country of Russia's resources and technical infrastructure will be many in the medium term My feeling is to get the Russian's to accept they are in a stalemate will take several years; we are going to be still discussing this in a year's time.
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  172.  @malcolmgibson5088  So Ukraine (Makinder's Heartland of the World Island) is not vital to Russia's status as a great power like Zbigniew Brzezinski said, but some heron nesting ground in inner Mongolia is?
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  173.  @kevinwarburton2938  We have been told that Bakhmut is strategically unimportant but I would point out the staunch Ukrainian defence of it suggests otherwise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du8IaRJWDsE Retired Major General Tim Cross, a British logistics expert. allows that even although the Russian high command were not told about Putin's order to invade Ukraine until very late and had no opportunity to plan properly for it, the Russian army has been exposed as woefully weak. However he says trying for negotiation and a settlement in the next 3 to 6 months avoids whatever danger there is is loudly announcing that the boot we have on the Russian neck will be pressed down harder until they quit. A Russian winter offensive that might improve their positions so greatly that Ukraine will be forced to negotiate is far from impossible according to Cross.
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  174. Absolutely
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  175. Anyone who thinks Ukraine is going to be open endedly backed ad infinitum by democracies is kidding themselves.
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  176.  @paulgibbon5991 . The Ukrainians are being backed and it makes sense geopolitically to do so. However the deep strikes against the ICBM defence radar of Russia by Ukraine is the sort of thing to be nervous about. It's all very fluid and totally unlike the static Warsaw Pact NATO confrontation, which was posturing. Anyone who says they know how Russia will perceive a campaign of such strikes by Ukraine is being bombastic.
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  177. When Trump said the Pandemic came from a Chinese lab the biggest social media banned mention of it as fake news.
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  178. I don't think ensuring Ukraine wins the war with Russia is an obviously proper priority for Western countries to set themselves. Important yes, but supreme objective over all other considerations no. And Ukrainians have not even drafted their young men yet for fear of a mass exodus, so Ukraine has other priorities over winning the war too.
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  179.  @ComradeOgilvy1984  They cannot compete in innovation or enterprise anyway. Their strong point can be seen is how they are taking T55s out of storage and sending them to Ukraine, and criminals from prison. I think the Russian way is to drag things down to a level where individual intelligence is superfluous.
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  180. Logical_if_ there was a strong line of fortification for the Russians to be attrited on.
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  181. I'm sorry, Bakhmut was a Russian victory. Pyrrhic perhaps, but a victory boosting Russian confidence and morale nevertheless.
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  182. I think the lack of large scale swift maneuvers is not because of weather but rather as the Ukrainian military commander said the other day because modern surveillance capabilities mean surprise is no longer possible and both sides have realised how to get real time targeting and easily destroy the other's attacking formations before they have made much headway. Anyway, it is barely useful to use the word "win" without stating what borders Ukraine would have were Russia to 'win', but just the other day Mearsheimer assured us that Russia is not going to be allowed to win. Let us define a Russian win in the sense of Ukraine officially conceding it has lost forever after the currently occupied territory and capitulating on terms favourable to Russia; no matter who is in the White House, the US's protégée Ukraine making any concession to losing the easternmost parts of the country in return for peace would be such a shattering blow to America's prestige that no president could possibly acquiesce in it. True victory might have been attained last year but Ukraine failed to follow up its successes in a timely manner, and now the Russians are, if not skillful, stubborn in defence. A Korean war type ending without an official peace treaty is the most likely outcome and that will let America and Russia retain the status they enjoyed prior to 2022. It would be a mistake to think that anyone in the White House (or the Kremlin) will see their country's status in the world as not worth battling to almost the last extremity for.
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  183. When the idea of Russia being driven out of Ukraine by the Ukrainians seemed far fetched it was fine for him to backhandedly scoff at the Kremlin' daring to chose a nuclear option. But that Russia loses conventionally seems a real possibility now, and nuclear weapons may well have utility for the Kremlin in rapidly developing losing endgame for them. Anders is trying to have it both ways with his talk of uncertainty and fear being part of a Russian psychological stratagem. There are some things, such as what the Kremlin would do with its theatre thermonuclear weapons in such an increasingly likely losing endgame for them, that have uncertain yet nonetheless credible outcomes it is wise to fear.
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  184.  @harmless6813  The new Ukrainian minister of defence Budanov predicted in an interview the other week that there will be a revolution in Russia and it will break up. Putin's system and the existence of the country will be in doubt if Russian army just goes home making all the losses for nothing. There are obvious parallels in the Russia Japanese war and WW1so I have no idea why you have no idea of what I speak.
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  185.  @harmless6813 Bad as using a nuke would be for Russia any alternative would be far worse from Putin's standpoint because it would (1) entail RusFeda being relegated from the ranks of great powers and (2) lead to RusFed breaking up. Zelensky' closest advisor Podolyak has just predicted the break of RusFed as a result of the coming defeats and casualties. Anders spoke of 'some people' who talked as if nuke us was a option for the Kremlin . One of those is Vad, former brigadier and German military advisor to Merkel, who is now predicting an inevitable Russian defeat by Western technology in Ukraine and a decision to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine rather than going quietly. Anders is a naval expert.
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  186.  @harmless6813  You are in agreement with Anders that what I suggest has a low order of probability, yet the Ukrainian success Anders is reporting is a clear pathway to Putin having to take a decision of what is the least bad outcome. Can't have it both ways, either Russia is heading for defeat or nukes are going to be completely redundant. In the doctrine of the US and as well as RusFed the purpose of nuclear weapons is to halt an enemy's successful conventional offensive, and the US is not giving Ukraine many conventional weapons such as ATACEMs even though Ukraine is completely dependent on US supply of the coordinates for HIMARS and would be for ATACMS too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC1_lpy8TVE That speaks for itself about the US worry that sudden reverses for Putin could lead to him seriously considering the option. At present he thinks he is winning, the US want to keep him oblivious to what is happening, but eventually he will realise he's going to lose. Is he going to have to accept that?
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  187. ​ @tokeherkild8038  A "units along the border" stance by Russia was politico military pressure, yet unconvincing as a threat because they would be outnumbered four to one on the ground and even more in the air if they crossed that border in an actual offensive Far forward and stationary mobile units are sitting ducks for surprise attack t so the Russian posture was sabre rattling, not defensive, as can be seen in Belarus right now. The present conflict between Russia and US led Nato is political/ hybrid. As I recall important US officials considered the electoral advances of the Italian Communist Party in the 70s/80s as a threat to Western security, so I expect that Putin is threatened by democracy in Ukraine heartening his Russian opponents and in a time of crisis contributing to by a colour revolution example. However, the simple fact is that Russia's accelerating relative technological backwardness means that in the future its going to become increasingly helpless in any real war, and any sabre rattling it does will be risible. Putin has foreseen this (his Munich Security Conference speech about the prospect of the US developing a complete defence to ICBMs and becoming the sole centre of international decision making), therefore he understands that US Patriot and anti ICBM bases on Russia's borders are bringing forward the day when Russian inferiority is so complete that no one pays any attention to waht the Kremlin says. Holding back that day is Putin's job as leader of Russia.
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  188.  @harmless6813  Russia is not aware it is destined to lose yet. so one would not expect them to think there could be a reason to actually use a nuke. that lies in the future IMO.
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  189. There are targets other than Kharkiv they could go for. The area where Ukraine took back all that territory in 2022 has a proven lack of obstacles to an offensive .
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  190. It is said the Russian "kill chain" was several hours long during the earlier stages of the war. I would say the lessons of the latest stage is that the Russians will eventually run out of mistakes to make. and get back to leading with their strengths, which are willingness to be profligate with their manpower and in the case of Wagner's tens of thousands of convicts, actually send them forward to be fired on by artillery, whereby enemy artillery reveals itself to drones and then be destroyed. Wagner in Bakhmut operates by constant rigidly planned reconnaissance in force infantry probes with lots of drones observing yet only a bit of artillery support, following which the Russian artillery (now having got its targeting info) opens fire in earnest.
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  191.  @Marvin-dg8vj  Such payments would be for technical specialist. Consider the cost of keeping a man in a high security prison for the rest of his life.
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  192.  @Marvin-dg8vj  https://youtu.be/Oxc9vtQJPsg?t=65
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  193.  @magikclown  I don't think Washington wants Russia to really lose in Ukraine.
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  194.  @pRahvi0  Mearsheimer is extremely controversial among international relations academics. He always has been.
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  195. Putin is not lying when he mentions that he tried to join Nato Multiple Western leaders and Nato officials have said he did. He was fobbed off of course (as Yeltsin was before him). That was when the scales fell from his eyes: Nato was not an anti Soviet alliance but an anti Russian one
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  196. Putin's job as leader of Russia i was to maintain and if possible increase its security. His duties did including no obligation to give other countries the benefit of the doubt about what their intention were or might become, let alone ignoring official Nato statement reiterated each year, to the effect that at some point in the future Ukraine would become a full member (so it was already more than a candidate). Was he supposed to wait and see if Ukraine became a full member and when it did start WW3?  @ABCBCNM 
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  197. So Russia ought to have done nothing; what makes you think so?  @ABCBCNM 
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  198. There is a way to avoid fighting and that is to not have different counties that can have conflicts of interest. Ukraine chose to become a separate country and it parted of friendly terms from Russia. Lo and behold, Ukraine then almost immediately began trying to join an anti Russian military alliance.  @ABCBCNM 
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  199.  @garethamery3167  Anders is talking about the changes at Twitter and Twitter changed because it was bought by a man whose has said he is going to destroy the trans virus because he lost a son to it. Well, I provided a link to a conversation between couple of reputable commentators whose talk was taken up by the NYT, and in it Michael Lind says that the same kind of damage done to Kamala by trans Tweeters and defund the police types in their heyday on Twitter is now going to be done by right wing autodidacts on Twitter to Trump. That is looking to the future but I think it is on topic.
