The War in the Ukraine

mossen said:

The messages don't make sense because everyone knows Putin isn't going to go nuclear over an ammo depot in Bryansk being blown up by a long-range missile. Everyone knew this including Putin. So why did he make his dumb threat? He was bluffing. And NATO called his bluff.

So my suggestion is simple: don't bluff on going nuclear when you can't back up what you say. It was an L by Putin and I'm tired of seeing people coping trying to pretend otherwise.

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‘Everyone’ also ‘knew’ Russia wasn’t going to invade Ukraine. It would be unwise in the extreme to dismiss clear warnings the other side is issuing just because you don’t think they have the ‘balls’ to follow through with their threats.

At the end of the day, Russia have nukes enough to kill the entire planet. They absolutely have the means to easily follow through with their threats and deter direct retaliation. What then? What do you think NATO will do if Putin actually nukes Kiev? Nuke Moscow back and trigger nuclear MAD? I don’t think so. Not when they are not even remotely willing to even consider fighting Russia directly conventionally because of the costs they will have to pay.

If Putin really wanted to, he absolutely can use nukes and ‘get away with it’ so to speak. It would actually be massively beneficial for him to do precisely that to restore Russia’s strategic deterrence power and basically end the Ukraine war at a stroke. How much downside would Russia and Putin realistically actually stand to face? What can the west do to ‘punish’ Putin and Russia that it’s not already doing without risking getting dragged into a direct open war with Russia?

If you look at it from a cost-benefit basis, Putin’s threats don’t sound so hollow.

RottenPanzer said:

Considering the amount of casualties which have been suffered by both sides, which had reached almost a million. I wonder whether Russia and Ukraine could recover from such losses, especially with their dropping fertility rates throughout the years.

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Hard to believe Russia is suffering anywhere near the casualties that Ukraine and the West keep claiming. How does one have a 6 to 1 manpower advantage while only mobilizing once since the start? Either Ukraine has only a few hundred thousand left or Russia has several million in Ukraine.

Outnumbered by more than six to one along some stretches of the front, soldiers and commanders say they are hindered by a lack of combat infantry after years of heavy fighting and, just as important, by a shortage of experienced platoon and company commanders to lead untested recruits into battle. That has led to a fraying of Ukraine’s lines that has allowed Russia to make its largest gains since the first weeks of the war.

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Combat use of Russian Kh-101 cruise missiles in Ukraine on November 17. The video shows Kh-101 cruise missile strikes on the Kremenchug hydroelectric power station, on the underwater part of the station and the consequences of the strike on the hydroelectric power station. At the end of the video there is an insert, strikes of Russian Kh-101 missiles on November 17, on the PS 330/110 electrical substation in the city of Rivne.
The Kh-101 missile has a range of up to 5,500 km, and a 400 kg warhead. Some versions of the Kh-101 missiles have an 800 kg warhead, the warhead of the missile was recently increased by reducing the fuel tank. The Kh-102 missile version can be equipped with a 250-kiloton nuclear warhead.
According to media reports, the damage to the Kremenchug hydroelectric power station in Ukraine is serious, including critical disruption of the hydro turbines, destruction of the shandor and local damage to the dam.

plawolf said:

How many cruise missiles have Russia fired into Ukraine? Is Ukraine disarmed? Tomahawks don’t grow on trees and the US already faces running out of ammo extremely quickly in any war against China. How many Tomahawks do you think that can afford to send to Ukraine to attack Russia without blowing up their own war plans against China?

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Putin is not the president of China, he is the president of Russia. whether the US runs out of missiles in a hypothetical war against China or not is quite irrelevant to how Russia should respond to this American ballistic missile strike against the Russian mainland.

American ballistic missiles were fired inside Russian territory. from what Scott Ritter says it is not possible for Ukraine to use these weapons without involvment from the US military &/or it's contractors in this strike. it would have been one thing if Ukrainian drones are what attacked Russia but it is completely different when American ballistic missiles are what's attacking Russia.

whether the missiles caused zero damage or massive damage doesn't change the fact that American ballistic missiles are striking the Russian mainland. Russia has to regain deterence by retaliating against these strikes. if Russia doesn't retaliate then that basically tells the US it is ok for American missiles to attack the Russian mainland.

I have seen some analysts suggesting that Russia could regain deterence by killing Zelensky. I believe that would not be enough. The US doesn't give a flying F about Ukrainian soldiers &/or politicians being killed including Zelensky. for them Ukrainian soldiers and politicians are just disposable tools against Russia and not some precious assets equal in importance to the importance of the territorial integrity of the US mainland.

if American missiles are striking Russian mainland then an equal retaliation would be for Russian missiles to attack the US mainland. obviously that would be quite difficult to do since no proxy of Russia in Latin America would be willing to help Russia to do that. so the next best thing to do would be to strike a US base inside a NATO country. that would be a sufficient retaliation since article 5 means an attack on a NATO country is equal to an attack on all (including the US mainland).
the least Russia should do as retaliation if they don't have the courage and/or capability to do the previous two options is to shoot down all NATO drones over the black sea and hopefully that would be enough to send the message to the US that it is not ok for American missiles to attack Russian mainland.

