ALERT RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread

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northern watch

TB Fanatic
Ukraine nationalists march to honor wartime partisan leader
Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists held a torchlight march in the capital of Kyiv to mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the leader of a rebel militia that fought alongside Nazi soldiers in World War II
By The Associated Press
1 January 2022, 13:48

Activists of various nationalist parties carry torches during a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022. The rally was organized to mark the birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, founder of a rebel army that fought against the Soviet regime and

Image Icon
The Associated Press
Activists of various nationalist parties carry torches during a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022. The rally was organized to mark the birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, founder of a rebel army that fought against the Soviet regime and who was assassinated in Germany in 1959. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

KYIV, Ukraine -- Hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists held a torchlight march in the capital of Kyiv to mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the leader of a rebel militia that fought alongside Nazi soldiers in World War II.

The Sunday march came amid persistently high concerns over Russia's massing of troops near the Ukrainian border, which many believe could be a prelude to an invasion. A large sector of eastern Ukraine has been under the control of Russia-backed separatist rebels since 2014.

“Today, when there is a war with the occupier at the front, and the struggle against the ‘fifth column’ continues in the rear, we remember and honor the memory of Stepan Bandera,” said Andriy Tarasenko, leader of the nationalist party Right Sector.

Bandera was the leader of a Ukrainian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s, which included a rebel army that fought alongside the Nazis. Bandera’s supporters claim that they sided with the Nazis against the Soviet army in the belief that Adolf Hitler would grant independence to Ukraine.

Jewish groups associate Bandera’s followers with the massacre of Jews.

Ukraine nationalists march to honor wartime partisan leader - ABC News (go.com)
 
phloydius

phloydius

Veteran Member
KFhunter said:
Sorry if duped, I read elsewhere that all of the Russian subs in the pacific fleet have left port. "hostilities and tensions from the west"
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Sweetwood said:
Do you have source?
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It has been requoted several times over the last month. The furthest back I could track it was it being reported around Thanksgiving by one of what seems to be an intentional misdirection propaganda web site (P r @ v d @).
 
AlfaMan

AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
jward said:
RieXXtDM_normal.jpg


John Sipher
@john_sipher

Finnish President in short: If Russia invades Ukraine, we join NATO. twitter.com/mollymckew/sta…



EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3

Update: Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman: “It is quite obvious that the ascension of Finland and Sweden to Nato would have serious military and political consequences that would require an adequate response from Russia.”

4:29 PM · Jan 1, 2022·Twitter Web App
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Where the devil did this come from??? This is HUGE. Finland and Russia have sparred some 40 times since the winter war of 1940. For Finland to say something like this is mindblowing. This raises the stakes with all the Baltic states going against Russia.
It also speaks volumes that the showdown between Russia and the US/NATO is close at hand.
 
H

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
AlfaMan said:
Where the devil did this come from??? This is HUGE. Finland and Russia have sparred some 40 times since the winter war of 1940. For Finland to say something like this is mindblowing. This raises the stakes with all the Baltic states going against Russia.
It also speaks volumes that the showdown between Russia and the US/NATO is close at hand.
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Indeed.

I saw it earlier but wasn't able to comment at the time.

I suppose the Finns figure that if Moscow feels froggy enough to go for Kiev after solidifying their hold on Donbass then anything goes (the degree to which NATO membership and EU membership overlaps is a related conversation). From a timeliness standpoint jointing NATO for Finland, and for that matter Sweden, is a lot more time efficient than restarting any "bomb in the basement" program they might have been running in the past since that's about the only thing that would seriously give Moscow any real pause.
 
Doomer Doug

Doomer Doug

TB Fanatic
Gee, for a NON NEO NAZI/NAZI nation the ukies sure do like their Nazi history.
Calling Oreally.:hof:Um this little parade of theirs guarantees Putin will move in. First, they firebomb the Russiand consulate, and now they celebrate Jew murdering thugs.
Just went from inevitable war to imminent war.
NATO sure hitched their horses to a real winner in the Ukraine.
 
