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Non-Polictical Ukraine Thread (NOT the Non-Political Coronavirus Thread)

Donkey Deac Doug

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This is not a political thread. This is a thread to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the likelihood that they will be embroiled in an all out war in the next three weeks.

It's not ok to post things like, "If Biden X, then Y." But local politics are fine; Putin X, "separatist rebels" Y.

Situation on the ground is some serious pre-WWII shit.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...tml?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490
James Heappey said a 'significant' number of troops were behind the lines
Came amid a deepening east/west stand-off and a growing military build-up
An estimated 100,000 Russian troops have massed at the border with Ukraine

https://www.ft.com/content/c5e6141d-60c0-4333-ad15-e5fdaf4dde71

Russia plans to target Ukraine capital in ‘lightning war’, UK warns
Alarm raised as Nato members put forces on standby while Russian ally Belarus responds with its own deployments

Putin is a terrible human being, but he's smart as fuck. Has he backed himself into a corner where he can't back down?
 
Just when it seems COVID may be declining and things could normalize, we face WWIII. Fucking Putin.
 
pls change title to Non-Political Ukraine Thread
 
I'm going to post some reddit content. I realize that there is a large propensity for propaganda in reddit content.

If Russia isn't planning to invade, their efforts have backfired spectacularly.

Ukraine has been begging the US and UK for the latest gen anti tank missiles, the famous Javelin and less famous, but equally devastating NLAW missile systems for years now. These are infantry weapons that can reliably defeat any tank Russia has. Ukraine has been facing off against Russian tanks in the Donbas conflict and suffering terribly, and these weapons would go a long way toward evening the odds there.

The US and UK have until now largely refused to sell Ukraine these weapons (and Ukraine has offered to pay way over the market price), out of fear it will escalate the Donbas conflict. Ukraine says it needs these weapons to defend itself if Russia tries to invade Ukraine proper, but the US/UK have taken the view that if Russia ever did that, it will take Russia months to move so much troops and equipment and will be caught by spy satellites, leaving plenty of time to rush those Javelins/NLAWs to Ukraine.

I cannot overstate how badly Ukraine wants these weapons. They begged and begged president Trump for Javelins, the entire debacle over the infamous Trump "Ukraine call"/"quid pro quo" thing, and indeed the allegations around Clinton/Biden interfering in Ukraine (I don't really want to get into either of those debates right now though please) were all about those missiles and what Ukraine would be prepared to do to receive them. Getting those missiles is Ukraine's number one foreign policy goal.

Until now, they have only received (I believe) 30 launchers and 180 Javelin missiles from the US, and nothing from the UK, with strict terms on when and where those Javelins can be used. Basically enough to tell Ukraine to fuck off and stop asking us for them all the time.

Well now Russia has spent the last few months doing exactly what the US/UK said would be make or break time for sending missiles to Ukraine. And the UK (and I suspect the US with greater secrecy) have indeed followed through on their tacit promise to get Ukraine those missiles if that situation were ever to arise.

If Russia weren't planning to actually invade, this could be the biggest fuckup by Russia since... idk... Operation Barbarossa? (Edit: since this post blew up overnight and some people mentioned it, the fuck up was the Soviets being so unprepared for Barbarossa. I'm well aware it was a German operation) The UK in the last few days has transported 1,500+ NLAWs and counting to Ukraine. Between bouts of intense sweating and nausea at the prospect of all out war with Russia, Ukrainian leaders must at least be able to enjoy the occasional wry smile at that.

Any Russian invasion will now take devastating casualties to their vehicles, as a lone Ukrainian infantryman crawling through a bombed out building, thicket of trees, ditch, etc only has to get within 600m of a Russian tank to blow it to smithereens. Worse still, even if Russia backs down and doesn't invade, expect Ukraine to use NLAWs in Donbas from now on. And while many have pointed out that these missiles won't help Ukraine against Russian air supremacy much, they're missing the point: air power is mostly useful against large targets, not widely dispersed soldiers armed with missile launchers.

That's why these missiles are so important. Ukraine has plenty of tanks. Ukraine has plenty of artillery pieces. Expect them to be destroyed by Russian aircraft in the opening hours of the invasion. But there are 200,000 Ukrainian infantry (plus a million or so reservists) who until recently couldn't really do much but run away against tanks so weren't really a problem for Russia. Now they can. Russia would still win an invasion, but is likely to lose 100s of tanks, and leave many infantry units without effective tank support, enabling Ukrainian infantry to stand their ground better, driving up the human and equipment cost to Russia of such an invasion dramatically.

