Russia Ukraine Update Thread - part 3

This is an interesting video by the Ukraine Matters youtube channel.

RUSSIA on the Brink of DISASTER! - Ukraine War Update


At time index 4:15, he shows this chart, where the gold or yellow part of the bar shows how much of Ukraine's territory is held by Ukraine. The other two colors show Russian occupied Ukrainian territory, magenta before 24th Feb 2022 and the orange after that date.

That's from this source, where it's interactive so you can scroll over the bars and see actual percentages displayed to 2 decimal places.

I would also mention that reported Russian soldier losses have been increasing, from 300 per day, to 600 per day, to now about 1000 per day, so Russia has paid a dear price for those small gains, in both personnel and equipment.

If you look at how much of a signup bonus Russia has offered for joining the military voluntarily, at first I was hearing numbers in approximate USD equivalents like $2000, which is a lot of money in Russia, and that worked for a while. Then in Moscow earlier this year, Putin was not getting many takers, despite the huge offer of a down payment of 1.9 million roubles ($21,777) from the city, taking their annual pay in their first service year to 5.2 million roubles ($59,600). 5.2 million rubles is about half of Putin's official 2021 income of 10.2 million rubles! Is that insane or what? (Of course that official number doesn't include the vast fortunes Putin receives through kleptocracy).

What has been confirmed is Putin getting something like 12,000 soldiers from N Korea, which should demonstrate his desperation in not finding enough Russians to fight the war.

Now I think the N Koreans are training, but if they do go to the front lines, it will be interesting to see if they can fight and what happens to them. Will some defect?

One article in the video is about some Russian soldiers being asked to go on a suicide mission. They refused, it was referred to as a mutiny or something. But then they surrendered, and were executed. Well I guess they were going to die either way, right? Russians should do more of that killing their own soldiers, so Ukraine has less Russians to kill. But i suppose they were sending a message to other Russians who might refuse to go on suicide missions. They probably should have taken the 10 year jail sentence for refusing to join the military during mobilization. I know some Russians took that option, but I don't know how many.

The video also talks about this article, linked here, if you'd rather read it than watch the video summarizing some points from the article:

Does Russia face military collapse by 2026? Inside Ukraine’s strategic assessment
As I said in a previous post, Russia is not going to run out of tanks completely, but they can't keep up the rate of refurbishing old soviet relic tanks in storage forever, because those inventories are decreasing, as confirmed in satellite photos.

Bad news for Ukraine though is Russia is ramping up its Iskander production, missiles which are hard for Ukraine to defend against. However, Ukraine is also stepping up its own drone and missile attacks against Russia, and has just started using it's budget version of a cruise missile, the jet-powered "Palianytsia". Look at how much Ukraine's attacks on Russia have increased in 2024, compared to 2022-2023!

a reply to: Arbitrageur
Haha, oh man Russia on the verge of collapse?? Your a funny guy, but the ones who produce it, they are even more comical. Moscow will fall any day now, while simultaneously Russian forces are somehow also making preparations to invade countries like Moldova and Latvia or something ??

The propaganda just contradicts itself from one day to the next. Whatever, it is come to be expected. In a few months time, you guys in Europe get to own this all by yourselves and we will hopefully have finally washed our hands of this European adventurism.

Looks like Russia has taken Georgia after recently losing Moldova to the west. One each. I guess Putin will be sort of happy with that for now................................

"Georgia’s pro-western opposition has called on the country to protest on Monday against the disputed parliamentary victory of the ruling, Russia-aligned Georgian Dream (GD) party.

GD retained power in Saturday’s pivotal election that dealt a significant blow to the country’s long-held aspirations for EU membership, amid allegations of voter intimidation and coercion.

The opposition refused to concede defeat and accused the ruling party of a “constitutional coup”, setting the stage for a potential political crisis that could further polarise the Caucasus country.

At a press conference organised by the opposition on Sunday evening, Georgia’s pro-EU president, Salome Zourabichvili, declared that she did not recognise the election results and asserted that the country had fallen victim to a “Russian special operation” www.theguardian.com...

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
a reply to: Arbitrageur
Haha, oh man Russia on the verge of collapse?? Your a funny guy, but the ones who produce it, they are even more comical.

