Russia invades Ukraine {2022-02-24} (Part 1)

America will have the money to buy.

I genuinely hope so.

But it could be a bald faced lie. It could be part of haggling with Russia on the price of oil for the next decade.

We’ll have to see.

Zelenskyy has continued to make urgent requests for a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine. He asked the U.S. Congress directly. But NATO has refused each time and each time their explanation hasn’t really changed, has it?

That explanation being: If either Russia or NATO were to, e.g., kill an opposing-side pilot and aircraft it could—gradually or in minutes—lead to nuclear war. So the answer was, and still is: “Sorry dude, but it’s a hard no.”

NATO’s answer and their reasoning must be obvious to, and expected by, Zelenskyy, even if he disagrees with it. So what is his response to hearing: “Because Nuclear Armageddon” for the umpteenth time? How does he counter the concerns of a no-fly zone provocation (either way) possibly leading to nuclear war?

I’ll add that I’m totally supportive of this guy and Ukraine and I very much wish NATO could do a no-fly zone. But I see why they are not doing it. I’m just curious how Zelenskyy has responded to this.

BBC News Online Europe editor: Is there a way out of this war?

UK Defence Intelligence update:

I think it’s possible that a ceasefire leading to a peace deal could happen in the next week or two. I don’t think it’s in either side’s advantage to prolong the war.

Zelenskyy said yesterday that Ukraine would not join NATO. So a Ukraine that’s out of NATO, but in the EU, like Austria, could be a possibility.

Maybe some UN-arbitrated political settlement of the eastern provinces could also happen, perhaps with the partitioning off of a small area.

Demographics maps:



Putin and the pro-Russian separatists, however, have demanded that Ukraine recognise the entire Donbas region - both Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts - as independent. This cannot be acceptable to Ukraine, as the region as a whole is majority Ukrainian. In any peace deal, the Russians and separatists will have to accept that most of the Donbas is, and will remain, Ukrainian.

I think for Ukraine to ever regain control of Crimea they’d probably have take it militarily, since Russia’s already annexed it and considers it its own territory, which would prolong the war and suffering across the country. Unlike other Ukrainian oblasts, Crimea is majority ethnically Russian and opinion polls in Crimea have tended to show a preference for joining with Russia.

The recognition of the de facto status quo of Crimea being Russian seems like it might be the only “golden bridge” for Putin to accept an early peace - something that he can take away that he can claim as a victory. Otherwise, I think the war looks like it will drag on for a while.

The amount of assistance the West can offer Ukraine is on a continuum. At one end, call it zero, Ukraine gets no help. At the other end, call it ten, the West offers a full military alliance and an overwhelming defensive invasion to repel the Russians.

Diplomatic condemnation with no action would be a one. A few half-hearted sanctions gets you a two. That plus a few truckloads of helmets and MREs is a three. And so on.

The flood of arms and intelligence currently being supplied is around a six, verging on seven due to its increasing volume and the power and sophistication of what’s being provided. A no-fly zone is an eight or nine depending on how aggressively the enforcers engage with Russian aircraft.

If you know you are unlikely to get the nine, it would be smart to ask for the nine anyway as a way of keeping up the pressure to make sure the current seven doesn’t fall back to a five or lower.

So it may or may not simply be a tactic. But as a tactic, it’s not a bad one.

I think it’s a tactic. Zelenskyy knows the facts about a no-fly zone better than anyone.

However, by continually pushing a no-fly zone, which sounds reasonable to many people, he gets far more leverage for everything else he’s asking for.

Politicians want to be seen to be doing as much as possible. ‘Unfortunately we can’t do a no-fly zone, but here’s a lot more humanitarian aid, and fancier missiles, and more and better military supplies instead.’

Exactly. “We wish we could help you with that” guilt goes a long way.

Someone may be in trouble - I can see some relatively low-level person thinking swapping the mayor for Dmitri, Ivan, Andrei, Mikhail etc was a good deal, but it doesn’t seem like something the highest level folks would approve of.

It seems to me, this is something that someone at the highest levels would have to have approved of.

Replacing the elected Ukrainian governments at all levels with Pro-Russian puppets is a key factor in Russia achieving its over all goals of permanently taking Ukraine out of the orbit of NATO, and turning it into a de facto Russian vassal state. That’s why they moved so quickly to grab the mayor, and replace him with their stooge.

To give up the mayor now is almost a declaration that this plan is no longer workable. Even if he’s no longer in the city, with the way the Ukrainians have been playing the social media game, he’ll still be able to act as a rallying point for resistance in the city, which is the exact opposite of what the Russians want.

One interesting question that I hope we someday get an answer to: why didn’t the Russians just kill him right away, when they had the chance? It’s not like Russia has ever shied away from such things, so why now? Perhaps even as they were grabbing him, they knew their overall plans were untenable? Were they thinking ahead to an exit strategy other than outright victory?

It’s actually quite a scary proposition. There was a Scientific American article, in '95 I believe, about concerns regarding post-cold war nuclear accounting, after the World Trade Center bombing in the underground parking. It mentioned that there was a known pop-can quantity (soda can for the US folks) of missing material and that, had that amount simply been left in the bomb, it would have rendered a significant area uninhabitable for some time.

It was the Jan '96 issue.

[aside because I’m curious]I always think of pop-can as a mostly Midwestern (and North-to-Northwestern) US term. Where is it used outside the US?[/aside]

This was something we also worried about as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

In Canada we always refer to the drink, generically, as pop (though this may vary in places I haven’t lived). I was once making a reference to “pop cans” to a USN colleague and he was confused as he thought that it was a reference to the opening mechanism.

I saw a sober assessment this morning about developments on the ground. According to this Task & Purpose video, they argue things are at least partly going the Russians way, just a lot slower than expected due in large part to logistics challenges. I say ‘sober’ because they actually discuss some Russian victories in the video. That’s something you almost never encounter from most western media sources.

Ukraine Fog of War: What’s Really Happening? - YouTube

This. It could be Putin plans to make an example of these returned POWs, and considers that more important than the mayor of some middle sized Ukrainian city. That would explain why it’s a dozen and not hundreds of prisoners. Hundreds is just a statistic. A dozen is just the right amount for individual stories of the traitors to mother Russia to be told before they are “made an example of.”

My WAG is he is really after something else, and using this to push NATO in such a way he thinks they would be willing to give him whatever it is he really thinks he could get.

It also shows Ukrainian farmers using their tractors to tow away Russian tanks, so it’s not all gloom and doom.