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Putin HAS to invade Ukraine, or look very WEAK

gambling_cruiser said:
I do not like Putin, but is clear that from his point of view the NATO eat-expansion seems a threat to his security.
The US promised in the 90s not to do this but they did it anyway.
If Ukraine got to a neutral status like Finnland, the problem could probably solved without wargames.
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And at that time, Russia promised to respect Ukrainian borders - but then violated that promise. The U.S/NATO present no threat to Ukrainian sovereignty or independence, but Russia does.

As others have stated, Ukraine tried to be neutral, but apparently wasn't neutral enough for the big neighbor.

You get punched by that big guy to the east, and he threatens to do it again if you don't toe the line. The big guy on the west offers to help you out a bit, no threats involved. It's not hard to imagine that you might start to look more favorably on the guy on the west side.
 
crescent said:
And at that time, Russia promised to respect Ukrainian borders - but then violated that promise. The U.S/NATO present no threat to Ukrainian sovereignty or independence, but Russia does.

As others have stated, Ukraine tried to be neutral, but apparently wasn't neutral enough for the big neighbor.

You get punched by that big guy to the east, and he threatens to do it again if you don't toe the line. The big guy on the west offers to help you out a bit, no threats involved. It's not hard to imagine that you might start to look more favorably on the guy on the west side.
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Ukraine did not have any sovereignty since long before the 2014 events. Remember the "Orange revolution". A tool of "the West" for a long time.

Anyway, "b" strikes again:

The 'Frozen Ground Theory' And Other Ukraine War Nonsense

Always remember to read the comments when you get a Moon of Alabama link.
 
crescent said:
And at that time, Russia promised to respect Ukrainian borders - but then violated that promise.
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That was pretty recent. The list of other countries closer & closer to Russia joining NATO happened first, without Russia piling up their army along those countries' borders. (And I don't get why their acceptance into NATO by NATO is being called a series of US decisions by some here; it seems like NATO decisions.)

crescent said:
Ukraine tried to be neutral, but apparently wasn't neutral enough for the big neighbor.
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History makes neutrality just about impossible for Ukraine. Ukraine is not just traditionally a part of Russia but where Russia came from. The beginning of the history of anything you can identify as a distinct "Russian" culture & coherent political sovereignty was based in Kiev; you can't trace Russian history back and not land at Kiev. That's a step beyond, for example, China calling Taiwan a part of China, because Taiwan isn't the original home of Chineseness and Beijing isn't on Taiwan. (It's actually more like the government of Taiwan calling itself the real government of all of China.) A closer analogy might be Jerusalem to the Jews, although that's different too because Russianity isn't a religion and at least the Russians have had Russia all this time while the Jews haven't had Israel or any other land of their own.
 
In case you were feeling reassured by Kremlin messaging today, Russia's ambassador to the EU say

“We will not invade Ukraine unless we are provoked. If the Ukrainians launch attack against Russia, you shouldn’t be surprised if we counterattack."
 
Delvo said:
That was pretty recent. The list of other countries closer & closer to Russia joining NATO happened first, without Russia piling up their army along those countries' borders. (And I don't get why their acceptance into NATO by NATO is being called a series of US decisions by some here; it seems like NATO decisions.)
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Russia could not put troops on the borders of most of those nations - they didn't have borders with Russia.

Those that did? At late as 2015 Russia was still seeking to prosecute citizens of Lithuania and other Baltic nations who had refused to be drafted into the Soviet military in those last few years after the Baltic nations declared independence but before the USSR formally dissolved.

25 years after the USSR ended, and Russia had not yet given up tilting at that windmill. With a neighbor like that, it would be foolish to not seek better defensive arrangements.
 
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Russia stated its demands again a few days ago.

-Legally binding commitment not to expand NATO eastward, including Georgia and Ukraine.

-Legally binding commitment for NATO to move all military and equipment back to 1997 lines.

I guess unless Putin is a complete liar jerkoff, they will be invading Ukraine.

https://tass.ru/politika/13744013
 
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Captain_Swoop said:
In case you were feeling reassured by Kremlin messaging today, Russia's ambassador to the EU say

“We will not invade Ukraine unless we are provoked. If the Ukrainians launch attack against Russia, you shouldn’t be surprised if we counterattack."
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Just quoting this for seeing how the narrative has changed. Which I suspect will *not* be to Captain_Swoop's surprise
 
Irony is that the bad performance of Russian Military is makiing Putin look weak anyway.
 
theprestige said:
Yep! Somehow he managed to invade Ukraine and still look weak.
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Exposing his armed forces as paper tigers.

As an aside, I read The Threat by Andrew Cockburn in the 1980s

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1032248.The_Threat

and following its extensive quotes from The Liberators by Viktor Survorov also that book

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberators_(Suvorov_book)

I was pretty persuasive that a lot of the Soviet military effort was misplaced and it wasn't as capable as it had seemed to the West in the 1980s
 
Oystein said:
In sports, a superior team can look weak even when beating an inferior opponent, if it has unexpected troubles carving out a win.
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But the Russians obviously aren't superior. They appear to have no training, strategy, logistics or tactical goals.
 
Oystein said:
In sports, a superior team can look weak even when beating an inferior opponent, if it has unexpected troubles carving out a win.
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I think this analysis is at least ten years out of date. We know that Russia has failed to match the west in technical innovation. We know they're struggling to develop new generations of weapons, and struggling to maintain the older weapons they have. The forces readily available to commit to this fight are probably on par with their Ukrainian counterparts, at best.

And logistically? I think if the west can keep up a steady supply of man portable antitank weapons, that will almost be enough by itself to tip the scales in Ukraine's favor.

Russian air power would flip my calculus on its head, but Russian air power has been conspicuously absent.

I have no idea where you're getting this "superior team" business from.
 
Size is a type of superiority. And it's where the sports analogy fails. In every sport I know of and possibly every one that exists at all, both teams get the same number of players. A sport that allowed 7 players on one team and 18 players on the other team would be guaranteeing the latter to win every time no matter how much better the former were than any 7 of the latter.
 
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