aircooled said:The picture is out of focus, or is focusing on something I cannot figure out. I am not sure that screams fake, but could always be a double cross "hey, who would ever fake an out of focus shot" kind of thing. It's good to be a bit suspicious though.
About to see Armenia and Syria get lit up. Turkey is taking advantage of Putin being busy. Wouldn't be surprised to see this happen in a lot of places that Russia's taken over, or been embroiled with, in the last few decades.
aircooled said:tuna55 said:....On another subject, can anyone verify this? This sounds very promising if real.
O2 might want to comment on this as it seems like a sort of NATO light kind of security agreement, without of course involving NATO.
Yermak noted that the proposed proposals are based on the idea of creating a coalition of guarantors of Ukraine's security, which should be based on a system of agreements united under a joint document on strategic partnership. "We expect the Kyiv Security Compact to unite the main group of allied countries and Ukraine. This group of guarantor states may consist of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, as well as the countries of Northern Europe and the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe," he said.
Some sort of agreement will be necessary, but the approach of this plan is wrong (but exactly what I'd expect from the people who produced it). While I agree that Ukraine should be militarily capable and prepared to defend its sovereignty, if it is bound to Western countries by means of bilateral security guarantees, Russia will see this as simply NATO expansion without the formal accession process. Medvedev has said as much on Telegram. Hyperbole aside, this is the same concern that Putin warned about after the 2008 Bucharest summit, and only serves to reinforce (again) his narrative of victimization. Treaties organized without consideration of external interests tend to be more expensive and difficult to maintain over the medium- and long-term.
A better approach is going to be one that provides Ukraine a robust defensive capability and means to strengthen and modernize their economy, making them better able to integrate into Western financial structures and developing domestic support for Westernization, but also de-escalates the points of conflict and provides Russia with guarantees that Ukraine (and other FSRs) will not be offered NATO membership. This is just being practical: it gives Ukraine security, keeps it oriented toward the West, and reduces Russia's motivation to reinitiate conflict while undermining the government's narrative of constant Western pressure threatening Russia.
I would argue that it is likely that Ukraine's government recognizes that once the conflict is over the flow of free high-tech equipment will dry up fast, and doesn't want to foot the bill for its own peacetime military, much as European NATO bandwagoned on US nuclear capability during the Cold War. If Ukraine can secure external guarantees, it won't have to spend as much money. Thus any agreement of the sort I outlined will need to have a fairly generous initial provision of modern equipment to allow Ukraine to build a peacetime force capable of unilateral self-defense.
Excellent tactical analysis from the Austrian military:
In reply to JFW75 :
No better time to open another front.
https://odessa-journal.com/georgia-proposes-to-hold-a-referendum-and-ask-if-georgians-want-war-with-russia/
Too many peoples start popping off at Russia and Pootin's gonna chuck a nuke just on "principle"
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:Too many peoples start popping off at Russia and Pootin's gonna chuck a nuke just on "principle"
If literally everyone other than Iran, NK, and sometimes tentatively China maybe, then they might start to get the hint.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Don't know that I care anymore.
I tend to agree with Bob on this one a bit. I mean they have threatened and hinted at it so much you just want to yell "Well just do it a-hole, and see what happens!"
( I am not saying that is a good idea at all, just what the sentiment is )
Gerry Baker: You obviously reject the idea that we in the West are somehow responsible for this because it was provocative to encourage the idea of NATO membership for certain countries, particularly Ukraine, that we have been provoking Russia with encouraging Ukraine to turn to the West when it's historically been so close to Russia. You just reject all that. You think that Putin's objective here was a wider expansionism to roll back NATO essentially, and not a kind of defensive move to embrace Ukraine, to keep Ukraine within the Russian embrace.
Fred Kagan: I'm terribly sorry. I hope my face didn't hurt your fist.
Gerry Baker: But you know, there are serious people have said this, people like Bob Gates said we went too far.
