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Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

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Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#771

Post by lm28469 »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #694
BurningFrog wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has thousands of nuclear missiles. This makes them immune to NATO invasion.

I had this mind as I wrote up my post but didn't mention it because I didn't consider the nuclear option as a serious option. Or maybe I'm just optimistic/delusional. But how would the nuclear option play out? Here I am, a Russian oligarch. I ordered the Ukrainian invasion because I bet that NATO wouldn't intervene because of my nukes. But it turns out I was wrong and NATO is pushing back my invasion. So I fire some…

If people were rational we wouldn't have had two world wars, Putin himself mentioned nuclear war a few times recently

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#772

Post by MrsPeaches »

unfocussed_mike wrote: post #635
amai wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” He claims that without any proof. This maybe would have been true in the 19th century given the technologies for war and power at that time. But we have the 21st century now. Why should the Ukr…

> Why should the Ukraine be so important? Side note: you've used the old-fashioned (and Putin-favoured) english nomenclature for Ukraine as "the Ukraine" in the first sentence, and the Ukraine-preferred nomenclature in the second. This is actually the crux of the issue in two sentences. Ukraine is a sovereign state, but Putin politically asserts it is merely a territory they control, harking back to a pre-WWII time;…

Just a very tiny nitpick. Ukraine is not a nation state. It is mearly a state.

In fact the part of the problem is precisely because it is not a nation state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#773

Post by bsd44 »

artem247 wrote: post #657
bsd44 wrote: post #529

Quoted post unavailable.

Nobody tried to install “missiles” in Ukraine, there are no NATO troops, no bases in Ukraine.

The only reason why there isn't a NATO base in Ukraine is because Russia has taken measures to make sure that doesn't happen. NATO pushed you into a war by installing a puppet regime, publicly speculating about Ukraine joining NATO for decades and supporting Ukrainian neo-nazi groups. It's an old divide and conquer recipe that worked well so far, you fell for it too.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#774

Post by Cthulhu_ »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #742
light_hue_1 wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no country like Russia that is accepting such high risk. Russia is a dictatorship. It's Putin taking risks to settle old scores that he feels weren't addressed when the Soviet union collapsed as a way to distract from Russia's severe internal problems. Putin sees the west as weak. Germany has a new leader. France is about to have elections. The UK is still dealing with Brexit. The EU is fractured with Poland…

> "The US is so divided that a previous president is encouraging Putin to invade" I've started hearing this a lot this morning and I don't see where Trump actually said this. From what I can tell he's blaming the current administration for allowing this to happen and saying that Putin is brilliant for taking advantage of Biden and outsmarting him. Seems like he's primarily calling Biden inept rather than encouraging…

He's not - and never has - condemned or opposed it either though; I think the US may have dodged a bullet with not re-electing Trump, because if he used his position as supreme commander to not act on Russia's aggression (which he would be required to due to NATO etc), it would destabilize NATO and make it a toothless tiger. He's always been a fan of Putin, and especially early on during his presidency there were accusations and rumors of him being in Putin's pocket (via extortion, 'kompromat', but given the quotes over the years I don't think that would have been necessary).

A selection of quotes: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vla...

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#775

Post by mlindner »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #721
smoe wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low, due to Ukraine not being a member state. As the Nato secretary said, they will support Ukraine, but made it clear the security guarantees are only for allies. "I think also that we need to realize that Ukraine is a highly valued partner. We support them with military support, with political support, with the cyber defences, with equipment. Different A…

>I think the risk of direct NATO military intervention is very low I agree the military intervention risk seems low, but what about economic intervention? Isn't this going to have some serious economic repercussions for Russia?

Most certainly. This will end Russia's ability to continue to grow in any way.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#776

Post by lm28469 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #751
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #668

What is the endgame here? Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily. If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much. If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO). The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss. But it doesn't make sense that a nation as soph…

> What is the endgame here? Exactly what Putin's always maintained: that Ukraine joining NATO is a red line, so they're preventing Ukraine joining NATO. > The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss. The risk of NATO intervention is exactly zero. NATO hasn't done shit except attack random non-NATO countries (Serbia, L…

> so they're preventing Ukraine joining NATO.

It already was the case since 2014, NATO wouldn't accept a country which isn't at peace because they'd be forced to intervene and that would mean a war between Russia and NATO, Russia didn't need further intervention for that

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#777

Post by kzrdude »

cambaceres wrote: post #756
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #668

What is the endgame here? Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily. If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much. If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO). The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss. But it doesn't make sense that a nation as soph…

There is 0% chance that NATO intervenes military, even without the fact that Putin basically told the world that any country that intervenes will be nuked. Regarding economic sanctions: yes Russia will suffer from them, but the thing is that it is impossible to know how high Putin values the prospect of dissolving Ukraine into Russia, so it's pointless to try to reason about it (not that I'm saying you shouldn't). Pu…

Why would he not respond with military force towards economical sanctions? I'm a bit worried about this.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#778

Post by Cthulhu_ »

reddog wrote: post #612

Some economic perspective. The Russian economy is 10x the size of the Ukrainian. The US economy is 14x larger than Russia's. The Canadian economy is larger than Russia's. The combined economy of all of NATO is 25x the size of Russia's. This does not even include Pacific allies like Japan and ANZUS. For historical perspective, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the US economy was 7x larger than theirs. At the end of WW2…

A country's economy may be a good indication of how long a battle of attrition would last, possibly, but at the same time, money is not really that important if you mobilize a country and have the raw resources.

Or if you already have nukes ready to go.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#779

Post by kzrdude »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #685
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #668

What is the endgame here? Russia is outclassed by NATO both economically and militarily. If NATO intervenes economically, Russia will lose much. If NATO intervenes militarily, Russia will lose much (but at great cost to NATO). The risk of NATO intervention is high, right? Russia understood this before invading, right? So it seems Russia is accepting a high risk of loss. But it doesn't make sense that a nation as soph…

Putin probably views it as a price tag. The cost of invading is lower than the benefits of invading. One benefit is that China (supposedly) approves of this invasion. So it's possible that the sanctions won't have as much of an impact as they otherwise might've. As others have pointed out, there is no risk of NATO retaliation due to Russia's nuclear arsenal. If China also reduced the risk of sanctions, then the net r…

Hm. I'm not sure it's as rational of that. Do the benefits of invading really pay off? Sure, the slow escalation over the last two months have made it possible for Russia to get a preview and understanding of what the sanction cost etc is.

Maybe he views it as a price tag but in a different way - it has a cost, but what use is resources/money if you can't use it to do what you want? I.e it has a big cost but it's how we wants to use the resources he has at hand, no matter the bottom line.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#780

Post by nradov »

baybal2 wrote: post #704
BurningFrog wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has thousands of nuclear missiles. This makes them immune to NATO invasion.

NATO can easily deny Russia using first strike nuclear attack. Without centralised command issuing computerised targeting info, it will be for missile officers own initiative to launch them, fully knowing from what they learned in the military academy that an uncoordinated launch will likely be futile. USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Ra…

Raytheon has never guaranteed anything. GMD tests have been very limited with many failures. And I don't mean that as a criticism of Raytheon or the other defense contractors involved; ballistic missile defense is extremely hard and getting it working at all was an amazing technical accomplishment.
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