Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[Mandy Lifeboats]

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think there’s some erroneous analysis in there. Firstly “we”. There is no “we”. Not in the sense that there is a unified entity, and nor is there a shared “tactic” or approach.

FWIW, there’s obviously Ukraine, which has been invaded and war-crimed and terrorised and robbed and which desperately wants and needs lots and lots of help and assistance, military and financial. Ukraine wants to rid itself of the invaders.

Then there are a few nations which are pretty helpful to Ukraine, including the UK & USA, who have some military clout in terms of providing arms and training, but which are also wary of letting really hi tech kit go to Ukraine lest it gets captured and reverse engineered by the Russians.

Then there are Ukraine’s close neighbours who are very supportive, but don’t have the military clout, though they’re admirably doing all they can.

Then there are more reticent Western European nations, who are more mouth and less trousers.

Then there’s the EU, which in turn has the likes of Hungary and the Czech Republic which are highly dependent on Russia.

Then there’s NATO, there’s the UN…

So from that lot (and more) any kind of analysis that it’s an “us” and a “them” doesn’t really pass the test, in my book. Some nations sanction, some selectively sanction, others trade more enthusiastically than previously with Russia.

There is no masterplan, no master manipulator, no controller of the non-Russian “side”.

This. 

[chrisp65]

 

8 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think there’s some erroneous analysis in there. Firstly “we”. There is no “we”. Not in the sense that there is a unified entity, and nor is there a shared “tactic” or approach.

FWIW, there’s obviously Ukraine, which has been invaded and war-crimed and terrorised and robbed and which desperately wants and needs lots and lots of help and assistance, military and financial. Ukraine wants to rid itself of the invaders.

Then there are a few nations which are pretty helpful to Ukraine, including the UK & USA, who have some military clout in terms of providing arms and training, but which are also wary of letting really hi tech kit go to Ukraine lest it gets captured and reverse engineered by the Russians.

Then there are Ukraine’s close neighbours who are very supportive, but don’t have the military clout, though they’re admirably doing all they can.

Then there are more reticent Western European nations, who are more mouth and less trousers.

Then there’s the EU, which in turn has the likes of Hungary and the Czech Republic which are highly dependent on Russia.

Then there’s NATO, there’s the UN…

So from that lot (and more) any kind of analysis that it’s an “us” and a “them” doesn’t really pass the test, in my book. Some nations sanction, some selectively sanction, others trade more enthusiastically than previously with Russia.

There is no masterplan, no master manipulator, no controller of the non-Russian “side”.

 

Oh there is a ‘we’, but unfortunately ‘we’ haven’t chosen to act as a coherent force.

Previously, ‘we’ have chosen to be a coalition of the willing on various campaigns. This time its all a bit more half arsed. It’s a bit the worst of both worlds as we (the UK) are now clearly ‘at war’ with Russia but not fully committed and organised with enough partners to make it decisive. So between us we are choosing a path of extending the period of rape and torture and murder of civilians and the levelling of cities and the polluting of seas and rivers with bombed out chemical plants and steel works.

Again though, I’ll put my hand up and freely admit to being a minimally informed armchair punter.

I’m just seeing this as ‘we’ allow the expansion of Russia by a few hundred square kilometres every few years. Or we try to stop it quickly if we can. Or we chose to sacrifice Ukrainians in a misguided hope of exhausting one of the biggest nations on the planet.

[blandy]

11 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Previously, ‘we’ have chosen to be a coalition of the willing on various campaigns.

Like when? There's never been a "we" in terms of a coherent chunk of the same nations with the same aims.

Falklands? No. Iraq? No, Iraq part 2 - No, Libya? No. Kosovo No, Syria No... The closest was Afghanistan, perhaps, when the US invoked NATO article 5.

Some countries are more closely aligned than others, it's true. But I contend there isn't a unified "we" and never was and never will be.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

NATO is united. I firmly believe that any attack of a NATO country will see a devastating NATO counter-attack. Russia knows this  

But politically it's a a real mess.  The 3 main parties (US, UK, EU) need to remain united and in agreement.  I doubt they will.  

[blandy]

17 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

So between us we are choosing a path of extending the period of rape and torture and murder of civilians and the levelling of cities and the polluting of seas and rivers with bombed out chemical plants and steel works.

