Russia threatens a retaliatory strike against US commercial satellites

"Western actions needlessly put at risk the sustainability of peaceful space activities."

Read the whole story

 

[DarthSlack]

Note that our resident tankie is characterizing NATO expansion as "Western aggression" and completely ignoring that Russian imperialism is the one and only reason for countries wanting to join NATO. It's no accident that Sweden and Finland, two looooong time holdouts, joined NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The moral of the story is if you don't want your neighbors to join NATO, don't be the reason that they want to join NATO.

 

[Imbrium]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia all it wants that doesn't mean it is part of Russia.

You appear to be unaware, but Ukraine voted to be independent, also in 1991. In fact, the Crimean referendum on becoming an autonomous republic happened before Ukraine voted on its own independence - Jan 20th for the vote, Feb 12th for the implementation. Ukraine's vote was Dec 1. Crimea was to be an autonomous soverign, and Ukraine's parliament decided that shouldn't be the case so they forcibly dissolved the constitution.

Okay, if Crimea wanted to be independent... how does that justify them being occupied by Russia?

It's a complicated situation and in any case "justify" is not really the correct word. Since the 2014 coup in Ukraine fighting in Crimea and Ukraine cutting off the water supply led to tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and millions displaced. It's not a good situation particularly considering the hostility with which ethnic Ukrainians persecute ethnic Russians in the region.

It's a situation where I can understand why the people in Crimea would wish for protection and given that and Western aggression (NATO expansion, unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty, general encirclement), Russia would feel the need to do something.

This war sucks, shouldn't have been started, and both sides feeding men and materiel into the grinder is a humanitarian nightmare. But if you do not know what led to it you can't understand the conflict or what each side wants.

And yet, you apparently are clueless as to why nations on the border of Russia would want to join NATO. Russia was kind and benevolent when they brought the Iron Curtain down on Eastern Europe, right? And if Crimea really, really wanted to be part of Russia, why did Putin have to send in the Little Green Men to invade in 2014, only admitting they were Russian military after the invasion was complete?

 

[DaveJ85]

>>Now, America's adversaries see little to no difference. "It's almost like they see companies like SpaceX as a branch of the US military, a mercenary in space, if you will, which changes how you view the lawfulness of attacking them," Victoria Samson, Washington Office Director of the Secure World Foundation, told Ars.<<

There is little to no difference in the public and private sectors in Russia or (especially) China. Even the Beijing Bioinformatics Institute was recently listed as a military asset.

 

[Statistical]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia all it wants that doesn't mean it is part of Russia.

You appear to be unaware, but Ukraine voted to be independent, also in 1991. In fact, the Crimean referendum on becoming an autonomous republic happened before Ukraine voted on its own independence - Jan 20th for the vote, Feb 12th for the implementation. Ukraine's vote was Dec 1. Crimea was to be an autonomous soverign, and Ukraine's parliament decided that shouldn't be the case so they forcibly dissolved the constitution.

Okay, if Crimea wanted to be independent... how does that justify them being occupied by Russia?

Don't concede false claims by tankies. Crimea can not vote for independence period. Once you concede that he will just move on to the next Kremlin lie and when you concede that the next lie. In a week you will be conceding the US government is illegitimate, NATO is a terrorist organization, Russia has a divine destiny to be at the center of a Eurasian Empire and anything less is subjugation of the Russian people.

 

[csilverman]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

It's not Israel so much as it is Afghanistan. Or Vietnam.

I don't think there's any way for Russia to hold indefinitely regardless of the outcome of military operations. Though this is how WARSAW already worked. Most members had attempted rebellion prior to actual independence.

As far as governments are concerned, it's Vietnam/Afghanistan: a major power attempting an invasion that it lacks the resources or will to maintain. Russia is barely able to maintain peace within CSTO, which is the closest thing to a remnant of the USSR that they already have. Ukraine is going to drive all of their other aspirations to the breaking point, and someone—probably not Putin—will ultimately realize that they haven't a chance at any kind of stable presence in Ukraine, and have sacrificed a half-century's worth of progress and power in the process. And as far as ongoing national conflicts, that'll probably be it.

Locally, it might be similar to Israel/Palestine, but I'd say far more like Northern Ireland. The occupied territories have a heavy Russian population, and if Ukraine ever gets Crimea back, they'll be inheriting a lot of Russians. Even if there isn't a "special military operation" going on, there will probably be serious bad blood between the pro-Russian people and their Ukrainian neighbors.

