So much woolly headed thinking Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
.
In many ways this war has revealed the flaws of NATO. It only covers its members, which means that people like Putin can get away with whatever they like against non-NATO countries.
But it also reveals the NIMBYism of some NATO states. The US in particular. Joe Biden greenlit this invasion when he pulled the plug so disgracefully on Afghanistan: dumping on them. The catastrophe in that country hasn't registered in our news very much.
But I also more controversially now doubt anyway whether NATO would respond to an attack on one of its member states. Joe Biden has shown such a disinclination to stand up to Putin.
If we survive this then Europe as a whole will emerge stronger and more united, minus the UK of course which has now decided to put it itself nowhere on the world map.
"nowhere on the world map" is certainly you inviting ad hominem attacks....
WRT cracks in NATO, this is nothing new. So many WWIII scenarios - when we started with Warsaw Pact forces invading western Europe as opposed to straight to nukes - have rows between the NATO countries being monstered by the red army and those not yet invaded.
However, when NATO forces are all fighting together in theatre the connection between them is physical. So far in the Ukraine - Russia war NATO is not a combatant, so of course there is more room for debate and disagreement. That so many NATO members are also EU members which is also reacting and the UK is fighting its own cultural war against the EU doesn't help seed unity - cf the petulant positioning between British and French governments.
Should Russia show any likelihood of invading a NATO member I think all of this debate will boil away very quickly, and "sleepy Joe" will speak with his measured authority on what NATO is prepared to do. Which is why Putin - in my opinion - won't do it.
Last week I was invited into a WeChat group mainly for Chinese migrants living in Australia, giving me a unique look at how they view the Ukraine war. The group logo has a Chinese national flag, so unsurprisingly their views are very pro-China, pro- Communist Party.
And how did they view the Ukraine war?
Mornin' all! Brighter here, too..
To save you the bother of reading the thread: loads of extreme pro-Putin propaganda, lots of it from official Chinese sources.
I did have a flick through but thought there must be more somewhere.
I was hoping for a twist, but didn't find one unfortunately. But I was surprised at how shamelessly pro-Putin some of the apparently official Chinese sources are - no sign of any sitting on the fence.
If the injury reports are even half correct, has anyone considered what will happen to Putin's internal propaganda when the young Russian soldiers either come back wounded (or not at all)? When vast numbers come back and tell the story of what they saw and who they fought... Remember that numbers of them seem happier to surrender than fight.
Putin would be safer wiping his own army out if he cannot guarantee victory and I do not see how he can.
Historically those are not high casualty figures for a Russian/USSR war. Russian life is cheap.
I'd say it depends on the current nature of Russian society, and whether the competent armed forces have shrunk so much as seems to be the case that smaller losses will be crippling.
One worthwhile comparison is the Winter War, and there Russia lost afaics ~150k dead and ~180k wounded, from an invasion force that was in the 500k-700k ballpark. Of those, 60k are thought to have been wounded / bitten by General Frost. Russian population was 170m in 1939.
The Finnish nos were around 25k killed, and 45k wounded. From a population of less than 4m in 1939.
More modern wars - Chechnya, Afghanistan, Georgia - have lower numbers.
The numbers are the approx. middle of the ranges quoted on Wiki, which seems adequate to make the point.
The possible difference here is the size of the usable army. Putin has quite limited numbers of non-conscripts - which means he will need to break his promise (ha) about not using conscripts quite soon.
*If* the reported rates of casualties are true, then some Russian units must have already rendered ineffective in combat - a common guesstimate of such thing is about 20-30% casualties.
IN the case of the Winter War, Stalin had essentially infinite reserves to rotate through - the Soviet army couldn't sustain more than the numbers above on the Finnish Front, but they could bring in replacements.
So much woolly headed thinking via false analogy on this thread.
“Stand up to bullies”. “You don’t deserve freedom if you won’t fight for it”. “Ukraine is Czechoslovakia” etc…
As for the whole debate about murdering Putin’s / his associates’ children and imagining the consequence would be a group of chastised fathers retiring peacefully with their family albums…
I don’t often say this but you should all read what HYFUD is saying. Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
What we are witnessing is the degree of powerlessness against a nuclear state once it sets its course on military action. Much of the world is doing what it can through military aid, giving refuge to civilians, corporate behaviour and direct sanctions. And it might work eventually. But it might not and Ukraine could easily be turned from a modern state into a failed one.
There were many world powers including Russia that were very upset when the US invaded Iraq. Infrastructure got destroyed, too many children were victims. But fortunately you didn’t see attempts by other nuclear states to fight the US directly in that conflict. They knew to do so was not only futile but too dangerous. Plenty of monkey business through proxies for sure but nothing that risked direct conflict and escalation.
The hard truth is that likely the only way to save the children of Mariupol is to stop the invasion from happening in the first place. Because the ex ante stakes have been raised sufficiently high that Putin does not dare. That is what NATO is for.
Sadly for the children of Mariupol, most of the western world only woke up to the need for a well funded defence budget and coherent and coordinated foreign policy AFTER the invasion. I suspect those railing against their own powerlessness know this is true of themselves if they are honest about it.
Yes. Look at our own position. We started the run down of our armed forces in the early 80s and really accelerated it hard over the last 15 - 20 years. Our troops are notoriously badly equipped and badly paid and we have had to explore stupidity like pooling naval resources with France to provide our new carriers with escorts.
On top of that we have allowed Russian money and influence to undermine our politics and society. We're weak and divided and astonishingly still have a PM and ministers helping their Russian friends. And that's just us - similar problems elsewhere in NATO (and lets not even go into the American disaster) - Putin has spent a decade and more undermining us and knows we are at our weakest.
Which is why we need to get Russian money out of our politics. And why we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Spending went up during the first half of the eighties after a broadly downwards trajectory since the sixties (at least: that’s where the graph starts). It was the nineties where spending fell off a cliff.
"Priti Patel to allow 20,000 more Ukrainian refugees into the UK Home Secretary set to extend criteria for displaced people following backlash over chaotic handling of visa applications"
Rather than announcing imaginary future high numbers just sort out the few hundred/thousand trying to get in now.
Is this on top of the 200k announced so far? Or a bypass to the obstacle course?
There is no 200k. What she seems to be suggesting is that they will stop behaving like inhuman tyrants and start letting refugees in to shelter with families and fellow nationals already here. Like every decent country did last week.
State Away, you need more courage. I think I understand your perspectives by now but you need, if I may say, to be more of a realist about the world.
This is a grim time but I'm reminded of JRR Tolkien's words:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Have as good and as non-insulting a day as you can, everyone.
Need to be more realist about the world... appeals to Gandalf.
"NEW from @CBSDavidMartin: A U.S. official estimates Russians have lost 5,000-6,000 killed in the first 2 weeks of battle. Standard battlefield math assumes 3x as many wounded as killed, so that puts the number of wounded at 15,000-18,000."
