2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Part 3)

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:rage:

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I half heard BBC News tonight and I think they were saying “alleged deepfake”.

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BBC News - Watch: Water gushes through damaged Ukraine dam

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Statement – IAEA Director General Statement to the IAEA Board of Governors

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1666023767875674112

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1666030969021771777

When you try to generate a system without politics, any politics at all feels like a challenge to the legitimacy of the state. The war in Ukraine has restarted Russian politics: not necessarily in ways that are pleasant to watch, but following a dynamic that will be difficult to stop. Ukrainian resistance has revealed the weaknesses of the Putinist attempt to make politics halt. The denial that Ukraine was a real country created a situation in which Ukraine is now all too real inside Russia itself. A Foreign wars are only spectacle when the other side cannot resist. A Russian political order built on propaganda generated propagandists who can make their fights public on social media. And a dictatorship built on managing rivalries begins to look fragile when the rivals are loud and armed.

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https://archive.is/2ASBu

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16m ago13.27 BST

Andrew Roth

Russia’s vocal military bloggers and other war hawks have been spinning the destruction of the dam at Nova Kakhovska as either a Ukrainian diversion or a tactic meant to sweep away Russian defenses on the left bank of the Dnipro river ahead of their counteroffensive.

Igor Girkin, a former leader of Russian proxy forces in east Ukraine, wrote on his popular Telegram blog that the dam’s failure could “wash away our forces on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro below [Nova Kakhovka]. That would also ‘wash away’ all of our defensive fortifications, all the minefields, all the warehouses with ammunition would be flooded, it would fully or partially destroy all the property that they didn’t manage to pack up and ship away (and that would be quite a bit, unfortunately).”

Although they often come into conflict with the military, most seem to have endorsed the Kremlin line of “deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side,” as claimed by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

But others have deviated from the party line. In a video, Yegor Guzenko, a popular commentator who has fought in the war, smiled broadly as he said he’d predicted many times before that the dam would eventually become a target.

“I won’t say who blew it up,” he said. “But from a tactical point of view, the [Ukrainians] can forget about the offensive in the Kherson direction.”

“If the evacuation [of Russian military personnel] goes well and without losses, then we can blow up all the fucking dams on the Dnipro river, if it fucking suits us.”

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IANAFP (I Am No Air Force Pilot), but isn’t maintenance and spare parts an issue here? The more different types of planes Ukraine flies, the more types of training and maintenance they will need to maintain. At some point don’t the logistics of this outweigh the benefits of the platform?

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The only alternative to introducing new types of aircraft is for the Ukrainian Air Force to dwindle away to nothing as planes get shot down and spare parts run out. There is a limited number of MiGs and Sukhois that Ukraine could get from friendly countries, and most of them have probably already been given, as parts or as complete aircraft. The same goes for stocks of spare parts.

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I would think that the more versatile F/A-18 (designed to handle both air-to-air and air-to-ground) would be more useful to Ukraine than the F-16 (capable of air-to-ground, but designed primarily for air-to-air).

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That part I understand, yes. But there’s talk of handing them something like 5 different fighter/fighter-bomber platforms. If each one requires specialized training, specialized parts, specialized weapons (or at least specialized hook-ups?), then things will get bogged down. This, in addition to the various platforms Ukraine already has. It seems like a general agreement to hand over one type only would be most beneficial.

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AFAIK some people suggested Gripens or Eurofighters as an alternative to F-16s, in case the US refused to allow F-16s to be given.

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So far I’ve read Gripens, Eurofighters, Rafales, and F-18 as suggestions. F-16s (Cs and Ds) are on the way at some point. They have already been given Mig-29s, Su-27s (which they already flefw) and Mirage 2000s.

I don’t know if the suggestions have been “either/or,” or “yes, and” though. It seems like a lot of maintenance.

That’s teh problem with the M1a1 tanks. They require a lot of maintenance infrastructure. If an engine gets damaged, it gets removed and replaced. That can’t be done in the field. German and British tanks are far easier to maintain. Now that Ukraine will be fighting with all three types, they’ll have to maintain all three types. Yes, this is better than having none. But at some point the logistics have to become too much to be efficient.

(opinions, all, here)

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The only non-Soviet fighter definitely coming is the F-16.

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Officially, yes. But Ukrainian pilots are being trained on Mirages and Eurofighter Typhoons.

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