“Only 190,000 troops” and 60
-70 miles of armour, two dozen war ships, a few hundred aircraft. Ya know, a typical peacekeeping force…
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Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar
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“Only 190,000 troops” and 60
-70 miles of armour, two dozen war ships, a few hundred aircraft. Ya know, a typical peacekeeping force…
Yes, heaven forbid there's a discussion on here instead of Ukrainian propaganda being copied and pasted from Twitter by Grim5 and jigger typing "Putler" with everyone patting each other on the back
You think the Ukrainians are so stupid as to not utilise social media to benefit their war efforts? That's rather insulting.
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If he took Kiev and decapitated the government he has the country. Yes small pockets of resistance would need to be mopped up but the war would effectively be over.
and take the country, otherwise why try to take Kiev and take out the government?
No one said it was a member. They are an ally though and the US and UK said we'd have their back when they gave up their nukes.
We weren't going to bring them into NATO. They were a million miles from being invited in. Only in your head and the heads of the people you listen to was that happening. You sound like the people saying Turkey would be admitted into the EU within a couple of year during the Breixit campaign, when the truth was they've never been further away from joining.
Putin invaded because he wants to restore the former USSR/Russian empire. NATO expansion is his excuse, an excuse you are happy to parrot.
Oh I think we should have done far far more. We should have given them better weapons far earlier, weapons that can strike bases over the border and destroy Russian military logistics. Sadly there are forces in the West who like you don't want to support Ukraine and want us to let Russia win so they can get their cheap fuel again or because it suits their politics to paint our leaders as failures if Russia wins. That Russia winning is terrible for the West and good for our enemies means nothing to them.
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Well Russia has and its got people like you parroting their propaganda for them as well.
What is the evidence for this? The source seems to literally be "trust me bro".
Mostly we were slow to give Ukraine more support because Putin used Manman theory, given that he could also have actually just been mad it was sensible not to call his bluff right away. You know more than the top NATO Generals and military analysts though.
Madman theory - Wikipedia
The intention was pretty clear - they thought they could headshot the Ukrainian government and take the country, with just a few hold out army groups and/or cities to surround and siege into surrender, you don't spend 4 years bringing stuff like the 2S7 Pion/Malka back into service/upgrading and other 240mm artillery/mortar platforms (such as the Tyulpan) and then building them up on the border just to knock out the government. The lacking troops numbers is a miscalculation not a statement or indication of intention. (Partly because they thought a far larger number of Ukrainians would welcome them than did and also because a considerable number of the corrupt Ukrainian officials they had in their pocket had over-exaggerated their ability to influence events so as to keep the gravy train coming).
Previous to 2014 Ukraine has zero intention of joining NATO, they even legislated against joining foreign security pacts which was held up under both pro-Russian and pro-Western governments. They only started to come around to the overtures from the West as to NATO as a reaction to Russian actions in the build up to and since 2014. There is a reason to that, not a good one, Ukraine's defence industry is not exactly the cleanest.
In 2009 they signed the Declaration to Complement the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership, key point being the below:
Russia pays attention to this kind of thing, this is what effectively triggered Russia so badly.
I think they had enough troops to take Kyiv and knock out the government and hopefully force a surrender if everything went right, but clearly they weren't looking at a protracted war or some Wehrmacht style invasion of Europe.
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It is worth reading up on the whole sequence of events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine–NATO_relations
It is very unlikely Ukraine would have joined NATO, at least not any time soon, but for Russia undermining the security situation.
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Well I agree, I don't think they would either in the next few years, but long term? You'd imagine so, given US involvement in Ukraine and them doing joint exercises, etc. Russia obviously had an extremely hard line on Ukraine joining NATO, and here we are.
Putin made it clear what he thought in 2008, yet still we went ahead. I just don't understand why we were obsessed with getting Ukraine in NATO. It defeats the purpose of NATO when inviting members causes a war in Europe.
What more of a warning do we want? He literally spelled it out in black and white.
Putin warns Nato over expansion
President says Moscow will view any attempt to expand Nato to its borders as 'direct threat'
www.theguardian.com
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No one said they were. Even the Russians are stupid enough to attempt a Wehrmacht style invasion of Europe. That doen't mean they aren't interested in invading parts of Europe.
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Soldato
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If they do they should focus on all attention on Moscow and St Petersburg, striking other cities will be a waste of time as Russia will either ignore it, play it down or let citizens in the provinces suffer through the winter.
Need to get them some more advanced systems mounted on something like the Supacat HMT.
Personally I think there are some considerable complications to furnishing Ukraine with an air force capable of taking the fight to Russia like that in the air and it would be better to supply them with good quantities of mobile medium range anti-air systems which can deny Russia the skies comprehensively, but if they think they can make it work I say let em.
Where would Ukraine be able to hide these F16 planes plus a runway so russian doesn't blow them up while there sitting on the ground
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Poland
. J/k but I'd bet they'd be agreeable (minor current disagreements excepted).
Though actually expensive and an effort to construct, though that is more a peace time concern, hardened shelters are actually pretty effective at protecting aircraft. Still not an ideal situation.
F-16s are only one part of the equation though - even with their failures Russia does have advanced long range air-defences, AWACS and similar along with a range of fighters, etc. problems with maintenance, lacking institutional knowledge and experience conducting air-operations at the required scale, etc. seem to be holding Russia back from playing that card but Ukraine escalating in the air may force their hand and that might actually do more harm than good for Ukraine in the longer run compared to the current situation in the air. But as before I wouldn't personally say they shouldn't have stuff like the F-16 if Ukraine thinks they can pull it off.
I've always wondered why Russia did not use its airforce to its advantage. In the first day of the invasion they had very few aircraft in the air, when on paper Russia should be able to field hundreds or thousands of aircraft.
It took a while to work out why and the answer is they can't. They overbuilt their logistics a long time ago. Back in WW2 there was a saying the US had in the pacific - what was the point of building lots of planes if you can't get them to the fight.
Russia may have a lot of aircraft on paper and even if I take that at its face value and assume the numbers are right and the aircraft are all operational, the reason Russia couldn't use them is they don't have the logistics for it.
It took a while to work out why and the answer is they can't. They overbuilt their logistics a long time ago. Back in WW2 there was a saying the US had in the pacific - what was the point of building lots of planes if you can't get them to the fight.
Russia may have a lot of aircraft on paper and even if I take that at its face value and assume the numbers are right and the aircraft are all operational, the reason Russia couldn't use them is they don't have the logistics for it.
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