I'm convinced Russia didn't actually expect the UK/US to make good with the missiles to Ukraine. Russia probably expected indecision, political fluff, and fear of provoking Russia to paralyse them into inaction. If so, they badly miscalculated.

But it's difficult to see what Russia expected to achieve if it had no intention of invading. The economic cost of relocating ~150,000 soldiers, along with massive numbers of tanks, aircraft etc from all across Russia (Russia has pulled units from all over Russia to spread the shortfall in other regions equally), building field hospitals, supply dumps, staging grounds, etc is enormous. The Russian stock market has also taken a big hit. It's a huge cost to pay for a joke/empty threat, even without it handing Ukraine a tremendous victory without a shot being fired.

This is why I think this is likely going to be a real invasion. Or at least, it was before the UK floored everyone with their response and put the screws on Russia. You don't throw away so much, and gift your rival so much, if it isn't real. Ukraine not only has the anti tank missiles they desperately wanted, but a whole bunch of other aid trickling in rapidly, and most importantly, the military aid taps have probably been turned on permanently. They can probably buy almost whatever they want from the US/UK from now on. SAMs, aircraft, warships, etc, because why not? The genie's out of the bottle now, everyone now knows Russia could do the unthinkable.

Russia's entire foreign policy strategy is based on brinkmanship. That you never know what they're going to do next, how crazy they really are. If Russia backs down now, this policy is in ruins. Everyone will know that Russia will blink first if you just stand firm enough. I don't think the Russian government can take that.

B. That then kickstarts WW3

Nah. Nobody wants that. Russia would get its teeth kicked in by NATO and they know it. NATO doesn't want the casualties, the economic chaos, etc, or to find out what a cornered, defeated Russia might do next with the thousands of nuclear weapons it possesses. Nobody is bound by any alliance agreement to defend Ukraine, so they'll all just nope out of it. Even the UK and US.

The entire reason the UK is sending those missiles to Ukraine (aside from perhaps a smattering of genuine sympathy and affection for Ukraine) is so the UK doesn't have to fight a war. Best way to stay out of the conflict is give Ukrainians the weapons they need to fight it themselves. The UK and US will also be giving Ukraine all their military intelligence, advice, training and a mountain of other material support.

If Russia is smart, they'll back down. On paper Russia's armed forces are much stronger, but their troops are pure trash. Low morale, bitter, poorly equipped conscripts who'll desert in droves at the prospect of an offensive war against a determined enemy that was never a threat to their country and that many consider their brethren. Russia risks humiliation if Ukraine can push their army over a tipping point. War is unpredictable, but the loyalty and professionalism of the average Russian soldier is more unpredictable than the determination of proud, free people defending their homeland.

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/...ussian_landing_ships_has_entered_the/htiqj1g/
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Oh boy, I’ll try to explain a decade of conflict as simple as possible:

Ukraine has a pro-Europe, anti-Russian revolution in 2013, Russia is worried it will lose its critical military and naval base at Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula (think like a half-size Florida in terms of climate and population), and so dresses its troops up as local militias, attack and seize the local Ukrainian navy and army bases, then to prevent the Ukrainian Army from counterattacking they send weapons and special forces to radicalize pro-Russian rioters in the east of Ukraine. In early 2014 the riots and attacks on Ukrainian police and soldiers resulted in the formation of separatist Russian "republics" in the east of Ukraine, plentifully supplied with local militias and Russian volunteers, "volunteers" and weapons the rebels "found." Luckily for Ukraine they were able to quickly retake the two main cities of the regions, Kharkiv and Mariupol, but the two rebel strongholds of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region closest to Russia proved much harder to crack. They almost managed to encircle and destroy the Luhansk rebels in the summer of 2014, but then Russian artillery attacked them and they had to withdraw, because firing back would start a war with Russia. The rebels counterattacked, but by this point Russia began withdrawing support for them due to being smacked with tons of economic sanctions from the US and EU for their bullying of Ukraine and shooting down of a passenger jet near Luhansk. Because of this the counterattack petered out and both sides agreed to a ceasefire which has lasted until today.

At the time all of this suited Putin great, even if he didn’t get to take over the Ukrainian east just like he did Crimea. NATO won’t accept any country which has active territorial conflicts (unless the other country also joins, like Greece and Turkey), so as long as the rebels exist, the Western powers are kept at an arms length. While realistically NATO would never invade Russia because of the nukes, and NATO already bordering Russia in the Baltic and Norway, having a former ally like Ukraine join the "enemy" would be a massive blow to the Kremlin’s prestige and ability to keep its other allies in line, especially Belarus.

