TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
Roads to the south and west of the city are still open according to journalists on the ground who are managing to enter and exit without seeing Russians:
The map also shows Chernihiv as occupied (not even contested), when it's trivial to verify that it's still Ukr held. Topping's Russian propaganda map, much like his article are laughably poor - only a fool would be taken in by them.
It would be even more if HMG give @MarqueeMark his Swansea Bay barrage.
I am also quite content to look out of my windows and see 1,000 wind turbines in the Bristol Channel
Swansea is the test-bed - powers a mere 150,000 homes. The prize is the lagoons built after that - Cardiff lagoon would power 1.6m homes. As would half a dozen others. The (admittedly, more technically challenging) Bridgewater lagoon would be nearer to 3m homes.
A million here, a million there - soon you are talking serious numbers....
Do you have maps of the schemes that you can show? - I'm interested in whether they are more single-big-structure, or the multiple-islands approach.....
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
Your map shows Russian occupation dozens of miles beyond Kharkiv.
Perhaps you should extend your scepticism of media reports to the pro-Russian stuff you have happily posted this morning.
I am super sceptical about everything. Unlike many on here.
As an illustration everyone is furious that I posted the article.
Because it's nonsense on stilts, and barely disguised propaganda? People would also be annoyed if I posted articles denying the holodomor. Proof of outrage doesn't make you right.
Problem is, until somebody builds the test bed to prove the concept and all the other issues around it, you won't get the private sector finance to build it (not without some serious volte face - question whether Ukraine provides that).
It looks pretty clear to me what the Russian plan is: take Kyiv and Odessa, the whole Black sea coast, and then run up the Dnieper to split off the whole East of the country, leaving a small rump in the West. And they will probably get there in 3-4 weeks time too, sadly.
However, they won't be able to hold it long-term and it will become an ulcer.
It would be even more if HMG give @MarqueeMark his Swansea Bay barrage.
I am also quite content to look out of my windows and see 1,000 wind turbines in the Bristol Channel
Swansea is the test-bed - powers a mere 150,000 homes. The prize is the lagoons built after that - Cardiff lagoon would power 1.6m homes. As would half a dozen others. The (admittedly, more technically challenging) Bridgewater lagoon would be nearer to 3m homes.
A million here, a million there - soon you are talking serious numbers....
But at what cost? We can't pretend it doesn't matter.
Ho Hum. From the BBC (edited). Apples if posted before, but "a rabbi who helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain his Portuguese citizenship has been told he cannot leave Portugal and must present himself to authorities when required...... Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition."
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
Ho Hum. From the BBC (edited). Apples if posted before, but "a rabbi who helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain his Portuguese citizenship has been told he cannot leave Portugal and must present himself to authorities when required...... Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition."
Yes discussed yesterday. Quite strange all round, as Roman is already an EU citizen (vis Cyprus).
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
Roads to the south and west of the city are still open according to journalists on the ground who are managing to enter and exit without seeing Russians:
The map also shows Chernihiv as occupied (not even contested), when it's trivial to verify that it's still Ukr held. Topping's Russian propaganda map, much like his article are laughably poor - only a fool would be taken in by them.
Again you are getting everything you think you know from the Western media and sources sympathetic to Ukraine.
And it's not my article of course it is an article that gives a different perspective.
It would be even more if HMG give @MarqueeMark his Swansea Bay barrage.
I am also quite content to look out of my windows and see 1,000 wind turbines in the Bristol Channel
Swansea is the test-bed - powers a mere 150,000 homes. The prize is the lagoons built after that - Cardiff lagoon would power 1.6m homes. As would half a dozen others. The (admittedly, more technically challenging) Bridgewater lagoon would be nearer to 3m homes.
A million here, a million there - soon you are talking serious numbers....
But at what cost? We can't pretend it doesn't matter.
Have we Seen/heard much about the 'anti-war' protests that were plant to take place in Moscow 1100 our time think?
Looking a the Russian government at the moment, you would have to be very brave to take part in such a protest, but I'm still hoping lots do. But I cant find much making me think it might be smaller than anticipated? Any news?
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
It's an interesting and apparently well-informed analysis, on a site mostly run (it would appear, from the 'about us' section) in Europe by journalists either ex-British or with experience of working in the UK.
But evidence of bias are plain to see. For example, the following extract, does anyone believe this is credible?
Scariest of all each passing days contains (and increases) the risk that some event (most likely a false flag “chemical attack” arranged by Washington but attributed to Russia) pushes the peoples of Europe, the UK and the USA over the brink of active participation, to a full-blown Nato declaration of war. We can already see US news channels and government spokespeople, supported by UK sources, working to manufacture consent for that based on a chemical attack.
Strange to see such obvious junk being circulated as a reputable source
Again I'm guessing that everything you know about the war comes from the Western media and tweets sympathetic to Ukraine.
It's a shame, for absent the absurd suggestion that the US is arranging a chemical strike, the other apparently researched suggestions - that the Russian advance is under-reported, that they are trying to avoid civilian deaths, that the Ukrainian air force is kaput and that not many of the ATGs are actually being fired at tanks - might carry more weight
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
Your map shows Russian occupation dozens of miles beyond Kharkiv.
Perhaps you should extend your scepticism of media reports to the pro-Russian stuff you have happily posted this morning.
I am super sceptical about everything. Unlike many on here.
As an illustration everyone is furious that I posted the article.
Because it's nonsense on stilts, and barely disguised propaganda? People would also be annoyed if I posted articles denying the holodomor. Proof of outrage doesn't make you right.
It's fantastic that you are so sure it's nonsense.
It looks pretty clear to me what the Russian plan is: take Kyiv and Odessa, the whole Black sea coast, and then run up the Dnieper to split off the whole East of the country, leaving a small rump in the West. And they will probably get there in 3-4 weeks time too, sadly.
However, they won't be able to hold it long-term and it will become an ulcer.
That sounds a plausible plan. I think it's possible rather than probable in terms of completion though.
It really is a tragedy though. Trump withholding military aid because Zelenskyy wouldn't dig dirt on Biden. France and Germany too afraid of poking the great bear.
Problem is, until somebody builds the test bed to prove the concept and all the other issues around it, you won't get the private sector finance to build it (not without some serious volte face - question whether Ukraine provides that).
One of the curious things about human nature is the ability to ignore existing capabilities, yet rush towards the unattainable.
For example, the back story of Tesla, the car company goes something like this
- In California, there was a small, but thriving market in converting cars to electric. For several hundred thousand dollars, you could get a Porsche converted to the performance of an original Tesla Roadster (though less range). - One thing that came out of this custom industry was that batteries would last, if you water cooled them. - The original "impossible" Tesla Roadster was simply to create a small production line, creating such cars from scratch, using a glider from Lotus. By "productionising" the tech, a bit more range was added and the cost dropped. - The impossible Model S was simply a matter of taking the same tech (improved a bit) and adding it to a completely custom car, built at greater volume. - etc
Meanwhile, the "smart money" was dropping billions on hydrogen fuel cells.....
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
Roads to the south and west of the city are still open according to journalists on the ground who are managing to enter and exit without seeing Russians:
The map also shows Chernihiv as occupied (not even contested), when it's trivial to verify that it's still Ukr held. Topping's Russian propaganda map, much like his article are laughably poor - only a fool would be taken in by them.
Again you are getting everything you think you know from the Western media and sources sympathetic to Ukraine. And it's not my article of course it is an article that gives a different perspective. Which you don't like. Fine.
