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

  1. Which is why he tried to take Kiev.
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  2. He would know all about grabbing a country's resources.
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  3. 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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  4. 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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  5.  @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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  6.  @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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  7.  @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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  8.  @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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  9.  @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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  10. Putin this and Putin's goals that. Ukraine is at war with Russia.
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  11. 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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  12.  @tuehojbjerg969  In kilometers taken there is an acceleration
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  13. 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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  14.  @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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17. The longer it drags on the more chance someone will miscalculate/ escalate.
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  18. 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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  19. That is why the criteria for Ukraine becomeing eligible to join the EC included military requirements.  @justmy-profilename 
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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. 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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  25. 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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  26. PremMusk Twitter single issue activist retweet cancel culture took over the Dems and doomed them.
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  27. If he was an opportunist Putin would have quit the SMO by now.
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  28.  @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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  29. Russia might think that worth it if pushed too hard.
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  30. 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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  31. 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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  32.  @barbaros99  No plan survives contact with the enemy. Well it ought not to anyway.
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  33.  @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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  34.  @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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  35. But would Russia accept that? Is Washington looking to find out?
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  36. Journalists understand morale and haw important perceptions are.
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  37. Lets say they did, do you think the Russians would only retaliate against Ukraine?
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  38. Washington wants stability. They are not looking to find out what Russia would do if faced with a clear defeat.
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  39. 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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  40. 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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  41. 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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  42.  @davidkottman3440  Fired from drones, by AGI. The Russia methods are inhuman.
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  43. Both countries have very heavy losses, but both seem to think it is worth it
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  44. But extending it to Russia disadvantage. Eventually Russia will have to choose how to end it
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  45. 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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  46.  @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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  47.  @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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  48.  @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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  49. 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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  50. 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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