Lowest western estimate is 1 in 8 of the pre-staged Russian forces dead, wounded, awol, or captured. European estimates are up towards 20%. Staggering, and completely unsustainable. Bear in mind that only 60ish thousand of the 180k are frontline combat troops, although they've clearly been taking significant losses in logistic, riot policing, and rear echelon troops.
The Russian manpower losses then are in a fortnight equal to their decade long Afghan war.
Sure, Russia does have a history of sustaining vast losses and keeping fighting, but that was in a defensive rather than offensive war. Perhaps a better parallel is the current Ukranian situation.
More to the point is the massive losses of skills and heavy weapons, again more important in an offensive war. Ukranian militias raiding supply convoys are relatively autonomous and low tech, but Russia needs an integrated combined arms approach to break what appears to be a mobile Ukranian defence in depth. Their capacity for that declines by the day in the face of Ukranian resistance.
It is going to be tough on Ukranian civilians, but the resort to artillery on cities shows that declining Russian ability. I don't think Russia can sustain this war beyond Easter, though turfing them out of the Black Sea coast may be difficult.
If the injury reports are even half correct, has anyone considered what will happen to Putin's internal propaganda when the young Russian soldiers either come back wounded (or not at all)? When vast numbers come back and tell the story of what they saw and who they fought... Remember that numbers of them seem happier to surrender than fight.
Putin would be safer wiping his own army out if he cannot guarantee victory and I do not see how he can.
Russian soldiers rteturning from war will be censored in the Russian media like everything else. That's even if they disobey their commanders and break army secrecy rules.
Bit difficult to censor lost limbs, or hands with blackened stumps of fingers through frostbite...
You can prevent news of it appearing in the media which is where 99% of people get their information from.
People worried about the whole of civilisation being evaporated if we confront Prestupnik Putin..
What's our "civilisation" worth if we don't?
Send your replies to Ukraine.
I don't know, I reckon billions of lives and the continuity of the species is worth a fair bit, but what the fuck do I know? Better send in the tanks so in 100 million years the successor civilisation of intelligent frogs can marvel at the moral integrity of our irradiated skeletons.
There are several billion too many of us. The specie is unimportant. It will be destroyed at some stage. Every atrocity we witness, perpetrate and allow to be repeated as an action of ghe human specie devalues us and goes towards proving we are are not worthy of continued survival.
So I presume you supported military intervention in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Syra, in northern Nigeria, in Chechnya, in Yemen too, conflicts which were often just as brutal as Ukraine if not worse with terrible atrocities and where we did nothing militarily in most of them?
Your comment 'the species is unimportant' is so ludicrous as to be barely worthy of comment, however going to war with Russia over Ukraine if it leads to WW3, nuclear war and the death of hundreds of millions or even billions rather than the thousands so far in Ukraine would not have been worth doing on any definition.
Yes in a few billion years time the Sun may explode but by then we may be living on a different planet or even a different galaxy anyway, however that is no excuse for a possible third world war or even nuclear war which is still avoidable
The upside to the Earth being engulfed in the fiery nuclear plasma of the Sun is that the place that elected you, and all its people, will be completely ionised and lost in heaving sea of fire. There's always a positive.
Though as a Christian I also believe in eternal life anyway, hopefully far away from you.
Given that comment I would not be certain you will escape the eternal fiery furnace even in the afterlife!
As fiery chat up lines go, you two are breaking new ground. Get a room! :-)
Also it is a, in some interpretations mortal, sin to say that someone else is damned.
Last week I was invited into a WeChat group mainly for Chinese migrants living in Australia, giving me a unique look at how they view the Ukraine war. The group logo has a Chinese national flag, so unsurprisingly their views are very pro-China, pro- Communist Party.
And how did they view the Ukraine war?
Mornin' all! Brighter here, too..
To save you the bother of reading the thread: loads of extreme pro-Putin propaganda, lots of it from official Chinese sources.
Puts some context on the misguided suggestions that China might be a useful broker in this conflict.
"Priti Patel to allow 20,000 more Ukrainian refugees into the UK Home Secretary set to extend criteria for displaced people following backlash over chaotic handling of visa applications"
Rather than announcing imaginary future high numbers just sort out the few hundred/thousand trying to get in now.
Is this on top of the 200k announced so far? Or a bypass to the obstacle course?
There is no 200k. What she seems to be suggesting is that they will stop behaving like inhuman tyrants and start letting refugees in to shelter with families and fellow nationals already here. Like every decent country did last week.
Johnson picked a big sounding number out of thin air yesterday, as the best answer to the question in front of him. Describing this as an "announcement" is probably an over-statement; I doubt there is anything more behind this than is usual with his ad libs?
WRT cracks in NATO, this is nothing new. So many WWIII scenarios - when we started with Warsaw Pact forces invading western Europe as opposed to straight to nukes - have rows between the NATO countries being monstered by the red army and those not yet invaded.
However, when NATO forces are all fighting together in theatre the connection between them is physical. So far in the Ukraine - Russia war NATO is not a combatant, so of course there is more room for debate and disagreement. That so many NATO members are also EU members which is also reacting and the UK is fighting its own cultural war against the EU doesn't help seed unity - cf the petulant positioning between British and French governments.
Should Russia show any likelihood of invading a NATO member I think all of this debate will boil away very quickly, and "sleepy Joe" will speak with his measured authority on what NATO is prepared to do. Which is why Putin - in my opinion - won't do it.
I have always been first, middle and last to take the micky out of Biden. But since the invasion actually occurred, he and his team have been measured, sober and responsible. Super cool response to Putin’s nuclear willy waving in particular.
Every action taken by the West in this should be aimed at consolidating global public opinion against Putin and creating the space for those countries either economically or diplomatically dependent upon him to turn against him.
Bombing air bases outside Moscow? Good one Heathener.
So much woolly headed thinking via false analogy on this thread.
“Stand up to bullies”. “You don’t deserve freedom if you won’t fight for it”. “Ukraine is Czechoslovakia” etc…
As for the whole debate about murdering Putin’s / his associates’ children and imagining the consequence would be a group of chastised fathers retiring peacefully with their family albums…
I don’t often say this but you should all read what HYFUD is saying. Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
What we are witnessing is the degree of powerlessness against a nuclear state once it sets its course on military action. Much of the world is doing what it can through military aid, giving refuge to civilians, corporate behaviour and direct sanctions. And it might work eventually. But it might not and Ukraine could easily be turned from a modern state into a failed one.
There were many world powers including Russia that were very upset when the US invaded Iraq. Infrastructure got destroyed, too many children were victims. But fortunately you didn’t see attempts by other nuclear states to fight the US directly in that conflict. They knew to do so was not only futile but too dangerous. Plenty of monkey business through proxies for sure but nothing that risked direct conflict and escalation.
