World war 3....

On the news today there is a 40 mile Russian convoy heading into Ukriane dont Ukriane have drones to take the convoy out, if not why are the west providing them.

 

To be fair, the sanctions imposed seem to be hard hitting, but they won't bite immediately. So unless the West is prepared to maintain their position of Russia being a pariah for years, decades, the sanctions will have limited effect.

I think its likely that Putin misjudged this, that he thought he'd get a free ride to Kiev, install his puppet regime and brow beat to the West. But they're taking large losses, the world has turned on this and things are backfiring. He could lash out and do something very worrying, whether that's bringing the full force of his military to flatten much of Ukraine (or worse).

I've seen speculation that he may be seriously unwell and in the terminal stages of something like Cancer. What if he's just deranged and wants to go out in a 'blaze of glory'.....?

 

Drones have to be piloted remotely, presumably by the country who owns them. It'd be tantamount to sending jets in. And it seems like the rest of the world has drawn the line at not enforcing a no-fly zone, or sending in military personnel.

 

There is no good end game here is my view. Putin will push and push until Ukraine is "his" and Ukraine will continue resisting as best they can.

For once I'm not sure the West's decisions come down to money for the most part - the sanctions to a degree bite both ways so are already costing. If it's a simple choice between giving up Ukraine and a full on war with Putin they are going to pick the first option. We're not going to do anything that's seen to start a war with Russia until we're 100% obligated to. That is the Russian strength and our weakness.

 

That's like trying to fight the enemy with your hands tied behind your back, I would think remotely controlled drones could be piloted by Ukrianeians.
Something must be done to sit and watch that convoy getting nearer and nearer must be terifiying.

This is heartbreaking,

 

Zelensky knows what he is doing and has put the west in to a difficult position on purpose, Denied both EU and NATO membership in the recent past he has now applied for membership of both again on a sympathy reason to defend his population against a war he was mainly at fault in causing, He and Putin are sides of the same coin in this war,
NATO are not keen but the EU president has fallen hook line and sinker and calling for express consideration of Ukraine membership in a token speech while Poland is treading a risky plan of supplying fighter jets from the west and training Ukrainian pilots which am sure Russia has noted as a possible act of war by them,

 

They do have drones, and there was a report/video the other day, I think it was on CNN, about a successful strike. Ithink this might be part of their overall plan to sacrifice the open spaces and protect the cities. They could pick off bits and pieces as the convoy moves, but I fear that then it would be easy for the convoy to take out the source of the attack. Maybe it's better to have them all massed in one place -- certainly an attack then on the convoy would be more damaging.

Yes, he certainly has miscalculated. LIke other tyrants, he may well have no one left around him who will tell him "no," even when these people know that "no" is the right answer. Crimea and the separatist insurgency went well; he seems to have expected the rest of the country to be the same. But the rest of the country is overwhelmingly Ukrainian. No matter what he believes, they are not the same.

There's been some good analysis of just this question on (primarily) CNN. Whatever proportion of the country he eventually controls -- beyond the Crimea and the separatist parts of the Donbas -- he will have an overwhelmingly hostile population to deal with. There will be no consent to being governed, just toleration and biding one's time.

The forces he has are not thought to be enough to maintain control, not of the cities let alone the country. For example, if he were to take the whole country, 44 million people, and only keep 150,000 troops in, that works out to 293 Ukrainians per soldier, or roughly 3.4 soldiers per 1000 Ukrainians. By comparison, the allies in post-WWII Germany had 89 troops per 1000, and in more recent wars the numbers have ranged between 10-20 troops per thousand. He will also have to deal with a counter-insurgency, that will be well-armed and funded, and will continue for years. Any puppet regime would have to eliminate free elections, or they won't last.

There is indeed no good endgame for Putin in this.

* * *

There is only one man to blame for this war, Putin. The Ukrainians have made it very clear where their sympathies lie, with the West, Europe, and democracy. They are fighting and dying for this. They have proven their worth. They must be put on the road to EU membership. It is very encouraging to see the open letter published by 8 of the EU nations yesterday urging just this. And they must be supported by us with arms, humanitarian aid, and funds.

RCB

 

Its utterly heartbreaking. I can only look see this getting worse and the risk of wider conflict increasing. And I fear the weakness of the west

 

Time for the west to get off the fence and act militarily
Evil succeeds when good men do nothing

 

Putin will nuke us if we step in, is it worth us all dying for?

 

I agree it’s not nice that countries have to sit on the sidelines, but all we can do is offer support for refugees, put sanctions on Russia and demand peace at this stage. If he didn’t have nuclear weapons it would be a different story but you’re literally risking known civilisation of you get involved with military action.

That said I do feel there’s a lot of double standards from many in the west, where was the outcry for sanctions and saying let every refugee in when Israel attacked Palestine or with the Syrian refugee crisis?

 

So at what point do we act?
Estonia
Lithuania
Poland?

