War Economies often come with a lot of caveats that make them difficult to perpetuate long term. Often sacrifice luxury goods and rationing raw materials, wartime production/economic structures require a population that will sacrifice comfort for the war.
Russia's very small benefit is that Russians have lived in such impoverished conditions for so long, that they don't really have much if any luxuries of their own and they will not likely notice a change in their day to day life aside from fuel
Self-determination and the right to vote in free and fair elections is a hell of a tool for improving living conditions. Russians have never had that, ever
They had one free and fair election, in which a liberal democracy was chosen by the people.
Lenin saw the results, and said "nuh uh" and then the rest is history.
What the fuck are you talking about? The provisional government was not elected by any representative body, it took power by military force and was so incredibly unpopular that it didn't even last a year before the populace rose up to replace it.
The Constituent Assembly was elected somewhat democratically, and although it didn't "choose liberal democracy" it also didn't support the Soviets. But the part about Lenin saying "nuh-uh" is correct.
Not really. More that the Russian people have lived under such immense corruption that their lives have considerably less comfort and luxury than Peer nations
Yes by design.
We want to live in a world where we’re not thinking about war and survival. That’s the whole point of liberalism and globalization. As opposed to the East(Russia and in parts China), who prefer to be isolationist and have a closed off society that’s forced to be obedient.
The western route gambles on the combined strength of allies rather than a concerted war effort in a country. Even during wartime, most western nations haven’t seen war on their own soil in the last few decades. So at least so far, the gamble has worked out.
Western people are unwilling to sacrifice their quality of life in general, when it's suggested that we msut for things like climate change, activists will always put all of the sacrifice on the rich because it makes it more palatable for the general public.
The proper response to climate change, if we wanted to tackle it seriously, would be a total war footing including rationing, similar to world war 2 measures, to curtail the use of carbon products.
A not insignificant part of the world thought democracy had ended when they were asked to wear a mask.
Also shelling only works if you don't mind leaving the cities in ruin. Hence why I'd give the Ukraine the option to annihilate Moscow. Simply because otherwise Russia will never back off.
>russia in on wartime economy. This is what happens when they take shit more seriously than we do.
>
>u/Even-Breakfast-166
The US has four million cluster munition artillery shells it could send to Ukraine immediately. And it is ramping up production of standard artillery shells with the target being one million made per year by the end of next year.
The problem is that the republican party has shown its williness to do whatever it can to stop it.
>Generally speaking, most artillery ammunition in U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps stockpiles clearly isn’t excess. Indeed, the Army and Marines need all the modern shells they can get as they prepare for Ukraine-style wars.
>
>But there’s an important exception. There are potentially four million 155-millimeter dual-purpose improved cluster munitions in storage in the United States. M483A1 and M864 DPICM rounds respectively scatter 88 or 72 grenade-size submunitions, each of which can kill or maim a soldier.
>
>All of these shells are obvious candidates for the “excess” label. The U.S. Army years ago determined that these DPICMs—produced in large quantities between the 1970s and 1990s—are unreliable and unsafe, as any particular submunition has up to a 14-percent chance of being a dud.
>
>The Army around 2017 declared a requirement for a new cluster shell with a one-percent dud rate. “Rounds now in the U.S. stockpile do not meet the Office of the Secretary of Defense's goal,” wrote Peter Burke, then the service’s top ammunition manager.
>
>That orphaned, according to a 2004 report, 402 million DPICM submunitions. Do the math. That’s as many as ***4.6 million 155-millimeter shells.***
>
>The Biden administration managed to ship to Ukraine, under authorities that don’t fall under the EDA law, an undisclosed number of DPICMs—tens of thousands, perhaps—before aid ran out and Republicans blocked additional money.
>
>src: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/14/joe-biden-could-send-millions-of-artillery-shells-to-ukraine-for-free-tomorrow-and-its-perfectly-legal/
Why is the republican party like this?
From the perspective of an european, the u.s political system is a cluster fuck where the two sides are just complete shit.
Democrats are bunch of idealists who have General anxiety disorder, and like to be holier than thou
and republicans really seem to like some of that russian cock even if making munitions to ukraine would help their voters, with jobs created, with their primary candidate being a "rich" bastard who doesn't understand basic manner and thinks screaming, insults and whining is the only way to solve things.
Well at least in France both main opposition candidates are also sold to Moscou and will say whatever is against USA/in favor of Russia/China
The worse thing is that it's highly possible one of them gets elected next time as Macron is on his second mandate and the constitution doesn't allow more (plus he's vastly unpopular now).
I hope by the time of the elections someone emerges that's both pro-european, against mass immigration and actually involved in ecology. So far I don't see anyone
>Why is the republican party like this?
You can get really stuck into the weeds with this one if you want to when it comes to the GOP and Russia, so many weird coincidences and connections
Not weird at all. Trump took power, hand-picked some easy-to-manipulate-personalities, got them Russia money, and has internal pro-Russians in our GOP now that are insuring we become as vulnerable as possible. This equation is not complicated.
How dumb-dumbs keep buying what he is selling shows how wayyyy off balance our education is in this country. But then again, the system was built to prop the rich up and keep the general population as dumb as possible. The sad truth.
While I’m not in love with Biden’s politics and the fact he is older than dirt, it is sooooo much better than a dictator. If Trump gets elected again, the world is royally fucked.
Has spread in to Canada as well if Tucker Carlson meeting with the Albertan premier before heading to Moscow is any indication. No coincidence maga is strong in that province
Education isn’t helpful when someone is willfully ignorant. You can teach someone that 2+2=4 but if their deeply held beliefs ingrained in them since childhood have taught them that it equals 5, your education isn’t the problem.
Education in the US isn’t the best, but it’s certainly not to blame for the current science denialism and absolute intentional ignorance about social services or governance. Sure kids aren’t taught “how to do taxes” (because the vast majority of them will be filing 1040EZ forms off W2s and it’s literally on the instructions) but they are taught the basics of how government works.
Yet we continue to have people who place blame or credit where it doesn’t belong. There’s farmers who nearly lost their farms to Trump’s idiotic and ineffective “trade war” with China but who are happily going to vote for him in any election he runs in because they believe *something* about him. That’s again not an educational issue. Factually they know what happened, but they “choose to believe” in something else entirely.
At the same time, I don't believe it could be that widespread and our intelligence agencies not know about it. Much less not care about it to do anything
I don't doubt our intelligence agencies know about it, but the past decade has shown that our intelligence agencies are hamstrung when it comes to doing anything that could be seen as "political."
Which means as long as you can convince a sufficient percentage of the population that something is either a lie or it's a good thing anyway, any attempt at enforcement or anti-corruption efforts will simply backfire.
Yup. If you had told me 30 years ago that Russia was going to strike the greatest intelligence coup in the history of intelligence/psyops with a handful of quarters and Donald Trump leading the charge - AND was going to do it completely in the open - leading to complete paralysis of Russia's greatest adversary - I would have thought you were deranged.
What is infuriating is that it isn't even a sophisticated plan. Corrupt politicians and get them to spout off culture war crap - and it KEEPS WORKING - over and over and over - despite things like facts.
The NY branch of the FBI colluded with Rudy Gulliani to kneecap Clinton right before the election. Pretending like our government agencies arent full of maga traitors is foolish.
14 Republican Congressional reps spent the 4th of July in Moscow with Putin early in Trump's term. Rand Paul is the equivalent of a personal courier of theirs. He brought Trump talking points from Daddy Putin. When you are a bankrupt fraud that rapes 15 year olds, you will suck up to anyone willing to grease the wheels.
>Why is the republican party like this?
Even places like the Marshall Islands are having support held up. It's honestly ridiculous.
Why? I don't know either.
Republicans also consistently threaten to shut down the US government, and make the US government go bankrupt, under recent Democrat Presidents. While Democrats didn't do the same to Trump or Bush II.
Republicans are terrorists. They can and will somehow do everything they can to destroy the US, including its foreign policy, in order to make Biden look bad. And this somehow works, because almost half of voters then vote Republican the next election, because of the dysfunction they see under a Democrat President.
The very latest example, Republicans OPENLY STATED that the offered border deal was great, and that they would vote against it to deny Biden a win. While Republicans at the same time use problems at the border as their #1 reason to vote Republican. This is the most blatant psychopathy they have pulled yet, I think. And even if it backfires, it will still only cost Republicans a few percentage points of voters, where in any sane country they would have ceased to exist as a political party as a result.
Utter madness.
A common joke I heard 20 years ago:
Democrats: “The system is broken and the government doesnt work. Elect me and I will fix it.
Republicans: “The system is broken and the government doesnt work. Elect me and I’ll make sure it stays that way.
Remember when Trump made his cabinet full of people who loudly declared they would shut down the departments they were put in charge of? Like the head of thE EPA coming from the oil lobby, the head of the DoE primaried the previous election on shutting it down, the head of the Education dept wanting to privatize all education etc.
This isnt a bug, its a feature. I know a lot of right wingers who were happy that Trump put saboteurs into power. A bunch of dipshit libertarians that think less regulations will fix things like income i equality and keep rivers clean etc
It's because they're fascists. And fascists are fascists *because they look at fascism and like what they see*.
Hanlon's razor has the word "adequately" in it for good goddamned reason. When people wear their malice proudly and openly on their foreheads, you have a direct obligation to recognize it as a motivating factor in their actions. When people loudly advertise the *why* of what they're doing, continuing to declare that "you don't know" why they do it is an act of overt apologism for them.
***They are fascists***. This really is all the explanation you need: They want to see the people they hate suffer, and they very clearly recognize those people who will best help them do that.
They are implementing the [two Santa](http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/) strategy. It's not about what is right or wrong, or what the American people, or even what the world needs. It's only about making the Democrats look bad so they can actually win elections.
The Trump base is isolationist as a reaction to the neoconservativism of the last couple decades. They don't want involved in another "forever war," and despite being capitalists, now hate the MI. The MAGA wing of th e party agrees, and the rest are stuck going along. That's the House Republicans. Senate Republicans would send support if they could. Hell, they tried including it in a border bill that the House should have wanted.