The hard truth is that likely the only way to save the children of Mariupol is to stop the invasion from happening in the first place. Because the ex ante stakes have been raised sufficiently high that Putin does not dare. That is what NATO is for.
Sadly for the children of Mariupol, most of the western world only woke up to the need for a well funded defence budget and coherent and coordinated foreign policy AFTER the invasion. I suspect those railing against their own powerlessness know this is true of themselves if they are honest about it.
Yes. Look at our own position. We started the run down of our armed forces in the early 80s and really accelerated it hard over the last 15 - 20 years. Our troops are notoriously badly equipped and badly paid and we have had to explore stupidity like pooling naval resources with France to provide our new carriers with escorts.
On top of that we have allowed Russian money and influence to undermine our politics and society. We're weak and divided and astonishingly still have a PM and ministers helping their Russian friends. And that's just us - similar problems elsewhere in NATO (and lets not even go into the American disaster) - Putin has spent a decade and more undermining us and knows we are at our weakest.
Which is why we need to get Russian money out of our politics. And why we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Spending went up during the first half of the eighties after a broadly downwards trajectory since the sixties (at least: that’s where the graph starts). It was the nineties where spending fell off a cliff.
I was going to link to that. Sadly, RP sometimes falls into the 1979-year-zero trap.
we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Interesting. A(nother) strategic defence review. Where do you see the UK in terms of its global military role and where would your focus be for this rearmament.
"NEW from @CBSDavidMartin: A U.S. official estimates Russians have lost 5,000-6,000 killed in the first 2 weeks of battle. Standard battlefield math assumes 3x as many wounded as killed, so that puts the number of wounded at 15,000-18,000."
Lowest western estimate is 1 in 8 of the pre-staged Russian forces dead, wounded, awol, or captured. European estimates are up towards 20%. Staggering, and completely unsustainable. Bear in mind that only 60ish thousand of the 180k are frontline combat troops, although they've clearly been taking significant losses in logistic, riot policing, and rear echelon troops.
The Russian manpower losses then are in a fortnight equal to their decade long Afghan war.
Sure, Russia does have a history of sustaining vast losses and keeping fighting, but that was in a defensive rather than offensive war. Perhaps a better parallel is the current Ukranian situation.
More to the point is the massive losses of skills and heavy weapons, again more important in an offensive war. Ukranian militias raiding supply convoys are relatively autonomous and low tech, but Russia needs an integrated combined arms approach to break what appears to be a mobile Ukranian defence in depth. Their capacity for that declines by the day in the face of Ukranian resistance.
It is going to be tough on Ukranian civilians, but the resort to artillery on cities shows that declining Russian ability. I don't think Russia can sustain this war beyond Easter, though turfing them out of the Black Sea coast may be difficult.
If they manage to get the Russians out of range of their big cities, there is going to be a wall of very modern, very effective weaponry heading down to the Black Sea.
As well as all those Russian tanks, stolen by tractors, now taken out of their barns across the Ukrainian landscape where they have had a minor respray. Z
So much woolly headed thinking Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
.
In many ways this war has revealed the flaws of NATO. It only covers its members, which means that people like Putin can get away with whatever they like against non-NATO countries.
But it also reveals the NIMBYism of some NATO states. The US in particular. Joe Biden greenlit this invasion when he pulled the plug so disgracefully on Afghanistan: dumping on them. The catastrophe in that country hasn't registered in our news very much.
But I also more controversially now doubt anyway whether NATO would respond to an attack on one of its member states. Joe Biden has shown such a disinclination to stand up to Putin.
If we survive this then Europe as a whole will emerge stronger and more united, minus the UK of course which has now decided to put it itself nowhere on the world map.
NATO protects only NATO - well, that was the whole point in the original design. Not to extend commitments beyond the core territory* of the member states. So that people would know what they were getting into.
As to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
As to "standing up to Putin" - the level of sanctions being levied against Russia are unprecedented. They are not designed to be a bit of a stone in the shoe to Russia. They are designed to collapse the Russian economy. And that in fairly short order.
*Imperial stuff doesn't count, deliberately. Hence Falklands being "out of area"
So much woolly headed thinking via false analogy on this thread.
“Stand up to bullies”. “You don’t deserve freedom if you won’t fight for it”. “Ukraine is Czechoslovakia” etc…
As for the whole debate about murdering Putin’s / his associates’ children and imagining the consequence would be a group of chastised fathers retiring peacefully with their family albums…
I don’t often say this but you should all read what HYFUD is saying. Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
What we are witnessing is the degree of powerlessness against a nuclear state once it sets its course on military action. Much of the world is doing what it can through military aid, giving refuge to civilians, corporate behaviour and direct sanctions. And it might work eventually. But it might not and Ukraine could easily be turned from a modern state into a failed one.
There were many world powers including Russia that were very upset when the US invaded Iraq. Infrastructure got destroyed, too many children were victims. But fortunately you didn’t see attempts by other nuclear states to fight the US directly in that conflict. They knew to do so was not only futile but too dangerous. Plenty of monkey business through proxies for sure but nothing that risked direct conflict and escalation.
The hard truth is that likely the only way to save the children of Mariupol is to stop the invasion from happening in the first place. Because the ex ante stakes have been raised sufficiently high that Putin does not dare. That is what NATO is for.
Sadly for the children of Mariupol, most of the western world only woke up to the need for a well funded defence budget and coherent and coordinated foreign policy AFTER the invasion. I suspect those railing against their own powerlessness know this is true of themselves if they are honest about it.
Yes. Look at our own position. We started the run down of our armed forces in the early 80s and really accelerated it hard over the last 15 - 20 years. Our troops are notoriously badly equipped and badly paid and we have had to explore stupidity like pooling naval resources with France to provide our new carriers with escorts.
On top of that we have allowed Russian money and influence to undermine our politics and society. We're weak and divided and astonishingly still have a PM and ministers helping their Russian friends. And that's just us - similar problems elsewhere in NATO (and lets not even go into the American disaster) - Putin has spent a decade and more undermining us and knows we are at our weakest.
Which is why we need to get Russian money out of our politics. And why we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Spending went up during the first half of the eighties after a broadly downwards trajectory since the sixties (at least: that’s where the graph starts). It was the nineties where spending fell off a cliff.
My point was simple. The Tories launched a defence review under John Nott. The withdrawal of our naval forces from the area literally opened the door to Galtieri opportunism. Once he invaded we then needed to fight back. Using an aircraft carrier we had sold to Australia and V-bombers we were scrapping at the end of the year.
Had Galtieri waited until 1983 the UK would have been unable to mount the war to retake the islands.
I am left asking what more can we do, but more thinking what option do we have short of things requiring full engagement with Russian forces.
Putin's escalations so far have precious little to do with any real Western provocation, and it truly makes me wonder how much his nuclear threats and any follow through on those threats are actually contingent on a Western response. He might just do it anyway, that is not at all improbable. And then we just pray that the line of command to the launch button substantially fails.
