OT: Putin's War in Ukraine

[pmulcahy11b]

Here's Simon Whistler's take on whether the Russians are pulling tanks out of museums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4yqUwxddTY

[Raellus]

For the past couple of weeks, news hasn't been good for Ukraine and it keeps getting worse. I think Russia's use of an experimental IRBM armed with conventional warheads is interesting. Apparently, Moscow warned the US gov't beforehand. This is a dangerous precedent and will require a mutual trust that hasn't been earned and I don't think either side is particularly eager to give.

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[HaplessOperator]

Originally Posted by Raellus

For the past couple of weeks, news hasn't been good for Ukraine and it keeps getting worse. I think Russia's use of an experimental IRBM armed with conventional warheads is interesting. Apparently, Moscow warned the US gov't beforehand. This is a dangerous precedent and will require a mutual trust that hasn't been earned and I don't think either side is particularly eager to give.

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Probably unearned, but the trajectory of a ballistic shot becomes obvious fairly immediately on launch, and the launches themselves are trackable by FIRMS and more advanced national reconnaissance assets; a ballistic threat to the United States isn't exactly something that would go unnoticed,

Publicly, we're no longer launch on warning, with the stated doctrine being to launch following a confirmed detonation (again, something that would be detected immediately), but one imagines that this doctrine would go out the window if multiple launches were detected and the course tracks indicated deployments against strategic assets, which in and of itself is a straightforward mathematical exercise in firing solutions.

One assumes this is why we maintain launch on warning readiness and capability despite not officially maintaining it as policy. Sidelong observations being a full nuclear deployment would be rather difficult to miss, given the nature of how it must be conducted to have even a remote hope of knocking out enough assets to make such a gambit "worth it," and that a single delivery vehicle being launched would be madness, as it would precipitate a full strategic escalation without inflicting any serious damage to the United States; a half measure would be utter suicide, and a functional deployment would be the most obvious event imaginable.

Though this is entirely conjecture, it's also likely we knew about the launch prep even before they told us; our defense intelligence apparatus has flexed several times in the past two decades with detailed information about Russian test launches immediately prior to or immediately after the Russians have issued a bare public acknowledgement.

On another front, one wonders exactly what state their nuclear arsenal is in. Their entire defense budget (including nuclear readiness) amounts to roughly about what we spend on nuclear maintenance alone.

[LoneCollector1987]

According to the latest news it seems that the war will end with the current borders, Ukraine not in NATO.
And that seems to be the most favourable ending.

I even found opinions, that there may be a demand that NATO goes back to the borders of 1991 or so and that Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, etc must leave NATO.

What do you think?

[kato13]

As it appears to be on a short timeline, I think it is best to wait to see what happens rather than speculate.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by LoneCollector1987

According to the latest news it seems that the war will end with the current borders, Ukraine not in NATO.
And that seems to be the most favourable ending.

Favorable? I think that depends on perspective. "Most acceptable to all parties", perhaps.

Originally Posted by LoneCollector1987

I even found opinions, that there may be a demand that NATO goes back to the borders of 1991 or so and that Poland, the Baltics, Hungary, etc must leave NATO.

What do you think?

I think that would be a massive unearned strategic victory for Russia. Trump might agree to those conditions, but NATO and the effected member countries most certainly would not and, AFAIK, the USA doesn't have unilateral fiat authority to affect this downsizing.

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[kcdusk]

Random thoughts from the last couple of days. Mods, please let me know if I have crossed the line with any comments or take the post down. My intention was not to even get close to anything potentially inflammatory.

I asked the question a year or two ago about economic sanctions hurting Russia, and how that may impact the war. But in recent days I'm left asking myself did the USA run out of money before Russia did?

Or did the USA simply run out of patience fighting another over seas war?

I thought Trump was "pro guns" and by extension "pro war" because of the huge economic benefit it provided to the USA (ie lot of jobs and local spend?)? But getting out of the war will mean less spend?
The difference between this war and others is that the USA didn't have boots on the ground, so I thought they'd be more likely to stay the course.

