I mean you can bring that up anytime a nation invades another, do Israelis think they are the baddies when they shell Palestinians hospital? Do Americans for shelling Iraqi schools?I do wonder if some of the rank and file Russian Troops are beginning to think this.
So an intruder is loose on Joint Base Andrews, and there where abouts are still unknown as of 16 minutes ago.
Really shitty timing for something like this.
Yeah the one in marylandThats the one at DC, right? Maybe kinzinger snuck in to take a plane and make that no fly zone he wanted
Well that will be interesting, if I recall that is one of the more important bases.Yeah the one in maryland
VERY important base.Well that will be interesting, if I recall that is one of the more important bases.
Right if I recall home of AF 1, and more importantly one of if I recall two bases with fighters actually ready to scramble.VERY important base.
Very much so. IIRC where all the QRF in case of DC being attackled are located.Right if I recall home of AF 1, and more importantly one of if I recall two bases with fighters actually ready to scramble.
I mean you can bring that up anytime a nation invades another, do Israelis think they are the baddies when they shell Palestinians hospital? Do Americans for shelling Iraqi schools?
He isn't wrong though.Because that is what your post is.
This is the part I have trouble believing. But it's understandable that when facing a scary and unknowable future they'd fall back on a strategy that has served Russia more or less adequately for half a millennium, even if all signs suggest that it won't this time. Because sometimes everybody is wrong and it's the best alternative to accepting a glide path downward from being a world power, no matter how much sense it would make.So Russia moves today, they secure critical choke points today. They suffer the political and economic consequences today. They spend the military equipment today. So that in fifteen to twenty years, the status quo is that the post expansion borders are the Russian borders as far as the world is concerned. They fortify the critical choke points that they can credibly defend against any European or Turkish adventurism, and need an army an order of magnitude smaller than what they have today.
Dude, what world are you living in? Everybody were giving Ukraine 72 hours max before the invasion began. Russian eventual victory is not really in doubt (they have a lot of crap to throw at their opponents, Ukraine doesn't, unless the West gets itself more heavily involved), the point is that their performance up till now has been an embarrassment, they are being humiliated in front of the entire world for their extremely crappy military performance.The crux of my argument was that Ukrainian Resistance was futile, they were crippled operationally in the first day when Chernobyl fell and Antonov Airport was seized. That prevented them from bottling the Russian Forces in the Pripyat Marshes and from stopping the operational encirclements of the North East UkA forces.
That right there meant they could never do more than launch local counter attacks which are irrelevant at the operational level. Each day they fight, means they lose more and more leverage to negotiate and the Russians tighten the screws even more.
From what little I've heard, Russian domestic propaganda has been selling it as more protection of ethnic Russians at risk from dastardly nazified foreign governments. So if Ukraine agrees to recognize the LPR/DNR and Crimea as "independent" (Russian) and further agree to pre-2014 levels of water supply to Crimea, that could probably IMO be played off as a win, even if the consequence is that the remaining Ukrainian state instantly joins NATO. That merely plays into the siege mentality they've already been selling for the last couple decades.So everyone appears to want Ukraine to win, but what I don't see is any of the talking heads talking about what happens if Ukraine does "win" the initial fight.
Imagine what would happen if when the US invaded Iraq, the US lost and was forced to pull out. What that would do in terms of domestic politics, domestic perception, and international relations is basically impossible to understate.
So what happens if Russia fails to take over its next door neighbor after trying with a full scale invasion? That isn't domestically survivable for not just Putin but the entire governmental apparatus.
That fact means that Russia can't afford to lose. It doesn't matter what they have to do, how expensive it is, or what weapons & tactics they have to resort to. The political damage from any of it is less than the damage from losing the war.
If you actually want some kind of peace or negotiated settlement, it has to be one that Putin can present domestically as a win.
Honestly, the only "peace" I can see as being viable is Russia taking everything East of the Dnieper. But even that isn't really viable because it would require that the west drop all the sanctions and basically pretend that the whole thing didn't happen, and that Ukraine would accept losing a third to half of their territory.
From what little I've heard, Russian domestic propaganda has been selling it as more protection of ethnic Russians at risk from dastardly nazified foreign governments. So if Ukraine agrees to recognize the LPR/DNR and Crimea as "independent" (Russian) and further agree to pre-2014 levels of water supply to Crimea, that could probably IMO be played off as a win, even if the consequence is that the remaining Ukrainian state instantly joins NATO. That merely plays into the siege mentality they've already been selling for the last couple decades.
So if a settlement can be reached (if Putin is willing to settle for anything less than all of Ukraine) I think it's just down to the difference between the territory actually controlled by LPR/DNR on 1/1/2022 and the territory of the entire oblasts they claim. Taking everything to the Dneipr would be asking for an insurgency Russia can ill afford, especially considering the amount of foreign support it would have.
Well, first, no they did not already effectively own the whole Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts:Except that the West would have to dump all the sanctions, concede that territory, and publicly and in writing say that Ukraine isn't ever becoming part of NATO or the EU.
Getting a concession on territory that Russia already effectively owned isn't a "win", especially not at the cost.
And you know that none of the western powers that be would spin it as anything except a Russian loss and humiliations. That those promises both won't be made and wouldn't be worth the paper that they are written on.
Russia grabbing to the Dnieper at least gives them a solid, clear, border to work with. And sealing the territory in question is a LOT easier than trying to do the same to the rest of Ukraine. There would be no entry points that Russia didn't control and letting Ukrainians leave easily would act to reduce a lot of the insurgency potential.
The real problem is that the west (and especially the US) has done what it always does and cast the other side as the absolute enemy that can't possible be given a win. The political damage to western leaders (especially Biden) from allowing Russia to get a "win" is substantial - largely because those same leaders have made it the end of the world.
Tell that to Libya. The US had no real plans on going after them either. And yet, when the Arab Spring came--they were more than happy to enforce a no-fly zone over a country with outdated technology.
And I don't want 120 million to die.
I just want Russia to burn.
How bad will the fallout be if Russia officially loses and Putin is gone?