Checking a map, it looks like the industrial cities that they would want to keep, which are at risk, are Donetsk, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, and Kherson. At the moment, I think we can safely say that Russia holds Donetsk and Kherson. I’m not inclined to think that Russia will get the rest of those before running out of steam.
That said, it looks like Kherson would block shipping from coming up the Dnieper, which could massively screw the rest of the country’s industry.
Zelensky is going to need to focus on maintaining control over the Dnieper.
Definitely, but the problem there is the southern prong coming out of Crimea. And the northern one coming out of Belarus. But, still, they need to hold that as a defensive obstacle to the Russians, who are having enough issues even just moving a few hundred kilometers into Ukraine without having to cross a major river.
Unless I am missing something, the one year Russian conscription period most commonly ends on March 31. Will the current class fight hard after that, assuming they are forced to stay in the army? And how many in the new class will evade the draft?
This won’t affect the Air Force, but air alone isn’t decisive.
I mean, even America often extends combat tours without consent so I cannot imagine Putin allowing that.
-The thinking that this is a ruse and Russia is just “holding back it’s best” is interesting and at least somewhat plausible, right? I remember hearing somewhere recently the question posed “Where Is Russia’s Air Force”? I mean…is this really the best they have…or all they have? Where is all this stuff I thought they had?
-When does the West, primarily America, call Putin’s nuclear bluff? Or do we not dare? Maybe with the no-fly zone it’d be like “You want to threaten us with nuclear weapons? The United States? Fine, go right ahead, you know where that goes. You know what you’re not going to do, Mr Putin? Fly any more airplanes over Ukraine. Fuck you.” and Biden drops the mic.
Then will Putin really allow that to be his legacy? Destroy the world over a miscalculation? Man, I just don’t know. I’m increasingly thinking along these lines.
-If we don’t do that, then we just…wring our hands, feel powerless and just keep doing what we’re doing? Until when? NATO sovereignty is breached? That’s an escalation right there, then we get involved for sure, right. But then what? Each escalation leads to the same result, The End anyway?
I’m not sure it is a bluff. Russia has a lot more of the smallest nuclear weapons — the kind that are just a few times higher yield than the mother of all bombs my country used in Afghanistan. Putin might try it. Then what?
A much safer place for the U.S. to establish a no-fly-zone is Tigray (largest current war in Africa). Am I seriously suggesting that? No, because, although it might save many lives, there probably are risks I don’t understand. The difference in Ukraine is that I have a better understanding of the risks, and they are bigger.
Suppose the US decided they didn’t want any boots on the ground or planes in the sky. Fine. What I don’t get is why our commander in chief is going on TV and saying we don’t want any boots on the ground or planes in the sky. That’s about the dumbest thing you could say. If you’re not going in intervene, at least fake like you’re going to intervene. Why we haven’t stationed half the Air Force in Poland and a fifth of the Army in Hungary, I don’t know. Why SECDEF isn’t announcing that we and allies are going to deploy inside Ukraine next week…I mean the next week…I mean one week more…I mean just another week more…ad infinitum, I can’t explain.
You see how Russia says they’re going home after the exercises in Belarus, then they don’t?
Then they say they won’t invade, but they do?
They say they aren’t bombing civilians but they are?
You see how everything they say is a lie? That’s what you’re supposed to do! Do that!
If I were president, I wouldn’t send in troops, but I would be dusting off those old assassination plots the CIA loved so much in the 50s and 60s. And I’d be sure to fund the insurgency if the Ukrainian government falls.
I’d also publicly call for Russia to be removed from the UN Security Council. The Soviet Union was a founding member. It dissolved. Russia has no claim to its permanent veto power.
I mean, I get that. I do. Which is why we’re having this “What more can we do?” discussion. This has become a plausible deniability charade, we should participate in it, like… simply and flatly state that we will no longer tolerate any more aggression and if you don’t withdraw immediately we will attack you and eliminate everything you have on the field. Or something. Give the Ukrainians Davey Crockett weapons secretly and announce the Ukrainians are now armed with nuclear weapons and the Russians must depart immediately.
“How did those plucky Ukrainians get those old things? We have no idea!”
