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

[Loren Pechtel]

The investigation just finished. It turns out that Ukraine's 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov has no links to right wing extremists

You have been busted. I knew you read, google and check on everything I post
Sorry to disappoint you, but that "investigation" is not worth shit.
They are 100% nazis. We should not make the same mistake Stalin did when he let ukro-nazis go.

You keep referring to them as ukro-nazis. Is that to distinguish them from the Nazis in Russia?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Also, just ask Barbos. He JUST told us that Russia is the rightful owner of all former soviet republics and most of the old Warsaw pact territory.

That's not what I said. I said Russia reserves its internationally recognized right for self-defence, in other words, Russia will beat the crap out of former "friends" if they decide to accept US payments in exchange for causing Russia problems. Don't know what I am talking about? Ask Georgians

Until you started invading people nobody was causing trouble for Russia. You didn't receive the respect you used to but that's not the same thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You fucking lost in Afghanistan, and nobody helped Afghanistan.

Pakistan is nobody??

You lost in Afghanistan because we helped. We lost in Afghanistan because Pakistan helped.

The reality is that victory is impossible when the other side has an untouchable base of support.

You are losing in Yemen.

We aren't in Yemen.

You have not fought a real army since Vietnam (you lost that one by the way)

True, once again an unwinnable war because you and China were helping the north.

Russian "invasion" force of 2022 was around 40K soldiers and Ukraine had a shitty but real and well equipped army of a half a million. And Russian force of 40K did accomplish what they were told to do. Ukrainian regime agreed to pretty much surrender but then US/UK ordered Elensky to fight promising him everything including retirement in Florida in case everything was not enough. Russian plan was to show that we meant business with relatively small force and they did.
Incompetent are the NATO idiots who train ukro-idiots. Ukro-idiots say that themselves. Yes they say that.
The training they receive is useless. It's not applicable to the kind of war they have.

Maybe that's what Putin tells you to think but that's not what happened. You made the same mistake in Ukraine as you made long ago in Finland---allowed your armies to be trapped on the roads. You invaded in mud season when most of your vehicles (including the whole logistics train) couldn't leave the roads. Hit the head of the column and you can't advance. The tanks could have--but that would have meant leaving behind the logistics train and they would have been cut off.

And in making that mistake you showed how inept the Russian army was and that arming Ukraine could actually help. All your previous invasions have been of places there was no way we would have given them heavy weapons. This time, though, you went after someone we would trust with the big stuff and you did so ineptly enough that we had time to do so.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ukraine is suffering from soviet brutality because they are not in Nato.

They want to be in NATO, but NATO does not agree. NATO wants Ukraine to fight Russia as its stooge. That is how much they care about Ukraine.

You aren't paying attention to how things work.

There is a very simple reason they can't join NATO: War and territorial dispute. Both prevent entry into NATO.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Great Bouncing Cthulhu! Russia is getting desperate.

.....
Russia's military is starting to tap into another source of manpower — female convicts.
A group of female convicts were released from a prison near St. Petersburg last month to fight in Ukraine, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing two former inmates it had spoken to.
According to The Times, roughly 10% of the prison's 400 inmates signed on with the military last year.
.....

Russia has started sending female convicts to fight in Ukraine: report

Russia's prison population has plummeted as it continues to rely on inmates to plug its manpower gaps.

www.yahoo.com

I'm surprised. Basically sounds like asking to get raped.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Seems Ukraine is hitting Russian S-300 and S-400 surface to air missile systems with wanton abandon. So much so Russia is reshuffling these systems around leaving Crimea exposed. Recently Ukraine reported Russia has brought in a S-500 system into Crimea to protect the Kerch bridge. There are likely precious few of these S-500 systems as production delays due to a lack of machine tools and dependency on Western sources for radar components have slowed manufacturing.

