I was listening to a podcast yesterday about the Georgia version of this and they mentioned that there’s a line in the NATO treaty about not letting in countries with ongoing border disputes and if that’s true Ukraine is kinda boned. But if Russia does invade Ukraine, Finland and Sweden are joining like the next day. Might make Turkey stop letting them move submarines in and out of the Black Sea, which per the Montreaux agreement they’re not supposed to do
There has been a bit of concern that the US providing weapons and training to their people could create a situation where those soldiers decided to attack Russian territory they stole previously near Crimea and Georgia. So the US and others have been cautious about how much training and assistance they provided Ukraine. Recently its also been a bit of a balancing act of how much do we help them. If we start arming the Ukrainian troops with radars and other weaponry, there is also concern it could cause Putin to move now rather than wait until Ukraine gets stronger and better defenses. There is hope that a lot of Putin's moves were simply for show. He has used the military movements in the past as a way to generate support internally in Russia. The reality is Putin does not want his entire eastern boarder to be NATO countries as that threatens him. So he is doing a lot of this in an attempt to get us to make sure Ukraine does not get into NATO.
How does this mindset work? Nobody is going to invade Russia. Who would want Russia? ITS FUCKING RUSSIA
it's full of minerals, untapped fossil fuels, timber and cheap labor. I'm sure there's some other extremely wealthy oligarchs / crime families that would love to take it off of the hands of the current extremely wealthy oligarch / crime family running the country.
Invading countries for their natural resources isn't done anymore imo, now you just overthrow the government and install the ruler who will let you rape their country
30% of the country gets literal Russian propaganda injected straight in to their eye sockets every night.
Really good frontline documentary that provides a lot of background. It’s from 2017 but part 1 covers his KGB experience, his rise thru the bureaucracy under Yeltsin, his paranoia regarding the Color Revolutions/Chechnya/Georgia/Arab Spring. Thought it was particularly interesting his falling out with W and his disdain for the Clintons. Overall it did not make me feel great about what to do in the current predicament. He is extremely cunning
Has been really interesting watching all of this develop. Who the hell knows what the outcome will be here. Seems like there has to be an actual plan to move here by the Russians. Putin spending too much political and real capital to have it all be a bluff. The Command and Conquer veteran in me says Russia well positioned now, or in next few days, to have at least 3 fronts pushing into Ukraine North, East, and South. They either push hard AF for full invasion (and capture Kiev) or the Northern troops in Belarus are just trying to draw some of the Ukrainian troops out of Donbas for a purely East push/grab?
Is Eastern Ukraine sufficiently frozen over at this point for tanks to roll in? Once that happens, the clock will be ticking until the land thaws.
I've read that temps right now only hover around freezing. Will be a muddy mess in a few weeks before freezing. Russia would need to move in next week or two before having to wait until full freeze. I have no idea if that is true. That was from someone supposedly in Ukraine on Reddit so...
UK sent (estimated) about 1k infantry carried NLAW anti-tank launchers. Less capable than Javelin but still a modern very good anti tank weapon. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ive-in-ukraine-courtesy-of-the-united-kingdom
This has the interview with Clinton where he describes suggesting to Yeltsin that Putin "doesn't have democracy in his heart" right? I remember seeing that and thinking "man wait till you hear about a significant number of your "colleagues" smfh."
how the fuck do you defend the Chernobyl exclusion zone (located N of Kyiv where the borders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia meet)?
It was interesting how strongly the UK emphasized that these are "defensive only weapons" and would pose no threat to Russia unless they were invading. I am curious of your opinion on this as I haven't had a chance to do much digging. Part of the issues I have read about have been the US reluctance to give Ukraine advanced air radar capability, but if the US wanted to, couldn't we stage AWACs and JSTARS in the Black Sea and handle any and all air radar capabilities that the Ukrainians needed? I have also been curious to see if we have repositioned any of our air assets closer to the area in case fighting breaks out. The F35 and F22 could handle most of the soviet air assets from what I have read. The question becomes how "involved" we agree to get, should Russia start making a move.
Yes something to that affect. In like January 2001 right before W was to take office, Clinton visited Moscow and met with Putin and then Yeltsin, who had just resigned on NYE. Clinton was very concerned and Yeltsin later told him it was a major mistake to back Putin. Putin cultivated a decent relationship with W in 2001 and then they became closer immediately after 9/11. However, the Bush Doctrine and neoliberalism overall is Putin’s biggest fear, so the combination of the Color Revolutions and later Arab Spring and Iraq/Afghanistan nation building is the major catalyst which led to an adversarial relationship with the Kremlin. Also Obama (more so Hillary) fumbled the diplomatic reset in 2009 and later poured napalm on internal anti-Putin protests in Russia which led to 2016.
I think we have pretty much said we won't directly intervene no matter what happens. From what I have read we already have regular JSTARs fly overs and they are the primary source of troops movement info. Rumor a chunk of the russians troops moving to belarus are electronic warfare forces which would prevent JSTAR from continuing to do flyovers.
I imagine we won't be giving them any real time battlefield information. I also imagine we might be giving an ally nearby some info that we insist they not forward to Ukraine. Kinda the information warfare version of when we kept parking all those fighters right next to the Canadian border and dammit if those Canucks didn't keep stealing them!
This really is the most terrifying aspect of this entire situation. Sitting here on the other side of the globe watching this play out like a movie, and literally tens of thousands could die in hours.
There are a lot of factors that make this seem like it’s going to happen all of which have been recently covered here, but Putin isn’t an idiot. He likes to push and find soft spots and take what he can with limited consequences. This doesn’t seem like one of those opportunities. I imagine all sides are looking for a small contained conflict land grab in the East that everybody can spin as a win in order to de-escalate this.
US Navy with a rare public post on current location for an OHIO SSGN. This is done to let the Russians know we are there and can hit back if needed. Good write up: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ded-missile-submarines-mediterranean-presence
Russia's amphibious landing fleet (6 ships) is headed likely to the black sea where they would be used to land troops on the southern front vs Ukraine. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ious-warships-has-entered-the-english-channel
Yeah considering how many Ropuchas and Alligators are already in the Black (they got heavily used during the Syria sea-lift), moving the Baltic LSTs to the Black is….concerning. The Gren is a big motherfucker too.
Would it be feasible to park an AEGIS cruiser close to the shore in the Black Sea to try and offer Kyiv some protection from the ballistic rockets Russia has staged close to the border? I know the range is able to detect the rocket launches from over 1,000 miles, but I am wondering if the interceptor could in fact close the range fast enough to hit an inbound missile if fired.
Not if we're officially staying out of it. If we're firing to knock out missiles it makes our ships a legit target.