The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[CharlesPhipps]

I personally am of the mind that military force would have been justified by agreements and international norms but the overtly horrible sanctions are the best we're probably going to get due to Putin's instability and the threat of nuclear arms (however unlikely anyone would trigger the end of the world out of pique).

Putin continues to play chicken with the rest of the world regardless, though, and his defeat in the Ukraine is the only way to stop him threatening more countries. But the freedom of Ukraine, by itself, is a good to be pursued.

[Madner Kami]

If it were up to me, the snakeing convoy wouldn't exist anymore, being sweeped away by F-35s and Eurofighters, transmitting over all channels that NATO is not involved, only european countries and that no tank, plane, soldier or any ammunition will enter Russian territory or airspace, unless provoked into action. The time for appeasement was over in 2014.

Unfortunately Europe wasn't ready at the time, neither military nor in terms of democratic will. This all only changed with Putin marching into Ukraine, interestingly and literally over night. Now it remains to be seen whether the drive for military indipendence persists or not.

[CmdrKing]

You're aware of penal battalions? The Russians have quite some experience with these types of formations and if even half the stories from the PoWs are true, then the Russians have a very distant relationship with rebelling because of bad conditions.

Also, the sanction-measures taken are quite unprecedented. Aeroflott, the primary russian airline, if not outright the only russian airline, for example, is basically left without any planes, as all their planes are only leased. Sure, Putin will refuse to not use them regardless, but modern airplanes need a lot of maintenance and Russia now has access to nothing. No Tools, no parts, not even the fucking manuals... Russia has no access to any modern circuitry either and the best that China can deliver, is more than two generations old and even that isn't available in high quantities. Building new factories takes north of four years and guess what, the tooling for such factories is almost solely available from Germany...

Also, something is happening under the radar. In Germany, the entire camera-network on the Autobahnen were purposefully deactivated yesterday. The french carrier Charles des Gaules, whose battlegroup is officially currently on patrol at Syrias's coast to guard against IS-activities, has a new mission, namely to protect and patrol the airspace of the baltic states and Poland, which are decidedly nowhere near the Mediterranean Sea. And looking at the documents for what Germany ordered with the budget intended for the support of Ukraine, there's a lot of stuff in the bill that wasn't mentioned in the news. There's something brewing up here.

(And yes, I know it sounds a bit conspiracy-y, as much of the above is just adding up irregularities.)

Legit, I think in the weeks leading up to the war, the larger European community came to the realization that, if Putin pulled this trigger, it would not only be the last chance to end what are clearly “reforge the great Russian Empire” ambitions, but in fact their last and best chance to truly *break* Russia as a military empire. I think at this stage Putin could take Kyiv and install a puppet government tomorrow *or* turn the whole engine back around and stop and he’d be left with exactly this same mess, Russia wholly cut off from the larger world and without even the dubious “fuck America” alliances of other powers like China or India. The moment Ukraine didn’t surrender at his mere flexing of military muscle, he was done.

[phantom000]

You're aware of penal battalions? The Russians have quite some experience with these types of formations and if even half the stories from the PoWs are true, then the Russians have a very distant relationship with rebelling because of bad conditions.

Also, the sanction-measures taken are quite unprecedented. Aeroflott, the primary russian airline, if not outright the only russian airline, for example, is basically left without any planes, as all their planes are only leased. Sure, Putin will refuse to not use them regardless, but modern airplanes need a lot of maintenance and Russia now has access to nothing. No Tools, no parts, not even the fucking manuals... Russia has no access to any modern circuitry either and the best that China can deliver, is more than two generations old and even that isn't available in high quantities. Building new factories takes north of four years and guess what, the tooling for such factories is almost solely available from Germany...

Also, something is happening under the radar. In Germany, the entire camera-network on the Autobahnen were purposefully deactivated yesterday. The french carrier Charles des Gaules, whose battlegroup is officially currently on patrol at Syrias's coast to guard against IS-activities, has a new mission, namely to protect and patrol the airspace of the baltic states and Poland, which are decidedly nowhere near the Mediterranean Sea. And looking at the documents for what Germany ordered with the budget intended for the support of Ukraine, there's a lot of stuff in the bill that wasn't mentioned in the news. There's something brewing up here.

(And yes, I know it sounds a bit conspiracy-y, as much of the above is just adding up irregularities.)

Legit, I think in the weeks leading up to the war, the larger European community came to the realization that, if Putin pulled this trigger, it would not only be the last chance to end what are clearly “reforge the great Russian Empire” ambitions, but in fact their last and best chance to truly *break* Russia as a military empire. I think at this stage Putin could take Kyiv and install a puppet government tomorrow *or* turn the whole engine back around and stop and he’d be left with exactly this same mess, Russia wholly cut off from the larger world and without even the dubious “fuck America” alliances of other powers like China or India. The moment Ukraine didn’t surrender at his mere flexing of military muscle, he was done.

I wonder if that might be Putin's motivation for launching the invasion in the first place. He's afraid that Russia is being seen as something like a 3rd world country. A washed up has been of an empire that is already on a steady march to completely breaking up and needs international support just to maintain stability. This would also explain why he's not backing down despite all the failures and setbacks he's faced. How could Russia be a threat to the EU when they could not even defeat Ukraine?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I wonder if that might be Putin's motivation for launching the invasion in the first place. He's afraid that Russia is being seen as something like a 3rd world country. A washed up has been of an empire that is already on a steady march to completely breaking up and needs international support just to maintain stability. This would also explain why he's not backing down despite all the failures and setbacks he's faced. How could Russia be a threat to the EU when they could not even defeat Ukraine?

