Ukraine ‘fires missiles at targets inside Russia’ for first time
Moscow accuses Kyiv of a ‘terrorist attack’ after apparent strike on the port city of Taganrog
Russia definitely fires missiles into Ukraine.
So, since when was it possible to say “no backsies” in war?
Like forever. Duh.
Goebbels did it an awful lot past 1942.
Iran was supplying and training Iraqi insurgents. Some of them were even Iranian, and we decided to do nothing about it 🙁
The US are trying to maintain this strictly as a proxy war (using Ukie body bags rather than their own to wear down Russia).
Isn’t there the risk – at some point if this became commonplace, with the armaments and everything else being provided to Ukraine – that NATO might be deemed to have attacked Russia? This, for obvious reasons, being that red line that all sides are keen to avoid?
For understanding some of the background to this war, worth reading this from Unherd:
https://unherd.com/2023/07/can-poland-ever-forgive-ukraine/
I’d been aware of the Polish side of this affair since acquiring a lot of the country’s history as far back as the early 70s & being involved with the UK Polish community’s anti-communists. And of course the years after WW1 contain the story or another European nation trying to gain independence from powerful neighbours. Not always a pretty story.
This is of course where Steve’s “Nazis” come from. Although it’s more a story of some people seeking “friends” from wherever they can find them. And yes, Ukraine has a troubled history, not always reflecting well on Ukrainians.
I don’t think that saying “whoopsie daisy” every time a Ukrainian missile or drone hits a Russian target is going to be sustainable.
The “Ukrainians” were doing better with their sabotage of Russian rail networks, bridges and armaments factories behind Russian lines. That this has now been replaced by long, distance drone attacks is interesting, but since we’re talking about the Ukrainians using drones and missiles donated or “purchased” (with US funds) from NATO countries, it does give substance to Russian claims that they are fighting a proxy war with NATO.
So what happens when the Wagner Group does a “totally unauthorised raid” into Poland and/or Lithuania across the Suwałki Gap?
Do we nuke the buggers or what?
I mean, I’m all for fighting the Russians to the last Ukrainian, but I draw the line at glowing in the dark.
Don’t worry, the war is now destined to reach a speedy conclusion. I noticed yesterday that Waitrose have renamed Chicken Kiev to Chicken Kyiv. Putin is doomed.
Heroic civilians can of course kill soldiers. But it is an unspeakable horror if soldiers kill civilians.
I once knew a German called Klaus whose father as a boy had lived through the destruction of Dresden. Klaus complained bitterly about how terrible and inhumane it was and how awful and criminal the RAF, Bomber Command and the USAF were.
I explained my view to him without any remorse or regret: it was a pity we didn’t have the capacity to have done it to every German city.
Klaus should have been grateful that Germany surrendered in April 45, rather than struggling onto September. Then he would really have had some blasted cities to moan about.
I fail to see why anyone making a weapon of war in wartime is any less of a target than anyone using that weapon or transporting that weapon.
Expect a number of unexplained factory fires and explosions. Fortunately, the West no longer has much weapon making capability so the target list will be small.
@BraveFart +1000
I’m old enough to remember the ruins in the UK AND in Germany. I also lived for a few years in a house once occupied by Bomber Harris, who had it 99% right – the missing 1% being that he didn’t have the means to do more, so not really his fault.
I also once met a chap whose father had been in the French Navy when a lot of it was sunk by the RN. Same complaint, although he had to accept the argument that it was too big a risk to allow the Frogs (and the Eyeties) to have big navies in the way of us supplying our desert army.
Plenty of horrors from both sides in any war. Quelle surprise.
Quite why we’re bothering with this one I don’t know.
Aside from pandering to our allies rulers and their business interests in Ukraine…
But is that worth spending billions on and sending equipment that we could use to equip our tiny military?
Russia isn’t a threat to us. If they tried anything, we can start a joint giant mushroom farm venture. And if we aren’t going to do that, why are we spending billions on billions on maintaining the giant mushroom generators?
I’m going with, I’ll sit this one out.
Hopefully we can avoid glowing in the dark.
What war? It’s a special military operation, remember? The Special Military Operation of Patriotic Defense.
Russia has peacekeeping soldiers in Crimea and the Donbass, bravely protecting civilians from terroristic attacks by Ukraine, fighting off the Ukrainian army trying to occupy those territories. It’s Ukraine that provoked this by insisting on its territorial integrity.
[/Правда]
By 1943 everything in Germany was being repurposed to way aims, even footwear factory Adidas:
“ The brothers began to argue vehemently with one another. Rudolf’s focus was to make money while Adi wanted to focus on sports and development. When Rudolf was conscripted, matters became worse as he feared losing control in his absence. A bitter exchange of letters ensued that was to damage their relationship permanently. But in November 1943, their quarrel became meaningless as the Dasslers were told to transform their business to produce armaments for the war effort, making the so-called Panzerschreck, an anti-tank weapon. In the process, at least 9 forced labourers were used. ”
There were no clear bright lines between civilian and military production and even if there were the technology wasn’t good enough to respect them. The Germans thought they were fighting a short war but like many before them they completely overestimated their abilities and underestimated the resolve of those they chose to attack.
Germany got what it deserved, likewise Japan.
https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/the-remarkable-story-of-adidas?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
JG – So what happens when the Wagner Group does a “totally unauthorised raid” into Poland and/or Lithuania across the Suwałki Gap
Exactly. This is a shit situation that could get a lot worse, very quickly.
Poland is keen to send troops to Ukraine (they already are sending thousands of troops to Ukraine, but they want to do it openly).
If the Polish Army marches into Kiev at Zelensky’s invitation, we’ll be a ball hair away from WW3.