But here’s the problem: in the meantime, Ukraine has gotten stronger and Russia and the rebels weaker. Unstable oil prices, Western sanctions and the pandemic has weakened Russia’s ruling party greatly, especially when they were forced to cut pensions, and now a loss abroad on top of that could be a danger to Putin’s position. And that loss looked very likely. The last Ukrainian president worked very hard to fix the broken economy with help from the EU, and the current president has worked hard at purging corruption and strengthening the military, especially with new drone tech. Meanwhile, the rebels are very weak. Most Russian volunteers left in 2015 because there was no serious fighting any longer, and they have only recieved old Soviet junk from the Russians. They have basically no real economy besides coal mining due to most of their factories being destroyed in the war, and lacking much countryside outside their two cities they can’t feed themselves, relying heavily on Russian humanitarian aid. Much of the population has just slinked away past the Ukrainian lines or over the Russian border to look for work and a place to live that isn’t a half-starved ruin with uncertain access to electricity, internet and clean water parts of the year.

So, the Russians are very worried that as soon as the snow melts in spring, Ukraine will attack and crush the rebels, thereby allowing Ukraine to join NATO and endangering the stability of the ruling Russian government. So, back this fall they were plotting a wintertime coup, removing the current president and replacing him with a pro-Russia billionaire or an exiled politician from the former regime, if needed supported by Russian soldiers. British and Ukrainian intelligence exposed this in November, and it was expected the Russians backed off after that. Until, suddenly at the end of december Russia announced it would be doing military drills near the Ukraine border in January. Those "exercises" have now been going on for weeks with more and more troops pouring in, only paused briefly to send in troops to help the government of Kazakhstan crush anti-Russian rioters with lethal force. It seems Russia has decided to go ahead with the invasion anyway even if the coup seems off the table. The EU tried to negotiate peace talks, but Russia refused and said it would only negotiate with the US. Biden said the US isn’t some imperial power that lords its will over its allies (partially true at least), and insisted the EU and Ukraine be allowed to negotiate Ukraine’s future as well. The Russians refused this, but eventually allowed Biden to bring along the British and French, since they are members of the UN Security Council (so is Norway and Ireland, but they weren’t allowed to come because they have complained about Russian naval exercises recently). The Ukrainians were not allowed to come to their own peace negotiations, but ultimately that didn’t matter as the conference turned out just to be a sham to buy time for the Russians to build up more forces before the West started sending aid (plus so they can say they tried peacefully first). The Russian demands were so outrageous they clearly knew NATO would never agree, not only demanding a treaty forbidding NATO from adding Ukraine or Belarus, but also banning all expansion of the alliance and kicking out the Eastern European countries that joined in 2004.

So, war is on the table. Japan tried to mediate but the Russians have now rebuffed them, Finland and Sweden the same but Russia threatened them. China initially supported the Russians but now Xi Jinping seems worried that a war will ruin the grand propaganda spectacle he has planned for the Winter Olympics in Beijing, so he has now changed his mind and called for an Olympic truce like in the ancient world. Who knows if Putin will listen, if not the war is expected to start within three weeks.
 
Thomas NEWDICK reports that:

A group of Russian amphibious warfare vessels — three of which left the Baltic Sea region yesterday, preceded by another three the day before — have started to enter the English Channel. Some expect that their journey will eventually take them to the Black Sea to participate in an invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.

You can find The War Zone's latest reporting on where these ships are headed here.

Multiple reports confirm that all six of the Russian Navy warships have begun their passage through the English Channel, after which they will enter the Atlantic Ocean. The vessels comprise the Project 775 Ropucha class amphibious warfare ships Olenegorskiy Gornyak and Georgiy Pobedonosets, as well as the Project 11711 Ivan Gren class landing ship Pyotr Morgunov, from the Northern Fleet, plus three other Ropuchas, the Korolev, Minsk, and Kaliningrad, from the Baltic Fleet.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ious-warships-has-entered-the-english-channel
 
who are these redditors you're quoting
 
Those are some very optimistic Ukrainian talking points, that make Russia seem ill prepared and out of its depth. I would portray it more like a scene in succession with Ukraine being Kendal, Russia being Logan and Tom being the EU/Germany/NATO. Tom tells Kendal, "I've never seen Logan get f***** once, while I have seen you get f***** plenty of times.

 
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wars to acquire territory are really frowned upon by the international community, which is part of why you seldom see them anymore. Putin cares enough about his legacy that he's not going to want to be hit with sanctions and all of the other shit. Plus Ukranians don't want them there and he knows it. He's not going to invade them and get himself his own personal afghanistan/iraq. I doubt he wants to back down either, but i really don't think he's going to try to take over another country.
 
