- Ukraine downed a Russian Su-34 fighter jet over Kursk amid an ongoing territorial push.
- The Su-34, worth around $36 million, is Russia’s most efficient fighter bomber with advanced tech.
- Ukraine has previously held long kill streaks with Russian Su-34s.
Sure is nice of Ukraine to start shooting them down closer to the pilots’ homes, rather than making them travel all the way back from Ukrainian territory.
Plus the jet parts don’t end up on the "wrong hands"🤯. putin needs to know this! Such a simple trick!
Putin big brain work from home strategy
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Ukraine is showing remarkable restraint by not razing the villages and not kidnapping Russian children. Slava Ukraini!
If I were ukraine I’d take the children for the sole purpose of exchanging them for the ones Russia kidnapped.
It requires no restraint if you’re not a monster.
Right on, this isn’t about Ukraine’s restraint, it’s about Russia’s psychopathy.
Yeah was gonna say… Russia has abducted and moved native populations as part of their imperialism, for most of their history. Ukraine presumably doesn’t want to take over Russia so they have no need for such inhumane tricks.
They are liberating Russia
russians are razing entire villages now because they can’t advance in any other way (currently). they didn’t do that in first days of the war, or in 2014. that’s because they can’t use maneuver effectively now for combination of reasons (loss of skilled personnel, armoured vehicles, constant surveillance, contested airspace) (unlike ukrainians now in kursk)
The Russian (and the Soviet) army was never great at maneuver warfare. That requires field autonomy from commanders. Autocrats can’t keep a strong, smart, well-trained and somewhat autonomous army since they always fear coups.
That’s why historically Russia has been victorious by obliterating cities via massed artillery and air bombardment. This doesn’t work so well unless the enemy stays put or assaults your fortified lines.
I wonder what Ukraine’s long-term game is with Kursk, taking territory this way they proved they can but keeping it is a whole other story. It certainly keeps their enemy off-balance and forces them to spread while making them look even weaker.
Autocrats can’t keep a strong, smart, well-trained and somewhat autonomous army since they always fear coups.
that’s only half of the problem. the other half is that maneuver warfare requires encrypted radios, EW equipment, spotter drones, night vision, good sensors on tanks/APCs/helis, everything has to be mechanized or portable, in other words - lots of expensive kit, and importantly it also requires thorough training to use that kit effectively. russians don’t have that. saudis have the kit but no training and their army is crippled by extremely limited agency of field commanders resulting from coup-proofing and petty office politics
russians were able to move freely using deception and surprise against the 2014 ukrainian army. all that training ukrainians have undergone now pays off
I wonder what Ukraine’s long-term game is with Kursk
that’s a good question that only maybe 30 people in the world know answer to. kursk oblast has several interesting things, all of which can be used as bargaining chips by ukrainians:
- gas metering station in sudzha. gas is still flowing, but as ukrainians control ground there, their engineers can undo this at ten milisecond notice
- rail lines go from north to belgorod and from there to donetsk. ukrainians now have cut off one of these and if they reach lgov they’ll get another one. this is important as russians rely on rail for their logistics backbone https://xcancel.com/Schizointel/status/1823737718582526037#m
- potential of ukrainians capturing kursk npp gets russians paranoid. getting that would be a massive bargaining chip, maybe they’ll be able to exchange this for zaporizhian npp
- the captured territory itself would be also useful in negotiations
- ukrainians attacked there because they knew that that part of border is staffed with untrained conscripts. unlike meatgrinder material in donetsk consisting of prisoners and minorities kursk border was staffed with a bit richer, white euro-russians. unlike poor minorities (buryatia republic, for example, had disproportionate number of military deaths, they’re also heavily in debt in that region. many tried to get out of debt quickly by signing a contract) these euro-russians have some resources to protest in moscow. ukrainians already captured what could be low thousands of POWs (i’ve seen number of 2000 few days ago), but all these numbers come from russian telegram channels so take them with a heap of salt. although just yesterday something like 170 were captured, with 130 on video
- then there are psychological and diplomacy effects. ukrainians are the first to occupy territory of nuclear power. incursion like this lifts morale among army, brings war to “i’m not interested in politics” russians at home, and calls bluff on all russian red lines. this already caused germans to pledge more tanks and americans to consider sending JSOW and brits to lift some restrictions on their weapons
