Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[FLEA]

1 hour ago, DirkDiggler said:

 

Man. It's like being the second in command of Al Queda. I remember a 4 year straight where that was the most dangerous job in the world. 

 

 

 

[fire4effect]

37 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Ouch!

This should be in the Farmers Hall of Claims

 

[VigilanteNav]

Ugly to watch as a human but highly suspenseful to the military bubba.  Does Kyiv become Putin's Stalingrad? Highly recommend the Institute for the Study of War site.  Its the best open source site for battle tracking I've come across so far.  It was started by Retired Army General Jack Keane so I'm assuming its at least a legit/non-profit/non-partisan source.  https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-7   Also, their assessments site various source's sites such as the Ukrainian Army and Air Force's official facebook sites.  In those, I found a post on a Ukrainian pilot, Colonel Alexander Mostovy, who was recognized as shooting down an IL-76 and 2xMi-24s. (I cannot confirm or deny he is the son of the Ghost of Kyiv...:))     https://www.facebook.com/kpszsu    Ukraine's use of information warfare is definitely interesting to behold.  Makes me think we should fire all USAF PA officers and replace them with Ukrainian's after this is all over!    

Edited March 8, 2022 by VigilanteNav

[hockeydork]

This one made me chuckle. 

[tac airlifter]

I think it’s a terrible idea to hurt Russia’s economy and their people just because we don’t like what Putin is doing.  Mass punishment doesn’t work on me or you or anyone. Human beings hate that shit.
 

i’m not sure what specific military effect we want to achieve by turning off some grandmother‘s credit card, or what we expect Russian civilians to do, but I’m not going to chuckle at starving civilians standing in food lines. They are innocent.

[FLEA]

11 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

I think it’s a terrible idea to hurt Russia’s economy and their people just because we don’t like what Putin is doing.  Mass punishment doesn’t work on me or you or anyone. Human beings hate that shit.
 

i’m not sure what specific military effect we want to achieve by turning off some grandmother‘s credit card, or what we expect Russian civilians to do, but I’m not going to chuckle at starving civilians standing in food lines. They are innocent.

Well its not a military effect for one. Its an economic effect and economic power is exercised very differently. 

I agree that chuckling at hunger is not apropo. That said, there is some rationale here. For one, just scratching the surface, tightening Russia's economy reduces revenue available to their war machine. It will make it difficult for them to sustain an extended campaign. Putin will have to choose to feed his people or expand his military efforts. I know the knee jerk thought is he wouldn't do that, but remember Machiavelli here, the primary security concern of the Prince is to prevent rebellion, not external security. We've seen dictators practice this time and time before. Kim Jong Un is a good example who didn't have the popularity of his father when he ascended and immediately needed to reinvest military capital into the country's agricultural sector to balance his internal/external affairs. 

[pawnman]

36 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

I think it’s a terrible idea to hurt Russia’s economy and their people just because we don’t like what Putin is doing.  Mass punishment doesn’t work on me or you or anyone. Human beings hate that shit.
 

i’m not sure what specific military effect we want to achieve by turning off some grandmother‘s credit card, or what we expect Russian civilians to do, but I’m not going to chuckle at starving civilians standing in food lines. They are innocent.

So you don't want to commit the military and you don't want sanctions.

What's left, some strongly worded letters written to the Russian embassy?

[brickhistory]

5 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Ouch!

That'll buff out...

[arg]

5 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Ouch!

That's a good BMW ad.

Let's see who gets this.

[hockeydork]

1 hour ago, tac airlifter said:

I think it’s a terrible idea to hurt Russia’s economy and their people just because we don’t like what Putin is doing.  Mass punishment doesn’t work on me or you or anyone. Human beings hate that shit.
 

i’m not sure what specific military effect we want to achieve by turning off some grandmother‘s credit card, or what we expect Russian civilians to do, but I’m not going to chuckle at starving civilians standing in food lines. They are innocent.

Meh, wanna know whats not funny? Having artillery shells landing in apartment complexes, for no reason, in a country that did jack shit to antagonize its neighbor. 

Maybe the Russian people need to go drag their government out of the Kremlin, the jig is up. Maybe Alex Ovechkin needs to sack up and say you know what, Putin, playing in the NHL is better than the KHL. I guess the Russian conscripts are innocent, since they got told to go blow shit up and kill people, half of whom probably have no idea why. Ukrainian's are sure as shit innocent, they didn't do anything wrong either. The 14 year old brainwashed jihadi in Afghanistan who picked up an RPG was innocent too. 