As an addition, this is a pet hate of mine. Newspapers do it a lot with their headlines and articles and opinion pieces. It's always XY or Z bad is happening and we must act now. No, not really. You (the article writer are you. You are not 'we" and when you say "we" you actually mean "somebody else must do something I want")

Anyway - the UK cannot either shorten, or extend the period of rape and torture.... Nor can france, or Germany, or the UN, or NATO (without risking, seriously, destruction of the planet) or anyone else. Short of that all that nations or international orgs can do is follow their own instincts and judgements and try and cohere others to follow, or persuade others, but there's no kind of rule or law that says "do what the UK/US/France/Germany/Norway/Hungary/whoever says is the right thing". Each is different.

It's not, therefore that (the non-existent) "we" are choosing a path, more that the sequence of events that occur is outside the control, but not influence, to an extent., of those choosing to either involve themselves, recuse themselves, increase or decrease trade or a load of other stuff.

There are unintended consequences. Boycott oil and Gas, the price goes up, Russia sells less, but earns more. Europe stops all Russian goods and trade with it, but then the price will fall, and China and India and Africa see cheaper oil and gas, and boom, Russia increases sales to those poorer nations and...

The illusion of control is just that. It's much messier than that.

[chrisp65]

9 minutes ago, blandy said:

Like when? There's never been a "we" in terms of a coherent chunk of the same nations with the same aims.

Falklands? No. Iraq? No, Iraq part 2 - No, Libya? No. Kosovo No, Syria No... The closest was Afghanistan, perhaps, when the US invoked NATO article 5.

Some countries are more closely aligned than others, it's true. But I contend there isn't a unified "we" and never was and never will be.

I thought that the Iraq War was a coalition of the willing? That could surely count as ‘we’.

So I just wiki’d it and there were troop deployments from U.S., UK, Australia, Poland, South Korea, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Denmark, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Albania, Mongolia, Singapore, Latvia, Bosnia, Tonga, Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Moldova.

 

[chrisp65]

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

As an addition, this is a pet hate of mine. Newspapers do it a lot with their headlines and articles and opinion pieces. It's always XY or Z bad is happening and we must act now. No, not really. You (the article writer are you. You are not 'we" and when you say "we" you actually mean "somebody else must do something I want")

Anyway - the UK cannot either shorten, or extend the period of rape and torture.... Nor can france, or Germany, or the UN, or NATO (without risking, seriously, destruction of the planet) or anyone else. Short of that all that nations or international orgs can do is follow their own instincts and judgements and try and cohere others to follow, or persuade others, but there's no kind of rule or law that says "do what the UK/US/France/Germany/Norway/Hungary/whoever says is the right thing". Each is different.

It's not, therefore that (the non-existent) "we" are choosing a path, more that the sequence of events that occur is outside the control, but not influence, to an extent., of those choosing to either involve themselves, recuse themselves, increase or decrease trade or a load of other stuff.

There are unintended consequences. Boycott oil and Gas, the price goes up, Russia sells less, but earns more. Europe stops all Russian goods and trade with it, but then the price will fall, and China and India and Africa see cheaper oil and gas, and boom, Russia increases sales to those poorer nations and...

The illusion of control is just that. It's much messier than that.

 

If we cannot do anything to shorten or extend this, why on earth are we involved?

 

[magnkarl]

16 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

If we cannot do anything to shorten or extend this, why on earth are we involved?

 

Because we want to help where we can without causing a nuclear war. It’s an unbearable balancing act between conventionally crippling Russia and not getting Putin so angry that he’ll put his shivering hand on the button.

Ideally if more people just gave a little, Putin would have no big enemy, rather than the US, UK, Scandinavia and former Soviet republics doing pretty much all the heavy lifting. It’s a shambles that NATO can’t align and send equal amounts of tech and equipment per their gdp. 

One of Putin’s believed allies in Kazakhstan have today gone out very publicly and said they don’t recognise Luhansk, Abkhazia, Donetsk or South Ossetia, so Putin’s circle of friends is now down to Assad and Lukashenko. Even he must realise what this shit show has caused.

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Because we want to help where we can without causing a nuclear war. It’s an unbearable balancing act between conventionally crippling Russia and not getting Putin so angry that he’ll put his shivering hand on the button.

Ideally if more people just gave a little, Putin would have no big enemy, rather than the US, UK, Scandinavia and former Soviet republics doing pretty much all the heavy lifting. It’s a shambles that NATO can’t align and send equal amounts of tech and equipment per their gdp. 

One of Putin’s believed allies in Kazakhstan have today gone out very publicly and said they don’t recognise Luhansk, Abkhazia, Donetsk or South Ossetia, so Putin’s circle of friends is now down to Assad and Lukashenko. Even he must realise what this shit show has caused.

So, you think we can influence things, Blandy thinks we can’t.