The title of the article I posted is "Does Russia face military collapse by 2026?" It talks about how Ukraine is destroying Russian tanks faster than Russia can make them, so to make up the shortfall, Russia is refurbishing old soviet tanks from storage. My comment about the article referred to the depletion of soviet tanks in storage. Are you denying that satellite photos show the previously huge number of soviet era tanks in Russian storage is being depleted?

Moscow will fall any day now, while simultaneously Russian forces are somehow also making preparations to invade countries like Moldova and Latvia or something ??

Citation please, where are you getting this from? Are you just making a strawman argument to make a fake argument against? Or are you referring to Freeborn's post, which is clearly NOT contradictory, because it's suggesting any Russian attack on Moldova is for now averted because Russia is too busy with Ukraine, so it's either/or, not both at the same time, Russia is too weak for that.

The propaganda just contradicts itself from one day to the next. Whatever, it is come to be expected. In a few months time, you guys in Europe get to own this all by yourselves and we will hopefully have finally washed our hands of this European adventurism.

Where is the contradiction? Not in Freeborn's post. Also, just because Russia is ambitious, doesn't mean they will achieve their ambitious goals. Denys Davydov posted this video of a Russian soldier with a soviet flag in the background, saying first they will take Kiev, then Berlin.

Russian soldier in front of soviet flag saying first we take Kyiv, then Berlin, on Telegram:
t.me...

The original Russian plan was to take Kyiv, but I don't think Putin will live long enough to see that, because look at the Russian rate of progress in the graph I posted. Kyiv is a long way from the eastern front. I think it would have to be someone in charge of Russia after Putin dies, if Russia, or the re-born soviet union, would ever take Kyiv. And according to the Russian soldier, Berlin isn't immediately threatened, because they need to take Kyiv first, then Berlin.

While I don't see Russia's military taking Kyiv any time in the near future, I also don't see the military collapsing just because they deplete the soviet era tanks. I think collapse is a strong word, but the depletion of the soviet era tanks will have an effect on the Russian military, whatever you want to call that effect.

If there will be a collapse in Russia, I think the economic collapse looks like it's coming sooner than the military collapse. Inflation is so out of control, the Russian bank has raised the key interest rate in Russia again, above the emergency level, so based on that, I think it's fair to say Russia's economy is now in a state of emergency, and this is according to how Russia defined a 20% interest rate as an emergency rate, when they previously implemented that rate, it's not some made up propaganda.

R ussia’s Central Bank Raises Key Rate to Historic 21%, Signals Aggressive Fight to Curb Inflation

Russia’s Central Bank raised its key interest rate from 19% to a historic 21% on Friday, taking it even higher than the emergency rate initially introduced after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as officials scrambled to shield the economy from Western sanctions.

So it's not just at the emergency rate, it's even higher than the emergency rate of 20%!

a reply to: ufoorbhunter
So, a new Soviet union is materializing?
A new iron curtain has been falling for a couple of years now, as sanctions have isolated Russia, and as Russia is isolating itself from the rest of the world by shutting down all free speech. They have even made youtube impossible to use in Russia, and cut off other services like Discord.

www.express.co.uk...

Vladimir Putin panic as Russia loses eye-watering 10,000 troops in a single week

It brings the total number of casualties suffered by the Kremlin to 690,720 since the start of the invasion in February 2022, Ukraine's General Staff said.
Vladimir Putin is facing another crisis after Russia lost another 10,000 troops who were killed or injured over just seven days, according to new statistics from Ukraine.

It brings the total number of casualties suffered by the Kremlin to 690,720 since the start of the invasion in February 2022, Ukraine's General Staff said.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

A new USSR materialising? Yes it seems so Arbi. Belarus, Georgia, The bit of Moldova in the east. The important industrial parts of Ukraine in Donbas, Novo southern Ukraine. Think Tajikistan is in the fold. Kazachstan is probably the big prize. Plenty of 'sudetenland' type russians living there to turn up the heat if necessary. The only thing stopping Russian takeover of central asia is China yet they will probably split the region between them.

