Radio War Nerd #333 — World Of Wars: Ukraine + Tigray Famine

I think the whole question about why didnt they amass artillery in the donbas is answered by the fact you underline - is that they're poor. There will always be huge deficiencies but the mobile approach actually worked. If Kiev was not so well defended, that scary convoy would not get as stuck and we might not even have the convo about artillery. Altogether, i'd say the general strategic decissions were kinda ok, taking into account the corruption and the budgetary limitations and the 'why havent they...' kinda answers itself, bc they are poor and have a terrible environment.

very funny that excellent anti-air has set back warfare like 90 years. artillery was supposed to be complete sitting duck for tactical air bombing. and also tanks can't be used for breakthrough anymore because atgm

Why did Ukraine not stockpile artillery guns and ammunition? - I agree with Jon that Russia has been targeting ammunition manufacturing and storage - Russia can do this to Ukraine but not vice versa - Russia much more secure lines of communication than Ukraine and guns need to be heavily and regularly fed with ammunition - When Ukraine was planning and preparing for this conflict I bet they assumed that Russia would have total air superiority at this point

Why did NATO not have Ukraine stock up on artillery? Easy. Alexandria defense contractors had higher profit margins on other equipment.

A World food programmer presser last week warned of a catastrophic food crisis worldwide, and really laid it out regarding Tigray: "up to 750000 people facing starvation and death in six countries; of these, up to 400 000 are in tigray"

Al Qaeda guy advertising a $15K javelin in Idlib. Can't vouch for the authenticity of the video, lifted off of the Naked Capitalism blog so I believe the link itself is safe. https://www.bitchute.com/video/bxFpcFmGwFky/

Hey you made it halfway to episode #666, congrats!!

@WarNerd: The e-mail is missing the direct link at the end. Ceterum censeo Opus Audio esse addendum.

A lot of the Ukrainian artillery shows up smoking on Russian Telegram. Also Russian artillery spends a lot of time targeting ammo depots, supply lines etc. Ukraine had it in the beginning but my guess is that they've lost a lot to attrition

Your take on Ethiopia is very different from what I have had heard recently from Break Through News. Any thoughts?

It was bit disappointing to see the Ukrainian democracy v Russian authoritarian state analysis trotted out in this episode. Both Ukraine and Russia are oppressive gangster states. There is a strong case that Ukraine since 2014 has been far more ruthless at repressing political dissent than Russia. The Ukrainian state have engaged in an orgy of political oppression and violence since 2014. Outright fascist paramilitary organisations have been utilised as a political weapon against sections of Ukrainian society including the left, trade unions, minorities and Russian speaking regions. Political parties, opposition media, books and minority languages have been banned. I would be interested to know on what grounds Ukraine can be described as a democracy in comparison to Russia.

To John's question around 28 mins, "Where has the Ukrainian artillery gone?" - a lot was Soviet-era and poorly maintained. These pieces are now being lost to maintenence or simply wearing out and no longer being usable/accurate, in addition to losses to counterbattery or airstrikes. Russia has also been targeting ammunition manufacturing and storage which has limited Ukraine's ability to keep its own equipment supplied. The NATO replacement systems (eg M777 and M109) require training and so even if NATO countries delivered overwhelming numbers there wouldn't be enough trained troops to use them.

Gotta be careful with using the CPI as your metric of inflation - the CPI tracks the prices of a small subset of goods deemed "relevant" to urban consumers. For example, food and energy prices have skyrocketed. But, also contributing to "higher inflation" as measured by the CPI is airline tickets, new and used car prices, and transportation services. So, not everything is increasing by 8% in price. As with most things economic, the devil is in the details of the way things are defined. Inflation measured by the GDP implicit price deflator (measured quarterly) indicates that this current bout of inflation is about 6.8% higher than a year ago, which is still less than the spikes seen in ~1950, ~1975, and ~1980. Don't get me wrong, it's getting bad, but it's not the worst we've ever seen and some categories of goods are distorting the picture

The economic warfare of sanctions have the opposite effect has got to be one of the more hilarious parts of this whole thing, other than the mistiming and sending of the wrong military supplies - sending small arms when they should've sent heavier equipment and now sending heavier equipment when it may be too late to help. Reminder: these are THE smartest people in the room, folks. Ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Morons

This ep is massively harshing the top gun maverick buzz

Yep, a damn good reason not to start wars is that you don't know wtf will happen. History and great literature keep saying that but we're stupid.

Ukraine inherited a huge amount of arms from the USSR artillery and tanks as well as munitions however they have been selling lots of it over the decades. I don't think its so much that Ukraine is not well armed or doesn't have enough rather the Russians are just stronger especially in air and strategic bombing. Russia has more artillery systems than God so they are playing to their strength.

Shame I wasn't able to catch you in Seattle. I still am researching PNW Indian Wars.

Can I get the name for the music track at the break between the Ukraine / Tigray sections? Thanks!

Rochester garbage plate meet up when?

you DO know that Zalinsky is the name of Dan Aykroyd's character in Tommy Boy right? You know, the guy who tells Tommy about how commercials are bullshit and how his enthusiasm is just an act?

1:07:15 My hypothesis is that because no one thought that the war would enter this second phase. I think they thought that either this war would end with Ukraine getting blitzed via mobile warfare or the Russians would be dragged down by attritional guerilla warfare (in farmlands for some reason). Why bother training soldiers to fight a war that you don't expect to fight? Now in retrospect they should have seen this as a possibility, but hindsight is 20/20.