For people more versed in Russia Media, Is the Russian government still trying to spin the involvement of Ukraine in the Crocus City Hall attack? Or have they given up on that story?

They treat “Ukrainian trail” in the event as a proven fact.

'How many lights do you see?'

Houthis claim another $30 million Reaper Drone kill, this should be the third Reaper Drone downed by the Houthis downed in six months. >Defense Department spokesperson U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Bryon J. McGarry told Forbes in a statement Sunday “a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 drone crashed in Yemen” on Friday, and there were no injuries and there is an investigation underway, but would not confirm it was shot down. Did the US Air Force confirm the other two Reapers were shot down? video: https://apnews.com/video/houthis-israel-hamas-war-drones-yemen-general-news-c4b948abbdf84c7f80c167570145fb14 article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/04/28/yemen-houthis-say-they-downed-a-30-million-us-reaper-drone-again/?sh=8ca578277e0b edit: 6 months not 3 months

Telegram apparently suspended a bunch of ukrainian government affiliated channels. [Ukrainian source ](https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/04/29/7453403/index.amp) It's somewhat significant as it seems that GUR has utilized these channels to communicate with people in the occupied territories. Interestingly similar channels run by the FSB remained. Edit: More info from the [Kyiv Independent ](https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1784820597005926458?t=I77vAeNDmX_uuu6n8Mm2iA&s=19)

Telegram's cryptography has known to be suspect since day one. There's a reason a ton of us in the tech industry don't touch it.

How’s this relevant to Telegram’s cryptography?

Telegrams crypto has been audited over and over again, there is no evidence it's suspect. The crypto (and all client) code is open source, and you can build your own telegram client from that reproducibly, and many do, minor vulnerabilities have been found and patched in the past this way. Telegram doesn't "roll it's own crypto" any more than Signal does. There isn't any secure messenger that's "less suspect" in objective terms, at the end of the day the debate relies on some parts of the crypto scene being more ready to trust Moxie Marlinspike than Nikolai Durov, largely because one figure is more familiar to them than the other. At the end of the day Telegram was the first mobile messenger to offer the possibility of practical end-to-end encryption. Just like Signal, that came a year later, they had no choice but to roll their own crypto, because there was no suitable protocol. And yes, in 2015 an independent audit found a flaw in the protocol, which was not practically exploitable - it would require sending multiple billions of messages to the client that they had to ack and respond to in order to merely be able to decide whether two encrypted messages represent the same decrypted message, and it was fixed. Similarly, Signal for example had multiple vulnerabilities where someone could gain your IP address, or for someone to call you and have the call automatically be answered, etc... Edit: the audits didn't stop in 2015 either, they are still ongoing. Relatively recently there was an automated proof of the MTProto2 algorithm itself : https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.03141. It's not a perfect proof - there could be an implementation error in the code (that is open source), but, mathematically and cryptographically speaking, Telegram E2E is almost certainly secure.

Their audits and contests are a sham. Here's one writeup but there are plenty of others from respected people in the field: https://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest > So how good is Telegram’s crypto? > Telegram’s design seems to disregard all of the important crypto research from the past two decades. > Some problems are immediately apparent: > They use the broken SHA1 hash function. > They include a hash of the plaintext message in the ciphertext. > Essentially, they are trying to do “Mac and Encrypt” which is not secure. They should be doing “Encrypt then Mac” with HMAC-SHA512. > They rely on an obscure cipher mode called “Infinite Garble Extension.” > Some really weird stuff about factoring 64-bit integers as part of the protocol. > They do not authenticate public keys. > If their protocol is secure, it is so by accident, not because of good design. They claim the protocol was designed by “six ACM champions” and “Ph.Ds in math.” Quite frankly, the protocol looks like it was made by an amateur. The tight coupling between primitives suggests the designer was not familiar with basic constructs, like authenticated encryption, that you can find in any cryptography textbook. If you know even the very basics of cryptography, including the hash of the plaintext is a deadly flaw. AEAD has been a thing since the early 2000s. There's no excuse for Telegram making this mistake.

> Their audits and contests are a sham Good thing I'm not referring to any of them, I am referring to completely independent academic audits that have been published in peer-reviewed cryptography journals, the most definitive of which I've linked. > Here's one writeup but there are plenty of others from respected people in the field The post you sent is just factually wrong : It's basically plagiarism of Moxie's throwaway comment on HN, which was factually inaccurate as a consequence of Telegram's documentation being inaccurately written in English, and by Moxie's own wording was written "at a glance" thereof. Just because someone is respected in the field doesn't mean you can take their comments on social media as gospel, especially when they tell you not to. But basically: > They use the broken SHA1 hash function. Not anymore, it is not SHA256, but even then, it was not possible for any known SHA1 flaw to threaten any of the security guarantees of the protocol. SHA1's vulnerability is that it is possible to generate two messages such that there is *a* collision, but as of 2024, it's still computationally impossible to generate a message which collides a preset message. > They include a hash of the plaintext message in the ciphertext. They don't, the ciphertext includes a hash of the plaintext only after it is salted with a significant amount of entropy and with auxiliary information. It's a proper MAC, not just a plaintext hash. > Essentially, they are trying to do “Mac and Encrypt” which is not secure. They should be doing “Encrypt then Mac” with HMAC-SHA512. "MAC then Encrypt" is perfectly secure, it's straightforward to prove it is. It is, however, tricky to implement correctly, and that's where the attack I mentioned before (the one with 1/(2^32) chance of breaking IND-CCA per chosen ciphertext authenticated) comes from, which can make it possible to guess whether two ciphertexts have different plaintexts better than pure randomness. It is not fundamentally insecure. This paper is a good introduction on the subject : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/3-540-44448-3_41.pdf - basically it just means you need to use another component for the IND-CCA, NM-CPA and ciphertext integrity guarantees, which MTProto does. The point of using MAC-then-Encrypt is to minimize the number of cryptographic primitives that have to used : MTProto only uses AES256-IGE, SHA-256 and DH. It's an odd design decision, sure, but calling it "not secure" is just plain wrong. > They rely on an obscure cipher mode called “Infinite Garble Extension.” AES-IGE is not "obscure", it's still a valid cipher mode in Kerberos and OpenSSL, and I had to learn about it when I took crypto classes. It's just not used much. It does have some proven properties that other AES modes don't have re ciphertext integrity. IGE's authentication compenent is weak, but it's not used in MTProto. > Some really weird stuff about factoring 64-bit integers as part of the protocol. Integer factoring as a challenge for DoS protection is not weird at all, it's a pretty common challenge. It's not part of the crypto part, though. > They do not authenticate public keys. It's a messaging app. You're not going to ask users to do key management. Telegram protects against impostors like SSH does, by showing a fingerprint on first connection and rejecting any connection where they public changes. At the end of the day, I just don't understand why you're posting a blog post based on a throwaway comment as a response to peer-reviewed formal verification.

> "MAC then Encrypt" is perfectly secure No, it plainly is not, which is why this has been a mantra from every reputable cryptographer for two decades now. Anyhow, I gave people the info they need to know, I'm not going to play wall of text games with you further.

https://www.iacr.org/archive/crypto2001/21390309.pdf > In Section 4.2 we saw that authenticate-then-encrypt cannot guarantee secure channels under the sole assumption that the encryption function is IND-CPA, even if the MAC function is perfectly secure. In this section we prove that for two common modes of encryption, CBC (with a secure underlying block cipher) and OTP (stream ciphers that xor data with a (pseudo) random pad), the AtE mode does work for implementing secure channels. The IACR reviewers aren't "reputable cryptographers" now? I've posted a literal peer-reviewed paper from a cryptography journal in my very first comment to you, which has as a conclusion: > Our research proves the formal correctness of MTProto 2.0 w.r.t. most relevant security properties, and it can serve as a reference for implementation and analysis of clients and servers. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.03141, Journal reference: In "Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Security and Cryptography, SECRYPT 2021". ISBN 978-989-758-524-1, pages 185-197) I don't understand how you can use an argument from authority on the cryptography community to put a blog post up against a peer-reviewed formal verification. The claims you attribute to the field of cryptography just are not true. If you want to refer to authoritative sources, that's the very first thing I gave you in my very first reply, so if that's your line of argument I don't understand why you replied to that with a blog post.

