We have Sentinel-2 imagery of the Berdyansk area, at approx 0845Z today.
— The Lookout (@The_Lookout_N) March 24, 2022
2 x Ropucha-class LSTs are about 12nm SW of the harbor. No smoke visible, so the fire on one of them has likely been extinguished.
Thanks to @dbmee for the heads up. pic.twitter.com/PE1ONKk1W1
Per Odessa sources, strikes were done by Bayraktar TB2 drone and OTRK "TOCHKA-U" missiles.
— Michael Weiss 🌻🇺🇸🇮🇪 (@michaeldweiss) March 24, 2022
Ok, now balance that with mutually assured destruction in a worldwide nuclear war.Stlkofta said:
From March 18th, Congressman Gallagher's questioning of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) Sasha Baker...
Is integrated deterrence a success if the invaded nation is ravaged?
Put simply, the White House believes its sanctions-based approach has worked.
Gallagher noted a key way the Russians could get around it...Quote:
Rep. Gallagher: So that's a yes, to punish their behavior. And by punishing Russian behavior, we are creating dilemmas, as you put it, or at least costs for the Russians, cost impositions.
Sasha Baker: Yes, Congressman.
Rep. Gallagher: So under the same logic, if another actor, say China, provided the Russian government with funding to help them evade sanctions, that would create an advantage for Russia, in the sense that it would mitigate some of the costs we impose via sanctions, right?
Sasha Baker: Congressman, yes, and we're having a conversation with China about our concerns in that regard.
Later on, Congressman Gallagher drives another point home...We knew Russia's intentions with regard to Ukraine months ago. We chose sanctions as a deterrence against those actions instead of providing Ukraine what it needed in terms of weapons and training. The concept of integrated deterrence clearly failed to stop Russia in this case. All the sanctions in the world aren't going to stop the Russians when they can (and have) called on the Chinese and Iranians to give them a lifeline. These sanctions aren't going to do a thing for Ukraine when the shooting stops and they look around their nation and see the "benefits" of such integrated deterrence measures.Quote:
Rep. Gallagher: Okay. Are you rethinking any of the assumptions underlying the NDS as a result of Ukraine? Or do you see it as a validation of integrated deterrence?
Sasha Baker: Congressman, we believe that the strategy, in fact, took into consideration some of the behavior that we've now seen Russia exhibit, and that it's resilient to what we're seeing from the Russians at this time.
Rep. Gallagher: So do you believe integrated deterrence succeeded in the case of Russia, Ukraine?
Sasha Baker: I think what you're seeing right now is integrated deterrence in action, bringing together the sanctions, the allies and partners.
Rep. Gallagher: What you're effectively saying is your entire theory of deterrence requires a country get invaded and pillaged in order to galvanize the West into action, and I just don't want to put our eggs in that basket. I'm out of time.
Zeihan is a really, really smart guy that has an understanding of Geopolitics that is as good as anyone I have ever heard. I don't agree with everything he says or with his solutions but his perspective is so valuable because it allows you to look at things from a broader perspective instead of getting distracted by 99% of the stories from the media that are designed around conflicting narratives and usually focused on the wrong thing.Shooz in Mizzou said:aggie93 said:
Absolutely fantastic podcast interview with Peter Zeihan on what is really going on with Ukraine and the chips that are falling, short and longterm.
Jordan Harbinger Podcast with Zeihan
Some of the discussion points:
Why this is Russia's last war and why they need to go now
Why Russia will eventually win but at a tremendous cost
Why NATO wants to keep Russia bottled up in Ukraine so they don't move on to the next target which is clearly the plan
Why Putin is not going to be deposed
The consequences of Russia not having success has different consequences, most of which people aren't considering yet
Russia as a potential failed State and how there is no succession plan for Putin and a frightening lack of leadership when he is gone.
How all of this ties in with China, Xi, and Taiwan and not in the way most people think.
