I'd put the story on a very low level of probable accuracy simply because of the way the Kremlin works. If it were true then no "Kremlin insider" would leak such immensely valuable information to the press when it can be traded for a position within the next regime.

The only way we'd find out Putin was seriously sick would be when Swan Lake was broadcast on soviet Russian TV.

Apparent UAV attack on Engels Airbase in Russia:



If true, the game's changed again since Engels is 600 Km from the Rus-Ukraine border.

Pinch of salt time over the damage caused (2 strategic bombers damaged/destroyed reported) and the cause of the explosion, with rumours of a new Ukrainian UAV, although it could be yet another carelessly discarded cigarette end.

Whatever, it's certainly a big bang where the Russians wouldn't want it.

This youtuber is developing a dedicated following among those following the situation. He does quality work using satellite images and has many videos (mostly quite short) one can use to assess his acumen:

One thing I'm curious about: Given how important Sevastopol is to Russian interests and how it was previously leased for their military usage, why did the current post Euro-maidan government deny Russia that lease? If Sevastopol had been made available for the Russian military to use, would that have prevented this Ukraine war from happening?

dochmbi wrote:One thing I'm curious about: Given how important Sevastopol is to Russian interests and how it was previously leased for their military usage, why did the current post Euro-maidan government deny Russia that lease? If Sevastopol had been made available for the Russian military to use, would that have prevented this Ukraine war from happening?

If there's an obligation to lease their port for military usage by another nation on threat of war, then the assumption therein is that Ukraine is and was a subject nation of Russia.

Putin does seem to believe that's the optimal relationship here, that Ukraine should simply be ruled by Russia in order that they no longer have sovereign decision making power, but given that the point of the Euromaidan protests was in response to an anti-democratic lunge towards closer Russian ties by a pro-Russia government, and the result of those protests was a government representing the interests of Ukranians who made democratically clear that they don't see themselves as a subject nation of Russia, then I think your underlying question is: should we respect the democratic rights and freedoms of Ukranians?

I assume most people would say yes.

Putin emphatically and with murderous zealotry said no.

Had Putin respected their democratic rights and freedoms, which is of course an absolute fucking joke at this point, then that would have wholly prevented any reason for war.

Blaming Ukraine for not sufficiently kowtowing to an aggressor seems laboured to me.

Russia had already annexed Crimea and was occupying it and Donbas in 2014, incidentally tearing up the Budapest Memoranda of 1994 which guaranteed Ukraine's borders. No amount of appeasement on Ukraine's part would have prevented the annexation.

There was absolutely no basis for the 2022 invasion excepting Russian Imperialism since they'd already secured Sevastopol.

In retrospect the only thing that might have prevented the 2022 invasion might have been the imposition of the sanctions and penalties when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, invaded the Donbas and killed just under 300 people on flight MH-17. The lack of response then effectively greenlit the later invasion since Putin thought "the West" would again do nothing.

Back to other current issues: The Belarus Foreign minister, the principle opponent to the invasion there, has suddenly dropped dead and the detained opposition leader is in intensive care. Belarusian and Russian militaries, by sheer co-incidence, have signed yet more understandings of co-operation. This may just be a ploy to divert Ukrainian forces into defending Kyiv from a possible Belarusian incursion from the North. Given that the Belarus military didn't join in the first attempted invasion, I personally can't see them suddenly developing an enthusiasm to attack a re-armed and massively more militant and determined Ukraine now.

Tortured_Genius wrote:...it could be yet another carelessly discarded cigarette end.

That was exactly my first reaction too. Or maybe the planes sank under tow in stormy seas.

I wasn't blaming Ukraine, I was simply asking a question. I'm motivated by nothing but curiosity on this issue as I have no horse in this race.

Ok, so rephrase the point instead as that seeking explanation of the cause of war in a scenario in which the Ukraine should have acted like a subordinate state to Russia in order to avoid war is an assumption that the Ukraine doesn't have sovereignty, that they should have been prepared to give up sovereignty to appease their aggressive neighbour, or that the Ukrainian people's democratic choices should not be respected.

This is not about accusing you of X, this is about the language of appeasement and how it doesn't seem to have any concern for Ukraine's sovereignty and its peoples' rights. This is still a very common refrain today: if Ukraine just concedes, then there'd be no cause for war, as if this puts the responsibility for the continuation of suffering squarely with the victim rather than with the aggressor.

Had Ukraine been aggressive and bombastic towards Russia, then sure, we might suggest they'd had a hand in the escalation that led to war. But really, all they did was show democratically that they wanted what being a state in Europe offers rather than what being a satellite of Russia offers, and frankly given the disparity in treatment of citizens and standard of living between those two states/superstates, perhaps Putin should have worked on making his fiefdom a more attractive option if he wants to win that argument. Instead, like all bullies, when he failed to get what he wants, he lashed out. Now everyone's suffering, Russians included.

Asking what Ukraine could have done to avoid being invaded by Russia is a reasonable question and a very real concern for other countries.

Unfortunately, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Russia was always going to attempt to invade Ukraine first by establishing the country as a vassal state with itself as a suzerainty (Belarus is almost completely there, the last opposition having dropped dead). When that failed, they moved on to creating "breakaway regions" aligned to Moscow aided by "little green men" (Moldova and Georgia are in this situation) followed by full annexation. After that it was full-on invasion (Moldova and Georgia have good reason to be worried).

