But, as a basis to conserve national-security, wholey justified? Asking for an Anglo-Saxon friend!
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
D
Deleted member 24525
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Would it kill you not to speak like a tsarist official from 1890
Didn’t know that Cecil Rhodes was a ”tsarist official”!
Ukraine to either surrender on Moscow’s terms or cease to exist — top Russian lawmaker
MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/. Ukraine is fated either to capitulate on Moscow’s terms or cease to exist as a state, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament), said."When speaking about the conflict in Ukraine, [US President Joe] Biden, [NATO Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg and other Western officials have started calling it 'a war of attrition.' They have put huge amounts of money into militarizing the Kiev regime. Where has it gotten them? The simple facts are these: the West is experiencing weapons and ammunition shortages, people in Europe and the US have lost trust in politicians, and the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive has failed," Volodin stated.
According to him, the outcome of the "war of attrition" also includes economic problems in Europe and the US, a lack of manpower for the Ukrainian armed forces, and ultimately bankruptcy and demographic disaster for Ukraine. "These seven facts speak for themselves: Ukraine will cease to exist as a state unless the Kiev regime capitulates on Russia’s terms," Volodin stressed.
"More than 10.5 million people have fled Ukraine. Another 11.2 million residents of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions decided to join Russia. Ukraine has lost 53.7% of its population since 2014," the State Duma speaker highlighted.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Can we just stop with the nuclear strike silliness already? That’s a complete no-go for too many reason to be worth listing.
The two critical factors holding Russia back from a much more extensive strategic deep strike campaign are: ISR, and PR. With munitions supply an additional half factor.
The foundational core reason why Ukraine has been able to punch way above its weight in terms of hitting high profit targets in Crimea has been NATO ISR. You have US global hawks preceding every Ukrainian strike sitting impossibly close to the action and providing live updates to co-operate Ukrainian assets to penetrate Russian air defences.
This is an ‘impossible’ scenario that no AD network can counter because there is no way in hell NATO assets would be able to maintain such close and uninterrupted view of the battlespace even if NATO was directly involved in the war. And if the positions were reversed, NATO would have declared any Russian assets so blatantly involved in the kill chain as legitimate targets and killed them in lawful self defence. This is an uniquely stupid position the Russians have managed to trap themselves in that no one (well, no other major power) else will tolerate and allow.
What the Russians are facing is instead what would be the norm one would expect in near-peer conflicts. Where you have sufficient strike power to be able to punch through enemy AD networks and hit basically most targets you want, but lack the frontline ISR assets to be able to find time critical targets and also have very limited post-strike BDA capabilities.
While the Russians can go scorched earth, especially in winter, to take down Ukraine’s power grid for example, what actual military objective will that really achieve for them? Ukrainian industry is dead, they are not making any material contributions to the war effort, pretty much all war materials, weapons and supplies are coming in from abroad.
All they will achieve with such a move is purposely create a massive humanitarian disaster, and plainly for no good (military) reason.
While the US and NATO countries certainly couldn’t be much more anti-Russian, most of the world is actually still neutral, especially the global south. That is why the Russians cannot afford to not consider the PR consequences of their actions.
Lastly, while the Russians are by no means running out of missiles as the western MSM keep wishing out loud, their missile stocks are not infinite either. And a sustained national strike campaign to take down and keep down the Ukrainian grid over a meaningful period of time, will certainly put a sizeable dint in their missile stocks. Given the above points about the irrelevance of Ukrainian industrial contributions to their war effort, as well as the obvious PR and diplomatic costs, its little wonder the Russians have concluded that it makes no sense for them to mount this kind of purely spiteful campaign.
And let’s not be disingenuous and think last winter’s power grid strikes were really seriously about trying to collapse the Ukrainian grid. That strike campaign was primarily aimed to forcing Ukraine to re-deploy and spread out their air defence assets to take the pressure off the VKS on the frontlines, as they were suffering a decent and growing amount of combat losses up to that point. A situation that was almost completely reversed following the strikes and subsequent Ukrainian AD redeployments, which justified that strike campaign.
The highest impact investment the Russians can make to allow them to get more out of their missile deep strikes are space based ISR assets. It will be interesting to see if they can manage it. Because unless and until they get a quantum leap in space based ISR assets, their current deep strike results are about as good as could reasonably be expected.
The two critical factors holding Russia back from a much more extensive strategic deep strike campaign are: ISR, and PR. With munitions supply an additional half factor.
The foundational core reason why Ukraine has been able to punch way above its weight in terms of hitting high profit targets in Crimea has been NATO ISR. You have US global hawks preceding every Ukrainian strike sitting impossibly close to the action and providing live updates to co-operate Ukrainian assets to penetrate Russian air defences.
This is an ‘impossible’ scenario that no AD network can counter because there is no way in hell NATO assets would be able to maintain such close and uninterrupted view of the battlespace even if NATO was directly involved in the war. And if the positions were reversed, NATO would have declared any Russian assets so blatantly involved in the kill chain as legitimate targets and killed them in lawful self defence. This is an uniquely stupid position the Russians have managed to trap themselves in that no one (well, no other major power) else will tolerate and allow.
