Will Russia invade Ukraine again? (Yes, yes they did)

[DiezelMonster]

The title says it all, there has been a build up of the Russian army on three sides of Ukraine, But will Putin invade before the winter Olympics? I doubt it, that would be a blow to his relationship with Beijing.

With the amount of anti tank weaponry and the 8500 US soldiers on their way, something is bound to happen.

The fact that the Russian, Chinese and Iranian navy is currently doing war games in the Mediterranean and the fact the US Air craft carrier fleets have been deployed there says a lot!

Are there any Russian or Ukrainian forumites that want to speak on any of this?

At a time when we have a global pandemic going on and an already strained supply chain does this make any sense? Will the UN just let Putin take what he clearly wants?????

 

[ArtDecade]

US and allies will sanction Moscow. Russia will invade. More sanctions.

Otherwise, hot war. End of planet.

 

[bostjan]

The title says it all, there has been a build up of the Russian army on three sides of Ukraine, But will Putin invade before the winter Olympics? I doubt it, that would be a blow to his relationship with Beijing.

With the amount of anti tank weaponry and the 8500 US soldiers on their way, something is bound to happen.

The fact that the Russian, Chinese and Iranian navy is currently doing war games in the Mediterranean and the fact the US Air craft carrier fleets have been deployed there says a lot!

Are there any Russian or Ukrainian forumites that want to speak on any of this?

At a time when we have a global pandemic going on and an already strained supply chain does this make any sense? Will the UN just let Putin take what he clearly wants?????

Like I said in the other thread, this is a continuation of the war that was going on before covid. Ukraine and Russia are at war, even though there is technically (I think) a cease fire at the moment.

The nordic countries all already formed a pact with the baltic states to keep Putin from invading there, anticipating Putin trying to make either the USSR 2.0 or Russian Empire 4.0 or whatever. If that is a deterrent, it might be worth noting that Ukraine and Georgia, I think, are the only two former SSR's outside of the Baltic states with an HDI worth Russia considering annexing. Even then, I'm not sure if Georgia's resources are worth that much to Putin.

But this invasion of Ukraine is 75% certain to happen at this point, by my estimations, but, then again, I had predicted Hilary Clinton was 90% certain to win the 2016 US presidential election, so what do I know?

 

[Adieu]

Could be a Putin negotiating tactic, could also be actually stupid enough to start this crap

At this point I'm genuinely shocked that nobody has assassinated the toxic little dwarf yet

 

[Drew]

Putin is aggressive, but not an idiot. I think whether or not he invades will be a direct product of whether or not he thinks he can get away with it with minimal costs, so I guess the best way to predict if Putin goes ahead and does it would be to have a sense of how committed he thinks Biden is to stop him, and how far he'll go.

If he does, he thinks Biden is weak. Whether or not he's right will decide what happens next.

 

[DiezelMonster]

Putin is aggressive, but not an idiot. I think whether or not he invades will be a direct product of whether or not he thinks he can get away with it with minimal costs, so I guess the best way to predict if Putin goes ahead and does it would be to have a sense of how committed he thinks Biden is to stop him, and how far he'll go.

If he does, he thinks Biden is weak. Whether or not he's right will decide what happens next.

From what I've read, Biden has no plan to Stop him, but as @ArtDecade said above there would clearly be more sanctions.

There have already been plots uncovered by the British that there was a coup plotted to install a pro Putin puppet, that was found out and halted. I do understand that they are Still at war, since the start was in 2014 but I really think with all that has been going on Putin really will do something and it will be big. I do think he sees Biden as being weak.

 

[Shoeless_jose]

Never bet against a President whose poll numbers are in the dumps something silly will happen I am sure

 

[Drew]

From what I've read, Biden has no plan to Stop him, but as @ArtDecade said above there would clearly be more sanctions.

There have already been plots uncovered by the British that there was a coup plotted to install a pro Putin puppet, that was found out and halted. I do understand that they are Still at war, since the start was in 2014 but I really think with all that has been going on Putin really will do something and it will be big. I do think he sees Biden as being weak.

I haven't been following this story super closely, plenty of other stuff to focus on in my corner of the news world, but, off the top of my head,

1) Biden has been building international support for a broad round of sanctions if Putin does anything - the US, NATO, the rest of the EU, parts of the Asia Pacific - tightening the economic screws on Russia if they invade is absolutely part of his planned response, and if it comes to that, it will not be even close to a unilateral move on the US's part.