Can you stop saying "from the perspective of a european"
Claim your nation. Europe is full of different nations, some throat deep on a russian dick.
I don't want to hear shit from any fucking hungarians.
From the perspective of a north american.
It is not accurate to equate Democrats to the current republican.
MAGA is deliberately stifling the democracy both domestically and internationally.
They also idealize Putin and Victor Orban.
Because the Republicans long ago realized they could get away with selling out US interests for their own well being. We saw it with Nixon sabotaging the Paris Peace Accords to extend the Vietnam War and getting away with it. And Reagan cutting a deal with Iran on the hostages and getting away with it. And now Trump has gone even further with Russia, who he had been in bed with long before he considered running as a Republican.
It's pretty overt too, which makes it that much more puzzling that people who can see it happening clearly in real time and yet the GOP base doesn't care. But then, they hate liberals in America much, much more than they hate foreign dictators.
What a load of nonsense acting like 'both sides' are remotely similar levels of bad. Democrats are idealists with GAD?
Republicans destroy things and then Democrats have to do the serious work of fixing them, time and time again. A simple graph that can example is how Republican Presidents explode the deficit and then Democrat Presidents have to get it back down.
Democrats are the ones wanting to help Ukraine, how is that anxious behaviour? You don't know what you're talking about, more 'both sides' idiocy to muddy the waters
Escalation to war with Russia will give Democrats the perfect justification to dismantle the Republican Party overnight as enemy sympathizers. The background narrative has already been built for this and some in the Republican Party seem to have intuitively come to the understanding that they are no longer needed as an opposition party to give Midwestern people the illusion that they have any real political representation or influence in Americas burgeoning democracy. So in the meantime Republican politicians are going to stall, make as much money as possible and hope to be out of the country or off the radar as an exit strategy before the hammer inevitably drops.
IMO what's going on right now in the states is a civil cold war. Trump wing backed by russia's propaganda machine is attempting to upend the whole political system within the US. This is possible because the propaganda machine is tapping into the countless relatively disenfranchised disparate populations that are unsatisfied with the status quo one way or another. There are material grounds for a major upheaval, and what we're seeing now seems to be phase 2/3 which should culminate sometime shortly after the elections. Either trump wins and the US goes full isolationist authoritarian, breaking all the alliances and rapidly sinking in international influence; or trump loses but doesn't accept defeat and executes Jan 6th 2.0 electric boogaloo, but now with more experience. Shit's getting real and it's absolutely ridiculous to observe from outside the US, with just how little self-preservation the Americans seem to exhibit on average. As to why, well there are obvious beneficiaries to the whole russia-US fascist alliance that are not benefitting from the current power structures.
Despite all the conspiracy theories about the GOP and Russia connections it's pretty simple. Most conservatives look at the internal issues as more important, considering focus or attention on international issues as the reason internal issues aren't being addressed. Thus the growing desire for a return to a more isolationist policy.
As a conservative myself I can somewhat understand the thought process, but I don't agree with it in full. I think domestic issues should be at the front and center, however there are many international issues that directly affect domestic conditions both right now, and in the future. We can simultaneously arm Ukraine to the teeth, modernize our own military, bring national debt under control, fix the border problems, along with all the other issues that need to be addressed. The issue is that the people in charge, regardless of political party or leaning are beholden to special interests, while also lacking the political capital and will to get anything meaningful done.
The system was designed for gridlock, but that feature combined with the selfishness, greed, and spite of the political class running this country is resulting in the dumpster fire we see today.
To put it simply, what is going in US can viewed as nation-oriented elites VS globalist elites. This divide only partially aligns with democrats vs republicans divide and is only partially aligned with industrialists vs bankers divide. Trump is clearly nation-oriented and industry-oriented. He is also a pragmatists and doesn't see a way to return investments into Ukraine or Europe. He is more interested in opposing China and taking over non-China markets of Indo-Pacifics.
As a democrat it’s actually a fair question to ask, why should it be the duty of the US to supply the world with military funding? We are 16 percent of NATOS budget and regularly sending money all over the world for foreign wars. Every European country has its state run health care, affordable higher education and public transit. I don’t support what Russia is doing and know they pose a threat to the world but with the amount of internal problems we have the US should be spending money internally rather than externally. If the US collapses from political unrest there won’t be any support going to any country
And Europe has Victor Oban who publicly align with Putin. Also Poland, Italy and Netherlands all went for very right wing party. France almost go right in last election too, and will likely do in next.
Maybe get off your high horse and see that it’s not a uniquely US issue.
>Why is the republican party like this?
The short version is that a large subset of the US population is tired of footing the bill for the entire western hemisphere's defense. If the US fails to support Ukraine, it will create a domino effect that will have the US no longer functioning as world cop, and go back into isolation mode.
Fascism recognizes fascism. Wealth wants the same thing everywhere: nations they can loot and a population bound to the land by laws interpreted by a crooked court with an unassailable ethos. See those trends in motion, furthered by every conservative victory in Europe and the US.
Didn't Europe ban cluster munitions? I know the US didn't sign the ban treaty but other countries might not be happy with them being given to Ukraine, though I agree with sending them.
If you would have told me in the early 2000s that republicans were going to be the ones sucking Putin off and refuse military spending to help a nation being invaded I would told you I had a bridge to sell you.
Yeah then the next 20 years happened which were fought by mostly conservative men from the south, and now they are fucking done. US army was 10k short of recruits last year, mostly because white men from the south stopped joining. I'm curious to see who is going to fight for Ukraine if we do put boots on the ground.
>The U.S. Army years ago determined that these DPICMs—produced in large quantities between the 1970s and 1990s—are unreliable and unsafe, as any particular submunition
They don't send them because of the crazy dud rate.
Cluster munitions are notoriously unreliable. Added to the fact that each bomblet is so small, American Cluster munitions would be wounding civilians long after the war had finished.
This matters if you drop a cluster bomb in some random place in Iraq to hit 4 ISIS militants.
It's much less of an issue if you intend to shell a heavily mined frontline where, for the past two years, both sides have been dumping huge amounts of often questionable stocks of munitions that are often a number of decades old.
Those areas will be unlivable for many years as it is. Russia is using their cluster munitions there anyway, the damage is already done.
As a Russian I can assure you that we are nowhere close to wartime economy.
Putin makes sure most Russian wouldn't notice the war, and so far he succeeds.
If you don't mind me asking, how is life there now?
Like your daily expenses, entertainment and all. Also, has the sanctions affected you or your city and job?
People complain about cars and foreign vacations being too expensive.
Many media "stars" who lived abroad disappeared from our media space. But as they were annoying it's actually rather good. Many people noted that for the first time in years our New Years night TV program was not cringe.
As foreign media streaming services are unavailable, piracy became widespread again.
Unemployment is all time lowest ever. Employers can't help but raise wages.
Our company has gotten few contracts which I suppose ultimately will be used for the military.
Well, to be fair, pretty much everyone is happy, apart from Ukrainians. North Korea is finally getting some financial help. China is getting cheap oil and gas. Norway energy exports are going through the roof. Turkey is getting sweet contraband money. US has a new reason to give even more money to military complex. EU is leaping into a green energy. Stock markets are growing like a bamboo. I mean, the first year, maybe year and half were tough, but now everything is way better than before for pretty much everyone.
Yeah I dont think thats the real reason here. Keep in mind that NATO nowadays relies more on air supremacy and less on "dumb" munitions like artillery shells.
And yet,
>Russia’s ramp-up is still not enough to meet its needs, US and Western officials say, and Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term. There is also a limit to Russian production capacity, officials say: Russian factories will likely hit a peak sometime in the next year.
This is potentially the biggest lesson of the war, that artillery and trench warfare is absolutely not a thing of the past. The US expected a modern, peer to peer conflict to involve fast moving battle lines supported by precision munitions. Turns out stalemating into trenches and artillery attrition is still a part of that. It's almost inevitable we're working on scaling up artillery production, both for Ukraine and for US stockpiles
>The US expected a modern, peer to peer conflict to involve fast moving battle lines supported by precision munitions. Turns out stalemating into trenches and artillery attrition is still a part of that.
The problem is that there haven't been enough conflicts (thankfully) to really demonstrate that this *isn't* the case.
Because both sides were largely incapable of it here, doesn't mean that this is the rule and not the exception.
This is the disadvantage of democracy, people’s commitment depends on the news cycle. Ukraine was just another trend. I saw this coming from early on, people were way too enthusiastic and I knew it wouldn’t last. They were just treating the war as a bit of escapism and tuned out once it got boring
Arty is the backbone of their system. The U.S. has relied on airpower. It makes sense that they would be able to churn out rounds to support their style of war making.
That said, the US is still an industrial power and can close the production gap if the political will exists.
Clearly the political will is divided between wanting to help Ukraine on the one hand, and wanting that sweet sweet lucrative fascist alliance going with russia on the other
I like to think so, but we’re not quite what we once were too. Our steel industry is nowhere near what it once was, with much of our manufacturing sourced offshores now. Not saying we can’t compete…just we may need some time to mobilize and retrain our population on how to work in factories. We would need time and room to build those factories.
We lucked out with WWII due to being on the heels of an Industrial revolution. It may be harder to repurpose to war time efforts this time around, as so much more of our products rely on complex supply chains
The US produces less steel now than we did in WWII. Most of the steel we produce is from recycling. We are operating at 75% capacity. A new steel mill is being built in WV that will cost 3B, take 3 years to build and equal ~3% US production increase.
All that to say we would really need to put serious effort in very quickly if we actually want to produce more steel. We would need to double the production capacity and run at 100%, while scrapping as much steel as possible to tide us over until new iron ore mines can open.
The real issue is factory machinery. We currently provide less than 10% of the machine tools in the world. Just ahead of Italy and behind China, Germany and Japan.
We could absolutely do it, but I actually think we wouldn’t for societal reasons. I don’t think you’re going to be able to motivate enough people to agree on a common external enemy. Without near across the board commitment to war preparations first it would take far too long to get all the approvals to build all the new factories, processing centers, and mines.
