Russian Invasion of Ukraine Megathread

[Pocket Dragoon]

At least Korean doesn't have another thing that makes China's situation worse, the disproportionate ratio of male-female

Behold, a Korean crossover:

 

[Autopsy]

At least Korean doesn't have another thing that makes China's situation worse, the disproportionate ratio of male-female

Oh right, part of the reason I'm taking the state-sponsored rape camps thing seriously is because a rural equivalent was a major controversy immediately before the war. Chinese farmers have been "solving" this problem of fewer men than women in various ways themselves, and it's been a mostly unspoken practice until recently. Chinese citizens are modern and networked enough that low-level atrocities are no longer palatable even if it's to solve a serious problem like demographic collapse. Ultimately, there's no way out but through.
If they really wanted to have a population boom they'd need to shoot for a Guangdong Woodstock, but China just banned idolizing effeminate men, so I don't think half of those performers would be allowed in the country, let alone their modern-day KPOP equivalents.

Edit:

Mine is not, but then again my take is less "Russia is losing" and more "Ukraine is not winning, yet". I think that the initial plan was a budget Shock and Awe; hit the Ukrainians everywhere, break communications, get into Kiev at the very least, and generally overwhelm the ground forces and command structure to compel them to just give up. I lean against the meat grinder idea, because they don't have the numerical superiority for it, and I've spent this war operating on the assumption that the people making decisions aren't idiots. A war of maneuver seems to be their only viable option at this point, but the lines are too static to indicate that they are achieving any success in this endeavor.

The wildcard no one expected was Ukraine's military not crumpling immediately under morale issues. The drop was Russia's military doing that instead, and the ace was nearly the entire West hopping on the wagon of "well fuck the Russian economy, then."
Russia has committed about 80% of its regular troops (reformed as BTGs semi-recently as part of "modernization,") to Ukraine. There's no evidence that Ukraine will beat the bulk of these or even most, in fact they might not even make it through 30% or so of that 80% before Russia gets tangible wins. That alone would be a tremendous success, but not a win.
The open question isn't whether Ukraine can win, militarily, but if their political apparatus and economic consequences can climb so much that Putin shoots himself in the back of the head, or so steep he'll have to draw losses and make major concessions tantamount to Ukraine winning. Some package like fucking off entirely out of Donbas, Russians keeping Crimea, paying for rebuilding, and Ukraine joining the EU, because the alternative is that there will be no working goods, services, or infrastructure left to keep the soldiers moving.
Every time another oligarch's shit is seized is itself directly a threat being made on Putin's life and rest assured he is reading them as such.

 

[Orange Man Costume]

Isn't Churchill now a warmongering, war criminal, racist who wanted all Indian's dead?
I think that's what twiiter was saying?

Twitter thought the election was hacked, then Twitter thought the election was supreme and unhackable, because Twitter thinks what they're told to think because they're just competitively signaling that latest thing.

 

[Ow The Edge]

Chinese citizens are modern and networked enough that low-level atrocities are no longer palatable even if it's to solve a serious problem like demographic collapse.

I... would not take bets on that. If there's a people and party ruthless enough to wholesale mass abduct women from their neighbors and force them to make babies, it's the chinks and their ccp. If they have to shut off their internet, crash the economy, and go full Mao again to stay in power and keep China existent, I think there's decent odds they'll try.

 

[Josterman]

One of these things is not like the other
Ken used the Iraq war comparison

https://mobile.twitter.com/KenPenders/status/1506449520615337984?cxt=HHwWgMCtxfD2_ecpAAAA

 

[hooboy]

If there's a people and party ruthless enough to wholesale mass abduct women from their neighbors and force them to make babies, it's the chinks and their ccp.

Didn’t Serb battalions do this in Bosnia?

 

[Rezza]

This was covered yesterday. They claimed they were hacked and those numbers are fake.
View attachment 3099209

"Hacked", yeah, sure....

I wouldn't count on an implosion, someone has to facilitate the bust. If no one is present to call collect, they can delay and do easing indefinitely. It won't be as efficient at obscuring costs to the consumer as quantitative easing, but China can afford unhappy Chinamen even if they can't afford unhappy investors and trade partners, so they will just foist off the costs at home. The only threat would be an audit catching out
China's policy in COVID has been fantastic for keeping their industries open with little concern for pesky things like "muh freedoms," and the US is both too distracted and domestic to stage an audit right now, so Chinese productivity is literally all that matters. I have no doubt that constant shutdowns are hurting the Chinese domestic market, but they can, and do, cook stocks with party money as much as they please already, so as long as the bluff stays, they're fine. It is ultimately better this way globally if you care about cheap goods. If you don't, it'd still be better to wait until China commits to something publicly embarrassing or enraging for propaganda purposes, to redirect consumers' frustrations as the markets adjust.
The threat of exactly this is likely a major contributor to China's current neutrality in the ongoing war despite initial vague support.

