#16 Ukraine the brave, the whole World is watching!

[DireWolfSpirit]

Old thread locked cont.

Time to dig Putin a grave already.

[Kalbear]

I don't normally geek out about this sort of thing but holy crap those anti drone guns are cooooooool

 

[Loge]

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The T-80 is a derivation of the T-72. At some point they stopped using the T-80 number and reverted to the T-72. The T-90 is also a derivation of the same design but it has a lot more and better and more modern equipment making it (on paper) a peer of the Abrams, at least the M1. That comes at quite a high cost.

It's a bit more complicated. The Soviet Union had two competing design teams, and therefore there are two different development lines. The T-80 is based on the T-64, which had been developed alongside the T-62. The design of the T-64 was rather ambitious and made the tank expensive in production and operation. The T-72 was originally designed for war time mass production only, but it was decided to introduce it in peace time because it was so cheap. At the same time, the T-80 was developed and went into production, too. The T-90 is an evolution of the T-72.

[a free shadow]

ended

[Alarich II]

Analysis by the Austrian army (this time in English):

Short summary: without modern MRLS Systems, the outlook is not great for Ukraine...

 

 

 

[Werthead]

18 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

Analysis by the Austrian army (this time in English):

Short summary: without modern MRLS Systems, the outlook is not great for Ukraine...

They're getting modern MRLS systems, so that should not be too much of a problem. The question is how fast they can get them.

[Zorral]

https://puck.news/newsletters/tomorrow-will-be-worse/?

 

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From: Julia Ioffe <[email protected]>
Date: May 31, 2022 at 8:30:24 PM EDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: Is the G.O.P. Waning on Ukraine?

h and potentially encircle some of Ukraine’s most experienced fighting forces. And though we heard a lot about debilitating Russian losses early in the war, we’re now getting a glimpse into the heavy casualties that the Ukrainian military is suffering as well. In recent days, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian army is losing 50 to 100 soldiers per day. That’s a lot. Ukrainian soldiers are complainingto reporters that they are outmanned and outgunned. Privately, military analysts are growing more skeptical that high-tech Western weapons will save Ukraine. This is what many of us were so afraid of during the early, triumphalist phase of the war: Ukrainians are still fighting bravely and cleverly, and taking out a lot of Russian materiel, but Russia still has more men and machinery that it can throw at this. It’s a tried and true Russian military tactic: push meat into the meat grinder until the meat grinder simply breaks. It’s what I thought about when Vladimir Putin celebrated Victory Day earlier this month. The lesson Russia took from World War II was that it can lose for a year and a half—that it can lose millions of soldiers and vast swathes of territory—and, through sheer determination and belief that human life is less important than state glory, eventually triumph militarily. This is obviously a simplified and skewed narrative of the Soviet victory in World War II, but that is the paradigm that Moscow is obviously leaning on. Already, the Kremlin is salivating at its prospects now that the battle for the Donbas seems to be going Russia’s way. Sources in the Kremlin told Meduza that, once they capture the Donbas, they expect the Russian army to take Kyiv. My sources are skeptical they will be successful but that doesn’t mean they won’t try—and inflict a terrible toll in doing so. That is not to say that Ukraine will lose and that Russia will win. But if you’re the Ukrainian state, today looks worse than yesterday and, at least for now, victory seems to be receding a little more each day. ~~~~~~~~~~ Right now, America’s support of Ukraine remains a bipartisan issue. But below the surface, an ebbing of financial support may be coming into sight. These two hypotheticals—a Trumpian president taking office in 2025 while the war in Ukraine grinds on—are not unrealistic. In fact, I think they are both quite likely. And sure, most Congressional Republicans voted for the $40 billion aid package earlier this month, but that was in the third month of the war, when support for Ukraine was high. It still is. But what happens if the war is still raging in a year and Americans spend that year paying higher gas prices and watching their economy sink, as seems increasingly likely, into a recession? What will the party that overwhelmingly approved of Trump withholding aid from Zelenskyin 2019 do when Americans will have moved on from Ukraine once again?