If Wagner or Lukashenko attack Poland or Lithuania, we’ll be in WW3.
Idk why we’re so complacent about the war. It’s considerably more dangerous to our wealth and health than the disastrous Iraqi adventure was, and that prompted massive protests across the United States and England.
Re: the Russians crying and lying about “terrorism”. Ukraine has very little capability to strike targets inside Russia, so what attacks it can muster tend to be for propaganda value rather than military effect.
One of the fun things about Slav brother wars is that everybody is lying, all the fucking time. When Russia isn’t complaining of “terrorism” because a single missile slipped through their defences and hit a port, they’re bombing the crap out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports
When the Ukrainians aren’t claiming to have a 100% success rate in intercepting Russian strikes, they’re ostentatiously lying about “genocides” and alleged plots by Russia to blow up Russian controlled dams, pipelines and atomic power plants.
We have no strategic interests in Ukraine, so logically we should prefer to settle the matter without burning to a greasy radioactive crisp.
Germany got what it deserved, likewise Japan
This sort of thinking is something I disagree with.
Civilians can’t influence their governments that much. Sure, occasionally the government throws them a bone or allows them an election to keep them sated, but usually the government just rolls on doing whatever it wants.
During war it would be nice if countries limited themselves to targeting things like weapons factories, military bases and government/civil service buildings to minimise damage to innocent civilians. Maybe the Russians could rid us of the Department of arts and culture… But that’s wishful thinking.
How on earth does a *footwear* factory make anti-tank weapons? Stamp out sheets of C4 and sew it into hand-sized blobs? Or were they making special anti-tank shoes to shove down the exhaust pipes?
If Wagner tries an “unauthorised raid” across the Suwałki Gap, we’ll treat them to same way the US did when they tried to attack them in Syria: annihilation. With no comeback from the Russians, because none of it was “official” 🙂
Russia is in no position to threaten NATO militarily at the moment, and whatever Putin thinks, his government is not ideological in the way the Soviets were. None of his power base want a nuclear war, because they would lose everything.
Rupert – None of his power base want a nuclear war
I’m sure, if you asked Churchill, Hitler, Stalin and Roosevelt in 1940 whether they wanted to fight a war that would kill 60,000,000 people and destroy incredible amounts of materiel and wealth and ruin the British Empire, they’d probably have thought you were a nutter.
We got WW2 anyway.
If you asked the Western powers in 1914 whether they wanted to destroy the Victorian world in an orgy of murder and revolution, they also would have denied any such intention.
Shit happens, as Forrest explained. Wars are very easy to start and very difficult to end.
KnowhatImean, Arry? It’s just a shot away (shot away, shot away).
Well Steve.
I’d say Hitler, Stalin and Roosevelt might all have agreed on destroying the British Empire.
Bboy – yeah and two of them were our allies.
You know what I mean tho. I’m sure Hitler never “wanted” the physical destruction of the German people and their replacement by swarthy foreigners.
Yet here we are.
War, huh?
Yes Boganboy
But it didn’t just take out the British Empire.
It devastated the Soviets and the Germans suffered massively.
The only country to escape relatively unscathed was the US because they entered halfway through and, thanks to their geographic location and the technology of the time, weren’t in a position to get hit back.
Today, the continental US is very much in range of missiles and bombers that can wipe out targets with ease.
If WW3 does kick off, it’s going to be a nasty surprise for the American civilians when bombs are dropping throughout the US.
Remember though, war is good for business and the economy.
First you have to make loads of stuff like tanks and planes and boats to get blown up.
Then, after, you have to re-build loads of stuff like houses and schools and hospitals that got blown up.
There’s a tragic human cost that you’ll never recover in all the millions of people that get killed, but our erstwhile leaders don’t seem to give a shit about that…
During war it would be nice if countries limited themselves to targeting things like weapons factories, military bases and government/civil service buildings to minimise damage to innocent civilians.
This would be somewhat possible today, with ‘smart’ targeted munitions – *if* you had good enough intelligence to identify the targets, and the opposition didn’t ‘cheat’ by hiding military activities in schools, hospitals etc. But in WW2 aerial bombing, when the radius of error was measured in miles, it would have been impossible to achieve, even had we wanted to. Bomber Command and the USAAF targeted cities because they were about the only things they could reliably hit.
I’d have thought that when someone invades you country, shooting back was all part of the rules. Or maybe they should have surrendered.
Longrider – they should have surrendered, or ideally, not gotten into an antagonistic relationship with Russia in the first place.
Ukraine is going to end up with nothing to show for this war, except a much smaller, poorer and less populated Ukraine.
And all the new cemeteries.
Ukraine will surrender, or at least, be forced to live with the reality that large swathes of their former country and millions of their former citizens are never coming back. The death toll of Ukrainian soldiers is not worth this outcome, so why keep dying?
We all know the USA and their NATO poodles have caused the Ukraine clusterfuck, deliberately and with malice aforethought(I know, i’ve used that already this week but it seems to be apposite).
My Mum and Dad lived in Poplar during the Blitz, Dad worked in the docks. Mum in particular was quite insistent – she would have been happy if every city in Germany had been levelled.
Ukraine is doing ‘terrorist attacks’ against civilian targets in Russia because that is the only tactic left to it.
Ukraine cannot win against Russia, its only hope is to provoke from Russia an escalation that becomes a full on Nato-Russia war: WW3.
If the Ukraine leadership are sane, they may hope that might drive Russia to negotiate something less than unconditional surrender of the Ukraine.
If they are insane, or corrupt, or stupid, or evil, or any mix thereof, they will want us all to go together when we go. Suffused with an incandescent glow.
