GAZ NZ Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_russias_military_options_in_ukraine3010 Interesting summary of the Ukraine War and Russia options. Thought I'd share. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 Nice piece, thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holien Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Thxs for the link, does explain / offers a reason why the war has stayed cool so far during summer, a decent attempt at explaining what Russia's long game is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 (edited) Interesting article - as were the comments that followed it. Thank you, Gaz... Edited July 14, 2015 by Erwin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Rage Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Face-desk at "...Russia deployed about 150,000 soldiers on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Around half of the forces were paramilitary forces of Russia’s Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry for Emergency Situations. ", and then it just got worse from there. Not only is the number utter BS, unless 500-600km deep into Russia is considered the "Russian-Ukrainian border", with most of the Western military district included, but calling the Russian EMERCOM paramilitary and lumping them with soldiers is just too much. Reminded me of the infamous headline in the Ukr media from a few months ago - "Terrorists are rebuilding the railways in occupied territories". I suspect the article drew from the same LSD induced sources that "buried" whole brigades of SpN in Donetsk airport and "destroyed" Armata columns on weekly basis all over the line-of-contact. For anyone reading Russian sources with plenty of first hand accounts at this point, including both anecdotal and analytical, it's hard to take such articles seriously. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kraze Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 (edited) russian sources deny the fact of russian troops occupying ukrainian soil so of course - if you for some funny reason believe them Edited July 14, 2015 by kraze 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panzersaurkrautwerfer Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 It's like, the Ukrainian accounts should be taken with some suspicion but generally they're based on an event that happened on earth somewhere at least. The Russian stuff is just out and out fiction from the get-go and should be read with the understanding that the truth contained within is deeply buried and often accidentally included. As the case is Russian forces being massed on the Ukrainian border was something from several different sources including more than a few neutral observers. Their exact composition and agency might be suspect, but most certainly Russian forces were there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L0ckAndL0ad Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 (edited) It's like, the Ukrainian accounts should be taken with some suspicion but generally they're based on an event that happened on earth somewhere at least. The lie is a lie. Or not? Look, they've got WMDs! Ukraininan govt and special services don't lie. They don't need no pretences to get western support, to (not indiscriminately) shell cities and start offensives, because it's their land and they can do whatever they think is necessary. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4514313.ece They should go to UNSC or US senate with this, to get the ball rolling. Is Powell still around? Edited August 1, 2015 by L0ckAndL0ad 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panzersaurkrautwerfer Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I will attempt to aid you in your reading comprehension: 1. Ukrainian media can, and does lie. A lot. However some of what they said has been somewhat factual with external verification. 2. Russian media is literally a mountain of lies built on a complicated system of lie caves, drawing pure lie-onium from the depths of the liar layer of earth's crust. Much of it is deeply and obviously false even with modest research. Both should be read, and fact checked, but one ultimately is reporting on events that ARE occurring in one capacity or the other, and one is claiming those events do not exist despite some very clear external reporting. Given that, the Russian narrative cannot be taken as "honest" and should be instead viewed as a smoke screen for other actors and methods. This is on par with the Russian preference for deception and hybrid warfare too. It's also interesting you bring up the lack of WMDs in Iraq, because it seems to indicate a very superficial understanding. The fact you should require additional education on the matter is not surprising however. he issue at hand with Iraq is that group think, paired with confirmation bias led to a decision making cycle that was incapable of filtering "bad" information so long as it supported an already agreed upon conclusion. The fact that WMDs were not found* is something freely discussed, and admitted. Further to that end, a very exhaustive, and very expensive search for WMDs was undertaken because again, we'd sucked ourselves into a silly magical land in which we believed any crap defectors told us, or unvetted reporting, and totally expected to find these WMD caches somewhere. If we were Russia I'm sure we'd have found them though. They