Fred Kagan: Absolutely. And look, I think there's lots of debate in discussion that one could have about how we handled the nineties and how we handled NATO expansion and all of that sort of stuff. Those are absolutely valid debates and discussions we could have, but look, let's just carry that forth, shall we? Putin has every right to be pissed off about what happened in the nineties. He has every right to be aggravated about the expansion of NATO and to feel actually, not truthfully, that NATO lied to Russia, which isn't actually true, or that he was betrayed in some way, or even to feel that these things are threats. Those are all within his rights. He has every right to have whatever opinions he wants to have about whether Ukraine should exist as an independent state, whether there's Ukrainian ethnicity. He has a right to all of those opinions. What he doesn't have a right to do is to invade and launch a genocidal war. So the problem that I have with that argument is that one can recognize the various reasons that Russia might be aggravated, but one also has to recognize that there simply isn't a world in which an appropriate and acceptable response to all of that is to launch a genocidal war. That's the problem that I have with that argument. So did NATO provoke this war? Absolutely not. Did NATO expansion aggravate Russia? Sure. But there's another issue here also, which is Putin's fundamental argument is that states of the former Soviet Union have qualified and truncated sovereignty. That's what it means when he says that he has a sphere of influence that must be respected and that he can dictate what alliances the states of the former Soviet Union can join. That means that they're not fully sovereign states, but here's the problem. Russia recognized them as fully sovereign states. And Putin's biggest problem, the person who actually made the mistakes and betrayed Russia from this perspective was, in the first instance, the late Gorbachev, who allowed the Soviet Union to collapse, and then Putin's own mentor, Boris Yeltsin, who recognized all of these changes. If Putin wishes to feel betrayed by anyone, those are the people he should feel betrayed by, because they created the international world order and the recognition of these states that made what he did absolutely illegal and unjustifiable.
Great conversation.
it goes on:
Fred Kagan: Crimea is always the hardest thing to see how the Ukrainians pull off, because it's just so easy to defend. There's a narrow neck of land that connects it to the mainland, and the Russians would really fundamentally have to just break and flee it. Now I could imagine circumstances in which that would happen, but I wouldn't bet a ruble on it one way or the other. I think it's possible, but I won't even begin to try to call that. But in terms of recovering all of, shall we say mainland Ukraine, it's very possible. I have no question that the Russian military at this point is weak enough that the Ukrainians could defeat it and that there isn't anything Putin could do, at least conventionally, to stop it. What I don't know is what capability the Ukrainians have, and another key variable here is whether the West will have the will to continue to provide them the wherewithal to do it. I think, based on what I'm seeing, that the Ukrainians probably do have the capability. And I also think that the West probably will continue to have the will, especially the more it looks like the Ukrainians can do this. I think the West will want to, and also feel obliged to help. So I think this is a very realistic possibility, Gerry, and it's what we absolutely should be doing everything in our power to try to make happen, because nothing better could happen for the world, let alone Ukraine, than to have the Russians have initiated this absolutely unjustified invasion and have been defeated completely in the process.
Things are getting bit more dynamic. Sounds like there are some advisers to Putin who may be making a trip to the 5h floor of the hospital:
- The Kremlin has recognized its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first defeat Russia has acknowledged in this war. The Kremlin is deflecting blame from Russian President Vladimir Putin and attributing it instead to his military advisors.
- The Kremlin is likely seeking to use the defeat in Kharkiv to facilitate crypto mobilization efforts by intensifying patriotic rhetoric and discussions about fuller mobilization while revisiting a Russian State Duma bill allowing the military to send call-ups for the regular semiannual conscription by mail. Nothing in the Duma bill suggests that Putin is preparing to order general mobilization, and it is far from clear that he could do so quickly in any case.
- The successful Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkiv Oblast is prompting Russian servicemen, occupation authorities, and milbloggers to panic.
- Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are likely continuing to weaken Russia’s leverage in the former Soviet Union as Russia appears unwilling to enforce a violated ceasefire it brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan or to allow Armenia to invoke provisions of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization in its defense.
- Ukrainian troops likely continued ground attacks along the Lyman-Yampil-Bilohorivka line in northern Donetsk Oblast and may be conducting limited ground attacks across the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast.
- Russian and Ukrainian sources indicated that Ukrainian forces are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counter-offensive.
- Russian troops made incremental gains south of Bakhmut and continued ground attacks throughout Donetsk Oblast.