That way, no one ‘wins’. When the air turns uraneous, we will all go simultaneous. Etc.
Some schoolteachers were good.
We all know the USA and their NATO poodles have caused the Ukraine clusterfuck
Always the wife-beaters lament. “She made us give ‘er a slap!”
Didn’t realise the mighty Russian empire was devoid of agency or that 4D chess grandmaster Vladdy was so easily duped.
they should have surrendered, or ideally, not gotten into an antagonistic relationship with Russia
Didn’t show nuff respec’ eh?
It seems perfectly reasonable and sensible for the Russian government to propagandise any event to the benefit of its operations. Presumably it works on some number the Russian population, given that it works on some number of western people.
.
PF @ 7:46am
– Isn’t there the risk – at some point if this became commonplace, with the armaments and everything else being provided to Ukraine – that NATO might be deemed to have attacked Russia? This, for obvious reasons, being that red line that all sides are keen to avoid?
The Russians have already set red lines that have been crossed (attacks on Crimea and Russia, etc). They aren’t in a position to do much about anything other than an existential threat.
.
John Galt @ 7:59am
– So what happens when the Wagner Group does a “totally unauthorised raid” into Poland and/or Lithuania across the Suwałki Gap?
Lolz. Wagner Group forces have been sent to Belarus to keep Lukashenko in power and toeing the Russian line (also to keep them out of the way). Seeing them attack NATO would almost be worth it for the comedic value.
.
Steve @ 9:46am
–We have no strategic interests in Ukraine, so logically we should prefer to settle the matter without burning to a greasy radioactive crisp.
We have a fundamental strategic interest in seeing Russia lose badly in Ukraine now. Settling the matter in a way that gives them some of Ukraine (whilst welcomed back into the wider world) will simply see all this happen again down the line. If Ukraine was geopolitically located as, say, Kazakhstan, then it would be tough titty for them. But it isn’t, it’s in our direction. Russia attacked in our direction so it needs to be put back in its box, with scorch marks.
Steve @ 11:55am
– I’m sure, if you asked Churchill, Hitler, Stalin and Roosevelt in 1940 . . .
Wait, WWII run-up analogies are allowed now? Oh goody.
I give you the German remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936. A straight up, in-your-face, treaty violating, strategic provocation. Even the German military though it was mad, such that they kept their stronger (but still pathetic) forces behind so they wouldn’t immediately be wiped out. But nothing. Hitler had correctly figured out that the Western allies were dominated by twats who wouldn’t do anything. And so it was that an enemy could be both feeble and extremely dangerous. And so it was, but for the voices of twats being listened to, that we had the devastating horrors of WWII.
.
Chernyy Drakon
– Remember though, war is good for business and the economy.
Nope. It may be good for some businesses but it’s always detrimental to the wider economy. It’s the ultimate broken window fallacy.
MC @ 2.12, what we have is a boy and his mates who targeteted a little boy in the same street (because he’s been told to by other, bigger boys, who’ll give him money and stuff if he does what they tell him to do) but has found that the little boy has a big brother who will /is kicking the shit out of him and his mates.
Castro put Russian nukes in Cuba in 1962 not because they wanted to nuke the US per se, but because NATO/ US put nuclear tipped Jupiter missiles into Turkey in 1959 .
No.
Castro allowed the Soviets to install nuclear weapons in Cuba because he quite rightly understood that it was the only way to prevent further attempts by the United States at invasion and the overthrow of his regime.
He had no missiles of his own, so was open to the plan devised by the Soviets, who saw no difference between installing nuclear weapons in Cuba and NATO installing nuclear weapons in Turkey.
Personally, I thought Castro was a shit through-and-through, but as far as protecting his regime, he was right about the US reaction against Cuban installed nuclear weapons, even if the launch controls were in Soviet hands.
When Dresden was bombed Germany was still gleefully firing V2s at London and Antwerp. So they can fuck right off.
JG@ 3.21 you are obviously entitled to your own opinion but it is documented that Eisenhower knew putting Jupiter missiles into Turkey would provoke a response from the Russians.
I doubt you are seriously suggesting that Cuba on their own would drop a nuke onto the USA……….
“Hitler had correctly figured out that the Western allies were dominated by twats who wouldn’t do anything”
It was nothing to do with “allies”. It was to do with France. If the French wouldn’t respond who else in the west could do anything?
Then re-read your own comment, because that’s exactly how it reads.
Castro did what he had to in order to prevent further US invasions of Cuba. He had no nukes of his own and therefore co-opted Soviet nukes. The Soviets were amenable because it gave them equivalence with the NATO nukes placed in Turkey.
As for why Eisenhower turned NATO from a conventional force to a nuclear one, that’s a whole other issue.
A Case Study In Nuclearization Of Nato
Strategy
It must not be forgotten that if the War in Europe had continued to August 1945, either Berlin or Ludwigshafen were going to have the Big One dropped on them.
I once had an argument with a Yank about the morality of bombing Germany. I was so annoyed by his silly approach that eventually I said that it didn’t matter if every man woman and child in Germany was killed, ad long ad ut defeated Nazism. He was suitably shocked.
@John Galt – “So what happens when the Wagner Group does a “totally unauthorised raid” into Poland and/or Lithuania across the Suwałki Gap?”
They get wiped out. The full power of NATO can be used against them, including air power, unlike in Ukraine where the force used is limited to what the Ukrainians can manage by themselves with foreign equipment.
@Steve – “Ukraine will surrender, or at least, be forced to live with the reality that large swathes of their former country and millions of their former citizens are never coming back. The death toll of Ukrainian soldiers is not worth this outcome, so why keep dying?”
