Thoughts and Comments on Current Russian,Ukrainian Conflict/War

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Driving home from University tonight I heard an interesting comment on the car radio. The interviewee said that Russia currently holds less of Ukraine than at the end of the first week of the war. If true, it gives a good indication of the effectiveness of the Ukrainian strategy.

That seems very likely to be true. Russia took a lot of territory very quickly. But they stalled almost immediately. Then they had to withdraw from the north, now they are being rolled back from Kharkiv, and Ukraine is starting to take back Kherson. I think the only place Russia has made any progress since the first weeks is Luhansk and a little bit of Donetsk, and that seems stalled now too. Mostly it’s been losses for them.
 
My concern right now is if Russia really does get 300,000 more men to throw into the meat grinder, that might be enough to simply overwhelm Ukraine. It reeks of their WWII strategy that made the eastern front so miserable and deadly, but "quantity has a quality all its own."
 
My concern right now is if Russia really does get 300,000 more men to throw into the meat grinder, that might be enough to simply overwhelm Ukraine. It reeks of their WWII strategy that made the eastern front so miserable and deadly, but "quantity has a quality all its own."
It sounds great on paper, as they say. But the reality is that these troops are going to be barely trained, not ready to face a real war, and certainly don't have the moral authority to fight *for* something that means anything to them. I remember my brother talking about this in the 80's where he said "I'd fight to defend my country, but I'm not fighting to defend some rich arab's oil field."

The point is: Okay, you've got your 300k troops, and then 1/2 that number desert or surrender to the Ukrainians as soon as they are put on the front. Then what? Russia is finished. They won't be able to sustain yet another round of drafts to make up for their losses then.
 
I am worried about Russia doing a planed withdrawal and then doing a Tactical Nuclear attack
of the location where they withdrew from . But Russia would not announce the threat of Nuclear Weapons
use they would just go ahead and use them. Which I hope never happens.
 
My concern right now is if Russia really does get 300,000 more men to throw into the meat grinder, that might be enough to simply overwhelm Ukraine. It reeks of their WWII strategy that made the eastern front so miserable and deadly, but "quantity has a quality all its own."

It sounds great on paper, as they say. But the reality is that these troops are going to be barely trained, not ready to face a real war, and certainly don't have the moral authority to fight *for* something that means anything to them. I remember my brother talking about this in the 80's where he said "I'd fight to defend my country, but I'm not fighting to defend some rich arab's oil field."

The point is: Okay, you've got your 300k troops, and then 1/2 that number desert or surrender to the Ukrainians as soon as they are put on the front. Then what? Russia is finished. They won't be able to sustain yet another round of drafts to make up for their losses then.
There's also a bunch of antipersonnel artillery equivalents to grapeshot, from the Beehives of the Vietnam era (and whatever they've been upgraded to) to HIMARS rounds that have 150K+ bits of tungsten. The latter was developed as an antipersonnel weapon after cluster munitions started going out of fashion. Either of those have the ability to stack up a lot of bodies very quickly. I hope that it doesn't come to that.
 
I am worried about Russia doing a planed withdrawal and then doing a Tactical Nuclear attack
of the location where they withdrew from . But Russia would not announce the threat of Nuclear Weapons
use they would just go ahead and use them. Which I hope never happens.
The more I think about it the more I believe that using low yield nuclear weapons is a bluff.
- The international response would be catastrophic for Russia, financially and politically.
- Russia's supporters and neutrals might desert them, particularly China and India
- Prevailing wing would blow the contamination back to Russia
- Would Russia want ro re-occupy contaminated land in Ukraine
- I think a military response by the west would become very likely, causing the whole this to spiral out of control. It would become an existential threat for Russia as well as other nations. Faced with this, his own people would probably remove him from power.
 
The more I think about it the more I believe that using low yield nuclear weapons is a bluff.
- The international response would be catastrophic for Russia, financially and politically.
- Russia's supporters and neutrals might desert them, particularly China and India
- Prevailing wing would blow the contamination back to Russia
- Would Russia want ro re-occupy contaminated land in Ukraine
- I think a military response by the west would become very likely, causing the whole this to spiral out of control. It would become an existential threat for Russia as well as other nations. Faced with this, his own people would probably remove him from power.
Also:
- Anyone who approved use of nuclear weapons would never be able to travel outside of Russia again without being arrested for war crimes. That really limits your available vacation spots. I'm only kind of joking.
- More importantly, if the result of using nuclear weapons was that Russia got their butts even more thoroughly kicked (as seems likely), anyone who approved use of nuclear weapons would be on the short list of people to execute when Putin went down.
 
