Russia's Invasion After Ukraine's Counter-offensive ft. Lily Lynch
Added 2023-10-29 22:33:29 +0000 UTCLily Lynch, writer for the New Statesman, joins us to discuss Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia and the state of the conflict.
https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-essay/2023/09/ukraine-war-realists-right
-The status of the counteroffensive -Expectations within Ukraine about US Support, and Reality -Morale/Conscription -Relationship between US military leaders and Ukraine -Any Resolution in sight? Ukraine and Russia objectives.
Comments
Lily's piece was excellent as was the interview. The response of a certain segment of hawkish left/liberal types to this war has left me a little cracked. I just remember feuding with a lot of these types in the majority report discord a while back and it feels like it's often impossible to discuss this stuff in good faith from materialistic perspectives. You immediately get pigeon holed by some idiots as a "grayzone listener" or a "putin apologist" but there have been very credible arguments from nat sec types as well as restrainers from the beginning that a ceasefire is in the best interest of Ukrainians. I see no point in tens of thousands additional deaths for a few extra kilometers of territory taken. Moreover, the west simply does not have enough artillery shells or barrels to give Ukraine a superiority in fires. We started raiding south korean stockpiles significantly earlier than the Russians started raiding North Korean stockpiles. The US's logistical supply chain for 105mm,155mm, and himars has only just gotten spun up this year and the one plant in the country that makes primer for these munitions was damaged in a fire a few years back. These are hard constraints that no amount of moral posturing can really overcome. Finally the attempt to isolate russia economically has largely failed- see ben aris's work on that. Europe is still buying Russian Oil from India. Russia is no longer offering india steep discounts in crude instead they are selling it to them for a few dollars under the market price. Finally the German economy is entirely predicated on using extremely cheap LNG from Russia to produce high quality goods at lower costs. Germany boycotting russian gas really hurts them a lot more than it hurts the russians. Germany's economy is expected to contract by 0.3% in 2023 while Russia is actually expected to see their economy grow by 0.7%. The Russians can simply sell the resources to the developing world and China who don't give a shit about what the west has to say since we do you know regime change operations in their countries all the time. It would be great if Brazil and China could work out some peace plan with western powers. I don't think China was really all that pleased with Putin's decision. Ukraine's largest trading partner before this was China I think, China owns 10% of Ukranian farmland on long term leases, and Ukraine was one of China's largest belt and road initiative partners.
PostmasterFenian
2023-11-08 14:17:25 +0000 UTCUkraine is not an empire. Ukraine is trying to break off from corrupt governments from Russia. Understand corruption is still a problem. Maybe a Ukraine with a struggling for rep government and autonomy, is the dream. (Vs the results in Chechnya or Belarus, neither preferable)
Ng12345
2023-11-05 07:14:18 +0000 UTC
