Latest Ukraine/Russia Thread

[Hayato]

What do you think about this clip from the show "Madam Secretary" from 2015?

 

Predictive programming, or what?

 

 

[Lyubov]

https://meduza.io/amp/en/feature/2025/10/09/putin-admits-russian-air-defenses-downed-azerbaijan-airlines-flight-last-year-killing-38
 

Pay attention: some of you were parroting typical brain rot conspiracy theory reasoning about how the West is responsible for whatever Russia does that’s cruel and awful. Typical brain rot denial about reasonable assumptions because it serves your stage blue right wing fear based biases. 

Putin has admitted his military downed that plane from last year. Probably because he doesn’t have as much geopolitical sway these days due to his country being weakened by the war he started. He needs to be far more diplomatic with his neighbors because he’s burned through a lot of trust and good will.  
 

Learn from this, next time you try to reach for a made up defense like a Fox News anchor 

Edited October 9 by Lyubov

[zazen]

Looks innocent on the surface but can have major implications

“A Tomahawk missile is dual-use capable — meaning that while the U.S. versions being sent are conventionally armed, Russia can’t easily tell that from radar alone. From their perspective, when a Tomahawk is inbound, they have no way to distinguish whether it carries a nuclear or conventional warhead.

That uncertainty matters because:

Flight profiles look similar. Tomahawks fly low, slow, and stealthy, and can approach targets from unpredictable directions — the same as a nuclear-armed variant.

Radar warning times are minimal. By the time Russian systems detect a launch, there may be only minutes to decide if it’s a nuclear strike. That compresses decision time and increases the risk of miscalculation or panic escalation.

Command nerves. Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows nuclear use if it perceives a “decapitating” attack on leadership or command-and-control infrastructure. A deep-strike cruise missile attack could easily look like that.

Historical precedent. This mirrors Cold War fears during the Pershing II deployments in the 1980s — short warning times + nuclear ambiguity nearly triggered preemptive doctrines.

So yes — even a single conventional Tomahawk fired into Russian territory could trigger worst-case assumptions inside Moscow. That’s why many strategists call this a “stability-destroying” weapon in this theater: not because of its power per se, but because of the ambiguity it creates.

In essence, the danger isn’t the weapon itself — it’s how it’s perceived under pressure.“

[BlueOak]

China has called for banning all rare metal exports to western countries.
 

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/10/chinas-new-restrictions-rare-earth-exports-send-stark-warning-west

There are plenty of stories and POV's on it if anyone needs more.

This is why its always been incredibly stupid to give China as much leverage as it's received over our economies. I have said so for a very long time now.  It's like we want to make life hard for ourselves, or rather, money is always more important than regulation far too often. Meanwhile, America has called for 100% tariffs on China, after they started all of this mess.

In Russian the economy still keeps tanking, four day work weeks are being normalised. Transport connections are failing, people can't get gas, and truck lines are queuing up. A true remake of the USSR's fall. 
 

 

I saw a great statement.
If a snail had started at the border of Russia when this war started, it'd be in Poland by now.

Edited October 11 by BlueOak

[Lyubov]

These new longe range missiles could maybe make Putin reconsider some of his objectives. He should have accepted Trump’s off ramp deal. We have been in this state of unknown since the beginning of this invasion and no one really knows how it’s going to end. I think at this point both sides see themselves fighting for a couple more years, then based on what they each have will agree to a deal. I don’t think these missiles will be some massive game change but they could maybe make Moscow take a peace deal more seriously. Really I doubt the line on the map will move much. It’s really a matter of getting Moscow to agree to a ceasefire with what they have and Ukraine getting security guarantees. 

[BlueOak]

Both Ukraine and Russia will be very cold this winter.

Kyiv lost its power.
So now, as promised, Moscow has lost its power. Just for a few hours, but Belgorod wasn't so lucky again.
 

Will the Russians learn to stop firing at power plants? Probably not.

