Current Affairs Ukraine

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Which is all true. However, all those components aren’t as effective when dealing with asymmetrical warfare and insurgencies as they’ve previously discovered.
the urbane western ukrainians are not fighters from the Caucasus

at best you will get a french style WW2 resistance
 
The most likely operational plan in the event of full-scale invasion probably is to pull Ukraine out of position and ideally get a blocking force in place, then wheel around on Kyiv and steamroll it. It's possible that Ukraine will fight, particularly over the ground in between the border and the city, if they have a chance. If not, they'll probably declare Kyiv an open city.


That's probably how they'll fight, should they decide to organize a resistance after the fall of the city.
in percentage terms what would you give the chance of a serious fightback, to the point where Putin wont be able to install his own government? 20%?
 
I think cutting them off from SWIFT will have an impact - just depends if Biden will go that far
Be interesting for sure. Very difficult already for companies to deal with Russian counterparts due to transactions getting pulled for compliance. Cutting them off from SWIFT would also hurt a lot of companies world wide which is why it probably won’t happen. Especially for airlines and mining etc. If it was to happen, I’d guess people would find a way to circumnavigate it.
 
in percentage terms what would you give the chance of a serious fightback, to the point where Putin wont be able to install his own government? 20%?
They could provide a serious fightback and still lose. They have rough numerical parity on the ground, but no shot in the air. Schwarzkopf proved that's a problem over open ground. Afghanistan proved (twice) that airpower doesn't matter nearly as much against an insurgency in rough terrain. If Putin wants Kyiv tomorrow, it's his. The problem will be keeping it.

I'd want to know a little more about what Biden's planning with respect to getting Zelenskyy out before making a call on that one. That is suggestive that the idea is to coordinate an insurgency from afar, probably under cover of asylum. On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing Ukraine failing to spend all of that heavy equipment in order to do some damage up front, if insurgency is the plan. To be coarse about it, the name of the game for Ukraine would be generating Russian body bags as a means to bring some pressure to bear on Putin.
 
I don't claim much expertise in foreign affairs, but this was interesting:


It's one way to look at it.

Another way would be to observe that going down that road (outside of property seizures) makes Western businesses less competitive against the Chinese, due to increases in materials and energy prices. I'm sure that Chinese auto manufacturers looking to move into export markets would love getting the palladium and platinum that they need to make catalytic converters at a discount, as an example.
 
I know it pales into utter insignificance compared the horror those about to be directly affected by this war mongering must be feeling right about now, but I'm still sat here worried about this bloody football club.

If this continues in the direction it is currently heading it's difficult to see the sanctions applied in response not hitting Usmanov and USM hard. What that in turn means for Moshiri and us isn't something I want to spend much time thinking about.

Putin really is an arsehole!
 
Putin has gone crazy, he's spent 2 decades in charge and still no one gives a crap about Russia. This is someone who is just crying out for a double page spread in the history books and this is his only way to get it.
 
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