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Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

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Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#241
post #121
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also getting fresh soldiers. I saw a claim from a Canadian vet in Kyiv that 40,000 foreign fighters were already in Kyiv. The Canadian was part of a 500-man exclusively Canadian urban battalion. There was also a report on BBC that Russia had summoned foreign ambassadors in Moscow to complain about foreign volunteers traveling to Ukraine to fight against Russia [1]. I've also been on Telegram channels helping…

Eventually the question becomes "if these guest fighters are successful, at what point do they consider going north through the contested border and attacking Russian (or, more likely, Belurussian) cities?"

I was actually reading some analysis from a military strategist who was quite critical of the foreign fighters. Essentially his arguments were that they are much more driven by idiology (and different ones) and thus less easy to follow orders and be controlled, which could lead to unwanted escalation.

Not sure what to make of it, but people are definitely thinking about this.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#242
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also getting fresh soldiers. I saw a claim from a Canadian vet in Kyiv that 40,000 foreign fighters were already in Kyiv. The Canadian was part of a 500-man exclusively Canadian urban battalion. There was also a report on BBC that Russia had summoned foreign ambassadors in Moscow to complain about foreign volunteers traveling to Ukraine to fight against Russia [1]. I've also been on Telegram channels helping…

>There was also a report that Russia had summoned foreign ambassadors in Moscow to complain about foreign volunteers traveling to Ukraine to fight against Russia. I am absolutely dying laughing at the absurdity of such a complaint (if true), lol.

What do you consider funny about it?

I suppose it is the difference between officially being at war and not. If some country sends fighters to support your enemy, you may start asking if you are at war with that other country, after all?

So would you say it would be funny if Canada was officially at war with Russia now?

Unless Russia gives up, WWIII seems to already have started, as most countries have joined in one way or another. I guess the only hope is that Russia will decide that the cost is too high.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#243

how much of this was contributed to banning all reporting from the Russian side of things? right now the atmosphere is like if you even remotely suggest that Russia is actually making slow progress despite losses you are viewed as supporting Russia! Yet what the fixation on Kyiv is doing is it's pulling resources away from the south and Donentsk/Lukansk area where the Ukraine army is in real danger of being completel…

I just checked and you can access Russian state media, so have at it please https://ria.ru - I don't speak Russian but from my research this is state owned media, please if others know better can we prove that if you really want to read Russia propaganda it is still possible, you just need a bit more effort then opening FB or twiiter or your TV

I understand Russian. Looking at ria.ru over the past few days there is barely any mention of the war, certainly no details, there's much more mention of sanctions but only some weird stories about their origin and motivation.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of "propaganda" that proved to be false a day later?

Not what you're asking about, but I'd classify the filtering for what people want to hear as propaganda. Why is so much of the news I see about Ukrainian battle victories while Russians are clearly advancing on multiple fronts? There could easily be more coverage of Russian victories than Ukrainian if we were shown a random sample of phone footage. I'm not complaining - these things have a tangible effect on morale.…

Their performance has been abysmal. Russia (who claims that this is not even a war) is not inclined to post losses. It's had some 'wins', but many of those were short-lived and were recaptured. Even less incentive to post it. Which is understandable since it was supposed to be quick and done in a few days.

Ukraine - being the underdog and the invaded country - has every incentive to publish every single tank they destroy. It isn't surprising, really.

There has been coverage on the South, where Russia has had more successes.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a saying in falling Germany in 1944: "each day our victories are closer to Germany than the previous day". You can follow the bombings, for example: if Kyiv is being shelled (and reported in Russian media), it's not under Russian control. If the shelling last for days, the city is holding. If some city was being shelled, but there are no more news about it, but the news are a nearby and further city is bein…

"It seems the Russian invasion is crawling" During WW2, the siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. Ukraine has only been under attack for 13 days.

US invading Iraq (OIF) is probably a better comparison; that took about a month. And that had openly sympathetic forces, the Kurds and some Shias, willing to tap out quickly. Plus previous wars (Gulf War I) had shown US airpower was absolutely dominant and had fried much of Iraq's hardware on the "highway of Death".

I'm not in favor of Russia but it's clear they're running into much harder resistance than expected, and are really just warming up.

The Russians had to fight two brutal wars in Chechnya, lot of false starts and screw ups... but ~30 years later the Chechens sent 10000 men to fight in Ukraine for the Russians...