War is hell, and Putin is trying to control the narrative Russians are exposed to by controlling the Russian state media.
at first, Russia welcomed pro-Russian bloggers talking about the "special military operation", but some of those started reporting the truth about how many Russian soldiers were getting killed and wounded for such little gains, and for reporting that truth, they are now in Russian prison. So that risk to Putin's grip on power was contained, but he still has had pesky things like youtube to contend with, where people in Russia previously could see uncensored commentary from the rest of the world about Russia and even people outside Russia calling it a war instead of a special military operation.

This story is a little bit on the lighter side, of how Russia is punishing Google, for censoring Russians. At first, Google was fined 100,000 Rubles (a little over $1000), but that has doubled once a week as Google refused to pay it, and doubling increases exponentially so the fine is now many times greater than the GDP of the entire planet. That made me laugh.

Russia fines Google more than the world's entire GDP

$20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is the number a Moscow court wants the YouTube parent company to pay for blocking Russian media outlets. It is a sum “filled with symbolism,” the Kremlin told NBC News on Thursday.

Google's market value of 2 trillion dollars isn't even a millionth of the fine amount. While Google's parent company acknowledged the Russian legal issue, they don't expect it to have a "material effect" on the company, since Russia has no chance of collecting.
What may happen is the remaining Russians that were trying to make a living on youtube might end up losing access entirely, though some Russians reported that youtube got so slow a couple months ago they could no longer upload their videos. So Russians were reporting it as unusable, even though maybe it hasn't been officially banned yet. An official ban may be coming though, and any other services like Google that leak information from outside Russia may also be restricted, to allow the Russian state more potential for mind control of Russians via state controlled media, without pesky outside interference.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

It has been a week since any updates. I guess things are not looking good. History legends switched to covering Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict. War leaks, continues to drip feed archive footage from the first days of the Kursk offensive, as I stated would be the case for weeks and weeks right after it happened. At least youtubers are not trying to pretend they were new actions anymore.

Russia closed off the border so another thing is happening exactly as I said, they will be dealt with in a pincer move, now with the help of North Koreans. Kursk is not even a part of the negotiations as Russia can resolve the matter as an anti-terror op within their borders with the help of friendly assets from other states/countries.

Well at least now with a couple of generations worth of men are no longer in Ukraine, Europe and North America can continue importing the widows and women for dirt cheap sex trafficking, as has always been the case with Ukraine to begin with.

Well at least we get cheap hookers 'ey mate? yes, appalling thing to say, but that is the way of the world innit?

Far from confirmed but rumours are going round that the upcoming Trump admins plans for peace in Ukraine are for Ukraine to give up 20% of its territory and for Europe, in paticular the UK, to foot the bill for an 800km DMZ zone (no detail on if the DMZ will be on Ukranian soil, Russias or both) as a UN peacekeeping force is seen as the US funding it.

If true then it gives Putin a huge boost and appeases him beyond his wildest dreams while crippling Europe and Ukraine - hopefully just a rumour and the actual plan is more realistic and geared towards peace.

Reports suggest UK to lead buffer zone in Trumps DMZ plan

a reply to: bastion

Obviously I don't know the details but it's always been my impression that Trump's solution is all about selling Ukraine out and Appeasing Putin's demands and desires.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

a reply to: Freeborn
well hey man, if you think stopping the endless slaughter of the Ukrainian male population leaving en entire generation of women and kids exposed to human trafficking with no men left to protect them is appeasement, you are welcome to grovel at the feet of your masters in Britain, and demand an initiation of war against Russia to save Ukraine. In world wars, borders change. NATO member Turkey still holds a chunk of Northern Syria, while other NATO members occupy a huge chunk of East Syria and have continued to pillage its resources for our general welfare. Iraq is now a vassal state of Iran. Land changed hands between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Israel is currently fumigating the Gaza strip and attempting to do the same to Lebanon for the intended goal of settling the lands in their typical push forward, occupy, settle, and then push forward again to create a new buffer zone. They have been doing it for decades, they clearly are not stopping now.


When allegedly free people stop seeing one side of the world's crimes against sovereignty as acceptable while attempting to diminish the legitimacy of other state's security concerns maybe we can all get somewhere. I am sure Hitler was surprised the world did not agree with him invading sovereign lands. Perhaps not pretending to be surprised that an opposing force has responded to current corporate/military adventurism while the alliance has facilitated the invasion or overthrow of dozens of weak small lesser developed states to take control of their domestic industry and markets since its creation in the fifties is a start. Stop pretending to yourself that our side is right in its foreign policy when the people of the world and the nations who were victim to our half century of military adventurism of attacking weaker small sovereign states have been quite vocal in their disagreement with these policies.

