What constitutes the condition of "until proven otherwise"?
For example, for one who does not see any gap between Heidegger's philosophy and his political declarations, why is it incumbent upon me to separate the two? He does not do that anywhere that I am aware of. If the burden of proof does not fall upon him, what else is left?
That was just an example. The first question about proof is what confronts all in regard to the situation in Ukraine. — Paine
Ukraine is recovering it's territory, not losing more. It's fighting a conventional war against Russia and not fighting a hit-and-run insurgency. Oryx that counts the destroyed/damaged/captured tanks can come up to numbers of 1300 tanks lost simply tells a lot. It speaks of a military failure that you cannot just deny. — ssu
Yep. It should be no contest. But then Russian incompetence, as all the credible analysis says… — apokrisis
Incompetence is a pretty high threshold and you can of course be competent and still fail, especially in a negative sum game such as war. — boethius
what is the background against which you're measuring 'competence'? — Isaac
Thanks for posting that Kofman interview which flatly contradicts your talking points. That you could hear it as saying the opposite makes me quite worried about your comprehension skills. — apokrisis
I focus primarily on the Russian military.
And let’s be honest, for those of us who follow this war, definitely engage in some pragmatic self censorship while looking at the Ukrainian military. I just want to put those cards on the table and be frank about it.
I think the Ukrainian military definitely enjoys a man power advantage, and likely has several hundreds thousand personnel that are mobilised and armed and at this point, ok. That allows the Ukrainian military to rotate troops on the front and introduce fresh troops.
It doesn’t translate necessarily into a huge advantage in correlation of forces as folks might assume, and as you can tell looking at the battlefield, it doesn’t feel like in most parts of the front as if Ukraine has a 3 to 1 or even more advantage over Russian forces as manpower would confer.
For a couple of reasons.
First, Russia still enjoys a fires advantage in artillery and that makes it hard to concentrate forces, on the Ukrainian side. That has been how the Russian military was able to make progress even though they did not have an advantage in troops, per se, they consistently had an advantage in fires up until June, and they could concentrate fires and they could achieve localised advantage, and that’s how they were making progress in the Donbas.
Ok, so second, Ukraine is generating additional units and brigades but it also has to recover from degradation of force quality. Why? In a major conventional war you’re going to lose your best equipment and your best people early on. Right. A lot of your best units are going to be heavy in the fighting and their going to get attrition, right, so Ukrainian military has also faced degradation of quality and that’s why you have the British effort to conduct training and other countries looking to add unit training on top of individual training and trying to fix what is kind of the long pole in the tent, which is, umm, maintaining quality of the force and allowing Ukraine to regenerate or reconstitute its military as the war goes on.
Cause the longer the war goes, the more outcomes hinge on sustainability. Who’s able to reconstitute better, which military comes back better than it was before, which military is able to replace its losses.
Beyond that, I don’t have a lot of details. I don’t know anybody that does. It’s actually very hard to look there. Let’s be frank. I think we know a lot more about what’s happening in the Russian military than the Ukraine military, and that’s been the case consistently, not just during this war, but well before the war. — Michael Kofman interview
Further, the fact that they managed to go on the offensive while outnumbered implies that they are not incompetent. To state as much would be a harsh insult to the Ukrainian military. After all, if the Russians are so incompetent then why weren't the Ukrainian forces able to defend against them when they had a numerical superiority on the battlefield? — Tzeentch
And also, to be frank, the more we’ve learned about the beginning of the war, right, the early phases, the more it becomes clear that actually there was quite a bit of capabilities used that we didn’t know about early on. Electronic warfare for example that has proved rather effective for the Russian military and continues to be so, ah, various, ah, attempts to fragment Ukrainian command and control. Employment of offensive cyber means. There’s an impression that some of these capabilities that some of these capabilities were the dog that didn’t bark early on in the more And I just want to say folks should be very careful with that assumption, because I think a lot of what’s going to come out over time increasingly will show that that’s not exactly true. That actually these capabilities used much more than assumed early on and have been used more throughout the war.
