How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[crazyfingers]

I think SLD knows more about this than I do

 

[Jayjay]

SLD is an optimist.

I might be a bit but I also have 30 years of military experience and multiple combat deployments to Afghanistan. I’ve served at top headquarters and participated in very high level exercises and know the necessity of proper military planning and war gaming. I also attended a war college.

I also know a lot of military history. And have read a lot of analysis of this operation. And I even talk with friends in high places at the Pentagon. The Russians will fail unless they mobilize their entire forces and call up their reservists. They will need to cut off western resupply as well and that risks NATO involvement and means they have to go deep into eastern Ukraine where the terrain becomes a more serious factor.

They cannot even come close with only 190,000 troops. This is not Grozny nor Aleppo. They will fail.

I bow down to your expertise.

However, even though Putin has said he won't call in the reserves, what if he changes his mind?

 

[ZiprHead]

Nine Russian generals killed in war as leaked report brands invasion a 'failure'

The latest death of one of Putin's military commanders comes as one Kremlin official reportedly described the Russian campaign to subdue its neighbour Ukraine as a 'clusterf***'

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[SLD]

SLD is an optimist.

I might be a bit but I also have 30 years of military experience and multiple combat deployments to Afghanistan. I’ve served at top headquarters and participated in very high level exercises and know the necessity of proper military planning and war gaming. I also attended a war college.

I also know a lot of military history. And have read a lot of analysis of this operation. And I even talk with friends in high places at the Pentagon. The Russians will fail unless they mobilize their entire forces and call up their reservists. They will need to cut off western resupply as well and that risks NATO involvement and means they have to go deep into eastern Ukraine where the terrain becomes a more serious factor.

They cannot even come close with only 190,000 troops. This is not Grozny nor Aleppo. They will fail.

I bow down to your expertise.

However, even though Putin has said he won't call in the reserves, what if he changes his mind?

Then he is admitting failure. And that may be a bridge too far for other elites. Putin isn’t Stalin. He may be an autocrat but he isn’t able to make any decision he wants and it will be obeyed. He faces significant opposition internally. He has to be afraid of a revolt in Chechnya again. This is not his only security problem.

When the US was considering invading Iraq senior officers estimated a necessary 450,000 troops to secure the country. Bush pushed much less assuming that the Iraqis wouldn’t fight. Tommy Franks went along with this and the Iraqis didn’t fight. But they did launch an insurgency that tied us down for years and yet they had minimal outside support compared to Ukraine. Vietnam tied down almost half a million US troops at one point and they got significant support from Russia and China. And we could never build a government that could hold its own. We still had the support of a significant fraction, probably a majority of South Vietnamese. Russia has none of this in Ukraine. Ukraine shares a long border with both Romania and Poland. Policing that isn’t likely to happen. Without border control insurgency will thrive. That happened in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. Safe havens are essential. That’s why the US went into Cambodia. We never did go into Pakistan (well one exception).

The Russians are practicing attrition warfare. They don’t care about their own casualties as long as they can inflict significant losses on Ukraine. They can do that. But in 1944 it took over a million Soviet soldiers to drive the Germans out of Ukraine. And they were highly motivated to do so, unlike Putin’s troops. Calling up the necessary troops would mean massive full scale mobilization. and then they’d have to worry about other security threats. I don’t see him doing it or if he tried that’s when the resistance would act.

 

[pood]

Even Russian state TV now calling on Mad Vlad to end the war.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Nine Russian generals killed in war as leaked report brands invasion a 'failure'

The latest death of one of Putin's military commanders comes as one Kremlin official reportedly described the Russian campaign to subdue its neighbour Ukraine as a 'clusterf***'

www.mirror.co.uk

Stop quoting The Mirror!

 

[SLD]

one more point, Jay. This is also why I emphasized in another post that the real fight is in information warfare space. its getting the information into ordinary Russian hands that’s important. The more we can counter Putin’s propaganda machine, the better. But this is something I don’t know how to do. I don’t understand these censor firewalls and whether they can be breached. Or even if that would work. How many ordinary Russians have internet to begin with? Can anonymous hack into Russian websites and replace them pictures of what’s happening in Ukraine? If so, how long can they keep those up? Some ordinary Russian wants to check his balance and instead he gets pictures of dead soldiers in Ukraine and bombed out buildings along with western headlines (in Russian) explaining what’s going on. Is that possible?

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[TV and credit cards]

SLD is an optimist.

Nonetheless, checking every morning to see if anyone has offed Pootey yet, has already become a habit.

Carried over from the Trump watch.

 

[blastula]

Even Russian state TV now calling on Mad Vlad to end the war.

To lighten the mood in the studio, the host resorted to one of the favorite pastimes of many Kremlin propagandists: playing yet another Fox News clip of Tucker Carlson and his frequent guest Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor. In the translated video, Macgregor predicted Russia’s easy military victories over Ukraine and its total invincibility to Western sanctions. Soloviev sighed and smiled: “He’s a lot more optimistic than my previous experts in the studio.”

Not to worry, Tuckyo Carlson is here to toe the Kremlin line for ya.

 

[TV and credit cards]

CEPA has an article on getting info to Russian citizens. That it may come down to passing text messages around. Their website is doggedly slow right now. I've been having problems with it lately. I don't think they are used to having much in the way of traffic. It's "How to Reach Russian Ears" by Thomas Kent.
https://cepa.org/how-to-reach-russian-ears/
https://1920.in/
If it's of value to anyone.

