Ukraine Invasion: Part 29

[MagicFox]

Welcome all, part 29

Found these pretty good (and reassuring) points on the BBC website.

"As Chinese military drills are due to get started following Pelosi's visit, what is the chance that tensions over Taiwan could spill into full-scale war?
Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, believes it unlikely that war will break out – at least for now.
“The Chinese do not as yet have the capability to take Taiwan and to take on the Americans and be certain they would win,” says Tsang.
“The Taiwanese for obvious reasons really don’t want a war. They are not stupid. They will be the theatre of any military operations and will be most devastated by it.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a US-based think tank, agrees that open conflict is in neither side's interest.
“Nobody could predict where it would go,” he tells the BBC. “It could very easily become global, it could very easily escalate, it could very easily involve nuclear threats.
“China is a major concern for the United States but it is less of an acute threat to the world than Russia,” he adds.
“Putin values disruption and he’s proved that he’s willing to take huge risks in pursuit of that goal. I don’t think China would pursue that unless they had absolutely no other choice on the Taiwan matter,” O'Hanlon tells BBC News."

Reassuring @katem98 , thank you. This all seems extremely worrying.

Hopefully not but does anyone think that China will retaliate by supplying Russia with weapons?

@Wannago

And - well again no military experience, so what do I know - I do wonder whether if they manage to push the Russians out of Kherson and basically keep going, whether it would make more sense to try and retake parts of Crimea rather than the Donbas. My thinking is this - the Donbas is connected to Russian territory, so much easier for Russia to keep up the supply lines. Crimea is much easier to isolate, especially with HIMARS etc

This is not my area of expertise either, but Dominick Nicholls addressed the question in the Telegraph's daily Ukraine: The Latest podcast. He's their defense and security correspondent and ex-British Army officer. I think he's really sharp. His opinion is that the UAF will isolate and bypass Kherson and use their forces in the area to cut Russian supply lines from Crimea into Ukraine. This is consistent with using HIMARS to close the bridges. By the way, that podcast is really good.

I am not a military or geopolitical bod. So this is only my armchair guess.

If the BBC article you linked to is correct in the SOAS professor's views that China does not have capability to take Taiwan yet, then I think China will have a big tantrum in the Taiwan Strait (to save face) but they will not escalate in Taiwan or Russia/Ukraine or elsewhere yet.

If China still needs the West for their economy and to build capability, then they have to bide their time for now and suck up their dependency by not inviting sanctions on China. China is not crazy like Putin and will play the long game. I salute the risk that Nancy Pelosi took in visiting Taiwan and making it clear the US is for democracy and will defend it. Thick red line for China to consider when plotting its next chess move.

Maybe China will help Russia with arms covertly but I don't know how easy is it to do it without being caught out. I assume it is the same issues which Ukraine faced in using US/Western weapons as to how compatible both countries' military systems are and the need for training if not. The language barrier must be quite a hurdle, I think.

I think the same as you @blueshoes

Very good points @blueshoes, thanks for that.

I wonder how much China do genuinely depend on the West?

Im told that at the moment they -really- do economically.

But they are also working hard to become self sufficient so that they are not, and they steal a LOT, a lot, of western knowhow and tech.

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Article: kyivindependent.com/national/the-battle-to-end-the-war-ukraine-has-a-chance-to-win-initiative-from-russia

⚡️General Staff: Ukrainian military repels all Russian attacks in Bakhmut direction.
Russia also failed to advance in two more settlements – Maryinka, 30 kilometers west of Russian-occupied Donetsk, and Bilohirka, a village in Kherson Oblast near the border with Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine's General Staff said.

