Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Crossroads]

I think Putin's MORE likely to use nukes now than a week ago. His reaction to the big bridge getting blown-up was an emotional one, fire missiles at everything Ukrainian in sight cause he looks bad to the whole world. Another huge defeat or a collapse of his military leading to the loss of the Crimea, could push him over the edge. Nukes maybe the only way out of this mess he created in his view of things. That's why while fully supporting the Ukes, the West should in every way be trying to de-escalate this conflict and convince Putin to backtrack his army out of Ukraine while he still has one.

I still don't see Putin using nukes for the simple reason there's nothing to gain by using them and a ton to lose if he does so. However we now have a top general who routinely used chemical weapons against civilians in Syria. Now there's a worry that just got a lot more concrete.

[JasonPratt]

Recent news this morning (since midnight EST) from the Washington Post: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-nato-discusses-air-defenses-russia-claims-arrests-for-crimean-bridge-blast/ar-AA12RTHy?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=24134db321bd48e8b48daa6f6f7454b2

2:10 AM: HIMARS from U.S. and IRIS-T air defense system from Germany arrive in Ukraine

An IRIS-T air defense system from Germany and four additional HIMARS systems from the United States have arrived in Ukraine, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

"A new era of air defence has begun" in Ukraine, he said.

Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have called for expedited and additional air defense systems in the wake of Russia's string of strikes on Monday.

The German Defense Ministry said Monday that the first of four IRIS-T air defense systems — modern weapons that Germany promised in June — would arrive in Ukraine in the "next few days." But the IRIS-T system appeared to have arrived sooner that anticipated.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said the defense system can protect "an entire major city from Russian air attacks," Germany's Deutsche Welle broadcaster reported.

Reznikov thanked President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the American people, as well as his counterpart in Germany. "This is only the beginning. And we need more," he said.

By: Sammy Westfall

The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, met with Russia's Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.

The two leaders were to discuss "the friendly relations" between the two countries, as well as regional and international issues, the UAE news agency WAM said before the trip.

The visit comes days after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners announced a cut in oil production by 2 million barrels per day, a move that will benefit Putin by increasing oil prices as Russia is under increasing financial pressure from Western sanctions.

3:50 AM: Yellen meets with Ukrainian counterpart, calls on allies to do more

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen met with her Ukrainian counterpart, Sergii Marchenko, on Tuesday in Washington, reassuring him that the United States was sending a recent aid package "as soon as possible." Yellen said the $4.5 billion package would be disbursed "in the coming weeks." In total, the United States has granted $13 billion — "all in grants" — to Ukraine, she said.

"We are committed to getting this funding to you as soon as possible because we know how important it is in supporting your brave resistance to Russia's illegal invasion," she said. But Yellen also called on allies to "join us by swiftly disbursing their existing commitments to Ukraine and by stepping up in doing more — both to help Ukraine continue its essential government services and to help Ukraine begin to build and recover."

By: Bryan Pietsch

4:08 AM: Biden says he has 'no intention' of meeting with Putin at G-20

President Biden said that he has "no intention" of meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia next month but that he would make an exception if, "for example," the discussion were about the release of American basketball star Brittney Griner.

In an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday evening, Biden said, "If [Putin] came to me at the G-20 and said, 'I want to talk about the release of Griner,' I'd meet with him." Griner is detained in Russia, sentenced to 9½ years in prison after a vape cartridge of cannabis oil that was found in her luggage there.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said Tuesday on state television that Moscow was open to discussions with the United States or Turkey on how to end the war, Reuters reported.

But State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday that the United States has "very little confidence" that it was a legitimate offer for peace talks because Moscow carried out "indiscriminate strikes within hours of this proposal."

Biden, in the interview, said of Putin, "I think he's committed war crimes, so I don't see any rationale to meet with him now."

By: Bryan Pietsch

4:23 AM: The Group of Seven nations on Tuesday committed themselves to continue supplying Ukraine's "urgent requirements" for military equipment and demanded that Russia "completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its troops and military equipment from Ukraine," including Crimea and all "annexed" regions. [...] "Today, Russia will achieve only one additional thing: It will delay our recovery a little," Zelensky said. He said the Group of Seven meeting, too, was "extraordinary" and allowed "the most powerful democracies" to discuss what he described as a Russian escalation.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Defense ministers representing the NATO military alliance's 30 members are meeting to coordinate plans on equipping Ukraine's army for battle into winter and discuss the group's response to Russia's "dangerous nuclear rhetoric."

The United Nations General Assembly is set to vote this week on a resolution to condemn Russia over its illegal annexations in eastern Ukraine, putting countries on the record for their positions on the war. [...] "It is illegal and simply unacceptable to attempt to redraw another country's borders by force," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Tuesday. Thomas-Greenfield called on all U.N. member states to "make [it] clear this week" that the annexations are "a brazen violation of the UN Charter," writing on Twitter that "we must stand together."