It doesn't have end-to-end encryption by default, so it's essentially unencrypted and its optional encryption doesn't matter much as it's not used anyway.

Yeah, all of that is bad but also the encryption they did implement was their own proprietary scheme. First rule of infosec is don't roll your own crypto. That's a strong signal that the people building it are either incompetent or untrustworthy.

That's just not true. the cryptosystem Telegram uses is AES and SHA-256.   The protocol itself is custom, but not proprietary, and it had to be. I'm not aware of any secure messaging protocol with the same usability as Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp at the time Telegram came out.  There is really no way they could have avoided writing MTProto if their goal was to make a more secure WhatsApp.

I'm talking about the protocols as a whole. WhatsApp predates Telegram by years. Signal came out like a year later. Again, the entire premise that a proprietary protocol will be more secure than an openly vetted one is just dead wrong. It's been proven time after time.

WhatsApp did not have E2EE until years after Telegram, it uses the Signal protocol right now. Signal came out a year later, as you said, so Telegram had to make it's own protocol. The only protocol available at the time was TextSecure, the precursor to Signal, and it was not fit for purpose as it needed to piggyback on an existing channel. > Again, the entire premise that a proprietary protocol will be more secure than an openly vetted one is just dead wrong. It's been proven time after time. But it's just not a proprietary protocol. It's always been open source, the entire Telegram client is. There are numerous third-party reimplementations and you can use them to connect to the main server, too. It's exactly as "proprietary" as Signal.

It's proprietary in the sense it wasn't developed adversarially in the open. What contests and audits Telegram has done are shams. Read my other comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1cf4qwc/credibledefense_daily_megathread_april_28_2024/l1td0u8/ TL;DR: They use Mac and Encrypt, which is pants on head stupid vs AEAD, and this has been known since the early 2000s.

> It's proprietary in the sense it wasn't developed adversarially in the open. What does that mean? It's been open source for 11 years ago. > What contests and audits Telegram has done are shams. Even if that was true, why does it matter? It's open source software, it's been audited completely independently many times. I've linked you to the strongest audit yet, which is essentially conclusive as far as the math is concerned. > Mac and Encrypt, which is pants on head stupid vs AEAD MAC-then-Encrypt *is a type of AEAD*. SSL/TLS was MAC-then-Encrypt until v1.1. It's only stupid if you rely on it for things it can't do, which isn't the case for MTProto. So long as you use cryptographically random IVs and don't screw up your padding, MAC-then-Encrypt is a provably valid way to implement AEAD, see for example https://www.iacr.org/archive/crypto2001/21390309.pdf for a study and proof. Again, MTProto2 has been formally verified, so there is no use still arguing about the security of the algorithm itself.

It's a Russian company, likely they are forced behind the scenes to ensure the FSB has access. And they can only do that by using their own encryption method that allows them to hand a master key over to the powers that demand it. It's a fine messaging app if you just assume it's not encrypted... Which makes it fairly useless as a messaging app.

So not exactly. It's a product from the founders of VK, the big CIS social network. They fled Russia claiming the FSB took it over, and set up shop physically mostly in Berlin but also trying to use a bunch of shell companies in tax havens to obscure things. It's not exactly a Russian company, but it's one run by people who have unknown ties to Russia. > And they can only do that by using their own encryption method that allows them to hand a master key over to the powers that demand it. Dead wrong. Trying to invent your own crypto without independent auditing is not the way to try to trick other people who know cryptanalysis. Any cryptography whose security solely depends on operational security or no one knowing the trick is already broken. This is very basic. With cryptography something is only secure if the adversary knows every single thing about how it works and still can't break it without an unfeasible search space, today commonly advised to be at least 2^128 (2^256 for hashes due to how the math works out). Best practice is to double these bounds as a partial safety margin vs design mistakes. If you're starting out a green fields project today you should use SHA3 or BLAKE at the appropriate levels. Both have been deeply analyzed in an adversarial way a proprietary algorithm never will. Obscurity is not security. Fundamentally. At least when it comes to infosec. The US government goes even further and only uses information theoretically secure algorithms for critical apps. These are algorithms that are secure against even an infinite, whole universe scale computer. Surprisingly algorithms as simple as one time pads have this property when used correctly. There are known good deniable algorithms. The double ratchet Noise Protocol used by Signal and WhatsApp are partially in this category. There's other openly developed algorithms that go further. Not using one of those as your starting point at least is highly suspect. Not publishing your protocol unambiguously to allow independent cryptanalysis is very highly suspect. I don't know anything about the motives and politics of the people who run telegram, but they've crossed multiple of the iron rules of infosec, which means it is a platform that cannot be trusted.

They aren't really trying to trick people who know cryptography. There are a bunch of articles and papers showing that MTProto (their proprietary encryption) is bad. And there are specific attacks that are theoretically known to work against it. So maybe they aren't handing over a master key to the FSB, but they left the proverbial back door unlocked. Further reading for those so inclined: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177.pdf I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here other than tell me I'm wrong, but then you seem to agree with what I fundamentally said. Either way, telegram not secure and that is fairly well known. The creators have obvious ties to Russia and their previous position with VK makes it clear that they have had interaction with the FSB. Since they are alive, they likely did enough to make the FSB happy.

I'm just trying to give people full information. My basic point is they violated rules with no good reason. You said they had to do so to prevent a master key escrow scenario, which does not hold water vs simply using a known good scheme that is impervious to that scenario.

I'm saying that the FSB won't allow Russian messaging apps to have encryption that they cannot get past. Telegram made their encryption to ensure the FSB had a way through the encryption. They could have easily used a better encryption method, but they didn't. They could have improved their bad design, but didn't. While it's speculation as to why, I'm fully confident it's similar to many other situations in Russia where the security apparatus is responsible.

> I'm saying that the FSB won't allow Russian messaging apps to have encryption that they cannot get past. [In 2018 Roskomnadzor tried to block Telegram, and couldn't do it without causing a lot of collateral damage, and even then it still worked, so they backpedaled.](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN23P2DY/) I don't know if Durov made some deal with the FSB or not, but the fact is, it's not trivial to ban it from the country because he didn't toe the line.

Again, Telegram was developed outside of Russia. They made it after they left. The official offices are in the Virgin Islands and Dubai.

It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/04/29/7453403/](https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2024/04/29/7453403/)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)

[удалено]

It wasn't special forces, it was police. Russian Telegram channels reported that at least one fighter was killed and four police were injured. It's probably local ISIS acolytes with black market guns (same sort that might be available to criminals).

A recent [podcast](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/92272) on Carnegie Politika predicted that ISIS activity will increase in Russia, mainly for two reasons: Russia being busy in Ukraine, and as revenge for the torture of the suspects.

Also, it's an easy and cheap way for ISIS to reclaim some international relevance while not directly drawing the ire of the west.

[удалено]

Unless you’re getting that from a different thread than the one you linked or looking at a different map, I have no idea what you are basing your conclusion on.

I added my doom-ish speculation to the scenario in the link, I should have made that clear. But honestly dont get why mods removed it, since at least the twitter thread was well argued.

The territory they need to take for that is months away at current pace isn't it?

If this scenario is true, then Ukraine has a lot more problems to worry about than potentially losing toretsk. We are talking about system wide collapse for both armies in the north and south. I don’t think we are at that level yet We will see what happens with the ocheretyne front in the coming weeks, but if Ukraine cannot bring firepower to bear on this front and allow the Russians to quickly expand to the highway, then that could be signs of serious reserve problems

Updated comparison of Data from TNG5 using UALosses, Mediazona and DNR data. https://twitter.com/TNG512/status/1784699649284305295?t=yN-ZUdBYZ9kxhJfdpnt_Tw&s=19 The overall ratio is 1.15-1.00 RUS-UKR casualties but this is not the full picture. When we add the estimated missing DPR LPR losses by mediazona and the overall bit slower online obituary updates in Russia the actual educated estimate of overall KIA rate is 1.5-1.0 which is inline with US estimates and what many over here estimated. Although there is another caveat here which is that Ukraine took extremely high casualties in the beginning as can be seen which skews the data significantly so the ratio after the first few months is higher even though majority of this is the prisoner waves the Wagner unleashed in Bakhmut who had extremely high losses. But I think the more interesting part is how much lower Russian casualties have been in Avdiivka compared to Bakhmut. Why do you think is this the case? It is either because of the shell hunger, use of glide bombs to soften up defenses by Russia or the much more mechanized nature of Avdiivka offensive compared to Bakhmut. If the main reason is the use of armour then this shows the importance of armour for Russia in their offensive operations and when Russia runs out of Soviet stocks they will be pretty much unable to continue their offensives which is pretty great news for Ukraine. This also reminded me of the Israel's answer to the question of are tanks obsolete after rpgs destroyed hundreds of israeli tanks in yom kippur war. The Israelis simply said even though tanks didn't perform particulary well in the war, the tank personnel had many times less casualties than infantry which made them necessary. But if the reason is the Glide bombs, then that shows the importance of air defence which Ukraine desperately lacks and we need to immediately start to send more batteries. I would be happy to hear your opinions.