Even if that is the case, the alternative is that there is no Ukraine as it all becomes part of Russia. Your strategy is to always surrender when threatened. That is not a good plan for survival.
Steve you are factually wrong about the west wanting either world wars.
1914 was not a surprise or unexpected. The belligerents all had beef and were determined to duke it out. There were decades of maneuvering before, arms races, treaties etc. Many on both sides wanted the war.
And in 1939 do you think that the Allies looked at Germany and went “sweet, it’ll be even easier now we don’t even start with Russia and Italy on our side”. They knew exactly what they were getting into, which is why the voices against war were so much louder.
Chester, yes indeed – but duke it out with whom ?
The Great War can be seen as a lot of separate wars that started at the same time.
The Austrians ( for instance ) had two war plans : an offensive war against Serbia and a defensive one against Russia. Unfortunately they ended up fighting both simultaneously as well as the improvised war against Italy and none of that was not supposed to happen.
The British Army had been gaming war against Germany since 1908, but it was all predicated upon a breach of Belgian neutrality. The Naval arms race had been won by 1912 and tension had eased consequently although the blockade of the North Sea was a constant strategic concept, it was applicable against any continental power that was being a bit uppity. The immediate threat in 1914 for Britain was civil war in Ireland.
The “real” war was supposed to be between Russia and Germany. Everything else was considered a side show to this main event ( except by the French of course, but no one cares about them).
In 1939/40 the only people who thought that the war would be over quickly were Hitler and Manstein.
It was nothing to do with “allies”. It was to do with France. If the French wouldn’t respond who else in the west could do anything?
The “allies” made it clear to the French that they wouldn’t uphold their treaty obligations. The League of Nations wouldn’t even agree sanctions. The whole thing was a risible display showing the treaties and alliances were worthless; a situation you can’t really blame Hitler for exploiting.
@ Steve
“two of them were our allies”
In 1939, Stalin was allied with Hitler and Roosevelt was happy for the USA to be neutral and make a lot of money out of selling weapons to both sides.
Don’t talk soft.
Re issues of deniability about the missiles – Ukraine are deliberately not using Western missiles to attack Russian soil (by 1991 borders – Russia claims it’s got bigger these days, this war of territorial conquest being the problem in the first place). Part of the deal when the West have provided longer-range weapons to Ukraine has been that they can only use them on internationally-recognized Ukrainian soil. Ukraine has a sophisticated arms industry of its own and has had to rely on this indigenous capacity to strike back.
This isn’t the first time Ukraine has hit Russian soil either, in December 2022 they used converted 1970s reconnaissance drones (ex-Soviet stock) to hit Engels airbase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-141
They’ve also been regularly using the sort of large Chinese drone you can buy on AliExpress for aerial surveying etc to launch long-range attacks as far as Moscow. Again, not Western.
The recent attack that the article was about used a “new” piece of kit: obsolete 1960s long-range surface-to-air missiles that had been modified for ground attack by adding a modern guidance system. Again taken from Ukraine’s ex-Soviet stock, though it’s possible some East European NATO members will donate old stock for conversion too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-200_(missile)
@John77 “Roosevelt was happy for the USA to be neutral and make a lot of money out of selling weapons to both sides.”
Roosevelt was NOT happy for the USA to be neutral. He wanted to be an open ally of the UK, but there was too much political opposition to this. And Germany never bought any weapons from the USA, just Britain and France.
@ ZT
OK, I don’t know how Roosevelt felt in 1939, but the USA made a lot of money from selling arms while neutral (including, even according to Americans, key materials for the Luftwaffe which only you can deny are materials that help kill or damage, hence armaments)
MC
July 29, 2023 at 2:14 pm
they should have surrendered, or ideally, not gotten into an antagonistic relationship with Russia
Didn’t show nuff respec’ eh?
They really didn’t.
Btw I completely agree with Vladimir Zelensky. (In his 2019 election manifesto).
PJF – We have a fundamental strategic interest in seeing Russia lose badly in Ukraine now. Settling the matter in a way that gives them some of Ukraine (whilst welcomed back into the wider world) will simply see all this happen again down the line. If Ukraine was geopolitically located as, say, Kazakhstan, then it would be tough titty for them. But it isn’t, it’s in our direction. Russia attacked in our direction so it needs to be put back in its box, with scorch marks.
I fear you’re going to be disappointed, then. Russia won’t give up its new oblasts, legally they can’t (and legalism is very important to Russia). Politically, militarily, they won’t. They’re dug in now, in every sense. If Putin failed to defend them, he’d be torn apart and replaced by someone much more aggressive. That’s the mood in Russia, apparently.
The local populations in Russian controlled Ukraine, or what’s left of them (plenty of fighters), seem to be solidly pro-Russian, so it’s not as if any Ukie/NATO advance would encounter petals and kisses.
And we’ve seen how the Ukrainian counteroffensive has gone so far. I.e., horribly. Not, thankfully, on the scale of doomed WW1 “over the trench, lads” charges. But a similar futile waste of life.
Clearly, Ukraine can’t win through military force, unless NATO in some very substantial way directly intervenes. But NATO invading what the Russians now claim to be sovereign Russian territory means WW3.
So how does Ukraine reclaim its lands?
It doesn’t. Like so many Western allies before them, they’ve been led to overestimate our promises of undying love (note how angry Zelensky was at the latest NATO summit). Maybe Poland goes Leeroy Jenkins into the western Ukraine, maybe they don’t. But there’s no army looming on the horizon that’s going to chase the Russki out.
But, and here’s where you might be re-appointed… similarly, I see no chance for Russia to ingest the Continuity Ukraine. And they seem to know it, Russia is not behaving as if it’s trying to conquer the entire country. They must know that if they advance too far west, every second civvie will be waiting to murder them.
