How should west respond to Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[Loren Pechtel]

Primorsk got hit again. Must be Estonia's fault or maybe Finland. We'll have to wait for the real truth from Russia. Two more shadow fleet ships and a Russian patrol boat with a missile launcher. Might be wishful thinking on my part but I hope Russia loses these ports on the Black and Baltic Sea.
As Ukraine's reach gets longer, Russian air defenses grow thinner. Russia is finally getting as good as they give.

The basic problem is that nobody was serious about building anti-drone air defenses. The only country that did much of anything is Israel and even they didn't go nearly far enough. Ukraine is exploiting this weakness and Russia simply lacks the tech manufacturing to compete. Russian military power was based on overwhelming brute force, again and again we see they can't compete on finesse. Big, fast missiles that have a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn. Buying weapons from third world powers because they're superior to what Russia can make. And we keep finding western parts in Russian equipment because Russia can't make them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's also talk of Putin fearing an assassination attempt.

Ukraine probably would not want to take him out. Same as we recognized that it was in our interest not to take out Hitler. You do not want to kill incompetent opposing leaders!

 

[SLD]

MSN

Ukraine has stopped Russia's offensive this year and blunted it hard and counterattacked via drones in ways that Russia had not foreseen. Russia is suffering something like 35,000 casualties a month, with no advances to show for it. More grumbling from Russians about the impact of this war - it's hard to deny its failures when they hit right on your front door in Moscow.

While Ukraine probably can't craft a strong counter attack - yet - they can blunt any further advances and Russia is struggling to do anything on the ground. The question remains - can Putin continue this war without antagonizing the rest of the population. He will have to draft deeper and deeper into Russian society to keep up the pressure, and that hurts his support and his economy.

 

[barbos]

Funny how the referendum to join Russia was after Russia effectively made Crimea "re-became" part of Russia.

Yes, it was not possible to conduct a referendum with nazi controlling the territory.

generally negative view it had among liberals and moderates here

generally negative? You fucking bombed the country for no reason other than to distract population from Epstein Levinsky scandal.
Same with Libya, Iraq and now Iran.
And Georgia. I don't recall you protesting against illegal attack on Russia by Georgia.

 

[barbos]

There's also talk of Putin fearing an assassination attempt.

Ukraine probably would not want to take him out. Same as we recognized that it was in our interest not to take out Hitler. You do not want to kill incompetent opposing leaders!

Riiiiiiiight, and Elensky is competent in your universe.
You really need to have your head examined.

 

[barbos]

Russia is suffering something like 35,000 casualties a month

why not 350,000?

How do you explain body exchange ratio 1000 ukrainian dead to something like 20 russians?
And yes that ratio is real and admitted by the ukrainian side.

 

[Tammuz]

The Iraq War was not conducted by NATO. NATO members France and Germany were among the harshest critics of it. The Iraq War was started by NATO members USA, UK and Poland, as well as non-NATO member Australia.

NATO got involved in the Yugoslavian wars to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing. Given that Russia has expressed desire to commit genocide Ukraine, in addition to the previous one committed by the USSR, I can see why someone supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine oppose interventions to prevent genocide.

 

[Tammuz]

And Georgia. I don't recall you protesting against illegal attack on Russia by Georgia.

Russia's occupation of territories internationally recognized as part of Georgia is not legal.

 

[Tammuz]

Crimea re-became Russia in 2014

"re-became". Boy if that ain't some Orwellian newspeak bullshit.

To be fair they have never been "Ukraine".

In other news, Estonia shot down an ukrainina drone
Whether he was lost or not is not reported.
Elensky must be mad at Estonia now.

Or you could read up on what actually happened.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Funny how the referendum to join Russia was after Russia effectively made Crimea "re-became" part of Russia.

Yes, it was not possible to conduct a referendum with nazi controlling the territory.

What was the excuse when Yanukovych was in charge?

Gosh... I remember earlier in this thread when you thought the Ukrainians were going to welcome you guys with open arms. Though I suppose you got the arms part right.

generally negative view it had among liberals and moderates here

generally negative? You fucking bombed the country for no reason other than to distract population from Epstein Levinsky scandal.

Lewinsky would be during the 90s. Iraq was invaded in 2003. And no, the Balkans efforts weren't distract from Overblown Scandal 1990s.

Same with Libya, Iraq and now Iran.

All to distract from Lewinsky?

And Georgia. I don't recall you protesting against illegal attack on Russia by Georgia.

Oh... there is the "we didn't anticipate you'd have a problem with the Ukraine thing" whining again. Putin failed to read the room correctly.

 

[SLD]

Russia is suffering something like 35,000 casualties a month

why not 350,000?

How do you explain body exchange ratio 1000 ukrainian dead to something like 20 russians?
And yes that ratio is real and admitted by the ukrainian side.

Got a link to prove that? From the Ukrainians that is.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nazi regime have no men left.
They rely almost exclusively on FPV drones in slowing down loss of territory. This will end eventually.
And when it ends it will be lights out for them.