Russia's playbook under Putin is well established.

Ukraine had only 2 options that might have avoided the war:
1.) Not giving up the nukes in 1994. (At the time though Russian treaties were still worth something. Now, firelighters).
2.) Joining NATO or some similar defensive alliance. (Although there was no real opportunity for this).

Any sort of appeasement would have just left them as a vassal state at best.

The implications for countries around the world are stark if they want to retain their sovereignty:
1.) Get nukes.
2.) Get in an alliance (preferably with nukes).

International rearrangements with this in mind are ongoing...

Ukraine never had operational control over the nukes. They were Soviet weapons reliant upon command and control systems that the Russians inherited, and were disabled before being abandoned on Ukrainian territory..

Although it was theoretically possible that these could have been reverse engineered or replaced with new designs, that could have taken many years to come to fruition during which the country would have been a pariah state both to Russia and the West.

It was never a realistic option for the country to become a nuclear power and it feels erroneous to me to suggest that they ever were one. The same goes for Belarus and Kazakhstan.

With Iran supplying Russia long range drones, and the US supplying Ukraine with patriots, the concept of avoiding escalation seems increasingly nebulous.

Patriot systems in Ukraine would've been a red line for Putin in the past, yet his own actions have directly caused it.

Given that we can know see that this 'special military operation' is only special insofar as it's not a military operation against Ukraine's military, but a terror campaign against its populace using one-way drones to destroy civilian infrastructure... how long until the cost-benefit rational changes and makes a military response from the West unavoidable?

The prospect of Putin pushing the big red button if NATO forces are actually stationed in Ukrainian territory, is the one big factor that's keeping that option in the realm of the impossible at the moment.

But there are other ways of attacking Putin. One option is to hack his offshore slush funds and steal his loot. If memory serves, the Panama Papers informed us that he has $2 billion (US) squirrelled away in places such as the Cayman Islands. I'm pretty sure that the CIA or MI5 have the tools to pull that off successfully and swiftly. I suspect Western intelligence agencies have been tracking his financial skulduggery for a very long time, and that they have intimate knowledge of his bank accounts waiting for just such an operation.

Deprive him of the money to keep other oligarchs sweet and standing by him, and I suspect he'll be enjoying what Latin American death squads used to refer to as "haircut and a manicure" in pretty short order.

It's an unwritten rule among oligarchs, that you don't steal money off each other. Not least because Russian oligarchs will respond to the resulting theft with knives and guns, or possibly something even more exotic (more polonium-210 in your tea, comrade?). if you're an oligarch, you can steal as much money from the plebs as you want, and the other oligarchs will mostly respond by slapping their foreheads when you devise an ingenious way of doing so they never thought of. Start a financial war among them, however, and that'll quickly turn into an internecine knife fight.

If I was head of state of a NATO member, I'd be thinking of hitting Putin with this.

Not escalation at all.

I'm sure the latest explosion of a Russian gas pipeline was due to a carelessly discarded cigarette end rather than sabotage.

Again.

Russia reports explosion in pipeline supplying gas to Europe (Politico)

Piteous whining and sociopathic narcissm: it's not our fault we're bombing the shit out of civilian infrastructure and have killed thousands of Ukranians- that's just how we've been forced to show the deep love we feel for our brotherly nation!

Associated Press put out an article suggesting that the US has sent Ukraine a Patriot missile system. Could this be a largely defensive measure? Could Ukraine potentially use this to deflect future Russian barrages, or is the system not quite that accurate?

Greg the Grouper wrote:Associated Press put out an article suggesting that the US has sent Ukraine a Patriot missile system. Could this be a largely defensive measure? Could Ukraine potentially use this to deflect future Russian barrages, or is the system not quite that accurate?

it’s mostly a question of numbers not accuracy

4 missiles per launcher - send 5 attack aircraft drone and at least one will get through.
Higher accuracy helps, longer range helps but ultimately it’s down to math: the more the better.

Agi Hammerthief wrote:

Greg the Grouper wrote:Associated Press put out an article suggesting that the US has sent Ukraine a Patriot missile system. Could this be a largely defensive measure? Could Ukraine potentially use this to deflect future Russian barrages, or is the system not quite that accurate?

it’s mostly a question of numbers not accuracy

4 missiles per launcher - send 5 attack aircraft and at least one will get through.
Higher accuracy helps, longer range helps but ultimately it’s down to math.

Patriots are also eye-wateringly expensive compared to the missiles they will be defending against. At $4 million per missile they won't be used to knock out $20,000 drones. With an operational range of up 99 miles I'm guessing they'll mainly be useful in deterring aircraft, but still as Agi says it's a numbers game and Putin's generals have shown themselves quite capable of throwing away any number of lives for even a marginal target. A single $Billion Patriot battery could well find itself swamped.

Quantity has a quality all its own, then? I wonder if this'll be the last Patriot system we ship over, in that case. The occasional Patriot missile drop.

Greg the Grouper wrote:Quantity has a quality all its own...

Welcome to mother Russia.