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

[Patooka]

Compare that to the situation last winter when Ukraine was trying to defend Bakhmut. Russia was trying a pincer movement from north and south, and had basically cut off everything but unpaved dirt roads, and Ukraine was still able to supply their troops in the city.

Are you leaving in a cave with TV stuck on CNN channel?
Ukro-idiots were not able to supply their troops in the city. Russians let them do it. That was the whole damn plan.
Your ignorance is mind-boggling.

Yeah right. Instead of taking the city as quickly as possibly, the "plan" was to waste tens of thousands of fighters and several months, and burn through Wagner to the point that they mutiny and march to Moscow.

If that was the "plan" I wish Russia all the best in their future "plans".

Yep, that was the plan. You can call it stupid (it is not) all you want, but that was the plan.
The fact that you are still unaware of that shows how deluded and misinformed you are.

I love barbos' bullshit. "Our plan was to lose all along you idiots!".

Congrats. You "won". I hope you keep on winning. Maybe you can win too.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

In Soviet times, there were several periods of liberalization, especially under Gorbachev. The problem with Gorbachev is that he really believed that the captive nations would choose to remain a part of the Soviet Union, if they were given a chance to choose. He thought he could hold the nation together during glasnost' without using troops to suppress dissent. Boy, was he wrong.

Generally speaking, though, I would say that you don't really know what life was like in the Soviet Union and how ordinary citizens reacted to authority. When our group visited in 1965, we were stunned to learn that there was very little fear of, and respect for, the police. People were always ignoring the laws quite openly, because they were always testing to discover how far they could get without crossing the line. When I returned in 1997 to deliver a paper at a conference, I was surprised and somewhat amused, to see people driving their cars up on the sidewalk to get around traffic jams. It reminded me of Soviet times, except that very few people had enough cars to cause traffic jams. Further down the road, they were being stopped by police and ticketed. I was further surprised to see that they were stopping when flagged down and not just ignoring the cops. That was very different from Soviet times, where people would often argue loudly with ordinary police, who usually did not visibly wear weapons. I can say truthfully that life on the street in the 1960s was not at all like we imagined it would be under a dictatorship.

Gorby no doubt believed he was giving freedom to people but he didn't know what freedom was. That's the point I'm attempting - and failing, obviously - to make. He thought he knew what freedom was but he didn't. How could the average citizen be any different? Gorby is actually a great example of the point I am trying to make, that living under a totalitarian system for all of one's history deprives a person of knowing what it is like to have actual freedom. People in Russia have always had the ultimate choice between licking the Tsar's balls or going off to the gulag. That's been their reality forever, generally speaking. How does being able to drive a car on the sidewalk replace voting for your representative in an actual election and being able to protest without being afraid that you will disappear?

We in the west can talk about those textbooks and have our opinions without fear of being physically attacked by the authorities. Russians have no concept of what that is. There is even evidence that epigenetic transference of such behavior occurs, that such influences can continue for generations. This is the trap that Russia is in presently and it isn't going to change from within unless there is sufficient pressure from without. The Russian people need to begin to identify with what freedom actually is, not some immature, subservient, middle school version of same. As you say and as I agree the spark is obviously there but there is no flame.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Politesse]

I love barbos' bullshit. "Our plan was to lose all along you idiots!".

Congrats. You "won". I hope you keep on winning.

All the way back to Moscow.

 

[Copernicus]

In Soviet times, there were several periods of liberalization, especially under Gorbachev. The problem with Gorbachev is that he really believed that the captive nations would choose to remain a part of the Soviet Union, if they were given a chance to choose. He thought he could hold the nation together during glasnost' without using troops to suppress dissent. Boy, was he wrong.

Generally speaking, though, I would say that you don't really know what life was like in the Soviet Union and how ordinary citizens reacted to authority. When our group visited in 1965, we were stunned to learn that there was very little fear of, and respect for, the police. People were always ignoring the laws quite openly, because they were always testing to discover how far they could get without crossing the line. When I returned in 1997 to deliver a paper at a conference, I was surprised and somewhat amused, to see people driving their cars up on the sidewalk to get around traffic jams. It reminded me of Soviet times, except that very few people had enough cars to cause traffic jams. Further down the road, they were being stopped by police and ticketed. I was further surprised to see that they were stopping when flagged down and not just ignoring the cops. That was very different from Soviet times, where people would often argue loudly with ordinary police, who usually did not visibly wear weapons. I can say truthfully that life on the street in the 1960s was not at all like we imagined it would be under a dictatorship.