What the Russians are facing is instead what would be the norm one would expect in near-peer conflicts. Where you have sufficient strike power to be able to punch through enemy AD networks and hit basically most targets you want, but lack the frontline ISR assets to be able to find time critical targets and also have very limited post-strike BDA capabilities.
While the Russians can go scorched earth, especially in winter, to take down Ukraine’s power grid for example, what actual military objective will that really achieve for them? Ukrainian industry is dead, they are not making any material contributions to the war effort, pretty much all war materials, weapons and supplies are coming in from abroad.
All they will achieve with such a move is purposely create a massive humanitarian disaster, and plainly for no good (military) reason.
While the US and NATO countries certainly couldn’t be much more anti-Russian, most of the world is actually still neutral, especially the global south. That is why the Russians cannot afford to not consider the PR consequences of their actions.
Lastly, while the Russians are by no means running out of missiles as the western MSM keep wishing out loud, their missile stocks are not infinite either. And a sustained national strike campaign to take down and keep down the Ukrainian grid over a meaningful period of time, will certainly put a sizeable dint in their missile stocks. Given the above points about the irrelevance of Ukrainian industrial contributions to their war effort, as well as the obvious PR and diplomatic costs, its little wonder the Russians have concluded that it makes no sense for them to mount this kind of purely spiteful campaign.
And let’s not be disingenuous and think last winter’s power grid strikes were really seriously about trying to collapse the Ukrainian grid. That strike campaign was primarily aimed to forcing Ukraine to re-deploy and spread out their air defence assets to take the pressure off the VKS on the frontlines, as they were suffering a decent and growing amount of combat losses up to that point. A situation that was almost completely reversed following the strikes and subsequent Ukrainian AD redeployments, which justified that strike campaign.
The highest impact investment the Russians can make to allow them to get more out of their missile deep strikes are space based ISR assets. It will be interesting to see if they can manage it. Because unless and until they get a quantum leap in space based ISR assets, their current deep strike results are about as good as could reasonably be expected.
That means if there's no further strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure as a matter of principle, the AD will redeploy to the front.
Good news, but now actually use them??
It's no use to receive so many tanks but not actually deploy them en masse. Enough with the one-tank-company-leading-an-entire-battalion-into-enemy-lines assault.
They spent hundreds of cruise missiles and TBMs over weeks.
There is a huge difference between nuclear weapons and conventional weapons because even a small country can acquire enough firepower to ruin the world through nuclear weapons. It is just so easy to destroy countries using them and everything else becomes irrelevant when nukes start getting used. Nuclear taboo is why there are only 9 nuclear armed countries in the world and why arsenals got smaller since 1991. It is also why tests are stopped.
Russia invaded a country. If it nukes Ukraine after failing to defeat it, everyone will get nukes. The fact that such a thing would be happening after Ukraine was made to give away its nukes in return for security guarantees (which Russia also gave) is just so unpalatable.
Hiroshima is quite irrelevant to this topic. It was an immoral act. But two rather important differences are:
1- The current nuclear Mexican standoff didn't exist back then.
2- Ukraine didn't start this war and it wasn't committing genocide after genocide in pursuit of continental hegemony.
Good morning.
Start with another FAB/UMPK strike. They are all over the place now.
Ukrainian equipment, I can't identify at this height, gets blasted by a 300mm rocket from a Tornado-S.
Glide bombs gets ready.
Another Lancet strike on a stationary Ukrainian MiG-29, more than 70km away from the front. Big explosion. Observed and recorded by a high flying Russian UAV loitering unmolested over the Ukrainian airfield. Same air field previously hit by Lancets.
FPV drones hit Ukrainian IFVs parked near a building. Courtesy of the Sudoplatov Battalion.
Ukrainian armored vehicle gets hit by an FPV drone, but still continuous to go along. A second FPV drone wipes out it completely. Courtesy of the Sudoplatov Battalion.
Kharkhiv region. AFU ammo depot gets targeted and hit by a Krasnopol strike.
Both buildings are done. Odessa hotel and port granary heavily stricken after missile attacks.
Ukrainian held building in Ugledar gets hit by a FAB bomb. Barracks? HQ?
Start with another FAB/UMPK strike. They are all over the place now.
Ukrainian equipment, I can't identify at this height, gets blasted by a 300mm rocket from a Tornado-S.
Glide bombs gets ready.
Another Lancet strike on a stationary Ukrainian MiG-29, more than 70km away from the front. Big explosion. Observed and recorded by a high flying Russian UAV loitering unmolested over the Ukrainian airfield. Same air field previously hit by Lancets.
FPV drones hit Ukrainian IFVs parked near a building. Courtesy of the Sudoplatov Battalion.
Ukrainian armored vehicle gets hit by an FPV drone, but still continuous to go along. A second FPV drone wipes out it completely. Courtesy of the Sudoplatov Battalion.
Kharkhiv region. AFU ammo depot gets targeted and hit by a Krasnopol strike.
Both buildings are done. Odessa hotel and port granary heavily stricken after missile attacks.
Ukrainian held building in Ugledar gets hit by a FAB bomb. Barracks? HQ?
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