Russian Invasion of Ukraine 2022
- Thread starter killerofa23
- Start date
Oh, the occupation will be hell for Russia. That doesn't change the fact that once Russia at least nominally takes the major cities and seals the borders, Russia's won.
Putin will gladly let the people who want to flee into the EU leave, which will substantially reduce a lot of the issues with occupation.
Russia will probably push to Ukraines border and grab Moldova to the Dniester river and then negotiate from that point, refusing to return any territory. Probably trading frozen Russian assets to the local population that leaves, to at least some extent.
But Russia won't push into Poland or Romania.
>Once
Comparing time of battles for major cities in Syria, Iraq, and also in Chechnya...
That's something that tends to take months.
1-2 if done well or in smaller cities.
Few months if done normally.
Dozens of months if done badly.
Something like 40k Ukrainians came from the west to join territorial defense since the war started. Its a matter of breaking morale.
Between other spats starting now with Finland and Sweden, NATO tensions and so on, losses and war weariness, they may stretch themselves too thin to hold anything if they go that far.
Look closely at the 2nd picture of the Tunguskas before the Molotovs were thrown.
The quality isn't good but there doesn't appear to be any sort of dirt and mud from driving across the border to Ukraine.
What I can see however is a bit of rust. Rust from sitting in a Ukrainian military warehouse since the end of the Soviet Union.
Thus, these are Ukrainian Tunguskas inherited from the USSR with "Z"s painted on. The camo is also lighter than the typical Russian type.
Also, look at the picture here.
grandpa from the Ukrainian Volkssturm with his double barreled shotgun.
Ukies are scraping the barrel now. The war is almost over.
Still, I can't wait to see Kadyrov's Chechens and the DPR troops crush the neo-Nazis of the Azov division at Mauripol.
The quality isn't good but there doesn't appear to be any sort of dirt and mud from driving across the border to Ukraine.
What I can see however is a bit of rust. Rust from sitting in a Ukrainian military warehouse since the end of the Soviet Union.
Thus, these are Ukrainian Tunguskas inherited from the USSR with "Z"s painted on. The camo is also lighter than the typical Russian type.
Also, look at the picture here.
grandpa from the Ukrainian Volkssturm with his double barreled shotgun.
Ukies are scraping the barrel now. The war is almost over.
Still, I can't wait to see Kadyrov's Chechens and the DPR troops crush the neo-Nazis of the Azov division at Mauripol.
Bassoe
Well-known member
The problem is the Ukrainian goverment trying to forcibly conscript their own people who're trying to flee.
Chiron
Well-known member
And pointing this out on twitter gets you nowhere. The majority of 'experts,' on it have drank their own Kool-Aide.
Its why Putin isn't bothering with the propaganda war, its a no win war and irrelevant. How many divisions does twitter actually have anyway? Answer is none. So Putin is wisely letting twitter trolls be twitter trolls while he wins the real war on the ground.
Agree, UkA by not declaring the plant and its attached city open, invited the unnecessary fight for it. Once their backs were against the river, they should broken out to the east or west than fight a futile battle.
Ukraine has launched a major counter-attack west of Kyiv
It has had some local successes but is not strong enough to alter the outcome. Russian OMGs have been seen at Fastive and Obukhiv which means once this counter-attack peters out, and the Russians retake all the lost positions, Kyiv will be effectively encircled. So best for them to send any remaining children out now.
It is clear the Eastern UkA elements are unable to to retreat now, even if they want to.
Except that Russia will start by just, largely, ignoring the cities. They want the border (and river) crossings along with securing their lines of supply back to Russia proper. Once they have the nation's borders sealed, they will basically start surrounding cities and telling them that if they surrender, Russia will drive them to the border and let them out into the EU and if they don't want to surrender then Russia will just wait until the lack of food, water, heat, and power gets them to surrender anyways.
Russia isn't grabbing Ukraine for people (although they will gladly keep anyone willing to stay) or natural resources (although, again, they will gladly take it) but to grab key strategic choke points
And more than a million Ukrainians have already left.
