Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
Sam Lowry said:
Mothra said:
Sam Lowry said:
FLBear5630 said:
Sam Lowry said:
FLBear5630 said:
Sam Lowry said:
FLBear5630 said:
boognish_bear said:
We better start coordinating better with NATO, Asia and Aus/NZ. Russia and China are positioning for a move. Iran with Israel and N Korea making munitions deals with Russia. Now this.
Whiterock, are you hearing anything that Russia is not showing its true capabilities in Ukraine? It is using basically the B and C teams? Just curious, not liking the chess board at the current time. Also, Asian allies in line? Curious...
Russia has large numbers of troops still waiting to join battle. Ukraine can't mobilize fast enough to create reserves at this point; they're just plugging holes.
Pokrovsk may well be the last nail in the coffin. Absolutely crucial supply hub linking the northeastern and southwestern halves of the front.
Where we differ, is that I believe Ukraine was the test case. When we allowed it to happen, the dominoes started falling. They are going for it all before the Nov election. Iran, Russia and China are all setting up the Board.
Too many things. Ukraine is not the end game for Russia. Next is Kalinburg Oblesk and the Baltics. They don't believe NATO will do a thing.
Their biggest concern is whether NATO will intervene directly in Ukraine. That's why they're making alliances, stockpiling ammo, conserving manpower. Even if they wanted to attack Kaliningrad or the Baltics, which I don't think they do, it would be a way down the road.
Yeah, it is much easier for them to subjugate their neighbors if nobody does anything. Silly NATO not realizing that...
You are really serious with this stuff? If NATO just agreed to stay out of it, Russia will go into Ukraine and sanitize it. What's wrong with that? Sounds like a Dr Evil line from Austin Powers movie. You really believe this stuff?
Whether NATO should intervene is another question. I'm just explaining why it makes no sense for Russia to start another war right now.
Russia isn't starting a war with anyone anytime soon because their conventional military capabilities have been exposed for what they are. Only a fool believe Russia is stronger now than it was before the war.
They're quite obviously stronger, but that's beside the point. They're not stronger in a way that enables them to go on the offensive against NATO.
If Russia calculates they can recreate in Romania, Poland, or the Baltics the same type of conflict they have in Ukraine, they will do it. All day long & twice on Sundays.
But they can't...and you have no evidence they even want to do so.
1. Romania, Poland, and the Baltic States are in NATO....they do not host a major Russian Black Sea naval base. And they are not flirting with joining NATO...they are already in NATO.
2. Romania and Poland have no real russian minority populations that Moscow could work through. Poland is 97% ethnically Polish and Romania is 89% ethnic Romanian... with Hungarians and Roma making up the rest (6% and 4%)
Lithuania is 85% ethnic Lithuanian and the remainder is Polish...less than 4% is ethnic russian.
-Latvia & Estonia are the only two that have any sort of significant russian minority population (25% for Latvia, and 22% for Estonia)
Not to mention that no all those ethnic russians are even interested in trying to help Moscow and the number of ethnic russians in the Baltic is on a steady decline anyway with out migration to Western Europe or to other countries.
[The number of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania has been declining since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. In 1989, the last census during the Soviet occupation of the three countries, the population of ethnic Russians was around 1.7 million. By 2023, that number had decreased to about 887,000, with 296,000 in Estonia, 445,000 in Latvia]
3.. In Ukraine pre-war there were at least two major political parties (one pro-West, and the other pro-Moscow)
Nothing like that exists in Romania, Poland, or the Baltic States.
The closest you can get to that is the pro-Russian ST party in Latvia...yet that party only has 9 of the 100 seats in the Parliament (The Saeima)...and does not do well electorally
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Stability!
(sigh)
1) Russia is not nearly as afraid of Nato as your argument presumes. Ukraine had security guarantees, in writing, from Nato members, did it not? What was that worth, in the end. Russia certainly ignored them. Russia did that because it thinks Nato is politically weak (always has, always will). Russia is under no illusions that can defeat Nato straight up in battle. Rather, it is gambling with the blood of its own young men that it can outlast Nato support for Ukraine. And you & Sam are doing your damnedest to help them succeed.
2) It's not necessary to have ethnic Russians to run destabilization operations, but it certainly helps For that reason, I suggest you should check Estonia's demographic and recalculate your assumptions. Once a single Nato state falls back into Russian hands, how do the remaining states react?
3) static error. Things change. There are Nato countries who are "pro-Russian" in that they are advocating a softer approach to Ukraine. Like Hungary. There are pro-Russian premiers in Nato, too, like in Slovakia. Every country has its hawks and doves, factions arguing over policies of confrontation vs accommodation. TODAY, the countries we are talking about are mostly pro-Nato/EU. History teaches us that will change. There will be scandals, economic collapses, and great challenges in foreign policy. Elections happen with great regularity Governments rise and fall. Time always affords opportunities. That was the policy error Russia made....it did not need to invade. It only needed for corruption and economic decline to bring their factions back to power.
And NONE of your superficial assessments allow for Russian error. We are in this war because of Russian analytical error. They badly mis-assessed Russian capabilities, Ukrainian capabilities, Nato responses, etc.... History is replete with examples of an actor starting a war that it should not have.....making bad assumption about the status of things, bad decisions on strategies/tactics/logistics, bad decisions on questions of national interest, etc.... And once the war starts,
somebody has to force it to an end. And that cost is the same whether the war was justified or not, no matter who starts it, for what reasons, good or bad.
You are ignoring the plain lessons of history both broad and specific to defend a bad policy recommendation, making many of the same really bad analytical decisions that Putin made leading up to his invasion of Ukraine. And you are myopically blind to current dynamics as well. We have seen the Defense Ministers of both Romania and Sweden, neither nation exactly known for foreign policy hawkishness, publicly tell their peoples to prepare for war. They clearly see the threat I describe. Does not not cause you for a moment to consider the possibility that one or more of your assumptions are faulty? Poland is the most hawkish Nato state of all....arming up well-beyond peacetime status. Why do you completely dismiss their assessments? Are you seriously trying to make the case that the US deep state is coordinating all this on behalf of the military industrial complex (rather than looking at the remains of Occam's Razor - that Russia is pursuing traditional Russian imperialist expansion, as evidenced by its invasion of Ukraine).