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  200. It had no value as a springboard for a Russian offensive, which is proven by them not advancing beyond it, but I think Ukraine could have found it handy for mounting an attack from.
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  201. Re an algorithm allowing bots to run wild promoting CIA biowarfare labs in Ukraine stories, Yup, that is bad housekeeping by Twitter. However, it must never be forgotten that spreading Trump's assertion while resident that the pandemic came from a Chinese lab was outright banned by social media on the grounds it was 'fake news' or disinformation. That ban was then quietly withdrawn. Quite a few people are saying they now think the explanation Trump subscribed to was correct. Obviously I am not a so schizy enough to believe in CIA labs in Ukraine, and I am pretty sure the COVID pathogen was accidently created and released unawares through a series of bad biosafety mistakes.
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  202. It is also a clear path for Russia coming into direct conflict with American forces, if Putin fails to act as Anders expects.
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  203.  @AfterTheIce-q4j  It ought to have happened in 2007. The mistake was not following though.
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  204. Britain announced a "Total Exclusion Zone" in the Falklands war", and destroyed a ship outside it. Maybe Anders and others ought to consider whether Russia thought Ukraine was low hanging fruit, or whether Russia just got desperate to halt the move of Ukraine into the Western camp. Personally, I think the Russians see themselves as having a Nato boot on their neck, one that is pressing down. The Russian Black sea fleet is only weak conventionally
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  205. Mistakes have been made by everyone. But the biggest one of all was made by Zelensky, who did not believe Putin would go through with it until Russian tanks were revving up across the border.
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  206.  @namesurname2205  Could you expand on that please?
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  207.  @arildsther2626  Mearsheimer's military analysis is basically the big battalions win, and the invasion force was small for a full on invasion. Every military expert said the force was too small. So Mearsheimer may have been influenced by that. He apparently thought it was a bluff ploy build up to exert pressure. (as did Zelensky). One thing that ought to have been considered by Mearshiemer is the the preceding Russian build up amassed huge artillery ammunition dumps near Ukraine, which remained in place and were added to. So if you looked at artillery there was a logistical basis.
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  208. In the current battle for Bakhmut Ukraine is avoiding urbanised combat in the city but on the offensive around the it while using HIMARS strikes to attrit the Russian artillery. This is a cleverer operation than going toe to toe with an ever burgeoning Wagner was, and while it is true that Wagner surely lost good troops at a high rate in the begining of their offensive the Bakhmut battle, their methods altered and they brought in the Z penal volunteers to front the advance and take many of the casualties, which although little reported are in a great many cases caused by mines. I think Ukraine ought to have adapted to the change in the Russian tactics with one of their own. Instead, Ukraine kept on with with the same dogged defence throughout.
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  209.  @gorillaguerillaDK  Moving them back simply means that the closer they get to the Russian border the more densely packed and abundantly supplied the army of Russia will be. Austen is asking in the news today for a Western effort to provide Ukraine with arms f This is all very well but there are limitations in the range and quantity (HIMARS for example) of what Ukraine is given. A final victory is unattainable with this underwhelming help, which is a recipe for a bloody stalemate; exactly what Austen has already said the US wants. I think eventually Ukraine's population will call a halt to the sacrifice when it dawns on them what any attainable 'victory' will look like. Namely, Ukraine sufferings death and life changing injuries to tens of thousands of patriots in endless combat for modest gains with a less agile but more fatalistic opponent, and being depopulated by emigration to avoid the war and endless conscription. .
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  210.  @daledelatte9607  The victory for Ukraine would have been deterring the Russian invasion, which happened after Ukraine had already lost Crimea and eastern Donbass.. Ukraine already had a demographic collapse problem, a long war without any prospect of ending will lead to a loss of the best people be emigration and refugees he decline to return. There is nothing worth going on with the war for over a year. Unless you think they can just import Turks en mass to get the agricultural work done after it is all over and Ukrain had a massive shortfall in workers and taxpayers.
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  211.  @gorillaguerillaDK  We are back at how badly the Russians are doing. While that may well be true, the cost for Ukraine of humiliating Russia is a very high one already.
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  212.  @legrandliseurtri7495  Other wars ended. Ukraine was offered a deal and in 2019 Zelensky was posed to accept it. but Poroshenko and the nationalist demos made him go back on the agreement. It is really hard to understand what was offered then as more unacceptable that the death and infrastructure devastation of the current war,. which will not be over until Russia says so and Russia can never be trusted not to restart it. A loss for Russia is already a fact but that does not mean Ukraine gets a win, especially as what was offered to them in 2019 is better than anything they will get now.
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  213. They will but just keeping the war going does not make much sense for anyone by now.
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  214. They are using T55s and convicts.
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  215. Not much geopolitical analysis of how Putin saw Ukraine as anything but a victim:. 'Putin assumed Ukraine was a politically weak state that would give in under pressure from great power Russia and when it didn't he underestimated it militarily and attacked it'. The use of force had nothing to do with the fact that Ukraine had an official NATO decision that it was at some point in the future going to become a full member of NATO, which was reiterated ever year since 2008? As a Russian leader Putin was wrong to believe the NATO announcements and act to permanently forestall them? Putin had tried pressure, hybrid war/ annexation/ undercover invasion by whole battalion tactical groups by 2015 and still failed to achieve his key objective of ensuring Ukraine could never join NATO. We don't actually know that Putin was certain an invasion of Ukraine would be easy by 2022, when Ukraine had improved its capabilities and had already got some military understandings with and support from the US and other Nato countries. We do know he ordered a full scale invasion in 2022 and it did not work at all well. Prediction requires understanding of the motivation of possible actions, not assuming they were some sort of caprice.
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  216. Ukraine can't negotiate because it can't trust Russia? Well, given that the Russians no doubt now regret halting their offensive in 2015 against a weak and demoralized Ukrainian army in return for the Minsk agreement, which proved worthless because Ukraine only agreed to it as a ploy to stop the fighting because they were losing (Poroshenko has admitted this) , I doubt Russia would take Ukraine's word on anything now. .
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  217. Totally agree. And General Miley who is no fan of Trump was advocating negotiation years ago.
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  218. Russia has had an artillery advantage so far but in a year the Ukrainians will be benefiting from Western artillery production lines. The isea is to make the Kremlin come to terms, not make them desperate
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  219. Females with medical experience are also going to be coscripted in Ukraine.
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  220.  @Tom_Quixote  I think it was fun for him at first.. He actually says in this one that it is not clear who is winning, which is a lot more downbeat than his usual summary. Reading between the lines, I think he is becoming a lot less sanguine about Ukraine's prospects.
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  221.  @GalAxy-u9s  I think this whole thing is the tail wagging the dog because countries like Poland and Denmark were instrumental in pushing for Ukraine to be in Nato.
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  222. Ukraine has not even drafted its young men but it wants to be part of Nato to be defended by other countries' young men.
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  223.  @stevenpace892  Zelensky proposed the minerals deal, not Trump.
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  224.  @trustnoone98  Zelensky broached a rare earth deal, not Trump. Weapons, intel and targeting system usage Ukraine gets from the US are in a great many cases unavailable on the open market; the value of them is realistically orders of magnitude more than the accounting has it.
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  225. Ukraine still wishes to maintain its (theoretical) total freedom to (try to) ally with whoever it wants. Ukraine does not like the practical real world consequences of its theoretical freedom: war without end.
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  226. It's more Hydra. Russian can add 100,000 trained soldiers a year. They are not losing unless more than that number of regulars are being subtracted from the Russian armed Forces though KIAs and seriously wounds and the attrition ratio greatly favors is the Ukrainian army. It is a big ask.
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  227. Seven hundred thousand military age Ukrainian men have left the country since the invasion and 200, 000 are in Germany living on their generous full state benefits as ' conscientious objectors'. Yet even though many left the country and of those still in it no one under 25 has to serve in the Ukrainian armed forces, Russia cannot take Kharkov, which is less than 20 miles from the Russian border. Ukraine has to be admitted to Nato to defend it but if Ukraine loses Russia is supposed to keep going and attack Nato countries, so what use in Nato membership for Ukraine then?
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  228. Russia did not continue the attack after taking Bakhmut, yet Ukraine is trying to recapture it. I think that Ukraine in Bakhnut threatened the Russian line which is why it is being so doggedly held against the current Ukrainian effort trying to break the Russian line in Bakhmut; both sides obviously think deeper behind Bakhmut is an an inviting weak spot for a Ukrainian exploitation and somewhere Russia will have trouble getting their reserves to.