Russia pulled the trigger, that means that Putin is prepared to go all the way and not back down. There is no real cost that is "too much" and will make Russia pull back.
If Russia has to seal the borders and then basically starve out the Ukrainians town by town then they will do so. For Russia, this isn't a war for resources or the like; its a war of (long term) strategic necessity.
Russia has systemic issues internal to the nation that it needs to deal with, and the government is aware of this. One of the ways to buy time and security to deal with those problems is to secure critical locations that allow Russia to secure its borders with less manpower.
Russia has been cut off from the global economy. That is going to result in global recession and famine across much of the world. Europe is looking at an economic shock at least as bad as 2008 as a first order effect.
Even if Russia hadn't moved on Ukraine, the global economy has a lot of fairly existential issues baked in at the moment and could essentially implode at basically any time. That would destroy the Russian economy anyways.
So Russia moves on Ukraine, causing a global economic catastrophe. The Middle East is heavily reliant on Russian (and Ukrainian) agriculture to keep its population fed. The last time that food supply was disrupted, we got the Arab Spring. Russia has a secure route to Iran via the Caspian Sea, which means that they can keep Iran fed while encouraging them to disrupt the ME as a whole.
ME disruption will further disrupt global oil supplies.
China is very badly positioned when it comes to importing ME oil. It's much better positioned in terms of strategic vulnerability to importing Russian oil, nat gas, and food.
In terms of real assets, Russia is one of the world's wealthiest nations - especially on a per capita basis. In a world where global financial markets are fucked, the calculus changes. It probably won't work, but Russia and China working together can be a strong isolated power bloc.
Basically, Putin has decided that it is time to try and trigger de-globalization hard and break the international system.
Right now, everyone is standing together condemning Russia. But will that last when food riots are occuring? When Europe is suffering from rolling blackouts? When the US is faced with throwing back on the oil export ban or having two hundred dollar a barrel oil in the US? When Europe is brain draining into the US? When Germany is suddenly actually a military power again?
Remember, Germany needs raw material imports to feed its entire economy. It also needs energy imports. And yeah, Nord Stream 2 might be "shut down" but the physical infrastructure is all in place and it could be "turned on" with literally an order.
Domestically, Putin just has to keep his hold on Russia. So long as he remains in power and with the support of relevant local stakeholders, Putin has the time to outlast opposition.
No it's not...
SchrodingersWehraboo
Well-known member
This is in a lot of way a castle problem. They can't turn their back on cities while dealing with the countryside, locking down cities busies a lot of forces, and there's a lot of countryside to pacify with so many forces busy locking down cities.
The only simple solution here is more forces. Which means draft. Which will hit both the political side, and increase losses.
No, Russia is grabbing Ukraine for Putin's strategic position in history books. That's why most or all of it has to end up controlled. Details and specifics are adjustable, but guaranteed (not elections or other lottery) government taking commands from Moscow is a minimum.
Most of them not fighting age men anyway.
Its not. They had many options of more limited operations with less ambitious goals.
But being less ambitious doesn't look good in the history books, especially if you have spent years claiming that Ukraine and even beyond are all rightfully Russian and Russia was cheated out of them by the fall of USSR and events after it. Putin expected a glorious easy win and miscalculated badly, he's getting a win after a brutal slog, with some unexpected chances of not even getting a win at all.
But does Putin have the biological clock to outlast anyone? He's a 70 year old man living in a lot of stress since decades.
Russia's wealth reserves can last it a few years if used well. But its Russia, so at least half will get siphoned off, leaving 1-2 years at best.
Food riots? Arab Spring was a problem of mostly the kind of ME countries that weren't oil wealthy, or couldn't apply that properly for other reasons (Iraq). For those who are, there is always Brazil, Africa and so on food wise.
Likewise, only few EU countries have committed heavily to a gas heavy energy sector already. Sure, the greens will need to accept some very bad news, but that's great news for everyone else, their ideas for how to run countries were bad anyway.
Why? They should fight on behalf of their country. Mind you, I wouldn't want to fight for their government, but I sure as hell wouldn't flee.
