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

[dowie]

It's smells like armegeddon to me. However hard to fathom, I think he's gone mad and might actually do it

He's refrained from turning Ukrainian cities into mid-90s Grozny so far, I'm not sure he's going to be looking at mutually assured destruction right now.

Granted it is a bit of a worry if things get silly, he's a very old man by Russian standards, close to the typical life expectancy for Russian men, rumours he might be ill too.... don't really want an ego maniac who doesn't have long to live anyway doing something silly.

 

[D.P.]

Not really. there's the missile crews themselves that have to fire the weapons. How many of them would think, I don't want to kill millions of people I don't have a quarrel with. Especially if they've found out why they are firing.

These guys get turned into robots through training. They continuously under go training exercises where they sre not warned beforehand. Any hesitation and they are out of a job. The people selected for such roles have specific psychological profiles and are highly susceptible to following orders. They alsk have multiple reserves, do if someone refused to follow orders they can be shot for treason and a replacement put in the hot seat.

 

[EGuitarStar]

It's smells like armegeddon to me. However hard to fathom, I think he's gone mad and might actually do it

He has gone mad and now very desperate, but I doubt the Chinese will appreciate him using any Nukes, they'll be keeping a close eye on this as will the rest of the World. Only Putin wants Armageddon and destruction.

 

[bingham67]

Ukrainian TB2 drones doing some heavy damage apparently Russia have had problems dealing with them in Syria.

 

[Uther]

It's not clear if you're quoting or you're summarising in your own words - it reads like the latter? Do you have a source re: what you're referring to?

Sky news. Quoting. I'll take his summary over some of the armchair experts in here.

 

[englishpremier]

what stocks and currencies is everyone shorting tomorrow. is gas and oil a strong buy, provided we dont get nuked by then

Unless you had access to pre-market it's probably too late.

Whilst it may have been a public reason but the real reason is that Russia could have retaliated by supplying anti air to Iran/Syria.

An S400 is in the region of $300-400m so pretty expensive to just give away a few of them. It would have to be something much cheaper and likely less capable.

Vets joining the Ukrainian foreign legion https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...o-military-veterans-fight-russia-with-ukraine

Now what is to stop western special ops teams going in under the guise of volunteers.

 

[AORUS]

If he does go crazy with nukes, I am on the fence, he’s 69, could just do it with not much to lose

And who can we thank! For the world to end if he not much to lose!

 

[LabR@t]

He's refrained from turning Ukrainian cities into mid-90s Grozny so far, I'm not sure he's going to be looking at mutually assured destruction right now.

Granted it is a bit of a worry if things get silly, he's a very old man by Russian standards, close to the typical life expectancy for Russian men, rumours he might be ill too.... don't really want an ego maniac who doesn't have long to live anyway doing something silly.

It's unlikely but if he's dying and is mentally ill who knows!

 

[dowie]

These guys get turned into robots through training. They continuously under go training exercises where they sre not warned beforehand. Any hesitation and they are out of a job. The people selected for such roles have specific psychological profiles and are highly susceptible to following orders. They alsk have multiple reserves, do if someone refused to follow orders they can be shot for treason and a replacement put in the hot seat.

This is getting into a bit of Hollywood fantasy tbh...

Back in a rather more grounded reality, they're still human beings not brainwashed drones and do sometimes defy their orders/apply some thought etc..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol,[3] is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in a large-scale nuclear war which could have wiped out half of the population of the countries involved. An investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned. Because of his decision not to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike amid this incident, Petrov is often credited as having "saved the world".

 

[Raymond Lin]

China is going to smell blood on Monday when the market opens and buy up a lot of Russian interests for half price or less.

 

[delta0]

Now what is to stop western special ops teams going in under the guise of volunteers.

Nothing. You could send quite significant numbers in. Reports earlier were 20k men entered Ukraine to fight today.

 

[ubersonic]

Why are vehicles not moving!