This has been floated a bunch, but it doesn’t hold water. Boris Yeltsin didn’t just sit down in the USSR’s seat, slyly change the placard, and pretend nothing had changed. The new Russian Federation deliberately claimed the diplomatic privileges and obligations of its predecessor state and nobody argued. Kicking them out on those grounds, 30 years later, would be a pretext so transparent as to be nonexistent.
Maybe the US had some unknown, secret successes that still haven’t been discovered but, to my knowledge, the CIA’s assassination success rate was zilch and their attempts laughably incompetent.
It looks like there was a report on the subject generated in 1975. No Wikipedia page but if you search for “select committee report alleged plots to assassinate foreign leaders”, Google should give it to you.
In general, my sense would be that the CIA is primarily good at collecting information and talking people into doing things. They’re librarians and socialites more than they are shrewd, psychopathic patriots. They’re incompetent at assassination and uncomfortable with torture (ergo it going public pretty much as soon as it started).
I’d venture to guess that if you wanted to assassinate someone, you’re better to use a special forces unit from the military or a rod from God, if we’ve secretly been working on that.
The thing about international affairs is you don’t need a pretext, you need broad acceptance. If the US and France said Russia is off the UNSC, they’re off the UNSC. There is no higher authority to appeal to. The UN doesn’t obey anybody else. The only question you need to answer is whether enough of the rest of the world would go along with it. I think that’s a solid yes. So it can be done. It’s a “You can’t do that - We just did” sort of thing.
I agree. There is absolutely nothing Russia could do about it if their U.N. (or security council) credentials were revoked.
On the other hand, the whole point of the U.N. is to bring hostile opponents to the table. Even though it’s clearly not working, you would really undermine the mission of the U.N. if you started kicking out states that misbehave.
Right. I don’t necessarily disagree with kicking them out, but I do think using the “haha you were never legitimately in at all!” gambit would would be laughable from a credibility standpoint. If it’s gonna happen, they shouldn’t retcon a silly loophole, They should just do it.
This is a completely normal thing for a so-called “super power” to be doing when fighting a regional power. If things don’t turn around very soon (1-2 weeks), then Russia will be forced to withdraw (they will be forced to withdraw even if they “win” it will just take longer. It is not possible for them to hold Ukraine). What would be funny is if the Ukrainians bought off Russian mercs with higher pay. They’re currently offering any Russian pilot $1 million USD to defect with a plane, or $500K for a helicopter. Ukraine is trying to buy the war and that’s fantastic. They can pay for it with confiscated (abandoned) Russian tanks and vehicles.
Where does this leave Russia though? Why would they care about that at this point after everything they have already done? What can the UN really do to Russia that they have not already done to themselves?
Russia doesn’t appear to care about much of anything other than Putin’s misguided whatever the hell he was thinking of doing and lying and killing their way to the brink of a World War. Does this assume that things will “settle down” and then Russia is all good to go then?
I literally have no idea. Is this the start of a literal “New World Order”? How can Russia possibly be forgiven? Putin’s death and then everything is a-okay?
I think Putin is forked. I don’t think he’ll survive the year. He may not survive the summer as president of Russia. He should be hoping to get exile to “Elba” but I suspect he may have an accident instead. I think widespread sanctions should stay in effect until Putin is gone. I’m not sure what should happen after that. I don’t think the Russian people should be punished for being drawn into a war that many don’t want, and the ones that do are mainly because they’ve been lied to. My concern is that whoever replaces Putin will just be another Putin. Maybe Trump will run?
I read a few tweets that Putin and his gang are even robbing their own dead soldiers (whose families should get 5 million rubles IIRC) - by dating their dead soldier’s dismissal papers to pre-war!!!
So it seems like getting paid from putin is like being a lawyer for Trump and waiting to get paid.
My understanding is that after WWII ended and the Japanese realized that they’d been lied to the whole time by their government on the status of the effort, there was a very strong and immediate switch to resenting the previous administration.
They were very receptive to American governance afterwards.
The danger of trying to fool the Russians is we might succeed in fooling the Russians.
Making it look like we are thinking about directly intervening might scare the Russians into launching what they believe is a pre-emptive strike against us.
Of course the other possibility is that what we are seeing is the misdirection. I’m assuming nobody in this thread is participating in White House planning sessions. So maybe the United States is considering direct intervention. In which case, Biden is doing what you said he should be doing and is putting forth a public message that is the opposite of his real intentions.