Which is not to say that Ukraine should just cede these territories; I hope they recover every square inch of territory they've lost. I deeply believe that Russia needs to come away from this conflict with nothing but years of hardship to look forward to. I'm just saying that, similar to the Troubles, this is not going to be over even after the war has technically ended.

The fact that Russia didn't stepped in to protect a CSTO member, means that CSTO is dead.

Imagine if Belarus attacked Lithuania and NATO did nothing.

That sounds like the conclusion the other CSTO members are coming to, even if they're being discreet about how they phrase it at this point. One of the main "benefits" to members is Russia's guarantee that it'll prop up the Kremlin-friendly strongmen who run those countries. If I were a tin-pot dictator in any one of those post-Soviet states, I'd be a little unnerved to see Russia reduced to buying weapons from Iran, shipping prisoners and high school kids to the front, and conspicuously AWOL in the ongoing Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict.

When I said Ukraine is going to push all of Russia's other aspirations to the breaking point, this was what I had in mind. The only thing Putin's accomplished so far is to drive his neighbors westward, and I have a feeling that Russia will end this conflict in such a state of disrepair that it's barely able to defend its own regime, let alone anybody else's.

 

[Celery Man]

Note that our resident tankie is characterizing NATO expansion as "Western aggression" and completely ignoring that Russian imperialism is the one and only reason for countries wanting to join NATO. It's no accident that Sweden and Finland, two looooong time holdouts, joined NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The moral of the story is if you don't want your neighbors to join NATO, don't be the reason that they want to join NATO.

"I keep beating my classmates up and they keep going to the principal. I am clearly the target of administrative aggression, so the beatings will increase until I am no longer the victim of aggression."

 

[Celery Man]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia. That doesn't mean the vote has any legal standing and it doesn't mean Russia now has territory in North America.

Also negotiation implies both sides give up something and that the compromise would be ethical. Russia has no interest in negotiating. It wants to annex all of Ukraine and subjugate its people. In WWII should the US have negotiated with Hltler to only exterminate half the Jews and he only gets to keep half of the stolen land in order to end the war. There are positions where compromise is not only impossible it is evil.

I think it's fair to note that the US did not give a shit about the Jewish people in Europe, as we consistently rejected refugees and refused to enter the war ourselves until war was declared on us. Your history looks a bit revisionist.

I've got a thing I do when Russian trolls like you show up to spew your Kremlin-shat talking points. I donate directly to the Ukrainian army for every post you make. In the donation comments - which are read by the Ukrainian military - I make sure to note everyone's username, so there's no doubt that you helped fund the Ukrainian war effort.

I'm sure your bosses will be pleased to know you not only failed at your job, but you're actively helping the enemy.

That's right - you post bullshit, you directly contribute to the defense of Ukraine and the harm of your countrymen... and I'm sure the Ukrainian military is happy to have that little bit of extra intelligence you're giving them (accounts can be traced, you know).

Think I'm joking? Here's the donation page from the Bank of Ukraine. My seriousness is as dead as the cannon fodder your boss Putin keeps throwing in the meat grinder.

The meat grinder you're helping fund.

... that you don't have to fund. You have the choice to stop. Don't post. Then you won't be helping put bullets in the guns pointed at your friends.

Don't let me stop your bloodthirst. You might enjoy the services of https://signmyrocket.com/

Don't worry about my bloodthirst, you've got plenty of that to deal with from your boss.

Spoilers: It's not my blood he's thirsty for.

 

[NetMage]

Stop speaking from ignorance and trying to make Kessler Syndrome a thing. It isn’t a thing, it won’t be a thing. Even if Russia hacked all of Starlink to set off their self destruct systems simultaneously, it wouldn’t happen.

Don’t listen to the fear mongers and learn something instead.

 

[chriskrum]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia all it wants that doesn't mean it is part of Russia.

You appear to be unaware, but Ukraine voted to be independent, also in 1991. In fact, the Crimean referendum on becoming an autonomous republic happened before Ukraine voted on its own independence - Jan 20th for the vote, Feb 12th for the implementation. Ukraine's vote was Dec 1. Crimea was to be an autonomous soverign, and Ukraine's parliament decided that shouldn't be the case so they forcibly dissolved the constitution.

Okay, if Crimea wanted to be independent... how does that justify them being occupied by Russia?

It's a complicated situation and in any case "justify" is not really the correct word. Since the 2014 coup in Ukraine fighting in Crimea and Ukraine cutting off the water supply led to tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and millions displaced. It's not a good situation particularly considering the hostility with which ethnic Ukrainians persecute ethnic Russians in the region.