⚡️Azerbaijan starts offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, seizes several heights.
According to Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry, the offensive started after Armenian troops killed an Azeri soldier in the area where Russian peacekeepers are deployed.
Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azeri territory populated by ethnic Armenians, declared independence in 1991.
Azerbaijan defeated the unrecognized republic and seized most of its territory in 2020, with Russia sending its peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh. [the pot is starting to boil]

⚡️Sky News: UK plans to lend $3.6 billion to Ukraine.
Nadhim Zahawi, the UK's chancellor of the exchequer, has written a letter to other ministers, supporting a request for a loan from UK Export Finance. If approved, the funds will be spent mostly on military contracts ($2.8 billion), and the rest will be used to finance reconstruction projects.

⚡️UN announces fact-finding mission to investigate Olenivka tragedy.

🤝 Canada provided 40 million USD to Ukraine to assist in grain storage, reports the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine

⚡️ Evening update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: The Ukrainian military repelled new attempts by the Russian invaders in two directions, in particular, prevented them from advancing in the Donetsk region

Who is China's biggest market or rather most profitable market?

Is anybody concerned about the Russia, China & Iran Axis?

The US, by a mile.

www.worldstopexports.com/chinas-top-import-partners/

The loss of export markets would have a significant negative impact on the Chinese economy.

Don't China have the same population problem as Russia did to their one child policy

That should say due

Yes, China is facing a demographic time bomb from its previous one-child policy which resulted in more males being born due to a cultural preference for boys (111 boys : 100 girls) and a growing elderly population supported by a shrinking working age population. China is finding it hard to reverse the one-child policy which is now entrenched in society, both in cities and rural locations.

Many families have a 4-2-1 structure: one working couple must support four aging parents and one child.

The problem is basically Too Male, Too Old and Too Few.

Yes, a lot of people. A lot.

You might be able to add Brazil in there up to a point too.

The problem is basically Too Male, Too Old and Too Few. Lol, nicely put!

This is pure speculation on my part .

There are more boys born in China than girls, so theoretically more cannon fodder for the war machine. These boys who were born during the one-child policy which was rolled out officially in 1980 (makes these boys 40 years old and younger) are pampered like emperors by 4 sets of grandparents. Can't see them faring that well if thrown into a Ukraine-type situation.

Of course volunteers and contract soldiers will be different from conscripts.

I really hope the situation does not escalate such that we have to size up China's military capacity like we do Russia's.

There is really no upside for China to get involved. And all of those families with one child will be loath to send them into the meat grinder for comrade Putin.

The Russian train that was hit on the 31st was stopped at the time of the attack. It had pulled off onto a side track to allow another train to pass it. The Russians lost another train shortly thereafter, but that seems to have been an accident while they were unloading ammunition. Cleverly, they were using smoke to conceal the operation, so those pyrotechnics might have been involved in the accident. I guess they thought the smoke would confuse the HIMARS.

The Russian train that was hit on the 31st was stopped at the time of the attack. It had pulled off onto a side track to allow another train to pass it. The Russians lost another train shortly thereafter, but that seems to have been an accident while they were unloading ammunition. Cleverly, they were using smoke to conceal the operation, so those pyrotechnics might have been involved in the accident. I guess they thought the smoke would confuse the HIMARS.

@MissConductUS really appreciate your going back to check this. Incredible that Ukraine has such up-to-date intelligence to target the stopped train concealed by smoke and for the HIMARS to 'see' through all that cover. Just awesome.

I've been researching China a lot lately precisely due to my concern about the Russia-China-Iran axis! I've found loads of good sources that I didn't post here in case I took the thread too far away from Ukraine. But it's all connected do in future I'll post anything useful I find. One good China catch-all is this podcast which has a series of short (20 mins ish) explanatory episodes:

'What China Wants'

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-china-wants/id1624512478

@blueshoes, the account I read was that the UAF didn't attack the second train. The ammunition being unloaded was set off by accident - someone dropping a shell, someone smoking, or a mishap with one of the chemical smoke generators. They scored on their own goal as it were.

Troops do sometimes use smoke to obscure themselves. The Russians probably thought it would make unloading the train less visible to UAF drones. It wound't have interfered with a HIMARS strike since those missiles are GPS/Satnav guided. Even the first reason is a bit dubious since a large amount of smoke at a rail depot would just have attracted attention from the UAF.

