Snowdens Secret posted:

Twitter's lighting up with pics and vids of Russian MBTs and heavy equipment moving under their own power, some of it supposedly right at the Russia / Ukraine / Belarus border, not far from Kiev. Previously the heavy stuff was being moved around by train. Not sure how big a deal this is just yet.

Courthouse posted:

BTW, does the Budapest Memorandum actually have any guarantees? People keep waving it around, but I don't actually see it saying anyone has to actually do something about any non-nuclear breaches. Is there something I'm missing, or is this just a nice piece of paper to wave at the Russians?

Zeroisanumber posted:

If Putin decides to invade Western Ukraine in spite of the fact that the US/EU response will be to collapse Russia's economy and steal all of his friends' money, I have to wonder how secure his place at the top really is.

Mortabis posted:

I'm highly skeptical of the deterrent value of sanctions given how well they've worked elsewhere.

friend of the family DEATH TURBO posted:

nope, but apparently ukraine thought it did and demolished their military cause they thought the us/uk would totally bail them out if they got invaded

MrYenko posted:

I could also see how sanctioning a first-world (second?) country could be more effective

Snowdens Secret posted:

Second, and I think that's part of the problem, to be trite they've been conditioned to find solidarity in misery, and to wholeheartedly blame the West for problems in no small part due to their own leaders.

Best Friends posted:

One thing I'm wondering about is the demographics of Ukraine's military. The rate of defections from the Navy seems to indicate that possibly most of their soldiers* come from Russian areas.

quote:

Not the rich people who run Russia though. Just like how blocking Hennessy to North Korea probably matters more than blocking food.

quote:

The editor of Beregus.ru, a portal that has promoted attention to the Russian Far East and highlighted the opportunities and dangers Russia faces there and along the Pacific littoral, notes today that all talk about "the returning of Alaska to Russia"began "as a simple means of information war," but "now people are talking about this as a real [possibility]."

"Russia needs Alaska," the editor says, and it also needs "the part of North America settled by Russians," an area that extends down to the middle of what is today the US state of California. But it is not just Russia which needs these areas, he adds; so too does the indigenous population of this enormous area.

"What have the Anglo-Saxons done for the native population?" the editor asks rhetorically. They have 'barbarously destroyed" it in order to steal the wealth of these people and enrich themselves. Despite that, the Americans "even today shout about the rights of numerically small indigenous peoples!"

"Russians today live in Alaska and in California,"he continues. And these are "not emigrants of a new wave but the descendants of their glorious ancestors" who came and developed this coast. These people are trying to preserve their Orthodox faith and their Russian culture."

Snowdens Secret posted:

On a lighter note, someone called this the other day

http://beregrus.ru/?p=2282

Snowdens Secret posted:

On a lighter note, someone called this the other day

http://beregrus.ru/?p=2282


Better brush up your skills blasting invisible ninjas with laser pistols, because war, war never changes

iyaayas01 posted:

That sound you heard was ALCOM and 11th AF popping the world's biggest boner.

Time to dust off those OPLANs last updated in 1989!

Waroduce posted:

I know your joking about this, but the brain drain after the Soviet Union collapsed was significant.

Snowdens Secret posted:

On a lighter note, someone called this the other day

http://beregrus.ru/?p=2282


Better brush up your skills blasting invisible ninjas with laser pistols, because war, war never changes

orange juche posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlSQAZEp3PA

This is relevant to what is going to be happening all over the world if poo poo ever got real.

It's also good that random blogger #23862 doesn't write Russia's foreign policy, because an invasion of the US would have no endgame other than the total nuclear annihilation of 90% of the planet, followed by the swift freezing of the remaining 10%.

Trabisnikof posted:

You really think a few more helicopters or tanks would have done anything to stop Putin?

Courthouse posted:

Barroso has announced the US and EU are hatching plans for reducing European dependence on Russian fossil fuels, G7 energy ministers to meet next week.

So... drill baby drill? Presuming they aren't talking more solar panels I take it we are looking at more fraking? Just how long term would reducing reliance on Russian gas be, taking into account the EU economic situation?

Godholio posted:

So when do we get to see badass Cossacks with awesome hats and staches riding into battle against tanks?

Godholio posted:

So when do we get to see badass Cossacks with awesome hats and staches riding into battle against tanks?

Zeroisanumber posted:

Cossacks are Putin's bully-boys. I remember he deployed them to Voronezh after some bombs went off. Big assholes with clubs and dogs smacking down anything bearded or brown.

friend of the family DEATH TURBO posted:

what? ukraine let their military decay into basically nothing from a pretty sizeable one because they interpreted the budapest memorandum to mean that the us/uk would step in and help them fight off an invasion if it happened

Booblord Zagats posted:

So wait, you're tellin me we need Cossacks in Austin and San Francisco?

