Russia invades Ukraine - 2 - from 4 May 2022

I’m hoping that at the end of this the whole of Belarus is levelled. They need to pay a hefty price for their part in this

Not the people of Belarus. They have also suffered for quite some time. Wouldn’t mind an old fashioned hanged, drawn and quartered of the current leader though.

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I’m hoping that a few thousand Belorussian legion veterans head home with all their weaponry. That nation is ripe for an armed partial revolution.

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It isn’t so long ago that they had to withdraw from their invasion of Afghanistan and admit that it was a failure, and a costly one at that. For all their superior fire power they were defeated by a ragtag group of fighters, supplied with modern weapons it is true. The Russians should not be given a convenient exit plan, to make it look like they can claim a sort of victory. Their leadership deserves nothing but abject scorn, and a sound thrashing, after having to withdraw once more in disgrace at their failure. Stay strong Ukraine.

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Theory goes that the constant exercises performed by the Belorussian military are deliberately orchestrated to keep them too occupied to organize a coup

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Everytime stuff like this happens, it’s less ordinance that Ukrainian servicepeople have to face.

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Is that just random clouds or some skywriting in Cyrliic?

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As the food shortages come to bear will this have any impact on western thoughts of intervention? If millions are starving and dying across the globe will they help more with troops/bombers at least on the southern front to open the ports? Will Ukraine have enough grain left to export?

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The list of Russian espionage throughout Europe is astounding, but here’s the bit that’s immediately relevant to the current war.

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There’s unlikely to be an increase in direct support to Ukraine. Don’t expect troops on the ground. If anything, support is likely to start to waiver as Africa starves and Europe runs out of heating gas during winter.

Ukraine has a 30 million tonnes of grain it can send if given a path to export. Some of that has been destroyed by Russian bombardment. Some of it has been stolen, there’s a reason Putin announced a record harvest this year.

There’s a fleet of barges that have sailed from the Rhine to the Danube to facilitate transport out of Romania. Ukrainian grain shipments are getting priority pathing through European rail networks, but there’s a bottleneck where Urainian trains need to transfer grain to European guage rail cars. There’s an old soviet guage railway line that’s being patched together through Poland to the Baltic sea, which will allow Ukrainian trains to roll straight through. A heap of very nerdy train nerds are nerding their way through this problem. So there’s some movement, but not enough.

Don’t believe any coverage of opening the port of Odessa, there’s no way Russia will allow it. If Russia does say OK, they’ll just drop a few mines from submarines to blow up a grain ship and the whole thing will be blamed on Ukraine.

The big issue looking longer term is the next crop is going to be a fraction of what’s currently in silos. Farmers are at the front lines. Paddocks are full of craters and mines. Much of the productive land is situated along the line of conflict. Crops won’t be planted and labour won’t be available to harvest. And that misses the massive issue of fertilizer supply, which is reducing global food production by 5-10% alone.

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A thread on the new Russian tactics that have successfully conquered a very small section of Ukraine in an extremely unimpressive 90 day campaign. Despite the current retreat in Severodonetsk, always worth keeping this in context rather than focusing on headlines.

This thread really reinforces how small a knife the Russian army has been degraded into. They’ve been able to take single towns by concentrating masses of artillery and all of their available infantry in a single spot. Then take a few days to recharge, relocate to the next town and do it again. It works, but is extraordinarily slow and allows Ukraine to withdraw at will. In this mode, there’s no chance of any major encirclements or large scale breakthroughs. They can stab in a single place at any one time and even then the wounds they make are shallow.

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Thanks Benny sums it up, well not nicely but nicely. So they kill a heap of Ukrainians, forcibly relocate 2M to Russia, then orchestrate the starvation of millions globally for a few years…

Yeah this guy and his regime needs purging and rather quickly.

I don’t think RU will open the ports, but was more hoping the international community will see the global impact and say it’s time for troops on ground to open the lines and give the south back to Ukraine. Not confident it will happen but hopeful.

Agree completely on the EU people freezing and food prices going up to make them question their resolve on sanctions etc… What a fkn shambles.

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Same SAM system Australia is spending $ 2.5 billion on for 3 batteries this year.

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LOL … Posted the same video at the same time
Nationalist, fascist, bombastic Putin propagandists spouting empty threats: Round 19. They are still deeply deluded about the current state of reality ("…and reach the western borders of Ukraine,") and smarting over restrictions on -Kaliningrad- Königsberg. I wonder if Gurulyov’s remarks reflect Putin’s thinking?

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I feel reassured that the appropriate nerds are on the case. Lets hope they nerd out a nerdy solution as quickly as nerdly possilbe.