This was an absolutely amazing listen! Thanks for sharing. I learned more in that episode than an entire month of consuming "news". Which again proves what mindless dribble TV news is. Fox News included. (The other ones are mindless AND maliciously evil. Double whammy).
What is the cost of these glorious successes? Only thousands of vehicles, tens of thousands of casualties, our economy, our military prestige, and complete embarrassment. Cope and seethe NATO 😎
— Woofers (@NotWoofers) March 24, 2022
After long rumors that Putin decided to remove Shoigu forever, they decided to show him on TV as participant of the government meeting. However, viewers noticed oddities during the broadcast. Pay attention to the top left corner. pic.twitter.com/xZD1wFCbJU
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 24, 2022
Some 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing, per NATO assessment.
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 24, 2022
This morning in Ukraine marks the end of one month since the invasion, and the start of the fifth week of this war https://t.co/MD4vyj4XlW
The War ZoneAgsMyDude said:
Does anyone have a good website for daily updates? I've been unable to follow this thread for about a week and it'll take forever to catch up on all the awesome posts in here.
PJYoung said:Some 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing, per NATO assessment.
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 24, 2022
This morning in Ukraine marks the end of one month since the invasion, and the start of the fifth week of this war https://t.co/MD4vyj4XlW
The best interest of NATO is to keep russia in russia. If you give them Ukraine you just put a significant amount of their intermediate and some of their short range weapons in NATO range. Its 500 miles from western border to Dnieper river, if you kick them out completely including Crimea that jumps to 750 miles. Ukraine also has very valuable strategic resources: Black Sea access, Agriculture, O&G, Etc absolutely nuts to give them all this while allowing them to commit genocide on the Ukrainian peoples.aggie93 said:Perhaps but I don't think so. I think this continues as a long, drawn out fight where Russia eventually wins but at tremendous cost to Russia and with Ukraine basically being destroyed. That's sadly in the best interests of NATO at this point because the real danger is when Russia decides to move to the next step and go after one of the Baltics or Poland that are NATO countries. That's when the nuclear risk really kicks in, Russia would be crushed from a conventional perspective so it's either accept defeat or go nuclear. So as much as it is horrible the best thing for us is for this to stay in Ukraine. Russia is not going to quit, they are fully committed.FireAg said:
This war seems to be shaping up as follows...
The only way for the Russians to turn the tide at this point appears to be a move away from conventional warfare toward a WMD campaign...
But a WMD campaign, at this point, I think would engage the eastern bloc NATO countries to move troops into Ukraine...which then puts other NATO countries on the verge of WWIII as they move to reinforce and protect the borders of eastern bloc NATO countries in the spirit and in honor of Article 5...
The best outcome for the entire world is one that would have saved the world from WWII given a similar predicament...cut the head off of the leadership of the offending force...
The world needs Putin to be dispatched...
As for Putin, certainly taking him out may solve this but it also means Russia goes into chaos. There is no one in Russia who can replace him, Putin has destroyed all his opposition internally and there are just very few people even capable of being in charge of such a complex country there. So you are looking at a possible Civil War or failed state or both. In a country with thousands of nukes and a lot of really bad people. Maybe that turns out ok but that could actually end up even more dangerous.
It's really frightening we don't have any adults in charge of our foreign policy right now.
Best guess is around 35k KIA/WIA/MIA/Captured. It's VERY hard to get good numbers on this. Civilian total casualties are probably 100k plus at this point, mostly wounded. But hard to tell as Kharkiv and Mariupol are black holes information wise (Sumy too to an extent). But 25% of the country is displaced. Crazy.rgag12 said:PJYoung said:Some 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing, per NATO assessment.
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 24, 2022
This morning in Ukraine marks the end of one month since the invasion, and the start of the fifth week of this war https://t.co/MD4vyj4XlW
Does anyone know Ukrainian military casualties? Don't recall seeing estimates for those.