Gorby no doubt believed he was giving freedom to people but he didn't know what freedom was. That's the point I'm attempting - and failing, obviously - to make. He thought he knew what freedom was but he didn't. How could the average citizen be any different? Gorby is actually a great example of the point I am trying to make, that living under a totalitarian system for all of one's history deprives a person of knowing what it is like to have actual freedom. People in Russia have always had the ultimate choice between licking the Tsar's balls or going off to the gulag. That's been their reality forever, generally speaking. How does being able to drive a car on the sidewalk replace voting for your representative in an actual election and being able to protest without being afraid that you will disappear?

Nonsense. Gorbachev was dealing with a crumbling empire. He didn't tear down the Berlin Wall because Reagan told him to. It was inevitable that the wall would come down, and Reagan knew that. He was trying to save what he could of his empire. The satellite nations had had enough of Russian dominance and yearned to join the rest of Europe. Ukraine was practically in open rebellion. Given the chance to approve membership in a new, more liberal Soviet Union, they voted to secede. Estonia was also leading the movement to leave Russian domination. It wasn't a lack of understanding about freedom that led to his overthrow. It was being the leader of an untenable union of Soviet socialist "republics" that were essentially captive nations. No amount of liberalization or understanding of freedom was going to change that. The Party leaders understood this, too, and that is why they desperately moved to depose Gorbachev. They wanted to hold things together by force of arms, but it was too late for that.

We in the west can talk about those textbooks and have our opinions without fear of being physically attacked by the authorities. Russians have no concept of what that is. There is even evidence that epigenetic transference of such behavior occurs, that such influences can continue for generations. This is the trap that Russia is in presently and it isn't going to change from within unless there is sufficient pressure from without. The Russian people need to begin to identify with what freedom actually is, not some immature, subservient, middle school version of same. As you say and as I agree the spark is obviously there but there is no flame.

And what gives you such great insight into the Russian mind? You have never even visited the country. The people who write those textbooks usually have. Doesn't it occur to you that Ukrainians and Estonians were part of the Soviet Union, too? If they can develop democratic traditions, then Russians can, too.

Zelensky made his name in a TV satirical comedy as a history teacher accidentally voted into office as president of Ukraine. One of the reasons he was voted into office as their real president is that people identified him with the kind of democracy that Ukrainians really wanted to develop. Anyone who has Netflix can watch the series to see what I mean about the image he projected. It's called Servant of the People** which is the not coincidental name of Zelensky's real political party. Russians would have done the same in their own country, if they had a charismatic figure to vote for comparable to what the Ukrainians had. Instead, they got Putin, an old Communist KGB apparatchik. The difference between Russians and Ukrainians was not that the former lacked the understanding of freedom that the latter had. It was serendipity.

** It is interesting that this TV show was all in Russian, Zelensky's native language, not Ukrainian, the language he now habitually speaks in public.

 

[robnisch]

Now South Korea is suppling weapons to Ukraine.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And what gives you such great insight into the Russian mind? You have never even visited the country. The people who write those textbooks usually have. Doesn't it occur to you that Ukrainians and Estonians were part of the Soviet Union, too? If they can develop democratic traditions, then Russians can, too.

I don't have to be a farmer to know the difference between cattle and corn. I'm just calling a spade a spade, and observing correctly that Russia has never been a free country and then attempting to explain how that can be. It isn't just luck as you seem to be asserting.

 

[Copernicus]

And what gives you such great insight into the Russian mind? You have never even visited the country. The people who write those textbooks usually have. Doesn't it occur to you that Ukrainians and Estonians were part of the Soviet Union, too? If they can develop democratic traditions, then Russians can, too.

I don't have to be a farmer to know the difference between cattle and corn. I'm just calling a spade a spade, and observing correctly that Russia has never been a free country and then attempting to explain how that can be. It isn't just luck as you seem to be asserting.

While you ignore that all of those other satellite and captive states in the Soviet Union that are now free countries and were also not free countries with democratic traditions. This is not about the character of the Russian people. It is about the circumstances they happened to find themselves in and the opportunities that would have allowed their people to achieve a different outcome. Russia has the same pro-democracy movement that those other countries had, and Russians are very similar to Ukrainians in both their culture and their history. The contrast between the countries is more serendipity than national character and ability to comprehend the concept of freedom. You really ought to study more Russian history before you make such broad sweeping generalizations about Russians.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The contrast between the countries is more serendipity than national character

Not presently.

