[Discussion] Ukraine - Russian Invasion and Discussion

A place for aggregated discussions of a possible conflict, it’s implications and effects, news updates and personal accounts if any. If the expected conflict kicks off, I will change the title but the function will stay the same.

Badferret wrote:

I think there is some real uncertainty to how effective the Russian military can be. The western world is perhaps a little spoiled (not sure if this is the right word) by the US/NATO's ability to force project.

How well can the Russian's maintain their equipment in the field? What happens when things start breaking down? Can they operate effectively in weather/night?

Watching TankTok videos, the Russians are still relying on a lot of older vehicles.

60 minutes just had a piece about how deadly American support vehicles are during training. How much training have the Russian truck drivers had and will it hold up under live fire?

Without a doubt the Russians can take a lot of territory in the first few days. I think anything beyond that is pure guess work.

The infantry and SF folks used to give us combat support guys crap, but in the grand scheme of things we were pretty scrappy. I could easily see Russia struggling to maintain supply lines.

I get it, but as Stalin noted "Quantity has a quality all its own".

jdzappa wrote:
Badferret wrote:

I think there is some real uncertainty to how effective the Russian military can be. The western world is perhaps a little spoiled (not sure if this is the right word) by the US/NATO's ability to force project.

How well can the Russian's maintain their equipment in the field? What happens when things start breaking down? Can they operate effectively in weather/night?

Watching TankTok videos, the Russians are still relying on a lot of older vehicles.

60 minutes just had a piece about how deadly American support vehicles are during training. How much training have the Russian truck drivers had and will it hold up under live fire?

Without a doubt the Russians can take a lot of territory in the first few days. I think anything beyond that is pure guess work.

The infantry and SF folks used to give us combat support guys crap, but in the grand scheme of things we were pretty scrappy. I could easily see Russia struggling to maintain supply lines.

Logistics is how wars are won. In my uneducated opinion.

Uh-oh....

A series of cyberattacks struck the websites of Ukrainian banks and defense agencies on Tuesday.

Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted on Tuesday that its website had likely been affected by a denial-of-service attack—a rudimentary type of attack that overloads a website’s server with traffic and causes it to crash. Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security similarly confirmed attacks on the state-owned Privatbank and Oshchadbank, two of the nation’s largest financial entities. An attack on the website of Ukraine’s Armed Forces appears to have occurred as well.
Top_Shelf wrote:
jdzappa wrote:
Badferret wrote:

I think there is some real uncertainty to how effective the Russian military can be. The western world is perhaps a little spoiled (not sure if this is the right word) by the US/NATO's ability to force project.

How well can the Russian's maintain their equipment in the field? What happens when things start breaking down? Can they operate effectively in weather/night?

Watching TankTok videos, the Russians are still relying on a lot of older vehicles.

60 minutes just had a piece about how deadly American support vehicles are during training. How much training have the Russian truck drivers had and will it hold up under live fire?

Without a doubt the Russians can take a lot of territory in the first few days. I think anything beyond that is pure guess work.

The infantry and SF folks used to give us combat support guys crap, but in the grand scheme of things we were pretty scrappy. I could easily see Russia struggling to maintain supply lines.

Logistics is how wars are won. In my uneducated opinion.

Logistics is historically termed Combat Service Support. Combat Support includes communications, security, and intelligence, and also battlefield multipliers such as: electronic warfare (jammers), combat engineers (sappers), chemical warfare, civil affairs, and psyop.

Yes, the trigger pullers are the tip of the spear, but there are a lot of folks besides infantry making a difference on the front lines.

If Putin sticks to the script, the invasion should start shortly with dawn in Ukraine. Meanwhile, I keep checking in on live flightracker of a GlobalHawk over the eastern part of the country. What a strange time.

Bellingcat has some great resources.

Why Is This AK-47-Toting Ukrainian Grandma Being Trained by Neo-Nazis?

It’s worth nothing here that Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish. The conflict in Ukraine is complicated and exists at a crossroads of a dozen different ideologies and geopolitical interests. The image of Konstantynovska leaning over an AK-47 is a powerful one that reflects Ukraine’s desire to remain an independent country. But so are the Azov Battalion trainers bent over her, showing her how to shoot, while the Wolfsangel looms on their shoulder.