Charles – Even if that is the case, the alternative is that there is no Ukraine as it all becomes part of Russia. Your strategy is to always surrender when threatened. That is not a good plan for survival.
Ah! Excellent. I’m glad you made this (foolish and untrue) allegation, because it allows me to explain something I’ve been thinking about.
No, surrender is not “always” or “my strategy” when threatened. How gay of you. Surrender is an option, which may in some circumstances be preferable to other options. Such as smelling the roasted BBQ flesh of your own children, for example.
Nor is surrender dishonourable, as perhaps pagan Japs would have you believe. It’s perfectly honourable to surrender when the alternative is pointless death, in fact medieval knights surrendered all the time. It just means you live to fight another day, and have more adventures. Something the dead rarely do, in my experience.
Various Blokes are getting excited, as usual, at the ol’ Chamberlain – Churchill mythos, yeah? Cool.
But.
Chamberlain and Churchill were the political leaders of a superpower with the world’s greatest navy, the world’s greatest air force, and an army that was no joke either. Britain, in the 1930’s, was still a towering (if slightly teetering) colossus of global power. Our scientific – technical – industrial complex was second to none. We were armed to the teeth, had allies and resources all over the planet, we could make (almost) everything we needed to wage total, industrial scale war, all by ourselves. And we have a big, fuck off moat called the English Channel.
Ukraine has none of those advantages. Telling them to do Churchill stuff against a country several times their size, which they share a land border with, is like encouraging a spotty ginger kid to punch Mike Tyson.
So, for Ukraine, the way to win is not to fight – openly on the battlefield, anyway. There’s plenty of other things they could have done to make a Russian military occupation of their country brief, unpleasant and unproductive for Putin.
Is the battlefield (that your enemy chose) the only place to fight? Is war not simply a policy decision? A means of achieving an end? We should desire the ends, not the means.
Fighting a war you can’t win, after you reach the point where you can no longer win it, is the option Japan and Germany chose in WW2, and all that bought them was millions of dead sons, raped daughters, and bombed out cities.
Another thing about the Churchill mythos is we always assume that we’re the goodies, and the goodies always win.
– Russia won’t give up its new oblasts, legally they can’t (and legalism is very important to Russia).
This is ridiculous. They’re gangsters who don’t give a shit about legalism (just ask all those who were illegally thrown out of high windows). The whole “we own them because we say so” is internal propaganda and external threat; mere theatre. Empty threat as it happens; if the occupied territories are “legally Russia” it doesn’t seem to especially bother them that NATO weapons are already being used against “Russian soil”, does it?
– The local populations in Russian controlled Ukraine, or what’s left of them (plenty of fighters), seem to be solidly pro-Russian, so it’s not as if any Ukie/NATO advance would encounter petals and kisses.
Utter, deluded bollocks. The Russians are suffering big problems with Ukrainian resistance. Mostly intelligence gathering enabling precision attacks on Russian command, depots, barracks and mobile columns. Also direct partisan attacks. And we saw in Kherson that Ukrainians can be happy when the Russians are forced to fuck off.
– And we’ve seen how the Ukrainian counteroffensive has gone so far. I.e., horribly.
I assume you’re talking about this summer rather than the liberation of Kherson and the rout in Kharkiv oblast. I’d describe the summer offensive as slow. I don’t think it’s been as horrible as for the allies stuck in Normandy for weeks, precisely because the Ukes are conserving their forces by advancing cautiously and smartly. They have to demine everywhere they move. Since it is ongoing, it can’t be said to be a failure or success. We can only say that when it’s over. The Ukrainian attack might flounder, or they might break through and reach the Azov sea.
I can recall your confident pronouncements of imminent Ukrainian collapse in the early days of the invasion. They turned out to be utter shite, most likely based on swallowing the output of online twats who’d swallowed Russian propaganda. You don’t seem to have changed much; you are demonstrably an unreliable assessor of events. To be fair, my prediction of a Western betrayal of Ukraine was a tad pessimistic – but there’s plenty of time for that.
– And we’ve seen how the Ukrainian counteroffensive has gone so far. I.e., horribly.
The collapse of the Russian army at Kherson set expectations far too high. Since then the Russia military has switched to the only thing it seems to do well: Scorched earth defence with a callous disregard for its own forces. And Russia has proved to be very good at it. I recommend the War on The Rocks podcast of 27 Jul for a detailed explanation of how it works.
Ukraine has also learned that combined arms offensives are very very hard above platoon level and not something that can be picked up at a few western training camps so they’ve had to switch tactics and are now focused on the attrition of Russian forces with the main focus being on taking out Russian artillery and their ammunition supplies.
Ukraine has also been hindered by the need to call up reserve officers who were trained in Soviet doctrine and find the western doctrine of Ukraine’s army hard to accept and that is taking time to change.
Ukraine’s general staff have been excellent so far and there’s no reason to believe they won’t be able to deal with these problems as long as they are given enough supplies and time by the west.
There’s plenty of other things they could have done to make a Russian military occupation of their country brief, unpleasant and unproductive for Putin.
Actually, and I am not disagreeing, there is plenty that all parties could have done that avoided any recent conflict at all, but that’s a whole different (and increasingly irrelevant) discussion.