Edited October 12 by BlueOak

[BlueOak]

Update on the two moronic Russian encirclements of their propaganda push, looks like the third group held (sort of) but the drones are still stopping any movement. They've tried over many days/weeks to reach these forces now and just keep getting vehicles ripped to shreds by drones. So they've resorted to sending out suicide squads crawling over the ground to try to reach the cut-off units.
 

It wasn't the most costly encirclement of the war, but its turning into it, by them just keeping sending old-styled armored columns, trying to ignore the drones.
 

*This video helps expand the understanding of how drones shape the battlefield control.

I can't remember the video now but up in Sumy these tactics are being exploited.

Russia will not withdraw from terrain they set foot in, so Ukraine bypasses them and just hits their supplies, over and over and over. They are getting destroyed up there too, and some say routed, because everyone knows what they will do. Rush to a settlement, jump off light bikes or cars, and then try to dig in, with nothing much but small arms. No supplies to speak of.

Edited Thursday at 01:44 PM by BlueOak

[Raze]

 

[Aaron p]

Tomahawk missiles? Trump turning a corner?

...trump being forced to turn a corner.....?

[zazen]

“Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia and should negotiate peace terms with the Kremlin, according to Britain’s most senior army officer.

Reflecting on Ukraine’s chances of success against Russia, he said: “My view is that they would not win.”

“Could not win, even with the right resources?” he was asked.

“No,” he replied.

Pressed further by The Independent, he was asked: “ Even with the right resources?”

“No, they haven’t got the manpower,” the former commando said.

In his first long-form podcast interview, Lord Richards, the only British officer to have commanded massed US troops at war since 1945, said the outlook for Ukraine was not good.

“Unless we were to go in with them – which we won’t do because Ukraine is not an existential issue for us. It clearly is for the Russians, by the way,” he said on World of Trouble.

“We’ve decided because it’s not an existential issue, we will not go to war."
 

Sobering truth from 36min - 50min from UK’s top army officer.

Another good one:

 

[Basman]

32 minutes ago, zazen said:

“Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia and should negotiate peace terms with the Kremlin, according to Britain’s most senior army officer.

It's worthless to negotiate any kind of peace without security guarantees. Russia can easily just breach those guarantees at a later date. This has been argued for extensively already.

Certain Europeans are going to be biased towards sacrificing Ukraine to Russia to get it over with because they can't effectively mobilize against Russia due to political incapability. But Russia is at war with Europe as well through hybrid warfare, trying to undermine democracy, so it is in the interest of Europeans to fight back as well. 

This is why I think Ukraine might go nuclear in the near future. 

[BlueOak]

Putins going bankrupt, his country is falling apart, and now he's desperate.

So he's back to rolling out his cronies to try and save him with the old tired lines. Ukraine can't win.

Well they are doing, and he's never been closer to being replaced. I've never seen Putin panic but I am doing now. I've never seen so much damage to them internally, and its happened in less than 3 months.

I've never said that I am certain he's going bankrupt unless he gets bailed out, but I am doing now.

Here is a microcosm for you:

This is what's happening to the west of Russia not just Crimea. They won't have power or fuel for generators in the west of Russia. The Occupied territories are toast, but Moscow is going to be squeezed, as Ukraine is hitting anything going into Moscow. Its hit 19 refineries repeatedly, oil depots, gas lines, power plants all surrounding Russia, its starting to starve the capital of fuel.

All while their imports dry up as they can't get in, they can't get around in cars, their main transport lines fall to half capacity. 

So Yeah Russia is toast. All they've got left is rhetoric and a grinding advance that depletes all their youth for hardly any land. I'm going to say Putin's already dead, unless someone like Trump bails him out, which is possible. All they've got left to look forward to is worse and worse conditions in their country, and it can't be fixed because they've put themselves so far in the hole.

*To amend this China and India can pick up more of the tab, but all that does is delay the inevitable resolution (Which IMHO will be the death of Putin, unless he settles in negotiaton, which is unlikely.)

Should add: Ukraine's missile and drone production are way up and only increasing. This is 2.5 months of it, wait till 6 months. There will be nothing of that country left.
 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by BlueOak