An interesting perspective. Based on this and other sources, it seems there is no way Ukraine's resistance lasts more than a few weeks at best. On the other hand, it's totally unclear what Russia thinks it will achieve in the long run. This can turn into a scenario like Afghanistan, with the difference that Russia's GDP is over 10x smaller than the US, and crumbling under sanctions.
Isn’t Western Europe still taking Russian oil and gas?
Why wouldn’t Ukraine attack the Russian gas pipelines? I understand that a conventional strike with an army is never going to happen, but there are many other options.
Yes they still buy our oil and gas, and neither side attacks the pipeline despite the war, but I think it's a matter of time. In a couple of years Europe will stop buying our energy, but the consequences of this war (police presence, peacekeeping, rebuilding) will last for decades.
If they blow up the gas pipelines that transit Ukraine, Europe would be forced to turn on Nord Stream 2, which is 100% complete and just waiting for regulatory approval. Then Ukraine would be cut out entirely. It's in their best interest to leave the pipelines alone.
> Europe would be forced to turn on Nord Stream 2, which is 100% complete and just waiting for regulatory approval.
Nord Stream 2 is history. The company behind it went bankrupt two days ago or sth. like this. Everybody who still held to that project in Germany has turned it down. Nord Stream 2 won't happen, instead NLG from Saudi Arabia seems to be a thing now, anything but supporting Russia and its war.
Also, Germany declared that it wants to be energy-independent by 2035, 15 years earlier than planned as a result of the Russian aggression.
The pipeline is still sitting there ready to go. I agree that it is highly unlikely to get used at this point, but if hypothetically Ukraine started blowing up pipelines, I don't think Europe would have much of a choice. It would be hard to stand on moral principle when elderly people are freezing to death and there are rolling brownouts.
Why would Ukraine leave the pipelines alone? There will no longer be a freely elected government in Ukraine. None of the profit of the pipeline will go towards Ukraine once they’re a puppet state.
As for Nord Stream 2, a small underwater autonomous vehicle could easily be built in a Ukrainian refuge’s garage in Poland.
Russia has underestimated how easily attacks can be performed by individual actors, who are properly motivated, against thousand mile long soft targets.
I’m not suggesting Ukraine would do it now. But there are going to be 40M people with lost loved ones who are speak Russian, look like the local population, and realize that the way to exact revenge is through pipeline sabotage. Destroy the pipelines and you’ve destroyed 50% of the Russian GDP.
> Isn’t Western Europe still taking Russian oil and gas?
Not really. It is still possible technicaly but traders are afraid of buying / making market as they predict sanctions to escalate and traders could be left with unsellable assets on their hands. The price of ural went as low as 20 dollars per barel (with 115 dollars for WTI and Brent)
So the only country that is at the moment actively contracting ural (Russian brand of crude oil) is India. Shame on you India... China scooped one or two tankers but that's it.
Also shipping companies aren't waiting for sanctions and refuse to contract Russian exports...
Unfortunately, Russia knows very, very well how to deal with this.
1. all citizens in the conquered territories will need a new id card. That card will be required everywhere. You want to send your kids to school, you need the card. You want to take a subway, you need the card. You want to buy groceries, use the ATM machine, the internet, pay your bills, make a phone call, you need your card.
2. the card will need to be re-validated periodically. At the time you need to make an attestation that you don't know the location of any hidden weapon, or any resistance fighter, or foreign agent, etc. The penalty for lying would be jail.
3. set up a system of informants. The rewards for information don't even have to be monetary, it could be: if you want your brother out of jail, you need to tell us 3 useful pieces of information. We decide what we consider to be useful.
How do I know Russia can do all these things? Because Russia (Soviet Union at the time) conquered my Eastern European country right after WW2, and the resistance was minimal. A country with millions of weapons (WW2 just ended), with forests, mountains, lots of places to hide. Well, guerilla warfare still requires you to eat. You can hide in a forest, but from time to time you need to go down to the village. If one person informs, you're finished.
