Ukraine

[WszystekPoTrochu]

Ukraine and Moldova received EU candidate statuses. An important symbol, that does exactly nothing for the current pressing needs of Ukraine. I sincerely hope none will try to sell it as a substitute of actual material help. I feel naïve for even expressing that hope...


On an (un)related note, Turkey's a candidate for 23 years now - will probably remain a candidate for at least another two decades

[johnw]

Ukraine and Moldova received EU candidate statuses. An important symbol, that does exactly nothing for the current pressing needs of Ukraine. I sincerely hope none will try to sell it as a substitute of actual material help. I feel naïve for even expressing that hope...


On an (un)related note, Turkey's a candidate for 23 years now - will probably remain a candidate for at least another two decades

Turkey has long had some governance problems. Let's hope Ukraine can move into the community quicker. Hell, let's hope they succeed in continuing to exist as a country.

[bluedog225]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yy4RP4FMNk&t=127s

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Severodonetsk abandoned

https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak/j...s-e2d8518889ed

[johnw]

Not actually true, many countries make guns and ammo in those calibers, including all Nato members wich are direct neighbors. Not to mention Ukraine itself, wich also developed its own smart munitions in those calibers. The real problem is that everything truely modern is available only in very small quantities, regardless of who made it.
What they want is more modern kit to give them an advantage on the field. Right now they can hold the line and even slowly grind the enemy down, but it's costing them dearly, and they would very much like it to be different.

Turns out Ukraine really is finding it hard to get ammo in the old Soviet sizes:

https://news.yahoo.com/putin-decade-...152921901.html

MARIUS BOSCH / Reuters
Russia’s recent gains on the battlefield can be attributed in part to a quiet, nearly decade-long sabotage campaign to block Ukraine from vital ammunition supplies, according to several reports.
The tactics include bullying ammunition sellers not to deliver to Ukraine and secretly blowing up depots across Eastern Europe prior to this spring’s invasion, The Washington Post reports, citing Ukraine Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar.
Russia and Ukraine use the same artillery, thanks to their common military hardware that dates back to the Soviet era. It’s a specific type of of ammo, mostly consisting of 122mm and 152mm caliber rounds, which are no longer common in modern warfare.


The Post found that Russia has for years been making sure Ukraine is not only in short supply, but experiencing difficulty resupplying. “Even if everyone gives us this ammunition, it will still not be enough,” Malyar told the paper. Russia pops off around 60,000 rounds a day, which is tenfold more than Ukraine has the capacity to fire back. And since the inventory is so specific, the global supply does not have the capacity to meet Ukraine’s wartime demand.
Weapons brokers who are working to covertly supply Ukraine told the Post that they are being regularly threatened with death if they make deliveries, which has acted as a successful deterrent. In other cases, Russian brokers working undercover outbid Ukraine suppliers, adding a further layer of delay. “The Russians are working very hard to ensure that we can’t sign contracts for this,” Malyar told the Post. “And then if we sign a contract, to prevent us from getting the shells delivered here.”
Putin Nemesis Warns of Sinister Twist in Russian Attack Plan
The campaign to keep Ukrainian weapons in short supply began in 2014, after Russian separatists started fighting. That year, a munitions depot in the Czech Republic was sabotaged, which, at the time was hard to link to the Kremlin. A year later, a Bulgarian weapons executive who was selling artillery to Ukraine was poisoned by the same unit that sabotaged the Czech depot, according to the investigative group Bellingcat.

[epoxyboy]

Severodonetsk abandoned

https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak/j...s-e2d8518889ed

Is it significant that Russia is buying ammunition from Belarus, or am I reading too much into that? At 50,000 artillery shells per day, they must be burning through their own stockpiles at a fair rate, though I thought they'd have just cranked up some old Soviet era factory to make more.

Pete

[WX]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Is it significant that Russia is buying ammunition from Belarus, or am I reading too much into that? At 50,000 artillery shells per day, they must be burning through their own stockpiles at a fair rate, though I thought they'd have just cranked up some old Soviet era factory to make more.

Pete

There’s an interesting discussion on Russian problems with machine tools, which I will try to find. The writer makes the point that because the Soviet apprenticeship scheme was allowed to collapse in the 1990s, “non-smart” machine tools are short of operators who can use them, whilst CAD-CAM equipment was mainly bought in from the West - now there’s a problem…

It wasn’t this one, which is a year old, but still interesting:

Some discussion here:

https://youtu.be/qGGwO99fQaI

https://www.intellinews.com/long-rea...-tools-213024/

[Rumars]

Is it significant that Russia is buying ammunition from Belarus, or am I reading too much into that? At 50,000 artillery shells per day, they must be burning through their own stockpiles at a fair rate, though I thought they'd have just cranked up some old Soviet era factory to make more.

Pete

I think just keeping it off the market. Belarus needs the money and some of its customers have good relations with the US.

[John Smith]

Notice how this subject is not on the news at all these days?

[birlinn]

Plenty on the BBC website.

