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Ukraine Part 2: Playing chicken with Kiev


Kalbear

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1 hour ago, Larry of the Lake said:

It's a tight window, Putin needs to avoid tank-devouring mud, to wait until the Olympics are over, and of course, to make new maps that will circumvent the old adage about "don't start a land war in Asia" with some creative new labelling.

Ukraine isn't in Asia by any geographic definition. The old delineation was the Volga, which is 200 miles to the east of the Ukrainian border, and general consensus modern definition as the Ural River north to the Ural Mountains, which puts the border in the western-most part of Kazakhstan, almost 600 miles away.

I really don't think Putin cares about the Olympics either.

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2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I really don't think Putin cares about the Olympics either.

The Chinese care about the Olympics and I’m pretty sure Putin cares about selling stuff to China if he’s going to face crippling sanctions from the West.

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6 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

The Chinese care about the Olympics and I’m pretty sure Putin cares about selling stuff to China if he’s going to face crippling sanctions from the West.

True, but I suspect the Chinese will also be understanding if Russia feels it needs to move sooner for reasons that are out of their hands.

Then again, the Olympics only have another week to run and Russian forces are not quite at 100% for a full-scale invasion, so they could easily hold off for a few more days.

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3 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

It's a tight window, Putin needs to avoid tank-devouring mud, to wait until the Olympics are over, and of course, to make new maps that will circumvent the old adage about "don't start a land war in Asia" with some creative new labelling.

 

Ukraine is entirely in Europe.

FYI.

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38 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Ukraine is entirely in Europe.

FYI.

We know, it's a joke, yadda yadda. Vizzini didn't say a historic blunder was to fight a land war in Eastern Europe after all.

And hell while we are getting pedantic the kinds of stupid harsh conditions that make wars in Russia so tough aren't as bad in Ukraine either. Even the winter. And roads are better, it's more densely populated, tech is better, there exists GPS, etc.

It's a joke. Lighten up francis

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23 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Well since Putin met Orban with that same silly big table, it wasn't just a dig against NATO or Macron. Still pointless: covid is airborne, if you stay for 5 hours in that room, a 5-m wide table won't protect you at all.

Waiting for frozen ground only makes sense if you intend a blitz, you get in, you crush the opposition, and you're out before the weather warms up. Otherwise, it might be better to wait until it's not mud anymore, in a few months, and you actually have several months worth of tank manoeuvres ahead.

All in all, if Putin actually plans to invade and if he ends up invading, this would be the most predictable and obvious invasion since Iraq in 2003. Not exactly the greatest strategy ever.

In the 21st century with as many satellites and smartphones as there are, it’s practically impossible to hide a build up of the size necessary to conduct a full scale invasion. There can be attempts at misdirection sure, but you’ll never be able to make the preparations in totally secrecy. Should China plan to invade Taiwan we’ll see the same thing happen there over the course of months. 

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5 hours ago, Werthead said:

True, but I suspect the Chinese will also be understanding if Russia feels it needs to move sooner for reasons that are out of their hands.

Then again, the Olympics only have another week to run and Russian forces are not quite at 100% for a full-scale invasion, so they could easily hold off for a few more days.

Yeah, I don't think Xi really cares and I strongly suspect it didn't weigh in on Putin's calculus much at all.  I mean, yeah, if he invaded, like, the day of the opening ceremony Xi probably would be pissed and thought it was a dick move, but at this point it doesn't matter even from a PR perspective.  I suppose maybe the closing ceremonies.

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This isn't even the last decade of the 20th C.  Why do they need tanks in the age of drones and satellites, and while there are even railroads and planes, and highways for trucks?  So what the hell does mud matter in this day and age (maybe again in the age after they occupy, but nevermind).

When I was a child at Christmas Eve, as we drove to Church, and / or to the grandparents in town 30 miles away, staring up at the winter stars over the fields on either side of the highway, covered feet in white snow, the glow of the town barely visible for the first miles, and everything shut down at night except Church and family, I would think, "If I were the commies, Christmas Eve is when I'd bomb us."

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11 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This isn't even the last decade of the 20th C.  Why do they need tanks in the age of drones and satellites, and while there are even railroads and planes, and highways for trucks?  So what the hell does mud matter in this day and age (maybe again in the age after they occupy, but nevermind).