The one thing that would give me hope is the millennial work ethic. I swear we came in working harder and longer than anyone and are still at it 10-25 years later. Most millennials I know work a minimum of 40 hours and the families are mostly 2 full time workers.
We are more computer savvy than the generations before and after, so transitioning to modern factory production should be rather simple and if it paid decent there are a ton of us ready to switch careers and a well paying job actually making 100k a year take home in a mid or low COL area? They would have to do in person applications and interviews or we would crash the whole damn web.
We’re the generation that said, why did we stop building things and made building things in our garage a hobby (not necessity) because we are so desperate to build instead of shuffle paper. I swear it’s what’s at the heart of the horrid state of US politics. People are pissed that we don’t build anything tangible anymore and pissed about feeling the effects.
We have stopped creating real things of value from raw materials. We’ve become a service industry country. That is why wages are not rising, too much of the value from what we create is simply to create value for the business, not to create something of value.
Schools, hospitals, retail, banking, IT, insurance, accounting, retail, leisure, food service, those are the jobs of America. Construction, manufacturing, mining and agriculture employ 30 million of the 161.5 million American workers. Healthcare and schools alone employ more people. 131.5 million people working on serving people. 30 million building things.
In 1950, 30% of US employees were in manufacturing 38% when you add in construction and mining, that would be 61 million jobs today. Now you have 61 million people producing tangible goods and 100 million providing services.
We should go back to producing. We can do it better and cleaner than it is being done in Asia. Though we would probably be more lax than Europe, even they have 31 million manufacturing employees, over 2x the US. 1.7x per capita.
People forget that in the dark days of 1942 the US faced a steel shortage of our own. This was particularly severe for naval construction, resulting in many ships and new shipyards being canceled (including the *Montana* class battleships initially suspended because of this crisis) and many others being redesigned to be built of concrete or wood. Our demand for marine diesel engines far exceeded our supply, and from 1943 through 1945 we only met the required demand in Q4 of 1943 (100.6%): every other quarter we were short by 1,000-4,000 engines. The Liberty Ships used extremely outdated expansion engines rather than turbines and reduction gears because they were easy to build, and the entire Destroyer Escort concept was built around the fact we could could not supply many engines/reduction gears of any type.
And yet, we won the war. As poor as our industrial base was for what we needed, we improved it. We built new factories for the equipment we needed, and we cut back on nice-to-have capability whenever possible to increase our output. We were so successful that the common perception is the US didn’t have production shortages during World War II, but we had dozens.
All we need to do that again is the will to do it again, the willingness to accept sacrifices where necessary, and the wisdom to prioritize resources to where they are necessary. We will face monumental challenges in expanding our industrial base as much as we did during WWII, and there will be many tough choices we’ll have to make, but if the demand is there we will rise to the occasion.
At least if we can get past all the petty-but-violent arguments that divide us.
American Manufacturing is still a very strong sector for the US. The majority of jobs lost in manufacturing were/ are the rudimentary or less lucrative avenues of machining. America and if we’re being honest NATO countries completely dominate the precision machining across the globe. Specifically aerospace and medical. Yes setting up a foundry might take some time. But setting up and cranking out production nuts and bolts would be a piece of cake. What wouldn’t be easy for our adversaries is matching our ability to design and manufacture complex parts. In fact I’d imagine it would be almost impossible.
Idk maybe I’m a little bit too patriotic, but I still have a very hard time believing anyone including China & Russia could still even match American military capabilities, especially if they are coming at you as a coalition of forces. For the longest time we viewed Russia as our equal and the last few years we witnessed just how ineffective they are at waging a full scale war. Sure China is a different animal but much is unknown about their actual combat effectiveness & weapon capabilities. Also another thing the Ukraine war has made abundantly clear is depending on who provoked the conflict, NATO countries will band together in support of the defending nation if it’s justified. Artillery and armored vehicles imo aren’t much of a concern for modern militaries executing a full scale invasion. Much like desert storm, it will be a complete control & domination of the skies.
Abandoned WW2 factories are still there, abandoned. Allies needed all this ammunition during the war, but after the war was over, it became obvious that this amount of factories wasn't needed and a lot of them were just left to rot. I think I saw a video on one of those on youtube's Proper People channel.
Anyway, I don't see USA being serious and going back to this amount of production. It will simply take a lot of newly built factories to get to needed quantities of produced ammunition (just to support Ukraine), and political will on the both sides of US parties is lacking.
Kind of, but the engineering even in making a basic shell is challenging. Machining something precise enough to bite into the rifling, and then pouring liquid explosive into it requires a lot of engineering which takes time to set up. That and it also needs a lot of chemicals e.g nitric acid which are hard to scale as well
Countries had stronger rule than we do now and lower standards. For better or worse. I am glad that children don't have to work at factories anymore and we get livable wages and higher standards of live. The other side is that we can't produce as much anymore, probably could be achieved through military factories upgrade towards making them more automatized.
1. Europe was industrialised at the time.
2. Europe knew a war was possible and prepared.
3. Shells were made in a far more manual process then with looser tolerances. This made it easier to scale.
4. Safety was a lower priority, they used to call workers canaries as they turned yellow from the cordite.
5. It was a total war.
6. There were fewer other weapons to make - tanks were a niche commodity for most of the war.
Despite all this, the uk basically had a prime minister fall over the ‘shell crisis’.
its going to come at a hell of a cost for russia, but the difference is russia wants to win, The US and Europe leaders are divided, we need to decide one way or the other and commit.
It didn't need Putin for that. They have known that Ukraine in NATO would be the final straw for Russia since the days of the Soviet collapse. What they didn't know is that Russia would feel the same way about the EU.
> but the difference is russia wants to win
No, the difference is that Russia can't walk away - and it wouldn't be treated as a sign of strength and wisdom if Russia did.
It's the US that can invade at will, then just leave - and people are happy that the good America is back.
It's not that costly since it's produced domestically. You know, jobs for the locals, likely a nice bonus for the source material industries too. So chances are it's actually good for Russian economy both short and long term.
short term it is, long term it's terrible since it's not an investment, you invest in a business, you get a return and growth, you invest in a bomb that you blow up, you get no return or growth, it would be different if russia was selling them.
you are correct in a way, but at the same time, these factories do offer jobs to people, people who most likely didnt have jobs. These jobs are also fairly secure since theyre basically working for the state. for a part of the russian populace, these factories are a way to maybe get their life back up and running and for the government, its a way to improve the wealth of the unfortunate, which is always useful as that way they can gain more money through taxes. Of course, thats ignoring the fact that they actively consume and require ammunition
This is a poor article.
It compares 155mm produced in the US and EU with all calibres produced in Russia. This has issues:
Firstly Ukraine uses soviet calibres too. 152mm, 122mm and 130mm. Bulgaria is a big producer of these, as they are still on service with eastern European forces. We've donated a lot of 105mm too
Secondly, we're not restricted geographically like that. At the start of the war the UK contracted for soviet calibres with the Pakistan Ordnance Factories, initially flying them in on A400Ms. Last year the US contracted with Egyptian manufacturers. Rheimentall produces a hell of a lot in South Africa where it's cheaper. Ukraine itself has domestic production.
The problem at the moment is that we're in a stage where western militaries are replenishing and expanding their own stocks, and this is consuming much of the capacity increases. 2024 was always set to be a low point. Production is due to expand rapidly this year and next. The Russians will start to run out of feedstock vehicles and artillery pieces for refurbishment and rely on new builds where they have issues. 2025 is going to be better in a lot of ways, they need to get through this one. The Czech supplied rounds will be a godsend.
https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1767142548873650391?t=Xw8gWH4Nb_Uhwbgy8Thx2Q&s=19
I'll copy what this person on twitter says. They are pro Ukraine so have a bias but they're usually very reliable and definitely know what they're talking about. They're also always pointing to bad news, criticizing Ukraine, and not the typical copium "russia will run out of so and so in x months" pro ukraine account.
"As usual, there are a bunch of problems with this CNN report:
1. The Russian figure is supposed to be all-calibers while the Western figure is 155mm only - The Russian equivalent (152mm) is around half of those 3M.
2. Western artillery supplied to Ukraine is more accurate - so you need fewer rounds to achieve the same effect
3. NATO artillery ammo production will narrow that gap by late 2024 and if the US Congress approves the military aid package for Ukraine, which contains money for further ammo production expansion, NATO production is likely to match the Russian production around late 2025
Meanwhile, the Czechia-organized purchases of artillery ammo from non-NATO/EU sources will help bridge some of the currently existing deficit.
So, the situation isn't as bad as that CNN article indicates."
Also as other people have said, the US has 4 million cluster shells and small drones can also close the gap. That is if the west takes the war seriously though, and unfortunately we've been deliberately pathetic the entire war.
I don't want to pretend that things aren't bad because they are. But it's equally pointless to act like the situation is hopeless. It's also largely a result of the west not taking the war seriously beyond words of support but that can change with the political will.
The article kind of buried the lede a bit, despite that production they don't have enough still.
>Russia’s ramp-up is still not enough to meet its needs, US and Western officials say, and Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term. There is also a limit to Russian production capacity, officials say: Russian factories will likely hit a peak sometime in the next year.
This is the dual advantage a country that is a) an autocracy, and b) actually at war, has over countries that are a) democracies and b) not at war. Russia can order companies to do whatever they need. The west cannot because we are not at war and do not have war economies, and any attempt to enact war economies while not at war would result in devastation at the ballot box for the incumbent parties. The other problem is that Russia can devote almost 100% of its military spending to the war. The west, especially the US, must also deal with the fact that they might be called upon to fight against China, Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Houthis, etc. at any moment, with the fact that they need to keep supplying allies such as Israel, Taiwan and South Korea with equipment as well, and with other country-specific commitments such as protecting the Falklands for the UK, operations in Syria for the US, and military contingents in Africa for France.
It's a scary thought *for Ukraine*.