And if the judgement is that his actions aren't contingent on Western actions, then to what extent should Western actions be contingent on a mercurial Russian threat. Should we just do the right but possible thing anyway in the thought that it is tangential to whatever Putin does.
If that is the calculation, I'm not sure which responses are best militarily but the art of the possible comes into play.
Provisional, temporary and unestablished NATO membership or "extension of protection" of Ukraine followed by establishment of de facto NATO protection for Lviv and the northern Carpathians? A partial NFZ knowing Russia can still strike at it if they want? MIG fighters that might get a week or twos use if lucky before the airfield is flattened? Everything might not make sense, some things might and is it for more specialised people than me to determine. But, militarily, I hope the clear eyed assessment is geared to what more CAN we do rather than what can't we do.
So much woolly headed thinking via false analogy on this thread.
“Stand up to bullies”. “You don’t deserve freedom if you won’t fight for it”. “Ukraine is Czechoslovakia” etc…
As for the whole debate about murdering Putin’s / his associates’ children and imagining the consequence would be a group of chastised fathers retiring peacefully with their family albums…
I don’t often say this but you should all read what HYFUD is saying. Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
What we are witnessing is the degree of powerlessness against a nuclear state once it sets its course on military action. Much of the world is doing what it can through military aid, giving refuge to civilians, corporate behaviour and direct sanctions. And it might work eventually. But it might not and Ukraine could easily be turned from a modern state into a failed one.
There were many world powers including Russia that were very upset when the US invaded Iraq. Infrastructure got destroyed, too many children were victims. But fortunately you didn’t see attempts by other nuclear states to fight the US directly in that conflict. They knew to do so was not only futile but too dangerous. Plenty of monkey business through proxies for sure but nothing that risked direct conflict and escalation.
The hard truth is that likely the only way to save the children of Mariupol is to stop the invasion from happening in the first place. Because the ex ante stakes have been raised sufficiently high that Putin does not dare. That is what NATO is for.
Sadly for the children of Mariupol, most of the western world only woke up to the need for a well funded defence budget and coherent and coordinated foreign policy AFTER the invasion. I suspect those railing against their own powerlessness know this is true of themselves if they are honest about it.
Yes. Look at our own position. We started the run down of our armed forces in the early 80s and really accelerated it hard over the last 15 - 20 years. Our troops are notoriously badly equipped and badly paid and we have had to explore stupidity like pooling naval resources with France to provide our new carriers with escorts.
On top of that we have allowed Russian money and influence to undermine our politics and society. We're weak and divided and astonishingly still have a PM and ministers helping their Russian friends. And that's just us - similar problems elsewhere in NATO (and lets not even go into the American disaster) - Putin has spent a decade and more undermining us and knows we are at our weakest.
Which is why we need to get Russian money out of our politics. And why we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Spending went up during the first half of the eighties after a broadly downwards trajectory since the sixties (at least: that’s where the graph starts). It was the nineties where spending fell off a cliff.
I was going to link to that. Sadly, RP sometimes falls into the 1979-year-zero trap.
Read my other reply. We were selling the ships and scrapping the aircraft we relied on to retake the Falklands. I said "run down of our armed forces". If spending went up as we ran down our capabilities then so what - doesn't negate my factual point.
Last week I was invited into a WeChat group mainly for Chinese migrants living in Australia, giving me a unique look at how they view the Ukraine war. The group logo has a Chinese national flag, so unsurprisingly their views are very pro-China, pro- Communist Party.
And how did they view the Ukraine war?
Mornin' all! Brighter here, too..
To save you the bother of reading the thread: loads of extreme pro-Putin propaganda, lots of it from official Chinese sources.
And a mention of PB shrewdies favourite snivelling Assad apologist Tulsi Gabbard
So much woolly headed thinking Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
.
In many ways this war has revealed the flaws of NATO. It only covers its members, which means that people like Putin can get away with whatever they like against non-NATO countries.
But it also reveals the NIMBYism of some NATO states. The US in particular. Joe Biden greenlit this invasion when he pulled the plug so disgracefully on Afghanistan: dumping on them. The catastrophe in that country hasn't registered in our news very much.
But I also more controversially now doubt anyway whether NATO would respond to an attack on one of its member states. Joe Biden has shown such a disinclination to stand up to Putin.
If we survive this then Europe as a whole will emerge stronger and more united, minus the UK of course which has now decided to put it itself nowhere on the world map.
NATO protects only NATO - well, that was the whole point in the original design. Not to extend commitments beyond the core territory* of the member states. So that people would know what they were getting into.
As to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
As to "standing up to Putin" - the level of sanctions being levied against Russia are unprecedented. They are not designed to be a bit of a stone in the shoe to Russia. They are designed to collapse the Russian economy. And that in fairly short order.
*Imperial stuff doesn't count, deliberately. Hence Falklands being "out of area"
Collapsing the Russian economy is as dangerous as continuing to send weapons in Ukraine (a non NATO country). This war shoudl have been over two weeks ago and the more it is prolonged the danger of nuclear war is - FWIW I think nuclear war is probable now and that is a failure of modern society but also this gung ho approach that somehow bad needs to be defeated at all costs . Pragmatism is the only way in a nuclear world , we are not mature enough as a society (and on here by many - calling for a NFZ FFS) yet to handle the weapons we have invented. The clock is a couple of seconds to midnight . The one time I would retaliate against Russia if it does use nuclear weapons against us as there is no point in the perpatrators winning and writing their history (as all winners do - see Russian propoganda now) so hope Boris has given the right instructions to the subs . One last glimmer of hope is that Putin knows the west will retaliate at that point and he actually cares - you can only hope
"NEW from @CBSDavidMartin: A U.S. official estimates Russians have lost 5,000-6,000 killed in the first 2 weeks of battle. Standard battlefield math assumes 3x as many wounded as killed, so that puts the number of wounded at 15,000-18,000."
Lowest western estimate is 1 in 8 of the pre-staged Russian forces dead, wounded, awol, or captured. European estimates are up towards 20%. Staggering, and completely unsustainable. Bear in mind that only 60ish thousand of the 180k are frontline combat troops, although they've clearly been taking significant losses in logistic, riot policing, and rear echelon troops.
The Russian manpower losses then are in a fortnight equal to their decade long Afghan war.
Sure, Russia does have a history of sustaining vast losses and keeping fighting, but that was in a defensive rather than offensive war. Perhaps a better parallel is the current Ukranian situation.
More to the point is the massive losses of skills and heavy weapons, again more important in an offensive war. Ukranian militias raiding supply convoys are relatively autonomous and low tech, but Russia needs an integrated combined arms approach to break what appears to be a mobile Ukranian defence in depth. Their capacity for that declines by the day in the face of Ukranian resistance.