And it’s always a challenge, the early takes are often if not wrong based on very incomplete information. And, you I like to annoy people and tell them look, we’re six months into the war just remember we’re still arguing about what happened in World War One.
So be very cautious on how much you consume, and over consume, the current information available about how this war has gone and why. So there as a community we need to be more humble in coming to big conclusions. — apokrisis
Plans that work because you’ve correctly prepared. — apokrisis
I wondered who would claim such nonsense and why. — apokrisis
↪boethius A lot of blah, blah, blah. Then a careful silence on your wild misrepresentation of Kofman’s analysis. — apokrisis
Note that I summarised his view as that Putin’s political war aims were incompetent because the Russian forces lacked the structural competence to execute them. Then on top of that, there was the incompetent execution due to poor preparation, systemic corruption, low morale, normalised sloppiness, etc, etc. — apokrisis
Vexler explaining why “competence” is such a touchy word for Putin and his rule by information autocracy…. — apokrisis
Asking to join NATO and EU, and be ready to suffer a war against Russia to defend their choice wrt anti-Western rhetoric and hostility from Russia are unquestionable evidences for that. — neomac
Boyko is considered to be one of the primary proponents of closer relations with Russia in Ukrainian politics
Similar protests take place in Russia. — Isaac
I've provided three reports from the world's leading human rights groups detailing the situation in Eastern Ukraine and their assessment is that the abuses by both sides are not noticeably different. — Isaac
So I'd need some fairly compelling evidence to the contrary if we're to justify 600 deaths a day as being a worthwhile sacrifice for keeping the disputed territory in the control of this 'West-leaning' government. So far no one's provided anything but wishful thinking.
That was before the war, before Zelensky even. But Russia is going down into absolute autocracy, all the while Ukraine's evolution is positive. — Olivier5
NATO is a military defensive organisation and the EU an economic one. Neither decision 'unquestionably' shows anything about a commitment to the sorts of human rights gains that the countries within those institutions enjoy. NATO particularly has absolutely no human rights element whatsoever. — Isaac
Nor are Ukraine 'ready to suffer a war against Russia' for that move. There's no link at all. The fiercest fighting against Russia has come from the ultranationalists, the very same groups opposed to westernisation. — Isaac
But they did not succeed in toppling the regime. In contrast, the euromaidan and revolution of dignity did succeed. — Olivier5
That was before the war, before Zelensky even — Olivier5
But Russia is going down into absolute autocracy, all the while Ukraine's evolution is positive. — Olivier5
Impunity for torture remained endemic. Gender-based violence remained widespread, although a new law removed legal obstacles to prosecuting military personnel and police for domestic violence. Homophobic attacks by groups advocating discrimination and violence continued. The investigation of attacks against journalists and human rights defenders was slow and often ineffective. A draft law on the security services envisaged additional powers of surveillance without legal safeguards. The crackdown on dissent and human rights defenders in occupied Crimea continued. Violations of international humanitarian law by both sides in eastern Ukraine remained uninvestigated.
So Russia should never had started this war, because by the same logic, it isn't a worthwhile sacrifice for keeping the disputed territory in the control of Russia either. — Olivier5
I simply asked you if Ukraine is more pro-West than Russia? The answer is unequivocally yes. — neomac
a tiny minority of Ukrainian ultranationalists — neomac
It's like citing a revolution in Scotland as evidence of England's pro-scottish tendency. — Isaac
No it isn't. Pro-west is not a single measure but is made up of military, economic and cultural forces. — Isaac
... We're talking about the situation in Donbas. — Isaac
It's like citing a revolution in Scotland as evidence of England's pro-scottish tendency. — Isaac
The crackdown on dissent and human rights defenders in occupied Crimea continued.
Yep. Well done, you've reached the conclusion that anyone with a reading age over five reached. — Isaac
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