You must be joking. — RogueAI

Is this guy supporting Russia too? Basically the exact same arguments.

↪boethius Would you still support Russia if they use chemical/biological weapons? — RogueAI

I'm not supporting Russia.

I'm not cheering on Ukrainians to die for no achievable military objective, that is not the same as supporting Russia; it is political realism and, for me, common sense ethics about the responsibilities of civilian and military leadership.

However, as I've explained a few times, only Ukrainian military leaders know if they have chances of achieving military objectives; maybe they have some huge surprise counter offensive about to launch; we don't know.

I have also presented alternative potential narratives to the Western media narrative, but I've made clear many times that perhaps the Western media narrative is totally true, but, since it seems to be based on nothing tangible, seems useful to present alternative explanations for things for the purposes of critical analysis.

But I do feel the future-crime accusation Russia will use chemical weapons are not based on anything remotely real, Russia has zero military reason to use chemical weapons, it would escalate to a tactical nuclear weapon if it wanted to escalate.

Russia has thermobaric weapons it's already deployed and are effective at clearing large areas (weapons the US also has and uses), and without any risk of poisoning your own troops, super large political consequences, and chemical weapons are notoriously ineffective for tactical purposes (why we stopped using them after WWI).

This is so faulty on so many levels of fallacies that it becomes utter nonsense. It's like one of the most bullshit sentences of an argument I've ever seen. :rofl: — Christoffer

She's asked about bio-weapons, she answer that Ukraine does have biological laboratories (that are secret otherwise we could lookup their websites) with things the Russians shouldn't find and they're working hard to prevent the Russians finding those things.

Yes, there is only one common sense interpretation of what she's saying. And this isn't some low-level person that maybe confused, or poorly selecting words, or wouldn't have good insight into the issue and is just surmising from a limited vantage point.

This is a high ranking official, running US policy in Ukraine since even before 2014, answering the question about whether Ukraine has bio-weapons with something that clearly means Yes, and not No.

If the truth was "No, Ukraine doesn't have bio-weapons, why would it" then she would have just stated that "No, Ukraine does not have bio-weapons".

No, you conclude it as facts, — Christoffer

It's a fact that there's only one common sense interpretation of what Nuland is literally saying.

Now, it's possible she's lying or she's just misinformed herself, but as @Isaac has already explained pretty clearly, there's no way to interpret what she actually says as referring to non-bio-weapons.

Of course, that doesn't make it a fact, just Nuland talking about bio-weapons; she could be lying or misinformed.

But the what she says, and has been recorded as saying, is a fact that she said those words.

If that's inconvenient to your world view and creates questions which have no good answers in your world view (the common sense followup questions of Tucker Carlson are simply good questions, and the explanations offered so far, like it was to destroy soviet bio-weapons, just make no sense as Tucker Carlson accurately conveys) ... not my problem.

Now, seems we will learn more about this when the Russians present their case at the UN, leak intel all over the place.

Likewise, that the Western Media now has their nickers in a knot that they've been blanket denying this and using the fact the Russians are talking about it as evidence that Russia is going to use chemical weapons (when it can simply bomb things to rubble and use thermobaric weapons in addition to that) ... but then Nuland just admits to it on live television and the Western media isn't even united in blanket denial but pundits like Tucker Carlson willing to just say the common sense interpretation of things ... again, that a Western media problem, not mine.

We're literally at the level of grammatical analysis that if the police ask a suspect if they've been killing people, and they answer "yeah, sure, some killings have been happening, by me so we're clear who we're talking about," that you're willing to argue that if, not as an immediate followup to clarify the statement, nor even stated by the suspect later but somebody else unfamiliar with the whole case, that the suspect saying "killing" doesn't really have any meaning here, and they could be talking about killing online in World of War craft (which millions of people kill things on everyday, totally normal) ... that, based on such an analysis, the police should just let the suspect go, nothing suspicious at all, totally explainable as just perfectly legal, run-of-the-mill video game killing online.

Why do you make a conjecture in the form of a factual conclusion? — Christoffer

These are literally questions. It would would be up to you to propose a conjecture to answer said questions.

You've already conjectured that "labs" could mean anything and therefore Nuland's statements have no content whatsoever. And I've responded to that conjecture with agreeing that, true, she could be talking about Quizno's in Ukraine.

Just because a question is difficult to answer in a way that makes sense in your narrative based on "leaked-intel" in "previous phases", doesn't make that a question in the form of a conjecture.

How did this threat go into pure conspiracy theory territory? — Christoffer

If it was just rumor on the internet; sure, conspiracy theory stuff, maybe based on some real cloak and dagger happenings, maybe totally fake, maybe just self-generated internet conspiracy theory.

Likewise, if it was just Russia saying with zero corroboratory evidence anywhere; again, can't just go ahead and trust "intel leaks" from Russia can we?

But we're not talking about rumors on 4-chan or 8-chan or reddit or wherever or just Russian intelligence leaks.

We're talking about a high ranking US official who seems to just come and say that Ukraine does have bio weapons labs: labs working on pathogens with bio-weapons potential that would "be bad" for the Russian military to find.

And, labs that work on defense against bio-weapons, and have relevant pathogens for that, are still working on bio-weapons, just for defensive purposes.

When countries perform nuclear tests to see how to defend against nuclear weapons ... they still obviously have nuclear weapons too.

Still not a bioweapon lab. You know, there are labs in every nation working to prevent stuff like the pandemic we just went through. There are high-level pathogens everywhere in these labs. — Christoffer

Then why would Nuland talk about non-bio-weapons-related labs in response to a question about bio-weapons?

