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

[Jayjay]

It can all be faked, like Russia’s accusations.

Russia does not accuse anybody yet.
But do you have anything of substance to say?

I'm saying that Ukraine has forged every part of this war. Russia doesn't even have troops within 1000000 miles of Ukraine. They have fooled Canada, US, Germany, and even China to some degree. They are phenomenal liars! In fact, you are probably a Ukrainian spy in double (triple?) agent mode.

You sound desperate.
Even their piece of shit president Ze started complaining about European diplomats asking for evidence about ukraine not being responsible for that crap.
Privately they simply don't believe that garbage.
Ukrainians are filthy liars, nazis and simply terrorists.
Even German right and left parties are united in their distrust of Ukrainian government. Imagine that! German left and right!

{sigh} Jimmy and Jay have a lot more patience that I do! Would you at least agree with me that negotiations with Russia are worthless. Putin is just using negotiations to try to gain some high road back. But at the end of the day, Russians want blood. It's not just Putin. Russians want war. And the west should stop holding out hope that we can convince them otherwise? Do you agree? You have been whinning about sanctions against Russia and aide to Ukraine. But the west sends far more to Russia than to Ukraine. We spend far more for your oil and gas than what we send to Ukraine. We need to quit thinking that peace has a chance with Putin, and go all out against Russia. Cut off all oil and gas imports from Russia. Start pressuring China and India. Maybe cut them off too?

That would be ideal, but I doubt Germany can do it. They're hooked on Russian natural gas and can't replace it easily. The current deals with Qatar and US for LNG can't make up for Russian gas, because at the moment Germany doesn't even have an LNG terminal. It'll take at least two years to build one, and until then Germany is screwed. On the other hand, it has reserves for maybe until late summer IIRC.

As for China and India, I think they're not countries that can relied upon to enforce sanctions. India's Modi is also a fierce nationalist, and may find Putin a kindred spirit. Plus India could use cheap oil from Russia as much as anyone, now that oil prices are going through the roof. Same goes for China, and in addition, China has no reason to throw Russia under the bus because it's got its own issues with the West. I think China will try to stay nominally on the fence, but avoid secondary sanctions (or absorb them for a few people or smaller companies), while dealing with Russia under the table. Europe is already taking a huge economic hit by sanctioning Russia, and it simply can't afford to do the same with China. Unlike the US, that has a very healthy internal market, Europe is dependent on exports.

 

[Jayjay]

The Ukrainians have to win.

To win, Ukrainians will have to kill 5 Russians for every Ukranian killed. Russia’s biggest asset is their huge supply of expendable soldiers/citizens/conscripts.
Even at that rate it will take years. Unless they can kick Russia out of Crimea and the East real quick, how can they “win”?

Well, it's a little bit less than this ratio. Common military reports state that it takes about 5 offenders vs every 1 defender to take a well defended area. The Russians don't have this many troops. Yes, they are importing Syrians and Nazi merks (like Wagner). But they will run out of troops eventually. I don't believe that Ukraine will be able to take Crimea. But (and this is a tragedy for Ukraine); Ukrainians win by just surviving. It's going to be a battle of the wills. But here's the difference, the Russians can just go home when they lose their will. The Ukrainians are fighting in their home. They have no choice. Ukrainians win by persevering their state.

On the other hand, the Russians already lost. They attacked in order to split Nato in half and convince the other eastern European countries to turn towards Russia. That's been an absolute failure.

Note that Russia is the "defender" already for a large part of the Eastern and Southern parts of the country, so the 5-to-1 calculus there is against Ukraine. I read somewhere that Russia is also conscripting residents of the "people's republics" to do the upkeep and policing of the occupied territory, which frees actual soldiers to fight the Ukrainian army.

The big fight is due for the next couple of weeks, when Russia tries to push south from Izyum and cut off Ukrainian defenders deeper in Donbas. I have no idea how that will turn out, but I'm not optimistic. Russian troops may be less motivated and some of their equipment broken, but the initial numbers advantage is too great. And Russia has much more long range striking capability. Recently Russia said that they had destroyed S-300 anti-air system in Mykolaiv; if true, that means Ukrainian air defenses are going down. Which means more missiles and planes will hit their targets.