It is going to be tough on Ukranian civilians, but the resort to artillery on cities shows that declining Russian ability. I don't think Russia can sustain this war beyond Easter, though turfing them out of the Black Sea coast may be difficult.
If they manage to get the Russians out of range of their big cities, there is going to be a wall of very modern, very effective weaponry heading down to the Black Sea.
As well as all those Russian tanks, stolen by tractors, now taken out of their barns across the Ukrainian landscape where they have had a minor respray. Z
Ukrainian farmers arguably have one of Europe's more powerful militaries.
we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Interesting. A(nother) strategic defence review. Where do you see the UK in terms of its global military role and where would your focus be for this rearmament.
If we face a new cold war then our "cold war is over lets be ready for The War Against Terror" stance is no longer fit for the future. I listen to people like Tobias Ellwood who know first hand what we need. He told the PM and the Big Dog just mocked the Lieutenant Colonel.
NATO protects only NATO - well, that was the whole point in the original design. Not to extend commitments beyond the core territory* of the member states. So that people would know what they were getting into.
As to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
As we weigh up the risks of action and inaction it might be good to understand why Putin might be deliberately provoking NATO.
A war against NATO is one he can more easily rally his people to, and one in which heavy losses are to be expected.
A war against Ukraine is one that defies all reason, and one in which heavy losses are a humiliation.
That would suggest that we should avoid a direct confrontation for political reasons, and the issue of the risk of nuclear war is not the deciding factor.
My guess is that Putin calculates that a NFZ is off the table, therefore by attacking civilians he can create a wedge between Ukraine and the west and create tension in NATO.
If that is true, should we respond and if so how. There will be more civilian targets in the days to come.
NATO protects only NATO - well, that was the whole point in the original design. Not to extend commitments beyond the core territory* of the member states. So that people would know what they were getting into.
As to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
1990's Yugoslavia says hello.
Yes - perhaps the exception that proves the rule. The Serbs had some vague backing from the Soviet Union, but nothing definite. Some argue, though that the Pristina Airport thing was a pivotal moment in Russian Greater Nationalism and it's revival....
My guess is that Putin calculates that a NFZ is off the table, therefore by attacking civilians he can create a wedge between Ukraine and the west and create tension in NATO.
If that is true, should we respond and if so how. There will be more civilian targets in the days to come.
well to be blunt (and i dont like saying this anymore than anyone else) but if the will (or lack of interest) is there we can ignore civilian casualties - We do it currently in yemen,syria, and did it in congo , Rwanda etc - even Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way out of this is to ignore as much as possible. Russia will get bored as much as the west then.
Heck we even ignored it when Russia invaded Georgia and Crimea and Grosny.For some reason we seemed to have been sucked into this to "defeat Putin" - Well politicos have a habit of always needing to do something , this is the one time , nothing being done is now better
As we weigh up the risks of action and inaction it might be good to understand why Putin might be deliberately provoking NATO.
A war against NATO is one he can more easily rally his people to, and one in which heavy losses are to be expected.
A war against Ukraine is one that defies all reason, and one in which heavy losses are a humiliation.
That would suggest that we should avoid a direct confrontation for political reasons, and the issue of the risk of nuclear war is not the deciding factor.
In trying to get the sub-text in situations like war in Ukraine it is useful to look at principal opposition positions. SKS and others will be briefed confidentially. While they are having a go at government on visas, Home Office general uselessness etc (rightly of course), they are all of one mind with the USA and our government on the big calls: negative on No Fly Zone, NATO engagement etc.
we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Interesting. A(nother) strategic defence review. Where do you see the UK in terms of its global military role and where would your focus be for this rearmament.
If we face a new cold war then our "cold war is over lets be ready for The War Against Terror" stance is no longer fit for the future. I listen to people like Tobias Ellwood who know first hand what we need. He told the PM and the Big Dog just mocked the Lieutenant Colonel.
Since when are Lieutenant Colonels masters of military strategy. They get a battalion; hardly the big picture at Sevastopol.
And if he came straight from a coffee with CGS of course he is agitating for a new cold war approach. It is a General's dream. As much money as they want and all for a war they will never fight.
So much woolly headed thinking Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
.
In many ways this war has revealed the flaws of NATO. It only covers its members, which means that people like Putin can get away with whatever they like against non-NATO countries.
But it also reveals the NIMBYism of some NATO states. The US in particular. Joe Biden greenlit this invasion when he pulled the plug so disgracefully on Afghanistan: dumping on them. The catastrophe in that country hasn't registered in our news very much.
But I also more controversially now doubt anyway whether NATO would respond to an attack on one of its member states. Joe Biden has shown such a disinclination to stand up to Putin.
If we survive this then Europe as a whole will emerge stronger and more united, minus the UK of course which has now decided to put it itself nowhere on the world map.
NATO protects only NATO - well, that was the whole point in the original design. Not to extend commitments beyond the core territory* of the member states. So that people would know what they were getting into.
As to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
As to "standing up to Putin" - the level of sanctions being levied against Russia are unprecedented. They are not designed to be a bit of a stone in the shoe to Russia. They are designed to collapse the Russian economy. And that in fairly short order.
*Imperial stuff doesn't count, deliberately. Hence Falklands being "out of area"
Yes but we can defend the Falklands ourselves as we did in 1982.
We can contain Argentina we cannot contain Russia however alone without NATO support.
Similarly we also agreed to hand back Hong Kong as even if many of the population preferred to stay a British colony rather than go back to Beijing, we could not defend it alone against China and other nations were not going to join us to defend one of the last outposts of Empire
People worried about the whole of civilisation being evaporated if we confront Prestupnik Putin..
What's our "civilisation" worth if we don't?
Send your replies to Ukraine.
I don't know, I reckon billions of lives and the continuity of the species is worth a fair bit, but what the fuck do I know? Better send in the tanks so in 100 million years the successor civilisation of intelligent frogs can marvel at the moral integrity of our irradiated skeletons.
There are several billion too many of us. The specie is unimportant. It will be destroyed at some stage. Every atrocity we witness, perpetrate and allow to be repeated as an action of ghe human specie devalues us and goes towards proving we are are not worthy of continued survival.
So I presume you supported military intervention in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Syra, in northern Nigeria, in Chechnya, in Yemen too, conflicts which were often just as brutal as Ukraine if not worse with terrible atrocities and where we did nothing militarily in most of them?
Your comment 'the species is unimportant' is so ludicrous as to be barely worthy of comment, however going to war with Russia over Ukraine if it leads to WW3, nuclear war and the death of hundreds of millions or even billions rather than the thousands so far in Ukraine would not have been worth doing on any definition.
Yes in a few billion years time the Sun may explode but by then we may be living on a different planet or even a different galaxy anyway, however that is no excuse for a possible third world war or even nuclear war which is still avoidable
The upside to the Earth being engulfed in the fiery nuclear plasma of the Sun is that the place that elected you, and all its people, will be completely ionised and lost in heaving sea of fire. There's always a positive.