 

 

[Werthead]

I find these kind of analyses to not be very helpful when they are not looking at the big picture. It's like going back a month or six weeks and saying that a Ukrainian victory is imminent and inevitable, when that was also extremely premature to declare. The Russians have brought overwhelming to force to bear on a tiny area (and we should note only one of three axes of attack in Donbas has had a major success, the other two ran out of steam and have suffered heavy losses in Ukrainian counter-attacks around Popsana and Izium), but to take Kyiv or Odesa or the rest of the country they would not be able to do that, and would expose themselves to the problems they had earlier in the conflict. Russia also has a manpower limitation due to their decision not to mobilise, and their "shadow mobilisation" behind the scenes has apparently not turned up many fresh recruits.

Russia also has technical limitations related to the sanctions, such as not being able to fly a lot of their military or civilian aircraft in another few months when their spare stores simply run dry, not to mention the fact that they are literally not building any tanks at all right now and have lost more than a thousand (a third of their total operational inventory) in combat.

To be sure, Ukraine is suffering severe problems as well, but it does have some localised advantages that have not fully come into play. For example, Ukraine has effectively between 200,000 and 300,000 combat veteran troops in the reserves who have not yet seen combat, and potentially twice to three times that in mobilised reserves who have been training for more than three months who have yet to enter battle. How well they can be equipped is a valid concern.

The big question right now is if Russia takes a win in Luhansk and Donetsk (and maybe not even Donetsk) and calls it a day, in which case they can (mostly) convincingly sell a significant victory to the public in Russia and their allies. If they decide to "go for broke" and make another play for Kyiv and or/Odesa, they run the risk of losing their existing gains if the Ukrainians successfully defeat the attacking force like they did previously in Kharkiv and Kyiv, and then counter-attack into occupied areas that the Russians don't have an existing reserve to hold.

[Maithanet]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Ukraine has effectively between 200,000 and 300,000 combat veteran troops in the reserves who have not yet seen combat, and potentially twice to three times that in mobilised reserves who have been training for more than three months who have yet to enter battle. How well they can be equipped is a valid concern.

I admit I haven't read a whole lot about this, but I would think that if equipping these troops were a dire problem, that Ukraine would be asking for these things much more urgently.  Instead, their requests have pretty consistently been for heavy artillery and lots of it.  The list of countries that have artillery that is as good or better than what the Russians have is fairly short.  The list of countries that have good rifles, helmets, boots and body armor is...basically all of them. 

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The big question right now is if Russia takes a win in Luhansk and Donetsk (and maybe not even Donetsk) and calls it a day, in which case they can (mostly) convincingly sell a significant victory to the public in Russia and their allies. If they decide to "go for broke" and make another play for Kyiv and or/Odesa, they run the risk of losing their existing gains if the Ukrainians successfully defeat the attacking force like they did previously in Kharkiv and Kyiv, and then counter-attack into occupied areas that the Russians don't have an existing reserve to hold.

That's only part of the question, and in some ways the less interesting part.  I don't think that Russia wants to have another go at Kyiv or Odessa, they are aware of the limitations of their army as well.  Further, they don't really need those cities.  If they could negotiate to get a deal where Luhansk, Donetsk and the land corridor are either independent or Russian, then that's a pretty big win.  Ukraine is already economically ruined from this war and will be rebuilding for decades, and they will have taken a valuable chunk of territory towards their long term goals.  Those are real wins, not just VINO.

The question is when Russia has exhausted its offensive potential and declares a desire for "peace" will Ukraine's purported allies take the bait.  We're already seeing a lot of reluctance from France/Germany to provide substantial aid because Russia has such an important role in supplying fuel and winter is coming.  It's also quite possible that the US will change its tune after the November midterms when Republicans retake the House.  If Ukraine can no longer count on support from the NATO countries, then it will have little choice but to make some sort of deal.  But if the US and EU remain vigilant and supportive, then Ukraine can slap Russia's bloody hand away and win a more equitable peace on the battlefield.  Even that won't bring back the tens of thousands of dead or the razed cities, but at least Russia would not be rewarded for its warmongering. 

[broken one]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

I find these kind of analyses to not be very helpful when they are not looking at the big picture.

Ive ecountered an opinion the whole Eastern offensive is a trap Russians set for themselves and got into. Ukrainians may be losing 100 men each day, as they consciously sacrifice 3 or 4 brigades, but Russian losses probably are like 3 times bigger (or more).

[Luzifer's right hand]

Some YouTube videos about the war made by the Austrian army are now available in English.