- Ukrainian forces provided the first visual evidence of Russian forces using an Iranian-made drone in Ukraine on September 13.
A bit more on the first two points:
The Kremlin acknowledged its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first time Moscow has openly recognized a defeat since the start of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin officials and state media propagandists are extensively discussing the reasons for the Russian defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, a marked change from their previous pattern of reporting on exaggerated or fabricated Russian successes with limited detail.[1] The Kremlin never admitted that Russia was defeated around Kyiv or, later, at Snake Island, framing the retreat from Kyiv as a decision to prioritize the “liberation” of Donbas and the withdrawal from Snake Island as a “gesture of goodwill.”[2] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) originally offered a similar explanation for the Russian failure in Kharkiv, claiming that Russian forces were withdrawing troops from Kharkiv Oblast to regroup, but this false narrative faced quick and loud criticism online.[3] The Kremlin’s acknowledgment of the defeat is part of an effort to mitigate and deflect criticism for such a devastating failure away from Russian President Vladimir Putin and onto the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the uniformed military command.
Kremlin sources are now working to clear Putin of any responsibility for the defeat, instead blaming the loss of almost all of occupied Kharkiv Oblast on underinformed military advisors within Putin’s circle.[4] One member of the Kremlin’s Council for Interethnic Relations, Bogdan Bezpalko, even stated that military officials who had failed to see the concentration of Ukrainian troops and equipment and disregarded Telegram channels that warned of the imminent Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv Oblast should have their heads ”lying on Putin’s desk.”[5] ISW has previously reported that the Kremlin delayed Putin‘s meeting with Russian defense officials immediately after the withdrawal of troops from around Kharkiv, increasing the appearance of a rift between the Kremlin and the Russian MoD.[6] The Kremlin’s admission of defeat in Kharkiv shows that Putin is willing and able to recognize and even accept a Russian defeat at least in some circumstances and focus on deflecting blame from himself.
02Pilot said:aircooled said:tuna55 said:....On another subject, can anyone verify this? This sounds very promising if real.
O2 might want to comment on this as it seems like a sort of NATO light kind of security agreement, without of course involving NATO.
Yermak noted that the proposed proposals are based on the idea of creating a coalition of guarantors of Ukraine's security, which should be based on a system of agreements united under a joint document on strategic partnership. "We expect the Kyiv Security Compact to unite the main group of allied countries and Ukraine. This group of guarantor states may consist of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, as well as the countries of Northern Europe and the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe," he said.
Some sort of agreement will be necessary, but the approach of this plan is wrong (but exactly what I'd expect from the people who produced it). While I agree that Ukraine should be militarily capable and prepared to defend its sovereignty, if it is bound to Western countries by means of bilateral security guarantees, Russia will see this as simply NATO expansion without the formal accession process. Medvedev has said as much on Telegram. Hyperbole aside, this is the same concern that Putin warned about after the 2008 Bucharest summit, and only serves to reinforce (again) his narrative of victimization. Treaties organized without consideration of external interests tend to be more expensive and difficult to maintain over the medium- and long-term.
A better approach is going to be one that provides Ukraine a robust defensive capability and means to strengthen and modernize their economy, making them better able to integrate into Western financial structures and developing domestic support for Westernization, but also de-escalates the points of conflict and provides Russia with guarantees that Ukraine (and other FSRs) will not be offered NATO membership. This is just being practical: it gives Ukraine security, keeps it oriented toward the West, and reduces Russia's motivation to reinitiate conflict while undermining the government's narrative of constant Western pressure threatening Russia.
I would argue that it is likely that Ukraine's government recognizes that once the conflict is over the flow of free high-tech equipment will dry up fast, and doesn't want to foot the bill for its own peacetime military, much as European NATO bandwagoned on US nuclear capability during the Cold War. If Ukraine can secure external guarantees, it won't have to spend as much money. Thus any agreement of the sort I outlined will need to have a fairly generous initial provision of modern equipment to allow Ukraine to build a peacetime force capable of unilateral self-defense.
IMHO we should follow our German Japan practice feed them, get them economically on their feet, let them build their military by selling them our planes and equipment.
They have the capability to be self sustaining against Russia. Especially a weakened Russia.
