The Ukraine War (Ukraine-Russia Conflict)

[Shiny Gems]

1 hour ago, Tani Coyote said:

So let's put some comparative findings in this. 

It's been well-covered what Putin is after; resources playing a hand is par the course, as authoritarian regimes tend to prioritize private goods they can reward their supporters with. 

But I think there's more to it as well. Putin is pushing 70 and no doubt a lot of people are whispering about who will replace him. A lot of autocrats know that sickness or old age means they either resign or quite possibly get killed; a show of force is a great way to try and shore up support among both the elites and his sizable support base in the population. 

As a paranoid autocrat, he has no doubt surrounded himself with yes men by this point. Which can explain why this invasion is going so horribly: he most likely was hearing what he wanted to hear, not reality. Consider: the Ukrainian military reformed itself after 2014 to avoid losing more territory. Meanwhile, the Russian military has largely continued Soviet strategy, that is, being prepared more for a post-nuclear war than a conventional war: a lot of Russian vehicles have excellent radiation shielding, but poor armor. 

Thus, despite the fact that on paper Russia should have utterly dominated this, they clearly are nowhere near where they expected to be militarily; that is without considering the enormous worldwide response and the catastrophic effects it is having on Russia's economy. Then there's the fact Putin is losing control of his security forces; Zelensky has survived several assassination attempts and this is apparently due to people within the FSB tipping off his security detail. 

And with the recent exposition of Russia's war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere, I expect the Ukrainian people will be fighting even harder than they did before. 

What about the future?

Based on Russia's progress... I don't know if they're actually going to gain much more. Their gains have been relatively minimal (it's debated whether they actually seized more than the roads and some towns, leaving huge patches of possible guerrilla territory open), and their bodies keep piling up. A lot of their troops are surrendering for relatively good conditions as POWs. 

But Putin does not care about Russia. He cares about himself. If he pulls back, he will most likely be overthrown, if not killed. He has created a mafia state, killing or imprisoning anyone who could allow a peaceful transfer of power. He will not get a peaceful retirement in a dacha like Khruschev, but quite likely go the way of Beria, Nicholas II or Trotsky instead. 

So his incentive will be to pour more and more into a hopeless war until something breaks. Given the state of the economy, that could come sooner rather than later. Russia's people are not stupid. Unless they're a hardcore Putin supporter, I don't think they're going to blame the West for this situation. They know who brought this on them. The would-be Tsar, who might very well end up like the last one.

What happens if he falls within Russia, who knows. Maybe another strongman with some more sense takes power. Maybe we get another Gorbachev eager to reform their society. Or maybe another civil war. Who knows. Putin has worked so hard to crush organized opposition and the independent media it's hard to really guess what might bubble to the surface if he falls. 

I don't want to speculate too much just yet, but, the results are likely to reach far beyond Russia. If Putin falls (which he's highly likely to unless he secures some huge strategic victory over Ukraine), I would not be surprised if we see a ripple effect; revolutions come in waves. Belarus, Chechnya, and Syria are just a few regions that might see their governments rapidly destabilize in the aftermath. The various Central Asian republics, even if they maneuver to secure Chinese support, might see uprisings as well. Kazakhstan just recently had its wave of impressive demonstrations, after all. 

Like the cornered spider, Putin is thrashing with his fangs out. But increasingly, he's being reminded that he is just a spider. 

Nice and good post. I would like to mention one other thing while we are on this: Remember when Russia was the Soviet Union back in the Cold War? They were much more powerful back then. Yet, towards the end of the Cold War, they invaded the country of Afghanistan. I do not remember the reason as to why, but at the end, the invasion failed. With Russia's war with Ukraine, based on what was said just now by you, I am beginning to see history repeating itself, even if Russia has been the Soviet Union no more for quite some time. Things aren't really going well for Russia, and Putin, like how they invaded Afghanistan back then in the Soviet Union, you know what I mean?

[MetalSkulkBane]

Agree... but I don't know if his successor will be any better.

 

Between Tzars, Communists and Putin this country was... almost never ruled by "nice" people. Although personally I'm more concerned with Russia's neighbors than russians themselves.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Chances are…no, his successor won’t be any better. And that can go two ways:

1) His successor is more incompetent. Pretty self-explanatory, and could cause more problems for Russia.

2) His successor is more competent. Or at least, more dangerous. There’s always the risk of an even bigger madman taking Putin’s place.

[lucasdanielpeterrygal]

Does it mean World War 3?

[MetalSkulkBane]

14 hours ago, lucasdanielpeterrygal said:

Does it mean World War 3?

Good News: No. Honestly right now WW3 will more likely happen when USA goes fighting China.

Bad News: And this is why Ukraine will bleed so rest of us don't have to.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Even that’s debatable, as China’s not as powerful as you hear on the news.
 

They’re equipped, at best, to fight close to their homeland instead of in the global range the US has, and their gear (even if stolen from the US or even Russia—yes, they steal from them too) is nowhere near as good as they pump it up to be. Their so called fifth-gen stealth fighter, the J-20, was actually detected by a fourth generation aircraft’s radar from India, they’re just now learning how to work with Aircraft carriers, which the US and Japan have had decades experience using, and the aircraft they want as carrier capable has engines underpowered that they may not fly as good as anything from the US (or even Russia). 

