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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   543 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 30, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Someone seen any good analysis what happens after the fall of Pokrovsk? Right now the situation there is quite grim for the defenders. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyprrp1d50o

Not much. The fundamental problem of the war hasn't been solved: neither country can conduct large-scale offensive operations. Russia has rebuilt enough of its armor for a mechanized push, but it can't execute one because any concentration of tanks and IFVs is too obvious.

Ukraine is losing, but it is not losing fast enough. Right now their strategy is to retreat as slowly as possible while attacking Russian refineries and now power plants, basically asking the question, "how much Russian infrastructure are you willing to sacrifice just to prove you can beat us?" The Russian strategy is to trade pieces while they are ahead in material, as this increases relative advantage.

Big Serge has a pretty sober analysis out recently on his substack -- short version as I recall is that the Russians are doing bite & hold, and this is basically just another bite -- not particularly exciting in and of itself, but shaping the lines for whatever they plan to bite next. Plus of course keeping Ukrainian forces pinned down and inflicting losses which one presumes will eventually become significant.

I have no idea what is happening in Pokrovsk, but I note that it isn't somewhere where a Western MSM outlet is going to be able to maintain a full-time reporter, and someone has been briefing the Western MSM that it is about to fall on-and-off for about a year now.

The BBC's sources here are a lying Russian general and a lying Ukrainian general. I don't need the MSM to know what lies the lying liars want to tell me. If they can't their own reporter into Pokrovsk, they could shut up. I know it's expensive and dangerous - that's what I pay my licence fee for, and it's why war reporters have the status they do.

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