Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Russia Can Do NOTHING as F-16s Announced for Ukraine" video.
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@pierreo33 : When people tell me that isn’t likely, I like to remind them that it was unpopular wars abroad, that the people didn’t understand, that were the driving influence of both of Russia’s last revolutions. Their famous one took place during WWI, and the next one, the collapse of the Soviet Union, occurred directly after Russia’s defeat in Afghanistan. It was especially driven on by the mismatch between the victorious tone of their media, set against all those expectant families who didn’t even get a coffin when they thought their boy was coming home.
I lived through that time as an adult. And I followed news and current affairs as much as anyone (certainly more than, “the average guy”) and anyone who tells you they saw that utter soviet collapse coming is either, “misremembering,” or just lying. Even the people who lead it were simply swept up in events, rather than having the end game in sight, as all of the main players have since confirmed.
All of those main historical ingredients are in place at the moment, with the pressures only increasing domestically and on the front. This is why Putin has found it advantageous to have the airforce, army and navy all competing for resources and passing blame for failure on to each other. And then to have divisions within each force blaming one another and fighting over the bullets. The Wagner group is far from unique in that regard. The only thing that’s new about that is that Prigozhin has been doing it in public, which is, admittedly, unprecedented. But he merely represents how ALL Russian armed services behave, behind closed doors.
Yet, if one charismatic leader were to turn his tanks and howitzers around and point them at the Kremlin, the odds of his troops surviving the next three months will shoot up 90%. And it won’t be long now before a domestic protest, or, “incident,” in Russia, sparks the encouragement needed for entire battalions to head back to Moscow, happier to shoot at street cops rather than Abrams tanks . . . It just takes that first domino to fall . . .
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@Etaoinshrdlu69 : Except Ukraine won’t allow them to just sit on their hands. Right now, Ukraine is running its battlefront like a finely tuned machine, (with NATO’s help, of course) creating a money sink that is just sucking up all of Russia’s finances and irreplaceable resources. Why would Ukraine suddenly stop doing that? Or even relax the pressure? Their shaping operations are going really well. And just as they get ready to make a big push, yet another long range solution drops into their laps and they, once again, see no reason to expend precious lives, when Storm Shadows and Scout missiles can deplete key Russian reserves behind enemy lines, making it eventually safer for the Ukrainians when they do finally assault the front lines. Russia can’t just sit around at a stalemate while it’s being bled white. It’s not like the old trench warfare where everyone gets to stare at their watches and get bored, between the odd push for a few feet of ground. Russia is burning behind them. Their personnel, equipment and fuel depots are literally exploding and their economy is already down 40% in the last quarter. We can HOPE they’re that dumb, as the Kremlin will be in Ukrainian hands within three years if they do that!
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@Etaoinshrdlu69 : Forgive me. You’re quite right to correct my poor choice of phrasing there. But, before I get into that, I must correct you on one point: I PROMISE YOU: Putin will NOT use nukes (deliberately) under ANY circumstances.
He is getting ALL of the, “bang for his buck,” he can out of them, RIGHT NOW. Each time he even mentions nukes the western press gets unhelpfully hysterical. Yet, if he so much as drops a small, “tactical,” nuke anywhere in the world and it’s all over for him. The western allies have gamed this possibility out in permutations you and I could not have even dreamt of and their response will be instantaneous and overwhelming.
It will not just be the end of Putin, but that legacy obsessed, bullying little pr*ck will go down in history (written over his dead body and thus outside of his control) as the maddest, dumbest, evilest dick-tater the world has ever known! Outstripping Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini all rolled into one. And the important takeaway here is that Putin KNOWS this!
He also knows that China is more likely to assist the west than defend him and get into WWIII over such a stupid act, than fight on his side! At the very worst, they would stand back and do nothing, knowing they have a lot to gain from mopping up the sudden, “break away nations,” that no longer wish to be a part of insane Russia. They have a population crisis to solve in China and they’ve been eyeing up several Russian, “federations,” rather greedily of late. So they can play both ends of the table on this one, as they have been doing thus far.
So, to your correct point: I was speaking figuratively about how disastrous a policy of, “waiting out,” Ukraine would be for Russia. I didn’t mean that Ukraine would literally take the Kremlin, only that it would be almost as good as that. They will not make any incursions into Russia with western supplies. Though I expect they will make the odd sortie, in the manner of others we’ve already seen, such as when they flew in helicopters to blast a fuel depot just inside the Russian border in the early months of the war. But all such actions will be carried out with bespoke, home made equipment, from those mysterious military, “supply,” factories that the Germans are so helpfully assisting Ukraine in building as we speak.
Yes, eventually they will need to establish superiority over their borders, which will mean that the final weeks or months of the war will see them establish missile bases right along the Ukraine/Russia border that can identify and take out any threat, land, sea or airborne, far away from their own skies. They will have to have the assurance that nothing can get past that steel umbrella, so they don’t have to put up with their civilian population being harassed by air raid sirens every other day. Russia will be required to keep anything of military value a couple of hundred kilometres away from the Ukrainian border if they don’t want to see it explode.
But, you’re right. I should be more careful about my figures of speech, as I risk being taken literally, which was not my intention in that case. A poor choice of words. I guess I’m just a little caught up in the desire to see the world’s most cowardly nation being put back in its box where it belongs, and being forced to deal with its own issues internally instead of victimising the innocents of other sovereign nations as if we were still living in the Medieval days!
I believe that some nations reach a point, where they collectively celebrate the routine rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent children, that they have just as, “collectively,” earned collective chastisement. The last time we saw this was World War Two. Yet both Germany and China did the smart thing and did not just surrender, but they submitted to wholesale rebuilding and re-education on western values and the importance of the rule of law. Russia would be a prime candidate for such a, “nation building,” program, not susceptible to the types of issues which made it impossible (and an arrogant misjudgement) in Muslim countries. But, if they will not submit to such an opportunity, they must be forced, collectively, to reap what they have sown and, more importantly, NOT given the opportunity to make their problems anyone else’s!
But hey . . . That’s just me . . .
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You’re absolutely right. When Putin’s fat cats are missing being rescued from every tree they get stuck up by western money; when their wives start leaving them for more jet-setting types who don’t have targets on their backs and the backs of their kids, who probably don’t even know them very well, and who are all writing best sellers in the west about what ass hats their dads are; when they’re tired of being threatened with death constantly and have seen some of their friends and colleagues falling out of hospital upper flaw windows or getting Novichocked; when they’re sick of spending what little capital they have left on private security outfits because they live in constant fear of the people as much as their own government and begin to realise that Sasha on the front line probably has a longer life expectancy; when even Lil’ Kim won’t visit because he doesn’t like slumming it and besides, it’s just not safe in Russia? . . .
My guess is that it will start with the armed forces? A few colonels (maybe one or two generals?) who know they are facing show trials at home if they don’t deliver results that can only be achieved through the wiping out of their own entire divisions, will look into the faces of those boys and say, “F*ck this noise, boys! Would you rather take on the best trained, best equipped fighting force in the world, to steal a country for one single person, or face down a few thousand, very well equipped, but not with the tanks and field guns we have, Muscovite cops? We’re going home, lads, and we’re taking back the Kremlin. Anyone who wants out? The Wagner group is that way.”
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