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

[Loren Pechtel]

You gave an excellent reason for a full and unconditional occupation of Ukraine.
And you are not listening. I said majority of educated (in the topic) people support occupation and reintegration of Ukraine into Russia.
There is simply no other choice which would lead to peace.

If Moscow simply pulled back to the 2014 status quo ante there would immediately be peace, no negotiation needed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are regurgitating the shit you are being subjected to by your Media. They are lying to you.
Russians don't consider themselves oppressed, and they are not. Your usual list of "oppressed" Russians non-withstanding.

Then why has there been such a brain drain in Russia?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, somewhere. Somewhere...

Don't care. You are on record ignoring links I provided after your request.
Why should I bother with you?

Because you provide Russian propaganda outlets as sources.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People vote with their feet.

People want to go to Canada, USA, and the western systems. Freedom and opportunity. A minimum of coruption and abuse of power. Indvdual rights. Rule of law. Due process.

This. People vote with their feet. Look where people emigrate from and immigrate to. People sometimes relocate for romantic reasons but they'll usually choose the more favorable of the two options. The only downward flow we tend to see are people retiring to lesser countries because they have retirement income from the greater country.

For a simple approximation look at passport power. While this isn't perfect the reality is countries bother with visas for two main reasons: Money and a filter against illegal immigrants.

Poor countries generally want a visa from most everyone. It's a money grab. Rich countries generally only want visas from countries they get a lot of illegal immigrants from. (Note that things like the US ESTA requirement is different--that's a filter against specific undesirables, not against the country they are from.) You do get some exceptions to this pattern, mostly tit-for-tat.

The US stands at 171 on this list, 9 points behind the leader (UAE) but only 1-2 points behind the top of the pack--most of the first world is in this 171-173 pack, although there are a few oddballs like Iceland at 168. Israel is at 150 for political reasons. Russia is way down at 123, mixed in with the more advanced of the third world countries.

F16s may be the final nail in the Russian coffin. Ukrainian air superiority.

I don't believe it's of much relevance--Russia pretty much doesn't operate in Ukrainian airspace anymore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A short time after 9/11, a private pilot out of one of the local airports somehow managed to accidentally send out a Squawk 7500...the code that says, essentially, "help, we're being hijacked."

Tensions were understandably high, so a couple of F-16s were scrambled out of Luke AFB and sent to intercept. This happened near my house, and I was outside when the jets flew by. Now, I'm a big fan of aviation, and have been to airshows where I've seen F-16s perform, so I know what one nearby at low altitude sounds like.

This was not that. These F-16s were flying angry. Some folks like to say "that's the sound of freedom," but for an enemy soldier? That's the sound of "we're fucked."

How does a jet sound angry? Flying outside civilian airspeed limits? Afterburners?

And while our stalwart Russian might never hear that sound in person, some of his "comrades" are going to hear it sooner than later. Or maybe they won't. They'll be standing next to their missile launcher or artillery piece when everything just ends in a fireball.

I doubt they'll be hearing it much--getting close enough to be heard is a good way to get shot down.

p.s. the fighter jets "convinced" the wayward pilot to land at the nearest airstrip, and I'm guessing he had to clean the seats in his plane after that.

Probably.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Angry jets? My father worked fro Exxon in Tripoli, Libya. My school was on the U.S. run Wheeler Air Force Base. From time to time the USAF would fire off Phantom II 25 mm auto cannons on a range to accurately zero in their sights. Nothing sounds angry like a burst of 25 mm auto cannon fire.

 

[Tigers!]

It's bad enough one can hardly read a news story any longer without grammatical errors but to get the date wrong by a year...

Shame on Russia... putting their stupidity in the headlines again.
One Year Later, Russian Navy Confirms Loss of the Amphib Saratov

At least we know that Barbos would not have have posted the confirmation.

 

[Elixir]

If Moscow simply pulled back to the 2014 status quo ante there would immediately be peace, no negotiation needed.

If cotton was a monkey…
Russia would be nothing without millions of expendable bodies, and nobody would respect them at all were it not for their willing eagerness to expend those bodies. As long as he has the ability to kill hundreds of thousands more Russians, Pootey is not about to crawl into a hole and pretend he never tried to exercise his Soviet ambitions.

 

[TV and credit cards]

And shut up about your husbands and fathers dying.