I suspect that quite a few locals are telling the Ukrainian high command where trains are etc, at considerable risk. That's partly why the Russians have taken over the phone networks.

About China, I've heard that a lot of the men who can't find Chinese wives import them from SE Asia. I suspect there's some snobbery going on (show me one society that doesnt really believe that their culture is the best!) but wives are being found ...

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This is important!

www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-warning-update-iranian-proxies-may-attack-us-response-iraqi-political-crisis

Key Takeaways

Russian forces are likely using Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Enerhodar to play on Western fears of a nuclear disaster in Ukraine, attempting to thereby degrade the will of Western powers to provide military support to a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Russian forces likely set fire to the prison complex holding Ukrainian POWs in occupied Donetsk Oblast but blamed Ukraine for an alleged precision strike using Western-supplied military equipment, likely to increase US hesitancy to continue providing HIMARS to Ukraine.

Moscow is likely continuing efforts to leverage its relationship with Tehran in order to secure drones for use in Ukraine.

Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack northwest of Slovyansk and continued efforts to advance on Bakhmut from the northeast, east, and southeast.

Russian forces are prioritizing frontal assaults on Avdiivka and failed to gain ground in Pisky.

Russian forces are reportedly forming a strike group to prevent Ukrainian counteroffensives in northern Kherson Oblast or counterattack against them.

Russian occupation authorities may allow both in-person and online voting in upcoming pseudo-referenda on the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory into Russia, enabling more straightforward Russian vote rigging.

Also, The Russian Defense Ministry has altered the focus of its reporting after the fall of Lysychansk, likely to orient on narratives that resonate positively with milbloggers and war correspondents rather than those that draw criticism from that community.

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✔️ The US Senate approves the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO [!!!! yay]

⚡️Russia’s Gazprom refuses to take back turbine for Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline.

🖇 Ukrainian Energoatom and U.S. Westinghouse launch internships for nuclear engineers in the United States

📊In 2001, Macedonia faced an attempt by terrorists to separate a part of the country. Government forces won the war, including with the help of Ukrainian weapons. The country is now supplying weapons to Ukraine.

✅ Ukraine has launched an app for women, by which it will be possible to quickly report domestic violence to law enforcement officers and get help

❗️ Operational Command “Pivden”: In the south of Ukraine, russian troops are building up their forces and planning actions to reach the administrative border of Kherson region

🌾 Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba: The next ships with grain are ready to depart from Ukrainian ports

🤝 The Ukrainian "Come Back Alive" foundation and the Turkish Baykar company have officially announced their cooperation [my Kiev guests told me yesterday that "Come Back Alive" was doing such good work that unique among voluntary organisations they were being allowed to buy weopons to send to the front]

🪚 Irreversible destruction of Mariupol still goes on, reports Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the city's mayor

❗️ The UN announced it is launching a mission to establish the cause of the deaths of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Olenivka — Secretary-General António Guterres [they -did- get the grain corridor opened, but other than that grrrrrr]

🔎 Bloomberg: Russia has found a new way to circumvent Western oil sanctions
Russia may have found a new way to transport its oil under Western sanctions, using the El Hamra Oil Terminal in Egypt.
The agency tracked a cargo of about 700,000 barrels of Russian oil that was delivered to El Hamra on the morning of July 24 by the Crested tanker. A few hours later, another vessel, the Chris, took all or part of the oil from the port.
The Chris tanker is currently moored at the Ras Shukheir Oil Terminal on Egypt's Red Sea coast. This terminal also allows mixing Russian crude oil with Egyptian crude oil, making it difficult to establish its origin.

📣 Ukraine is seeking an opportunity to speak directly with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping to end the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with the South China Morning Post
Zelensky urged China to use its enormous political and economic influence over Russia to end hostilities.

