Russia & Ukraine War

[tampa24]

There's another point I wanted to take on. There has been mention of the high level of corruption within Ukraine, its government, and even possibly Zelensky himself. My belief is that Zelensky is probably the least corrupt president they've had in a while. I'll grant that Ukraine has had a reputation for being corrupt for a long time. In comparison with the eastern neighborhood Ukraine lives in around and behind it though, they would have a long way to go to take the top corruption prize away from Russia, Belarus and even some former Soviet republics in Asia like Kazakstan for instance. Ukraine would be the cleanest one of the bunch.

But even if you take some level of corruption in Ukraine as a given, I can't fathom trying to make the argument (however convoluted or opaque) that that makes Ukraine somehow deserving of being invaded and conquered. Russia is a poster child for one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. It's not like you can make the argument that if Russia is just given a chance to get into Ukraine and make it a mirror image of the rest of Russia under Putin, that they will clean up house and make Ukraine so much less corrupt and better off. Yeah. The Russians are really famous for cleaning up corruption. haha

The saddest part about that kind of reasoning here is the implication that just because parts of a society suffer from some degree of corruption, that that somehow justifies having its cities flattened, its water processing and electric plants bombed or knocked out...its apartment buildings turned into skeletal hulks and its vulnerable children, women and elderly citizens left homeless to be murdered, starved, dehydrated, raped, or frozen to death. Because they had it coming to them? Because they deserve it due to having some corruption in the country?

 

[br6205]

On the negative side with all opposition voices in Russia silenced, Putin's propaganda has an 80% public approval. As we know ZHitler had high approval til the war turned against him & that is what will be necessary to oust Putin being the unexpected.

 

[tampa24]

I'll preface this by saying that I have no way of verifying the authenticity of this conversation. I found it online and it does seem to be genuine. There's little wonder why morale is low among Russian troops in Ukraine. This convo touches on just a few grievances the troops have with their superiors and how the they are being led.

You can sympathize with them on some levels. But when you consider those troops who are murdering and executing civilians, committing war crimes, looting, raping and in general just terrorizing the civilian population... Then of course my empathy with them comes to an end.

 

[tampa24]

 

[tampa24]

I'm obviously including some of these P.O.W. videos. But I must also admit as a matter of full disclosure that the main reason that U.S. news stations and media are not showing clips of P.O.W. vids, is because they are illegal under the Geneva Conventions. So of course, yes. Technically Ukraine is in violation of the conventions and the modern rules of war by making and distributing videos of captured prisoners. However, given the scale of Russian atrocities so far...war crimes and crimes against humanity, in only a matter of several weeks of warfare...Ukraine's violations of the conventions seem paltry in comparison. Putin is showing the world just how criminally evil he is and how much contempt he has for following any pretense of "civilized warfare". (Is that an oxymoron if you ever heard one?) So I don't fault the Ukrainians for breaking a few minor rules here and there.

 

[br6205]

TY Tampa for showing these videos.

 

[tampa24]

 

[br6205]

Keep up your good work ,Tampa.

 

[tampa24]

I wanted to continue with the FSB whistleblower's letter. Again I'll refer to the author of the letter in the much shorter online abbreviation of OP. (Meaning, "Original Poster".)


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We have a conditional deadline of June. [For a supposed total Russian victory in Ukraine] Conditional - because in June we have no economy left, nothing remains. By and large, next week there will be a turning point in one of the sides, simply because the situation cannot be in such an overstrain. There are no analytics - it is impossible to calculate the chaos, here no one can say anything for sure. Act intuitively, and even on emotions - but this is not poker for you. Rates will rise, in the hope that suddenly some option will shoot through. The trouble is that we, too, can now miscalculate and lose everything in one move.

By and large, the country has no way out. It’s just that there is no option for a possible victory, and defeat is everything, sailed at all. They 100% repeated the beginning of the last century, when they decided to kick weak Japan and get a quick victory, then it turned out that the army was in trouble. then they started the war to the bitter end, then they began to take the Bolsheviks for "re-education" into the army - after all, they were outcasts, uninteresting to anyone in the masses. And then, the Bolsheviks, who were not really known to anyone, picked up anti-war slogans and it started like this ...

