Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

[Hydra009]

Trump says he's definitely going to put new sanctions on Russia - just one small thing first, Europe has to 100% stop buying Russian oil.  Oh, and it also has to involve placing tariffs on China (poison pill amendment)

Look, I don't like the idea of Europe buying Russian oil more than anyone else and Europe has steadily been weaning itself off, but experts who know this stuff say Europe can't feasibly go completely cold turkey and they know much more about it than I do.

This is not a good-faith effort to punish Russian aggression.  This is like me saying that I'll clean my room when the US completely pays off its national debt and the Panthers win the superbowl.

Trump is in effect saying that he'll never sanction Russia.  Obviously, if he were serious about punishing Russia, he never would have invited Putin to Alaska or offer him improved trade relations or be so chummy with him in general.  Putin has made a mockery of Trump's seemingly genuine effort to make peace between Russia and Ukraine for months and Trump has done very little except tell reporters that he's unhappy.  Hell, that bill that Lindsey Graham proposed to sanction Russia has been dead in the water for a while now.  And before that, Trump wanted to change the wording on it to make sanctions optional.  For what reason?  I think we all know.

This guy has consistently argued for the Russian position - even his "peace in our time" efforts amounted to little more than handing Ukraine to Russia piece by piece.  He can say that he wants to do this or isn't happy about that all he wants, but it's just hot garbage to make headlines and does nothing to end the war.  I'm not fooled and you shouldn't be either.

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Ukraine's doing a fantastic job lately.  Drone attacks on Crimea and even Moscow (unthinkable in 2022), hitting refineries, radars, AA, even helicopters and ships sometimes.  Plus, partisans sometimes hit trains and/or train infrastructure.  Just a withering, grinding-down of Russia's strategic assets.

On paper, Russia should've been able to crush Ukraine, but they're getting frustrated at every turn - every single thing that Putin's war effort needs is under serious threat all the time.  For example, let's say missiles -  Ukraine often hits the refineries that generate the cash to afford to make missiles, the factories that produce the missiles, the logistics that carry the missiles, the ships that fire the missiles, and finally, the missiles themselves get shot down.  Harried every step of the way.  Russia bottlenecks somewhere in the process and that option becomes increasingly blocked.

Let's say you plan to have an armored column assault at the frontline.  Well, you muster them and BAM! they get hit before they've even left Russian territory, then on the way to the front, then finally, at the front.  Everything gets so disrupted and gummed up that Russia cannot really operate in anything like a normal way.  (To be fair, Ukraine also suffers these sorts of problems, but Ukraine doesn't have nearly as much of a difficult time because their supply lines are much shorter and the mustering process is often through NATO countries)

Therefore, Russia's main strategy now is just to send motorbike assaults to strike as fast as possible or small groups spread out to identify weak parts in Ukrainian lines.  But the obvious problem here is that this generates enormous casualties.  And even this cannot be sustained forever.

[Hydra009]

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about with the missiles:





https://militarnyi.com/en/news/strike-on-molkino-test-site-iskanders-destroyed-and-pantsir-s1-damaged/

I<3 map location + photos.  Makes it much easier to distinguish from similar stories.

And yes, it happened about a month ago.  And this is a training ground.  Doesn't look like they're doing much training here anymore.

[Hydra009]

It has been distressing seeing news of Russian drones fly into Polish airspace and Russian jets violate Estonian airspace.

Well, finally, NATO seems to be waking up to the reality that Putin's mad dream of conquest doesn't end with Ukraine.  Over the past few days, Polish and Estonia and NATO representatives have put Russia on notice that they will shoot down Russian planes and drones that violate their airspace.

This is a no-brainer and should've been implemented years ago.  Putin showed his true colors back in 2014, and a decade later, we're warning him that we'll defend ourselves.  FFS.  Well, better late than never.

Also, Zelenskyy once again reiterated the importance of shooting down Russian missiles/drones while they're still in Ukrainian airspace.

"If we could strengthen our skies with a joint system to shut down Russian missiles and drones, it would force Russia to stop its attack from the sky," Zelensky said.

I'm 95% sure he actually meant "shoot down", not "shut down".  Being the head of state of a country actively being invaded is stressful, give him a break.

[Hydra009]

I'm not a military strategist, but this seems pretty bad for the Russians.

The Ukrainians just reported taking Pankivka, effectively cutting off the second group of encircled Russians from any hope of continued service.

To the best of my knowledge, the Ukrainians haven't assaulted the Russian positions there yet and opted instead to wait them out.  They'll run out of food/water and other supplies.  And when things get bad, they'll either surrender or die, those are the only two remaining options.

The Russian high command knows this and has sent forces to rescue their encircled troops, but to the best of my knowledge, none have been successful.  Without rescue, the encircled Russian troops are doomed.