So its either the civilian Russian grandmother who has to choose between continuing to gobble Putin's chode of lies or getting her Visa turned off, or the Ukrainian teacher with two days military training shooting at invading Russians, wondering if he'll make it to the end of the week while his wife and kids flee to Poland. 

If the Russians starve, its their own damn fault. Better a dead Russian than a dead Ukrainian, that calculus is simple right now. Or we could send Americans to die. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by hockeydork

[brickhistory]

Clown show going on between various governments in NATO but not invoking NATO regarding sliding the Ukrainians some MiG-29s.

Poland:  We'll give you MiGs, send 'em to Ramstein, the Ukrainians pick 'em up.  In return, you give us used F-16s.

DC:  Wha???!!!

 

On a serious note, if this is some sort of a thing, where would the MiGs be based?  Inside Ukraine and they are insta-HVAs for the Russians.  Outside Ukraine and the host nation just joined the war.

So, either a clownshow or some psyop thing that, again, I'm not smart enough to deciper.

[Best-22]

I'm really hoping the planes are already in Ukraine flying missions and we're just pretending we can't figure out how to get them there. It would avoid escalation but still help the Ukrainians; plus I think we could get away with it. We've already seen the Russians attacking deserted Ukrainian bases and wasting missiles on places where IADS used to be weeks ago.. so there's clearly a weak spot in Russian real time Intel gathering. 

 

I know global geopolitics is incredibly difficult, but i also know there is a lot of really smart diplomats and strategists on our side. I choose to believe the west is the one playing 4D chess here. 

[hockeydork]

2 minutes ago, brickhistory said:

Clown show going on between various governments in NATO but not invoking NATO regarding sliding the Ukrainians some MiG-29s.

Poland:  We'll give you MiGs, send 'em to Ramstein, the Ukrainians pick 'em up.  In return, you give us used F-16s.

DC:  Wha???!!!

 

On a serious note, if this is some sort of a thing, where would the MiGs be based?  Inside Ukraine and they are insta-HVAs for the Russians.  Outside Ukraine and the host nation just joined the war.

So, either a clownshow or some psyop thing that, again, I'm not smart enough to deciper.

I am def not qualified to comment how effective they would be in helping the Ukrainian war effort.  But I agree they'll get punched by cruise missiles almost instantly. I don't know what their dollar value is (any idea?), but I think that money could be spent way more effectively (food rations, more anti tank missiles, maybe a medium range SAM?). Even without their fighters/bombers, I feel if Russia wants to just level Ukraine, they have plenty of rockets and artillery to do it, and even without their Air Force I feel like they probably brought a shit ton of their own SAMs to wreck 30 Polish Migs pretty quickly. 

[tac airlifter]

1 hour ago, pawnman said:

So you don't want to commit the military and you don't want sanctions.

What's left, some strongly worded letters written to the Russian embassy?

Have all the sanctions you want.  I love the ones targeting their elite.  But celebrating bread lines?  Do you think that will make people hate the dictator or hate us?

I know it’s an unpopular opinion.  But I’m uninterested in hurting civilians.  I don’t think it will be effective and I don’t think it’s a good look.  

[hockeydork]

3 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

Do you think that will make people hate the dictator or hate us?

 

They've already been taught to hate us (especially the older population). The youngins (the ones protesting on the streets in Moscow & who know how to get to free media) know whats up, they are the internal hope for changing this. It's the only way to put pressure on the Kremlin without nuclear badminton. 

[Prozac]

10 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

Have all the sanctions you want.  I love the ones targeting their elite.  But celebrating bread lines?  Do you think that will make people hate the dictator or hate us?

I know it’s an unpopular opinion.  But I’m uninterested in hurting civilians.  I don’t think it will be effective and I don’t think it’s a good look.  

Might not make them love us, but it also might make them start asking questions about what they’re seeing on state TV and why the rest of the world is reacting so harshly. I don’t think the idea is to starve the Russian people. I do think the idea is to squeeze Putin at every possible pressure point. 

[hockeydork]

18 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

Have all the sanctions you want.  I love the ones targeting their elite.  But celebrating bread lines?  Do you think that will make people hate the dictator or hate us?

I know it’s an unpopular opinion.  But I’m uninterested in hurting civilians.  I don’t think it will be effective and I don’t think it’s a good look.  

Also, noble indeed, but its not fair for you to feel like you have to carry the burden of somebody else's poor decisions. If you were commanding a nuclear sub and got word DC just got nuked by the Russians, are you going to not nuke Moscow because of the innocent civilians who literally had nothing to do with it?

