Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique

Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.

On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.

The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.

Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.

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Just a few random thoughts about Russian strategy and current short term goals in Ukraine. I've been religiously following this war since the first few days and I guess like many of you nerds here, one begins to sort of develop an understanding of military affairs after consuming so much content in a short period. My analysis of the current South Donetsk offensive is that it is the most coherent and well-executed campaign since the start of the war. Previous long-term Russian and Ukrainian offensives were like separate islands of small gains, never joining together into one single front that drastically collapses an entire part of the front. Ukraine for example during their 2023 summer offensive attacked in three different directions, south of Orikhiv, west of Bakhmut, and south of Velika Novosilka. All those fronts never had a realistic chance of actually linking up, as they were too far from each other and there was never a real coherent "what happens next" plan. Same with the Russian offensive in the start of the war. They attacked near Kiev, near Kharkov, from the South and north of the old LPR territory, but the first two fronts could never realistically collapse an entire sector and link up to be one continuous front with supply lines entirely located in the captured zones. Even Bakhmut was the same, Russia made a dent in the frontline, but the lack of offensives in Siversk and Toretsk meant that Russia couldn't collapse an entire sector and straighten out the line again, so they only took the city and some territory around it.
Their current southern offensive is different though, with three big arrows that are actually threatening the entire South Donetsk sector for Ukraine. An advance of a few km from each direction now is lethal for the AFU. They would lose one of the most fortified sectors of the front, and escape into open fields with no fortifications all the way to Pavlograd. According to a map of fortifications that I saw last week, the whole section from Kurakhovo to the centre of Dnipro Oblast has barely any defensible ground, and the opening of that sector for Russian troops means that they will be able to outflank Ukraine's north-south trench systems in Zaporozhye, and the east-west systems in fortified central Donetsk. 2025 will be extremely decisive for this war if Trump doesn't pull off a 4D chess peace agreement.
- I mean my critique would be:
  still too slow to overrun defense line
  only 1 place (le axis) of advance
  continuous inability to suppress sam systems (its been 3 years, what are they even doing)
  ukraine internal politics seems fine with throwing people from the streets in the trenches and preserving mobile motivated forces behind, which makes russians cautious of sudden attack, so they are sitting a lot of forces in defensive lines **which they still managed to fuck up in kursk
  tl;dr yet to escape ww1 strategy
  indications of winning would be either mass surrenders or large consistent territorial gains (>1000 squared km, or more than 20 km advances in one place)
  
  continuous inability to suppress sam systems (its been 3 years, what are they even doing)
  The Russian Air Force, like most in the world, simply does not have the Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD/DEAD) capabilities that the US, and to a small extent Israel and Australia have. If you look at aircraft that can fulfill the jammer/electronic warfare and SEAD/DEAD role simultaneously, Russia only has about a dozen Su-34 NVO craft which only started service in 2022, and 10 Su-24MP aircraft. The US has over 160 EA-18G Growler aircraft, almost double their initial order of 85 aircraft, and Australia 12. Russia also only have a handful of stealth Su-57 aircraft, while the US has over 600 F-35s and 180 F-22s.
  A comment I made on this a while ago
  
  I meant: a) in 3 years one can make the phased jamming thingamajig b) how many planes would they have to lose to suppress 5 patriot systems and something like 30 soviet ones? 50? 100? Its obviously worth it. c) they don't even try to do smart shenanigans, like launch rockets with radar profiles of the planes and with planes following them, etc

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