might have had to have been shipped to Iraq, but in keeping with the Crimea fabrication (which Putin admitted to) and the Russian fabrications in the Ukraine (which the rest of the not-Russian portion of the earth knows is going on), Russia would have found a way to try to make reality match what it's saying, vs the other way around. *In quantity, or as a functional program, small stockpiles of chemical weapons weren't what we went in for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L0ckAndL0ad Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I don't understand what you're trying to say here, with all those Russia references. I'm talking about Ukraine. Media is just a tool. And Ukrainian government is a bunch of corrupt liars. The problem I'm pointing at here is that.. nobody cares about their lies and crimes. They've got a carte blanche. Comparing them to other entities changes nothing. Zippo. The stuff still gets into such articles, like that one from ECFR in the OP. It's a common narrative that gets repeated everywhere. I do not believe that it does not affect decision making cycle. Even simply allowing Ukraine bomb their own cities with civilians in them, is damage big enough for me. Because my close ones are there. And because my city might some day be next. You might not care about it, find it "acceptable casualties", or whatever, but I do not. This is kinda like Israeli confict. They keep killing civilians and nobody's doing anything about it. Same here. All people can do is brag about how Russia is evil and all. Blah blah blah. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
panzersaurkrautwerfer Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 What are your thoughts on the Chechens then? Do you shed tears for those civilians? The various Russian elements in the Ukraine are the problem. If they hadn't started this war, there would not be all the killing and death. Russia thought it had conquest on the cheap, instead it bought a war. Bluntly if you take issue with conflict in the Ukraine, the Ukrainians are not the ones to point fingers at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 What are your thoughts on the Chechens then? Do you shed tears for those civilians? The various Russian elements in the Ukraine are the problem. If they hadn't started this war, there would not be all the killing and death. Russia thought it had conquest on the cheap, instead it bought a war. Bluntly if you take issue with conflict in the Ukraine, the Ukrainians are not the ones to point fingers at. yeah really, and the Russians haven't exactly shown much concern about the humanitarian crisis they have created. Hell the "humanitarian" convoys are even a joke. Yeah we are sending "aid" but we aren't gonna let anyone see the "aid" we are sending even though that would be a PR coup.... Me thinks I am seeing crocodile tears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L0ckAndL0ad Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 What are your thoughts on the Chechens then? Do you shed tears for those civilians? What kind of question is that? Is it a rhetorical one? All civilian lives matter, and Russia is rightfully blamed for leveling Grozny. We're talking about Ukrainians doing the same here. And they get a carte blanche. The various Russian elements in the Ukraine are the problem. If they hadn't started this war, there would not be all the killing and death. Russia thought it had conquest on the cheap, instead it bought a war. Bluntly if you take issue with conflict in the Ukraine, the Ukrainians are not the ones to point fingers at. That's just an excuse. When terrorists capture a building with civilians, you don't just level the whole building. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but in Ukraine, there's not a lot of such thing as "precision strikes". There's a bunch of indiscriminate shelling, frequently even in places where there are no military targets, and ordinary people get killed. And if anyone here believes when Ukrainian govt says that "those rebels shell themselves", well, I've got a surprise for you, they lie, to cover their own strikes that kill civilians. No need to go far, July 19th, they screwed up during their report briefing. First officer said that "it turned out to be true that DNR did try a provocative strike on their own territory, as we predicted", and then 7 minutes later, another officer comes and says that "they place firing positions inside living areas, so when we fire back, civilians suffer, so they need to stop putting firing positions in civilian areas". Should've gotten their story straight before doing the briefing. So they lie. And there's been quite a few accounts of shellings with no military targets nearby. By grids, on "suspicious targets", etc. Just like with Israelis, nobody's doing anything about it. And it's just the deaths I'm talking about here. There's a bunch of other crimes to talk about (human rights wise). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L0ckAndL0ad Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 The most recent example. Today, Horlivka. Civilian houses and a freaking kindergarden get shelled. Zero military targets. https://youtu.be/frrbvD14QYo?t=49s the Ukrainians are not the ones to point fingers at. Right? Those seps shell themselves all the time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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