You think Russia doesn't know how to do what the Soviet Union did in '45-'48? They lost the institutional memory? You haven't been paying attention. Putin is ex-KGB. As we speak, he's putting children (!!) in jail for going to a protest with their parents.
Why didn't this work in Afghanistan ? Because Afghanistan is quite different. People don't live in apartment buildings (well, some do, but most not). They know each other. Internet, subways, grocery stores, are nice, but not essential for many, many people. Informants work both ways. The reprisals from the resistance can be worse than those from the occupiers. Etc, etc. This is not racism. Afghani people are absolutely the same as Ukrainian people, or like me and you. They bleed just as much when you put a bullet in them, and dislike that just as much. But the bullet can come from more places. If the Ukrainian resistance were to have an iota of a chance of success, the resistance fighters should be willing to shoot their compatriots who inform on them. The Taliban were willing to do just that.
Well, I'm quite sure Putin will find the most efficient way to keep the occupied people under his boot. As for the Resistance flushing out the moles, what are they going to do with them? Are they willing to kill them? Or just shame them?
Would we (the West) still support them if we hear they kill informants? Or if we hear hey tar and feather them?
Who knows, maybe in today's world the threat of being canceled on the internet is enough of a dissuasion, that the Resistance fighters can use that. But will it be enough to balance the threat of going to jail?
There's a big difference between setting that kind administration up immediately after bringing nominal peace by kicking out an occupying army people hated more and being the initial occupier setting those things up.
People were willing to put up with a lot for peace in 1945-48.
Russia will probably try but there's so many key details between now and then it's hard to make any confident predictions.
The will of the people isn't relevant to authoritarian dictatorships, except in the case of widespread revolutions. That might occur, but while Putin is still in charge, what happens is a matter of his decisions and whim. He is quite willing to commit atrocities in pursuit of expansion.
I think you're right, which sucks, but I'd say the main difference can be if the general population just fights you, none of these can work. When you send the person to check someone's ID they get shot. Pretty soon nobody wants to do that. Or you blow up the office where you get your ID re-evaluated, etc.
The deciding factor is just the population's will. With so many millions of people that's all this comes down to. Russia couldn't possible enlist or conscript enough people to make this work if the Ukrainians decide they will not tolerate it.
But there is much that remains to be seen, unfortunately. This sucks. We need to solve this disinformation problem. Hopefully sanctions will start working too.
99% of the people just want to live their lives. But media had a selection bias. You only hear about the 1% who go and pick up a Kalashnikov, and do some patrol duty around a hospital or a bomb shelter. But 99% just want this to be over with. They want to go home, sleep in their bed, eat some warm food, take a shower. They hate the Russians, but love their children, and know that being a hero can very easily translate into their children growing up without a parent (and maybe the other parent in jail).
My Mom had to live as a little kid with har father in jail for 2 years. Because he had been a police officer before the communists took over. Not fun. I can’t even begin to imagine what would’ve happened if he had been an active resistance fighter.
I agree that 99% wants this to be over with, but in a country of 44 million people (minus however many people the Russians have murdered) that's still 440,000 people, and even if only half of those people are actively resisting that's still 220,000 people to fight on their homeland against a 150,000-200,000 person strong Russian army, and even then you have to subtract some number of Russian soldiers who are in pure support roles, etc. whereas you don't really have to subtract that number for the Ukrainians. And those are very conservative numbers and the Russians are really not getting any help from the locals whereas the active resistance fighters for sure are getting assistance.
Now imagine we take those extremely conservative numbers and put the number at say, 3%. Whole different ball game. Especially when the defenders are armed to the teeth.
I do agree it's a big if, but I think in this case it's proving to not be in doubt so far. Eventually Russia is likely to "win", though I'm not sure what their victory conditions are... maybe installing a puppet Ukrainian government that's not recognized internationally and then some large number of people want to get on with their lives as you say and maybe 80%+ of the population stops resisting, but if people keep resisting (back to my post) I just don't see what Russia is going to do here. Maybe they'll conscript hundreds of thousands of Russians?
