European Politics

I wonder if Mad Vlad realizes that when this all blows over Ukraine will buy loads of state-of-the-art military equipment from the US and the US will probably have an air base in Ukraine with some ships in Odessa. Good move Vlad, good move. *slow hand clap*
 
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Ok so I was watching this last night and thought of this situation. The more things change, the more they stay the same: Is it still East vs. West? Is it Man against man? (Obama v. Putin)

 
Black Wizard said:
I wonder if Mad Vlad realizes that when this all blows over Ukraine will buy loads of state-of-the-art military equipment from the US and the US will probably have an air base in Ukraine with some ships in Odessa. Good move Vlad, good move. *slow hand clap*
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That kind of move from new Ukranian government with hypothetical NATO alliance would trigger an all out war.

Russia has hypersonic theatre-class nukes (Iskander-M system) deployed from Kaliningrad to Crimea, via Belarus and western Russia. Current situation in the theatre enables them to preemptively strike any target in Europe 400-500 km away from the border. State-of-the-art United States does not possess, let alone deploy a system that can protect from that missile. It has average speed of 2.1 kilometers per second, can carry conventional or nuclear payload, has several redundant navigation systems, and a CEP (targeting error) of less than 10 meters. They can target and destroy only a specific building or wipe out a complete army base. The only method of defense is taking out the mobile launchers prior, or taking out the missile some short period after it has been launched. Since there's between 4 and 6 mobile regiments deployed in said regions, under umbrella of Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, there's no method of quick preemptive strike against them.

You forgot that this is eastern Europe. It isn't border between Russia and United States. You're suggesting that US could produce, transfer, equip, train personnel for and support "loads of state-of-the-art military equipment" while Russians would be sitting and waiting...for what? They can and would preemptively strike the at very genesis of the buildup, because at current strategic deployments, such buildup would last a couple of years and would look very hasted and unfriendly.

Leaving Russians as the only ones capable of delivering a pinpointed or a massive preemptive strike, with high success rate, in Eastern theatre. High success rate means that simulations predict most payload will reach their target. In human terms, that would be dead people and destruction everywhere. Since I am a very informed about military stuff, I urge you to hold down warmongering, regardless of your personal favourite tyrant. The fact is that Russian Federation has enough means to wage a conflict against NATO if they feel threatened enough. That would leave you and me in a bad situation.

There is a lot of going on in world markets, Chinese have significantly increased selling of US debt bonds, with a speculated destination of Belgium and France. They also plan to significantly cut down foreign trade and investment in USD in favour of yuan. Such a step would negatively impact their economy in short-term, but is compensable with real goods trade and gold. Leaving the positive, long-term effect for a stronger yuan. On the other hand, since Ukranian economy literally sank, so did the value of Russian-owned percentage of Ukranian economy, and the Ruble fell down. Also some other related stuff but it's a bit offtopic anyway.

And this is a great listen :

 
Assuming, of course, that Russia wants to risk total annihilation of all their city centres by a NATO nuclear counterattack. Which...they don't.

And that's also assuming that Russia's ICBM and other missile systems work when they hit the button.
 
LooseCannon said:
Assuming, of course, that Russia wants to risk total annihilation of all their city centres by a NATO nuclear counterattack. Which...they don't.

And that's also assuming that Russia's ICBM and other missile systems work when they hit the button.
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This is new stuff, it's not Soviet.
Any such act would be an act of war against NATO and would require MAD with ICBMs. Remind me, what deployed American system can intercept a path-changing ICBM? None.

Anti ballistic missile systems require missile to follow a ballistic path. Calculation of trajectory is performed by long wave EW radars, which by laws of universe don't have enough resolution to accurately track a high speed reentry object in real time. The AB missiles are sent into collision trajectory. This is not an easy hit, since precision error is wide, there's a > 50% (depending on a system) chance that a single AB missile would miss. Thus, multiple missiles are sent to cover more. However, you can miss even with a swarm of ABMs, and that's why each launched ICBM will only have a number of allocated ABMs going up against it. Keep in mind that trajectory recalculation is a long (in minutes) process until radars have sampled enough feedbacks.