Are you just saying she's a total moron?

So, maybe they know something that the public aren't being told about .... — Apollodorus

This whole development about bio weapons labs, is truly and utterly bizarre.

Already what's admitted to by Nuland is massive bombshell level, and Russia says it's taken these labs, now WHO is casually suggesting it's advisable to destroy any pathogens that may pose a risk to the entire world population.

Very difficult to imagine this can turn out to be a nothing burger at this point.

It's been trying to force crossings on the Southern Bug to move west, not driving towards Kyiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To setup the breakout maneuver to push North, you'd definitely want to first push West to push out to protect forward operating bases, and to just fortify your flank generally speaking, while also tying up troops to your West which is not your priority. Of course, Russians will also want to go encircle Odessa as well, so these plans aren't exclusive.

From Kherson to Zhytomyr (town West of Kiev) is 8 and half hour drive according to g-maps.

If Russians simply poor in armor (tanks APC's and armored artillery) to rapidly close the pincers going through flat open terrain, it could be done in a day or two (facing light opposition). Of course, the logistics need to be setup to resupply the pincers, and once established it's only a couple of days to poor in more infantry to dig in on the entire pincer formation. Since there's the river to the east, which can be difficult to cross if key bridges are bombed, the pincer formation may only be realistically assaulted from the West, where there are few Ukrainian battalions, certainly very few professional soldiers.

The "pincer" from the south is two battalions; it's not going to cross hundreds of miles without a significantly larger force/logistic elements moving up to supply it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's why I mention the naval base in Crimea which can easily bring in supply, heavy armor and additional troops.

They have been holding the territory North of Crimea and the crossings at Kherson since early in the war, so even if they only have two battalions there now, what actually matters for a push north is setting up the logistics chain and forward operating bases to be able to resupply and refuel a breakout maneuver. Russians can also then bomb every bridge along the Dnieper they don't control, and mess up critical junctions and roads, to further slow any retreat West as the pincers close, which may explain why we are now seeing air strikes in Dnipro.

The Russians have also been sorting out logistics and digging in on their salient West of Kiev, once it is out of urban areas it too can do a breakout maneuver towards the south.

The local National Defense University publishes a map with assumed units. Unfortunately in Finnish. This picture of the situation in 10.3.2022 in the evening: — ssu

This map is way more informative, thanks for posting.

If the Russians have been basically just keeping the Ukraine forces in the East to setup this moment ... seems to me there's no a race in time against the pincers closing for all those brigades to the East of the pincers to retreat West.

Militarily speaking, Ukraine has been in a double bind: If they retreat to the West, then Russian forces advance unopposed to the Dnieper river and have a big strategic victory and "map momentum", the narrative that their losing somehow completely falls apart. If they don't retreat, then 14 out of 16 brigades of the map you posted risk being cutoff from external resupply and nearly the entire professional army cutoff and then both the East and West may fall militarily.

That Russia is starting to disengage the most Eastern fronts, for me anyways, indicates that trying up those forces no longer has any strategic need as they have no where productive to go.

"Best solution" considering the current situation on the ground. — Apollodorus

At the moment, at least nominally, Russia is still offering to end the war if Crimea annexation is recognized, the Eastern breakaway regions independence is recognized and Ukraine commits to remaining neutral.

This offer seems more fair to Ukrainians than losing half the country.

Yes. IMO the best solution would be for Ukraine to be divided fairly between the two sister nations. — Apollodorus

I wouldn't agree that's the best solution, considering that it seems it was possible to not have a war at all.

But it does seem to me Russia can militarily achieve this result.

However, the EU could certainly negotiate a better result for Ukrainians, but so far has chosen not to.

Russia should take everything east of the Dnieper, and maybe half of Kiev, and Zelensky (or Kolomoisky) can keep the rest. — Apollodorus

Governments come and go.

To continue my military analysis of what's going on.

So far the Aljezera map seems to be most accurate and useful (with distinctions of zones and operations).



So, if this map is accurate, Russian Southern forces have broken into basically open country side that is the center of Ukraine. This is the archetypal and infamous flat plane through which armies can easily invade.

Equipment, supplies and soldiers can easily be brought into their naval base in Crimea, and there's no further built urban environments that are difficult to fight through (such as is seen on the North-West front).

If Ukrainian forces dig in to the front of a salient, Russian forces can just flank and pincer around it, and in flat open territory like this I do not see how Ukrainians could build and defend a line hundred or two hundred kilometres against armor maneuvers.

If the logistics are now in place to simply roll North, then retreats from Eastern positions are not losses, but simply represent the Ukrainian forces there having no where to go and are stuck there anyways now and so Russians can just withdraw; Russia has no strategically important positions in East Ukraine.

In understanding these maps and what they represent, it's important to keep in mind that you don't go and dig in as close to the enemy as possible, you generally go and contest an area with suppressive fire and dig in behind that and once the defensive line is formed the skirmishing forces withdraw. There's a big difference between a tactical withdrawal to a defensive line and losing a skirmish, and breaking through a defensive line, and these maps don't tell us the state of defenses on either the Russian or Ukrainian side. Likewise, a maneuver through an areas does not mean there is any intention to hold it ... could be just a maneuver through an area to get somewhere else or to get the enemy to commit forces to an area that is unimportant. However, since the strategically important pincers on each side of Kiev and the pincer coming up from the South seem pretty stable they maybe well defended.