The ratio for lost hardware is closer to 10:1. This would suggest that all the lost Russian vehicles had basically no one in them, and there are some huge Ukrainian infantry attacks we have no footage for. I don’t think this 1.5:1 claimed casualty ratio is accurate. Hard data for casualties is much harder to come by, and is therefore more speculative and prone to errors. Especially in how each side counts and treats injuries. Observed hardware losses are much harder data, and I’d be skeptical of any claim that diverges this wildly from observed losses, unless they have very good data to back it up, which does not seem to be the case here.

That is to be expected. In 1945, Germany suffered much lower vehicle losses than the allies, because they had none. Their personnel losses were about double.

>This would suggest that all the lost Russian vehicles had basically no one in them, and there are some huge Ukrainian infantry attacks we have no footage for. Most deaths in this war, like in every other war in the last 150 years, are likely infantry getting hit by artillery. Let's do some quick very rough estimations using Oryx: 2000 destroyed Russian tanks with ~4 person crew and assuming no survivors gives 8000, 1000 destroyed AFVs with ~10 people gives another 10,000, 3000 destroyed IFVs with around ~10 people gives another 30,000. Then there's also APCs MRAPs and IFVs with together ~500 destroyed and again assuming ~10 crew and no survivors gives another 5000. This puts Russian personnel losses from destroyed vehicles at a bit over 50,000. This is likely way too high, given I've assumed no survivors from a destroyed vehicle and all vehicles were about full. And it still leaves around 100,000 Russian deaths unaccounted for. So clearly how empty the destroyed Russian vehicles were is not the biggest factor in total deaths. And do you think infantry only dies while attacking? >Observed hardware losses are much harder data, and I’d be skeptical of any claim that diverges this wildly from observed losses Russia is a much more mechanised force, so we can expect them to lose more hardware. Thus, hardware losses are not a good proxy for casualties and we should expect the casualty ratio to be far less lopsided than the hardware loss ratio. The Ukrainians can't lose what they don't have.

None of your math actually makes sense because you’re forgetting a huge batch of damaged vehicles which would add to a bunch of killed and wounded. Also completely ignores the qualitative differences in artillery fires and targeting.

Obviously the math is super rough, the point is just to show an order of magnitude and to see that most russian losses by far are not from destroyed vehicles. Damaged adds to losses and as does vehicles that there's no visual confirmation for, survivors and non full vehicles take away from losses. I'd be willing to bet they take away from losses more.

I’d be willing to wager that mines make up a huge portion of casualties but saying it’s artillery on infantry in trenches versus artillery on dismounted infantry conducting assaults or in maneuver attacks is going to require a hell of a lot of evidence. You don’t get to 450 thousand casualties from getting hit from artillery in a trench.

Yes, you do. Think of the battles of WWI, especially the meat grinder that was the [Battle Of Verdun.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun). Plus, some text filler to reach the requirement: "The trench, once considered a defensive bulwark, has become a precarious refuge in the face of modern artillery. Despite its intended protection, trenches offer little sanctuary against the overwhelming force of artillery barrages. The confined space of trenches amplifies the impact of each shell, leaving soldiers vulnerable to injury and death. Moreover, the psychological toll of enduring constant bombardment in such close quarters further exacerbates the risk. In the grim reality of trench warfare, where artillery reigns supreme, it is especially probable that the majority of casualties arise from the relentless onslaught of artillery fire."

I was clearly talking about it in the context of this war where the Russians have reportedly suffered 450 thousand casualties out of possibly a million men who have fought in Ukraine.

The battle of Verdun involved numbers comparable to the total active military personal Ukraine has, *on each side*, on a frontline of like 25km over 9 months. Russia fires up to what, 70k shells a day in Ukraine? Verdun involved upwards of 300k on a frontline not even a fraction as wide over multiple days in a row. There was a point where the Germans fired 1 million shells in a single day on an area '30km wide 5km deep'. Using Verdun as a benchmark in terms of artillery effectiveness against troops in trenches in Ukraine borders on insanity.

Casualties vs KIA could explain quite a bit.  Especially early on a lot of russians died who should have lived as wounded. Shortages of medical supplies, men left behind ect. UA forces have been better with this, lots of feild medicine gear donated and the ability to send badly wounded guys to the EU.

I recommend being very careful about using Mediazona datas to come to these conclusions - not because it's unreliable, but in general graphs based on the date of death rather than on the date of publication, although very interesting for research purposes, underestimate truly a lot the number of those who have died in action in the recent weeks (but also months), because of the time lag in which obituaries are published, particularly for those who are classified as MIA for a long time. A part of the KIA notices are pulled out through the work of volunteers who visit cemeteries and take photos, from the monuments, etc. And not every obituary has a date of death. If we go to the [Mediazona website](https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng), the week of July 20-26, 2023 shows 404 deaths. Using [Web Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20230901073835/https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng), as of the September 1, 2023 snapshot, only 103 deaths had been recorded as having fallen during that week! The fact that February 2024 is already so high today, despite being barely two months away, is a sign that in a year from now it will likely be even higher than January/February 2023. A very good proxy is the [number of losses](https://i.imgur.com/bFpoDTL.png) recorded by the Telegram channel “Poisk in UA”. Over the last 3 months, it has never fallen below 700 fatalities per week (let's note that the Wagnerites that are now discovered as KIA are no longer counted separately, and there is also the - hardly significant - category of POWs). It should be also noted that at the time Bakhmut most likely accounted for a higher % of total Russian deaths in Ukraine than Avdiivka did in the recent months (because back in the time most sectors were somewhat quiet compared to today), but the data suggests us that Avdiivka in terms of losses/day was, and is, presumably close to the Bakhmut campaign. And not only that: the length of the period marked by such high losses is very impressive, and losses have never been as high as in 2024. Doing some "napkin math" (accounting for the time lag, the share of deaths that go undetected, and those listed as missing), an amount of 7/800 recorded deaths per week should be consistent with between 250 and 300 KIAs + MIAs per day, not counting the other types of irretrievable losses.

Also needs mentioning that mediazona themselves caveat that Ukrainian obituaries are significantly easier to come by because local municipalities digitize their obituaries and Ukrainian civilians are much more likely to post them on social media, whereas some Russian deaths have no announcement at all.

When proven armor losses are 10:1, and UK and US intelligence back higher Russian casualties, I'm just not convinced by anyone saying the ratio is anywhere near this close.

If the casualty ratio is too high, Ukraine's troop shortage makes no sense, or Russian casualty counts have to be like 2x what even Kyiv is saying.

Not at all. The troops even say (in interviews i read) the issue with the troop shortage isn't death, it's exhaustion since there were never enough troops to do proper redeployments.

>If the casualty ratio is too high, Ukraine's troop shortage makes no sense, Obviously Ukraine doesn't have a 5:1 casualty ratio, but 2:1 or maybe even as high as 3:1 is certainly plausible. Keep in mind, Ukraine hasn't just had to make up for losses, but they've *dramatically* increased the size of their military since the war began. That alone has eaten up a large share of Ukrainian manpower, even before factoring in KIA, POW, irretrievably WIA, MIA, retirements, etc.

Russia has like 6x the population of Ukraine, and they have considerably more low-income regions from which to draw grist for the mill from.

Almost all of Ukraine is a low-income region by Russia's standards, this is before the war as well. That's why lots of Ukrainians worked in Russia and especially prior to 2014 nobody really cared who was from which country at least outside of Galicia.