SchrodingersWehraboo
Well-known member
Ukrainians already blew up a few of their trucks in kiev and called it a “defeated russian convoy”, I wouldn’t put it past them to do that.
Floridaman
Well-known member
Yes, very much so. The bundswehr has massive supply problems.
29% of the worlds wheat exports flow through the Black Sea and are sourced from Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is not going to be planting this year, wheat planting season is in April and there is zero chance that the situation is stabilized to the point where farms are being planted at scale by then.
Russian wheat exports run into the problem of 1) shipping and 2) paying for them. Commercial shipping in the Black Sea is practically uninsurable at the moment, and is basically going to shut down (save for Russian owned vessels). Russia is not going to accept payment in dollars or euros; they won't trade wheat for money in accounts that Russia can't use. So how is that wheat getting paid for?
Then you have the global fertilizer market. 40% of the Potash comes from Russia and Belarus. China has effectively stopped exporting phosphate based fertilizers. US fertilizer production basically meets US (NA at a stretch) demand. Regardless, the world is going to be facing a global fertilizer shortage this year (especially if Russia remains excluded). That has a substantial impact on farming across the world.
So yes, this conflict is very likely to cause substantial food insecurity if not outright famine.
Now look at oil. Oil already had some fairly substantial supply issues BEFORE Russia invaded Ukraine. Interrupting Russian supplies will only make that worse. And this is not a pricing problem but a problem of demand outstripping supply by a substantial margin. Basically every single product you care to name is downstream of oil and so an increase in the price of oil results in an increase in the price of that product.
We already have inflation issues, they are about to get worse.
These are all direct consequences of Russia's invasion/the response to it. They don't touch the second and third order impacts and don't touch any of the other ways that Russia matters to the global economy.
The European economy is not prepared for any of this. It's just lost a substantial market (Russia), a substantial source of raw materials (Russia), had its energy supply put in jeopardy, and found itself facing a security threat that it was utterly unprepared for.
You think that the Ukrainian partisans are going to leave the pipelines intact once the writing is really on the wall and Europe has proven that its not actually going to do anything more material to improve Ukraines situation? Pipelines are easy for partisans to break and hard to secure.
Or the political issues. To move off of Russian power, Europe needs to return to nuclear. It is the only viable power source relative to the scale of the problem. "Green" energy at the scale needed is a pipe dream that would cost trillions and still not work. But you think that European politicians can admit that reality?
The Russia force is already largely conscripts. And no, simply locking down a city doesn't really need all that many ground forces if you are willing to be decently ruthless about it. So long as you can keep the city under surveillance and have decent coordination with your artillery, you can basically keep the city contained enough to let you ignore it.
You take/disable the power plants, cut the communications links, deploy decent jamming, and then interdict shipments into the city as you are able. Minefields are also useful.
Russia isn't grabbing Ukraine because Putin wants to be a conqueror.
Ukraine is still losing them in substantial numbers.
Not really. The goals that Russia cares about are all on the Western edge of Ukraine. The only "lesser" goal that Russia could credibly have gone for is everything east of the Dnieper River; and the expected consequences of trying that are identical to the consequences for grabbing all of Ukraine.
He's got another decade.
Define wealth. Because Dollars and Euros aren't really wealth.
Nations that are entirely reliant on fertilizer for their food production. Nations that have transport costs at least twice as high as Russia's. Nations whose food products are already spoken for on the global market.
Russia and Ukraine combine for, literally, 29% of ALL the world's wheat exports. That is not something that can be casually or quickly replaced.
Most of Europe is critically reliant on Russian energy. Not just for electricity or heating, but also for industrial processes. Without Russian gas, you are looking at substantial inflation in Europe at best. Now, again, throw in the loss of the Russian market and the GLOBAL loss in excess money as everyone's energy and food prices increase. Europe's economy is driven by the export of what are, largely, luxury goods.
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Top Russian general killed by Ukrainian sniper
Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky, who was the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of Russia's Central Military District, was killed yesterday as Ukraine's defences held firm.
Pretty much this. If the EU and US leaders don't already know what they've unleashed, then they're fools.