Putin's invasion of Ukraine
- Thread starter Saint
- Start date
Yes, actually. Not a purely military war - but an asymmetric war where Putin is denied air superiority by NATO, is denied freedom of movement within Ukraine by their military (and their own citizens) and is denied funding by international action. A lot of republicans don't want to see that, because they admire and support Putin. Which is why they are working against sanctions against Russia and support of the Ukraine.
How does Nato deny Russia air superiority?
The first of those surely won't happen (???) as that will put NATO and Russia at war, something which neither side want.
However, it does raise the question of what a "win" looks like for each side. For Ukraine it could simply be the eventual removal of Russian forces from its land and the continuation of their right to self-determination. That might take years to achieve should Russia secure an occupation, but it is not outside the bounds of possibility that continued uprising and insurgency against that occupation, coupled with continuing economic sanctions against Russia, sees Russia eventually pull out.
It took 10 years in Afghanistan between Russian invasion and subsequent withdrawal.
Through surface to air missiles in both neighboring states and in Ukraine itself.
It won't happen directly - but it could happen indirectly, through states furnishing material to both the Ukraine and neighboring states.
This is why Putin is so bent on doing this quickly. He knows that a long protracted Afghanistan-style war will both weaken Russia and make him an international pariah. That's also why right wing support in the US for Putin and his invasion is so dangerous - it helps remove his fear that this will be an unwinnable and politically deadly war. If the US supports him - or even if republican support for the war cripples the US response - his chances of keeping Ukraine get much better.
Surface to air missiles from neighbouring states,would that not be direct conflict between Nato and Russia?
The reason for not having "boots on the ground"
Or did you only mean the supply of surface to air missiles to Ukraine from neighbouring states?
Yes. For example, man-portable antiaircraft missiles sent to Ukraine and Belarus, and furnished to Ukranians in both places.
FYI - technically you're talking about air supremacy rather than merely air superiority. (Yeah, maybe splitting hairs)
If Ukraine have no planes in the sky and Russia do then they have conceded air superiority to Russia at least, but things like ground-to-air defences can prevent Russia from achieving air supremacy. And the degree of that superiority will be determined by the level of aerial denial that Ukraine can muster.
I don't think it would get to a point, even with all the help from NATO, where they're capable of stopping every Russian aircraft and helicopter being in the skies. But maybe.
Well, you get your information from white nationalists and propagandists for Russia and China, so this is going to happen from time to time.
More directly: When you go out of your way to immerse yourself in wrongness, you're going to be wrong more often than you expect.
foghorn
Valued Senior Member
My heart skipped a beat when I saw this BBC head line ''Chernobyl: Radiation spike at nuclear plant seized by Russian forces''.
Stand down for now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60528828
Stand down for now.
Breathe
But that's not actually a real problem.
Just like there isn't an invading army of Mexicans taking over the United States.
Migration patterns tell us a lot; xenophobic mythopoeia is not a reliable means of assessing those circumstances.
Meanwhile—
—consider that back around the time Russia was hosting the Olympics and invading its neighbors, there was a period when people were hunting homosexuals in the streets of Moscow: Luring, abducting, and then torturing victims on video. There were no charges; suspects weren't arrested. A reporter asked Putin about it, and the Russian boss gave an answer about how failure to suppress homosexuality risked Russia's future because men will stop being husbands and fathers. It was one thing to laugh about it, at the time, because the only men afraid of mass homosexual conversion are already insecure about their own heterosexuality, so Puti-Toots the closet case is just one of those amazing things we get along the way. However, the flip-side is that Vladimir Putin thinks it's okay to hunt and torture homosexuals in order to save Russia from itself.
Recently, a cable television host asked why people hate Putin, and to be clear, it's not really a matter of hating him: When a murder-loving thug declares himself my enemy, I might notice. Still, though, even as a question about murder-loving thugs in general, what part of their narratives should we trust?