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Some updates:

A news story from a couple weeks ago that not enough people know about: the string of parcel bombings that happened in Poland, Germany, and England - all countries that strongly support Ukraine - was linked to Russia (surprise surprise)

Over the weekend, Kyiv was heavily bombed by Russia.  The attacks struck a kindergarten, a cardiology institute, and residential buildings.  Suffice it to say that these are not military targets.  The clear intent was to terrorize civilians and sow as much death upon them as possible to force some sort of capitulation by Ukraine - textbook state terrorism.

Ukraine fired back - Ukraine seems to be more and more capable of increasingly severe retaliation as this war drags on - hitting a number of targets, including Russian drone operators in Melitopol, an electric parts factory in Russia (dual-use electric parts used by the Russian military as well as Russian civilians), and also a thermal power plant in Belgorod, causing widespread blackouts in that city and the surrounding region.

That last one has me a little worried because that's definitely not a military target and reminiscent of Russian attacks on Ukraine, though that may be the point.  Russian civilians have largely been spared the sorts of hardships that Ukrainian civilians have felt - I've seen some recent footage of Russia hitting Kherson with artillery and drones, and it's stomach-churning stuff. Russians are essentially shooting at Ukrainians for sport and for spite - to terrorize and depopulate Kherson because if they can't have it, no one will.  Very sick stuff.

So far, Ukrainian retaliation has gone through great pains to spare civilians and focusing on acceptable military targets like Russian bases, aviation, ships, ammo depots, etc as well as the logistics supporting them - war factories, fuel trains, and oil refineries.  Obviously, some civilians are still hurt, but these Ukrainian strikes mainly harm the Russian military.

This strike on a power plant is a bit of a change.  I don't like it, but there's lots of stuff going on here that I don't like - I don't like Russia stealing Ukrainian land and obliterating Ukrainian settlements and killing PoWs and torturing civilians and abducting Ukrainian kids and sending drones over NATO airspace and threatening Europe with nuclear war.  For me, it's getting increasingly difficult to sympathize with Russian civilians who largely still support Putin's genocidal war.  There's an expression, "You reap what you sow" and this year has been a bountiful harvest for Russia with a massive bumper crop slated for next year if Putin wills it.

That said, I wish Ukraine would stick to military or at least military-supporting targets to maintain the nobility of their cause.  But this is war and things go sideways in war.  And ultimately, everything that happens here was initially started by Putin in 2022 or earlier - without that, none of this would've happened.  And unlike Zelenskyy, Putin can end the war tomorrow by simply withdrawing his troops to his own country.

[Hydra009]

In your base: Ukrainian intelligence bags a colonel

Rosgvardiya lieutenant colonel, assistant, and driver on the way to a training center.  Never made it.  This happened in Russia's Stavropol region, just north of Georgia.

Ukraine publically thanked the Caucasus liberation movement for the help, which imho is intended as an insult to injury.  It's no secret that there is opposition to Russia and a desire for independence in that general area.  This acknowledgement will put a lot of eyes on them, both anti-Putin and pro-Putin.  We'll see what happens there.

[Nobody]

Interesting, because after I read your previous post I was wondering how much opposition there was among the Russian people. I guess there is some after all.

[Hydra009]

Interesting, because after I read your previous post I was wondering how much opposition there was among the Russian people. I guess there is some after all.

It depends.  When you have them on camera, most will say that Putin is a great leader and they support the special military operation.  A lot of the people who were definitely against the war either fled the country or protested and were hauled away.  So the average Russian is pretty cagey about revealing their true feelings.  But there are some hints.  In Moscow, there were up to 1000 people waiting in line to perform civic duties that definitely weren't protests.  And when Wagner's thunder run on Moscow happened, he received a significant amount of goodwill from regular Russians, though that may be just deference to whoever is nearby with the biggest stick.

But what I was alluding to isn't so much muscovites, it was people who live in the Caucasus region within and outside of Russia who have a pretty dim view of Russia.  Georgian and Azerbaijani nationals, for starters.

[Hydra009]

Russian losses by armor type.  Either they found a way to make their tanks and armored vehicles invincible or they're no longer using them very much.

And what's more, Russian state media is now advocating for cavalry units.  And yes, they're serious.

The discussion has reportedly gone as far as to promote a horse's utility on a cold night for its warmth and, in extreme circumstances, as a source of food, underscoring the severe challenges forces may be facing.

"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside."

What on Earth is going on with Russian logistics when a friggin' van is too hard to supply/upkeep?!  Jeez, second army in the world all right.  "On to Berlin!" for what purpose?  To beg for gasoline?

[Nobody]

Outside of a horse a book is man's best friend. Inside of a horse it's too dark to read.
A paraphrase of Groucho Marx

[Hydra009]