Though as a Christian I also believe in eternal life anyway, hopefully far away from you.
Given that comment I would not be certain you will escape the eternal fiery furnace even in the afterlife!
As fiery chat up lines go, you two are breaking new ground. Get a room! :-)
Also it is a, in some interpretations mortal, sin to say that someone else is damned.
we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Interesting. A(nother) strategic defence review. Where do you see the UK in terms of its global military role and where would your focus be for this rearmament.
If we face a new cold war then our "cold war is over lets be ready for The War Against Terror" stance is no longer fit for the future. I listen to people like Tobias Ellwood who know first hand what we need. He told the PM and the Big Dog just mocked the Lieutenant Colonel.
Since when are Lieutenant Colonels masters of military strategy. They get a battalion; hardly the big picture at Sevastopol.
And if he came straight from a coffee with CGS of course he is agitating for a new cold war approach. It is a General's dream. As much money as they want and all for a war they will never fight.
NATO protects only NATO - well, that was the whole point in the original design. Not to extend commitments beyond the core territory* of the member states. So that people would know what they were getting into.
As to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
1990's Yugoslavia says hello.
Yes - perhaps the exception that proves the rule. The Serbs had some vague backing from the Soviet Union, but nothing definite. Some argue, though that the Pristina Airport thing was a pivotal moment in Russian Greater Nationalism and it's revival....
The difference is we were prepared to confront and defeat the Serbian bully but the bigger Russian bully not so much. We prod him, we take his pocket money away, we say horrible things to him. But the bully still attacks our friend and will continue to do so and other friends until we put the Russian bully on his arse.
I am left asking what more can we do, but more thinking what option do we have short of things requiring full engagement with Russian forces.
We already have a level of engagement with Russian forces, via our weaponry put in theatre. Can't imagine the Russian Army and its mercenaries look forward to full engagement with NATO, so it's hard to imagine Putin is provoking an encounter that he would lose very quickly indeed. Those columns of vehicles would be gone within the hour, his air force west of the Urals within two.
Provoking NATO into full engagement only leaves him with a nuclear response. And resulting obliteration of his country in short order. Would his generals really go along with that battle plan?
Blitzkrieg within a non-NATO neighbour has clearly failed. His troops are bogged down, supply lines not protected. A conventional war launched into NATO borders has been shown to be unwinnable. All he has is long-range demolition of cities. Effective. But is it as effective as long-range demolition of the Russian economy by sanctions?
Putin has gone to war to prevent NATO expansion. The likely outcome is that NATO will expand its borders to Finland and Sweden. Moldova next. The moment the Belarus dictator falls, it will apply too. It's hard not to think Putin has brought a knife to a gunfight.
we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Interesting. A(nother) strategic defence review. Where do you see the UK in terms of its global military role and where would your focus be for this rearmament.
If we face a new cold war then our "cold war is over lets be ready for The War Against Terror" stance is no longer fit for the future. I listen to people like Tobias Ellwood who know first hand what we need. He told the PM and the Big Dog just mocked the Lieutenant Colonel.
Since when are Lieutenant Colonels masters of military strategy. They get a battalion; hardly the big picture at Sevastopol.
And if he came straight from a coffee with CGS of course he is agitating for a new cold war approach. It is a General's dream. As much money as they want and all for a war they will never fight.
He clearly know more than the Big Dog.
Well, on the subject of tanks - are they actually a good idea on the modern battlefield?
Quite a lot of people arguing that they are nice for low intensity conflicts to dominate the place, but no use in high intensity conflicts. If every man and his dog is throwing fire-and-forget top attack weapons at you.....
Apologies for jumping the shark last night and making a rather offensive suggestion regarding dealing with Russians via their offspring. It was a knee jerk reaction to the destruction of the maternity hospital and was made out of emotion and not rationale and so I am sorry to those I upset with it.
With a more rational head on I hope this morning I do think we in the west need to be a little more creative how we deal with Putin’s black arts in the future but maybe just (ok totally) my suggestion went too far.
I think it’s easy to get fatigued by these major events after covid and want quick happy solutions and so I’m hoping that all future bad events can be kept to two weeks maximum including the coming famine and the following alien invasion.
Again my apologies for my unacceptable suggestion.
p.s. the cracks in NATO are very obviously emerging ...
Sorry to HYUFD and those who would love it to be otherwise. Much of this lands at Biden's feet. European countries, especially those closest to the conflict, have a rather different perspective than Sleepy Joe.
(And the UK has become even more isolated.)
30,000 NATO troops are doing an exercise in Norway today. NATO reinforcements continue to arrive in Poland, Romania and the Baltic States.
That seems a pretty united response to protect NATO nations to me. It was of course the UK which led the giving of supplies to Ukraine before the invasion. Truss met the US Secretary of State yesterday, Boris met the PMs of Canada and the Netherlands earlier this week, all stood firm in condemning Putin's actions. Does not look much UK isolation
we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Interesting. A(nother) strategic defence review. Where do you see the UK in terms of its global military role and where would your focus be for this rearmament.
If we face a new cold war then our "cold war is over lets be ready for The War Against Terror" stance is no longer fit for the future. I listen to people like Tobias Ellwood who know first hand what we need. He told the PM and the Big Dog just mocked the Lieutenant Colonel.
Since when are Lieutenant Colonels masters of military strategy. They get a battalion; hardly the big picture at Sevastopol.
And if he came straight from a coffee with CGS of course he is agitating for a new cold war approach. It is a General's dream. As much money as they want and all for a war they will never fight.
He clearly know more than the Big Dog.
About what? Polishing 1 RGJ mess silver? Johnson has to weigh the competing elements and interests of the country to determine whether he thinks we should expand our military and for what purposes and what role HMF should or is likely to occupy in the years ahead. It's MLRS vs new hospitals.
If Ellwood is simply a channel for the General Staff to lobby Johnson for more spending on tanks and guns then that's fine. But it is a small part of the big picture. It might be right "today" (and might not be) but so what.
Last week I was invited into a WeChat group mainly for Chinese migrants living in Australia, giving me a unique look at how they view the Ukraine war. The group logo has a Chinese national flag, so unsurprisingly their views are very pro-China, pro- Communist Party.
And how did they view the Ukraine war?
Mornin' all! Brighter here, too..
To save you the bother of reading the thread: loads of extreme pro-Putin propaganda, lots of it from official Chinese sources.
I did have a flick through but thought there must be more somewhere.
I was hoping for a twist, but didn't find one unfortunately. But I was surprised at how shamelessly pro-Putin some of the apparently official Chinese sources are - no sign of any sitting on the fence.
Yes; straight down the line isn't it. Depressingly so.
So much woolly headed thinking via false analogy on this thread.
