Is there a viable path for the Ukrainian government to do that without triggering a civil conflict between the volunteer battalions and the state?
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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The Azov Battalion was about 2,000 even before the seige of Mariupol, where they were decimated. There's no way they could carry out civil insurrection on any serious scale against Ukraine.
Now do Right Sector and the UVC, Donbas Battalion, and the Special Tasks Patrols (most of whom were formed by or have significant ties to, Svoboda, of particular note being the Sich Battalion which is quite literally a militarized wing of the party named after the now-defunct neo-Nazi terror group with the same members).
While you're at it, I'd strongly urge comparing that total to the estimated peak number of belligerents in the Islamic State and consider the scale of trouble it's able to cause, while fighting a 20-year-long, two-front, war against coalitions led, funded, and trained by the Russian Federation and United States.
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So if we're being extremely generous, maybe 5,000 in all, most of whom had to be equipped by the Ukrainian Army in order to be able to contribute anything, and who've very recently suffered enormous battlefield defeats.
Tens of thousands across numerous states, with dozens of affiliated other organisations of unknown size, prominence or geography, fighting primarily a guerrilla war rather than battlefield engagements, in countries with infrastructure that makes Ukraine's look top-notch.
UVC boasts 5,000 alone. I'd put it more likely to be around 10,000, especially after "foreign contribution" floating losses sustained during the last eight months.
Except in this case, we know which organizations are affiliated and what their respective sizes are (hint, it's NATO). And, this war's been ongoing for eight years; how precisely do you think it had been waged for the seven prior to the Russian shift to conventional warfare in February, and how do you think Ukraine predominantly waged it for the first five months proceeding that shift?
The Azov Battalion are also celebrated national heroes after they held Mariupol for so long against such terrible odds. It is extremely unlikely the Ukraine gouvernment can afford to turn against them now.
They could do it with some groups basically nobody knows. But considering that Russia also focused their propaganda on the Azov batallion, that would have very little value.
Extremely doubtful. There's nobody attesting that number except they themselves, and right-wing militias have a tendency to bullshit on their projected power.
Affiliated with Daesh.
Russia primarily waged it via its proxies in Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as disguised Russian troops and ultranationalist mercenaries.
Ukraine waged it with a combination of regular Armed Forces and volunteer battalions like those above. The latter making up a minority, and also having to source all their equipment from the former in order to contribute anything.
You've basically covered all the ways this end. Most realistic end is some general realizing he's about to take the fall for Ukraine, and in Russia all falls are from 10-story balconies, and ordering his troops to take Putin's little fortress and executing him on the spot.
The other is Putin is backed into a corner, knowing a General is about to storm is little fortress and deciding to flip the table so to speak and ordering a nuclear exchange.
I'd say both of these are rather unlikely.
Putin is an opportunist, and someone who has spent his career self-enriching from the state and corporate machinery. He's not a "true believer" in the sense that, say, the European fascists were in the 40s. For that reason, he's very unlikely to press the nuclear button unless he genuinely believed that NATO would not retaliate.
As for the other scenario, its possible that he may be removed if the other Russian government/military powers grow more dissatisfied with their income and prestige suffering. They know that its only Putin and a small number of Siloviki that are insisting the farce continue, mostly to protect their own political careers. They know it would be easier to withdraw (and thus salvage their income and lifestyles) if they replaced him.
But this shit is dangerous, and government/military powers in autocratic states like Russia tend to prefer avoiding internal confrontation until its absolutely unavoidable.
I think the likeliest outcome is that after the Russian invasion is completely exhausted and incapable of making further progress, Putin will find a few small aspects he can sell as a victory, and then will withdraw claiming the mission succeeded in deferring the imagined "threat" to Russia. In truth the opposite will be the case: the domestic support for United Russia will be severely tarnished, the reputation of the Russian army in tatters, and NATO stronger than ever.
