Ukraine Watch...

[clv101]

No one is seriously talking about nuclear weapons, it will be game over for Russia if they use a single one.

I don't know about that. If Russia used say 2-4, small (5-20kT) nukes in Ukraine, on Kyiv and a couple of strategic military/logistical targets what would happen? I don't think it would dramatically change Russia's transactional relationships with the non-west rest of world and I don't think US/UK would nuke Russia - the risk of Russian response would be deemed unacceptable.

[Vortex2]

No one is seriously talking about nuclear weapons, it will be game over for Russia if they use a single one.

If they are approaching game over anyway, what will they have to lose?

[Vortex2]

If Russia used say 2-4, small (5-20kT) nukes in Ukraine

The smaller tactical warheads can be very useful - and don't need to lead to a mass exchange.

The Beirut explosion was around 3kt .. an explosion of that size in Ukraine wouldn't seem too disastrous.

(The Hiroshima and Nagasaki photos are only so dire because almost everything was built of wood and paper. A British POW survived in Hiroshima a mile or so from the explosion ... because he was working in a small concrete tool-shed.

[adam2]

I think that putin or his senior officers are quite mad enough to resort to nuclear weapons.
If they do, then in my view the free world should avoid nuclear retaliation but should make a huge response with conventional weapons. "Doing a Dresden" is the popular phrase within the UK armed forces, and allies.

All rusian assets oversea should then be confiscated including ships, aircraft, and buildings.

[Vortex2]

All russian assets oversea should then be confiscated including ships, aircraft, and buildings.

We have already done much of that.

The US will want to 'administer' (steal) the Russian oil, gas etc.

RAND or some similar think-tank will have modelled much of this as far back as the 1960s.

All sides have play books which they are working through step by step.

The last chapters read as follows: <this chapter intentionally blank>

[Vortex2]

I think that Putin or his senior officers are quite mad enough

There is no reason to assume that your enemies are mad.

[clv101]

I think that Putin or his senior officers are quite mad enough

There is no reason to assume that your enemies are mad.

Indeed! Assuming your enemies are *mad* is a cheap and easy way out. More likely is that your enemies simply don't share your values and beliefs. During the Cold War we spent a long time trying to *understand* our enemy, that approach seems to have gone out of fashion these days.

[Default0ptions]

Ralph said: “The Ukrainians will not stop fighting even if the US and UK walk away”

How many Ukrainians have you asked about this?

Your opinion is just so much guff unless you’ve been talking to a reasonably large sample of Ukrainians.

There aren’t many Ukrainians left who want to fight.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... nscription

I’m sure they’ll be happy to know that you’re supporting this senseless war right down to the last Ukrainian.

If you really believe in the cause do please go and volunteer and send us some battlefield reports.

[Default0ptions]

No one is seriously talking about nuclear weapons, it will be game over for Russia if they use a single one.

If they are approaching game over anyway, what will they have to lose?

Quite right. Whatever whataboutery the western press makes you believe, the uncomfortable fact is that Russia considers this an existential crisis and has repeatedly said that it will go for mutually assured nuclear destruction if it’s pushed too far.

The ‘mutually assured destruction’ bit means that YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE gets nuked too. Not just Russia. You don’t get to wave an “I’m so woke and ignorant that it can’t possibly affect me” flag and escape the consequences.

Mutually assured destruction means what it says on the fuc<ing tin.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you convince yourself that it’s not an existential crisis for Russia.

It actually matters whether Russia thinks it is; even if you think Russia is wrong about that.

[Default0ptions]

No one is seriously talking about nuclear weapons, it will be game over for Russia if they use a single one.

I don't know about that. If Russia used say 2-4, small (5-20kT) nukes in Ukraine, on Kyiv and a couple of strategic military/logistical targets what would happen? I don't think it would dramatically change Russia's transactional relationships with the non-west rest of world and I don't think US/UK would nuke Russia - the risk of Russian response would be deemed unacceptable.

Why would Russia need to? They’re doing fine with conventional weapons and the Ukrainian ‘spring offensive’ has remained largely unsprung.

The Ukraine, however, is now using cluster bombs in the territories that they consider theirs (cluster munitions really let the population know you care for them perhaps) and we’re supplying them with depleted uranium shells too.

Luckily for them we are trying to rename chicken kiev to chicken kyiv, though it hasn’t really caught on yet.

Phew. That’s all sorted then.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... 0545d67d6c

[Vortex2]

The Ukraine, however, is now using cluster bombs in the territories that they consider theirs

They have been using them in civilian areas for ages.

They are now using them in 155mm shells because the US has run out of standard high explosive shells.

Luckily S Korea is sending 500,000 155mm shells to Ukraine via the US, so Happy Days!

[Default0ptions]

Vortex: “They are now using them in 155mm shells because the US has run out of standard high explosive shells.”

Yeah. But still the papers say Russia is running out of ammunition!

The facts on the ground turn out to be that the whole of NATO can’t keep Ukraine supplied but Russia still seems to be doing just fine. Or at least has had enough ammunition to render the Ukrainian spring offensive a complete failure. And is indisputably able to keep it up.

Maybe the sight of a few archaic F 16s burning on the Ukrainian tarmac will show them damn Russkies who’s the boss.

I never would have believed that so many people would swallow the sheer, in your face, blatant and easily refutable propaganda that the media continue to serve up about this situation.

But then again, many of these same people seem to be able to believe that the totally incoherent and obviously demented Biden is ‘the leader of the free world’. He’s so obviously unfit for the job (they had to cut his mike the other day) that you really do actually need to ask just who is actually running America.

“Democracy: the best government that money can buy”

[Default0ptions]

Oh brilliant.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/09/11/bli ... -missiles/

Let’s all just save our great rulers the trouble and commit suicide instead of waiting for their pathetic war games to play out.

The only saving grace is that the Russian electronic warfare systems seem to have been able to deal with the HIMARS and the much touted Shadowstorm missiles.

You’d have been sure to see all the great successes they gave Ukraine in the news. Oh - the news didn’t report any successes from these weapon systems, did they?

Umm. So - did they work at all?

Maybe the ATACMS will work?

Do please let me know when any news comes in about these being successfully deployed!

This is nothing like bombing wedding parties and droning civilians in Afghanistan.

And the Afghanistan venture turned out so well. Umm did it turn out so well?

And all they had were AK 47s and IEDs

[Default0ptions]

Adam. I don’t like to disagree with you but what do base this analysis on?

“I think that putin or his senior officers are quite mad enough to resort to nuclear weapons.”

If you compare the relative condition of Kiev now to the horrendous destruction of Baghdad in the very first day of the American ‘shock and awe’ invasion of Iraq, you have to concede that Russia has done NOTHING like it.

Why on earth would they use nukes?

They’re winning hands down on the battlefield.

[mr brightside]

It doesn’t matter whether or not you convince yourself that it’s not an existential crisis for Russia.

It actually matters whether Russia thinks it is; even if you think Russia is wrong about that.

This is the nub of the whole issue for me, and demonstrates quite well my argument about everybody's idea of truth being different. NATO started to expand towards Russia like they promised not to some time ago, and Putin thought they were after his country. The western truth is that NATO were not planning an invasion, the Russian truth is that they were.

The only way out of the conflict is for everyone to get round the table and eat a slice of humble pie.