Jay: I don't disagree with you. I'm very pessimistic about this war. Russians hold most of the short term cards. We mostly send defensive weapons to Ukraine that have short range. The Russians will just use their long term artillery and aircraft and just pound the Ukranians. And starve them to death. But the west should do everything in our power to bankrupt Russia. And be ready to prop up whatever remains of Ukraine with massive western support and aid. I don't think that Russia will take western Ukraine at least. But the Russians have chosen war. And we need to find a way to stop them at some point.

There are limits to what US and NATO can do.

Providing state-of-the-art western weapons systems isn't just about money (although it is about that too), because the Ukrainian army would need to be trained to use them. The better option of sending old soviet weapons is good, but not limitless: the other countries are not going to just de-arm their own armies, and even if US promises to give them replacements, that takes time. So does producing new weapons off the assembly line.

Many EU/NATO countries haven't really stocked up on weapons since the end of the cold war, and just have enough for their own active duty soldiers.

If Russia manages to break through the defenses south of Izyum, the war could become very long. if it fails, maybe Putin would be willing to cut some sort of ceasefire or a peace deal at least. After that, I hope that US and EU realize that they can't just drop the financial support. We need to have a Marshall-plan like rebuilding package for Ukraine, including reforms to curb the corruption and enforce public institutions, or that Money's just going to be pocketed by the Oligarchs and corrupt government officials like in Afghanistan. Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries in Europe before the war. The good thing is that some of Putin's confiscated war chest might be used to finance this plan, but just throwing money at a problem hasn't proven to be very reliable means of nation building.

 

[Jayjay]

I mean that we need to cut off Russia.

You do realize that the only reason why Russia has not done it already by herself is that there are contracts which Russia can't break?

When has Russia cared about "contracts"? It only believes in force.

Russia needs the gas money from Europe. Unlike oil, it can't sell it anywhere else because there aren't pipes going to China. But unfortunately Germany is addicted to Russian gas like it was heroin.

Don't you think it's weird?
Russia can break all trade tomorrow and will be happy to see whole world starving.
They just don't want to go to court for that.

Where is this court where Russia could be held accountable? Relatives of the victims of Bucha and other Russian massacres want to know.

 

[bilby]

just throwing money at a problem hasn't proven to be very reliable means of nation building.

The trick is not to supply money, but to instead spend money on supplying infrastructure.

The one smart thing the UK did when they handed Hong Kong back to China was to empty the treasury into infrastructure. The Chinese would happily have robbed Hong Kong blind, but it turns out that while it's fairly easy to relocate pounds sterling or greenbacks, relocating airports, highways, bridges, container ports, and other civil engineering systems is rather more challenging.

 

[bilby]

Germany is addicted to Russian gas like it was heroin.

That's a direct consequence of their insane policy of shutting down nuclear power plants, and trying to power a developed nation with wind turbines.

Russian gas is the only thing keeping the lights on, because sometimes people want to have a society when the wind isn't blowing.

 

[Jayjay]

You are ignoring my arguments and post some random esoteric crap.
Anyway, about Bucha.
Apparently video of staging itself surfaced. In it, ukrainians are moving real corpses to make better shot for the camera. So Pallywood of them.

False. That video where they are pulling a corpse is to check that it isn't booby trapped. In Russian propaganda, that video was cut in reverse order: making it seem like the body was moved into place, when in fact it was moved away.

It literally would take you one minute to google this stuff.

I remember another fake video about purportedly hungry russian soldiers stealing food from the store. Cool video. Except that full version of it surfaces later where these soldiers ...... pay for the food. And before you ask, standard military ration they are given are crap, I have seen and tried it. They are designed to last long, not to taste good. Dry milk was pretty good though.

Not all Russian soldiers are bad. You might enjoy this story where a guy from Irpin recounts how Russian soldiers beat him up and killed his friend (In Russian... the original is in Finnish so apologies to rest of the forum, maybe you can use google translate):

News in Russian | Слава Притуленко о мучительном пребывании в руках российских солдат

Звуки боев в Ирпене на подступах к Киеву ненадолго стихли, и Слава Притуленко решил вместе с соседом Олегом выйти поискать, где берет сеть сотовой связи. Этот мартовский день превратился для него в ужас.

www.hs.fi

In that, even if the Russian soldiers did rough him up, one of them apparently offered him money afterwards (from the cash they stole from the guy they shot), as if to make amends. Even if in propaganda we want to portray all Russians as monsters, most of them are regular people who at least don't want to see themselves as such, so they do things like try to offer money or food to people they know they were treating like shit. It's to buy a cleaner conscience.