 

[Jayjay]

one more point, Jay. This is also why I emphasized in another post that the real fight is in information warfare space. its getting the information into ordinary Russian hands that’s important. The more we can counter Putin’s propaganda machine, the better. But this is something I don’t know how to do. I don’t understand these censor firewalls and whether they can be breached. Or even if that would work. How many ordinary Russians have internet to begin with? Can anonymous hack into Russian websites and replace them pictures of what’s happening in Ukraine? If so, how long can they keep those up? Some ordinary Russian wants to check his balance and instead he gets pictures of dead soldiers in Ukraine and bombed out buildings along with western headlines (in Russian) explaining what’s going on. Is that possible?

That kind of hacking is happening already. I read or saw some report of people in Russia being interviewed, and one of the people they talked to complained that he saw some war images when paying his bills online or something. But that's just a random encounter, and easily blocked. I don't think it works for large number of people.

Russia can probably go full North Korea and block all internet traffic if it wants to. It probably has built the capability to do so during the past 10-15 years. My personal opinion is that the best way to reach Russia is through expats living in the West, and their personal contacts. But it's not something that governments can control. One thing we can do is provide Russian-language resources with truthful information about the war, so that those Russians who do talk to their friends and relatives back home, have some backup. For example, major newspapers in Scandinavia have started translating select articles about the war to Russian. Maybe something like that would help.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Anyone who knows anything about spent fuel assemblies in cooling ponds will appreciate the extreme danger that now exists as the Chernobyl site is without electricity. I think this is more terror tactic from Putin the Pig, if he even gives a shit about other human lives or ever has.

Chernobyl without Power

I thought the reactors there had been shut down ages ago. If the others had been operating cutting the power is just begging for another Fukushima.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Putin is just going the same route that he did in Syria. There, the combined Russian and Syrian forces weren't able to take large urban centers, so they resorted to simply obliterating civilian targets. It didn't get the same attention in the West, because the targets were Muslims in the Middle East, but the technique is the same. In Ukraine, the civilian population rose up to resist the Russian occupiers, but they were expected to put up a token resistance and then submit. The next step is punishment--revenge for the rejection of the initial strategy.

In Syria it was hard to identify a good guy. Most of the guys with guns were bad guys. Nobody wanted to arm them much.

Here there's a clear good and bad, the defenders are getting the missiles to make it very bloody indeed for the Russians.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't.

Bunch up and you invite artillery and bombs. Spread out and you don't have mutual defense against missileers and even the molotov brigade.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Anyone who knows anything about spent fuel assemblies in cooling ponds will appreciate the extreme danger that now exists as the Chernobyl site is without electricity. I think this is more terror tactic from Putin the Pig, if he even gives a shit about other human lives or ever has.

Chernobyl without Power

I thought the reactors there had been shut down ages ago. If the others had been operating cutting the power is just begging for another Fukushima.

It is true I learned that the spent fuel assemblies in temporary storage cooling ponds at Chernobyl are no longer capable of secondary reactions. That's a good thing. But the water is a barrier to radioactive release as far as I understand so if it cannot be replenished and the spent fuel assemblies become exposed there is still a problem. The fuel assemblies must remain submerged. Long term storage involves them being encapsulated and sequestered underground.

 

[Thomas II]

Nine Russian generals killed in war as leaked report brands invasion a 'failure'

The latest death of one of Putin's military commanders comes as one Kremlin official reportedly described the Russian campaign to subdue its neighbour Ukraine as a 'clusterf***'

www.mirror.co.uk

Hmmm...Nine?...That's a lot of generals...

 

[bilby]

Anyone who knows anything about spent fuel assemblies in cooling ponds will appreciate the extreme danger that now exists as the Chernobyl site is without electricity. I think this is more terror tactic from Putin the Pig, if he even gives a shit about other human lives or ever has.

Chernobyl without Power

I thought the reactors there had been shut down ages ago. If the others had been operating cutting the power is just begging for another Fukushima.

The last reactor to be decommissioned at Chernobyl was No.3, which was shut down in 2000.

None of the spent fuel on site is fresh enough to require active cooling, or even passive water cooling.

 

[bilby]

the water is a barrier to radioactive release as far as I understand so if it cannot be replenished and the spent fuel assemblies become exposed there is still a problem.

Only for anyone stupid enough to wander up to them unprotected.

If the water is drained, it becomes inconvenient for the operators who are tasked with putting the remaing spent fuel into dry casks. It's annoying, but not dangerous or difficult to deal with.

As risks go in an active war zone, this is pretty close to the bottom of the list.

 

[Hermit]

This war will end with Putin’s downfall. It’s the only way. Putin will be the final casualty. His military will eventually revolt.

Your expositions in posts #3217 and #3224 are excellent. They certainly tempered my more pessimistic view of the Russian invasion. Of course, only time will tell what the outcome will be, but I am now inclined to think your scenarios are realistic.

As for me, the best outcome would be for Putin to die. The sooner the better. Yes, I want him dead, and I don't care if his death is by natural causes or he expires in some Iulius Caesar type incident. This, I hope, will be swiftly followed by the new leader denouncing him similarly to the way Nikita Khrushchev got stuck into Stalin after that dictator died, then pointedly avoiding the euphemism "special military operation" calling it military invasion or war instead, describing it as a huge mistake, and announcing the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine.

One can dream, right?