Ukraine Watch...

[invalid]

I do not think it is Western military thinking to say it is a bad idea to leave your main battle formation on a narrow road in a 40 mile traffic jam for a week when you don't have total air superiority. I used to be an avid wargame player (40 years ago) and I have replayed battles from every period of history. Putin is clearly in one of 2 positions - either he miscalculated the resistance he would face, or he is so confident of victory that he really does not care how many people die - Ukrainian or Russian - and he has no interest in retaining any of the industrial and social structure of the country,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-60630352

No, I don't think Putin is necessarily in one of those two arbitrary positions. I think Putin is determined and is not going to be stopped by sanctions, certainly. In addition it seems most of the fighting has been in the south of Ukraine so far.

[BritDownUnder]

I think this reference to calling people that you don't agree with Nazis and fascists is somewhat reminiscent of 1980s student politics if it was not so serious.

The RT article worked fine from Australia but I turned off once I saw the denazification mentions.

In my opinion the attack, or lack of it, on Kiev/Kyiv is a feint and the real action is a drive up the Dneiper valley to cut the country in half. Russia presumably taking the East now and the West sometime later.

[Mark]

Russia presumably taking the East now and the West sometime later.

One of many possible outcomes, but the Ukrainians are fighting harder in the East/South than Putin ever expected.

[invalid]

One of many possible outcomes, but the Ukrainians are fighting harder in the East/South than Putin ever expected.

And how do you know that?

[Vortex2]

“What the president of Ukraine literally means when he berates NATO for not enforcing a “no-fly zone” over Ukrainian airspace is that he wants NATO to shoot Russian planes out of the sky. That is to say, President Zelensky wants one nuclear power to engage in a clear act of hot war on another nuclear power. We should let that sink in.” Benjamin Harnell

[Stumuz2]

Plus to enforce a no fly zone you have to first target all air defence systems on the ground. This means using NATO to attack Russia in Russia. It is only when ground air defence system are gone can you start a air defence parol. It will not happen, as this would bolster Putin. Give him the victim status he craves and badly needs. His central bank had 500 billion nicked from under his nose, sanctions will bring massive turbulence to the average Joe. Plus he has a very expensive guerrilla war to fight in Ukraine over the next year or so.

All in all we do not need a no fly zone.

What would help enormously is for Germany to refuse to buy oil and gas. Sanctions aside, the EU most days are giving Putin a approx a billion dollars to finance the war in Ukraine.
France is on the phone everyday begging for mostly French bonds in Russia to be respected, because when they marked to market, the EURO is no more.


https://twitter.com/MacleodFinance/stat ... 08/photo/1

[PS_RalphW]

It is true that Europe and by extension the entire global financial system is in a deep bind over this war. Over the last decade Russia has built up a huge store of Euros and Dollars from selling its oil and gas, and in his mind Putin now sees it as time for a bit of Quid Quo Pro - in this case, returning Ukraine to his sphere of influence. He is, as has been demonstrated in multiple wars, quite happy to kill millions of people to get his way, and at a moral level most of the world quite rightly condemns him for this, but Europe and NATO cannot intervene with direct military action because Putin hold one trump card and one joker - namely the gas tap and nuclear war. If Putin stops the gas flowing he will be killing the golden goose - the Euro will collapse and most of Russia's foreign reserves will be worthless, and his best customer will be out of business. The nuclear option would almost certain escalate very quickly to MAD and is even for Putin a last resort.

At the same time those reserves means that in theory Russia can withstand sanctions for many years as they are self-sufficient in food and energy and most raw materials. As always it will be the poor that suffer most, but that is nothing new to the Russian people and they won't blame Putin for it.

This is hard to judge from the inside, but the impression that the media is giving is that the "propaganda" has been so overwhelmingly successful against Putin that the whole of Western society is voluntarily cutting Russia out of their sphere of business - at the 'soft' level of sport and consumer goods, and at a deeper level where trades unionists are refusing to unload Russian oil or LNG. This alone will not destroy Russia, that oil will find a buyer somewhere in the world, albeit at a lower price, but now financial moves like Visa and Mastercard cancelling all business on Russian or Russian owed accounts looks a lot like the West defaulting on their bills to Putin.