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Yeah, that's what keep coming to my mind. We know Russia has missles and nukes to mount on said rockets. What we don't know is how well mantained or even "existant" those forces actually are. I'm not gonna bother listing bombers here because at this point Russian aircraft are afraid to operate over Ukraine for fear of taking loses, so I can only imagine nuclear bombers are going to have awful attrition rates vs. NATO. No clue about their SSBN(Missle Submarine) deterrent force.
On Paper(aka per Wikipedia) Russia has about 6,000 nukea with about 1500 of those ready to deploy at short notice. That's a lot. That's a hell of a lot and would be very bad if they were used.
The rub being, how many of those:
-Actually exist.
-Are ready to be actually fired.
-Will actually work as intended once used AKA Explode in a nuclear fireball at point of impact.
I don't know that, NATO and the Pentagon don't know that and I'm gonna guess Putin doesn't know that either. The state of corruption and apparent lack of give a shit in the maintenance and logistics in the Russian military has to keep him up at night wonder if instead of 6000 nukes, he might only have 600(random guess) that will actually detonate if fired. The problem being......not knowing which 600 are going actually work. The only way to find out would be to launch them all and hope enough get through to....well, destroy the west, but again, only 1500 of those can be deployed at short notice. It would also require Putin be stupid and/or insane enough to decide to just go for a full on nuclear strike on NATO because Ukraine is making him look bad.
The only way to know would be to inspect ever nuke ASAP and be positive they're actually there and operational and can be used, but he'd also have to be sure those reports are trustworthy and man I'd be fucking worried I was being fed bullshit by the people in charge of that.
Inspector: "Yes, President, all of the nukes inspected are 100% operational and ready to be used"
Putin: "You're not just telling me that because I'd be really fucking mad of half of them were missing or broken and possibly send you to gulag, right?"
Inspector: *Sweating profusely* "ALL NUKES ARE ACCOUNTED FOR! Now excuse me, I have to use bathroom. *Sound of window opening and car driving off at high speed*
Another possibility, he did get accurate reporting somehow and it is that bad and he knows it.
This all speculation on my part, but considering how often Putin has teased the nuke card and followed it up with........well, jack shit, It's hard to take such threats seriously as opposed to big talk to hide weakness. Especially since those occupied territories have been formally annexed into Russia, and the Ukrainians keep pushing deeper into "Russia" and so far.....well, the Russian troops in Ukraine continue to suck at their job of not dying and falling back. Meanwhile, well, Putin just says stupid shit in response while his troops continue to die.
If we go down to DEFCON 2 tomorrow because Russian starts fueling ICBMS, I'll eat my words.
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See the problem is, the last time Russia picked on a smaller country to make it feel good about itself, it also lost, at the time to Japan, and that caused a series of events that led to the Czar Nicholas being deposed.
Putin may be an opportunist, but he's also a megalomaniac who is convinced of Russia's superiority. His ego can't afford not to have total 1000% victory. And his generals as so afraid of his ego they feed him bullshit stories about noble victories, all the while pocketing the war funds for their own personal use.
Eventually Putin will expect actual results, and his generals will have two options; admit they've been lying about gains and victories and stealing government funds for their own luxury lifestyles, or just shoot Putin in the head and steal as much money as they can.
And Putin is absolutely capable of launching nuclear strikes, even with the knowledge of a NATO intervention because he'd rather see it all burn than admit the Russian government and army is basically a 30 year long scam by a few oligarchs.
I guess the question there is at what point does Putin consider that the only option left. Because he gains no benefit from it other then pure fucking spite. His armies don't give the slightest impression they'd be able to exploit the use of a couple tac nukes(assuming they didn't accidently hit their own dudes to begin with), or that it do anything other then enrage everyone else(especially Ukraine). A full on strategic attack on NATO would be completely overkill, especially considering he keeps saying NATO is attacking the Russians in Ukraine and/or the Nordstream and hasn't bothered to actually shift forces for an attack on NATO or declare war on NATO, which would be what many would consider an intermediate step to "Global Thermonuclear War".