A non-political thread about a military buildup and response makes about as much sense as a non-political thread about an election.
 
a lot of speculation that Putin is trying to widen the boundaries of what is acceptable for less drastic future moves
 
A non-political thread about a military buildup and response makes about as much sense as a non-political thread about an election.

It's non-political in the US sense. Geopolitics of the region at issue are fair game. I didn't want a slue of garbage about our sitting President when there's so much regional information available.

Edit: I just read the thread on the politics board. My apolitical thread choice was/is a good one.
 
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Basically as long as jhmd doesn’t post you’re all good

LK has such great posts. He's a really smart dude and I wish he would post on the Pit more.

On topic: Russian troop movements are escalating.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-trains-packed-russian-troops-26036065

Hundreds of military trains packed with Russian troops are being deployed to Ukraine's neighbour Belarus, it emerged last night, as PM Boris Johnson warned of a bloody “new Chechnya” if Moscow invades.

The Mirror has learned as many as 30 train loads of Moscow’s troops have entered Belarus in the past week - with a staggering 200 scheduled for the next few days.

Russia’s Belarus troop build-up by far exceeds its claims of a “military exercise” as a recent similar wargaming project dubbed Zapad amounted to 25 trains over a month.

Sources told the Mirror of the Belarus build-up as Russia continued to increase its troop presence in the neighbouring country, in Crimea and along the contested Donbas frontier.

The following is actually good news, because I think it's a possible out for Russia's brinksmanship:
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/americas/2022-01-24/putin-cuba-strategic-partnership-4402280.html
Putin discusses ‘strategic partnership’ with Cuban leader amid fears of military threat
 
You want some scary shit? The folks in /r/russia think this is the United States' fault.

callmesein
·
3 days ago

Hi, just here to give a piece of my thought and trying to see the perspective from the average russians.

I think a war is highly likely and just a matter of time. It'll happen in the coming weeks or if not might be within several years from now. The biggest reason is simply that the USA would want the war. Russian invasion of Ukraine would increase war support from the population of NATO and EU which would cause their respective governments to increase military budget. This would mean that USA get to sell more arms and increase most NATO members reliance on the country.

Furthermore, USA would get to impose significantly heavier sanctions on Russia especially on its oil and gas industry. This means, many countries in the world especially those within the EU must now buy their oil and gas from USA and at the same time the prices would go up due to supply constraint. USA would enjoy hefty profits from this.

Another thing, USA is currently facing inflation problem and at real risk of unable to control it in the future. The Russian invasion would make EU population to pressure their government and companies to reduce trade with China because undoubtly, China wouldn't abide to the sanction because of its energy security would be at risk. In addition to the oil and gas that the EU need to import from USA (of course in USD), the country would be able to ensure USD demand from foreign banks and countries significantly increased. Other major oil exporters like members of the GCC would also be pressured to keep using USD in their transactions/trade. Hence, USA would be able to safely export its inflation abroad.

With then seemingly unlimited supply of money, USA seeks to dominate/defeat its rivals through economic superiority and if that fail, there's always the option of major war which would leave countries in Euroasia continent devastated. Reparation then would be costly and USA would be available to lend resources repeating what happened in the post WW1 and WW2.

ThesisWarrior
·
1 day ago
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edited 1 day ago

The US is 100% responsible for causing these events. They have persistently been aggitating for conflict with Russia for years now. The Neocon Zionist policy makers in Washington driven by hate and delusional hubris are bent on making her kneel at all costs. This is going to end badly for all involved. Superpowers don't bluff. They act. Russia is going in and who knows what the final result will be. Possible redrawing of borders at Dneiper river boundary?

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JadedSpy
·
4 hr. ago

So Russia putting troops in its own country, on its own border (where else would you put troops) - and is looking to invade. US, UK, other European countries are putting weapons and troops in other countries as near as possible to Russia - but they are just defending. Love the double standards of Western media! I have many many problems with my government (I’m Russian), but even the Ukrainian president and armed forces are saying this is all Western panic.
 

Well, of course Russia wants to keep Sevastopol. You need to hold that to bounce in the Black Sea and keep Turkey from moving north.

I also don't know how interested Russia would be in an Olympic truce if they are still being banned from competing as a nation. Maybe throw them the bone of having their flag and anthem back for the games?
I expect a very limited military engagement followed by a quick ceasefire granting limited concessions to Russia. That way everyone is happy except the Ukraine, but on the world's stage, they don't count for too much.

Also, to address a later post, I would fully expect Russia to blame the US. That's how these things work. Just because we aren't in THE COLD WAR any longer doesn't mean that those sentiments go away.
 
That is some tinfoil hat shit there. We are not at risk of not being able to control inflation. We haven't even tried to yet, but the fed is going to start bumping rates up and easing the monetary supply.
 
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