Https://youtu.be/RpC1kXhW2Lw

[Alarich II]

30 minutes ago, broken one said:

Ive ecountered an opinion the whole Eastern offensive is a trap Russians set for themselves and got into. Ukrainians may be losing 100 men each day, as they consciously sacrifice 3 or 4 brigades, but Russian losses probably are like 3 times bigger (or more).

The problem is that Russia is bringing more, much more, artillery to bear at the moment. And apart from the Ukrainian losses, it also wears down morale as Ukrainian soldiers are being pounded and cannot (yet) retaliate in kind.

 

13 hours ago, Werthead said:

I find these kind of analyses to not be very helpful when they are not looking at the big picture.

I disagree, one interesting bit of information in the video I posted was his analysis why the southern pincer was more successful than the northern one. Basically the Russians found a weak spot in the Ukrainian territorial defence forces who are simply not as well trained and experienced as the Ukranian elite regiments who are being slowly reduced more and more. And this is important for the bigger picture as well: the Ukrainian forces who will come from their reserves and who are being trained right now, will not have the same quality wrt morale and experience than those who are fighting now on the front lines. They may be veterans in that they have already served their conscription time and some of them will have spent some time in the trenches, but that's not going to be the same. So the Ukrainian counterattack that we're talking about might not have as much power as we could hope from the sheer numbers.

Russia activating their old tanks may look like a desperate measure (and maybe it is) but there are no big tank on tank battles. They pound the Ukrainian positions with artillery and the old T-62s will then support the infantry assault and that's something they can still do with reliable effectiveness. 

So it turns out that bringing artillery and lots of it, is going to decide this whole thing. I just hope that the US MRLS will come in sufficient quantities and in time, because I don't think that Ukraine can otherwise keep their positions in the Donbas region much longer. 

[Alarich II]

18 minutes ago, Luzifer&#x27;s right hand said:

Some YouTube videos about the war made by the Austrian army are now available in English.

Https://youtu.be/RpC1kXhW2Lw

Thats the one I linked 6 posts ago...

[Luzifer's right hand]

18 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

Thats the one I linked 6 posts ago...

*facepalm*

[broken one]

48 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

The problem is that Russia is bringing more, much more, artillery to bear at the moment. And apart from the Ukrainian losses, it also wears down morale as Ukrainian soldiers are being pounded and cannot (yet) retaliate in kind.

For sure they know they are being sacrificed. Yet they do not flee. I think soon they will reteat and leave the sack, there is no point in defending ruins other than to inflict maximum damage.

Poland sent a squadron (18 units) of Krab howitzers  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHS_Krab , looks like they are already there. There's a rumour some more vehicles may come soon. Anyway, another 3 squadrons will be produced and sold to Ukraine within... a year . Germany and South Korea (owners of technologies - chassis and parts of engine) gave consent for the transfer.

[Werthead]

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Ive ecountered an opinion the whole Eastern offensive is a trap Russians set for themselves and got into. Ukrainians may be losing 100 men each day, as they consciously sacrifice 3 or 4 brigades, but Russian losses probably are like 3 times bigger (or more).

I'm not sure this is true any more. The Russians were losing masses of troops in the early stages of the conflict but are now keeping their troops back whilst air strikes and artillery pound positions and then send troops in. This was ineffectual in Mariupol and some other parts of Donbas because the Ukrainians had build fortified positions with deep underground bunkers the artillery couldn't reach, so when the Russian infantry went forwards they were pushed back by a strong defense. In the areas most heavily contested at the moment, that's not necessarily the case and the Ukrainians have fewer redoubts they can shelter in.

We saw in the first two months of the war that Russia probably lost around 17-20,000 troops (maybe plus 6,000 from the Donbas republics) KIA, captured, missing or wounded so badly they could not fight; in the five to six weeks since then, they seem to have lost around another 8-10,000 max (maybe around another 3-5,000 from the Donbas republics). The rate of Russian losses seems to have slowed, although it's still high, but the rate of Ukrainian losses seems to have increased, and in localised areas the Ukrainian losses may be becoming unsustainable.

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I don't think that Russia wants to have another go at Kyiv or Odessa, they are aware of the limitations of their army as well.  Further, they don't really need those cities.  If they could negotiate to get a deal where Luhansk, Donetsk and the land corridor are either independent or Russian, then that's a pretty big win.  Ukraine is already economically ruined from this war and will be rebuilding for decades, and they will have taken a valuable chunk of territory towards their long term goals.  Those are real wins, not just VINO.

