Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[Hobsons Choice]

1 hour ago, LondonLax said:

 

I still think they are waiting to receive a good deal of equipment. The Abrams tanks for example will not arrive in Ukraine until Autumn. 

They better get a move on before Trump is voted in again. If Ukraine hasn't won by then, they're buggered.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

Personally,  I think its time for NATO to escalate the conflict.  

Russia likes wars of attrition.  They have a huge amount of land that is out of the range of Ukraine.  They will eventually grind Ukraine down.  

 

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Personally,  I think its time for NATO to escalate the conflict.  

Russia likes wars of attrition.  They have a huge amount of land that is out of the range of Ukraine.  They will eventually grind Ukraine down.  

 

Me too. I do wonder if they went all in from the start how many less people would be dead, how many less towns, cities and villages would not be destroyed, and how many less girls and women would have been raped?

You could even probably account for Russia dropping a nuke and still be “up” in terms of overall damage caused so far.

[avfc1982am]

2 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Personally,  I think its time for NATO to escalate the conflict.  

Russia likes wars of attrition.  They have a huge amount of land that is out of the range of Ukraine.  They will eventually grind Ukraine down.  

 

How do you propose NATO escalate the conflict? 

[Panto_Villan]

I think the chances of Ukraine retaking large swathes of land this year are steadily decreasing. It might still happen if the Russians totally collapse in a sector but I think the reality is that it’s just difficult to attack through minefields even if you do have Western equipment.

That said, I’m not sure that means time is on Russia’s side necessarily. I think the Ukrainian will to fight is likely much higher, especially if Trump doesn’t get re-elected and the Western backers stay the course. The Russians have already burned through their most disposable troops so each new round of mobilisation will hit closer to home.

And if the US does drop out, there’s nothing holding Ukraine back from invading Russian territory - which would probably be much easier to seize than the contested parts of Ukraine.

[avfc1982am]

6 hours ago, bickster said:

I do think as someone else posted that Ukraine may well be awaiting the F16s unless a front completely unravels.

The F16's aren't due until mid 2024 which will probably turn into late 2024 so it'll be a long wait.  

[avfc1982am]

5 hours ago, LondonLax said:

 

I still think they are waiting to receive a good deal of equipment. The Abrams tanks for example will not arrive in Ukraine until Autumn. 

They've only been promised 31 Abrams, so hardly enough to make a huge dent in the grand scheme of things. Russia have now got miles and miles of defense lines, huge areas mined. Even if Ukraine had the advantage of ground vehicles, covering the ground quickly enough to capture anything significant is just not possible at the moment due to the obstacles. 

IMO Ukraine have been given enough equipment to hold the frontlines and contain Russian forces, no more no less.  

[Mandy Lifeboats]

16 minutes ago, avfc1982am said:

How do you propose NATO escalate the conflict? 

I'm definitely no military expert. I suspect the Ukrainians would be better placed to specify what actions would help.  

But the following are examples of various levels of escalation that come to my mind.   

Low -No civilian planes to/from Russia should have access to NATO airspace regardless of their nationality.  

Medium Minus - NATO should protect all merchant ships travelling to/from Ukrainian ports. 

Medium Plus  - Only the UK and France have donated cruise missiles.  Ukraine should have the ability to bombard Russia with the same sort of weapons Russia are using to bombard Ukraine. 

High - NATO maintain air supremacy up to the existing front lines. 

 

 

[avfc1982am]

1 minute ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I'm definitely no military expert. I suspect the Ukrainians would be better placed to specify what actions would help.  

But the following are examples of various levels of escalation that come to my mind.   

Low -No civilian planes to/from Russia should have access to NATO airspace regardless of their nationality.  - 

Medium Minus - NATO should protect all merchant ships travelling to/from Ukrainian ports. 

Medium Plus  - Only the UK and France have donated cruise missiles.  Ukraine should have the ability to bombard Russia with the same sort of weapons Russia are using to bombard Ukraine. 

High - NATO maintain air supremacy up to the existing front lines. 

 

 

I actually agree with all your points however, Merchant shipping is really in the hands of Turkey as they control entry and exit of the Black Sea. The last point. NATO maintaining air supremacy is/would bring NATO into direct conflict with Russia. That's just a fact. Sooner or later, a stray missile, poor targeting or just Russian twatishness will put everyone in a situation whereby further escalation will be a necessity. 

I agree with the medium plus - Ukraine getting missiles to target Russia on a scale similar to how they're targeting Ukraine. IMO a Russian collapse will only happen when Russians start worrying about their own Cities and homes. At the moment Ukraine is another world away to Russians. 

[avfc1982am]

1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

I think the chances of Ukraine retaking large swathes of land this year are steadily decreasing. It might still happen if the Russians totally collapse in a sector but I think the reality is that it’s just difficult to attack through minefields even if you do have Western equipment.

That said, I’m not sure that means time is on Russia’s side necessarily. I think the Ukrainian will to fight is likely much higher, especially if Trump doesn’t get re-elected and the Western backers stay the course. The Russians have already burned through their most disposable troops so each new round of mobilisation will hit closer to home.

And if the US does drop out, there’s nothing holding Ukraine back from invading Russian territory - which would probably be much easier to seize than the contested parts of Ukraine.

I think the US are to heavily invested in Ukraine to drop out as you put it and everyone will want their money back at some point or a good portion of it. 

Also, in the last sentence you missed the important bit. How can Ukrainian forces invade Russia when there is occupied territory in the way? 