Trump, despite all the domestic controversy, was a very foreign policy-focused president. Biden is now on the back of four? five? major international controversies in his presidency so-far, and he rant on a domestic agenda. I would be amazed if he'd take on the role of popping the China bubble, ON TOP OF oil skyrocketing, getting out of a war in a costly way, getting involved with a costly war, preexisting supply chain issues, etc.
Any one of these would normally be a presidency ender alone, regardless if he's to blame for any of these problems directly. There's decent arguments to be made for his contributing to all of those, so I would anticipate Republicans driving the nail in, and that's a legitimate threat any momentum he wanted to build off his first term. The fact that Biden's team started running ads in the middle of his presidency after making fun of Trump for it, and he used the State of the Union to shill, is surely "coincidental."


Implosion is inevitable, no country on the planet has solved this problem. China is extra handicapped because, like for the Japanese, mass immigration is dirty and would be considered capitulation. Importing whites to fix the birthrate would be seen as another humiliation, the kind of Asians who would want to go to China are the ones who China doesn't want, and blacks are currently heavily repressed and transient, large permanent populations of blacks or Indians/Pakis in China would cause uproar.
I know it's a joke, but state-sponsored rape camps don't solve every step after the boning, which is expensive and debilitating for 1-2 people per family minimum or a few dozen million young people collectively, depending on how you organize the social safety net.
The economic war in Moscow is also demonstrating in real time what such horrific PR allows your enemy to do with minimal repercussions in real time. It's still going to take a while to shake out how resilient the West's economic warfare engine is long-term, but there's a lot of countries that would absolutely take advantage of multinationals' outrage to nip at China's hamstrings.

Edit:

Keep in mind that most of the Ukrainians they're "liberating" are cousins, former friends, former co-workers, etc., and that despite shitty Pravda memes about muh Russian language oppression and how everyone wanted to secede, most of the people the Russian Guard is having to shoot at speak the same language. It's much harder to slaughter someone who can express their humanity at you directly instead of a monkey yelling desert gibberish, or worse: French, which sometimes drives even civilians to murder.

I agree and disagree. The property market in China is tied to many things, from socio-economic to politics. The bubble's pop is not going to be just a bust, its an implosion

Chinese families overall don't want more than one kid, max. Just too expensive. Farm families likely would want the three kids, more helpers on the farm, more to provide for parents in their old age.

The thing is, lots of farm families children are moving to cities to find work, and the children of those have to be raised by the elderly back at their hometown. Hence another destruction of a part of Chinese Family culture

People say this but I don't get it. Even if the numbers in the computer get spooky they'll still have the 24,000 miles of high speed trains, thousands of brand new bridges, vast hydroelectric dams, subway systems, and airports that they built instead of invading Iraq.

Ah, see, who pays for the maintenance of those fancy infrastructures? The Central government? No, its the local governments. And the local governments get their money from the sales of their land to the real estate developers. And we're not talking small change either, significant, if not most, of their earnings are sourced from those land sales. If those are gone, the local governments would be struggling to maintain all those expensive buildings

 

[No Batty Boys in Jamaica]

Didn’t Serb battalions do this in Bosnia?

Meanwhile in Kebabland.

 

[DumbDude42]

That is the war the west trained Ukraines Army to fight, but from what I am seeing this war has become something entirely different. An organized Light Infantry Army going up against a wholly mechanized Army...and winning. Ever since the US wars in the middle east, there has been debate in strategic circles as to just what is the most effective combat formation. Light Infantry or Armored. The US, having infinite money, went with the little girl solution. "Why not both?!" as such we have entire divisions of Light Infantry and entire divisions of Armored, with most forces being a weird hybrid capable of doing one or the other. This was aided by the fact that Light Infantry was ideal for counter insurgency. But the question remained as to whether or not they were effective against a peer power.

infantry is vulnerable to everything though, especially light machine guns. whether they're moounted on an ifv, a bunker, a helicopter or somewhere else, if your dudes get spotted the'll drop like flies. it's especially bad out in the open where there is no cover.

The logic as to WHY Light Infantry has suddenly become a subject of debate is due entirely to computer miniaturization. Computers have gotten small enough in the last 30 years that you don't need a massive truck or tank to hold the guidance system for a missile. You can fit the thing on the missile itself, and make the missile light enough to be carried by hand. Where before you need a 40 pound computer mounted to a truck in order to launch a guided missile at an attack helicopter, now you just need the equivalent of a 2 pound laptop. In essence, an infantry platoon dismounted is now capable of the same fire output as a mechanized unit 40 years ago.

im pretty sure infantry already had access to manpads (like stingers or the old redeyes) and anti tank missiles (panzerfaust, rpg7) 40 years ago. not high tech stuff like javelins and nlaws today, but good enough to get the job done.