Just because a perspective is different doesn't mean any credence deserves to be given to it. A journalist managing to enter and exit Kharkiv without seeing Russians is poof of it not being encircled - the only evidence you've provided to the contrary is a map which has other inaccuracies that are easily proved incorrect (e.g. Dniper and Chernihiv).
As for the propaganda you posted, since you're such a 'free thinker', please feel free to point out some of the more obviously nonsense bits of it, it's not hard.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
What do you think of the rest of Mr Don's analysis - this is from November:
Ukrainians will have looked carefully at whether they have the men, material, money and mates to withstand a Russian invasion, and will have come to the same conclusion argued here – that resistance is futile. That realisation is a useful step towards a reluctant but popular future federation with Russia, which was President Putin’s overriding objective from the beginning.
It would be even more if HMG give @MarqueeMark his Swansea Bay barrage.
I am also quite content to look out of my windows and see 1,000 wind turbines in the Bristol Channel
Swansea is the test-bed - powers a mere 150,000 homes. The prize is the lagoons built after that - Cardiff lagoon would power 1.6m homes. As would half a dozen others. The (admittedly, more technically challenging) Bridgewater lagoon would be nearer to 3m homes.
A million here, a million there - soon you are talking serious numbers....
I love the idea, but have no idea how practical/economic it would be, do we have a cost estimate? and/or know how expensive the electricity would be? I've not heard of any large scale versions being built elsewhere or am I wrong?
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
It was just a generalisation that whilst we know certain things we don’t know everything and without knowing everything we don’t know how useful the certain things are in informing us of the whole picture.
We might know x and y but on their own we can only add them to existing small details and then to the general situation as we see it through the limited information or sources we have access to.
There is also the problem that what we think we know can have changed the next day - territory gained/held, losses etc and so again that changes the big picture and as nobody really has all the info all the time we don’t really know anything of substance.
I wasn’t really going for any contentious point or debate and it was just really more a throwaway remark.
In fact I pretty much agree with what you have said above but have a lazy Sunday brain on!
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
What do you think of the rest of Mr Don's analysis - this is from November:
Ukrainians will have looked carefully at whether they have the men, material, money and mates to withstand a Russian invasion, and will have come to the same conclusion argued here – that resistance is futile. That realisation is a useful step towards a reluctant but popular future federation with Russia, which was President Putin’s overriding objective from the beginning.
"reluctant but popular" is a gem. I am calling him as a wrong 'un based on that. "I know she was reluctant, your honour, but I sensed I was popular with her."
It looks pretty clear to me what the Russian plan is: take Kyiv and Odessa, the whole Black sea coast, and then run up the Dnieper to split off the whole East of the country, leaving a small rump in the West. And they will probably get there in 3-4 weeks time too, sadly.
However, they won't be able to hold it long-term and it will become an ulcer.
Big question over whether they can take Kyiv. The losses in just getting within 15km have been massive. Probably now unsustainable numbers for a viable siege. The Russians will have to contend with a well-trained guerrilla army equipped with thousands upon thousands of cheapish (free to the Ukrainians) high-tec kit, kit that each take out an expensive piece of military equipment. And every location of that Russian equipment is being fed to the defenders by the latest intelligence from ultra-sophisticated surveillance.
The Russians are going to be playing the most disastrous game of Whack-a-mole. Where every mole pops up with a Javellin or an NLAW.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
@Topping is weirdly keen for us all to accept that “no one can know anything”, when, in reality, social media means a layman can know more than ever before: tho you do need to use your critical faculties to sift through the ample disinformation
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
Have we Seen/heard much about the 'anti-war' protests that were plant to take place in Moscow 1100 our time think?
Looking a the Russian government at the moment, you would have to be very brave to take part in such a protest, but I'm still hoping lots do. But I cant find much making me think it might be smaller than anticipated? Any news?
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
Kharkiv is a bit of a strange one, because there was also the WSJ article someone shared yesterday evening, which stated there were supply routes open to the city, but the UK MoD have had an "assessed encirclement" of Kharkiv for as long as they've used those icons on their map. https://mobile.twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1502957751831511044/photo/1
Salisbury, Wells and North Wiltshire are 3 seats the LDs should have won in 1997 but didn't because the Labour vote went up instead of voting tactically.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
We're still waiting for you to show some of your self-proclaimed super scepticism about that article.
Ramez Name @ramez This is an incredible analysis of how Putin's invasion of the world will re-order the global world, largely for the better. By a leading Chinese policy thinker, in Shanghai, originally written in Chinese. Brief thread, but read the whole thing. https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/ 1/ uscnpm.org Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice - U.S.-China Perception Monitor Hu Wei is the vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor's Office of the State Council, the chairman of Shanghai Public Policy Research Association, the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Chahar Institute, a professor, and a doctoral supervisor.
He writes that Putin's invasion of Ukraine will lead to: 1. Possibly an escalation of the war beyond Ukraine. 2. Certainly Putin's degeat. 3. The United States regaining leadership in the Western world, and the West being more united. 4. A new "Iron Curtain" falling globally, this time dividing democracies from authoritarian regimes, and extending into Asia. 5. Growth in the power of the West, in both military strength and the strength and importance of western institutions. Greater hard power and soft. 6. Further isolation of China, as the US, Europe, and also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia turn against China.
"China will not only be encircled militarily ... but also challenged by Western values and systems."
He closes by saying that China has 1-2 WEEKS in which to make a choice. And basically says that China should choose the West, and use its influence over Putin to end the war and bring him to heel. It says that China is the only nation that can. I don't disagree.
The whole thing is incredible, and very clearly argued. Read the whole thing here in the English translation. It's not more than a 10 minute read.
It's an excellent read - but the implications for China are Profound and not spelled out - not only giving up Taiwan for ever, but cutting loose from the various dictators China is propping up. Our own politicians aren't renowned for insightful but big *bold* decisions - are China's likely to be better?
Ho Hum. From the BBC (edited). Apples if posted before, but "a rabbi who helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain his Portuguese citizenship has been told he cannot leave Portugal and must present himself to authorities when required...... Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition."
Yes discussed yesterday. Quite strange all round, as Roman is already an EU citizen (vis Cyprus).
Sorry for duplication. Cold and frustrating afternoon yesterday watching our local football team make themselves look ever worse than usual (second half, anyway!) Also apologies for not noticing the effect of predictive text (Apples s/b Apols)
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
No - but we can know things about the situation. The truth is somewhere in the range of reports.
And that map isn't supported by *anyone* else out there, for example.
I did not realise it but apparently Ukraine is as big as France so no wonder Russia are in a mess, especially as misjudging the reception they would receive from Ukrainians
I think it's slightly bigger than France which would made it the biggest country in Europe if you exclude Russia. There seems to be a bit of confusion about it: some sources I've looked at say France is bigger, some Ukraine.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
Yes, that is where it became undermined. It did the first part, of laying out why we cannot be 100% sure, but then decides based on not much that X is more correct than Y.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
It really depends on who you follow on twitter!
There's definitely bias towards Ukraine but seems to be a pretty general consensus on a map something like this:
Ho Hum. From the BBC (edited). Apples if posted before, but "a rabbi who helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain his Portuguese citizenship has been told he cannot leave Portugal and must present himself to authorities when required...... Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition."
Yes discussed yesterday. Quite strange all round, as Roman is already an EU citizen (vis Cyprus).