Putin knew that the global response to this was possibly going to be crippling sanctions against his country. He and his enablers did it anyways. Don't carry his bad karma baggage for him. Last thing we need is for people in the west to start feeling bad for him and like they're responsible somehow for all of this. 

[tac airlifter]

11 minutes ago, Prozac said:

Might not make them love us, but it also might make them start asking questions about what they’re seeing on state TV and why the rest of the world is reacting so harshly. I don’t think the idea is to starve the Russian people. I do think the idea is to squeeze Putin at every possible pressure point. 

Copy the idea.  Has this particular method of pressuring a dictator ever worked?  It didn’t on Saddam, and it didn’t on Ghadafi.  Or Milosevek.  It’s not working in Iran or N Korea.  When you target civilians for suffering, all it really does is hurt civilians.  If you have a counter example I’m game to hear it.  

[FLEA]

2 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:

Copy the idea.  Has this particular method of pressuring a dictator ever worked?  It didn’t on Saddam, and it didn’t on Ghadafi.  Or Milosevek.  It’s not working in Iran or N Korea.  When you target civilians for suffering, all it really does is hurt civilians.  If you have a counter example I’m game to hear it.  

Was actually very effective in Iran and N. Korea. nK even more so because sanctions were backed by a UNSCR. 

 

 

[FLEA]

57 minutes ago, hockeydork said:

I am def not qualified to comment how effective they would be in helping the Ukrainian war effort.  But I agree they'll get punched by cruise missiles almost instantly. I don't know what their dollar value is (any idea?), but I think that money could be spent way more effectively (food rations, more anti tank missiles, maybe a medium range SAM?). Even without their fighters/bombers, I feel if Russia wants to just level Ukraine, they have plenty of rockets and artillery to do it, and even without their Air Force I feel like they probably brought a shit ton of their own SAMs to wreck 30 Polish Migs pretty quickly. 

One of the important aspects though is this is what Ukraine asked for. We may assess they need something different but it's a bit irrelevant. If we give them fighters and it's a total disaster it's on them, but at least they were responsible for the decision. 

[ecugringo]

Didnt Iraq have sanctions in the 90's that the UN estimated was responsible for over 500k dead mostly children?

You think in WW2 the allies wanted unconditional surrender.  That made the Germans and Japanese only fight on harder.  More people died in the last year of hte war than all the previous combined.

I dont know what the solution is but backing Putin in a corner could be dangerous.  If he loses in Ukraine more of Russia will break away and he will lose more resources. Mostly the oil around the Caspian Sea which is vast.  He will lose out on the revenue from transportation of crude as well.  Even China could become aggressive in Russia's east.

They can be starved out through sanctions but I think that will only draw more internal support for Putin.

Putin can also show his neighbors that if you go against him he will exhaust all resources to burn you down like Ukraine.  Maybe that is his path to victory and create a new economic zone with his neighboring allies and China?  If he can take Ukraine he will have a stable food source and can influence the global food market.

Also, I guess we're buying Crude from Venezuela now...Good job Brandon!

 

[hockeydork]

8 minutes ago, ecugringo said:

You think in WW2 the allies wanted unconditional surrender.  That made the Germans and Japanese only fight on harder.  More people died in the last year of hte war than all the previous combined.

Isn't it different tho, because it was foreigners on German and Japanese territory. Those soldiers and civilians (thought) they were defending their homes, which is why they fought to the death. The Ukranian's are the ones defending their homes, and they are the ones who are probably only going to fight harder.

Nobody is pushing for Ukrainians to advance into Russian territory and rule Russia. Just for them to leave Ukraine, which Putin could do with a phone call but won't because of his massive ego.  He could end it all right now. 

[hockeydork]

15 minutes ago, FLEA said:

One of the important aspects though is this is what Ukraine asked for. We may assess they need something different but it's a bit irrelevant. If we give them fighters and it's a total disaster it's on them, but at least they were responsible for the decision. 

Roger, makes sense. 

[hockeydork]

20 minutes ago, FLEA said:

One of the important aspects though is this is what Ukraine asked for. We may assess they need something different but it's a bit irrelevant. If we give them fighters and it's a total disaster it's on them, but at least they were responsible for the decision. 

Looks like Kirby said no bueno to the Migs, thankfully. I think that could've kicked off WW3. 

[FLEA]

2 minutes ago, hockeydork said:

Looks like Kirby said no bueno to the Migs, thankfully. I think that could've kicked off WW3. 

I agree. And in that case, I fully support NATO sending other aid if they determine its not in their interest to send something that could threaten their own interests. 

 

Edit: Sounds like we are sending patriot batteries though!

Edited March 9, 2022 by FLEA