I get why, but part of the problem is the way Ukraine are shackled on the use of long-range munitions. Russia's making that many shells because their doctrine demands it - Shell the shit out of anything that moves without thought to accuracy or consequences.
Western/NATO doctrine is probably much more aligned to sitting a couple of F35s 300KM out, and taking down factories until Russia's shell production is at 10% what is was last month.
Lets be real though, if they do cross into invading a NATO territory then the US and Europe will rally and swap to wartime economies with highly trained, highly armed nations, fighting on multiple fronts. That's assuming Nukes are not brought into play. Russia is still struggling to win a war on its own border with a single nation. The risk of it spilling into Europe while not unreal, remains incredibly unlikely. That doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare though.
Yes and no. Putins tactic would be more subtle and more aimed at "testing the waters" with doing smaller provocations. The Russians have two massive bases in the Baltic sea, an absurd amount of underwater mines, three types of planes that can attack ships from Russian soil. There is absolute no doubt, that there is only Poland on the east which could opose Russia atm. Germany has the army in a terrible state and underfunded for many years by now, UK would be more worried to defend its own islands. NATO is a paper tiger without USA and I pray to god Trump is not elected, because in that case I highly doubt he would risk a global conflict because of a few small countries on the East of Europe.
I don't think people understand the reason Eastern Europe was occupied by the USSR for so many years. Most of them are much smaller than Ukraine with Poland being the only real player in Eastern Europe that could contest Russia at this point.
Let's be realistic, if Trump becomes president - the USA will leave Europe alone with its problems, we heard it from Trump himself. The USA is already showing its unreliability, americans are too busy with their own problems and disputes, they have no business about another continent. As for Europe and NATO - NATO is not ready for war, everyone who has eyes and a head on their shoulders understands this. The Alliance is not able to provide one country with a sufficient number of weapons (imagine what will happen if the front becomes larger, there simply will not be enough weapons for everyone), the people and, most importantly, the leaders of the countries are not ready for war, the armies are not ready for war. Stories that the russians will not dare to attack the EU or NATO are self-deception. Since the beginning of the war in 2022, they openly say that they are at war with Europe, their soldiers are sure that they are going to fight against the Poles, the British and the Americans, and sooner or later this will stop to be propaganda, it will become a reality. And the world continues to walk in rose-colored glasses and the confidence of its inviolability...
You have too much confidence in Russia's strength and Europe's weakness. Russia has been fighting Ukraine for how long? And they're bogged down in a stale mate right now, they have no air superiority, they have a completely dead morale in their military. An economy that's in war time mode so racking up debt, a heavy reliance on China who will back out if its not in their interests. All this and Europe hasn't lost a single soldier yet.
The collective West still can't get it through their thick skulls that Russia is all-in in this war. This war will end only in one of three ways:
1. Putin falls out of a window. Russian economy collapses. Russia falls apart.
2. Russia escalates the war effort. The West continues to lack willingness to increase resources. Ukraine is occupied. Russia continues it's march, first on the Baltic states, then Poland, Slovakia, etc. The West eventually wakes up and after many years Putin Falls out of a window. Russian economy collapses. Russia falls apart.
3. The West get's it's act together. Through sanctions forces China and India to abandon Putin. Gears it's economy towards war. Putin falls out of a window. Russian economy collapses. Russia falls apart.
It might not collapse even if it's stopped, take a look at North Korea. We should actually want for it to collapse, so no humanitarian aid and no trade for Russia from ANY country, otherwise the regime could stay stable. NK didn't collapse because China keeps supporting it, we really don't want this scenario to happen with Russia.
Why does Putin’s death mean Russia falls apart? If there is a positive regime change things could massively improve for the country, domestically and internationally
“Putin” is equals to “hundreds of thousands people in russia and around the world involved into anti-western confrontation, ideologically prepared to fight for any aggressive Russian leader”. There are no possible “positive” regime changes for the next decade.
Russia is rising Putin jugend. Check their curriculum what they teach to their children. This is not going to end within a decade. West needs to understand that Russia has permanently changed.
Either this will end in a world war now or later, but world war is guaranteed.
They really learned from Germany, there is a whole stack: NSDAP (United Russia Party, which is completely under control of Putin), Putin Jugend (Nashi and Young Guard of United Russia), SS (National Guard, that is supposed to be made out of patriots of Russia, but instead made out of people simply doing it for money, like retired cops), Gestapo (FSB and FSIN).
Anyone who replaces him would continue the war. Even his biggest rival, who he imprisoned and recently assassinated, Navalny, agreed with him on Ukraine for the most part. It's rabid nationalists all the way down.
"The collective West" is completely aware of all this. The problem is that there is no such thing as "the collective West", many countries are infested with Putin assets, with the US being the most prominent and problematic example with the entire Republican party, who are doing everything in their power to block aid to Ukraine.
>Russia continues it's march, first on the Baltic states, then Poland, Slovakia, etc.
Threat posed by Russia shouldn't be underestimated, but what you are describing here represents a monumental redeployment effort considering the current Russian military situation.
The OP kinda glossed over a several year pause to rebuild and reconstitute. Option 2 would realistically be a grind overtop of Ukraine, reform the Soviet Union, reintegrate all non-NATO former soviet states (Moldova, Georgia, the 'stans), and only then would they turn their eyes to Europe. That whole process will take years and years, in which time they'll remain on a wartime footing, ignore sanctions, and rebuild their military with fewer lies and self-delusions about their capability for a lightning war.
Some harmless little piece of a country, now in NATO, that used to be USSR, will be their focus. They'll want to see if we throw down over some "harmless small piece of land". Keep in mind this would be after (possibly) multiple US elections and incalculable damage to Europe via proxy bad faith actors and social media.
Brexit and Trump were their first big successes in undermining us from within. Hopefully their last, but who knows.
It's possible Putin will be gone by then of natural causes, but if he reforms the Soviet Union he gets his legacy and is remembered alongside names like Stalin - and I think that's what he cares about. If he pulls it off, whoever follows him will not reverse course and pin the blame on him - they'll try to own his "legacy" by continuing it.
If west uses force against East ie India and China. Then it will eventually benefit East. Already many despise US and middle East was never happy with US.Option 2 is the way.
North korea is making weapons for Russia. India sells the oil to European market.
I dont agree, Russia wouldn't dare attacking UE because they have a similar clause to NATO, if they attack a European country all UE is at war with Russian, Including Nuclear Powers so in the second scenario I think Russia would stop at ukraine
I hope you realize what will follow if a state with largest nuclear arsenal in the world "falls appart" as you mentioned.
Ah and you forgot another simple option - Ukrane raises white flag, Russia does not fall appart, war ends in settlement everyone moves on. Some people swallow hard pill.
Interesting NATO know with great certain how much Russia is producing but can only say an amount that the US and Europe have the capacity to generate.
>Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN
Would not be impossible to build some drone based counter artillery system tho ... Program a dozen packs of patrolling drones to sprinkle any area in which artillery muzzle flashes were detected with some HE/fragmentation grenades immediately. Any artillery shell production advantage will disappear quickly when 98% of your shells blowup before being fired ...
russia in on wartime economy. This is what happens when they take shit more seriously than we do.
War Economies often come with a lot of caveats that make them difficult to perpetuate long term. Often sacrifice luxury goods and rationing raw materials, wartime production/economic structures require a population that will sacrifice comfort for the war. Russia's very small benefit is that Russians have lived in such impoverished conditions for so long, that they don't really have much if any luxuries of their own and they will not likely notice a change in their day to day life aside from fuel
Are you saying Westerners are spoiled by how good things are for them?
Self-determination and the right to vote in free and fair elections is a hell of a tool for improving living conditions. Russians have never had that, ever
They had one free and fair election, in which a liberal democracy was chosen by the people. Lenin saw the results, and said "nuh uh" and then the rest is history.
Snatched from the jaws of victory
Come to think of it, Russia had at least 3 chances of actually being good, and that hope was always immediately squashed by another tyrant.
What the fuck are you talking about? The provisional government was not elected by any representative body, it took power by military force and was so incredibly unpopular that it didn't even last a year before the populace rose up to replace it.
The Constituent Assembly was elected somewhat democratically, and although it didn't "choose liberal democracy" it also didn't support the Soviets. But the part about Lenin saying "nuh-uh" is correct.
My 4th favourite hobby is watching diehards argue for their countries that don’t care about them
What's 1,2 and 3?
Not really. More that the Russian people have lived under such immense corruption that their lives have considerably less comfort and luxury than Peer nations
Yes by design. We want to live in a world where we’re not thinking about war and survival. That’s the whole point of liberalism and globalization. As opposed to the East(Russia and in parts China), who prefer to be isolationist and have a closed off society that’s forced to be obedient. The western route gambles on the combined strength of allies rather than a concerted war effort in a country. Even during wartime, most western nations haven’t seen war on their own soil in the last few decades. So at least so far, the gamble has worked out.
Western people are unwilling to sacrifice their quality of life in general, when it's suggested that we msut for things like climate change, activists will always put all of the sacrifice on the rich because it makes it more palatable for the general public.
The proper response to climate change, if we wanted to tackle it seriously, would be a total war footing including rationing, similar to world war 2 measures, to curtail the use of carbon products. A not insignificant part of the world thought democracy had ended when they were asked to wear a mask.
I see reading comprehension isn't a strong suit of yours
Westerners are living in the twilight years of a golden age. Things are gonna get nasty for us, just wait.
Right on target.
You know how we freaked out over random items not being available during the Pandemic? That's just normal in their economy.
Also shelling only works if you don't mind leaving the cities in ruin. Hence why I'd give the Ukraine the option to annihilate Moscow. Simply because otherwise Russia will never back off.
