I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this. On the news they are reporting that Putin is now saying that a country carrying out sanctions against Russia is committing an act of war. The problem with him saying this is that NATO countries have no gotten move involved in order to avoid "WW3." If sanctions = WW3, then there is no longer a reason for everyone else to not join the fight and end this quickly.
Hopefully the international community has learned a lot in the last few months. The next time a country is ramping up to invade another there will hopefully be a better response before the invasion actually happens.
For the Russians on the street war with Ukraine is very unpopular, but going to war with the west is much more popular. If the war can be successfully cast as Russia vs the US or NATO instead of Russia vs Ukraine, that is a win on the home front. That's why he's saying this. It's trying to change the narrative.
Russia will not run out of money until the US gets serious about limiting Russian oil. All of the sanctions we have imposed including SWIFT exempt Russin oil! If our government really had any backbone Russian oil sales would be banned.
The initial sanctions may not have included Russian oil to give various other countries a chance to ramp up production and fill the gap left when Russian oil leaves the market. As pointed out, the sale of Russian oil has dropped significantly since the war began. Shell bought some Russian oil and they have been heavily criticized for it.
The oligarchs are mostly craven and cowed, but the FSB and increasingly the military is unhappy with him. Those are two other legs of the stool holding him up.
Another factor she is missing is that the common people have been kept mostly quiet for years with an ever increasing standard of living. They have been enjoying the benefits of western consumer goods and the ability to travel to European destinations for over 20 years. Despite that, the political opposition has been growing. The people born after 1980 are increasingly unhappy with Putin even before this war.
In the past Putin has done a military operation when his support has flagged as a wag the dog thing. He invaded and took a slice of Georgia in 2008 and later in 2014 he took Crimea and part of Donbas. This is his biggest military operation yet. It could show how weak he really is with the public.
A story came out yesterday that workers at a factory somewhere had gone on strike because they didn't get paid. With the ruble in freefall, no access to credit, and a lot of key goods no longer made in Russia and need to be imported as nose bleed prices, hyper inflation is almost certain very soon. We in the west have seen what disruptions of some imported goods do to the economy as we've tried to climb out of the pandemic shut downs. Russia's upcoming shortages are going to be significantly worse.
The under 42s who are already unhappy with Putin are going to see their standard of living drop back to Soviet era and worse. The older than 42s understand it, but it's an alien landscape to those too young to remember the USSR. The protests are going to ramp up. And if the protests get too big for the police to handle, the military is not there to back up the police. They will be able to put some troops on the streets, but not as many because the bulk of the army is in Ukraine.
If the polices and soldiers sent to put down the protests aren't getting paid, they will probably be sympathetic to the protesters and might deliberately let things get out of hand and let the protesters occupy carious critical places.
Even if Putin orders these protesters arrested or even shot, the people tasked with carrying out his orders will be outnumbered and might not be all that inclined to do it. Even if they tried they would not be able to put a dent in the protests. You can't arrest 20 million people.
Not that long ago Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus faced mass protests and his government almost toppled. Authoritarian leaders have been ousted when the public got fed up and rose up against them. The massive Russian army has always been a looming threat for this in Russia, but with the army tied down, the door is open.
Since 1900 Russia has had popular uprisings after ever military defeat. One was put down (1906), but the others were the 1917 Revolution and the 1989 collapse of the USSR. And the operation in Afghanistan was chicken feed compared to this war.
Yep, not smart. I feel much of putins reputation for smarts was just due to his lack of respect for morals, he pushed his army into near genocide in Chechnya ...he jailed enemies...he was president of a country with enourrmass natural resources and ran it like a mafia boss. None of which strikes me as a sign of intelligence.
He is an authoritarian, but he's stayed in power over 20 years because he is very good at playing off factions and keeping the masses quiet. But he's losing control.
According to UK sources it's now believed that Putin has colon cancer and it may be quite advanced
Vladimir Putin may have cancer, according to source
He's had it at least two years. Early in the pandemic I recall reading about the elaborate decontamination procedures anybody had to go through to see him face too face. He has been behaving like someone immune compromised for two years. He's also exhibited the signs of someone with severe lower back pain from before the pandemic and chronic lower back pain is one symptom.
Another thing I noticed is nobody has seen him in several days. They released a video of him meeting with people yesterday, but it appears he was added electronically too another video and the metadata on the video was from February 21.
Putin may be dying. Interestingly the person who is officially second in line, their head of the military, was ousted today. Putin dying and leaving a power vacuum could also set off a civil war.
Another random thought that I've been having - is the tank dead as a modern combat vehicle? What I see, simplistically, is that ~WW2 the balance of power was heavily in favor of a moving fortress that most infantry weapons (bullets) would bounce off (huge, huge simplification). With the readily portable AT and AA weapons available to modern infantry, mobile fortresses start looking more and more like mobile death traps that require a huge logistics tail.
