Adokforme wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 10:50 amGuess my motivation for posting was that should Ukraine be overwhelmed, which would be the next eastern European country under threat and In years to come would the free world look back to wonder if there wasn't more that could have been done to avert such a disaster!
Next one in line in our part of the world is pretty clearly Moldova. Formerly part of the Soviet Union, there's a breakaway region (Transnistria) with Russian "peacekeepers" present and it's the last former Soviet/Warsaw Pact state not in NATO.
Having said that, even if the Russians win in Ukraine (far from certain given their miserable performance to date) it's going to gut the Russian army for a decade. They're facing an economic contraction of perhaps 50% in dollar terms, losing a lot of fairly new kit (details
here - something like 3-5% of their total vehicle park so far) and have already failed in their strategic objective.
The plan - if you can call it that - appears to have been essentially to carry out a coup d'état in Ukraine, install a compliant new leader and leave. That plan is dead - any other leader is only going to remain in power if surrounded by Russian tanks, and the number of troops they've committed to date is nothing like enough to occupy a country the size of Ukraine against a hostile populace. If they do, they're facing a massive insurgency funded and supplied with advanced weapons by the West.
Mr Gus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 11:37 amThe fact that the convoys are "breaking down" "out of fuel" "out of supplies" "crawling" at a standstill & remaining around 30km from (for example Kyiv) bodes well I think for now, for the conscripted grunts who are realising what sacrificial lamb means & how much value Putin places on their lives.
Maybe - there are certainly persistent reports that they've been sabotaging their own vehicles (mostly leaks in fuel tanks) to avoid fighting. However, for that particular convoy it's pretty clear that the main issue is piss-poor command & control coupled with mechanical reliability problems.
Mr Gus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 11:37 amI have had the radio on 24/7 & refreshing the news every few minutes, the other day? (night) there was comment on how the ukrainians were leaving the convoys alone & vice versa, with a bit of mutual understanding that's been played out via captured prisoners too, that the aggression is primarily from those in office & those in the field will try to avoid instigating a fire fight across a quiet front.
Don't read too much into that. **If** there is any such understanding, it's very much one-sided - even the Russian-speaking bits of Ukraine seem to be very strongly against the Russian invasion, and are becoming increasingly embittered. For now captured conscripts are being treated well (at least when on TV - arguably part of the Ukrainian information ops which are absolutely top notch), but I wouldn't bet on that lasting.