esteban wrote:
As I said to Peter, read the original, and think a bit about what is being said and at what context. I find it difficult to understand how people can at the same time believe that Russia is totally incompetent and will lose in Ukraine, and and the same time believe that they are still plotting to take the whole Europe.
Ambition and capability have nothing to do with one another. That is darn obvious from this conflict. Their ambition in this phase was to topple the Ukrainian leadership and gain control of the country. The Russian leadership obviously expected this to be a 4 day operation. it has turned as we can see into a war of anihilation.
So their capability and their ambition do not match, but this does not mean the ambition is not there.
I don’t think they aim to militarily conquer all of Europe, but they are aiming to regain their “lost” lands which includes large parts of Eastern Europe. Baltic states for sure, Moldova, Georgia, Azarbeidjan, quite possibly Kazakhstan, parts of Poland, parts of Rumania and so on. Right now they are obviously not capable to do that but the ambition remains.
As for the rest of Europe, they aim to do what they did during the cold war. Finance and support politicians whom they expect they can profit from, install regimes friendly to them wherever they can and generally seed discord and division in Western states. Just remember the 1970ties and 80ties, where they did exactly that quite successfully. And with the means of propaganda and darknet e.t.c. today it is much easier to do that than it used to be.
esteban wrote:
What is relevant is finding a way to stop the shooting a.s.a.p. so the suffering and death is minimized. That won’t happen while both sides believe they can militarily get into better negotiating position or that offering the other side a way out is simply unacceptable because they are evil/nazis.
Absolutely, and I’ve been saying this from the start. I also agree with you that massive mistakes were made ante belllum, but as you say, most of this is irrelevant now. The main goal has to be to stop the slaughter and to find at least a temporary status which both sides can live with without loosing too much face.
You know, from the start I’ve wondered: Where has the Western attention been when Russia anihilated Chechnia, when they fought in Syria and so on. Everyone knew their way of fighting and that what we see now in Ukraine is nothing else but standard operations policy for the russian army. So why is everyone so surprised now? It’s war, it’s destruction, what do people expect? War is always like that, only that many people in the West seem to have forgotten the slaughters of WW2 and the more recent ones were too far to care?
War is evil, what the Russians are doing now is beyond evil. It’s certainly not the only evil in the world, which in it’s whole is an evil place, but it sticks out. Forgiveness is not going to happen any time soon, rather never. But the imperative issue now is to stop this madness and get everyone to take a step back from violence towards some sort of enforced at least armistice.
But make no mistake, it is only the beginning. Getting an armistice and some sort of peace deal for now is utmost important, but it will still leave Russia as a pariah and isolated to the extent that the incensement of the population will continue unrestricted. The same btw goes to an extent for the West. Prior to February 24th Russia was for many regarded as an interesting place, many tourists went there, there was trade and mutual interest in exchange of culture, people travelled this vast country pretty freely and vice versa. All this is gone and it won’t be back any time soon.
From this perspective the best we can hope for is a stalemate which will leave both parties unable to act without massively adverse consequences, at least for now. Once we reach a stage where both sides back down from the brink of a nuclear exchange, we can slowly rebuild a level of mutual trust, but this will not be tomorrow. In fact I doubt I’ll be around to see it in my lifetime.
This thread will be locked for a bit. Already explained further back, and remember the last para of the Guidelines:
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EuroGA is a GA forum. It is not a political forum where people who post little or nothing on GA topics can hang out. There are lots of places on the internet for that. It is difficult to moderate a forum which has a high political content. Also such content drives a lot of people away. Then, moderating people who abuse it drives away yet more people. We’ve had a few over the years who dumped a vast amount of such material (in the political/OT thread, mainly) and then created lots of trouble.
This thread is now unlocked. Some additional conditions have been laid down for posting here, however:
There was a post a few pages back about whether all the shoulder launched missiles being given away will pose a terrorist threat to airliners and police helicopters etc. I was fretting about this too. Apparently at least some might be geofenced.
@kwlf, unlike small arms, MANPADS are not being given away to all and sundry. Even the Territorial Defence (militia) units don’t have them.
Few if any shoulder launched missiles will hit an airliner at FL300. For example the British Starstreak which is arguably the best “gift” to Ukraine so far, only goes to 16000ft.
Peter wrote:
Few if any shoulder launched missiles will hit an airliner at FL300. For example the British Starstreak which is arguably the best “gift” to Ukraine so far, only goes to 16000ft.
Flying over some „questionable“ regions I always used to think this as well (to my relief). Until one day I realized you could launch them from say a mountain peak of 5000m elevation… and being rockets, they’d happily fly another 5000m upwards. Never checked it though.
These missiles also require training to be used, and they have less than a minute’s worth of sensor coolant. If you fail to capture the target and fire within than interval, you need a new cooling cartridge.
All airliners fly at less than 16,000 feet when they’re landing or taking off, and some missiles have already been captured by Russia and will be captured by other parties e.g. Chechen and Syrian mercenaries. It sounds as if there are solutions to stop this from mattering, and this can only be a good thing.
Ultranomad wrote:
These missiles also require training to be used, and they have less than a minute’s worth of sensor coolant. If you fail to capture the target and fire within than interval, you need a new cooling cartridge.
Russian version of the same weapon doesn’t have this limitation and training is super-easy. Trained person can fire the missile within 10 seconds from carrying it in unarmed state, hanging from shoulder or within 45 seconds if the weapon is in the box. Been there, done that.