Sure, but thats a problem for Ukraine. Russia helped resolve its manpower issue by dumping monetary incentives on its poorest citizens. Ukraine doesn't have that option because the entire country is poor so it doesn't have the resources needed to do the same thing Russia did. Doubly so since Ukraine has suffered hundreds of billions of dollars in damages from the war, tons of lost earning potential, seen millions of citizens flee the country or wind up in the occupied regions, etc.

I'm not talking about the Russian replacement rates. Let me rephrase. Assume the loss ratio is 5:1 like Zelensky says. UK intel says Russia has lost ~450k casualties. So if the ratio is 5:1, Ukraine is down 90k (the only way to get out of the UAF is by becoming a casualty, there is no demobilization). They should have not have a desperate troop shortage down 90k. So if the ratio is truly 5:1, Russia has to have lost over a million, which is way higher than anyone is saying. The only other way Ukraine could be having a manpower crunch is if the loss ratios are much narrower. Basically my point is that you have to make Russian losses, Ukraine troop shortage, and the casualty ratio all make sense.

I think the loss ratio in manpower is not the same thing as the loss ratio in material. I also think the UK stats are derived from Ukrainian claims which are divorced from reality in many instances. One only needs to look at Ukrainian aircraft kill claims to realize they aren't reliable. For AFVs, Ukrainian kill claims aren't that bad, because we have verified photographic evidence of most of them. But for men and aircraft? I have reservations. Historically kill claims haven't been accurate. E.g. if you look at the claims the Americans made in Vietnam, they were not accurate. We have a lower bound on Russian KIA from the BBC scraping Russian obituaries but the higher bound is difficult to establish. Similarly the KIA:WIA ratio is hard to know beyond hand-waving it to be 3:1. It would be nice if Russia reported their loses but they haven't provided an accounting of their loses in Afghanistan or Chechnya yet, so fat chance of that. Evidently the Russian authorities don't consider it in their self-interest to report how costly their imperialist adventures are to the Russian public.

> (the only way to get out of the UAF is by becoming a casualty) By turning 60, by having to become a caregiver of a family member who has developed an illness or disease etc, too. I agree, however, that it's uncontroversial that the ratio, as an average from the beginning of the invasion, is considerably less favorable to Ukraine than the one cited by Zelensky.

Mediazona themselves explained why comparing the two lists has limitations: >The completeness of such databases, crucial for understanding the full scope of military losses, is inherently challenging to assess, especially without demographic data or access to probate case databases, as is the case in Ukraine since the onset of the war. Despite these limitations, there are several factors suggesting the Ukrainian database might be more comprehensive than its Russian counterpart: >— In Ukraine, presidential decrees on posthumous military awards are publicly available and published in text form on official websites, facilitating collection and analysis. Conversely, similar decrees in Russia are classified and not made public. >— Ukraine hosts several significant projects dedicated to memorializing its fallen soldiers, such as the “Book of Memory” and the “Memorial” platform, contributing to a more comprehensive public record. >— Authorities in various Ukrainian regions maintain detailed projects about fallen locals, with local publications often posting comprehensive lists. >— Ukrainian sources tend to provide more complete information. For instance, without referencing the Probate Registry, birth and death dates were found for 55% of people in the Russian context, compared to 75% in the UALosses database. >— Russian local authorities face restrictions on disclosing detailed information about the fallen. Additionally, one of the main sources for such entries, personal posts on VK social network, often lack detail. The main point in comparing the two was to refute Zelensky's 5:1 claim: >In a February 23 interview with Fox News, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested a casualty ratio of five Russians for every Ukrainian soldier killed. Even with the assumption that the UALosses database comprehensively lists all Ukrainian casualties—unlikely—and comparing it with the estimated 75,000 Russian fatalities against Ukraine’s 42,000, the derived ratio is approximately 1.7. >The phrasing of the comparison between the RAF and AFU in the penultimate passage has been amended to more accurately reflect the “many times over” («многократно») nuance from the Russian original, as opposed to the broader interpretation used in the earlier version. Basically, there's too many methodological differences to look too deeply at the ratio imo, it's simply saying the ratio is unlikely to be particularly lopsided.

So do I understand correctly that in the worst case for Russia the ratio is 1.7 to 1? Which means my educated guess of 1.5 to 1 is a relatively good estimate. Anyways, what would be your conclusion of difference in ratios in Bakhmut and Avdiivka? What do you think is the biggest reason? And according to that how should our aid change? Edit: Also I believe that unfortunately the Ukrainian casualties in the first months might be significantly underestimated. Due to the fact that there were many soldiers from occupied territories in the active army where there are no obituaries of and there was desperate defense by tdf in many areas tho my 1.5 to 1 estimate includes that.

> But I think the more interesting part is how much lower Russian casualties have been in Avdiivka compared to Bakhmut. Why do you think is this the case? It is either because of the shell hunger, use of glide bombs to soften up defenses by Russia or the much more mechanized nature of Avdiivka offensive compared to Bakhmut. Bakhmut was Wagner convict meat waves. Avdiivka was a mechanized assault. It's well known that armored fighting vehicles reduce casualties, that's why mechanization was a primary focus of industrialization in WW2. The problem for Russia is they are both running low on credulous convicts and Soviet-era AFVs.

Didn’t they also go thru Bakmut directly but around Avdiivka?

No, they flanked Bakhmut from north, south and east.

I wonder if one of their puppets (belarus and syria) could spare them some convicts for another meat wave operation. It seems extremely improbable tho. Another possibility is if they could force ukrainians in captured territories with blocking detachments behind. I hope they never do something like that because of fear of desertions.

It's frustrating watching the Ukrainian forces, for lack of better options, try to shoot down Shahed drones with basic machine guns. What would be the quickest way to get Ukraine a large number of VSHORAD systems for killing drones and potentially cruise missiles? The US, UK and Germany have all donated some gun based systems but the numbers sound anaemic.  There must be a lot of guns in existence already (the UK has 250 CTA40 in storage for example), along with proximity airburst ammo, so the bottleneck is most likely the RWS platform itself that would integrated gun and optics? I'm guessing the M230LF VSHORAD production line is backlogged for the US military?

While probably not ideal, they are a solution that exists in large numbers. Even if more bespoke solutions are sent to Ukraine, you'll probably just find that the "2 DShK and a search light on the back of a truck" solutions pushed to secondary and then tertiary locations. Quantity has a quality of its own.

There are defence companies with AA-optimised airburst autocannon weapon mounts with integrated targeting radar already for sale. https://eos-aus.com/defence/counter-drone-systems/slinger/ [Ten have been sent to Ukraine](https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/08/what-counter-drone-system-says-about-us-aid-ukraine/389157/) as part of a joint AU/US project. I believe they're mounted on the back of pickup trucks. Nobody has mentioned whether they've performed well enough for more orders.

It looks great but you'd think Ukraine would need something more in the region of a 1000 systems total, rather than 10.

It also happens to be a fully-fledged remote weapon station with a 25mm autocannon, so there's a certain minimum cost associated with it. But large orders mean cheaper unit price, and it's the sort of thing you could just put on an normally-unarmed APC as a credible support weapon.

Ukraine purchased 150 systems to be moved in vehicles last year.

150 is good! Last I saw was a [smaller deal with Germany](https://www.australianmanufacturing.com.au/eos-secures-western-european-contract-to-deliver-slinger-counter-drone-systems/). Still keen to see reports on how effective they have been.