Sorry for duplication. Cold and frustrating afternoon yesterday watching our local football team make themselves look ever worse than usual (second half, anyway!) Also apologies for not noticing the effect of predictive text (Apples s/b Apols)
I did not realise it but apparently Ukraine is as big as France so no wonder Russia are in a mess, especially as misjudging the reception they would receive from Ukrainians
I think it's slightly bigger than France which would made it the biggest country in Europe if you exclude Russia. There seems to be a bit of confusion about it: some sources I've looked at say France is bigger, some Ukraine.
Perhaps it depends on if you include the Crimea?
Or alternatively if you include France's (surprisingly large) South American land? France could be the second largest European country, but Ukraine have the second most land in Europe.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
I have been surprised by this as rational scepticism is the default position of a lot posters on here yet many of them have taken to gobbling down any old shit on Twitter that proves Russia are losing. Tractor memes, 30 helicopters destroyed on the ground and similar nonsense, etc.
Poorly supplied brutal chaos is what the Russia army looks like when it's winning.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
Well in the end it comes down to the question of whether, as a layman which almost all of us here are, you believe the claims of Russia and their apologists or the Western Intelligence agencies. I know which side I find more believable.
Now I still think Russia will probably manage to take most of their pre-war targets so long as they were limited - I don't for example think it is now possible for them to even take, let alone hold, the whole of Ukraine. But all the evidence from those in the know seems to point to the fact they have suffered far heavier losses than expected, they still don't have control of the air and they are being bled so badly that any victory they achieve will definitely be Pyrrhic and will make it utterly impossible for them to hold any of their gains in the medium to long term.
You seem to disagree with that (at least that is what your postings have always intimated) but the only way to argue against that is to say that all the Western assessments are wrong and that the Pro-Russian commentators are right.
Ho Hum. From the BBC (edited). Apples if posted before, but "a rabbi who helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich obtain his Portuguese citizenship has been told he cannot leave Portugal and must present himself to authorities when required...... Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition."
Yes discussed yesterday. Quite strange all round, as Roman is already an EU citizen (vis Cyprus).
Sorry for duplication. Cold and frustrating afternoon yesterday watching our local football team make themselves look ever worse than usual (second half, anyway!) Also apologies for not noticing the effect of predictive text (Apples s/b Apols)
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
What do you think of the rest of Mr Don's analysis - this is from November:
Ukrainians will have looked carefully at whether they have the men, material, money and mates to withstand a Russian invasion, and will have come to the same conclusion argued here – that resistance is futile. That realisation is a useful step towards a reluctant but popular future federation with Russia, which was President Putin’s overriding objective from the beginning.
The problem with that approach Nick ia that, if the Liberals and Labour are seen as too close together, then it allows the Conservatives to portray Liberals as proxy Labour with all the things attached to that. You also need Conservatives to stay at home, as they did in 1997.
They'll always try that anyway.
But it only works when there is real fear of Labour. Otherwise the Tories just end up looking ridiculous (cf. their 'demon eyes' posters).
A point Nick underrecognises is that most of us carry our perceptions of the parties through our lives, with our outlook heavily shaped by the political events during our early adulthood. That's why it is never possible to re-invent a party completely; however 'moderate' Labour's current leader might be (and however secure, which is as much to the point), there will always be voter resistance based on events long past.
Yes, though I think that's more true of many of us on PB than it is of the average Joe Bloggs voter, who doesn't feel the least identification with anyone but makes up his mind on the day. In fact I think party identification is lower than it's ever been in my lifetime. Even we partisan types are a bit less monomaniacal than we were - if Labour wasn't standing I could imagine voting for someone else, and the choice happened to be Con/RefUK, I'd vote Tory, rather than just abstain as I would have done 20 years ago. You can see the same willingness to consider alternatives among many of the traditionally partisan people here.
But I agree with MrEd that there are dangers in the Opposition parties looking as though they were in bed together. It makes sense for both to stand everywhere - not least as not all of us are tactical voters and some genuinely want to endorse their preferred candidate - but to have a realistic private discussion on where to target efforts, which is made very clear to local parties.
Ramez Name @ramez This is an incredible analysis of how Putin's invasion of the world will re-order the global world, largely for the better. By a leading Chinese policy thinker, in Shanghai, originally written in Chinese. Brief thread, but read the whole thing. https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/ 1/ uscnpm.org Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice - U.S.-China Perception Monitor Hu Wei is the vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor's Office of the State Council, the chairman of Shanghai Public Policy Research Association, the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Chahar Institute, a professor, and a doctoral supervisor.
He writes that Putin's invasion of Ukraine will lead to: 1. Possibly an escalation of the war beyond Ukraine. 2. Certainly Putin's degeat. 3. The United States regaining leadership in the Western world, and the West being more united. 4. A new "Iron Curtain" falling globally, this time dividing democracies from authoritarian regimes, and extending into Asia. 5. Growth in the power of the West, in both military strength and the strength and importance of western institutions. Greater hard power and soft. 6. Further isolation of China, as the US, Europe, and also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia turn against China.
"China will not only be encircled militarily ... but also challenged by Western values and systems."
He closes by saying that China has 1-2 WEEKS in which to make a choice. And basically says that China should choose the West, and use its influence over Putin to end the war and bring him to heel. It says that China is the only nation that can. I don't disagree.
The whole thing is incredible, and very clearly argued. Read the whole thing here in the English translation. It's not more than a 10 minute read.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
You're playing the martyr and it is unconvincing. Many people are suspicious or cautious of overly positive news as put out by Ukraine, even as they hope it to be true. Certainly some take an optimistic view but it is not as universal as you pretend.
The issue is that just as no positive story about Ukraine is automatically to be accepted as factual, that doesn't make any story positive about Russia's position automatically factual by default, yet the article you posted did do that in several points (though not all the way through, certainly).
On the contrary, you seem to be getting angry at people pointing out a few instances where the suggestion of an 'alternative situation' was made without evidence.
So you are getting angry at people doing the very thing you claim to want them to do, which is think a bit more about information that is posted. People have thought about the article you shared and had some critical comments, and you are now whining about them doing so.
Should people also be wary of information putting out nothing but pro-Ukrainian messaging without sufficient evidence to support it? Sure they should. But what does that have to do with being wary of elements of that article which were nothing but supposition (and the bit I highlighted was paritcularly weird supposition about a troop build up being corroboration about an assault plan, without even considering alternative explanation of it being in response to the earlier troop build up by Russia)?
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
I find it very hard to believe that the front is at Poltava, and the Russian army is reaching the outskirts of Dnipro. We've had recent media reports - e.g. interviews with refugees recently evacuated from Sumy - in Poltava, where they've stopped at Poltava as a safe haven. There were recent reports of a rare missile attack on a shoe factory in Dnipro - not likely to be the picture if Russian forces were at the outskirts.
Where Russia has taken territory in Ukraine this has been well-established by subsequent evidence posted online. If anything, western media reports have often hyped up Russian gains, as part of a "dramatic breaking news" narrative (and equally like to hype up Ukrainian counter-offensives for the same reason), yet there's been nothing about Russian forces at Poltava or Dnipro. That doesn't seem credible.
Why do you accept the official Russian story of the war so uncritically?
Is that the official Russian story? I have no idea.
It paints a picture of a city under constant attack not to say besieged. Perhaps the map meant that.
And it is a government owned Western media report.
Roads to the south and west of the city are still open according to journalists on the ground who are managing to enter and exit without seeing Russians:
The map also shows Chernihiv as occupied (not even contested), when it's trivial to verify that it's still Ukr held. Topping's Russian propaganda map, much like his article are laughably poor - only a fool would be taken in by them.
Again you are getting everything you think you know from the Western media and sources sympathetic to Ukraine.
