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

[Henry-Finland]

William Spaniel is a video blogger and an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Political Science. Previously, he was a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Rochester, is the creator of the popular YouTube series Game Theory 101, and is the founder of gametheory101.com. You can subscribe to him on YouTube at https://youtube.com/c/gametheory101 or follow him on Twitter @gametheory101.

Books by William Spaniel:



His latest video blog (4 hours ago):

Why Russia's Nuclear Weapons Failed to Deter Ukraine's Invasion​

 

[Henry-Finland]

Just wanted to show that all video bloggers are not just some empty-headed teens.

 

[TomC]

Putin’s ‘slow, chaotic reaction’ shows Ukraine will sustain Kursk incursion | Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges​

Wiki:
Frederick Benjamin "Ben" Hodges III (born 16 April 1958) is a retired United States Army officer who served as commanding general, United States Army Europe. He has been Senior Advisor to Human Rights First since June 2022 and also serves as NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics
He previously held the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

The look on Putin's face there resembles what I would expect to see on Trump's face when one of Trump's staffers mentions that Kamala Harris is now leading in yet another swing state.
Tom

 

[Henry-Finland]

I also present here the video blogger Ukraine Matters from Denmark:

I've started this channel to explain the general situation of the war in Ukraine in simple terms.
I watch military experts so you don't have to.
From June 2022 until January 2024 this channel's profits over 50,000 USD have been donated to support AFU.
Additionally in direct, channel-authored campaigns we raised over 180,000 USD directly to AFU in vehicles, equipment and drones.
This community constantly donates to the official, bigger platforms and numbers there are many times larger. Full disclosure fact list:
I am not a Ukrainian. I am not in any physical danger. I live in soft and cozy Denmark very far from UA.
I understand Ukrainian and Russian, so I can follow news from the sources. I have been to Ukraine many times. I have a lot of good friends in Ukraine one of the best is actually from Bucha.
My wife is Ukrainian. We have family in Ukraine. I have friends and family in the military who are on the front lines.
Ukraine Matters, support Ukrainian Armed Forces!

Ukraine's GENIUS STRATEGY That Changed The War - Expert Opinion on Ukraine War​

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There is not so much I can do for Ukraine as I live here in a small Bulgarian village (80 inhabitants, almost all pensioners like me).
Later I will anyhow tell how I (and you) can help Ukraine in this war - with small or even without resources.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So far, that attack is not a big area, 1000 km^2 ~ 32 km * 32 km. That's about half the area of Moscow, for instance.

But if Russia decided to push back, Ukraine has three options:

1. Hold on to all the territory - could be difficult.
2. Fall back to some more defensible part and then dig in.
3. Withdraw completely.

This could be something like the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. While that North Vietnamese attack on the South was eventually defeated, it showed that North Vietnam had unexpected vigor in that war.

If Russia does not push back very much, then what's next for Ukraine? Expand the incursion northward to Kursk? Eastward to Belgorod?

I doubt they'll be any weaker in the area they took than they are in the existing front lines.

Looking at Google's map of Europe I find some interesting things:

The Ukrainian incursion appears to be approximating the R200 highway. Keep following it and eventually you come to the E38. I see no substantial population centers on this route. Turn right onto the E38 and in time you come to the E105 aka M2, still with no substantial population. Look south along the E105 and you find Kharkiv, occupied Ukraine. Now, there is a major population center (Belgorod) on that route but you don't need to go there to interdict traffic on the road.

Furthermore, the E105 is the most prominent road that Google shows into the occupied area. That wouldn't completely cut the supply line but I would be surprised if that road doesn't have a lot of supplies going along it. In trucks, not tracked vehicles, they can't just drive around a blockading force.

I have not found adequate information on train tracks to figure out if any important lines are threatened.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Steve_bank said: "The Warsaw Pact was a collective defence treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania (Albania withdrew in 1968)."

Warsaw pact was a reply to NATO. NATO came up in 1949. Warsaw pact came up in 1955.

What happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union? The Warsaw Pact was created as a reply to NATO, which you freely admit. When all of those Central European satellite nations gained their independence from the Soviet Union, why didn't they reestablish that pact to defend against NATO? Seriously. Ask yourself that Aup. You know better. Every single one of the former Warsaw pact nations applied to join NATO--the very organization that you think they wanted to defend against. They all did that, because they feared Russia would once again do what it did after WWI--try to grab back all of the border territories that it felt it had lost and was entitled to. Even the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuanian--former Soviet Socialist Republics--rushed to get into NATO. Ukraine wanted in. Even Georgia wants in. NATO did not move closer to Russian borders. Countries that were close to Russian borders joined NATO. The Warsaw Pact was created by the Russian-dominated Soviet Union to defend itself from NATO. It was not created to serve the needs of satellite nations that were forced to join the Pact.

I hope you're not actually expecting a response from aupy on that one.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When Russia was near Kyiv there were reports of air-fuel bombs. Release an air fuel mixture, ignite it, and it creates a vacuum and toxic gas. Inderscriminate.

Fuel-air isn't barbaric. It comes down to the target. We dropped a bunch of them in Iraq--beautiful for clearing paths through minefields in the desert.

They lack the shrapnel and high overpressures of regular bombs and thus aren't very good at hard targets. But against soft targets you get far more boom per pound. Whether their use is appropriate or not comes down to what that soft target is. Minefields, fine. Cities, no. The Russians have a tendency to clump the important stuff together to make for better localized defense--but if Ukraine had some way to get some FAEs onto those Russian airfields they would be very, very effective at killing planes. (But would do very little to the airfield.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

From business reporting China is in financial trouble and has been for a while. Real estate collapse and over extending their foreign loan programs.