It's a situation where I can understand why the people in Crimea would wish for protection and given that and Western aggression (NATO expansion, unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty, general encirclement), Russia would feel the need to do something.

This war sucks, shouldn't have been started, and both sides feeding men and materiel into the grinder is a humanitarian nightmare. But if you do not know what led to it you can't understand the conflict or what each side wants.

People lived under Russian rule. They didn't like it. I turn out that the Russians are brutal, rapist thugs who steal anything that isn't nailed down (sometimes they take the nails). They rejected Russia.

That isn't aggression. That isn't expansion. That's self-determination.

Which is the core of the entire war. You believe in self-determination, or you believe people should be ruled by whatever dictator is willing to hurt them the most.

There are not two sides to this.

There is only one aggressor. It's Russia.

 

[fenris_uy]

Putin lost his mind.

And therein lies the core issue- A delusional Putin.
Hopefully they don't get to the point where a debris field is a viable military strategy to knock out "military" satellites.

Putin shares these delusions of eternal prosecution by the west with the majority of russians. If Putin were to die tomorrow of natural causes or assassination, his replacement would stay course. This war is the will of the russian people.

This isn't actually true.

The Russian people have experienced 30 years of deliberate repression by an increasingly dictatorial government. They are essentially trained to not interfere.

They are not trained to support.

Should Putin die, the machinery in place will likely pick a different successor. At that point, the question becomes, "Is pursuing the "war" really the best option?" It's already being called "Putin's Folly" in many circles. I expect that to spread in the underground. The Oligarchs want warm water ports so they can continue to sell their stuff on a global market. But instead of negotiating rights of way for their products, like the Keystone Pipeline was supposed to have done, they decided they could take it by force, and discovered they can't.

Now they need an exit strategy that doesn't end with Moscow becoming a glowing pile of radioactive rubble.

It's strategically better for them to walk it all back after Putin dies (or is assassinated, because his tit is well and truly caught in a wringer and he's not getting out of that without a lot of blood and pain, and if the Oligarchs decide he needs to go, he'll be done), blame Putin for everything, do a bunch of mia culpas, bite the bullet in paying reparations, and negotiate with Ukraine to pay for the port space to do that quickly.

World peace is reestablished, Russia sanctions are gradually lifted, produce and product flow again, and all is right with the world.

I expect Russia will be required to demilitarize, much like Japan was required to do after WWII, and just maintain a verifiable defense force. Maybe even join NATO when China decides to move against them (that will come sooner or later).

That is an exit strategy that only requires one thing: Putin must die.

Do that, stop the war and everything else can be negotiated without firing another shot.

The warm water ports rationality needs to die already. They already have warm water ports, in Russia, and they could expand those ports cheaper than what this invasion is costing.

They are invading, because they want to restore the Russian Empire, not for economic reasons. It's hubris not a cold calculus.

 

[ABa]

Putin lost his mind.

And therein lies the core issue- A delusional Putin.
Hopefully they don't get to the point where a debris field is a viable military strategy to knock out "military" satellites.

Putin shares these delusions of eternal prosecution by the west with the majority of russians. If Putin were to die tomorrow of natural causes or assassination, his replacement would stay course. This war is the will of the russian people.

They're not really delusions though, are they? The sabre rattling by the west has never stopped, not even with the fall of the USSR. If anything it's increased, with the North Atlantic organization calling China (notably absent from the North Atlantic) a security challenge.

The fact is that the West has demonstrated over and over that they will never respect a non-Western hegemony, and will encroach and encircle any non-Western attempts.

Name checks out.

 

[Celery Man]

Parasite, can you show the class on a map where NATO has encircled Russia? I didn't even know we had the resources to blockade thousands and thousands of miles of Arctic and Pacific coastline, or occupy Mongolia and China.

 

[SteveDave_au]

This will be unpopular, but here goes: Russia has a point.

In time of war, civilian owned and operated facilities can be legitimate targets. Just because Raytheon isn't government-owned doesn't mean that their missile production lines wouldn't be targets, for instance.

The US has become used to the idea that we can project force out in to the world more-or-less with impunity, but that's not really true. We have involved ourselves in the Russia-Ukraine war, and I think we are right to do so, but that does mean that we are at risk of Russian retaliation. It might seem insane to us for Russia to strike the US or US-owned assets directly, but that doesn't mean they won't do so.

