# Russia invades Ukraine {2022-02-24} (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Tags:** ukraine-invasion, breaking-news\ **Created:** [February 24, 2022, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037 "2022-02-24T08:30:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 146
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2901 "2022-03-21T17:38:56Z")
Is it possible that the Russian military, looking beyond Putin’s reign, are emptying their reserves of the munitions they wish to replace with more advanced systems? Win or lose, when this is all over Russia is going to have to supercharge their military procurement budget and infrastructure. It will be easier for the generals (if there are any left) to convince the Kremlin to authorize new systems if the old ones have been essentially exhausted. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2902 "2022-03-21T17:46:36Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Russia is going to have to supercharge their military procurement budget and infrastructure. If harsh sanctions remain, Russia will be hard pressed to get any advanced materials for a renewed military buildup, and would not be able to afford them anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2903 "2022-03-21T18:00:56Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Is it possible that the Russian military, looking beyond Putin’s reign, are emptying their reserves of the munitions they wish to replace with more advanced systems? Win or lose, when this is all over Russia is going to have to supercharge their military procurement budget and infrastructure. It will be easier for the generals (if there are any left) to convince the Kremlin to authorize new systems if the old ones have been essentially exhausted. If this was the US blowing off old stock weapons and ammo, this might be a plausible scenario, but Russia was already having trouble finding enough money to build modern weapon systems before the war and all the economic sanctions. If we don’t lift those sanctions, Russia might, in a few decades, be able to create an entirely internal economy that could then begin to contemplate replacing these losses, but not any time soon. After all, Russia is a huge damn country with access to lots of resources within its own borders. There’s really nothing _physical_ stopping them from doing this. The problem is, to do this, they’d need a government that was more interested in building a nation than in lining their own pockets - and they don’t have that, and likely won’t have one any time soon. So, yeah, if this is their plan, they’re fucked. Maybe twenty years to reform their entire government if they start now, thirty to forty years more to then reform their economy? By that point, they might even realize they don’t need all that fancy military crap. ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2904 "2022-03-21T18:02:15Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > One of the things Bill hated was reading in civilian news sources that they weren’t at a war with the Germans but were instead fighting against Hitler and the Nazis. He wrote something like, “Other than a crack SS Division, I didn’t see any Nazis in Italy.” He was of the opinion that they were fighting Germans not just Hitler or the Nazis. i.e. He blamed Germans for the war not just one party or person. OK, here’s the quote from _Up Front_ by Bill Mauldin: "I read someplace that the American boy is not capable of hate. Maybe we don’t share the deep, traditional hatred of the French or the Poles or the Yugoslavs towards the krauts, but you can’t have friends killed without hating the men who did it. It makes the dogfaces sick to read articles by people who say, “It isn’t the Germans, it’s the Nazis.” Our army has seen few actual Nazis, except when they threw in special SS divisions. We have seen the Germans - the youth and the men and the husbands and the fathers of Germany, and we know them for a ruthless, cold, cruel, and powerful enemy. When our guys cringe under an 88 barrage, you don’t hear them say, “Those dirty Nazis,” You hear them say, “Those god-dam krauts.”. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2905 "2022-03-21T18:10:38Z")
There was a report yesterday that a Russian Admiral was killed. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2906 "2022-03-21T18:12:36Z")
I thought I saw it was an officer below Admiral rank. I’ll check. * * * This is the one I saw: > **Captain 1st rank** Andrei Paly is the latest senior Russian officer to be killed in the war with Ukraine. I found another article on it here: > **[The top Russian naval commander died near Mariupol, Russia said, the latest...](https://www.businessinsider.com/top-russia-naval-commander-andrei-paly-killed-mariupol-officials-2022-3)** > > An unusually high number of senior Russian officials have been killed in the war with Ukraine, with the death of a top naval officer announced Sunday. Captain 1st rank is pretty much the same as our Navy Captain or Army Colonel. ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2907 "2022-03-21T18:27:12Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > And before they do that, they’ll need to take out the air defense systems based in Russia. And engage with the Russian air force. > > How’s that going to work out when NATO bombs are falling on Russian territory? > > Putin is killing civilians in order to provoke just this NATO response. This is what he wants. To use the very good analogy in one of these threads, Putin is getting very embarrassed by getting his ass whooped by a one-armed man. What he wants is a bike gang to step in and beat him up so he can say “See! They are all against me and I never had a chance!” This may very well be correct (I mean none of us truly know what he wants) but, to quote nelliebly: “This is what worries me. Does any nuclear power who rattles its sabres get to do whatever it wants, no matter how evil or horrific and regardless of the stranglehold on the rest of humanity, because we can’t know with 100% certainty that it’s not bluffing this time?” Bearing all of that in mind, are we supposed to just sit back and watch this poor fucking population get destroyed? These poor fucking people (40-some million of them), through no fault of their own, will never have anything resembling lives again. If Putin, for whatever reason, decides next week to down tools, and recalls the Russian military, what then for the Ukrainian survivors? I mentioned this to a colleague in an email: “it is really depressing to think about but, one month you’re going to work, going to cafes, bars and restaurants, living a sort of normal western existence, then a few weeks later your home has been bombed to smithereens and, if you’re a guy you’re scrabbling through the rubble with your newly issued AK-47 looking for Russian soldiers to kill. And if you’re female you get to tow a suitcase, and maybe a backpack or a few grocery bags of stuff down cratered highways to some place you may never have visited before. And for everybody, knowing you may never see your own family again and facing a future of god-knows-what – all because of one guy.” And every NATO leader is offering the NATO equivalent to “thoughts and prayers” that we keep referring to in this board. Every time Zelensky finishes an address to some parliament or congress, he probably listens to the various national platitudes and then thinks “that and a quarter might get me a cup of coffee”. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2908 "2022-03-21T18:30:42Z")