2) Biden also began deploying troops to the border over the weekend. While this is clearly at least partly a deterrent and a show of force, it's awefully hard to picture Biden pulling them out if Putin invades - it's like parenting, you never make a threat you're not fully prepared to follow through on, or you risk appearing weak.Obama learned this the hard with in Syria, and Biden has been very conscious about learning from the mistakes the Obama administration made.

Again, I haven't been following this story super closely... but between Biden moving troops into position for a counterattack and not wanting to repeat Obama's mistakes in Syria with the "line in the sand" over chemical weapons, and between what Adieu is saying about tensions being at a fever pitch inside Russia and everyone freaking the fuck out, while this is more of an academic discussion in the US, makes me think Putin is probably going to blink, or at a minimum refrain from any overt activities where he loses any pretext of plausible deniability.

 

[sleewell]

would probably be easier to just have one of their guys "win" the next election.

 

[nikt]

US and allies will sanction Moscow. Russia will invade. More sanctions.

Who do you consider to be these allies?

IMO Putin will wait till next winter and he's not going to invade whole Ukraine at the moment. He only need Dniepr as natural boarder and get Ukraine out of Black Sea. EU will do nothing as always.

 

[ArtDecade]

Who do you consider to be these allies?

NATO. If they choose not to enforce sanctions against US wishes, that will mean they will have to pay more for their weapons, planes, subs, etc. Defense contracts speak louder than common sense.

 

[Louis Cypher]

Needs to be personal sanctions against Putin and his cronies on there wealth and assets, most of which are held in the west in particular London to our shame. Putin doesn't give a shit about the Russian people but he does care about his personal fortune he has stolen from them

 

[nikt]

NATO. If they choose not to enforce sanctions against US wishes, that will mean they will have to pay more for their weapons, planes, subs, etc. Defense contracts speak louder than common sense.

This scale have two side.
US without those contracts will have even worse crash in economy. I highly doubt that any of EU countries will put sanctions that will really impact Russia. It would backlash with extream prices of oil, gas, coal and other commodies. We would also pay more for transit from China.

I don't like where all this is going...

 

[bostjan]

I don't know why, but this picture is amusing to me:

I have no idea what the context is, but I can kinda guess. The woman's back says, roughly, "Go eat a dick, Putin."

 

[Drew]

This scale have two side.
US without those contracts will have even worse crash in economy. I highly doubt that any of EU countries will put sanctions that will really impact Russia. It would backlash with extream prices of oil, gas, coal and other commodies. We would also pay more for transit from China.

I don't like where all this is going...

the problem with this line of thought is the US recovery is currently leading the global recovery, and is being driven mostly by domestic demand. I know, I know, "military-industrial complex," but defense spending is not THAT big a portion of GDP. Q4 2021 GDP was reported this morning at just shy of $24 trillion dollars. The US defense budget for 2021 was about $700B. You could wipe that whole thing out, and we'd have a GDP contraction of about 3%. We could lose a couple hundred billion a year in defense contracts and STILL put up positive growth, I think.

 

[Adieu]

There's also a quite possible "intermediate" scenario: open annexation of the pro-Moscow separatist "Republics", without crossing into Kyiv-controlled territory.

The threat of a shooting war might be the bluff intended to make everyone go "meh, fine, nothing really changed" when (if) no one actually fires a shot, and the buildup might be intended to discourage Ukrainian military from trying to evict overtly or covertly Russian forces attempting to roll into the separatist areas unopposed.

...of course, this can go very wrong so, so many ways. Might even end up with separatist-vs.-Kremlin warfare.

 

[StevenC]

the problem with this line of thought is the US recovery is currently leading the global recovery, and is being driven mostly by domestic demand. I know, I know, "military-industrial complex," but defense spending is not THAT big a portion of GDP. Q4 2021 GDP was reported this morning at just shy of $24 trillion dollars. The US defense budget for 2021 was about $700B. You could wipe that whole thing out, and we'd have a GDP contraction of about 3%. We could lose a couple hundred billion a year in defense contracts and STILL put up positive growth, I think.

It's a pandemic after all. Medical industrial complex > military industrial complex

 

[Steo]

Also tying in with this. There Russian navy is running a live-fire exercise 200km of southern coast of Ireland. We have no way of monitoring this, either by sea or air. It also happens to be the area where a lot of the undersea telecommunications cables from US to Europe pass.

 

[Crungy]

I know Ireland stated they were unwelcome there given what's going in the Ukraine but I take it that hasn't stopped Russia.

 

[Shoeless_jose]

Also China/Russia doing joint exercises in Mediterranean/Baltic