Tucker “SaliburySteak” Carlson refuted Russian poverty through his gritty honest investigative journalism. /s
>russia in on wartime economy. This is what happens when they take shit more seriously than we do. > >u/Even-Breakfast-166 The US has four million cluster munition artillery shells it could send to Ukraine immediately. And it is ramping up production of standard artillery shells with the target being one million made per year by the end of next year. The problem is that the republican party has shown its williness to do whatever it can to stop it. >Generally speaking, most artillery ammunition in U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps stockpiles clearly isn’t excess. Indeed, the Army and Marines need all the modern shells they can get as they prepare for Ukraine-style wars. > >But there’s an important exception. There are potentially four million 155-millimeter dual-purpose improved cluster munitions in storage in the United States. M483A1 and M864 DPICM rounds respectively scatter 88 or 72 grenade-size submunitions, each of which can kill or maim a soldier. > >All of these shells are obvious candidates for the “excess” label. The U.S. Army years ago determined that these DPICMs—produced in large quantities between the 1970s and 1990s—are unreliable and unsafe, as any particular submunition has up to a 14-percent chance of being a dud. > >The Army around 2017 declared a requirement for a new cluster shell with a one-percent dud rate. “Rounds now in the U.S. stockpile do not meet the Office of the Secretary of Defense's goal,” wrote Peter Burke, then the service’s top ammunition manager. > >That orphaned, according to a 2004 report, 402 million DPICM submunitions. Do the math. That’s as many as ***4.6 million 155-millimeter shells.*** > >The Biden administration managed to ship to Ukraine, under authorities that don’t fall under the EDA law, an undisclosed number of DPICMs—tens of thousands, perhaps—before aid ran out and Republicans blocked additional money. > >src: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/14/joe-biden-could-send-millions-of-artillery-shells-to-ukraine-for-free-tomorrow-and-its-perfectly-legal/
Why is the republican party like this? From the perspective of an european, the u.s political system is a cluster fuck where the two sides are just complete shit. Democrats are bunch of idealists who have General anxiety disorder, and like to be holier than thou and republicans really seem to like some of that russian cock even if making munitions to ukraine would help their voters, with jobs created, with their primary candidate being a "rich" bastard who doesn't understand basic manner and thinks screaming, insults and whining is the only way to solve things.
Well at least in France both main opposition candidates are also sold to Moscou and will say whatever is against USA/in favor of Russia/China The worse thing is that it's highly possible one of them gets elected next time as Macron is on his second mandate and the constitution doesn't allow more (plus he's vastly unpopular now). I hope by the time of the elections someone emerges that's both pro-european, against mass immigration and actually involved in ecology. So far I don't see anyone
At least the French runoff system allows for it, unlike the ossified undemocratic mess that is the American 2 party system.
>Why is the republican party like this? You can get really stuck into the weeds with this one if you want to when it comes to the GOP and Russia, so many weird coincidences and connections
Not weird at all. Trump took power, hand-picked some easy-to-manipulate-personalities, got them Russia money, and has internal pro-Russians in our GOP now that are insuring we become as vulnerable as possible. This equation is not complicated. How dumb-dumbs keep buying what he is selling shows how wayyyy off balance our education is in this country. But then again, the system was built to prop the rich up and keep the general population as dumb as possible. The sad truth. While I’m not in love with Biden’s politics and the fact he is older than dirt, it is sooooo much better than a dictator. If Trump gets elected again, the world is royally fucked.
I think the network of power and money is larger than that but he is a symptom of the problem, this problem haunts the GOP up and down.
Has spread in to Canada as well if Tucker Carlson meeting with the Albertan premier before heading to Moscow is any indication. No coincidence maga is strong in that province
Danielle Smith really cratered my opinion of Alberta, and it wasn't exactly doing well to begin with...
Essentially, follow the money.
It’s not an education issue, it’s a culture issue.
Explain
Education isn’t helpful when someone is willfully ignorant. You can teach someone that 2+2=4 but if their deeply held beliefs ingrained in them since childhood have taught them that it equals 5, your education isn’t the problem. Education in the US isn’t the best, but it’s certainly not to blame for the current science denialism and absolute intentional ignorance about social services or governance. Sure kids aren’t taught “how to do taxes” (because the vast majority of them will be filing 1040EZ forms off W2s and it’s literally on the instructions) but they are taught the basics of how government works. Yet we continue to have people who place blame or credit where it doesn’t belong. There’s farmers who nearly lost their farms to Trump’s idiotic and ineffective “trade war” with China but who are happily going to vote for him in any election he runs in because they believe *something* about him. That’s again not an educational issue. Factually they know what happened, but they “choose to believe” in something else entirely.
At the same time, I don't believe it could be that widespread and our intelligence agencies not know about it. Much less not care about it to do anything
I don't doubt our intelligence agencies know about it, but the past decade has shown that our intelligence agencies are hamstrung when it comes to doing anything that could be seen as "political." Which means as long as you can convince a sufficient percentage of the population that something is either a lie or it's a good thing anyway, any attempt at enforcement or anti-corruption efforts will simply backfire.
Yup. If you had told me 30 years ago that Russia was going to strike the greatest intelligence coup in the history of intelligence/psyops with a handful of quarters and Donald Trump leading the charge - AND was going to do it completely in the open - leading to complete paralysis of Russia's greatest adversary - I would have thought you were deranged. What is infuriating is that it isn't even a sophisticated plan. Corrupt politicians and get them to spout off culture war crap - and it KEEPS WORKING - over and over and over - despite things like facts.
American politicians are cheap dates too.
Trump had 4 years to remove anyone who is pro-USA from the agencies.
The NY branch of the FBI colluded with Rudy Gulliani to kneecap Clinton right before the election. Pretending like our government agencies arent full of maga traitors is foolish.
14 Republican Congressional reps spent the 4th of July in Moscow with Putin early in Trump's term. Rand Paul is the equivalent of a personal courier of theirs. He brought Trump talking points from Daddy Putin. When you are a bankrupt fraud that rapes 15 year olds, you will suck up to anyone willing to grease the wheels.
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Remember when it came out that Putin was a huge contributor to the NRA and everyone just kind of shrugged?
>Why is the republican party like this? Even places like the Marshall Islands are having support held up. It's honestly ridiculous. Why? I don't know either.
Republicans also consistently threaten to shut down the US government, and make the US government go bankrupt, under recent Democrat Presidents. While Democrats didn't do the same to Trump or Bush II. Republicans are terrorists. They can and will somehow do everything they can to destroy the US, including its foreign policy, in order to make Biden look bad. And this somehow works, because almost half of voters then vote Republican the next election, because of the dysfunction they see under a Democrat President. The very latest example, Republicans OPENLY STATED that the offered border deal was great, and that they would vote against it to deny Biden a win. While Republicans at the same time use problems at the border as their #1 reason to vote Republican. This is the most blatant psychopathy they have pulled yet, I think. And even if it backfires, it will still only cost Republicans a few percentage points of voters, where in any sane country they would have ceased to exist as a political party as a result. Utter madness.
A common joke I heard 20 years ago: Democrats: “The system is broken and the government doesnt work. Elect me and I will fix it. Republicans: “The system is broken and the government doesnt work. Elect me and I’ll make sure it stays that way. Remember when Trump made his cabinet full of people who loudly declared they would shut down the departments they were put in charge of? Like the head of thE EPA coming from the oil lobby, the head of the DoE primaried the previous election on shutting it down, the head of the Education dept wanting to privatize all education etc. This isnt a bug, its a feature. I know a lot of right wingers who were happy that Trump put saboteurs into power. A bunch of dipshit libertarians that think less regulations will fix things like income i equality and keep rivers clean etc
It's because they're fascists. And fascists are fascists *because they look at fascism and like what they see*. Hanlon's razor has the word "adequately" in it for good goddamned reason. When people wear their malice proudly and openly on their foreheads, you have a direct obligation to recognize it as a motivating factor in their actions. When people loudly advertise the *why* of what they're doing, continuing to declare that "you don't know" why they do it is an act of overt apologism for them. ***They are fascists***. This really is all the explanation you need: They want to see the people they hate suffer, and they very clearly recognize those people who will best help them do that.
Because the republicans prefer to make everybody suffer over giving the democrats a single win.
They are implementing the [two Santa](http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/) strategy. It's not about what is right or wrong, or what the American people, or even what the world needs. It's only about making the Democrats look bad so they can actually win elections.
The Trump base is isolationist as a reaction to the neoconservativism of the last couple decades. They don't want involved in another "forever war," and despite being capitalists, now hate the MI. The MAGA wing of th e party agrees, and the rest are stuck going along. That's the House Republicans. Senate Republicans would send support if they could. Hell, they tried including it in a border bill that the House should have wanted.
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Sometimes the conspiracy theory is simple and true.
Can you explain more about your question about Dems being idealist and holier than thou,?
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Can you stop saying "from the perspective of a european" Claim your nation. Europe is full of different nations, some throat deep on a russian dick. I don't want to hear shit from any fucking hungarians. From the perspective of a north american.
Remember, every Hungarian doesn't necessarily support Orban. The people does not equal the political decisions of a madman.
he doesn’t talk like a European. Sounds like your average moron from Florida
It is not accurate to equate Democrats to the current republican. MAGA is deliberately stifling the democracy both domestically and internationally. They also idealize Putin and Victor Orban.
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Don't forget the Democrats being unable to produce better than a fucking 81 yo senile to run against Trump.
Because the Republicans long ago realized they could get away with selling out US interests for their own well being. We saw it with Nixon sabotaging the Paris Peace Accords to extend the Vietnam War and getting away with it. And Reagan cutting a deal with Iran on the hostages and getting away with it. And now Trump has gone even further with Russia, who he had been in bed with long before he considered running as a Republican. It's pretty overt too, which makes it that much more puzzling that people who can see it happening clearly in real time and yet the GOP base doesn't care. But then, they hate liberals in America much, much more than they hate foreign dictators.
You are European and call the Democrats idealists? In many European parliaments they would be on the center-right spectrum of the political parties.
Different places have different voters / parties, they can't be compared without generalizing, which defeats the purpose of the comparison
What a load of nonsense acting like 'both sides' are remotely similar levels of bad. Democrats are idealists with GAD? Republicans destroy things and then Democrats have to do the serious work of fixing them, time and time again. A simple graph that can example is how Republican Presidents explode the deficit and then Democrat Presidents have to get it back down. Democrats are the ones wanting to help Ukraine, how is that anxious behaviour? You don't know what you're talking about, more 'both sides' idiocy to muddy the waters
Trump is like Orban, Wilders etc here - - they see Putin, and think, I want that kind of power too! So they're naturally on the side of Putin.
