Live Conflict Ukraine-Russia War

[Hexciter]

MasterCard and Visa stopped their services in Russia

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500234762681782276

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500235361796120576

 

[Hexciter]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500032894261211138

 

[Isa Khan]

Russian forces in Ukraine may have entered a possibly brief operational pause as they prepare to resume operations against Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolayiv, and possibly Odesa in the next 24-48 hours.

 

[Fuzuli NL]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500104042181234696

 

[Xenon54]

Missile Firing from the Russian AUAV Orion-E

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500156575708856331

Looks really low resolution, even recordings from gulf war have higher resolution, no wonder russian drone tech never really took off.
Building the drone body is nothing, having the electronics is the hard part.

 

[Isa Khan]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500060518031282179

 

[Xenon54]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1499989967782694913

pls y u nzi?!

Clown people...

 

[Hindk84]

Despite the Russian attack facing strong resistance and losing much military personnel or military equipment, in the end, they will achieve their goals in Ukraine, this is an existential war for the Russians!

 

[Vergennes]

Spoiler: graphic

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500238751011909644

 

[Vergennes]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500246238083653635

The same convoy that was ambushed in kharkiv today. A total carnage...

 

[Nilgiri]

Totally agree with that analysis.

Rearming is going to be a huge issue for russia, as well as continuing their modernisation program. Someone on here noted before that optics for their drones and aircraft are manufactured abroad as well. I doubt that China would want to supply russia with pirated versions of western chips either, one thing to supply the internal market, but they are reliant on keeping a somewhat amicable relationship with the west and the gains compared to the risks are small.

Also, the chips they make themselves are manufactured on an old 28nm process, so they draw more power, they get hotter and they are huge, really not conducive to fitting them inside comparatively small things such as missiles and drones.

Its always best to look inside, STFU as much as possible (externally) and build yourself up to be strong.....and commit that final strength only when principled and called for.

Rather than risk it all over some small issue.... and showing all the weakness you have....and that now you will be stuck with....instead of having as X-factor to buy time for building up better.

Bad-thinking authoritarian thugs just understand very little of this....they are highly impulsive and wreck their countries and others for long periods of time.

It is always regular people that are wiped off from living altogether....or suffer a long painful bill and trauma far from ivory tower idiots.

 

[Vergennes]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500239741706551307

 

[Vergennes]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1500197649307348994

 

[tracer]

Despite the Russian attack facing strong resistance and losing much military personnel or military equipment, in the end, they will achieve their goals in Ukraine, this is an existential war for the Russians!

Pretty sure it's an even bigger existential war for the ukrainians.
I was convinced at the outset that this would basically be a rush to Kiev and the installation of a "friendly government" but the apparent abysmal morale of the russian troops combined with their complete and total inability to bring resources to bear on a point in a coordinated fashion makes me seriously doubt if they will achieve their objectives, and if they do, how the hell are they going to hold on to the country? They would have to leave a sizeable occupying force to protect the new pro-russian government, and they would face resistance on all planes for a long time.

 

[Dmitry]

Bayraktar has become a legendary weapon in my country. Folk songs are already composed about it. The first one is my favorite

 

[OverTheHorizon]

Despite the Russian attack facing strong resistance and losing much military personnel or military equipment, in the end, they will achieve their goals in Ukraine, this is an existential war for the Russians!

Exactly. people here are unable to fathom that Russians are all-in for whatever reason best known to them. It could actually be a genuine case of Russian security being at threat. The lack of activism in Russia worries me. This means many Russians are supporting Putin’s claims.

 

[OverTheHorizon]

Bayraktar has become a legendary weapon in my country. Folk songs are already composed about it. The first one is my favorite

Good advertisement for Bayraktar for sure. May the Turks make more money with it.

 

[Nilgiri]

Many people who have no idea about trade, history and geopolitics are ready to jump on the Russia- China Alliance train way too fast. The same people who were calling BRICS the end of Western dominance in everything from economy to defense are now thinking that China will support Russia on 100% or something which is a joke.

They don't understand that no matter what China has VASTLY bigger interest in keeping their economic relationship with the West than it does with deepening the ties with Russia. The Chinese are a mercantile nation and to them trade and sweet USD and Euros are much more precious than the Putin ambitions to create an anti- Western block or something. Of course that China will use Russia to strengthen their positions in the world but it will never ever sacrifice itself for the sake of Putin. Beijing will never ever sacrifice a trillion dollars worth of exports to the Western block for Russia. At the same time China will gladly buy Russian resources on preferential prices they chose. As we saw already even if China is neutral and not joining any sanctions on Russia many of their financial institutions who work in the West are already stopping the financing on projects in Russia etc.

Chess master Putin with a grandmaster move again.

If anything PRC will nickel and dime Russia pretty brutally now.

There will be a bargaining power you gave to (especially) shanghai oligarchs....they will be a supplier monopoly and buyer monopsony to Putin's Russia (assuming Putin stays past the event horizon going on).

Russian oligarchs dont have much soft power in PRC at all like they did in West (Chelski etc) either.

How many learned Chinese compared to English? I'd say very close to zero.

But we also have to see what kind of sanctions West is able to cough up to apply on PRC for buying/supporting Russia as some vassal/client state.

They are also very dependent on PRC....so that dependency buys PRC sometime and buffer to have Russia as vassalage in some chunk of years.

Lot of things have to be proven, rather than simply talked about/threatened on this kind of stuff.

 

[Nilgiri]

Exactly right, i bet the chinese government is hugging themselves right now, if russia is blockaded by the world china can pretty much set their own prices. In one sense they probably support the sanctions even if they would never ever ever admit it.

It depends in the end what the powder keg and pressure cooker actually is underneath Putin in Russia. That is a big factor of dynamic grey that no one can really predict at this point....and its very important to the final equation.

CCP in China have watched it at some great discomfort before when USSR collapsed to begin with.

They will observe in overall neutral fashion....not being too thrilled or concerned....because Russia is simply instable in lot of ways compared to their preference....consider USSR's wealth, power and GDP compared to China's in 1990 for example (and folding and cleaving at that disparity ratio).

i.e cold calculus of will Putin be willing to do tianenmen's as necessary (if things boil over to that level downstream) that Gorbachev was not willing to do. Then handling the consequences of such things in this day and age.

These strain factors in society are just not known in the end. Putin has staked all of it in finding it out in a real rush.... I guess lets see.

 

[OverTheHorizon]

Its always best to look inside, STFU as much as possible (externally) and build yourself up to be strong.....and commit that final strength only when principled and called for.

Rather than risk it all over some small issue.... and showing all the weakness you have....and that now you will be stuck with....instead of having as X-factor to buy time for building up better.

Bad-thinking authoritarian thugs just understand very little of this....they are highly impulsive and wreck their countries and others for long periods of time.

It is always regular people that are wiped off from living altogether....or suffer a long painful bill and trauma far from ivory tower idiots.

The question is did Putin have the liberty of having this time? In an ideal world yes wait until you are in a dominant position and then unleash a blitzkrieg like the Nazis did. But does Russia have this option at all? At the end of the day Russia’s population is only 140 million and declining. Their economic situation is probably maxed out now with the largest forex reserves and GDP they could possibly have. So, in my books, waiting to be more dominant is not an option available for the Russians. This is it - now or never. Russia’s defense budget is just $45 billion - half of India’s and 15% of China’s. Russia no longer can aspire to be in a dominant position even if it wants to.