A place for aggregated discussions of a possible conflict, it’s implications and effects, news updates and personal accounts if any. If the expected conflict kicks off, I will change the title but the function will stay the same.
Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky have a phone call scheduled on Friday, sources say
Lord, what I wouldn't give.
Also, I'm so, so, so sorry, Volodymyr, and I'm sorry Ukranians. Like genuinely, I'm really sorry.
Former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have scheduled a phone call on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
The call would mark their first conversation since Trump left the White House, and comes amid concerns in Europe about what Trump’s policy towards the Ukraine war would be if Trump were to win the presidential election in November.
One of the sources warned that schedules shift frequently. There have been discussions for some time about the appropriate time for a call between the GOP nominee and the Ukrainian president, sources said.
Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the Ukraine war in a day, but it remains unclear how he would pursue peace.
In last month’s CNN debate with President Joe Biden, Trump said that Putin’s terms for an agreement – which would include Ukraine ceding the four territories currently occupied by Russia – are “not acceptable.”
But the former president and his allies have also criticized US military aid to Kyiv.
Last week, when Zelensky was in the US, he said that “everyone is waiting for November,” including Putin. He also said that Biden and Trump are “very different” but both support democracy which is why he claimed: “I think Putin will hate both of them.”
Last week, Trump met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the second time in less than six months. The visit came less than two weeks after Orban met with Putin in Moscow. Following the meeting, Orban told European leaders that Trump is “ready to act as a peace broker” between Russia and Ukraine.
Guessing the Logan act isn't really a thing anymore if you're a Republican.
Austerity economics just. don't. work. You'd think they'd have picked up on that by now...
"Remember sir, put the phone against your other ear."
Russia is the first meme-based empire.
Top Russian Economist Dies After Falling out of Window
Valentina Bondarenko, a top Russian economist, has died at the age of 82 after falling out of her apartment window in Moscow, Russian state-run media reported on Tuesday.
.....................
While the circumstances behind Bondarenko's death remain unclear, a number of prominent Russian officials have died after falling out of windows since President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine began in February 2022, including a top oil executive and a defense official.
Here is a full list of all the Russian officials who have died after falling out of windows since the war began.
Ukraine thrown into war's bleak future as drones open new battlefront
The black box sits on the army truck dashboard like a talisman, its tiny screen lighting up with warnings when Russian drones are above us. We are driving fast along a country road in the darkness near the front lines outside Kharkiv.
Like many in this war, the soldiers inside have come to revere the little cube they call "sugar"; it warns of the unseen dangers above.
On the vehicle’s roof are three mushroom-shaped antennas that make up separate drone-jamming equipment. The car emits an invisible aura of protection that will thwart some, but not all, of the Russian attack drones patrolling the skies above this battlefield.
"It has detected the Zala Lancet Russian drones," says Senior Lt Yevhenii, 53, from the front passenger seat, describing one of the most powerful long range Russian drones and its targeting drone. "Is that why we’re driving so fast?" I ask, aware that the drone-jamming antenna is useless against a Lancet.
"We’re not a priority for them, but it’s still better not to slow down because it’s very dangerous," says Yevhenii, from the Khartia Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard.
The jamming equipment blocks roughly 75% of frequencies that drones use to communicate with their operators, but some like the Lancet are difficult to block because they are entirely autonomous once their target has been marked. Because of the Lancet’s power, it tends to be used on larger targets, such as armoured vehicles or infantry positions, the Ukrainians say.
Almost none of this technology was here in Ukraine a year ago; now it is commonplace. Drones, which were once peripheral to the war are a central component for both sides, alongside infantry and artillery as Ukraine struggles to hold back Russian advances.
Russia is the first meme-based empire.
Today's number is 8. I think.... if I'm reading that article right.
Russia is the first meme-based empire.
Top Russian Economist Dies After Falling out of Window
Valentina Bondarenko, a top Russian economist, has died at the age of 82 after falling out of her apartment window in Moscow, Russian state-run media reported on Tuesday.
.....................
While the circumstances behind Bondarenko's death remain unclear, a number of prominent Russian officials have died after falling out of windows since President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine began in February 2022, including a top oil executive and a defense official.
Here is a full list of all the Russian officials who have died after falling out of windows since the war began.
I had to look it up to confirm it wasn't Elvira over at the Russian Central Bank. (It was not.)
Regular season of Sopranos over there.
