Russia invades Ukraine

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by the_only_turek_fan

What “justification” is Putin using for this invasion?

Putin had "rebel" forces shell schools in Donbas and blamed evacuations and the humanitarian crisis on the Ukrainians and then launched the attacks saying he needed to "de-nazify" Ukraine. They also claimed to have found mass graves of "Russian" civilians in Ukraine "separatist" regions. Problem was the world was watching and all the justification videos used had metadata that showed they were filmed days prior to the supposed incidents.

Every Russian claim to justify this has been thoroughly debunked cuz UK/US/EU countries have been actively release all intel publicly to counter Russian misinformation after dealing with the last time in 2014. Its a naked war of aggression on Putin's part at this point.

[Zoller]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Germany's response in all this has been insulting. Best they offered Ukraine was some helmets and nothing else. Germany needs to ween itself off Russian natural gas and fast. Should have been clear to do that years ago tho in 2014.

I read that Germany didn't want to send weapons because when Ukraine inevitably fell those arms and supplied would fall into Russian hands.

[Pointman]

Originally Posted by the_only_turek_fan

What “justification” is Putin using for this invasion?

"To stop genocide by Ukrainians on citizens of rebel republics".

[tony-soprano]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1496844333772853254

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Zoller

I read that Germany didn't want to send weapons because when Ukraine inevitably fell those arms and supplied would fall into Russian hands.

That's BS, they were cowards who didn't want to stoke tensions early on and now still are maintaining a "neutral" position. You don't need to send any of the advance stuff that Russia could reverse engineer if you are worried about that. Just send stacks of HK rifles, small arms, anti-air infantry weapons, that Russia would have had plenty of access to on the open market, just to seem fair with other NATO allies aid to Ukraine. Like the Dutch sent radar systems, anti-tank weapons, mine detection equipment, rifles, helmets, and combat vests and the Dutch don't make any of this stuff themselves and are much smaller than Germany.

Germany is one of the west's biggest arms exporters, they have plenty of that stuff laying around and Ukrainians have huge numbers of reservists to arm if the war is to become protracted in any way. Ukraine has a huge reservist force that they could mobilize, activate, and arm for a longer fight/insurgency if it came down to it. Small arms falling into Russian hands wouldn't matter at all since its not like Russia has a shortage of that stuff at all from their own factories + the USSR. Russia has thousands of tanks rusting unused for crying out loud. Not sending anything means Germany is just writing Ukraine off and it's an embarrassing position for Germany to take.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by the_only_turek_fan

What “justification” is Putin using for this invasion?

Distractions from dominating the daily COVID death count globally.

[karl262]

Originally Posted by 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.

I was suggesting it would be Putin that might use this nuclear solution. Escalate to de escalate.

If he's facing a bigger response than anticipated or backed into a corner he just might use a small >3 KT tactical bomb somewhere and scare the hell out of the world. Then what? Is a western nuclear power going to act in kind? I doubt it.

[Pointman]

Budapest memorandum should have been written way more clear

[PeteMoss]

Some war protests have begun in Russia - not huge but something:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1496845964103061512

[OutOfTheCube]

What’s with all the ALL CAPS news tweets? Is that a new thing?

[Azure]

Couple things, besides how sad it is.

Shame on all Western countries who have abundant access to natural gas & oil within their own bloody country and are not utilizing it, and yet they buy from Russia.

6th month outlook price on spring wheat jumped 9.1% overnight. Not a good sign for food prices, but a good sign for the Canadian farmer & Canadian exporters. On the other side, Russia is top 5 exporter of fertilizer, so Canada needs to increase investment and production on that side immediately.

Canada needs to fast track LNG development today. Right now we are funding the war buying anything from Russia that we can't produce in our own country.

Sanctions need to be severe to put it mildly.

All Russian state owned assets need to be seized.

Good job Germany. Shuttering stable nuclear power and creating reliance on Russian gas. As of 3 days ago Germany natural gas storage was at 31% capacity. Winter is almost over and that could be the only thing that saves them.

Who knows what will happen now. Hard to say what is truth and what is misinformation on Twitter feeds.

[PeteMoss]

This still feels like a giant self own by Russia. They will win the battles with Ukraine but there will be a big cost to them and I just don't see a huge benefit to them besides land.. but they've got boatloads of that as it is.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

This still feels like a giant self own by Russia. They will win the battles with Ukraine but there will be a big cost to them and I just don't see a huge benefit to them besides land.. but they've got boatloads of that as it is.

Its not about land for Putin. This is ego and protecting his domestic position. The rest of the world has been letting him get away with stuff for too long, the cost for this has to be extremely high now.

[Pointman]

Russia stands to gain absolutely nothing from this war. Putin stands to gain absolutely nothing either. What could be his reasons:

1. He's gone insane. Possible, but this has been planned for months by many high level people. Somehow nobody within his inner circle stopped him, even though they don't seem to gain much either

2. Putin wants to show off NATO. That was the leading theory before the actual invasion. But with actual war there's no doubt that everyone will beg to join NATO. NATO will now authorize much bigger spendings and will likely put all sorts of missiles targeting Russia so to keep us at the gunpoint.

3. Putin wants to restore USSR. That's silly, unless he's literally mad. Russia stands to gain nothing by gaining more land. Invading Ukraine will not make his legacy any "great", but the opposite. Everyone in Russia is shocked at this. This is the end of him as a public politician.

4. Putin got some real intel about USA trying to assassinate or at least topple him or something like that. So he's showing his strength and freaking out. Remember he's been limiting US embassy in Russia for years.

5. Putin actually has Russia's best interest in mind and wants more buffer, secure access to the black sea and such. Also mad by NATO breaking promise about not expanding east. It's somewhat plausible, but such actions will result in the opposite of his goals. It's more like a hissy fit, than a calculated plan.

[Pointman]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

Its not about land for Putin. This is ego and protecting his domestic position. The rest of the world has been letting him get away with stuff for too long, the cost for this has to be extremely high now.

This war absolutely destroys his domestic position. Russians are absolutely shocked at this. Russians basically gave up their rights to vote and such in return for stability and fairly rich life. Like it's ok to not be able to chose a president as long, as you can spend honeymoon on Maldives. After this, we will most definitely try to get the ability to choose leadership back

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by IGGYRULES

First Ukraine... Then what.. where does.it end with this psychopath

Sent from my SM-S908W using Tapatalk

Only when the USSR is back and in tact.

[tony-soprano]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

What’s with all the ALL CAPS news tweets? Is that a new thing?

They're copied and pasted directly from the BloombergTerminal as they come in to Twitter.

Spoiler!

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Pointman

This war absolutely destroys his domestic position. Russians are absolutely shocked at this. Russians basically gave up their rights to vote and such in return for stability and fairly rich life. Like it's ok to not be able to chose a president as long, as you can spend honeymoon on Maldives (like I did). After this, we will most definitely try to get the ability to choose leadership back

Unless Putin was in a weaker position domestically than he was letting on at home and now is going to use to the war as an excuse to round up and purge remaining dissenting opposition elements.

Revolutions usually coalesce around existing politic leaders and elements. I'd expect any Navalny sympathizers to get rounded up and arrested shortly. After that, who do anti-Putin Russians rally around? Then maybe further Russian constitutional and government restructuring.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by tony-soprano

https://twitter.com/user/status/1496838538398248971

Originally Posted by tony-soprano

They're copied and pasted directly from the BloombergTerminal as they come in to Twitter.

Spoiler!

Why not take them off Bloomberg proper instead of some rando unaccredited entrepreneur account then?

[GirlySports]

We knew this was happening when the hockey team wore CCCP throwbacks.