War Games: Russia Takes Ukraine, China Takes Taiwan. US Response?

[TheVat]

Western countries also expressed doubts about Russia’s intentions.

“We judge the Russian military machine by its actions, not just its words,” British Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab told Sky News on Wednesday. “There’s obviously some skepticism that it will regroup to attack again rather than seriously engaging in diplomacy.”

He added that “of course the door to diplomacy will always be left ajar, but I don’t think you can trust what is coming out of the mouth of Putin’s war machine.”

An assessment from Britain’s Ministry of Defense said that Russia’s focus on the Donbas region “is likely a tacit admission that it is struggling to sustain more than one significant axis of advance.”

“Russian units suffering heavy losses have been forced to return to Belarus and Russia to reorganize and resupply,” the ministry said in a statement Wednesday. “Such activity is placing further pressure on Russia’s already strained logistics and demonstrates the difficulties Russia is having reorganizing its units in forward areas within Ukraine.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. has detected small numbers of Russian ground forces moving away from the Kyiv area, but it appeared to be a repositioning of forces, “not a real withdrawal.”

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-zelenskyy-roman-abramovich-kyiv-europe-ef9c28c44f94b34262fe6b7c296d58a6

 

[iNow]

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. has detected small numbers of Russian ground forces moving away from the Kyiv area, but it appeared to be a repositioning of forces, “not a real withdrawal.”

It seems Russia is also putting down land mines and fortifying themselves in a roughly 15 mile perimeter around Kyiv. This tends to signify their intent to dig-in and push forward from relatively stable regrouping points. 

I agree with the above. Their words mean nothing. Until they withdraw, they're lying. 

[StringJunky]

12 minutes ago, iNow said:

It seems Russia is also putting down land mines and fortifying themselves in a roughly 15 mile perimeter around Kyiv. This tends to signify their intent to dig-in and push forward from relatively stable regrouping points. 

I agree with the above. Their words mean nothing. Until they withdraw, they're lying. 

They are just buying time with the talks.

[TheVat]

I found this interpretation of Putin's real objectives to be disturbingly plausible:

https://archive.ph/2022.03.30-020554/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html

 

The possibility is suggested in a powerful reminiscence from The Times’s Carlotta Gall of her experience covering Russia’s siege of Grozny, during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. In the early phases of the war, motivated Chechen fighters wiped out a Russian armored brigade, stunning Moscow. The Russians regrouped and wiped out Grozny from afar, using artillery and air power.

Russia’s operating from the same playbook today. When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?

“There is a whole next stage to the Putin playbook, which is well known to the Chechens,” Gall writes. “As Russian troops gained control on the ground in Chechnya, they crushed any further dissent with arrests and filtration camps and by turning and empowering local protégés and collaborators.”

Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s).

 

 

Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance.

“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors....

[Kittenpuncher]

Well I'm new here and yes I know this has probably been said but I don't exactly want to read 31 pages before I put my two cents in

Obviously Ukraine is doing much better than expected

I wouldn't be surprised if the other nations decided to use this opportunity to finally take out Russia for good

Which is a likely explanation for China starting to throw weight around

if this does escalate

I hope we have India on our side since they were gearing up to be super power #4

Other than that my mind is disturbingly led to suspect that the winner is simply whoever launches a decisive nuclear first strike 

Circumstances seem to me like they're pulling all sorts of ironic trips on mankind, one being how "Violence is not the answer" seems like an invalid phrase, the people of this Earth having tried everything else to little avail

maybe it's not time to finally settle things yet, but eventually it will be, that's what it looks like to me

 

Other thoughts: when Donald Trump was lambasted for his comments about this over a phone interview or speech or whatever it was, I thought it was really obvious that he was just being ironic, like he said something like "OH they've got the best peacekeeping force, soldiers, bombs, tanks, so many tanks, MORE TANKS THAN I'VE EVER EVEN SEEN" and he was like "this is such a savvy thing for russia to do, super savvy" which is pretty funny because they made almost the whole world sanction them like a guillotine drop and, you know, this could start a nuclear war

yet for some reason I haven't seen anybody point this out

So what if they were serious? I would think that maybe a lot of Republicans acted this way because they expected Ukraine to do well and for Russia/Putin to screw up and look like fool(s)

idk i'm just a hobo, feel free to weigh in on what i said because that's what you're expected to do anyway?