Of course all this does the Western financial system no favours, but Russia is a small economy in global terms and it will be squeezed hard. The question is how much economic contraction will Putin's power based be willing to take in order to sustain a brutal war with little short term prospects of economic or geopolitical gain even if they win militarily?

There is global moral outrage at the loss of life, but ultimately it is economics that decides who lives or dies.

[Mark]

One of many possible outcomes, but the Ukrainians are fighting harder in the East/South than Putin ever expected.

And how do you know that?

I don't, however I think it's fair to say that there's a higher proportion of Russian speakers in the East/South of Ukraine, the East/South is geographically nearer to Russia and there was some level of local support for the Russian occupation of Donbas and Crimea.

Maybe Putin put 2 and 2 together and made 5 ?
The vast majority of Ukrainians seem to oppose Russia now, whatever their ethnic background.
It only leads to hate once any army starts killing civilians, ruining livelihoods and laying a country to waste....

[Mark]

All in all we do not need a no fly zone.

Agreed - plus, from what I understand, most of the damage is being wrought by missiles and shelling, rather than from the air.
However, it's much easier to say this when it's not our families being killed and not our houses being destroyed.
If I was Ukrainian, I'd want any/all help available, and feel let down by the West.

[Mark]

What would help enormously is for Germany to refuse to buy oil and gas. Sanctions aside, the EU most days are giving Putin a approx a billion dollars to finance the war in Ukraine.

True, but the EU isn't the only game in town - there are plenty of other customers out there...
For example, in the past few days, Imran Khan has been busy signing a new trade deal for Russian gas....
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... l-gas.html

We seem to be glorying the fact that we only buy 4% of our gas from Russia, but we're far from innocent in funding Russia....
Maybe we should concentrate on cleaning up all the dirty money in the UK/London before being too critical of others ?
That would help enormously too......

[kenneal - lagger]

Russia's aim is pretty clear to me. It is to overthrow the current elected government and install a Ukrainian version of the Russophile, Lukashenko of Belorus, and the necessary infrastructure to keep him in power until the next dictator is installed to take his place. Any democratically elected President who wasn't Russia friendly would be a Nazi, according to the Hitler of the 21st century, Putin.

It might take a few years to recruit the police and other bully boys necessary to enforce the government but they can always get those from the pro Russian areas. They will be glad of the chance to get their own back on the rest of Ukraine. Until they are in place expect fighting to continue.

[PS_RalphW]

Western analysts are reporting that Russia has now deployed almost 100% of the troops it had prepared for the invasion, and is looking to employ Syrian mercenaries to bolster their numbers.

Also reports that shelling has begun into Odessa.

There are calls to boycott McDonalds and CocaCola because they are not withdrawing trade from Russia.

UK is not going to accept significant numbers of Ukrainian refugees.

Germany is not looking likely to stop buying Russian oil or gas

[clv101]

As the days tick by, the Russia military machine is looking more and more pathetic. Their military prowess seems to have been a con, they simply aren't a first rate military. Nothing they seem to have attempted so far has come across as well executed, competent, efficient or effective... maybe I'm just a victim of western propaganda but they REALLY shouldn't be losing fast jets, helicopters and heavy armour and hundreds of casualties on a daily basis two weeks in, and still not got close the Ukrainian government.

This is simply the end of Russia being (pretending?) a military superpower. All they have are nukes and subs... but what condition is the strategic nuclear force? Both technically and personnel?

[Vortex2]

>> As the days tick by, the Russia military machine is looking more and more pathetic.

The Czech invasion back in 1968 cost them a yea'rs harvest as all the workers and lorries from the fields were needed to support the troops ... and it involved he Soviet Union not just Russia.

Russia has NEVER been capable of mountng a major war without the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

[Vortex2]

>>. but what condition is the strategic nuclear force? Both technically and personnel?

Soviet hardware is generally robust.

They use large strategic warheads because they have poor missile accuracy.

Even if only a handful of missiles detonate somewher/anywhere then we have a problem.

PS Why does the forum keep going offline? Putin at work?