Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar

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I don't see the point in the west giving up in helping Ukraine/providing aid now?

What a waste of time and money. If they were going to end up doing that, surely it would have been better to just let Russia get it over with quickly in the first place, and spent the money on something else.
 
Jono8 said:
I don't see the point in the west giving up in helping Ukraine/providing aid now?

What a waste of time and money. If they were going to end up doing that, surely it would have been better to just let Russia get it over with quickly in the first place, and spent the money on something else.
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I think the idea was to bleed Russia a bit and try out some hardware to see if it works or not. If they'd thrown a lot more aid in at the beginning then things might look a lot better now.
Soon both America and to a lesser extent the UK will be consumed with an election, already Ukraine is slipping down the board in terms of interest since Israel kicked off.
 
Semple said:
I guess the question that needs to be asked of Ukrainians is what do they want for the future of their country. It seems to have been pretty clear that the far Eastern side of Ukraine are very pro-Russia/anti-Ukraine, do they want to be wasting Ukrainian lives to claim back land that the people living on it want nothing to do with Ukraine.
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Oh yes, I forgot those regions voted 98% for Putin in the Russian elections, of course they're very pro-Russian. :rolleyes:
 
Owenb said:
Unfortunately right after Germany announced that they were increasing military aid next year a German court ruled that the governments budget was illegal as it broke spending rules. So savings will have to be made and some of that might be the aid to Ukraine.
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The issue has been resolved with no cuts to the promised support to Ukraine, additionally they've said that if it becomes necessary to give extra support to Ukraine because the US drops its support then they will activate the "emergency" override on the debt brake to give extra support to Ukraine.
 
Just reading a report the Kremlins minimum acceptable outcome before entering into a 4 year pause is to take Odessa and Kharkiv. To achieve this would mean taking and holding a very large area of Ukraine. If Vladolf manages this, Moldova is likely next and a push south into Romania would be very much on the cards. If the world allows this to happen I think we probably deserve all we get.
 
Bug One said:
Oh yes, I forgot those regions voted 98% for Putin in the Russian elections, of course they're very pro-Russian. :rolleyes:
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Regardless of the supposed "high vote count" for Russian support, it's pretty clear that there's a majority in that region that were pro-Russian.

Mr Jack said:
The issue has been resolved with no cuts to the promised support to Ukraine, additionally they've said that if it becomes necessary to give extra support to Ukraine because the US drops its support then they will activate the "emergency" override on the debt brake to give extra support to Ukraine.
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Does Germany have deep enough pockets to fill the void that the US might leave?
 
Semple said:
Regardless of the supposed "high vote count" for Russian support, it's pretty clear that there's a majority in that region that were pro-Russian.
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People may have been suckered in by pro-Russian propaganda before Putins forces came to liberate them. I doubt anyone left alive is particuarly pro-Russia now. Not that they have any choice in the matter.
 
jigger said:
Just reading a report the Kremlins minimum acceptable outcome before entering into a 4 year pause is to take Odessa and Kharkiv. To achieve this would mean taking and holding a very large area of Ukraine. If Vladolf manages this, Moldova is likely next and a push south into Romania would be very much on the cards. If the world allows this to happen I think we probably deserve all we get.
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Odessa is also effective control of the rest of Ukraine as that's their grain export gateway. They may as well just drop their trousers and bend over if they take that deal.
 
Eastern Ukraine was pro Russian in that they were more aligned with Russian views than Western views.
Geography pretty much ensures that. (people forget how large Ukraine is)
Your far more likely to align with people in different countries who happen to live on the other side of the arbitrary line drawn on the map than those a thousand miles away within the same country.

Its what was partly behind Ukraines troubles going back 15 or so years. The Western most areas were seeing and after a more progressive Western lifestyle. Living alongside Poland for example showed how they were changing.
The Eastern areas saw little of that, but saw what appears as a degradation of Ukraine becoming poorer and less "good" as before.
Since whilst they moved away from the influence of Russia people in the East were actually worse off than under the USSR. As hard as that is to believe.
Seemingly having things change, for the worse, against their wishes.

