Russia invades Ukraine

I'm no military strategist and am probably about to prove it by asking but why don't the Ukrainians try and destroy as much of that 40 mile Russian column north of Kyiv as they can whilst it's strung out in a long line on the open road before it gets to the city, deploys and creates hell?

 

I'd suspect thats an ideal thing to try and do, but they are defending the whole country all at once and the Ukrainian army is far smaller than Russias.

This convoy seems to have been going for days, so maybe they are facing resistance.

 

Apparently they are resisting it as much as they can. Don't think there's any air capability though.

 

I listened to a military expert on the radio, he said the huge convoy may be a godsend, there's no need to attack it all, just attack strategic points that logjam it, but before Ukraine can attack it they need to identify where in the column are the control and command centres, without taking those out the Ukrainian attack aircraft ( which they haven't many of) and attack drones will be very vulnerable to AA fire.

 

Poland, Bulgaria and another have agreed to hand over their Mig's and Sukhoi's to Ukraine, could be a total of 50 to 60 aircraft.

 

Yeah, I saw that. I guess it's a question of how long they can keep ghem in the air. The Russians must be pretty confident they can't if they're willing to put a convoy that size on the road. I sincerely hope something stops it flat in its tracks.

 

I'm not here to teach anyone a lesson but your post had a lot of stuff in there from a lot of different angles. To pick up on any or all would lead into so many rabbit holes we’d never get out.

So, here’s what I think - and by the way your post did make me think things over - which is good.

In terms of geo-politics, I’d pretty much agree with you.

My problem is with geo-politics and political science. To me it’s a bit like economics – there are lots of well-constructed plausible theories and as an intellectual exercise there’s nothing wrong with it. However, to me, it operates at a refined level where anything can be justified intellectually. For instance...

Let’s take a powerful country who lose out on a war and are humiliated. Worse, many other countries are a threat to its security. What it needs to do is re-establish what it sees as its historically rightful borders and unite people who speak the same language who are now in other countries. In order to do that, it takes their land – which in many instances it has a claim to.

This could describe our present situation. It could also describe and explain decisions taken by the German leadership in the 1930s.

In your first post you consider the present situation as being 80% the responsibility of the west due to their mis-handling and misreading of the Soviet Union.

By the same token, the responsibility for the conflict that turned out to be WW2 could be seen as 80% down to the Britain, France and America and their decisions taken at the Treaty of Versailles.

This is not to deny that in both cases, serious miscalculations were made - some only visible with hindsight. Whatever the ‘percentages’ though (and we could argue the toss forever) there is, in my mind, a separation here….

Britain, France and America, I think, cannot be held responsible for a war that annihilated 75 million people. Responsibility for that lies in the warped minds of Hitler and Stalin.

In the same way NATO is not responsible for what l fear will be the cold-blooded annihilation and subjugation of the Ukrainian people. Responsibility for that lies in the warped mind of Putin.

For all the talk of military strategy, an ex-friend of Putin who fell out with him (10 years in prison for that one) gave what has to be perhaps the clearest insight into Putin’s mind. He said that Putin isn’t mad but lives in a world he’s constructed on historical precedent. Putin expected Ukrainians to “welcome Russian tanks with flowers.”

This is a reference to the ‘liberation’ of Eastern Poland where such incidents did occur as the tanks arrived to ‘free Ukrainians and Belarusians from Nazi and Polish oppressers’. Many ‘Ukrainian and Belarusian brothers’ were soon tortured, shot and sent to the gulag, but that reality is not Putin's reality. So, the military strategy hasn’t failed – its just that reality on the ground hasn’t matched Putin’s imagined reality. I fear for what happens next.

I have read some work by Mearsheimer. Interesting. I feel that he shifts his position to suit the geo-political climate, and glosses over previously held convictions. I may be wrong. However, I really would like to know if he stands by his 1993 assertion that Ukraine should never give up its nuclear weapons as that would leave them open to attack by Russia. He was the only person to voice this opinion at the time.

I don’t have any problems with anyone’s opinions even if I strongly disagree. I do have a problem with geo-politics, cold political science and military enthusiasm. I fear we are about to witness thousands of innocent people slaughtered before our eyes. If there is any hope it is that, for the first time, via technology we will witness barbarism as it happens. Hopefully that will bring Putin down and put a stop to this. If not, then the human race deserves everything it’s going to get.

I’m too depressed to write any more.

 

Might be in bad taste this but..... they should have a word with the Taliban... (experts in making and deploying IEDs roadside). Wreaked havoc on the U.S. army. Tony Stark can vouch for that!

EDIT: On a more serious note (and it may be propaganda) but I have seen reports of teh convoy being strung out and delayed due to multiple breakdowns causing blockages. Sounds unlikely but we did see many miliary vehicles including tanks and personnel carriers in phase 1 stranded through mechanical fialures or running out of fuel. They then become sitting ducks.

 

Long post there and I don't want to go through it piece by piece and unpick it. You're absolutely entitled to your views, but in my opinion, some areas of your thinking are a bit under developed.

Couple of things: I didn't say it was our mismanagement of the Soviet Union. It's been western - predominantly American - mismanagement of the post-cold war era. Huge structural shift (unipolarity) has been, in fact, a curse for much of the globe. Bipolarity generally most stable and multipolarity (what we're seeing now) generally the most volatile.

Mearsheimer was suggesting that Ukraine's best interests would have been to keep nukes. Of course it would have been, they're the ultimate insurance policy. Hence why, Iran and North Korea want them. When the USA runs around the world explicit telling regimes "you're next on the list", like Iran, they build nuclear arsenals. Makes sense for their point of view.

Theories are born out of reality and lived experiences. Theories of international politics are very different from say less developed theories of economics. They're useful to make sense of large, complex bodies of information and some, are useful at making sense of the world. Not sure what you mean by cold political science. If I'm cold for not wanting WW3 over Ukraine (by that I mean, I don't want the British to fight for Ukraine against Russia), then yes, I'm freezing. We can't fight every fire. Also, does anyone take notice of whats happening in Yemen? A war that we're supporting? 400k dead. 2.5 million with cholera.

And, I'm no fan of Putin, but the British and the Americans are hardly angels. Look at the Middle East. Consider Russia's history and their lived experiences, then you can better understand and predict their behaviour. This has been coming for a long time, unfortunately.

Great debating with you. I'll keep an eye on this thread but I'm struggling to actually get time to respond properly. A lot going on at the moment. Don't want any of the above to come across as belittling or disrespectful, but obviously a vigorous debate can sometimes come across that way - not my intention.

 

The convoy has been there a while really. Sense would say a few good men with some of those anti tank missiles and just take out the fuel tankers in the night. Maybe already done. I do think the Russians will have supply line problems as they move further into Ukraine. Taking land is one thing, keeping it is another. Hopefully.

 

I think we'll leave things right there.

 

Mexico won't hit Russia with sanctions. Pakistan have Imran Khan who can't read the room so has just done a trade deal with Putin. Cannot believe there are still countries who don't want to stand with the big majority.

 

not sure if it is deliberate or accidental but you really do come across as a pompous ****.....

 

I'm not saying I agree with his views, but it's a bit rich to take the moral high ground over that after how you reacted to his previous post...

 

What's the phrase? Summat like "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics"?

 

Wouldn't professionals talk both?

 

I Thought that mate. I did my own digging but people of all that area Iraq Pakistan etc are telling us to bolt because they got ignored when they faced similar. I can’t really voice an opinion on that myself because I ain’t got a scooby ******* do

 

For more polite response than the one you originally gave.