Ah yes, the joy of having such friends saying "won't rule out military action"
Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
"The director of the Chinese language institute at Karachi University is among the 3 Chinese killed in the attack. It was apparently a suicide attack and must be seen as serious security lapse!"
plawolf
Lieutenant General
You are being unreasonably critical of Putin here.
All wars short of total wars are limited by political considerations. Otherwise things could backfire spectacularly if military commanders were given too much power and freedom to do what they liked. Because newsflash, military commanders are human also, and are not immune from mistakes or personal ambition. Case in point, McAuthor’s vanity and political ambitions influenced many of his battlefield decisions, which then directly resulted in China’s entry into the Korean War.
Rampant corruption was a problem Putin inherited, not caused. Maybe he could have done more to try to get it under control, but this was the same Russian military that did ok in both Georgia and Syria and did an impressive job on the Ukrainians the first time around.
That’s the problem with systematic, institutionalised corruption - its too smart to go overboard and expose itself as a clear and obvious national security threat. Instead it leaves a passable facade that looks fine superficially while it hollows out the centre. The facade will hold up well to most scrutiny and stress testing, it may even hold up fine in real use, but can fail catastrophically when put under significant strain, as has happened in Ukraine 2.0. But that’s not an uniquely Russian problem. Throw any non-US NATO military into a full spectrum war against a near-peer adversary and they will fumble far worse than the Russians. Who, need I remind you, are still winning the war against Ukraine?
I think the biggest mistake Putin made was actually in not involving himself enough in the military modernisation and took too much of what his generals were reporting back to him at face value instead of critically challenging them and testing the fruits of those investments properly.
To us military enthusiasts, we can see potential problems with the way the Russians were blatantly cheating to win tank biathlons, international army games and similar international events and competitions. But it seems Putin didn’t involve himself enough in the details to see past the headline results of the Russian military always coming out on top.
Add on top the fair real-world combat results from recent wars and it’s not unreasonable for him to believe his generals and thus vastly overestimated Russia’s true conventional military strength. Specially the state of its forces beyond the elite special forces and specialist expeditionary formations.
I think it’s no co-incidence that Putin personally ordered and oversaw the recent test launch of their new Sarmat ICBM. The west interpreted that as sabre rattling nuclear brinksmanship, but I think that was Putin quietly taking inventory of the state of his strategic nuclear forces to make sure they are not also as addled by corruption as his conventional forces.
Had a still-in-development new missile failed during tests, it would be embarrassing but somewhat expected. A high profile test of in-service weapons that fail would put Russia’s entire nuclear deterrent in doubt. That’s why Putin didn’t dare wave his nuclear stick to try to dissuade NATO’s escalating weapons supply to Ukraine. I think Putin is genuinely worried his nuclear stick might snap in his hand if he waved it too hard.
The overall strategy wasn’t terrible. The problems arose because the Russian military fundamentally lacked the capabilities to actually pull off those moves properly.
I think the same applies to this ‘brotherly war’ notion. Now, with hindsight, it looks like less Russia went in pulling its punches and more that this was how hard they could actually punch. Which is a much bigger problem! This is why the Russians had to fundamentally readjust their war strategy and force disposition.
But the thing is, despite all these monumental screw ups, on the grand strategical scale, it’s all only going one way. The Ukrainians are achieving some tactical successes, but they are not able to slow, never mind turn the overall tide of war going against them.
Putin has effectively been President of Russia since 1999.
Whatever corruption problems he inherited, he has had more than enough time and power to correct whatever was wrong.
The attack on us just like last time is here again
Who's responsible?
I think it is no small miracle he did as much as he did. I still remember the Chechen conflicts. The first Chechen war, before he came in, was a disaster.
I think you guys are ignoring since Putin came into power Russia won the Chechen conflict, and the Georgian War, and managed to turn a situation in Syria which most people thought was impossible. The government currently in Ukraine is not interested in a negotiated settlement to the conflict. I think this was quite clear when they did not follow the Minsk agreements. In fact they seem to be pushing for yet another cease fire, via the UN, which they will then proceed to break again. Ukraine do not bother going through the motions of a deal anymore even. And they seem to think they can win in conditions of total war and their allies will help them. Well, that is the same arrogance which led Poland to its downfall in WW2. Putin did not come in hard for two reasons. First is, and a lot of you guys ignore this, but this is the first large scale overt war between two nuclear powers close to one's borders since we have had nukes. There are several conditions because of this which hamstring Russia. Like I said they need to avoid having large troop concentrations of their own or they might get hit with a US tactical nuke. So just making a mass mobilization, making a huge blob, and going into Kiev is a major no. The US would also light fires elsewhere. They tried in Georgia. There were moves in Nagorno-Karabakh. And now you have the Sweden-Finland situation. Today you had attacks in Transnistria. Ideally Russia could arm the separatists in Ukraine and let them fight it out. But given the Ukrainian military buildup this is not possible. They could have made a huge strategic bombardment campaign against Ukraine. But that would have lost Putin both his support base in Russia proper, and the support of the local population. The minute he declared the independence of the separatist regions, the chances of them getting back into Ukraine proper also diminished. And with the massacre at Bucha, there is just no way the ground they de facto hold will ever go back to the Ukraine government. That is why after Bucha, you saw Russia start erecting Russian flags at Kherson and Melitopol. When Russia previously claimed they would not annex Ukrainian territory. I think that is now off the table. They might make more tactical withdrawals. But I think Ukraine will lose a large chunk of its territory. If it even survives as a nation in its current configuration.
Supposedly the terrorist organisation BLA. There is also a CCTV video of the moment the suicide attack happened. Its not NSFW but I won't link it, you can find it online if you want to
Agree with most of the points, except the tactical nuke part, that would escalate things to WWIII and both sides know that. If suddenly 10k-25k Russian troops died from a tactical nuke, then there is no way to hide the fact it came from US because Ukraine is not in possession of such weapons or launch capabilities, and Putin would have to escalate attacking NATO/US directly, else he'll be seen as completely spineless and weak. Having huge concentration of troops in one place is also a bad idea in any case, because of artillery and possibility of chemical weapons.
Personally I think Russia's performance looks bad is because of their military objective is not to completely destroy Ukraine, and that they want to keep as much of the infrastructure and industries in the regions they are planning to annex, to lower the cost of reconstruction.
I have a speculation that Ukraine's stability might be one of the end goals as well, whatever left of Ukraine needs to at least be functional, else they will bordering against a European version of Syria, hotbed of terrorism and factionalism. Which can explain why Russia is insistent on negotiations, though currently conditions for negotiations is not favorable, since crackhead Zelensky still think they can win the war with imported weapons.
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Europe's black market purchase of Russian crude oil.
Russian oil export to Europe increased from 1.3 million barrels per day to 1.6 million barrels per day in April, Russian tankers left Ust-Luga and Primorsk for an "unknown" destination. However on the way, the ships met other tankers, transferred oil to them, with the oil subsequently mixed. Europe now officially buys the "Latvian blend" crude, rather than Russian crude.
Russian oil export to Europe increased from 1.3 million barrels per day to 1.6 million barrels per day in April, Russian tankers left Ust-Luga and Primorsk for an "unknown" destination. However on the way, the ships met other tankers, transferred oil to them, with the oil subsequently mixed. Europe now officially buys the "Latvian blend" crude, rather than Russian crude.
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