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United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

reuters.com

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Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#111

Post by gspetr »

kypro wrote: post #28
digdugdirk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong to be concerned, just likely off on the probabilities by orders of magnitude. 1. Tactical nukes aren't a likely step for Russia if Ukraine takes back their territory - even if they go for Crimea. Russia knows that any use of nuclear weapons is crossing a line, and that the regime is done if they do so. 2. There isn't a reason for spying on these facilities if the goal is to analyze the US' ability to…

> 1. Tactical nukes aren't a likely step for Russia if Ukraine takes back their territory - even if they go for Crimea. Russia knows that any use of nuclear weapons is crossing a line, and that the regime is done if they do so. Is Putin not done politically if RU is defeated in UA, and Crimea is liberated / annexed? > 2. There isn't a reason for spying on these facilities if the goal is to analyze the US' ability to…

It's possible to lose a major war and still be somewhat OK domestically, see Saddam's 1st war for a recent example.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#112

Post by heneryville »

rjzzleep wrote: post #45
barrkel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely The consensus military opinion I've read on this is that tactical nukes aren't very useful militarily; troops in the field are too dispersed. If there's a hardened target, then yes, otherwise not great. They then have to be weighed against the costs of crossing that Rubicon. > why they're suddenly so worried about the…

What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory? It doesn't even have a working economy anymore, the US tax payer is paying both the government and the military's salaries. It's most resource rich areas are now in Russian hands. They started with over a thousand tanks, hundreds of jets, got hundreds of soviet tanks from various places, got hundreds of artillery pieces and hundreds of…

Because when empirical evidence defies theory, it's time to reevaluate the theory.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#114

Post by djaychela »

shapefrog wrote: post #41
kypro wrote: post #8

Something that's been concerning me about all these UFOs being shot down is that perhaps it could be best explained by the start of something else building up... Realistically these UFO's aren't alien crafts but hostile spy drones. Perhaps the reason we haven't heard about these drones before could be that the US has never felt the need to act (the spying poses no real imminent threat), or maybe the hostile state sen…

> such expensive weaponry if they thought UA had no chance? It seems likely they are betting on a UA victory and all that entails. > And in the event of a potential UA victory Ukraine are not going to win the "war", by any meaningful measure. There are no western countries that assign anything above a 0% probability of victory. The equipment that we are sending is excellent, but it is all old and literally surplus to…

>The equipment that we are sending is excellent, but it is all old and literally surplus to requirements.

Can't speak about anything else, but the Challenger 2 Tanks the UK is sending are old or surplus. They're the UK's current main battle tank, and extremely capable.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#115

Post by tacon »

nradov wrote: post #91
LinuxBender wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong to be concerned? I don't think so. Normalcy bias is strong in the public right now and I don't blame people for wanting simple explanations for the recent events. Regarding the balloons my unpopular opinion is that they may have received intel that the spy balloons are to condition the US into complacency and then replace the payload with something else using a later set of balloons. This would never make…

Let's say Russia does decide to use nukes. What would they target? Their main objective in the war is to seize control of Ukrainian energy and agricultural resources; they don't want to turn it into an irradiated wasteland. Using a nuke against Ukrainian military forces would be a waste since they are now dispersed and dug in. Many of those forces are close to Russian forces so a nuclear strike would endanger their o…

>Many of those forces are close to Russian forces so a nuclear strike would endanger their own troops.

If one thing is blindingly obvious lately, it is that Russia doesn't care about their own troops, only about winning. Peter Zeihan reminds us that historically Russia needs to lose about a half million men before they consider giving up on a war.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#116

Post by yks »

rjzzleep wrote: post #45
barrkel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely The consensus military opinion I've read on this is that tactical nukes aren't very useful militarily; troops in the field are too dispersed. If there's a hardened target, then yes, otherwise not great. They then have to be weighed against the costs of crossing that Rubicon. > why they're suddenly so worried about the…

What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory? It doesn't even have a working economy anymore, the US tax payer is paying both the government and the military's salaries. It's most resource rich areas are now in Russian hands. They started with over a thousand tanks, hundreds of jets, got hundreds of soviet tanks from various places, got hundreds of artillery pieces and hundreds of…

> When people agree that Ukraine loses multiple times as many people for every Russian that dies

Sure, if you listen to the Russian propagandists and ignore the common sense in the simplest of questions, Ukraine doesn't have any chance of victory. But we'll soon get to the anniversary of Kyiv fallen in 3 days.