From the pros: we did everything so that even a hint of the mass sending of "penalty boxes" to the front line did not pass. Send convicts and "socially unreliable" political prisoners there (so that they don't mess with the water inside the country) - the morale of the army will simply go into the negative. And the enemy is motivated, terribly motivated. He knows how to fight, there are enough middle-level commanders there. There are weapons. They have support. We will simply set a precedent for human loss in the world. And that's it.

What we are most afraid of: at the top, they act according to the rule of overlapping the old problem with a new problem. Largely for this reason, the Donbass of 2014 began - it was necessary to divert the attention of Westerners from the topic of the Russian spring in Crimea, so the Donbass crisis, it seems, should have drawn all the attention to itself and become the subject of bargaining. But there were even bigger problems.

Then they decided to push Erdogan into 4 pipes of the South Stream and entered Syria - this is after Soleimani gave deliberately false inputs in order to solve his problems. As a result, it was not possible to close the issue with Crimea, there are also problems with the Donbass, the South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria has hung with another headache (if we go out, they will demolish Assad, which will make us look like idiots, but it’s also difficult and useless to sit).


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OP is even more pessimistic than I am as to how long the Russian economy can hold up against sanctions. I believe they can hang on for about 6 months before things start to really fall part with a lack of foreign spare parts for industry for instance. They've been able to prop the value of the ruble back up for now. And they can run on the fumes of some of their pre-sanctions economy for a little while longer, until the lag time catches up with them. But OP is saying he thinks that by June the Russian economy will collapse. I would guess closer to August. But OP lives there and knows the society and economy better than most of us. So we'll see.

He speaks as to how terribly Russia has started off this young century with Ukraine. (Much like Imperial Russia did at the start of the 20th century.) Russia in 1904-1905 (before the revolution and before it became the Soviet Union) sent a mighty naval fleet all the way from Europe, sailing around the whole Eurasian world, to the northern Far East Pacific in order to go to war against Japan. Once they finally got there it was supposed to be a quick and easy victory for them. Instead the Japanese handed their heads to them on a platter. The defeat was a huge international embarrassment for Russia. It was clear at that point that the Russian military and its navy had many problems.

I can't say for certain what OP means here about "started the war to the bitter end..." in the last century. Full disclosure here that the following historical account is over-simplified to some extent. But... My best guess as to what OP's basing that on is this. Russia in 1914 was so huge, its reserves of possible army recruits so spread out over thousands of miles and several time zones, its Byzantine bureaucracy slow to function, its transportation, postal and communications networks more backwards, primitive and not as technologically advanced as the rest of Western Europe... That in order to call for a national mobilization of the army and the pooling together of its necessary war materiel for the onset of a large-scale war...Russia needed at least a full 6 months more time than the other countries to get prepared in advance. The other smaller sized European countries could mobilize for war much faster than Russia. Historians still debate to this day whether the Tsar's call for national mobilization in 1914 for a possible Great War...which at that point was still confined only to Serbia in the Balkans...was actually the catalyst and spark that led Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to decide to go all-in and start a World War, before Russia could finish mobilizing.

So you get into that chicken and the egg argument of what caused what and when. Tsar Nicholas II was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he sat on his hands in 1914 and waited to see if Germany and the Austrians would start a wider war and a possible invasion against him, before he had mobilized...his country might have been overrun. If he mobilized before a general large-scale European war had even started, he risked provoking and instigating the very war he didn't want in the first place...and which might have actually been avoided otherwise. Sure enough though, once Germany saw that Russia had started its mobilization, they jumped into the start of WWI to prevent giving Russia more time to get ready and possibly attack Germany and its allies first. Obviously Russia still got beaten very badly in WWI in spite of having started its mobilization first.

So OP is right that the beginning of the last century was horrible for Russia. It was wrought with miscalculations and missteps from their leadership on a global scale...humiliating military defeats and economic, political and social calamity. While the beginning of this century with a war of choice in Ukraine might very well end up holding more of the same fate for them to varying degrees.

I'll finish up this segment of OP's rant tomorrow. haha

 

[br6205]

Things often go as we think.