And it's not my article of course it is an article that gives a different perspective.
Which you don't like. Fine.
What are you saying? You think western media is falsely claiming that Kharkiv is not encircled? Why would they do that?
You can be sure that - if/when the Russians manage to encircle Kyiv - the western media will be competing to be the first to breathlessly report the fact. They won't be claiming to have just driven in from Bila Tserkva and denying the encirclement exists.
Ramez Name @ramez This is an incredible analysis of how Putin's invasion of the world will re-order the global world, largely for the better. By a leading Chinese policy thinker, in Shanghai, originally written in Chinese. Brief thread, but read the whole thing. https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/ 1/ uscnpm.org Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice - U.S.-China Perception Monitor Hu Wei is the vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor's Office of the State Council, the chairman of Shanghai Public Policy Research Association, the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Chahar Institute, a professor, and a doctoral supervisor.
He writes that Putin's invasion of Ukraine will lead to: 1. Possibly an escalation of the war beyond Ukraine. 2. Certainly Putin's degeat. 3. The United States regaining leadership in the Western world, and the West being more united. 4. A new "Iron Curtain" falling globally, this time dividing democracies from authoritarian regimes, and extending into Asia. 5. Growth in the power of the West, in both military strength and the strength and importance of western institutions. Greater hard power and soft. 6. Further isolation of China, as the US, Europe, and also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia turn against China.
"China will not only be encircled militarily ... but also challenged by Western values and systems."
He closes by saying that China has 1-2 WEEKS in which to make a choice. And basically says that China should choose the West, and use its influence over Putin to end the war and bring him to heel. It says that China is the only nation that can. I don't disagree.
The whole thing is incredible, and very clearly argued. Read the whole thing here in the English translation. It's not more than a 10 minute read.
It's an excellent read - but the implications for China are Profound and not spelled out - not only giving up Taiwan for ever, but cutting loose from the various dictators China is propping up. Our own politicians aren't renowned for insightful but big *bold* decisions - are China's likely to be better?
Don't get how any of that means "giving up Taiwan for ever"? Most significant line, for me, was this.
"Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine has caused great controversy in China, with its supporters and opponents being divided into two implacably opposing sides."
Later, it is called a War. As I suspected from the start. There is a power struggle. This article is probably a sign of who is winning.
It would be even more if HMG give @MarqueeMark his Swansea Bay barrage.
I am also quite content to look out of my windows and see 1,000 wind turbines in the Bristol Channel
Swansea is the test-bed - powers a mere 150,000 homes. The prize is the lagoons built after that - Cardiff lagoon would power 1.6m homes. As would half a dozen others. The (admittedly, more technically challenging) Bridgewater lagoon would be nearer to 3m homes.
A million here, a million there - soon you are talking serious numbers....
I love the idea, but have no idea how practical/economic it would be, do we have a cost estimate? and/or know how expensive the electricity would be? I've not heard of any large scale versions being built elsewhere or am I wrong?
We have one in the early stages proposed for off our south coast. Ocean tidal.
Russia defaulting: "Russian Finance Minister: "Russia doesn't renounce its obligations on the state debt and will pay in rubles until Western countries unfreeze their gold and foreign exchange reserves. About $300 billion has been frozen, which is half of the reserves of the Russian Federation."" https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1502980099431358467
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
@Topping is weirdly keen for us all to accept that “no one can know anything”, when, in reality, social media means a layman can know more than ever before: tho you do need to use your critical faculties to sift through the ample disinformation
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
LOL. Talking of church doctrine. I posted an article which goes against the PB military strategists' view of what is happening in Ukraine and all hell broke loose.
The guy may or may not get stuff right or wrong but people are queuing up to say how ridiculous it is. Fair enough - I believe you yourself have written on confirmation bias. It is a much better story to hear that Russia is suffering setback after setback rather than slowly but surely achieving its war aims.
I do indeed say "no one can know anything" but you misunderstand what this means, perhaps understandably, given your flitting around the various key issues of the day before becoming expert on all of them. My point is that snippets from twitter or indeed journalists can't stitch together the overall progress of the war, nor gain any insight in what the hell Putin wants to do and/or how successful he is doing it.
Posting a picture of a Russian platoon coming under fire and then saying: "ah ha, proof if proof be needed..." is just absurd but it is what most people on PB have been doing since the invasion began. Most recently everyone was amazed that Ukraine hadn't been conquered in a fortnight.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
Fair comment. But it would be interesting to know how that site is really funded, nevertheless. Accusing the US of preparing a chemical attack is not a small thing.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
It was just a generalisation that whilst we know certain things we don’t know everything and without knowing everything we don’t know how useful the certain things are in informing us of the whole picture.
We might know x and y but on their own we can only add them to existing small details and then to the general situation as we see it through the limited information or sources we have access to.
There is also the problem that what we think we know can have changed the next day - territory gained/held, losses etc and so again that changes the big picture and as nobody really has all the info all the time we don’t really know anything of substance.
I wasn’t really going for any contentious point or debate and it was just really more a throwaway remark.
In fact I pretty much agree with what you have said above but have a lazy Sunday brain on!
Indeed. But it is absolutely the case for the reasons you describe. Snippets here and there do not give any kind of an insight into how the overall campaign is progressing.
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
@Topping is weirdly keen for us all to accept that “no one can know anything”, when, in reality, social media means a layman can know more than ever before: tho you do need to use your critical faculties to sift through the ample disinformation
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
LOL. Talking of church doctrine. I posted an article which goes against the PB military strategists' view of what is happening in Ukraine and all hell broke loose.
The guy may or may not get stuff right or wrong but people are queuing up to say how ridiculous it is. Fair enough - I believe you yourself have written on confirmation bias. It is a much better story to hear that Russia is suffering setback after setback rather than slowly but surely achieving its war aims.
I do indeed say "no one can know anything" but you misunderstand what this means, perhaps understandably, given your flitting around the various key issues of the day before becoming expert on all of them. My point is that snippets from twitter or indeed journalists can't stitch together the overall progress of the war, nor gain any insight in what the hell Putin wants to do and/or how successful he is doing it.
Posting a picture of a Russian platoon coming under fire and then saying: "ah ha, proof if proof be needed..." is just absurd but it is what most people on PB have been doing since the invasion began. Most recently everyone was amazed that Ukraine hadn't been conquered in a fortnight.
I’m going to call that a false dichotomy, if only to give me an excuse to post this:
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
You're presenting a caricature of general opinion on here, which does have a tendency to be a bit too enthusiastic, but not the the degree you assert.
And you ignore the important point - not all assessments of the situation have equal merit. Just as it's not the case that any two opinions about the science of global warming have equal merit, it's also the case that, even if we are not aware of them, there are categorical truths about the war. Has the siege of Mariupol been lifted? Is Kharkiv encircled? Are Russian forces at the outskirts of Dnipro?
The article you linked to is not just another point of view, it includes a series of assertions that conflict with the best available evidence and that destroy its credibility on other points which are less certain.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
We're still waiting for you to show some of your self-proclaimed super scepticism about that article.
I like that article because it posits an alternative view of what might be happening, not because I think it is what is happening.
Or shall we discuss the difference between "surrounded" and "assessed encirclement".
Indeed. The interesting point, nonetheless, is that China is ADMITTING to a big new Covid problem. This suggests something nasty
Hong Kong multiplied 200 times would not be a pretty spectacle
No.
