Posted on 03/01/2022 4:28:41 AM PST by Kaslin
From his principal avenues of attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin began this war with three strategic goals.
Send an army south from Belarus to capture Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, and replace the government. Send forces into northwest Ukraine to capture its second largest city, Kharkiv, with 1.4 million people.
Third, extend the Donetsk enclave westward to establish a land bridge to Crimea and give Russia full control of the Sea of Azov and most of the Ukrainian coast along the Black Sea.
This last objective is almost achieved. Yet, as of Monday evening, five days into the war, neither Kyiv nor Kharkiv had fallen, though Russia had committed most of the troops it had assembled for the invasion.
Putin needs to get this war over with, for time is not on his side or Russia's side.
In a week, he has become a universally condemned and isolated figure, and his country has been made the target of sanctions by almost the entire West. He is being depicted as an aggressor, even a war criminal, who is brutalizing a smaller neighbor, which, in its fierce and brave resistance, has taken on the aspect of a heroic nation.
The world is rallying to Ukraine.
In the UN Security Council, which Russia chairs, only Russia voted to veto a resolution denouncing it for aggression. India, China and the United Arab Emirates abstained.
As for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his defiance of demands for surrender is being portrayed as Churchillian.
Moreover, serious military aid to Ukraine will soon begin.
Europeans and Americans have promised more Javelin missiles to destroy Russian tanks and armor, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles of the type that took a heavy toll of Russian helicopters in the Afghan war of the 1980s.
NATO is uniting. Germany has voted to raise its defense budget and send its own anti-tank weapons and Stingers to Ukraine.
Economic sanctions imposed on Russia have crashed the ruble, caused a collapse of the stock market and severely restricted Moscow's capacity to manage its debt.
Russian army units in Ukraine may be sufficient to occupy Kharkiv and Kyiv, but that army is insufficient to control and run a country the size of Texas with a population of 44 million people.
The Russians would have to find thousands of collaborators to help run the country. Where would Putin find them among a people that so widely detests him today?
The longer this war goes on, the greater the certainty that it bleeds the invading army to levels intolerable to Mother Russia, which is what eventually happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
If this war does not end soon, Putin is likely to lose it and fail in his goal of pulling Ukraine out of the Western camp and back into the orbit of Mother Russia.
Eventual defeat is becoming visible, and Putin probably cannot politically survive such a defeat.
As his motivation is to hold power and use it to carve a niche in history alongside the greatest Russian rulers of the past who enlarged the nation or empire, Putin is probably not going to accept defeat and go quietly.
Nor was it a sign of resignation that Putin, on Sunday, ordered Russia's nuclear forces to high alert because, "Top officials in leading NATO countries have allowed themselves to make aggressive comments about our country."
This is not the first time Putin has introduced the idea of using a nuclear weapon. On Feb. 19, days before the invasion began, Putin ordered drills of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles, bombers and warships.
In his speech announcing the military operation in Ukraine, Putin warned that countries that interfere with Russia's actions will face "consequences you have never seen."
Would Putin exercise what has been called the "Samson Option" -- pulling down the pillars of the temple and taking your enemies with you?
What Putin is suggesting is that in the last analysis, if military defeat beckons for Russia, and his own dispossession of power and political if not actual death are to follow, he may use the ultimate weapon in Russia's arsenal to prevent it.
What should U.S. policy be?
Avoid a widening of the war by preventing any escalation to nuclear weapons. Secure the independence of Ukraine. Effect the removal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.
If this requires that Ukraine give up any ambition to become a NATO nation, Putin's declared purpose in launching the war, so be it. We might have avoided this war had we done so before it was begun.
This is not where we appear to be headed.
Finland, and Sweden, it is now being said, should be invited into NATO. Were that to happen, the U.S. would be obligated to help defend the 830-mile Finnish border with Russia.
This would be an act of hubris of the kind that has led to great wars.
Since a lot of recent Russian military thinking has gone into doctrine about how to counter our overwhelming conventional superiority, and there are a lot of really smart people in Russia [you know they quite deservedly win noble prizes in the sciences for example], they might actually have some answers to that issue, especially since they have rapidly been developing tactical nukes.
Can you think of any inviting high value but isolated targets? Where might such targets be located?
FINNISH?
As a Hoosier, it’s told as Kentuckians, but I imagine EVERY non-clan group gets this joke told on them.
Well Trav isn’t.
This is what I think the crazy git is trying to do.
1. Send troops in the anticipation that Ukraine will kotow to the ‘mighty Russian army.’ That the president of Ukraine will flee, and after some minor skirmishes the Ukrainians will yield. That didn’t work! The Ukrainians gave the Russians an Eastern European version of the first two Die Hard movies! Lots of Russian dead, lots of humiliation for Putin, and a lot of polish scuffed off the myth of the ‘mighty Russian army.’
