Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Tamas]

Russians might be going with a Katyn-style massacre as (fake?) casus belli. The link is in Russian but the East Ukrainian secessionists claim they found a mass grave of 130 Russian civilians killed by Ukrainians: https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/13679393

[Sheilbh]

However much you believe Russia has or does not have the ability to influence internal instability in Western countries, I expect they'll dial it up as much as possible.

Incidentally just thinking about this - I think if Russia goes down this route the most likely is that they'll just launch a lot of cyber-attacks on core infrastructure.

I've been doubting whether there'd be an invasion at the end of this all the time but it really does feel like something's happening. In the last hour Russia's cut the number of staff in their embassy, Germany has advised German citizens to leave Ukraine and the US is ordering all non-essential staff out of the embassy.

[Syt]

Russians might be going with a Katyn-style massacre as (fake?) casus belli. The link is in Russian but the East Ukrainian secessionists claim they found a mass grave of 130 Russian civilians killed by Ukrainians: https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/13679393

Is it 130 civilians or 130 mass graves? Google translate says the latter.

[Syt]

Incidentally just thinking about this - I think if Russia goes down this route the most likely is that they'll just launch a lot of cyber-attacks on core infrastructure.

See my thread here: http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,16519.0.html

[Tamas]

Russians might be going with a Katyn-style massacre as (fake?) casus belli. The link is in Russian but the East Ukrainian secessionists claim they found a mass grave of 130 Russian civilians killed by Ukrainians: https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/13679393

Is it 130 civilians or 130 mass graves? Google translate says the latter.

Yeah you are right it's 130 graves, I misread the Hungarian article. Then this will be even harder to spin in a conflict where thousands have died already.

[grumbler]

Any news regarding Taiwan?  Does China have real capability to attack Taiwan any time soon?

China can attack Taiwan, but cannot, at this point, successfully invade.  There's no more difficult operation in military terms than an opposed amphibious landing, and China has nowhere near the superiority needed to make one work.  If Xi is willing to pay the price in blood and treasure, he can devastate Taiwan while it devastates China's eastern seaboard.

[DGuller]

If (or I guess when) the war starts, what are the thoughts on what happens directly between Russia and the West?  Tense unease?  Lots of Gaijins surfacing everywhere on the Internet explaining how Russia is actually the restrained one?  Some cyber attacks by fat Russian teenagers inspired by patriotism?  An all out salvo of cyberwarfare and attacks on cyber infrastructure?  Nuclear war?

[Jacob]

It really does feel very sobering right now.  I've been wondering about the possibility of Russians feeding bullshit intel to US, either through a double agent or a burned agent supplied with bullshit, but it seems like a remote possibility.  I would think that US intel would be aware of such possibilities, as that trick has probably been tried before in history.  Such intel would also probably be gathered from multiple sources, since it's hard to give orders to start a war without a whole bunch of people getting enough information for the intelligence agency to put together.  I wonder if Russians could call off the attack now after legitimately having set it in motion, just to make the US lose cred and make everyone exhausted before the actual strike, but that's probably also not something you can turn on or off with a switch.

There's also the bit about why it'd be worth their while for the Russians to fake this. It's not like they'll suddenly do a big reveal and say "look, we're only having a tea party with cakes and balloons! Those foolish Americans" and make the US look bad.

Maybe there's some angle in putting NATO on high alert for no reason, but I struggle to see the use (unless it's for internal consumption for some reason).

[Jacob]

If (or I guess when) the war starts, what are the thoughts on what happens directly between Russia and the West?  Tense unease?  Lots of Gaijins surfacing everywhere on the Internet explaining how Russia is actually the restrained one?  Some cyber attacks by fat Russian teenagers inspired by patriotism?  An all out salvo of cyberwarfare and attacks on cyber infrastructure?  Nuclear war?

The optimist in me thinks that Russia has already been going all out on cyber attacks, social media misinformation, and encouraging extremism and social conflict. But maybe they can step it up. At this point, I think that's the main realm they'd be operating in.

I think nuclear war, and direct conventional conflict, is unlikely to happen. But if they can find people to supply weapons to who'd then direct them at Western states I expect they'd be all over that.

[DGuller]

Another question I'm wondering about:  what about tactical nukes?  What prevents Russia from dropping a tactical nuke or two on Ukraine, in case their blitzkrieg fails to deliver? 

People are going to be annoyed at Russia?  I think all the reasonable people already are as annoyed as they can be.  Retaliation by a neutral party?  Somehow I don't see any Western country pressing the self-destruct button on the world as a matter of principle.

[Jacob]

Another question I'm wondering about:  what about tactical nukes?  What prevents Russia from dropping a tactical nuke or two on Ukraine, in case their blitzkrieg fails to deliver? 

People are going to be annoyed at Russia?  I think all the reasonable people already are as annoyed as they can be.  Retaliation by a neutral party?  Somehow I don't see any Western country pressing the self-destruct button on the world as a matter of principle.

People can get a lot more annoyed.

That's not to say Putin couldn't use tactical nukes and hope to brazen it out. Really it depends on what his objectives.

[Admiral Yi]

Here's another oddball conspiracy theory to explain the US prediction of war.

US intel knows they're not going to invade, but if they say they are going to, it can be presented later as Putin backing down, causing him to lose face with the Russian public and bolstering the confidence of NATO and Ukraine.



DGuller: saying you're from the Ukraine should be enough.  If that's not enough for you, you can take the Canadian chicken run and start wearing a little Ukrainian flag pin. 

[Syt]

the Ukraine

[Sheilbh]

US intel knows they're not going to invade, but if they say they are going to, it can be presented later as Putin backing down, causing him to lose face with the Russian public and bolstering the confidence of NATO and Ukraine.

I think Lavrov's said exactly that

[Habbaku]

the Ukraine