Russia has no point. I mean of course dual use infrastructure is a valid military target. Russia however can ill afford escalation. They are having to throw untrained men into the meatgrinder just to avoid capitulation at the current level of escalation.

Sure Russia could escalate things but so can the west. The US has refused to send F-16, M1 tanks, or long range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. We could we have chosen not to. An attack on western targets would change that calculus. We have also instructed Ukraine they can't use any US supplied weapons to strike targets within Russia. Another intentional limitation we have chosen to take. That could also change.

Russia is not a superpower it can't go toe to toe with a superpower. The fact that Russia military hasn't ceased to exist in Ukraine is largely the west showing restraint not Russia ability to prevent that outcome. Of course Russia already knows all this because otherwise they wouldn't be threatening to shoot down US satellites they would just be shooting down US satellites.

In fairness: you can't just send over F16s... it takes years to train the pilot to the aircraft; but yes, there's more than what we are doing that we could do.

I've wondered what would happen should the Russians move a tactical nuclear weapon within striking distance of Ukraine. I'd like to think it would result in a direct airstrike from NATO on the launch system. It would risk an escalation; but it's also the only way to actually *have* a "red line"... which is a term we often bandy about but without meaning.

Clearly there are unofficial rules being followed. No one is fighting outside of Ukrainian territory. That means that Ukraine isn't attacking across the border; and Russia is having to just accept the tremendous aid happening outside Ukraine (whether NATO surveillance, or training and staging in Poland).

It's a strange dance; with the people of Ukraine caught, tragically, in the middle.

It takes years to train a non-pilot to become a jet fighter pilot, but an already experienced fighter pilot can become proficient on a new system in a matter of months. Conceivably, it's plausible that there are already Ukranians who have quietly trained on modern NATO jets and could fly them on short notice if they became available.

True. But remember that it's not just the pilots though. It's also the whole support and logistics structures that need to be outfitted, retrained, updated etc.

F16s aren't much good to you if you can't keep them flying after the first few sorties.

None of that is insurmountable of course, but it's not quick either.

It isn't quick but we are on the eight month of the war not the eighth day. Sadly we heard in February that F-16 would take too long as a rationale for not starting the process. It is very unlikely the war will be over in less than a year. We should start thinking longer term. The early weapon systems blunted the Russia invasion and caused them to smash their most capable units and weapons against the Ukrainian rocks. The current larger heavier weapon systems are allowing the Ukrainians to start to liberate parts of the country and prevent Russians for regrouping. It will take more for them to end the war decisively.

To be fair, they've been pretty busy for the last eight months.

So getting them every piece of Soviet era equipment NATO members had along with specific systems that could be deployed quickly and worked with their existing tactics seems to have been the right call.

But I agree figuring out to get them converted to as much NATO standard as possible seems like it should be a priority going forward.

 

[Celery Man]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia. That doesn't mean the vote has any legal standing and it doesn't mean Russia now has territory in North America.

Also negotiation implies both sides give up something and that the compromise would be ethical. Russia has no interest in negotiating. It wants to annex all of Ukraine and subjugate its people. In WWII should the US have negotiated with Hltler to only exterminate half the Jews and he only gets to keep half of the stolen land in order to end the war. There are positions where compromise is not only impossible it is evil.

I think it's fair to note that the US did not give a shit about the Jewish people in Europe, as we consistently rejected refugees and refused to enter the war ourselves until war was declared on us. Your history looks a bit revisionist.

I've got a thing I do when Russian trolls like you show up

It is quite a degradation of thought to say any dissenting opinion is such of a foreign troll. The very freedoms we promote and cherish are all of a sudden dismissed and thrown out. Perhaps we aren't much better than Russians after all.

Yes, saying someone is a troll on the internet is totally the same as bombing children or gang raping old women before torturing them to death and throwing them in a mass grave.

 

[chriskrum]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia. That doesn't mean the vote has any legal standing and it doesn't mean Russia now has territory in North America.

Also negotiation implies both sides give up something and that the compromise would be ethical. Russia has no interest in negotiating. It wants to annex all of Ukraine and subjugate its people. In WWII should the US have negotiated with Hltler to only exterminate half the Jews and he only gets to keep half of the stolen land in order to end the war. There are positions where compromise is not only impossible it is evil.

I think it's fair to note that the US did not give a shit about the Jewish people in Europe, as we consistently rejected refugees and refused to enter the war ourselves until war was declared on us. Your history looks a bit revisionist.

