But not that many dead Russians. I assume it is someone’s job to work out what percentage of those 200 missile could realisitlcally hit a tank, are any historical numbers out there? it has to be a pretty small percentage IMo (even before considering how many would be destroyed by artillery and bombs before tanks come close)
Neither do Americans for the most part! A lot of celebrities either have them artificially whitened and straightened, or they get veneers/caps.
by the way, do you know what happens when a country is non-religious for a long time and openly suppresses religion? people become morally bankrupt, the strong crush the weak. People don’t care about each other. That’s how Russia is today. An amoral society. Have you ever heard “onward Christian soldiers.” America is the Christian soldier, fighting the despot.
If you walk around my neighborhood today you will see a large amount of kids from Eastern Europe and Central America wearing shirts and symbols that say NASA. America is viewed as a country lifting the world up. A country that can put a man on the moon. An enlightened country of Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglas, Thomas Jefferson. Where people fight for the Justice of each other. In Russia the strong crush the weak with their boot and keep them down, nobody fights for the little guy.
bump
Why? Do you think Russia’s ability to conquer the Ukraine has changed since the beginning of this month?
Yeah I think the OP has been totally answered. Yes, Russia is completely capable of conquering Ukraine. It might not be particularly easy and involve lots of casualties on both sides, but they are totally capable of it if they decide to do so.
I can’t believe u really think that. Look at the Hungarian revolution of 1956, it was a full scale war Hungarians vs Russians… the people of Hungary would not tolerate being a Russian vassal state, so they fought… statues of Stalin and Lenin were toppled over… a similar revolution happened in Poznan and in East Germany… the only way the Russians were able to put the revolution down, was to send in tanks… if you really think the people of world would tolerate such brutality today, then u don’t understand the world… (by the way, the people of the world would not tolerate the brutality of 1956 against Hungry, and pleaded president Eisenhower to intervene, he almost did, but did not want to start a Third World War so decided agianst it)
The memories of Hungary 1956 are still alive, remember many people alive today have parents or grandparents who were alive then. It’s not such a distant memory.
For Russia to use forces against Ukraine, you would see the same thing you saw in Hungary in 1956, except it would be on television worldwide, all over Facebook and social media… the world would be stired
Not the best example to use. The Soviets lost 722 troops putting down the Hungarian revolution, as red army casualty statistics go, that is basically “in the noise”. And yup the Soviets had to put up with lots of condemnation from the international community. The results of that condemnation amounted to basically bugger all, the regime the set up lasted until the end of the cold war.
The 1950s Soviet Union is not 21st Century Russia. But if they decide to ignore the international condemnation and invade Ukraine I don’t see the end results being all that different, even if militarily it might be a bit tougher. At the end of the day the only way to prevent them from doing so would be start WW3, just as in the 1950s.
The thread is kind of over (yes, Russia can conquer the Ukraine if they are willing to feel the pain), and I don’t disagree with all you are saying here, but that last part is wrong, IMHO. The Soviet Union is nothing like Russia today, and while I don’t believe that even in 1950 the ONLY way to prevent Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe was WWIII, that is definitely not the case today. A strong US position on any invasion of the Ukraine, including a clear statement that the US would intervene in preventing Russia from such an invasion would definitely stop any plans of Russia from invading, full stop. There is zero chance that Russia, knowing the US would intervene, would push forward with a full on invasion. Yeah, they have lots of nuclear weapons, but I seriously doubt they have the confidence in them to push something like that to the limit and test it. They simply wouldn’t do it.
I don’t expect the US to do anything like that, of course. We seem to always be in a position to attempt to assert a firm position but then weaseling (like with our Taiwan stance wrt China) so that neither our allies (which Ukraine isn’t) nor our enemies…nor interested 3rd parties (which Ukraine is) know what the fuck we are actually saying or what the fuck we will actually do. And we have a president that takes that chaos theory of international politics to whole new levels. But it doesn’t HAVE to play out as WWIII, not today (I actually don’t think it had to be that way in the 50’s either, but the threat was definitely more then than now).
Which is basically the same choice Eisenhower faced in 1956. You can saber rattle and threaten to intervene militarily, but if they call your bluff and invade anyway then you are you either have to back down, or start a war with a nuclear armed power.
Yeah you’d hope the nuclear forces on both sides are on less of hair trigger than they were in 1956, but the basic calculus hasn’t changed.
It’s debatable whether it would be appropriate to call it a “full-scale war”, and it’s certainly not correct to say that it was (only) Hungarians vs. Russians. There were Hungarians fighting on both sides, and the Soviet side wasn’t simply Russians. In fact, the armies that intervened were based in the Ukraine and commanded by an Armenian and an Ossetian.
It works exactly the same way from the other side too. And in the case of today, Russia knows (even if seemingly a lot of 'dopers don’t) that the US over matches it in just about every way. Including a credible nuclear capability. We over matched the Soviets in the 50’s to, as it turns out, but WE didn’t know that with a certainty, even if they did.
