History in the Making: Russian Invasion

In reply to Mndsm :

NK's perenially short on funds. They could make some good cash playing "rent an army", but their paranoia is such that they'd probably expect US tanks to roll into Pyongyang the moment their troops set down in Russia. 

The spectre of MAD will always be with us. It's like sharing the space with an excitable but well-fed lion. As long as you play it cool enough it's just going to slumber in the corner, but get it excited and it'll eat everyone in the room.  It's ironic, because without nukes, WWIII would probably have already gone down by now and some of us would just be engravings on a wall in Washington DC. Likewise, if a Russian sub commander hadn't shown restraint in 1962, we might all be dead or unborn.

Mndsm said:

06HHR (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Anyone think NK testing a new ICBM yesterday is just a coincidence?

I think kim jong whatever wants to play, and show off, but no one wants him. He's like the last kid picked at dodgeball, and Russia's waaaaay down on guys. 

The irony of the Russia invasion is that it starkly shows how vulnerable countries WITHOUT nukes are to bigger countries with a lot of powerful conventional weapons. If Ukraine hadn't given up its Soviet-era nukes in the 90s, you can bet Russia wouldn't have soldiers in its territory right now, because Ukraine could hold Moscow or St. Pete or Belarus at risk of annihilation for the flattening of Urkainian cities. 

While we can all agree nukes are not a good thing, You have to think North Korea, with its ancient conventional military, looks at South Korea and the US and realizes it wouldn't stand a chance if "we" decided to invade them or crush the NK military. So having nukes is their safety net that we would never try such a thing. The same goes for Iran.  They are paying attention. NK ICBM launches are their way of saying "hey, don't even THINK about invading us, America/South Korea" because WE have nukes and will shoot them at you if you do. 

People act like NK and Iran want nukes so they can threaten/destroy "the west," but the reality is that they want nukes to guarantee their own continuity/security primarily (see also: Saddam's Iraq, without nukes). It's actual textbook international theory realism - not because Kim and the Ayatollahs are "madmen." Kim doesn't want to lob an ICBM at the US for no reason, and Iran isn't going to lob a nuke at Israel if Iran ever has them. But Israel would think twice about making airstrike in Iran (like they do now) if Iran had nukes, that's for sure. Israel has long guaranteed its security from invasion by having its own nukes, notably. 

A pretty good article from the Atlantic of all places:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/

and another:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/ukraine-is-winning-war-russia/627121/

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Those articles support the premise of the blog post I linked to earlier.  The Russians only real advantage in this fight is supposedly superior numbers and equipment.  A war of attrition will not be to Putin's advantage, simply because his superiority in numbers just gives the Ukrainians more plentiful targets to destroy.  Using outdated soviet-era tactics, he's swatting flies with a sledgehammer.  (Had to make some edits to properly convey my train of thought)

For those who want a better (really good quality) vid of the destruction of the Russian ship(s) in Berdyansk today, here it is. Turn your youtube settings to 2x speed and it's much easier to watch (ships are pretty slow....)

Cliff notes:

The ship on fire is an Alligator-class landing ship, according to Sutton.  You can see a red-hot glow through the opened bow doors. 

At the beginning you see a patrol boat and two tugboats already hauling ass out of the port to avoid being (more?) damaged. These are Russian as well. 

Then you see the two nearby Russian Ropucha - class landing ships pulling away as fast as they can. The one in the foreground has a small fire on deck (shrapnel?) and the one later visible coming out of the smoke has a larger fire on its forward deck. They're moving out under power, tough to say if there's more damage there. The one still has its boarding ladder hanging over the side. 

And if you look around the 5:00-5:30 mark you'll see another ship coming out of the smoke, maybe a minesweeper or a seagoing tug. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

That's a lot higher resolution copy of that video than I had seen.
 

You can see a splash on the starboard side of the nearest ship right at the three minute mark, and immediately afterwards, smoke begins to rise from the forward part of the deck. Maybe munitions going off from the burning ship, or maybe mortar fire? 

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

That's a lot higher resolution copy of that video than I had seen.
 

You can see a splash on the starboard side of the nearest ship right at the three minute mark, and immediately afterwards, smoke begins to rise from the forward part of the deck. Maybe munitions going off from the burning ship, or maybe mortar fire? 

If I was guessing, I'd say the former. Russia controls Berdyansk entirely and there's no real Ukrainian resistance force there (they consolidated to protect Mariupol, which is a far more important port city), so not sure where mortar fire would have come from. Based on all the explosions, it seems pretty clear the ship was loaded up with munitions and/or vehicles with explosive munitions (say, MLRS launchers or something). So as they cooked off they probably sent parts of the ship flying all over the place, as well as other munitions or parts of whatever the cargo was. I expect more will come out about how the ship was hit in the first place. Ukraine seems to enjoy publicizing accomplishments like this to keep morale up and to lower Russian morale. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

The Ukrainian people deserve these small moral victories as the rest of their world is shattered around them.

How many Russian ships are in the black sea and how hard would it be to gain a tactical advantage if they are dealing with the actual war front?

It's good to see this, as I expected the navy to bombard the shoreline without any opposition. There ships were turned away damaged, or destroyed, hopefully, in that one case. Russia has no shipbuilding capability left so those ships are out of the theater for the duration.

I was shocked to see the lack of firefighting equipment, and that none of the other ships were aiding each other. I am not a Navy guy, but is that normal, or a sign of incredibly bad morale?

Ugh I dreamed about the US getting into this war. 

So a question:

I know that NATO does not want to cross a line that would indicate they are a part of this war.