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  229.  @philipmulville8218  As an active duty officer in the Danish armed forces (Denmark was red hot for Ukraine joining NATO), he cannot be rude about the Ukrainians, but Kofman is an easy target
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  230. I liked him in the begining but the quality of his analysis declined as he increasingly looked for a bright side from Ukraine's point of view
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  231.  @dpelpal  Going toe to toe with anyone is in the real world going to result in getting hurt, but something pretty unpleasant is going to happen to Ukraine before Russia is on the point of collapse
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  232. ​ @thomasbaader6629  Hodges was so right at the very begining about the invasion not working, but since then he has been completely unrealistic about the big picture. Like all these guys he has been conditioned to see the Russians as the main threat. They are not and moreover will be needed as allies against a future mega power China. Trouncing Russia using Ukraine as a cat's paw would be relatively easy, but counterproductive in the long term
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  233. Hodges was uniquely prescient about the invasion, but Washington is thinking a few moves ahead.
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  234.  @maritaschweizer1117  In 1994 Mearsheimer published an article told the Ukrainians the would need their own nuclear deterrent to Russian bullying. So the Ukrainians ignored him and you can judge for yourself how good his analyses was . Putin is now using an army three times large to take a fraction of Ukraine.
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  235. No Anders, for once you really ought to not end it with the conclusion that the West needed only harden its will. Perhaps you might consider what happens if the West took the total commitment to supplying Ukraine option , and those stubborn Russians' will hardened as a result of facing the humiliation of losing to Ukraine, and the Kremlin considered the final option. Ukraine is a country the West is doing its best to help; yes, in a limited way because there are constraints.
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  236. They will, but if they are hit hard enough they might decide to covertly sabotage a pipeline important to the West in a third country.
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  237. He was extremely controversial on Israel long before Ukraine hit the headlines.
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  238. Although Russians can be difficult to read, I think Putin is proceeding very cautiously by starving his commander of troops. Putin's worst nightmare is generalship like WW1's Brusilov who was militarily successful at the cost of fatally weakening the belief in the Russian supreme leader. In my opinion, Putin is currently very far from desperate, but were he to become so I very much doubt his preferred option would be throwing myriads of troops into a 'neck of nothing' offensive. Nor would he ask for terms.
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  239. But until they have Nato membership and until they have a deliverable nuke, Russia would have the very best of motives to try and win the war by any means necessary
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  240. Is Biden one of them? Biden could have sent Ukraine all kinds of things two years ago, but didn't.
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  241. Kherson in Ukrainian hands lets Russia of the hook of trying to get artillery ammunition through easily targeted bottlenecks across the river. Russia if well suppled can win artillery duels by mass effect, as is now being demonstrated in Kherson where the Ukrainians can't concentrate. Defeating Russia in a battle of attrition is not a very good strategy in my opinion. Perhaps that is why we hear so much talk about a Russian collapse. Rely on it, we will have a long wait.
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  242. Ukrainians' elected representatives are the only ones who can officially cede national territory, and yes that would signal a terrible diplomatic defeat for the country and when hostilities cease Kyiv might see some changes, yet this punishment of failed elected officials by replacing them is supposed to be the Western way. Biden started as Pres by calling Putin "a killer", then had almost three years after a full on invasion of Ukraine by Russia to give ATACMS, F16s to Ukraine, and most dreaded of all by Russia, draconian oil sanctions, but did/ is about to do so only when he knew Trump was going to be the one to deal with the results. The latest Ukrainian strike inside Russia were on Taganrog which is a Black Sea port nowhere near Kursk or the North Koreans Biden was worried about Russia red lines until he lost the election but then starts expanding the strikes deep and wide so Trump takes power inextricably entangled in tit for tat escalation he cannot get out of without looking terribly weak. Biden is also giving the largest ever amount of US money yet to Ukraine and using the interest on Russian money to pay for the rest of the aid. The much more stringent oil sanctions will cause general inflation globally, and send Germany's economy down the toilet; not clear who in going to pay for the massive cost of EU convergence payments for Ukraine with the economic outlook for Bessel's banker Germany. Similarly, Trump is not going to be the one who has to deal with the fruits of mature mega-alliance between Russia with its vast untapped resources being exploited by the industrial giga workforce of China that will tilt the whole balance of world power irreparably against the West. So I expect that Trump will have to continue the war at the intensity Biden's own 'Christmas Bombing' has amped it up to by January. What I think Trump might do as an initiative against Russia is impose sanctions against China for helping Russia in Ukraine, which will kill the Russians' war effort (from microchips to spools of optic fibre for one way drones) in an attempt to slow down Chinese growth. German diplomats chuckled as Trump opposed the German reliance on Russia energy being cemented by a new huge pipeline, but Trump was right.
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  243. What comes next is the war ends with Russia occupying less than a quarter of Ukraine, which builds defensive lines
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  244. Live like a Russian. Die like a man.
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  245. The Russians have not destroyed the bridges across the Dnieper. Why is that do you think?
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  246. If what you have been saying in these videos is correct Anders , then Russia's leadership is either completely deluded about how the war is going for them , or ought to already have seriously considered using a nuclear weapons against Ukraine. The only reason to think Russia won't use nukes, is because the Russians seem to think they are slowly but surely winning conventionally; if they become convinced they are losing conventionally then using theatre thermonuclear devices would surely become a viable alternative for the Kremlin to seriously consider
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  247. The age of mothers at the birth of their first child has gone down in Russia even as it went up in the West ; Russia is a strange place. Anders's vid about naval drones was very informative (he ought to do more stuff like that) , but he is not a specialist in how ordinary Russians think. A Foreign Policy article: 'Ukraine Isn’t Putin’s War—It’s Russia’s War Jade McGlynn’s books paint an unsettling picture of ordinary Russians’ support for the invasion and occupation of Ukraine.' @dpelpal 
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  248. I will not deny that Anders knows his stuff about sea drones. There is an academic called Jade McGlynn who likes Ukraine but hasmade a very deep study of Russians' political views, and she says that opposition to Putin is no stronger that extreme pro Putinist sentiment. The strategy of the Putin regime is to make the average Russian disinterested in politics, and conventionally patriotic by default. Yes many, many people in Russia live in villages lacking indoor plumbing, but that just shows how untypical of Russia the Moscow and St Petersburg elites who disdain Putin and want to do business Western style are.  @SianaGearz 
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  249. Denmark was the original prime mover in trying to get the Ukrainian military qualified for incorporation into Nato. Remember that when you listen to Anders.
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  250. There is a counter productive fringe of both left and right though. When they have Twitter dominance any fringe will have too much influence on the policy and the bounds of acceptable debate. Kamala found that out, and Trump is going to.
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  251. Russia has not had a another mobilisation because Putin wants to remain popular but also because he knows it would provoke America into giving more and better equipment. As many Ukrainians as needed to hold the Russians back can be equipped and will be equipped by America. The Russians understand that every move they made will be countered by US donating more and better equipment. Both Russia and Ukraine are instituting tough military discipline, so the troops are not going to have any choice but to fight. It is said that the Russian trenches are being constructed so the troops cannot withdraw from them safely. RusFed is not a polyglot empire like the USSR it is much more an ethic overwhelming majority nation state, and the Russians are going to benefit from patriotism no less than the Ukrainians. The Russian may lack will, but he is willing perhaps more than willing to suffer (Dostoevsky's Russian 'soul'). Breaking the morale of the populace Putin rules would be a challenge.
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  252. North Korea is a Chinese sockpuppet. Just look at their obviously Chinese ICBM!
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  253.  @evgeniya7853  'It is not impossible' that Ukraine wins if the West backs it 100%, it is also not impossible that the US would have won in Vietnam if they had been determined to.
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  254.  @evgeniya7853  Neither Putin or Zelensky can end this war and survive as leader. So Trump will have to make them.
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  255.  @Princip666  We do our best then they tell us what we still owe them. The money is needed at home.
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  256. ​ @Princip666  There is an escalating stalemate with the cost of keeping Ukraine in the war climbing inexorably. Western countries can't borrow for military spending, because it's consumption, so there will have to be cuts or new taxes. Continuing this way would be directionless.
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  257. My impression is he is saying Russia will win and the Washington establishment have come to understand that now although it is still a publicly unspoken understanding. The forces Putin had poised on the border in 2022 were totally inadequate for what Putin seemed to expect them to achieve. Now he is using mass effect for lesser objectives
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  258. That is why the West is not willing to give Ukraine what it needs to win. They want the Russians to be discouraged, not desperate.
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  259. Can Russia win the military production race? The the West even trying to push Russia that hard; they do not dare.
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  260. Unfortunately, the single issue crowd are all about taking pro social issues and going one step beyond common sense to draw pushback and counter pushback donations from BILLIONARES (Musk is not a typical billionaire).
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  261. The Russians want to overstretch the Ukrainian army; encircling their cities, would overstretch the Russian army.
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  262. Long term thinking in Washington is Russia may well not stand for certain things. The US is not trying to help Ukraine to defeat the Russians; America is just tying to keep Ukraine in the war. Ukraine has to start doing badly to be given effective arms like F16s or ATACMS . So the F16 will be eked out in direct proportion to how dire Ukraine's situation is. Right now Ukraine is doing reasonably well, so the number of F16s will given will be designed for PR rather than victories over the Russians; just enough to keep Ukrainians from getting too discouraged. If Ukraine wants the really effective US arms, then the best thing Ukraine can do is start retreating.