- ukrainians maybe decided that that incursion will cause russians to shift some units from east and south to kursk, which would take pressure off of these regions making advance easier, or maybe trigger mobilization which would be a political catastrophe for putin. it looks like hole in kursk is for now just plugged with more of untrained conscripts, but it’s unsure if they’re ran out of more capable infantry or they don’t want to send them there, or maybe logistics haven’t caught up by now. at any rate troops in transit are not troops fighting and there were artillery ambushes on entire convoys, in one case destroying 14 trucks and several hundred soldiers (anywhere from 200 to 490) in a minute (in oktabirskiye, on second or third day). there’s been another that night. there are also of course smaller ambushes that nobody hears about, because targets are dead and ukrainians don’t say anything
- ukrainians are not done, they run in circles around russian units that have no idea what is going on because of their lack of training and effective ukrainian jamming. russians get defeated in detail with arty and air support from across border in sumy region, and it might be that they’ll get encircled in south of glushkovsky district, which would bring even more POWs and accomplish something that russians weren’t able to do since day one, that is large scale encirclement
all of this comes with a massive caveat that everything we know comes from russian telegram channels, because ukrainians maintain very tight opsec and let out only very little specifically cleared information
Oh yeah, I forgot about the coms gear. Unlike Russian troops relying on cell phone towers during the invasion (while simultaneously knocking the towers down). The EW gear would make it even harder for an already ill-equipped and disorganized defense force to coordinate.
And I bet Ukraine is getting some nice up-to-date intel from NATO assets (satellites, SIGINT, HUMINT…) which helps them decide where to attack and when to evade.
ukrainians have their own capable humint. remember, lots of ukrainians can speak russian at native speaker level. russians can’t do the same
after capture of sudzha train station, and maybe before that, ukrainians have all the frequencies used by russian trains. i bet they can make good use of their EW capabilities there
Listen-in and cause confusion. So many possible hijinks.
oh cool now ukrainians have surrounded korenevo. expect shenanigans today
Bucha masacre happened in March 2022. The war started on the 24th of February.
News of civilians shot, raped started flowing in since the start of the war.
russians were doing this while swaths of them were indoctrinated into thinking they will be welcomed with open arms. As saviors.
Stop whitewashing russia.
this is not what i’m talking about. these cases of wholesale destruction and ethnic cleansing happened after russians controlled territory, not as a prerequisite to advance. it’s also quite possible that these units were explicitly ordered to do that, and it’s not a result of poor discipline or anything like this
one of several reasons why looting is banned in all sensible armies is that looting slows advance
If you have a proper supply chain and logistics you don’t need to rely on taking civilians stuff. The russian military and the members who loot the villages are just despicable
Ukrainian soldiers are leaving Google reviews on local shops as they travel through. I don’t think they are looting, but they are definitely stopping for snacks.
not only that, they’re delivering humanitarian aid to civilians https://news.sky.com/video/ukrainian-military-have-been-delivering-humanitarian-aid-to-those-who-were-reportedly-abandoned-in-the-kursk-region-13197067
if i’ve seen this headline two weeks ago i’d think that i’ve gone crazy
Why would you think you’d gone crazy? Ukraine’s troops have conducted themselves very well throughout the whole thing haven’t they?
“we’re three years into three-day special operation. NATO equipped forces are distributing humanitarian aid in Russia” sounds like ncd shitpost if you had no idea that Ukrainians were able to pull off Kursk incursion. like, they lost so badly that they’re taking aid from most probable adversary. this is desert storm levels of losing
Looting happens because people like to steal unusual or valuable stuff. For example, when wristwatches were popular, they were a common item to be looted, because they had a lot of value for their size and weight. It’s not about being supplied with necessities.
looting happens when your army consists of undisciplined cavemen. it further strains logistics, that has to run both ways now; takes valuable time that could be used doing literally anything else; sets local civilians against you - maybe there are spotters or informants or insurgents now that weren’t there before; makes unit in question vulnerable to some of these civilians’ antics - there were multiple reports of poisoned food being served to russian soldiers by now and i think it could be over 50 fatalities total; not to mention that it’s a war crime
It’s all tied to the old military thinking.
Russian soldiers are not fighting for Russia. Russian soldiers are fighting for their generals. Similar to how Roman armies worked, or… well, really like any army worked until we got to the nationalism level that eventually lead to WWI. One of the most effective ways the generals got their troops to follow them was allowing them the “spoils of war”. Good ol’ raping and pillaging.