 

[Orange Man Costume]

View attachment 3098797
Well it looks like the stream of ancient shit never ends. At this point I'm waiting to see a T34 roll out.

This might be captured from the Ukranians, because this type of machinegun was spotted and made fun of by the russian telegrams yesterday.

Your version has a shield that's missing from the Ukranian one, so yea it's easily possible this is just irony and they ended up using the same model, or it's the same gun and the Russians took it, I just think it's odd to see this gun show up twice in two days.

Translation:

The war of museum exhibits continues. This time, a Ukrainian serviceman is firing at the range from the Maxim Machine Gun modified in 1941.

(source)
Also archived:

 

[Jump]

One of these things is not like the other
Ken used the Iraq war comparison

https://mobile.twitter.com/KenPenders/status/1506449520615337984?cxt=HHwWgMCtxfD2_ecpAAAA

View attachment 3099261

Ya Russia has a long way to go if they want to catch up the the USA's civilian kill count. Maybe hold off on the Iraq comparisons for a bit and give them a chance to catch up

 

[Lone MacReady]

Having to fight people who aren't that different from you, using shitty equipment, getting paid in worthless money. Traditionally when an army doesn't get paid in real money, the solution is to plunder. But grunts aren't being allowed to plunder that much for various reasons, ranging from bad optics to higher-ups wanting it for themselves.

That's something I'd say to all western military men and jackboot cops back home. How can you continue to be a tool, for worthless slave currency? Back in the day you could cut some jap's fillings out for Gold, or were actually paid in tangible Silver - but today? You literally work for unbacked, thoroughly debased Debt Notes, Slices of Cotton and nothing more. No miner had to dig, no surveyor had to search, no mint worker had to refine... it's all just controllable Kike-printed fiat now.

 

[Ow The Edge]

View attachment 3099293
Meanwhile in Kebabland.

You're not kidding. The actual Turks in Turkey have Western European levels of tfr. Only the Kurds are actually breeding in decent numbers, which spells trouble for our friend Erdogen and his boys. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of roaches says I.

 

[Smity Werbenjagermanjensen]

A lot of these guys died a week or two ago and are only just being announced now by Russian media, but Russian Junior Officers aren't having much better luck than their Senior counterparts.

 

[Josterman]

Ya Russia has a long way to go if they want to catch up the the USA's civilian kill count.
View attachment 3099303

View attachment 3099314

Boy howdy Ken barked up the wrong tree with that comparison if he cared that much he should just wear a azov battalion shirt or wave a azov battalion flag. I wonder if some would use the black sun logo with that group and turn its current colors into the Ukrainian colors of blue and yellow. Tim pool brought it up on his show when he was talking about the group

Also hunter avalleon

 

[MrJokerRager]

The latest memes so far from /chug/ in general.

 

[Jump]

This might be captured from the Ukranians, because this type of machinegun was spotted and made fun of by the russian telegrams yesterday.

Your version has a shield that's missing from the Ukranian one, so yea it's easily possible this is just irony and they ended up using the same model, or it's the same gun and the Russians took it, I just think it's odd to see this gun show up twice in two days.

View attachment 3099257
Translation:

(source)
Also archived:
View attachment 3099250

Supposedly there are 35,000 of them floating around Ukraine.

The Soviets never scrapped anything.

 

[Richardface]

That captured Russian EW system might just be a refrigerated container spray painted green by the ukranians

https://mobile.twitter.com/Alex06944477/status/1506364912532135936

 

[Aidan]

Chinese families overall don't want more than one kid, max. Just too expensive. Farm families likely would want the three kids, more helpers on the farm, more to provide for parents in their old age.

I listened to ADVChina's podcast, two white dudes who both lived in China for over a decade and made videos driving all over it who had to leave when things got spicy. Anyway they had a whole segment about how those farm families do have more kids but rural Chinese bumpkins are barely citizens aside from pumping up population numbers apparently, they are literally second-class and barely on the record to the point the government doesn't really know how many there are.

Figured it's worth a mention whire we raff at china's inevitable popuration probrem.

That's something I'd say to all western military men and jackboot cops back home. How can you continue to be a tool, for worthless slave currency? Back in the day you could cut some jap's fillings out for Gold, or were actually paid in tangible Silver - but today? You literally work for unbacked, thoroughly debased Debt Notes, Slices of Cotton and nothing more. No miner had to dig, no surveyor had to search, no mint worker had to refine... it's all just controllable Kike-printed fiat now.

Hard to compare the US military personnel situation to Russia's. Even on the low end, US troops make bank compared to their Russian counterparts. I doubt it's a Russian joke for their junior enlisted to go out and get flashy cars they can barely afford.

 

[Smity Werbenjagermanjensen]

That captured Russian EW system might just be a refrigerated container spray painted green by the ukranians

https://mobile.twitter.com/Alex06944477/status/1506364912532135936

Maybe but this guy brings up a decent point.

So really, who knows what the fuck it is.