Ok, i am ready and on standby to be called a Russian propagandist. It carries no wait anymore anyways. Unless of course I was in Britain, to which I am certain there would be cheers to lock me up with your fellow citizens for speech violations, of which you have attempted to insist to me in previous posts in other threads was not a thing.

Oh wait here is a better idea, just pretend you don't know what I am talking about and call me some crazy person and then leave off with a post feigning righteous indignation and a desire to no longer bother entertaining discussions with loons.

Or we can rally together and cheer at the defeat of globalist plans to enslave humanity by overthrowing the USA and using our military to destroy the world through the initiation of nuclear warfare with our strongest military rivals. The world should not be rallying to save a nation who's historical titles include one of the most corrupt governments on Earth, a legacy of child sex trafficking and human trafficking in general. A strong black market for human organs, which Europeans are continuing to buy up with fervor now. The only parties claiming Ukraine was some shining beacon of Democratic virtues are the warmongering globalists seeking European energy security through force and the benefactors of human organs black market and human trafficking industry as well as the chickenhawks who support them.

Now wash your hands of this filth in Eastern Europe and move on to the next adventure, as all of our collective media will soon memory-hole this entire fiasco and start calling it old news to save face.

Oh wait I forgot one more response option. "sorry, word salad, not going to read a word. I am done with this subject it is clear people support communists and soviet autocrats/oligarchies over European royal interests." yea, that was probably the more likely reply option anyways.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Nobody wants War with Russia. That would be WW3.

Odd that you might think anyone does.

Describing a whole country as "filth" is not very nice, either.

a reply to: Oldcarpy2
Oh no?? What a strange about face now being done compared to the rhetoric of the last year. That is really strange of you. Well whatever, Ukraine can drain your taxes now, not ours. Enjoy that.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

When have I ever expressed any desire for WW3?

Clue: I haven't.

Cant understand why people are parroting unconfirmed rumors from anonymous sources yet again.

Trump might sell them out, trump might not, trump probably doesnt even know for certain at this point, he needs to get the briefings and up to speed on whats going on before that can happen.

how about we wait and see what he does in 70 odd days before we argue over it.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

We're not at war with Russia, we're giving aid to Ukraine after Russia waged war on them and invaded. We've been giving aid to Ukraine for years, the US is one of the lowest contributors in terms of GDP.

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Well at least we get cheap hookers 'ey mate? yes, appalling thing to say, but that is the way of the world innit?

I will have to defer to your knowledge about cheap hookers, since that's a subject I am not familiar with.

I saw a video on youtube from a couple (western man and Ukrainian woman) who are matchmakers trying to help Ukrainian woman and western men hook up with each other. They were saying that since the war started in 2022, Ukrainian women have had lots of options to go to western countries (with or without children) and get public support as refugees, so they have lots of options now and don't need to hook up with a western man to get into a western country now.

So with all those social welfare options for Ukraine women refugees, it seems like they have a lot of other options besides prostitution.

Here's a mother and daugher who escaped Ukraine. Initially they were in Kyiv, when the air raid sirens were going off and they had to go hide in basement bomb shelters for hours at a time while Putin was attacking children's hospitals and other civilian targets. The daughter kept people's spirits up as the bombs were falling overhead, by singing a song from the movie "Frozen". Someone videoed it and posted it online and it went viral. Now she's singing it for a foreign audience, but these are the kind of innocent civilians Putin is trying to kill when he attacks children's hospitals etc, and when I see this little Ukrainian girl singing, I don't think of "filth", as you put it.

8 year old Amelia Anisovych from Kyiv sings Let It Go then joined by the cast of Frozen - 31/12/2022


a reply to: bastion

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: bastion

Obviously I don't know the details...