I understand why the Ukrainian government might be hesitant to post them and why people would be skeptical about anything Russia claimed.
Of course it would be better if Russia retreated but that isn't going to happen or is very unlikely to happen. Russia is trying to seal itself off from a future attack while it still can, it's in demographic collapse and in 10 years (maybe less) simply won't be capable of doing so. The lack of military age males in Russia is a real problem. So they have gone all in and to retreat means total collapse and soon rather than later. Russians don't look at this the same way we do and they are far more accustomed to a harsh life. I mean it's possible they just "go back to Russia" but extremely unlikely so what we are looking at is the much more likely scenario that they continue to attack Ukraine until the conquer it no matter the cost.JFABNRGR said:The best interest of NATO is to keep russia in russia. If you give them Ukraine you just put a significant amount of their intermediate and some of their short range weapons in NATO range. Its 500 miles from western border to Dnieper river, if you kick them out completely including Crimea that jumps to 750 miles. Ukraine also has very valuable strategic resources: Black Sea access, Agriculture, O&G, Etc absolutely nuts to give them all this while allowing them to commit genocide on the Ukrainian peoples.aggie93 said:Perhaps but I don't think so. I think this continues as a long, drawn out fight where Russia eventually wins but at tremendous cost to Russia and with Ukraine basically being destroyed. That's sadly in the best interests of NATO at this point because the real danger is when Russia decides to move to the next step and go after one of the Baltics or Poland that are NATO countries. That's when the nuclear risk really kicks in, Russia would be crushed from a conventional perspective so it's either accept defeat or go nuclear. So as much as it is horrible the best thing for us is for this to stay in Ukraine. Russia is not going to quit, they are fully committed.FireAg said:
This war seems to be shaping up as follows...
The only way for the Russians to turn the tide at this point appears to be a move away from conventional warfare toward a WMD campaign...
But a WMD campaign, at this point, I think would engage the eastern bloc NATO countries to move troops into Ukraine...which then puts other NATO countries on the verge of WWIII as they move to reinforce and protect the borders of eastern bloc NATO countries in the spirit and in honor of Article 5...
The best outcome for the entire world is one that would have saved the world from WWII given a similar predicament...cut the head off of the leadership of the offending force...
The world needs Putin to be dispatched...
As for Putin, certainly taking him out may solve this but it also means Russia goes into chaos. There is no one in Russia who can replace him, Putin has destroyed all his opposition internally and there are just very few people even capable of being in charge of such a complex country there. So you are looking at a possible Civil War or failed state or both. In a country with thousands of nukes and a lot of really bad people. Maybe that turns out ok but that could actually end up even more dangerous.
It's really frightening we don't have any adults in charge of our foreign policy right now.
The Risk of Nuclear war already exists. Is the world prepared to let anyone with Nukes steal land and murder people?
Russia is a failed state now. We have to have faith and prepare that a new group of leaders better than putin rises to the occasion. Prepare for future problems now but deal with them as they come about nukes or not.
Looks like what is Presumed to be another Nuclear Bug-out Drill from Moscow this morning, they seem to be doing these almost weekly at this point, in my opinion it’s very clearly a Warning to the West. https://t.co/BmmASbD0KO
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 24, 2022
aggie93 said:Zeihan is a really, really smart guy that has an understanding of Geopolitics that is as good as anyone I have ever heard. I don't agree with everything he says or with his solutions but his perspective is so valuable because it allows you to look at things from a broader perspective instead of getting distracted by 99% of the stories from the media that are designed around conflicting narratives and usually focused on the wrong thing.Shooz in Mizzou said:aggie93 said:
Absolutely fantastic podcast interview with Peter Zeihan on what is really going on with Ukraine and the chips that are falling, short and longterm.