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  263. The original invasion was a mistake by Putin, and badly organised in keeping with that supreme leadership without delegating style. But in 2024 you have to say the Russian effort is quite methodical and coordinated. This is the Russians as a group we are seeing now, not a capacious individual. The Russian Federation as a state is what Mearsheimer's theory would try to explain foreign policy continuities in
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  264. I think because Russia is now going all in and staking its great power status on something it can present as a victory, America does not want Russia to be faced with a total defeat in Ukraine, because the Kremlin might consider alternatives that Washington does not want Russia considering.
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  265. The forces used in Bakhmut are highly specialised convict cannon fodder Wagner units; indeed they seem to have been created precisely for the purpose of the Bakhmut campaign . I don't see how they could easily be employed elsewhere in the front. The Russian artillery may be weakened elsewhere because of Bakhmut, but I don't see it as an overall economy of force operation for Ukraine
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  266.  @baronvonlimbourgh1716  Wagner methods in Bakhmut require massive artillery support for tiny assault groups, which get preceded by expendable screens of convicts there simply to draw fire, and aren't scalable to the whole theatre. Anyway, the Russian army effort want to do what they have trained and equiped to do; in the Vuhlidar operation there was a standard mobile warfare advance using elite formed up regular units and it failed miserably. I think such attempts to advance by Russia are a boon for Ukraine. The Americans would have liked Ukraine to stop fighting in Bakhmut in the hope that the Russian army would try major offensives using the outdated maneuver over distance with large motorised formations method.
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  267. like the ICC would indict Ukraine.
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  268. The ultimate outcome has never been in doubt.
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  269.  @leopoldbloom4835  The German army was good. Russia's is not.
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  270. Professor Jonathan Haslam, author of a large book on the subject says Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were the main NATO members insisting peace would be secured by Ukraine becoming a full member of NATO, but Denmark was the foremost advocate for Ukrainian membership of NAT0 among West European countries, and it pushed hard for military cooperation with Ukraine in peacekeeping operations all over the globe to qualify it as a NATO partner. What the Russians might think was behind all this was not much considered. The suspicion was mutual nevertheless; as Mearsheimer says countries can never be certain of each others intentions, or of what those intentions might become.
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  271.  @oliversissonphone6143  Zelensky didn't think Russia was actually going to do it.
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  272. There had been a war in Donbass since Russia invaded in 2014.
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  273. Journalist understand the importance of perceptions though, and how are the Russians going to be persuaded to stop if as a result of tactical victory they think things are going well. strategically?
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  274. Every border in the world was formed by the balance of forces on either side of it.
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  275. it is and it isn't. The trajectory of the war seems to indicate Russia has the advantage, but they are going to pay an enormously heavy price if they press on.
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  276. The territory can be regained but the dead are gone forever. Russia has 100 million more people that Ukraine. Nuff said.
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  277. Kofman is a land power guy. O'Brien is more enamored of sea power as determinative in the grand scheme of things. Anders is a naval officer of course.
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  278.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  Thanks, that explains why the Russian used the Z convict storm units when forced to fight where they originally didn't want to, but it doesn't explain why the Ukrainians did not stage an economy of force fighting retreat when it became clear the Russians were driving an inexhaustible screen of expendable goons in front of the actual professionals of Wagner that were supported by fires. Currently the Ukrainians are advancing on Bakhmut, which indicates it does have value to them as a point from which to mount a deep penetration and exploitation. Furthermore the Ukrainians are methodically arttriting Russian artilleries by extensive use of HIMARS then slowly advancing in the latest offensive, which is a lot cleverer than trying to defend against Russian cannon fodder convict screening the adept professions of Wagner while they are being given massive fire support, which is what the battle of Bukhmut was in the latter part of it,. Kofman was critiquing a failure of Ukrainian flexibility and subordinating everything else to the main effort. I don't see there was a pinning of Wagner as they won and Ukraine could hardly have predicted the rebellion, could they? Wagnerites would have been available if not for Prig's mutiny. In fixing them the Ukrainians were fixing their own troops and the loss of morale after Zelensky announcing it would be defended was sapped the troops fighting spirits somewhat surely.
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  279. Twitter was quite important for cancel culture. It got completely oit of control and was electorally irresponsible because as Michael Lind said to Klein, US elections are won by 'Big Tent' coalition parties. The Dem;s candidate for pres was espousing crazy stuff as a result (biological males in school female sports teams and defund the police).
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  280. Germany was compelled to admit they were solely responsible for WW1, thereby totally demoralizing the political class.
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  281. I don't think the US wanted this; there were a long series of miscalculations by Russia and Ukraine that America was powerless to prevent.
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  282. Mearsheimer had no influence on the diplomacy and knew less than Biden; US intel very successfully predicted the Russian invasion before it happened. The problem was that America could warn the Kremlin not to, but not prevent the Russians from following through with putting their invasion plan into action regardless. Mearsheimer has an explanation why the Russians were so determined in early 2022. And almost three years and hundreds of thousands of dead Russians later they still are determined, for reasons that are nothing to do with Mearsheimer trying to explain and comment on the war..
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  283.  @evgeniya7853  Mearsheimer said if Ukraine had been admitted to NATO as a full member then Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. But Mearsheimer is not infallible, he may have been proved wrong about that too
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  284.  @rawnukles  Not the issue. Ukraine is a signatory to the non proliferation convention and has agreed to renounce nuclear weapons forever. If Ukraine first used a nuclear weapon on Russia, then Russia would retaliate against America for Ukraine's first use, because America's hands would not be clean. It is on America if it supports Ukraine while it builds a nuclear weapon to use in a conventional war, because American intel will know if Ukraine starts building one.
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  285.  @yellowtunes2756  The problem for Ukraine was not being in Nato as a full member it was that the Russians knew they were trying to get into Nato and decided to forestall that possibility. Similarly, the problem for Ukraine is the Russians would destroy any facility capable of creating a nuclear weapon were they aware that Ukraine was actually trying to make a . nuclear weapon.
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  286. He told them in 1994 they needed a nuclear deterrent against Russia. Wasn't wrong.
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  287.  @olenmees9150  It was not Mearsheimer who told Ukrainian politicians to renounce nuclear weapons, quite the opposite. The Germans and Americans paid Ukrainian officials off in 1994.
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  288.  @StunBuns  It was not mrely giving back Siviet nukes to Russia. Ukraine renounced building their own nukes, which they had the expertise and resources to do. In 1994 Mearshimer said it was was terrible idea for Ukraine to not have an independent nuclear deterrent to a Russian invasion and Mearsheimer was right. The West paid off Ukrainian politicians to agree Ukraine would never have its own nukes.
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  289.  @steemlenn8797  He, and virtually only he, already has the credit for saying Ukraine needed its own nuclear weapons. He said that thirty years ago.
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  290. You have to read between the lines, as with any source.
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  291. After watching this carefully I have to say Denmark's greatest military thinker ever is Sven Hassel.
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  292. Not clear how Russia can be made to feel so hard pressed on the battlefield that they feel the need to compromise, but not use their battlefield thermonuclear weapons.
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  293. Why are Ukraine leaving the 18-26 year olds out of the call ups and at the same time squealing for aid? If you cannot or will not help yourself then no one else can and no one else will.
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  294. Given his title focusing on whether there is a military rationale, his analysis being that this benefits Ukraine militarily, and Ukraine having came into control of one side of the dam in November, it is not clear why Anders does not even canvass the possibility the Russians did not demolish the dam. It turned out they did not do the NordStream pipeline demolitions contrary to what he assumed, so the likelihood is he is wrong again. Pretty remarkable considering he is a naval officer with expertise in riverine and undersea operations.
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  295.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  He was too busy to inform his viewers that the prime suspects are clearly nonRussian individuals operating in an unobtrusive way from a yacht , making a Russian state operation most unlikely. Morover, Russia would have did such a slick frame up and let everyone think that Russia had blown the pipelines for several weeks? Come on!
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  296.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Nothing much was made of the destruction of the pipeline by Western governments .One might have expected uproar if it was Russia. as the sabotage was in Nato waters. As I recall. Anders had some convoluted counter hybrid provocation explanation for Western governments remaining tight lipped. But the truth is Western governments knew it was done by Ukraine not Russia.
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  297. It is missing the fourth and in my opinion most likely type of escalation.: that the Kremlin realise the tide has turned against them nd they cannot possibly hope to win or even survive in the long run with their current conventional strategy. In that case they would have to actually do something riskier. Or quit.
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  298. It is not clear that Russia's war machine is operating at anywhere near maximum capacity. The US intel briefings to Biden and soon Trump may be to the effect that a flood of extra support to Ukraine would not necessarily lead Putin to end the war and might leave him an option to put Russia into higher gear.
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  299. Denmark was the first country to support Ukrainian membership of NATO. Tail wagging the dog.
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  300. Russian took Bakhmut and did not follow up so no, it was not somewhere Russia wanted as the basis for an advance. I think the Russians thought the Ukrainians could not be left in posession of Bakhmut because it was somewhere Ukraine would find ideal to launch an attack into the Russian rear area, which were favourable for exploitations..
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  301. Which is why he tried to take Kiev.
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  302. He would know all about grabbing a country's resources.