I think the Russian leadership is being tugged in two directions at the moment. There's the "realist" school who won the argument in April when they withdrew from Kyiv to focus on Donbas. This school likely feels that Russia doesn't have too much more offensive power to offer on a large scale and wants to declare a victory once Donbas and the land corridor is taken (some real moderates there seem to be suggesting doing that once Luhansk is 100% taken and even leaving Donetsk as is). However, this faction has also been criticised for weakening the Kharkiv front too much to allow Ukraine to push Russian forces back from that city and counterattack into the NW Donbas, where they briefly threatened the lines of communication and supply for the main thrust. The success in Donbas, however slow and incremental, is also encouraging the maximalists who want to try to take all of the country, since they're taking the success in Donbas as proof that Russia has magically fixed 100% of all its problems, rather than playing their immediate strengths in that one area.

The maximalists are also mostly from the political wing without strong experience or knowledge in military matters, who are treating the Russian army as an inexhaustible resource like the Soviet Red Army was, and seem to have little idea about supply lines, logistics, equipment maintenance or resupply, which are all areas when the Russian military still has problems. Nevertheless they are still pushing for an attempt to take all of Ukraine or, at a minimum, the Novarussia project.

There are also some realists who believe that, although there is a strong risk of Russia exhausting its offensive capability, the situation will only get worse over time and if Russia does not take a larger victory over Ukraine now, they might not be able to in the future. If Russia chooses to pause and renew the invasion in, say, two years, they have a real fear they will confront a Ukraine armed to the teeth with much more capable artillery and anti-air systems, whilst Russia will not be able to rebuild and rearm effectively due to the sanctions (and China's apparent reluctance to help them too much). So their argument is "use it or lose it," with regards to Russia's current advantages over Ukraine not being the same in the future.

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The question is when Russia has exhausted its offensive potential and declares a desire for "peace" will Ukraine's purported allies take the bait.  We're already seeing a lot of reluctance from France/Germany to provide substantial aid because Russia has such an important role in supplying fuel and winter is coming.  It's also quite possible that the US will change its tune after the November midterms when Republicans retake the House.  If Ukraine can no longer count on support from the NATO countries, then it will have little choice but to make some sort of deal.  But if the US and EU remain vigilant and supportive, then Ukraine can slap Russia's bloody hand away and win a more equitable peace on the battlefield.  Even that won't bring back the tens of thousands of dead or the razed cities, but at least Russia would not be rewarded for its warmongering. 

I think France and Germany (probably Austria and certainly Hungary as well) have the view that Putin must take "something" tangible from the conflict he can sell as a half-convincing victory. They have the idea that Putin will not use WMDs in Ukraine or risk escalation unless Russia is under existential threat or he believes he himself is under existential threat, and Putin believes (true or not) that his position and maybe life will be in jeopardy if he withdraws from Ukraine or is defeated with nothing to show from it. Plenty of other people, including the Baltics, Ukraine and Poland, disagree and think that Putin will sell a loss in Ukraine as being down to foreign interference and will rant and rave about it but otherwise will not take action. The problem is that we don't quite know which of these two opinions is true.

The main opposition view, certainly from the USA and eastern European countries, is that if Putin takes a victory, that will embolden him to further adventurism in future, and he does seem to be setting out options for possible interventions in Moldova, Georgia and Kazakhstan, and maybe heavily reinforcing the borders with Finland and the Baltics. A victorious Putin may also be able to strike further deals and alliances with China that could become globally far more concerning.

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Basically the Russians found a weak spot in the Ukrainian territorial defence forces who are simply not as well trained and experienced as the Ukranian elite regiments who are being slowly reduced more and more. And this is important for the bigger picture as well: the Ukrainian forces who will come from their reserves and who are being trained right now, will not have the same quality wrt morale and experience than those who are fighting now on the front lines. They may be veterans in that they have already served their conscription time and some of them will have spent some time in the trenches, but that's not going to be the same. So the Ukrainian counterattack that we're talking about might not have as much power as we could hope from the sheer numbers.

