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

[Elixir]

the bedroom of his home

So rising to the level of General in Russia, gets you a single bedroom home?
Dream big, right?

 

[ZiprHead]

Holy crap!!!

 

[DrZoidberg]

Holy crap!!!

I'm willing to bet large amounts of money on that that box is empty.

 

[ZiprHead]

Holy crap!!!

I'm willing to bet large amounts of money on that that box is empty.

That's what you got out of that???

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Holy crap!!!

I'm willing to bet large amounts of money on that that box is empty.

It probably is--the issue isn't the box, but what it is hitting. A solid fuel rocket motor. Handle them too roughly and they may crack--and when a cracked motor lights you don't want to be anywhere around. Especially when there's a bunch of boom nearby. Think RUD.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Holy crap!!!

We didn't do it that way. We didn't even cover that in the safety brief.
They must have lost their box launcher loading tool.


In other news, Russia, with a little help from their friends (the one with money) plans on building a tunnel to Crimea. Because crossing the Kerch Strait by bridge isn't scary enough.
And speaking of friends, At the latest CSTO meeting, all the heavy hitters showed up: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus. Sadly, Armenia RSVPed it in, again.
But enough about friends. Let's talk about neighbors. Finland has closed all but their northernmost border crossing with Russia. Norway, Estonia, and Latvia may follow suit.
Well at least his people love him. Next March, the Russian people get to show their love and admiration for dear Vlad in their presidential election. In his list of accomplishments, Putin hopes to put Avdiivka in the win column and is sparing no life in doing just that.

 

[Copernicus]

An underwater tunnel between Crimea and Russia might seem like a good idea in times of peace, but tunnels can be flooded in times of war. The cheaper, saner solution would be to stop the war and just use bridges for commerce and tourism. The Russians don't have the spare wealth or infrastructure to build that tunnel right now, and the Chinese probably have better things to do with their money than invest in Russian delusions.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

the Chinese probably have better things to do with their money than invest in Russian delusions.

Depends on the terms of the deal. Maybe China wants to bite off a bit of territory in exchange. Maybe they want favored trade status. Hard to know what a couple dictators might want to do with their stolen wealth.

 

[bilby]

It would likely take at least two years to dig a tunnel of similar length to the Crimean Bridge (19km), assuming a highly favourable geology - the 50km Channel Tunnel took six years to dig, and travels through a chalk marl that is very well suited to tunnelling.

A very cursory Google suggests that the Kerch Strait is not a favourable geology for tunnelling, as it is a very deep cut filled with highly variable clays; While it's certainly possible to cut a tunnel through such material, it's generally slower and more hazardous (even in peacetime). The 42km of tunnels through clay to build the London Crossrail project (now the Elizabeth Line) took three years to bore through a mostly consistent clay substrate; However this was done using eight TBMs - as an underwater project, the proposed Kerch Tunnel would be only able to be worked from the ends, so four TBMs for a two bore tunnel would be the maximum, giving a project time closer to three years than to two, before we consider Russian economic and technical limitations, and the fact that the project is in a war zone.

The tunnel boring machines that dug the Elizabeth Line were specially designed and built for the poor conditions, using a technique called Earth Pressure Balancing to prevent the collapse of the tunnel face before the linings can be placed; Such machines are hugely complex and expensive, and it's highly doubtful that Russia would be able to either build them herself, or import them from Germany, which is currently the only European nation with the capability to build them. They cost about $15 million each.

While it's certainly possible that Russia won't have definitively lost the war (and hence Crimea) in three years time, it does seem unlikely that the project could be completed before becoming irrelevant. It would almost certainly be cheaper and quicker to wait until the war is over, and then repair the damage to the existing bridge - even if, by then, that means completely replacing the bridge.

And obviously if the war ends with Ukraine in control of Crimea, it's unlikely that they would want to maintain any permanent link across the strait, which represents a security risk - even in the UK, after fifty years of peace, there was opposition to the Channel Tunnel on defensive grounds.

In summary, the suggestion that a tunnel could or should be attempted sounds like either a bluff, or a strategy born of desparation, by a political hack with no grasp of the technical difficulty of what he is proposing.

Saying "We will just dig a tunnel" is easy. Actually digging a tunnel, in that particular location, is very hard indeed, and would take many years to acheive even if it were not under attack from the outset.

Years of hard work could (and likely would) be undone in minutes by a saboteur; Attempts to protect such a massive construction project against sabotage would significantly delay the project, and would still very likely be futile.

 

[Elixir]

Kerch Strait is not a favourable geology for tunnelling, as it is a very deep cut filled with highly variable clays

Google sez … I found this:

The Kerch Strait connects the Black and Azov Seas (Figure 1). Its length is 40 km, width varies from 4.5 to 15 km. It is a shallow strait with average depth of 5-7 m and maximum depth of 18 m at its southern entrance..

Does the tunnel need to be through bedrock?

