[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.

Paleocon wrote:

It looks like this may be the straw that breaks Republican support for Putin …at least for some. Most of my Trumpist friends are forgetting how much they parroted Tucker Carlson nonsense and are screeching about how Biden is “being too weak”.

It’s going to be some interesting backpedaling

Backpeddaling that will teach them literally nothing. There's no shame, there's no self-awareness of their hypocracy, only an endless well of self-deception and fortification against cognitive dissonance.

Badferret wrote:

Anyone know why the US would have three Stratotanker fuel jets up at once in Eastern Europe?

It was announced today that NATO has stood up aerial defense patrols along the Western borders of Ukraine, so those tankers are undoubtedly fueling up NATO fighters and other aircraft.

Badferret wrote:

Finland and Sweden might join NATO.

About that....

Russia threatened “military and political consequences” against Finland and Sweden on Friday if they attempted to join NATO.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.

“Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences,” Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference.

The ministry later posted the same threat on its Twitter. Finland and Sweden have given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine since Russia invaded.

One pretext Russia has given for attacking Ukraine is that NATO would not give any assurance that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the intergovernmental military alliance.

Ukraine has been adamant about joining but is now willing to discuss a different status with NATO after hundreds were killed in the first day of fighting the Russians.

There already was ArmA 3 footage mistaken for actual combat footage, so DCS, you're up next so come on down!

US Extremists Have Picked a Side in Ukraine: ‘Lol Putin Is Brilliant’

Far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist.

From a Ukrainian actor/comedian I follow on twitter:

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/ZYB314GG/3519-D726-1212-4-C47-9-B27-B7598-AA15-AE3.jpg)

Prederick wrote:

US Extremists Have Picked a Side in Ukraine: ‘Lol Putin Is Brilliant’

Far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist.

Game recognizes game.

Robear wrote:
Badferret wrote:

Anyone know why the US would have three Stratotanker fuel jets up at once in Eastern Europe?

It was announced today that NATO has stood up aerial defense patrols along the Western borders of Ukraine, so those tankers are undoubtedly fueling up NATO fighters and other aircraft.

They probably have every intelligence and radar (ELINT) plane that flies up there to watch the Russians, both to cooperate with the Ukrainians and to scoop up everything they can on how Russian equipment and doctrine work.

The "Ghost of Kyiv" sounds like something straight out of an Ace Combat game.

AP wrote:

The Biden administration said Friday that it would move to freeze the assets of Putin and Lavrov, following the European Union and Britain in directly sanctioning top Russian leadership.

Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called the sanctions against Putin and Lavrov “an example and a demonstration of a total helplessness” of the West.

I hate when the assholes have a point.

Prederick wrote:
AP wrote:

The Biden administration said Friday that it would move to freeze the assets of Putin and Lavrov, following the European Union and Britain in directly sanctioning top Russian leadership.

Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called the sanctions against Putin and Lavrov “an example and a demonstration of a total helplessness” of the West.

I hate when the assholes have a point.

Yeah, I keep thinking back to the sanctions after Crimea. Like, here we are, how will it be different this time?

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/SNV0BrSX/Screenshot-20220225-163518-Microsoft-Launcher.jpg)

This is my shocked face
IMAGE(https://www.parentmap.com/sites/default/files/styles/1180x660_scaled_cropped/public/2017-10/iStock-672973456.jpg?itok=jOGyIaw2)

Putin clearly will only be stopped (on this, at least) by force. And he knows we're not going to use force, so he's not gonna stop.

One point that's been made here is that Ukraine had nukes and I think there has been a misunderstanding. Ukraine had possession of nukes in their territory when the USSR broke up, but never actually had control of them. Like if North Dakota left the Union. There would be ICBM's in their territory, but they wouldn't do them much good without the codes. They weren't a real nuclear power. How would they have maintained and supported those weapons? They didn't give up much in reality.

Also don't forget the counter factual of if they'd kept them and sold or lost them at some point in the last 25 years.

With dawn of the third day of the war about to rise, a couple of observations.

I'm shocked that the world is still able to watch webcams from inside Ukraine. Cell coverage looks like it has been impacted, but the internet still being up has to be a huge win for Ukraine.

If Russia didn't have nukes, they would be royally screwed. If not for their overwhelming numbers, it's clear that they have outdated machines, little training (at least in their regular troops) and questionable overall strategic/tactical leadership. I've been reading a lot of military analysis that if Russia's aim was actually Kyiv, which it appears to be, advancing from all fronts doesn't really make any sense, plus, they are badly stretching their supply lines, something that I wondered that they might not be good at maintaining before all of this started.

Finally, if the reporting is accurate, and something like 70-75 percent of Russia's ground forces are now in theater, what the hell happens if they get bogged down? What happens if the popular uprising in Georgia catches fire? Could this destabilize Chechnya?

