Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Crumpets]

I can't speak for Ukraine specifically, but one thing that's clear from watching Syria that might be applicable here is that Putin loves to create all the trappings of going to war ahead of leader-to-leader summits to maximize leverage in negotiations. Erdogan does this too. (A recent example of both) Sometimes it still results in offensives, but sometimes if the negotiations go well, the "crisis" he manufactured will just kind of go away overnight (funny thing). Biden should absolutely take this buildup seriously and do everything he can to both deter Putin from launching another invasion and gain leverage for himself in their meeting, but I'd hesitate away from pointing to Russia's preparations for war as a guarantee that war will in fact take place.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1483427285298520069

[Crumpets]

The top headline on RIA right now is "The LNR [Lukhansk separatists] reported a significant aggravation of the situation on the contact line." Meanwhile, IntelDoge on Twitter is reporting that people saying they live in Donetsk on Discord and Telegram are reporting the sounds of explosions.

Of course:
https://twitter.com/IntelDoge/status/1494199634180415489

Now, I think it's extremely unlikely this means an invasion is starting or even imminent. I think what is probably happening is that the Kremlin knows the clock is ticking if it wants to do anything on a grand scale and they need to get their justification out of the way so they can say "go" whenever it best suits them if they so choose, whether that be tomorrow, a few days from now, or next week. Alternately, they can still de-escalate if they choose. It's just one more roadblock out of the way for a hypothetical major escalation.

[Crumpets]

US is accusing Russia directly (not just Russian-backed separatists) of shelling Ukrainian government-controlled territory and hitting a kindergarten. I don't know if this is the same shelling that was reported earlier or if this is something else. One thing I will hand the US on this one is that we've been pretty good at getting out statements early and not letting Russia set the narrative on its own. That's an improvement from the Obama, and certainly the Trump years.

https://twitter.com/USEmbassyKyiv/status/1494346636587409410

[Crumpets]

It's funny because, while exaggerated reports of Ukrainian shelling are totally in the Kremlin playbook, "The war will start on X day very soon" is totally out of the American playbook. The Kremlin wants to be able to pick and choose when they would start an offensive. By naming February 16th, and then 17th, and then some day in 4 or 5 days, it makes it look like the Kremlin was initially planning to launch the invasion yesterday but is now getting cold feet and trying to re-evaluate thanks to US pressure. So... I'm not saying Sergei's sources are definitely CIA, but he might want to be careful about pushing a CIA-driven narrative.

[Crumpets]

I will do whatever is needed to halt the aggressors in their bloody tracks.

Buy ticket to Ukraine and fight for their freedom!

If the US fights back I won’t need to buy the ticket, still gotta save that money for what remains of my family!

Don't you understand?

If the US formally goes to war with Russia, there won't be any remains of anyone's families.

Oh well then.

You seem to not fully grasp the idea of what happens if Russia and the US go to war. The end result will be a global thermonuclear war that will destroy the majority of the world and leave the remainder with little to no future.

Reminder the US and Russia have already engaged in direct armed conflict with casualties and airstrikes just 4 years ago. That did not lead to any massive escalation, and arguably made Russia keener to actively deconflict with the US diplomatically in theaters where both countries have troops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham

And if that's not enough for you, there were at least 18 cases of air-to-air shootdowns between US and Soviet planes in the nuclear era of the Cold War. That doesn't include ground-based shoot-downs or combat in war zones. None of these resulted in nuclear war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-to-air_combat_losses_between_the_Soviet_Union_and_the_United_States

There is absolutely no strategic advantage to either the US or Russia to use nukes, especially considering neither have so much as tested a single weapon in 30 years. Nukes are reserved for a national existential threat and absolutely nothing short of that would necessitate their use, or even make their use appealing, especially if it might turn out we just have arsenals full of un-maintained duds.

Making our decisions on the assumption that any kinetic engagement with Russia has a >0% chance of leading to nuclear war is not playing it safe, it is actively encouraging Russia to be as aggressive as possible, knowing it will face no serious retaliation from other powers.

[Crumpets]

Now is not the time Duolingo!

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/mrsorokaa/status/1495057000262254595

Zelensky is obviously talking worst-case-scenario here, but this is a kind of big deal rhetorically. Zelensky seems to be implying that, unless the US and UK come to Ukraine's defense, Ukraine may pursue an independent nuclear weapons program. I kind of doubt Ukraine currently has the capacity to build such a program, and it would also be against the terms of Ukraine accession to the NPT. But since Ukraine joined the NPT as a result of the Budapest Memorandum, Zelensky might be able to pull some crazy legalese interpretation that, absent a Budapest Memorandum in force, Ukraine is grandfathered into the NPT as a nuclear weapons state as it legally had Soviet nuclear weapons at the time the NPT was created.

