Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Jacob]

I guess an intermediate stage in the Russia getting pushed out scenario is that Russia goes on an actual formal war footing, with full on mobilization and so on.

[jimmy olsen]

I wonder just how big a blow this is to the Russian war effort. To the extent that they rely on supply and attack by sea, I would imagine it would be very significant indeed - quite apart from the propaganda hit.

That ship had a lot anti-air and anti-missile capabilities (in theory). Should make it easier for the Ukrainians to launch airstrikes on the Kherson front and to attack other Russian ships with planes or missiles.

[Zanza]

I guess an intermediate stage in the Russia getting pushed out scenario is that Russia goes on an actual formal war footing, with full on mobilization and so on.

What would that change?

[Jacob]

I guess an intermediate stage in the Russia getting pushed out scenario is that Russia goes on an actual formal war footing, with full on mobilization and so on.

What would that change?

Good question.

[Zanza]

Is it clear whether Moskva had nuclear warheads on board?

[celedhring]

I guess an intermediate stage in the Russia getting pushed out scenario is that Russia goes on an actual formal war footing, with full on mobilization and so on.

What would that change?

In the short term... probably nothing? They'd need months to mobilize.

Also, the fact the Kremlin still stupidly calls this an "Special Operation" after two months of operational embarassment and thousands casualties,  means they probably believe the political price of current failures is still lower than the political price of mobilizing.

[Iormlund]

Is it clear whether Moskva had nuclear warheads on board?

It was an AA and anti-ship platform IIRC, so I'm guessing that was unlikely.

Most of the other, smaller vessels in the Black Sea Fleet can be outfitted with Kalibr cruise missiles. Which can carry a nuclear payload. I think even the Kilos can launch them.

[Solmyr]

[Threviel]

I guess an intermediate stage in the Russia getting pushed out scenario is that Russia goes on an actual formal war footing, with full on mobilization and so on.

What would that change?

In the short term... probably nothing? They'd need months to mobilize.

Also, the fact the Kremlin still stupidly calls this an "Special Operation" after two months of operational embarassment and thousands casualties,  means they probably believe the political price of current failures is still lower than the political price of mobilizing.

As long as it's a special operation Putin does not need to deliver a total victory. He can say that the Azov batallion was the target, now the de-nazification is done.

If he were to declare it a war he will be forced to deliver a total and complete victory, otherwise he will lose all legitimacy in the eyes of all nationalists in Russia, and there are lots of them.

So, if Putin declares war it's a fight to the death more or less, a special operation can be backed out of with fake or real victories. That's why he did not extend the service period of some conscripts a while ago even though they have hug manpower issues.

Go listen to war on the rocks podcast, they hade a good talk of it in the latest episode with Michael Kofman.

[Josephus]

We're on what? Day 50 of Putin's three day war. The fighting is shifting to Eastern Ukraine.

What do possible end-games look like at this point?

It seems Russia's current plan is to hang on or maybe push forward a bit while the cost of atrocities goes so high that Zelenskyy is willing to negotiate... something... that Putin can sell as a victory to himself and his people. I don't know how likely it is, but let's say it comes to pass... what happens after that? What sort of levels of sanctions do we expect to see? What level of rebuilding aid and military support is likely to remain? How does the world move on?
How does the scenario "Ukraine pushes Russia out" develop and eventually wrap up?

Yeah, I asked this same thing a couple weeks ago. Do we ever go back to normal, vis-a-vis Russia if Putin remains in power. If Ukraine agrees to some peace deal and Putin gets his exit ramp, does the West invite him to summits, trade agreements, etc? Do we forget this all happened? And who's going to pay for all the damage?

[Zanza]

"Partners of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) from China "paused" cooperation with the academy, freezing the development of previously discussed projects. This was announced on Thursday by the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev during the International Scientific and Practical Conference "Digital International Relations - 2022", which is being held at MGIMO.

"If we are talking about the southern or eastern directions, unfortunately, I can directly say that our Chinese scientific colleagues also paused, and over the past month we have not been able to enter into such serious discussions, despite the fact that we had a wonderfully built cooperation with regular communication," Sergeev said."

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2022/04/china-is-haltin.html

[Darth Wagtaros]

Yes. China doesn't like Russians or Russia. They probably built up this whole scenario with vague promises and then pulled out.  They'll get an isolated and weakened Russia, one that is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

[Berkut]

How does the scenario "Ukraine pushes Russia out" develop and eventually wrap up?

Lets be honest. If Ukrainian forces push into the previously occupied Donbas regions, I suspect we will see some attrocities going the other way.

Those regions have been  effectively Russia for a long time, and anyone who lived there before who was pro-Ukraine has likely long since fled. That means those who are left are likely going to be pretty hard-core pro-Russians. How does Ukraine handle that?

I could easily see them handling by simply clearing them out themselves - forcing those people back into Russia. That won't be pretty.

[Threviel]

The Donbas has been run by gangsters in a horrible mafia state, the population might se the Ukrainians as liberators. Or they might not, we'll hopefully find out.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Russia sent a diplomatic note formally warning the United States about further military supplies to Ukraine, analysts believe this could be foreshadowing attacks on weapons convoys in NATO territory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/14/russia-warns-us-stop-arming-ukraine/

Russia warns U.S. to stop arming Ukraine

The formal diplomatic note from Moscow, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post, came as President Biden approved a dramatic expansion in the scope of weapons being provided to the government in Kyiv

By Karen DeYoung
Yesterday at 8:03 p.m. EDT

Russia this week sent a formal diplomatic note to the United States warning that U.S. and NATO shipments of the "most sensitive" weapons systems to Ukraine were "adding fuel" to the conflict there and could bring "unpredictable consequences."

