Comments by "Sean Cidy" (@seancidy6008) on "Privatization of Russia's war fighting" video.

  1.  @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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  2. 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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  3.  @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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  4.  @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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  5.  @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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  6.  @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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  7.  @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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  8. 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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  9. 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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