 

As we have a NATO alliance then it’ll have to be the first one of them that gets attacked. I am not aware of any such pacts with Ukraine, so should we have attacked Russia when then invaded Georgia or Afghanistan? Or Isreal when they attack Palestine territory? Where’s the cut off?

 

Putin holds all the cards, the only threat to him is the US and they are reluctant to act due to what happened in their previous conflicts. Throw nuclear weapons and a madman into the mix and there is very little the rest of the west can do other than to start what would end up us a full scale east v west conflict. No one is gonna risk that. Its heartbreaking seeing what is effectively the demolition of a sovereignty, it will see a change of the landscape in Europe forever. And as much as I admire the pride of the Ukrainians I fear if this war carries on much longer we will see bloodshed off the scale to what we've seen so far.

 

You're the blinkered one.

This is a battle between democracy and authoritarianism. Trump and the Republican Party are standard bearers for authoritarianism, which is the main reason why Trump and his supporters like Putin so much.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/01/republican-party-trump-putin?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/01/why-does-putin-have-superfans-among-the-us-right-wing?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

The fact that Trump was correct about certain things - most people (even Trump) are occasionally correct about some things - doesn't alter the fact that his basic stance with Putin was (and still is) fawning admiration and appeasement. He even chose to believe Putin's word over the hard evidence obtained by US security agencies, which should have lead to him being prosecuted for treason.
Trump worships strength and bullying - it's how he was brought up by his bully of a father and is how he has conducted his own business all his life. Putin is, basically, Trump's idol.

I completely agree that Corbyn would have handled this no better than Trump would have. Both would have appeased Putin for even longer than the rest of the west has done. But I don't know why you're bringing up Corbyn in your reply to me, as if I were a supporter of him, which I wasn't. I admit that I voted for Corbyn in his initial election to Labour leader, but I very quickly realised my mistake. I've made it very clear on here for a very long time that Corbyn couldn't lead his way out of a wet paper bag and I'm very glad that he's gone.

 

All of that is fine but 'admiration' is a lot different to the childish notion of being a puppet. He was sometimes vociferous in opposing Russia - as posted - and his criticism of NATO was due to the allies not spending enough, something Germany have at least now corrected.

Sometimes their interests would align and sometimes they wouldn't but the same is as true for Corbyn as it is for Trump. Its not about who you support, it's about accepting nuance on all sides of the spectrum.Posting Guardian opinion pieces as "proof" that lack the same balance doesn't particularly help either.

The more interesting part in this is that Trump would no doubt have been much stronger that the nuclear deterant works both ways as he was with Korea.

Now whether that would have given Putin pause for thought or the two mad men would have egged each other in to mutual destruction is anybodies guess!! Personally I see benefits of the current light touch viewpoint but the fact we don't actually use the nuclear weapons as a deterant is definitely a weakness.

 

I'm sure that Putin has designs on all of those countries. But I can't see how he'll be in a position to invade them, much less succeed in conquering them. Putin thought he was going to send a relatively small force into Ukraine and the country would roll over and capitulate, with many civilians welcoming the Russian troops as liberators. Instead he has had to commit 80% of Russian forces to overcome fierce and dogged resistance from Ukrainian troops and civilians alike. Munitions are now pouring into Ukraine at a rate of knots. Civilians are engaged in impromptu bomb making factories. The Russians are going to sustain heavy troop casualties and ordnance damage.
If they succeed in overthrowing the whole country it will be at heavy cost. And then they will be stuck trying to hold onto a hostile country engaged in guerrilla warfare for as long as they are there. This will bottle up huge troop resources, severely impairing their ability to invade other countries. All of this at the same time as the Russian economy is being crippled by sweeping sanctions and growing internal unrest.
Meanwhile, neighbouring countries will be preparing to resist any possible future invasion from Russia, with build up of troops, equipment and NATO planning and military planning. I really think Putin has bitten off far more than he can chew.

 

We'll have to agree to differ. I think Trump was, and still is, Putin's poodle, both because of his admiration of Putin as the despotic leader he would like to be himself, and also because he is up to his neck in dodgy loans and business dealings with Russia that he doesn't want made fully public.

Trump's (justified) complaints about European nations failing to meet their commitments to NATO weren't about wanting to make NATO stronger against Putin - they were about his desire to reduce US spending on European security - ie his 'America First' agenda. Trump would have happily withdrawn the USA from NATO if he'd thought he could get away with it.

The fact that Trump made nuclear threats against Kim doesn't mean he would have done the same to Putin. You may believe he would have done, but I don't. You say that Trump would 'no doubt' have been much stronger re the nuclear deterrent, but I think that's very much in doubt. Even now he is still making statements about how great Putin is. Trump is a sociopath who only cares about his own reputation. He wouldn't have done anything that risked Putin disclosing his past indebtedness to Russian money.

You haven't explained why you randomly chose to bring up Corbyn, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the current situation, or this discussion.