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Ukraine

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YetAnotherRDUGuy said:
Yea, we might wanna wait for independent confirmation of troop withdrawals before taking their word for it.
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Yep, this is something you might say right before you intend to invade just to throw the enemy off. Not saying that’s what’s happening, but I also wouldn’t take Russia’s word on anything right now.
 
superjames1992 said:
Yep, this is something you might say right before you intend to invade just to throw the enemy off. Not saying that’s what’s happening, but I also wouldn’t take Russia’s word on anything right now.
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It is extremely easy to monitor military activity. Lying about it makes you look stupid.
 
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Poimen said:
It seems like a whole bunch of trouble just to end up at the negotiating table anyway.
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Nah, It embarrassed the US and NATO to look like fools. Plus, he can turn to his own people and say "See, the West are the war mongers" and build morale and justification to further fight the expansion of NATO.

Added bonus to play chicken with Biden.
 
Sounds like the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and some banks there might be getting hit by DDoS attacks now.
 
Rain Cold said:
It is extremely easy to monitor military activity. Lying about it makes you look stupid.
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Yeah the US intel assets in the region know when the Russian troops take a dump much less where all their equipment is. People who dont know or understand the USA's ability to see EVERYTHING the Russians are doing would be astonished at what the true capabilities of these systems are. Everyone knows the Russians are probably not going in, Putin lost, at this point he is going to try to get any kind of concession he can, Russia is not a superpower anymore, has not been for a while, this force projection is costly and nearing the limits of their abilities IMO. Simply put they cant afford to keep this many troops on this kind of footing and have to either go in or pull back.
 
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Rain Cold said:
It is extremely easy to monitor military activity. Lying about it makes you look stupid.
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I do agree that is true, although it may take a few hours to verify anything and that could be a difference here. Will be interesting what happens.
 
smast16 said:
Nah, It embarrassed the US and NATO to look like fools. Plus, he can turn to his own people and say "See, the West are the war mongers" and build morale and justification to further fight the expansion of NATO.

Added bonus to play chicken with Biden.
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Not sure how this embarrassed the US or NATO, Putin is getting nothing out of this even if he invades.....polling showed that the Russian people supported invading Ukraine by a whopping 8 percent.....https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/11/russia-may-be-about-invade-ukraine-russians-dont-want-it/

"Sending arms or deploying Russian troops into Ukraine is unpopular — and has only become more so as Russians tire of the war Moscow and its proxies have waged in eastern Ukraine since 2014. According to our latest survey of 3,245 Russians in December, just 8 percent think Russia should send military forces to fight against Ukrainian government troops there. Only 9 percent think Russia should train or equip separatist forces with Russian arms."

In the end no matter what Putin does here its lose lose for him, if he backs down Ukraine ends up in NATO, if he goes in Russia gets sanctioned into the dirt, thousands of his soldiers will die and he will face mass protest in the streets when the bodies start coming home.
 
Downeastnc said:
Not sure how this embarrassed the US or NATO, Putin is getting nothing out of this even if he invades.....polling showed that the Russian people supported invading Ukraine by a whopping 8 percent.....https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/11/russia-may-be-about-invade-ukraine-russians-dont-want-it/

"Sending arms or deploying Russian troops into Ukraine is unpopular — and has only become more so as Russians tire of the war Moscow and its proxies have waged in eastern Ukraine since 2014. According to our latest survey of 3,245 Russians in December, just 8 percent think Russia should send military forces to fight against Ukrainian government troops there. Only 9 percent think Russia should train or equip separatist forces with Russian arms."

In the end no matter what Putin does here its lose lose for him, if he backs down Ukraine ends up in NATO, if he goes in Russia gets sanctioned into the dirt, thousands of his soldiers will die and he will face mass protest in the streets when the bodies start coming home.
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Check the price of a barrel of oil. He cashed in , thanks to the sabberattaling pushing inflated prices even higher.
 
Downeastnc said:
Yeah the US intel assets in the region know when the Russian troops take a dump much less where all their equipment is. People who dont know or understand the USA's ability to see EVERYTHING the Russians are doing would be astonished at what the true capabilities of these systems are. Everyone knows the Russians are probably not going in, Putin lost, at this point he is going to try to get any kind of concession he can, Russia is not a superpower anymore, has not been for a while, this force projection is costly and nearing the limits of their abilities IMO. Simply put they cant afford to keep this many troops on this kind of footing and have to either go in or pull back.
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See, I don't think Russia lost. I think they won. They walked up to Nato, bowed up, and Nato flinched and put their hands up to stop the punch. Now Russia is walking away laughing.
 
smast16 said:
See, I don't think Russia lost. I think they won. They walked up to Nato, bowed up, and Nato flinched and put their hands up to stop the punch. Now Russia is walking away laughing.
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And if you're NATO you see a country that just wasted billions to position military assets for an invasion that didn't happen. I could see both sides seeing this as a victory.

In the end, I understand why Russia felt threatened and needed a show of force. Their Black Sea fleet is the largest outside of the Pacific. If Ukraine joined NATO, it would essentially create a curtain of control in the Black Sea that leaves an already vulnerable Russian Naval forces, even more so.

I also understand why NATO feels they must check Russia's aggression.

Interesting times for sure.
 
Poimen said:
It seems to me that the only way Putin walks away the winner here is if he walks away with major concessions from NATO and Ukraine. Am I missing something?
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This is correct, nothing short of a guarantee that Ukraine is never going into NATO is a loss for Putin. I think Putin greatly misjudged how the west would react to this. At home none of the people wanted this, the Russian stock exchange tanked, the ruble took a big hit, and he spent billions rattling his short sword, ultimately for nothing. Biden and the EU played this just about perfectly.....they sent all the right messages, Putin knew if he went in they would have sanctioned Russia into oblivion, and assisted the Ukraine with intel and other assets that would have made the Russian loses very high. Ukraine has a large well equipped standing army on full alert, Putin would have had to defend thousands of dead troops to the people who already did not want this war. The only real danger now is some kind of "Gulf of Tonkin" move from Putin to try and sway world opinion but at this point no one would believe him.
 