They're relying on FPV drones because it means they don't get killed and can fight again the next day. There's little other combat because your people can't get past the drones.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

ISW reports Russian milbloggers are bitching about Ukrainian drones operating freely over the T0509 highway, preventing supplies from reaching Russian troops. This highway is south of Donetsk toward Mariupol, a connector between H20, extending to Velyka Novosilka and T0508 at Starobesheve extending to Popova Balka. This looks to be about 100km behind the front lines. Reference the interactive map at ISW for perspective.
This seems significant. If Ukrainian drones can control the skies this deep behind the lines keeping supplies from reaching Russian soldiers, this may lead to a collapse of Russia's front lines. Perhaps this is why Putin seems eager to have this war come to a close. And he will use his favorite useful idiot to press for it.

And this is how wars should end: cut the supplies and force surrender without everyone dying.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nukes are useless weapons in this fight. Indeed, nukes seem to me to be pretty useless overall; They "worked" in Japan, but Japan was already defeated, needed an excuse to surrender, and was taken by surprise by a new weapon that only one nation posessed. It's hard to envisage a plausible circumstance where using nukes helps the side that deploys them - and given that their use will make you instantly the most villainized regime in history, you really need them to help a lot.

There's very little you can achieve with a nuke that can't be better achieved by conventional means.

They worked in Japan because the Japanese strategy at that point was to make a final victory so bloody that we would give up and walk away, leaving them in power. The bomb threw that out the window because we could reduce their cities to rubble without being exposed to their AA fire. It was a horrific but not insane strategy that appeared to have become useless. Fortunately they did not realize we didn't have enough bomb production to actually destroy them that way.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is that Ukraine does not trust Russia to keep any agreements, for very good reasons. If Ukraine cedes the Donbas, they would have to abandon their most heavily fortified defensive lines. Then Russia would most likely attack again and take another slice of Ukraine.

And Russia doesn't trust West with any agreements becasue if we leave any significant part of Ukraine to the West you will arm that scum again and use them to attack Russia as they did in the first place.
Putin made a mistake in 2014 when he decided to not interfere with the nazy coup.
The west violated all the agreements with Russia.

There was no coup. Your puppet ran away.

And there never would have been violence had no not invaded in 2014.

It's actually quite easy to have peace with the western powers:

Do not attack other countries, whether by direct or indirect means.

Do not engage in major horrors against your own population.

That's it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fiber-optic drones more expensive than radio-link ones. But they provide high resolution jam-free picture for hunting military targets on the battlefield.
Only deranged idiot would believe they make good tool for terrorizing civilians. Russia can terrorize civilians less expensively just fine. But we don't terrorize civilians, ukrainian army does.

The problem is one of metrics. Russian drones are supposed to kill Ukranian troops, but they are hard to find. Civilians are much easier to find. Thus you get drone operators hitting civilians in order to look good to command.

More telling is the kid's response: look for the guideline, count to 15. Entirely sensible battlefield instructions--given to a civilian. You don't train civilians in how to deal with military threats unless you expect them to face such threats. An untrained civilian might very well recognize to go for the guideline, but a count of 15 for a safety parameter is training.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, Russia hasn't launched thousands of drones and missiles on the Ukrainian civilian population just over the last couple of months.

No, we have not. Unlike US in Iran with their unprovoked agression against people of Iran, Russia strikes exclusively military targets.

Unprovoked??

You have a serious problem of not recognizing indirect attacks as attacks.

Look a few posts up, my post about peaceful coexistence with western powers. Look how badly Iran has violated that: attacking our friends, perpetrating genocides that kill millions. Look at their "Axis of Resistance"--that's Iran + Iranian-controlled puppets. They're admitting what they're doing. None of the other members got there peacefully.

 

[Tigers!]

Some good news today! It seems like the Russians are getting tired of the war and have signaled for the first time that they are open to real negotiations. What's causing this shift? Well, Ukraine attacks are getting deeper into heavily fortified sites. Ukraine has been making some inroads and taking some land back. And it appears that the Russian economy is getting worse. All good news.

MSN

Hitting Moscow, and thereby making it impossible for influential and wealthy Muscovites to keep pretending that the war won't hurt them personally, or that the air defences around their city are impregnable, probably has more to do with it than anything else.

Reminds me of Goering's boast

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So after suffering thousands upon thousands of drone and missile strikes over the past couple months, Ukraine gives back some of what it has got. News is just coming out that Ukraine launched 550 drones at various regions within Russia. From the short videos I've seen, along with the usual military targets, it looks to me like some either commercial or civilian high rise buildings got hit. If initial reports are correct, these targets were within Moscow. So along with the usual military strikes, some symbolic strikes in Moscow will let Muscovites know their country is in fact at war.

It's not just symbolic. Hitting rich-guy targets in Moscow will make rich guys clamor for more air defense in Moscow and that means less at the front.

Think of the Doolittle raid. Launched as a one-way (not suicide--the planes were lost, not the crews) yet quite worthwhile.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Real world politics: if you strike manufacturing in a foreign country you just went to war with that foreign country. Thus it is not done. We bent over backwards to avoid hitting Russians in Vietnam.

Vietnam have never attacked US. Whereas Nazi scum in Kiev attacked Russia, using western weapons and intelligence data. We, of course, returned the favor in Iran somewhat but that was limited only to Iranian defense. Iran is not attacking civilian targets in US proper.

A communist puppet state attacked US forces that were in the country by permission of it's government.

And no attack on Russia happened before your attack of 2014.