> [@velomont](#): > > “This is what worries me. Does any nuclear power who rattles its sabres get to do whatever it wants, no matter how evil or horrific and regardless of the stranglehold on the rest of humanity, because we can’t know with 100% certainty that it’s not bluffing this time?” Exactly. And not just that, but this encourages nuclear proliferation. Iran now has more reason than ever to get nukes. Any other aggressor that already has nukes is also now thinking, “We can do what we want as long as we wave that nuke card in front of anyone who might intervene.” To quote someone: > ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2909 "2022-03-21T18:33:03Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Putin is killing civilians in order to provoke just this NATO response. This is what he wants. And I apologize in advance for sounding snarky, but I actually have no clue what the right answer to this thing is. So what? So we do nothing so that Putin can’t “own the West”? > [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > What he wants is a bike gang to step in and beat him up so he can say “See! They are all against me and I never had a chance!” So he’ll lie. Again, so what? Who’s going to believe him? Tucker Carlson, China, and Russia? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2910 "2022-03-21T18:37:47Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > If we don’t lift those sanctions, Russia might, in a few decades, be able to create an entirely internal economy that could then begin to contemplate replacing these losses, but not any time soon. After all, Russia is a huge damn country with access to lots of resources within its own borders. The biggest problem for them would have to be smart weapons. Russia, like the US, has minimal chip foundary capacity, relying primarily on the East Asian companies. If they can build the actual bombs, they would be relying on launch control logic with no post~launch nav. When you have ready access to lots of chips, it makes sense to blow them up in the interest of getting the explosion right where you want it, but when the chips are down, you end up falling back on the point-and-pray weapons. Which is to say, the longer this goes on, the less accurate Russian weapons are likely to become. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2911 "2022-03-21T18:43:18Z")
Thanks. Excellent article! ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2912 "2022-03-21T18:52:36Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The biggest problem for them would have to be smart weapons. Russia, like the US, has minimal chip foundary capacity, relying primarily on the East Asian companies. And that’s one of the reasons it will take decades for them to build up any native capacity for build these advanced weapons. There’s no fundamental reason such chips have to be made in other countries - we just do it that way because it’s cheaper. But if we were entirely isolated from that supply, we could just suck it up, and build our own factories, and build them ourselves, and ultimately so could Russia. It’s not an overnight kind of thing, and they’d be lagging decades behind the rest of the world, but I’m sure they could eventually produce some “good enough” chips. But not if everyone from the CEO to the janitor is trying to steal as much as they can every damn day. At some point, allowing rampant corruption has to begin to bite them in the ass. That point may very well be “now”. ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2913 "2022-03-21T18:52:38Z")
> ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2914 "2022-03-21T19:09:52Z")
> > > Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof > ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2915 "2022-03-21T19:21:13Z")
That would seem to confirm that it’s currently running something like 1000 Russian deaths a day. If you’re starting at 200,000 troops, 1000 die every day, another 1000 are otherwise incapacitated, and say like 500 run away and turn themselves in to the enemy, you’re going to already be down to 50% by 40 days into the war. I wouldn’t have thought that it would be so linear but so far it seems to be keeping on a fairly strict schedule by those numbers. I’m not feeling like the Syrians are going to help out much. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2916 "2022-03-21T19:23:51Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Russia, like the US, has minimal chip foundary capacity Not true. The US has significant foundry capacity, primarily through Intel. It is true that US production demand significantly exceeds capacity, but if the US were somehow cut off there would still be plenty for military purposes. Russia however does have minimal capacity, and what they do have is ancient. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2917 "2022-03-21T19:26:26Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > If you’re starting at 200,000 troops, 1000 die every day, another 1000 are otherwise incapacitated, and say like 500 run away and turn themselves in to the enemy, you’re going to already be down to 50% by 40 days into the war. And that 50% is going to be mostly your front-line troops. I don’t know what the pointy-end/shaft ratio is in the Russian Army, but an army that is losing that percentage/day is going to be less than worthless. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2918 "2022-03-21T19:34:21Z")
At this point, what are the chances that Russia will institute a draft in order to supply the necessary manpower? Would be hugely unpopular but it may be the only way Russia can have sufficient men at the front lines, given their rate of losses. Doesn’t take much training to just get a Russian conscript taught to fire a rifle and be cannon fodder, at threat of death if he attempts to desert. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2919 "2022-03-21T19:36:27Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Win or lose, when this is all over Russia is going to have to supercharge their military procurement budget and infrastructure. First they’re going to have to undertake some major reforms so that their budget doesn’t disappear into mansions and megayachts again. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037/2920 "2022-03-21T19:38:51Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > At this point, what are the chances that Russia will institute a draft in order to supply the necessary manpower? Well their loses are not sustainable for long, and Putin is just not going to quit and go home. If we are still in the same situation a month from now I would imagine its inevitable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037.md?page=145) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-2022-02-24-part-1/960037.md?page=147)