H

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
Doomer Doug said:
Gee, for a NON NEO NAZI/NAZI nation the ukies sure do like their Nazi history.
Calling Oreally.:hof:Um this little parade of theirs guarantees Putin will move in. First, they firebomb the Russiand consulate, and now they celebrate Jew murdering thugs.
Just went from inevitable war to imminent war.
NATO sure hitched their horses to a real winner in the Ukraine.
Click to expand...

When you look at who's running the EU and the new German government it becomes all the clearer....
 
Doomer Doug

Doomer Doug

TB Fanatic
Merkel is gone. The covid response is uber fascist so maybe they have delusions of restored reichs floating around their panzer fausts.:lol:
 
Marie

Marie

Veteran Member
At this time I don't think the bidengestapo and nazibastards in world governments are going with the big N. They want control and they would lose that instantly. Totally against their M.O. it achieves their depopulation plan but they lose everything they relish in at the same time.
Can't speak for the Ukrainians though. An all or nothing seems to be their current mindset
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
Ukrainian new anti-tank missile gets direct hit on pro-Russian rebels

NewsArmyVideo
By Dylan Malyasov

Jan 2, 2022
Modified date: 4 mins ago
Photo by Dylan Malyasov
Ukrainian Soldiers targeted a military truck that had been carrying Russian-backed separatists.
The story was first reported by Militarnyi, which cited volunteer Oleksandr Karpyuk, who said that the Ukrainian-made anti-tank missile direct hit an enemy target 3,4 miles (5.6km) away.
Volunteer also shares dramatic video showing the moment of attack on the enemy military truck.


“Javelins are not the only ones. Meet Stugna-P [Ukrainian anti-tank missile system]. In the video, two objects are worth noting, Stugna-P and the Ural truck” – says Oleksandr Karpyuk to the video.

According to the volunteer, the distance between the anti-tank complex and the truck of was 3,4 miles (5600 meters).
Ukrainian Stugna-P, also known as Skif in export modification, is a modern anti-tank missile system developed by Kyiv-based LUCH design bureau to destroy manpower and stationary and mobile modern armored targets with combined, carried, or monolithic armor including ERA (explosive reactive armor) and also pinpoint targets like weapon emplacements, lightly armored objects and hovered helicopters at any time of day or night.
The laser-guided system has a range of 5800 meters and can penetrate armor up to 1100 millimeters thickness.
If you wish to report grammatical or factual errors within our news articles, you can let us know by using the online feedback form.

If you would like to show your support for what we are doing, here's where to do it: patreon.com/defenceblog

Executive Editor
About this Author
Dylan Malyasov
U.S. defense journalist and commentator. Aviation photographer. Dylan leads Defence Blog's coverage of global military news, focusing on engineering and technology across the U.S. defense industry.

Video at source site if you're so inclined
Posted for fair use
defence-blog.com

Ukrainian new anti-tank missile gets direct hit on pro-Russian rebels

Ukrainian Soldiers targeted a military truck that had been carrying Russian-backed separatists. The story was first reported by Militarnyi, which cited volunteer Oleksandr Karpyuk, who said that the Ukrainian-made anti-tank missile direct hit an enemy target 3,4 miles (5.6km) away. Volunteer...
defence-blog.com defence-blog.com
 
jward

jward

passin' thru
toomas hendrik ilves
@IlvesToomas
1h

The Finnish-NATO Catch-22: Finnish politicians point to lack of public support for NATO membership. Yes, support for decades has been in the mid 20 percent range. Polls also show, however, "would you support NATO membership if your leaders say its worth supporting?" Then...1/2
Support for joining goes up to the mid 50%. In other words, Finns trust their leaders' judgment. So Catch-22: Leaders don't support NATO membership because people don't. The populace doesn't support membership because their leaders don't

Matti Metsola
@MMetsola
1h

Replying to @IlvesToomas
Interestingly, men narrowly support NATO membership in both Finland and Sweden. Women are overwhelmingly against (15% for 44% against in Finland).
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1477632487761321987
View: https://twitter.com/MMetsola/status/1477632487761321987?s=20