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  303. All depends what you mean by 'win'. Halt the Russian advance and attrite the Russians until they realise their efforts is futile and ask for an agreement freezing the front lines? Forcibly retake the land in the South and Donbass occupied post Feb 2022? Make remaining in Crimea untenable for Russia? Inflict so many KIA sons on Russian soldiers' families that Putin gets overthrown by popular unrest and Russia breaks up? Ukraine will try to attain the latter outcomes. The West won't help them achieve those, but Ukraine might just be able to do it anyway. Big if, but if Ukraine was getting the kind of victory they aspire to then I think Putin would use nukes on the Ukrainian army. Theatre thermonuclear weapons' as unignorable hybrid warfare; the US led Nato alliance would not have been attacked yet it would still have to do something but what would they dare do to a country that had already crossed the Rubicon? There would be uncertainty and fear of overdoing it and panicking the Kremlin, with good reason! In my opinion the greatest asset of Russia in deterring the Wesst in Russia's fragility. An endgame without a Russian rout and resort to desperate measures short of an attack on Nato forces but presenting them with a challenge will be very tricky to avoid because things speed up towards the end, in war as so many things. Although we hear a lot about Ukraine currently winning comfortably, no one spells out how taking that process to completion would actually be feasible without a period of extreme instability and danger. Is Nato willing to directly enter conventional combat, limited but nevertheless actual, against Russian forces if Russia gets so desperate it nukes the Ukrainian army?
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  304. The path to getting Ukraine into Nato is like the process of building a nuclear weapon would be. The problem is Russia would decide to act while it could to forestall any such possibility.
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  305.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Russia has quality (ie intelligent and easily trained manpower) hat has barely been touched yet. Even though the current army of reservists are from backward Taiga regions that are the only ones really mobilised yet. you cannot ignore that Russia will have double the number of troops and will be able to have double that again quite easily. Ukraine has not got reserves to match that.
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  306.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  They are not green they are trained soldiers in the reserves who have been called up again. And they can man fortifications, three lines of which have already been constructed opposite Kherson on the east bank. Double the troops already and there will be more to follow.
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  307.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  There are also reports that there is a big drive for blood donations in Russia, which means they are expecting a huge number of casualties soon. There is going to be an big Russian offensive, and freeing the elite units in Kherson for a big push is probably a large part of why there is a withdrawal from the west bank..
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  308.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Exactly, they have won every battle but the war keeps going on. And the Russians are getting more rather than less numerous.
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  309.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  It is apparent that Russia cannot win and Putin has zero intention of disengaging and is already gearing for a full albeit undercover mobilisation as that becomes necessary. Russia has made a terrible mistake, but the world is watching them; the Kremlin’s mindset is keep the war going at however great a cost or cease to be taken seriously (even by themselves). A hundred thousand Russians will killed in Ukraine before they’ll consider ending the war. With a quarter of a million of their countrymen dead or severely disabled in action and losing Crimea to the HIMARS rockets (allied to US surveillance pinpointing of everything they do, which they have no answer to). in a year from now Russia will start to think of tactical nukes use in terms of a final settling of accounts with Ukraine rather than a way to win.
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  310. Putin this and Putin's goals that. Ukraine is at war with Russia.
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  311. Ukraine is not near losing the war but they are inexorably losing territory. Actual peace would mean recognition of Russia's gains and ceding the aforementioned territory to Putin as legally Russian now by the Ukrainian government. They can't do that, no way. The momentum of the Russia forces is slowly but surely accelerating and that is an incentive for Ukraine to end the Russian advances with a secession of hostilities without peace. Russia has no military incentive to end hostilities this year because they think they are winning. So Trump will have to offer the Russians powerful economic incentives and keep supplying Ukraine militarily to halt the erosion of the Ukrainian position in order to convince Putin to halt the war. Russia's offer to let Ukraine join the EU as part of any final settlement is a poison chalice for Europe, because the money for economic convergence of Ukraine with other members is just not there. Europe will fear a peace settlement that lands them with massive contribution obligations to Ukraine. An armistice is the most likely outcome.
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  312.  @tuehojbjerg969  In kilometers taken there is an acceleration
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  313. The pressure on Ukraine is coming from Russia. What you are implicitly asking for is unlimited countervailing assistance from the West to Ukraine, and if the West says sorry we can't commit to that, you say the West is pressuring Ukraine
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  314.  @evgeniya7853  Russia would have to be insane from their point of view to halt the fighting now and that is what Biden is counting on: Trump getting all the blame for Ukraine losing. The tide turned against Ukraine several months ago, and all that remains is to put it all on Trump.
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  315. Why is it important for someone in the West to remember anything about the war in Ukraine; that could only be because the crucial factor for whether Ukraine wins is the high level and open ended duration of Western support. Can Washington/the West provide such a level and duration of support? Yes. Do they want to? Not really. Russia is going to be needed to deal with a future mega power China.
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  316. Front line shortened and troops doubled; Russia is not going to run out of any missiles. Bakhmut is a symbolic waste of Russian troops?; clever communist infantry advances by infiltration during the Korean war were explained as human waves, whereby the defenders ran out of bullets. That is what the West and Ukraine desperately hope Russian soldiers will believe. Otherwise the steamroller will meatgrind on inexorably. Luhansk offensive coming?; the Russians are not going to fall for the same trick again surely. The reason why some people want to give Putin and Russia an offramp is because they think Russia is going to turn the tide and it will be Ukraine that needs an offramp, which it will not get after the remarks by Merkel about why she brokered the Minsk agreement. Saying Putin ought not to be given an offramp is IMO a way of trying to convince him he needs one Russia will not fall for the same ploy again, even though they might be promised the moon and the stars.
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  317. The longer it drags on the more chance someone will miscalculate/ escalate.
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  318. Since 2007 Putin and his diplomats issued thinly veiled threats that Russia would invade and try to conquer Ukraine unless it stopped trying to join the Western block. Kiev did not respect the implicit threats, so he checked them.
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  319. That is why the criteria for Ukraine becomeing eligible to join the EC included military requirements.  @justmy-profilename 
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  320. Why was Putin was simply supposed to respect Ukraine's right to choose themselves in which international alliances they seek membership? It is my distinct impression his job was to maintain and if possible increase the security of the Russian Federation and, as he could not do properly both things it seems logical that the security of Russia would be the one he chose to take care of. And by the way, countries do not have to wait until they know there is a plan to attack them before taking counter action, and how can anyone now what a a foreign country's intentions really are, still less what they might become in a few decades ?  @justmy-profilename 
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  321. Getting Ukraine into the Washington alliance was a way to totally humiliate the Putin system and cause a colour revolution in Russia. The ex director of the National Endowment for Democracy explicitly said this in a 2013 op ed. If anyone thought Putin's would response to such a gambit would be essentially impotent because ideological aggression was not a proper casus beli in international law, then they were cracked. Now people are saying that enabling Ukraine to outlast Russia in the war will lead to the implosion of Russia..  @stevesonnaquesta 
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  322. Well that is the way the game is played, because a country that did not interfere would regret it. Why anyone thought that Russia would not escalate I have no idea.  @Muzakman37 
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  323. Not forced at all; he could let his system be overthrow and someone like Yeltsin preside over the disintegration of Russia. view of the alternative, I just don't think it is remotely surprising he chose to use armed violence  @DartNoobo 
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  324. Even if the Russian army is driven of of Ukraine and Crimean completely, Russia, can simply refuse to cease hostilities, thereby preventing Ukraine becoming a NATO member. Conversely, were Russia to agree to a peace treaty then Ukraine could join NATO. Putin is going to keep this war going forever, for the rest of his life.
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  325. But why is Russia not making serious offers? In my opinion it is because Russia does not think it is losing; fantastic as it seems, the knuckle dragging Russians think they know more about the war they are fighting than a thinker like Anders does.
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  326. PremMusk Twitter single issue activist retweet cancel culture took over the Dems and doomed them.
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  327. If he was an opportunist Putin would have quit the SMO by now.
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  328.  @Xylene.T The Special Military Operation Putin mounted in early 2022 led tp the slaughter of many of the ResFed's best units. At present Putin is in a full scale industrial war that is calling into question the existence of his regime. Its is silly to assert Putin is trying to remake the world order just because he is fighting a war against a country on his own border.
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  329. Russia might think that worth it if pushed too hard.
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  330. I think we ought to remember that Zelensky won election with a platform that gave Putin hope he could attain all his objectives. Zelensky seemed about to give the Donbass a veto over whether Ukraine could join NATO. Then he did a U turn, got and used more advanced weapons, then ordered the arrest of a Ukrainian oligarch who was a major Russian language media magnate in Ukraine and who Putin was a personal friend of Putin. Yet Zelensky did not realise Putin was serious about the invasion: up until a week or so before it he was telling the US to stop warning about it because it was affecting tourism.
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  331. You have to look and the evolution of tactics and how the battle changed. It seems clear to me that the Russians were being bled at first but they adapted. And they did get their first victory in over a year even though Ukraine was willing to take significant losses defending it throughout.
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  332.  @barbaros99  No plan survives contact with the enemy. Well it ought not to anyway.