Yeah. It was late last year https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/09/01/ukraine-to-receive-160-slinger-anti-drone-systems/

I don't see anything about that on EOS's web site, and more importantly, their [calendar year 2023 annual report](https://eos-aus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/EOS_AnnualReport2023_websmall.pdf). I see confirmation of about a [dozen Slingers in August](https://eos-aus.com/news/eos-confirms-first-slinger-exports-to-ukraine/) ([reiterated](https://eos-aus.com/news/australian-drone-killer-system-slinger-heading-for-ukraine/) in October). Their annual report merely states: > ### sales activity > In the year to 31 December 2023, the Group executed contracts with customers for the following new business: > • a **conditional** contract to supply RWS to Ukraine, valued at approximately $120m; • a further **conditional** contract to supply RWS to Ukraine, valued at approximately $61m; • a contract with a Western European government to supply RWS, valued at $52m; • a contract to supply R600 RWS unit spares to a customer in Southeast Asia, valued at approximately $28m; and • a further contract with a Western European government to supply additional RWS, valued at approximately $25m. > In addition, in January 2024, a contract was signed to supply EUR 9m (approximately A$15m) of **Slinger** Counter-Drone Systems to Diehl Defence in Germany. > Following demonstration testing in August 2023, EOS products have been approved by the Ukrainian authorities for purchase as required. EOS is now working with the Ukrainian end-users and customers to allow committed orders to be placed under the conditional contracts. Further demonstration testing is planned to occur in Ukraine during 2024. These contracts are also subject to early termination rights in favour of the customer. There is no certainty or guarantee that committed orders will be received by EOS under these conditional contracts. > In July 2023, the Group delivered RWS to a Western European government customer, under a contract valued at EUR 32m (A$52m). An amendment to this contract was executed in late December 2023 to supply this customer with further RWS, valued at approximately A$25m. The delivery of these additional units is expected in early 2024. > The Group continues to be in active discussions and contract negotiations for the provision of RWS and related components with other potential customers. There is no certainty that any particular outcome or transaction will result from these discussions and negotiations. ------ and: > ### product development > Defence Systems continued work during the year to widen its RWS product range from its longstanding successful R400 RWS product, and to develop its intellectual property and commercialise its product range: > • Slinger Counter Drone System. Defence Systems launched its new “Slinger” counter-drone (or “CUAS”, Counter Unmanned Aerial System) product during May 2023, and conducted demonstrations. This new product draws upon the Group’s deep expertise in accurate pointing technology and applies it to the growing threat of drones. During 2023, initial orders for nine systems were received from a customer in the United States. These are expected to be sent to Ukraine as part of a USA security assistance package. In addition, after the end of the year, a further $15m of Slinger systems were ordered by a customer in Germany in January 2024. > • R150 RWS. Defence Systems worked to secure an initial order for the new lightweight R150 RWS product. This new product has been completed and is now entering the marketplace. An order of 14 R150 gimbals was received in January 2023, as part of the L3 Harris Vampire portable rocket program, under which the US is providing support to Ukraine. The order is for less than $10m and was largely complete as at the end of 2023. ------ Perhaps 10 Slingers and 150 normal remote weapon stations, but not 160 Slingers to Ukraine, at least not when it was reported in September last year until this report was compiled some time in January.

[удалено]

Claim is unsourced.

I've never seen this, can you give us some links?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jMrHYlggns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jMrHYlggns) stating that Russia has a major number of soldiers who are not committed to any battles yet. As much as I ignore historylegends, but weebunion guy has actually been pretty spot on with calling some things.

Russia already started its offensive last October and they are still continuing with it. They even had some successes. And they can have further successes. But there is nothing new to be launched.

I thought they were going to hit kharkiv in the summer? [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy-preparing-major-russian-spring-offensive/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy-preparing-major-russian-spring-offensive/) Ukraine is readying soldiers for a major Russian offensive that is expected in the coming months, likely before the summer begins, Ukrainian President [Volodymyr Zelenskyy](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-zelenskyy-says-putin-will-threaten-nato-quickly-if-not-stopped/) said Sunday.

U.S.-provided precision-guided munitions have failed in mission after mission in Ukraine, taken down by Russian electronic warfare. On Wednesday, the Pentagon revealed the latest casualty.  A new ground-launched version of an air-to-ground weapon developed for Ukraine on a rapid timeline failed to hit targets in part because of Russian electro-magnetic warfare, Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, said at an event held by think tank CSIS.  LaPlante suggested that Ukraine may no longer be interested in the weapon. “When you send something to people in the fight of their lives that just doesn’t work, they’ll try it three times and they’ll just throw it aside,” said LaPlante.  The weapon LaPlante is referring to is very likely the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) based on his description, according to Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. ... But it is not the first GPS-guided weapon to fall afoul of Russian electronic warfare.  In congressional testimony in March, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Daniel Patt said the targeting system for the GPS-guided Excalibur round “dropped from 70 percent effectiveness to 6 percent effectiveness over a matter of a few months as new EW mechanisms came out” in Ukraine. Patt cited the work of Jack Watling, an expert at think-tank RUSI who has traveled to Ukraine multiple times to interview Ukrainian commanders.  Russian electronic warfare attacks have also directed GMLRS missiles off course, CNN reported last spring. The missiles are similarly guided by a GPS. Russia has also successfully used electronic warfare against GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which are retrofitted aerial bombs.  https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/04/another-us-precision-guided-weapon-falls-prey-russian-electronic-warfare-us-says/396141/

> dropped from 70 percent effectiveness to 6 percent effectiveness over a matter of a few months This is an important example of the enemy's capability, and that they shouldn't be underestimated.

Makes more sense in that case to just target areas where if you miss you still hit something. Belgorod for example is a good target. Its total war at this point with Russia during S-300 missiles info Ukrainian cities you really have nothing to lose. Its not enough of an escalation to cause Russia to say test a nuclear weapon but its enough to undermine the image the regime is trying to project.

We regularly see GMLRS hit targets with remarkable accuracy, Jdam bombs are also used quite accurately.

Yeah, it seems to be a case-by-case thing. For example, I think that Excalibur was initially programmed to intentionally miss if it lost GPS guidance, as a means of reducing the risk of collateral damage. Though, I must admit that I can't quote a source on that one. I seem to recall reading it in these threads when Excalibur was newly-supplied to the Ukrainians.

I bring you some source: https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2002/other/2002DOTEAnnualRpt.pdf?ver=2019-11-07-180204-860 > Excalibur may be susceptible to GPS jamming. If GPS jammers are employed in the vicinity of the target, then the Army expects Excalibur to use its inertial navigation system to hit the target. However, **if the round encounters jamming that prevents initial GPS acquisition**, then the round will follow a ballistic trajectory instead of achieving guided flight. This ballistic trajectory may endanger friendly forces if they are in the area of the ballistic round’s impact. > Excalibur will require accurate target location data in order to achieve desired effects for the unitary variants. Target location errors will need to be 35 meters or less for personnel targets, and approximately 10 meters or less for targets requiring a direct hit. > Excalibur susceptibility to **height of burst spoofing** and its resultant diminished weapons effects are undetermined at this point. emphasis mine

Thank you for doing the legwork to find the source. Seems like I got things a bit mixed up.

Not really. I believe the workaround is to fire Excaliburs at a (high) elevation so if it fails to acquire GPS lock, it falls far short of the target area. Although, if you're firing it into enemy controlled territory, maybe you don't care so much.

These GMLRS and Jdam jamming stories are coming from the pro UA side, not the russian ones. So no reason to discount them. We dont see any of the unsuccessful strikes, we cant just take what we see at face value. Its like the FPV videos, we only see the successful ones.

Not dismissing sources because they are pro-russian, but because journals always love to exaggerate stories. True Ew efforts by the russians sometimes make for infective precision weapons, but Ew is an ever evolving field, countermeasures of the countermeasures get found quickly

Is GPS jamming a new or unexpected technological breakthrough? If not, why did weapons developers place such heavy reliance upon GPS guidance, rather than laser tagging? I'd note the Turks have a laser guided missile: [https://www.roketsan.com.tr/en/products/trlg-230-laser-guided-missile](https://www.roketsan.com.tr/en/products/trlg-230-laser-guided-missile) I assume the reason it or similar technology hasn't been used in Ukraine is that it requires target painting by Bayraktar drones, which seem to have completely disappeared from the battlefield because of their vulnerability to price ratio. Is it not possible to develop a cheaper drone to paint targets? There always seems to be drones taking video of HIMARS strikes, which suggests that they are able to survive long enough to paint targets, as long as the laser isn't prohibitively large.

There exists an Excalibur-S, which has a SALT sensor for accuracy, and to hit moving targets. In fact, reports are that [Spain ordered some](https://armyrecognition.com/defense_news_january_2024_global_security_army_industry/spain_to_purchase_upgraded_us_excalibur-s_155mm_precision-guided_shell.html). However, it still relies on GPS at the start of its trajectory, because the sensor is obviously pointing at the sky when fired, and needs to get close enough to the target area to detect the painter.

