AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
They are stupid power hungry lunatics.
Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)
- Thread starter ParadiseLost
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They are stupid power hungry lunatics.
That barely even makes sense as a response... OK boomer, is it time we need to up your meds again?
That would make sense. Living "rent free" in ones head is commonly known as "memory" and yet elderly people often deal with memory loss issues so to them being able to recall or remember a prolific and pronounced poster on a forum must offer the false impression of impact.
History Learner
Well-known member
That barely even makes sense as a response... OK boomer, is it time we need to up your meds again?
My meds are consuming copium as Ukraine's Army falls apart, and brother the business is booming right now.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
Looking on recent Ukranian volunteer accounts I wouldn't want to be one of them right now.
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If Ukraine truly will collapse (note the italics on "if"), then the West should ironically still benefit from this due to the huge influx of Ukrainian refugees into the West. Russian-ruled Ukraine (or Russian-puppet Ukraine) will be a demographic wasteland.
History Learner
Well-known member
Probably, and unlike most of my opponents in this thread I'm entirely content to say that there's not going to be some happy ending for everyone involved here. Russia will accomplish its strategic goals of rolling back NATO and securing its national security, but Ukraine is going to not be a major boon for it for a generation at least. Poland, for example, will and is benefiting from the influx of refugees and there is a serious question of what this means in the long run given there has been some talk already of Poland over-taking Germany some day.
Poland overtaking Germany in terms of population? Because that's not going to happen. The gap is simply too wide. But Poland's population could theoretically end up reaching 50+ million if Russia will ever manage to conquer all of Ukraine.
History Learner
Well-known member
Economically; there's been some talk of that since 2008 at least with George Friedman's work initially and now expanding into general discussion:
Not all agree with the professor. A 2019 report by the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) argued that if Poland maintained the economic growth rate it had from 1990 to 2018, it would catch up with Germany in 21 years. It would take Poland 14 years to catch up with the average GDP-per-capita rate of the 15 "old" EU member states, the report showed. Hanna Godlewska-Majkowska, a professor at the SGH, wrote in the report that in terms of GDP per capita, Poland caught up with Greece in 2015 and was set to overtake Portugal by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, in the first five months of 2019, Poland surpassed the UK to become the sixth-biggest economic partner of Germany in the world, the Polish Economic Institute (PIE) said in a report. In 2018, Poland's exports to Germany made up 28.2% of all Polish exports, while imports stood at 22.4%.
Almost 16 years ago, Poland joined the EU and at the time was one of the least affluent countries in the bloc: GDP per capita was $16,000 in purchasing power parity, the second-lowest after Latvia. Unemployment was 19%. The average monthly salary was less than 2,300 zlotys (€510). Over the last decade and a half, the country has grown around 4% a year on average, more than three times the EU average of 1.2%. Polish GDP was 44% of the EU average in 2004, compared with 67% in 2018.
Based on Poland's PISA exam scores actually being higher than Germany's (human capital matters a lot for long-run economic development, especially if a country doesn't have a lot of natural resources), I actually wouldn't be surprised if Poland will eventually converge to Germany's levels of economic prosperity:
Programme for International Student Assessment - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Of course, I do suspect that immigrants are holding down Germany to a much greater extent than they are holding down Poland simply because Germany has many more immigrants percentage-wise than Poland has:
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Well, apart from the Gulf states - thanks in large part to coming from such a low base that even subcontinental coolies are an improvement over the natives. Otherwise, the cognitive impact of immigration - at least as proxied by the differences in performance on the PISA tests between the...
www.unz.com
Immigration in Europe: Map of the percentages and countries of origin of immigrants
Migration is a common phenomenon in Europe. The growth in the number of migrants has been even more pronounced after the formation of the European Economic Area, which comprises most European
jakubmarian.com
As for Ukraine, I think that if Russia truly will conquer all of Ukraine (which I have very significant doubts about, but which I am accepting as a possibility for the sake of argument here, @History Learner), then Ukraine will very likely have to be resettled by millions of Russians due to the fact that Ukraine will likely end up becoming so depopulated as a result of extremely massive emigration to the West. Of course, without Russia significantly boosting its own fertility levels, repopulating Ukraine would simply mean depopulating Russia.