The indication a pincer movement fails is usually the counter tactic of cutting through the pincer and isolating the advanced forces succeeds, which we have yet to see against any of the main pincers and salients of Russian forces. For me, it's difficult to imagine the basis of statements in the media such as literally "Ukraine: Demoralised & incompetent, Putin’s army is doomed | Taras Kuzio interview" from the telegraph, without seeing any Russian salients actually getting cutoff, isolated and dispatched with.

Zelensky has dug himself into a hole (or grave). My guess is that he was prompted by his oligarch masters (Kolomoisky & Co) to stand up to Russia in the hope that the US and UK, who have been arming and training his people, and maybe Israel, would come to his rescue. Obviously, he has miscalculated badly. Now he is likely to lose half of his country to Russia and he will have the death of thousands of Ukrainian civilians on his conscience. — Apollodorus

I'm pretty confident Israel wouldn't show up and fight for Ukraine.

However, I completely agree that the play was to hold out as long as possible, focus on social media without any military plan, and try to corner NATO on social media into intervening.

It's really unclear to me how Zelensky could have sat down and rationally worked out such a plan. In addition, his US supporters were pretty open about the goal to arm an insurgency ... which takes as given losing the conventional battle.

I also completely agree that as soon as the war ends (or even sooner), as @Isaac put it, the idea Ukraine has essentially been "beautified" and can face no criticism of anything and any kind whatsoever, will evaporate and there will be some pretty hard questions for both Ukrainians and the EU on how and why this happened and wasn't stopped sooner (of course, maybe Putin's bad faith and accepting Russia's offer would be "appeasement" but you need to accept a reasonable offer first to credibly accuse someone of bad faith).

Because you still retain that I view the intel as true and therefore... — Christoffer

... This is literally what you say:

There's also an inductive argument to be made. What's more likely based on what we know so far about this war? A) Russia continues to use propaganda and desinformation to try and control the narrative. B) The US has leaked intel continuously in order undermine that desinformation and has proven to be correct information based on Russia actually acting accordingly. — Christoffer

That US "leaked intel" has been correct so far, nothing clandestine about it at all, and therefore trustworthy going forward.

So trustworthy that we can be certain that what Nuland, a top US official, is saying publicly in can be dismissed offhand, that we literally don't even know what "lab" means in the context.

Sure, trust to the "leaked info", maybe it's true. Maybe Nuland has literally been replaced with a Russian robot that US intel is dismantling as we speak to show the world that Russian treachery knows no bounds.

No one here seems to be saying they know the real truth of the critical things under discussion (except for you maybe).

For example, I explain at some length that the military situation on the ground we can't really evaluate with much confidence about the real state of things. It's possible Russian troops are at super low moral, logistics in chaos, and their lines are about to collapse. I'm not denying that maybe the Western media narrative is 100% true, even the strange spinning of Nuland's statements could be "true" that by "lab" she literally meant a Quiznos, as lab could mean anything, and the "bio labs" are just their kitchens "Boldly Building a Better Sandwich" and if the Russians get their hands on these better sandwiches: oh boy, moral problems solved, boldness achieved, victory at hand, strategic disaster.

For you see, a sandwich is made of biological material and building a better sandwich implies some sort of biological laboratory to conduct this important research. And what can sandwiches do in the hands of the enemy? Fuel the Russian war machine.

Nuland's just saying a completely banal description of a situation you'll find among any freedom loving population that appreciates a good sandwich. How can we prove otherwise?

So you don't understand what I wrote, even with that nice breakdown. — Christoffer

What's there not to understand?

What strawman?

Interpreting these events has nothing to do with trusting any government — Christoffer

Your narrative is based on "leaked intel": aka. trusting the government in question's intel is accurate to begin with and leaked for the purpose of "just being open" ... aka. trusting the government is telling the truth when they say they are just being open and honest with everyone and that they actually have the truth to be open about in the first place.

Leaked intel could be fabricated but it could also simply false anyways.

Comparing that intellectual process to a top US official just answering a question in public and admitting in public to certain things ... can just be dismissed because "government's can't be trusted" and "lab can mean anything"?

And it could get even bigger ... it's possible that the Russians discover the exact lab where SARS-COV-V2 originated, and manage to prove it ... maybe still unlikely, but honestly anything seems possible after watching this answer by Nuland.

Even so, already easily rivals the spies in the Manhattan projects as:

A. US needed a lot of scientists to make the bomb, and scientists can have sophisticated ethical and political analysis and decide it's not acceptable that only the US has these weapons, especially considering they are willing to use them, and are really smart so it's by definition a challenge to keep tabs on them. So, certainly a Soviet intelligence success, but it's not like the US intelligence community mishandled and just "failed' miserably in securing the Manhattan project.

B. Soviets may have developed the bomb anyways in roughly the same amount of time, so the Manhattan project spies may not have changed world history much.

Likewise, the Soviet movement of missiles to Cuba ... difficult to keep a secret, and the political point would be the US knows about it anyways (just as Russia knows about missiles in Poland).

As well as breaking enigma; it's not like the German cryptographers had a dumb system easy to break.

Whereas in the present situation, in the middle of a real possibility of nuclear war, it's honestly a truly dumbfounded level of incompetence to not only have these labs ... but then not get rid of them ... by yesterday?

And, rationally, the only justification to have these secret labs in Ukraine (in a sort of "closer we are to danger, farther we are from harm" sort of plan) ... would be to do something truly nefarious. It's certainly not for Ukraine's "protection".

I can assure you that nearly every world leader and diplomat and intelligence officer and military officer on the entire planet is thinking the same as us: what the fuck just happened?

Oh for fuck sake, are you illiterate, can you please READ what I wrote here AGAIN and see if you can understand it before continuing? — Christoffer

I respond to exactly what you say ... what are you missing.