I don't see why he would want to establish himself as a threat or any concern to the EU. Ukraine joining the EU would be a step closer to estranging Russia economically, and there's probably a lot of ties between the more seedy Russian economic interests and Ukraine.

Putin coordinated KGB efforts to the end of the cold war, entered politics for some years and then jumped to prime minister from the Security secretary position. For all we know he could have had a major hand in disestablishing the USSR itself. Seems like he knows how to orchestrate national affairs like it's a game of billiards.

[phantom000]

I wonder if that might be Putin's motivation for launching the invasion in the first place. He's afraid that Russia is being seen as something like a 3rd world country. A washed up has been of an empire that is already on a steady march to completely breaking up and needs international support just to maintain stability. This would also explain why he's not backing down despite all the failures and setbacks he's faced. How could Russia be a threat to the EU when they could not even defeat Ukraine?

I don't see why he would want to establish himself as a threat or any concern to the EU. Ukraine joining the EU would be a step closer to estranging Russia economically, and there's probably a lot of ties between the more seedy Russian economic interests and Ukraine.

Putin coordinated KGB efforts to the end of the cold war, entered politics for some years and then jumped to prime minister from the Security secretary position. For all we know he could have had a major hand in disestablishing the USSR itself. Seems like he knows how to orchestrate national affairs like it's a game of billiards.

I'm not sure, that's why I tried to frame it as a question. It has been suggested that the reason the Russians were so eager to respond when Austria threatened Serbia was that the Russians feared they were no longer seen as an important military power. Remember that in the years leading up to WW1 Russia's military record was not great, they lost the Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, and failed to stop Austria from annexing Bosnia. I remember reading a letter from one Russian official who said if his country did not fight the Central Powers no one would ever take them seriously again.

Given that the last 20 years or so have not seen much Russian military success could it be that Putin and some of the other Russian leaders are afraid that no one sees their country as world power anymore? This is a very 'historical' view point because its based on stuff that happened over a hundred years ago, but there are enough parallels to make me wonder if Putin and his inner circle are having similar thoughts.

[phantom000]

Russia has the will but not the means on the international stage. The West is the opposite. The Ukraine is on its own and shouldn't be happy with the West after this.

One of the nuclear plants is catching fire .-.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3 ... s-liveblog

That's not good. Given what almost happened at Chernobyl back in 1986 the thought of a similar incident in the middle of an active warzone is disturbing. With everyone worried about US and Russian nuking each other, is anyone going to stop to consider what happens if a reactor gets blown to pieces by artillery?

You better not be thinking it'll produce a nuclear initiation. It won't. The 86 incident was a pressure eruption from very special circumstances engineered by the idiocy of the reactor technicians as they ducked around.

Yeah a fission reactor is not like a gas tank where you can make it all explode just by shooting it. But the real threat of Chernobyl was that the core was completely exposed. The explosion, or explosions rather, didn't just blow the lid off the core it nearly demolished the entire reactor building which meant the nuclear material was exposed to the open air which meant there was nothing to check the spread of the radiation; hence the mad-scramble to get it under control.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I wonder if that might be Putin's motivation for launching the invasion in the first place. He's afraid that Russia is being seen as something like a 3rd world country. A washed up has been of an empire that is already on a steady march to completely breaking up and needs international support just to maintain stability. This would also explain why he's not backing down despite all the failures and setbacks he's faced. How could Russia be a threat to the EU when they could not even defeat Ukraine?

I don't see why he would want to establish himself as a threat or any concern to the EU. Ukraine joining the EU would be a step closer to estranging Russia economically, and there's probably a lot of ties between the more seedy Russian economic interests and Ukraine.

Putin coordinated KGB efforts to the end of the cold war, entered politics for some years and then jumped to prime minister from the Security secretary position. For all we know he could have had a major hand in disestablishing the USSR itself. Seems like he knows how to orchestrate national affairs like it's a game of billiards.

I'm not sure, that's why I tried to frame it as a question. It has been suggested that the reason the Russians were so eager to respond when Austria threatened Serbia was that the Russians feared they were no longer seen as an important military power. Remember that in the years leading up to WW1 Russia's military record was not great, they lost the Crimean War, Russo-Japanese War, and failed to stop Austria from annexing Bosnia. I remember reading a letter from one Russian official who said if his country did not fight the Central Powers no one would ever take them seriously again.

Given that the last 20 years or so have not seen much Russian military success could it be that Putin and some of the other Russian leaders are afraid that no one sees their country as world power anymore? This is a very 'historical' view point because its based on stuff that happened over a hundred years ago, but there are enough parallels to make me wonder if Putin and his inner circle are having similar thoughts.

I've only seen Putin speak once on the matter of superpowers and he humbly and modestly ceded to US being the only superpower, and in a rather persuasive manner.

I'm not really quick to take speculations of WWI and apply them today. There's probably a plethora of conditions from the Cold War alone that up the ante past anything WWI can provide us for consideration. And that's before you postop Russia back from a super power to regional heavyweight. Maybe a bit of something is there, but it's not a very comprehensive international framework.

[Frustration]

they suggested a new law which forces conscription on arrested anti-war protestors

You'd think they wouldn't be interested in putting weapons in the hands of the protestors. But perhaps they're thinking of "conscription" as "hard time in prison, only with uniforms".

[Frustration]

I'm really digging the international "yes we can" vibe surrounding Ukraine. It's unfortunate that we're just supposed to kinda watch it play out from the west.

I keep half-expecting someone to step in... but I suppose the possibility of a nuclear exchange is too real for any nation to risk it.

At this point, I wonder if Russia would just nuke Ukraine if it somehow lost. Not that I expect they'll lose when they can just keep throwing bodies at them.