Like I said, I disagree with your conclusions in your second paragraph here…the calculus absolutely has changed. This isn’t to say we should (certainly we won’t) support the Ukraine to the point of military conflict with Russia, but if we did it would be Russia that would be backing down, no matter how crazy or whatever folks think Putin is. The real problem, IMHO, is that we so often do back away and give vague mouthings about what our policy is or might be that it emboldens someone like Putin (or XI, or lil’ Kimmy 3.0) to push the limits…and might push them into doing something really stupid. Such as Saddam and his invasion of Kuwait that kicked off the first gulf war and stemmed, basically, from a miscalculation and misunderstanding of what, exactly, the US policy was wrt a potential invasion of Kuwait.
That all said, I don’t think Russia will formally invade anyway, as the international ramifications even leaving aside a very improbably US direct intervention would be dire for them…and they are already reeling under the ones just for their current shenanigans.
Russia could absolutely win the fight. It would have a cost, but Russia can fork out that cost. There would however, be a political and economic cost afterwards, and its far less likely that Russia could afford that cost.
Wow it seems we don’t have many people in this forum with knowledge of the military/defense issues, maybe I’ll ask somewhere else, if anyone thinks Russia could easily conquer Ukraine as if Ukraine is a pushover, then they are smoking something strong… Ukraine is not Russia, Ukrainians do not want to be Russian, no matter how much crappy prooganda is put out… Crimea did have large Russian sympathies due to a large percentage of the population being ethic Russian, but Crimea =! Ukraine at all… especially Western Ukraine, western Ukraine wants nothing to do with Russia (nether dies eastern Ukraine, despite the lies that they are pro-Russia).
From a certain, not-unpopular point of view, Russia has already handily conquered huge swaths of Ukraine.
Parts of it are now, for all practical purposes.
Some Ukrainians do not want to be Russian. But millions of other Ukrainian citizens have already expressed and realized a desire to be part of the Russian Federation, or of independent states that are largely Russian in character and politically aligned with Russia.
Now you’re venturing into no-true-Scotsman territory. Any Ukrainian region or citizen that supported Russia was never Ukrainian to begin with, eh?
What would “the people of [the] world” do about it? Does “stirring” involve ATGMs or airstrikes? Because if it does not, I don’t see all that “stirring” amounting to much.
In fairness, what Kamaski said isn’t wrong and it’s not a ‘no-true’Scotsman’ argument either. Large parts of the Ukraine were (force) colonized by ethnic Russians (and large numbers of ethnic Ukrainians were purged, either by the traditional Soviet method of lead poisoning or winter holidays in the happy camps of Siberia or moved out to other regions) and so had disproportionate representation in those regions. Most ethnic Russians DO have a lot more sympathy with the new Russia than they did with ethnic Ukrainians. And Ukrainians (ethnic Ukrainians) don’t have those same sympathies, by and large, to say the least.
They also have long memories. It’s kind of why, when they had the chance, they got out from under Russia’s thumb as quickly as they could, then tried by hook or by crook to get into the EU and NATO.
I think the forum does have some folks who understand and have knowledge of the military and defense issues, as you put it. Some don’t, nor do they have any real understanding of the history of how we got to where we are today wrt the Ukraine, Russia and the Crimea. That said, Russia could take the Ukraine in a forced entry invasion if they really, really wanted too. The Ukraine would probably inflict some large casualties on Russia forces, and it would cost Russia a lot both in terms of man power and equipment as well as in terms of an even worse international image, but they could do it. They have the logistics to stage their invasion close to the Ukraine, they have the forces to do it, and they have the money to do it (barely). And Ukraine doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. What Ukraine does have is the ability to make it hurt a lot more than many in this thread seem to realize who haven’t done more than a cursory look at Russia’s current OOB and what they COULD, feasibly, project and compare it to what the Ukraine has and could use in a defensive battle. Particularly I think the western part of the Ukraine would be a tough nut for the Russians to crack. But crack it they would if they really, really wanted too and were willing to pay the price. It would be a heavy price, but if they were willing to pay it they would win…and NATO and the US wouldn’t do much more than even more heavy sanctions and pressure on Russia than we already have over the Crimea. It would probably be a final break with the Russians diplomatically and wrt trade if Russia did it (especially how brutal it would be and how that would play out on the international scene), but, again, if Russia was willing to pay that price they would win in the end.
I don’t recall if this has been mentioned already in this thread, but Russia probably doesn’t have “conquer all of Ukraine” as one of their strategic objectives. They probably wouldn’t mind conquering eastern Ukraine, or at least enough of it to get a real land bridge to Crimea, but I doubt they’re even interested in owning western Ukraine.
Russia - 145 million people
Ukraine - 45 million people
Just because Russia is a large country many times the size of Ukraine, doesn’t means its military capabilities are in proportion to its geographic size.
They have one delapidated aircraft carrier, they don’t have funds to maintain their aircraft, nobody knows what condition their nuclear weapons are in, they have levels of curruption unimaginable in western counties, and the readiness level of their armed forces is about 100 times less than the US.
If Ukraine aligns itself with NATO, then it will have the support/help if a military alliance which has about 30 times the military power of Russia.