Let’s see where this goes. Reporting today shows the Russians cleaned out the wives and children from their Kyiv embassy; NATO is looking to position itself in the Black Sea for spillover; the Brits are increasing arms to Ukraine; Blinken scheduled to go to Ukraine this week after Senators visit. The Germans are looking like they are balking on denying SWIFT to the Russians and NATO chief is calling for more talks. Meanwhile Russia is checking how deeply frozen the ground is in Ukraine while the Ruble drops like a rock.
I don’t know, I think the Russians are very serious about this and the more this drags and positions the more this has a chance to escalate. We’ll see but the Russians may be looking to go deeper into Ukraine than we suspect.
"Meanwhile Russia is checking how deeply frozen the ground is in Ukraine while the Ruble drops like a rock." It is true that mud season has always been a major factor in military planning in that part of the world. As Napoleon learned. And multiple armies since. It not mud season yet, but they need several months of being able to maneuver and that window gets shorter every day so it gets to be "now" or wait until the next cycle.
You expressed in an earlier post in another thread about how important having insiders Turn on Ukraine in the Crimea annexation. As far as annexations go Crimea was low hanging fruit. In this situation currently, I am not sure how much local support the Russians have for this go around. It could be they have a network of pro Russian leaders ready to transfer to Russia or it could be they have weaker support. I don’t know. What I do know is if they don’t have pro Russian separatists ready to go then they will have to invade and then being able to maneuver becomes of the upmost importance to the Russians. They could very well find themselves stuck if they wait too long and invade in earnest. Crimea was early to February if I recall. In terms of timing, we are Probably just about where the Russians want to be, the next 30 days or so.
Yes, and I said that about Crimea as well. The other posts emphasized ad naseum that the situation in the eastern Ukraine is different than in the west and I took/take the position that at least some of the regions in the east are solidly pro-russian and one or more are even classified as "russian occupied" already. As I said to El Concho "you ask what the people there will do, but the question is some of those areas is what do they want to do." All of the reporting is that he has some easy pickings in the east but it gets tough from there. I was/am just pushing on the idea that it is an all or none situation. It is not. He could nibble some more turf, or he could just continue to game play to wait for another day and take some assurances around the pipeline and nato in the meantime. It is not and has never been about either invading all of Ukraine or not. I don't want to get into the weeds right now. But their are pro-russian populations in the east that welcomed the ruskie growing influence but then tired of the corruption. Then in recent years, the Ukraine de-centralized some of its government operations and let the eastern ukrainians manage more things as an alternative to just being pro-ukraine or leaning toward russia. The reports I have seen was that that worked great for a while but now the locals are fed up with all corruption from the locals who have since come to abuse their power. I don't know how that shakes out in the end. Not being a binary thinker, I tend to believe that Putin could advance his turf a little but not have to bite off all of the Ukraine, and various degrees and options in between. The risk that Putin has run or is running is that if he is jousting to probe the atmospherics and defenses then that works against him if it causes the west to put enhanced defenses and penalties into place. Putin is a Kgb agent at heart. He likes the fake insurrection route when possible. As he did in the Crimea. He solidly denied any Russian involvement. Then months later gave all the commanders of that operation medals for implementing it. Yeh, Putin is old school in some ways. Poisoning political opponents. Poison umbrella tips. He likes the sneaky shiite.
Vlad has paranoia and fears ending like Gaddafi. He's pretty shrewd so can preemptively anticipate when the west attempts to undermine him. He knows the west doesn't have the stomach to call his bluffs so he keeps bluffing. This though, this stinks of posturing like Trump did when he requested to move our troops to the border in time for the elections. It costs Vlad a little bit of diesel, spurs nationalism sentiment for his falling popularity, undermines NATO & Biden, and gives the GQP rubes their newfound Jesus moment of "we're not interventionists, so screw our allies" in time for 2022. If things go his way (as they appear to be), he gets no missiles at his doorstep, get his pipelines, and gets easing of sanctions. It's Iran's "we're building nukes" strategy. Remind me when he starts moving field hospitals
Excellent video explanation at the top of this link on how the troop build up in Belarus signals Russia positioning for a possible advance on Kyiv. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/europe/russia-ukraine-us-high-stakes-gamble-cmd-intl/index.html
As in any other military operation, he would want to open another front just to keep his enemies' forces committed there. Which may or may not turn out to be his primary objective. All those scenarios over in the east that he outlined are valid possibilities. If you sneeze, it is easy to forget exactly what Putin's pretext is, other than that Joe Biden is in office so it might be a good time to go. Otherwise, what has he got for a pretext? "I want the Ukraine," is aspirational but not an actually international legal basis." It is just Crimea 2.0. - ie. pretend that local insurrectionists are being bad. Even though they are Russian, if any. The fellow in the video did touch upon the core of the matter, aside from military tactics. The core of the matter is that Putin is not just trying to restore the Soviet Union as the pundits say. He is trying to restore the Russian Empire glory days. And the inconvenient truth for Putin is that the homeland of Russia is in Ukraine. - Kiev- which is 700 years older than Moscow. Yeh, that's gotta suck. Especially if the Russian homeland were to be in NATO. ouch!!! Not going to happen but just talking about it hurts for him. The video fellow also properly referenced the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is why Vlad suddenly revitalized his participation in the Orthodox Church a few years ago) before that he had not attended since his mother took him as a child (and now uses government dollars- bigtime- to build and promote Orthodox churches - NOT SOMETHING YOU WOULD SEE THE SOVIET UNION DO. But the orthodox church was one of the pillars of the Russian Empire/Dynasty and the Romanov Czars were big russian orthodox supporters and very devout. That's more along the line of the model that Vlad is following, versus trying to be stalin and the soviet union.
The timing they are thinking is it’s basically now or never for the Russians to move before they are the USSR of 1 but it’s already baked in for them. They might get a little here but the trend is not the Russians friend. All of the talk about Biden and pipelines doesn’t address the conflict is Russia would like to be imperial again but it ain’t going to happen. NATO is beyond containing and as a western country we should be very happy about this. You all know - freedom and liberty and democracy. The Russians see the US, ie Biden, as the only arbiter capable of leveraging their interests on NATO. The problem is it ain’t going to happen. And I’m not trying to get into this Trump v Biden nonsense but Biden has recommitted to NATO instead of undermining it. You all forget 4 years ago the conversation in America was derogatory toward NATO with some people arguing we leave NATO. Putin’s dream come true. I’m glad that didn’t happen. Don’t know how some other folks may be feeling though. Yeah, like I said previously, Joey B is holding a damn strong line right now. The Russians are in a Joe Manchin type of situation where they think they can hold it all together but it’s already all gone. Putin for all of his posturing is ultimately self destructive. Putin can’t see Russia without satellite states and Manchin can’t see WV without coal even though that’s where it’s all going.