This is why Ukraine needs to regain Mariupol. They need the industrial capacity to melt down all the scrap! Thousands and thousands of tons of junked Russian tanks, fighting vehicles, personnel carriers, trucks, artillery pieces, planes, and helicopters. So. Much. Scrap!
Ukraine probably has enough Russian scrap to rebuild most of the country. u ;)
 
I am worried about Russia doing a planed withdrawal and then doing a Tactical Nuclear attack of the location where they withdrew from . But Russia would not announce the threat of Nuclear Weapons use they would just go ahead and use them. Which I hope never happens.
That would mean they would be nuking themselves (their recently self-proclaimed Russian territory), since that is very same territory Putin has just claimed to be part of Russia. So not only would he giving it up parts of Russia for good, but also nuking it as well?
Russian propaganda is good, but if they manage to spin that story into a victory song, I will personally nominate Putin for Nobel prize in literature!

I'm not saying that it can never happen, but that would be ridiculously counter-productive and against everything they have been trying to achieve, to date.

My concern right now is if Russia really does get 300,000 more men to throw into the meat grinder, that might be enough to simply overwhelm Ukraine. It reeks of their WWII strategy that made the eastern front so miserable and deadly, but "quantity has a quality all its own."
  • It's not clear that they have 300,000 man healthy enough to be trained, never mind go into combat.
  • It's not clear where the trainers would come from, as everyone who knows how to handle a gun has already been sent into Ukraine.
  • It takes 6+ months of training to turn the new draftees into somewhat combat ready soldiers. Thus the delay between Ukraine announcing mobilization in February, and initiating offensive operations in August.
  • Lastly, Russia is showing no sign of training the draftees, and has already sent first battalions to the front line near Lyman (where they got immediately wiped out). A large number of untrained bumbling idiots with guns may create more problems than it attempts to solve. More on that below:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threa...an-ukrainian-conflict-war.171175/post-2329062
 
I keep asking myself the question ‘who benefits from the sabotage of Nordstream 1?’.
European countries with some dependence on Russian gas don’t benefit. It kills off any opportunity for getting gas from Russia with a difficult winter approaching.
Russia loses whatever residual leverage it has over those European countries. As winter starts to bite some of those countries may be required to do a deal with Russia, and Russia would not be able to take advantage of that situation if the pipeline is unusable.
It could be a calculated act by Russia: damage the pipe so the west can be blamed, but ensure that the damage could be repaired before the winter.
Its all very unclear.
The German people are the primary beneficiary of the Nord stream pipelines. Germans know this is a long, dark cold winter ahead. German factories are closing, steel mills, going idle and people being laid off. No energy to run factories or heat homes. Recently, the German people have been protesting literally by the hundreds of thousands to cut an energy side deal with Russia. We can’t have a major NATO player cutting side deals… so someone removed that option by destroying the pipelines. Now the German government does not need to cave-in to civil unrest. Picture getting clearer now?
 
The German people are the primary beneficiary of the Nord stream pipelines. Germans know this is a long, dark cold winter ahead. German factories are closing, steel mills, going idle and people being laid off. No energy to run factories or heat homes. Recently, the German people have been protesting literally by the hundreds of thousands to cut an energy side deal with Russia. We can’t have a major NATO player cutting side deals… so someone removed that option by destroying the pipelines. Now the German government does not need to cave-in to civil unrest. Picture getting clearer now?
Do you have a cite for "hundreds of thousands" protesting in Germany? I can find quite a few articles saying "thousands," but none for 100 times that. Also, at least one of the large protests wasn't demanding a side deal with Russia, they were demanding a price cap for gas (= a government subsidy for residential energy costs). That's a very different animal.
 
Do you have a cite for "hundreds of thousands" protesting in Germany? I can find quite a few articles saying "thousands," but none for 100 times that. Also, at least one of the large protests wasn't demanding a side deal with Russia, they were demanding a price cap for gas (= a government subsidy for residential energy costs). That's a very different animal.
I have also seen what you reference, but adding up all the occurrences over gas shortages because of Nord Stream could easily total the amount
reported. And while the claim of demanding a side deal with Russia was
not specific, the point is that German leadership is/was under a lot of pressure from unhappy people, and most assuredly a bunch more unhappy people when it gets really cold. And apparently its not all totally
Germans.
https://ussanews.com/2022/09/29/pro...eam-2-pipeline-amid-huge-spike-in-gas-prices/
I’m also unsure of who the actor was that blew the pipeline, but comments from a ranking US official like “the jury is still out” regarding
the incident convinces me that it must have been a DC jury🤣🤣.
 