I'm not trying to argue Putin is a good person in the least(he's a fucking awful person), but for all his "We will bury you" posturing, he sure as shit hasn't done much in accordance with his bluster about the West trying to destroy Russia, other then continue feeding men and material into the Ukraine Meat grinder(and becoming possibly the largest supplier of Ukrainian military equipment if you believe some sources). So he's aware on some level that getting NATO involved would be a very, very bad move on his part or else we'd be in Cuban Missile Crisis Pt 2 right now. While there's no much restraint in Ukraine, we're also not seeing armies staging in Belarus preparing to strike into Poland or Russian naval forces harassing US/NATO Naval forces, which again, would be a logical prerequisite for WW3. I'm gonna leave aside jokes that Poland might not wait for article 5 for the moment.
I hate to use Hollywood as an example(and fucking Tom Clancy to boot), but for the sake of it, I'm gonna use this.
Ignoring all the Red October stuff, you'd imagine the Russians would deploy their fleets/armies prior to any action that would lead to a major conflict(aka a nuke strike), which would then cause NATO to deploy our fleets and armies in response. To not do this would be INCREDIBLY FUCKING STUPID because it runs the risk of Russian forces getting caught with their pants down when NATO decides, yes, this is something we need to be invovled in.
We're at the "Concerned and possibly Anxious" stage right now. We're not yet at "Bring me my brown trousers" stage of the process. Hopefully we don't get there.
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I don't believe that's the case. He has spent his entire career building exorbitant wealth and comfort around himself: that's been his lifelong focus, and he's not going to throw that away for nothing.
He need not admit anything about the corrupt state of the government and useless state of the military to the domestic audience. He controls their access to information. And it's already obvious to everyone outside Russia, which is embarrassing for some diplomats, but hasn't been a serious threat to the Siloviki for the last few decades.
Well remember Putin lives in a bubble. Sure he's been scamming the Russian people and hording billions for himself for decades. But his Generals and top officials were also doing that, under the table. We saw that being exposed in real time in Ukraine during the summer. Putin would order millions of rations and arms be sent to the front line, because the budget General X submitted 5 years ago listed millions of rations and arms bought. And then it turns out General X just pocketed everything. Hell the Russian conscripts are being armed with rusted out AKs and Mossin Negaunts, WW1 era bolt action rifles!
So on paper the Russian army is very impressive. In practice it was all a scam, and officials for decades just forged documents to make it look like there was a functioning army.
Putin doesn't know that though. He lives in a bubble. He thinks the super soldier project actually worked and he has millions of Captain Russias ready to deploy, because that's what his generals have been charging him for. Their planes barely fly, and their pilots don't know how. Their ships leak and sink and can't be navigated. Their tanks are 30 years out of date at best, and their arms and ammunitions are in a similar state.
So if NATO decides to step in, which it might, it can destroy every single Russian position and asset and unit in Ukraine with air strikes and drones within a day. And that would cause Putin to freak out and fire the missiles.
Putin is ex-KGB. He grew up and had a career around the idea of destroying Western powers and keeping the Soviet Union established. That's what he's trying to do now, re-found the Soviet Union by annexing entire countries. He's even said he's pretty annoyed the Russians never got to nuke New York.
The dude may be a lazy old fart now who just wants blowjobs from Russian slave girls, but at his heart he is an aggressive anti-Western fanatic more than capable of burning the world to atomic cinders rather than admit defeat. And seeing's how he's announced 4 Ukraine states are now continental Russian territory forever anything less than that is admitting defeat.
The KGB were an overzealous body of state security and defence. Nuclear war is the antithesis of that.
That's the rub through, because NATO surely has that in mind and might decide "Okay, Putin, if we see one fucking missle begin fueling(and we're already at war) we start airstrikes on every launcher we can possibly take down", as well as airbases within range and missiles subs we've been shadowing for weeks.