The problem with “Russia won’t give up its new oblasts, legally they can’t (and legalism is very important to Russia)” as the basis for UKRAINE MUST SURRENDER NOW is that (a) the Ukrainian constitution also makes it illegal to give away territory and changes to that constitution legally require a national (including currently occupied territories) referendum, so Ukraine can’t legally cede the land away either. Does that mean RUSSIA MUST SURRENDER NOW too? If you’re correct that Russia will simply not pull back from land it claims is newly its own (Kherson would like a word with you, wasn’t that supposed to be Russian forever?), then the best you can hope for is a frozen conflict rather than a peace deal if legal nuance is so important to you. (b) Russia doesn’t even control the territories it claims! They pulled out of Kherson and they annexed Zaporizhzhia without ever even controlling the major city there, making an utter mockery of their “democratic” referendum or the nonsensical idea that the annexed territories are solidly pro-Russian. If you’re totally insistent that Russia must be granted control over all the territories it claims in order to end the war (but Ukraine shouldn’t be because they are weak and have no friends so deserve to be pulverised and anyway clearly they can’t fight and no country would give them weapons to help them do so – oh wait) then that doesn’t just involve a halt to the fighting and Ukraine accepting what’s currently lost is lost. It would also require Ukraine to hand over several major cities with clearly pro-Ukrainian populations which Ukraine has either won back or which were never even occupied in the first place – in fact some of the territory Russia claims is very deep behind Ukrainian lines.
If you’re saying Russia legally can’t withdraw its claim to that land, how’s a peace deal supposed to work? Could the Ukrainian government happily hand over land and people deep within their own controlled territories (without triggering armed mutiny or civil war), especially when Russian officials are frequently also calling for the annexation of the “Russian cities” of Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kharkhiv? If they blithely handed over everything Russian wanted and accepted the Kremlin’s demand of total demilitarisation and ending any security arrangements with the West, there would be literally nothing to stop Russia grabbing the rest of these irrendentist claims too. I mean it’s a mainstream Russian nationalist view that Kyiv is a Russian city that should be reunited with the motherland, though unlike the other cities I named I don’t think anyone close to Putin has actually called for this yet.
Feel free to criticise Western intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and anywhere else but we never annexed those places did we? It’s not like Iraq became the 51st state so that the US could truly “own the oil”, and we didn’t even let Albania “merge with” Kosovo like lots of nationalists there would have wanted. If Putin had simply set up and recognised fake “independent” statelets in Crimea, occupied Kherson etc like he had in South Ossetia/Abkhazia in occupied Georgia (and as he did originally in Donetsk and Luhansk) then at least legally he’d have quarter of a leg to stand on when he does his “woe is me, the West don’t like it when someone else follows their example” act. But the tone was set in 2014 when Crimea and Sebastopol were annexed. The West has a genuine strategic interest in forbidding and de-normalising wars of territorial expansion in Europe – they did enough damage in the centuries up to 1945, and there are plenty of European borders that are not historically or linguistically “tidy” and would be ripe for nationalists to claim require “rearranging on a fairer basis” if we start treating war as a valid way to set new borders. After so many millenia where that was absolutely normal, it’s a credit to European security architecture we went so long since 1945 without this patten returning. It’s also a condemnation of the spinelessness of our political classes, and their intellectual laziness to think this risk had gone away, that Putin believed – and correctly – that he could get away with 2014.
If you needlessly wanted to stretch the legalities in his favour, I suppose you could have claimed that the transfer of Crimea and Sebastopol from the Russian to Ukrainian Soviet Republic was somehow invalid and so their return was in some sense excusable. But that’s even more naive politically than it is legally stretching things – the annexation of the four new oblasts didn’t even have the flimsiest of such excuses. We are under absolutely no obligation, ethically, legally, politically or otherwise, to give that man an inch. Realpolitik fans might say the rights and wrongs don’t affect the fact Ukraine would be better to cave in (though I’m far from convinced this is actually true, or that it would even be politically possible) but there’s no need to hero-worship Putin or claim his actions were justified when you think about the deaths and unfreedom he bears personal responsibility for. He didn’t have to do this. And to the extent he even thought he could, the Western political class shoulder a lot blame. Increasing the costs of Putin’a decision now is too late for my liking but I’ll take late over never.
@BiND
Good point re false expectations but think you mean Kharkhiv, where Russia was surprised and its thinly defended lines collapsed, rather than Kherson, where the Ukrainians had a long hard grind and the counter-offensive was written off many times as a failure by Western commentators until suddenly the Russian supply lines became untenable and they withdrew. We won’t get another Kharkhiv but another Kherson would be welcome.
Anon, yes you’re right, I meant Kharkhiv.
We are under absolutely no obligation, ethically, legally, politically or otherwise, to give that man an inch.
We are also under no obligation to spend our blood and money defending the Ukraine.
Why should I have to go to work and earn money only for the government to confiscate a good portion of it at gunpoint and then have them send it over to the Ukraine to have it be pocketed by the corrupt or give it to arms companies for new tanks because we gave them tanks that we’re short of anyway?
If someone wants to support Ukraine, have at it. Donate them money, send them food parcels or go and fight for them. But why should I be forced to? Not my business, not my fight, but for some reason I’m paying for it?
I’d also say the same for Russia. Why not let people donate to them?
Personally I’ve never had any issues with either Russians or Ukrainians. Let them fight it out if they want to. Us sticking our noses in is just going to lead to more pain. Same as Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Shame our politicos never learn…
@CD
There are obvious reasons why the West collectively, and therefore us included, would be much worse off in a world in which it is normalised for countries (including European countries) to expand their borders (including borders they previously accepted the legality of – we aren’t even talking about “settling territorial disputes” here) by invading and annexing their neighbours. This was also the case in 2014, but Western leaders seem to have been slow to work out the consequences of going easy on that infraction. The benefit of preventing territorial expansion by armed force is true as a general rule, and analogies to the 1930s are not out of place since that’s the last time someone in Europe thought it would be a good idea to try it and “wiser heads” decided not to stop him until was too late, but it’s especially true in the case of Russia given the prodigious amounts of territory, including the entirety of the territory of several of our allies and decent chunks of many others, that Russia has controlled at some point in the past and Russian nationalist nutjobs claim should be “returned”.