> That's sacrificing your population.

Big if true, but if you haven't noticed the population doesn't want to be butchered by Russians instead, or recycled by Moscow in the future wars, like Russian speakers of the 2014-annexed territories were.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#117

Post by caeril »

kypro wrote: post #8

Something that's been concerning me about all these UFOs being shot down is that perhaps it could be best explained by the start of something else building up... Realistically these UFO's aren't alien crafts but hostile spy drones. Perhaps the reason we haven't heard about these drones before could be that the US has never felt the need to act (the spying poses no real imminent threat), or maybe the hostile state sen…

> Perhaps the reason we haven't heard about these drones before could be that the US has never felt the need to act

My understanding, and it could be completely wrong (sourced from various tweet threads), is that the first balloon discovery prompted StratCom to change the nominal focusing range of our radar and optical networks, after which we suddenly discovered there were a lot more UFOs than anyone even realized, and that StratCom is just as surprised as the general public is.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#118

Post by gspetr »

This should be understood as a message to those rich people (and/or their dual citizenship proxies managing their assets) with dual citizenships: "US will not go balls-to-the-wall to bail your asses out like it would for its OG citizens. If you continue engaging in overly risky business over there, whatever consequences may be, that's on you."

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#119

Post by danaris »

nradov wrote: post #91
LinuxBender wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong to be concerned? I don't think so. Normalcy bias is strong in the public right now and I don't blame people for wanting simple explanations for the recent events. Regarding the balloons my unpopular opinion is that they may have received intel that the spy balloons are to condition the US into complacency and then replace the payload with something else using a later set of balloons. This would never make…

Let's say Russia does decide to use nukes. What would they target? Their main objective in the war is to seize control of Ukrainian energy and agricultural resources; they don't want to turn it into an irradiated wasteland. Using a nuke against Ukrainian military forces would be a waste since they are now dispersed and dug in. Many of those forces are close to Russian forces so a nuclear strike would endanger their o…

Putin's primary objective, from everything I've seen and read, is to be able to reassemble at least some vestige of the former USSR with himself at its head.

At this point, I'd say it seems to be an open question whether or how much it matters to him how much of that land is actually habitable.

It also seems like a) he views Ukraine as a somewhat rebellious province—daring to defy him, its rightful ruler—and b) he views Ukrainians as Russians, and furthermore believes that any Ukrainian who does not subscribe to this view is either traitorous or mentally ill...so I could see some fairly strong arguments for him deciding that they "deserve" to be nuked.

Honestly, in my view, the strongest argument for the position that Putin won't use nukes is simply that he hasn't done so already, despite many fairly significant setbacks in his attempted annexation of Ukraine.

Re: United States tells citizens: Leave Russia immediately

#120

Post by vbezhenar »

nradov wrote: post #105
vbezhenar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the only regime change likely in Russia will not make you happy. There're some very pro-military leaders arise recently. Putin does not allow for war to go full-scale. Those leaders will. Fragmentation is possible but I don't believe it, at least for now. Russia loses soldiers but they obtain much more soldiers with perfect battle training, they acquire priceless experience as to which weapons are effective and s…

I saw a video recently where a column of Russian tanks was advancing along a road when the lead vehicle was hit by artillery. The others proceeded to ... just stop and wait until they were also hit. Now I'm no expert in mechanized warfare but I think when you're caught by artillery fire on an open road with no cover you're not supposed to sit there and wait to get hit. Advance past the kill zone, retreat, or disperse…

There're hundreds of thousands of soldiers. There're dozens of thousands of tanks and other vehicles. Incompetence is unavoidable and those kinds of situations put this incompetence to focus and hopefully measures will be developed to prevent it from happening in the future.
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