“Stand up to bullies”. “You don’t deserve freedom if you won’t fight for it”. “Ukraine is Czechoslovakia” etc…
As for the whole debate about murdering Putin’s / his associates’ children and imagining the consequence would be a group of chastised fathers retiring peacefully with their family albums…
I don’t often say this but you should all read what HYFUD is saying. Reflect carefully on his short, clear sentences about the lines of NATO.
What we are witnessing is the degree of powerlessness against a nuclear state once it sets its course on military action. Much of the world is doing what it can through military aid, giving refuge to civilians, corporate behaviour and direct sanctions. And it might work eventually. But it might not and Ukraine could easily be turned from a modern state into a failed one.
There were many world powers including Russia that were very upset when the US invaded Iraq. Infrastructure got destroyed, too many children were victims. But fortunately you didn’t see attempts by other nuclear states to fight the US directly in that conflict. They knew to do so was not only futile but too dangerous. Plenty of monkey business through proxies for sure but nothing that risked direct conflict and escalation.
The hard truth is that likely the only way to save the children of Mariupol is to stop the invasion from happening in the first place. Because the ex ante stakes have been raised sufficiently high that Putin does not dare. That is what NATO is for.
Sadly for the children of Mariupol, most of the western world only woke up to the need for a well funded defence budget and coherent and coordinated foreign policy AFTER the invasion. I suspect those railing against their own powerlessness know this is true of themselves if they are honest about it.
Yes. Look at our own position. We started the run down of our armed forces in the early 80s and really accelerated it hard over the last 15 - 20 years. Our troops are notoriously badly equipped and badly paid and we have had to explore stupidity like pooling naval resources with France to provide our new carriers with escorts.
On top of that we have allowed Russian money and influence to undermine our politics and society. We're weak and divided and astonishingly still have a PM and ministers helping their Russian friends. And that's just us - similar problems elsewhere in NATO (and lets not even go into the American disaster) - Putin has spent a decade and more undermining us and knows we are at our weakest.
Which is why we need to get Russian money out of our politics. And why we need to purposefully rearm and re-equip armed forces that are fit for the modern age. The PM won't do that as witnessed by his astonishing row with Tobias Ellwood at the select committee meeting about tanks.
Spending went up during the first half of the eighties after a broadly downwards trajectory since the sixties (at least: that’s where the graph starts). It was the nineties where spending fell off a cliff.
I was going to link to that. Sadly, RP sometimes falls into the 1979-year-zero trap.
Read my other reply. We were selling the ships and scrapping the aircraft we relied on to retake the Falklands. I said "run down of our armed forces". If spending went up as we ran down our capabilities then so what - doesn't negate my factual point.
IMV it does: because the money is being spent on other things within the MOD's budget.
"scrapping the aircraft we relied on to retake the Falklands."
If you're talking about the Sea Harriers, you should look into the a little deeper - and look at Hoon's role in it.
People worried about the whole of civilisation being evaporated if we confront Prestupnik Putin..
What's our "civilisation" worth if we don't?
Send your replies to Ukraine.
I don't know, I reckon billions of lives and the continuity of the species is worth a fair bit, but what the fuck do I know? Better send in the tanks so in 100 million years the successor civilisation of intelligent frogs can marvel at the moral integrity of our irradiated skeletons.
There are several billion too many of us. The specie is unimportant. It will be destroyed at some stage. Every atrocity we witness, perpetrate and allow to be repeated as an action of ghe human specie devalues us and goes towards proving we are are not worthy of continued survival.
So I presume you supported military intervention in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Syra, in northern Nigeria, in Chechnya, in Yemen too, conflicts which were often just as brutal as Ukraine if not worse with terrible atrocities and where we did nothing militarily in most of them?
Your comment 'the species is unimportant' is so ludicrous as to be barely worthy of comment, however going to war with Russia over Ukraine if it leads to WW3, nuclear war and the death of hundreds of millions or even billions rather than the thousands so far in Ukraine would not have been worth doing on any definition.
Yes in a few billion years time the Sun may explode but by then we may be living on a different planet or even a different galaxy anyway, however that is no excuse for a possible third world war or even nuclear war which is still avoidable
The upside to the Earth being engulfed in the fiery nuclear plasma of the Sun is that the place that elected you, and all its people, will be completely ionised and lost in heaving sea of fire. There's always a positive.
Though as a Christian I also believe in eternal life anyway, hopefully far away from you.
Given that comment I would not be certain you will escape the eternal fiery furnace even in the afterlife!
As fiery chat up lines go, you two are breaking new ground. Get a room! :-)
Also it is a, in some interpretations mortal, sin to say that someone else is damned.
I don't want it to become received wisdom that Johnson has been saved by the war. He could still be ditched before the GE. I don't think so but he might be. It depends on the polls. Plus he might not have been ditched in any case. Lying to parliament, breaking Covid laws, generally being corrupt, this clearly isn't enough for Tory MPs. It would have depended on the polls. Common thread - the polls.
It almost seems bad taste discussing our party politics in the current situation but here is an idle thought. If Ukraine situation is resolved in next 12 months then Johnson will decide to go rather than risk being ousted or losing the election having decided he has enough for his 3 volume memoirs?
I really don’t get the received wisdom here that he’s a busted flush. Absent anything new from the police, leading to a proper bollocking, I think he’s now safe from the party stuff and has an evens chance of winning the next election. I only think his chances of that are as low as evens because the police might yet scupper his hopes.
But something new from the police is highly likely and the publication of the actual, full Gray report is inevitable. Those predicting Johnson will stay seem to ignore these obvious threats. How bad they’ll be for Johnson, we don’t know, but they’re coming.
While there's support for the way we're aiding the Ukraine military, there's rising anger over the treatment of refugees. And I don't think he can shuffle it all off onto the Pritster.
Yes. There will be a reverse ferret on this.
If BJ does his BJ special timing, he will have spaffed away the political upside he could have gained, and credit deserved for the good decisions in supporting Ukr, and kept the downside.
Comments
However, when NATO forces are all fighting together in theatre the connection between them is physical. So far in the Ukraine - Russia war NATO is not a combatant, so of course there is more room for debate and disagreement. That so many NATO members are also EU members which is also reacting and the UK is fighting its own cultural war against the EU doesn't help seed unity - cf the petulant positioning between British and French governments.
Should Russia show any likelihood of invading a NATO member I think all of this debate will boil away very quickly, and "sleepy Joe" will speak with his measured authority on what NATO is prepared to do. Which is why Putin - in my opinion - won't do it.
*If* the reported rates of casualties are true, then some Russian units must have already rendered ineffective in combat - a common guesstimate of such thing is about 20-30% casualties.
IN the case of the Winter War, Stalin had essentially infinite reserves to rotate through - the Soviet army couldn't sustain more than the numbers above on the Finnish Front, but they could bring in replacements.