[Crumpets]

Based on multiple reports, it appears that the areas surrounding the contact line in the Donbas are experiencing the heaviest artillery barrage since 2014/2015. Columns of Russian mechanized units have also been spotted tonight less than five kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

At this point, I am pretty sure some sort of operation is commencing and we'll soon see further Russian incursion into Ukraine. I think the only question at this point is whether it's the full-on assault that could see Kyiv encircled or some sort of limited invasion that seizes Kharkiv, Mariupol', and degrades Ukrainian infrastructure in the interior with air and missile strikes. I don't see what the 'limited' option really does for Putin in the strategic sense. If his goal is regime change, I don't know if that'll cut it.

What happens if Zelensky is sitting on unaccounted Nukes and there are reports of a nuclear explosion?

So, there definitely are unaccounted for Soviet nukes, and it's possible there's at least one in Ukraine. Although it's much more likely that any such "lost" bomb would be buried deep under some farm where a Soviet plane crashed decades ago in a totally unusable state and without anybody but some aging bureaucrat in Moscow knowing anything about it. But the chances that Ukraine has managed to keep even one nuke under wraps while also maintaining it (weapons-usable isotopes have half lifes ranging between 14 years and 700 million years, among other considerations) without any IAEA inspectors catching on, are slim to none.

There's also a thorough, reliable, global network of nuclear explosion detectors. So, if there were reports of a nuclear blast, we'd know whether those reports were true almost instantly, although there's no doubt you could convince people otherwise (I knew someone who was extremely knowledgeable about military/warfare stuff who was convinced Russia might have tested a nuke in Syria without anyone noticing - it's not true.)

So, the most likely answer to your question is that the attack would immediately be widely blamed on Russia, which I'm sure Russia would deny, but beyond that, we'd be in totally unprecedented territory, and it's impossible to say.

[Crumpets]

Based on multiple reports, it appears that the areas surrounding the contact line in the Donbas are experiencing the heaviest artillery barrage since 2014/2015. Columns of Russian mechanized units have also been spotted tonight less than five kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

At this point, I am pretty sure some sort of operation is commencing and we'll soon see further Russian incursion into Ukraine. I think the only question at this point is whether it's the full-on assault that could see Kyiv encircled or some sort of limited invasion that seizes Kharkiv, Mariupol', and degrades Ukrainian infrastructure in the interior with air and missile strikes. I don't see what the 'limited' option really does for Putin in the strategic sense. If his goal is regime change, I don't know if that'll cut it.

What happens if Zelensky is sitting on unaccounted Nukes and there are reports of a nuclear explosion?

So, there definitely are unaccounted for Soviet nukes, and it's possible there's at least one in Ukraine. Although it's much more likely that any such "lost" bomb would be buried deep under some farm where a Soviet plane crashed decades ago in a totally unusable state and without anybody but some aging bureaucrat in Moscow knowing anything about it. But the chances that Ukraine has managed to keep even one nuke under wraps while also maintaining it (weapons-usable isotopes have half lifes ranging between 14 years and 700 million years, among other considerations) without any IAEA inspectors catching on, are slim to none.

There's also a thorough, reliable, global network of nuclear explosion detectors. So, if there were reports of a nuclear blast, we'd know whether those reports were true almost instantly, although there's no doubt you could convince people otherwise (I knew someone who was extremely knowledgeable about military/warfare stuff who was convinced Russia might have tested a nuke in Syria without anyone noticing - it's not true.)

So, the most likely answer to your question is that the attack would immediately be widely blamed on Russia, which I'm sure Russia would deny, but beyond that, we'd be in totally unprecedented territory, and it's impossible to say.

The ultimate question I was asking is that if it happened tonight/in the morning over there, would I be getting up to a mushroom cloud tomorrow?

No. There are only two reasons Russia would ever launch a nuclear attack on the US. Either 1) They are totally convinced they can completely destroy all NATO second (response)-strike capabilities AND they see some strategic advantage to turning most of North America and Western Europe into a wasteland or 2) It's a response to a US first strike, which would have to be ordered by Joe Biden directly.

As to option 1, Russia has no such ability, has never believed it has, and has no reason to want the US destroyed when we are actually pretty strong trade partners and most importantly (since they don't think they can destroy all second-strike capabilities) it would also mean the end of Russia.