They’re surrounded by too many potential enemies and have few surrounding allies, that they’ll likely exhaust themselves fighting other countries like S. Korea, Japan, and Australia (maybe India too) before the US even begins to commit their forces. They have at least 20 years to actually catch up to us now, but 20 years is plenty of time to accelerate that gap to make it moot.

[lucasdanielpeterrygal]

Yeah usually it’s also about China.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

With this war going worse than expected for Russia, I’m curious as to whether Ukraine will gradually get more advanced weapons in the near future.

Most notably the F-35. This entire conflict has been a case of unexpected outcomes—we didn’t think Russia would actually fully invade Ukraine until we saw the satellite images and intercepted communications, we didn’t expect Ukraine to hold and stall the Russians as long as they have, and we didn’t think Russia’s equipment would do poorly in a lot of areas (sure, their navy sucks, but you figured they’d have decent jet fighters until they got shot down for flying too low due to a lack of precision munitions, even despite their SU-57 yet to be mass produced). Makes me wonder if their S-500 air defense is as cracked as they make it out to be?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Oh no, Finland’s joining NATO…who didn’t see that coming after invading one’s neighbor?

[Raya]

On 5/15/2022 at 3:52 AM, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Oh no, Finland’s joining NATO…who didn’t see that coming after invading one’s neighbor?

It is really funny beacues before that Russians were like "Finland joining NATO means instant war, hurr durr Russia strong we will destroy the Occident", but now Putin just mumbling something about attacking Finland only when NATO forces will be located in Finland. 

This is amazing how in just a few months Russia came from "we are the great empire and the second biggest army in the world" to being an absolute joke.

[PaddyFancy]

On 5/15/2022 at 2:52 AM, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Oh no, Finland’s joining NATO…who didn’t see that coming after invading one’s neighbor?

That might not happen if Turkey gets their way.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

7 hours ago, PaddyFancy said:

That might not happen if Turkey gets their way.

Turkey’s situation is a lot more complicated than any of us are aware of—that, and my knowledge over the scope of Turkey’s true geopolitical goals are limited beyond the fact that they essentially control access to the Black Sea and can effectively choke Russia without anyone else’s help.

In fact, from what I am aware of, I think can be smoothed over with Turkey rather easily thanks to this war opening much of the world’s eyes. If anything, Turkey is just holding Finland and Sweden’s potential membership into NATO hostage to get concessions they weren’t guaranteed years before hand. At best, they’ll concede; at worst, my guess is they’ll get kicked out of NATO (I don’t know if that’s possible, but we said the same about this very war being unthinkable until it happened) and Finland and Sweden will be admitted anyway—that last part being a stupid move as that’ll just push Turkey closer to Russia, which NATO does not want.

[batson]

On another note, it pisses me of how some corners of the american right-wing (and not not talking the entire american right wingl, but a certain part of it) has taken their insatiable need to be contranarians against absolutely everything that the american left is currently saying and started becoming apologetic towards Russia's invasion. They be like "Of course as we all know this is in fact an issue with many considerations and not the black and white conflict that the SJW's try to make in into". But like, no, it isn't. Russia, is in the wrong and Ukraine is, in this particular situation, in the right. There is no moral ambiguity here. "But Russia is just defending their interests". Well what if they invaded the United States, would that be something to be apologetic about? I mean if they did it would probably be for the understandable reason that they just want to bring down their most potent enemy once and for all. I mean that's understandable right?

I get that it's easy to try to be a neutral fucking Jedi master when you have an ocean and a trillion nukes between yourself and Putin, but for us actually living in Europe it's impossible not to see Putin's Russia as the dangerous mad bear that it is. I live in Sweden, and here basically everyone on the right (bar a small nutty minority of course, there are always some of those) is in agreement with everyone on the left that Putin's invasion is illegal, unjustified and entirely evil. Even the party called the Sweden Democrats, a far right nationalist party, is just as one sided (in a good way) as all the other parties when it comes to the moral and political assessment of the invasion.

[MetalSkulkBane]

If I had to guess, those extreme Americans are aware that the USA did similar things and need to justify Russia's actions to keep their own consciousness clean.

Alternatively, they might believe the USA needs Russia. Right now USA's biggest rival is China, not Russia. If anything, in case of war, Russia will be a key player, depending on which site it would pick.

To understand politics you can't trow the phrases "monster" or "idiot" without trying to figure out why they do that in the first place... which absolutely doesn't change the fact that the attack on Ukraine is a horrible crime and Putin IS the monster. I'm just saying there is the logic behind his actions, which arguably makes him even worse.

[Shiny Gems]

So, I have not kept up to date, how is the war going right now? Anything significant?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

3 hours ago, MightyGems said:

So, I have not kept up to date, how is the war going right now? Anything significant?

Nothing that hasn’t been the case for the past few months—Ukraine is still around, Putin has a new general, NATO sending aid.

There are specifics, but it’s been a stalemate as it has been for a while now. Just be glad we were all wrong about how long Ukraine would last in a fight against Russia—if anything, they basically exposed Russia’s flawed capabilities.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

So remember when I said at best, Turkiye would concede to Finland and Sweden NATO membership?

I’m not psychic, I just have a stronger grasp of geopolitics than I expected just based on open sources.

Also, Lithuania is blocking Russia’s access to Kaliningrad. That’s, of course, not going to go over well.