And I don’t just mean ex-USSR stuff, there’s still pining for the territories lost by the Russian Empire in 1917, a reluctance to accept Poland or Finland should exist as independent countries, and even people upset that a treacherous Tsar sold Alaska instead of colonising the Canadian Pacific and expanding Russian settlements in North California. Okay, they’re not stupid enough that they’re going to try to do anything about Alaska (at least unless the US falls into a state of civil war or something – but if an exploitable situation presents itself, who knows?) but they have scores to settle across Europe, they’ve blown up ammunition storage sites even in Nato members, they’ve used chemical and radiological weapons on our own soil, their intelligence agencies actively work to promote civic collapse across the West… Any government that decided to be “even-handed” about the “Russians and Ukrainians fighting if they want to” would be being incredibly naive.
One of the things about living in a democracy is that politicians who would rather go soft on Russia and decide to be honest they’re kinda okay with wars of territorial expansion is that they’ll do well at the ballot box if people agree with them, and do badly if people think they’re weak idiots. For my own part, I can only say I’d take an ill view of any politicians I saw as appeasers. You’d rather vote against anyone you see as a warmonger and that’s fine too. In a democracy we can agree to disagree, which sadly is a luxury Russians don’t get to experience. But as it stands the weight of votes, at least so far as the polling stands, seems to be against you.
– The West has a genuine strategic interest in forbidding and de-normalising wars of territorial expansion in Europe . . .
A very good point I neglected. If we are to give up the “rules based system” in favour of a return to aggression and surrender “pragmatism” (just like those jolly old knights of olde) then we’ll have to learn to enjoy war at the frequency it used to occur; i.e. nearly all the bloody time. Our extended European peace hasn’t been by accident.
But as it stands the weight of votes, at least so far as the polling stands, seems to be against you.
It was much relief when I saw a solid majority of registered US Republicans polling in favour of supporting Ukraine. I’m guessing this is reflected in internal polls too as there hasn’t been a big move by prospective candidates to renounce US involvement. Tucker Carlson seems to be doing his best to change that but may just damage himself.
@PJF
Yeah, and it’s not even like it’s just some abstract hypothetical risk either. Turkish leaders love to grandstand about “getting back” various Greek islands. It’s quite normal for Hungarian politicians to have maps of Greater Hungary hanging on the wall, complain about how neighbouring states treat their Hungarian-speaking minorities, and absolutely go off on one at the territorial iniquities of the Treaty of Trianon. And I haven’t even mentioned the mess formerly known as Yugoslavia. There are plenty of people out there just itching for a fight. Making it clear to them that Bad Things will happen if they try it on, and even if they successfully occupy the land they will not be allowed to keep it, is a good way to keep a lid on things. Can’t imagine we’ll have so much success if our new line is “it’s you and your neighbour’s business whether you decide to fight or not, we’re keeping well out of it, but once it’s clear who’s holding what territory we’ll come back to sort out a peace deal.”
If Reagan had taken that limp an attitude to the USSR, the Evil Empire might still be with us: and the people currently cheering on Putin would no doubt have been condemning Reagan as a cuck. The spirit of Ronnie is not yet dead among U.S. Republicans, fortunately.
The west is still invading, destabilising and controlling countries at a depressing frequency.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria (the US still has troops there that have been asked to leave but aren’t), Libya…
That doesn’t include the countries that have been added to the west hegemony via diplomatic means like the expansion of NATO.
Russia is just doing exactly what our western governments have been doing. Except when we do it, it’s a doubleplusgood. When they do it, yahboosucks.
Honestly, as far as I can tell, all the governments are the same. Speak out in Russia and you might come down with a case of falling out of the window. Not great. But here isn’t much better. Say the wrong thing about trannies, the gayers or the fuzzy wuzzies and you’ll be done for a hate crime. Try to change the system and you’ll get black balled by the banks. Remember David Kelly? Spoke out against invading Iraq and mysteriously turns up dead…
At least Russia isn’t actively importing people to replace their own population.
I want no part of this war which shows all the signs of spreading.
Turkish leaders love to grandstand about “getting back” various Greek islands.
Given that both are in NATO, whose side would we be on?
No doubt they would both claim that the other side started it…
Would we assist both side? Scottish Battalions on one side, English on the other? Sit it out and wait to see who has what?
“Russia is just doing exactly what our western governments have been doing”
But in the post Cold War era, we never fought a war of territorial expansion. That is not “exactly” what the Russians have been doing. Putin loves to toss about Kosovo as an example of the West ignoring the principle of territorial integrity in favour of the principle of self-determination, but even then, we never annexed the place. We never even let Albania have it. Invading your neighbour and annexing their territory is a very different, and very dangerous, ball-game.
“Given that both are in NATO, whose side would we be on?”
I don’t know why people seem to think that NATO is the be-all and end-all of security agreements for all its signatories. That it’s one big chummy happy alliance and that nobody inside NATO has different alliance systems with anyone else. There are, in fact, NATO members signed up to various other alliances including several on competing sides of potentially mutual hostile ones. Obviously you can’t get consensus/unanimity in NATO if there’s a NATO member-vs-NATO member conflict, so it wouldn’t be a NATO affair. But e.g. France has a separate alliance agreement with Greece with an Article 5 style mutual defence clause, which is clearly there for the event that Turkey invades Greece. Turkey has various alliances of its own. Just because NATO exists doesn’t mean other stuff can’t blow up. See Cyprus for example, although again Turkey’s use of an internationally unrecognised quasi-state fell short of direct territorial acquisition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Greek_defence_agreement
Also this was hilarious:
“At least Russia isn’t actively importing people to replace their own population.”