And yet, to sound very cynical, I can imagine the Chinese leadership would actually not be terribly unhappy with an infectious disease that dramatically reduced the size of its retired population (as long as they weren't killed by it). It would solve many problems for them in terms of pensions, healthcare and housing and they have already shown they are totally callous and indifferent to human suffering.
What will be spooking them is the idea of having totally lost control of a situation they claimed they had handled uniquely well.
Question for Dura Ace: could the Polish MIGs currently being transferred to Ukraine - or not - be adapted to carry (for example) the CBU-97/CBU-105 cluster munitions? If so, would the US supply them, or is that in breach of treaty obligations? And if supplied, would the get out be that Ukraine wasn't a signatory?
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
@Topping is weirdly keen for us all to accept that “no one can know anything”, when, in reality, social media means a layman can know more than ever before: tho you do need to use your critical faculties to sift through the ample disinformation
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
LOL. Talking of church doctrine. I posted an article which goes against the PB military strategists' view of what is happening in Ukraine and all hell broke loose.
The guy may or may not get stuff right or wrong but people are queuing up to say how ridiculous it is. Fair enough - I believe you yourself have written on confirmation bias. It is a much better story to hear that Russia is suffering setback after setback rather than slowly but surely achieving its war aims.
I do indeed say "no one can know anything" but you misunderstand what this means, perhaps understandably, given your flitting around the various key issues of the day before becoming expert on all of them. My point is that snippets from twitter or indeed journalists can't stitch together the overall progress of the war, nor gain any insight in what the hell Putin wants to do and/or how successful he is doing it.
Posting a picture of a Russian platoon coming under fire and then saying: "ah ha, proof if proof be needed..." is just absurd but it is what most people on PB have been doing since the invasion began. Most recently everyone was amazed that Ukraine hadn't been conquered in a fortnight.
“PB military strategists”. The sneering tone is the giveaway
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
Well in the end it comes down to the question of whether, as a layman which almost all of us here are, you believe the claims of Russia and their apologists or the Western Intelligence agencies. I know which side I find more believable.
Now I still think Russia will probably manage to take most of their pre-war targets so long as they were limited - I don't for example think it is now possible for them to even take, let alone hold, the whole of Ukraine. But all the evidence from those in the know seems to point to the fact they have suffered far heavier losses than expected, they still don't have control of the air and they are being bled so badly that any victory they achieve will definitely be Pyrrhic and will make it utterly impossible for them to hold any of their gains in the medium to long term.
You seem to disagree with that (at least that is what your postings have always intimated) but the only way to argue against that is to say that all the Western assessments are wrong and that the Pro-Russian commentators are right.
I see no reason to accept that argument.
Indeed. Even if you assign purely selfish motives to the western agencies, why lie and then get found out in a week or so? It’s not like you’d be confusing Russia or bolstering Ukraine, which would presumably know it was all false. You’d just crash your reputation when the truth came out.
Russians occupying southern city of Kherson are reportedly trying to call a referendum to establish a new statelet: Kherson National Republic (like DNR and LNR).
Today 44 (out of total 64) members of the Kherson Oblast Council proclaimed that Kherson is part of Ukraine
It really seems to be a genuine surprise to the invaders that there isn't a large minority, or even a majority, in favour of Russian rule. At least they're learning it now I suppose.
Russians occupying southern city of Kherson are reportedly trying to call a referendum to establish a new statelet: Kherson National Republic (like DNR and LNR).
Today 44 (out of total 64) members of the Kherson Oblast Council proclaimed that Kherson is part of Ukraine
It really seems to be a genuine surprise to the invaders that there isn't a large minority, or even a majority, in favour of Russian rule. At least they're learning it now I suppose.
Their opinion polling needs some serious re-examining.....
Sadly sounds like two NYT journalists were killed in Irpin.
NYT has had a lot of criticism lately but these are brave people.
Yep, definitely. Correction on my behalf, Ukrainian authorities have confirmed one dead (Brent Renaud), one wounded. Ukrainians saying that Russian troops opened fire on them (like they have done on the Sky news and the French(?) journalists).
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
@Topping is weirdly keen for us all to accept that “no one can know anything”, when, in reality, social media means a layman can know more than ever before: tho you do need to use your critical faculties to sift through the ample disinformation
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
LOL. Talking of church doctrine. I posted an article which goes against the PB military strategists' view of what is happening in Ukraine and all hell broke loose.
The guy may or may not get stuff right or wrong but people are queuing up to say how ridiculous it is. Fair enough - I believe you yourself have written on confirmation bias. It is a much better story to hear that Russia is suffering setback after setback rather than slowly but surely achieving its war aims.
I do indeed say "no one can know anything" but you misunderstand what this means, perhaps understandably, given your flitting around the various key issues of the day before becoming expert on all of them. My point is that snippets from twitter or indeed journalists can't stitch together the overall progress of the war, nor gain any insight in what the hell Putin wants to do and/or how successful he is doing it.
Posting a picture of a Russian platoon coming under fire and then saying: "ah ha, proof if proof be needed..." is just absurd but it is what most people on PB have been doing since the invasion began. Most recently everyone was amazed that Ukraine hadn't been conquered in a fortnight.
I’m going to call that a false dichotomy, if only to give me an excuse to post this:
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
We're still waiting for you to show some of your self-proclaimed super scepticism about that article.
I like that article because it posits an alternative view of what might be happening, not because I think it is what is happening.
aka Sean posting tweet after tweet and link after link predicting that we are all going to die of COVID, then later saying he was just being curious...
TL;DR we don't know much but what we do know doesn't necessarily align with Western media reports.
Have you read that article in depth and paid attention to the language the author uses? It talks about, for starters, the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol deliberately using civilians for cover and, most laughably, that Russia has a clear and consistent policy of not using middle strikes to ensure there are no civilian casualties. And those are not the only examples (a fair few examples of what they call Ukrainian ‘tropes’ chucked in there as well).
It was also very disingenuous about the risk of false flag chemical attacks being a western plan to enable NATO to intervene amongst other dodgy commentary.
It really read like an article pumped out of Russia but designed to look neutral and reasonable with plenty of nudges and winks about Ukrainian nationalism and threats by Ukraine.
I'm wondering now whether it's @TOPPING's favourite article precisely because it is so obviously ridiculous and biased - the point being that all the news we are receiving is ridiculous and biased, and he likes this one because it's so blatant.
I think you can go a bit too far with the idea that, because both sides lie in war there is nothing that you can accept as the truth. I think there are ways to establish the reliability of competing claims, and to get some sense of the way that the war is going - which I would summarise as, hard going for Russia, but Ukraine still being pushed back, little sense of whether a change in momentum is possible or likely.
It does back up Topping’s wise and correct point the other day that nobody really knows what’s happening. We put together little pieces of evidence with various degrees of strength and mix them with our prejudices and hopes and maybe some Gin and come up with an idea of what we think is happening!
But I would put the article down as nicely disguised propaganda expressed as thoughtful balanced critique.
What do you mean by the bit in bold?
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
@Topping is weirdly keen for us all to accept that “no one can know anything”, when, in reality, social media means a layman can know more than ever before: tho you do need to use your critical faculties to sift through the ample disinformation
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
LOL. Talking of church doctrine. I posted an article which goes against the PB military strategists' view of what is happening in Ukraine and all hell broke loose.
The guy may or may not get stuff right or wrong but people are queuing up to say how ridiculous it is. Fair enough - I believe you yourself have written on confirmation bias. It is a much better story to hear that Russia is suffering setback after setback rather than slowly but surely achieving its war aims.
