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Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

reuters.com

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Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#101

Post by baybal2 »

0x_rs wrote: post #84
baybal2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's good to remember Ukraine never possessed operational control of them [0], Ukraine had full control, and an operational arsenal for a few years. There was no such thing as a PAL on Soviet nuclear weapons. Ukraine had a fully functioning nuclear force for these few years. I will give no credibility to claims of Western think tanks who can't tell apart a tank from an apc.

This goes against my knowledge and documentation available on the matter. Any sources on these claims? Thank you. >By early 1994 the only barrier to Ukraine's ability to exercise full operational control over the nuclear weapons on missiles and bombers deployed on its soil was its inability to circumvent Russian permissive action links (PALs). (from "Pulling Back from the Nuclear Brink" by Barry R. Schneider)

I find the whole corpus of Western military writing on USSR, and later as "generally unreliable."

Just too much of fiction writers working in these think tanks to pump grants, and research funding.

Even today, go and lookup a number of articles on something very trivial, say, "Russian general military doctrine," and your will get absolutely random, and bizarre assortment of opinions not agreeing on anything, despite that the official doctrine document in Russian is not secret at all, and is easily googleable on the internet.

A lot of them are just regurgitating each other's data without any original input, or validation. A broken telephone effect ensures.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#102

Post by koonsolo »

javier2 wrote: post #35
sharikous wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's harder to mobilise people behind a corrupt cause once blood starts flowing. I don't know how significant it is. Dictatorships have always been feared and despised. And armies lost motivation many times in history, before the internet. From a military perspective what I think is different this time is how (probably) US intelligence is helping Ukrainians. It seems they know any Russian move in advance in real ti…

Same. While it is still a bit unclear to me at least why Russia sent their seemingly old gear without proper support and young conscripts in first, the terrible parachute attempts still stand out. When you want it to be over quickly, you have to send in the best soldiers with the best gear first to seal the deal? In addition to live NATO intelligence, it is clear to most europeans that US intelligence tried to warn a…

Seems like it is the same as the Soviet days: Russia is just an empty shell.

I recently learned their economy is as big as the Benelux. What a joke for a "world power".

Their elite spetsnaz got captured, the elite chechenians got annihilated before they could move a finger. No supplies, soldiers are uninformed, ... .

5 days of war, no major city captured, no air control, no cut in communications, electricity, ... .

They got nukes, yes, it seems that's basically all. If they are as good as the rest, they might even explode before they leave the surface ;).

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#103

Post by hef19898 »

hdivider wrote: post #99

One positive side effect: this result, in the context of an ongoing land war in Europe will finally help to rattle us Europeans out of our traditional resistance to defense and military investment. (I'm both British and German.) Stronger Europe -> stronger NATO -> more options for the Alliance, and for the US to prevent conflict in and out of Europe, since Europeans will shoulder more of the local deterrence burden.…

Can be a net positive, if we also start to really stand by our principles of democracy and equality. The EU and NATO have a less then stelar track record on those for quite a while.

And the European disdain for military and defense spending only started after the end of the cold war when huge standing armies weren't needed anymore.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#104

Post by TheAlchemist »

dstick wrote: post #13

It seems that the only option left for Putin is the "nuclear" one (no pun intended) now that the whole world is seeing that the Russian army lost its morale, and its teeth. Old equipment, young soldiers that are harder to brainwash than in the old days. It is fascinating to see for the first time in the modern age what effect modern media consumption and the internet has on a local war. While it is undeniably true th…

While I'm all in awe for Ukraine resistance, I wouldn't dismiss so quickly the Russian army. The loss of morale and teeth, is mostly social media stuff. I do hope it's true, but I wouldn't bet on it.

They did encounter much stiffer resistance than they expected, but there are still hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of troops around Kyiv. Now that the West is sending arms to Ukraine, there is an increasing probability that they will manage to defend themselves. But unfortunately it's far from certain, or even probable at this point.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#105

Post by meepmorp »

the-dude wrote: post #100
secondcoming wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened? Would Ukraine being a member of the EU prevented Russia from attacking, or would it have accelerated it?

The referendum was ignored, that is what happened.

It was an advisory referendum, according to the Wikipedia article you linked to.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#106

Post by cyberpunk »

vilius wrote: post #92
piokoch wrote: post #52

This is empty gesture, just a symbol of Belarus serfdom. Russian army was already free to enter Belarus using any convenient reason like military exercises so status quo hasn't really changed. Russia might keep nukes in Kaliningrad Oblast so from the security perspective nothing major had changed.

I would not be so quick to dismiss it. Belarus claims that it still is an independent country. If it uses a nuclear weapon then it cannot be treated as if Russians used it directly. At least in Russia it would be easier for propaganda to push the story that Lukashenko did it.

.... Well, I didn't think about that side really. Goddamn. Are we really going there? Recon I should get in the car and head for the north already? ;)

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#107

Post by SassyThrowaway »

the-dude wrote: post #78

Meanwhile in the EU, specifically in The Netherlands, we had a referendum about the Ukraine EU assoc treaty in 2016. 60% of the voters voted against. Guess what happened? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93Eur...

I am not Dutch (much like many people here), so your rhetoric question is difficult for me to understand. What happened? What did you expect to happen? What was the purpose of that referendum in the Netherlands in the first place? Was it a binding one? UPD. And, importantly, why is it all relevant to the topic?

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#108

Post by dane-pgp »

Aeolun wrote: post #86
dane-pgp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such an operation cannot need more than a few months at most. But how much would it have cost to keep those warheads and their rocket engines and all the associated infrastructure in good working order, and secure from accidental launch or denotation, for decades up to the present day? When the decision was made, I suspect it was not at all clear that having the ability to nuke Russia might be an option worth spend…

> But how much would it have cost to keep those warheads and their rocket engines and all the associated infrastructure in good working order, and secure from accidental launch or denotation, for decades up to the present day? If Russia can do it for a few thousand warheads, Ukraine can too. It’s not like their economies are that different.

I suspect that developing, maintaining, and securing a few thousand nuclear missiles is not 1000 times more expensive than doing so for just a few nuclear missiles.

To give some figures, the IMF estimates that the sizes of the economies in 2021 (in US$ million, PPP) were:

* Russia 4,328,122

* Ukraine 576,106

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#109

Post by koonsolo »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #50
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends entirely - what was the goal of this attack in the first place? Did he think he could quickly take Ukraine and the West wouldn't interfere? It's possible. His soldiers look unmotivated, even unprepared though. Maybe it's part of a larger strategy. We might see more crisis popping up soon.

I can't help but think there's something else happening in the background, or that this is part of something larger. It feels like a distraction because the "goal" seems ... both unclear and not worth the reputation damage.

An old colleague once told me, if it's either really stupid, or extremely genius, most of the time it's the former.

In all those years after hearing this, it has always been the former :D.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#110

Post by baybal2 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #79
adrian_b wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is correct that Ukraine did not have operational control over the nuclear weapons, anybody who have nuclear weapons in their possession, and who have the engineering resources of an entire state, would be easily able to disassemble the weapons, reverse engineer the connections to the devices that initiate the detonation and substitute the control units in order to gain operational control. Such an operation…

>would be easily able to disassemble the weapons, reverse engineer the connections to the devices that initiate the detonation and substitute the control units in order to gain operational control. Such an operation cannot need more than a few months at most. I think you're massively underestimating the effort needed to have operational nuclear weapons. Nuclear missiles aren't like a car that you can just hotwire and…

Russia actually had much harder time to maintain its arsenal than Ukraine because most of USSR's nuclear industry was in Ukraine.
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