The new Bulgarian government, led by pro-Russian former president Rumen Radev, has halted Bulgaria's military aid to Ukraine, with the Defense Minister Stoyanov saying that further supply of weapons only prolongs the conflict and suffering, and the war needs to be resolved through negotiation.
Ukraine is game to you? Part deux.
- Thread starter Slothur the Hasty
- Start date
If this denial of supply becomes as successful as it seems and Russian forces withdraw, I can imagine a new front-line running from Vasylivka - M-18/E-105 south of Zaporizhia through Melitopol to the ocean as the narrowest stretch for Russia to defend, liberating Kherson and Crimea completely, but that is not soon.
Donbass - not much gain there I do think unless Ukraine has something else cooking that we do not know about, we have been surprised before.
Guess where I am not going on vacation again. Fuck Bulgaria. (Had a great time there last summer, but with this government, i am finding a different place to go)
Russia is imploding economically. The radical change in the status quo is the self-created domestic mess they created by embarking on this ill-fated mission. This is on top of the rotting out of the country via corruption and outright indifference since the end of the Cold War.
Russia's MO is this salami slicing, taking a country piece-by-piece while corrupting its government in order to pull the target nation into Moscow's orbit. We saw it with similarly labeled SMOs in Georgia (Abkhazia), and elsewhere.
What makes Ukraine different is that there was strong popular support to end corruption (Euromaidan), a populous nation with a decent economy, a world-class leader in Zelinksy, and strong support in Europe who remembers how the USSR treated them not too long ago.
Russia—or should we more precisely say Putin—is caught in a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy. At any time, he could declare victory and go home. The longer he stays, the weaker his and Russia's position becomes. He had a good grift going before invasion, and all he's got now is being exposed as the paper tiger savvy observers had already deduced, as well as a decimated population and military/industrial capacity.
VividVerism
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Yeah that was one of my thoughts on the matter.
My other thought was European military support may start to slack off once Ukraine pushes Russia back to the 2022 pre-invasion status quo, with Crimea and some eastern regions under at least de facto Russian control. If that's the case, better to recapture Crimea earlier rather than later if possible because they may not have the support later.
Ukraine is now firmly in the EU-sphere now. If Ukraine push Russia back to the pre-2014 borders or makes a favorable peace-treaty with Russia, Europe will continue to prop-up and beg Ukraine on their knees to join the EU, and even if Ukraine cannot broker a peace deal they are happy with, they'll still be considered the first front-line against any Russian aggression in the future.
The biggest problem with most western countries is that there has not been real hardship experienced by the population since WWII. The peace-bubble Europe has been living in since made governments "peace-damaged" to the point that preparations and readiness went out the window decades ago, and very few understand what is needed. Finland and Poland being the exception, Sweden also, the rest seem to enjoy internal invoicing to fudge any so-called growth in spending, while the major powers in Europe for the most part cannot work together or decide who will do what. It's been 4.5 years and military buildup is still glacial.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and Ukraine lives this every day. Europe is still flailing having had years to do something but with very little to show for it except sternly worded letters. No matter what happens, Ukraine will be the big winner here in the long run.
What i do see if Russia fails in Ukraine is that they will go after Georgia instead - something to keep the war economy going.
As someone with German family—some of whom are tied into the the Russian media—can vouch for this. If Poland and Finland weren't part of the EU, the outlook would be markedly different at this time. Many—even excluding Russian misinformation—still don't view Ukraine for the canary in the coal mine that it is. It's a stark warning that Moscow cannot be trusted.
The EU (for all its many flaws) grew out of the desire not to do a WWII again, it's the heart of the project. A project Putin hates more than NATO because it shows a different way for countries to work together. Too many in Europe under appreciates what they have in the EU and what it does for them (I'm British and yes I'm bitter). The invasion of Crimea was in response to Euromaiden Uprisings and the desire of Ukrainains to no longer be a corrupt Russian satrapy but part of the EU. The Ukraine war is the first one where people were fighting in trenches for the European Union.
A gas pipeline fire of a truly scary size. The sound and sights are very end of the world-ish.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/wartranslated.bsky.social/post/3mnuwc3tcmk2j
Closer look:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3mnuw2dxp3s2j
View: https://bsky.app/profile/wartranslated.bsky.social/post/3mnuwc3tcmk2j
Closer look:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3mnuw2dxp3s2j
While I understand where you're coming from, I'd like to point out that peace-damaged is a very negative way of saying spending money on your people instead of military contingencies.
There was also a real hangover from US military adventures we blindly followed into, that defence spending was really unpopular among the populace. 2014 was the wake up call which was largely ignored, partly because most countries trusted that the US would back them up.
defense spending did rise though: EDA defence numbers
2014 -2025 the spending has doubled, defense investment quadrupled. Thats actual hardware and factories. This is against a backdrop of trade wars from the US and China, energy crises, labor shortages.
It could have been faster and more coordinated, but at least its not just internal invoicing and sternly worded letters
According to Interfax, there is a new Deputy Diretor of the Russian Central Bank
https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/118002/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/where-is-nabiullina/ar-AA25aegm
https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/118002/
But Nabiullina hasn't been seen in public for weeks...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/where-is-nabiullina/ar-AA25aegm
Europe has been warned enough times that Russia has had imperial ambitions since the dissolution of the Soviet Union where Russia basically has been on a war-footing ever since with brief pauses in between. The old Russian imperial plan drafted since Catherine the Great is still active. (Crimea, Bessarabia, Baltic's)
Europe in the early 90s was a lot poorer than it is now, yet that decade was mostly spent dismantling the readiness that had been ingrained in us since WWII, so what that tells me is that Europe could have afforded both but choose not to, so yes i will use peace-damaged as sternly worded letters, committees, meetings and receptions that could have been an e-mail and fluff have dominated European politics for two decades. The EU is very top-heavy.
Finland again the exception, and recently Poland.
IIRC we had a Bulgarian poster in the old Ukraine thread commenting on the politics there occasionally. Would have been nice to read their account of the local politics, but I haven't seen them much on Ars lately, if at all.
The problem with Russia going after Georgia is that the Ukrainian approach to dealing with the Russians is very exportable. And I'm sure the Ukrainians would be very happy to show the Georgians how to build a drone or three.
Given that this has turned into a war of attrition, and Russia's biggest vulnerability seems to be logistics, I'm not sure I see how shrinking the from line does anything particularly good for Ukraine. For Russia, rather than doubling the density of meat bags, I would expect the main benefit of a shorter front to be concentration of logistics resources which would make them more efficient and easier to defend. And that would slow the rate of attrition of those logistics resources.