I'd be surprised if Trump knows the details of Trumps plan at this point, he certainly didn't share any publicly except to say if Ukraine didn't agree to his proposal, he'd cut off support to Ukraine, and if Russia didn't agree, he'd increase support to Ukraine. I doubt Russia would agree to a temporary freeze of the current front lines for a peace deal as long as Ukraine is in Kursk, which is why Russia is trying hard to push Ukraine out, but so far, without much success. My guess is Ukraine will still be in Kursk when Trump is sworn in, because the muddy season is here which limits what can be done until the mud either freezes or goes away.

One analyst said Russia would need something like 100,000 troops to push Ukraine out of Kursk, and they are trying to do it with only 50,000. Maybe if they add 10,000 N Koreans it will be 60,000, but who knows how effective the N Koreans will be? Apparently 19 have defected already. They are probably all shocked to see what the world outside N Korea looks like.

One thing is 99.999% certain, Trump won't end the conflict in 24 hours like he promised in his campaign. Does anybody want to place any bets that Trump will actually end the war in 24 hours, like he said he would?

This is big news. First, a historical recap of what Putin was saying about sanctions:
2022 March through December: Sanctions aren't hurting us.
2023 All: Sanctions aren't hurting us, and our economy is great.
2024 January though July: Sanctions aren't hurting us, and our economy is great.

2024 July, this opinion piece was published, some might have thought it to be Western propaganda...

“Russia is lying about its economic strength: sanctions are working – and we need more”

President Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian regime are peddling the false narrative that the Russian economy is strong, and that its war machine is unharmed by western sanctions. This is a lie that must be rebutted. In fact, there are many signs that the Russian war economy is deteriorating. The sanctions and other measures to weaken the Russian economy are effective, but even more can be done.

So in July those authors pointed out that Putin's lies about sanctions not affecting Russia and their economy being strong need to be rebutted. The huge news is that now it is Putin himself who has rebutted his previous claims!

If Putin was lying before about the economy being strong and sanctions not having an effect, why did he suddenly start telling the truth now? Because things are getting so bad, he can't lie about it anymore. The Russian economy is in a state of emergency with the key interest rate at 21%, above the emergency level of 20%.

Russians' top banker said there is no way out of the current economic predicament except for a deep recession. And now Putin has also admitted Russia's economy is in bad shape, and here's the shocker, he admitted it's because of sanctions! Unsurprisingly, he throws a few lies in his statements to avoid admitting it's happening because of the war he started, but, it's happening because of the war he started, and not only won't he admit that, but he's still not even calling it a war!

Putin Admits For The First Time That Russian Economy Is In Crisis

Putin (told) Russian people lies of the state of Russian economy and its future. Now he admits that the international sanctions are working.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Vance had mentioned the DMZ on current lines with Europe footing the bill and Ukraine banned from joining alliances like NATO and EU/EEC a few times during the campaign but no details of how to achieve it were offered or any fleshed out plan of action - it seemed more off the cuff comments not based in the real world same as the 24 hour soundbites.

That plan doesn't seem to have progessed at all since he first mentioned it in April so hopefully the other plans have some subtance instead of back of a fag packet peacedeals only Putin would agree to.

Vance floats potential Ukraine DMZ plan

I think Ukraine giving up Crimea and UN peacekeeping controlled DMZ on original Ukraine-Russia border could be a realistic plan all sides would agree to but a non-UN/current frontline DMZ would massively increase conflict on other fronts and allows Ukraine to maintain sovereignty instead of barring them from joining or working with EU/EC and pretending they're sovereign.

Russia has suffered record losses during October according to Admiral Tony Radakin a senior Royal Navy officer and Chief of the Defence Staff.

Russia has suffered its worst ever month for casualties since the start of the war in Ukraine, the UK chief of defence staff has told the BBC.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said Russia’s forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured "every single day" in October, bringing its losses to 700,000 since the war began in February 2022.

He also adds that though Russia is definitely making territorial gains in Ukraine those casualties are for what he describes as "for tiny increments of land".

He also stated that

Russia is spending more than 40% of its public expenditure on defence and security, which he said was "an enormous drain" on the country.

Which sort of validates what other posters have testified to and provided evidence of.

The Russian people are paying an awful price for what amounts to nothing more than an act of war committed to satisfy Putin's own ego driven vanity and personal glory. He desperately wants a Great epithet like celebrated Russian leaders of the past.

www.bbc.co.uk...