The diplomatic démarche, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post, came as President Biden approved a dramatic expansion in the scope of weapons being provided to Ukraine, an $800 million package including 155 mm howitzers — a serious upgrade in long-range artillery to match Russian systems — coastal defense drones and armored vehicles, as well as additional portable antiaircraft and antitank weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition.

The United States has also facilitated the shipment to Ukraine of long-range air defense systems, including Slovakia's shipment of Russian-manufactured Soviet-era S-300 launchers on which Ukrainian forces have already been trained. In exchange, the administration announced last week, the United States is deploying a Patriot missile system to Slovakia and consulting with Slovakia on a long-term replacement.

Shipment of the weapons, the first wave of which U.S. officials said would arrive in Ukraine within days, follows an urgent appeal to Biden from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Russian forces were said to be mobilizing for a major assault on eastern Ukraine's Donbas region and along the coastal strip connecting it with Russian-occupied Crimea in the south. Russian troops have largely withdrawn from much of the northern part of the country, including around the capital, Kyiv, following humiliating defeats by the Ukrainian military and local resistance forces.

"What the Russians are telling us privately is precisely what we've been telling the world publicly — that the massive amount of assistance that we've been providing our Ukrainian partners is proving extraordinarily effective," said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive diplomatic document.

The State Department declined to comment on the contents of the two-page diplomatic note or any U.S. response.

Russia experts suggested that Moscow, which has labeled weapons convoys coming into the country as legitimate military targets but has not thus far attacked them, may be preparing to do so.

"They have targeted supply depots in Ukraine itself, where some of these supplies have been stored," said George Beebe, former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and Russia adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney. "The real question is do they go beyond attempting to target [the weapons] on Ukrainian territory, try to hit the supply convoys themselves and perhaps the NATO countries on the Ukrainian periphery" that serve as transfer points for the U.S. supplies.

If Russian forces stumble in the next phase of the war as they did in the first, "then I think the chances that Russia targets NATO supplies on NATO territory go up considerably," Beebe said. "There has been an assumption on the part of a lot of us in the West that we could supply the Ukrainians really without limits and not bear significant risk of retaliation from Russia," he said. "I think the Russians want to send a message here that that's not true."

The diplomatic note was dated Tuesday, as word first leaked of the new arms package that brought the total amount of U.S. military aid provided to Ukraine since the Feb. 24 invasion to $3.2 billion, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. In a public announcement Wednesday, Biden said it would include "new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine."

The document, titled "On Russia's concerns in the context of massive supplies of weapons and military equipment to the Kiev regime," written in Russian with a translation provided, was forwarded to the State Department by the Russian Embassy in Washington.

The Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

Among the items Russia identified as "most sensitive" were "multiple launch rocket systems," although the United States and its NATO allies are not believed to have supplied those weapons to Ukraine. Russia accused the allies of violating "rigorous principles" governing the transfer of weapons to conflict zones, and of being oblivious to "the threat of high-precision weapons falling into the hands of radical nationalists, extremists and bandit forces in Ukraine."

It accused NATO of trying to pressure Ukraine to "abandon" sputtering, and so far unsuccessful, negotiations with Russia "in order to continue the bloodshed." Washington, it said, was pressuring other countries to stop any military and technical cooperation with Russia, and those with Soviet-era weapons to transfer them to Ukraine.

"We call on the United States and its allies to stop the irresponsible militarization of Ukraine, which implies unpredictable consequences for regional and international security," the note said.

Andrew Weiss, a former National Security Council director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs, and now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech on the February morning that the invasion began, warned that Western nations would face "consequences greater than any you have faced in history" if they became involved in the conflict.

Attention at the time focused on Putin's reminder that Russia possesses a powerful nuclear arsenal, Weiss said, but it was also "a very explicit warning about not sending weapons into a conflict zone." Having drawn a red line, he asked, are the Russians "now inclined to back that up?"

Such an attack would be "a very important escalatory move, first and foremost because it represents a threat to the West if they aren't able to keep supplies flowing into Ukraine, which by extension might diminish Ukraine's capacity for self-defense." That risk "shouldn't be downplayed," he said, noting the added risk that an attempt to strike a convoy inside Ukraine could go awry over the border into NATO territory.

Senior U.S. defense officials remain concerned about the possibility of such attacks. "We don't take any movement of weapons and systems going into Ukraine for granted," Kirby said Thursday. "Not on any given day."

Kirby said Ukrainian troops bring the weapons into Ukraine after the United States brings them into the region, and "the less we say about that, the better."

Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.

I will note--while I've long said that NATO intervening militarily to some degree will create PR wins for Putin, if he strikes a target in a NATO country those concerns are no longer paramount, if he hits any target in a NATO country, we need to hit back with military force, preferentially I would say Russian military targets in Ukraine or naval targets in the Black Sea. There is virtue in not escalating, but once the enemy has hit us or our treaty allies a response is required--and it has to be a military response, not a diplomatic or economic one.