Which might lead to the same outcome regardless, but if an attack on Russian forces anywhere invites an automatic nuclear response, there's no reason not to hit the most dangerous targets ASAP. That's the danger of playing that game, because NATO might decide, "Well, they're gonna launch nukes no matter what so we might as well limit the number that get airborne as much as possible". It's likely NATO doesn't need to use it's own nukes to do this either, and using conventional means means it's not violating the "No first strike" nuke policy. Again, assuming NATO and Russia are indeed at War, which is mostly likely to happen if Russia has used a nuke already.
I don't know. I'm guessing and I'm sure there are people wargaming every possible scenario right now in the Pentagon trying to figure out how to approach this if we get to that point. I'm a guy sitting in my underwear going off my knowledge and my armchair military nerd take, not on any good authority on what the hell is going to actually happen.
So to reiterate, right now NATO is content to supply and support Ukraine indirectly. Russia using a nuke is probably the only excuse needs to step in directly and the very first step might be to attempt to take Russia's nukes off the table permanently, since Russia will have already proven to be casual and reckless with them and there would be little reason to hold back.
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I mean depends on how you view state security. Is it just stopping threats inside the country, or preventing threats outside the country getting in? The KGB was very clear the West was their enemies and they wanted to protect the Soviet Union from them. Nuclear war is well within that belief structure. Don't want US agents coming over? Get rid of the US.
I appreciate the discussion and fully acknowledge that they're all 100% good reason not to start throwing nuke around.
But attacking Ukraine was a dumb move even when though it would be an easy special operation, and he still did it. Even if it all worked out, he wouldn't have been any richer or any better situated, but he still went ahead with it. I'm just starting to worry he'll act like a spoil kid who's losing monopoly and will flip the board.
And I don't necessarily mean nuking the US, say there's a major offensive by Ukraine on crimea or something, maybe Putin will try his luck with a relatively small nuke to stop the advance (either the advance itself, or maybe Kyiv just as a distraction). Or imagine the war drag on and there's a lot of skirmish around the border, maybe he'll feel like its okay to use nuke on his territory to stop an advance.
But attacking Ukraine was a dumb move even when though it would be an easy special operation, and he still did it. Even if it all worked out, he wouldn't have been any richer or any better situated, but he still went ahead with it. I'm just starting to worry he'll act like a spoil kid who's losing monopoly and will flip the board.
And I don't necessarily mean nuking the US, say there's a major offensive by Ukraine on crimea or something, maybe Putin will try his luck with a relatively small nuke to stop the advance (either the advance itself, or maybe Kyiv just as a distraction). Or imagine the war drag on and there's a lot of skirmish around the border, maybe he'll feel like its okay to use nuke on his territory to stop an advance.
I mean, it's kinda weird to admit I can totally see Russia going full Belka, as horrifying as that would be.
Of course, the irony would be that using a nuke in the current battlegrounds would be either an admission the annexanation was complete bullshit, or he literally just nuked Russian soil(including a population that might have been sympathetic to Putin). Because it's really fucking hard to square "These are Russian lands, thus I nuked them because there were too many Ukrainians there" circle. Nuking Kyiv doesn't have this issue but there's no justifiable reason to do this other then Daddy Putin mad and pissing off the West. Now we're right back to "Congrats Russia, you've just given NATO casus belli to unleash hell on you"
I guess the question for me is: IF Putin wants war with NATO, what the fuck is stopping him? He's all but claimed Russia is at War with the West, yet does nothing directly to NATO. He's apparently blamed NATO nations for his pipeline blowing up and does fucking nothing, despite that being ample casus belli if true. Ukraine keeps taking his precrious "Russia" away by the day and they continue to do this. I don't think he's dumb enough to believe NATO is gonna sit back and watch a nuke go off without doing anything, so if he wants to avoid a war with NATO, a nuke would be a great way to screw that up too.
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