The Russian Ministry of Justice registered the civil society group “Council of Mothers of Wives” as a foreign agent on May 26, likely to curb resistance to ongoing and future Russian force generation efforts. The “Council of Mothers and Wives” routinely advocated for their relatives serving in the Russian military by reaching out to local officials following the start of partial mobilization in late September 2022.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Prigozhin is a criminal and a nazi by any standards but what he says here about Ukraine certainly rings true

"With regard to demilitarization...if they had 500 tanks at the beginning of the special operation, [now] they have 5,000 tanks," Prigozhin said in a recent interview. "If they had 20,000 people able to fight skillfully, now 400,000 people know how to fight. How did we demilitarize it? It turns out that the opposite is true—we militarized her hell knows how."

Kremlin Faces 'Mutiny' as 'Coup Attempt' Declared: Former Russian Commander

No, no mutiny on the horizon but I wish it were true.

 

[steve_bank]

F16s are multi-role and can be used for ground attack.

Stating the obvious this all has serious consequences for the future. That being said what is happening in Russia brings to mind the 1930s-60s movie farces of the Soviet Union.

Inept government and petty incompetent militarily martinets.

 

[steve_bank]

Russian revolution led to an oppressive regime. Regime failed followed by a few years of potenia;l stability. Eventually the old order reestablished itself, authoritarianism, military conquest, and corruption.

The regime is again bringing about its own destruction and fostering a poential revolution.

A recurring Russian theme while the west through difficulties moves forward.

Hitler had no choice but to keep on keeping on, as with Putin. Putin can no longer control events, he can only stay alive as long as possible at any cost to others.

China pragmatically adjusted. While authoritarian and oppressive, Chinese leaders have improved the lives of the Chinese people.

Russia seems like it is always a dark, dull place.

If things do fall apart the question is who ends up controlling the nukes. Other than that I could care less.

Putin improved the lives of Russians compared to the horribly 1990s. Arguably a big part of that was the higher oil prices that allowed the regime to do so, but nevertheless it happened on Putin's watch, and while Putin didn't get rid of corruption and criminality, the standard of living of elites in St. Petersburg and Moscow did increase.

Similar thing could be said about Xi who's following in Putin's footsteps. He reduced corruption, but at the same time got rid of his political opponents and solidiied his own position. And I think that like Putin, eventually he'll fuck it up... and take the entire country with him.

From shows and commentaries the CCP is aware that if they do not make progress they could face large scale rebellion.

In the 90s I had a conversation with someone who interfaced as a consultant between American business and Chinese government. He rubbed elbows with officials.

As he put it the suppression of free speech and press comes from a deep fear of a counter revolution. In his opinion they will never have a westtern democracy, it is not in their culrural DNA.

From reporting the majority of Chinese not unlike Americans will support the govern mt as long as the prospects for their kids are better than they had.

Putin shot himself in the foot with Crimea. It began the sanctions that cut off Russia from the EU.

Investing in China has its problems, like theft intellectual property. But Russian business is utterly corrupt. Boeing used to have a design center in Russia.

China while maintaining its revolutionary antipathy for the west fully integrated into global economy. Putin insisted on an independent Soviet style economic block and remains hostile to the west,

Russia has no lack of physical and intellectual resources yet remains dismal compared to the developed world. I worked with ex pat Russian engineers. There is a Russian brain drain.

China to a lessor degree is shooting itself in the foot. Its hostility and disrgard for international rule of law threatens supply chains and there is movement away from China for manufacturing.

Sales of chip manufactrng eqipemnt is being banned. These systems are not easily duplicated.

 

[Ford]

A short time after 9/11, a private pilot out of one of the local airports somehow managed to accidentally send out a Squawk 7500...the code that says, essentially, "help, we're being hijacked."

Tensions were understandably high, so a couple of F-16s were scrambled out of Luke AFB and sent to intercept. This happened near my house, and I was outside when the jets flew by. Now, I'm a big fan of aviation, and have been to airshows where I've seen F-16s perform, so I know what one nearby at low altitude sounds like.

This was not that. These F-16s were flying angry. Some folks like to say "that's the sound of freedom," but for an enemy soldier? That's the sound of "we're fucked."

How does a jet sound angry? Flying outside civilian airspeed limits? Afterburners?