If you were up against infantry without that equipment you still wouldn't want the tanks as that infantry will just go insurgent on you and eat the logistics tail, while the tanks can't meaningfully help with that.
Something I hadn't really put together with this idea before now - even modern sci-fi authors stoop to aliens to construct a scenario in which a modern full-on armored division with top line equipment and training have a meaningful opportunity to go into battle. Mostly ending with a significant tactical victory, a strategic loss of the formation, and the troops abandoning the vehicles and going insurgent.
Outside of alternate history novels I don't see a WW2 style fight breaking out anywhere, strictly for these combat power reasons. Ignoring the political and social constraints.
And what we're seeing in Ukraine is just reinforcing this notion for me.
Russian tanks are all rooted in the 1950s designs which were in turn evolved from WW II designs. The Russians introduced the main battle tank concept then and every army in the world has adopted it since. The T number on their tanks is the year they were accepted for production. The T-90 is their front line tank today, though I believe they have a T-14 in the works. They are taking T-62s out of storage to send to Ukraine right now. T-62s that have been sitting outside in Siberia for 30 years.
The American Abrams saw action in the first Gulf War. It originally had Chobham armor which was made from layered fabric and is very resistant to conventional armor piercing rounds, but when it became evident that the Russians used HEAT rounds (high explosive anti-tank) the armor was replaced with depleted uranium armor. The Abrams is literally radioactive.
The uranium armor is highly resistant to all anti-tank weapons, including rocket munitions.
The Abrams wiped out the Republican Guards in Iraq in a very short and fast armor battle. I believe there was not a single US tank lost.
Insurgency warfare has been around a long time. The American colonies employed it in the American Revolution. It's always been the way a weaker opponent who is determined can fight back against a stronger invader. There are various weapons used against insurgents, but the only way insurgencies are eventually put down is putting enough infantry on the streets to stop the insurgents before they get going. Most invaders are unwilling or unable to do this.
Russia's population is only a little over 3X Ukraine's. It would take a serious effort and commitment on the part of Russia to subdue Ukraine and they don't have the manpower in arms right now nor the budget to do it. Even if they don't pay the soldiers, they need to outlay resources to put them in the field and keep them there. And unhappy soldiers are not going to do their job very well.
Other countries outside of the Russian sphere have developed their own tanks and most have designed them more on the line of the Abrams than the Russian tanks. What's obsolete is tank designs rooted in WW II and the early cold war.
Pretty much. If Ukrainians had taken a direct stance against Russian columns, they'd have lost the war already.
Old saying: supply trucks come sometime behind the tanks, take those out, tanks won't move. They've really entertained it.
Also seems the ukrainian intel in Russians movements is really good, wonder where all that is coming from..
Regarding tanks, would you rather be firing a javelin some 3km away from the tank, or sitting inside that can of sardines..
It's been clear from the start that US intel has been fed to the Ukrainians. Additionally leaks from the FSB have helped both the US and Ukraine stay ahead of the Russians.
I think that the US is taking a wait and see attitude on imposing further sanctions on Russian oil. The existing sanctions have already scared off some purchasers of Russian oil even though the sanctions don't directly cover Russian oil. The uncertainty is causing oil buyers to seek other sources for their purchases. Oil doesn't come to the buyer immediately unless its in a direct pipeline to its refinery. Someone could put in an order to buy Russian oil and then have it cancelled by new sanctions.
Basically the war is a race between Ukraine surrendering and Russian economy collapsing. In the end, both may happen.
I don't see Ukraine surrendering. Their cites are getting destroyed, but when the public is willing to keep up the fight, destroying the cities only has the effect of making the enemy dig in deeper.
Think of the British resiliency during the Blitz and the Germans were just as resilient when the western Allies bombed their cities to dust. Germany was virtually leveled by the war, but they kept fighting to the bitter end. Ultimately the Germans lost because they ran out of everything: men, weapons, and ground to defend. They fought for every inch of it though, especially against the Russians.
Russian POW explaining that Russian soldiers think they are helping/freeing the Ukrainian people from fascist regime because of the mis-information they have in Russia. He is shocked and ashamed to learn the truth.
I read today that those three guys were actually police. The Russians figured this was going to be such an easy cake walk that they sent civilian police groups in to police places like Kyiv after they had been taken.
Always good to test ideas against the opposition a la Gordo J. on TSLA....here is a Russian perspective:
I didn't watch the whole video, but is this guy in Russia? If so he almost certainly does not have access to high quality information about the war. I plan to watch the whole thing a bit later.
I don't know why Zelansky keeps calling for a no fly zone. I'm sure he's been told this would lead to the conflict getting worse and possibly go nuclear and imposing a no fly zone is not going to stop artillery attacks unless the people flying the no fly zone are also going to be attacking Russian positions on the ground, at which point NATO has fully joined the war.
kyivindependent.com