It is becoming fairly obvious at this point that the large sweep of the war momentum is mostly going to be determined by the November election. Should Harris win, Putin is largely out of options. He will not have the resources to prosecute the war beyond 2025. The Russian economy will, by then, experience massive hyperinflation as fewer and fewer consumer goods compete for the equally massive stimulus rubles they have been smashing into war industry and soldier salaries. Domestic industry outside of the military sector is already annihilated by a combination of draws from the military sector and the unprecedented flight of pretty much a generation of young professionals trying to avoid conscription. In a lot of ways, this is looking like the precise conditions Moscow faced in 1917.
Aside from tightening sanctions, threatening secondary sanctions on Russia's trade partners, and financial and military support for Ukraine, we could seriously accelerate the collapse of the Russian empire with a couple pretty unorthodox steps.
One is massively cyberattack the Russian banking sector. Take down electronic banking within Russia for a couple weeks and that country becomes a cash only economy.
Next, flood the living snail snot out of the republics of Buryatia, Dagestan, and Chechnya with trainloads of high quality counterfeit rubles. You could use the regular smuggling routes through Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia currently being used to funnel them consumer goods.
The combination would result in massive foreign capital flight, accelerated hyperinflation, and civil unrest. Combine this with Ukraine's continued targeting of Russian oil infrastructure and an international crackdown on the unregistered Russian shadow tanker fleet and collapse looks inevitable.
But it all depends on Trump losing.
Einstein was right
just not the way he could imagine
Ukraine’s military has claimed it sank a Russian submarine in a port in Crimea, in what would be another major setback for Moscow in the occupied peninsula.
The submarine Rostov-on-Don was hit in the port of Sevastopol on Friday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement Saturday.
“The boat sank on the spot,” the General Staff said, without providing further evidence.
The Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said submarine defense exercises were taking place on Saturday, and “everything is calm in the city.”
On a post on Saturday, Russian military blogger Boris Rozhin said the ship repair plant in Sevastopol, where the submarine was docked, appears to have been hit.
Commissioned in 2014, the Rostov-on-Don is a 73.8-meter (242-foot) Kilo II-class submarine and carries a crew of 52. With a submerged displacement of 3,100 tons, the diesel-electric-powered vessel can carry Kalibr cruise missiles.
Not sure how the US will respond to the news that the Free Russia Legion used American provided Stryker vehicles in their raid across the border into Kursk Oblast. The operation is apparently wrecking havoc in the Russian rear as they have begun evacuations of settlements along the entire border. The speed with which the Ukrainian backed rebels moved caught the Russians entirely off guard with some reports of up to a hundred Russians surrendering with barely any resistance.
I haven't seen any reliable maps to confirm it, but Telegram posts suggest that the Russians are realistically concerned that the FRL could take control over the NPP at Kursk. Doing so would necessarily force a realignment of forces away from the Donetsk push to stem the bleeding. And possibly end the Russian Summer offensive.
JC, the sub had been hit last year, badly, and was not yet functional again. But it's still around $275M USD worth of hardward deployed to the bottom. 
JC, the sub had been hit last year, badly, and was not yet functional again. But it's still around $275M USD worth of hardward deployed to the bottom. :-)
It was one of the newest as well. I think it was commissioned in like 2014.
Did it actually sink or was it on land being repaired? Maybe it's just a husk now or could it still be repaired?
It was in the water, but it's still covered by tarps. It is surmised that it sank by the presence of recovery equipment and statements from bloggers in Russia and Ukraine.
So it looks like this cross border "raid" into Kursk is turning out to be a lot more substantial than folks initially anticipated. It apparently involves over 1000 Ukrainian troops, air defense assets, artillery, and armored vehicles. The Ukrainians are being VERY tight lipped about it and executing remarkable OpSec, but the picture emerging from Russian civilian video is of entire settlements being abandoned without a fight, civilians being left to their own to evacuate however they can, and mass surrenders of conscripts whose officers fled at the first sign of contact with the enemy.
There aren't a lot of reliable maps of the conflict area, but geolocated video of civilians fleeing and prisoner video has the outer limits of the advance about 40km southwest of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant which provides just about all the electrical power to the entire oblast and beyond. Kursk oblast produces roughly half of Russia's steel btw. It is speculated that the Ukrainians are making a thunder run to shut it down, rig it for demolition, and negotiate an end to the war.
I wish that felt less desperate than it does.
I wish that felt less desperate than it does.
The possibility of a Trump victory has made the entire planet desperate.