You say you're "interpreting" government actions ... like "leaked intel" which are still government statements, just nominally supposed to be kept secret as it's intelligence during a war and potential nuclear escalation.

We're "interpreting" Nuland's statements.

What's the "information has played out in earlier phases" that are relevant for interpreting Nuland's public statements? Sure, information "pays out", I'm not denying that, but how do we know we're not seeing right now information playing out in the way it seems to be playing out: the US government admitting in public that Ukraine has bio-weapons that the US surely knew about if not helped create?

These handful of phrases by Nuland seem to have no other "interpretation", as you call it, other than representing the greatest intelligence and clandestine failure in all of history. By a wide margin.

And, just so everyone's aware, one good explanation for everything:

1. Snap surprise invasion planned in a week
2. Conventional warfare not starting for 2 weeks, small units rushing everywhere not super clear strategy wise.
3. Russia not caring at all about world opinion or sanctions.
4. Far larger invasion than anyone expected.

Is perfectly explained if Russia knew about these bio-weapons labs (because Russia has had intel ops in Ukraine for ... basically ever ... and it's a pretty corrupt "intel space" where people are super likely to sell info to the Russians as "be a patriot").

And the "irrational" chaos of the first phases of the war was to ensure securing these labs with special forces: take over the lab, get the researcher in charge to message back "the shower is cleaned; the pubes have been itched; the hair is in the drain", and then wait for a salient to secure the position, which are so random and chaotic that it's impossible to deduce what the Russians are doing until it's too late.

It is truly a "game changer", and you can't really fake secret research if you find it. Other NATO countries can easily verify the info checks out as something only the CIA could have helped create, both contextual evidence and human testimony (of double agent / captured researchers) overwhelming.

So, if Russia knew about it ... which is honestly the only way it could credibly "fall into enemy hands", then it explains a lot about the Kremlin's decision making.

If it was just speculation on the internet, it would just be speculation on the internet, but these few statements by Nuland are quite possibly the most shocking statements in the history of international relations, all in a tiny handful of phrases.

It's truly a completely bizarre and almost unimaginable (any point in time before) turn of events.

Do you understand what I'm saying here? — Christoffer

So, you "interpret" leaked intel as being 100% credible.

But our interpreting Nuland's clear answers to direct questions to just mean what she clearly means ... is invalid "interpretation"? Because it doesn't cohere to previous phases where the US government was denying any bio weapons labs in Ukraine...

That because they've kept it a secret for a long while--hasn't "played out" as information in an earlier phase--and a top US official, most closely associated with the original Ukraine coup and managing things since, is only disclosing this secret now ... it, therefore, cannot possibly be true?

Because the strategy has been in the open over the course of this entire war. — Christoffer

And you base this "strategy" of objective truth telling openness ... on what?

On leaked intel?

The question is raised by Russia. Intel leaked (as intel leaked before that was confirmed by Russian acts) points to possible chemical attack by Russia. — Christoffer

Neither Nuland nor Tucker Carlson are Russians.

And, your whole argument is "statements" by the government have no factual, or even critical thinking value (lab could "mean anything") ... yet "leaked intel" you find more credibly objective, true and no possible ulterior motives ... and somehow not statements from the government?

We know exactly what Russia is thinking and doing and planning because of Western "leaked intel"?

A lab doesn't mean anything. — Christoffer

It's basically impossible to have any intelligible discussion with this level of denial.

The question is about bio weapons, a weapon of mass destruction and if Ukraine has them.

As I say, for Nuland to respond with a ramble about "labs that don't mean anything", in the context of this senatorial hearing in the context of this war, in the context of possible escalation to Nuclear war, would be a delusional psychotic episode and the US government would institutionalize her immediately if there was no relevant link between the question and her answer.

If you want to learn what propaganda is ... all you got to do is reread your arguments here.

There is no credible way to say Nuland's statements are not incredibly concerning and obviously due to the fact there is WMD's in Ukraine, and there's no credible way to argue the CIA wouldn't know about it (and ... obviously the US government does know about it otherwise she wouldn't be talking about it) nor any way to argue there are some legitimate reason to tolerate it and, at best, be indirectly financing it.

And, as Tucker correctly describes, no one was really talking about it before Nuland talked about it ... and, even if it was true, to not then move / dispose of these labs by now (which, if they were all disappeared from Ukraine, Nuland could just confidently say "there are no bioweapons in Ukraine" as an answer to that question in the present tense; and if someone did bother to ask about the past tense, which is unlikely as not relevant for the current situation, she could anyways then confidently say given Ukraine's history "it has had bio-weapons in the past, yes" -- subject closed) is a fuckup of monumental proportions.

Tucker asks some excellent questions. You may dispute facts, but you cannot dispute that a question has been asked, and then it is a simple matter to figure out if it is a good question or not. As I said I do not trust anything without some verification - I watch news channels to get the facts about what each faction is saying. Their statements are valuable evidence, and revealing. — FreeEmotion

Totally agree, Tucker basically lays out a pretty good critical analysis of this truly extraordinary exchange. We certainly don't know the truth yet.

However, what we can more easily evaluate about the main stream news is how different people are likely to perceive things. Obviously Russian's aren't going to be bending over backwards to find some strange interpretation that Nuland is just talking about pharmacies in Ukraine with discounts coupon, that if Russian were ever to discover would aid their war effort tremendously, and, technically speaking pharmacies can have some sort of laboratory to mix drugs and pharmacists do moonlight as meth producers from time to time (and, could have developed meth recipes that would be the perfect stimulants to power the Russian war machine).