I do indeed say "no one can know anything" but you misunderstand what this means, perhaps understandably, given your flitting around the various key issues of the day before becoming expert on all of them. My point is that snippets from twitter or indeed journalists can't stitch together the overall progress of the war, nor gain any insight in what the hell Putin wants to do and/or how successful he is doing it.
Posting a picture of a Russian platoon coming under fire and then saying: "ah ha, proof if proof be needed..." is just absurd but it is what most people on PB have been doing since the invasion began. Most recently everyone was amazed that Ukraine hadn't been conquered in a fortnight.
At least you've given up making up a moral equivalence between this and Iraq like you were for the first week of the invasion.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
We're still waiting for you to show some of your self-proclaimed super scepticism about that article.
I like that article because it posits an alternative view of what might be happening, not because I think it is what is happening.
Or shall we discuss the difference between "surrounded" and "assessed encirclement".
You seem to be somewhere between blustering and backtracking.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
Well in the end it comes down to the question of whether, as a layman which almost all of us here are, you believe the claims of Russia and their apologists or the Western Intelligence agencies. I know which side I find more believable.
Now I still think Russia will probably manage to take most of their pre-war targets so long as they were limited - I don't for example think it is now possible for them to even take, let alone hold, the whole of Ukraine. But all the evidence from those in the know seems to point to the fact they have suffered far heavier losses than expected, they still don't have control of the air and they are being bled so badly that any victory they achieve will definitely be Pyrrhic and will make it utterly impossible for them to hold any of their gains in the medium to long term.
You seem to disagree with that (at least that is what your postings have always intimated) but the only way to argue against that is to say that all the Western assessments are wrong and that the Pro-Russian commentators are right.
I see no reason to accept that argument.
That's fair enough. My gut feel is that Russia having launched the invasion has a plan somewhere and nothing I have seen so far has shown this to have demonstrably failed. That is just a gut feel and hence informs my caution when people on here post a 30-second video of two T-72s doing a pirouette on some street somewhere and taking that as proof of an imminent Russian defeat.
But I also from Day One said that if Russia does occupy the whole of Ukraine then we are back to an Afghan situation and that seems absolutely bonkers but then perhaps Putin is absolutely bonkers. Because if nothing else we all know how that ended.
As for not control of the air I think that article was interesting both on Ukraine and Russia air power limitations (he asks for example about the famous and untouched Russian convoy). I have no idea why it wasn't targeted but it wasn't. He also poses some other interesting questions which contradict the PB orthodoxy and hence why everyone is furious at me for posting it and calling it "my article".
It is a very strange phenomenon on PB but perhaps not surprising, given PB's nature.
I would advise Putin and his circle to do as I did this morning and watch “It’s a mad mad mad world” for the first time in over 30 years.
It’s an allegorical foretelling of the Ukraine invasion. Greedy stupid people see huge dollar signs in their minds and gather together a motley crew who they cannot trust in order to drive south in convoys to claim the prize with the mystical letter “W” (replacing Z) as their cypher.
The convoy is badly planned and breaks down and crashes and they need to beg borrow and steal to keep going all the while falling out about what they are doing and how to do it.
Eventually they reach their destination to plunder and achieve their goal and in their greed they fight over the prize and lose it. Nobody gets the prize and they all end up in hospital.
They need to get the projector out in the Kremlin now to avoid the same fate….
A slightly ominous paragraph in that news report (linked prior) on Covid in Hong Kong
“A senior Chinese official overseeing Hong Kong affairs, Xia Baolong, who has been helping coordinate Beijing’s response to help Hong Kong contain the outbreak, was cited by the China News Agency on Saturday as saying the situation was still severe and told residents to prepare mentally for a “long-term war”.”
Hmm. One of the *good* things about Omicron is that it is so infectious it burns out quickly. By infecting everyone fast. Why should this be a “long term war”?
But perhaps the Chinese official is just steeling the people for a lot of dying
Question for Dura Ace: could the Polish MIGs currently being transferred to Ukraine - or not - be adapted to carry (for example) the CBU-97/CBU-105 cluster munitions? If so, would the US supply them, or is that in breach of treaty obligations? And if supplied, would the get out be that Ukraine wasn't a signatory?
No, they need power and data on the pylons in the correct spec.
E2a... Also, not cleared for carriage or release so they could take a horizontal stab off when they come off the wing. Nobody knows.
Russians occupying southern city of Kherson are reportedly trying to call a referendum to establish a new statelet: Kherson National Republic (like DNR and LNR).
Today 44 (out of total 64) members of the Kherson Oblast Council proclaimed that Kherson is part of Ukraine
It really seems to be a genuine surprise to the invaders that there isn't a large minority, or even a majority, in favour of Russian rule. At least they're learning it now I suppose.
Worth pointing out that the result was 44-0, the other 20 were DNV due to fled/killed/fighting.
Russians occupying southern city of Kherson are reportedly trying to call a referendum to establish a new statelet: Kherson National Republic (like DNR and LNR).
Today 44 (out of total 64) members of the Kherson Oblast Council proclaimed that Kherson is part of Ukraine
It really seems to be a genuine surprise to the invaders that there isn't a large minority, or even a majority, in favour of Russian rule. At least they're learning it now I suppose.
Their opinion polling needs some serious re-examining.....
In Putin’s experience, opinion polling doesn’t correlate with election results. It’s more theoretical - “who would you like to vote for” vs “who you will vote for”.
I see @carolecadwalla tweeting about Russians and Brexit again. Here's a reminder of what she told a court under sworn oath in her evidence: "I have never said that Russian money went into the Brexit campaign. I have always stressed that there is no evidence to suggest it did."
It would be even more if HMG give @MarqueeMark his Swansea Bay barrage.
I am also quite content to look out of my windows and see 1,000 wind turbines in the Bristol Channel
If they are put there, why stop at wind? Why not have a second blade in the water powered by the tides and currents?
They would all be whizzing around the Bristol Channel crashing into one another.
I know I'm being silly as it actually sound like a good idea.
It was suggested as an alternative to the Avonmouth tidal barrage which was considered too ecologically damaging to be approved.
How practical it would be I don't know as I am not an engineer but it certainly sounded like an idea worthy of further investigation.
Tidal turbines are indeed a thing - they differ from the lagoon idea in that they have no structures around them to extend the power generating periods. Pretty much "a windmill in the water".
One of the arguments in their favour is that they scale from zero smoothly - you can install 1 or 1,000 (when you have the design sorted).
The downside is that they only generate when the tide is flowing. Tidal lagoons stretch that period by storing water.
Tidal lagoons have a minimum size - and it is pretty big.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
Well in the end it comes down to the question of whether, as a layman which almost all of us here are, you believe the claims of Russia and their apologists or the Western Intelligence agencies. I know which side I find more believable.
Now I still think Russia will probably manage to take most of their pre-war targets so long as they were limited - I don't for example think it is now possible for them to even take, let alone hold, the whole of Ukraine. But all the evidence from those in the know seems to point to the fact they have suffered far heavier losses than expected, they still don't have control of the air and they are being bled so badly that any victory they achieve will definitely be Pyrrhic and will make it utterly impossible for them to hold any of their gains in the medium to long term.
You seem to disagree with that (at least that is what your postings have always intimated) but the only way to argue against that is to say that all the Western assessments are wrong and that the Pro-Russian commentators are right.
I see no reason to accept that argument.
Indeed. Even if you assign purely selfish motives to the western agencies, why lie and then get found out in a week or so? It’s not like you’d be confusing Russia or bolstering Ukraine, which would presumably know it was all false. You’d just crash your reputation when the truth came out.