 

[tampa24]

This is a very thoughtful video about the current Russia situation. For those with longer attention spans I think you'll find it quite interesting. I don't agree with all of his conclusions. For instance he says the Russians will eventually win in Ukraine because they have the might and the numbers, which I don't necessarily agree with. Nobody thought Vietnam had a chance in hell of defeating the U.S. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. So a guerilla/insurgency kind of war in Ukraine could in theory bog down Russia for many years, and eventually end in defeat. But then he goes on to explain just how difficult and costly it will be for Russia to try to occupy and pacify a defeated Ukraine. So he does seem to contradict himself a little bit. But still his insights are very intelligent, interesting and helpful.

 

[br6205]

Tampa you perform a great service for us to watch & post these items, TY.

 

[SFPS01]

Like many of you here, I find it unbelievable that this could be happening in 2022. I have purposely not posted on this thread for fear my personal feelings would not go over very well with the members. I watch the news first in the morning, then at noon, and then in the evening to try to stay abreast of what is happening there. Unfortunately it seems to get worse by the day. While I believe that the Russian people remain pretty much in the dark about what their army is doing in the Ukraine, the Russian government certainly isn't. Putin and his gang of thugs need to be held accountable in the eyes of all the world. Hanging in the public square (upside down) would be a good start (I said earlier that some are not going to like what I feel about this). I believe the US and all of our NATO members and other concerned countries need to say enough is enough. Call that chicken shit Putin on his own game. Get your armies out of Ukraine immediately or our jets, bombers, missiles will nihilate your army in a matter of hours. NATO or non NATO member doesn't matter. They have a right to live in their own country the way they want. Whats Putin going to do about it? He is deranged yes, but not stupid. If he wants to make Russia and island of its own, so be it. Every country in the world needs to cut ties with him. He can go drink is own oil and gas. And if he thinks he can use his other annexed countries to stage his armies, then that country needs to suffer the consequences as well. When the bombs start falling on Russian soil, mnaybe just then their people will wake up. Sooner or later there will be another revolution in Russia and it will be Putin and his generals that will be taken to the countryside and shot. I am a peace loving individual but seeing the horrors in Ukraineo makes my blood boil, and what kind of country are we to allow this to happen to the people there. I know we dont want boots on the ground there, but we wouldn't need them on the ground. Our Navy and Air Force could take care of this matter within hours. And if Putin wants to continue to rattle his little dick, one nicely placed cluster bomb in the middle of the kremlin would take care of that problem. Enough is enough!!!!!!

 

[tampa24]

You do have some strong opinions SFP. haha

But I'm glad you're posting and sharing a piece of your mind.

 

[br6205]

SFP, TY for sharing.

 

[tampa24]

This is a continuation of my previous post dealing with a segment of the FSB whistleblowers letter. As I've said all along, I have no way of knowing for sure if this letter is legit or a forgery. What I do know is that just about everything he has predicted has either come to pass, or is about to. And everything he has voiced possible concerns about, are things that very well could or should keep Russian foreign and domestic policymakers up at night. Based on the intelligence with which he makes his points and the way he speaks so matter of factly and colloquially about complex issues and historical precedents...which he assumes his coworkers in the FSB, as fellow Russians also, would readily grasp...leads me to believe that this document is legit. And even if it were not, it's a very useful tool in seeing how this war is playing out in real time and where it's likely to go. If it's fake, it would seem to have been channeled from Nostradamus himself.

I hope OP (the Russian FSB author of this letter) is not fired, under house arrest, or worse... The latest word is that Putin has dropped the axe down hard on the FSB and its agents, who he blames for faulty intelligence leading up to the disastrous start of the war.

Last I left off from my previous post I was talking about the Russian experience of the beginning of the last century. I was explaining that historians debate to this day (and likely will do so into the future) over whether WWI could have been avoided altogether, or kept to a very low-level regional conflict in the Balkans, or prevented through diplomacy...if Tsar Nicholas II had not begun mobilizing his army in 1914. (Making his the first major European country to do so.)

Did the tsar's mobilization actually provoke and/or panic the other countries into starting WWI? Or were Germany and Austria-Hungary eventually going to launch a global war regardless? (Which in the latter case, Russia was absolutely right to have started mobilizing immediately.)

So we pick up from there.