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  333.  @barbaros99  As it is apparently a point so tangential that you object to my response pertinent to Anders's one perhaps you ought to consider whether to start your own channel and not allow comments on it. The only point Anders made about timeline in the context of his discussion about whether Ukraine fell into a Russian trap was he noted that the Russian convicts were finishing their contracts by the time Wagner entered the Bakhmut battle. I simply picked up on your mention of timeline in a comment and assumed it was in the aforementioned context, and as this is Anders's YT where he decides to allow comments and has allowed mine so far even though I often disagree with him, I replied to comments on his YT reaction to Kofman without worrying about whether I exactly grasped what the commenter meant. Pardon me for not realising we were not on the same page and you had some abstruse musing you wanted to do here.
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  334.  @barbaros99  My comments are pertinent to the argument of the YT video they appear below. Anders said Kofman was wrong, but I said its not that simple; Russia was was forced into urbanised offensive and bled in Bakhmut initially but it tried to turn the tables and thrugh accepting the high kill ratio while altering it to be of disposable auxiliaries recruited from prisons for trained soldiers valuable to Ukraine. One has to look at how the Russians responded during Bakhmut to create and use the assemblage of expendable convicts and professional soldiers that Wagner had became by the time of the heaviest fighting for Bakhmut. Only then is it possible to judge whether in hindsight Ukraine ought to have persisted with the same operational concept it started with, or disengaged due to an evolution in Russian tactics over time altering the terms of the battle to Ukraine's disadvantage
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  335. But would Russia accept that? Is Washington looking to find out?
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  336. Journalists understand morale and haw important perceptions are.
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  337. Lets say they did, do you think the Russians would only retaliate against Ukraine?
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  338. Washington wants stability. They are not looking to find out what Russia would do if faced with a clear defeat.
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  339. What is the effect of Putin's reluctance to mobilise? Fewer casualties; the Russian generals cannot attack when starved of troops, and attack is when the real casualties are suffered.
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  340. Obama vetoed Blinken and others' urging to send weapons to Ukraine because he said Russia had "escalatory dominance'. His belief has not been falsified by events, because Russia has escalated to an astounding degree, which perhaps indicates a perception that they faced an existential threat. To feel compelled to fight is not necessarily motivated by a belief that one will win. We don't know whether Putin ordered the invasion in a state of exultation or desperation. America is not terribly worried about Ukraine being decimated and Russia may not have anything more to throw at Ukraine, but the menacing statements are not aimed at Ukraine they are aimed at the US, which seems to be taking them seriously judging by how Ukraine have been denied ATACMS. Russia cannot be defeated in the sense that Saddam's Iraq or Hitler's Germany was, so it would not be existential for the leadership to withdraw and sign a peace treaty with guarantees of no future repetition of the invasion. But whether they could domestically survive a failure in Ukraine is dubious. Full mobilization or even more drastic measures such as clear warnings of a very big bang would be tried before Russia accepted being pushed back. There could also be some kind of attack on US surveillance satellites planes or bases, possible bey electronic warfare or laser to begin with. If forced to accept a defeat in the field against medium sized technologically middling country like Ukraine the RF might as well disarm because they cannot beat anyone. A common scenario wargamed by Nato has been coming to the aid of Russia invaded by China; maybe Russia will lose (you have made a good case), but in the global strategic context any such Ukraine/NATO/ US victory will prove to be a pyrrhically costly one in the long term I suspect. So the assumptions may not just be bad in the Kremlin
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  341. Putin's major mistake was in thinking he had got anything with Minsk and halting instead of going all out in 2015. Now as then, Ukraine benefits more from a pause than Russia is the obvious lesson the Kremlin will take. I cannot see the Russian army going on the defensive. Also. being on the defensive or making slow advances makes it especially easy and safe for Ukraine to bring forward its artillery and hammer the Russians very deep behind the front line with the 200 heavy howitzers and 30 HIMARS the West has supplied. It would be a massacre. The cost of it has been so incredibly high, yet Russia line and HQ officers have gained combat experience relevant to what is to come, which is already a reset. The Russian army 2.0 is what any fighting in winter will be against. The Wagner regiment is building fortifications? That indicates Russia will be on the defensive where the fortifications are built. Surely no one expects Russian commanders to be obtuse as to think that only their troops will benefit from training during a pause. It terms of the re-equiping of the Ukrainian armed forces with Western arms that gun for gun enable Ukraine to win artillery duels, Russian can expect its advantage in materiale to decline with every week. .
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  342.  @davidkottman3440  Fired from drones, by AGI. The Russia methods are inhuman.
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  343. Both countries have very heavy losses, but both seem to think it is worth it
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  344. But extending it to Russia disadvantage. Eventually Russia will have to choose how to end it
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  345. Just a decade ago peace was an option for Ukraine, but to be aligned with America was something they wanted more, so they ignored the warnings from Russians and many Western diplomats who knew Russia, preferring to listen to resentful Poland. Why Denmark was so keen to bring Ukraine into the Western camp is a mystery.
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  346.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Denmark was foremost in pushing Ukrainian participation on UN peacekeeping missions in order to to promote their Nato application. As President, Yanukovych agreed on an EU deal that cut out Russia and forced Putin to alter the deal in Ukraine's favour, by buying massive amounts of bonds from Ukraine, and provide heavily discounted gas; a much better deal that he originally had offered Yanuckovych. It was for taking the much improved deal he forced Putin to make that Yanukovych was overthrown (for the 2nd time) . Timoshencko of the silly hairstyle also did a deal with Putin over gas but not suspected being pro-Russian because she wasn't an ethnic Russian, eh?
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  347.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Ukraine wanted to be wealthy happy and with things getting better all the time like modern Poland acting like the 51st state. Now that dream has come half true, because they are just like Poland ... in WW2
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  348.  @andrzejbarcelonafrlk6416  Ukraine is an anti authoritarian and anti imperialist country that chose freedom. Ukrainians have have got to be their enlightened selves just as benighted Russians have to be 'dark' and mainly support Putin. Both countries had their chance and made their choice.
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  349. Published in Feb 2022 is different to written then. I think we ought to remember that Zelensky won election with a platform that gave Putin hope he could attain all his objectives. Zelensky seemed about to give the Donbass a veto over whether Ukraine could join NATO. Then he did a U turn, got and used more advanced weapons, then ordered the arrest of a Ukrainian oligarch who was a major Russian language media magnate in Ukraine and who Putin was a personal friend of . Yet even Zelesnsky did not relies Putin was serious about the invasion up until a week or so before it he was telling the US to stop warning about it because it was affecting tourism. Mearsheimer has been right about the trouble Russia would have invading Ukraine. What neither Zelensky or Mearsheimer or those who for the last two years thought Putin might order a withdrawal failed to understand is how intent Putin is on wrecking Ukraine irrespective of the cost. People say the Ukrainians care more than the Russians about the war. I think they both, in a great many cases, care enough to die.
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  350. The thing is Putin is following through with his initial decision. Russia is going to go right on to the bitter end, come what may. So what does Anders think is the explanation for the war having lasted getting on for thee years and Russia still showing no signs of stopping?
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  351.  @MN092krjsj  Yes. And getting on for three years later Russia is still fighting harder and herder in Ukraine despite hundreds of thousands of casualties. Why?
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  352.  @ericp1139  Anders is a member of the Danish Armed Forces, not the RusFed's.
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  353. I gotta admit the explanation of Ukraine 's attritional withdrawal tactic is pretty good. But why can't Russians around Bakhnut have their own non urban version of it: pre register their positions with artillery then blast hell out of those positions when Ukraine attacks and occupies them? By the same token, why could the Ukrainians not reoccupy the positions after springing their tactical trap? Hmmm.
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  354.  @connormycyk1835  The Europeans are going to have to pony up.
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  355. @ Ha
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  356.  @connormycyk1835  But keep paying?
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  357. Trump was explicitly facing facts that Europeans are aware of but not publicly talking about. European countries could carry on keeping Ukraine in the war but they would have to be willing to find the extra money for Ukraine by hurting their own voters. Winning the war with Russia over Ukraine is not obviously what it would have to be: a supreme priority objective of European governments or the US. And is winning the war against Ukraine a supreme priority for Putin? No one knows how much Russia still can draw on, or whether China would be willing to seriously help Russia if it was losing. Committing to continuing with 'however long it takes' would be an unlimited liability exercise for the West. We honorably did the best we could, and now it is time to talk with Russia.
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  358. Is denmark going to agree to directly fight Russia /: NO IT WANTS OTHER COUNTRIES TO DO THAT! Same policy as in the Korean war.. Denmark has a gold plated welfare state; what does it know about where to find that money?
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  359.  @Ikkeligeglad  American taxpayers foot the bill for European defence. That makes Denmark and others like Poland recklessly push Ukraine association with Nato in the belief that the US would be picking up the tab forever more.
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  360.  @Ikkeligeglad  F35s are not available on the open market, they are 'sold' to US allies. Denmark and Poland especially have been the tail wagging the dog over Ukraine.
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  361. 10:56 Is Russia trying for encirclements like Mariupol, or are they wary of repeating that kind of urbanised last stand by hard core Ukrainian battalions? I think Russian military strategists perceive the casualty ratio in Bakhmut ECT (whatever it may be) is the best Russia can get anywhere in Ukraine; and so the fighting there is thought by the Russian military to be to Russia's advantage
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  362.  @harmless6813  There is no argument about the Russian casualties being at least 50% convicts. Or that Russia is bigger in population than Ukraine.