That's not evidence for fuck sake. That's an answer that you interpret as being questionable. — Christoffer

This is literally witness testimony. Nuland obviously knows about these labs.

What's more likely based on what we know so far about this war? A) Russia continues to use propaganda and desinformation to try and control the narrative. B) The US has leaked intel continuously in order undermine that desinformation and has proven to be correct information based on Russia actually acting accordingly. — Christoffer

This seems to me completely delusional.

You're saying US has leaked intel (are you saying this is "evidence" or more government statements that aren't evidence of anything?) ... in no way to try to control the narrative themselves? Just concerned truth seekers out to give the world an objective view of the situation on the ground?

Just as I said it can have variants of pathogens for research purposes that if released by bombardments could potentially be catastrophic for the entire world. — Christoffer

What legitimate research purposes? You're saying that there's legitimate purpose for Ukraine (a defacto ally of the US) to being doing it's own "defensive" bio-weapons research in multiple secret labs?

There are labs that do that kind of research: heavily regulated, super secure, of the large powers that deal in WMD's (not small corrupt countries). Any "defensive" measures against bio-weapons Ukraine could legitimately need, the US could easily do that research (as it does anyways in it's top security labs run by credible top-of-their-field researchers) and supply Ukraine with whatever information they could legitimately require to "defend themselves" against a bio-weapons attack.

There is literally zero possible "legitimate research" defense of Nuland's statements.

What's the hypothesis here, that Ukraine and the CIA have had the following dialogue:

Ukraine: Ok, you've given us a bunch of ATMG's and training and stuff, super cool, but how do we defend against a bio weapon attack?

CIA: Oh, you know, you just build a bunch of secret bio weapons labs ... you'll figure it out. It's really a "learn by doing" kind of thing, we can't really like "explain it" to you; kind of like, learning to play the flute or something; sure, you can come see us do it, and hear us talk about, but nothing replaces practice, practice, practice when it comes to the finger dexterity you need to work with pathogens that (if released, so definitely baby steps) could cause a global calamity.

Which, at least could explain why no one secured the labs, if you're learning by doing then you kind of need this sort of debacle to realize securing the labs during the military build up that may invade and find the labs / cause a second global pandemic with a single errant shell, is a good idea.

Russian combat effectiveness seems to have plunged. They're using reconstituted regiments now, forming new units out of ones cut down far from dull strength. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a totally normal process ... and may also be happening to Ukrainian forces. To say Russia is losing requires not just Russian losses, but more losses than Ukrainians (decrease in relative strength, not absolute strength). But, only Russian generals really have a good idea, likewise for Ukrainian generals about the state of Ukrainian forces.

This is borne out by the recruitment drive in Syria, consideration of using unreliable Belarusian forces, and use of Chechen irregulars and mercenaries like the Wagner Group as frontal assault units for their main effort on Kyiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This isn't surprising nor really indicates anything; a military is going to use the available assets the best it can; US equipped and advised jihadist fighters in it's proxy war with Syria, because it had those assets to use.

Also the abandonment of Kharkiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If the purpose is to cut Ukraine in half North to South then the purpose of all fighting in the East is simply to tie up Ukrainian forces until they can no longer effectively retreat to the West. If you want to retreat by civilian vehicle, that maybe impossible by now, and armor is vulnerable to air attack and whatever is left maybe out of fuel (maybe we didn't see much air power until now to not scare Ukrainian East deployed forces to retreat to the West).

If you're going to retreat on foot, according to google maps it would be 133 hour walk from Karkiv to Vinnytsia (that is a town just West of where the Russian pincers are likely to meet).

It's not possible to walk 133 hours in one go, so we can easily double that to 266 hours, which is 11 days (where you'd need to bring all the food you need, or then scavenge for it, and this assumes the optimum path as calculated by google).

Tying up the Ukrainians in the East and encircling them not only reduces significantly Ukrainian strength, but will almost certainly lead to a domino of surrenders of these encircled forces.

When people talk about sieges lasting years in ancient or medieval times ... the superb innovation of just in time supply lines had not yet been discovered.

If Russian generals see no way Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv can possibly retreat to West of their pincers in the time they calculate those pincers to meet, then there is no further need to keep pressure on Kharkiv and those troops can return to Russia and be circled around to reinforce the main pincers.

Some people keep saying that Putin “miscalculated”. But I think it is fair to say that Zelensky miscalculated even more. All he had to do was to promise not to join NATO and recognize Crimea and the Donbas as Russian. That would have saved half of his country from being reduced to rubble. — Apollodorus

Yes, and if the offer was bad faith and Putin attacked anyways, then it's far easier to legitimately claim there is an existential war happening with an enemy that cannot be dealt with diplomatically.

And even Putin's demands to pull back NATO to Germany makes rational sense considering the justification of that forward deployment was to send missiles to Afghanistan and NATO was "adamant" that was the reason literally stating it has nothing to do with Russia... which doesn't seem such a good justification anymore, and NATO just huffs and puffs that "of course they're not removing those missile bases! Don't be absurd! Delusional demands from the Kremlin!!".

Yes, but questions does not equal counter-evidence or counter-arguments. — Christoffer

You don't seem to be following the conversation.

What evidence do you have that any of these are bioweapon facilities? It's important to have clear facts. — Christoffer

The evidence is what Isaac just literally transcribed. We can assume Nuland knows whatever these labs are about, otherwise it's unlikely she'd improvise, and from her statement we can pretty safely conclude there is a military purpose for these research labs.

If you want to say she's making it up as she has zero knowledge of the situation or actually wants the whole world to believe the Ukraine military has bio weapons labs (WMD's) the US knows about and funds directly or indirectly ... then that's a possibility too.