Spending went up during the first half of the eighties after a broadly downwards trajectory since the sixties (at least: that’s where the graph starts). It was the nineties where spending fell off a cliff.
Sure, Russia does have a history of sustaining vast losses and keeping fighting, but that was in a defensive rather than offensive war. Perhaps a better parallel is the current Ukranian situation.
More to the point is the massive losses of skills and heavy weapons, again more important in an offensive war. Ukranian militias raiding supply convoys are relatively autonomous and low tech, but Russia needs an integrated combined arms approach to break what appears to be a mobile Ukranian defence in depth. Their capacity for that declines by the day in the face of Ukranian resistance.
It is going to be tough on Ukranian civilians, but the resort to artillery on cities shows that declining Russian ability. I don't think Russia can sustain this war beyond Easter, though turfing them out of the Black Sea coast may be difficult.
Every action taken by the West in this should be aimed at consolidating global public opinion against Putin and creating the space for those countries either economically or diplomatically dependent upon him to turn against him.
Bombing air bases outside Moscow? Good one Heathener.
(I thought we agreed to call it Königsberg?)
As well as all those Russian tanks, stolen by tractors, now taken out of their barns across the Ukrainian landscape where they have had a minor respray.
ZAs to defending NATO states - the US, UK and others are continuously reinforcing and increasing troop numbers in the Baltics States and Poland. That means that if the Russians attack, they will automatically be fighting them.
As to "standing up to Putin" - the level of sanctions being levied against Russia are unprecedented. They are not designed to be a bit of a stone in the shoe to Russia. They are designed to collapse the Russian economy. And that in fairly short order.
*Imperial stuff doesn't count, deliberately. Hence Falklands being "out of area"
Had Galtieri waited until 1983 the UK would have been unable to mount the war to retake the islands.
*Awaits arrows...
Quite unexpected to find it is not old Victorian engineering* that was the problem but very modern contractor work.
Edit: time-expired.
Putin's escalations so far have precious little to do with any real Western provocation, and it truly makes me wonder how much his nuclear threats and any follow through on those threats are actually contingent on a Western response. He might just do it anyway, that is not at all improbable. And then we just pray that the line of command to the launch button substantially fails.
And if the judgement is that his actions aren't contingent on Western actions, then to what extent should Western actions be contingent on a mercurial Russian threat. Should we just do the right but possible thing anyway in the thought that it is tangential to whatever Putin does.
If that is the calculation, I'm not sure which responses are best militarily but the art of the possible comes into play.
Provisional, temporary and unestablished NATO membership or "extension of protection" of Ukraine followed by establishment of de facto NATO protection for Lviv and the northern Carpathians? A partial NFZ knowing Russia can still strike at it if they want? MIG fighters that might get a week or twos use if lucky before the airfield is flattened? Everything might not make sense, some things might and is it for more specialised people than me to determine. But, militarily, I hope the clear eyed assessment is geared to what more CAN we do rather than what can't we do.
The one time I would retaliate against Russia if it does use nuclear weapons against us as there is no point in the perpatrators winning and writing their history (as all winners do - see Russian propoganda now) so hope Boris has given the right instructions to the subs . One last glimmer of hope is that Putin knows the west will retaliate at that point and he actually cares - you can only hope
Anyone know what the issue/rule for calorie counting are in the various after lives?. Valhalla, I can guess at, but we won't be going there....
A war against Ukraine is one that defies all reason, and one in which heavy losses are a humiliation.
That would suggest that we should avoid a direct confrontation for political reasons, and the issue of the risk of nuclear war is not the deciding factor.
If that is true, should we respond and if so how. There will be more civilian targets in the days to come.
Heck we even ignored it when Russia invaded Georgia and Crimea and Grosny.For some reason we seemed to have been sucked into this to "defeat Putin" - Well politicos have a habit of always needing to do something , this is the one time , nothing being done is now better
See for example
https://labourlist.org/2022/03/labour-is-right-to-resist-calls-for-nato-to-establish-a-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine/
I think this may be true of major oppositions in all the big NATO countries. We have to draw the obvious inferences as to why.
And if he came straight from a coffee with CGS of course he is agitating for a new cold war approach. It is a General's dream. As much money as they want and all for a war they will never fight.
We can contain Argentina we cannot contain Russia however alone without NATO support.
Similarly we also agreed to hand back Hong Kong as even if many of the population preferred to stay a British colony rather than go back to Beijing, we could not defend it alone against China and other nations were not going to join us to defend one of the last outposts of Empire
Provoking NATO into full engagement only leaves him with a nuclear response. And resulting obliteration of his country in short order. Would his generals really go along with that battle plan?
Blitzkrieg within a non-NATO neighbour has clearly failed. His troops are bogged down, supply lines not protected. A conventional war launched into NATO borders has been shown to be unwinnable. All he has is long-range demolition of cities. Effective. But is it as effective as long-range demolition of the Russian economy by sanctions?
Putin has gone to war to prevent NATO expansion. The likely outcome is that NATO will expand its borders to Finland and Sweden. Moldova next. The moment the Belarus dictator falls, it will apply too. It's hard not to think Putin has brought a knife to a gunfight.
Quite a lot of people arguing that they are nice for low intensity conflicts to dominate the place, but no use in high intensity conflicts. If every man and his dog is throwing fire-and-forget top attack weapons at you.....
With a more rational head on I hope this morning I do think we in the west need to be a little more creative how we deal with Putin’s black arts in the future but maybe just (ok totally) my suggestion went too far.
I think it’s easy to get fatigued by these major events after covid and want quick happy solutions and so I’m hoping that all future bad events can be kept to two weeks maximum including the coming famine and the following alien invasion.
Again my apologies for my unacceptable suggestion.
That seems a pretty united response to protect NATO nations to me. It was of course the UK which led the giving of supplies to Ukraine before the invasion. Truss met the US Secretary of State yesterday, Boris met the PMs of Canada and the Netherlands earlier this week, all stood firm in condemning Putin's actions. Does not look much UK isolation
If Ellwood is simply a channel for the General Staff to lobby Johnson for more spending on tanks and guns then that's fine. But it is a small part of the big picture. It might be right "today" (and might not be) but so what.
"scrapping the aircraft we relied on to retake the Falklands."
If you're talking about the Sea Harriers, you should look into the a little deeper - and look at Hoon's role in it.
If BJ does his BJ special timing, he will have spaffed away the political upside he could have gained, and credit deserved for the good decisions in supporting Ukr, and kept the downside.
Are there any views on Lord Ashcroft's new book, yet?
First Lady: Intrigue at the Court of Carrie and Boris Johnson
I've only seen talk of a couple of reviews.
It seems to be quite fruity, with some not-very-positive claims.
Does MA write these himself?
Link:https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Lady-Intrigue-Carrie-Johnson/dp/1785907506