War in Ukraine

#28,601
#28,601
KB5252 said:
So in your opinion any group that wants sovereignty, even within the borders of an established country, should be granted statehood?

How do you reconcile Georgia being occupied by Russia with this line of thinking? Where do you draw the line?
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Does Donetsk and Luhansk being independent republics affect your everyday life?
 
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#28,604
#28,604
DonjoVol said:
The U.S. got involved before Russia did. Russia was actually trying to have a friendly relationship when Yanukovych was president.
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Says US was involved first, then specifically calls put Russian actions before said US involvement.

For the last 200/300 years it is literally impossible for anyone but Russia to be the first in getting invovled in Ukrainian matters.
 
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#28,608
#28,608
MontyPython said:
Russia's army is in a woeful state - Economist Briefing
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Russia's army is in a woeful state The fiasco in Ukraine could be a reflection of a bad strategy or a poor fighting force...

"...On the eve of war, Russia’s invasion force was considered formidable. American intelligence agencies reckoned that Kyiv would fall in days. Some European officials thought it might just hold out for a few weeks. No one thought that the city would be welcoming such dignitaries as Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, America’s secretaries of state and defence respectively, two months after the fighting started. The belief was that Russia would do to Ukraine what America had done to Iraq in 1991: shock and awe it into submission in a swift, decisive campaign. This belief was based on the assumption that Russia had undertaken the same sort of root-and-branch military reform that America underwent in the 18-year period between its defeat in Vietnam and its victory in the first Gulf war. In 2008 a war with Georgia, a country of fewer than 4m people, though successful in the end, had exposed the Russian army’s shortcomings. Russia fielded obsolete equipment, struggled to find Georgian artillery and botched its command and control. At one stage, Russia’s general staff allegedly could not reach the defence minister for ten hours. “It is impossible to not notice a certain gap between theory and practice,” acknowledged Russia’s army chief at the time. To close that gap, the armed forces were slashed in size and spruced up.

Ambition in spades Russian military expenditure, when measured properly—that is, in exchange rates adjusted for purchasing power—almost doubled between 2008 and 2021, rising to over $250bn, about triple the level of Britain or France (see charts). Around 600 new planes, 840 helicopters and 2,300 drones were added to the arsenal between 2010 and 2020. New tanks and missiles were flaunted at parades in Moscow. Russia tested new tactics and equipment in Donbas, after its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and in its campaign to prop up Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator, the following year.

A retired European general says that watching this new model army fail reminds him of visiting East Germany and Poland after the end of the cold war, and seeing the enemy up close. “We realised how shite the 3rd Shock Army was,” he says, referring to a much-vaunted Soviet formation based in Magdeburg. “We’ve again allowed ourselves to be taken in by some of the propaganda that they put our way.” Russia’s army was known to have problems, says Petr Pavel, a retired Czech general who chaired nato’s military committee in 2015-18, “but the scope of these came as a surprise to many, including myself—I believed that the Russians had learnt their lessons.”

The charitable interpretation is that the Russian army has been hobbled in Ukraine less by its own deficiencies than by Mr Putin’s delusions. His insistence on plotting the war in secrecy complicated military planning. The fsb, a successor to the kgb, told him that Ukraine was riddled with Russian agents and would quickly fold. That probably spurred the foolish decision to start the war by sending lightly armed paratroopers to seize an airport on the outskirts of Kyiv and lone columns of armour to advance into the city of Kharkiv, causing heavy casualties to elite units.

Yet, this coup de main having fizzled, the army then chose to plough into the second largest country in Europe from several directions, splitting 120 or so battalion tactical groups (btgs) into lots of ineffective and isolated forces. Bad tactics then compounded bad strategy: armour, infantry and artillery fought their own disconnected campaigns. Tanks that should have been protected by infantry on foot instead roamed alone, only to be picked off in Ukrainian ambushes. Artillery, the mainstay of the Russian army since tsarist times, though directed with ferocity at cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol, could not break through Ukrainian lines around Kyiv...

...The battle for Donbas will not entirely settle this debate. A Russian army that prevails in a war of attrition through sheer firepower and mass would still be a far cry from the nimble, high-tech force advertised over the past decade. More likely is that Russia’s plodding forces will exhaust themselves long before they achieve their objectives in southern and eastern Ukraine, let alone before mounting another attempt on Kyiv. The world’s military planners will be watching not just how far Russia gets in the weeks ahead, but also what that says about its forces’ resilience, adaptability and leadership. Like a knife pushed into old wood, the progress of the campaign will reveal how deep the rot runs."
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This reeks of corruption. While I'm sure Putin got his share I wonder if he knew how much his buds were stealing from country's military funding? I wonder if anyone knows how much is being stolen from ours.
 
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#28,609
#28,609
So are we thinking Russia will try to use Transnistria to attack Moldova, Ukraine, both, or simply try to connect a land bridge to the territory via southern Ukraine?
 
#28,611
#28,611
He is going to bomb the **** out of the south west with what ever bombers he can scrounge together, He is running out of munitions that target by laser. He has BIG blasts, like cruise missiles, and gps guided. Basically, Ukraine has outgunned him and is calling his bluff. They seemed well prepped for a campaign as well. They are losing forces. In a fight for himanity.... but Russia's loses are far, far greater.
 
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#28,612
#28,612
LouderVol said:
Says US was involved first, then specifically calls put Russian actions before said US involvement.

For the last 200/300 years it is literally impossible for anyone but Russia to be the first in getting invovled in Ukrainian matters.
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We had absolutely no business getting involved and meddling in their political affairs. None whatsoever.

Yanukovych was actually trying to have a diplomatic relationship with both the west and Russia. Are they not allowed to have that?
 
#28,616
#28,616
DonjoVol said:
Does it affect your everyday life outside of the virtue signaling you and others do every day about this on Volnation?
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A land war in Europe involving a nuclear armed power absolutely impacts all of us. We have a vested interest in preserving European peace and security after the fighting two very destructive world wars.
 
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#28,619
#28,619
The problem with Russia is a LARGE majority of information coming in and out is controlled at borders like land grabs. You have to trust that Russia is still human at this point, and I like to believe they are.
 
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