By comparison the Ukrainian army is unified in their fight for Ukraine. They’re not fighting for a person, they’re fighting for their people. All the fighting happening inside Russian borders isn’t to secure loot, it’s to end the war so they can go home.
If you have a proper supply chain and logistics
Do they, though…? Or is it still the classic Russian “wait until the guy in front of you is killed and then pick up his rifle” sort of thing…?
russians are at very least supplied with small arms ammo
With proper supply chains you can loot more efficiently. Care packages sent back home from the front lines fit nicely on empty supply trucks heading back to restock.
you need proper supply chain anyway, the only thing civilians can provide you with is at most food, fuel, and maybe some vehicles. civilians don’t have any ammo, radios or any practical communications equipment in general, firearms, mines, grenades, bulk explosives, fuzes, drones, medical supplies, spare parts, and fuckton of other things that you have to supply either way. this is not napoleonic era warfare
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There were some talking heads some months ago saying that the Ukraine war would determine if China expands into Taiwan militarily or russia economically. No need for weapons in the second case.
So they’d become a kind of vassal state?
I could totally see that, especially if something happens to Putin.
What I saw was that North China is DRY. They need tons of water. And russia has lake Baikal nearby. These kinds of Nestlé-style tricks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlUJwbL7SM8
Imagine all the anger russians feel towards the US for not being able to magically fix their country in the 90s but now turned towards their growing and grabby neighbour.
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:/ huh? So, why are the russians resentful for the 90s towards the US? That’s what I am talking about, during Yeltsin post-USSR, not Gorbachov.
So, why are the russians resentful for the 90s towards the US?
The coup that brought Yeltsin to power is believed to have been a plot by US intelligence services. And the post-90s break up of the USSR resulted in a pillaging of national assets through privatization, which upset a lot of people.
Everything is an american coup to some people, even when the USSR military performs a coup against the leader of the USSR 😔
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No, they wouldn’t, one period was communist, the other was anarcho-capitalist 💀 none of the points you made remotely apply.
Wait, did Russians really believe the U.S. was supposed to fix it after the collapse of the USSR?
That’s not how government works what the hell is wrong with people over there
Don’t know about “expect”, but at the time there seemed to be popular hope that with the collapse of USSR they would get some of that sweet western prosperity. When that did not come to pass even when by all accounts the Russian government of that time was trying to lean into normalized relations with the west, then some “the west still keeps us down” narrative is unsurprising. It was in the midst of continued economic struggle that Putin came along and started reasserting a more nationalistic philosophy in Russia.
While it might not have been reasonable to expect, in retrospect it might have been in NATO’s best interest to be more proactive in helping Russia during that window where they were actually friendly. They might have managed to avert Putin’s rise to power.
For what it’s worth the west had a history of helping in these events, we did fuck all for them really when the Soviet Union broke apart.
It wasn’t our job, but it woulda gone a LONG fucking way to bettering relations.
I could see feeling bitter we didn’t help but to take it as far as blaming us for their woes is just classic “it’s their fault” mentality.
Look at Japan and Germany as examples of how it may have played out.
But Japan and Germany were occupied, the US had skin in the game, influence over russia was more hands-off.
I’m exaggerating for the sake of argument, but I’ve seen tankies and russians on youtube make this argument unironically to justify why russia had the right to do whatever it wanted to recover its empire and that they had a right to revenge for the “decade of humiliation” and shock therapy.
russia had the right to do whatever it wanted to recover its empire
I don’t see anyone seriously making these arguments. What I do see is a nasty situation in Eastern Europe thanks to decades of privatization and looting of the domestic economies. There’s a reflexive anti-Americanism that suggests simply divorcing from the western economy will restore the eastern states to a more normal economic path. But Putin isn’t exactly Lenin (or even Khrushchev), so there’s no reason to believe a Russian capitalist oligarch looting the Bulgarian or Estonian economy would somehow benefit anymore more than the UK/US doing it.
Although funny enough that’s what we promised to do in Japan after WWII.
They did experience rapid economic growth, and did move to a democratic government, though as usual the right wing leadership took hold both here and there, and we just wanted Japan as a military base to counter those commie Russians, and they wanted to nullify the treaty preventing them from having a standing army
China is expanding into both economically. That’s been the strategy for the last 50 years.