A bioweapon facility, on the other hand, is something else. — Christoffer

Both Isaac and I have already commented that normal biol labs in universities, hospitals and private companies aren't really a concern if they "fall into enemy hands".

It's also an answer to the direct question about bio weapons ... so rambling about something totally different (legitimate biological research) in response to this question is at best some sort of delusional psychotic episode in the context.

Thanks for transcribing ... it's pretty common sense Tucker Carlson's questions, and credit where credit's due.

Government statements aren't facts. — Christoffer

Government statements represent the fact the government made that statement, and give rise to legitimate questions about those statements.

That's how journalism and democracy is supposed to work: representatives (such as senators), journalists and pundits (such as Tucker Carlson), random people too, ask questions and the government responds by answering or not, giving rise to more questions about the answers or then the fact the government is not answering.

In terms of evaluating facts from government statements, certainly anything can be doubted, but if it seems something they would usually keep secret if it's true ... such as bio "research labs" in Ukraine (that isn't so famous for it's cutting edge bio medical research that is a concern if Russia gets hold of it ... to just go cure cancer in Russia or something?!?) ... maybe they are saying it because it's true, Russians have secured those labs already, and they want to get ahead of the story with some counter narrative of what those labs were about.

It's quite clear what the plan is here and it's only fooling them who don't know how to sift through the propaganda BS. — Christoffer

The Wests own sources, such as the Nuland senatorial hearing above, or Western journalists regularly visiting Azov brigade since 2014, is not Russian propaganda. Russia cannot be accused of creating propaganda if it's material literally coming from the US government or Western media institutions like the Times.

Of course, Russia will take that material and also use it for propaganda purposes, but the logic that this material (that a CIA chief / "Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs" admitting to building a bunch of "Bio Research Labs"--that were obviously secret as otherwise we'd already know about them as just normal university or hospital labs--gives rise to completely legitimate questions regardless of how big a gift that is to Putin and the Kremlin).

Stop using FOX news as any kind of valid source. — Christoffer

It's a completely valid source for just showing the super strange Q&A with Nuland at a public senatorial hearing. Whatever this conversation represents, it's a fact that it happened, and legitimate to ask questions about it.

Tucker Carlson also simply has completely valid critical thinking questions: such as if the purpose of the labs was to destroy Soviet bio weapons: a) why would that take 20 years b) why would you need to to that in the Ukraine instead of just transporting them to a NATO country, and c) what's so concerning about the Russians getting their soviet weapons back (presumably they already know about them and know how to secure them).

Facts need to be sourced, but just literally showing government statements is a valid source of the fact of those statements.

Critical thinking doesn't need to be sourced, and good questions are good questions whether from Tucker Carlson, anonymous forum posters, Putin, or anyone else.

Russia is now trying to smoke screen a possible attack with chemical weapons by calling for a UN meeting where they will try and create a narrative that the US and Ukraine had a bioweapon lab in Kiev, thinking the world is gullible enough to fall for such bullshit as reasons to why we might see the result of bioweapons soon. — Christoffer

The problem with the bioweapons lab thing ... is that US seems to have admitted to it.

As surreal as it is, Fox News has some actual critical thinking about it:

— Christoffer

The guy Matsimus has surprisingly good videos and good video material. — ssu

Yeah, I think a lot of people base their expectations on Iraq and Afghanistan / first person shooter games.

We haven't seen much conventional warfare on television for decades, so I was looking for something more than just a demo video of a lot of explosions (which there are many), and this Matsimus is kind of a gold mine for contextualizing what we're seeing, and his latest video is just explaining why his lips are sealed about what he thinks of the current war, so it's a pretty rare resource that's not also promoting a point of view of current events.

↪boethius are you averse to including evidence/sources with your posts? — Changeling

I should have time today to look for sources, I'm not sure what sources you want.

One reason I try to avoid posting sources is simply that leads to accusations that the source is biased. This isn't a journalist forum, but more focused on argument, so I try to keep to arguments of the form "if the premises are true, the conclusions follows" and let people makeup their own mind about the premises. However, I'm not against sourcing, just takes a lot of time and, as @ssu has pointed out, there's a big fog of war element, we can only speculate about a lot of stuff; things can deteriorate rapidly in warfare.

That being said, for the foundation of my analysis of simply what conventional warfare is like to assess the battle field as best we can, since a lot of decision making depends on whether you think Russia will win or lose. Now, we can't really know Ukraine's prospects for victory, but presumably the Ukrainian leadership knows and NATO countries also know more than us. We criticize the Nazi's and Japanese for not surrendering to avoid unnecessary loss of life when there were no more prospects of victory--I see no reason why that criticism only applies to them because "they're bad". The "right" to fight to the death doesn't mean that's the best decision to make; just like if a bunch of ex-marines invaded your home, fighting back depends on A. prospects of victory regardless and B. if it's an existential threat (if they are there to torture, sry "enhanced interrogation" you, and then murder you then fighting back is a good decision if no one's coming to help ... but if they just want your frozen pizza's because the store ran out and then they'll be on their way, a low-odds fight to the death maybe isn't the best decision).\

Likewise, for the EU, supplying arms and hitting with sanctions isn't morally justifiable if it just results in more people killed and undermining European security for the next several decades. If the only possible resolution of the conflict is diplomatic, then that should be the focus. If there is a impasse in the talks (and Ukrainian negotiators being executed as "spies") then the EU could step in and offer things to Russia and also Ukraine and protect negotiators from being executed etc.

