# Russia invades Ukraine -- The regional situation **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** ukraine-invasion\ **Created:** [December 30, 2023, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349 "2023-12-30T18:43:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 79
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1563 "2026-01-20T15:47:41Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > However I think Putin is far more like Stalin than Nicholas II. That’s definitely what he intends to project. I’m not convinced his grip is that strong. Everyone was loyal to the Tsar until they weren’t. Anyway, the U.S. and Europe need to be prepared for loose nukes. And also prepared for a sudden Russian collapse. China is assuredly prepared to exert economic hegemony in the Russian Far East, even if not direct political control. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1564 "2026-01-20T15:53:25Z")
Another scenario that could end with a partitioned Russia is if Russia does use their nukes, and most of them fizzle, and the rest of the world decide that they have nothing left to lose. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1565 "2026-01-20T16:17:16Z")
Agree with that fizzle scenario as one plausible outcome. An increasingly likely outcome as their stuff gets ever older and raggedier. Whether the fizzle is failure to command a launch, failure to launch, failure enroute, or failure to trigger. In the event it’ll be a combo of all the above. Ref this: > [@Chronos](#): > > Which in turn decreases the power of nuclear weapons, because most of their practical power stems from the fear of using them. There’s a reason why countries have competed so hard to have nuclear weapons, and to have more of them, despite them never having been used in the past 80 years. Yep. Agree completely. The “good” news is that reduces their utility as tools of coercion or tools of deterrence. They become _politically_ less relevant, perhaps even irrelevant. Now for the “bad” news. That’s all true until somebody who has a few actually pulls the trigger and the world is rudely reminded of the lesson they forgot as the generation(s) with direct experience died off. They might have become politically irrelevant, but they aren’t irrelevant in the physical world; they blow shit up real good just as much as they ever did (malfunctions aside). IMO the potential for bad decisions increases as long as nukes exist and are increasingly underappreciated as military weapons, not political game tokens. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1566 "2026-01-20T16:18:57Z")
Given the amount nukes Russia has in its inventory, wouldn’t even 10% of them working as intended be enough to utterly collapse civilization? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1567 "2026-01-20T17:00:02Z")
It’d be really bad, yes. But it wouldn’t collapse civilization to the point that the rest of the world couldn’t exact a very thorough revenge on Russia. To be clear, I wasn’t trying to imply that that was a desirable turn of events, only a possible one. If Putin were sane (but still evil), then he would realize that most of his nukes are probably unreliable, and that any use of them would result in both Russia and him personally being even worse off than the rest of the world, and so he would be deterred from using them. Unfortunately, I believe that he’s both evil and insane. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1568 "2026-01-20T17:25:15Z")
Also not a gamble anybody would like to participate in, what’s the threshold that differentiates “really really _really_ bad” from “civilization collapse”? 20% of the nukes working as intended? 30%? ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1569 "2026-01-20T22:55:46Z")
Or those responsible refuse to launch them, as has happened IIRC twice in the past ? ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1570 "2026-01-20T23:00:05Z")
This isn’t even a mod-nudge, so I’m not going to put it in staff color, but if we’re seriously going to talk about what % of nukes are needed for a world-ending event and possible retaliatory strikes in reprisal, we’re way past it being about the Ukraine, except as a precipitating factor. Probably better to spin off a thread so that those posters who want to talk ramifications of less apocalyptic ongoing scenarios can do so. Not even a note, just a suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1571 "2026-01-21T11:47:15Z")
Russian Ammo depot goes boom! 2 min video [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/CedPgx01RQM/maxresdefault.jpg "Russian Ammo Depot Destroyed in Debaltseve, Donetsk: HUGE Cookoff") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CedPgx01RQM) ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1572 "2026-01-23T12:51:33Z")
You aren’t going to shot down drones with shotguns anymore. Not when they fly 370mph. I’m growing more and more concerned the US military won’t be ready for modern drone warfare. Technology and most importantly Military tactics are evolving quickly during Russian and Ukraine war. The US could easily find itself needing Ukrainian drone experts to advise and train our military. Tactics are learned on the ground in a life and death situation. The commanders that don’t die rewrite the books. I know the US was an early adopter of drone warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, the targets then didn’t have the air defense capabilities the Russian and Ukrainian drone units are developing. Remember during the early invasion there were news reports of basic weapons downing drones. I don’t see that happening as much now. > **[Russia deploys new high-speed drones amid claims they contain western parts](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/23/russia-deploys-new-high-speed-drones-amid-claims-they-contain-western-parts)** > > Experts say Geran-5 long-range attack UAVs could pose serious threat to Ukraine’s struggling air defences > [@](#): > > Wreckage recovered from a so-called Geran-5 long-range attack drone that was fired at Ukraine in early January points to a series of new capabilities that experts believe could pose a serious threat to Ukraine’s already struggling air defence if deployed widely. > > Local reporting suggests two of the drones have been shot down, both this year, one near Kyiv and another near Dnipro. > > Powered by a Chinese turbo jet engine, the Geran-5 has a long cylindrical body attached to wings, unlike previous iterations based on [Iran’s delta-shaped Shahed drone](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/02/deadly-cheap-and-widespread-how-iran-supplied-drones-are-changing-the-nature-of-warfare), making it appear more like a conventional aircraft. > > With an estimated top speed of 600km/h (370mph) it is considerably faster than the previous jet-powered Geran-3, which had a top speed of less than 400km/h. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1573 "2026-01-23T13:52:00Z")
