Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Solmyr]

I still can't get used to how shamelessly open so many people are about doing the bidding of potentially hostile countries.  You'd think that this kind of thing requires some covertness, but that seems to be an outdated notion these days.

Yeah - I kind of get it with Schroeder. He signed up in 2005, there was still a bit of the 90s attitude about the world. But at some point since he must have realised and made the choice.

There was probably a pee tape of him already by the time he realized.

[Tamas]

No doubt another sign of Western schemes of forcing Russian self-defence invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-police-detain-group-suspected-planning-mass-riots-2022-01-31/

[viper37]

No doubt another sign of Western schemes of forcing Russian self-defence invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-police-detain-group-suspected-planning-mass-riots-2022-01-31/

It's the CIA posing as Russian agents to discredit uncle Vlad!  The proud Russian people shall not stand by idle to such provocation!

[Tamas]

Six Russian warships entered the Mediterranean Sea today and might be heading towards the Black Sea in the next few hours, according to media reports in Italy.

The vessels from the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet, were allegedly spotted by a Spanish Navy Meteoro class offshore patrol vessel entering the Central Mediterranean early on Monday via the Strait of Gibraltar.

According to the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, the vessels are carrying 60 tanks and over 1,500 soldiers. The warships are currently navigating in the Sicilian Channel. The news was repeated by Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine's former defence minister, who had been speaking about the likelihood of a Russian invasion. "Six Russian warships had just entered the Mediterranean," Zagorodnyuk said, adding: "If they enter the Black Sea we will change our views to negative."

Moscow has not confirmed the reports.

[Berkut]

Spotted?

The straights are like 10 miles across. I assume every ship going through is seen and identified by like....everyone? Right?

[DGuller]

Does it even matter how wide the straits are?  Wouldn't every surface ship be tracked by satellites these days, or am I missing some difficulty in that?

[The Brain]

The smoke from a Russian warship is visible from the moon.

[celedhring]

Come on guys, one time that we are useful and you rain on our parade.

[The Larch]

Does it even matter how wide the straits are?  Wouldn't every surface ship be tracked by satellites these days, or am I missing some difficulty in that?

I know civilian vessels are indeed monitored by satellite nowadays because of safety regulations, and have to carry special equipment for that, but I'm sure that military vessels are not covered by those regulations, and a purely visual reconaissance by satellite must be somehow limited, so regular onshore systems as well as patrols must still necessary.

[Jacob]

Spotted?

The straights are like 10 miles across. I assume every ship going through is seen and identified by like....everyone? Right?

Yes. And when they see and identify it, they report that they've spotted the ship

[Berkut]

I just thought it odd that it was presented as kind of like a "gotcha!" with a patrol vessel spotting the Russian warships.

10 miles....I mean, couldn't they be spotted by someone on the beach?

It's a non-issue of course, just a weird aside. I kind of figured that no warship on the surface transits the straits without that being common knowledge.

[Threviel]

Presumably every naval command in Western Europe and Nato have been tracking those ships and been fully aware of their goings. When they went through Gibraltar they did it before the public eye so some navy had to send out a ship to "discover" them and make it public. Presumably diplomacy have been going on to stop them in order to de-escalate, but when they passed through so publicly the Russians showed that they are escalating.

[The Larch]

The strait of Gibraltar has a ground based AIS (Automatic Identification System, the system I mentioned in my previous post) in place to monitor navigation in the area, which is extremely busy, so at the very least they were identified at that point, and if it was the Spanish navy the one that brought the flotilla to public attention it makes sense that it steemed from their crossing of the strait.

By the way, checking the wiki for AIS it seems that it's another field of cyberwarfare (or at the very least disinformation) nowadays:

On 18 June 2021 AIS receivers in Chornomorsk, Ukraine, reported HMS Defender and HNLMS Evertsen allegedly sailing towards Sevastopol Russian military base in annexed Crimea while the ships were safely moored in Odessa, according to numerous live port webcam feeds and witnesses, which implied that falsified AIS data was injected into the system by an unknown party.[45] A few days later, on 22-23 June, the ships left Odessa and indeed sailed by the Crimean coast, with Russia accusing the fleet of violating its territory while UK command insisted the ships sailed in international waters.

In March 2021 a similar incident was registered by Swedish armed forces whose ships were incorrectly presented by AIS as if they were sailing in Russian waters near Kaliningrad.

In July 2021, researcher Bjorn Bergman found almost 100 sets of faked AIS data between September 2020 and August 2021, with almost all of those being faked NATO and European warships. He said that the data appeared in the system as if it had been received by ground (not satellite) receivers, which led him to believe that the data is not being introduced by fake radio transmissions, but rather injected into the data streams used by AIS websites. Todd Humphreys, director of the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, stated that "While I can't say for sure who's doing this, the data fits a pattern of disinformation that our Russian friends are wont to engage in."

[Jacob]

Presumably every naval command in Western Europe and Nato have been tracking those ships and been fully aware of their goings. When they went through Gibraltar they did it before the public eye so some navy had to send out a ship to "discover" them and make it public. Presumably diplomacy have been going on to stop them in order to de-escalate, but when they passed through so publicly the Russians showed that they are escalating.

They may have been the same ones reported by Danish media as passing through the Sound, leaving the Baltic, a little while earlier. Or those could've been going to take part in Operation Annoy Irish Fishing Vessels.

[Tamas]

Russia continues to be pushed into a corner, Ukraine forcing their hand:

Ukraine will be responsible for its own destruction if it undermines existing peace agreements, a senior Russian diplomat has warned at a combative UN security council debate on the crisis.

The warning from Vasily Nebenzya, Russia's permanent representative to the UN, came on a day of continued high-level diplomacy aimed at defusing the Ukraine crisis.

The state department said it had received a response from Moscow to a document the US delivered in Moscow last week, formally outlining areas where the Biden administration believes the two countries could find common ground. US officials would not disclose the contents of the Russian letter, saying they would not "negotiate in public".

Russia's state news agency RIA reported on Tuesday that Russia had sent follow-up questions rather than a response, and that Moscow was still working on an actual response