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"From the pros: we did everything so that even a hint of the mass sending of "penalty boxes" to the front line did not pass. Send convicts and "socially unreliable" political prisoners there (so that they don't mess with the water inside the country) - the morale of the army will simply go into the negative. And the enemy is motivated, terribly motivated. He knows how to fight, there are enough middle-level commanders there. There are weapons. They have support. We will simply set a precedent for human loss in the world. And that's it.

What we are most afraid of: at the top, they act according to the rule of overlapping the old problem with a new problem. Largely for this reason, the Donbass of 2014 began - it was necessary to divert the attention of Westerners from the topic of the Russian spring in Crimea, so the Donbass crisis, it seems, should have drawn all the attention to itself and become the subject of bargaining. But there were even bigger problems.

Then they decided to push Erdogan into 4 pipes of the South Stream and entered Syria - this is after Soleimani gave deliberately false inputs in order to solve his problems. As a result, it was not possible to close the issue with Crimea, there are also problems with the Donbass, the South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria has hung with another headache (if we go out, they will demolish Assad, which will make us look like idiots, but it’s also difficult and useless to sit)."

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I admit I have no idea what the Russian idiom for "penalty boxes" is. So given the awkward translation we have to guess from the context.

Apparently OP is telling us that from the very onset of the war Russia was worried about having enough troops and manpower for the job. Yes. Russia has a large population of about 144 million people. But they're also spread out across the largest country on the planet. Short of declaring a "State of Emergency" along with a declaration of "Martial Law" and a "National Mobilization" of able-bodied men...in peacetime it's hard for them to pull anything much beyond 250,000 troops total (stationed nationwide all the way from Eastern Europe to nearly the Bearing Straits of Alaska), out of their ass.

Western officials were very concerned that Putin would declare a State of Emergency after only about 2 weeks into the war. And it could still happen. If it does...the stakes go up considerably. Putin has tried to call a mobilization on the down-low without calling it a mobilization. Last I heard he ordered the armed forces to draft another 135,000 new conscripts this spring. He's hiring mercenaries and thugs from Africa to Asia. But it still doesn't give him enough in numbers. Regardless though Russia would need an army of a couple million or more if they wanted to actually occupy Ukraine. If Russia does ever declare a State of Emergency it would also be a tacit admission to the Russian people that the war is going very badly for them. The propaganda line right now is that things are going just swimmingly well for them. They use phrases like everything is "going according to plan" or they are "regrouping to begin the next phase" instead of retreating in defeat to safer areas. How do you justify declaring martial law if the war is going so well?

OP already warned in an earlier part of the letter that any attempt at a mass national mobilization (Maybe anywhere from a modest 300,000 men up to 2 million or more for a Ukrainian occupation) would crater the economy and strain the country's transportation networks and infrastructure to the point of collapse.

So in this section of the letter OP seems to say that the FSB did its best to discourage the government from ever using prison inmates and political prisoners as draftees for the army. He seems to hope and worry that they never do. Because the regular army soldiers and new conscripts having to deal with, live with, and fight along side with, unreformed violent offenders who usually have serious mental health issues (as their "brothers-in-arms") would only send morale in the Russian army plunging further.

He talks about the Russian invasion of Crimea of 2014 and how Russia tried to divert Western attention away from Crimea by then invading the Donbas region. Apparently the plan was to use the new Russian leverage in Donbas to negotiate for formal recognition from both Ukraine and the international community of the Russian annexation of Crimea. That plan fell apart and got them no formal recognition for Crimea. Partly because they pivoted their attention away and decided to jump into the Syrian Thomas conflict. So to OP's dismay the government left two conflicts in Ukraine unresolved and decided to jump into a third.

So Russia decided to jump into the Syrian Thomas conflict in a big way. The Iranians convinced Putin and the government that it would be easy for Russia to intervene and play savior to Iranian and Russian ally Bashar al-Assad. Apparently Iranian General Qasem Soleimani painted such a rosy picture of the situation Russia would find itself in there on the ground that OP accuses the general and Iranians of outright lying to them. It was probably about the severity of the war, the direness of the situation on the ground, as well as the true financial commitment and the future loss of Russian lives.

Soleimani is the same top Iranian general that the U.S. killed in 2020.

