Ukraine and Russia have both lost a lot of their Navy in the war. Ukraine claims to have destroyed nearly a third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet less than two years. 25 vessels have been destroyed, and 15 more are under repair. There is some dispute to this number and lower estimates are about 14 destroyed and 12 damaged. Ukraine had a smaller navy and many of its ships were lost.
On December 26, 2023, Novocherkassk, a major Russian landing ship, was hit and destroyed while docked in Feodosia, southern Crimea, by air-launched cruise missiles.
Video supplied by various sources, including Ukrainian authorities and Russian reports on Telegram, showed massive and multiple explosions and fires, with indications that munitions aboard the ship had been detonated by the attack (Ukraine said the ship was used to launch cruise missiles against Ukrainian cities). Independent analysts said the strike substantially impedes Russia’s ability to further attack and invade Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. Reported casualties of 74 crew killed and 27 wounded. Wreck apparently removed in late January/early February 2024.
1 February 2024, Ukraine released video purported to show the sinking of the Tarantul-class vessel Ivanovets by unmanned surface vehicle.
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This is a ground war which Russia is winning. Sinking some derelict ships under repair makes for good propaganda but provides very little value otherwise.
Trump is the one, who is sowing divisions and pitting one group against another. It is classical example of divide and conquer military strategy. He is weaking the Usa and Europe by dividing them, wants to pull out of Nato. That will make Russia stronger. He is dividing USA and encouraging divisions between reps and dems. He is making USA weaker and more divided. Manipulating one group towards another.
His actions benefit Russia.
It the similar thing Russians are doing. They are sowing division, by manipulating public opinion. Perhaps even Brexit is their doing. They can’t destroy united west, so they need to divide it in smaller fractions, which are easier to conquer. Inner conflicts make country weaker and benefit enemies.
Anti-globalist and non-interventionist politics is not “sown division”… there are many people like me that want their nation to turn inward and focus on itself. We are sentimental (often Christian) students of history – we see all wars since 1945 as illegal interventions – total casualties numbering megadeaths. I really only reflect on the modern era since 1917 – I cannot reconcile the political realities that put Andrew Jackson on the $20, owned a slave, or took territories from Spain. Bravo for Brexit! Bravo for MAGA! The UN is good for diplomacy only (should have no authority). NATO became obsolete by 1995 – its expansion has decreased security and lead to the destruction of the Russian province of Ukraine. A multi-polar world is much safer than a new world order… diffuse government is the founding principal of the USA. Since you don’t understand the conservative, libertarian, rugged individualistic mindset, you imagine our thoughts are the result of a meddling Russian bogeyman. I will always stand in opposition to further collectivization – you describe this as an inner conflict that makes the country weaker. In my opinion, YOUR collectivist politics is a THREAT to my sovereignty. Think of it this way, there are those among us that eat twice as much meat to nullify the best efforts of some vegan. I live to be a contrarian. The majority is OFTEN WRONG. My attitude has likely led me to more plentiful and more diverse experiences than you. I eat life – I have something to prove – I don’t want a nanny.
I understand where you are coming from – perhaps an Ayn Rand cultist adherent. Fine – i get it. But at the end of the day, in the most simple terms, without any nuance or subtlety, sophisticated world visions are either:
1. You want a Fair World
-or-
2. You want a Great World.
That easy.
The bottom line is that we (rich countries) cannot do the Great World thing on our Own – divided. We may have an Elon Musk laying around or a DARPA or some advanced fusion at the unending verge of positive yield in such-and-such facility; we may even throw a few people and some stuff on the Moon and exploit a NEO or 2, but at the end of it all – in the quest for Greatness, intellectual and ingenuity only comes from collaboration and consulting with our peers – often in other rich countries. Pulling back from EU/NAto is to ‘piss on that’ and fundamentally underachieve the country’s potential. So, ‘look inward’ or be a doomsday prepper-type if you want, but you get neither: ‘sustainable’ greatness (Great World) or a satisfying slide into a Fair World (northern Europe style retirement). Easy Choice. Throw some ATACMs, super-FPV drones, a few $10B, (mostly some fabulous Raytheon-style factories in Ukraine’s direction) for the next 6 to 18 months and we all win. Russia pushed back to Black Sea; eastern Europe back in line, the US beign the main mind behind the next generation of all air and land equipment. Win-win-win.
Your first two sentences cancel each other out.
