Mod+ The Crisis in Ukraine

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Just folks are clear, the boundaries on the Wikipedia maps I post don't represent a continuous front. For example see the below from the NY Times. The solid red lines are the areas you would expect patrols, formations, and posts.

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Visa and Mastercard are partially shutting down processing of Russian purchases. Apparently, cards issued in Russia will not work outside of Russia and cards issued outside of Russia will not work in Russia.

I wonder what's up with Russia's limited use of air power. Maybe many of the aging craft aren't in great shape and their air force is functionally much smaller than on paper?


I noticed that most of Russian vehicles are cold war models, with maybe slight upgrades. I was curious so looked into things. Apparently, in the last decade, Russia has developed a new tank, IFV, and APC, all of which are supposed be very good, theoretically. The tank has a protective cell in the front where all 3 crew sit side by side. But none of these have entered full production. I don't know if they are still buggy or if economic issues prevented setting up a production line.
 
David Johansen said:
The standing theory is that they're holding back on the limited good stuff for fighting NATO if it comes to that rather than expending it in Ukraine.
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That might explain everything about this war. They can't commit their best because they can't afford to lose it if they actually fear NATO. It might also be the best sign they don't intend to use nukes. Because if they really did they might not care much what they lose in Ukraine.
 
I don't think Putin will authorise nuclear missiles, unless nukes are already heading towards Moscow.
I'm not supportive of him in any way, but I also don't think he is that stupid, because he knows there no endgame there.
But if he is in a corner and thinks that Russia or his regime has no future, then he'll make sure as many of us end up likewise.

However, the Russian Armed Forces sending missiles at that Ukrainian nuclear power-plant...that's just plain crazy. One would expect them to storm that facility with their ground forces, but to missile the buildings next to the actual nuclear power reactors, this is just beyond belief and shows us that the whole thing is getting out of control

If anything spurs on further NATO action, then the threat of nuclear fallout will do it

This whole thing is escalating too quickly, and if history can tell us anything, this is now getting to be a grave situation for the rest of the world
 
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Endless Flight said:
It’s really hard to come up with words that can summarize what’s in my mind when I see pictures like this.

www.nytimes.com

Russian forces fire on evacuees, leaving 4 people dead outside Kyiv.

The attack in Irpin, west of the capital, suggested either direct targeting of evacuees or disregard for the risk of civilian casualties.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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I can come up with some...

1. They specifically targeted civilians.
2. They didn't care whether or not civilians were there.
3. Since Ukraine blew that bridge to stop the Russian advance, if Russia is going to repair that bridge or use bridging vehicles to cross, they need to make sure there's no soldiers in the area, ie. bomb the hell out of the area.
4. Since Ukraine soldiers are fighting in that city, Russia's blasting everything that moves.
5. A fuckup (like the kind we say we make when we kill civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Worse things have happened every day in Yemen (the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran) for the past 8 years. Our Oil & Gas Companies don't have a vested interest in that war, though, so no one covers that one.
 
Stan said:
Visa and Mastercard are partially shutting down processing of Russian purchases. Apparently, cards issued in Russia will not work outside of Russia and cards issued outside of Russia will not work in Russia.

I wonder what's up with Russia's limited use of air power. Maybe many of the aging craft aren't in great shape and their air force is functionally much smaller than on paper?


I noticed that most of Russian vehicles are cold war models, with maybe slight upgrades. I was curious so looked into things. Apparently, in the last decade, Russia has developed a new tank, IFV, and APC, all of which are supposed be very good, theoretically. The tank has a protective cell in the front where all 3 crew sit side by side. But none of these have entered full production. I don't know if they are still buggy or if economic issues prevented setting up a production line.
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Yeah, and Russians are already using Chinese systems as replacements. No one could have seen that one coming...
 
CRKrueger said:
Yeah, and Russians are already using Chinese systems as replacements. No one could have seen that one coming...
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Any company providing financial services typically has to be licensed in every country (and sub-national jurisdiction in many cases) in which it operates. This is actually most of the reason Lloyd's still exists.

That could go one of two ways. The Merkins can still start leaning on other governments to sanction the activities of CIPS if they allow Russian banks to trade outside the sanctions. Here in the UK, as in most of the Western sphere, there are whole sets of compliance regulations regarding sanctions checks. All Western countries and most of their trading partners have similar checks in place due to political pressure from Washington. I don't think it's a stretch to see pressure being brought to bear on other players to suspend licenses on CIPS if they support sanction busting activities.

Alternatively, if CIPS manages to weather that, folks suddenly realise they can use it to carry out banking transactions away from the prying eyes of Uncle Sam. However, my money's on the Merkins putting pressure on governments to sanction CIPS unless they toe the line.
 