OP is very worried about the still ongoing Russian commitment in Syria. Moreso than I would have suspected. I assume because maybe he knows that Russia can't afford it in the longer term? But he's exasperated that Russia's military is stuck there for possibly many more years to come playing bodyguard to Assad and his regime. If Russia pulls out, their ally Assad is either killed or he flees into exile. The Syrian Thomas government collapses. The country and possibly much of the region would descend into further armed chaos, and Russia would get the blame. And then what was the point of them being there in the first place, spending a fortune, killing many thousands and sending its own soldiers there to die? That argument sounds very familiar to Americans who've had to deal with the aftermaths of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'll continue this in another post.

 

[br6205]

Tampa just so you know, I had a duo major while an undergraduate history & mathematics (the later because atmospheric science is mainly a post graduate study). So I am familiar with much of what you post. I do not bring this up as a boast. I never used my doctorate & fell education is for learning but has nothing to do with intelligence as there are multiple examples of dumb de-greed people & an equally large group of wise, smart people with little formal education In conclusion , Tampa you do a big service with what you post and I commend you for it,.

 

[tampa24]

Tampa just so you know, I had a duo major while an undergraduate history & mathematics (the later because atmospheric science is mainly a post graduate study). So I am familiar with much of what you post. I do not bring this up as a boast. I never used my doctorate & fell education is for learning but has nothing to do with intelligence as there are multiple examples of dumb de-greed people & an equally large group of wise, smart people with little formal education In conclusion , Tampa you do a big service with what you post and I commend you for it,.

Thanks Br.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thread I know there are some people in here who already know much of the history I discuss here. As well as many of the foreign policy issues I try to break down. I'm sure there are some in here who know far more than I do on many of these subjects. I just try to break down the undercurrents of the present situation and some of the historical precedents that add more context. I don't try to dumb down or oversimplify things to the point of risking talking down to people or insulting their intelligence. I just try to find that middle road of sharing enough detail so as to speak my mind in a coherent and hopefully logical and intelligent way.

I also hope to inform other intelligent adults of historical context who may not have had specialized formal education in some of these matters. For the topics at hand some of us in here may already have various undergraduate or graduate level degrees in fields such as History, Political Science, International Studies and so on. For some it may be a refresher of sorts for some of their high school history classes, or a few elective undergraduate classes they took in college on their way to degrees in other fields.

So as for my own posts in here I hope I'm calibrating them well for the audience at hand.

 

[tampa24]

I got into a little bit of the last paragraph of the previous chunk of the FSB whistleblowers letter. I left the rest of it for another time because it gets much more complex as to why OP is so concerned about the status of Russian forces in Syria, as well as the whims and actions of Turkey. Turkey is a bigger player in this war than one might at first think. And potentially it could become a much bigger player.

I purposely delayed going into it not just because the historical context is lengthy and complex, but also because I needed to try to do some research on some of this myself so that I don't give inaccurate or out of date information.

The second paragraph here I'm combining them out of order from the letter. But as it relates to Turkey it's easier to take on the subject in one post rather than slip us explanations later.

For now I'm going to leave this much as a stand alone post to give a sense of the geography of what the histleblower (OP) is talking about in regards to Turkey.


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"Then they decided to push Erdogan into 4 pipes of the South Stream and entered Syria - this is after Soleimani gave deliberately false inputs in order to solve his problems. As a result, it was not possible to close the issue with Crimea, there are also problems with the Donbass, the South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria has hung with another headache (if we go out, they will demolish Assad, which will make us look like idiots, but it’s also difficult and useless to sit).

We go further. Syria. "The guys will hold out, everything will be over in Ukraine - and there in Syria we will again strengthen everything in positions." And now, at any moment, they can wait there for the contingent to run out of resources - and such a heat will set in ... Turkey blocks the straits - to transport supplies there by planes, it's like heating an oven with money."


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I'm hoping to keep this explanation and commentary as brief as possible. Please keep in mind that this will force me to oversimplify in places. Otherwise this one section could turn into 1500 word essay quite easily. I do want to give a brief but accurate explanation here however.

Let's take a look at Turkey as it once was at the peak of its power and glory as the Ottoman Empire. And then Turkey as it is today.