The current problem in the negotiations is Russia is already asking essentially the minimum that it won't possibly make any concessions on. However, the EU could not only offer things to Ukraine for also offer things to Russia who then offer "something" to make the settlement more sellable to Ukrainians.

Being in the EU already may simply motivate Ukraine to keep fighting from the West for several decades, which isn't really good for Ukrainians nor the EU.

Of course, diplomacy requires some evaluation of the war situation. If we think Russia is really, or then Russian leaders perceive, in a bad spot one negotiation strategy follows from that assumption. If Russia is actually getting what it wants the hard way and, at least leadership, perceives no risk of military loss or social upheaval in Russia, then a different negotiation strategy follows from that. If what Western media repeats as "super bad for Russia" is viewed by Russian leadership as a good thing (maybe they actually want a break with the West, but couldn't do that themselves as the Russian people would actually revolt about that, but if the West does it, that's grand; likewise, maybe Putin wants all Oligarch wealth to be seized by the West as it's wealth outside of Russia that is laundered around in corrupt schemes ... which Putin doesn't necessarily want corruption; you don't need corruption if you control the government, everything can be done "legally").

So, there is a purpose for evaluating the war situation and how Russian leadership and ordinary Russians perceive things, nor merely intellectual brainstorming.

A good source to start with is I found this Candian artillery youtuber with a lot of military analysis made before this war, and who has stated he cannot comment on the war due to Canadian Forces policy. So, all this material made before the war is presumably not biased towards Russia or Ukraine, and he is not commenting what he thinks now, so the channel doesn't promote one side or another.



This video is a bit long, but I think gives a real good feel for how hard and how much skills is required to be an effective infantry soldier.

One really important part, is the short bit about the positioning of trenches; takes significant skill for senior commanders to decide where to send soldiers to dig in, the strategic purpose, and then there's a chain of decision making all the way down to the squad leader positioning individual trenches and even then soldiers themselves deciding all sorts of details as seen in the video.

I think anyone who looks at this source will get a good feel for my view that handing out small arms to civilians is just killing people for no military justification. People with rifles will be fired upon by mortar and artillery, bombs dropped on them etc.

It takes significant experience and skill to a) always be hiding in a battle situation and b) have some idea if you're safe or not. Observers can sneak anywhere and order strikes from artillery tens of kilometres away, and observers then see where the shells land and send back corrections. Observers we rarely see talked about in the media, but are basically have the same sneaking around skill set as snipers, just an additional skill of knowing better where they even are and what direction their looking at and the distance to things they're looking at.

What the video also shows is the level of vulnerability of the soldiers when they first reach this position compared with the stage 6 trench they have built at the end. The combat effectiveness or "force multiplier" of the trench is several orders of magnitude. Of course, trenches don't move, so infantry can't bring this force multiplier with them to assault an enemy position. The tank is basically a trench that you can take with you.

Without serious armor and supporting artillery fire, and ideally air support as well, it's basically impossible for infantry to assault a well dug in position by themselves (why WWI resulted in one giant stalemate for so long).

Hence, we do see a lot of chaos in the East of Russian troops maneuvering around and they can be ambushed and harassed. However, if the strategy is to encircle the entire East, then the North-West and South-West pincers are being well dug-in as they go, and it really seems to me that Ukrainians can't do much about that with just infantry.

In particular any sort of conscript or civilian given a rifle, will have essentially zero effectiveness in any offensive maneuver. Infantry (alone) do have a few offensive maneuvers they can do, but it will almost always involve a "long sneak / death march" to arrive somewhere the enemy simply doesn't expect. This requires a high level of sneak skill, strength and endurance to carry stuff (weapons, ammo, food) many kilometres and still be effective enough to take enemy position; the utility of such maneuvers is also extremely limited as without armor infantry simply can't go very far and very fast, so even if you do take some enemy positions you can't really follow through to rout the enemy rear positions. If you look at a map of Ukraine and think about how far you can actually carry heavy stuff in a day, you'll get a feeling for the limitations of infantry maneuvers. Why armor is so effective at offensive maneuvers starts with simply being able to get to the battle in a reasonable amount of time; the difference in maneuverability is basically exactly the same as if you decided to do everything by walking instead of car or public transport for the next week.

And, once you have armor you have significantly more logistical problems: armor needs fuel and heavy ammunition. You can send someone with a bunch of food and a buddy with a bunch of ammo to resupply a whole infantry unit for the day, and these people will be hard to spot and difficult to kill even if you do spot them from the air; but you can't resupply tanks and armored personnel carriers and armored artillery on foot, so you need fuel and ammo trucks which can't just sneak around in the woods and marshes.

Likewise, why armor is so effective at counter offensives as well. If you look at a map of Ukraine and you imagine a position on a defensive line 20km away coming under assault ... if you have to walk there with your weapons, ammunition, food, it will take you the entire day and the whole battle maybe over by the time you get there. Ok, you can hop in a civilian car and drive there ... by any artillery or air strikes at all on the road between here maybe impassible to a civilian vehicle and if you some under artillery fire on the way, a civilian vehicle won't offer much protection.

Whereas having an APC solves a lot of problems compared to a civilian vehicle, and also can carry way more ammunition and brings along it's own machine gun and cannon that maybe useful too. However, even if the APC is immediately disabled when arriving at the battle, ATMG's are unlikely to just kill everyone inside (far more likely to be disabled than be totally destroyed), so the infantry can get out are "fresh" for the fight; if the area is secured, of even not, there maybe still a whole bunch of supplies in the APC that are incredibly useful for continuing the operation (conventional warfare, even by infantry with unmounted arms, consumes large amounts of ammunition, super difficult to resupply on foot whereas one APC arriving, even if immediately disabled, may still provide a significant amount of ammunition).

