'Could' and 'will' are two different things:

[dancesofthelight]

 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-says-russia-masses-more-troops-near-ukraine-invasion-could-come-any-time-2022-02-11/

The glorious Proletarian heartland beloved of the Western Left that is as completely willfully clueless of what Putin's pseudo-Tsarist dreams are as the global Right is evidently poised to go for a big war after all, if you believe US political and military leadership. This is a Godzilla-sized if based on multiple levels of recent events and leaves the question 'but why would you take anything Washington says on what Moscow's going to do completely at face value' for anyone who does. 

100,000 troops is not enough to take Ukraine, let alone hold it. Ukraine can fight the shittiest lousiest war imaginable (and it'll probably do better than that but not by a great heaping margin) and it will still bloody the Russians unimaginably worse than anything since Yeltsin's idiocy in Grozny. Ukraine is a massive country, Russia doesn't have the logistical ability to launch a drive to Kyiv, let alone west of it. 

Russia has been moving massive amounts of troops into Belarus, strengthening its hold on the country enough to almost outright annex it while the eyes of the world are on Kyiv. If I thought Putin was that smart (and nothing in his career since he began his career with a willful massacre of Chechens right out of the Tsarist days in finest Russian colonialist fashion supports it) I'd see this as a highly expensive maskirovka for a Belarus annexation. But since Putin isn't that smart, this raises the question of what exactly he really thinks he's doing here. 

Personally I do think Putin's been high on the smell of his own farts since 1999 and has repeatedly gotten away with genocidal barbarism of the kind that'd see the world demand a US leader swing from a gallows in the Hague if the USA had done it. He has seen zero accountability and instead fawning obsequious 'if Russia butchers Muslims they're just fucking Syrians or Chechens anyway, not human beings or anyone important like Parisians at a soccer game' coverage. This is the precise context in which going from smaller-scale barbarism to the kind of war he doesn't have the power to actually do whether or not he thinks he does looks like a rational approach. 

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/belarusalert/while-the-world-watches-ukraine-putin-is-quietly-occupying-belarus/

^After all, even if this is a bluff he's outright regained Minsk and a nice little salient to outflank the Baltic countries and Ukraine whenever he decides 'I'm about to die, so fuck it, burn it all down and piss on the ashes' if he does go for that approach. 

Did anyone care when it was Minsk and not Kyiv? Do people in fact care or remember Belarus exists or why the Tsars used to call themselves Emperors of all the Russias, plural? Probably not. 

It took the USSR most of a year and vast armies (to be fair the Wehrmacht of 1943-4 wasn't fighting with the brilliance of Alexander the Great and more with suicidal stubbornness no modern Ukrainian army would show but they're not facing the Red Army of that time either) to conquer all of Ukraine. And it took equally vast armies against even weaker opponents in the Civil War to squelch the umpty-gajillion armies in Civil War era Ukraine. 

Ukraine can fight badly with ill-led and poorly motivated troops but it will still break Russia in the same way that Chechnya did as the task Putin wants his armies to do is beyond their power. 

The problem is that Putin himself is what happened when Yeltsin went 'la dee da fuck logistics, glorious Russian army doesn't need gas or bullets in its fucking tanks and can put them in cities full of RPGs and rifles'. What happens with Russia if it gets a 1905-scale embarrassment with nuclear weapons? For that matter, what happens with NATO? Based on Libya the non-US factor in NATO is a social club for people with guns to drink on the weekend where they have guns and not broomsticks. If NATO's power gets further punctured, could Russia reasonably expect a Ukrainian war to crack it apart and thus salvage a kind of victory from the jaws of defeat? 

Comments

(frozen) (no subject)

[fridi]

Now now, why rob folks of the pleasure of hearing the sound of themselves typing?

(frozen) (no subject)

[dancesofthelight]

I think Dreamville has some kind of strange emotional stake in the idea of Russia restoring its 1914 frontiers for some reason. So naturally a post noting that whatever Russia thinks it can do, it ain't gonna do that and that the problems get worse when Russia fails is going to frost his pumpkins.

(frozen) (no subject)

[dancesofthelight]

I mean your recent post on Ukraine where you said glorious Third Rome has a God-Given right to control the 'mother of the Russian state' is a pretty clear-cut exercise in that argument. Because clearly Ukraine has no legitimate right to exist as a state, and the only reason someone would think that is Russian nationalism by proxy.

Whether or not Russia did have a 'right' to Kyiv if it doesn't have the gas to supply 100,000 troops on a drive for it it's not going to get it no matter what it wants. And I have seen nothing from Putin's exercises in barbarism to support the idea his state can supply 100,000 troops in a land war.

(frozen) (no subject)

[dancesofthelight]

I'm sure you don't, because you said my comments stating it were strawmen and refused to explain what you meant by Russia having a legitimate claim to Ukraine. If you just dismiss it as a strawman and won't answer, someone else is free to speculate on why you refused to provide clear-cut answers. And that speculation leads, under Occam's Razor, to the view that you agree with Putin that Ukraine is a fake state promoted by Jews and Germans to deprive Russia of its mother-city, Kiev.

(frozen) (no subject)

[dancesofthelight]

What is there to correct? You insisted that Russia has the right to annex its neighbors at will. Then when you were told point blank that this assertion, held at face value, is at best willful 'might makes right' you call it a strawman and try to walk back words without actually doing so. If you make the first statement and retract it without actually retracting it the conclusion there is almost always 'person believes sentiment but lacks the courage to admit it.'