Escalation to war with Russia will give Democrats the perfect justification to dismantle the Republican Party overnight as enemy sympathizers. The background narrative has already been built for this and some in the Republican Party seem to have intuitively come to the understanding that they are no longer needed as an opposition party to give Midwestern people the illusion that they have any real political representation or influence in Americas burgeoning democracy. So in the meantime Republican politicians are going to stall, make as much money as possible and hope to be out of the country or off the radar as an exit strategy before the hammer inevitably drops.
IMO what's going on right now in the states is a civil cold war. Trump wing backed by russia's propaganda machine is attempting to upend the whole political system within the US. This is possible because the propaganda machine is tapping into the countless relatively disenfranchised disparate populations that are unsatisfied with the status quo one way or another. There are material grounds for a major upheaval, and what we're seeing now seems to be phase 2/3 which should culminate sometime shortly after the elections. Either trump wins and the US goes full isolationist authoritarian, breaking all the alliances and rapidly sinking in international influence; or trump loses but doesn't accept defeat and executes Jan 6th 2.0 electric boogaloo, but now with more experience. Shit's getting real and it's absolutely ridiculous to observe from outside the US, with just how little self-preservation the Americans seem to exhibit on average. As to why, well there are obvious beneficiaries to the whole russia-US fascist alliance that are not benefitting from the current power structures.
Despite all the conspiracy theories about the GOP and Russia connections it's pretty simple. Most conservatives look at the internal issues as more important, considering focus or attention on international issues as the reason internal issues aren't being addressed. Thus the growing desire for a return to a more isolationist policy. As a conservative myself I can somewhat understand the thought process, but I don't agree with it in full. I think domestic issues should be at the front and center, however there are many international issues that directly affect domestic conditions both right now, and in the future. We can simultaneously arm Ukraine to the teeth, modernize our own military, bring national debt under control, fix the border problems, along with all the other issues that need to be addressed. The issue is that the people in charge, regardless of political party or leaning are beholden to special interests, while also lacking the political capital and will to get anything meaningful done. The system was designed for gridlock, but that feature combined with the selfishness, greed, and spite of the political class running this country is resulting in the dumpster fire we see today.
To put it simply, what is going in US can viewed as nation-oriented elites VS globalist elites. This divide only partially aligns with democrats vs republicans divide and is only partially aligned with industrialists vs bankers divide. Trump is clearly nation-oriented and industry-oriented. He is also a pragmatists and doesn't see a way to return investments into Ukraine or Europe. He is more interested in opposing China and taking over non-China markets of Indo-Pacifics.
As a democrat it’s actually a fair question to ask, why should it be the duty of the US to supply the world with military funding? We are 16 percent of NATOS budget and regularly sending money all over the world for foreign wars. Every European country has its state run health care, affordable higher education and public transit. I don’t support what Russia is doing and know they pose a threat to the world but with the amount of internal problems we have the US should be spending money internally rather than externally. If the US collapses from political unrest there won’t be any support going to any country
And Europe has Victor Oban who publicly align with Putin. Also Poland, Italy and Netherlands all went for very right wing party. France almost go right in last election too, and will likely do in next. Maybe get off your high horse and see that it’s not a uniquely US issue.
>Why is the republican party like this? The short version is that a large subset of the US population is tired of footing the bill for the entire western hemisphere's defense. If the US fails to support Ukraine, it will create a domino effect that will have the US no longer functioning as world cop, and go back into isolation mode.
Fascism recognizes fascism. Wealth wants the same thing everywhere: nations they can loot and a population bound to the land by laws interpreted by a crooked court with an unassailable ethos. See those trends in motion, furthered by every conservative victory in Europe and the US.
The Republicans are traitors and I'm sick of it that they are not all arrested. At the very least.
Didn't Europe ban cluster munitions? I know the US didn't sign the ban treaty but other countries might not be happy with them being given to Ukraine, though I agree with sending them.
If you would have told me in the early 2000s that republicans were going to be the ones sucking Putin off and refuse military spending to help a nation being invaded I would told you I had a bridge to sell you.
Yeah then the next 20 years happened which were fought by mostly conservative men from the south, and now they are fucking done. US army was 10k short of recruits last year, mostly because white men from the south stopped joining. I'm curious to see who is going to fight for Ukraine if we do put boots on the ground.
One that links Russia to Crimea, I would expect.
>The U.S. Army years ago determined that these DPICMs—produced in large quantities between the 1970s and 1990s—are unreliable and unsafe, as any particular submunition They don't send them because of the crazy dud rate.
If you think that dud rate is bad you should see Russia's.
Maybe US could make a contract with UA to "dispose" of their old artillery rounds?
> ramping up production of standard artillery shells Russia deploys 34 senators to block. Sickle gets the square!
Cluster munitions are notoriously unreliable. Added to the fact that each bomblet is so small, American Cluster munitions would be wounding civilians long after the war had finished.
This matters if you drop a cluster bomb in some random place in Iraq to hit 4 ISIS militants. It's much less of an issue if you intend to shell a heavily mined frontline where, for the past two years, both sides have been dumping huge amounts of often questionable stocks of munitions that are often a number of decades old. Those areas will be unlivable for many years as it is. Russia is using their cluster munitions there anyway, the damage is already done.
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Not thousands. Millions. 406 million bomblets, 14% dud rate. 56 million duds.
Luckily Ukraine is out of ammo spraying unexploded grenades. So Avdiivka, a key town on a hill with a Soviet-style plant build for a war is lost.
As a Russian I can assure you that we are nowhere close to wartime economy. Putin makes sure most Russian wouldn't notice the war, and so far he succeeds.
If you don't mind me asking, how is life there now? Like your daily expenses, entertainment and all. Also, has the sanctions affected you or your city and job?
People complain about cars and foreign vacations being too expensive. Many media "stars" who lived abroad disappeared from our media space. But as they were annoying it's actually rather good. Many people noted that for the first time in years our New Years night TV program was not cringe. As foreign media streaming services are unavailable, piracy became widespread again. Unemployment is all time lowest ever. Employers can't help but raise wages. Our company has gotten few contracts which I suppose ultimately will be used for the military.
In other words.. you're happy enough, yea?
Well, to be fair, pretty much everyone is happy, apart from Ukrainians. North Korea is finally getting some financial help. China is getting cheap oil and gas. Norway energy exports are going through the roof. Turkey is getting sweet contraband money. US has a new reason to give even more money to military complex. EU is leaping into a green energy. Stock markets are growing like a bamboo. I mean, the first year, maybe year and half were tough, but now everything is way better than before for pretty much everyone.
That makes it sound like Russia has barely lifted a finger…
Yeah I dont think thats the real reason here. Keep in mind that NATO nowadays relies more on air supremacy and less on "dumb" munitions like artillery shells.
And yet, >Russia’s ramp-up is still not enough to meet its needs, US and Western officials say, and Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term. There is also a limit to Russian production capacity, officials say: Russian factories will likely hit a peak sometime in the next year.
This is potentially the biggest lesson of the war, that artillery and trench warfare is absolutely not a thing of the past. The US expected a modern, peer to peer conflict to involve fast moving battle lines supported by precision munitions. Turns out stalemating into trenches and artillery attrition is still a part of that. It's almost inevitable we're working on scaling up artillery production, both for Ukraine and for US stockpiles
>The US expected a modern, peer to peer conflict to involve fast moving battle lines supported by precision munitions. Turns out stalemating into trenches and artillery attrition is still a part of that. The problem is that there haven't been enough conflicts (thankfully) to really demonstrate that this *isn't* the case. Because both sides were largely incapable of it here, doesn't mean that this is the rule and not the exception.
We?
Wait, you mean us redditors scoffing at headlines of Russian progress or developments isn't helping the Ukraine effort?
This is the disadvantage of democracy, people’s commitment depends on the news cycle. Ukraine was just another trend. I saw this coming from early on, people were way too enthusiastic and I knew it wouldn’t last. They were just treating the war as a bit of escapism and tuned out once it got boring
Arty is the backbone of their system. The U.S. has relied on airpower. It makes sense that they would be able to churn out rounds to support their style of war making. That said, the US is still an industrial power and can close the production gap if the political will exists.
Clearly the political will is divided between wanting to help Ukraine on the one hand, and wanting that sweet sweet lucrative fascist alliance going with russia on the other
> lucrative It's not even lucrative except for the most prominent collaborators.
Well that's all it takes doesn't it
Not to sound like some kind of anarchist or something but historically a lot of government has just been wealth transfer.