More generally, the Russian dictator's invasion of his neighbor is a gift to those of us who can appreciate our freedom. The Russians would be wise to remember how they reacted to Napoleon and Hitler. Did they negotiate? Did they cede land for peace? They should consider this. If they would they may begin to understand how fucked they are in the long term, both from Ukraine and Ukraine's free neighbors to the west.

 

[Copernicus]

The contrast between the countries is more serendipity than national character

Not presently.

More generally, the Russian dictator's invasion of his neighbor is a gift to those of us who can appreciate our freedom. The Russians would be wise to remember how they reacted to Napoleon and Hitler. Did they negotiate? Did they cede land for peace? They should consider this. If they would they may begin to understand how fucked they are in the long term, both from Ukraine and Ukraine's free neighbors to the west.

My reaction to your posts is that they seem more an indictment of Russians as a people than as those leading their country to ruin. They aren't born with a collective memory of Napoleon or Hitler, and what they know of those two men is only what they get from school and reading. Since the end of the Soviet empire, Russians have been greatly exposed to conditions in the West and have travelled extensively. They have had just as much access to information as everyone else until Putin started clamping down on freedoms of the press and of expression. Putin had a fair number of dissenters killed or jailed before the message finally got through to the population that they had lost their earlier freedoms. The process of clamping down has been gradual since the year 2000, when Putin first rose to control, so you have had roughly three decades of exposure to the rest of the world. You seem to think that Russia and Russians haven't changed much since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the country has been transformed since then.

Russians are now losing many of the freedoms that they once enjoyed, and they don't have much power to do anything about it. They are behaving just the way Americans would under the same circumstances. Some of it is already happening in the US, especially in so-called red states. We are witnessing a lot of movement towards authoritarianism, and the election of Donald Trump was only a symptom of that general trend. Politicians choosing who can vote in elections is one sign, but there are a lot of others--e.g. control of the judiciary and public school curricula. A similar trend is taking place in Eastern Europe at perhaps a more accelerated rate. If you think that Russia's invasion is some kind of gift to us in terms of teaching us to appreciate our own freedom, I disagree. I think that it ought to be taken more as a warning, because people don't really seem to be thinking about what happened in Russia as a cautionary tale. It is too tempting to look at what is going on over there and think "that's not us". We can dismiss it as a flaw in their national character, not recognizing that it is also a flaw that we share with them.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

My reaction to your posts is that they seem more an indictment of Russians as a people than as those leading their country to ruin. They aren't born with a collective memory of Napoleon or Hitler, and what they know of those two men is only what they get from school and reading. Since the end of the Soviet empire, Russians have been greatly exposed to conditions in the West and have travelled extensively. They have had just as much access to information as everyone else until Putin started clamping down on freedoms of the press and of expression. Putin had a fair number of dissenters killed or jailed before the message finally got through to the population that they had lost their earlier freedoms. The process of clamping down has been gradual since the year 2000, when Putin first rose to control, so you have had roughly three decades of exposure to the rest of the world. You seem to think that Russia and Russians haven't changed much since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the country has been transformed since then.

Russians are now losing many of the freedoms that they once enjoyed, and they don't have much power to do anything about it. They are behaving just the way Americans would under the same circumstances. Some of it is already happening in the US, especially in so-called red states. We are witnessing a lot of movement towards authoritarianism, and the election of Donald Trump was only a symptom of that general trend. Politicians choosing who can vote in elections is one sign, but there are a lot of others--e.g. control of the judiciary and public school curricula. A similar trend is taking place in Eastern Europe at perhaps a more accelerated rate. If you think that Russia's invasion is some kind of gift to us in terms of teaching us to appreciate our own freedom, I disagree. I think that it ought to be taken more as a warning, because people don't really seem to be thinking about what happened in Russia as a cautionary tale. It is too tempting to look at what is going on over there and think "that's not us". We can dismiss it as a flaw in their national character, not recognizing that it is also a flaw that we share with them.

Russia has never been a free country. Thirty years of relative freedom does not correct for centuries of its absence. Russia has no legacy of freedom. I wish it did, as do you. But it does not. That is it's misfortune and it's present condition. Maybe that will change.

 

[Copernicus]

Russia has never been a free country. Thirty years of relative freedom does not correct for centuries of its absence. Russia has no legacy of freedom. I wish it did, as do you. But it does not. That is it's misfortune and it's present condition. Maybe that will change.

It changed everything for Ukraine, the Baltic republics, and the former Warsaw bloc nations. You cannot write off Russia's problems with such a simplistic analysis of their history.