Modern day Turkey Below







Russian gas pipelines to Eastern and Western Europe

 

[tampa24]

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"Then they decided to push Erdogan into 4 pipes of the South Stream and entered Syria - this is after Soleimani gave deliberately false inputs in order to solve his problems. As a result, it was not possible to close the issue with Crimea, there are also problems with the Donbass, the South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria has hung with another headache (if we go out, they will demolish Assad, which will make us look like idiots, but it’s also difficult and useless to sit).

We go further. Syria. "The guys will hold out, everything will be over in Ukraine - and there in Syria we will again strengthen everything in positions." And now, at any moment, they can wait there for the contingent to run out of resources - and such a heat will set in ... Turkey blocks the straits - to transport supplies there by planes, it's like heating an oven with money."

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The Turkish Stream is also referred to as the South Stream





The greatest decline of the Ottoman empire in recent history was after its defeat in WWI. Turkey and Russia were on opposite sides of the Great War. Even after post-war borders of the Ottoman Empire were redrawn, modern-day Turkey still straddles a small part of Europe with a much larger piece of Asia. European countries tried for centuries to erase Turkey's last European stronghold and force it off of its peninsula there. Catherine the Great wanted to. Popes wanted to "liberate" Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) from the Turks and didn't succeed. So other than Russia itself, Turkey is the only other truly Eurasian country that straddles both continents.

If any of you wondered during the war in the Balkans with the breakup of Yugoslavia, why there are so many Caucasian European Muslims living there, it's because that region had been conquered and occupied by the Muslim Ottoman Turks for centuries prior. The clashes of empires there and so many battles fought within the Balkans involving various alliances of countries over centuries, is also why the region has been such a flashpoint of international tensions and European war (and potential war) right up to the present day.

Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union all of the territories on Turkey's eastern border north and east of its border with Iran, were part of the USSR. So Turkey and the USSR, and Turkey and Russia, have always had a tense relationship to put it mildly. Among NATO countries it's not for nothing that only second to the United States within the alliance, Turkey has the largest standing army and the strongest military of any other NATO member.

Another reason Turkey has always maintained a large and strong post-WWI peacetime military is not just because it has bordered either directly next to or very near to Russia...it's because it needs the leverage of intimidation and strength in order to maintain its territorial sovereignty over the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait. The Dardanelles Strait is also known as the Strait of Gallipoli. Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey has very broad leverage in controlling which ships (and how many) it will allow to pass through its territory. Just like with a man-made canal, the country whose territory it is on has the right to make any ship go through a maritime customs process, including possible inspections and the collection of fees and fines, Turkey is allowed to do exactly the same for its natural canal system. That is a considerable amount of power to be able to stand up to a superpower like the Soviet Union or Russia (including U.S. flagged ships) and tell them if Turkish customs will allow their ships to pass through, and at fees and/or fines set by and decided upon by the Turks.

Russia, and by extension Putin, has been rankled and peeved that the main gas pipelines it has going to Western and Southern Europe have traversed through an independent Ukraine. So Ukraine gets a share of royalties for protecting and maintaining the parts of the pipelines on its soil. So we get to Putin's era where Ukraine became the bad boy in Russia's eyes. If you look at the locations of the North Stream pipeline and the South Stream pipeline you can see that the decision to build them had little or nothing to do with pragmatism, practicality or the shortest path between two points...and everything to do with geography and politics. Russia wanted future pipelines to traverse Ukrainian territory as little as possible.

Up to 2014 when the South Stream was still being built and it already had a section built that traversed part of eastern Ukraine, Putin still had his Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych installed as president in Kyiv. Then Yanukovych was overthrown and fled to Russia. Then as OP's letter outlined, Putin invaded Crimea and took it over. Then he invaded eastern Ukraine and has built a quasi occupation force there ever since. It no coincidence that not only is that territory under Russian control closest to the Russian border...it also just happens to conveniently occupy exactly all the Ukrainian territory where that section of the South Stream pipeline sits. So now Ukraine also doesn't collect any royalties or maintenance fees for upkeep of a foreign pipeline on its soil.

Then Putin got the bright idea that jumping into Syria would be a good idea.