Kinda surprised it took this long for the ties between neo Nazis and Ukraine to start coming out. Even traditionally lefty areas have glossed over the fact that Ukraine is a Nazi stronghold at the moment.

(It does explain American interest in protecting the region. We’ll do anything to save poor innocent Nazis from the big mean commies)

Except they're not commies, they're just as reactionary right as anyone right now and are beloved by sections of the American RW. Tucker & Friends think Vlad's one of the last bastions of protecting traditional European Christianity.

Yep, it’s a lot of holdover from boomer era conflict. Also fun fact, the Russians use Nazi mercenaries!

Wagner are Blackwater on steroids and are assumed to be largely under the control of the Russian state or at least working with close cooperation.

But not *nearly* as competent as Blackwater... or at least their Gulf War incarnation. I have no idea how they perform these days, I think they are mostly personal protection, anti-piracy and the like.

Robear wrote:

But not *nearly* as competent as Blackwater... or at least their Gulf War incarnation. I have no idea how they perform these days, I think they are mostly personal protection, anti-piracy and the like.

They are mostly being used as muscle in north and central African nations.

Read a wonky think piece recently that they are part of some master plan by Putin to control the floodgates of the coming climate refugee crisis over the next 30 years. Some folks are really bending themselves into knots trying to prove that Putin is playing 28 dimensional chess.

Dude's just the world's top mob boss. That's a great place to be until it isn't.

Flightradar24 is tracking interesting planes when they appear. A Global Hawk has been showing up every other day or so, and a few days ago a UK Rivet Joint was also running racetracks. You can find them by looking at the "most tracked" list on the left, they are usually top of the list when they are around.

Robear wrote:

Flightradar24 is tracking interesting planes when they appear. A Global Hawk has been showing up every other day or so, and a few days ago a UK Rivet Joint was also running racetracks. You can find them by looking at the "most tracked" list on the left, they are usually top of the list when they are around.

Badferret wrote:

Meanwhile, I keep checking in on live flightracker of a GlobalHawk over the eastern part of the country. What a strange time.

Also, a few F-16's were doing holding patterns just to the west of the Black Sea two nights ago before disappearing off of radar. I didn't stay up late enough to see if they were ever tracked again to an air base.

Link to the current Global Hawk flight.

I find it very interesting that the Russians seemingly can't start an invasion during the night. It should give plenty of heads up when/if they actually do come, with the assumption that they will need to at least start at least showing signs of "spinning up" an attack in the pre-dawn hours. I guess they could do that several mornings in a row, but probably not for too many days without exhausting their troops.

Joe'd better be right about this stuff, at this point, anything short of a Russian invasion is gonna make him look dumb.

Dunno what you're talking about, it's obvious to all what is intended, it's just a matter of dissuading Putin. The invasion not going ahead would be a success. If the invasion did go ahead, then the inevitable lack of concrete response would make him look weak an ineffectual.

Yeah, calling out Russia's plans before they happen and having unified support (so far) amongst the allies has to be creating tremendous strain on Putin no matter which way he decides.

One, it shows that Russia has their own intelligence issues, and if I were Putin, I would be worried about whether they were technological or human leaks, or both.

Two, with the element of surprise completely off the table, how much more of a risk does an actual invasion become. I know some don't expect much of a contest and or think that Putin's position is not at risk, but I do imagine a scenario where an invasion going poorly could ultimately lead to either a coup or popular uprising.

And lastly, if he does back down, does that slowly start to weaken Putin's grasp anyway? Ukraine will only be more heavily arm. Maybe the Belarusians give it another go for ousting their despot as a result?

Don't make the mistake of thinking this has to be a long-term engagement for the Russian military. They can do wonders with a quick, destabilizing strike, then get the heck out and let their many proxies go to work. Democracies depend on working systems to resist internal unrest. The Russians are very good at breaking those systems.

Robear wrote:

Don't make the mistake of thinking this has to be a long-term engagement for the Russian military. They can do wonders with a quick, destabilizing strike, then get the heck out and let their many proxies go to work. Democracies depend on working systems to resist internal unrest. The Russians are very good at breaking those systems.

I thought we were talking about Ukraine, not the US?

Olympics are ending on the 20th. President’s day is the 21st. What’s the potential for Putin to invade Ukraine on Monday as a poke to the eye of Biden? This enables the right wing noise-box to blather on about how incompetent our administration is and further destabilizes things over here.