One last note, when we see online videos of tanks being hit by ATGM's, the large explosion can be the reactive armor working as intended, and super long ATMG shots can easily be at decoys.

Disabling an armored vehicle is not the same as killing everyone inside, and if the crew survives, Russia has plenty more armored vehicles. Even when we see totally destroyed armor, this could still be blown up sometime after the vehicle was disables and the crew escaped. Vehicles can be disabled by just driving over the wrong thing, but it is the skilled crew that is far more valuable than the vehicle. There are weapons that can completely obliterate a tank and everyone who dwells within the tank, but they are heavy weapons and not shoulder mounted ATGM's.

But the main thing to be taken away from the trench video, is that that's how to effectively use conscripts, and still requires learning how to dig and fortify a trench and experienced professionals deciding where it's useful to send people to dig trenches, and out of shape conscripts are going to need a lot of time and experienced sergeants regularly checking in on them to yell at them.

So, if you mobilized a month before an invasion you can secure a lot of positions and lazy out of shape middle-managers can even get in shape a bit.

And, once you've dug one trench, this in no way prevents digging more! You can then leave a tiny garrison in your front line trenches and have everyone else go dig a second line, third line, etc. You don't really ever get to the end of trench digging. No one has ever said "this is it, this is the last trench to dig".

But they would need more than just those ATGMs, but also artillery and medium range Surface-to-Air missile systems. — ssu

Yes, so far we've heard mainly about the ATMG's and Manpads, but there maybe other things in the pipe or stuff deployed in secret. But mechanized warfare requires serious training and logistics, so it's not clear to me what other weapons systems can be just thrown in.

But still, it's not going well for the Russians. — ssu

We really don't know how Putin and his generals evaluate things. Russia tolerates far more casualties than Western armies.

If Russia achieves it's objectives (which we don't even know at this point ... other than they are obviously in Ukraine), Putin, generals, Kremlin and even most ordinary Russians may view the war as a hard fought battle, but worth it.

In particular, people shouldn't underestimate how much ordinary Russians hate Nazism, and the West's own journalists have been documenting this movement in Ukraine since 2014. Whatever political / moral / policy discussions we may have about it, Russians will react to videos of these people (that they happily produce themselves) extremely negatively.

Also, it's estimated some 10 000 people have died in the civil war in the East since 2014 to the start of this war, so the logic of "getting it done" when Russians / ethnic Russians are dying anyways regularly, can make a lot of sense from the Russian perspective.

However, we really don't know much about what the average Russian is thinking about things (obviously sanctions are hitting, no one like wars--except those neo-nazis--, people are dying, and so on), but once the war is over there are many bases on which it could be considered "worth it" to ordinary Russians.

Russians were already demonized by our media before the war ... so, it's unlikely they care too much about even more demonization.

The Western media logic is mostly: we disapprove, therefore it's a blunder, therefore Russian troops are unmotivated, therefore Putin is looking for an off-ramp. But this logic is entirely self-generated.

Putin maybe happy to end the war with what he (from his perspective) reasonably asked, but he maybe perfectly content also cutting Ukraine in half and taking everything East of the Dnieper River.

Russians like land ... that's why they have the most of it already.

↪boethius are you averse to including evidence/sources with your posts? — Changeling

I'm not averse to it, but the whole point of my post is that we don't really know what's going on. Western media continuously say one unsourced thing, so seems appropriate to say the alternative scenario.

But the main source is just the maps of what territory Russia is holding / contesting, which clearly do advance everyday on the West-North and West-South main pincers. There's really no way to know about the state of those pincers in terms of soldiers, equipment, logistics, and likewise the state of Ukrainian resistance to those pincers.

There's also a whole bunch of maps made by different people with different biases and sourcing, none of which are "authoritative", but I assume anyone interested in this topic we're discussing checks on one map or another (or sees on TV).

What we can know is that if the pincers meet then the entire East of Ukraine will be encircled and that will certainly change the dynamic of the war (but not necessarily end it, as the West Ukraine can keep harassing and attacking from time to time ... potentially for years).

In terms of infantry being extremely poor at attacking maneuvers (without armor against dug-in positions supported by armor, mortars, artillery, planes and attack helicopters), this is based on my personal experience training for this sort of warfare. Never been in a war, but live fire exercises of this kind make it pretty clear that exiting the trench is extremely hazardous ... even to run away, much more so to run towards the enemy line.

It's not really in dispute that Russia has far more armor than Ukraine, and NATO could supply armor but then that needs training, logistics ... and Russia has plenty anti-armor weapons.

Hence, focus on sending Ukraine anti-tank guided missiles and manpads. These are extremely dangerous weapons for sure, but you can't really assault and take a dug-in position with these weapons; certainly harass supply lines and lay ambushes but they don't really help defend against a concentrated offensive. So, if Russia digs in on the sides of a pincer and has a concentrated offensive to move forward, there's not much Ukraine can do about it with ATGM's and manpads.

However, as I mention, deception is a large part of warfare, so if there's some game changing weapon or tactic ... maybe we don't know about it.

But if you want sources, feel free to ask which factual statement you want sourced and I provide more information.

All the commentary on Putin is simply arguments he could say to play things at home (his main audience), doesn't need to make sense to Westerners (just as what Trump said didn't make sense to us Europeans), and, of course, Putin may say something different. But @Isaac was simply pointing out that Putin hasn't stated more than extremely minimal objectives, so he can easily just set the bar at whatever has been achieved at any moment.