‼️ The International Committee of the Red Cross claims that it did not guarantee the safety of Ukrainian prisoners of war who left the Azovstal plant in Mariupol

“We did not guarantee the safety of prisoners of war who fell into the hands of the enemy, because this is not in our power. We explained this to the parties in advance,” the committee said in a statement.

⚡️ The invaders failed the offensive in four directions
The Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully repulsed the attacks of the Russian occupiers. In particular, in the Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut, and Avdiivsky directions. There are fights in some areas.

🔺 North Korea has legally withdrawn from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and has the right to self-defense, – the media, citing a statement by the Permanent Mission of the DPRK to the UN

🛢 One of the largest oil companies in the world, the American Exxon Mobil, is negotiating the transfer of its stake in the Sakhalin-1 project to another company, – Reuters
According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the company will transfer its 30 percent stake in the Russian project to "the other side."

⚡️Russia plans to open duty-free shops for diplomats, their families.
Russia is launching several duty-free shops accessible only to diplomats, employees of embassies, consulates, international organizations, and their families. The shops will open in Moscow and St. Petersburg with prices listed in rubles, U.S. dollars, and euros and will be operated by the Russian foreign ministry and another local entity chosen in a competition

⚡️Ukraine’s military destroys Russian command post, hits 2 strongholds in southern Ukraine.

⚡️State Border Service detained over 6,400 men of draft age trying to flee Ukraine since Feb. 24.

⚡️Official: 2,500 civilians remain in Avdiivka.
civilians comprise 10% of the city’s population before the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24. The conditions in the city are “inhumane,” with no water, gas, and electricity access. Russian forces shell the city up to 20 times a day, according to Barabash

⚡️Official: 30,000 children have returned to Ukraine since May.

⚡️Novaya Gazeta: Russian state-owned companies send workers for military retraining.
The Leningrad Oblast officials sent directives to the state-owned businesses asking them to send workers to military retraining according to independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta. Reportedly, the workers will be repairing Russian military equipment coming from Ukraine

⚡️General Staff: Belarus checks combat readiness of its military.
Belarus' armed forces are strengthening their positions on the border with Ukraine in its Brest and Homel oblasts, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

⚡️Commander: Russia unlikely to be able to advance toward Kyiv for second time.
Commander of the Joint Forces of Ukraine Serhiy Naev reported on Aug. 4 that Ukraine had closely studied the previous actions of the Russian army and strengthened its defenses in necessary locations to ensure it won't happen again. "We are doing everything to ensure that this confidence is real," Naev said.

Hello, longtime lurker here who very much appreciates the thread.

Just in case no one else had epic insomnia last night, this episode of Assignment on the World Service was a fascinating bit of insight into just a bit of how life is going on in occupied Kherson...

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct303x

Thanks! @expandabandband

@blueshoes

Incredible that Ukraine has such up-to-date intelligence to target the stopped train concealed by smoke and for the HIMARS to 'see' through all that cover.

I think somebody is certainly providing very timely info, though having witnessed some Russian behaviour one must never rule out stupid behaviour such as the trains always running to time....

And as MissConductUS says HIMARS, like a lot of modern ordnance doesn't need to 'see" a target in the optical wavelengths, a significant amount of stuff these days uses satnav at least in part to steer to a latitude and longitude or grid reference (that is one of the reasons for the Russian proclivity for jamming GPS in some parts of the world).

China.

I sometimes encounter Chinese ‘state agents’ through my work. By that I mean people who work for Chinese state entities, or organisations and businesses that seem one step removed.

I am generally perplexed at various levels, and they may well be about me. My current assessments are:

1. 4-2-1 puts massive responsibilities and expectations on 1.
2. The CCP is incredibly powerful and important but…
3. … it just doesn’t feel Communist in a way I can grasp (the ideology, among other things, is there to be sensed in my family tales from the former Soviet Union and Republican Spain, but China? No).
4. With respect to Putin’s War, China will act in its interests that existed prior to it breaking out, but will exploit opportunities it opens up around the world.