I have also seen what you reference, but adding up all the occurrences over gas shortages because of Nord Stream could easily total the amount
reported. And while the claim of demanding a side deal with Russia was
not specific, the point is that German leadership is/was under a lot of pressure from unhappy people, and most assuredly a bunch more unhappy people when it gets really cold. And apparently its not all totally
Germans.
https://ussanews.com/2022/09/29/pro...eam-2-pipeline-amid-huge-spike-in-gas-prices/
I’m also unsure of who the actor was that blew the pipeline, but comments from a ranking US official like “the jury is still out” regarding
the incident convinces me that it must have been a DC jury🤣🤣.
So, I can say that a Deuces Wild has hundreds of motors because it definitely has more than one and it could easily have 100 times that? Interesting take.

Since nobody has released any actual evidence from the sabotage sites, I'd say the jury is definitely still out. Convicting someone before presenting evidence seems ... un-American.
 
So, I can say that a Deuces Wild has hundreds of motors because it definitely has more than one and it could easily have 100 times that? Interesting take.

Since nobody has released any actual evidence from the sabotage sites, I'd say the jury is definitely still out. Convicting someone before presenting evidence seems ... un-American.
Thats a pretty thin analogy, but ok. Guess its no big deal if 1000’s of people freeze this winter, but I guess two is ok?

Not sure what you mean by un American conviction, I never accused anyone, just offering some food for thot, However, this guy, and far left
liberal from Columbia U with impressive historical credentials feels
he has a good idea who done it. Go flail at him for being un American.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...y-believed-Nord-Stream-pipeline-sabotage.html
 
I think these 300,000 poor, untrained troops from the Russian mobilization are going to be sent to Ukraine just in time to freeze to death. If Germany is going to have a rough winter without Russian gas, how is the winter going to be for these guys sheltering in a trench somewhere? Not great. During the February invasion, lots of Russian tanks and trucks got blown up because idling the motors at night was the only way to keep from freezing. That made it very easy for drone operators to find them.
 
That would mean they would be nuking themselves (their recently self-proclaimed Russian territory), since that is very same territory Putin has just claimed to be part of Russia. So not only would he giving it up parts of Russia for good, but also nuking it as well?
Russian propaganda is good, but if they manage to spin that story into a victory song, I will personally nominate Putin for Nobel prize in literature!

I'm not saying that it can never happen, but that would be ridiculously counter-productive and against everything they have been trying to achieve, to date.

I think the nuclear threat is not likely due to these same reasons. And I would add that being able to operate on a nuclear battlefield and capitalize on the effects of the nukes you are using without killing your own army with radiation is not easy. That’s something that takes a lot of training and specialized equipment — two things it seems like Russia lacks. They’d quite likely end up just killing themselves.
 
Thats a pretty thin analogy, but ok. Guess its no big deal if 1000’s of people freeze this winter, but I guess two is ok?

Not sure what you mean by un American conviction, I never accused anyone, just offering some food for thot, However, this guy, and far left
liberal from Columbia U with impressive historical credentials feels
he has a good idea who done it. Go flail at him for being un American.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...y-believed-Nord-Stream-pipeline-sabotage.html
I never said that I was OK with people freezing, so please don't put words in my mouth. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the German government is going to prioritize home heating over industry in the next few months. Sure, it's a thin analogy, but no more so than saying that several news articles saying that thousands were protesting meant that hundreds of thousands are protesting.

Lots of people feel that they have a good idea who blew the pipeline. Since that guy's evidence is that he's talked to a lot of journalists who think that the US did it, I'm kind of inclined to wait for, you know, actual evidence. He doesn't even have the cover of "I talked to a confidential source who knows and they said that the US did it." It is interesting that in the article you cited, when the host pushed Sachs on his evidence, he got really vague really fast.
 
I never said that I was OK with people freezing, so please don't put words in my mouth. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the German government is going to prioritize home heating over industry in the next few months. Sure, it's a thin analogy, but no more so than saying that several news articles saying that thousands were protesting meant that hundreds of thousands are protesting.