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  363.  @thomasherrin6798  The Russian forces have done the opposite of shrink in number since the begining of the war according to testimony by Gen Cavoli the other week, and he estimates they can fight on for a year. In a very recent interview General Milley said that neither side is likely to achieve their objectives. Those two figures have access to the very best intel (better than the Ukrainians have) How is the war going? It is going to go on without any decisive result.
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  364. Except Ukraine will not agree to any deal except one in which Russia agrees to recognize Ukraine's original borders, and if Russia did that Ukraine would in all likelihood join NATO, which would be a disaster for Russia.
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  365. The elite units are glad that they are in Kursk and are not being used in Pokrovsk.
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  366. The Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, did ten years in prison and is a minion of Putin; Prigozhin fascinates the intel and deception machine of the west that is looking to cause trouble in the kremlin because the battlefield is not looking too good, but in all truth his current prominent position could not possibly survive Putin leaving office, and the idea of him being a successor is very far from credible. Wagner's convicts ( 20,000 of which 10% have been KIA to date) are not skilled but they are advancing in a very rigid way quite possibly as sitting ducks for locating Ukrainian positions (per drones that are always overhead of Wagner assaults bands) when the Ukrainian open fire. The convict Wagerites' lack of skills is a feature, not a bug. They are not there to take territory and are expected to die in the process of not taking it. Russia is not going to run out od robbers and murders they have a 100,000 srill incarcerated. They are not there to take territory and are expected to die in the process of _not_taking it. Russian men against American machines, It's only the convicts who are being killed, and it seems they are being used to locate Ukrainian artillery when it fires on Wagner's constant reconnaissance in force. Wager has 20,000 convicts, the planners of Wagner operation just get more convict to replace the ones dying, The bombardments after Wagner operation are greater thAT THE ONES THAT WERE TO SUPPORT THE OP. These ops always take place in daylight, all the better for Russian drones to see the Ukrainian artillery's firing. And sorry, but it is working for Russia be it ever so ugly. If is really is good for Ukraine why do they keep telling the world that the Russian tactics in Bakhmut are stupid? RusFed individuals being lost there are almost entirely convicts and them being KIA is a saving to the Russian taxpayer. Bakhmut is where they have the firepower and Ukrainians standing and fighting and these are some of the best and most determined units in the Ukrainian being pinned or 'fixed' in Bakhmut where they are immobile and easy to bombard instead of being free for surprise offensives. Meanwhile the VDV (professional core of the Russian army) has been resting and refitting after being withdrawn from West bank Kherson months ago. I think Surovikin has the wherewithal for an offensive using his mst capable and now freed troops while putting the hundreds of thousands of mobilised reservists into the fortified defensive positions .It must be remembered that the Wagner convicts are there to die., A well planned defensive battle is to the Russian army's taste. It is in over extending itsele by advancing too far too fast and distant from logistic infrastructure that Russia has come unstuck. I think Surovikin would be happy to let Ukraine come to him, now he has a consolidated, fortified and fully manned front line plus in the VDV a large mobile force being held further back to be thrown in to a critical battle that will be on ground where Russia has the logistic advantage. And Surovikin can cut the bridges across the Dnipro when that will have maximum disruptive effect. If one was going to chose a place to fight Russia , south east Ukraine would not be top of the list. I think Russia giving up in a war against a medium size country on its doorstep would be very surprising, and it is not necessary to attribute their continuation of this war against Ukraine to anything but standard nation state geopolitical interests. When all is said and done Russia has propinquity and resources, while Ukraine does not have a monopoly on nationalism and people supporting their country when it is up against it. I would not bet on Russia settling for less than a draw, or the US /Ukraine assemblage being able to get an outright victory.
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  367. So Western combined arms boils down to complete command of the air, (thats what air superiority is) . Far from clear how air support would have been have been useful against Wagner's highly urbanised light infantry attack, which used expendable convicts to clear mines and draw fire, and could have been used to soak up airstrikes by extremely valuable planes braving the Russians AA missile festooned ground forces
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  368. The Russians think they are the good guys, and they take Ukraine very seriously as a threat. Ukraine has united behind their leader,, that is what countries (not just democratic ones) do in war. A country is a survival machine.
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  369. "Russia is headung for defeat" . No, Bakhmut .
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  370.  @mariaf.6601  Does America want Ukraine to get the kind of victory that Zelensky is saying is what he would settle for? I don't think the US has ever said that or supplied Ukraine with the advanced long range missiles to do it.
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  371.  @mariaf.6601  The early gains were headlong drives by columns of vehicles along roads; not methodical and accompanied by fortification and mine laying. The current Russian offensive is more ratchet than pendulum.
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  372.  @shuathe2nd  Why all this now? Because the West knows Ukraine is about to need it. Newsflash: Russia is advancing on multiple fronts
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  373. Anders talks about war as the continuation of politics but what is lacking in his analysis is an understanding of politics in war. Ukraine to keep fighting no matter what and Nato countries populations will have to take the financial pain is is a purely military perspective. It's just not politically feasible to continue forever. We did the best we could.
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  374. The Russian steamroller is gathering pace (gist of what Oberst Reisner says about the Kharkiv offensive), but Anders is buoyed that Putin will be embarrassed as if he is a high school girl.
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  375. They have always been economically weak, That is nothing new for them.
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  376. By the UN definition: none. And the Gaza situation is actually the Palestinian situation,
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  377. Unless the Russians are dim, the mobilised reservists are for replacing the remaining contract professional soldiers currently stationed at cushy bases inside the current borders of the RusFed. The freed up young tough professional soldiers will be sent to Ukraine. Not clear what Putin is going to do with them, but I think he understands Ukraine aided by America is holding almost all the cards in a long war, and further Ukrainian advances are likely. Invading the Russian Motherland is something that Ukraine must not and won't willingly do, because it would give Putin a theoretical justification (under long standing Russian rationales for first use) to detonate a theatre thermonuclear weapon on the Ukrainian army. What Putin is up to with the proposed rapid incorporation of the occupied territories is getting Ukraine on the horns of a dilemma whereby trying to liberate their own territory they will be moving into what is in Kremlin eyes as Russian as Siberia. Please note: I do not think Russia will demand Ukraine withdraw from what they have liberated in Donbass ECT just because of some law that Russia has passed saying all Donbass is Russian, but I do think that once Russia passes such a law the Ukrainians will be put on notice that if they advance any further their force will be treated as if they are a conventionally unstoppable aggressor at the gates of Moscow.. The meaning of Putin's "this is not a bluff" remark is clear. It is much cleverer than a demand to 'surrender or we drop the Bomb'. because it puts the ball in the Ukrainian American court. My feeling is the US behind the scenes will tell Ukraine to advance as quickly a possible before the occupied Ukrainian territories can be incorporated into Russia proper under Russian law. Once that happens America will choke down the supply of HIMARs ammunition, and the war will effectively end. America is not going to get into a nuclear war with Russia, and a US force (including air force) conventionally fighting with Russia would have much too easy a path to nuclear war, because there are tactical anti aircraft missiles that Russia commander would in 15 minutes ask for permission to use when they were being clobbered as they would be.
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  378.  @krpi7685  Holding the referendums and doing the annexations now does not fool anyone outside Russia, but it must be for a purpose and I think he is preparing the ground for the contingency of having to issue a credible theatre thermonuclear strike when and if 'Paddington' puts his paw across whatever front line exists at the time. Putin is readying a backstop in case the Russian army gets routed again, wants the West to understand that the personnel of the state including the military commanders in Russia are going to be given a order consistent with the long established decision protocols for an apparent proper rationale for the use of a theatre thermonuclear weapon on the rear area of an Ukrainian army driving into what by that time in Russian law ' 'is' as Russian as Vladivostok. In a situation where America is retaliating for a Russian battlefield thermonuclear strike on Ukraine's advancing army with a direct military attack of some kind on Russian forces in and around Russia, Russia would have has already crossed the Rubicon of first use, although not against any member of Nato. None of such complicating factors have been well worked out in all their implications in the way a Warsaw Pact NATO conflict had been over decades, so there can be little certainty. Nonetheless, I venture to say it is barely plausible that after detonating one theatre thermonuclear weapon on a Ukrainian army, the Russians are going to accept that their nuclear deterrent to conventional attack is so risible to America that it can for example, brazenly send swarms of F35s to sink the Black Sea Fleet with impunity, while Russia is paralyzed with fear. Two things are thing is for certain Russia would be pathetically vulnerable to any conventional raid America launched on it, and another is that in the thermonuclear weapons' realm Russia can look the USA in the eye; so what would the Kremlin do in retaliation? 'Nothing' seems an unlikely response from Putin in view of his track record.
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  379. "Given time and steady support Ukraine will win." How are they going to convince Russia to agree to end the war? As long as the war continues Russia has not lost.
