So, Ukraine is back to wavering on NATO membership?
That’s one of the things that got them into this war.
This may be an attempt to start peace talks with Russia. We don’t need NATO membership affer all.
It would be foolish not to look at all possible alternatives.
It’s not clear from the article if this was a report that asked what they should do versus - as the first sentence indicates - a report that simply looks at what some of the other options are. Double-checking is only prudent.
Personally, I don’t see any strong reason for Ukraine to join NATO. If nothing else, it amplifies the image that the whole war was about NATO (Note: which doesn’t make sense when you consider that Russia applied for NATO’s Partnership for Peace, was given their own top-level place in the organization, Putin was working with GW Bush to decide which states to grant membership into NATO, and that Russia first attacked Ukraine for thinking about doing a trade deal with the EU not anything to do with NATO).
And, realistically, Israel has never joined NATO but they get many of the benefits of membership by being someone that the US will clearly support, regardless of anything, due to historical intertwinement. All of the perks with none of the demerits. Ukraine could try to do something similar by simply being a strong enough ally and playing American politics well enough. They are well-placed to keep eyes on that region of the world.
Likewise, they could try to work with France to build a stronger EU military cooperative. France supplies many of the arms to India so, plausibly, they could ramp up a new option outside of NATO and the Russia/China axis.
Calls to mind other mutinies, and the effect they had on Russia.
I’m curious about what they find too. After the drone camera being a phone duct taped to the frame and the fake tank armor, who knows what this will yield. Maybe they’ll actually find some real tech in this one. Not really holding my breath, tho.
Ukrainians fire artillery shells filled with leaflets at Russian soldiers, calling on them to surrender.
Maybe a repurposed iPhone 4.
But isn’t one of the criteria for NATO membership that a country has stable boundaries upon application? I think I’ve seen that cited. Since it’s not clear what is going to happen with eastern Ukraine, it might be that NATO membership is out of reach, so alternative arrangements are being considered?
I think that’s right. It’s been mentioned several times in this thread. The Donbas region was considered a place of unrest, so NATO membership was on hold. I’m not sure what the situation with Crimea was, maybe the same.
Sounds a bit like insurance companies denying patients who have preexisting conditions from getting insured.
(oh well, off topic)
Putin needs to give that critter a medal and a Generalship!
Not to mention massive corruption and theft.
But have they done so? Why would you develop hardened and reinforced positions when you have the mighty, unstoppable Russian army to defend you?
No. Just another Putin lie/excuse.
Georgia is talking about holding a referendum on whether to go to war against Russia.
I recall reading something recently in which a Georgian noted that the Russia-Georgia border fences seem to be a tiny bit farther south every morning.
I remember that too, but I’m not certain it was Georgia.
Definitely a good time for the folks on the Russia-Georgia border to start moving those stakes back where they belong…
Armies have been doing this forever, and the various efforts in WWII are pretty well documented.
Here is an example of German propaganda leaflets which contain some mildly nude sketches of what the girlfriends back home were doing, and generally not effective.
https:// info.publicintelligence. net/GermanPropagandaLeaflets.pdf
The US dropped many on Japanese troops, but the number of troops which surrendered was minimal, with or without leaflets.
Probably the most effective campaigns was by the Allies sending official looking safe conduct documents to the German troops, especially in the final year of the war. Almost 66 million of just one version were dropped.
This is why maintaining moral is so important.
Certainly, that is what is expected, and the Russian and local military groups have had difficulty making much progress against fortified Ukrainian positions in the region during the war so far.
It will be interesting to see how much Western aid will change the balance here. It seems that the Russians will have more logistics challenges with the fall of Izyum and the loss of the GLOC as apparently many of the munitions for Donbas were flowing through there. Obviously, the Russians will supply through other lines, but presumably less efficiently and Ukraine has shown they are becoming increasingly more effective at disrupting that.
Common sense says that the same kind of maneuver warfare isn’t as likely to succeed in Donbas, but there are too many unknowns now to make good predictions.
Yeah, it is a real offence, but it was seriously enough of a misdirection that it caused everyone to be caught off guard. They also diverted sufficient offensive power to make Kharkiv the main offence while building up expectations that Kherson was where the main office would be. Brilliant.
What I’m wondering these days is if 24/7 satellite coverage is good enough that the U.S. could basically serve as a round-the-clock artillery spotter for Ukraine in real time.
“Hey, there’s a cluster of Russian vehicles at (insert coordinates,) you should send a few 155mm shells their way in the next two minutes.”
“An important Russian general was just seen walking into a building that’s serving as a forward base, send a few GMLRS there pronto.”
With sort of spotting, Ukraine could essentially destroy the entire Russian force piecemeal.
I watched a news documentary on this subject on a German network back in April, I think. The news crew spent a week hanging out in this small Georgian border village, asking the locals about their experience as neighbors to Russia. It’s as you say — from time to time, the villagers wake up and lead their sheep out to their usual meadow, or otherwise make their morning rounds, and they find that, overnight, the border markers (sometimes a fence, sometimes just stones) have mysteriously moved fifty or a hundred meters overnight.
The villagers typically will try to move the border markers back to where they’re supposed to be, but they have to be cautious, because occasionally Russian soldiers will swoop in as they’re working and accuse them of setting foot on Russian soil, and take them into custody. The villagers said this rarely results in formal charges; the Russians are just looking for bribe money. The offending Georgian is held for three or four days, then there’s an off-the-books arrangement of the equivalent of thirty or forty dollars or a case of liquor, and the villager is released.
The Georgians they spoke with said that even aside from these kidnappings and other border shenanigans, their impression of the Russian soldiers is very poor. They’re constantly drunk, they’re undisciplined and unprofessional, coarse and unwashed and rude. They had the feeling the Russians were operating more or less autonomously without a lot of direction or supervision from above, like the soldiers were ordered to cause low-grade trouble on the border, and that as long as they don’t start an actual war, nobody much cares what they’re doing. Again, this was in April, so Russian leadership’s attention was understandably elsewhere, but essentially these are just uniformed thugs leaning on their Georgian neighbors for pocket money and booze.
The news crew asked the Georgians what they thought about all the help Ukraine was getting from the West in resisting Russian aggression, and whether they were angry they weren’t receiving the same level of attention and assistance. The answer was no — they thought the Ukrainian spirit was inspiring, actually, and they were very hopeful that all the Western attention to the Russians being criminal assholes on their borders would now start “spilling over” to their own village sooner or later.
I sincerely hope their wish comes true. The Russians are just bullies who won’t modify their behavior until they get punched really hard in the face, and it would be nice if we could help the Georgians do it.
That’s why anti-satellite weapons have been developed. IMHO Actually using them against NATO countries would be an extreme provocation. Basically a declaration of all out war.
Intel from US satellites and other sources made a big difference in this war. It made targeting Russian assets more accurate. The Ukrainian military still had to do the brutal fighting and sustain the casualties .