(frozen) (no subject)

[dancesofthelight]

As opposed to insulting my posts by declaring them incoherent verbal masturbation and expecting me to give you a respect you refuse to give me? Nah. If you're going to act like an assclown and leap to personal insults you don't get to declare a high ground you willingly forfeited for cheap shots because someone else doesn't sit there and let themselves get the cheap shots in question.

(frozen) (no subject)

[fridi]

Whatever you say bruh.

(frozen) (no subject)

[dancesofthelight]

As an FYI if you want respect from someone else, starting out by calling things verbal ejaculation is a really, really poor way to do so. Respect is either mutual or it doesn't exist. If you are free to insult me, I am equally free to respond in kind.

(frozen) (no subject)

[asthfghl]

My warning applies to you too.

Back to your corners. Both of you. Now.

(frozen) (no subject)

[asthfghl]

I think we haven't flagged anyone in years here, but you're about to be the first one in a long time.

[dancesofthelight]

1) Russia tries to invade Ukraine, it runs out of gas before it gets near Kyiv, let alone the western territories.

2) The Russian army runs out of gas and bullets, then Ukraine's badly led and poorly motivated army has a glorified shooting gallery.

3) Russia is in the middle of annexing Belarus and might break up NATO whether or not it actually launches a war in Ukraine and could get a win even if it did lose a Ukrainian war.

4) If Putin was rational he'd realize that logistics and manpower do not favor 100,000 Russian troops in Ukraine. Nothing in the history of his ramshackle dictatorship suggests he is that rational and that pointing this out to him would be good for the life expectancy of people who did.

5) Putin is what happened the last time Russia launched an idiotic war it lacked the logistical and strategic ability to pull off, and that was suppressing a glorified rebellion.

6) Invading a country the size of France in a big conventional war is a much bigger task so if Putin does embarrass himself he might find himself swinging from the Kremlin spires. Or he might proclaim it was all about Minsk, not Kyiv, and see the probable breakup of NATO as what he was really after, facts and logic be damned.

[dancesofthelight]

Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. Russia has had problems waging small wars and supplying troops in small wars. 100,000 troops driving west to Kyiv is a task far beyond anything Russia's tried since the Soviet-Afghan War. And Putin is not leading a superpower with an infinite budget and military supply line. He's leading a state that hemorrhaged a million human beings to the current pandemic and can barely supply troops in an ethnic Russian enclave under the most favorable circumstances.

Ukraine doesn't need genius, it just needs the Russians to run out of gas. Which based on their existing military performance they'd do so well east of Kyiv because glorious Russian army can run tanks on icons and prayers to the Virgin.

[dancesofthelight]

100,000 troops in a campaign requires a mountain of infrastructure and logistical support. The USA couldn't manage this feat in a territory the size of Ukraine, either. Iraq in 2003 already showed that. Russia doesn't have America's money or ability to supply forces on that scale by throwing money to build the equipment to do so. So I rest my case that Russia is likely to replay the experience its armies had in the Winter Water and under the eyes of a world that actually is paying attention.

[kiaa]

Um, running out of gas is probably the last thing I'd be worrying about if I were Russia, just saying.

[dancesofthelight]

Supplying 100,000 troops in a campaign requires a shitload of gas. I don't think the USA could do that in Ukraine either judging by how many problems it had with supplying troops under its own ludicrously favorable context in 2003 in Iraq. And the USA has far more money and equipment to throw at supplying troops in an overland invasion than Putin's regime does after all those sanctions and with the Belarus and Syrian campaigns as still ongoing realities.

If Washington, with the most lavishly funded army and the best logistical supply chain in relative terms in the world can't do it, Russia sure the fuck ain't.

[kiaa]

All this talk of all out invasion makes me wonder if we aren't getting over ourselves. Do you really believe there'll be an all out invasion? But really?

[dancesofthelight]

No, I don't think there will be one. I think the whole thing is more probable to be a highly expensive maskirovka for Russia to complete the annexation of Belarus and to move enough troops there that it sticks. Russia has no need to gamble on an almost certain failure when it's got an equally clinched success. One that's been pulled off for years with the world shrugging and going 'meh, it's Belarus, replacing a Belarusian dictator with a Russian one is probably an improvement.'

I think that enough of the Russian army knows it doesn't have the logistics to supply an invasion and outright total war for Ukraine that it won't, in fact, launch one.

[kiaa]

So it's what everyone thought. A pompous move masquerading a target that sits elsewhere. Typical Putin.

[dancesofthelight]

Hopefully, though the USA and TASS saying for people to evacuate Kyiv is why I'm considering the prospect of what happens if Russia does do it. The previous small war in the Donbas never saw this sentiment echoed from BOTH states and it marks a profound change, and is not a small step to take at diplomatic levels.

[dewline]

That's just sickly pragmatic enough to make sense.

Now I want to try to figure out a way to pry Belarus loose without triggering a nuclear exchange. I figure there's ways to do that. The really good ways would leave Russia's government thinking it was their idea, too, whatever they end up being.

[dancesofthelight]

At this point in time? After years of Lucashenko and Putin collaborating on Russian annexation of Belarus? Always nice to see optimism.

[dewline]

Optimism?

I live in eastern Ottawa. Well outside the "Red Zone", yes, and the fears of my friends and acquaintances who have to live and work inside it these past two weeks?

Ugh.