It’s sad to see these final betrayals from Trump and Musk, but hardly surprising. Even now, there’s room for optimism though. These are desperate measures from Putin’s goon squad of supervillains. That isn’t even hyperbole, and it’s really shocking that we barely blink an eye that the president of the US and the richest man in the world are so obviously in cahoots with the Demon King of Moscow.
But - this is supposed to be optimistic. And here’s why: This is ALL they can do, and Ukraine still has the capability to say “Fuck Off”.
And also an upside - their masks are fully off. You can see who the teams are and what they care about.
This is not going to change the battlefield dynamics in a time frame where both Trump and Putin are alive and in power. It will force Ukraine to find some workarounds, and may reduce their capabilities, but does nothing to improve Russia’s in the near term.
There are more threats from the populists on putin’s payroll in Europe - but Ukraine doesn’t have to accept a bad peace just yet. There’s even cause for optimism that Trump and Musk have to do these things at all - it means that Russia is at a late stage of desperation and wants them to get Russia peace it doesn’t deserve on military basis.
It isn’t actually all they can do, AFU in general is extremely dependent on starlink for communications, yesterday we had a demo version of partially disabled starlink comms (they were bandwidth limited) it wasn’t pretty at all.
Ukraine has long prepared for this situation, they are not stupid. Trumps fawning towards warmongering autocrats is hardly newsworthy, and UA has set up alternative communication channels outside of Starlink. And for strikes on russian territory they already had to rely on their own communications.
It’s inconvenient, but it’s by far not as bad as the situation was for Russians who suddenly were faced with a comms blackout when starlink went down for them.
Edit: Main issue is that many interceptor drones used to stop Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones (the jet-powered ones) are based on Starlink. Geran drones move around 400km/h+, and this is the area where loss of Starlink hurts the most - but it is also an area where they will be quick to switch to another transmission mode.
Exactly. If you ever trusted Trump and Mush, you have borscht for brains.
Europe is led by very smart people who have better proof of Trump’s devotion to Russia than us internet muggles. They have plans within plans. Part of what I’m trying to say is that TrumPutin and Mush are just so transparent and, frankly, bad at this. It’s cluminess and desperation highlights how stupid they are. They have very little leverage over Ukraine anymore because they already pissed it all away in ham-fisted extortion attempts before.
Russia is pleading with Trump and Mush to get them something worthwhile out of this stupid invasion because:
- a) they know what they’ve done is a desperately failing project b) they can’t get a better outcome on the battlefield by themselves. c) Trump is going to have his legislative balls cut off in a couple of weeks. Everything he wants to do will be harder going forward
Trump may well just flip the table in America and cause a violent crisis by interfering with the election and refusing to honor any defeat, but that too will end up making him both distracted and weaker. He will spend all his remaining days figuring out how to avoid being thrown into prison or liquidated. Point being - he won’t be very useful to Russia to try and strong arm Ukraine into a bad peace. If there is any justice in this universe, the remaining months of his truly vile lifetime will be spent in rage and impotent paranoia.
All that to say - what Ukraine probably should do is endure for a while longer - their enemies are in very VERY precarious situations. Even Mush could find his outlook very different with Trump dead and Putin more focused on quelling coup plotting at home.
Besides - nobody expects this malignant form of Russia to honor any peace. The best strategy for Ukraine might be to keep bleeding the Russian army until they REALLY learn their lesson and are incapable of doing this again in the future. Russia ONLY understands pain, after all. Let them squeal for a peace they don’t deserve.–
This is really important as Russia has to convert its refineries back to winter diesel. That happens every year, so the diesel does not become a solid below -5C. For that the refineries have to be shut down for a bit. So Russia has not done it to avoid shortages. Obviously it also takes time to transport the diesel to the petrol stations. Winter is coming.
At the same time hitting data centres seems like a good idea to cause a bank run.
This is really important as Russia has to convert its refineries back to winter diesel. That happens every year, so the diesel does not become a solid below -5C. For that the refineries have to be shut down for a bit. So Russia has not done it to avoid shortages. Obviously it also takes time to transport the diesel to the petrol stations. Winter is coming.
At the same time hitting data centres seems like a good idea to cause a bank run.
Body
Good thing they’re selling some of that diesel to the U.S. too. I agree with you on this and a dozen other fronts - Russia has completely fucked itself and things haven’t even started to get close to as bad as they’re going to.
The mask is completely off, and it was barely on anyways.
Exactly. My whole thesis is that their flailing extortion is a pretty impotent display and admission that they can’t stop Ukraine in any conventional way. Russia’s critical economic infrastructure is completely indefensible and as long as Ukraine can make and deploy drones, not only is Russia fucked in terms of it’s goal of conquering and occupying Ukrainian land - Russia can’t protect it’s own.
The sheer size of Russia’s territory has always been both a strength and a weakness. And while they love to thump their chests about how big and therefore invincible russia is, the reality is that their population and industry is heavily tilted towards and algeria-sized piece of land in the far west of the country, which is permanently within firing range of increasingly powerful Ukrainan weapons.
There are SO many pieces of their economy and demography that Russia has completely mortgaged that can likely never be restored. Oil wells that can’t be restarted. Refineries that can’t be easily repaired. Transport infrastructure and pipelines that they lack the tools and expertise to fully repair. A soviet legacy inheritance than can never be replaced. Data centers that are 5x more expensive to repair than they were to build. Human labour that has been pissed away in Ukraine instead of adding value to the economy. And for what? So that an overpromoted gangster doesn’t have to admit his stupid vanity revenge project was a bad idea.
A completely understandable reaction. My thoughts and donations will be with him.
Scorch the earth of Russia
There’s too much of it. You don’t need to destroy Russia - they will do that themselves.
You need to make it impossible for them to stay in Ukraine. There’s nothing Trump or Elongated Muskrat can do to stop that.
I think you made an error, you linked to a reddit post.
you are correct. Fixed.
AFAIK there are also alternatives, like Eutelsat
Yes, and if there aren’t, they will soon be. In a way, the Trumpian abandonment of Europe might end up having the unintended conqsequence of being a massive stimulus prompt for Europe. Defense spending there is already undergoing a complete renaissance and their political system has learned, harshly, that you cannot assume safety under the American security umbrella.
Eutelsat shares went up about 20% in the last 3 days. Investors are weirded out by Elon and the US government messing with Starlink and looking for alternatives.
