Posted on 12/25/2023 7:47:47 PM PST by marcusmaximus
You aren’t saying anything, that is just a meaningless whine to counter some news that someone doesn’t like, it is immature to try and counter every major war story of a given day with a meaningless emotional response.
IMO, unless the sinking of the vessel represents a total battlefield reversal and Russia has no more vessels of a similar nature to bring in, then I’d hardly call it a ‘strategic blow.’ More like a ‘tactical blow.’
Immature? Have you read the title of the thread? My posts have been factual, not emotional. You must have a reading comprehension problem.
Touting this tactical strike as a “major strategic blow” is nonsense. It is part of the endless propaganda fed to the American people to justify the hundreds of billions of dollars we must borrow to fund this proxy war. It is no coincidence that this alleged major victory coincides with the Congressional decision on the latest $62 billion aid package for Ukraine that will be decided next month.
It is not a matter of liking or not liking a particular war story. If we really cared about the welfare of the Ukrainian people, we would seek a negotiated end to this senseless killing and destruction. Nuland, Sullivan, and Blinken started this debacle in 2014.
See how you drifted off into a narrative?
If someone posts a thread that some Ukrainian troops got turkey delivered on Christmas day you would be on that thread with passion and vigor trying to overcome the story.
“Don’t be distracted by shiny objects.”
I’m not. We were discussing the ages of warships.
Stay on topic: Warships.
👍
Memorandum on security assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Budapest, 5 December 1994.
Certificate of registration of the Memorandum on security assurances with the United Nations Secretariat, 2 October 2014. (by Ukraine)
The Budapest Memorandum on security assurances never provided a promise of military assistance. It is clear from the actual text and parties have acted accordingly. Absolutely nobody volunteered non-required boot on the ground military support. It was a Memorandum, not a Treaty, and could not create any form of binding obligation.
No. 52241
____Ukraine, Russian Federation, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and United States of America
Memorandum on security assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Budapest, 5 December 1994.
Entry into force: 5 December 1994 by signature
Authentic texts: English, Russian and Ukranian
Registration with the Secretariat of the United Nations: Ukraine, 2 October 2014
Pursuant to the Budapest Memorandum on security assurances, there was a commitment that any arising situation would be brought before the UN Security Council.
4. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
Ukraine was assured that UN Security Council consideration would be sought. It was sought. As everyone knew, Russia held a veto on any action by the Security Council.
Volodymyr Vasylenko, Ukraine’s former representative at NATO, who took part in drawing up the conceptual principles and specific provisions of the Budapest memorandum:
“the form and content of the Memorandum ... show that, unfortunately, the Budapest talks on giving Ukraine security guarantees did not eventually result in a comprehensive international agreement that creates an adequate special international mechanism to protect our national security.”
According to V. Vasylenko, “Ukraine had to give up nuclear weapons for it to become sovereign state and its independent status to be recognized all over the world.”
Ukraine's forgotten security guarantee: The Budapest Memorandum
DW News [German]
Date 05.12.2014
[Excerpts]
Twenty years ago, the Budapest Memorandum marked the end of many years of negotiations between the successor states of the Soviet Union and leading Western nuclear powers. Ukraine had a special place in the talks.After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the eastern European country inherited 176 strategic and more than 2,500 tactical nuclear missiles. Ukraine at that point had the third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world after the United States and Russia.
But Leonid Kravchuk, then the president of Ukraine, told DW that was only formally the case. De facto, Kyiv was powerless.
"All the control systems were in Russia. The so-called black suitcase with the start button, that was with Russian president Boris Yeltsin."
Western pressure
Ukraine could have kept the nuclear weapons, but the price would have been enormous, Kravchuk says. Though the carrier rockets were manufactured in the southern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, the nuclear warheads were not. It would have been too expensive for Ukraine to manufacture and maintain them on its own.
"It would have cost us $65 billion (53 billion euros), and the state coffers were empty," Kravchuk said.
Additionally, the West threatened Ukraine with isolation since the missiles were supposedly aimed at the United States. Therefore, "the only possible decision" was to give up the weapons, according to Kravchuk.
[...]
"Nowhere does it say that if a country violates this memorandum, that the others will attack militarily," said Gerhard Simon, Eastern Europe expert at the University of Cologne.
German journalist and Ukraine expert Winfried Schneider-Deters agrees, telling DW, "The agreement is not worth the paper on which it was written."
Cyber-Security: The Threats from Russia and the Middle East, Ferry de Kerckove, CGAI Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, (2019), at 2-3: (footnotes omitted)
On the latter point, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances (not “guarantees”), although considered an important landmark, had a single purpose: to convince Ukraine to abandon its nuclear weapons in exchange for a commitment by the signatories to provide it with support: “1. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE [Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe] Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” The memorandum, although formally signed, is not a treaty. Indeed, “Although signatories ‘reaffirm their commitment’ to Ukraine in many passages, the memorandum requires them to do almost nothing concrete, in the event that Ukraine’s sovereignty – territorial or political – is violated. There aren’t any hard enforcement mechanisms.” Ukraine is the subject of the memorandum, rather than a full participant. Furthermore, according to Volodymyr Vasylenko, Ukraine’s former representative at NATO, who took part in drawing up the conceptual principles and specific provisions of the Budapest memorandum, “the form and content of the Memorandum ... show that, unfortunately, the Budapest talks on giving Ukraine security guarantees did not eventually result in a comprehensive international agreement that creates an adequate special international mechanism to protect our national security.”
