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

Copernicus said:
US is one of the signatories to the 1936 treaty.
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So?
It's not like the U.S. hasn't any experience breaking treaties.

My point is this.
If Turkey is helping Russians destroy Ukraine they should suffer severe consequences. I don't mean military. End of EU membership considerations. End of trade agreements with NATO countries. Major economic sanctions.
That sort of thing.
Tom
 
TomC said:
Copernicus said:
US is one of the signatories to the 1936 treaty.
Click to expand...

So?
It's not like the U.S. hasn't any experience breaking treaties.
Click to expand...
It's not about the US abiding by the treaty, it's a simple fact that the only way to enter the Black Sea is via Turkish straits.

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Bosporus - Wikipedia

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TomC said:
My point is this.
If Turkey is helping Russians destroy Ukraine they should suffer severe consequences. I don't mean military. End of EU membership considerations. End of trade agreements with NATO countries. Major economic sanctions.
That sort of thing.
Tom
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Taking a harder line on Turkey would probably just push it in Russia's sphere of influence.
 
Jayjay said:
It's not about the US abiding by the treaty, it's a simple fact that the only way to enter the Black Sea is via Turkish straits.
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What's your point?
"Give access to Ukrainian allies and cut it for Ukrainian enemies, or lose all trade with NATO countries for the indefinite future."
Turkey could choose to bet on Russia, but maybe not.
Jayjay said:
Taking a harder line on Turkey would probably just push it in Russia's sphere of influence.
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That's a problem bigger than the disaster in Ukraine?
I don't think so.
Tom
 
TomC said:
Jayjay said:
It's not about the US abiding by the treaty, it's a simple fact that the only way to enter the Black Sea is via Turkish straits.
Click to expand...
What's your point?
"Give access to Ukrainian allies and cut it for Ukrainian enemies, or lose all trade with NATO countries for the indefinite future."
Turkey could choose to bet on Russia, but maybe not.
Jayjay said:
Taking a harder line on Turkey would probably just push it in Russia's sphere of influence.
Click to expand...
That's a problem bigger than the disaster in Ukraine?
I don't think so.
Tom
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You may not think so, Tom, but those who make it their business to manage foreign relations do. Turkey is extremely important to the Western alliance, especially since it does really control access the to Black Sea. Driving Turkey and Russia together merely because we are piqued that they don't do everything we want is seriously shortsighted. Maybe we could bully them into letting us send more lethal force into the Black Sea, but you have to think of the consequences of being wrong and losing your gamble about how Turkey would respond to the bullying. People who are responsible for our own national security need to think about how that would affect the balance of power in the region after we got our way. Turkey is still in NATO, and that gives us a tremendous strategic advantage in the region, not the least of which is that it keeps Turkey and Greece from blowing each other up. More importantly, though, is that Turkey also bottles up the Russian fleet. We don't really need to make things worse by sending more lethal force into the Black Sea, and Turkey doesn't really want to see us mixing it up with Russians in their backyard.
 
ISW reports Russian offensive actions have recently decreased by roughly 70%. Are they spent or are they like every girl I've ever known, saving themselves for that special day? ISW's favorite word, "culminate" is used copiously throughout. Further, the encirclement of Bakhmut is widening further out and away from Ukrainian forces. Perhaps their intentions are to dig in and wait for the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive. Or the more obvious answer, they truly are spent and doing what little they can just to make a show of it.
I don't know if I'm fully onboard with the take that the MoD is intentionally starving Wagner forces for munitions. Seems to me the Kremlin doesn't have the luxury for such a rash act. If this be a canard, it would dovetail nicely with the overall decrease of offensive actions.

***​

I listened to the accounts of a Ukrainian soldier in Bakhmut. They (the Russians) knowingly run headlong into machine gun fire. Seems it's their best bad option as turning back means certain death by their own forces. Imagine that.
 
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Spent. Recently in a major offense, Russia had jerked naval personel off their ships and made them spearhead an attack with only two weeks 'training'. They were slaughtered. Their usual spearheads, their elite troops have been slaughtered over the last year. One cannot draft 300,000 Gopniks and train up a true core elite force in a year.
 
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TV and credit cards said:
I don't know if I'm fully onboard with the take that the MoD is intentionally starving Wagner forces for munitions. Seems to me the Kremlin doesn't have the luxury for such a rash act. If this be a canard, it would dovetail nicely with the overall decrease of offensive actions.
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I also don't think so. Russia is running short on munitions in general, so everyone is getting less. Prigozhin is being vocal about this so that he has an excuse why Wagner hasn't been able to deliver Bakhmut, but the regular army is suffering from shell hunger also. In this video, the Russian soldiers near Vuhledar are complaining that they don't have ammo because it's sent to Wagner:

 
Cheerful Charlie said:
Spent. Recently in a major offense, Russia had jerked naval personel off their ships and made them spearhead an attack with only two weeks 'training'. They were slaughtered. Their usual spearheads, their elite troops have been slaughtered over the last year. One cannot draft 300,000 Gopniks and train up a true core elite force in a year.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be so sure. When the US ran short of manpower during the Vietnam war, they took naval personnel off ships to fight on land and even drafted people into the marines at one point. The war was so unpopular that they simply couldn't get enough volunteers, and there was considerable organized resistance to the draft. Nevertheless, the US never lacked the population of young men to fight, because not everyone of draft age got drafted. They put an elaborate system of deferments in place to "channel" the excess into career paths that the government valued--for example, joining the priesthood or working in an essential industry. Channeling became so unpopular that they developed a lottery system to handle the excess towards the end of the war, when the effort simply collapsed. Nevertheless, the public always elected and reelected those who favored continuing the war. They feared humiliating defeat worse than the loss of all those lives. Nevertheless, they got humiliating defeat.