I still don’t really see China attacking Taiwan as a particularly likely since it would involve tangling with the US, which may not come to anything but is an unknown factor.
China has done pretty well expanding economically and mostly staying out of warmongering. I really hope that continues, but switching to a more militaristic approach with their recent military expansion would be bad for us all …. Probably including them
Certainly including them. China has benefited greatly from their trading relationship with the rest of the world and continues to do so, and unlike Russia their foreign policy is much more pragmatic than personal.
The only way they make a play for Taiwan is if they are convinced they can do it without the US becoming materially involved. This would most likely mean winning so quickly that the fighting is already over by the time the US can seriously mobilize, but even that would likely turn into a larger conflict.
China has to maintain the idea that any day now they’ll retake Taiwan, for a number of reasons. Mostly because it’s a necessary pillar of their internal politics. But in practice the real value they obtain from it would be seriously diminished by the astonishing costs. The biggest practical benefit would be ability to completely control the world’s supply of semiconductors (sure was a genius idea to let everyone outsource that to TSMC), but that value will diminish if the US and other countries continue to invest in domestic chop production (add that to the list of actually good things Biden did by the way).
China has been escalating its practice of economic imperialism for year now. They have been fortifying the waters around the islands they claim, but aren’t under their control. They have been running into more and more economic issues, and are not recovering from them as well as they had been. Given this, I do not for a second believe China will never get into the expansion game.
China won’t militarily invade Taiwan until they have their own semiconductor foundry that rivals TSMC
Haha.
China is one of the most impatient countries around, driven by the whims of the general secretary. Just look at how badly they rushed into HK, all they had to do was follow the original dates and it would’ve been a smooth transfer, instead they rushed in and caused huge conflicts, in turn dropping the one country two systems bullshit narrative and souring Taiwan off any chance of reunification.
They’re currently pumping ultranationalism hard with their gen z/alpha, and are facing potential future economic issues, a war is a great outlet for angry young people. I could easily see them rushing into armed conflict with Taiwan without having their own foundries. Same as that spectacularly backfired “wolf warrior diplomacy”.
Its about face not economics. You can’t except rationality from human actors.
China will make a play for Siberia and Far East by 2100.
!RemindMe 2100 Did China do this?
Heard they don’t know how to build the Su-34 any longer (old forgotten Soviet stuff), only service and upgrade them.
Putin us really thinking with his ass now, they haven’t lost the battle but they sure seems to have lost the war.
Ffs.
Yeah, even if it ends tomorrow (which it will not, not even close) this has totally screwed over Russia.
I think Russia’s plan was to enslave the Ukrainian people and force them to rebuild the russian military.
Ah, you mean Russia’s perpetual solution until Ukraine won their independence.
I mean, they have nukes, actually invading them with intent to actually conquer them or permanently take significant parts of the country would be a risky move regardless of how depleted their stocks get.
That goes both ways, at least a little. It would be risky for Russia to ever use nukes, even on their own territory. It certainly wouldn’t make the west happy, and their citizens probably don’t want to see their own villages with mushroom clouds over them.
Russia has made it painfully clear that she does not give one single fuck about her citizens. But yeah, using nukes probably wouldn’t end well for Russia at all. I agree, the US would step in at that point and things would get very messy.
The problem is the US cares about not nuking regular people at least somewhat but Russian leadership don’t care outside of themselves
You sure 2100?
If I was China I’d make a play for it by the end of the year, fuck Taiwan when you could snag all that free real-estate and precious metals Russia should have been mining instead of losing their ass in a war.
Right, China has an opportunity now while Russia is desperate, and that window will be open at least a generation for Russia to rebuild and repopulate, so this could be much earlier than OP predicted
Why would China need to invade Russia when they can just buy the resources? Russia would certainly like something to cover the huge trade imbalance.
it is good living space… but i digress…
China has no emotional investment in the territory so it would not undermine itself trying to capture it like Russia is doing now.
However, at this rate Russia will be very weak in the future and at point China will cross over and colonize the area which is very sparsely populated by about half of the people who really don’t give a fuck about being “Russian”
It will be on of them… do you cry when you step on the thing and our grandkids won’t blink.
living space
6% of chinese people live in 57% of China, living space isn’t an issue at that scale.