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#246

I just have no confidence that we can really know anything for sure one way or another. The media so far (in the West) ranges from tangibly self-conscious to overt propaganda, much of which is proven false a day later. There is no harm in this in itself, propaganda is as much part of the war as any other part, I get that, but I at this point I wouldn't be surprised that Russia is doing much better than what is being…

> no confidence that we can really know anything for sure one way or another Not only is this true from a general sense of "fog of war" and misinformation, but even in a purely statistical sense, these numbers aren't compelling. As a stats person, both 0.9 and 0.26 are probabilities that basically reflect nothing more than a vague sense how the outcome will go. In a classical NHST this degree of confidence would not…

I am not sure I follow. Are you saying that a 90% chance of not needing an umbrella is the same as a 26% chance?

These are vastly different probabilities which mean that you might be wrong 9 out 10 days, or right 3 out of 4 times.

As another example: I bet most companies would die to turn up conversion rates up even 1 or 2 percent.

When dealing in risk management where probabilities should start in 1 in 10 or 1 in 100, then I could agree that 90% risk of failure isn't to different from 26%.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#247
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There was also a report that Russia had summoned foreign ambassadors in Moscow to complain about foreign volunteers traveling to Ukraine to fight against Russia. I am absolutely dying laughing at the absurdity of such a complaint (if true), lol.

Unfortunately, it is a big point of Russian internal propaganda which demonizes it into foreign "soldiers of fortune", "mercenaries" coming to fight Russia, basically they are making it into an additional point of how Russia in this war is basically defending itself from foreign invasion. "Ukraine is being pumped up with foreign weapons and mercenaries!". Unfortunately Russians are eating it. As a glaring example of…

Russia claims their SVP-24 bomb sight with integrated computer enables high precision (3-4m accuracy) bombing with dumb bombs

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#248
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. A Nuclear Bluff is just that, a Bluff. Putin can't win in a nuclear war and if he uses nukes anywhere, he is done for. No one is going to have anything to do with him or Russia on any level after that.

No one is going to have anything to do with Putin after launching a nuclear first strike because he'll be dead. Along with most of the population of Russia and a big chunk of the rest of the world too. And Putin knows this. Thus, it's a bluff.

Not necessarily. There is a very real chance that a nuclear strike on a purely military target will cause a flinch by the other side.

Lets say Putin nukes a carrier group at sea. This wont trigger an immediate counter attack like launching ICBMs would. Biden/whoever would have to order launching the nukes. Follow this for any usage of tactical nuclear weapons.

Will he decide to end life in America and most of the world over a carrier group? There's a non zero percent chance he would flinch at that.

Your argument is that nobody would have anything to do with Putin, but we already pretty close to that point. Backing Putin in a corner makes him MORE dangerous, not less.

Putin could do all kind of things to completely undermine as well. What happens if he decides that the world uniting against Russian means Russia no longer need to adhere to the Non Proliferation Treat and offers "free" nukes to whoever aligns with his new order? It's already understood geo politically that "no nukes" means the West and China get to bully you whenever they want. So why not take the offer? There's all kinds of ways this could get worse without all life ending.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#249
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Information from either side is to be taken with a grain of salt, although Ukraine is winning the social media ops-game hands down. At lest in the west where our information is censored to provide a Pro-Ukrainian perspective. I can only guess at how the social media ops-game is playing out in Russia and China within their own propaganda bubble.

Can you clarify how are our information censored in the west? Like specifically what kind of information is actively suppressed by a government actor?

Well, if the same oligarchies that influences the government by lobby also are the owners of big media companies, you do not need the direct involvement of government to censor the information and you can keep the image of a free press.

Re: Prediction that Kyiv falls to Russian forces by April 2022 goes from 90% to 26%

#250

Armies have momentum. Germany almost lost in 1941 when Barbarossa failed. Hitler managed to keep his armies from disintegrating, but it was a near thing. Japan's armies went far further then they had any right too in the same period, because of the perception of invincibility, higher morale, and everyone underestimating them for racial reasons. It's very clear that the Russians badly screwed up their logistics chain…

>and Demcoratic forces will be revitalized inside of Russia.

Now there's a good prediction market - who will replace Putin if he's gone soon. My money will be on the kinds of people who will make Putin himself look like a liberal democrat.

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