Lots of people feel that they have a good idea who blew the pipeline. Since that guy's evidence is that he's talked to a lot of journalists who think that the US did it, I'm kind of inclined to wait for, you know, actual evidence. He doesn't even have the cover of "I talked to a confidential source who knows and they said that the US did it." It is interesting that in the article you cited, when the host pushed Sachs on his evidence, he got really vague really fast.
I pretty much dismissed him because..
He was an advisor to Yeltsin…prejudiced much?
He is a product of Columbia U.

And please, try not to grasp at vague analogies that seeing 2 rocket motors burning at one time is the same as seeing photos of throngs of people and guessing how many there are.

I am not your enemy. And you are not mine. So quit trying to draw blood, ok?
Peace
 
... far left liberal from Columbia U with impressive historical credentials...

love that piece. appreciate the post. nerdy dude is smart, informed, ballsy as f* fearless, and imma fan. really sucks when smart people cave to populist influence, ignoring chunks of data to satisfy prevailing sentiment. y'all hip to Babu Frik? he was the one guy who could recover the supersecret sensitive data from the busted droid. Everybody was with dread concern over the data that might be retrieved, and when Babu completed the task, and the worst fears were confirmed and the data show everyone was doomed, Babu said excitedly, "Heyheeeeyyyyy!!!" he didn't care about the content, only the successful completion of his task at hand. i love Babu Frik. my favorite starwars dude. anyway, i believe the US would do such a thing, as he suggests. not sayin' i know, any more than the prof does.
 
I have also seen what you reference, but adding up all the occurrences over gas shortages because of Nord Stream could easily total the amount
reported. And while the claim of demanding a side deal with Russia was
not specific, the point is that German leadership is/was under a lot of pressure from unhappy people, and most assuredly a bunch more unhappy people when it gets really cold. And apparently its not all totally
Germans.
https://ussanews.com/2022/09/29/pro...eam-2-pipeline-amid-huge-spike-in-gas-prices/
I’m also unsure of who the actor was that blew the pipeline, but comments from a ranking US official like “the jury is still out” regarding
the incident convinces me that it must have been a DC jury🤣🤣.
If you look at the flags being waved in the video (Russian flags and one that appears to be inspired by the Reichskriegsflagge) and some of those clean shaven heads, you can see that this is not the German mainstream protesting. This also happened on the German Unity Day - their national holiday - where protests by of all kind of groups are not uncommon.
If the people in my biggest neighboring country were rising, I would have noticed by now. Of course, this doesn't mean that people enjoy high gas prices, but the country is far from a revolution.


Reinhard
 
If you look at the flags being waved in the video (Russian flags and one that appears to be inspired by the Reichskriegsflagge) and some of those clean shaven heads, you can see that this is not the German mainstream protesting. This also happened on the German Unity Day - their national holiday - where protests by of all kind of groups are not uncommon.
If the people in my biggest neighboring country were rising, I would have noticed by now. Of course, this doesn't mean that people enjoy high gas prices, but the country is far from a revolution.


Reinhard
Thanks, thats good to know. I pulled that pic from the net, first one that popped up.
Good input.
 
Any pics of the hole yet? I find it odd Deepwater Horizon had live video streamed to websites like within 72 hours of accident and a weak later no photos have been made public? What's down there that Western media/government doesn't want us to see?
 
Apparently the Danish and Swedish governments are denying access to the damage, as it’s in their waters. Apparently an official investigation is underway and the area is being treated as a crime scene.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...mine-pipelines-after-police-probe-2022-10-04/
I cannot say definitively who is behind it, but I’d order the most-to-least-likely list of candidates to Russia followed distantly by the US in second place. Everyone else seems extremely unlikely in terms of motive, capability, and prior behavior.
 
Apparently the Danish and Swedish governments are denying access to the damage, as it’s in their waters. Apparently an official investigation is underway and the area is being treated as a crime scene.

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...mine-pipelines-after-police-probe-2022-10-04/
I cannot say definitively who is behind it, but I’d order the most-to-least-likely list of candidates to Russia followed distantly by the US in second place. Everyone else seems extremely unlikely in terms of motive, capability, and prior behavior.
This guy is overseeing the investigation now.
1664937355799.png
 
Look at how they massacred my boy!

…right??? Been a while since I’ve seen those, and I don’t believe it was very attentively.
 
Back
Top