Jordan Harbinger Podcast with Zeihan
Some of the discussion points:
Why this is Russia's last war and why they need to go now
Why Russia will eventually win but at a tremendous cost
Why NATO wants to keep Russia bottled up in Ukraine so they don't move on to the next target which is clearly the plan
Why Putin is not going to be deposed
The consequences of Russia not having success has different consequences, most of which people aren't considering yet
Russia as a potential failed State and how there is no succession plan for Putin and a frightening lack of leadership when he is gone.
How all of this ties in with China, Xi, and Taiwan and not in the way most people think.
This was an absolutely amazing listen! Thanks for sharing. I learned more in that episode than an entire month of consuming "news". Which again proves what mindless dribble TV news is. Fox News included. (The other ones are mindless AND maliciously evil. Double whammy).
It is so important to understand what the real motivations are here and where this is going and so little focus is being spent on that. Probably the biggest positive out of all of this is this makes the likelihood of China trying to invade Taiwan far less likely because it is clear now that it would China would fail miserably if they did and would destroy their own country in the process.
BREAKING: Russian ambassador says that Poland has frozen the bank accounts of Russia's embassy in the country
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) March 24, 2022
It's complicated and governed by the Montreux Convention. Basically, if a Russian ship has a home port in the Black Sea, it can pass freely to return to that port. In the case that Russia is at war, I don't think it can leave the Black Sea. Likewise, no new vessels can enter so long as Russia is at war. Once peace is declared, then Russia can rebase a vessel to the Black Sea. I think. I'm sketchy on this. I do know that the US, while not a signatory to the Montreux Convention, generally wants to avoid placing ships in the Black Sea so as not to upset this balance of power that has existed for almost 90 years.Quote:
Just in case I missed it: Turkey still is not allowing new warships through the straits, meaning Russia has a cap on its Naval force, correct?
Well...... maybe Zelinski can take over?aggie93 said:Perhaps but I don't think so. I think this continues as a long, drawn out fight where Russia eventually wins but at tremendous cost to Russia and with Ukraine basically being destroyed. That's sadly in the best interests of NATO at this point because the real danger is when Russia decides to move to the next step and go after one of the Baltics or Poland that are NATO countries. That's when the nuclear risk really kicks in, Russia would be crushed from a conventional perspective so it's either accept defeat or go nuclear. So as much as it is horrible the best thing for us is for this to stay in Ukraine. Russia is not going to quit, they are fully committed.FireAg said:
This war seems to be shaping up as follows...
The only way for the Russians to turn the tide at this point appears to be a move away from conventional warfare toward a WMD campaign...
But a WMD campaign, at this point, I think would engage the eastern bloc NATO countries to move troops into Ukraine...which then puts other NATO countries on the verge of WWIII as they move to reinforce and protect the borders of eastern bloc NATO countries in the spirit and in honor of Article 5...
The best outcome for the entire world is one that would have saved the world from WWII given a similar predicament...cut the head off of the leadership of the offending force...
The world needs Putin to be dispatched...
As for Putin, certainly taking him out may solve this but it also means Russia goes into chaos. There is no one in Russia who can replace him, Putin has destroyed all his opposition internally and there are just very few people even capable of being in charge of such a complex country there. So you are looking at a possible Civil War or failed state or both. In a country with thousands of nukes and a lot of really bad people. Maybe that turns out ok but that could actually end up even more dangerous.
It's really frightening we don't have any adults in charge of our foreign policy right now.
Keegan99 said:
Listening now. Very much agree. Putin knows Russian history, knows the current demography of Russia, and knows what is necessary to secure Russia.
Also Zeihan sounds like John Hamm.
Source: Mariupol City Council – https://t.co/YGT6UfkBox
— Anastasiia Lapatina (@lapatina_) March 24, 2022
Nazis did this. ISIS did this. Now Russia is doing it to Ukraine.