[Presuming Ed]

There’s an interesting discussion on Russian problems with machine tools, which I will try to find. The writer makes the point that because the Soviet apprenticeship scheme was allowed to collapse in the 1990s, “non-smart” machine tools are short of operators who can use them, whilst CAD-CAM equipment was mainly bought in from the West - now there’s a problem…

Think you might be referring to this Twitter thread?
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1539623100144295936

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Think you might be referring to this Twitter thread?
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1539623100144295936

Thanks!

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...144295936.html

[epoxyboy]

This is interesting too - China increasingly bypassing Russia in favour of Kazakhstan, as a freight route.
https://www.intellinews.com/death-of...rce=uzbekistan

Pete

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The bit of the route shown from Odessa to Poland is u/s at the moment (!) and indeed we have had a container ship stuck in Odessa since February 24th because we had been developing the Odessa / West Europe rail route.

Other than that, I very much agree. The steady improvement in relations between Kazakstan and Turkey is all to the good as well.

[Tom from Rubicon]

June 24 — Day 121 — Out of Severodonetsk, Kherson hit, Mind the mines | by Stefan Korshak | Jun, 2022 | Medium

[johnw]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...144295936.html

So, they've decided they will trust China to be their supplier? We know where that leads{

[WszystekPoTrochu]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...144295936.html

Which makes me think, it's not racism. It's probably fear. Until 2022 Russian industrial managers, technologists, economic policy makers and probably even the state security never believed they could get into a conflict with the *unified* West. So buying Western tools was ok
Let me get it straight. Apparently Russia was escalating the conflict with the West and many understood it. But they assumed that the West would be divided, consumed with the internal strife and couldn't act as one anyway. So the technological import from there was okayish

There were numerous cases of sanctions broken after 2014 aggression, mostly by French and then a bit by Germans. They didn't just assume, they had solid proof that the West isn't united. Even apart from, you know, the whole gas transfer issue. And several pre-2010 embargoes that were not reciprocated on EU level.

Overall, a solid thread, thanks.
It is worth noting that the vocational school generation gap is not limited to Russia

[sandtown]

I know this gent vaguely . . he is a former board member of US Peace Action.

I do not entirely agree, but his points are well argued . . .

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183403

[WX]

I know this gent vaguely . . he is a former board member of US Peace Action.

I do not entirely agree, but his points are well argued . . .

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183403

Which bit/s don't you agree with?

[johnw]

I know this gent vaguely . . he is a former board member of US Peace Action.

I do not entirely agree, but his points are well argued . . .

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183403

Good work on the pretextual and the delusional parts of Putin's justification. Not mentioned is that Ukraine was trying to become less corrupt and more democratic, which would have provided an example of the alternative to Russia's system of governance right next door.

[bamamick]

If Ukraine is admitted into the European Union how does this not wind up drawing western Europe into a war with Russia? And if that happens, the rest of NATO? I am not saying that Ukraine doesn't deserve member status, I just see it was a declaration of war on the part of the other members of the EU. Am I wrong?

Mickey Lake

[johnw]

If Ukraine is admitted into the European Union how does this not wind up drawing western Europe into a war with Russia? And if that happens, the rest of NATO? I am not saying that Ukraine doesn't deserve member status, I just see it was a declaration of war on the part of the other members of the EU. Am I wrong?

Mickey Lake

Yes. The EU is not a military alliance, Unlike joining NATO, it does not commit anyone to defend Ukraine. Also, it would take at least a decade for Ukraine to join the EU.

[Osborne Russell]

The aims of the European Union within its borders are:

. . . promote peace, its values and the well-being of its citizens . . .

-- https://european-union.europa.eu/pri...-and-values_en

. . . which is accomplished by making the bucks to buy the arms to kick the S out of Russian imperialism before it gets a millimeter closer to the borders of the EU. NATO -- we, the EU, unite to fund it.

[Jim Mahan]

I’m glad to hear the US is sending some longer range heavy artillery to Ukraine. I wish we would defy Putin a bit more openly, with more collaborating with NATO. And I would like hear that Ukraine has shelled some Russian territory across the border and hammered some Russian facilities. It would be sweet and well deserved though unlikely in the extreme for Ukraine to bomb some major Russian city, even Moscow. Fck Putin.

[lupussonic]

NATO can not admit any country that is at war at the time of admission. It is written in NATO's constitution as far as I know.

[Landrith]

I’m glad to hear the US is sending some longer range heavy artillery to Ukraine. I wish we would defy Putin a bit more openly, with more collaborating with NATO. And I would like hear that Ukraine has shelled some Russian territory across the border and hammered some Russian facilities. It would be sweet and well deserved though unlikely in the extreme for Ukraine to bomb some major Russian city, even Moscow. Fck Putin.

