[CaptainCrunch]

This thing is going to be over in the next few days with the rate that the Russian attack is going.



Really Nato and the UN should have mobilized on this weeks ago and at least NATO should have re-enforced with heavy units. Instead the Ukraine Military is getting swamped under.


1) Frankly by the time the consultations and debate with the UN, which won't matter with China holding a hammer with a Veto vote, so any military action by the UN won't happen. And even if it does, it will be far too late. NATO can try to respond, but that will take days that Ukraine doesn't have.



By the time any action happens, Russia will have complete control of the air, any deep water ports that Nato needs will be under Russian control. They will dig in their troops and re-enforce over a short logistics line. Also pretty much any airfield will also be under Russian control. That literally leaves out any deployment of heavy units except by road. The US and Great Britain would have to send units through Poland or Germany through Austria and Hungry via road, and by the time they arrived they would have to fight through air power and long range artillary. Also what's problimatic is that the sea borne re-enforcements would go through Poland through a port like Gdansk, but with Russian Aircraft in Belarus, they would be able to interdict any shipment of heavy weapons, and formations that are needed in Ukraine.



Ukraine maybe has 150 functional modern battle tanks like the T-84 with another few hundred older T-80's 72's and 64. The Russian's have a huge advantage in heavy formation numbers.



I guess NATO could deploy their rapid response force. But a rapid response force is really light infantry troops and their transport aircraft and by the time that could be deployed which by the NATO handbook is a day there won't be any airfields.



Any battle now wouldn't be a battle to defend Ukraine, but to Liberate it fighting a entrenched enemy with air and artillery superiority.


2) We can talk about a nuclear option or warning. Someone mentioned detonating a small device to warn the Russians to back off or they'll get more. But frankly I would expect that any detonation of a nuclear device on Russian Soil would instantly trigger a nuclear response by Russia at the country that fires it. The last thing we need is an escalation to a nuclear nightmare. The Russians and Americans and Brits have massive amounts of nuclear warheads. Even firing a "Warning shot" would be utter madness, especially with Putin on the other side.


3) We can talk about what Canada should do, but frankly outside of sanctions I don't even see how we'd be any use in a modern battlefield. Our armed forces are too far gone, to old and obsolete. Yes our Soldiers are top of the line. But this isn't the taliban or ISIS we're fighting. This is a major military power, with advanced weapons and aircraft wed be facing. A Canadian contribution wouldn't last long or be all that useful. I mean the first and most likely contribution would likely be a squadron of CF-18's. Some transport and surveillance craft. Navy wise I think we were looking at deploying a frigate. But we don't have the transportation ability to send tanks or AFV and NATO's going to give priority to other nations who have more advanced and modern military gear. So Canada is just going to have to look at economic levers and Putin doesn't give a crap about that.



4) The international response is going to be too late, too slow and too indecisive. The only thing that Ukraine is probably going to be able to do in the next 72 hours or so is take their military out of the field, save what they have militarily and form a insurgency movement. The problem is that the Russian's historically aren't known to be all the concerned with things like civilian casualties or honoring things like the Geneva Convention, so its likely that any action by an insurgent group will lead to Russian retaliation against civilian centers.



5) If we don't think that China wasn't informed by Putin about this, or that they aren't watching this with a ton of interest, we're fooling ourselves. The problem for China is that while they have upgraded their navy, and added power projection in their own sea with carriers and long range ground based aviation and missiles. They don't really want a confrontation with the US Navy. However if China is interested in resources, they won't even bother with Taiwan, they'll go straight after the Spratley's, and be happy with that.


Frankly as soon as Putin saw NATO with a bit of a split (Thanks Germany). No significant re-enforcements of the Ukraine Military, and the imposition of sanctions instead of a combined sanction and re-enforcement effort with heavy formations, advanced aircraft and artillery, he was going to jump at this.







just my two cents.