Trabisnikof posted:

Or maybe instead of it being because Ukraine is foolish and naive it is because they are poor as poo poo with weak civil institutions? Thus, they don't have enough money for a large military and all the kickbacks.

Besides, even if they somehow kept their Soviet Union era force sizes, do you think they would have been able to stop what the Russians did (which remember, occurred right after revolution in Ukraine)? Or is your argument that Yanukovych would have been able to maintain power with a larger military more reliant on Russia (since building your own stuff costs a lot more than buying Russian made goods)?

Snowdens Secret posted:

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but Russia's military is also a pale shadow of its Cold War prime. And Ukraine got a disproportionate share of Soviet armor and shipbuilding industry, and a good chunk of aerospace.

There's natural resource money there, but it was going to opiates for the populace and opulence for government high-ups instead of actual long-term improvements - but that's a problem hardly unique to Ukraine. At least all over EU people are waking up to what it means when paying people to be unproductive eats up all the funding for defense.

quote:

A new classified intelligence assessment concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine, CNN has learned.
...
“This has shifted our thinking that the likelihood of a further Russian incursion is more probable than it was previously thought to be,” one official said.
...
U.S. military and intelligence officials have briefed Congress on the assessment.

As a result, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee late Wednesday sent a classified letter to the White House expressing concern about unfolding developments.

An unclassified version obtained by CNN said committee members feel “urgency and alarm, based on new information in the committee’s possession.”

The committee said there was “deep apprehension that Moscow may invade eastern and southern Ukraine, pressing west to Transdniestria and also seek land grabs in the Baltics.”

Snowdens Secret posted:

seek[ing] land grabs in the Baltics.

Otto Skorzeny posted:

quote:

The English-language Baltic Timesreported that the Lithuanian intelligence service, the VSD, has warned that its Russian counterpart and other Russian security services “were acting most aggressively against Lithuania.”

In Latvia, the daily paper Neatkariga quotes the country’s security police chief as saying Russia has intensified its “soft power” efforts “through information campaigns, as well as through cultural, educational, and other similar instruments,” the paper said.

Estonia’s defense minister, Urmas Reinsalu, has called on more Estonian citizens to join the Estonian Defense League (Estonia’s version of the US National Guard). He told Estonian Public Broadcasting, “The Ukrainian crisis shows that the idea that defending the state is the problem of professional military only is outdated.”

Estonia’s national defense plan calls for membership of the Defense League to be expanded to 30,000 by 2022, more than double the current 14,000. An informal online poll conducted by the daily Postimees last weekend yielded more than 8,000 responses, with 32 percent saying they would seriously consider joining, 14 percent saying they might do so in the future, and 36 percent saying they would not. Twelve percent said they were already members. 

There is no shortage of advice on what the West should do next. In an editorial, the Baltic Times urged the Atlantic Alliance to “step up and offer Ukraine accelerated NATO membership,” which—it said—the Ukrainian prime minister had already requested in private meetings with NATO officials. “Ukraine is a worthy and willing candidate for NATO,” the paper said. “The NATO community needs to stand and rectify the wrongs of Yalta and Bucharest.” The latter reference is to the 2008 NATO summit in the Romanian capital in which France and Germany blocked an attempt by the Bush administration to offer fast-track membership to Georgia and Ukraine because of Putin’s objections. “Ask the Poles, the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Baltic nations, and other East European recently admitted NATO members,” the editorial continued. “They’re willing to defend Ukraine if only to experience freedom from fear themselves.”

Estonia’s president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, called on the European Union to take a tougher stand against Moscow in defending shared values. Speaking in Brussels, Ilves said the EU should join the US in a united stand, and praised the Americans for showing more spine.

“This border change means a major loss of trust in Europe as a player and NATO ‘being back in business’ discussing Article 5. We can no longer think that there are unthinkables of a certain type—countries do get invaded,” Ilves said.

He did not, however, put forward any concrete steps for hardening the European position.

Courthouse posted:

Half the old soviet block is in NATO these days. Surely at least the Baltic states has some level of humint there? Can't we ask them?

Trabisnikof posted:

I agree completely that this is a wake up call across Europe, I just think Ukraine probably has a few more legitimate excuses than EU nations that can afford a military. Which is a larger part of the problem as the EU tries to act jointly as a superpower but individually nations don't want the costs associated with the title.

Mortabis posted:

Can EU nations actually afford more military spending? Many of them are even more broke than we are for a lot of the same reasons. They already have insanely high taxes (40%+ of GDP, compared to our ~25%) and are still running deficits because of generous entitlements.

I'd love to see, for instance, France raise its retirement age and put the balance into defense but last time it tried something like that people set cars on fire.