I wasn’t thinking with John Cale “let’s go to Moscow,”* I was only thinking of going to Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea. Chase the Russians out of Ukraine.
Find the back door to the Kremlin,
Push it down and walk on in
Ukraine has been fought pretty much to a standstill, and while they’ve been pretty savvy about using drones and sabotage teams to attack within Russian territory they certainly don’t have the military logistics or airpower for an extended campaign into Russia. Ukraine has engaged in a couple of cycles of counteroffensives (Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022, primarily in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia in 2023), gaining back considerable territory in 2022 but not making a lot of headway in 2023. Even if Poland did joint Ukraine and pushed the Russians back to the 2013 borders, they’d still have the same problems getting to Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow as Russia has had getting vehicles and supplies to Ukraine. And frankly, if you look at a map it doesn’t really give them all that much advantage in distance even as the crow flies, notwithstanding the logistical challenges of looping all the way through Ukraine and the actual routes they would have to take.
Of course, the smart strategy in entering into an ongoing war is to open a second front to divert resources of the shared opponent, not to attack through the field that is already in battle. But again, Poland’s military is just not comprised for logistically extended action and certainly not to invade Russia. If it tried, that might benefit Ukraine because it would pull away resources and might even cause the Russian army to go into retreat in order to free up resources for defense, but Poland’s military would then be stretched and at the disadvantage. It should also be noted that while Poland participated in both the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and contributes significantly to UN peacekeeping forces, they haven’t actually fought in a real battlefield conflict with a parity opponent since WWII. Russia’s military isn’t great but it has been learning hard-fought lessons from the ill-conceived adventure in Ukraine and has advanced their tactics beyond conventional land war texts.
Stranger
I’m not clear on what that gets Poland, and apparently neither does Poland as their “Ministry of Defense has firmly rejected the US proposal to send Polish troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping mission.”
Stranger
If Poland joined armed hostilities I think Belarus come out the worst; Russia forces them in and then they get rolled. Also, Kaliningrad would be hard to defend.
If Poland joined I think you’d have a lot more support from the rest of the EU, but I don’t see that happening. Maybe the EU intelligence services start whacking people involved with Russia operations on home soil, getting harder in the grey zone, but outright war? Don’t see it. Maybe Polish airforce extends their umbrella over western Ukraine.
Russia’s Navel losses are substantial.
One ship had only recently been retrofitted.
Ukraine lost 100 ships in 2014 after Russia captured the base at Sevastopol Bay.
But Russia navel losses are more embarrassing for a country trying to claim a position as a World power.
That was before Russia sent drones to attack deep into Poland. Now the Poles are invoking NATO article 4. Romania also got Russian drones intruding.
Romania is a NATO member nation (which has also just today experienced an incursion of Russian drones into its airspace) with which Poland routinely coordinates with and under a NATO Article 5 declaration is obliged to provide support.
I have not seen any reporting that Poland is considering sending military units to Ukraine, and in fact Karol Nawrocki, the current President of Poland, who was elected earlier this year under a rightward shift with support from the populist “Law and Justice” party, has expressed both a desire to review materiel and support to Ukraine as well as inflaming cultural grievances with Ukraine. So, I find the suggestion that Poland is going to send troops or air defense resources to aid Ukraine versus stationing them on their own eastern front to be unlikely.
Stranger
Why did the POW refuse to take off his shirt? He didn’t want his captors to discover his navel base.
I goofed on spellong naval.
Yep.
I sure wish this would happen, but I’ve been disappointed too many times.
Russian offensive collapses, Ukraine takes advantage and liberates Udachne.
So keep the slow-motion meatgrinder going, and hope his
palplanted agent trump delivers him Ukraine on, if not a silver platter, at least a rusty hubcap. So far he’s winning this slow-motion arm wrestle. A pyrrhic victory to be sure, but he is winning.
I think it will be useful to post this graphic. I will also note that this graphic is significantly understating how well Ukraine has done, as it doesn’t include the Kharkiv region just north of this map, where the Kharkiv counteroffensive in late 2022 occurred. In other words, Ukraine has liberated more territory since August of 2022 than Russia has taken in the rest of the war combined. ie the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives liberated more territory than all of Russia’s attacks since then. I don’t think it is possible to argue that Russia is winning the war at this point.
I will grant that Putin may THINK he is winning the war as he invites guests for an interesting view out of tall windows if they give him even mildly bad news. I have no doubt he is stuck in an echo chamber of his own beliefs.
Well, shoot, the straight dope apparently doesn’t allow media images to be posted. I have a graphic showing the % of Ukrainian territory conquered by year. But can’t post it.
Is this it?
That’s REALLY good news. Hope we see additional similar stories in days to come.
For sure very good news. We’ve speculated before about tipping points and Russian military collapse. Could this be the beginning?
Another Russian arms client is ditching Russian jets and buying American now.
No it is a more detailed map showing the territories of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson and the % conquered for each region. It was from August of each year. How did you post your image? After uploading the image into my post when I click the reply message I get an error saying I can’t post media images.
You can’t post images directly, but if you put the url of the the image discord will display it.
Discourse, not Discord. But otherwise yeah.