Its why Putin would refer to Russian speakers because when you live alongside a relatively open border you will tend to have many who will speak Russian as opposed to, or in preference to Ukrainian.
Also have to bear in mind, many in that area will have moved from Russia whilst it was part of the USSR, they ended up left behind in effect.
Estonia has a similar situation and they are now actively enforcing action against people who have lived there for decades to check they can actually speak Estonian! Many still do not, they are basically Russians pretending to be Estonians. (Having not taken up Estonia passports)
 
jigger said:
Just reading a report the Kremlins minimum acceptable outcome before entering into a 4 year pause is to take Odessa and Kharkiv. To achieve this would mean taking and holding a very large area of Ukraine. If Vladolf manages this, Moldova is likely next and a push south into Romania would be very much on the cards. If the world allows this to happen I think we probably deserve all we get.
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Romania is a member of NATO with a lot of territory to cover so that particular step is probably one too far I would guess, but it'd still be a lot of pressure applied, same with the three Baltic states who I think would start to get a lot more nervous than they are currently, because basically does Russia really think NATO would risk a Nuclear war (and thats a political decision, not a military one) over some of these smaller NATO members, who realistically wouldn't last long due to their limited geography, unless NATO airpower was already prep'd and ready to go.
 
ianh said:
Romania is a member of NATO with a lot of territory to cover so that particular step is probably one too far I would guess, but it'd still be a lot of pressure applied, same with the three Baltic states who I think would start to get a lot more nervous than they are currently, because basically does Russia really think NATO would risk a Nuclear war (and thats a political decision, not a military one) over some of these smaller NATO members, who realistically wouldn't last long due to their limited geography, unless NATO airpower was already prep'd and ready to go.
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If you look at that area, Odessa, Moldova and Transnistria any potential to push south is a problem. The trick is not allowing the issue in first place.
 
The way I see it - Russia's longer term goals there would be to use Ukraine as a staging area to flip the likes of Hungary and countries around it which have a certain amount of pro-Russian leaning - thereby somewhat isolating Romania, though that doesn't quite work as well in the age of the internet and air travel, and facilitating Russia doing whatever with Moldova and Transnistria. I'll be surprised if direct action against Romania is even something they are considering any time remotely soon let alone something we'd see in reality outside of planning.

By causing a mess on the eastern side of Europe like that, they'll likely hope to use it to distract NATO and the EU downgrading the priorities when it comes to responding to anything they do in the Baltics.

Maybe they'd like to take more direct action at some point in the more distant future but I don't think it is reality even assuming they'd roll the dice on the West not being prepared to escalate to potential nuclear war over the carving off of a smaller or part of a smaller member state.

The big risk IMO is that Russia is finding out how much they don't have to play by the West's rules and order and will increasingly be a source of destabilisation and a growing security risk which will be vastly costly both for Europe and the US compared to containing it now by ramping up support for Ukraine.
 
bingham67 said:
www.dailymail.co.uk

Putin has lost 'nearly 90 per cent of his pre-invasion army'

The report assessed that Moscow's losses in personnel and armoured vehicles have set back Russia's military modernization by 18 years, a source said.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

What a stat
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I don't like these stats or at least the impression people get from face value - Russian losses represent (actually over 90% now) the equivalent of a pretty much total wipe of its pre-2021 ground forces (at least the long term standing numbers) - but that doesn't necessarily mean those units/equipment are the ones which have been destroyed - although there are very few units left untouched by this war now.

There was a huge amount of stuff put back into service for this war - so a big slice of those numbers depletes from "maintained" reserves or cold storage. As an illustration say the active army (all forces, not just those deployed to Ukraine) had 200 artillery guns at the start of the war and Russia has now lost 250 - they might still have 60 of those originally deployed with the active army with 110 of those 250 lost guns coming from reserves/storage either in the recent years leading up to the war or pulled out subsequently to replace losses.
 
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