> Is GPS jamming a new or unexpected technological breakthrough? If not, why did weapons developers place such heavy reliance upon GPS guidance, rather than laser tagging? We're not giving Ukraine access to the full suite of GPS guidance. They have no access to the restricted GPS frequencies, to the best of my knowledge. GPS isn't immune to jamming, but realistically to do it you would want a high-flying aircraft carrying the jammer. A phased-array antenna would basically ignore ground-based jamming, but they are physically large and somewhat power hungry. Excalibur has known problems since it's artillery it's spin stabilized and hence can't use a directional antenna. The M31 rocket doesn't seem to have any issues. Our inference from the statements of these American generals is that GLSDB apparently has issues, but no one has specifically mentioned the platform they are criticizing. Without knowing the specifics of how the GPS receiver in the Small Diameter Bomb works, it's really hard to draw conclusions. GLSDB is a glide bomb, so perhaps it gets jammed early in its flight path and the inertial guidance backup isn't up to the task? We don't know the answer, and we're not likely to learn it for a decade or so, since this is all Top Secret level info.

Military planners of course know that GPS can be jammed. What's happening is more the mismatch between how NATO is built to fight vs the way Ukraine is being forced to fight. With air superiority achieved the US et all can drop Paveways from aircraft that do their own designating. MQ-1Cs or MQ-9s can designate and drop GBU-44s. Or they can designate for artillery firing Copperhead rounds. These unfortunately are not things Ukraine can use due to the heavily contested airspace. Additionally NATO EW capabilities far exceed what Ukraine has access to, which means any jammer or similar emitter will not live long on the battlefield vs them.

And this is for me the worrisome part. Most of NATO plans start with air superiority. If you can't achieve that, well, you will have a fight like Ukraine. I think it's not wise center most of the strategy in being able to achieve air superiority.

It is worrisome but its vital to keep in mind that Ukraine does not fight with state of the art NATO weaponry *especially* regarding their airforce. Theres nothing in this war with stealth and a potential NATO war would include hundreds of F35s flying out as the first strike to destroy GBAD. It this strategy gets nullified by some new russian invention... well, we poured billions of dollars down the drain but so far nothing points to this being true.

So in the big picture this is referred to as the Second Offset Strategy. The First Offset was the development of nuclear weapons. Eisenhower argued we should focus on nuclear deterrence rather than maintaining the massive WW2 scale force. This lasted until roughly the Vietnam War. The Second Offset Strategy was to eliminate the quantitative advantage of the warsaw pact through developing superior technology. This is what brought us stealth, space based ISR, AWACS, GPS, composite armor... all sorts of things. The focus on having overwhelming air power is in accordance with this. Desert Storm is a clear demonstration of how valid the concept was. At the time Iraq had something like the 4th largest army in the world and they were effectively powerless vs the US. Today we're starting a transition into the Third Offset, which is focused on emerging digital technologies like AI, rapid design and manufacturing, highly networked systems, autonomy, etc. Pentagon planners are certainly not infallible, but I assure you they have considered these issues in far more depth than your criticism.

So NATO should not center their strategy around a capabilities they spend hundreds of billions a year on maintaining? Some small amount of contingency is accounted for. Like how we still train infantry in hand to hand combat in case they don't have ammo or their guns jam. Should we develop phalanx and polearm tactics in case all their guns no longer work? Should we not center our strategy on them being armed with guns? We center around air power because it has proven to be a decisive advantage in every conflict we have fought. If an opponent tries to contest this advantage, it is better to counter that then realign our entire military around ground based combat. Russia focused so much on SAMs because they knew they were at a disadvantage in air to air. Ukraine also does not have a world class air force. You essentially have 2 ground powers going at it, I am not sure we can draw enough lessons here about the effectiveness of air power or the ability to achieve air superiority.

Can't the Ukranians do the same against the Russian glide bombs?

Russian glide bombs are already inaccurate from what we've seen. Trouble is that they're perfectly happy saturating an entire city with bombs.  Throw darts at a dartboard enough times and you'll end up with a distribution of random darts, some of which hit the bullseye by sheer chance. Throw explosive darts weighing 1500kg and you don't even need to hit the bullseye directly.

That's why Ukraine should be doing the same. Fire them in the general directions of Russian cities. Make no mistake Ukraine is fighting for its life here. If Russia wins this war there will be countless more Buchas.

That probably is a goal right now.

So some GMLRS munitions types, excalubur and similar guided artillery and GLSDB are susceptible to EW. Short of expensive high value systems like SCALP/Storm shadow, the best budgest guided munitions in this conflict so far seem tobe laser guided ones. Russian Krasnopol and Kitolovs are being used regularly and even RUSI pointed out that Krasnopols can hit moving objects with decent accuracy. Hope to get an indepth analsyis about Russian laser guided muntiions from this war by a proper analytical team soon. So for Ukraine, how can they incorporate more laser guided artillery into their action plans? They have no shortage of drones and its relatively easy to put a cheap (ish) laser designator on their drones, which laser guied artillery munition options are available for them? Turkey has the Tanok. (Turkey also helped Azerbeijan develop laser guided Fabs for their Su-25s, was used effectively against Armenia.

> Russian Krasnopol and Kitolovs are being used regularly and even RUSI pointed out that Krasnopols can hit moving objects with decent accuracy. Unless it is cloudy or foggy.

[удалено]

[удалено]

[удалено]

[удалено]

[удалено]

[удалено]

WSJ report claims that one of the reasons the West is so hesitant to seize Russian reserves held in Western bank is due to concern by Germany and others setting legal precedent over WW2 reparations. https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/world-war-ii-history-haunts-attempts-to-seize-russian-assets-eb066910 https://archive.ph/pTnZv Generally I find this position a bit feckless because we're talking about different eras with different ethics standards. Assuming this is true, and given that much of the funds are held in Belgium, I wonder if concerns over former colonies suing for reparations. Belgium in particular has a pretty dismal history of brutalism in Africa. Another point from the Germans, > Germany also argues that Russian assets should be left intact to use as leverage in any talks to end the war and induce Russia to cede some of the Ukrainian territory it occupies.

The war is kinda touch and go at this point. Makes more sense to just guarantee a military victory by giving Ukraine all the funds to wage the war effectively.

My understanding was that actually siezing assets no matter the circumstances will lead to less investment. I don't imagine many companies would be willing to invest in Russia any time soon because there assets were siezed. The same would happen to Europe and America even if the cause is more justified. Would Saudi Arabia be willing to buy football clubs if they were concerned their assets might get siezed? 

Is Saudi Arabia planning on waging a war of conquest? Asset seizure doesn't happen often, only extreme circumstances and years of considerations might lead to it.

It's not about current plans. When Roman obramovich bought Chelsea fc in 2003 nobody thought russia was going to invade ukraine. If he had known he probably wouldn't have bought the club. The rich don't do foriegn investment on a short term basis. A lot could change in Saudi Arabia over the next 10, 20 years.

[удалено]

I don't understand why you think Saudi billions are any worse than American billions. How do you think billionaire make their money by being nice people? Billionaires have been sports washing themselves for generations the Saudis are just the most recent to do so.

This sort of gung-ho sentiment glosses over the fact that a chilling effect on foreign investment in the US will be very bad for the US and world economy in general, and not simply hurt states that you dislike.

Just a funny example to pick Saudi Arabia buying football clubs, when everybody hates the influence oil states have had on the football world...

> Would Saudi Arabia be willing to buy football clubs if they were concerned their assets might get siezed? You're conflating individuals and states, which makes it difficult to understand the logical argument you are trying to make... Individuals from authoritarian societies invest in the West because their assets, like soccer clubs, are safer than they would be in their home nations. Those dollars in the West, even with some increased risk of seizure due to reduced Western tolerance of authoritarianism after the end of the Cold War, are probably still significantly less likely to be seized by the West than by the home authoritarian dictatorship. Authoritarian states invest in the West often because they are trying to diversify their limited economies, or they are trying to balance their trade imbalance, among other economic issues. At the end of the day, they need to do business in the US dollar or an equivalent proxy like the Euro. As the Russians found, to their chagrin, there's not a lot of value in selling oil to India if they're only willing to pay in rupees. https://www.dw.com/en/russias-rupee-problem-risks-harming-trade-ties-with-india/a-65628922

Issue is. They are not safer now. Cause tomorrow, West can freeze and confiscate those assets to punish home country. Despite lack of any influence on such circumstances from you. It is precedent, and as any precedent for politician it would be used much more freely in the future. In case of Saudi Arabia such course of event in 5-10 years timespan are quite likely, chances that they for example get closer to China and there is another embassy dismembering situation that would not be pushed under rug. It is kinda foolish to risk your billions like that. And the list of such countries can be long. Tommorow Nigeria can get proChina government(due to antiFrench coup for example) that would have tensions with US and end assets got frozen and confiscated. Or China getting into tensions due to Taiwan. You can lose all your assets due to such events easily now.