some people say this is a trap by NATO to drag Russia in a direct military confrontation and thus Russia should not respond to this provocation so as to avoid falling into this "trap". personaly I believe that line of thinking makes no sense and is quite dangerous.
the burden of de-escalation should fall on the aggressor not on the victim. if some one attacks you in the street do you go "oh I should de-escalate so I'm not gonna retaliate"? no of course not.

as I said Russia should retaliate and the burden of de-escalation should fall on the US since they are the ones who started it by violating the Russian mainland with American missiles. and if the US refuses to de-escalate and instead retaliates against the Russian retaliation then that is fine. and if the US continues to escalate against Russian retaliations against NATO territory till all of them reach nuclear Armagedon then that is fine too. it would be the collective west who have chosen nuclear catastrophy and not Russian.

mossen said:

The messages don't make sense because everyone knows Putin isn't going to go nuclear over an ammo depot in Bryansk being blown up by a long-range missile. Everyone knew this including Putin. So why did he make his dumb threat? He was bluffing. And NATO called his bluff.

So my suggestion is simple: don't bluff on going nuclear when you can't back up what you say. It was an L by Putin and I'm tired of seeing people coping trying to pretend otherwise.

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Change in doctrine means, at least what I could understand, that under a perceived threat <<like long range missiles causing damage inside Russia>> Russia reserve right to use nuclear weapons, so in an hypothetical situation, him or one his commanders could use the excuse of a perceived threat and go nuclear over a town or fortification that is giving them difficulties if they know that instead of fighting for months they could just blow the whole thing up with an small yield 5kt nuke and take it in a day.

AND NOW the big question is THEN WHAT? What NATO and the West is going to do? They are gonna give their tactical nukes to Ukraine? Or NATO will use the nukes themselves?

Do the rewards merit the risk?

Ukraine had already fired GMLRS missiles north of Kharkiv into Russia. The only difference with ATACMS or Storm Shadow is it they have more range. But it is still not enough to hit strategic targets deep inside Russia. Russia will respond to this eventually but it is still way below the nuclear threshold.

Claims of massive destruction with such weapons are also bunk. As we can see from what is happening in Crimea which has been under fire from such weapons since the start. By firing them into the much larger Russian territory the weapon effect will be more spread out and even more irrelevant. The West continues to fall into the pit they dug themselves into at Kursk.

This was also a feeble Western response to Russia's recent huge attack into Ukraine which decommissioned most of the Ukrainian electric power generation just ahead of winter. Russia still has lots of room to escalate further against Ukraine and make things there even more miserable. Thus far heating installations or gas storage have not been struck.

The Ukrainian drone attacks towards Russian strategic infrastructure like the Voronezh and Container radar stations, strategic bomber airfields, and the SSBN submarine base were way more likely to cause Russian nuclear retaliation. By putting Russia's strategic deterrent at risk Russia might decide to use its deterrent before it is reduced or disabled. We were this close to nuclear war with that stupidity.

obj 705A said:

American ballistic missiles were fired inside Russian territory. from what Scott Ritter says it is not possible for Ukraine to use these weapons without involvment from the US military &/or it's contractors in this strike. it would have been one thing if Ukrainian drones are what attacked Russia but it is completely different when American ballistic missiles are what's attacking Russia.

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A journalist asked the white house spokesman about the validity of Lavrov statements. He basically avoided answering it, which more or less seems to confirm what Lavrov and Putin has been saying. Video is in the Reddit Link.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1gvoor7

ATACMS probably can be used without US assistance. But the thing is the US might not want systems with military grade GPS to be captured intact by the Russians, it is also likely they think the range is long enough that US operators are not at risk of capture. So they might use their own operators.

The Storm Shadow cruise missile though, that needs Western assistance. You need to program the route into the missile. You need high precision elevation maps to do this, which are themselves considered to be military secrets, as well as information on Russian air defense radar and SAM systems locations. To avoid them. You also need to program sensor data of the target into the missile for it to recognize. Which likely means it is Western technical experts which program the cruise missiles to avoid leakage of intel.

Hi,
I think no need for Russians to attack NATO, and start playing
with bigger fire but of cource they can use their proxies towards
USA in Syria and provide Houthis similar to something ATACMS
to keep USA and Israel at bay likewise provide something more
robust to Iran or may be in & out from Korean side by NK
thank you

This is very significant. It was obvious to most of us that the CIA was involved from the getgo, but the German media still played footsie with the facts. First they tried to blame only the Ukrainians and later they tried to claim the Poles were in on it too. While I have no doubt those two countries are happy NS2 got blown up, you need authority from the very top for such an operation. That means the US.

A very established publication like Der Spiegel publishing this signals three things:

1. The Germans knew this all along but held back for other reasons.
2. With the impending betrayal of Ukraine, the blame game starts and they don't want to be left holding the bag.
3. This is likely being leaked from within the Sholz govt on purpose.

Sooner or later the real truth will come out and then Germans will have to think long and hard whether the US is such an ally after all.