— Anastasiia Lapatina (@lapatina_) March 24, 2022
15,000 residents of the Left Bank district of Mariupol are in grave danger. The Russian occupiers are forcing them to move to Russia. The invaders confiscate people's passports and other identity documents. 6,000 Mariupol residents are in Russian filtration camps - @MFA_Ukraine
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) March 24, 2022
History repeats. What Stalin did to my grandparents and millions of Ukrainians, Russia now plans to do with brave residents of Kherson. Kremlin plans to kidnap people and deport somewhere far in Russia. If necessary they are ready to do it en masse. https://t.co/QJFQH57l4q
— Olya Vorozhbyt (@vorozhbyt) March 24, 2022
Go look at their visually confirmed equipment losses (those that are open source) this seems a very reasonable number. If the Ukes can cut off and force the surrender or loss of the two groups near Kyiv that they are threatening. Woof. Russia will be very, very short of trigger pullers in their invasion force.74OA said:
Even the lower end of NATO's suggested range of Russian casualties is eye-opening for less than a month of fighting.
40,000?
As I said, even the lower end of the suggested range of casualties is impressive. I imagine the ground truth lies somewhere in-between.aezmvp said:Go look at their visually confirmed equipment losses (those that are open source) this seems a very reasonable number. If the Ukes can cut off and force the surrender or loss of the two groups near Kyiv that they are threatening. Woof. Russia will be very, very short of trigger pullers in their invasion force.74OA said:
Even the lower end of NATO's suggested range of Russian casualties is eye-opening for less than a month of fighting.
40,000?
The brain drain is real. My wife finished her PhD here and has a lot of friends that came from Russia that are PhDs or MDs.one MEEN Ag said:
Listening to the podcast now. He talks about the brain drain in Russia that's been going on for decades.
I work with incredibly talented, phd holding russians in the oil and gas industry that are here on visas. They usually have the same visa issues everyone else does and they wind up hoping around the globe over their careers.
The joke is that russian engineers will go anywhere in the world for work except back to russia.
Zeihan has some great commentary on global brain drain and how America will be the winner in the long run. And while that becomes a competition problem for citizens, its better than having the opposite problem where you're in a country that has lost their young populations to other countries.
MeatDr said:BREAKING: Russian ambassador says that Poland has frozen the bank accounts of Russia's embassy in the country
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) March 24, 2022
Losing Putin wouldn't collapse Russia into 6 nuclear states. They have an infrastructure and could elect a new govt and even get international support to do so.wtmartinaggie said:
Honest question... is a Russian collapse really in our best interest? I think one of their reps said it best that if we decapitate Russia and cause it to collapse we will have 5-6 nuclear nation states to deal with. Could end up backfiring. It also would very much open the door for China to move on resource rich and sparsley populated areas of eastern siberia. Could be bad for the long-game...
china is going to have free reign in Eastern Russia even if it is only as pennies to the ruble.wtmartinaggie said:
Honest question... is a Russian collapse really in our best interest? I think one of their reps said it best that if we decapitate Russia and cause it to collapse we will have 5-6 nuclear nation states to deal with. Could end up backfiring. It also would very much open the door for China to move on resource rich and sparsley populated areas of eastern siberia. Could be bad for the long-game...
We don't want to collapse Russia, we want Putin gone. Hopefully the latter happens first.wtmartinaggie said:
Honest question... is a Russian collapse really in our best interest? I think one of their reps said it best that if we decapitate Russia and cause it to collapse we will have 5-6 nuclear nation states to deal with. Could end up backfiring. It also would very much open the door for China to move on resource rich and sparsley populated areas of eastern siberia. Could be bad for the long-game...
Proc92 said:Losing Putin wouldn't collapse Russia into 6 nuclear states. They have an infrastructure and could elect a new govt and even get international support to do so.wtmartinaggie said:
Honest question... is a Russian collapse really in our best interest? I think one of their reps said it best that if we decapitate Russia and cause it to collapse we will have 5-6 nuclear nation states to deal with. Could end up backfiring. It also would very much open the door for China to move on resource rich and sparsley populated areas of eastern siberia. Could be bad for the long-game...