In fact, Putin has always made the strategic endgame of the war in Ukraine totally clear: he doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO and he wants to keep Ukraine in Russia's sphere of influence. All sub-campaigns have been and will be in service of that goal. A nuclear war with anyone does not achieve that end. In fact, it probably undermines it, since it's probably the only thing that could totally unify every single NATO member and most non-NATO members against Russia on a totally unprecedented level. Also worth remembering this isn't Putin's first war, and he didn't see any reason to use nukes in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine in 2014, or Syria, where the stakes would have been lower and where it's clear Russia was fine going scorched earth. In other words, there's no reason to suspect Putin sees nukes as anything other than a deterrent. Hence why he agreed to extend Russia's arms limitation treaty with the US just last year. Putin might be cruel and want glory, but he's not suicidal, and a nuclear war means suicide, not glory.

As to option 2, Joe Biden is just not going to order a nuclear strike on Russia in response to a Russian attack on Ukraine, even a nuclear one. He's just not. It's completely out of character for him, and again, there's no strategic advantage to the United States destroying Russia. Especially since we also can't totally eliminate their second-strike capabilities and doing so would mean the end of the US. The same logic applies in reverse, and like Putin, there's no reason to think Joe Biden sees nukes as anything but a deterrent, which they are, and a very good one.

[Crumpets]

If you do want to be worried about something WMD related, here's a scenario that's a bit more likely than a nuclear attack: Russia has turned a blind eye to chemical attacks in Syria and we know Russia has a chemical stockpile of its own which it has already used on a small scale in cases like the Skripal attack. The US, UK, and France have all launched airstrikes on Syrian targets in response to Assad's chemical attacks, even despite not otherwise being at war directly with Assad. If there are reports of a chemical attack in Ukraine, how do the US, UK, and France respond?

Personally, my guess would be that they come up with some lame excuse as to why it's different, like saying they have intel it was done by some tiny Russian-backed extremist group, and they will work with Ukraine to identify and destroy chemical stockpiles in Ukraine but won't do anything in Russia, but I don't think we can say for certain. Fortunately, I don't think Putin would want to use chemical weapons for the same reason that it doesn't really further his larger goal to keep Ukraine out of NATO, and he wouldn't want to escalate above a conventional war with Ukraine and Ukraine only, but he at least has a little more plausible deniability/"wasn't me" with chemical weapons than he does nuclear weapons, especially the really-easy-to-come-by stuff like chlorine.

[Crumpets]

Its still hard to see the endgame of a full-scale Russian invasion, though.

I think that once the decision to use force is made, the logic to go all the way is overwhelming. A limited invasion has confused political/strategic aims. If you don't want to take all or even most of Ukraine then you are de facto forfeiting the country to the west, when to avoid that is precisely the rationale for invasion in the first place. So anything short of some sort of regime change doesn't make sense.

One possibility that, personally I think is the most likely of all invasion scenarios, is that Russia does use overwhelming force on the scale of what they would need to use to take over the whole country, but only takes a limited amount of terrain before unilaterally pulling back. Then they make another round of demands - that Ukraine pledge never to join NATO, or that NATO pledge never to accept Ukraine - and see if it works. Then, if they still don't get their way, repeat with overwhelming force, taking a little more terrain, and so on. This is exactly what they have done fighting Turkish-friendly forces in Syria: Negotiate, seize a stretch of highway up to the next major town, stop, negotiate.

I agree with CumbrianLefty Russia doesn't want to have to fight for, control, and govern all of Ukraine. One kind of cynically smart things the US has done is make anything short of a full Russian takeover of most if not all of Ukraine to appear to be a loss for the Kremlin, since that's now what everyone thinks Putin wants and is posturing to do. And it's making Putin have to choose between doing nothing and be seen as a loser, doing relatively little, and still being seen as a loser, or taking an absolutely massive risk and trying to go for the biggest possible escalation. Until now, seizing new terrain would have been seen as enough of a risk to Kiev that they might have faltered. But now? I'm not so sure if Russia will have the leverage they were going for if Ukraine and the West can spin it as "Russia thought they could conquer all of Ukraine, and all they got was a couple of new towns after weeks/months of fighting."