I also find it interesting how closely that Russian soldier's alleged behaviour matches with yours: "You're a nazi! And you're a nazi! Everyone is a nazi!"... like some dystopian alternate universe Oprah.

It's not that the Russian soldiers are all psychopaths, they're just being fed the same bullshit propaganda that you and everyone else in Russia is.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If Russia manages to break through the defenses south of Izyum, the war could become very long. if it fails, maybe Putin would be willing to cut some sort of ceasefire or a peace deal at least.

Not singling you out, just using your comment here to illustrate. Where does this attitude originate? What evidence is there to support this hope that Putin will somehow capitulate? Did the allies in WW2 think that Hitler would at some point throw in the towel or sue for peace? Hitler and Putin are madmen focused on personal wealth and power. They are not amenable to compromise, they are drunk on wealth and power. They are crime bosses who have succeeded in doing precisely what they wish and will stop at nothing to obtain more wealth and power, not to mention that they know they have a lot of enemies. They are not going to stop and start acting like rational choirboys.

I think it is quite natural to express the attitude that persons like Hitler and Putin - and barbos for that matter - will just magically attain the same aspirations as rational peaceful persons. But it isn't going to happen. Cross that bridge and this madness will end sooner than later.

BTW it was pretty simple to come back to this thread after being gone for a couple weeks and covering a half dozen pages of thread. I only had to see wherever barbos had posted or where other posters had responded to his claims and comments and skip over.

The only thing that will stop Putin is the same thing that stopped Hitler, force of arms, nothing less, unless one is willing to give away freedom and democracy to appease another madman.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[steve_bank]

Watched FRONTLINE last night, 'Putin Road To War'

Putin's Road to War | FRONTLINE

Watch "Putin's Road to War," FRONTLINE's March 2022 documentary on what led to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

www.pbs.org

It looks like Putin was focused on this from the time he took power. A progressive push back on the west testing responses.

Back during Crimea there were reports of armed groups in Russian battle dress without insignia. Russia's response as I rember it was anybody can buy the clothes in a surplus store.

In a phone call with Putin Obama confronted him on reports of this in Ukraine saying we have eyes we see it. Puin just changed the subject. Obama decided not to provide militarily aid to Ukraine.

Along comes Trump and that sealed the fate of Ukraine. It confirmed Putin's view that the west was weak enabling him to reach further. Seeing that press conference where Trump says sheepishly Putin strongly said Russia did not interfere in the elections and why would they was sickening to see our president act like a fawning awe struck kid.

Thre ar clips of people in the Kremlin cheering and high fiveing when Trump got elected.

Putin could have been deterred. No one cared about Crimea.

Putin is and has always been at war ith the USA and the west intent on disruption and bringing down western unity. He almost did it. If Trump got reelected There would be no aid to Ukraine and no resurgence of NATO unity.

He has threatened Finland if it joined NATO and has interfered with GPS on flights near the border.P
Maybe it is just isn't sinking in what Putin is. We keep expecting to somehow illicit a rational response from Putin. About as much chance as it would have been with Hitler.

Finland may be next. The dictator;s rule of survival, when facing failure go to war.

 

[Harry Bosch]

More please

 

[TV and credit cards]

Russia claiming the Moskva damage was the result of an interior fire/explosion and not Ukrainian missiles does not speak well of the condition of this supposed warship or the ability of the crew while in a wartime posture.
Hell, it would be slightly less embarrassing to let the Ukrainian claim stand.

 

[Elixir]

Hell, it would be slightly less embarrassing to let the Ukrainian claim stand.

I would defer to barbos to tell us if that’s really true.

 

[marc]

Watched FRONTLINE last night, 'Putin Road To War'

Thanks, I'll be watching this later today.

Finland may be next. The dictator;s rule of survival, when facing failure go to war.

So he will try for Winter War 2.0, repeating Russia's previous embarrassment? Sure, go ahead. What better way to cover up a failing war effort than to overextend into two failing war efforts.

 

[steve_bank]

Watched FRONTLINE last night, 'Putin Road To War'

Thanks, I'll be watching this later today.

Finland may be next. The dictator;s rule of survival, when facing failure go to war.