When none of your predictions come true this time, will you do some self-reflection? Did you do any self-reflection about how you’d been convinced that hostile action against Iraq was justified? Afghanistan? Libya? The ongoing occupation of Syria? How previous and upcoming action against Iran?
Do you mean 94% of Chinese people are concentrated into 43% of the space?
I mean, that just says that the distribution of people across the land is uneven. It all depends on why. Is that land inhabitable? Is it mountains or desert?
It does contain mountains and deserts, (and taiga and steppe and deciduous forest and grassland, it’s really, really big) but the main reason it’s less inhabited is that it’s much less developed. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1000459
This situation is comparable to the midwest and rockys in the US.
not only chinese can buy resources from russians, they can do so on wildly favourable terms. they can have all that oil and iron ore and whatever without the trouble of actually occupying siberia
They can’t even make sufficient ball bearings to keep their railroad alive; they depended entirely on western imports lol
Solid propaganda but I am sure China can machine them some fucking ball bearings lol
There are shortages though.
100% this isn’t a lost technology, it “just” needs some machines built
Does Russia even have that precision machining capability?
yes, they are capable. have you ever shot an AK-47?? They are marvels of engineering. You can bury it in mud, pick it up, and shoot it with no malfunction.
dont underestimate our enemies, that puts them at an advantage.
I have. They’re so reliable because of loose tolerances, not because of precision machining. If you shake them, they rattle. (An AR-15 does too, but only because of the plastic handguards.)
right, nothing to do with the size of the gas piston lol the tolerances were not a mistake, they are intentional in order to allow it to function when dirty.
I have never shot an AR15 that didn’t have slop. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer AR, but let’s not pretend AK isnt a marvel of engineering. Even Stoner would agree, and did
The ball bearings are made in Germany with a very specific level of precision that China can definitely replicate given how they rapidly caught up to the rest of the world in the past 30 years economically and technologically. (Hint was done primarily through corporate espionage and theft)
fuck IP, knowledge belongs to the world not imaginary borders created by hairless apes.
honestly. the reason 3D printing didnt take off until 2012? IP We could have been making progress in this technology since the 90s. but no… Imagine where we could be today if greed didnt keep that tech locked up for decades.
We have been stifling progress in the name of IP while China is starting to gain ground faster and faster.
I bought a chinese made phone, oneplus open, and it blew me away. US foldable phones are 2 years behind, despite being created by TRILLION dollar US companies. If the US is so afraid of competition maybe we should start competing!?
Everything you said I agree.
The bearings in trains are actually pretty complicated to build. They use slanted roller bearings, not just regular old ball bearings. 10 companies in the world make like 70% of all rail bearings, and 5 of those are in Japan. Plus, only a few countries produce the two steel alloys that you make these bearings out of.
China does produce around 20% of the bearings used in trains, but pretty much all of it gets used for domestic purposes and they still have to import due to their massive rail expansion projects
Okay im ignorant on this one, why do trains use ball bearings? And is this for traditional trains or high speed?
Pretty much anything with a turning wheel and axel relies on some sort of bearing system. That means traditional and high speed rail systems both require them.
There are some differences in types of bearing depending on what you use your rail system for. In the US we utilize antiquated plain bearings that are relatively easy to manufacture, but that’s because our rolling stock is ancient compared to most countries. Mainly because we rely heavily on trucks for transporting most goods and haven’t bothered investing in our aging rail network.
In Russia they have a much more modern rolling stock, as everything they ship goes through their rail network. Their rolling stock utilizes angled/slanted roller bearings, which can vastly increase their weight capacity, speed, and can double to triple their lifespan. The only problem is that they are complicated to manufacture.
This has really peaked my interest. Are these the types of bearings you are referring to? I’d like to read more but not misinform myself. https://www.savree.com/en/encyclopedia/tapered-roller-bearing-rail
Yep, that’s a tapered/angled roller bearing. They’re conceptually a pretty easy concept, but deceptively hard to manufacture
AIM-120Cs on F-16s, baby. Something to counter the R-77s and R-37s of the VVS.
Terms I recognize from your comment:
- F-16
- baby
Good, there will hopefully be more where that came from. I hope Russia is scared to fly over their own country.
Russia is, after all, the second best air force in Russia.
They gotta be running out soon