I'm thinking that Russia is likely to add a puppet government and then take the military and keep fighting on to Moldova and march through and bring the Belorussian military to the Baltics. We are only at the opening stage. My fear is that they start conscripting Ukrainians who, as you say, just want to stay out of trouble but get thrust into combat anyway and have no choice but to shoot back. All of sudden by conquering countries and conscripting people, Putin enlarges his army. But I just don't know how the logistics of that work here. Either he will continue and press on and it's going to get really crazy or here soon the entire thing is going to fall apart drastically. Too bad the Ukrainians can't march on to liberate Moscow and Russia.
This analysis is completely wrong. Street fights benefit Ukrainian military, if anything. What we learned from the first week of war is that Ukrainian military is becoming increasingly efficient at this. The vast majority of damage dealt by Russians is done by means of air strike targeted at regional centres and metropolia (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa.) and it usually doesn't impede Ukrainian military, but simply wrecks havoc upon civilian population. All the major battles are happening on the outskirts of regional centres (Bucha, Hostomel, Mariupol, etc.) with only but marginal number of Russian military reconnaissance-diversion groups puncturing deep into the cities themselves. In the street fight, Ukrainian military has the upper hand. Ukrainian territorial defence is already running at 30K+ assault rifles and plenty of ammo, this stuff is rapidly dispensing down to smaller towns in which fights will soon take place.
The top priority (and in fact where much of the damage comes from) for Ukrainian military is to contest the airspace efficiently, which it can only achieve by means of Buk/S-300 air defence systems and the limited fleet of MiG-/Su- fighters available to them, but you have to see that it might just prove enough. Russian officers (Air force) are reluctant to fight this war, after all. They wouldn't want to lose their head in this...
If anything, Ukraine is winning this war. And it _will_ win this war, unless Russia is able to achieve air superiority over the skies pronto, which is very, very unlikely.
That's just pro Ukraine propaganda rehashed by Western press to keep up the morale. While admirable, this will result in disbelief when major cities do fall. Its not easy to win against enemies that don't care about the lives of their own soldiers. They want Ukraine (or at least major portions of it including resource rich east and the coastal areas) and they have the staying power (despite crazy articles proposing that war is costing costing Russia 20 billion usd per day).
Putin is assembling another Security Counsil today. We'll see how it goes, but, in my opinion, an announce of a series of nuclear tests is not off the (comically long) table.
Here's another neutral perspective from 2 senior indian generals, who have trained with the Russian Army - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNHUDDqTgdI - explaining why NATO / EU is being very careful in engaging militarily with Russia in Ukraine.
In principle, if the Ukrainian people is willing to fight till the end, they could turn the Zakarpattia province into a fortress. Protected behind the Carpathian mountains and with Nato countries on either side, and given continued arms deliveries from Nato countries, Russia may never be able to take that province
Don't think so. 60% of Russian big name military assets on the paper are stuck in Ukraine, and Belarus.
Stuck in the mud, forests, without food, fuel, and comms. Russia is already mobilising its reserves from all the way back as Vladivostok (7000km away,) which means they had a very, very, very serious, life-threatening reason to do so.
We can also conclude that Russia didn't commit its fancy new weapons to the assault, making the claim that most of them exist only on paper, and to appear on parades so more stronger.
The state or Russian military hasn't changed at large since the Second Chechnya War, except now they lack military veterans from Soviet era.
Russia is blessed by only having NATO as its only adversary, and this gives them ability to concentrate on Ukraine.
If we had a hostile to Russia regime at least in Belarus, Georgia, or Kazakhstan, they would've gone for landgrab in Russia WITHOUT HESITATION now given just how weak is the Russian conventional military. People die, and go, cities fall, and are built again, but borders stay for centuries. This would've been a once in a century opportunity for them.
Kazakhstan can return to being a nuclear state overnight if they capture Orenburg. 50% of Russian nuclear potential is a taxi ride away from Kazakhstan border.
It is fool hardy to believe that the Russian forces are "not militarily capable" of doing to Ukraine what the US did in Iraq. Reduce cities to rubble, given the logistical advantage compared to what the US did in Iraq.