That was the best way I could describe it. I didn't know what was going on at the time, but they were definitely not flying at "let's put on a good show as we pass by the viewing stands" speeds.

Now, it will take some time for Ukraine to get them into service. They've got to get their pilots up to snuff, and they need a place to take off and land. There was an F-16 pilot who did an "AMA" yesterday on Reddit, and he said (in response to a question about their runways):

That's definitely an issue. The F-16 needs near-perfect conditions to take off and land.

So there's definitely some challenges, but once they are operational, Russia is in a heap of trouble.

 

[steve_bank]

The A10 Warthog might be better for Ukraine. Designed for ground attack and heavily armored and redundant, able to take a lot of damage. High engines for rough airstrips.

I saw one at an airshow dong low and slow aerobatic maneuvers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The A10 Warthog might be better for Ukraine. Designed for ground attack and heavily armored and redundant, able to take a lot of damage. High engines for rough airstrips.

I saw one at an airshow dong low and slow aerobatic maneuvers.

They're unsurvivable in a modern SAM environment.

 

[Patooka]

The A10 Warthog might be better for Ukraine. Designed for ground attack and heavily armored and redundant, able to take a lot of damage. High engines for rough airstrips.

I saw one at an airshow dong low and slow aerobatic maneuvers.

They're unsurvivable in a modern SAM environment.

They're unsurvivable in an 80s SAM environment. They look cool and have been in a lot of movies. Drones or even A-37 Dragonflies provide much better bang for buck.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Prigozhin is a criminal and a nazi by any standards but what he says here about Ukraine certainly rings true

"With regard to demilitarization...if they had 500 tanks at the beginning of the special operation, [now] they have 5,000 tanks," Prigozhin said in a recent interview. "If they had 20,000 people able to fight skillfully, now 400,000 people know how to fight. How did we demilitarize it? It turns out that the opposite is true—we militarized her hell knows how."

Kremlin Faces 'Mutiny' as 'Coup Attempt' Declared: Former Russian Commander

No, no mutiny on the horizon but I wish it were true.

“Hell knows how”? When he figures this out, he’s well on his way to becoming a human being.

 

[Copernicus]

A drone attack has taken place on Moscow, possibly in retaliation for the relentless targeting of civilian targets in Ukraine, especially their capital. This was bound to happen. It must be very difficult for Ukrainian territory being brutally and mercilessly attacked without any response on Russian territory. Putin has done everything he could to provoke it, and perhaps this is what he wanted. It's also possible that these attacks are a false flag operation to make Russians feel that they need to prosecute their invasion of Ukraine more vigorously.

Drones strike Moscow as fresh wave of Russian air attacks hit Ukraine​

 

[DrZoidberg]

A drone attack has taken place on Moscow, possibly in retaliation for the relentless targeting of civilian targets in Ukraine, especially their capital. This was bound to happen. It must be very difficult for Ukrainian territory being brutally and mercilessly attacked without any response on Russian territory. Putin has done everything he could to provoke it, and perhaps this is what he wanted. It's also possible that these attacks are a false flag operation to make Russians feel that they need to prosecute their invasion of Ukraine more vigorously.

Drones strike Moscow as fresh wave of Russian air attacks hit Ukraine​

There is no mention of what drones have been used. When people say "drone", we usually think of SHahed 136, MQ-1C Gray Eagle or something that needs serious military infrastructure to use and operate. But a drone might be little more than a DJI Phantom with a stick of dynamite attached. Which is what I think this is. I'm not sure. But based on the lack of damage, it's what it looks to me. Is also a drone that can be operated by anyone. Litterally anyone. Even a retarded child could pull this off. Off the shelf equipment.

As usual Russia is making as much as they can out of this, tiny attack. For all we know this is a fully internal Russian thing. Putin is making plenty of internal enemies now. Or Putin himself orchestrated this, to drum up more support for the war. I wouldn't put this past Putin.

 

[Tigers!]

As usual Russia is making as much as they can out of this, tiny attack. For all we know this is a fully internal Russian thing. Putin is making plenty of internal enemies now. Or Putin himself orchestrated this, to drum up more support for the war. I wouldn't put this past Putin.

Poor Putin. He can't put a foot right with you can he?

(Where is Barbos when you need him? We need some shrill agitprop about this incident)