That being said, Russian newest (RT-2UTTH and RS-24) intercontinental ballistic missile systems are not ballistic. They can change course. Undisclosed number of times. This ability is confirmed by US. Rendering the above defensive mechanism meaningless. And they are high speed mobile systems that can be deployed in under half an hour after a mobile group does a full stop.

Russians are ahead in missiles. Their ICBMs are better and their defense measures are better, and they even have comparable or larger number. In a MAD, it's NATO who would bleed more.

There's no comparison between NATO and RF branches (ground, air, naval).
But there's no comparison between Space Forces and NATO counterparts either. US has stagnated in R&D in favour of other fields - they're ahead in. Space Forces were the only possible detterent that Putin had when he started with this superpower project of his. Naturally, most of the ever-increasing resources were and are spent on missiles and shit. Keep in mind that in 2014 Russia same number of space launches as everybody else combined.

Point is that Russians have contingency plans, and if they involve NATO on the other side, guess what's going to be a primary weapon of choice.
 
How come you know so much about the Russian military Zare? :S

The Crimean parliament has voted to become part of Russia and will hold a referendum in 10 days time. There's no way that the result will be "No" of course, and I'm sure the Russian army won't allow ethnic Ukrainians to get anywhere near a polling station. This referendum is completely illegal and the result won't be recognized by anyone other than Russia. I wonder if Mr. Salmond will look for any tips on how to win a referendum?
 
Black Wizard said:
The Crimean parliament has voted to become part of Russia and will hold a referendum in 10 days time. There's no way that the result will be "No" of course, and I'm sure the Russian army won't allow ethnic Ukrainians to get anywhere near a polling station. This referendum is completely illegal and the result won't be recognized by anyone other than Russia. I wonder if Mr. Salmond will look for any tips on how to win a referendum?
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Nicely put, complete BS. It should not be recognized by anyone.
 
What if it actually is the will of the Crimean people, though?
 
It seems hard to tell the will of the people under an occupying army. I do not trust the Russians to hold a fair election.
 
Perun said:
What if it actually is the will of the Crimean people, though?
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Then the Ukrainian government should give them a referendum with international observers. This is totally different from independence though. Having Crimea break away is one thing but allowing Russia to annex it is another. I guess Ukraine could sell Crimea to Russia like Russia did with Alaska to the United States. Ultimately this will lead to the persecution of Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea.
 
You know, by certain interpretations you could say that Russia has a right to Crimea. It has belonged to Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, himself Ukrainian, gave it to Ukraine in Soviet times. So very technically, on basis of the interpretation of the Soviet Union as a period of injustice, Russia has the same claim to Crimea as Ukraine has to independence.

Of course, nobody on either side brings forward that argument, because that would be the precedent to open Pandora's Box.
 
I believe there was a referendum scheduled anyway for sometime in May? So why move it ahead, unless it is to take advantage of the existence of a heavy Russian force in the Crimea to ensure the election goes one way and not the other?
 
Perun said:
You know, by certain interpretations you could say that Russia has a right to Crimea. It has belonged to Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, himself Ukrainian, gave it to Ukraine in Soviet times. So very technically, on basis of the interpretation of the Soviet Union as a period of injustice, Russia has the same claim to Crimea as Ukraine has to independence.

Of course, nobody on either side brings forward that argument, because that would be the precedent to open Pandora's Box.
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So are they just being Indian Givers? Maybe Ukraine should have specified "No Backsies"
 
Russia accepted the Ukrainian Crimea in 1991.

20 years later, "no way, we with want it back; even the people want it".

Because western's Ukraine wants to be part of European Union. I tought independence also meant "taking one country's political decisions by their own path".

Guess i was wrong.
 
Well, I do want to remark that anything openly said about Crimea being part of Russia came from the Crimean parliament, not Moscow. I'm not saying that this isn't a Russia's ploy to gain control over the regions in their periphery, and I'm not saying Putin isn't a villain. But I also don't want all this crude, anti-Russian black and white thinking that helps nobody. This conflict is more complex than that.
 
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