re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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That sounds like a very good reason for countries next to Russia to want to join NATO, doesn't it?

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That's not really the question though, the question is who should we admit, and why?

The big question is whether or not Ukraine is allowing the pocket towards Kharkiv to remain so it can continue to annihilate Russian troops?

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Russian air defense soldiers have been ordered to evacuate their families from Crimea to the Russian Southern Military District

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I thought Crimea was in the Southern Military District. I guess it means across the bridge to the Krasnodar side.

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I really, really just do not see him attacking any NATO countries though. Its abundantly clear that even before the Ukraine invasion in 2022 they didn't have the strength to put up any sort of fight against NATO without trying preemptive nuclear strikes to try and take us out before the fighting even starts, which would also almost assuredly fail.

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NATO would obliterate the Russian military, right?

Lima Whiskey and Sir Winston, I think, insist it would be the other way around because "Russia has more battlefield experience (or at least the Chehen squads who hang in the rear to execute Russian troops who retreat, who seem to be the only ones who survive)...

So is NATO thinking Putin will not attack a NATO country?

No, they think he will. His media talking heads say they will every night.

Why? "Security Concerns" in part, control of neighboring countries to act as a buffer to invasions of Moscow across the flat Eastern European plain... the same thing Russians have always wanted based on being invaded 50 times in history... the same thing that even Yeltsin wanted and launched military operations for, and held onto Kaliningrad for...

Does anybody (besides maybe Poland, out of hatred) want to invade Russia to take it over? No... buying Russia's natural gas and oil was cheaper than invading, rebuilding and occupying it to get them, for that to even be any European nation's agenda... that's why Globalism mostly eliminated those kinds of wars, post-WWII, and pretty much just shifted things to civil wars, at least in Europe.

So there's no real aggression towards Russia (Putin is paranoid so he thinks everything is, though)... but that is one of the Russian obsessions/reasons

What else?

Demographic and global power position decline.

Russia is a nation in decline... there's a sunset on military power projection, on economic power... snatching up millions of "Russians" in neighboring countries offsets that, and an Empire is certainly more powerful than just one country that's the equal of maybe France, alone, though much bigger in area.

What would you do if you were the leader of a nation in demographic decline?

Ukraine was facing that... and their solution was to try to join the EU, promote a more modern economy and make themselves attractive to immigrants from elsewhere...

This is an interesting thing... how do countries deal with this?

I'm puzzled by Japan, where it is really bad... but they seem too preoccupied to worry about it (with what I have no idea)...

Germany... Merkel decided immigration (like America) was the answer... Germans did not like that (or that the immigrants were from the Middle-East and didn't assimilate), so... I don't know how they're taking it, really... maybe the far right fed up with American Liberalism will en masse move there and take over (I'm joking... they'd be legally barred from entering).

China... is in denial, mostly because they committed demographic suicide with the one-child policy (and the unintended consequence of people somehow only have male children when that was the rule)... they sought to handle the labor shortfall by making people move from the countryside villages to the urban areas, but that also has a demographic chilling effect, since children in urban areas are consumers/dependents rather than extra producers/assets.

"The greatest foreign policy challenge of the next two or three decades will be handling and pacifying an angry Russia and China as they collapse inward to non-existence." - Zeihan, I think...

So, NATO thinks Putin is just desperate enough to do anything that's stupid because he's angry at not being more powerful... he isn't a rational actor.

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That sounds like a very good reason for countries next to Russia to want to join NATO, doesn't it?


That's not really the question though, the question is who should we admit, and why?

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NATO existed to protect Western Europe from Soviet aggression and to eliminate conflicts between Western European nations over security concerns by making them all security partners. NATO is the greatest defense pact in human history, and has ultimately made the continent peaceful (with the exception of non-members like Serbia conducting Civil Wars/ethnic cleansing)... after a bit of questioning of why it should exist after the collapse of the USSR, the Eastern European countries pointed out exactly why: "Russia is still a threat to us." Russia has proved this to be true.

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The Russians can replace tanks and armored vehicles a whole lot easier than they can these air defense systems. Im assuming the radars for these systems went bye bye along with their launchers and control stations. This is a pace of destruction that Russia can’t keep up with.

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Thanks, LSUPilot07. I was thinking about this situation this morning and came to the same conclusion that, yes, air defense is going to be the Russian failure point.

Russian s-300 and S-400 air defense systems are already in serious trouble, as Ukraine can regularly put drones, MALDs, etc. in the air to light them up, and then use multiple ATACMS launches to take them out. They are losing those systems much faster than they can replace them now -- so how much worse is it going to get when F-16s are taking them out?

And Ukrainian drone production is only improving and accelerating. The time may not be far off when Ukrainian Bayraktar drones can fly over Crimea and destroy Russian assets the same way that they did at the beginning of the war.

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NATO would obliterate the Russian military, right?

Lima Whiskey and Sir Winston, I think, insist it would be the other way around because "Russia has more battlefield experience (or at least the Chehen squads who hang in the rear to execute Russian troops who retreat, who seem to be the only ones who survive)...

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No, mutual assured destruction is terminology with an actual meaning. Are you eager to participate .... you fricking imbecile?

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Looks like a 2nd Su-57 took shrapnel damage to go with the destroyed one from the strike on their airfield.

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I believe that with these 2 gone, that is 10% of their stealth jets now gone.

Will the new Russian Black Sea Fleet have glass bottoms so they can look at the old Black Sea Fleet?