 

[SLD]

Another Russian general fired for speaking out about his people! Major General Vladimir Seliverstov, a division commander in Bakhmut, was relieved of command, allegedly for complaining about poor conditions and lack of supplies in the unit.

The insanity of removing commanders who speak out about their own troops deprivations will not solve their supply problems. There appears to be an ongoing purge of insubordinate commanders. This will only exacerbate their moral problems. Popov practically urged the troops to revolt by claiming they were being stabbed in the back by their superiors in Moscow. How much longer can they take their crap before they revolt?

Russia seriously fucked up. They have depleted something like half of their combat capabilities. Their elite units have been destroyed. They have to rely on convicts and untrained soldiers who don’t want to be there. Both Popov and Seliverstov may have been effective commanders who halted Ukrainian gains. Their units had been holding their ground, but now will they? Now the commanders are eyeing each other and afraid to say anything. This is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Jayjay]

Now South Korea is suppling weapons to Ukraine.

And North Korea has been providing arms to Russia.

It's a proxy Korean war.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Another Russian general fired for speaking out about his people! Major General Vladimir Seliverstov, a division commander in Bakhmut, was relieved of command, allegedly for complaining about poor conditions and lack of supplies in the unit.

The insanity of removing commanders who speak out about their own troops deprivations will not solve their supply problems. There appears to be an ongoing purge of insubordinate commanders. This will only exacerbate their moral problems. Popov practically urged the troops to revolt by claiming they were being stabbed in the back by their superiors in Moscow. How much longer can they take their crap before they revolt?

Russia seriously fucked up. They have depleted something like half of their combat capabilities. Their elite units have been destroyed. They have to rely on convicts and untrained soldiers who don’t want to be there. Both Popov and Seliverstov may have been effective commanders who halted Ukrainian gains. Their units had been holding their ground, but now will they? Now the commanders are eyeing each other and afraid to say anything. This is a recipe for disaster.

And each time someone in a leadership position is replaced, it is done so with an individual of lesser ability in the field. The replacement commanders will be yes men who will order their troops into sure death. What a clusterfuck.

 

[TV and credit cards]

AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder radar - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The AN/TPQ-36 is an electronically steered radar, meaning the radar antenna does not actually move while in operation. The radar antenna may however be moved manually if required. The system may also be operated in a friendly fire mode to determine the accuracy of counterbattery return fire, or for conducting radar registration or mean point of impact calibrations for friendly artillery.

It can locate mortars, artillery, and rocket launchers, simultaneously locate 10 weapons, locate targets on first round and perform high-burst, datum-plane, and impact registrations.It can be used to adjust friendly fire, interfaces with tactical fire and predicts the impact of hostile projectiles.

Its maximum range is 15 miles (24 km) with an effective range of 11 miles (18 km) for artillery and 15 miles (24 km) for rockets.Its azimuth sector is 90°.It operates in the X-band at 32 frequencies.Peak transmitted power is 23 kW, min.

It features permanent storage for 99 targets, has a field exercise mode and uses a digital data interface.

This fielded in the 1980s by the US, the Russians are having a hard time manufacturing and fielding today for their troops. This speaks to their defense supply issues and the effects of sanctions.

So, I'm guessing it will be precision missile strikes on Russian logistics, precision artillery strikes on Russian artillery positions, and cluster munition strikes on dug in Russian troops to try and convince their unwanted guests to go home.

 

[pood]

Russia has never been a free country. Thirty years of relative freedom does not correct for centuries of its absence. Russia has no legacy of freedom. I wish it did, as do you. But it does not. That is it's misfortune and it's present condition. Maybe that will change.

It changed everything for Ukraine, the Baltic republics, and the former Warsaw bloc nations. You cannot write off Russia's problems with such a simplistic analysis of their history.

Sure, but the Wasrsaw bloc nations and the Baltics had had centuries of contact with the West and in many cases prior democratic incarnations to speed their conversions. The Baltics and Eastern Europe in particular never wanted anything to do with the Soviet Union. They were kept in place at gunpoint. Apart from the Baltics and to some extent Ukraine, none of the ex-Soviet Republics achieved anything even approximating democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of them, including Russia, are authoritarian dystopias.

 

[SLD]

Another Russian general fired for speaking out about his people! Major General Vladimir Seliverstov, a division commander in Bakhmut, was relieved of command, allegedly for complaining about poor conditions and lack of supplies in the unit.

The insanity of removing commanders who speak out about their own troops deprivations will not solve their supply problems. There appears to be an ongoing purge of insubordinate commanders. This will only exacerbate their moral problems. Popov practically urged the troops to revolt by claiming they were being stabbed in the back by their superiors in Moscow. How much longer can they take their crap before they revolt?