It's obvious that many, if not most young Russians, are reluctant to fight in a war whose aims are unmistakably just stitching back together an old empire that they didn't grow up needing. Russia has the manpower, but organizing it into fighting units would be a lot easier if there were foreign troops on Russian soil or really threatening Russian territory. The latest effort by Prigozhin to gather up cannon fodder is to conduct a campaign to recruit kids in high schools. They had similar promotional campaigns in high schools in the US during the Vietnam war.
 
Copernicus said:
I wouldn't be so sure. When the US ran short of manpower during the Vietnam war, they took naval personnel off ships to fight on land and even drafted people into the marines at one point. The war was so unpopular that they simply couldn't get enough volunteers, and there was considerable organized resistance to the draft. Nevertheless, the US never lacked the population of young men to fight, because not everyone of draft age got drafted. They put an elaborate system of deferments in place to "channel" the excess into career paths that the government valued--for example, joining the priesthood or working in an essential industry. Channeling became so unpopular that they developed a lottery system to handle the excess towards the end of the war, when the effort simply collapsed. Nevertheless, the public always elected and reelected those who favored continuing the war. They feared humiliating defeat worse than the loss of all those lives. Nevertheless, they got humiliating defeat.
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Both my older brothers joined the Navy to avoid getting drafted into the Army. One ended up in the Medical Corp and was attached in a Marine unit where he took a bullet for his trouble.

Then that same brother joined the National Guard years later to get money for schooling and did three tour in the middle east during the Gulf Wars. He now has terrible PTSD.
 
ZiprHead said:
Copernicus said:
I wouldn't be so sure. When the US ran short of manpower during the Vietnam war, they took naval personnel off ships to fight on land and even drafted people into the marines at one point. The war was so unpopular that they simply couldn't get enough volunteers, and there was considerable organized resistance to the draft. Nevertheless, the US never lacked the population of young men to fight, because not everyone of draft age got drafted. They put an elaborate system of deferments in place to "channel" the excess into career paths that the government valued--for example, joining the priesthood or working in an essential industry. Channeling became so unpopular that they developed a lottery system to handle the excess towards the end of the war, when the effort simply collapsed. Nevertheless, the public always elected and reelected those who favored continuing the war. They feared humiliating defeat worse than the loss of all those lives. Nevertheless, they got humiliating defeat.
Click to expand...
Both my older brothers joined the Navy to avoid getting drafted into the Army. One ended up in the Medical Corp and was attached in a Marine unit where he took a bullet for his trouble.

Then that same brother joined the National Guard years later to get money for schooling and did three tour in the middle east during the Gulf Wars. He now has terrible PTSD.
Click to expand...

Yep. My best childhood friend ended up a Navy corpsman on a ship off of the shore of Vietnam and flew with recovery operations into Vietnam. I worked as a volunteer draft and military counselor during those times, so I came across a lot of cases of people who were trying to desert or find some way out of the mess. PTSD was a huge problem, as it will now be for so many Russian and Ukrainian men. What we did with deserters was make sure they declared themselves officially as AWOL and got them legal help to get discharged.
 
www.forbes.com

The Russian Army Is Running Out Of T-72 Tanks—And Quickly

The worsening T-72 shortfall helps to explain why the Russians increasingly are equipping their newly-mobilized battalions with obsolete T-62 and T-80B tanks.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com

www.forbes.com

Russia’s Best Tank Army Might Have No Choice But To Reequip With 60-Year-old T-62s

Russia’s tank shortage has gotten so dire that the United Kingdom for one believes the Russian army’s best tank formation, the 1st Guards Tank Army, might have to reequip with T-62s from the 1960s or ’70s.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
crazyfingers said:
No mention of the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Putin.

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The article reports that an arrest warrant for Putin was issued by the ICC.

he ICC issued arrest warrants on Friday for Putin and Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova for an alleged scheme to deport Ukrainian children to Russia – a practice the Russian government has defended as saving them while denying that the deportations are forced.

The move has already made history by making Putin the first head of state of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to be issued with an arrest warrant, Khan pointed out.
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What makes the exercise largely symbolic is that the ICC has no way to police its warrants. Russia is no more likely to hand over its officials for trial by the ICC than the US government is. No Russian government in the future would likely be able to remain in power, if it voluntarily handed over past officials for a trial. Russia is a huge country, and Russians, like people in other countries, don't want to believe that they are the bad guys. They would rather look the other way. Putin will either die in office or be killed. He knows that and has taken measures to ensure that it is the former that happens rather than the latter.
 
But doesn’t it limit his ability to travel the world and thereby limit his influence, at least to some degree?
 
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Rhea said:
But doesn’t it limit his ability to travel the world and thereby limit his influence, at least to some degree?
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Even without this warrant hanging over him, Putin needs massive security anywhere he goes. He has already painted himself into that corner. The ICC warrant is essentially toothless, since no Russian government would dare hand him or any other Russian citizen over for a highly publicized trial at the Hague. Russians are already incredibly sensitive to the fact that their international image is at the lowest point it has been in decades.
 
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