But at least Russia would be able to loot Ukraine's natural resources, such as its neon production:
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/KLT3S5YWSBNTFE3UA24IAVWEOM.jpg)
www.reuters.com
But at least Russia would be able to loot Ukraine's natural resources, such as its neon production:
Exclusive: Russia's attack on Ukraine halts half of world's neon output for chips
Ukraine's two leading suppliers of neon, which produce about half the world's supply of the key ingredient for making chips, have halted their operations as Moscow has sharpened its attack on the country, threatening to raise prices and aggravate the semiconductor shortage.
www.reuters.com
History Learner
Well-known member
Ukraine to U.S. Defense Industry: We Need Long-Range, Precision Weapons
Our readers are about 1,800 corporate members of the defense industrial base in the United States. What message do you have for them? And what do you need from them urgently?
Sharapov: The [Ministry of Defense] is concentrating currently on fulfilling all the needs of the armed forces. You asked a question about needs. First, you have to understand that the frontline is 2,500 kilometers long. The frontline where there is active combat in more than 1,000 kilometers long. That’s like from Kyiv to Berlin. … As of today, all the people in all of our armed forces and within the defense and security sector is up to one million people. And we have to support them all. We have to supply them with small arms, with personal protection gear and with the means of communication.
And of course, to carry out a war in this day and age, we need heavy weapons — that’s primarily artillery systems. As of today, our need for heavy artillery systems is measured by hundreds. That’s why we also need a huge number of rounds for these artillery systems.
I am not going to name the exact number we need. That is information for internal use. I’m just going to tell you I think to fulfill those needs we have to engage the entire military industrial complex of the entire world.
We have received a large number of weapon systems, but unfortunately with such a massively expendable resource, it only covers 10 to 15 percent of our needs. We need artillery, we need artillery rounds, infantry fighting vehicles, combat vehicles, tanks. We really need air-defense systems and the multiple launch rocket system.
Also, high-precision weapon systems, because we believe that high-precision weapon systems will give us an edge over the enemy, the upper hand in this war.
There is a debate in the United States about whether to send Ukraine armed Predator drones. How important are they to your fight?
Sharapov: The party that will win in this war will be the party that will first start using contemporary high precision equipment and weapon systems. And those drones that you mentioned, they are a part of the modernized, highly accurate, highly precise, modern equipment. It gives us an advantage that allows us to accurately strike the enemy.
Gen. Karpenko: Regarding the first question, I want to add something to what the deputy minister has said in terms of the need for equipment and armaments. I just want you to understand the intensity of the conflict. While the deputy minister was talking, I drafted some numbers to just show you the intensity of combat along those … kilometers where the combat is most active.
Think about this: one brigade occupies around 40 kilometers of the fence line. That means that to cover the active combat conflict we need 40 brigades. Every brigade is 100 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 tanks, 54 artillery systems — just for one brigade, and we have 40 of them.
I'm not going to talk about the anti-tank guided missiles or anti-tank guided weapons for now. I’m just talking about heavy weapons. As of today, we have approximately 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent of losses of equipment as a result of active combat. So, we have lost approximately 50 percent. … Approximately 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles have been lost, 400 tanks, 700 artillery systems.
That is a mathematical estimation we can make based on the length of the frontline and the intensity of the conflict. So, I'm giving you this estimate just for you to understand how significant the requirement is based on the intensity of the conflict.
So, think about it. If the current need for artillery systems is 700 vehicles, that needs to be replenished because they were destroyed. And we have only received 100 vehicles for example from [foreign] aid. … Then there [are] medical needs, the air force troops, the special forces and all the other branches and services that are also fighting in this war.
Regarding the heavy armaments and in regard to the drones as you asked about: this is what the war has come down to — using heavy artillery systems. It's close-contact warfare. So that leads to a lot of casualties.
The war that we are seeing in Ukraine right now happened the last time in 1945 when the world won over evil.
Unfortunately, today, we don't have the technologies that would allow us to limit human casualties. We have close human contact within the warfare. And that's why the deputy minister said correctly that the victorious side will be the party that has those [long-range, precision] technologies.
You have to understand that all of the [unmanned aerial vehicles], the armed UAVs that are needed, the kamikaze drones, they are the weapons that will allow us to extend the line of contact. So, the [increased] space between us and the enemy will limit human casualties while still increasing the efficiency of the destruction of enemy vehicles.
We need both the multiple launch rocket systems and the kamikaze drones [loitering munitions].
If we can use long-range items like the drones — like the MLRS — that will allow us to extend the effective range up to 60 kilometers, that will give us the upper hand and that will give us significant success.
And if we can increase the number of multiple launch rocket systems and kamikaze drones that will decrease the rate of consumption of artillery systems.