And we can supply ATACMS missiles a lot easier than they can supply the missiles for those launchers. And by the time it can engage the booster has burned out, all that's left is the basically ballistic warhead--a much harder target to kill and much harder to actually confirm a kill. If you actually smack into it a kill is obvious, but SAMs typically are built to detonate nearby--by spreading the damage around you basically ensure it finds something vital, but if it detonates on impact it's possible to blow one part to bits without knocking it from the sky. (One of the limitations of things like the Stinger--one that gets through goes for an engine and will almost certainly kill it. But engines are built to survive their destruction without destroying the plane. So long as it has another engine it very well might limp away.)

However, against a falling warhead unless you blow it to bits how do you know if it's dead? It's going to continue on the same path it was even if you manage to kill it's guidance. And it's probably still going to go boom when it hits. In a war of attrition of ATACMS vs SA-21s we come out way ahead even if every round is stopped.

The rail portion of the Kerch bridge is rarely used these days. Only recently has Russia dared transport fuel across the bridge. It looks like an act of desperation. Ukraine has been increasing its reach into the Sea of Azov hitting what it can to diminish military supply to Russian forces in Crimea. So, not only has Russia had to pull back its Black Sea Fleet to Novorossiysk, its naval assets in the Sea of Azov are now at risk. What's a poor Putin to do? Find a safe harbor in Cuba, I guess.
Anyways, if this continues, Crimea would be the logical piece for Russia to have to let go. Ukraine has been hitting not only SAM systems but other radar, airfields, comms centers, supply ferrys, and command posts there. Now if they could just hit that bridge and put it OOC once and for all.
Russia is building new rail routes from Rostov-on-Don down along the coast to supply Crimea, but once other means of transport are sufficiently diminished, this lifeline will become a focal point for Ukraine. Oh, and I almost forgot, F-16s will start trickling in soon and with a lack of air cover, any remaining military assets in Crimea should be easy pickins'.
So this will hardly be the end of it, Russia will still have its meat wagons running poor soldiers into Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv with guns at their backs. But losing Crimea will be not only a major miitary defeat for Putin but quite a blow to his self-esteem. And after all isn't that what this is all about?


With ATACMS, all things are possible.

Bridges are actually fairly hard targets to kill because they inherently must be built tough. You need a big boom that actually hits--if it passes 1' to the side it falls in the water and doesn't do much. That's why the bridge hasn't been killed by the jet skis yet--they can't get to anything vital.

And note that with the long range SAMs down they won't have anything that can protect the bridge from a F-16 with a 2000# laser guided bomb. The piers can't stand up to that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How do you like F-35s based 25 min flight away from St.Putinsburg?

St. Putinsburg--love it!!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As to your claim that Finland would try to promise Russia that there would not be major NATO forces, it is not true. This very day the news has it that Finland wants to have NATO Forward Land Forces deployed in the country.

We are not worried about a thousand drunken sailors from UK/Germany/US landing in Finland.
We are worried about certain types of military hardware.

How do you like F-35s based 25 min flight away from St.Putinsburg?

F35s is not on the list of really worrisome hardware. You should know that, Finnish media you trust should have informed you.

Your air defenses in the back regions leave a lot to be desired. And while I do not have too great an opinion of the F35 it's good enough. It's stealthy enough your long range stuff won't be able to lock it up.

 

[bilby]

Bridges are actually fairly hard targets to kill because they inherently must be built tough.

But the flip side of that is that if they have been weakened, they may no longer meet the "must be tough" criterion, even if they look fine to a casual observer.

It would be a brave man who drove the first fully laden freight train across that bridge - which is presumably why the Russians are mostly sticking to using trucks.

Of course, logistically you can't move anywhere close to the same volume of materiel that way. And it needs more drivers, more maintenance staff, more spare parts, more fuel, etc., etc., to haul your stuff across in trucks.

So even damage short of complete destruction is well worth doing.

 

[bilby]

As to your claim that Finland would try to promise Russia that there would not be major NATO forces, it is not true. This very day the news has it that Finland wants to have NATO Forward Land Forces deployed in the country.

We are not worried about a thousand drunken sailors from UK/Germany/US landing in Finland.
We are worried about certain types of military hardware.

How do you like F-35s based 25 min flight away from St.Putinsburg?

F35s is not on the list of really worrisome hardware. You should know that, Finnish media you trust should have informed you.