The separatist forces could even just take another chunk of territory (quietly backed by Russian special forces of course) while Ukraine is desperately trying to de-escalate things.

The Russians have shown that they can handle multiple fronts at once, in this arena.

Yeah, I am sure one of the things discussed in the meeting with China was for Putin to wait until the olympics are over to invade.

I still think Putin waits because while apparently it has backfired on the world front, locally the tension is paying dividends. And his target is not the world...

Random Ukrainian twitter guy would like a word with Seth's sources.

Dmitry Mrachnik
@dmrachnik
It's quite f*cked up how Western leftist discussion on Ukraine quickly devolves into mentions of far-right groups like Right Sector or Azov. Come on, people. The US, whose leftists often bug Ukrainians with whataboutisms on the fascists, has just had a fascist president.
Dmitry Mrachnik
@dmrachnik
·
16m
Replying to
@dmrachnik
Western leftists and anarchists don't ask us whether we need medical supplies, food, military equipment. They ask us about fascists patrolling the streets in Ukraine. Sweet Jesus, our president is Jewish, and the only right-populist party in the parliament is f*cking pro-Russian.

Serious question.

With the usual corrupt GOP suspects hitting the Russia good, Ukraine bad talking points this weekend, it is just one more very obvious data point that said grifter GOP politicians are either beholden to kompromat or bribes or both.

My question is, in an age of fisa wiretaps, surely the FBI has actual prosecutable evidence against these clowns?

I mean, MTG is all of a sudden saying that Ukraine gave more money to Hillary than any other donor. Besides the absurdity of the statement, does anyone think that MTG came up with that idea by herself. I don't exactly see her as the type to be able to stick to practiced spycraft when receiving her marching orders. Is it strictly a case that our intelligence/investigative folks are still working the masterminds higher up who actually are trying to cover their tracks?

I don't know that $$$ is actually changing hands between someone with GRU connections and someone with RNC credentials. More of an opportunistic kinda thing: Biden/Left bad, anything that weakens my enemy = good. Exacerbated by the simplistic, 2D views of pretty much everyone left on the Right.

Remember that their theory of everything right now is an apocalyptic one (replacement theory in terms of race, gender, religion, sOcIaLiSm, etc). They're going to side with the mob boss who promises churches and anti-gay propaganda and shirtless photos ops with an AK over the effete, cosmopolitan West.

I mean, maybe there is someone meeting regularly with Alex Jones and Tuck. But why would they need to? Those folks already profit from their outrage jobs and are easily influenced with trips to Hungary and Facebook farms. Why cut an actual check?

I believe FISA only covers wiretapping for national security purposes, for communications with entities outside the country. Internal stuff would be sourced through other Five Eyes nations, and I believe that's beyond the reach of law enforcement until a national security case is raised. There's a lot of stuff in the NSA databases, but after the Church Commission and the Snowden revelations, it's quite rightly locked behind a huge firewall, to mitigate abuses like those of the past.

As far as I know, anyway. I have no non-public knowledge of this stuff, just what's in books and the media.

Robear wrote:

I believe FISA only covers wiretapping for national security purposes, for communications with entities outside the country. Internal stuff would be sourced through other Five Eyes nations, and I believe that's beyond the reach of law enforcement until a national security case is raised. There's a lot of stuff in the NSA databases, but after the Church Commission and the Snowden revelations, it's quite rightly locked behind a huge firewall, to mitigate abuses like those of the past.

As far as I know, anyway. I have no non-public knowledge of this stuff, just what's in books and the media.

Right, but I'm assuming that the GRU is talking to someone(s) here who is then handling GOP stoogies. But, yeah, the GRU is probably not leaving a digital trail directly to said stoogies. And as Top Shelf points out, the stoogies are probably quite happy to echo Russian talking points from the gentlest push from whomever the actual middlemen are.

I mean, I think we all assume that the Trump WH was compromised and I'd wager that the Murdoch org is as well. I've got suspicions about Tulsi, Lindsey and on down the line.

I guess I'm really tired of NY Times and WP journalist writing books after the fact with some of these details, when it turns out that they or their sources knew a lot of this info at the time.

Would be nice to have something actually come out, or I don't know, see someone arrested, say before, the largest land war in Europe since WWII.

Probably wishful thinking in this timeline. This timeline's writers are so lazy.