Technically, NATO isn't a threat to Russia, and no, this war is not some both-sides equivocation. If it is such a problem that "neither side will back down", then perhaps you might take a moment to explain why Ukraine should have to. Remember that part of the pro-Russian narrative here is paradoxical: The only way for Ukraine to not lose its right to self-determination is to forfeit its right to self-determination. And if I say don't ask me how that works, it's part of a disinformation drumbeat in the twittery, and only makes sense according to generally anti-American presupposition; the key is in understanding how Ukraine joining NATO would destroy the Republic's right to self-determination, because the solution in that framework is that Ukraine can only protect its right to self-determination by agreeing to never make certain decisions in the future, i.e., waiving its right to self-determination. That is, the argument goes that joining NATO would destroy Ukraine's right to self-determination, so the only way to save that self-determination is if Ukraine agrees to never determine that it should join NATO.
It seems a bit difficult to suggest the U.S. "has deliberately spent years trying to cause war in europe", and, no, it's not "suddenly blaming Russia".
If the U.S. wanted to cause a war in Europe, we could have tried for it in Poland, in 2013. Or as Condoleeza Rice put it in 2008, ten interceptors in Poland won't do anything to disrupt Russia. The problem was and remains that Putin sees the prospect of his neighbors having any defensive capacity as some sort of threat.
So let's try this: At what point do you think the U.S. should have occupied what portion of Europe in order to do more than nothing, or not ignore the situation, or properly support who? 2004, when Russia subverted Ukraine? 2008, when Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia? How about 2010 or so, as Putin shuffled power toward returning to the presidency? 2014, when Russia invaded the Republic of Ukraine? And there were political assassinations along the way, even in other countries. Should the United States have occupied Britain in 2006, or 2012, to protect it from Russian aggression? Somewhere between trying to cause a war and ignoring a civil war, well, given what passes for a warring pretext in the U.S., maybe it's better that we haven't accepted the invitations.
Consider, please, that among Americans who routinely criticize, condemn, and downright savage the idiocy and brutishness of their country, one thing that draws us back to defending ragged American integrity is a dysfunctional critique. Not only do certain ranges of bullshit offend our petty pride, the shitness of some arguments only makes things worse. Spending time disputing such distorted argumentative frameworks is, functionally speaking, a distraction from useful discourse.
And though there are days when paradigmatic discourse seems to suggest there are no true good guys, we ought be wary of narratives styled particularly toward that pretense. For instance, it's one thing if anyone is wary of American political machinations, but the Russian-sympathetic narrative treats Ukranians like shit. Additionally, no, migrants aren't the villains, here.
In other news, it's one thing if the cartoonist went and made the joke↱ about a discredited rightist, but that's why it is a joke; often, the audience does not understand the concept of performance art, and, for the most part, they don't care, and many of those would resent any pretense that they should.
Breathe: Even the truth—(¡freeze!)—can be broken, cannot be broken.
____________________
Notes:
@tomtomorrow. "That guy is gonna reveal that his entire life was a big performance art piece at some point". Twitter. 27 February 2022. Twitter.com. 28 February 2022. https://bit.ly/3tAXgx5
But that's not actually a real problem.
Just like there isn't an invading army of Mexicans taking over the United States.
Migration patterns tell us a lot; xenophobic mythopoeia is not a reliable means of assessing those circumstances.
Meanwhile—
—consider that back around the time Russia was hosting the Olympics and invading its neighbors, there was a period when people were hunting homosexuals in the streets of Moscow: Luring, abducting, and then torturing victims on video. There were no charges; suspects weren't arrested. A reporter asked Putin about it, and the Russian boss gave an answer about how failure to suppress homosexuality risked Russia's future because men will stop being husbands and fathers. It was one thing to laugh about it, at the time, because the only men afraid of mass homosexual conversion are already insecure about their own heterosexuality, so Puti-Toots the closet case is just one of those amazing things we get along the way. However, the flip-side is that Vladimir Putin thinks it's okay to hunt and torture homosexuals in order to save Russia from itself.
Recently, a cable television host asked why people hate Putin, and to be clear, it's not really a matter of hating him: When a murder-loving thug declares himself my enemy, I might notice. Still, though, even as a question about murder-loving thugs in general, what part of their narratives should we trust?