Because everyone knows where the roads are, and can just bomb those into oblivion?

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Just now, Zorral said:

And they can bomb the bombers to oblivion too.

Modern war or not - I would think it is pretty self evident that if you can increase the potential paths of attack, that it will ultimately make it more difficult for your enemy to defend against you.

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31 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This isn't even the last decade of the 20th C.  Why do they need tanks in the age of drones and satellites, and while there are even railroads and planes, and highways for trucks?  So what the hell does mud matter in this day and age (maybe again in the age after they occupy, but nevermind).

This sounds a lot like WW2 when they thought "we have planes, why do we near armies?" air power is a great force multiplier, but it needs something to multiply.

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41 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

This sounds a lot like WW2 when they thought "we have planes, why do we near armies?" air power is a great force multiplier, but it needs something to multiply.

Air power can do a great many things but it cannot win a war by itself. It can achieve set military goals by itself, like destroying high-tech weapon systems from the air, but even that is kind of iffy.

During WWII, German military production continued year-on-year until 1944, despite massed Allied aerial bombing of German industry beginning as early as 1942, and only started decreasing as the Soviets swept into the German empire from the east and the Brits and Americans from the west and south. Obviously modern air power is more technologically impressive, but so are defences and countermeasures. You needs boots on the ground to actually hold territory.

For example, the Russians seem to be somewhat concerned about the potential of Ukrainian AA defences because Russia only has a small number of stealth-ish fighters and bombers, so the majority of aerial sorties to cover any invasion would be carried out by aircraft vulnerable to standard and even some shoulder-mounted AA systems (once the aircraft are attacking from low altitude). That said, I would expect Russia to gain aerial superiority almost immediately, as their inventory is decidedly more impress than that of the Ukrainian Air Force (which consists almost entirely of ex-Soviet stock, so is over 30 years old) and Ukrainian AA forces would probably be suppressed immediately. I know a lot of people will be waiting to see if the Russians deploy the Su-57 (their - rather late - competitor to the F22) and we can see what it's capable of. I suspect they probably wouldn't bother in this kind of operation.

The weapons systems the Russians are most concerned about are drones, and would probably be counting on Ukraine not having bought a lot of drones in from Turkey yet.

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I dunno, really, beyond what military historians tell us over and over about how army commanders tend almost always to re-fight their most previous war, which ran the armies into multitudes of disasters, by not noticing things had moved on in the current war, thereby running the armies into multitudes of disasters.

Look at us in the Middle East in our forever war(s) there -- all the tanks in the world -- and money too -- and still lost.  Again.

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9 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I dunno, really, beyond what military historians tell us over and over about how army commanders tend almost always to re-fight their most previous war, which ran the armies into multitudes of disasters, by not noticing things had moved on in the current war, thereby running the armies into multitudes of disasters.

Look at us in the Middle East in our forever war(s) there -- all the tanks in the world -- and money too -- and still lost.  Again.

So what are you saying? Because Russia's most recent war was their blitz in Georgia. And they just tested their paratroopers in Kazakhstan. Their air force got some combat experience in Syria along with some troops they sent there.

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What I think I'm trying to say is perhaps people are expecting, even counting on, Russia being stupid conducting its invasion.  Stupid in the way the USA proved itself to be the Middle East, with commander in chief not even knowing there are many different sorts of Islam -- which the western powers have been doing since before WWI, which is why the Middle East has ever since been such a violent, warring mess with its ass-all partitions etc.

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50 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I dunno, really, beyond what military historians tell us over and over about how army commanders tend almost always to re-fight their most previous war, which ran the armies into multitudes of disasters

Neither here nor there, but this is a very common critique among IR scholars as well.

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47 minutes ago, Zorral said:

What I think I'm trying to say is perhaps people are expecting, even counting on, Russia being stupid conducting its invasion.  Stupid in the way the USA proved itself to be the Middle East, with commander in chief not even knowing there are many different sorts of Islam -- which the western powers have been doing since before WWI, which is why the Middle East has ever since been such a violent, warring mess with its ass-all partitions etc.

That matters a lot for keeping the territory. It didn't matter in the least for taking it over.

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