By: Bryan Pietsch

Meanwhile, on bridge news:

Moscow's security services announced the arrests of eight people — including five Russian citizens — after the explosion that destroyed part of the strategic Crimean Bridge early Saturday.

In a statement, Russia's FSB security service accused Ukraine's military intelligence service of coordinating what it described as a "terrorist act" and blamed it on explosives hidden in the back of a cargo truck that detonated along the bridge. The FSB also claimed that three "citizens of Ukraine and Armenia" participated. When asked about the allegations, a spokesperson for Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs told the public broadcaster that the Russian investigation was "nonsense."

In Moscow's first detailed account of the events leading up to the explosion — a devastating and humiliating attack inflicted deep within Russian-controlled territory — officials outlined how they believe a 22-ton bomb came to be shipped out of the Ukrainian port of Odessa, before traveling a circuitous route into southern Russian via Bulgaria, Armenia and Georgia in the weeks before the blast. "The investigation continues and all organizers and accomplices, including foreigners, will be prosecuted in accordance with Russian law," the FSB said.

Ukraine has not publicly claimed responsibility for the blast, but a government official previously told The Washington Post that Ukrainian special services were responsible.

Some salient quotes from that prior article:

The committee said the truck's driver had been identified as a resident of the Krasnodar region of Russia. "The investigation has begun at his place of residence," it said. "The route of the truck and the relevant documentation is being studied." [...]

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, called it "the beginning." "Everything illegal must be destroyed," Podolyak added on Twitter. [However,] Podolyak, the presidential adviser, characterized the explosion as a manifestation of disarray within the Russian government.

"Undoubtedly, we are witnessing the beginning of large-scale negative processes in Russia," he said in a comment sent later to The Post by his spokesman.

Podolyak noted that the driver of the truck that exploded was reported to have come from Russia.

"So, the answers should be sought in Russia," he said. "The logistics of the explosion, synchronization with the fuel echelon, the volume of the destroyed roadway — all this clearly points to the Russian trace."

[JasonPratt]

Update on the arrests for the bridge attack: Per the BBC's report, "[Russia's] FSB security service said five of those held were Russians, while the others were Ukrainian and Armenian."

[JasonPratt]

A little more information about the Russian FSB claims of investigation, per NBC news: "According to the Russian intelligence service, the explosive device that was used to blow up the bridge was concealed in rolls of construction film, and was shipped from Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa to Bulgaria in early August before being moved through Georgia and Armenia and into Russia earlier this month. The explosive was detonated as it was being carried in a truck toward Crimea on Saturday, the FSB said. All the while, Ukrainian agents were in control of the operation, it added."

Considering how Russians like to do their investigations, I suspect this information was provided in sworn testimony by the suspects with some of the details being interpolated due to blood sprays smudging some of the ink on the paper.

[JasonPratt]

The ISW super-grogs, whom we love, have an interesting take on the Belarus situation buried in the first part of their Oct 11th analysis (yesterday): https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

"The Russian Federation is likely extracting ammunition and other materiel from Belarusian storage bases—activity that is incompatible with setting conditions for a large-scale Russian or Belarusian ground attack against Ukraine from Belarus. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on October 11 that a train with 492 tons of ammunition from the Belarusian 43rd Missile and Ammunition Storage Arsenal in Gomel arrived at the Kirovskaya Railway Station in Crimea on an unspecified recent past date.[13] The GUR reported that Belarusian officials plan to send an additional 13 trains with weapons, equipment, ammunition, and other unspecified materiel from five different Belarusian bases to the Kamenska (Kamensk-Shakhtinsky) and Marchevo (Taganrog) railway stations in Rostov Oblast on an unspecified future date. Open-source social media footage supports this report. Geolocated footage showed at least two Belarusian trains transporting Belarusian T-72 tanks and Ural military trucks in Minsk and Tor-M2 surface-to-air missile launchers in Orsha (Vitebsk Oblast) on October 11.[14] Belarusian equipment movements into Russia indicate that Russian and Belarusian forces likely are not establishing assembly areas in Belarus. Belarusian equipment and supply movements to Crimea and Rostov Oblast indicate that Russian forces are less confident about the security of Russian ground lines of communication running through northern and western Luhansk Oblast given the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there. Ukraine's General Staff reiterated that it monitors Belarus and has not observed indicators of the formation of offensive groups in Belarus on October 11.[15] Russian and or Belarusian forces remain unlikely to attack Ukraine from Belarus, as ISW has previously assessed.[16]"

Put more shortly, the recent activation of Belarus, sort of, could be not much more than a pretext to loot Belarus of functional equipment for the Orcs to work with (and for the Ukrs to blow up.  )

[GDS_Starfury]

I'll say it again.  if lubi tries to open a northern front he will be overthrown which is the last thing he wants.
at the end of it all I dont see him staying in power anyway.

[SirAndrewD]

Lukashenko keeps spending most of his time provoking Poland. 

Yesterday he waxed on about how Poland was shaking in terror at the might of Belarus.