Thanks for reading.

[J.C.MacSwell]

41 minutes ago, Kittenpuncher said:

Other thoughts: when Donald Trump was lambasted for his comments about this over a phone interview or speech or whatever it was, I thought it was really obvious that he was just being ironic, like he said something like "OH they've got the best peacekeeping force, soldiers, bombs, tanks, so many tanks, MORE TANKS THAN I'VE EVER EVEN SEEN" and he was like "this is such a savvy thing for russia to do, super savvy" which is pretty funny because they made almost the whole world sanction them like a guillotine drop and, you know, this could start a nuclear war

 

Trump is just doing his best to support the current POTUS. 

As we all know Biden is fairly prone to gaffs...but here we can at least be comforted by the fact "at least it's not Trump".

[Kittenpuncher]

Now there's a neat conspiracy theory, both comforting and disturbing

Since I was born the president's have been progressively worse, judging by what the polls seem to say (and the statistics too, for the most part)

[Sensei]

7 minutes ago, Kittenpuncher said:

Since I was born the president's have been progressively worse,

...people always say that.. that things were better in the past days..

(mostly because they have no idea)

 

 

[Kittenpuncher]

Maybe they remember? I doubt that EVERYONE'S a demonic changeling, probably because I'm sort of naive.

Oh well we're starting to get off topic now so we'd better cut it out

[J.C.MacSwell]

18 minutes ago, Kittenpuncher said:

Now there's a neat conspiracy theory, both comforting and disturbing

Since I was born the president's have been progressively worse, judging by what the polls seem to say (and the statistics too, for the most part)

Not asking for the sake of personal information, but who was the POTUS when you were born?

The worst WH administration, IMO, since I was born (Eisenhower was in his second term as POTUS) was G. W Bush's, and they voted him in for a second term after an unprovoked attack on Iraq in the first term based on "weapons of mass destruction" that did not exist.

[Kittenpuncher]

Bill Clinton

Everyone liked him when I was younger but then in hindsight I guess most people apparently decided that he was really terrible

Oh and the business with the "tropical getaway" didn't fly well with them (that's probably the main reason)

[iNow]

1 hour ago, Kittenpuncher said:

Oh well we're starting to get off topic now so we'd better cut it out

Correct

[MSC]

3 hours ago, Kittenpuncher said:

Other than that my mind is disturbingly led to suspect that the winner is simply whoever launches a decisive nuclear first strike 

I very much doubt that is a course of action which will allow for any sort of "winner". Nobody will win a nuclear war. We'll all lose. 

2 hours ago, Kittenpuncher said:

Now there's a neat conspiracy theory, both comforting and disturbing

Since I was born the president's have been progressively worse, judging by what the polls seem to say (and the statistics too, for the most part)

I agree to some extent; although worsening conditions and the presidential job having become much more difficult and complex within the last century definitely adds to the perception they have been getting worse. 

I kind of feel bad for Biden. He inherited governance over a very chaotic geopolitical landscape, domestically and on the international front. The one thing I really don't like about opinion polls, is a tendency to blame the executive branch for things largely beyond its control. If that tendency didn't exist, I think opinion polls would be a little bit kinder and fairer. 

Now, getting back to Russia and the Ukraine. I see some historical similarities in the Kremlins motivations in attacking Ukraine, to the Soviet unions attitudes toward west Berlin before the wall came down. 

In East Berlin you had rampant poverty and hardship for its citizens while the people of West Berlin seemed to be enjoying the fruits of democracy and capitalism. It's kind of difficult to convince your people that the grass is not greener on the otherside, when they can take a peak over a wall and see that it is not true. In my opinion, and just my opinion, Putins Oligarchy sees western democracy as a threat, not to Russia directly, but to the minds of the Russian people. It has been said before, Russia is a sleeping bear, slow to rouse but strong and ferocious when awake. This is why in the past, many rulers have done their best to keep an iron grip on their power and their illusion of power over the people of Russia. I think it can probably be said of most countries, that the biggest threat to their governments, comes from within the borders, not beyond them.