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Stan said:
Visa and Mastercard are partially shutting down processing of Russian purchases. Apparently, cards issued in Russia will not work outside of Russia and cards issued outside of Russia will not work in Russia.

I wonder what's up with Russia's limited use of air power. Maybe many of the aging craft aren't in great shape and their air force is functionally much smaller than on paper?


I noticed that most of Russian vehicles are cold war models, with maybe slight upgrades. I was curious so looked into things. Apparently, in the last decade, Russia has developed a new tank, IFV, and APC, all of which are supposed be very good, theoretically. The tank has a protective cell in the front where all 3 crew sit side by side. But none of these have entered full production. I don't know if they are still buggy or if economic issues prevented setting up a production line.
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Just keeping a military running is expensive, actually using it even more so. The Russian economy is really not that big it just barely edges out Brazil for the #11 spot. For comparison China at #2 has 10x the GDP of Russia. The US spent more just on Covid relief in 2020 than the entire Russian GDP. Three US states California, Texas and New York each have a larger GDP than Russia. Ukraine has a GDP about 1/10 that of Russia.

Russia's military budget is 48-60 billion depending on source which makes them very comparable to what the UK, France or Germany spends, but Russia has a much larger military. The USA spends in excess of $750 billion, and China around $250 billion.

Reality is the Russian military is probably mostly on paper. Russia has put a lot of development into new weapons, but has made very little adoption of new tech, so most of the Russian military is actually not far advanced from where it was in the 1990s Soviet era. Not just the same tech but often literally the same aging equipment. Then you add in the corruption, how much of the military budget just went into somebodies pocket instead of keeping the equipment running?

Ukraine's military is much smaller, but they are fielding much of the same Soviet era equipment and having been a part of the Soviet Union they have the same play book, so they know what to expect from the Russian military. Ukraine may even have an advantage in that they have been upgrading to more modern western weapons since Russia took Crimea. The MIG 29s Poland is talking about providing to Ukraine have been upgraded so are probably better than most of Russia's operational fighters. Last Ukraine is fighting for their home, and it appears many of the Russian troops have no idea why they are there. That plays a huge part in morale.
 
Also a significant portion of Russia's military is holed up in Kaliningrad, that odd little exclave they have between Lithuania and Poland so they can maintain a port on the Baltic Sea. There is no realistic way that those assets can support their invasion of Ukraine.
 
I hope I am wrong, but it does seem like there a reasonably high chance Russia will take Ukraine.
However I'm not sure if the ongoing cost of keeping a lid on the insurgency for years to come is going to be something Russia can maintain.

One wonders how high-tech the Russian military actually is? It definately is something to be feared, it is a Super Power after all, but there are many indicators that it has a much lower baseline than many of the NATO Forces, esp USA and Great Britain. How much of it can be spread to keep an occupation of an entire population going?

It's clear to the world that Ukrainaian patriotism won't be going away anywhere soon, and it sure doesn't include a Hammer & Sickle anymore.
The more destruction now, the more cemented the internal insurgency will be, as well as The West's concerns for how modern Russia manages it's affairs.

These days I steer clear of any threads like this even, especially on forums that robustly promote political discussions, as it all tends to get to be about polarised camps very early on. Thanking you all for keeping as objective as we can during these circumstances, and focusing on the human impact of this situation that has the potential to affect all of our daily lives.
 
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Around 6am each morning a friend and share information and discuss the crisis. We have both noted how many people do not understand what a police state is and casually say things like "Russian people should take to the streets and end the war!" You need critical mass to rise up and the Russian government has decades of experience suppressing people below that point for some time. Obviously, Ukraine citizens are in a far worse situation than Russian citizenry and I support sanctions over bombs but I don't want 140 million people in NK-style poverty and isolation, either. The unlikely but ideal resolution would be peaceful regime change in Russia followed by an immediate end to the war and lifting of sanctions.

There was a supposed leak from an FSB agent that says the point of no return economically is like June. While I question the document's authenticity I have no doubt that the sanctions are making the war unsustainable. I can easily imagine a man like Putin doubling down on his decision and using small yield tactical baby nukes on the battlefield in an attempt to scare the West into backing off. Threats and bluffing are his modus operandi. That said, I think Putin screwed up and played the nuclear threat card way too early. I am hoping future threats fail miserably and increase the world's resolve to support Ukraine.
 