Technically, NATO isn't a threat to Russia, and no, this war is not some both-sides equivocation. If it is such a problem that "neither side will back down", then perhaps you might take a moment to explain why Ukraine should have to. Remember that part of the pro-Russian narrative here is paradoxical: The only way for Ukraine to not lose its right to self-determination is to forfeit its right to self-determination. And if I say don't ask me how that works, it's part of a disinformation drumbeat in the twittery, and only makes sense according to generally anti-American presupposition; the key is in understanding how Ukraine joining NATO would destroy the Republic's right to self-determination, because the solution in that framework is that Ukraine can only protect its right to self-determination by agreeing to never make certain decisions in the future, i.e., waiving its right to self-determination. That is, the argument goes that joining NATO would destroy Ukraine's right to self-determination, so the only way to save that self-determination is if Ukraine agrees to never determine that it should join NATO.
It seems a bit difficult to suggest the U.S. "has deliberately spent years trying to cause war in europe", and, no, it's not "suddenly blaming Russia".
If the U.S. wanted to cause a war in Europe, we could have tried for it in Poland, in 2013. Or as Condoleeza Rice put it in 2008, ten interceptors in Poland won't do anything to disrupt Russia. The problem was and remains that Putin sees the prospect of his neighbors having any defensive capacity as some sort of threat.
So let's try this: At what point do you think the U.S. should have occupied what portion of Europe in order to do more than nothing, or not ignore the situation, or properly support who? 2004, when Russia subverted Ukraine? 2008, when Russia invaded the Republic of Georgia? How about 2010 or so, as Putin shuffled power toward returning to the presidency? 2014, when Russia invaded the Republic of Ukraine? And there were political assassinations along the way, even in other countries. Should the United States have occupied Britain in 2006, or 2012, to protect it from Russian aggression? Somewhere between trying to cause a war and ignoring a civil war, well, given what passes for a warring pretext in the U.S., maybe it's better that we haven't accepted the invitations.
Consider, please, that among Americans who routinely criticize, condemn, and downright savage the idiocy and brutishness of their country, one thing that draws us back to defending ragged American integrity is a dysfunctional critique. Not only do certain ranges of bullshit offend our petty pride, the shitness of some arguments only makes things worse. Spending time disputing such distorted argumentative frameworks is, functionally speaking, a distraction from useful discourse.
And though there are days when paradigmatic discourse seems to suggest there are no true good guys, we ought be wary of narratives styled particularly toward that pretense. For instance, it's one thing if anyone is wary of American political machinations, but the Russian-sympathetic narrative treats Ukranians like shit. Additionally, no, migrants aren't the villains, here.
†
In other news, it's one thing if the cartoonist went and made the joke↱ about a discredited rightist, but that's why it is a joke; often, the audience does not understand the concept of performance art, and, for the most part, they don't care, and many of those would resent any pretense that they should.
†
Notes:
@tomtomorrow. "That guy is gonna reveal that his entire life was a big performance art piece at some point". Twitter. 27 February 2022. Twitter.com. 28 February 2022. https://bit.ly/3tAXgx5
Ironic twist:
May be Russia should be invited to join NATO? LOL
May be Russia should be invited to join NATO? LOL
They can, however, make it extremely expensive for Russia to keep aircraft in the air. And that's a good outcome.I don't think it would get to a point, even with all the help from NATO, where they're capable of stopping every Russian aircraft and helicopter being in the skies. But maybe.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Do you think Afghanistan can win a war with the U.S. and with Russia?
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I think the odds favor Ukraine over the long-term. It's much harder to invade than to repel. It's also not like there is a great reason to invade in the first place where the Russian people are behind the war effort.
Ukraine didn't do anything to the Russian people. The economic sanctions will take its toll eventually. Putin has to lose support. Sure, he is a dictator but he still needs some level of support among the people and among the oligarchs.
They can take him out, the military can take him out, he can come up with a story to save face, etc. The entire Ukrainian population is armed, no one (very few) want to be a part of Russia, democracy has taken hold. Even if the tanks make it to Kiev and shoot up the place, what then?
I just don't see this as being sustainable on the part of Russia over the long-term.
Ukraine didn't do anything to the Russian people. The economic sanctions will take its toll eventually. Putin has to lose support. Sure, he is a dictator but he still needs some level of support among the people and among the oligarchs.
They can take him out, the military can take him out, he can come up with a story to save face, etc. The entire Ukrainian population is armed, no one (very few) want to be a part of Russia, democracy has taken hold. Even if the tanks make it to Kiev and shoot up the place, what then?
I just don't see this as being sustainable on the part of Russia over the long-term.
sculptor
Valued Senior Member
ask yourself
What does the bear want?