[Crumpets]

Lavrov and Blinken were already scheduled to talk on Thursday, so they're just adding the possibility of a Biden-Putin summit to the agenda. At the moment, this isn't really a game-changer unless/until we see some proof that Russian units are pulling back from their final staging areas*

*Satellite imagery from the past 24-48 hours have pointed towards Russian units decamping from their temporary forward operating bases, with many battalions now spread through fields, farms, and forests not far from the Ukrainian border. I am not a military logistics expert, but I don't know how long mechanized infantry and other equipment can be left in such relatively unsupported conditions before it starts to impact force effectiveness, morale, etc.  

One thing I'm kind of curious about and haven't seen covered is that there's a "radiological reserve" or something like that on the Belarusian side of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. And while I doubt Putin has any qualms about keeping Russian forces stationed there (or near there) as long as he wants, I kind of wonder if there are any morale, logistical, or even health issues that go with being stationed in an area that's so notoriously unhealthy to be in for long periods of time.

[Crumpets]

Sure looks like this is going to be a significantly increased and overt Russian military presence in the separatist areas. That means Russian weapons and troops crossing the border into Ukraine, but it still remains to be seen if they're planning to try to take any new territory (worth noting both the DNR and LNR claim a lot more territory than they control, albeit none outside of easternmost Ukraine). At least according to a lot of the Russia watchers I know, doing the former without doing the latter is a way Russia can "invade" and not be seen as backing down without having to "invade."

[Crumpets]

This is just my opinion, but I think the way Putin is framing this makes a big escalation in the Ukraininan east much more likely while making war - at least a ground war over control of territory - in the rest of the country much less likely.

[Crumpets]

What exactly are the borders of these “states” that Putin just recognized? It’s in contention, no?

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1495875803661455366

Red outlined area = separatist-controlled
Gray+light blue = separatist-claimed, controlled by Ukraine

The capitals of each oblast are under separatist control, but there are still several major cities in the claimed area under Ukrainian control - Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Kramatorsk, to name a couple.

[Crumpets]

Silly last couple of pages. If you think this is just about Donbas or ends there then you're not paying attention. Not even to what Putin said a few hours ago.

Well, the fact remains that there are now Russian troops heading across the border between Russia and the separatist regions and no other parts of the Ukraine-Russia border. So, for now, that is the focus of the conflict. Whether this is the main thrust of whatever Russia is planning or just a feint remains to be seen. But by framing this as a "peace-keeping operation" to protect the separatist republics, the farther Russian troops get from those republics, the less justification Putin has for Russians dying on their behalf. And even if Putin rants and raves about Ukraine being a puppet government or abandoning Russia as its true savior or whatever else he comes up with, a full invasion and occupation is a lot harder sell to the Russian people than a lower-risk campaign continuing to support the separatist groups Russia has already been supporting for eight years, but now with more troops. And I still don't think Putin wants to risk the level of domestic discontent that would go along with mass casualties in the Russian military and an open-ended occupation of all of Ukraine. That is, unless he's truly lost it, which let's face it, he might have.

[Crumpets]

But by framing this as a "peace-keeping operation" to protect the separatist republics, the farther Russian troops get from those republics, the less justification Putin has for Russians dying on their behalf.

If you watched Putin's speech, he made it pretty clear that all this was about much more than peacekeeping and Donetsk and Luhansk.

He also said much of the same things nearly a year ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians


For anyone that wants to understand the background and has not already done so, I would recommend watching Putin's speech from earlier and/or reading his essay from last year.

Ultimately this will be Putin's justification, the peacekeeping etc is just a small peace of the puzzle, one little step in his plan.


It would be a lot better if you are correct, however, so hopefully you are!

Just to be clear, I have no doubt at all Putin wants full Russian control over Ukraine, Belarus, and as much of the former USSR/Russian imperial sphere of influence as he can dream of. I just don't think he's fooling himself into thinking he can achieve full Russian domination of Ukraine under the current circumstances, at least not without a heck of a lot of risk to his personal position that I don't think he's willing to put up. If he gets eastern Ukraine, his popularity remains high, and Russia's military remains strong and motivated, I have no doubt he'll move on to trying to subsume somewhere else, either in Ukraine or elsewhere, just as a subsequent campaign and not a concurrent one.

[Crumpets]

The ruble has lost 10% of its value in the last 24 hours, so there's that.

[Crumpets]

This is my first time posting in this thread since the start of the invasion, just for my own sanity, but this is way too weird to pass up. Note the date and the person posting this. (For anyone who never took an IR 101 class, this is a guy who famously predicted in 1992 that liberal democracy is an inevitable end-point of human political development.)

https://twitter.com/FukuyamaFrancis/status/1576814943197724675