In my mind, if we relate recent events back to WWII. It would be like the Allies allowing Germany to "keep" Poland and France if it brought an early end to the war. And allowing Japan to "keep" Pupau New Guniea and Australia if it ended the war.

And if thats the case, what stops Russia next time (next year?)? I'd be nervous if I was Poland.

How bad must Ukraine feel not being allowed to Join NATO? Is like not being allowed into a "friends" group.

Russia/Putin just had to sit there for the last couple of weeks and watch NATO implode.

While I am not in favour of war. I'm not sure I'm in favour of peace at any cost. Or rewarding bad behaviour (ie Russias military exercise to invade Ukraine).

[LoneCollector1987]

To kcdusk:
War and military take money. And you need to earn money as a state (by taxing your companies and citizens) by producing things and selling them.

We of the West believed McKinsey and outsourced everything.
So, the taxes to collect got smaller and now we are dependent on other countries.

And thats why we have no money because now we have to pay for everything bought abroad.
Yes, for the Greens and climate people it is nice, because we dont pollute the enviroment. The pollution is done somewhere else and worse than if we would be producing.Because we have enviromental protection laws and Nigeria (just as example!) has not.

And Mc Kinsey also is responsible for (example): Germany has only ammo for TWO days of fighting a war but needs SIX months to produce the same amount of ammo.

We have only a few factories to produce said ammo and the blogger BigCountryExpat once listed the factories in the USA who produce ammo.
Hint: Not many.
And that equals No Arsenal of Freedom like in WWII.
And does anybody want to guess how long it will take to bring the necessary industrial power back to our countries and reviving our military infrastructure to support armies like during the height of the Cold War?

Pro Guns doesnt mean Pro war. Si vis pacem para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.
You need weapons to fight a war but ask any soldier and while he is willing to fight he abhors war.
My dad was 14 at the end of WWII and while he didnt tell me much about it (and he was not clear on certain parts but if I use logic it must have been very dark what he experienced), it is enough to convince me that the only war I want to experience is with PC games, board games and roleplaying games.

But make no mistake: If the threat would be high enough, I would fight. But why should I fight for the rulers of Germany of the last 20 or so years?
Germany has gone down the drain, massive immigration without us citizens asked by the government, the Declaration of Human Rights was nearly shredded during COVID - so the answer is no.


But now to something that I read and it shocked me.
I found:
https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichte...9890ad6a&ei=13 (in German)
and
https://time.com/7207661/bidens-ukra...zelensky-loss/

It asks if Ukraine was led into a trap by Biden.
According to a Mr Green of the security Council of Biden the victory of Ukraine was never a goal of the US government.
And the White House knew that Ukraine would never regain the territory they lost to Russia.
The only goal was to weaken Russia and to strengthen the Alliance.

Quote:
Wenn etwas ruchlos ist, dann die Tatsache, dass die Biden-Administration laut Time wusste, was sie tat. Sie schickte die Ukraine in einen militärischen Kampf, den sie nicht gewinnen konnte, und verhinderte – gemeinsam mit Großbritannien unter Boris Johnson – einen frühen Friedensschluss, zu dem sowohl Selenskyj als auch Putin damals bereit waren.

Translation:
If something was infamous then it was the fact that the Biden-Administration knew what they did according to TIME magazine. They sent the Ukraine into a war they couldnt win and prevented - together with England under Boris Johnson - an early peace to which both Zelensky and Putin were ready.

The witness to this is the former ukrainian ambassador to the USA Tschalyj.

They mention a study of the RAND corporation from 2019 (here I have to translate from german "Russland überdehnen und aus dem Gleichgewicht bringen" into english so it is not the exact title): To overextend Russia and destroy its balance

So, if this is true (and msn is no conspiracy site) - I know that officers sent soldiers to die - but extending a war even they clearly knew it was over - the last time this happened was WWII.