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I gather Ukraine's fun little bombing drones are messing up supply lines as well which might help explain some of the slow movement on the Russians part
 
Brock Savage said:
I can easily imagine a man like Putin doubling down on his decision and using small yield tactical baby nukes on the battlefield in an attempt to scare the West into backing off. Threats and bluffing are his modus operandi. That said, I think Putin screwed up and played the nuclear threat card way too early. I am hoping future threats fail miserably and increase the world's resolve to support Ukraine.
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This is what I'm most afraid of. Putin's backed himself into a corner, while he'll likely take Ukraine, holding it will be a nightmare, and, combined with increasing economic pressure, I can easily see him doing something drastic.
 
Giganotosaurus said:
This is what I'm most afraid of. Putin's backed himself into a corner, while he'll likely take Ukraine, holding it will be a nightmare, and, combined with increasing economic pressure, I can easily see him doing something drastic.
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That is my concern as well. Putin has effectively crashed the Russian economy, and demonstrated a level of military incompetence worse than what even the most pessimistic prognosticator expected. I suspect the China - Russia relationship will also sour as a weak pariah Russia offers China very little.

This leaves a petty little man with nukes very little to to lose by using them.
 
Bunch said:
I gather Ukraine's fun little bombing drones are messing up supply lines as well which might help explain some of the slow movement on the Russians part
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At the moment I don't think they have enough to be more than nuisance value. However, they were very effective in the Armenia war of a few years ago. I think the lesson here is that TB2s are about 1M USD each - far cheaper than a Reaper or other Western ones and less expensive than a Tomahawk cruise missile - so they could be purchased and operated in their hundreds or thousands relatively cheaply and can be used on missions too risky for a manned aircraft. Given that Russian air defences don't seem to be all that effective against them they could be a serious threat in numbers, and cheap enough for saturation wild weasel attacks as well if the enemy were to develop effective air defence tactics against them.
 
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Brock Savage said:
Around 6am each morning a friend and share information and discuss the crisis. We have both noted how many people do not understand what a police state is and casually say things like "Russian people should take to the streets and end the war!" You need critical mass to rise up and the Russian government has decades of experience suppressing people below that point for some time. Obviously, Ukraine citizens are in a far worse situation than Russian citizenry and I support sanctions over bombs but I don't want 140 million people in NK-style poverty and isolation, either. The unlikely but ideal resolution would be peaceful regime change in Russia followed by an immediate end to the war and lifting of sanctions.

There was a supposed leak from an FSB agent that says the point of no return economically is like June. While I question the document's authenticity I have no doubt that the sanctions are making the war unsustainable. I can easily imagine a man like Putin doubling down on his decision and using small yield tactical baby nukes on the battlefield in an attempt to scare the West into backing off. Threats and bluffing are his modus operandi. That said, I think Putin screwed up and played the nuclear threat card way too early. I am hoping future threats fail miserably and increase the world's resolve to support Ukraine.
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Yea, revolutions vs long time dictators are rare and even more rarely successful. A more possible option would be an insider coup from oligarchs and/or generals who are seeing their sweet life messed with. But I have no estimate of the likelihood of that happening - probably low.

I could see a frustrated Putin using "only tactical" nukes. Hopefully his generals would balk at that. Does any one know what the U.S. policy is in response to tactical nukes? Less than a nuke but devastating are some of the larger fuel-air explosives. There are lots of weapons that are illegal or at least frowned upon that aren't nukes. If the Russians start devastating city blocks at a time, will NATO respond or just watch?
 
Nobby-W said:
At the moment I don't think they have enough to be more than nuisance value.
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I'm going to go with more than a nuisance. I've seen a couple of interviews with separatists. One of the things that they were 'complaining about' was the fact that now drones are wreaking havoc on their rear positions and supply lines and fixed positions are being hammered by drones. They thought they would be safer with the Russians invading, but now the gloves are off. The Ukrainians don't have to worry about poking the bear anymore.

You don't need huge amounts of them if you use them well. They are targeting 11 million dollar SAM systems before they can be set up and taking out fuel bowsers - tanks don't run on fresh air. you don't need to kill the tanks, just their fuel. With the new cold front moving in, it's possible this mess might get a whole lot worse for the Russians. Without those forward SAM systems, the Russians will never be able to suppress the Ukrainian air space.

Obviously, more would be better.
 
CRKrueger said:
I can come up with some...

1. They specifically targeted civilians.
2. They didn't care whether or not civilians were there.
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I'm going to go with the first option, but the second one is equally valid.