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  380. 5:30 Russia once was willing to be like one of those thirty countries, because Russia tried to join Nato and not just under Yeltsin, but under Putin too. And they did not get a pre-emptive acceptance like Georgia and Ukraine did in 2008, which was supposedly a dead letter but officially reiterated for Ukraine in a Nato announcement of er, June 2021 (hmmm), Russia was fobbed off instead. Now was exclusion from a formerly anti Soviet alliance designed to help Russia develop into something very different to the USSR? Russia would surely not dare attack Nato, but Ukraine was announced to be joining Nato at an undetermined point in the future, whereupon a military option for Russia to deal with Ukraine would cease to exist in effect. Yet until Ukraine did actually join Nato then Russia would still have an invasion option. So why would anyone not think Russia was going to invade while it could? Rather that different attitudes to international rules, I think the belief that Russia was only up to clandestine hybrid war rather that a promethean endeavor such as an all out invasion of Ukraine is the key to what went wrong.
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  381. Russia and Ukraine both made a serious mistake getting themselves into the sticky situation they are currently in. They are well and truly in the soup together.
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  382. I think Russia would as likely as not use nuclear weapons on Ukraine to stop Ukraine if it was about to win. There definitely would not be a nuclear war because years into the conflict the West has not got directly involved in fighting Russia even conventionally over Ukraine. Fortunately, Ukraine is further away from winning than ever. Does not mean Ukraine is going to lose, just that a meaningful win is beyond them. Or rather that the West does not dare push Russia into a corner by supplying Ukraine with everything it needs. It's called a nuclear DETERRENT, not "blackmail".
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  383. Shouldn't parts of the front under pressure be reinforced by fresh units held in rear areas as a reserve rather that taken from another part of the front line?
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  384. The calculus of nuclear stand offs as they existed in the Cold War between equal superpowers was understood. The Russian (Warsaw Pact) conventional superiority was deterred by Nato's nuclear weapons doctrine of going nuclear if a Soviet conventional attack was succeeding. Anders's assurances of nuclear weapons use against the Ukrainian army being a counter productive non starter for Putin in any conceivable circumstances is an entirely novel hypothesis. Washington does not appear to be at all confident that Putin can not use tactical nukes without being overthrown, judging by the grudging provision of the really effective weapons to Kiev.
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  385.  @macki-1  Wagner as it fought in Bakhmut (apart from the early advance attempting to encircle it), was was using a very specialised l method of advancing spearheaded by convict groups sequentially sent along the same routes and suffering extremely high casualties. As the US said Wagner's tactics in Bakhmut were not ones that the Russian would chose to use if there were other options. Bakhmut had to be denied to Ukraine at whatever cost in the Russian command's opinion
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  386. Trump lost an election, by a very narrow margin. He may, or may not, win one soon. Putin may be bad, but he is genuinely popular in Russia.
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  387. Putin does seem to have greatly underestimated Ukrainian resistance in 2022, but Zelensky greatly underestimated the degree to which Putin was serious about an invasion. Anyway we are now in 2024 and it is clear Putin ain't bouncin' cause he's a GANGSTA
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  388. Ukraine has agency and is fighting for its life; well it is becoming critically short of infantry yet still will not draft its young men. You cannot blame Trump for that
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  389. Yes, yet he is still at it and amping ever more up to fight it. Maybe he thinks it is worth any price.
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  390. Under Obama. Then under Biden. Not Trump's war dude, he is just here to clear up the mess.
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  391.  @Ikkeligeglad I do think Trump has got the blame for things that were not his fault. Like the pandemic, which many people now are willing to admit was a Chinese lab escape.
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  392. Germany has always been part of the West, no matter who was leading it. Britain and France were making plans to attack Russia in the Russo Finnish war even though Britain and France were officially at war with Germany It was the Nazo Soviet pact that cause Britain to declare war on Germany.
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  393. Anders is right that Ukraine would win if only the West gave them proper backing but the strategists in Washington are not trying to really defeat Russia in Ukraine, They want the Kremlin to become discouraged and quit Ukraine. Russia has to stand alone after this war ends because it is going to be needed as part of a US led alliance of Germany Britain Japan India over against a future mega power China as predicted by Mearsheimer. Russia getting trounced in Ukraine might make it permanently alienated from the West.
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  394.  @victorhopper6774  A quarter of Russians don't have an inside toilet, and a similar proportion of Russian men die before they reach 55. Russians are remarkably careless with themselves, not anxious. I would not bet a lot of money on them over dramatizing their difficulties, or correctly characterizing them. They are most likely going to blunder on the same pyrrhic fashion, and wreck Ukraine in the process.
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  395.  @aaronbaker2186  True, but who thought it necessary to forbid men under 60 from leaving the country? Russia has stopped trying to ape US methods had has gone back to blind artillery sledgehammering of everything within reach, this does not require much quality in infantry. We are talking about two countries with low birthrates, one much larger than the other and the larger one is recruiting the dregs while the smaller country has the best men in the country on the front line. Moreover, Russians do not have a diaspora in the West (refugees) exerting a powerful draw to a life of peace , no military service, and relatively high wages.
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  396.  @cv990a4  One wonders why Russian has not pulled back again, if it has culminated for the second time.
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  397.  @kimpedersen4746  Inviting death is something that in real life gets less attractive over months. I think that Ukraine is going to give up on maximal objectives. and end up with what is far short of Minsk, which they could have had for the asking a year ago.
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  398. Mearsheimer is getting on for eighty years old, and his theories are about states and as he himself always cautions are simplifications of reality, yet I think he has been remarkably prescient about the geopolitical realities. He predicted over thirty years ago, that Russia would bully Ukraine unless Ukraine had an independent nuclear deterrent (to any invasion by Russia obviously).No one not even Putin could have predicted in 1994 what Russia would be doing 30 years later but Mearsheimer did. He also assumed in 2022 that Putin would not invade Ukraine because surely Putin understood his forces would incur very heavy losses trying to hold Ukraine down. The 2022 invasion was a failure of comprehension by Mearsheimer about another individual's assessment of the feasibility of conquering and holding down Ukraine, yet his analysis of the Russian state's policy toward Ukraine was not wrong. The current amped up Russia offensive in Ukraine is being done despite the heavy cost being understood. So the Russian effort in 2024 is not just a mistaken personal belief by Putin that Ukraine is low hanging fruit. The Kremlin now understand the cost is huge and still climbing but thinks it is worth it for Russia's strategic security. The Kaiser vetoed an attack on Russia in 1905, which Mearsheimer admits is out f line with his theory.
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  399. Mike martin's book says we fight for belonging and status. Crying uncle would make Russia not longer a major league country. And the deaths of Russians in Ukraine are a 'sunk cost'. So how are the Russians going to be made to quit? It is my impression that they are preparing for a 'war without end, not a blitz strategy.
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  400. A third possibility occurs to me. The story being printed and then being quickly taken down seems very like a ploy Goebbels once used to mislead the allies. I suspect the Kremlin want Ukraine to go all in on the bridgehead and advance so as to free Russian artillery from counter battery fire and let then knock seven bells out elite Ukrainian formations crowded into the bridgehead.
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  401. But there is a continuity in Russian policy toward Ukraine going back to the Tsarist regieme. The Kremlin was shocked at the losses initially but persisted and currently is not being put off by huge and mounting casualties beyond anything they dreamt of at the start of the invasion. There is an ineluctable logic behind Russian policy that surely stems from geostrategic considerations rather than Putin's particular psychology. Germany fought two world wars against almost exactly the same opponents, even though in WW2 the systems were totally different in both Germany and Russia that they had been in WW1. Hitler single handedly ordered WW1, but the Kaiser was hardly informed of the decision to go to war in 1914. Ukraine is a bit like the FinnoRussia war in which Britain and French were aiding the Finns and nearly directly fighting, Russia. But the real war was to come and Russia was needed to win it. Russia will be needed to deal with China down the road.
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  402.  @farnarkleboy  They were getting worse off. Trump is the reaction. It is perfectly rational from their point of view.
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  403. Going by the undersized army he first went into Ukraine with, Putin seems to banked on Kiev asking for terms once the invasion reached the capital rather than fight it out. Putin is desperate to end the war on terms he stipulates. Putin withdrawing without what he could present as a victory would be tantamount to admitting the war was a huge mistake in the first place and loosen his grip on power. Too late for Putin to compromise, he must go on until the bitter end to (sort of) win or lose it all. Russia loses some fighter planes. Mariinka has been transformed into a 'hellscape' . Planes can be pulled out of service to preserve them, cities are there for the taking. Ukraine will run out of cities before Russia runs out of planes
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  404. The LGM were not resisted at all in Crimea, which is certainly not going to happen in Latvia ECT, the Russian army were already in bases on Crimea, and Ukraine was never a full member of Nato, so 2014 is zero precedent for any kind of operation against Nato members not being reacted to by Nato as a whole in accordance with the rules of the organisation. Furthermore. Nato as a whole has went well beyond its treaty obligations to help non member Ukraine; no one expected that the countries of Nato would give as much help as they did. Putin thought he could do another 2014 in 2022 and got a debacle because Nato was pro active. He will plan his next move with the experience of 2022 in mind. I don't think who is in the White House is a big factor in Putin's thinking because Biden and Obama being pres did not stop him. Trump is a such a loose cannon with reckless rhetoric that the the Kremlin would surely have no reasonable expectation that he would do what he said and not respond to a attack on a Nato country not spending 2% on defence; that was surely just yet another Trump complaint about European Nato members freeloading on the US taxpayer (while pushing the expansion of Nato so as to cocoon them inside Chapter 5 members on every border). @BosonCollider 
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