Tell me you know nothing about urban Russia without telling me you know nothing about urban Russia.
Incidentally, some of the heavy mob the Russians relied on in the 2014 seizure of power in Donbas were organised crime groups / political street thugs (not a great difference between the two) from Moscow and other Russian cities, whose previous day-jobs had included terrorising Central Asian and Caucasus migrants and trying to establish “no-go” zones for anyone who isn’t ethnic Russian. If you spend any amount of time at all in Russian right-wing circles, they are absolutely petrified of the demographic “invasion” from those regions – Russia’s not a very wealthy country but cities like Moscow are far richer than most of ex-Soviet Central Asia (or even Russian-controlled Caucasus) and the pull factor works pretty much like it does with Mexicans and Central Americans to the USA. With the added frisson of the incomers being mainly Muslim, which Russian right-wingers don’t like one bit either.
“ We are also under no obligation to spend our blood and money defending the Ukraine.
Why should I have to go to work and earn money only for the government to confiscate a good portion of it at gunpoint and then have them send it over to the Ukraine to have it be pocketed by the corrupt or give it to arms companies for new tanks because we gave them tanks that we’re short of anyway?”
I can’t compete with Anon’s excellent responses but I’d like to add that there is no evidence of that money disappearing in to a corrupt black hole, despite the best efforts of Russia’s propaganda machine and the Putinverstehers in the west.
Furthermore, in return we get to see how well our new weapons perform in war and how land war is developing with the deployment of weapons such as MLRS, drones and AI.
There were even bloggers on the Russian far-right writing in support of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, on the grounds that total annexation of Ukraine (which they viewed as the logical outcome of the Kremlin’s famous “Russians and Ukrainians are historically one people” essay) would bring 40 million mostly white Christian Slavic people under Russian rule, and help resolve Russia’s demographic crisis, compensating for the millions of swarthy Muslim Turkic immigrants who’d arrived since 1991. It might even allow for a ban on future Central Asian migration or, best of all, allow mass deportations to begin now that the Asians weren’t needed any more and could be replaced by Ukrainians! If you delve around on your search engine of choice, you can even find Russian nutjobs doing frenzied calculations about the IQ differential between Slavic Ukrainian and Turkic Central Asians, and figuring out how Putin’s masterstroke will end the current downward IQ trajectory caused by Russia’s current mass migration, replacing it with higher IQ genestock. For all that’s wrong with Putin, I don’t think he or his advisors are actually in hoc to these kind of ideas. But there are plenty of extremists there who believe in it all – and whose IQs apparently weren’t high enough* to spot the flaw in their plan, that maybe 40 million Ukrainians might not see themselves, or wish to become, “Russian” – and they’d find your idea that Russia is some kind of pure country with a hard brake on all non-white migration comical, though laudable as an aim.
* To be fair the smarter ones actually did foresee this and had various plans for it. Publicly spoke about – even published in the mainstream media – the idea of banning all use of the Ukrainian language and all references to a distinct Ukrainian identity, burning all the books, separating Ukrainian children and parents, restricting their voting rights for a generation or two, until all previous memory of a separate Ukrainian culture and identity was erased. The idea seemed to be that if you could only wipe the Ukrainianness out of them, the genetic stock was still pretty good underneath so even a temporarily rebellious population would be a valuable war prize in a world of sub-replacement fertility rates.
Also wot @BiND said. You can’t, contrary to Russian propaganda, build a presidential palace out of HIMARS missiles and decades-old tanks or donated MiG jets. Russia also claimed that any Western support would be pointless since any aid would be destroyed as soon as it crossed into Ukraine. That it would all be viewed as a massive escalation or even lead to war. As it turns out, the donated MiGs are still flying, the HIMARS are still firing, turns out they weren’t just resold on a non-existent black market, Russia can do sod-all about it, and anyone you caught saying “bUt wHY sENd AiD It WiLl JuST aLl bE dEstRoYeD tHe mOmENt iT cRoSsEs tHe bOrdEr” has been revealed as the gullible fool (or worse, disingenuous Russian shill) they were.
@ Chernyy Drakon
I haven’t invaded a country recently; I haven’t sponsored an anti-democratic coup in Niger; I haven’t overthrown three democratic regimes in the Sahel; I don’t bomb apartment blocks and grain stores in Ukraine; I don’t send suicide squads to kill off poliical opponents.
Nobody has told me that I was East ..
There’s so much hone headed ignorance on this post, I can’t be bothered to wade through it, but suffice it to say none of you cunts seem to have heard of John Mearsheimer, let alone watched his lectures from years ago where he laid out exactly how The West would lead Ukraine to it’s ruination.
Flubber, if you weren’t such a silly person you’d know that many of us have heard of Mearsheimer – not least because you and others have repeatedly suggested his (selected) output before as if it’s some golden truth.
Mearsheimer was correct in the early 1990s when he challenged the wisdom of forcing Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons – arguing the obvious case that their absence would enable Russia to attempt reconquest (and here we are). Somewhere between then and now he has become increasingly and dementedly anti-western (and, surprise surprise, anti-Israel). A Bernie Sanders supporter, wittering about inequality being our greatest threat. It’s as if being in the halls of academia is almost guaranteed to turn someone into a fuckhead.
He is but one voice, and clearly neither consistent nor reliable.
It really isn’t all our fault. The Russians have agency. They have a momentum of being an agenda setting world power and they seek to regain prominence come what may, whether we are nice to them or mean to them.