Your air defenses in the back regions leave a lot to be desired. And while I do not have too great an opinion of the F35 it's good enough. It's stealthy enough your long range stuff won't be able to lock it up.

Matthias Rust could tell you that even a bog standard civillian Cessna 172 was a hard target for Russian air defences, and that was during the Cold War, when Russian kit hadn't all been subjected to mass pilfering, and widespread neglect.

 

[Elixir]

How many countries has Russia invaded, annexed or pillaged?
How many countries has NATO invaded, annexed or pillaged, @aupmanyav ?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

But the flip side of that is that if they have been weakened, they may no longer meet the "must be tough" criterion, even if they look fine to a casual observer.

And knowing the systemic corruption that is the Putin economy I very much doubt the initial construction was up to western standards.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

World Bank keeps increasing their estimate of Russian economy.
Last time they apparently recalculated and made Russia ~$6trln economy.
Now they appear to be saying that Russia could be $10trln economy. ~They explain that 40% of russian economy was not accounted by their accounting methodology

Where are you seeing this? Because when I go to the World Bank site for Russia I see 2.2T for 2022, no more recent data.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Bridges are actually fairly hard targets to kill because they inherently must be built tough.

But the flip side of that is that if they have been weakened, they may no longer meet the "must be tough" criterion, even if they look fine to a casual observer.

Yeah. That truck bomb they hit the bridge with compromised it.

So even damage short of complete destruction is well worth doing.

The thing is only a direct hit will do any damage. The cluster stuff they're using will scratch the paint and little more. Don't you think they would have dropped a round on it by now if they thought it would work?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

They are not children to be ordered about.

Pootey's opinion is contrary to that. Everyone is a child in dire need of Pootey's guidance. Which excuses every single heinous act of genocide, crimes against humanity and plain old sadism.

The perfect way to get rid of this asshole is to have him fall out of a window. It happens so often in Putinstan that no one should be suspicious that it was anything but an accident.

 

[aupmanyav]

"Had a very productive meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky. India is eager to further cement bilateral relations with Ukraine. Regarding the ongoing hostilities, reiterated that India believes in a human-centric approach and believes that the way to peace is through dialogue and diplomacy," PM Modi posted on X after meeting Zelensky.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

"Had a very productive meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky. India is eager to further cement bilateral relations with Ukraine. Regarding the ongoing hostilities, reiterated that India believes in a human-centric approach and believes that the way to peace is through dialogue and diplomacy," PM Modi posted on X after meeting Zelensky.

And absolutely nothing was accomplished toward a peace because India needs cheap Russian gas and oil. All talk from Modi.

Gotta give Zelensky credit, not burning any bridges.

 

[aupmanyav]

Why? Pootey was going to siege their resources any way he could. They fought back like you would do.
Do you believe Ukranian people are inferior to “your” people? Why would you tell them not to do what you would do?

I do not believe that any people are better than others. That would go against my belief in 'Advaita' Hinduism which does not exclude even animals, vegetation or inanimate objects ('All that exists here is Brahman' - Sarvam khalu idam Brahma, so said my book, Mandukya Upanishad).
Like Buddha or my Prime Minister Modi said, the way to peace is talk and not war.

NATO isn't a threat to anyone. It's a defensive alliance only. It's just an impediment to those with an eye for conquest.

Ask the Russians or the Chinese.

 

[aupmanyav]

NATO isn't a threat to anyone. It's a defensive alliance only. It's just an impediment to those with an eye for conquest.

Ask the Russians or the Chinese.

You aren't paying attention to how things work.
There is a very simple reason they can't join NATO: War and territorial dispute. Both prevent entry into NATO.

You missed Ziprhead's post. https://iidb.org/threads/how-should...vasion-of-ukraine.25317/page-745#post-1190981

 

[aupmanyav]

How many countries has Russia invaded, annexed or pillaged?
How many countries has NATO invaded, annexed or pillaged, @aupmanyav ?

Elixir, off-hand I cannot reply, but perhaps the numbers are more or less equal. Remember Cuba, Egypt, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, some in Africa and South America too.