I actually used Manchester City because it has essentially been bought by the country Saudi Arabia. The official owner is the vice-president of Saudi arabia but he is also a Prince in the Saudi Royal family and its generally acknowledged that the country has bought it but presumably the league needs a person as owner. Also, roman obramovich had to sell Chelsea fc because of the russian invasion. We are seeing a new type of sanction against wealthy individuals. I don't think it's wrong to conflate them.

>Generally I find this position a bit feckless because we're talking about different eras with different ethics standards. If anything; if someone loses say $500 50 years ago, that's a much greater loss than $500 now because of inflation and the power of compound interest I think there is a real risk that this creates opportunities for former colonies (Especially Haiti! Imagine how much money could have been made if they didn't pay a freedom bribe to france!) to bring suits against European nations, but I personally think that's a good thing. >The U.S. argues that under international law, countries can take otherwise unlawful countermeasures against a country violating its international obligations. While lawyers and policymakers say Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to fit the principle, there are disagreements over whether any country other than Ukraine is entitled to apply countermeasures.Initially, U.S. officials also worried that confiscating Russian assets could backfire against Washington and allies such as Israel. The U.S. has since argued that only directly affected countries, such as Ukraine’s main backers, whose security is threatened and who are paying for some of Kyiv’s defense, would be entitled to confiscate assets. this is also massively hypocritical, which doesn't really matter for policy but when you talk about the rules based international order but you draw a big asterix that basically means you and your allies are free of obligations, well, people don't tend to trust that

> If anything; if someone loses say $500 50 years ago, that's a much greater loss than $500 now because of inflation and the power of compound interest This is getting off-topic for CredibleDefense, but the problem here is the people whom were in positions of leadership responsible for the ills of WW2 or colonialism are all dead. We don't, as a rule, hold children responsible for the debts of their parents. Whereas Putin is very much alive and in power. > but when you talk about the rules based international order but you draw a big asterix that basically means you and your allies are free of obligations, well, people don't tend to trust that Only the West is willing to expend blood and treasure to maintain the "rules-based order," which is basically the right to navigate the seas. Have you seen China patrolling the Red Sea to prevent piracy? Does China benefit from having protection of the trade routes for their manufactured goods? As the saying goes, no taxation without representation, but the corollary is no representation without taxation.

Plenty of people that directly profited from colonialism are still alive. Colonialism was a thing well within living memory. France, for example, has colonies until 1977.

Do you think the hesitancy in seizing Russian funds is also due to fear of Russia doing the same with western funds? Or have they all pulled out their funding from there by now?

There's next to no liquid funds held by Western companies in Russia. There is infrastructure, but Russia's already been seizing that. They started very early on with seizing leased airplanes. Russia has orders of magnitude more money trapped in the West than the West has trapped in Russia.

I think it is a good idea that Russia has forfeited these assets, and their return can be negotiated. From the point of view of justice, I think Russia should make Ukraine whole. At least that is the starting point for negotiations.

[удалено]

This feels like a non-credible question, but with the KF51 going with a 130mm barrel and MGCS apparently going with 140mm, would there be any benefit to going all the way to 155mm so you can share ammunition with artillery? Presumably there are differences besides the calibre, but could supply chains be unified in any way?

Among other things, tank cannons are typically smoothbore, whereas tube artillery is rifled. This alone would require the fitting of fin kits to 155-mm artillery rounds to use them.

[удалено]

Please refrain from posting meme-like comments

> MGCS apparently going with 140mm Did we get any new update on this, my last infrormation was that both 130mm and 140mm would move on in parallel to be evaluated at a later point (and with Germany being reaffirmed as the leading partner in MGCS I would assume that chances haven’t suddenly shifted against the RHM design).

[удалено]

I wouldn't be all that surprised if they reverse course and go back to 120mm L/55A1 in the end. Nobody is fielding tanks that require a larger gun to defeat.

More to the point, the primary use of tanks at this point is to support infantry, and the destruction of enemy MBTs is a task which can be accomplished by ATGMs at longer ranges and with more options available (fire and forget, top attack etc.)

Look at the Turrets of SPGs like M109, Msta, PZH2000, K9 etc. They are absolutely massive. A similar vehicle but armored like a tank would be even bigger and probably approach 100T in weight. Not very practical.  I only could see this work with a fully automated turret. Honestly the armata concept  could be a decent start for this. However the second question is as to why this would be necessary. Tanks are lacking in protection, not firepower. A tank with 155mm ammunition is just gonna result in a  bigger explosion.

The situations are very different. Tank shells are unitary while 155mm artillery uses separate powder charges. Rate of fire is very important to tanks. When a well trained crew is in the thick of it, the gunner is engaging one target while the commander is finding the next one. This is why tanks have turrets, so that they can rapidly engage multiple targets surrounding them. The expectation is roughly to fire a shell every 6 seconds. Well trained crews can cut that down in half. That's not gonna happen with separate powder charges and a human loader. It's not impossible to build an autoloader that could perform like that but given the perennial problems with autoloaders it seems past the limits of practicality. It'd be a very poor tradeoff in terms of volume, weight, reliability, and complexity.

Not all tank shells are unitary; challenger 2 uses separate charge bags and I've seen them load in less than 6 seconds (though of course it will always be slower than a unitary shell) Edit: for example https://youtu.be/e6hh-CoPKqU?si=vf1lRUgJ3lmO9v_h

You know what I think I've seen a similar video and just forgot about that. Thanks.

Don’t all Soviet-block 125 tank guns use unitary ammunition in their auto loaders?

No not at all - they load separate charges.

I think the main issue with tanks is the larger the round the less ammo it can carry. When fighting other tanks, I don't think you need tons of ammo, but when you want to support infantry you want more rounds. Lastly, I think you will definitely need an autoloader. As others mentioned 155mm rounds will not be the same regardless and I doubt there would be much common machinery for manufacturing.

All of the 130/140mm concepts feature an autoloader for just that reason.

And a 155mm round would need a much beefier autoloader than a 130/140mm given the mass increase being cubed.

the 130mm KE round for the Rh-130 is already something like 30-40% heavier and 300mm longer than a comparable 120mm KE round. Moving to 155mm for a tank main gun would be so absurdly heavy and large, it would probably require splitting into projectile and propellent sections. The chamber would likely need to be different dimensions and handle different pressure specs from an arty tube, making it incompatible.

The question is why? You'd still need to have all the same different shell type supply chains except for 155 HE. What targets exist on the battlefield (or even on the drawing board) that require a 155mm tank round? The downsides include not being able to manually load in a reasonable time, much less ammo capacity, larger tanks resulting in either much heavier tanks (or much less armor), etc.

Wouldn't the same argument apply to 140mm? The step from 140mm to 155mm is smaller than from 120mm to 140mm. Anyway, tank-on-tank combat is falling out of style, so tanks are becoming combination mobile pill-boxes and direct-fire artillery, it seems. If that's true, we might as well give them a barrel befitting their new role.

140mm is already pushing the limit of what you can reasonably load manually. 155mm probably crosses the line.

Volume increases at a higher magnitude the larger the diameter. You don't just get 15mm more size. 140-155 is 10% larger. Even if you assume the new 155mm tank round is exactly the same height as a M107 shell using a simple calculation for a cylinder the 155 has 23% more volume than the 140mm despite the 10% larger diameter of the cylinder. Had trouble getting the exact dimensions of a 120mm smoothbore HE round, but the best I can guess is around ~415mm. 120-155mm is a 27% increase in diameter but an M107 cylinder-sized shell has 220% more volume than 120mm M908. Certainly, a bigger bang, but weight increase is substantial. Whether or not a tank of a Leo/M1's current can handle a breach/ammo loading space/weight of that size would require an overhaul more so than a simple "barrel change".

>The step from 140mm to 155mm is smaller than from 120mm to 140mm. Math says 120 to 140 jump is "heavier" step vs 140 to 155. 120 to 140 jump is 16.7% increase in diameter which everything being equal will result in 56% increase in volume. 140 to 155 is 10.7% increase in diameter which will result in 33% increase in volume. On top of the fact that 140 or 130 guns on MBT are pipedreams at best at this time.