There are all manners of different theories for Ukrainian motivation here.
Anders Puck seems to think that it had to do with the assessment that the Russians were approaching culmination of their offensive in Donetsk and the Ukrainians wanted to deny them the ability to take a much needed operational pause. That could make some sense, but the act of crossing the international border seems like a pretty big step to take if the aim was simply, as he puts it, to continue logistical pressure on a stressed Russian military.
Jake Broe seems to think that they wanted to (and managed to) seize the natural gas pumping station and disable it, but encountered such little real resistance that they continued opportunistic advancement in the hopes of f*cking up more shit. I think two combat brigades and lots of strategic assets like air power and air defense is a bit overkillish for that sort of objective.
I already mentioned the thunder run to the Kursk NPP.
And others have theorized that they were just looking to apply domestic political pressure on Putin in the hopes of fomenting rebellion.
I have to say I honestly don't know, but am starting to think that the least unlikely motivation was simply to "hit them where they ain't". Earlier raids utilizing the Freedom for Russia Legion as well as the poor performance of Rosgvardia against the Wagner rebellion demonstrated that outside of the contract army, Russian forces lack the discipline, leadership, and morale to survive contact with the enemy. Knowing that, it made more sense to hit them there than it did to counterattack against the teeth of the Russian force in Donetsk or Lugansk.
It definitely runs some sort of diplomatic risk as it does make the Americans and Germans nervous about "escalation", but it is well within their rights to do so in their own defense. It is, however, unlikely that this is going to be ground they can easily keep considering that, as Ryan McBeth points out, the territory they have already taken would require about two DIVISIONS of troops to hold according to American and NATO doctrine.
Again, not sure what they are doing, but I sure hope they have a plan.
Crippling Russian economy is undoubtedly a good way to increase leverage in negotiations.
Nobody expected them to penetrate the border on foot so it makes sense the aggressor's defence lines were thin beyond a certain point.
There's no way they're expecting to hold territory. It's a wedge and prone to being surrounded.
Reminds me of the olden days of war where civilians would flee to the nearest town/city for refuge. Gonna be hard to deny in the motherland when thousands fleeing in cars with whatever they can carry spreading the word about an incursion.
Crippling Russian economy is undoubtedly a good way to increase leverage in negotiations.
Nobody expected them to penetrate the border on foot so it makes sense the aggressor's defence lines were thin beyond a certain point.
There's no way they're expecting to hold territory. It's a wedge and prone to being surrounded.
Reminds me of the olden days of war where civilians would flee to the nearest town/city for refuge. Gonna be hard to deny in the motherland when thousands fleeing in cars with whatever they can carry spreading the word about an incursion.
Yeah. There are literally dozens of videos out there of Russians fleeing in cars with no hint of Russian military around other than landmines, burnt out vehicles, and looted stores. And these are in territories in which the Ukrainians haven't yet arrived. A few of them show obvious evidence of civilian vehicles having run over hastily placed Russian mines demonstrating that the retreating army didn't exactly observe proper care about the civilian residents they abandoned.
I helped my dad write his autobiography and he mentioned how he was hired by a general to play music for a dinner he was throwing at his house. This was during the second wave when the Chinese came screaming across the border. The general and his staff jumped in vehicles and sped off leaving the entire house staff, caterers, and musicians in the dark about what was going on. It wasn't until he heard the sounds of artillery that he realized how imperiled he was. That was in 1954 and he was still bitter about it to the day he died. I can only imagine how much "goodwill" the Russians are squandering with their people now.
It's a limited opportunity though. You'd expect any general to start fortifying motherland lines to avoid repeated exploitation of thin border defences.
I'm hoping they can use the disorderly retreat to knock out AA and other logistical assets that will need to be redeployed deeper within Russia's true borders which will ease up conditions on the front for the F16s and their imminent cameo in the war.
It's a limited opportunity though. You'd expect any general to start fortifying motherland lines to avoid repeated exploitation of thin border defences.
I'm hoping they can use the disorderly retreat to knock out AA and other logistical assets that will need to be redeployed deeper within Russia's true borders which will ease up conditions on the front for the F16s and their imminent cameo in the war.
The only way this makes sense is for the incursion to result in something of big, lasting damage to capabilities and/or infrastructure. Disabling and rigging the Kursk NPP would definitely do it and would make the effort well worth it. Giving Russians a taste of a cold winter without power and crippled industry would definitely bring the war home to them.
Pages