2. Putin brings in the thread of nuclear retaliation should ‘external parties’ get involved. That was where we were this past weekend. It is also why Biden told Ukraine yesterday that there would be no NATO enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine. But that is not the reason Pootie raised the threat of nukes
3. Putin then has his army (artillery forces being key) start to surround a couple of Ukrainian cities. This is where we are today! A rush of heavy artillery taking up positions around cities.
4. Russian artillery unleashes an overwhelming barrage of fire on one or more Ukrainian cities. Maybe just one. This is where, if I am right, we will be in 24-48 hours. The chosen city (or cities if it is more than one, although I would expect just one) will go through what Grozny experienced in the early 2000s. Utter destruction from artillery and heavy bombardment. Dumb artillery and bombs, and lots of them. War crimes basically. And that is why the git made threats and did nuclear tests. Simply to ensure that no strong military (eg NATO) intervenes as he lays waste to one Ukrainian city. That will break Ukraine in the same way it broke Chechnya. After all, without external assistance the Ukrainians may be unable to do much to prevent a second - or a third - city facing the same consequences.
The Ukrainians have put up a most valiant fight. They bloodied the nose of the bear and made Putin vulnerable - even from his own people. No matter what Putin does his days may very well be numbered. The ‘king’ has been shown to be weak.
But what the Ukrainian defenders will face in the next two or so days May very well be hell on Earth. If I am right, one city will face a withering barrage of artillery that, without Western intervention, basically means the destruction of that city. And it is extremely doubtful NATO would step in considering the threats from Russia.
I may however be wrong on the above. Maybe the Ukrainian defenders will continue holding back Russian waves. Maybe the Russian soldiers who were attacking over the first few days were the best Russia had (I suspect they may have been the ill-trained conscript-types considering how they had to ask for directions and were running out of fuel - and that the attacks from today will be from the more professional troops with combat experience). Maybe the worst of it is over.
I may be wrong.
But if I am not wrong then the world is about to see a war crime as Russian artillery literally razes a city to the ground.
The Pontic Caspian Steppe has been a highway for invading armies for as long as history has been recorded. Those invasions ended only when Rissia expanded to the East. This acheivement has informed the core character of modern Russian leadership. Russians believe they need strong leadership to survive.
Invasions from the western powers began soon after Peter the Great opened a window to the West - Charles XXII of Sweden, Napoleon, the Allies in WWI, aid to the White Russians and Germany in WWII. Russia sees NATO with Article 5 in Ukraine as a prelude to invasion that will arise out of the kind of entangling alliances that escalated a Serbian conflict into a World War.
Eastern Ukraine and the areas along the Black Sea to Transnistria (Novorossiya) has been part of Russia since Catherine the Great 1764. Russia quite rationally sees invasion of its traditional territory against the backdrop of our State Department policy that seeks to isolate and push back its borders.
Preciselybwhat I fear is happening. Russiabhas a demographic problem and Putin is well aware of it. This is Russia’s last war and if he can’t get what he wants I fear he will try to drag everyone down with him in a massive nuclear event.
These maps show the borders of Ukraine. A geographical entity that began after the defeat of the White Russians, only after Novorossiya was stuffed into its borders in 1954.
We wanna interpolate the data we find on the web just like the weather-mongers do - by looking at only the latest data.
We don’t need no steekin’ HISTORY!
I have you drooling and swearing without making any cogent point at all. You have informed no one of anything whatsoeve except your view that Putin is an [endless drool of expletive deleteds], which tells no one what they might do about the problem.
Maybe you are ok with WWIII. It sure sounds that way.
Give it up. Russia was not threatened except in Putin’s paranoia.
Great. Then by all means, ignore geography and history and act on blood lost against a nuclear power. Propaganda has given you brain worms.
Why can’t Putin understand that it’s not an empire? It’s purely a defensive arrangement marching its border ever closer to Mother Russia 100s of miles a decade.
Travis must be an apologist for Russia.
I’d just go nuke Putin right now and get it over with.
One plausible tactic is to down the LEO satellites which will have a huge impact on supply chain logistics.
Remember, in November they took out a satellite causing the ISS to maneuver around a debris field.
Not only that, but because the US is being run by mean little eighth graders and one senile old man, our government arranged for Vlad to find out via China that Ukraine was about to join NATO and his change to grab eastern Ukraine was about to slip away. Isn't this big fun now?
Kharkiv is in the northeast. Pat is usually pretty good geographically.
Forget your sarcasm tag?
You and I and a few others understand this.
Far too many Freepers operate on about a 5th grade understanding of geography and history. They are very easily misled.
9-11 > WMDs in Iraq! > CHARGE!
See 39.
In your case, about 3rd grade.
{Absorb current propaganda with zero understanding of geography or history} > CHARGE!
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