 

[bilby]

Kerch Strait is not a favourable geology for tunnelling, as it is a very deep cut filled with highly variable clays

Google sez … I found this:

The Kerch Strait connects the Black and Azov Seas (Figure 1). Its length is 40 km, width varies from 4.5 to 15 km. It is a shallow strait with average depth of 5-7 m and maximum depth of 18 m at its southern entrance..

Does the tunnel need to be through bedrock?

The bedrock is a LONG way down; The strait is a very deep canyon through the bedrock, made shallow by having silted up with clay.

The tunnel basically can't be through bedrock; It would need to cut through the clay, like the London underground does.

This is far more difficult and dangerous than tunnelling through bedrock, as any hole you dig has a strong tendency to quickly collapse on itself.

The nineteenth century solution was to have men with picks and shovels working in a highly pressurised chamber behind a steel shield. It was this working environment that first introduced the medical world to the disease called "The Bends", when workers came back out into the low pressure environment. The Bends was originally called Caisson Disease; A Caisson is basically the same technique as a pressurised Greathead Shield, but employed vertically to bore down through water, silt, and clay to find solid ground on which to place the foundations of a bridge pylon.

Modern EPB-TBMs are very similar in concept, but have a rotating cutting head in the high pressure working area at the tunnel face, so people rarely need to go into that zone.

Most tunnelling is done in bedrock, where the geology is sufficiently self-supporting to allow work at ambient pressure, but that's not an option in places with deep clays, like the lower Thames Valley, or the Kerch Strait.

Of course, if you're a nineteenth century engineer, or a twenty first century Russian despot, and you don't care about a few hundred dead labourers, you can do things the old fashioned way, with a simple Greathead Shield and a bunch of navvies with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. It's far slower, though. Slower still if the workers are fully aware of just how poorly they are being treated, and just how dangerous the work is.

Small sections of the recent Northern Line extension in Battersea, south of the Thames, were actually dug manually in this way, where large numbers of existing underground services were present and needed to be located, identified, and re-routed. Those tiny sections of tunnel took as long to dig as the entire rest of the project, and the work was hard, gruelling, and filthy.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Ventilating a 19 km long tunnel under water is gonna be a bitch. In New York, building bridges meant deep digging to make deep foundations for bridge piers. Miners died because of decompression coming to the surface. The bends. Would Kersh tunnel travelers likewise have similar problems?

 

[TomC]

Ventilating a 19 km long tunnel under water is gonna be a bitch. In New York, building bridges meant deep digging to make deep foundations for bridge piers. Miners died because of decompression coming to the surface. The bends. Would Kersh tunnel travelers likewise have similar problems?

Maybe the Sevastopol will protect the tunnel from Ukrainian attacks?
Tom

 

[bilby]

Ventilating a 19 km long tunnel under water is gonna be a bitch. In New York, building bridges meant deep digging to make deep foundations for bridge piers. Miners died because of decompression coming to the surface. The bends. Would Kersh tunnel travelers likewise have similar problems?

The tunnel diggers certainly could; But once finished, the pressure inside the tunnel is basically indistinguishable from normal sea level pressure - you only need to pressurise the tunnel until the concrete and/or steel liners are in place to hold back the clay. So travellers wouldn't have issues with decompression.

Ventilation is another matter; Long undersea tunnels can be ventilated in various ways, and the amount required depends on what kind of traffic they carry - rail tunnels with only electric trains (as in the channel tunnel and most metropolitan underground commuter rail systems) are easiest to ventilate; Tunnels carrying gasoline and diesel engined vehicles need far more ventilation.

In the case of the Channel Tunnel, ventilation is by means of a third (service) tunnel between the two main tunnels; This is kept at a higher pressure than the main tunnels so that if a fire occurs, smoke is kept out of the service tunnel which acts as an escape route and as access for emergency services. Air circulates in via the service tunnel, and back out through the main running tunnels. The main tunnels also get some 'passive ventilation' from the trains passing through at 160km/h.

Of course, the three tunnel ventilation system requires up to fifty percent more digging than a twin tunnel system; in difficult geology and for shorter tunnels (as at Kersh), it's probably easier (and certainly cheaper) to use a two tunnel system with passive ventilation for electric trains.

A road tunnel would need active ventilation no matter what the design, and is therefore expensive to operate, as well as being expensive to build, as you need to constantly power some seriously big fans.

 

[Rhea]

Ventilating a 19 km long tunnel under water is gonna be a bitch. In New York, building bridges meant deep digging to make deep foundations for bridge piers. Miners died because of decompression coming to the surface. The bends. Would Kersh tunnel travelers likewise have similar problems?

And that pressurized tunnel as they dig has its own risks of workers dying on the way to the surface!

nycsubway.org: Tells How It Feels to Go Up In A Geyser (1916)

www.nycsubway.org

TELLS HOW IT FEELS TO GO UP IN A GEYSER. Man Shot Through River Bed from Tunnel Was Never Squeezed So Tightly Before.
KEPT HIS MOUTH TIGHT SHUT.
Body of Third Victim Found-- Damage to New Subway More Serious Than Was Thought.