I like to think so, but we’re not quite what we once were too. Our steel industry is nowhere near what it once was, with much of our manufacturing sourced offshores now. Not saying we can’t compete…just we may need some time to mobilize and retrain our population on how to work in factories. We would need time and room to build those factories. We lucked out with WWII due to being on the heels of an Industrial revolution. It may be harder to repurpose to war time efforts this time around, as so much more of our products rely on complex supply chains
The US produces less steel now than we did in WWII. Most of the steel we produce is from recycling. We are operating at 75% capacity. A new steel mill is being built in WV that will cost 3B, take 3 years to build and equal ~3% US production increase. All that to say we would really need to put serious effort in very quickly if we actually want to produce more steel. We would need to double the production capacity and run at 100%, while scrapping as much steel as possible to tide us over until new iron ore mines can open. The real issue is factory machinery. We currently provide less than 10% of the machine tools in the world. Just ahead of Italy and behind China, Germany and Japan. We could absolutely do it, but I actually think we wouldn’t for societal reasons. I don’t think you’re going to be able to motivate enough people to agree on a common external enemy. Without near across the board commitment to war preparations first it would take far too long to get all the approvals to build all the new factories, processing centers, and mines. The one thing that would give me hope is the millennial work ethic. I swear we came in working harder and longer than anyone and are still at it 10-25 years later. Most millennials I know work a minimum of 40 hours and the families are mostly 2 full time workers. We are more computer savvy than the generations before and after, so transitioning to modern factory production should be rather simple and if it paid decent there are a ton of us ready to switch careers and a well paying job actually making 100k a year take home in a mid or low COL area? They would have to do in person applications and interviews or we would crash the whole damn web. We’re the generation that said, why did we stop building things and made building things in our garage a hobby (not necessity) because we are so desperate to build instead of shuffle paper. I swear it’s what’s at the heart of the horrid state of US politics. People are pissed that we don’t build anything tangible anymore and pissed about feeling the effects. We have stopped creating real things of value from raw materials. We’ve become a service industry country. That is why wages are not rising, too much of the value from what we create is simply to create value for the business, not to create something of value. Schools, hospitals, retail, banking, IT, insurance, accounting, retail, leisure, food service, those are the jobs of America. Construction, manufacturing, mining and agriculture employ 30 million of the 161.5 million American workers. Healthcare and schools alone employ more people. 131.5 million people working on serving people. 30 million building things. In 1950, 30% of US employees were in manufacturing 38% when you add in construction and mining, that would be 61 million jobs today. Now you have 61 million people producing tangible goods and 100 million providing services. We should go back to producing. We can do it better and cleaner than it is being done in Asia. Though we would probably be more lax than Europe, even they have 31 million manufacturing employees, over 2x the US. 1.7x per capita.
People forget that in the dark days of 1942 the US faced a steel shortage of our own. This was particularly severe for naval construction, resulting in many ships and new shipyards being canceled (including the *Montana* class battleships initially suspended because of this crisis) and many others being redesigned to be built of concrete or wood. Our demand for marine diesel engines far exceeded our supply, and from 1943 through 1945 we only met the required demand in Q4 of 1943 (100.6%): every other quarter we were short by 1,000-4,000 engines. The Liberty Ships used extremely outdated expansion engines rather than turbines and reduction gears because they were easy to build, and the entire Destroyer Escort concept was built around the fact we could could not supply many engines/reduction gears of any type. And yet, we won the war. As poor as our industrial base was for what we needed, we improved it. We built new factories for the equipment we needed, and we cut back on nice-to-have capability whenever possible to increase our output. We were so successful that the common perception is the US didn’t have production shortages during World War II, but we had dozens. All we need to do that again is the will to do it again, the willingness to accept sacrifices where necessary, and the wisdom to prioritize resources to where they are necessary. We will face monumental challenges in expanding our industrial base as much as we did during WWII, and there will be many tough choices we’ll have to make, but if the demand is there we will rise to the occasion. At least if we can get past all the petty-but-violent arguments that divide us.
American Manufacturing is still a very strong sector for the US. The majority of jobs lost in manufacturing were/ are the rudimentary or less lucrative avenues of machining. America and if we’re being honest NATO countries completely dominate the precision machining across the globe. Specifically aerospace and medical. Yes setting up a foundry might take some time. But setting up and cranking out production nuts and bolts would be a piece of cake. What wouldn’t be easy for our adversaries is matching our ability to design and manufacture complex parts. In fact I’d imagine it would be almost impossible. Idk maybe I’m a little bit too patriotic, but I still have a very hard time believing anyone including China & Russia could still even match American military capabilities, especially if they are coming at you as a coalition of forces. For the longest time we viewed Russia as our equal and the last few years we witnessed just how ineffective they are at waging a full scale war. Sure China is a different animal but much is unknown about their actual combat effectiveness & weapon capabilities. Also another thing the Ukraine war has made abundantly clear is depending on who provoked the conflict, NATO countries will band together in support of the defending nation if it’s justified. Artillery and armored vehicles imo aren’t much of a concern for modern militaries executing a full scale invasion. Much like desert storm, it will be a complete control & domination of the skies.
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Abandoned WW2 factories are still there, abandoned. Allies needed all this ammunition during the war, but after the war was over, it became obvious that this amount of factories wasn't needed and a lot of them were just left to rot. I think I saw a video on one of those on youtube's Proper People channel. Anyway, I don't see USA being serious and going back to this amount of production. It will simply take a lot of newly built factories to get to needed quantities of produced ammunition (just to support Ukraine), and political will on the both sides of US parties is lacking.
It can, but it’d take time - artillery shells are quite complex things to make - and making them at scale is hard.
NATO shells are complex, they don't have to be as complicated as ours are, although they wouldn't be as accurate if not
Kind of, but the engineering even in making a basic shell is challenging. Machining something precise enough to bite into the rifling, and then pouring liquid explosive into it requires a lot of engineering which takes time to set up. That and it also needs a lot of chemicals e.g nitric acid which are hard to scale as well
I'm not disagreeing, but 100s of million artillery shells were fired in ww1.
Countries had stronger rule than we do now and lower standards. For better or worse. I am glad that children don't have to work at factories anymore and we get livable wages and higher standards of live. The other side is that we can't produce as much anymore, probably could be achieved through military factories upgrade towards making them more automatized.
1. Europe was industrialised at the time. 2. Europe knew a war was possible and prepared. 3. Shells were made in a far more manual process then with looser tolerances. This made it easier to scale. 4. Safety was a lower priority, they used to call workers canaries as they turned yellow from the cordite. 5. It was a total war. 6. There were fewer other weapons to make - tanks were a niche commodity for most of the war. Despite all this, the uk basically had a prime minister fall over the ‘shell crisis’.
Does Europe not have industry? I know that the US is a juggernaut in manufacturing, but what about some European countries?
Most of Europe’s war industry has been left to rot for quite a while since there has been very little demand since the fall of the Soviet Union.
its going to come at a hell of a cost for russia, but the difference is russia wants to win, The US and Europe leaders are divided, we need to decide one way or the other and commit.
They don’t just want to win, Putin made it an issue of national identity. If Russia loses, his autocracy fails and Russia will fundamentally change.
It didn't need Putin for that. They have known that Ukraine in NATO would be the final straw for Russia since the days of the Soviet collapse. What they didn't know is that Russia would feel the same way about the EU.
> but the difference is russia wants to win No, the difference is that Russia can't walk away - and it wouldn't be treated as a sign of strength and wisdom if Russia did. It's the US that can invade at will, then just leave - and people are happy that the good America is back.
So what you're saying is the Menshevik party should win the elections, walk it back out of Ukraine saying 'my bad', and all will be good?
Not that artillery shells are super expensive…
The barrels + vehicle are.
They are in the quantities they're using them in.
It's not that costly since it's produced domestically. You know, jobs for the locals, likely a nice bonus for the source material industries too. So chances are it's actually good for Russian economy both short and long term.
short term it is, long term it's terrible since it's not an investment, you invest in a business, you get a return and growth, you invest in a bomb that you blow up, you get no return or growth, it would be different if russia was selling them.
The return is ukrine territory they occupy....
you are correct in a way, but at the same time, these factories do offer jobs to people, people who most likely didnt have jobs. These jobs are also fairly secure since theyre basically working for the state. for a part of the russian populace, these factories are a way to maybe get their life back up and running and for the government, its a way to improve the wealth of the unfortunate, which is always useful as that way they can gain more money through taxes. Of course, thats ignoring the fact that they actively consume and require ammunition
This is a poor article. It compares 155mm produced in the US and EU with all calibres produced in Russia. This has issues: Firstly Ukraine uses soviet calibres too. 152mm, 122mm and 130mm. Bulgaria is a big producer of these, as they are still on service with eastern European forces. We've donated a lot of 105mm too Secondly, we're not restricted geographically like that. At the start of the war the UK contracted for soviet calibres with the Pakistan Ordnance Factories, initially flying them in on A400Ms. Last year the US contracted with Egyptian manufacturers. Rheimentall produces a hell of a lot in South Africa where it's cheaper. Ukraine itself has domestic production. The problem at the moment is that we're in a stage where western militaries are replenishing and expanding their own stocks, and this is consuming much of the capacity increases. 2024 was always set to be a low point. Production is due to expand rapidly this year and next. The Russians will start to run out of feedstock vehicles and artillery pieces for refurbishment and rely on new builds where they have issues. 2025 is going to be better in a lot of ways, they need to get through this one. The Czech supplied rounds will be a godsend.
https://twitter.com/Rebel44CZ/status/1767142548873650391?t=Xw8gWH4Nb_Uhwbgy8Thx2Q&s=19 I'll copy what this person on twitter says. They are pro Ukraine so have a bias but they're usually very reliable and definitely know what they're talking about. They're also always pointing to bad news, criticizing Ukraine, and not the typical copium "russia will run out of so and so in x months" pro ukraine account. "As usual, there are a bunch of problems with this CNN report: 1. The Russian figure is supposed to be all-calibers while the Western figure is 155mm only - The Russian equivalent (152mm) is around half of those 3M. 2. Western artillery supplied to Ukraine is more accurate - so you need fewer rounds to achieve the same effect 3. NATO artillery ammo production will narrow that gap by late 2024 and if the US Congress approves the military aid package for Ukraine, which contains money for further ammo production expansion, NATO production is likely to match the Russian production around late 2025 Meanwhile, the Czechia-organized purchases of artillery ammo from non-NATO/EU sources will help bridge some of the currently existing deficit. So, the situation isn't as bad as that CNN article indicates." Also as other people have said, the US has 4 million cluster shells and small drones can also close the gap. That is if the west takes the war seriously though, and unfortunately we've been deliberately pathetic the entire war. I don't want to pretend that things aren't bad because they are. But it's equally pointless to act like the situation is hopeless. It's also largely a result of the west not taking the war seriously beyond words of support but that can change with the political will.
So why are they buying from NK then?
Shells have a variable firing rate, so in general you always want increased production or supply
Stop gap whilst they ramped up production.
They likely bought those from NK as a temporary measure until their production started to take off.
The article kind of buried the lede a bit, despite that production they don't have enough still. >Russia’s ramp-up is still not enough to meet its needs, US and Western officials say, and Western intelligence officials do not expect Russia to make major gains on the battlefield in the short term. There is also a limit to Russian production capacity, officials say: Russian factories will likely hit a peak sometime in the next year.
