https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russian-troops-himars-while-gathered-field-reports-2024-2?r=US&IR=T

"A Ukrainian HIMARS strike killed at least 60 Russian troops gathered in an open field, The BBC reported."

The primary source material suggests dozens, 60 seems like a very high claim. Messy situation.

Twitter post is misleading. There was just a single farmer who put on pro-Putin flag. Dont know if he is a Russian agent or just read on the Internet that Putin is cool. Russians are decent at spreading propaganda over the internet, we can see that here too. Anyway a single person not worth talking about, he ran away before police came.

But there is a problem indeed. Ukrainians used to export their food via Black Sea in the past, now the Black Sea is closed due to war, so all the food came to Poland or Romania, crashing the local food market over here. Ukrainian food is cheaper, work labor is very cheap, Ukrainian soil is very good and there are no EU regulations there. Polish farmers are in deep shit now, unable to make any money, so they protest to get an attention from the government to find a solution to the problem.

There is often some local sentiment/bias, Germans often consider VW as a good car, Czech people like Skoda, French people like Peugot etc.
NATO members often believe NATO is strong, and Poland/Ukraine people often believe Ukrainians can defend their homeland.

Trident missile fails for the second time in a row, major embarrassment for the royal navy

When it comes to Russia’s general objectives what they say (different people are contradicting themselves within the Russian sphere as well) is fundamentally different to what happens on the battlefield.

To keep it simple, Putin said „denazification, demilitarisation of Ukraine and its neutral status“

Judging by this statement, this means all of Ukraine and not just Donbass regions.
Going into what this means is that he wants to erase Ukraine and its intelligence, meaning all people who have the idea of Ukraine as an independent state.
This starts from erasing Ukraine from Russian textbooks (https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/20/russia-scrubs-kyiv-and-ukraine-from-school-textbooks-reports), abducting Ukranian people and children and forcibly transferring them to Russia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War) and moving native Russians to Ukranian territory to undermine its occupation (https://cepa.org/article/behind-the-lines-russias-ethnic-cleansing/)

If you are following the war since day 1 you know that Russia has changed its objectives several times on the battlefield. First they started out to rush for Kyiv, expecting to overthrow the government within a few days. The Ukranian resistance was more fierce than expected and the poor military execution led to a collapse on several frontlines.
Since then Russia has adapted their military strategy, more focussing on Eastern Ukraine and Donbass. The reason being that keeping up a supply chain and a frontline stretching from the Krim all the way around Ukraine up to Kyiv is not possible.

They built up substantial fortifications, leaving the Ukranians in their most recent offensive with little to almost no advances.
On the Russian side, considering their military supremacy they have not achieved anything besides committing war crimes against civilians with no achievment on their goals in reach.

Going forward it remains to be seen how resilient Ukranian defenses will prove behind Avdiivka and what other fronts Russia will open up. I would expect fights to become more fierce once the mud period is over. And since Ukraine is lacking military support from the west they will be on their backfoot for the time being.




I don’t want you to believe me. You just have to use your own brain, use the internet and then you will see that Russia is using the internet and online media to obfuscate their committed crimes. I can’t give any credit to a state that keeps razing Ukranian cities to the ground while claiming that they are not bombing civilians, that the civilians dying on the battlefield are merely actors and that Ukraine themselves are responsible for all atrocities against civilians committed in this war. They are using screenshots and material from entirely different wars to prove that they’re allegedly innocent. There is tons of material showing that reports on the war in Ukraine stemming from Russian sources are fundamentally false. Such as claiming that Ukraine is planning a chemical weapons attack on Donbas with the aid of the US.

Now I won’t say that Ukraine is not trying to use the media to their advantage, keeping their own casualty numbers low or hiding them altogether, as an example.



I don’t see Russia as my enemy. I’m a seeker of truth and I’m firmly against any wrong narratives being spread. I’m not omniscient, I can and will inevitably be partially wrong, but I want to prove a point against „facts“ which are obviously wrong.

I didn’t missunderstand the point here, in fact China and India are the two top most important trading partners with Russia. Yet I stick to what I know. And that is that the vast majority of the microchips and technology parts are produced in western countries. Statistics vary, some say the number of parts only originating from the US are as high as 80% https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/19/7407471/
Now China and India are primarily interested in cheap fossil fuel and minerals from Russia. In exchange they will keep the loopholes open for technology goods to circumvent sanctions and be delivered to Russia.
In addition to the trading partners that you named, I would add Iran (drones, artillery munition), Turkey (western technology) and North Korea (munition) as vital to keep up their long-term military efforts.

Russia is highly dependent upon technology exports for the time being and they will remain for an undisclosed amount of time since their primary concern was and is to keep the military production up.



It is obvious that the sanctions imposed by the west on Russia have not achieved their goals.

When Putin came to power, the Russian people voted him in in order to end the era of oligarchs. And yet here we are, having the most corrupt Russia in history where all the resources are dedicated towards military spending and every independent opinion is suppressed.
Not a single Russian will benefit from the war. Nobody will win it and Ukraine and Russia will be equally at loss, no matter how this conflict ends.



It remains to be seen and I doubt it. For several reasons.
First off, Russia has a significant drain of work force. Just recently, Putin mentioned that Russian women need to get more children. They are basically facing the same demographic issue that western countries do. They saw a dramatic plunge of birthrates in the 1990s (which can be seen here https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP162.html) Along with that they have significantly higher death rates, especially when it comes to nonnatural causes.
In addition a significant amount of young people have fled the country, an estimated 900k from the start of the war till october 2022 alone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine)


Due to sanctions which have to be circumvented, Russia has become more reliant on fewer trading partners.

And I don’t see them being able to ramp up production for semiconductur and other high technology products.
In fact, when the war in Ukraine is over they will be left with a blown up military industry, while other states are primarily focussing on technology advances which will inevitably increase the gap in this sector.




Again I never said that. However that doesn’t change the fact that Russia in its current form a terrorist state, invading Ukraine for no reason and committing war crimes on a daily basis.

This post was edited by Gala on Feb 22 2024 09:29am

https://www.moscowtimes.eu/2024/02/22/medvedev-predlozhil-otpravlyat-v-lagerya-ne-soglasnih-s-rossiiskoi-okkupatsiei-ukraintsev-a122455

"Medvedev proposed sending Ukrainians who disagree with the Russian occupation to camps"

What about Russians who disagree with said occupation? Medvedev is a populist warhawk.

This post was edited by Norlander on Feb 22 2024 10:48am

What about them? Russians don't openly disagree with Putin, and live.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on Feb 22 2024 11:01am

To add to the royal Navy's embarrassment:
Two mine sweeper frigates collided into one another while docked causing damage to one hull
Two ships are getting scuttled because of a manpower shortage
Hms diamond had to let the world know that it has no vls tubes for shore bombardment because they are poor
Both aircraft carriers prop shafts are misaligned, so they can't help operation Prosperity no friends
And now their tridents don't work