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The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine.

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crescent said:
Russia has proposed talks in Minsk with the Ukrainian leadership.

A bit of history:

In the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the Hungarian defense minister was invited to meet with the Soviets to coordinate the withdrawal of Soviet troops. When he and his delegation arrived, they were arrested. The Soviets had made a bad-faith promise of negotiations as a means to lure the Defense minister and thereby decapitate the Hungarian military.
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This might be a dumb question....why would that decapitate the Hungarian military?


If in the US, if Lloyd Austin was kidnapped tomorrow I'm not sure the military would notice.
 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged the Ukrainian army to overthrow its leadership whom he labelled as a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who have has lodged itself in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people.”

Addressing the Ukrainian military in a televised address, a visibly angry Putin urged the military to “take power in your own hands”.

It seems like it will be easier for us to agree with you than this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.

Putin further repeated his claim that the Ukrainian leadership had been engaged in “genocide” in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

We are fighting with nationalist groups that are directly responsible for the genocide of the Donbas and the bloodshed of peaceful civilians in the two republics.

In the address, Putin further accused the Ukrainian “neo-Nazi” leadership of acting like terrorists, by ‘cowering behind civilians’.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/l...08db56730fbe65#block-6218f3808f08db56730fbe65

High as a kite everybody. Goofballs.
 
Putin is seriously seething over the fact that the Ukrainians haven't given up without a fight and been able to fight back to some success. I don't know if he really believes that the Jewish president is actually a neo-nazi drug addicted gangster, or if he's stupid enough for the Ukrainian military to believe him claiming it. Either way its not a good sign for his mental health.
 
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Thermal said:
By that rubric, all wars are both hot and cold between somebody or other.
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Yes, if they have any involvement at all. Sending troops in and exchanging violence = hot. Sending arms and support to one side, levying sanctions, etc = cold. Doing nothing would be neutral.

The normal understanding of a cold war is proxy support in regional conflicts with one eye glaring at the uninvolved power.

Putin does not care about thumbing his nose at the States here. He is pulling a Hitler. Hitler was nor Cold Warring anyone. He was Hitlering.
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You can have a hot war between A and B while simultaneously having a cold war between A and C. The US and Russia have been and are having a cold war. You might consider the original Cold War stopped for a few years back when the USSR fell, or you might consider it just lapsed, or you might consider this a second and different one. But we have been and definitely are having a cold war between the US and Russia regardless of what's happened and is happening in Ukraine right now.

Do you think a country can only be involved in one single conflict at any time?
 
Tero said:
Only about a day to go. Russia has control of the air space between it and Kiyv.
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Russia has not been able to control any large towns. Heavy fighting in several of them, but Russia can't seem to close the deal. Sumy and Cherniv are both still contested.

It's like an odd reversal of the usual ways of insurgency. Russia has control of the countryside, because it is open and allows effective use of airpower. Ukraine controls the towns, because there is shelter there and that's where the popular support is.

If Ukraine chooses to keep fighting in the cities, this could drag out.

Tero said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine


Where are the tanks?
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I get the impression that Ukraine still has forces in reserve, west of the Dnieper. But the few tanks they've used so far have been destroyed, most of the Ukrainian tanks are outdated (T64) compared to the Russian ones (T72, T80, Armata). Too susceptible to being hit by aircraft. When the enemy has total air supremacy, tanks are death traps. Right now dismounted infantry with shoulder fired anti-tank weapons are much deadlier to Russian troops than tanks could be.
 
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crescent said:
Russia has not been able to control any large towns. Heavy fighting in several of them, but Russia can't seem to close the deal. Sumy and Cherniv are both still contested.

It's like an odd reversal of the usual ways of insurgency. Russia has control of the countryside, because it is open and allows effective use of airpower. Ukraine controls the towns, because there is shelter there and that's where the popular support is.

If Ukraine chooses to keep fighting in the cities, this could drag out.
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See the battle of Grozny
 
crescent said:
Russia has not been able to control any large towns. Heavy fighting in several of them, but Russia can't seem to close the deal. Sumy and Cherniv are both still contested.

It's like an odd reversal of the usual ways of insurgency. Russia has control of the countryside, because it is open and allows effective use of airpower. Ukraine controls the towns, because there is shelter there and that's where the popular support is.

If Ukraine chooses to keep fighting in the cities, this could drag out.
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Or Russia starts indiscriminately bombing population centers. Not sure Putin will go there or not.
 
lobosrul5 said:
6,500 tanks? That number seems highly suspect, the US Army only operates about 4,000 M1 Abrams. We also have Strykers that in some configurations might be considered a light tank.

I'm guessing they are camouflaged and hidden away somewhere to guard against air strikes.
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Those numbers tend to count functional tanks as well as half-scrapped ones in boneyards. By that measure the U.S. probably has tens of thousands of tanks because they'll count older M60s and such that have already spend a decade rusting away in desert boneyards.

So the number for Ukraine probably counts a bunch of T-64s and T-55s that might have never been updated.
 
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Tero said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine


Where are the tanks?
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Do you expect them to have thousands of tanks fueled, crewed and ready to deploy at any point in the country at any time? Most of those are probably mothballed and would take at least weeks to get in working order, when it's possible at all and they aren't just rusted pieces of scrap metal. Ukraine is a poor country, and it could probably have a couple of hundred tanks ready at one time.

Most important asset for them would probably be man-portable anti-tank and anti-air weapons rather than tanks anyway.
 
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Arcade22 said:
Do you expect them to have thousands of tanks fueled, crewed and ready to deploy at any point in the country at any time?
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This isn't really "any time", though. This was the moment intelligence agencies were saying Russia was going to strike. It was now or never.

Fueling isn't really going to be an issue for standby. Once tanks start rolling, keeping them fueled up can be a challenge, but not before the shooting starts. It's easy to have them filled with fuel while waiting, they aren't like liquid fuel rockets where you can't just leave them full in storage.

I would expect them to be fully crewed as well, because, well, what the hell do you even have tanks for if you don't have crews? Repair status may be a significant limiting factor, though, can't really say much about that. But if they really have only hundreds out of thousands, that's a REALLY bad readiness level, even for a poor country. Tanks should be a lot simpler to maintain than aircraft.

Most important asset for them would probably be man-portable anti-tank and anti-air weapons rather than tanks anyway.
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You really want that mix, though. Man-portable anti-tank weapons are probably the best counter to Russian armor, but your own armor is a really good counter to Russian infantry, which man-portable anti-tank weapons aren't particularly good against.
 
In Ukraine's situation, it would typically be advantageous to keep your tanks concealed in "hull-down" positions at key points, moving them only at night or during air cover.

Related to this, word from Ukrainian forces is that ambushes against Russian armor columns with Javelin missiles have been quite effective.
 
NASA is reporting that ISS operations are not expected to be effected by the Ukraine Crisis and that American and Russian personnel on the ISS are continuing their duties as normal.

Still wager it's fairly tense up there.
 
JoeMorgue said:
NASA is reporting that ISS operations are not expected to be effected by the Ukraine Crisis and that American and Russian personnel on the ISS are continuing their duties as normal.

Still wager it's fairly tense up there.
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Unless they try to crash the thing into Kiev it's difficult to imagine what anybody on the ISS could possibly do in this conflict.
 
Ziggurat said:
This isn't really "any time", though. This was the moment intelligence agencies were saying Russia was going to strike. It was now or never.

Fueling isn't really going to be an issue for standby.
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It is if the troops are selling diesel fuel (and equupment) to buy food and booze. There were reports of this from the Belarus border.
 
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