That Biden speech sounded very much like he knows it’s about to go down. We’ll see.

Also:


Russian government hackers have broadly penetrated Ukrainian military, energy and other critical computer networks to collect intelligence and position themselves potentially to disrupt those systems should Russia launch a military assault on Ukraine, according to newly declassified U.S. intelligence.
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Not much change since yesterday wxwise with pretty tranquil through tomorrow and then stormy (cold rain and snow along with windiness) for Thu-Fri. The next two weeks still look warmer than normal overall.
 
Now there are some that think a false flag operation was staged in the Donbass.

I gotta say, if something happens tomorrow, sheesh, it was so telegraphed. Before the report that some troops were being pulled back, there was a report that there was going to be an attack tomorrow at 3 AM.

It's possible that all that's going to happen is Donbass gets annexed here, and there has apparently been fighting here since Crimea was annexed? (I haven't looked into it deeply)
 
GeorgiaGirl said:
Now there are some that think a false flag operation was staged in the Donbass.

I gotta say, if something happens tomorrow, sheesh, it was so telegraphed. Before the report that some troops were being pulled back, there was a report that there was going to be an attack tomorrow at 3 AM.

It's possible that all that's going to happen is Donbass gets annexed here, and there has apparently been fighting here since Crimea was annexed? (I haven't looked into it deeply)
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Is that local time? Ukraine is +2 UTC or 2352 at this time

I could see portions of Ukraine getting annexed in the short term, especially areas that are more pro Russian.
 
GeorgiaGirl said:
Now there are some that think a false flag operation was staged in the Donbass.

I gotta say, if something happens tomorrow, sheesh, it was so telegraphed. Before the report that some troops were being pulled back, there was a report that there was going to be an attack tomorrow at 3 AM.

It's possible that all that's going to happen is Donbass gets annexed here, and there has apparently been fighting here since Crimea was annexed? (I haven't looked into it deeply)
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It has been telegraphed, but I’m not sure it really matters. I don’t think Ukraine has much capacity to resist if Russia does go in. Likewise, the Coalition telegraphed they were coming after Iraq in 1991 and 2003, but it didn’t matter; Iraq couldn’t resist either way. Granted, I don’t think the strength differential is quite that much here, but Ukraine has a poor Air Force and Russia will dominate the skies and rain down hell on Ukraine’s ground forces immediately.

Now past an initial invasion, Russia may have issues occupying if they choose to do that (as the US found out in Iraq), but I don’t foresee Russia invading the entire country. That would require significant manpower.
 
HSVweather said:
Is that local time? Ukraine is +2 UTC or 2352 at this time

I could see portions of Ukraine getting annexed in the short term, especially areas that are more pro Russian.
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Before there was a report on Russia pulling troops back, there was a report floating around that Russia was going to attack tomorrow at 3 AM ET.
 
Here's just some random RDU guy thinking out loud, so take with various grains of salt..

If no invasion was ever planned, that means Putin's goal was applying a military buildup to pressure getting concessions. The big one talked about is Ukraine NATO membership. If this was to get concessions, is this the only one? Does it also involve missile placement in other NATO countries bordering Russia? Also, if Putin's goal is to pressure for concessions, when would those talks be? I'd think there'd be a quick announcement of talks to help destabilize tensions or even some sort of summit. That has not come yet..

On the other hand, IF an invasion was planned from the beginning, Russia needs a reason for war (casus belli). If the invasion starts tomorrow (or a short time later), you'd think there'd be some 'incident' provided (made up or no) showing the US/NATO as the aggressor. (like a gulf of tonkin incident) We've heard a lot of talk about 'Western aggression' from Russia in a general sense, but I'm not sure if that works by itself as a reason internationally. Anyway, this is my long way of saying if tomorrow is invasion day, you'd also likely see an incident provided tomorrow too.

Also, if the invasion has always been set tomorrow, would Russia still go through with it since the date was leaked? You'd think they'd delay it that were the case. For this reason, even if nothing happens tomorrow, we probably shouldn't assume its off completely.
 
YetAnotherRDUGuy said:
Here's just some random RDU guy thinking out loud, so take with various grains of salt..

If no invasion was ever planned, that means Putin's goal was applying a military buildup to pressure getting concessions. The big one talked about is Ukraine NATO membership. If this was to get concessions, is this the only one? Does it also involve missile placement in other NATO countries bordering Russia? Also, if Putin's goal is to pressure for concessions, when would those talks be? I'd think there'd be a quick announcement of talks to help destabilize tensions or even some sort of summit. That has not come yet..

On the other hand, IF an invasion was planned from the beginning, Russia needs a reason for war (casus belli). If the invasion starts tomorrow (or a short time later), you'd think there'd be some 'incident' provided (made up or no) showing the US/NATO as the aggressor. (like a gulf of tonkin incident) We've heard a lot of talk about 'Western aggression' from Russia in a general sense, but I'm not sure if that works by itself as a reason internationally. Anyway, this is my long way of saying if tomorrow is invasion day, you'd also likely see an incident provided tomorrow too.

Also, if the invasion has always been set tomorrow, would Russia still go through with it since the date was leaked? You'd think they'd delay it that were the case. For this reason, even if nothing happens tomorrow, we probably shouldn't assume its off completely.
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There is uncertainty in certainty and certainty in uncertainty ... and Putin is a master at that game ...
 
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