I guess their objectives are pretty straight forward and since they are ethnically same as the Ukrainians do not target civilians.
What worries me is the use of civilians as human shields, even reports of Indian students being locked up by the Ukrainian forces to be used as human shields.
Let us remember that the US was ' ' close to carpet bombing Cuba during the cuban missile crisis. If you share borders with a regional superpower, stop dreaming about getting in bed with their enemies, let alone military ties.
You should investigate bold claims like the human shield one. Not only does it sound like Russian propaganda, multiple major news sites state that there is no evidence that this is true.
If you can not see through how people with rifles are going to defeat the world's second or third strongest military.
It is not like the Russians have a logistics disadvantage, they are literally surrounding Ukraine.
As much as I might be disillusioned, the very fact of pressing citizens to carry rifle, and making them believe they are "winning" is my definition of human shield.
Haha, for others here, lakh and crore stand for 10^5 and 10^7 respectively kind of an intermediary between the usual million and billion that we use in the west.
Out of curiosity, would be it be in the realm of possibility that Ukraine dispatches an offensive force into Russian territory? Maybe it could get the pressure off with a long needle.
Whilst this might (emphasis on the might) be a good idea in a purely military world, it would not be useful in the real world. Military action is an extension of politics. Ukraine is viewed as the good people being attacked by the bad. They get a lot of support, both home and abroad because of this. If they launch even a limited attack into Russian or Belarusian territory they will compromise this position, and potentially lose support now or in the future at home or abroad.
You can never forget that war is politics, and not the other way around.
This would be the worst thing they can do right now. They don't stand any chance of winning against Russia if the Russians suddenly have a reason to hate them.
By playing only defense, they are a victim, even a martyr. Who doesn't empathize with someone having to pick up a weapon and fight for their country/survival. It's the stuff of songs and legends.
What might be nice instead is of Ukraine can buy a few French Exocet missiles and attack the Russian fleet in the Black sea. That might hit them where it hurts.
As I understand it, they have been attacking Russian ships. I guess there is some speculation that Russians have been using civilian shipping as cover, resulting in two non-Russian ships being damaged by fire meant for warships.
In asymmetric warfare, the weaker force benefits from being spread out. Concentrating just gives the larger force a bigger target to shoot at. But you need a large force to mount an offense into enemy territory.
I think the more ruthless russia is going to act, the more resistance ukraine mount even in defeat via guerrilla groups. So brutally conquering the cities only helps the military objective but not the overall one. It cements western support for the ukraine and sanctions, antagonises russia for the civilians. I think Putin really counts on europe to be weak, dividd and unwilling to act decisively. A brutal conquest will lead to large-scale public pressure on the governments on europe and heavy military support. Also, western europe ist still heavily influencing other parts of the world and can turn public opinion in the most distant places. So I don't think that Putin can establish an authoritarian regime against a united europe in Ukraine. Also, there are large land-borders and we have the much deeper pockets. We could pump NLAWs and Stingers in there like there's no tomorrow. You can't rule a nation using guided missiles.
Even now ukraine experienced a renewed nationalism only fueled by the common enemy russia. It's the first step for failure, he can't win against the people.
This article misses the point. His objective is not to win militarily, but to influence the nation or take it under his control.
I also wonder whether his opinion on the basics is right. He dismisses Ukraine defence of the cities, but they still get a lot of supplies from western nations. If kiev is flooded with anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft weapons the assault will be more brutal.
Yes, even the pro-russian parties in ukraine are speeking out against them. Nobody will see them as non opressors, even if they put back the ousted pro-russian Viktor Yanukovych.
We're already seeing ruthless city battles; see https://t.me/uniannet/34755. They said 33 civilians are reported dead from Russian air strikes. And in Irpin' outside Kyiv, heavy fighting for the city continues - here (1) they've destroyed (in the words of the soldier "f'ed up") 4 Russian vehicles and are "Holding out".
You know what I love? A little fucking moving thing in the corner of my eye when I'm trying to read something. No wait I hate that. You can't even block it with ublock origin. How the do frontend people not realize how annoying that is.