In a single article, Ukrainian officials admitted Oryx is completely wrong in all of his figures for Ukrainian losses and that Western Aid is completely insufficient to make up for the fact Russia has a massively larger economy than Ukraine. @LordsFire I really do think you should this article as an additional piece of why I am convinced Ukraine will inevitably lose the war, since we've been discussing this idea elsewhere.
History Learner
Well-known member
Which is not the point, and even on its own ignores that similar claims were made about the artillery in April which has failed to stop exponentially increasing losses in both manpower and territory. By the admission of the official here, everything the West is doing is only sufficient to meet 10-15% of their needs; Russia had 10-15x the economic productive power of Ukraine Pre-War and Western Lend Lease has only been sufficient to make up for 10 to 15% of their shortfall. That means 85-90% of their needs are going unmet, meaning attrition is working massively against them in a war with a country that has a far larger manpower and industrial production pool.
Basic math and history dictates what the end conclusion of such is.
Everyone, take correction that this conviction is coming from the "great" mind who not only thinks that the West didn't win the arms race against the Soviet Union, he also thinks that that the arms race had nothing to do with the Soviet Union collapsing, and if that wasn't eyebrow raising enough, he is also convinced that this is the consensus of historians and economists.
As such, any predictions of his just mean that the opposite is more likely to happen than not, as he apparently resides in the oppositeworld. He does however like to invent very simple numerical comparisons about things he doesn't understand and pretend that it constitutes quality military analysis, as demonstrated in the later post.
Megadeath
Well-known member
Will they though? I mean, they've already encouraged two other countries to seek NATO membership, and they'll still have other NATO countries on their border. If they occupy Ukraine, it just changes where their effective border with NATO is, without actually changing how far NATO is from their forces. It's also hard to see how an extra couple hundred kilometres distance does more to improve their security than they've lost in combat power, from the impact of sanctions, the loss of soft power by forcing neighbours into greater energy independence, the heightened military spending they've encouraged in NATO countries, the increased eastern deployments of forces and general readiness levels, the information they've revealed about their operational capabilities and technical capabilities of vehicles, the internal dissent they've fermented and stoked...
I really don't see how any sane person could argue Russia and their government are more secure now than they were at the start of this year. Even more when we consider the vanishingly small probability of NATO military aggression against Russia.
In such a scenario, Russia would have given itself extra "protection" against the NATO "threat" in the south while making its position relative to NATO more vulnerable in the north. Ironically, this would be similar to the situation during Operation Barbarossa, where the Axis advance into the Soviet Union was the fastest in the north:
The Stalker 2 Game Development Team (largely based in Ukraine) posted a "Dev Diary" Video Update of what their devs and other employees have been up to since recent events occurred.
The most disturbing part of the video is how one of their Community Managers/Moderators is now a member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The most disturbing part of the video is how one of their Community Managers/Moderators is now a member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense, and there is a good reason for that. It isn't supposed to, because as later was revealed more freely in many comments by Putin and his cronies, the whole theory of "Russia invading Ukraine due to being very afraid of NATO armored divisions/missiles suddenly heading for Moscow if allowed a good staging area" is an openly ridiculous one, intended only for a specific western audience of isolationists, leftists and pacifists who would never let a "West bad and bloodthirsty" story go unswallowed.In such a scenario, Russia would have given itself extra "protection" against the NATO "threat" in the south while making its position relative to NATO more vulnerable in the north. Ironically, this would be similar to the situation during Operation Barbarossa, where the Axis advance into the Soviet Union was the fastest in the north:
Domestically, and probably in fact, this has way more to do with things that Putin has stated in his own essays and speeches - that Soviet Union collapsing was a terrible thing, and that its cycle of rise and fall has screwed Russia out of many territories that Russian Empire has painstakingly conquered, in turn implying that it would be good to undo such historical injustice.
The bigger reason why the previous theory has to be obviously intended only for a foreign audience is that not only it makes Russia and its leadership look weak, but if it was true, the current situation would be pretty much a perfect storm of circumstances for NATO to launch the invasion it is being accused of sneakily scheming with the best possible shot at succeeding, and a good diplomatic justification for it to boot.
Or in other words, if that was THE PLAN, it would be happening right now, as now is golden moment to run any plan like that, to which nothing even close is going to happen again for decades if not centuries.
Frankly, NATO is simply content to try giving Russia an extremely bloody nose in Ukraine:
