Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
The North Koreans are apparently training in Russia and receiving Russian uniforms, but are not expected at the front till next month.
still skeptical.
Russia does have quite a well publicised recruiting problem, with the prisons being scoured for 'volunteers'.
They've pretty much run through the prison population. According to Russia their prison population of 420k is now 250k. You have to go back to 2009 to get verifiable figures, which showed 750k prisoners, but 250k prisoners still there seems likely. Russia has been recruiting at pretrials. A few months ago I think we talked about a guy who got out of a murder sentence to fight in Ukraine, went home and murdered again and was back on his way to Ukraine.
More telling about Russia's recruitment problems is that despite drastically raising signup bonuses they are failing to meet recruitment demands. Estimates are Russia is only recruiting at 70-80% the level they were this time last year despite signup bonuses being 6x higher (over 30x what they were at the start of the war).
This particular unit has been doing this in Kherson since last year, and it's been happening pretty much the entirety of the war. So no, it wasn't something learned from Israel. Russia needs no lessons in how to terrorize civilians anyways, if anything the lessons work the opposite direction but in reality there's little to no connection.
Why do we assume the North Korean soldiers would would be sent to the Ukraine front? Unless I was told otherwise, I would assume they are taking over other roles inside Russia, freeing up Russian soldiers to go to the Ukraine front.
Why do we assume the North Korean soldiers would would be sent to the Ukraine front? Unless I was told otherwise, I would assume they are taking over other roles inside Russia, freeing up Russian soldiers to go to the Ukraine front.
South Korea claims that North Korean troops have already been sent to the front lines, are performing logistics and maintenance tasks, and some have even already been killed. This development isn't particularly surprising, as it was expected with Russia's increasing reliance on North Korean ammunition and weapons. It’s likely that this has been happening for months, and was likely part of the original deal to send weapons systems to Russia. However, the first South Korean report of North Korean troop deaths appeared only two weeks ago. I've seen no one doubt that some of these 12,000 troops might serve in logistics, maintenance, or observer roles, but it also seems extremely unlikely that North Korea would need such a large number solely for those purposes.
For context, USA made a significant decision not to publicly deploy military observers in Ukraine, relying instead solely on CIA intelligence operations. Of the NATO countries that have sent observers (bilaterally), the number is almost certainly fewer than 1,000, probably under 300, and maybe even under 100. North Korea sending troops for these purposes is not really news, the amount of troops however is news because it's unlikely that this many are being sent for non combat roles.
There's no longer many roles for North Koreans to take over in order to free up Russians to go to the front and it's unlikely that helps Putin in a meaningful way. If you read my posts about how completely nonsensical it is that Putin had to invade Ukraine because of NATO "encroachment" you might have read about Russia's border troops. Despite claiming that NATO is a huge threat, and Russia being at its weakeest position vs NATO ever, Russia has removed 80% of its troops from the Finnish border, and pretty much has no troops in Kaliningrad. This is true for pretty much everywhere, and there's no longer many troops that can be replaced. The troops remnaining in these positions are conscripts, all troops which have signed up for the "Special Military Operation" are engaged in the invasion. Putin has been reluctant to send conscripts into the conflict, as he wishes to avoid casualties among wealthier Russian families and relies on the poorer minorities to be the ones getting killed. For example there was a long time where no POW exchanges occured because Putin doesn't care about the meat assault troops much, but when the 19 year olds from St Petersburg and Moscow were captured during the Kursk invasion, Putin quickly agreed to a series of POW exchanges to bring them back.
A major aspect of this war has been gradual escalation. When Putin attacked Kharkiv again this year, he did so by firing from Belgorod. This put Ukraine into a position where they could not fire back using western equipment, and instead had to do extremely high risk scoot and shoot missions with their own equipment which resulted in a lot of losses. USA agreed this was ridiculous, saw the cost of doing these missions, and then allowed Ukraine to fire a short distance inside of Russia. Since Ukraine invaded Kursk, Ukraine has been arguing that if they could fire deeper into Russia then they would be suffering far less casualties and would have a greater chance of holding the areas they took. It was expected that USA would relent, but so far they haven't. Either way, it's part of the strategy of slowly escalating.
The Kursk invasion also opened up opportunities for Russia however. Since Putin promised conscripts wouldn't be sent to Ukraine, but Ukraine is now attacking Russia, Putin has the opportunity to fight Ukraine with conscripts and technically not be lying about his promise to not send conscripts to Ukraine (although any deaths would still be a direct result of his invasion of Ukraine obviously). A much better solution for him though is that he can now maybe use North Korean troops since the two countries have a defense pact in the event of an invasion. This would be Russia testing the waters to see the international reaction to such an escalation by easing his way in: if there are only a few thousand North Korean troops and they are only defending Russia then that's a far smaller escalation than having North Korean troops attack Ukrainian territory. If the international reaction is weak then more North Korean troops could be sent to help annexed Russian areas, and eventually maybe escalate to the point that they are just straight up attacking Ukraine.
This would be a huge advantage for Putin because the cost of convincing Russians to throw their lives away is growing at an outrageous rate and he's still not able to recruit enough. He's already paying up to 30x what the signup bonus was at the start of the war. On top of that he's paying death compensations which are up to 4x the signup bonus. This is draining Russia's coffers and also creating a massive amount of inflation. If he can instead send far less money to Kim who will then send him essentially slave labor, then they're both happy.
My fave part is how in 5-10 years the usual suspects on here will quietly pretend they didn't back the Axis of Evil/Disruption
I kinda wonder how they could implement north Korean solders. You couldn't give them their own units because they would all just mass defect or surrender at the first sign of trouble. They would need to mix them in Russian units so they wouldn't risk desertion
South Korea claims that North Korean troops have already been sent to the front lines, are performing logistics and maintenance tasks, and some have even already been killed. This development isn't particularly surprising, as it was expected with Russia's increasing reliance on North Korean ammunition and weapons. It’s likely that this has been happening for months, and was likely part of the original deal to send weapons systems to R
why would Russia even need border troops? They have always just been for show so now that they need them obv they will be removed. no ones invading russia they have the most nukes in the world..... . There's probably us military on the Canadian border. They just need something to do in peace time to keep them sharp. finland isn't ****ing invading russia lol
And yet people are still arguing that Russia had to invade Ukraine due to NATO.
My fave part is how in 5-10 years the usual suspects on here will quietly pretend they didn't back the Axis of Evil/Disruption
This is an optimistic view of things. More likely they'll be justifying other imperialist invasions using the same lies and propaganda.
Moldova voted Yes to EU membership by just under 51% or a margin of 13,000 votes (despite whatever Russia may have got up to, and it probably got up to something).
Moldova voted Yes to EU membership by just under 51% or a margin of 13,000 votes (despite whatever Russia may have got up to, and it probably got up to something).
this opens up the question of citizens living elsewhere being allowed to vote or not and if so, for how long. as you know even among first world countries the rules about this vary greatly.
there is no first order morally obvious choice on the topic but whatever a polity ends up doing can have huge repercussions.
in this Moldovan case specifically people living in Moldova voted against , people already living elsewhere (and often with a dual citizenship, as the most common way for a Moldovan to enter the EU is by claiming Romanian citizenship which is extremely easily for Moldovans) voted overwhelmingly in favour.
I've lived abroad for 15 years, will be voting in this election and believe that I absolutely should be allowed to. Can't really imagine an argument against tbh.
Allegedly there was tons of Russian meddling in this election, yet despite that they did not get the result they wanted. I would fix this problem before barring citizens from voting.
I've lived abroad for 15 years, will be voting in this election and believe that I absolutely should be allowed to. Can't really imagine an argument against tbh.
Allegedly there was tons of Russian meddling in this election, yet despite that they did not get the result they wanted. I would fix this problem before barring citizens from voting.
I mean if you are both a French and a Moldovan citizen, and vote in French elections, and pay taxes on income in France, and live in France, you can't imagine an argument against allowing you to vote in Moldovan elections? really?
I am not saying it is "a problem" in the sense that's obvious not to allow them to vote from outside because it isn't, but it's obvious it's a controversial issue, as proven by the fact that first world countries have different rules about it.
Italy allows citizens living elsewhere to vote in italian national elections forever.
Germany wants you to have lived there after you were 14y old, and within the last 25 years.
https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/eur...
Don't you find it relevant that first world countries disagree on this?
what about Russian-Moldovans? should they be allowed to vote?
What is this news I see that North Korea are sending its troops to Russia to help battle Ukraine - what a disaster. Faster Trump gets in the better.
I mean if you are both a French and a Moldovan citizen, and vote in French elections, and pay taxes on income in France, and live in France, you can't imagine an argument against allowing you to vote in Moldovan elections? really?
I am not saying it is "a problem" in the sense that's obvious not to allow them to vote from outside because it isn't, but it's obvious it's a controversial issue, as proven by the fact that first world countries h
It seems like there's more to this, especially for Europeans, than I was aware of as a boorish American. Germany wanting voters to have lived in Germany within the last 25 years seems reasonable, does that accurately represent a large portion of the voters in this election though?
USA does limit voting on local elections if you have not lived there in a long time, which is something I understand. However for an issue such as this most recent EU vote, this is about the general direction the country should head. It is something I believe every Moldovan should have the right to vote on, even if they have not been in Moldova for a long time.
Regardless, Russian meddling in the election is by far the more important issue to focus on.
It seems like there's more to this, especially for Europeans, than I was aware of as a boorish American. Germany wanting voters to have lived in Germany within the last 25 years seems reasonable, does that accurately represent a large portion of the voters in this election though?
USA does limit voting on local elections if you have not lived there in a long time, which is something I understand. However for an issue such as this most recent
I think the exodus out of Moldova in significant numbers started when Romanians could freely travel and live within the EU which I think happened around year 2007 or 2008 (many/most Moldovans have some Romanian relative going back through their family tree and Romanian law allows to use that to get Romanian passports).
Currently there is approx one third of the population (in terms of citizens) outside Moldova.
As for Russian meddling in the elections, it's expected in some form (also because a significant minority of Moldovans want that), what unusual/unexpected events do you think happened?
Nothing unusual or unexpected. It would be unusual if Russia didn't try to sway the election.
Really not big news, but anyone who has been following the Tenet story should enjoy the absurdity.
US Defense Secretary Austin confirms North Korean troops training in Russia.
White House security spokesman John Kirby says 3,000 NK troops were shipped to Vladivostok mid-October and are now training at various Russian bases.
https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-r...
The US does not know yet if these troops are intended for combat in Ukraine (which they would regard as a serious development), but, as the Russians are offering prisoners awaiting trial the chance to have the charges dropped if they volunteer, there does seem to be a manpower problem on the Russian side. So there is on the Ukrainian side, certainly, but, given the much larger Russian population, the Russian problem is more remarkable.
no that's not really known. oh tim pool called it quits? thats crazy are you sure he's not being sarcastic ?
Pool had a total meltdown on camera, he is being mocked aggressively even on alt right twitter
I make 8 figures a year and I just want to go home at a normal time like everyone else.
He sounds like one of those ego maniac actors that won't come out of their trailer because their latte wasn't hot enough.
I guess when you're not getting that juicy RT weekly paycheck you start to lose motivation.