Ukraine is on the brink of joining the EU, if it were to somehow defy the odds and force the Russians to give up their "special military operation" coughinvasioncough... it will attempt to either join or make treaties with NATO to secure promises of more direct help in the event of another Russian offensive. 

This is why, I believe, the war in the Ukraine has not even gotten close to an end yet, it may very well have some cold periods, but it could be months to years before the conflict is truly over. From Putins perspective, any border Russia shares with western democracy is a threat. Mostly for the reasons stated above, however in the case of conventional warfare, Putins Oligarchy wants as much distance as it can get, between Moscow and it's enemies to the West. Russias disruptive foreign policy, is born of its recognition of its geographical weaknesses in fending off a military invasion from its enemies. As it stands, a strong force setting off from the Scandinavian territories, could theoretically make to and take Moscow and the Kremlin, long before reinforcements are roused, readied, and sent from Eastern Russia. 

Putin is an extremely dangerous man. His advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth about how the conflict in the Ukraine is really going. Which he is now aware of and this makes him even more mistrustful. I don't really know what to make of his implicit nuclear threats, but I don't take them lightly. I think in a direct confrontation with NATO, if he felt his power was truly threatened and on the brink of being lost, I think he would genuinely fall back on the nuclear option, and release Armageddon. 

Ultimately, I think the people with the most power to stop Putin, while keeping the world away from midnight, are the people of Russia. 

Медведи, просыпайтесь и деритесь*

Edited March 31, 2022 by MSC
Translation: Bears, wake up and fight

[Kittenpuncher]

Good essay

I can imagine Russia falling apart during any sort of long conflict

The pressure from most of the world being against them

Could inspire a big civil war or something

But I guess the main problem is still

The nukes

[StringJunky]

Talking about nukes, Russian soldiers are driving through the 'Red Forest' around Chernobyl kicking up the dust and raising radiation levels;

Quote

LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) - Russian soldiers who seized the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster drove their armoured vehicles without radiation protection through a highly toxic zone called the "Red Forest", kicking up clouds of radioactive dust, workers at the site said.

The two sources said soldiers in the convoy did not use any anti-radiation gear. The second Chernobyl employee said that was "suicidal" for the soldiers because the radioactive dust they inhaled was likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies.

Ukraine's state nuclear inspectorate said on Feb. 25 there had been an increase in radiation levels at Chernobyl as a result of heavy military vehicles disturbing the soil. But until now, details of exactly what happened had not emerged.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/unprotected-russian-soldiers-disturbed-radioactive-dust-chernobyls-red-forest-2022-03-28/

I suppose there will be a rise in cancer cases in the coming years.

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Talking about nukes, Russian soldiers are driving through the 'Red Forest' around Chernobyl kicking up the dust and raising radiation levels;

Much of the waste has also gone missing, thus raising future risk of dirty bomb deployment in population centers. 

 

9 hours ago, MSC said:

Nobody will win a nuclear war. We'll all lose. 

[Genady]

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Talking about nukes, Russian soldiers are driving through the 'Red Forest' around Chernobyl kicking up the dust and raising radiation levels;

I suppose there will be a rise in cancer cases in the coming years.

According to reports, it didn't take long for them to get sick.

I don't know how much Russian army has changed since it was Soviet army, but back then, when I was two months in military training, the officers were drunk most of the time.

[StringJunky]

37 minutes ago, Genady said:

According to reports, it didn't take long for them to get sick.

I don't know how much Russian army has changed since it was Soviet army, but back then, when I was two months in military training, the officers were drunk most of the time.

Also you'd have to be at least mid-forties to remember it, so the soldiers out there now wouldn't likely know about it, especially given  the tendency towards secrecy in the communist bloc at the time. There would be know reason for modern Russian youngsters to know about it now. Some of them, unfortunately, are going to learn that history hard way.

Edited March 31, 2022 by StringJunky

[SergUpstart]

42 minutes ago, Genady said:

I don't know how much Russian army has changed since it was Soviet army, but back then, when I was two months in military training, the officers were drunk most of the time.

Admittedly, under Putin, drunkenness in Russia has become much less. Personally, I stopped drinking alcohol altogether about 20 years ago, when driving after drinking alcohol began to deprive the driver's license.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, SergUpstart said:

Admittedly, under Putin, drunkenness in Russia has become much less. Personally, I stopped drinking alcohol altogether about 20 years ago, when driving after drinking alcohol began to deprive the driver's license.