Just as the US would be risking its global status and reputation for generations if it ever came out that it had organised a chemical weapons attack on Ukrainian civilians. Hence why it is obvious nonsense
Russians occupying southern city of Kherson are reportedly trying to call a referendum to establish a new statelet: Kherson National Republic (like DNR and LNR).
Today 44 (out of total 64) members of the Kherson Oblast Council proclaimed that Kherson is part of Ukraine
It really seems to be a genuine surprise to the invaders that there isn't a large minority, or even a majority, in favour of Russian rule. At least they're learning it now I suppose.
It also reminds us to take those surveys in the Crimea showing 90% satisfaction with being ruled by Russia with a very large ladleful of salt.
The point about the article is that it posits, contrary to accepted PB wisdom, that there is an alternative situation and Russia is not suffering catastrophic defeat after catastrophic defeat. Or that there is a plan being executed.
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
Well in the end it comes down to the question of whether, as a layman which almost all of us here are, you believe the claims of Russia and their apologists or the Western Intelligence agencies. I know which side I find more believable.
Now I still think Russia will probably manage to take most of their pre-war targets so long as they were limited - I don't for example think it is now possible for them to even take, let alone hold, the whole of Ukraine. But all the evidence from those in the know seems to point to the fact they have suffered far heavier losses than expected, they still don't have control of the air and they are being bled so badly that any victory they achieve will definitely be Pyrrhic and will make it utterly impossible for them to hold any of their gains in the medium to long term.
You seem to disagree with that (at least that is what your postings have always intimated) but the only way to argue against that is to say that all the Western assessments are wrong and that the Pro-Russian commentators are right.
I see no reason to accept that argument.
That's fair enough. My gut feel is that Russia having launched the invasion has a plan somewhere and nothing I have seen so far has shown this to have demonstrably failed. That is just a gut feel and hence informs my caution when people on here post a 30-second video of two T-72s doing a pirouette on some street somewhere and taking that as proof of an imminent Russian defeat.
But I also from Day One said that if Russia does occupy the whole of Ukraine then we are back to an Afghan situation and that seems absolutely bonkers but then perhaps Putin is absolutely bonkers. Because if nothing else we all know how that ended.
As for not control of the air I think that article was interesting both on Ukraine and Russia air power limitations (he asks for example about the famous and untouched Russian convoy). I have no idea why it wasn't targeted but it wasn't. He also poses some other interesting questions which contradict the PB orthodoxy and hence why everyone is furious at me for posting it and calling it "my article".
It is a very strange phenomenon on PB but perhaps not surprising, given PB's nature.
No one on PB is commenting on Ukraine in the Pollyanna way you describe. There is no “PB orthodoxy”. People aren’t “furious” at you, just puzzled by your remarks
Honestly, this whole bizarre strand of commentary, from you, perhaps says more about you than about PB
Comments
People have a habit of thinking about knowledge in black and white terms. If we can't be 100% sure about something then people react as though that means we know nothing, but either extreme is very rarely the case. There are a whole bunch of things that we can say about the war with very high levels of confidence, and a whole bunch more with decreasing levels of confidence. What is particularly hard is to put all of that information together and make a judgement about which side is winning, or what the conflict is likely to look like in two month's time.
Is that latter bit what you mean by "what's happening"?
There are a whole bunch of things that the article Topping linked to which have got no supporting evidence for at all - Russian forces reaching Dnipro, or Odessa imminently to face encirclement - and so it shows that the limits to our knowledge are not as restrictive as he argues.
https://twitter.com/yarotrof/status/1502310946039304195
The map also shows Chernihiv as occupied (not even contested), when it's trivial to verify that it's still Ukr held. Topping's Russian propaganda map, much like his article are laughably poor - only a fool would be taken in by them.
However, they won't be able to hold it long-term and it will become an ulcer.
Mr Abramovich was granted Portuguese citizenship in April 2021 under a law that offered naturalisation to descendants of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled from the Iberian peninsula more than 400 years ago during the Inquisition."
But I'm sure you're willing to make up for your omission by pointing out which parts of the article you are sceptical about.
Should be quite easy given that other PBers have already pointed out some of the more curious parts.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
Ukraine have lost 61.
Usual caveats apply.
And it's not my article of course it is an article that gives a different perspective.
Which you don't like. Fine.
Looking a the Russian government at the moment, you would have to be very brave to take part in such a protest, but I'm still hoping lots do. But I cant find much making me think it might be smaller than anticipated? Any news?
It really is a tragedy though. Trump withholding military aid because Zelenskyy wouldn't dig dirt on Biden. France and Germany too afraid of poking the great bear.
For example, the back story of Tesla, the car company goes something like this
- In California, there was a small, but thriving market in converting cars to electric. For several hundred thousand dollars, you could get a Porsche converted to the performance of an original Tesla Roadster (though less range).
- One thing that came out of this custom industry was that batteries would last, if you water cooled them.
- The original "impossible" Tesla Roadster was simply to create a small production line, creating such cars from scratch, using a glider from Lotus. By "productionising" the tech, a bit more range was added and the cost dropped.
- The impossible Model S was simply a matter of taking the same tech (improved a bit) and adding it to a completely custom car, built at greater volume.
- etc
Meanwhile, the "smart money" was dropping billions on hydrogen fuel cells.....
As for the propaganda you posted, since you're such a 'free thinker', please feel free to point out some of the more obviously nonsense bits of it, it's not hard.
Ukrainians will have looked carefully at whether they have the men, material, money and mates to withstand a Russian invasion, and will have come to the same conclusion argued here – that resistance is futile. That realisation is a useful step towards a reluctant but popular future federation with Russia, which was President Putin’s overriding objective from the beginning.
https://intellinews.com/long-read-russia-looks-poised-to-invade-ukraine-but-what-would-an-invasion-actually-look-like-227987/?source=baltic-states
There appear to be some subtle policy differences to our LDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_of_Russia
We might know x and y but on their own we can only add them to existing small details and then to the general situation as we see it through the limited information or sources we have access to.
There is also the problem that what we think we know can have changed the next day - territory gained/held, losses etc and so again that changes the big picture and as nobody really has all the info all the time we don’t really know anything of substance.
I wasn’t really going for any contentious point or debate and it was just really more a throwaway remark.
In fact I pretty much agree with what you have said above but have a lazy Sunday brain on!
People on here are furious about even thinking such s thing could be possible.
Fine - keep watching Twitter where every clip is proof if proof be needed of Russia's imminent military defeat. Much more comfortable that way.
The Russians are going to be playing the most disastrous game of Whack-a-mole. Where every mole pops up with a Javellin or an NLAW.
Isn’t @Topping ex military? If so, perhaps this is just status anxiety. He feels this is his specialist field and his views are not afforded enough unique respect. Others are rudely opining, as well as him
You see this a lot. Virologists get huffy when non experts talk about Covid origins. Popes and priests don’t like plebs chatting about church doctrine. Probably a universal human trait
My apologies to @Topping if I have misidentified him as ex-army
"Despite the party's name, it is frequently described as "neither liberal nor democratic nor a party""
Also apologies for not noticing the effect of predictive text (Apples s/b Apols)
And that map isn't supported by *anyone* else out there, for example.
They’re having their worst outbreak (Omicron BA2) and cases have just doubled in a day…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/13/china-battles-worst-covid-outbreak-for-two-years-as-cases-double-in-24-hours
There's definitely bias towards Ukraine but seems to be a pretty general consensus on a map something like this:
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1502732464980172802
This current event is actually about the thing I’m obsessed by” - Ukraine edition.
https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1497553538175614978?cxt=HHwWhICyscbAsMgpAAAA
Poorly supplied brutal chaos is what the Russia army looks like when it's winning.