I think that is a concern, but even Ukrainian reservists are gaining combat experience where they are on the line, and Ukraine is now putting more of a priority on preserving their troops' lives. Their defence of Luhansk has been highly mobile and they have pulled troops out of areas where they could be encircled and defeated in detail.

The Russians are also gaining some combat experience, but the greater the reliability on artillery, the less they are actually sending troops forwards into battle. Their troops are also experiencing problems with morale over things like their pay, being sent to the wrong area (Donetsk troops fresh from the victory at Mariupol refusing to fight in Luhansk and even getting lawyers to defend them) and so on. Also, the actual number of Russian boots on the ground in the combat zone is startlingly small (well under 15,000, based on the BTGs involved). They are relying on technology to do the fighting for them, which is working well in an area where they have access to easy resupply, but will become more problematic the further they advance.

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Russia activating their old tanks may look like a desperate measure (and maybe it is) but there are no big tank on tank battles. They pound the Ukrainian positions with artillery and the old T-62s will then support the infantry assault and that's something they can still do with reliable effectiveness. 

Not to mention that a lot of the T-62s are being sent to lower-priority fronts to relieve T-72s, T-80s and T-90s that can be sent to Ukraine. Ukraine has a lot of tanks (more than they started the war with) but they don't want to send them into range of the Russian artillery at the moment.

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So it turns out that bringing artillery and lots of it, is going to decide this whole thing. I just hope that the US MRLS will come in sufficient quantities and in time, because I don't think that Ukraine can otherwise keep their positions in the Donbas region much longer.

Yup, Russia's artillery advantage is their major strength right now. It was also their weakness in the north (they couldn't resupply their artillery ammunition quickly and they couldn't bring lots of it in via the weak supply lines) and maybe become more of a weakness if they try to thrust deeper into the Ukrainian interior without defended railheads. The Ukrainians' #1 priority right now is counter-battery capability, which they have been building up for some time and have deployed with some success, but only on a small scale. Ukraine also needs more anti-artillery drones, as the ones they got from the US seem to have been somewhat successful, but they need a lot more.

[Werthead]

The current main thrust of the fighting remains Severodonetsk, where the Russians have taken control of 75-80% of the city but have faced heavy Ukrainian resistance. The Russians need to cross the Siverskyy Donets River to secure Luhansk Oblast and prepare to attack Donetsk, but the most favourable crossing points near Lyman and Lysychansk remain in Ukrainian hands. Ukrainian forces have also destroyed existing bridges and zeroed likely crossing points with their own artillery and drones. Russia will likely take the rest of Severodonetsk in the next few days and will then have to tactically regroup for any further thrust into Donetsk. Ukrainian forces in Donetsk have spent months reinforcing and building defensive positions, so the Russians will face another long grind to take Donetsk Oblast.

Some reports from the ground where Ukrainian soldiers are reporting still killing and wounding larger numbers of Russian soldiers, but the Russians are doing a much better job of pulling the bodies back and not reporting casualties on the radio in the clear, which is where the casualty figures came from earlier on. So the Russians are still sustaining losses, but at rate and scale is unclear.

There are signs that Ukrainian AA defences have increased effectiveness in the west of the country. The small number of Russian sorties into Ukrainian airspace to fire dumb weapons seems to have decreased, and cruise missile attacks are becoming fewer and further between (an attack this morning on railway infrastructure around Lviv seems to have mostly been ineffectual). The Russians have used more Kinzhals several times, but very sparingly. New German systems designed to defend entire cities are likely to be first deployed around Lviv, Kyiv and Odesa.

There's been a lot of recent videos showing Ukrainians engaging Wagner, LPR, DPR and Chechen forces rather than Russian regulars. DNR soldiers have filed more complaints, this time claiming they have been reassigned to reinforce Russian troops which is outside of their area of responsibility.

 

[broken one]

14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'm not sure this is true any more.

Me either, I just find source of this opinion competent. Russians are said to attack in waves, soviet style, and make many same mistakes as in the beginning. Their morale is said to be really bad.  I think the fact the cauldron is still not closed and Ukrainians are able to manouver inside is meaningful.

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The rate of Russian losses seems to have slowed, although it's still high, but the rate of Ukrainian losses seems to have increased, and in localised areas the Ukrainian losses may be becoming unsustainable.