Is that actually true, or something that Russia claims to be true?

(i.e. is there an independent, credible source of this information?)

[MSC]

21 minutes ago, swansont said:

Is that actually true, or something that Russia claims to be true?

(i.e. is there an independent, credible source of this information?)

From what I can gather, it is not true. In fact, per capita consumption has risen under both Yeltsin and Putin and is much higher than it was during the Soviet Era. While Putin is responsible for more aggressive policies in tackling alcoholism, the increase suggests it has only sent drinking culture underground and out of sight. 

It's lower than what it was between 2000-2005 but still higher than it's lowest point between 1980-1990.  Putin has been in power since the year 2000 and was in power when alcohol consumption was at its highest. 

I think the perception that it has gotten lower, can be explained by the fact that it's not happening in public spaces as much. 

At least, that's what my interpretation of the attachment is. I may have misread it, so you can check for yourself and correct me where I'm wrong.

 

rus.pdf

[SergUpstart]

21 hours ago, swansont said:

Is that actually true, or something that Russia claims to be true?

This is not Russian propaganda, these are my personal observations. There are much fewer drunks in Moscow than in the days of Gorbachev and especially Yeltsin.

21 hours ago, MSC said:

At least, that's what my interpretation of the attachment is. I may have misread it, so you can check for yourself and correct me where I'm wrong.

This applies to Moscow and other major cities. There is no less drunkenness in rural areas.

Putin also banned casinos and slot machines. So he has serious successes in the fight against gambling addiction.

[StringJunky]

5 minutes ago, SergUpstart said:

This is not Russian propaganda, these are my personal observations. There are much fewer drunks in Moscow than in the days of Gorbachev and especially Yeltsin.

This applies to Moscow and other major cities. There is no less drunkenness in rural areas.

Putin also banned casinos and slot machines. So he has serious successes in the fight against gambling addiction.

Alcohol addiction is a very serious state to be in. Government mandates can't change that, although it may reduce new users in the long term. Same with gambling addiction, it will have just moved underground. This is not a uniquely Russian problem, it's the same everywhere. Prohibition solves nothing... it's cosmetic.

[swansont]

32 minutes ago, SergUpstart said:

This is not Russian propaganda, these are my personal observations. There are much fewer drunks in Moscow than in the days of Gorbachev and especially Yeltsin.

And this is a science discussion site, where we expect most folks to understand that the plural of anecdote is not data.

[TheVat]

Quote

One of the recruits who crossed the border that day, also named Aleks, was a Belarusian passport holder but ethnically Russian. The 61-year-old, the oldest in the group, described himself as a freethinker and a proud Russian who wanted to show Ukrainians that not all Russians supported the war — in fact, there were some like him who would fight on their side.

https://archive.ph/2022.04.01-072154/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/01/ukraine-belarus-fighters-russia/

(Screenshot, no paywall)

Quote

“According to my sources in the military, battalions on the Belarusian side of the border are completely prepared for the invasion, they are just waiting for the word go,” said Pavel Latushko, Belarus’s former culture minister who defected to Poland a decade ago and has since organized protests, and now recruitment to Ukraine, from there.

“To me it is obvious why Lukashenko has not said go yet,” Latushko said. “He is a master at self-preservation, and he knows that invading Ukraine may be the end of him. His soldiers’ morale is zero for this war. They will defect in droves.”

Lukashenko dismissed the battalion as “insane citizens” in a recent interview with Belarusian state-run media.

In Ukraine, however, hopes are high among Belarusian recruits that if Belarus’s army invaded, its soldiers would seize the opportunity to defect, and their Belarusian battalion was ready to welcome them.

 

“We are already envisaging how to get Belarusian troops to defect into our ranks,” said Sergey Bulba, who along with Prokopiev, leads recruitment and training efforts for Belarusians in Ukraine. “Many soldiers in the army already know in their hearts that the destinies of Belarus and Ukraine are bound to each other. As soon as they leave Belarus’s propaganda bubble, they will know what they have to do.”

These are some very optimistic Belarusians.   It's worth asking if Putin would do something that we all regret if faced with any chance of losing Belarus.