Now I still think Russia will probably manage to take most of their pre-war targets so long as they were limited - I don't for example think it is now possible for them to even take, let alone hold, the whole of Ukraine. But all the evidence from those in the know seems to point to the fact they have suffered far heavier losses than expected, they still don't have control of the air and they are being bled so badly that any victory they achieve will definitely be Pyrrhic and will make it utterly impossible for them to hold any of their gains in the medium to long term.
You seem to disagree with that (at least that is what your postings have always intimated) but the only way to argue against that is to say that all the Western assessments are wrong and that the Pro-Russian commentators are right.
I see no reason to accept that argument.
But I agree with MrEd that there are dangers in the Opposition parties looking as though they were in bed together. It makes sense for both to stand everywhere - not least as not all of us are tactical voters and some genuinely want to endorse their preferred candidate - but to have a realistic private discussion on where to target efforts, which is made very clear to local parties.
I doubt it will age well.
Does anyone know if the person who wrote it has any influence in Beijing? That’s the only thing that matters, I guess.
The issue is that just as no positive story about Ukraine is automatically to be accepted as factual, that doesn't make any story positive about Russia's position automatically factual by default, yet the article you posted did do that in several points (though not all the way through, certainly).
On the contrary, you seem to be getting angry at people pointing out a few instances where the suggestion of an 'alternative situation' was made without evidence.
So you are getting angry at people doing the very thing you claim to want them to do, which is think a bit more about information that is posted. People have thought about the article you shared and had some critical comments, and you are now whining about them doing so.
Should people also be wary of information putting out nothing but pro-Ukrainian messaging without sufficient evidence to support it? Sure they should. But what does that have to do with being wary of elements of that article which were nothing but supposition (and the bit I highlighted was paritcularly weird supposition about a troop build up being corroboration about an assault plan, without even considering alternative explanation of it being in response to the earlier troop build up by Russia)?
You can be sure that - if/when the Russians manage to encircle Kyiv - the western media will be competing to be the first to breathlessly report the fact. They won't be claiming to have just driven in from Bila Tserkva and denying the encirclement exists.
Most significant line, for me, was this.
"Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine has caused great controversy in China, with its supporters and opponents being divided into two implacably opposing sides."
Later, it is called a War.
As I suspected from the start. There is a power struggle. This article is probably a sign of who is winning.
"Russian Finance Minister:
"Russia doesn't renounce its obligations on the state debt and will pay in rubles until Western countries unfreeze their gold and foreign exchange reserves. About $300 billion has been frozen, which is half of the reserves of the Russian Federation.""
https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1502980099431358467
The guy may or may not get stuff right or wrong but people are queuing up to say how ridiculous it is. Fair enough - I believe you yourself have written on confirmation bias. It is a much better story to hear that Russia is suffering setback after setback rather than slowly but surely achieving its war aims.
I do indeed say "no one can know anything" but you misunderstand what this means, perhaps understandably, given your flitting around the various key issues of the day before becoming expert on all of them. My point is that snippets from twitter or indeed journalists can't stitch together the overall progress of the war, nor gain any insight in what the hell Putin wants to do and/or how successful he is doing it.
Posting a picture of a Russian platoon coming under fire and then saying: "ah ha, proof if proof be needed..." is just absurd but it is what most people on PB have been doing since the invasion began. Most recently everyone was amazed that Ukraine hadn't been conquered in a fortnight.
Original here: https://xkcd.com/
Hong Kong multiplied 200 times would not be a pretty spectacle
And you ignore the important point - not all assessments of the situation have equal merit. Just as it's not the case that any two opinions about the science of global warming have equal merit, it's also the case that, even if we are not aware of them, there are categorical truths about the war. Has the siege of Mariupol been lifted? Is Kharkiv encircled? Are Russian forces at the outskirts of Dnipro?
The article you linked to is not just another point of view, it includes a series of assertions that conflict with the best available evidence and that destroy its credibility on other points which are less certain.
Or shall we discuss the difference between "surrounded" and "assessed encirclement".
“Hong Kong reports 32,430 COVID cases, 264 deaths”
That’s today
https://twitter.com/jaranews_in/status/1502986673679998977?s=21
Scaled up to the size of mainland China that would be:
6,031,980 cases
49,104 deaths
I know I'm being silly as it actually sound like a good idea.
https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1502987456152539139
And yet, to sound very cynical, I can imagine the Chinese leadership would actually not be terribly unhappy with an infectious disease that dramatically reduced the size of its retired population (as long as they weren't killed by it). It would solve many problems for them in terms of pensions, healthcare and housing and they have already shown they are totally callous and indifferent to human suffering.
What will be spooking them is the idea of having totally lost control of a situation they claimed they had handled uniquely well.
Status anxiety
https://twitter.com/RespectIsVital/status/1502697966439698433?s=20&t=YkEvb-PpdVo5qR8aJCO97g
How practical it would be I don't know as I am not an engineer but it certainly sounded like an idea worthy of further investigation.
That was pure "А у вас негров линчуют"
But I also from Day One said that if Russia does occupy the whole of Ukraine then we are back to an Afghan situation and that seems absolutely bonkers but then perhaps Putin is absolutely bonkers. Because if nothing else we all know how that ended.
As for not control of the air I think that article was interesting both on Ukraine and Russia air power limitations (he asks for example about the famous and untouched Russian convoy). I have no idea why it wasn't targeted but it wasn't. He also poses some other interesting questions which contradict the PB orthodoxy and hence why everyone is furious at me for posting it and calling it "my article".
It is a very strange phenomenon on PB but perhaps not surprising, given PB's nature.
It’s an allegorical foretelling of the Ukraine invasion. Greedy stupid people see huge dollar signs in their minds and gather together a motley crew who they cannot trust in order to drive south in convoys to claim the prize with the mystical letter “W” (replacing Z) as their cypher.
The convoy is badly planned and breaks down and crashes and they need to beg borrow and steal to keep going all the while falling out about what they are doing and how to do it.
Eventually they reach their destination to plunder and achieve their goal and in their greed they fight over the prize and lose it. Nobody gets the prize and they all end up in hospital.
They need to get the projector out in the Kremlin now to avoid the same fate….
“A senior Chinese official overseeing Hong Kong affairs, Xia Baolong, who has been helping coordinate Beijing’s response to help Hong Kong contain the outbreak, was cited by the China News Agency on Saturday as saying the situation was still severe and told residents to prepare mentally for a “long-term war”.”
Hmm. One of the *good* things about Omicron is that it is so infectious it burns out quickly. By infecting everyone fast. Why should this be a “long term war”?
But perhaps the Chinese official is just steeling the people for a lot of dying
E2a... Also, not cleared for carriage or release so they could take a horizontal stab off when they come off the wing. Nobody knows.
"I have never said that Russian money went into the Brexit campaign. I have always stressed that there is no evidence to suggest it did."
https://twitter.com/EuroGuido/status/1502951577975410692
One of the arguments in their favour is that they scale from zero smoothly - you can install 1 or 1,000 (when you have the design sorted).
The downside is that they only generate when the tide is flowing. Tidal lagoons stretch that period by storing water.
Tidal lagoons have a minimum size - and it is pretty big.
https://twitter.com/guardiannews/status/1502989186131017737
Honestly, this whole bizarre strand of commentary, from you, perhaps says more about you than about PB