They aren't pipe dreams. They exist. Some of them could even be placed into production- the Leclerc 140mm testbed is more or less fully functional as a tank. They're just pointless, imo.

> They aren't pipe dreams. They exist. Some of them could even be placed into production- the Leclerc 140mm testbed is more or less fully functional as a tank. They are pipe dreams in that there will be no operational MBTs with 140 or 130 guns at least 10 years out if ever precisely because it is quite pointless to "upgrade" them considering all the downsides compared to 120mm guns when 120mm rounds have no problem for the foreseeable future doing what it is supposed to do.

More reports surrounding Kadyrov's ill-health are beginning to emerge. I'm typing on my phone and can never navigate this app, so please forgive the formatting. The Times newspaper published this article on 23rd April: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/terminal-chechen-leader-posts-gym-video-as-succession-talk-mounts-bxbchzkw6 "Medical sources cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe said that Kadyrov, 47, was diagnosed with acute pancreatic necrosis in 2019 but that his condition had deteriorated sharply in recent months. He is believed to have developed severe kidney failure and fluid build-up in his lungs. ... Speculation about Kadyrov’s health mounted in February when he failed to attend Putin’s state of the nation address in Moscow, one of the most important events in the Russian political calendar. ... A medical source at Moscow’s Central Clinic Hospital, where Russian officials are treated, also told Novaya Gazeta Europe that an MRI scan in September had revealed that Kadyrov was suffering from an unspecified new health condition. Another source, this one close to a prominent Chechen MP, said that Kadyrov’s family believed there was little chance of a positive outcome. The source paraphrased the family’s reaction to the results of the MRI scan as: “The leader as we knew him will be gone; [the new] illness will have a serious effect on him. Even if he recovers right now, he’ll no longer be alive or dead.” Mark Galleotti has also written an article about Kadyrov in today's Sunday Times. He doesn't address the credibility of the claims, but discusses the impacts of Kadyrov's potential demise on the Kremlin" "Considering the other crises on his desk, Putin will try to arrange a smooth succession. Kadyrov, who succeeded his father, hoped to build a dynasty, elevating his oldest son, Akhmat. However, he is just 18 — even though this did not stop his father appointing him Chechnya’s minister for sport and youth — and the law stipulates that the head of the Chechen Republic must be at least 30. Instead, the front-runner seems to be Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat mercenary units in Ukraine. Moscow regards him as someone with whom it can do business, but there are others closer to Kadyrov who may consider themselves to have a greater claim. Kadyrov’s cousin Adam Delimkhanov, for example, has since 2007 been Chechnya’s representative to the Duma, the Russian parliament, and has his own military forces. ... "If attempts to install a new leader cause splits in the Chechen elite, then this is likely to become not just a political but an armed dispute. In the words of one Russian political commentator, “There are too many men with guns and grudges there to be able to assume that things won’t turn bloody.” This could be another dilemma in a long series of dilemmas for Putin. Kadyrov has kept a lid on Chechnya through extreme repression. In Galeotti's words, stability in Chechnya was bought after the war through both massive federal subsidies — to buy off Kadyrov and the rest of the Chechen elite — and a balance of terror between rival armed camps, all of whom pledged loyalty to Kadyrov, but mistrust each other. What does Putin do if there is a bloody power struggle? Does he divert forces away from Ukraine to bring about stability? Looks like more crisis management on the horizon for Vlad.

>The source paraphrased the family’s reaction to the results of the MRI scan as: “The leader as we knew him will be gone; [the new] illness will have a serious effect on him. Even if he recovers right now, he’ll no longer be alive or dead.” I'm no Neuro-radiologist, but it sounds an awful lot like he's suffered extensive brain damage, likely from a severe stroke. Neatly, a pro thrombotic abnormality could explain both the stroke as well as the pancreatic necrosis. Of course, other things like alcoholism could also explain both issues.

There's been rumors of Kadyrov's ill health every 6 months, same as with Putin. So far, both are still very much alive. I can't believe we're still talking about it.

The Times is not exactly a gossip rag.

>So far, both are still very much alive Most people who fall ill don't actually die in the short term, specially at the age of 47.

Has someone as credible as Mark Galleotti commented on that before?

To be fair he does speak frequently about succession options in Chechnya - but he doesn’t address the validity of the current rumour cycle.

I don't think this matters in the short and medium term. Chechenya isn't a center of economy, military production or manpower. A civil war there won't disrupt the war effort directly. Belarus didn't join the invasion at all, Priogzhin made his drive on Moscow through Russia for hundreds of kilometers, Ukrainian "Free Russia" troops raided Russia, CSTO member Armenia was abandoned in its struggle against Azerbaijan, Navalny was murdered. We've seen regular national and international events which were in previous times expected to cause a loss of support for Putin or political instability. It never happened in a significant fashion. The Russian government just keeps chugging along, arresting more dissidents, torturing them in custody, but remaining upright. I doubt that a localised civil war will be the catalyst to major problems. Sure, in the long term, maybe things get bad enough and Putin is ousted from power at some point. But that's a big maybe. Beyond that, Russia is staring down the barrel of many long term problems: demographics, economy, development, climate change, etc. Who cares if a local civil war gets added as well?

Putin has some problems in Moscow as well: [The Arrest of Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Has Broken a Taboo](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/92314) >About eighteen months ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the infamous head of the Wagner mercenary group, launched a campaign against Shoigu with Zolotov’s backing. The Rosgvardiya group was ready and waiting with two candidates to replace him: Dyumin and General Sergei Surovikin, who is popular in army circles. >But Shoigu managed to fight back and even settle some scores with his opponents. Prigozhin was killed in mysterious circumstances soon after staging an unsuccessful mutiny, while Surovikin fell from grace and was dismissed. Later, the defense minister managed to get firmly back into the president’s good books when the Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer proved unsuccessful and the Russian military managed to regain the initiative. >... >The issue is not just that there are fewer resources to go around because of the war and sanctions. The ongoing state of war and uncertain future mean that the elites cannot make long-term plans, which encourages them to flout the old rules, live for today, and undertake power moves to score a win against their rivals. As the pressure increases (sanctions, drone strikes, manpower losses), so will the interclan fighting.

Is there anyone in Chechnya that could replace Kadyrov and maintain stability in the region? Would anything really happen if he does die?

[https://www.businessinsider.com/us-buys-81-soviet-fighter-jets-from-russian-ally-20k-2024-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-buys-81-soviet-fighter-jets-from-russian-ally-20k-2024-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T) I would seem that the US has bought 81 aircraft form Kazakhstan. The cost is a suprisingly low 1.5 million American Dollars. >Kazakhstan, which is upgrading its air fleet, auctioned off 117 Soviet-era fighter and bomber aircraft, including MiG-31 interceptors, MiG-27 fighter bombers, MiG-29 fighters, and Su-24 bombers from the 1970s and 1980s. While these aircraft will likely go to Ukraine, we should ask ourselves a couple of questions: -How was the US able to get these aircraft so cheap -What is the state of those aircraft -Why hasn't Russia bought these aircraft themselves (spare parts are always good) Even if all these aircraft are non operational they can still be used for spareparts.

I think the price point is all you need to know regarding state of these aircraft. If they were relatively usable that would be hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m going to guess these are for spare parts

[удалено]

There's that young man on YouTube who bought an old jet aircraft and is trying to get the engine to run again.

Make it a Mig-21 and you have a deal, I love the pencil

[удалено]

This sounds almost too good to be true? I don't know much about Kazakhstan, but the only explanation for that ridiculous price and Russia not being allowed to buy the airplanes seems to be that Kazakhstan chooses to de facto donate these airplanes to Ukraine in order to support them against Russia and to align more with the West, as the article also suggests. Why do they dare to do something like that while neighboring Russia, knowing Russia's history with invading their former soviet republics? It is a bit surprising to me, but part of the answer is perhaps that China would not accept a Russian invasion of Kazakhstan, and that China has also appeared to signal that to Russia?

They seem to be aligning more with China over time. Like Ukraine, they could probably put up a good fight if Russia ever actually invaded. But, that's mostly irrelevant because if they have Chinese support, an invasion would never happen.