Maybe out of fuel, or stopped so they could begin setting up the SAM system, /shrug.

 

[woppy101]

He's refrained from turning Ukrainian cities into mid-90s Grozny so far, I'm not sure he's going to be looking at mutually assured destruction right now.

Granted it is a bit of a worry if things get silly, he's a very old man by Russian standards, close to the typical life expectancy for Russian men, rumours he might be ill too.... don't really want an ego maniac who doesn't have long to live anyway doing something silly.

I think you might find a lot of Russian commanders and soldiers refusing to follow orders if told to level city’s, were already seeing tanks backing away and turning around instead of driving over civilians

 

[voidshatter]

Japan didn't know it would result in their total annihilation/the end of civilization.

A very different situation to now.

Do you think the deterrence from mutual assured destruction is sufficient to hold him off from pulling the trigger?

I read a theory that "total annihilation of civilisation" is a lie to those countries without warheads. Indeed there can be a "winner" out of a nuclear war (based on the fact that even if all existing warheads are detonated it can't cover all lands suitable for living). One "winning" condition is to have huge land area (e.g. USA, Russia and China) to survive both waves of strikes and then re-bootstrap civilisation from underground facilities. The UK and France may be wiped out beyond repair (full radiation coverage).

 

[Malevolence]

I don't understand why, but they're really struggling to take out those drones, most convoys have been supported with short range air defence Strela-10's, so they should have no reason not to take them out, but it seems like they're not even looking out for them

Same thing happened back in 2020 when it kicked off between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Azerbaijanis purchased the same Turkish drones and they devasted the Armenians military, which was mainly made up of the same Soviet/Russian gear.

 

[V F]

If he does go crazy with nukes, I assume your all referencing him nuking Ukraine and not the west? If the west where does he shoot? He cant take us all out and surely once he fires a few he gets almighty hell from all. Basically its a cheap shot (but very brutal shot) for very little reward

I am on the fence, he’s 69, could just do it with not much to lose

Nuclear particles made it all the way to some places in Scotland from Chernobyl. It's the devastating after mass that's the issue.

 

[Puzzled]

Didn't stop people in Belarus from protesting not too long ago, it seems a bit weak sauce from the Russians so far, I suspect Putin actually had a big chunk of support for this and another big chunk of people who were ambivalent about it. This is why sanctions need to hit Russians in general quite hard, start making things costly for individual Russians and turn things against Putin.

I'm assuming the majority of Russians get their news from state media and according to them they are just pushing forward in the separatist areas and striking military targets.

With all the sanctions, airspace closures, cancelled sports events etc you'd hope that they start to clock on that something isn't right.

 

[NickK]

Why are vehicles not moving! Ragip is a Washington correspondent, one of Turkey's leading newspapers

There's a guy walking - walks away then walks back to the truck just as the bomb hits.

 

[wordy]

These guys get turned into robots through training. They continuously under go training exercises where they sre not warned beforehand. Any hesitation and they are out of a job. The people selected for such roles have specific psychological profiles and are highly susceptible to following orders. They alsk have multiple reserves, do if someone refused to follow orders they can be shot for treason and a replacement put in the hot seat.

There's training and knowing you'll be killing millions of people. sure a large portion of people very well may fire but I bet a sizable portion wouldn't. I vaguely remember something similar happening in the U.S. where a good chunk of their missile crew couldn't bring themselves to launch on a training exercise.

 

[dowie]

I think you might find a lot of Russian commanders and soldiers refusing to follow orders if told to level city’s, were already seeing tanks backing away and turning around instead of driving over civilians

Yup, I'd hope so, there was also a Belarussian colonel on a video on twitter earlier appealing to Bealrrusian soldiers to defy orders, not get involved in a war with Ukraine + telling them about the casualties... hopefully word is getting out.

There were unconfirmed rumours of a riot in a Russian military base yesterday too.