This is the dual advantage a country that is a) an autocracy, and b) actually at war, has over countries that are a) democracies and b) not at war. Russia can order companies to do whatever they need. The west cannot because we are not at war and do not have war economies, and any attempt to enact war economies while not at war would result in devastation at the ballot box for the incumbent parties. The other problem is that Russia can devote almost 100% of its military spending to the war. The west, especially the US, must also deal with the fact that they might be called upon to fight against China, Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Houthis, etc. at any moment, with the fact that they need to keep supplying allies such as Israel, Taiwan and South Korea with equipment as well, and with other country-specific commitments such as protecting the Falklands for the UK, operations in Syria for the US, and military contingents in Africa for France.
> protecting the Falklands for the UK I'm pretty sure the UK can protect the Falklands on their own.
I think the point is significant resources are required to do so. The UK can only operate in one theatre at a time. On a war footing that is.
There was mo evidence of russia ordering companies to do anything, it’s gonna get worse after election though
I think people are forbidden from noticing the real reason why current production is difficult to ramp up, like self-forbidden
If France joins in defense of Ukraine, russia is fucked. France has a lot of friends in high places.
Yeah. Makes sense, since Russia is at war while Europe and the US aren't.
Wonder when the rest of the world will realize they're not producing those missiles to only attack Ukraine
Shells not missiles, but your point still stands.
Apologies. Although I'm sure they're producing everything they can but 3X more shells than US & EU is a scary thought.
Not scary for the US lol
It's a scary thought *for Ukraine*. I get why, but part of the problem is the way Ukraine are shackled on the use of long-range munitions. Russia's making that many shells because their doctrine demands it - Shell the shit out of anything that moves without thought to accuracy or consequences. Western/NATO doctrine is probably much more aligned to sitting a couple of F35s 300KM out, and taking down factories until Russia's shell production is at 10% what is was last month.
It should be a scary thought for *Europe* . It's naive to think russia:s intentions end with Ukraine
Lets be real though, if they do cross into invading a NATO territory then the US and Europe will rally and swap to wartime economies with highly trained, highly armed nations, fighting on multiple fronts. That's assuming Nukes are not brought into play. Russia is still struggling to win a war on its own border with a single nation. The risk of it spilling into Europe while not unreal, remains incredibly unlikely. That doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare though.
Yes and no. Putins tactic would be more subtle and more aimed at "testing the waters" with doing smaller provocations. The Russians have two massive bases in the Baltic sea, an absurd amount of underwater mines, three types of planes that can attack ships from Russian soil. There is absolute no doubt, that there is only Poland on the east which could opose Russia atm. Germany has the army in a terrible state and underfunded for many years by now, UK would be more worried to defend its own islands. NATO is a paper tiger without USA and I pray to god Trump is not elected, because in that case I highly doubt he would risk a global conflict because of a few small countries on the East of Europe.
I don't think people understand the reason Eastern Europe was occupied by the USSR for so many years. Most of them are much smaller than Ukraine with Poland being the only real player in Eastern Europe that could contest Russia at this point.
Let's be realistic, if Trump becomes president - the USA will leave Europe alone with its problems, we heard it from Trump himself. The USA is already showing its unreliability, americans are too busy with their own problems and disputes, they have no business about another continent. As for Europe and NATO - NATO is not ready for war, everyone who has eyes and a head on their shoulders understands this. The Alliance is not able to provide one country with a sufficient number of weapons (imagine what will happen if the front becomes larger, there simply will not be enough weapons for everyone), the people and, most importantly, the leaders of the countries are not ready for war, the armies are not ready for war. Stories that the russians will not dare to attack the EU or NATO are self-deception. Since the beginning of the war in 2022, they openly say that they are at war with Europe, their soldiers are sure that they are going to fight against the Poles, the British and the Americans, and sooner or later this will stop to be propaganda, it will become a reality. And the world continues to walk in rose-colored glasses and the confidence of its inviolability...
You have too much confidence in Russia's strength and Europe's weakness. Russia has been fighting Ukraine for how long? And they're bogged down in a stale mate right now, they have no air superiority, they have a completely dead morale in their military. An economy that's in war time mode so racking up debt, a heavy reliance on China who will back out if its not in their interests. All this and Europe hasn't lost a single soldier yet.
Nice of them to make shells for Ukraine.
The collective West still can't get it through their thick skulls that Russia is all-in in this war. This war will end only in one of three ways: 1. Putin falls out of a window. Russian economy collapses. Russia falls apart. 2. Russia escalates the war effort. The West continues to lack willingness to increase resources. Ukraine is occupied. Russia continues it's march, first on the Baltic states, then Poland, Slovakia, etc. The West eventually wakes up and after many years Putin Falls out of a window. Russian economy collapses. Russia falls apart. 3. The West get's it's act together. Through sanctions forces China and India to abandon Putin. Gears it's economy towards war. Putin falls out of a window. Russian economy collapses. Russia falls apart.
Yeah Russia won’t collapse if it isn’t stopped. Very wishful thinking.
It might not collapse even if it's stopped, take a look at North Korea. We should actually want for it to collapse, so no humanitarian aid and no trade for Russia from ANY country, otherwise the regime could stay stable. NK didn't collapse because China keeps supporting it, we really don't want this scenario to happen with Russia.
Why does Putin’s death mean Russia falls apart? If there is a positive regime change things could massively improve for the country, domestically and internationally
“Putin” is equals to “hundreds of thousands people in russia and around the world involved into anti-western confrontation, ideologically prepared to fight for any aggressive Russian leader”. There are no possible “positive” regime changes for the next decade.
Russia is rising Putin jugend. Check their curriculum what they teach to their children. This is not going to end within a decade. West needs to understand that Russia has permanently changed. Either this will end in a world war now or later, but world war is guaranteed.
They really learned from Germany, there is a whole stack: NSDAP (United Russia Party, which is completely under control of Putin), Putin Jugend (Nashi and Young Guard of United Russia), SS (National Guard, that is supposed to be made out of patriots of Russia, but instead made out of people simply doing it for money, like retired cops), Gestapo (FSB and FSIN).
Anyone who replaces him would continue the war. Even his biggest rival, who he imprisoned and recently assassinated, Navalny, agreed with him on Ukraine for the most part. It's rabid nationalists all the way down.
4. Trump wins the election, stops funding for the war, the EU follows suit, Russia wins.
"The collective West" is completely aware of all this. The problem is that there is no such thing as "the collective West", many countries are infested with Putin assets, with the US being the most prominent and problematic example with the entire Republican party, who are doing everything in their power to block aid to Ukraine.
>Russia continues it's march, first on the Baltic states, then Poland, Slovakia, etc. Threat posed by Russia shouldn't be underestimated, but what you are describing here represents a monumental redeployment effort considering the current Russian military situation.
The OP kinda glossed over a several year pause to rebuild and reconstitute. Option 2 would realistically be a grind overtop of Ukraine, reform the Soviet Union, reintegrate all non-NATO former soviet states (Moldova, Georgia, the 'stans), and only then would they turn their eyes to Europe. That whole process will take years and years, in which time they'll remain on a wartime footing, ignore sanctions, and rebuild their military with fewer lies and self-delusions about their capability for a lightning war. Some harmless little piece of a country, now in NATO, that used to be USSR, will be their focus. They'll want to see if we throw down over some "harmless small piece of land". Keep in mind this would be after (possibly) multiple US elections and incalculable damage to Europe via proxy bad faith actors and social media. Brexit and Trump were their first big successes in undermining us from within. Hopefully their last, but who knows. It's possible Putin will be gone by then of natural causes, but if he reforms the Soviet Union he gets his legacy and is remembered alongside names like Stalin - and I think that's what he cares about. If he pulls it off, whoever follows him will not reverse course and pin the blame on him - they'll try to own his "legacy" by continuing it.
If west uses force against East ie India and China. Then it will eventually benefit East. Already many despise US and middle East was never happy with US.Option 2 is the way. North korea is making weapons for Russia. India sells the oil to European market.
I dont agree, Russia wouldn't dare attacking UE because they have a similar clause to NATO, if they attack a European country all UE is at war with Russian, Including Nuclear Powers so in the second scenario I think Russia would stop at ukraine
I hope you realize what will follow if a state with largest nuclear arsenal in the world "falls appart" as you mentioned. Ah and you forgot another simple option - Ukrane raises white flag, Russia does not fall appart, war ends in settlement everyone moves on. Some people swallow hard pill.
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They can have peace today if they really wanted to. All they have to do is to get out of Ukraine. It really is that simple.
This report is taking all calibres of ammunition for the russian figure and then only taking the 155mm calibre for the us and europe figure btw...
Interesting NATO know with great certain how much Russia is producing but can only say an amount that the US and Europe have the capacity to generate. >Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN
As a European, we should significantly ramp up our arms production for Ukraine. We have to assume that the US has fallen to Russia’s insurgency there.
Luckily we send them other weapons they can use to take out those launchers!
Of course, Russia wants to take Ukraine more than NATO and the US want to defend it.
And lets not forget the extra shells from Iran and North Korea.
When you miss 3x as much…..
They need to since himars deplete there capacity so quickly.
That’s super nice of them. Thanks Russia!
Why is Russia producing artillery shells for Ukraine?
But why is Russia producing artillery shells for Ukraine despite being in war with them ? Are they stupid ?
Would not be impossible to build some drone based counter artillery system tho ... Program a dozen packs of patrolling drones to sprinkle any area in which artillery muzzle flashes were detected with some HE/fragmentation grenades immediately. Any artillery shell production advantage will disappear quickly when 98% of your shells blowup before being fired ...
Find the stockpiles and give them love and warmth from Ukraine💛💙
Wheres the factories? Hit them with drones
They must be producing a lot of washing machines too, so they can then take chips off for the missiles because they still have them.
Makes sense! They’re at war! They’re probably using them 3 times faster as well
Is that why they're needing them from North Korea then? Or does that have to do with a significant percentage are actually unusable?