While Putin may rapidly waste his resources in spending to restore some military power, Ukraine can build back their economy under the NATO umbrella.
America gets a proven, valuable Ally right on Russia's door step. Plus a customer for our military Hardware and development costs.
aircooled said:Things are getting bit more dynamic. Sounds like there are some advisers to Putin who may be making a trip to the 5h floor of the hospital:
- The Kremlin has recognized its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first defeat Russia has acknowledged in this war. The Kremlin is deflecting blame from Russian President Vladimir Putin and attributing it instead to his military advisors.
Sounds an awful lot like Germany post 1942.
eastsideTim said:Multiple explosions reported at an airbase inside Russia - Twitter video. If this is for real, that's where they base a bunch of transport aircraft, and their equivalent of AWACS.
I haven't heard any new news about that twitter video and the above link is now dead. Not true?
It's probably true. There were reports of other explosions in the area also. Along a similar lines, there is a recent report (last few hours) of the air defenses active in Kerch (critical bridge to Crimea which is along the same basic coast). The Ukrainians seem to be doing something in that area and as noted earlier, the Russians I am certain are VERY paranoid about that bridge.
As a bit of a tangent, to another ruthless dictator....
Solomon Islands bars U.S. Coast Guard ship from routine refueling, raising China influence fears
But heck, not like we ever did anything for them (!?!):
For those who don't know, Guadalcanal (the green hell) is in the Solomon Islands.
VolvoHeretic said:eastsideTim said:Multiple explosions reported at an airbase inside Russia - Twitter video. If this is for real, that's where they base a bunch of transport aircraft, and their equivalent of AWACS.
I haven't heard any new news about that twitter video and the above link is now dead. Not true?
I have not either, so could have been incorrect. I wonder if any of the commercial satellites have recent images available.
I think that is entirely accurate, I am sure Russia has been doing a lot of work with their bombers, but....
....it's not like there was a bombardier huddling over a bombsite as the bomber bounced in the flak over Kyiv!
These planes are just long range cruise missile launch platforms. The Kh-101 cruise missile they mention in the article has a 2500 km range! There is absolutely no need to get anywhere near Ukrainian air defense to launch them. And lets be realistic here, there is NO way you want to be in a TU-95, anywhere NEAR a radar guided missile! Those things have the radar cross section of a small city! Stealthy it aint!!!
aircooled said:
For those who don't know, Guadalcanal (the green hell) is in the Solomon Islands.
Wait, I though the Nürburgring was the Green Hell? I mean, we liberated that one too, but....
I think that that video maybe might have been from the previous attack at Russia's Saki Air Base near Novofedorivka on August 9. Youtube deleted it because it violated it's terms of use. Below is an article from yesterdays attack near Taganrog, Russia.
Yahoo.com: Russians unsettled by attacks on borderlands, expert says
In reply to aircooled :
True, but how many Sparrows/AMRAAMs would it take to knock down a '95...?
Sparrow? Did you just time travel from the 70's Mavrick? 
But seriously, even the AMRAAM has 22 kg of high fragmentation explosives in it. I certainly would not feel confident in taking any missile hits in a TU95, and with that big of a not so maneuverable target, you can pretty much guarantee it's going to get the best possible impact profile.
Some updates:
Reports (obviously Ukrainian sourced) still seem to show Ukraine has been rather active (and apparently feels safe to operate) with their air force in the west (Kherson area).
Ukrainian aviation conducted 12 air strikes at gatherings of Russian military. Ukrainian air defense shot down 3 Su-25 and a Su-24M, - General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine says in the morning report
Making the mercenary guy the face of your army? The Russians are flooding the Inhulets river to try and keep the Ukrainians from coming across. Social media and cell phone leaks are a HUGE issue for the Russians. It's a great source of intel. But of course, going to be less than well recieved by the troops and they already have potentially huge moral issues.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I have no way of knowing, but I hope somebody in Russia has hidden Pootin's nuclear key.
spitfirebill said:In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I have no way of knowing, but I hope somebody in Russia has hidden Pootin's nuclear key.
That thought has crossed my mind a few times and I genuinely question whether or not their stuff would even work.
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