However, I have to think that NATO has enough satellite data to pinpoint Russian troops by individual nametags.  This seems like both very useful and very untraceable aid to the Ukrainians. 

Should I assume this is happening or is there a reason why such data might not be available?

In reply to NOHOME :

Not only the satellites, I'm betting that NATO is flying AWAC planes in their own territory and sending that info to Ukraine troops so that they are not exposing their anti-aircraft radar systems.

NOHOME said:

So a question:

 

I know that NATO does not want to cross a line that would indicate they are a part of this war.

However, I have to think that NATO has enough satellite data to pinpoint Russian troops by individual nametags.  This seems like both very useful and very untraceable aid to the Ukrainians. 

Should I assume this is happening or is there a reason why such data might not be available?

Assume it's happening. It should be obvious given how many incredibly detailed satellite images we have seen publicly, and how we were told they were sharing intelligence with the Ukrainians, especially now that they have Starlink internet. THis is not a flounder, and I am absolutely not a fan, but the current administration has brilliantly countered Russian propaganda with real timely intelligence and proof over and over. The Ukrainians are fighting a 21st century war and the Russians a 1970s war that probably wouldn't have done very well then either.

I think it is a very safe assumption the US is sharing a lot of data with the Ukrainians.  There are constant Rivetjoint (signals intelligence) and AWACS (airborne radar) patrols going on as well as I am sure constant satellite coverage.  How exactly they are transmitted this info of course is a question.  But realistically, even a simple text with a GPS coordinate and target is all that is needed for most.

As noted previously, I highly suspect the West is transferring tracking data on Russian aircraft, giving Ukrainians for warning of approaching aircraft, making them much easier to target.

It's also pretty reasonable to assume they are getting launch warnings of the ballistic missile attacks on cities.

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

The Ukrainian people deserve these small moral victories as the rest of their world is shattered around them.

How many Russian ships are in the black sea and how hard would it be to gain a tactical advantage if they are dealing with the actual war front?

The Russian Black Sea fleet by itself is probably one of the 10 biggest navies in the world, I would guess. And ships are a lot harder to take out than tanks since they can stay offshore and have really good air defense. If the Ukrainians had submarines that would be a different story lol...

I have no idea what kind of coastal defense weapons ukrain has but I'm guessing it's not particularly substantial.

tuna55 said:

It's good to see this, as I expected the navy to bombard the shoreline without any opposition. There ships were turned away damaged, or destroyed, hopefully, in that one case. Russia has no shipbuilding capability left so those ships are out of the theater for the duration.

 

I was shocked to see the lack of firefighting equipment, and that none of the other ships were aiding each other. I am not a Navy guy, but is that normal, or a sign of incredibly bad morale?

I mean if that landing ship was full of munitions as it appeared there was no fighting that fire. Just get the hell away from it so you don't get damaged yourself. 

Just look at last year when the US Navy amphibious ship had the fire aboard it and the whole thing basically burned for several days even with a ton of firefighting going on. And that thing didn't have any munitions on it, 

Russia minister of defense Sergei Shoigu appears to be MIA.  The official reason is heart issues.  Now, are these heart issue brought on by the stress of being the highest command officer in charge of one of biggest military S-shows in many years, or "heart issues" (soon to be followed by shooting himself in the back of the head twice) as the result of maybe saying the wrong thing?  Who knows.

aircooled said:

Russia minister of defense Sergei Shoigu appears to be MIA.  The official reason is heart issues.  Now, are these heart issue brought on by the stress of being the highest command officer in charge of one of biggest military S-shows in many years, or "heart issues" (soon to be followed by shooting himself in the back of the head twice) as the result of maybe saying the wrong thing?  Who knows.

Apparently this has been the case, I wonder if he accidentally shot himself in the back of the head?

In reply to aircooled :

strong afib caused him to squeeze the trigger twice.  definitely heart issues.

White House clarified today that should the Kremlin use chemical weapons, we will "respond accordingly".  Not necessarily "in kind".  I'm fairly certain that the "respond in kind" as it pertains to N/B/C has a somewhat specific meaning, so that clarification is definitely good.

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

The Ukrainian people deserve these small moral victories as the rest of their world is shattered around them.

Yeah, that's why I didn't say a dang thing when the "Ghost of Kyiv" was front page.  They needed a hero, and they got one:  The ghost flies, and Russians die.  Full stop.

We may be getting some idea of what Putin might be thinking on exit strategy.

Yahoo article: Russia claiming phase 1 of the war is complete

Looks like a variant of the old "throw a dart and paint a bull's eye around it," except the dart hasn't hit yet. The Russians are now claiming their goal was to "liberate Donbas" all along. Whether that is an attainable goal, or they later switch to claiming their goal was to punish the Ukrainians over some real or imagined action and the punishment is complete, remain to be seen.

"Commander, phase one is complete!"

   "Is the bed shat?"

"Yes sir, the bed is quite thoroughly shat"

   "Excellent.  Just as we planed"

On another note, if you have access to Netflix, check out, at least the first episode of Servant of the People.  It's all subtitles, but it's quite surreal.  A school teacher accidentally becomes president of Ukraine after a video of him complaining about the idiocy of the presidential elections goes viral.  It's basically a light comedy with a heavy thread of absurd corruption.

It of course stars Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a very weird life following fiction kind of thing.  The production quality is very good (as good as any US show), and has some very good shots of Kyiv, the way it used to be, which is a bit sad when you see it.

One of The Atlantic articles cited above referred to training of Ukraine Forces this is from the government of Canada website https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/operations/military-operations/current-operations/operation-unifier.html