1. There's clear footage of Russians gunning down civilians. I'm not talking about a wayward shell landing where it wasn't invited. Up close and personal with dozens of folks filming it. Russians walking through a crowd of protesters holding 2 live grenades above their heads.
2. There's plenty of footage of civilian cars that have been used by the Russians all shot up. They have been clearly marked with a Z. Why would a Russian paint a Z on a civilian car? Because they know their own troops will target civilians.
3. They leveled plenty of other cities without remorse
 
So the Twitter account for the Russian Embassy in South Africa posted this:

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In response, the German Embassy for South Africa responded with this:

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Props to the German Embassy for calling the Russians out on their bullshit propaganda
 
Brock Savage said:
While I question the document's authenticity a lot of it seems plausible. Russia is fucked.
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my source for that is pretty discerning, being in the industry. I don't know that the document itself is legit, but there is some credibility imparted. The tone and language the analyst speaks has some verisimilitude to other analysts I've spoken to at length. The perpetual misuse of analysts by leadership to give them authority in their confirmation bias is also quite familiar.

We will see, but I found it quite interesting.
 
Raleel said:
my source for that is pretty discerning, being in the industry. I don't know that the document itself is legit, but there is some credibility imparted. The tone and language the analyst speaks has some verisimilitude to other analysts I've spoken to at length. The perpetual misuse of analysts by leadership to give them authority in their confirmation bias is also quite familiar.

We will see, but I found it quite interesting.
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I linked the doc in a post upthread- whether authentic or not, I agree that it is interesting enough to be worth sharing. :thumbsup:
 
Giganotosaurus said:
The US just banned Russian oil, gas and coal imports.
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a tiny impact financially, a huge one politically for us. There is great worry that this will massively increase gas and oil prices. However, we are already in pretty high gas and oil and have been for a bit due to the existence of war.

1646758074013.png

Soon you will see a lot of people freak out about this, I expect. They shouldn't, because we are shopping around, of course.
 

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Raleel said:
Soon you will see a lot of people freak out about this, I expect. They shouldn't, because we are shopping around, of course.
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I think whatever measures the administration takes to counteract higher gas prices will determine what the reaction is like. There's already a lot of pressure to increase domestic production, and if that's approved, it will go a long way towards how people in the US end up feeling about this. There was already significant inflationary pressure before this, and it's become a political liability for the administration.

However, if the response is just telling people to buy electric cars (looking at you, Buttigieg)...yeah, good luck with that.
 
Dyrnwyn said:
I think whatever measures the administration takes to counteract higher gas prices will determine what the reaction is like. There's already a lot of pressure to increase domestic production, and if that's approved, it will go a long way towards how people in the US end up feeling about this. There was already significant inflationary pressure before this, and it's become a political liability for the administration.

However, if the response is just telling people to buy electric cars (looking at you, Buttigieg)...yeah, good luck with that.
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yea, that is an untenable short term solution, and I own an electric car and generally enjoy Buttigieg's policies. There are not enough being produced, the demand FAR outstripped what they anticipated*, and we can't do it in that short a period of time. As for inflation, the economy is very weird right now. People think it's going fine, but they are also worried about inflation, which shouldn't be.

* - I have a pretty long commentary on EVs, as I follow the industry pretty close. Short of it, I'm pretty ticked at most of the automakers for taking the hybrid and ev incentive money and literally doing nothing with it. Incredibly frustrating to see them take virtually no risk until the last 2 years when Tesla started eating their lunch and Rivian pushed out a truck that has a 3 year backlog and PHEVs are in such high demand they are backlogged by 6-9 months (I checked, 2 weeks ago, very hard to get nation wide). Insulating ourselves from shocks like this would be an excellent goal for the move to EVs, but it literally can't happen overnight. This should have been seen a decade ago, it could have been started a decade ago. I'll start another thread, though.
 
If there’s a massive boost in electric cars on the road in a short amount of time, the price of electricity would soar as the grid would be unprepared. There needs to be significant improvements to infrastructure for us to get there. They should probably give huge tax rebates to people who want to buy electric as well.
 
Raleel said:
yea, that is an untenable short term solution, and I own an electric car and generally enjoy Buttigieg's policies. There are not enough being produced, the demand FAR outstripped what they anticipated*, and we can't do it in that short a period of time. As for inflation, the economy is very weird right now. People think it's going fine, but they are also worried about inflation, which shouldn't be.
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Demand is one thing, but the main issue with EVs as a solution is that a lot of people simply cannot afford to replace their current vehicles even if they can get a hold of an EV. They are going to have to significantly come down in cost (or be generously subsidized) before that becomes a viable solution. Even the cheapest EV after rebates is more than a lot of used ICE cars, and the lowest-end new ICE cars too.

Then there's charging logistics -- I live in an apartment building with 200 units and zero chargers. There's only one charging station within a mile of my home, and four more within five miles. I'm talking the basic parking lot chargers here. So the infrastructure just isn't there yet either, at least not everywhere; home charging is not an option for a lot of people.

As for inflation not being a problem, I guess that depends on how it's defined. I don't think it is necessarily a problem at the 10'000 foot view/structural level, but at the level of the average consumer, yes, it's a problem.
 
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