[Werthead]

Moldova has voted in favour of further EU integration and it looks like Maya Sandu has been re-elected with a 5+ point lead (potentially ending around 9 points, which would be pretty decisive). Interesting to see if Russia can pull any shit there, and if the EU (and Romania in particular) will tolerate that happening if so.

The Kiel Institute has made the argument in Germany that a Russian victory over Ukraine would cost Germany around 1-2% extra in GDP expenditure to deal with renewed waves of refugees and dramatically increased defence spending. This is significantly more than doubling Ukrainian military and economic aid or even more, and vastly more than holding assistance at current levels. To some degree, the true is of other European countries, especially Romania, Slovakia and Poland.

Russian Railways has announced that it has decommissioned 100,000 freight cars. It is using them to cannibalise for parts to keep the rest going. That's around 7-8% of the total, but there's some evidence that a substantial number on top of that are out for the count. Russian Railways is also reporting a major problem with employees, many of whom have gone (willingly or not) to Ukraine.

Some reports that a Russian - North Korean unit may have come under attack from Ukrainian forces. A captured Russian soldier reported that the North Koreans could not distinguish between the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and killed two Russian troops, forcing them to surrender rather than risk further friendly fire.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 05 November 2024 - 11:41 PM

[Werthead]

Ukraine is taking the pragmatic view that they'll see how the new administration settles in in January. For what it's worth, Russia has said it sees no benefit from having Trump in the White House and a great deal of uncertainty, so they are not anticipating a change in conditions.

We also know that the Russians despise the leaked "Trump Deal" from a few months back and would not cooperate with it, so the question is if the stick in the deal (a long-term lend lease agreement for Ukraine) was a real thing or a bluff.

Ukraine also seems to be taking the view of showing its inventiveness and capabilities in the meantime. Last night it launched a surprisingly large-scale attack on the Russian Caspian Sea Fleet, hitting two missile destroyers and possibly disabling one of them. This involved the coordination of a large number of drones operating at distances of well over 1,000km from Ukrainian soil.

[Cause]

Ukraine should be Jubilant. The war ends Jan 21st.

I hope Trump gets asked every 24 hours starting with Jan 21st why his peace plan hasn’t taken effect yet.

[Mentalist]

Zelensky is going to be looking for the "the West made us stop fighting" narrative in the coming weeks and months as a means to cushion criticism and shift the blame away from the systemic problems within the UA military and government leadership.

Unless Putler doesn't do smth incredibly stupid, he is likely to sell a ceasefire idea to Trump & co. Which would in turn trigger a flood of emigration from UA once the borders are open, and bring all the social pressure to the fore, likely resulting in a huge political crisis and further instability. And without any "real" security guarantees, this will allow Putler to ramp up pressure and expect to make further gains.

It is unclear to what extent EU heads recognize the threat, and to what extent they still think a ceasefire could turn the clock back to "business as usual". But Needless to say, I'm not feeling optimistic

This post has been edited by Mentalist: Yesterday, 03:10 PM

[Werthead]

There are multiple ways this can pan out, some very bad for Ukraine, some merely kinda bad for Ukraine, some maybe okay for Ukraine and maybe even one that's pretty good for Ukraine (the US backing it to the hilt). The last one is basically if Russia refuses to come to the table at all or if it doesn't pass the test that even Trump would demand as a lowest common denominator.

We might get a clue to that when Trump starts naming his Secretary of Defence and Secretary of State. All of the names being floated have been somewhat supportive of Ukraine (ranging from very to lukewarm-but-present), and some have been pretty supportive but taking clever stances to also look supportive of Trump (i.e. supporting sending money but only if it's closely audited to avoid corruption and 100% of the money is spent in the US itself, which isn't far off the case). The risk comes if Trump puts in the most milquetoast picks.

Vance's crappy attitude to Ukraine is irrelevant, since that's not the VP's area, unless Trump were to keel over in the near future, which is not a nontrivial possibility.

It is of course insane for Ukraine to be in this position, given the successes it's had in multiple areas recently, despite the slow attritional loss of territory in Donbas. If North Korea really steps up its commitment, it might force South Korea to step into the void left behind by the USA even if Trump disapproves, which is useful because it's arguably the only western (or western-adjacent) country that can.

Russian Telegram has just blown up with angry reports over a massive Russian assault on Bilohorivka on the Siversk front on November 2nd. The commander of the 123rd Brigade of the 2nd Corps of the Luhansk People's Republic military, sent the 1st, 2nd and 3rd motorized rifle battalions and the 4th tank battalion in a frontal assault without artillery, air or drone support.

The Ukrainians responded with massive artillery and drone assaults which inflicted huge casualties even before they entered direct fire range. In the resulting melee, only some of the Russian troops were able to withdraw. Many were forced to take cover and have been pinned down for five days with little prospect of the Russians being able to extricate them. The death toll is estimated in the dozens at least, with maybe hundreds wounded and dozens of vehicles destroyed. The scale of this defeat has not been fully documented yet.

The same Telegram channels are now calling for a wholesale rethink of Russian offensive doctrine, saying they need to switch to a system that preserves Russian lives because they simply cannot afford to keep throwing them away at this rate.

Media are now analysing Ukrainian opinions on Trump's victory and they are seeing some positivity, though for varying reasons (copium being one, presumably). One is that people think the war might have to end soon to preserve any chance of Ukraine retaining most of its pre-invasion borders. Losing the two Donbas republics and possibly regaining the other two (as hinted in Trump's leaked plans) in a deal in the New Year is being seen as maybe a much better outcome than Ukraine can realistically achieve on the battlefield alone. Some are even saying that losing the four oblasts but redrawing the map to retain Kherson city, Dnipro city etc (effectively along the current front lines, maybe with some swaps for a withdrawal from Kursk) might be a better result than might be achieved on the battlefield at this rate, though that's much more contentious (and I'd say politically unacceptable, and would require Zelensky's resignation, and they cannot accept NATO neutrality as well in that case). Ukrainians in general seem annoyed with Biden, seeing him as dithering over every decision and pointing out that being told "no" immediately on certain things would have allowed them to have made other plans rather than holding out for months that they might happen; they seem to have realised this in the last year or so, hence them asking for permission to use long range weapons and, whilst waiting for Biden to make his mind up, accelerating their own internal ballistic and cruise missile programmes, but it was a major problem earlier in the conflict.

As Garry Kasparov has put it, Ukrainians might prefer it for "Trump to stab them in the front rather than Biden stab them in the back."

Interestingly, Trump has taken a telephone call in the last hour from Zelensky and accepted his congratulations. Putin has so far ruled out calling Trump.

The Lithuanian defence minister has bigged up Trump as well, pointing out that the Battle of Khasham, when US forces engaged and annihilated a Russian Wagner unit in Syria, happened on his watch, and Trump was better at setting out and enforcing red lines than Biden, who has vacillated too much. Probably just trying to flatter Trump into not immediately doing something stupid on taking office.

This post has been edited by Werthead: Yesterday, 11:25 PM