Yup. Last I knew real estate rental in Shanghai was in the ballpark of .1% of value/month. Realistic is about 1%/month.

They are trying to stimulate internal consumption.

And internal investment. Some time back they changed the rules to allow margin accounts to be backed by real estate. If the market crashes it will crash badly.

On top of that they have a decking population with litlle to no immigration. They are heading towards an gaing population and not enough young workers.

The CCP went from population controls to now trying to get people to have babies, even single women.

Didn't know they were to the point of encouraging birth. It makes sense, though--One Child China was facing a huge demographic problem and it was probably the only answer. But now they're in the same position as every other industrialized nation of people seeing kids as too expensive.

My guess is that while they have aspects of a capitalist free mater system, the CCP clings to the centralized economic control paradigm.

I don't see it as central economic control, but rather a panic effort to avoid crashing the economy. They're kicking the can but it's going to get worse the longer they put off the day of reckoning.

They are fearful of losing control.

Exactly. I rather expect the government to fall when things come apart.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

- Ukrainian "saboteurs" were driving civilian vehicles in Russian villages, posing as Russian officials. They gave evacuation orders to the residents through loudspeakers. This caused traffic jams and blockages on the roads, significantly hindering the movement of Russian troops.

Sounds like a very good ploy. Nobody gets hurt but the Russians get all snarled up.

And it also suggests that Russia is going to have problems in the future--you can't give an instruction of "ignore fake orders" since they can't tell what's fake.

 

[Henry-Finland]

Perun, a videoblogger:
"An Australian covering the military industrial complex and national military investment strategy. Since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, I've been covering lessons from the conflict and how they may inform the future investment decisions that other nations may or should make."

Air Defence In Ukraine (2024): Creativity, Anti-air drones, Shortages & Lessons​

 

[Henry-Finland]

I read here that someone was interested in the Cuban crisis. Here is a "Cuban crisis - one day at a time" video-serial:



I highly recommend their works. It isn't the "normal" repetitive "same shit all over again". You will see what I mean.

 

[Henry-Finland]

The word I'm thinking of isn't "tell", but "confirm".

How to confirm anything?

That is the basis of Journalism and why we can trust, to a point, professional journalists. Multiple sources with first hand knowledge.

Kind of like why one goes to a doctor for a medical problem, not YouTube.

Jimmy Higgins:
I posted some YouTube-videos by "professional journalists" or more like professional writers and other professionals.
I have posted these guys' videos, and others the time I have now posted here.

What do you think?

 

[Henry-Finland]

I believe that some of the key reasons for Ukraine's attack on the Kursk region were:

• To force Putin to declare a general mobilization, which would cause significant "unrest" in Russia. Mobiks that are not interested in the war are not very keen to fight or stay in the trenches.
  
  
• Ukrainians were certainly aware of how train operations in Russia are computerized and that the Russians cannot use the railway if they shut down the system. I believe that Ukrainian hackers are now working on the railway traffic system around the clock.
  
  This Kursk operation is good for the UA efforts on many levels.

 

[Henry-Finland]

Wikipedia:
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (born 25 January 1978) is a Ukrainian politician and former entertainer who is serving as the sixth and current president of Ukraine since 2019, including during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine ongoing since 2022.

Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. He obtained a degree in law from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics. He then pursued a comedy career and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played a fictional Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party with the same name as the TV show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.

Zelenskyy announced his candidacy in the 2019 presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018, alongside the New Year's Eve address of then-president Petro Poroshenko on the TV channel 1+1. A political outsider, he had already become one of the frontrunners in opinion polls for the election. He won the election with 73.23 percent of the vote in the second round, defeating Poroshenko.
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TV series Servant of the People with Zelensky in the main role:

Servant of the People | Season 1 Episode 1&2 | Multi-Language subtitles Full Episodes​

Very humoristic and realistic! Warmly recommended.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

What to know about Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region​

Just because it is on YouTube, doesn't make it a vetted source. In fact, if it is on YouTube, it most likely not a vetted source.

I watched the video. There isn't anything in that makes spectacular or propagandistic claims. It's just straightforward reporting. Give it a watch.

Also watched the Been Hodges video. Very, very informative. Not cheerleading. Give it a watch.

 

[aupmanyav]

Even the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuanian--former Soviet Socialist Republics--rushed to get into NATO. Ukraine wanted in. Even Georgia wants in.

Did Russia want to attack these nations at that time? Why the rush? It was a specter created by West, just like Pakistan military has created for preserving its dominance, 'India will attack Pakistan, 'Akhand Bharat' - undivided India'. Who says that? A marginal political party, Hindu Mahasabha, which has not won even a single seat in the Indian parliament since 1996, and none in the State legislatures since 2002.

Hindu Mahasabha - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Who suffered because of these beliefs? Georgia and now Ukraine. Will Ukraine be the last country attacked by Russia? These countries are just pawns for NATO.

 

[aupmanyav]

So, you were wrong.
And now you go befind whataboutism.

I said all nations do it. Is my statement wrong?

 

[aupmanyav]

It's the standard position of the abuser--look what you made me do.

I am not the abuser. India is nowhere involved in this conflict. I am just an onlooker stating my views.

 

[aupmanyav]

It comes down to what you choose to stand for. Western liberal democracy, rules of law domestically and internationally, free speech, free elections, civil liberties, free press...or the authoritarian rule of China and Russia.

It is not about what chooses, but about the wisdom of what to choose under the circumstances. These circumstances do not allow USA and India to accept Taiwan as an independent nation and station their ambassadors in that country.

 

[aupmanyav]

The Philippines would disagree with the "not attacking" bit.

Yeah, they seem to have made a strong protest to China.