Replying to
@IlvesToomas
The same Catch-22 exists in Sweden. To me, it’s a mystery why Finland did not join NATO together with the Baltic countries, after the fall of the Soviet union.
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Replying to
@IlvesToomas
Unless Finnish voters want politicians to take risks, then this situation won’t change.
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Replying to
@IlvesToomas
Kremlin can tilt this balance in an instance
Pro-Kremlin politicians are dying breed in Finland anyway, mostly leftovers from Cold War era. Once those dinosaurs are gone, I'm pretty sure Finland will join NATO at some point.
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W

Walrus

Veteran Member
Apology in advance for thread drift, but this thread has drifted all over the place sometimes and always comes home.

Interesting but not particularly surprising results, aren't they? The 2020 presidential election duplicates the same trends.

In the US (discounting the election cheating), women put Biden in office, favoring him over President Trump 57%-42%. Men more narrowly swung to Trump 53%-45%.
 
T

Techwreck

Veteran Member

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

Authored by David Stockman,

Are these people so abysmally ignorant of history, geography, economics and the wherewithal of a true national security threat that they think the map below is worth WWIII?

Ukraine has never had stable borders, nor has it been a longstanding independent nation state. In fact, for hundreds of years under the czars and commissars alike, Ukraine was at best a vassal state and mostly a provincial satrapy of Moscow. Its current borders were actually drawn to precision by Communist apparatchiks during the Soviet era and thereafter embraced by the Kiev government that emerged in 1991 when the Soviet Union suddenly evaporated.



Ukraine’s history can be summarized as follows:

  • 700 or so years as a meandering set of borders in search of a country (1200 AD to 1922);
  • 69 years as an administrative appendage of totalitarian Soviet rulers in Moscow, who purged Tartars and replanted Russians in the eastern regions along the way;
  • 23 years as a happenstance nation-state that fell into existence when the biggest and most evil empire in history collapsed overnight (1991–2014); and
  • 7 years as a pretext for Washington interventionists, neocons and anti-Trump Dems to rekindle cold war fears, the better to keep hideously swollen national security budgets firmly in place.
Yet these Foxified Republican pols and neocons blather on about "weakness" and phony threats to our national security. Let’s see the extent of that threat.

The GDP of the New York City metro area is about $1.7 trillion, which is well more than Russia’s 2020 GDP of $1.6 trillion. And that, in turn, is just 7% of America’s $22 trillion GDP.

In terms of manufacturing output Russia’s annual manufacturing value added is currently (2020) about $197 billion, which amounts to just 8% of the $2.35 trillion figure for the US economy.

Basically, Russia’s economy cannot support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $65 billion of military outlays in 2020 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington’s current $755 billion of expenditures for defense.

It may well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

Recall the remnant of the Soviet strategic weapons arsenal at Putin’s disposal today amounts to 4,500 operational nuclear warheads, of which under two-fifths are actually deployed. That compares to 4,600 nuclear weapons in the US arsenal with a similar fraction actually deployed.

Accordingly, what exists on the nuclear front is a state of mutual deterrence (MAD) — the arrangement by which we got through 45 years of Cold War when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to just 4% of the country’s anemic present day economy — one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others.

Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable.

Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he’s got. That is, Russia’s conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent.

Moreover, the canard that Washington’s massive conventional armada is needed to defend Europe is ludicrous nonsense. Europe can and should take care of its own security and relationship with its neighbor on the Eurasian continent. After all, the GDP of NATO Europe alone is $17 trillion or 11X greater than that of Russia, and the current military budgets of European NATO members total about $300 billion or 4.4X more than that of Russia.

But more importantly, the European nations and people really do not have any quarrel with Putin’s Russia, nor is their security and safety threatened by the latter. All of the tensions that do exist and have come to a head since the illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 were fomented by Imperial Washington and its European subalterns in the NATO machinery.