Russia seriously fucked up. They have depleted something like half of their combat capabilities. Their elite units have been destroyed. They have to rely on convicts and untrained soldiers who don’t want to be there. Both Popov and Seliverstov may have been effective commanders who halted Ukrainian gains. Their units had been holding their ground, but now will they? Now the commanders are eyeing each other and afraid to say anything. This is a recipe for disaster.

And each time someone in a leadership position is replaced, it is done so with an individual of lesser ability in the field. The replacement commanders will be yes men who will order their troops into sure death. What a clusterfuck.

They can order. But they can’t make people obey. And therein lies the problem. Or maybe the solution.

 

[pood]

Some of the toy soldiers that will soon be deployed to the Ukraine front.



Putin to Deploy Toy Soldiers to Make Ukraine War More ‘Economical’

Lauds ‘Tovarishch Barbos’ for ‘Wise Counsel’ in Ongoing Catastrophic Victory Over Ukraine


IIDB (Loony-Tunes News Service) — President Putin announced on Sunday that he would deploy “tens of thousands of toy soldiers” to the Ukraine front in an effort to make the war “even more economical than it already is.”

Speaking from an underground bunker in the Urals that was reconstructed to look like the interior of the Kremlin, the president, in a televised address, conceded that Russian forces could “easily overrun” all of Ukraine in a few days, but said “that would cost too much money.”

“At the start of the war, you will recall that we sent huge columns of tanks to flatten and occupy Kyiv,” the president recalled. “But then we decided to stop and turn around, because of the price of diesel fuel. Do you people have any idea how much diesel costs these days?”

To further economize on Russia’s “ongoing victory” over Ukraine, Putin said Russia would replace front-line conscripts with toy soldiers.

“Toy soldiers don’t need to be fed or resupplied with weapons,” Putin pointed out. “Although, come to think of it, we don’t feed or resupply our flesh-and-blood soldiers, either.”

Put singled out “tovarishch Barbos,” a rando on the internet, for his wise counsel and support in the ongoing victory over Ukraine that has cost Russia well over 100,000 casualties, destroyed its economy and made it an international pariah.

“I hang on every post Barbos makes,” Putin says. “He knows his shit.”

In his Potemkin lair, the president addressed the nation from the head of an empty table, with his top generals seated unsmilingly behind him like so many stuffed gargoyles weighed down with too many medals. Putin occasionally slumped in his chair and spasmodically tapped a foot. One eye blinked non-stop, and the left side of his face sagged from apparent paralysis.

Parts of the speech were slurred and incoherent, including periodic utterances of “rosebud,” “covfefe,” and “Trump pee tape.”

In the middle of his speech, Putin turned to face his generals and yelled at them: “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding, if you don’t eat yer meat?” The generals did not respond.

 

[Copernicus]

Russia has never been a free country. Thirty years of relative freedom does not correct for centuries of its absence. Russia has no legacy of freedom. I wish it did, as do you. But it does not. That is it's misfortune and it's present condition. Maybe that will change.

It changed everything for Ukraine, the Baltic republics, and the former Warsaw bloc nations. You cannot write off Russia's problems with such a simplistic analysis of their history.

Sure, but the Wasrsaw bloc nations and the Baltics had had centuries of contact with the West and in many cases prior democratic incarnations to speed their conversions. The Baltics and Eastern Europe in particular never wanted anything to do with the Soviet Union. They were kept in place at gunpoint. Apart from the Baltics and to some extent Ukraine, none of the ex-Soviet Republics achieved anything even approximating democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of them, including Russia, are authoritarian dystopias.

But how important is that in the rise of Putin to power? I see a greater parallel with the rise of Hitler, whose regime signaled the end of a more or less liberal Western democracy in the heart of Western Europe. Hitler was able to play on the sense of economic chaos and helplessness in a population that had experienced a humiliating defeat. Putin was also able to play on the sense of economic chaos in the 1990s and a feeling of humiliation after the collapse of the Soviet empire. The Ukrainian invasion was largely driven by a vision of rebuilding part of that lost empire and sense of power, not just an inability to handle democracy. Russia did have a very active pro-democracy movement before Putin succeeded in cowing it. We also have cases in Eastern and Western Europe where the rise of authoritarianism has been noticeable and somewhat scary. I don't think that Russia can be dismissed on the basis of some kind of authoritarian stereotype of their past. The rise of tyranny can happen anywhere, especially when a population feels weak and helpless.