At least from this first few days, it really feels like a case of Putin not getting the truth from his aides or ignoring them.
Twenty plus years in, what kind of lieutenants does Putin have. Yes men, but also ones that can't be too ambitious or intelligent, because Putin wouldn't trust underlings with those qualities.

And it turns out, that stealing from your country is probably a good way to hollow out the effectiveness of your armed forces.

Trying to swallow the entirety of Ukraine was a bad move by Putin.

He can only justify taking Ukraine as a defensive measure and economically he needs the country intact. This is firstly why he cannot bring the full arsenal of artillery and rocket attacks to bear. By extension, razing Kyiv with huge civilian casualties would probably cause a mass mobilization of Europe to stop the genocide.

That left him with two choices. One was to just go after the so-called separatist regions and stop there. The other was to try and decapitate leadership and install a puppet ministry.

If he had just taken the two eastern separatist regions he might have got away with it. But stopping there risked ever hardening defence forces and NATO membership making it ever harder to subdue Ukraine.

It seems to me he decided to roll the dice on a full invasion. He lost hundreds of Spetznaz trying to take and hold the airport. If he'd held the objective and landed the hundreds of choppers of troops, he could have airlifted heavier weaponry in to take Kyiv. Fortunately there were enough Stingers/Javelins etc that stymied the airdropping efforts. He's still trying to crush Kyiv but it will be a slower siege effort and Russians will pay in a river of blood; Mosul wasn't a quick or easy siege and that involved razing the city block by block.

Thus it's a real possibility that Putin may be facing a coup if this drags on.

Yup, I thought for sure they were just going to try and expand the two eastern territories, create a land bridge to Crimea.

And I had a real suspicions that their troops were woefully unprepared for real fighting when I watched a video of two Washington Post reporters drive right up to and perform a u-turn along side a column of Russian APCs.

That complete disregard for threat assessment lends credence to the reports that their troops were told they wouldn't be met with resistance.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/SNV0BrSX/Screenshot-20220225-163518-Microsoft-Launcher.jpg)

How is this even a thing? Like, how does Russia get a vote in that question?

Apparently Kazakhstan has denied Russia's request for troop reinforcements, and even more significantly, is refusing to legitimize the "breakaway regions" that Putin claimed as a pretext for invasion.

Wow. Seriously, wow. If even Kazakhstan won't stand by Russia, that's a pretty big deal.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/SNV0BrSX/Screenshot-20220225-163518-Microsoft-Launcher.jpg)

How is this even a thing? Like, how does Russia get a vote in that question?

They're one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council and that status means they can veto any resolution (just like we can...and have). There's even no mechanism in the UN Charter to remove a permanent member of the Security Council.

Farscry wrote:

Apparently Kazakhstan has denied Russia's request for troop reinforcements, and even more significantly, is refusing to legitimize the "breakaway regions" that Putin claimed as a pretext for invasion.

Wow. Seriously, wow. If even Kazakhstan won't stand by Russia, that's a pretty big deal.

They just had Russian troops helping them crack down on some internal dissent, but they've also got a region with a large Russian minority, and it's abundantly clear that Putin considers those fair game.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/SNV0BrSX/Screenshot-20220225-163518-Microsoft-Launcher.jpg)

How is this even a thing? Like, how does Russia get a vote in that question?

They won that power in WWII; permanent seat on the security council with veto power. I think I heard that they are currently chairing the security council too, but I could have that wrong.

It was a regular back and forth thing during the cold war; the Soviets would try to get a vote condemning US in Vietnam, US vetos, US tries to condemn the Soviets in Afghanistan, Soviets veto. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It is unbelievable that countries can vote on resolutions that have to do with themselves. That’s just absurd.

Okay, I do not want to engage in whataboutism or derail the thread, but I was watching a deeply sympathetic report on ABC about the Ukranian refugees, and I'm just imagining some Syrian dude who's been living in a refugee camp in Greece for the last year and half just throwing up his hands in frustration.

ANYWAY.

There's a lot of chitter-chatter today about Russia apparently doing a very poor job planning this invasion. I want to believe, but I am very wary about getting way too "Yay Team Ukraine!" when getting any verified information about the state of the war is borderline impossible in any situation.

It's hard to know how the battle is actually going.

Found this blog that is tracking materiel, run by regular folks that are requiring confirmations for the numbers:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/0...

Don't know the trustworthiness.

Prederick wrote:

Okay, I do not want to engage in whataboutism or derail the thread, but I was watching a deeply sympathetic report on ABC about the Ukranian refugees, and I'm just imagining some Syrian dude who's been living in a refugee camp in Greece for the last year and half just throwing up his hands in frustration.

Or Yemen. Or Libya.

Ethiopia?