I’m just the numpty in the middle trying to work out the ethics of helping just enough not to let it end. 

[blandy]

10 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

So, you think we can influence things, Blandy thinks we can’t.

I think the UK can and is influencing things and haven’t said otherwise. Indeed I specifically said

11 hours ago, blandy said:

the sequence of events that occur is outside the control, but not influence, to an extent., of those choosing to either involve themselves…

Where I don’t agree with you is your assertion that either individual or collective nations (“we”) can and are deliberately choosing to extend the war.

 

[chrisp65]

The sequence of events is always going to be outside of anyone’s control, it’s war, nobody can fully predict the path of a war. Nobody would have predicted the Taliban now in control and needing to fight off IS in Afghanistan. Clearly nobody thought Iraq would pan out as it did when they were arming Saddam Hussein to fight against Iran.

But ‘we’ clearly can impact the duration and direction of the war. If we choose to only send defensive weapons of limited range, then that will not end the war as rapidly as having sent other weapons. Sending defensive weapons is good. It’s not the quickest way out of this when the Russian aim is to keep the land they have invaded.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

If we choose to only send defensive weapons of limited range, then that will not end the war as rapidly as having sent other weapons

What are defensive weapons?

[magnkarl]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

The sequence of events is always going to be outside of anyone’s control, it’s war, nobody can fully predict the path of a war. Nobody would have predicted the Taliban now in control and needing to fight off IS in Afghanistan. Clearly nobody thought Iraq would pan out as it did when they were arming Saddam Hussein to fight against Iran.

But ‘we’ clearly can impact the duration and direction of the war. If we choose to only send defensive weapons of limited range, then that will not end the war as rapidly as having sent other weapons. Sending defensive weapons is good. It’s not the quickest way out of this when the Russian aim is to keep the land they have invaded.

Just to paint a picture for you Chris. You can stand at the border with Russia and fire an air gun over the border, it'd be considered an offensive weapon. The whole idea of us not supplying long range stuff is idiotic and clearly an attempt to show Putin that we don't want nuclear war. The MLRS systems we're sending can easily reach Belgorod from Ukranian held territory, so can the Caesar and M777's. It's a way that our governments are trying to keep Putin calm and not worth the oxygen used to say the phrase. The PzH that the Dutch have sent with the right configuration can hit targets at around 54kms with deadly accuracy, once these get delivered I presume we'll see many more 'fires' inside Russia. 

Considering the Dutch, Scandinavians and U.S have supplied Harpoon and NSM missiles (139km range Harpoon, 185km NSM), there's absolutely no reason to keep going with that line. The NSM missile can be re-rigged to fire at ground targets, and afaik we've supplied Brimstone missiles (60+ km range), so the whole idea about offensive and defensive weapons is just political mumbo jumbo.

All things considering I'm pretty sure Ukraine have already received longer range stuff, it's just not being broadcast.

Some NATO nations have developed plans to counter Russian reliance on artillery, the Ukrainians are possibly adopting these strategies. They essentially mean that you let Russia pound away at very strong defensive positions with more and more artillery, then you map out their artillery and strike them all at once with your longer range artillery and missile systems. Ukraine may be waiting for enough long range supplies in order to essentially destroy most of Russia's artillery in one foul swoop. It's a tried and tested Finnish strategy.

Edited June 19, 2022 by magnkarl

[PussEKatt]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

What are defensive weapons?

Not sure,but I think they are weapons used for defence.

[Genie]

A shield?

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

What are defensive weapons?

I’m repeating the language I’m seeing on here, and I’m getting from sound bites on the news.

I was under the impression that the U.S. was not supplying their longest range artillery as they didn’t want to be accused of giving Ukraine ‘offensive’ weapons that could be fired in to Russia. I mean, personally I’d have thought that would depend on how close to the Russian border you start, but I’m absolutely not an expert.

 

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

Just to paint a picture for you Chris. You can stand at the border with Russia and fire an air gun over the border, it'd be considered an offensive weapon. The whole idea of us not supplying long range stuff is idiotic and clearly an attempt to show Putin that we don't want nuclear war. The MLRS systems we're sending can easily reach Belgorod from Ukranian held territory, so can the Caesar and M777's. It's a way that our governments are trying to keep Putin calm and not worth the oxygen used to say the phrase. The PzH that the Dutch have sent with the right configuration can hit targets at around 54kms with deadly accuracy, once these get delivered I presume we'll see many more 'fires' inside Russia. 