Doubt the Russian ship has undergone the extensive PM and retrofitting the U.S. carrier fleet does.
The ship was sitting in port, unfit to get underway because it needed repairs that required parts that were unavailable due to sanctions. It was damaged in a prior attack. It was removed from action 24 August 2022, almost a year and a half ago.
The strategic value of a ship that cannot get underway until after the war is, to say the least, questionable. Its greatest value was as a distraction to divert attention from the disaster in Maryinka.
Novocherkassk at 320 feet is not a very large ship. It is dwarfed by a Zumwalt class destroyer at 505 feet, not to mention aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford at over 1100 feet.
Russians claimed one fatality. That sounds reasonable. One would not expect a full crew, but one security guard is more likely. It would not have held a full load of equipment either.
It was an important ship to the shrinking Black Sea fleet. The secondary explosions went on for a long time so that ship was packed.
But you say a destroyed small town in the Donbas was of more importance. Hhmmmm, that is a difficult case to make.
1) Turkey has the Bosphorous closed to any warships (Russian, Ukrainian, or otherwise) since last year; only those returning to their home port in the Black Sea are allowed to transit.
2) What material could a landing ship carry that couldn't also be carried over land by the far more extensive (and more efficient) rail networks?
3) "But you say a destroyed small town in the Donbas was of more importance. Hhmmmm, that is a difficult case to make." It all depends on how much Ukrainian military resources were attrited as a result. After all, as seen with Bakhmut, Ukraine had no issue throwing absurd amounts of military personnel to fight the Russians over a "small town"; if it's down to a war of attrition, the raw numbers favor Russia. A landing ship that had been out of action for over 12 months isn't going to change the calculus on land.
(On a side note, do you have a source video regarding the secondaries? The videos and clips I've seen have shown only one secondary explosion of note.)
It was an important ship to the shrinking Black Sea fleet. The secondary explosions went on for a long time so that ship was packed.
Novocherkassk was a small ship, damaged and removed from duty at sea a year and a half ago, with no expectation of a return to sea before the end of the war. Get serious.
Maryinka was a fortress and the civilian population was militarily irrelevant.
The Russians destroyed the Ukrainian armed forces and their infrastructure from a distance. As long as the Ukranians don't mind getting destroyed, the Russians will destroy them. The Ukrainians fortified the position because it had strategic significance. They fought to the death for two years because it had strategic significance. They lacked the means to stop or withstand the Russian artillery. They lost a strategic fortress because they cannot perform miracles.
Maryinka holds much more significance than a small, unusable ship.
You are one dependable and steadfast Bolshevik pig.
The Russians paid way more of a price for Maryinka than it was worth. Those losses are creating something of an undercurrent of resentment. The rebellion hasn’t appeared yet on largely state-directed Russian social media but it is there.
Do you know what’s trending on Russian social media? That is Russian-government directed social media ... It is how great Hamas is and how evil is Israel. They also talk up North Korea and Iran as great places.
361 feet ain’t no small ship in the Black Sea jack. And what about those secondary explosions? They were so impressive. They went on and on and on.
Agree with your assessment. As mentioned before, this is part of the propaganda war. Ukraine needs some successes to keep the money and weapons spigot open. The Biden Administration’s $62 billion budget request for Ukraine is stuck in the House. A vote in the House will be held next month.
Support for the war is declining in Europe and the US. The longer it goes on, the less the support. With a $2 trillion budget deficit this calendar year and over $800 billion in annual debt servicing costs (greater than DOD’s annual budget), we cannot afford these endless wars that don’t involve our strategic national interests. This fiscal year we will have another huge budget deficit and over $1 trillion in interest payments. Government spending is out of control.
Our woke military is experiencing significant recruitment and retention problems. The war in Ukraine is weakening us. America first.
Mostly targeting Pakistanis and occasionally Chinese... Less a little bit used up in evaluations and live fire exercises, I'd imagine. A little goes to anti-piracy ops.
Russia is very limited in the Black Sea and can’t bring anything in without a major confrontation with Turkey.
This ship was being used as an alternate method to deliver war supplies to Crimea as the land routes are increasingly under threat. So, while by no means a “decisive blow”, it is significant. I’d have to agree with you on “tactical blow”.
Oh, nonsense. This goes MUCH further back than 2014 and you should know it. At most Nuland, Sullivan, and Blinken had a miniscule effect on the overall picture and forces at work.
It’d sure be interesting to know what munitions that ship had on board. The “after” photos are almost as impressive as the explosions. Geeminy...
The neocon cope here is off the charts
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