I’m actually less worried about the technical development of drones as weapons systems - American defense contractors will own that process and rapidly adapt when it perceives the need - and more concerned about the doctrinal aspects. Is the big bureaucratic Pentagon and Army War College, etc. prepared to entirely re-write the way it thinks about warfare? I’ve heard rumblings that the Army is planning to thicken the armor on top of our M-1 tanks, but this example reeks of a stopgap measure, and not the kind of wholesale reevaluation that’s almost certainly called for in light of the changes that are unfolding on the 21st century battlefield. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1574 "2026-01-23T14:04:15Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > You aren’t going to shot down drones with shotguns anymore. Not when they fly 370mph. We really need more vocabulary here, because the word “drone” encompasses an extremely wide range of different devices, with different tactics and different countermeasures. On the one hand, you’ve got the things that cost maybe $100 and can be mega-mass-produced: These can’t do much individually, and must be deployed en masse to be effective, and any countermeasure against them must be even cheaper, or even an “unsuccessful” attack costs the defenders more than it costs you. This is the thing for which the appropriate countermeasure might be a shotgun. On the other end of the scale, you’ve got things that are basically modern fighter jets, that just happen to not have a human aboard them. These are cheaper than manned fighters, but still very expensive, and it can still be cost-effective to use a million-dollar missile to shoot them down. Anything that can fly at 370 MPH is closer to the top end than to the bottom, and you don’t need to use shotguns to shoot them down. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1575 "2026-01-23T14:24:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > We really need more vocabulary here, because the word “drone” encompasses an extremely wide range of different devices, with different tactics and different countermeasures. It’s similar to the term “piloted aircraft”, which is also too general to be useful in most discussions. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1576 "2026-01-23T17:25:33Z")
The US coordinated and attacked from comfortable state-side drone bases in the Afghanistan and Iraq war. Sip a Coke and push a few buttons. 😀 Today, they got to get more dynamic. Get on the battlefield and shoot-and-scoot like artillery. Ukraine has no choice. There is no safe place for a drone base. But, sitting in a chair in California, won’t work for the US drone command anymore. ---
**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:** [January 23, 2026, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1577 "2026-01-23T17:28:58Z")
**Moderating** : At this point, if you want to keep discussing drone use by the US or any others countries not directly involved in Ukraine defending itself from Russia, please start a new thread. > **How to Reply as a linked Topic** > > Click Reply, in the upper left corner of the reply window is the reply type button, _looks like a curving arrow point to the right_. > > Choose **Reply as linked topic** and it starts a new thread. As an example, you can choose GD, IMHO or The Pit for it. > > That is actually the best method. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1578 "2026-01-23T17:31:38Z")
Sorry. I got too interested and carried away. No more drone discussions. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2026, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1579 "2026-02-07T15:36:52Z")
So,so close but no cigar. Alexeyev is number two in the main directorate of Russia’s GRU military intelligence. Number 2 huh? 💩 > **[Russian general Alexeyev shot several times in Moscow attack](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3686nzexp3o)** > > Lt Gen Vladimir Alexeyev is a senior figure in the main directorate of Russia's military general staff. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2026, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1580 "2026-02-07T16:21:41Z")
Don’t ever take a job as the #2 of something people fervently want to stop. You get nearly all the visibility and nearly none of the protection. It’s not a suicide gig, but it’s close. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2026, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1581 "2026-02-07T17:45:15Z")
He’s a war criminal. > **[Top Russian general reportedly behind Salisbury poisonings shot in...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukraine-assassination-vladimir-alexeyev-moscow-b2915691.html)** > > Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of Russia's military intelligence arm, is in a serious condition in hospital > **[Mystery as Russian general shot at close range - with equally curious...](https://news.sky.com/story/this-russian-general-fought-and-meddled-for-vladimir-putin-around-the-world-now-hes-fighting-for-his-own-life-13504073)** > > Lieutenant General Vladimir ‍Alekseyev is fighting for his life after being shot several times in a Moscow apartment building - and Russia is blaming Ukraine. > [@](#): > > From the Skripal poisonings to the invasion of Ukraine to subverting American elections, it is hard to think of a Russian outrage Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev has not been involved in. > > He is now fighting for his life in a Moscow hospital, the victim himself of foul play. > > The military intelligence deputy chief had a role in so many of Vladimir Putin’s acts of malice stretching back decades ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2026, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349/1582 "2026-02-07T18:56:39Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Don’t ever take a job as the #2 of something people fervently want to stop True. I can’t remember all the times we(US) killed the #2 ISIS or Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan or Iraq. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349.md?page=78) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/russia-invades-ukraine-the-regional-situation/995349.md?page=80)