So he will try for Winter War 2.0, repeating Russia's previous embarrassment? Sure, go ahead. What better way to cover up a failing war effort than to overextend into two failing war efforts.

As some who know Putin and are outside of Russia say the west does not seem to grasp who Putin is and how he thinks.

We keep expecting a rational western response of compromise. Russia is a vast country. For all we know Putin may believe Russia can wage nucleatr war and survive. In the 60s our military beieled nuclear war was winnable.

 

[barbos]

BBC proves there are no nazis in Ukraine.
I was so wrong.

 

[Elixir]

I was so wrong.

As usual.

 

[ZiprHead]

More now on claims Ukraine has been attacking border areas in Russia.

According to the governor of Russia's Belgorod region, the village of Spodaryushino was shelled by Ukraine, prompting its evacuation along with a neighbouring village.

Writing on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said no one was injured and no residential buildings were damaged.

The claim comes after Russian officials accused Ukraine of carrying out air strikes on another residential area in the town of Klimovo in the Bryansk region.

More claims of Ukrainian attacks on Russian border

 

[Jayjay]

I was told that that corpses moving is a standard practice to prevent boobie traps. But I have not seen the video itself

As for the satellite images. There is evidence of forgery there.
There is an image after russians left and 3 weeks prior to that. They look almost identical, the only difference is resolution. And during this 3 weeks there was rain and warm temperature. They suspect it's the same image but they changed resolution to hide the fact that bodies did not decompose at all.

Who is "they"?

Maxar doesn't just have one or two pictures that they publish. The idea is that they have a database spanning years back with all the data. It wouldn't be possible to "change resolution" on one image afterwards to hide anything, because the users would notice. What you probably saw was images cropped at different resolutions. The larger the area, the bigger the resolution.

In this New York Times article:

Satellite images show bodies lay in Bucha for weeks, despite Russian claims. (Published 2022)

The images rebut Russia’s claim that the killing of civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv, took place after its soldiers had left town.

www.nytimes.com

... they show images from before the invasion (empty street, of course), March 19th, and another place from March 21st. And in the text they mention that the latter body didn't exist in March 20th so there must have been a lot more material available to the New York Times than was published. Which makes sense; Maxar is a commercial actor that charges for the images. I seem to recall reading somewhere (way back in the MH17 days, so I could be misremembering) that their license agreement doesn't just charge for the access to the database, but also for each published image, so their customers can't just pay an annual fee and dump everything online.

 

[Jayjay]

This is the shit Barbos has been fed.

Everyone in Ukraine is a nazi and must be eradicated along with the whole entire country.

I don't read that particular site at all. I mostly follow youtube bloggers.
But yeah. that "shit" seems to be consistent with my own conclusion based on available data I trust. "too late for half measures" consensus is starting to form in Russia and .... Ukraine. And no. I am not being fed shit, it is you who is being fed shit.

Half measures? Russia can't fight a war with an army of conscripts. They can continue shelling and they could bomb as well. It is all Russia has.

Russian army is mostly contract soldiers and not conscripts (I believe they were telling the truth when they said the conscripts were there "accidentally" and have been pulled since). Conscripts wouldn't be very useful because they're still in training, and it would cause a big backlash at home. If push comes to shove, Russia's next step would be to mobilize reservists, and according to Ukraine they're already doing that secretly in smaller scale.

The "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk are a different matter. The Russian-speaking people still living there are being conscripted and forced to fight, but they're mostly just to keep the peace in already occupied territories.

Don't underestimate the power of shelling. The tactic seems to be working pretty well, though it's slow.

 

[Jayjay]

In the news Russia is massing new troops. I don't think Putin will stop until he is stopped or Ukraine is destroyed.

The new general in chrge has a history in Syria of levelng towns. No moral restraints. Kill and destroy.

Institute for the Study of War (whose daily updates I follow) had an interesting summary on Dvornikov. Basically, he's not in any way exceptionally brutal compared to other generals, even in Syria, and was already leading the Southern military district since the beginning of the war. What they did now was just hand him the overall command of all the troops.

The media would have us believe the narrative of a "butcher of Syria" being unleashed upon Ukraine, but the reality is far more mundane: it's just that the disorganized way the war was handled in the beginning is being replaced by a more centralized organization under more competent leadership. But this is actually also more dangerous to Ukraine, because it means Russia is getting its shit together.