Possibly. I never fully got all the nuances of Rand’s objectivism and its wide world implications. Hyper-selfishness as the ultimate means to productivity and greatness, when magnified by other self-interested persons in a common striving for a ‘success network’ always came across as simplistic – like small-Govt’ Libertarians – silly creatures. Heart is in the right place, but the practicalities are self-defeating. Ho-hum. As long as ‘someone’ pushes Russia back to the Black Sea – that’s all that matters.
Keck, Americans had a chance to defeat their enemies gracefully and cost-effectively and lost because of the election. The insignificance of Western civilization has been proven. The world will belong to China, screw immigration to the USA, I will go to serve Xi in China.
So Republicans will let Putin take Ukraine, then Moldova, then why should he stop there when Russia is only getting stronger and the west is showing weakness and division? He would like a land corridor to Kaliningrad. He has already made aggressive noises to Finland and the Baltic states. Showing weakness to Putin is bad. He will only be stopped when he somebody stops him. Stopping him in Ukraine will be much cheaper than having another protracted cold war for the next few decades. Also, as somebody said, China is watching.
Russians got Advika for completely different reason. They got is because Ukraine does not have artillery ammunition to fire back at them. Why doesn’t Ukraine have ammunition? Because republican congressmen didn’t have trouble spending 2 trillions fighting shepherds and goat f*, but under Putin’s friend Trump they won’t give Ukraine 50 billions to fight much more damaging enemy – Russia.
It’s not the US’s war. If Putin & Trump are friends (like you claim), that would have nothing to do with how various congressmen vote.
Don’t be a warmonger, if 2 countries want to go to war each other, and neither country is a US ally, or even NATO member, it should have nothing to do with the United States, we can no longer afford to be the worlds police, plus all we do is receive hate from other countries for even trying to keep the world stable.
The only winning move, is not to play.
Xi is watching with interest.
Nice response comrade.
So what are the Europeans doing about their war? Maybe they ought to pony up more money and material to help Ukraine.
This is not what is important in what is going on in the war. The Russians won Advika. They’ve managed to do it because they finally learn how to use their Air Force. They have attacked and
destroyed the Ukrainian positions with massive precise gravity bomb To the points where the Ukrainians had nowhere To hide. Although they’ve lost six fighter jets in the process, it was worth for them in exchange of winning this battle. They’re sure to continue with the same method in the coming bottles.
Ukrainian victories are guerrilla warfare victories won by special Operators from the US and Western Europe.
Russian victories are battlefield victories.
The current Russian oligarchism/nationalism entity is evil. They will not be content (and only smugly so) until 1/3 of people in the world speak or glorify Russian ‘czar top-down-type’ culture as a ‘primary world culture’. They wish to restructure the UN, Security council, world economic order, courts, and international trade system. Their value system of being ‘everything that the West is not’ seeks to gather all the damaged, backward, and dysfunctional governments in the world and establish a non-West axis of military, economic, and social ‘undemocratic chaos’. They have no other viable ‘homegrown’ ideas. They know that they can only accomplish this by taking land and resources back from eastern europe so that western Europe, north Middle East, and northern Africa are but a land invasion, coup, government infiltration, or resource siege away from capitulation. They don’t want to destroy the World only influence/veto its every system. They know that their non-western populations are notoriously dysfunctional, unproductive, uninspired, uncreative, and non-collaborative — so they know that they cannot compete or even prosper internally on technological, economic, or creative-enterprise except minimally by means of copying, pirating, forced labor/ research/ production. All that is being asked is that the EU/ NATO/ US provide a hard barrier to this chaos at the Black Sea while such disorder spreads. No wants to destroy Russia or its culture or history; only pen it in before military 60s/70s style world conflict spreads on every non-North American continent – distracting economies and peoples from bettering the world technologically – energy, agriculture, space, comunications, etc. War is a distraction and burden. The US can support the containment of this rot and maintain its own ties to rich and modernized economies by lending expertise and resources. To leave/ underfund/ undersupport EU and NATO in this (which should never have happened in Ukraine since 2008) is to threaten economic and technological ties between the US and others that would likely have deteriorated both economies. For the US to abandon the EU/NATO is to to foce deteriorated techno-economic relations that would otherwise make the US 20% poorer and stupider than it otherwise would have been by 2050. And hey it makes Ukraine a great testing ground/ manufacturing faciltiy for much future NATO weaponry and strategic systems.