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

9 minutes ago, avfc1982am said:

Merchant shipping is really in the hands of Turkey as they control entry and exit of the Black Sea.

Agreed. 

But Romania and Bulgaria are both NATO countries and they are a large amount of the western shore of the Black Sea.  

I'd have a corridor for merchant shipping running up their coastlines. But I would expand that defended corridor to include Ukraine's existing ports.  

[sidcow]

2 hours ago, avfc1982am said:

How do you propose NATO escalate the conflict? 

 

[Captain_Townsend]

Russia needs to be punished, severely, for the pure evil it has unleashed.

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, Captain_Townsend said:

Russia needs to be punished, severely, for the pure evil it has unleashed.

 

[regular_john]

14 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Personally,  I think its time for NATO to escalate the conflict.  

Russia likes wars of attrition.  They have a huge amount of land that is out of the range of Ukraine.  They will eventually grind Ukraine down.  

 

Given Russia's ties to China, Iran etc. an open escalation by NATO will almost certainly trigger a major war that, for all intents and purposes, would be WW3. We'd be looking at millions and millions dead.

 

In my opinion, NATO are playing this perfectly. As things stand, Russia are burning through resources at lightning speed all for the sake of marginal gains in a country that, in the long term, they cannot hope to occupy.

 

If things continue as is, Russia will have degraded it's military capacity to the point of collapse and all without the war moving beyond a relatively small section of Ukraine.

[magnkarl]

12 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I'm definitely no military expert. I suspect the Ukrainians would be better placed to specify what actions would help.  

But the following are examples of various levels of escalation that come to my mind.   

Low -No civilian planes to/from Russia should have access to NATO airspace regardless of their nationality.  

Medium Minus - NATO should protect all merchant ships travelling to/from Ukrainian ports. 

Medium Plus  - Only the UK and France have donated cruise missiles.  Ukraine should have the ability to bombard Russia with the same sort of weapons Russia are using to bombard Ukraine. 

High - NATO maintain air supremacy up to the existing front lines. 

 

 

May I add a point here:

No risk - donate enough AA capability to completely lock down the airspace without the need for F-16's. It'd stop the terror bombing and allow Ukraine to start ramping up their own very capable production. NASAMS and Patriots do the job against pretty much all of Russia's systems, so why not deliver enough to stop Russia bombing civilians on a daily basis. The director of NAMMO (producer of NASAMS and NSM systems) said in an interview on German TV yesterday that they can ramp up production even more and churn out a system per week. It wouldn't be that hard to do the same for the patriod\samp-t\iris systems. We have the production capability to crush Russia if we'd just go for it properly.

[avfc1982am]

30 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

so why not deliver enough to stop Russia bombing civilians on a daily basis

This is the question I ask myself quite often. The only conclusion I can come to is that we've given Ukraine token armaments. You can play the game but you cannot have enough to win it. 

There is no real appetite to crush Russia, and no appetite to see them completely removed from Ukraine. 

[bannedfromHandV]

NATO aren’t going to escalate anything, for starters, despite the rhetoric from Putin it’s a defensive alliance, it’s there to shield it’s member countries not to be offensive, so the only people who are going to escalate this war is Russia, and if they do, NATO will likely retaliate.

As others have said, what’s ongoing currently is about the best anyone can hope for, a war of attrition with little forward momentum, this will continue to sap Russian resources whilst continuing to tank the economy and the longer it goes on, the more risk there is of Russian people turning on their masters.

Ukraine have nothing to lose in doing what they’re doing now, in some respects at least, provided they can keep this up of course.

[sidcow]

23 minutes ago, avfc1982am said:

This is the question I ask myself quite often. The only conclusion I can come to is that we've given Ukraine token armaments. You can play the game but you cannot have enough to win it. 

There is no real appetite to crush Russia, and no appetite to see them completely removed from Ukraine. 

Its not the only conclusion. 

These weapons are expensive. Extraordinarily expensive.  We're currently experiencing a cost of living crisis and deeply difficult economic times.  OK some of this is linked to the war, but we are where we are.  Many people in most NATO questions are already asking questions about how much our support is costing.  If we suddenly chuck £20-30 bn of weapons their way a lot of questions are going to be asked by the electorate.  

In addition nations have a first duty to defend themselves.  No one has masses amounts of kit just kicking around in storage facilities.  By giving a load of extra kit to a third party you leave yourselves exposed.  All European armed forces have been driving on empty for years.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

1 hour ago, regular_john said:

Given Russia's ties to China, Iran etc. an open escalation by NATO will almost certainly trigger a major war that, for all intents and purposes, would be WW3. We'd be looking at millions and millions dead.

There's a few problems with that opinion.   A world war requires 2 massive armed allegiances. 

China will not form an armed allegiance with Russia over Ukraine.  A military alliance with Russia would effectively weaken China's military.  

Iran isn't a credible threat to Europe with conventional arms.  This is a country that still uses 1970s F14 Tomcats as a front line fighter.  It would be a threat with nukes. But Israel will deal with that matter long before it becomes a problem for European. 

Are South Africa, India, Brazil, China going to war with the most powerful military alliance over Russia being kicked out of Ukraine?  No.  Nope.  Negative.  

With the exception of maybe Belarus, Iran and North Korea - Russia has no military allies.  Its military is a spent force.  Now is the best time to defeat it. Before it rebuilds.  

That would STOP WW3 not facilitate it.