Considering the Dutch, Scandinavians and U.S have supplied Harpoon and NSM missiles (139km range Harpoon, 185km NSM), there's absolutely no reason to keep going with that line. The NSM missile can be re-rigged to fire at ground targets, and afaik we've supplied Brimstone missiles (60+ km range), so the whole idea about offensive and defensive weapons is just political mumbo jumbo.

All things considering I'm pretty sure Ukraine have already received longer range stuff, it's just not being broadcast.

Some NATO nations have developed plans to counter Russian reliance on artillery, the Ukrainians are possibly adopting these strategies. They essentially mean that you let Russia pound away at very strong defensive positions with more and more artillery, then you map out their artillery and strike them all at once with your longer range artillery and missile systems. Ukraine may be waiting for enough long range supplies in order to essentially destroy most of Russia's artillery in one foul swoop. It's a tried and tested Finnish strategy.

 

You might be better off telling the US military about the air gun theory, I got my ‘defensive’ weapons terminology from them.

As far as the theory of not upsetting the nuclear nutter, if we genuinely think the nutter might go nuclear depending on how far Ukraine can throw shells, then I’m not sure any reassuring words are going to help.

I also remain to be convinced with this latest version of ‘allowing’ Russia to do something as a way of luring them in to a false sense of security because pretty bloody soon the masterstroke counter attack will kick in.

 

[blandy]

50 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I’m repeating the language I’m seeing on here, and I’m getting from sound bites on the news.

I was under the impression that the U.S. was not supplying their longest range artillery as they didn’t want to be accused of giving Ukraine ‘offensive’ weapons that could be fired in to Russia. I mean, personally I’d have thought that would depend on how close to the Russian border you start, but I’m absolutely not an expert.

I was trying to prompt thought around 2 things really.

Firstly "defensive weapons are weapons deployed to repel an attack(er)" (as @PussEKatt said) - so basically just about anything - whether a handgun, a SAM, an anti-tank missile, artillery, MLRS, artillery, drones, aircraft and so on - all the stuff the West has been supplying. And that's what Ukraine is attempting to do - to repel the Russian invaders.

But then of course, there's a desire on Ukraine's part to essentially "attack" the territory taken by the Russian forces, and to do that the Ukrainians need...er. exactly the same types of weapons as they use to defend themselves.

So in other words what Ukraine needs are "weapons" and that's what they're getting. There's not really any such thing as a solely defensive weapon. They have a desire, of course, to have better weapons, as you say - whether longer range artillery and Missiles, fancy drones, aircraft and etc. And they've asked for that stuff. Here, (going back to the "we" again) there is not unified "we" response. the UK and US, Norway, Denmark have to an extent granted their request, Germany Switzerland, France rather less so. It's individual nations acting on their own initiative or views or politics, not a coherent approach from the RotW.

[Arj Guy]

1 hour ago, magnkarl said:

Some NATO nations have developed plans to counter Russian reliance on artillery, the Ukrainians are possibly adopting these strategies. They essentially mean that you let Russia pound away at very strong defensive positions with more and more artillery, then you map out their artillery and strike them all at once with your longer range artillery and missile systems. Ukraine may be waiting for enough long range supplies in order to essentially destroy most of Russia's artillery in one foul swoop. It's a tried and tested Finnish strategy.

Of course, Ukraine are using  the tried and tested strategy of getting pounded by artillery which has resulted in them losing around 1000 troops a day (Ukraine's figures, not mine). Genius

Edited June 19, 2022 by Arj Guy

[magnkarl]

13 minutes ago, Arj Guy said:

Of course, Ukraine are using  the tried and tested strategy of getting pounded by artillery and losing  around 1000 troops a day (Ukraine's figures, not mine). Genius

Do share where you get your 1000 a day figure.

Last time I read about it (two days ago), Zelensky said 100 a day, count in wounded and MIA which is usually around 2/3, and you've got 300. 

I'm not sure if you read it but the Ukranian army has gone out and essentially said that all sources bar their own figures are speculation. I'm sure Zelensky is privy to this, but the 1000 figure you're quoting has been debunked as a non-military or government official speculating rather than stating fact. A bit like when Russia claims they've lost two tanks an a shoe.

In other news, it seems like Lukashenko is intent on starting a revolt in his own country by sending troops into Ukraine. All 24.000 of his front line personnel.

This is the same Belarussian army that refused to fight in the first place.

I was wondering if NATO could make an example out of Belarus to show Putin what would happen if he decided to take this too far. They're not nuclear, have a very small army and a population ready to revolt. Putin doesn't have the resources to stop anyone in Belarus. Poland has more policemen than Belarus has active military personnel.

Edited June 19, 2022 by magnkarl