This would go to show (what I suspect since the beginning) that the rate is pretty honest and Ukrainians do not exaggerate nor put in it something they cannot count, as now they do not control the terrain where the bodies fall, slowly lose it and seem to be quite blind in comparison to central parts of the land in initial months of the conflict (most drone footages Ive seen recently were taken by Russian drones).

Anyway, this is what I would like to believe :-S

 

 

[Maithanet]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think the Russian leadership is being tugged in two directions at the moment. There's the "realist" school who won the argument in April when they withdrew from Kyiv to focus on Donbas. This school likely feels that Russia doesn't have too much more offensive power to offer on a large scale and wants to declare a victory once Donbas and the land corridor is taken (some real moderates there seem to be suggesting doing that once Luhansk is 100% taken and even leaving Donetsk as is). However, this faction has also been criticised for weakening the Kharkiv front too much to allow Ukraine to push Russian forces back from that city and counterattack into the NW Donbas, where they briefly threatened the lines of communication and supply for the main thrust. The success in Donbas, however slow and incremental, is also encouraging the maximalists who want to try to take all of the country, since they're taking the success in Donbas as proof that Russia has magically fixed 100% of all its problems, rather than playing their immediate strengths in that one area.

I'm sure the realists exist, but I don't see much evidence that Russia is moving back to maximalist objectives.  This war has basically demonstrated that the larger the Russian objective, the less success they have.  When they tried to take the entire country in February, it was a disaster.  When they tried a large offensive across the Donbas area in April, it made minimal progress.  The comparative success in May has been because they concentrated forces on just a tiny portion of the front and punch through, then repeat. 

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I think France and Germany (probably Austria and certainly Hungary as well) have the view that Putin must take "something" tangible from the conflict he can sell as a half-convincing victory. They have the idea that Putin will not use WMDs in Ukraine or risk escalation unless Russia is under existential threat or he believes he himself is under existential threat, and Putin believes (true or not) that his position and maybe life will be in jeopardy if he withdraws from Ukraine or is defeated with nothing to show from it. Plenty of other people, including the Baltics, Ukraine and Poland, disagree and think that Putin will sell a loss in Ukraine as being down to foreign interference and will rant and rave about it but otherwise will not take action. The problem is that we don't quite know which of these two opinions is true.

The main opposition view, certainly from the USA and eastern European countries, is that if Putin takes a victory, that will embolden him to further adventurism in future, and he does seem to be setting out options for possible interventions in Moldova, Georgia and Kazakhstan, and maybe heavily reinforcing the borders with Finland and the Baltics. A victorious Putin may also be able to strike further deals and alliances with China that could become globally far more concerning.

 

It is hard for me to really respect the idea that real concessions need to be made to Putin lest he feel threatened personally.  Because nobody has control over how Putin feels, that is just chasing a shadow.  The idea that European powers should push Ukraine to give away territory for thus purpose feels very much like they are just making an excuse because it is better for them (ie their desire for cheap energy to avoid recession).

[Gorn]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think France and Germany (probably Austria and certainly Hungary as well) have the view that Putin must take "something" tangible from the conflict he can sell as a half-convincing victory. They have the idea that Putin will not use WMDs in Ukraine or risk escalation unless Russia is under existential threat or he believes he himself is under existential threat, and Putin believes (true or not) that his position and maybe life will be in jeopardy if he withdraws from Ukraine or is defeated with nothing to show from it. Plenty of other people, including the Baltics, Ukraine and Poland, disagree and think that Putin will sell a loss in Ukraine as being down to foreign interference and will rant and rave about it but otherwise will not take action. The problem is that we don't quite know which of these two opinions is true.

The main opposition view, certainly from the USA and eastern European countries, is that if Putin takes a victory, that will embolden him to further adventurism in future, and he does seem to be setting out options for possible interventions in Moldova, Georgia and Kazakhstan, and maybe heavily reinforcing the borders with Finland and the Baltics. A victorious Putin may also be able to strike further deals and alliances with China that could become globally far more concerning.

I think this issue is much bigger than the Russia-Ukraine conflict itself. If a major country can successfully commit aggression on a smaller neighboring country and get something to show for it, the world order established by the UN Charter and Helsinki Accords (in which this is a major no-no) is basically dead. We're back to the 19th century, only with nukes.

That, to me, is a much scarier prospect than the idea of Putin stomping his little feet in anger.