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Auto Driller

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  1. If UA is in fact responsible, I assume that they calculated that the side effects were not as bad as the implications of the armored divisions reaching Kyiv. But at the very least, lots of property was destroyed and will have to be rebuilt after the war.
  2. I’m reading that UA opened a dam to flood the areas north of Kyiv and three Russian mechanized divisions are stuck in the mud. edit:
  3. Yes. And I’d also bet that the number of active and reserve troops is severely inflated. We saw this in Afghanistan. Regional commander secures his budget for “5000” troops. Tells 3000 of them they shouldn’t bother showing up for work or drills. Pockets the difference on ammunition, food, and equipment. It’s a pretty good racket until you’re supposed to start fighting a war.
  4. Who knew that the humble John Deere tractor was the greatest tool in modern land warfare.
  5. I know it’s early but this is shaping up to be one of the worst geopolitical moves of all time. Putin has woken up ALL of his enemies out of their persistent complacency and inspired them to rebuild their militaries and strengthen alliances. To say that he collapsed the economy is an understatement. And to top it all off, he’s losing the ground war. He has framed this as fighting “Nazis” to his domestic audience. So if he wants to withdraw or is eventually forced to due to a lack of materiel and fuel he basically has to tell the country “I just decided to let the Nazis keep Ukraine because it was really expensive to fight them”. Pretty soon, all of his secret police are gonna get pissed that their wages are no longer enough to feed their family. At this pace I think he’ll be lucky to hold onto a unified Russia and not have a breakaway province (looking at you, Chechnya) stage a successful uprising. edit: Russians also can now look forward to a future filled with economic exploitation by the friendliest nation on earth - China.
  6. I’m sure everyone in Russia is thrilled with their newfound poverty and information blackout. Anything for dear leader.
  7. All of the police and military currently responsible for his security have to eat. They have families. Pretty soon, they’re going to realize that their wages are basically worthless. I read an interesting theory that it’s not simply suffering that leads to revolutions, it’s when quality of life drops sharply in a short period of time. Russians have basically been enjoying the benefits of European life for the past 20 years. The wealthier among them spent weekends in London and Milan and send their kids to private school in London. I don’t think they’re going to respond to 25% inflation and bread lines very well.
  8. Once the reality of the economic situation in Russia sets in, Putin will be taken out internally. He’s literally destroyed all the progress they’ve made since WWII because he’s got little man syndrome. I don’t think he makes it to the end of the year.
  9. It’s becoming clear that we (the US, EU, NATO, Japan, whoever) have no choice but to turn this into a war of attrition. It’s really sad that the Ukrainian people will suffer the consequences, but that’s on Putin. If they are allowed to take and hold Ukrainian territory it is only a matter of time until they move on another country and threaten nukes if anyone intervenes. Let their economy implode on top of them and keep supplying weapons and intel until they literally have no fuel to send additional troops into the fight.
  10. Ukraine realizes that if they don’t fight now they will never, ever get this territory back.
  11. I occasionally check out rt.com to see how things are being spun for the Russian public. For the first time, they’ve started calling it an “invasion” and acknowledged “nearly 500” military deaths. Also an article about how the UN passed a resolution condemning their actions. Seems like they realize that they can’t keep this thing hidden forever. Side note: the only countries voting against the UN resolution were Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea, and Eritrea. Some company.
  12. A couple of random thoughts: - Ukraine is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt winning the propaganda battle. But it’s not only because they really are on the right side of history. It’s because Russia can’t fight back. See, the party line in Russia is there’s not even a war going on at all. They’re simply performing some targeted air strikes to help defend the “Donbas People’s Republic”. If they start filling the airwaves with images of tanks and artillery running over Ukrainian villages it’s going to be apparent that (1) the military is much weaker than they’ve been led to believe and (2) that they’ve been lied to since the beginning. It’s debatable whether (2) even matters because allowing a strongman to run over their rights seems to be baked into Russian DNA. - A lot of speculation has centered around the idea that Putin didn’t know the weakness of the military (particularly logistics) and is now scrambling to figure out a solution. I actually think he did know these things and planned around them. The idea was that he would mass an invasion force on all sides to scare them into submission. Throw in a couple of go-fast spec ops raids on airports and government HQ and he would never have to send the armor at all, thus negating their biggest weakness and preserving the myth of overwhelming strength. The problem was that the Ukrainians decided to fight back and he was forced to do it the “conventional” way. Now he’s trying to figure out how to fight a war while also telling the population that no such war exists. In the age of social media…pretty tough to pull this off.
  13. A large percentage of their stockpiled currency was held in foreign banks and is now frozen.
  14. The entire EU and NATO are going to ensure this is not the case. Relentlessly shelling civilians in a capital city and “having” that city are very different things.
  15. China taking a big L on this one too. In addition to looking like a bunch of jackasses for having tacitly supported Russia in the lead up to the invasion, the world has now clearly seen that a smaller country can effectively resist a full scale invasion from a “super power”. Taiwan suddenly isn’t looking so vulnerable.
  16. He’s not going to be there personally. He’ll send a representative.
  17. This seriously could not have gone worse for Putin. I’m trying to think of literally one thing that has worked out for them, and I’m coming up blank.
  18. Russian military doctrine seems to include a heavy dose of “drive your equipment into the open without infantry support, stop, and wait to get shot with a rocket.”
  19. The outpouring of support and western tilt have already happened. There’s no going back there. I think that Putin and his generals are going to find a way to “declare victory” by taking a small slice of southern/eastern Ukraine and claiming that was the objective all along. But the world knows they wanted the whole pie so it will be widely viewed as a humiliating defeat. One thing that’s important is that the impact of sanctions are going to make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for them to replace all of this smoldering military equipment we see posted on twitter. Already they are sending 1980s-era tanks from eastern-based units. At a certain point they can’t continue to prosecute this war without materially weakening their actual self-defense needs. A javelin costs less and is much easier to replace than a tank/APC/helicopter. We’re pretty much following the Soviet/Afghan war plan and they’re no better prepared to handle it than they were last time.
  20. So following Russia’s incoming military defeat, they get to spend the next decade begging to be allowed back into the global financial system? And hope that someone other than Syria honors their passports? This Putin guy is a strategic genius.
  21. Who could have guessed that Twitter would turn into a command and control tool during a major war.
  22. All of the advantages that led to a Russian victory in WWII - strong national identity and hatred for the invader, civilian participation in defense, supply chain problems for the enemy - are firmly in favor of the Ukrainian side in this conflict. They also have none of the advantages that the Nazis had - highly disciplined and experienced forces, efficient industrial production, hatred of the enemy. Add to this that basically the entire world (sans China, who is just using this as an opportunity to economically subjugate Russia) is united against them. I’m beginning to think that Putin loses his head over this little adventure.
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