Like everything reviewed above, the source of the current calamity-howling about Russia is the Warfare State. That is, the existence of vast machinery of military, diplomatic and economic maneuver that is ever on the prowl for missions and mandates and that can mobilize a massive propaganda campaign on the slightest excitement.

The post-1991 absurdity of bolstering NATO and extending it into eastern Europe rather than liquidating it after attaining "mission accomplished" is just another manifestation of its baleful impact.

In truth, the expansion of NATO is the underlying cause of America’s needless tension with Russia and Putin’s paranoia about his borders and neighbors.

It needs be asked: Precisely what juvenile minds bivouacked in Washington’s Warfare State beehive actually determined that America needs a military alliance with Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro and now the mini-state of North Macedonia?
 
ibetiny

ibetiny

Veteran Member
Does anyone have a data set that compares the number of tanks, guns, planes, howitzer, exc... That NATO has vs the Russian federation? How about this, how many tanks, fighters, subs, ships, helicopters..... Does NATO plus, s Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, israel, Ukraine and India have vs Russia, china, Vietnam, Pakistan, Cuba, mid east states and Venezuela?
Bet it doesn't look quite as dire then.
 
H

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
Marie said:
At this time I don't think the bidengestapo and nazibastards in world governments are going with the big N. They want control and they would lose that instantly. Totally against their M.O. it achieves their depopulation plan but they lose everything they relish in at the same time.
Can't speak for the Ukrainians though. An all or nothing seems to be their current mindset
Click to expand...

Stalin's genocide against Ukraine in the 1930s is fueling a lot of this in Kiev.
 
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M

mecoastie

Veteran Member
ibetiny said:
Does anyone have a data set that compares the number of tanks, guns, planes, howitzer, exc... That NATO has vs the Russian federation? How about this, how many tanks, fighters, subs, ships, helicopters..... Does NATO plus, s Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, israel, Ukraine and India have vs Russia, china, Vietnam, Pakistan, Cuba, mid east states and Venezuela?
Bet it doesn't look quite as dire then.
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Challenge is that a lot of NATO on paper is the US and we do not have a lot in Europe. Look at armor. There is a Stryker Brigade but no heavy armored units. THere is some armor kept ready in storage. The theory is that the soldiers to fill them land and climb into them and they are off. I would think those storage depots would be first targets for any Russian attack. All additional armor has to be brought in by air or sea. I assume we would immediately deploy additional air power to Europe as well as Airborne units but the heavy stuff takes time.
 
M

marsofold

Veteran Member
Russia has small tactical nukes able to stop any amount of NATO tanks or infantry, which makes them a game changer. To bet the farm that Putin will not use them seems like fantasy to me. If Russia does choose to invade Ukraine, then I believe the Russians will go in determined to win the territory at any cost, including tactical nukes. Not seeing any willingness to fight them on those terms.
 
LoupGarou

LoupGarou

Ancient Fuzzball
ibetiny said:
Does anyone have a data set that compares the number of tanks, guns, planes, howitzer, exc... That NATO has vs the Russian federation? How about this, how many tanks, fighters, subs, ships, helicopters..... Does NATO plus, s Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, israel, Ukraine and India have vs Russia, china, Vietnam, Pakistan, Cuba, mid east states and Venezuela?
Bet it doesn't look quite as dire then.
Click to expand...

If russia actually goes "all in", the fight will probably be over in a matter of days, long before we can get any of our assets over there to be able to help. Russia has been learning both the Electronic Warfare (EW) AND the 5th Gen warfare talents for the last 20-30 years. I would bet that anything that says Thales, Harris, General Dynamics or Motorola will be proven dead weight in a matter of minutes once they start playing. Just reading the intel in the JEDs that I get is proof enough with the way that they toy with their enemies now, and they were just playing with it then. When it comes down to an all out war, it will be nasty if Ukraine trusts their electronics too much. Not sure how much SAAB electronic toys that Ukraine has, since they work fairly well against a lot of the EW threats that russia uses, but if they are using the same stuff most armies use, then they need to prepare to ditch it and go with the older analog or at most DMR radios like they learned in Donbas.
 
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