[FarAway Sooner]

North Korea does not have the nuclear capability to end civilized life on the planet. If the Norks raised a credible threat of using a nuclear weapon, I believe this capability could be destroyed conventionally without much risk. The equation is also much different with China, who has vastly different economic interests and is not led by a potentially irrational dictator. The strategic situations in the examples you raise are very different.

Putting all that aside, I am simply talking about having a discussion of peaceful diplomatic solutions and I'm critical of the notion that just talking about such a thing is worthy of attack. That, in my view, is naive madness in the extreme.

I'm not suggesting the West should simply "cave" to Russia. I'm suggesting that the West should encourage Ukraine to engage in some form of diplomacy with Russia and be prepared to consider some proposal that might at least make some headway toward deescalation. The West has already proven that it will use pawns to fight proxy wars against its enemies by spending billions to fund, train and arm them. The destruction of the Russian conventional military capability would have otherwise been impossible.

Apologies for the lengthy post here.  In an effort to defuse some of the tension around this topic, I feel like it's important to speak very specifically about this topic.  Here goes!

I think this is a very fair question, and it's one that we should be able to discuss logically without evaluating any viewpoint as "pro-Commie" or "pro-Fascist" or whatever we're calling the Russians these days.

Putin has recently stated that a pre-condition for negotiations is Ukrainian recognition of the 4 "peaceful annexation votes" in question.  That was a new addition, after previous insistence that Ukraine's foreswearing entry into NATO was the primary precondition.  Ukraine has once again stated a list of pre-conditions that are more extensive and specific (e.g., full military withdrawal of occupied territories, no concessions of "sovereign Ukrainian soil", return of Ukrainian citizens deported to Russia during hostilities, etc.).  So, at this point, the two sides are pretty far apart and neither party is willing to talk to the other.

But talks do continue.  The Ukrainians this month rejected a proposed Mexican peace plan that they deemed unsuitable.  Rejecting a third-part proposal suggests that you are in fact talking and listening--clear evidence of ongoing diplomacy.  The Russians are also having talks with Mexico.  So the discussion you're asking for is already happening.  The two sides simply aren't agreeing on even the basics at this point.

Given the extraordinary "fat tail" risks on the worst-outcome side of the Ukraine situation, I do think it's worth considering de-escalation tactics.  Since we have no idea what bargaining is done in secret, I see three key problems for Western leaders in terms of adopting more public and aggressive stances on unilateral Ukrainian de-escalatory measures(as you seem to be suggesting--I'm not sure?):

• It seems likely that any effort to encourage Ukraine to come unilaterally to a diplomatic solution would be viewed by the Russians as a sign of weakness/division, encouraging them to continue both the attacks on Ukraine and the nuclear-saber rattling. This might actually extend the Ukrainian conflict rather than shortening it, resulting in a decrease in stability.
• Any sort of negotiated settlement that grants Russia any material concessions seems likely to set a precedent/incentive for further adventurism (by Russia, China, or any other nuclear-armed aggressors) going forward.  This would result in a worldwide decrease in stability.
• Negotiations only work if both parties are willing to give something.  If neither party seems willing to give an inch, what good would it do to admonish one set of leaders to move towards a compromise first?

I don't disagree with you in theory, JH.  I just don't see what can be done practically.

[Windigo]

Is there anything really worth the impact of global nuclear war? I think this is germane to the discussion.

Is brinkmanship between nuclear powers in getting what they want, still a thing?

[GDS_Starfury]

todays meeting of 50 Defense Ministers discussing how to further fuck russia.   :arr:

[GDS_Starfury]

Is brinkmanship between nuclear powers in getting what they want, still a thing?

obviously it is.

[Jarhead0331]

Is there anything really worth the impact of global nuclear war? I think this is germane to the discussion.

This is kind of the Six Million Dollar question that nobody who is in support of continuing the war seems to be asking or seriously considering. My answer is an emphatic, no. It's actually a HELL NO.

With respect to FarAway's post above, there are ways to make concessions without losing "face" or setting a negative precedent. How do you think the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved averting nuclear war? Both the Soviet Union and the United States made concessions.

FarAway is right...in order for their to be a diplomatic resolution, BOTH sides must make concessions. This usually means both sides will walk away unhappy about one thing or another...but in my business, this is what we call a good settlement. And in my view, as the father of two young children, virtually any settlement that averts nuclear war is a good one worth considering.

[Windigo]

found a video with an old friend of JH's.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1579979648578236416

Awwww, yes. Machine gun porn. Excuse me while I go find my Aveeno.

LoL. Yes historic shades of LB. Well played.

[Windigo]

Lukashenko keeps spending most of his time provoking Poland. 

Yesterday he waxed on about how Poland was shaking in terror at the might of Belarus.

Lies, damned lies, and speeches by Soviet Bloc nations.

[GDS_Starfury]

ok JH, how does this war end with all Ukrainian territory returned, the complete exit of russian forces from said territory and putin being removed from office while at the same time avoiding a nuclear incident?

as for the Cuban crisis, we had the flexibility to remove missiles from Turkey.  wheres the flexibility here?