The body of Michael McCarthy, one of the three men shot up through. the bed of the East River on Saturday afternoon by a leak of compressed air from the new subway tunnel under construction opposite the foot of Montague Street, Brooklyn, was recovered yesterday morning by the harbor police about 200 yards from the scene of the accident.

Another man, Frank Driver, a negro miner's helper, died soon after the accident, as he was being dragged aboard a launch. The third man, Marshall Mabey, who was taken to the Brooklyn City Hospital, was able to go to his home at 89 Theodore Street, Long Island City, yesterday, He was not seriously injured, and said he hoped to return to work within a day or two. He gave a graphic description of his experience.

 

[barbos]

So, Davyd Arakhamia, the current head of of Elensky party (!!!!) in Ukrainian Parliament agrees with everything ..... russian "propaganda" and Putin have been saying.

I am trying to figure out why the puppet masters in Washington would let him say these things, what is their plan?
Title is of course misleading. You need to read what he said.

Head of Ukraine's leading party claims Russia proposed "peace" in exchange for neutrality

Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction who led the Ukrainian delegation at "peace" talks with the Russians in Belarus and Türkiye in 2022, said that the Russian delegation promised Kyiv peace in exchange for refusing to join NATO, but the Ukrainians did not believe them.

news.yahoo.com

This guy should be an illustration to Sunken Cost fallacy.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

If Russia truly wants peace talks, Russia should cease its drone and missile strikes on civilians across Ukraine.

 

[zorq]

So, Davyd Arakhamia, the current head of of Elensky party (!!!!) in Ukrainian Parliament agrees with everything ..... russian "propaganda" and Putin have been saying.

I am trying to figure out why the puppet masters in Washington would let him say these things, what is their plan?
Title is of course misleading. You need to read what he said.

Head of Ukraine's leading party claims Russia proposed "peace" in exchange for neutrality

Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction who led the Ukrainian delegation at "peace" talks with the Russians in Belarus and Türkiye in 2022, said that the Russian delegation promised Kyiv peace in exchange for refusing to join NATO, but the Ukrainians did not believe them.

news.yahoo.com

This guy should be an illustration to Sunken Cost fallacy.

Hmmm, you would think that if a thing is important enough to supplement with four (!!!!) exclamation points then it must also be important enough to know its proper spelling. Maybe we just can't teach stupid dogs new tricks.

I don't even know what you think is interesting about this information. It was obvious that Russia fucked up the beginning of the illegal, immoral, and unprovoked invasion in 2022 and it is no surprise that they sent their diplomats to stall for enough time to regroup and launch a better organized invasion later. It is also no surprise that Ukraine refused offer the lying Russian diplomat shits offered because Russia has proven over and over again that they can't be trusted to honor their agreements. Their word is well known to be shit in Ukraine since they illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. (The broken 1994 Budapest memorandum had been reaffirmed by Russia as recently as 2009)

And as far as a sunk cost fallacy goes, it is pretty clear that Russia is continuing to sink a lot more resources into this war than Ukraine with all the free military toys Ukraine is getting from their western friends. When will Russia realize that their thieving and murdering isn't worth the sacrifice? They probably won't. The fuckers clearly love to lie, steal, and murder so I guess they will never care how much it costs them.

I'm actually a little surprised that you are bringing this up as it kind of blows a hole in all of the "Denazification" bullshit you have been spewing. I mean assuming for a moment that Russia was serious bout this diplomatic maneuver, This would be a clear sign that Russia DOESN'T actually care about getting Nazis out of Ukraine. All they really cared about was this supposed "Neutrality."

 

[Elixir]

The fuckers clearly love to lie, steal, and murder

Their so-called leaders certainly do - and always have. The sin of “the fuckers” (Russian citizenry) is to lack the balls to do anything but submit to those so-called leaders, and wade obediently into the cannon fire. Or, alternatively, loudly and consistently mouth their propaganda as if you truly believed it - like babs has elected to do.

All they really cared about was this supposed "Neutrality."

All they care about - all they have EVER cared about - is Ukraine’s arable land and mineral resources. PERIOD.
Nothing more. They'll let card-carrying Nazis run the whole place, as long as everything it produces accrues to Putler.
Without it, Russia is nothing more than one vast, humongous shithole.

 

[ZiprHead]

So, Davyd Arakhamia, the current head of of Elensky party (!!!!) in Ukrainian Parliament agrees with everything ..... russian "propaganda" and Putin have been saying.

I am trying to figure out why the puppet masters in Washington would let him say these things, what is their plan?
Title is of course misleading. You need to read what he said.

Head of Ukraine's leading party claims Russia proposed "peace" in exchange for neutrality

Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction who led the Ukrainian delegation at "peace" talks with the Russians in Belarus and Türkiye in 2022, said that the Russian delegation promised Kyiv peace in exchange for refusing to join NATO, but the Ukrainians did not believe them.

news.yahoo.com

This guy should be an illustration to Sunken Cost fallacy.

There's reason to believe Russia?