Back in the day, I respected the Chechens because the mainstream news said they were blowing up targets in Moscow. At the time, I would have liked to think I would have stood up to a foreign invader by fighting them in my neighborhood, but then by the third week like Chechen's I would be blowing of apartment blocks in their capitol city. Mistakenly taking seriously the Kurt Vonnegut mock apologetics for the clearly civilian targeting that went on during the Allies WWII bombing campaign. https://www.history.co.uk/article/wa...lied-war-crime

In reality, the Soviet leaders ordered their own capitol city apartment complexes destroyed https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-russia.../30097551.html and maybe also the students at one of their own schools executed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege and blamed on the Chechens for the sole purpose of trying to whip up mass public support for their war against the Chechens.

The Ukrainians have managed their propaganda campaign excellently until just recently. When lower level commanders did hit some targets in Russia while Kiev was being encircled, it was made clear to Russia and NATO that the actions were unauthorized. Ukraine had to build confidence that it had the ability to defeat and repel the Russian invaders. On the other side of the same coin, Ukraine had to keep risk adverse NATO military organizations supportive of giving more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine's more than colorful decentralized combat units. I could not imagine how they succeeded at both simultaneously, but they did.

I fail at a lot of things. My first instincts for Ukraine would have been both to strike targets in Russia AND to take Russian territory. I have even romanticized what family members have said was a distant cousin (John Hunt Morgan) for similar initiative. In reality Morgan robbed line units engaged in the real war from the support of the calvary he commanded. The guys running the big picture for Ukraine have made very few mistakes and with both hands tied behind their back were still managing the EU and US political bureaucracies successfully. At least till about last week... .

[WszystekPoTrochu]

NATO can not admit any country that is at war at the time of admission. It is written in NATO's constitution as far as I know.

Nope, they technically can.

We have made clear that, at a minimum, candidates for membership must meet the following five requirements:--New members must uphold democracy, including tolerating diversity.
--New members must be making progress toward a market economy.
--Their military forces must be under firm civilian control.
--They must be good neighbors and respect sovereignty outside their borders.
--They must be working toward compatibility with NATO forces.

https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_members.html

This is obviously met.

1. Aspirants would also be expected:
   
   1. to settle their international disputes by peaceful means;
   2. to demonstrate commitment to the rule of law and human rights;
   3. to settle ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes including irredentist claims or internal jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles and to pursue good neighbourly relations;
   4. to establish appropriate democratic and civilian control of their armed forces;
   5. to refrain from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the UN;
   6. to contribute to the development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions and by promoting stability and well-being;
   7. to continue fully to support and be engaged in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Partnership for Peace;
   8. to show a commitment to promoting stability and well-being by economic liberty, social justice and environmental responsibility.

https://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-066e.htm#4

The latter is what some use to argue that Ukraine can't join. However:

To join the Alliance, nations are expected to respect the values of the North Atlantic Treaty, and to meet certainpolitical, economic and military criteria, set out in the Alliance’s 1995 Study on Enlargement. These criteriainclude a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy; fair treatment of minoritypopulations; a commitment to resolve conflicts peacefully; an ability and willingness to make a militarycontribution to NATO operations; and a commitment to democratic civil-military relations and institutions.

https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2...gement-eng.pdf

A commitment is not same as non participation.

[Vadim 68]

Nope, they technically can.


https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/eur/fs_members.html

.

The reasons quoted "upholding democracy" and "tolerating diversity", are the reasons Ukraine will not join the EU or NATO anytime soon.
It is as if Von Der Leyen was unaware that Zelensky had banned/broken up the biggest political opposition to him, jailed some members, and stole the assets of a party representing 20% of the population, when she gave her speech last week.

[WszystekPoTrochu]

let me take your post of abysmal quality and provide it with any:

Ukraine suspends 11 political parties with links to Russia

[WX]

let me take your post of abysmal quality and provide it with any:

Ukraine suspends 11 political parties with links to Russia

Britain and the US banned their home grown Nazi parties during the war.

[WX]

let me take your post of abysmal quality and provide it with any:

Ukraine suspends 11 political parties with links to Russia

That link is broken.

[Vadim 68]

That link is broken.

Much like, it would appear, his ability to hold civil discourse.

This was at the top of a google search.

Ukraine Shuts Down Largest Opposition Party, Seizes its Assets (thenewamerican.com)

""[COLOR=var(--text)]a Facebook post by Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice declared the government’s action against the party Opposition Platform — For Life (OPPL), which has been accused of being pro-Russian.[/COLOR][COLOR=var(--text)]This comes after the party had its operations suspended in March. Because OPPL was Ukraine’s second-largest political party (its popularity was even greater than that of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party last year), its dissolution essentially removes any significant political opposition from the president’s path ""

Is it democratic to abolish a party with more support than your own?[/COLOR]

[WszystekPoTrochu]

Much like, it would appear, his ability to hold civil discourse.

Convince me you're a real human being first, then we'll talk about civil discourse
Knowingly spreading obvious pro russian half truths doesn't help neither convincing me nor keeping me calm

Viktor Medvedchuk is literally putin's ally. The bloody autocrat warmonger is a godfather of medvedchuk's daughter.