Am I the only one who thinks Russia is going to get an almighty bloody nose. Victory, in all likelihood but at a tremendous cost. Their doctrine isn’t really one of force projection and they’ve historically performed pretty poorly; Afghanistan (okay, who doesn’t perform poorly there) and Chechnya in particular. I’m wondering also about the morale of the Russian troops and people. Do they really want to be invading the Ukraine, of all places? That’s almost like the US invading Canada ffs. Probably why Russian propaganda is really pushing some narratives here for their own people as much as it is for justification purposes.
If they do it they’ll meet their tactical objectives, no doubt, and with significant losses I feel but whatever their grand strategic goal is? I’m not so sure.
Putin wants to reunite the USSR and restart the cold war. Has always been his plan and having rewritten the Russian constitution to ensure that he can remain President as long as he wants he is simplay another Stalin
This is what the hyperbolic Western press tells you, sending billions of dollars of armaments to Ukraine of old gen. tech, when in reality they could do fuck all if Russia decided to act… You’re talking 24-48 hours, then done. That’s what I don’t like, lambs to the slaughter for Western ambitions.
Fuck all to do with press. I have no idea what they’ve been sent or what they have available. It’s to do with the human nature of people defending their homes and how an occupying force deals with that not only with military force but also on a personal moral level and how it affects the morale. The Russians will win the initial conflict, the numbers and tech point to nothing else, but they’re not going to have it all their own way during the conflict or after.
He’s saying dangling NATO membership will most likely lead to civil war… Oh, that highlighting isn’t mine, meant to just link the cable, so start from the top.
So, you provide a simple reason for why they won’t… To occupy Ukraine would require what 500,000-750,000 troops? Ain’t happening. The first invasion map I saw was WaPo circa 7 years ago, hence the media hysteria, and when the date comes nothing happens. What IS concerning is that they managed to get OCSE observers removed from play, now shit might kick off…
If Russia has 100,000 to 150,000 troops massed on the borders of Ukraine (across Russia and Belarus) isn’t that nearly half of their total groundforces?
If it’s not preparation for an invasion, it’s to at least provide the threat of one. When they say that these are training exercises - training for what? Invading by any chance? Nobody seriously buys the line that this is innocent. It might be posturing but whatever it is, it’s designed to intimidate and achieve concessions in Russia’s interests.
Russia must be spending some serious money in maintaining such large forces away from their permanent bases. The infrastructure needed to do that would be something I’d first look to compromise if I was NATO. Basic things like sanitary and catering equipment. Generators. Water pumps and purifiers. Non-human or ‘military’ targets.
From 2014 article on BBC, the final part of the article by Oliver Bullough.
“He does not understand that the collapse of the Soviet system was predetermined, therefore he believes his mission is to restore the Soviet system as soon as possible,” he says.
As a middle-ranking KGB officer who loved the Soviet Union, Putin lacked the perspective of senior officers, who knew full well the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiency rather than because of Western plotting, Bukovsky says.
“It leads him exactly to… repeat the same mistakes. He wants this whole country to be controlled by one person from the Kremlin, which will lead to disaster,” he says.
I used to work in a little site office on the boundary fence at Heathrow at the opposite end of the runway. 10:45 every morning (from memory) it was down tools as the office shook when Concorde was taking off.
Latest US Intel says 62,500 deployed, the rest “mobilised”, which is no where near enough for any significant form of invasion. If you look at Russian military bases they skirt the Western border (surprise). The large exercises are four-yearly (I think), the Belarus ones were telegraphed back in December with open invitations to Western media, guess how many came?
More likely the threat of retaliation, they wouldn’t have to move across the border to decimate them. As for money, about 1/11 of US spending… Less than China and India.
I’m pretty sure that’s one of the first things that the Ukrainian Army did, you know destroy that capacity…
Can’t have done. They’re still there aren’t they? Unless the Russian army doesn’t need to eat, drink, keep warm and literally doesn’t give a shit where it takes a shit.
You mean the LNDR regions? I’m pretty sure they fucked with the Dniper river system in some way stopping large volumes of water flowing… Maybe just Crimea?
Apart from everything he says/does. As well as experts, you know, Professors of Russian Studies whom I linked and who bother to actually read what he says…