I've got a thing I do when Russian trolls like you show up

It is quite a degradation of thought to say any dissenting opinion is such of a foreign troll. The very freedoms we promote and cherish are all of a sudden dismissed and thrown out. Perhaps we aren't much better than Russians after all.

Bullshit.

Pointing out that someone's thoughts are ridiculously stupid, and counterfactual isn't a "degradation of thought" it's the exercise of thought.

Of course, Russians are trained not to think, just to regurgitate.

 

[chriskrum]

Parasite, can you show the class on a map where NATO has encircled Russia? I didn't even know we had the resources to blockade thousands and thousands of miles of Arctic and Pacific coastline, or occupy Mongolia and China.

Parasite doesn't have access to a map. Those are State secrets. That might show people how to leave his country.

 

[ABa]

With Musk already Grunting about supplying Ukraine with free internet access, it sounds to me as Putin just wants to give him an excuse to pull the plug.

I'm honestly surprised Starlink hasn't added a "Special Operation Logistical Support Fee" to subscriber's bills in the west.

What a very Comcast sort of thing for you to say!

 

[Celery Man]

Putin lost his mind.

And therein lies the core issue- A delusional Putin.
Hopefully they don't get to the point where a debris field is a viable military strategy to knock out "military" satellites.

Putin shares these delusions of eternal prosecution by the west with the majority of russians. If Putin were to die tomorrow of natural causes or assassination, his replacement would stay course. This war is the will of the russian people.

This isn't actually true.

The Russian people have experienced 30 years of deliberate repression by an increasingly dictatorial government. They are essentially trained to not interfere.

They are not trained to support.

Should Putin die, the machinery in place will likely pick a different successor. At that point, the question becomes, "Is pursuing the "war" really the best option?" It's already being called "Putin's Folly" in many circles. I expect that to spread in the underground. The Oligarchs want warm water ports so they can continue to sell their stuff on a global market. But instead of negotiating rights of way for their products, like the Keystone Pipeline was supposed to have done, they decided they could take it by force, and discovered they can't.

Now they need an exit strategy that doesn't end with Moscow becoming a glowing pile of radioactive rubble.

It's strategically better for them to walk it all back after Putin dies (or is assassinated, because his tit is well and truly caught in a wringer and he's not getting out of that without a lot of blood and pain, and if the Oligarchs decide he needs to go, he'll be done), blame Putin for everything, do a bunch of mia culpas, bite the bullet in paying reparations, and negotiate with Ukraine to pay for the port space to do that quickly.

World peace is reestablished, Russia sanctions are gradually lifted, produce and product flow again, and all is right with the world.

I expect Russia will be required to demilitarize, much like Japan was required to do after WWII, and just maintain a verifiable defense force. Maybe even join NATO when China decides to move against them (that will come sooner or later).

That is an exit strategy that only requires one thing: Putin must die.

Do that, stop the war and everything else can be negotiated without firing another shot.

The warm water ports rationality needs to die already. They already have warm water ports, in Russia, and they could expand those ports cheaper than what this invasion is costing.

They are invading, because they want to restore the Russian Empire, not for economic reasons. It's hubris not a cold calculus.

Also, you usually have to have ships to take full advantage of a port, and Russia seems to be on a mission to convert their fleets to artificial reefs.

 

[Imbrium]

Parasite, can you show the class on a map where NATO has encircled Russia? I didn't even know we had the resources to blockade thousands and thousands of miles of Arctic and Pacific coastline, or occupy Mongolia and China.

Parasite doesn't have access to a map. Those are State secrets. That might show people how to leave his country.

If he doesn't have a map, he's perfect for the Russian army, as the soldiers don't have them either...along with modern weapons, food, warm clothing, body armor...

 

[passivesmoking]

Fucking Vlad the imploder.

He's a a text-book abuser. Not only is he horrifically violent, but it's always his victim's fault. "Why did you make us invade you and blow up your maternity wards, Ukraine? You shouldn't have been so pally with the west". "How dare you fight back against us! That's a terrorist act!". "If you make me blow up your satellites, then it's your fault". All he needs is the white string vest and the six pack of Stella and the look is complete.

And if that wasn't enough, he's also a complete moron. The ISS has already had to make multiple manoeuvres to avoid the debris from his satellite-killer test, the last one only very recently. The last thing anyone needs, Russia included, is even more space debris flying around up there.

I honestly hope that when his end comes, it's excruciating

 

[Statistical]

Should Putin die, the machinery in place will likely pick a different successor. At that point, the question becomes, "Is pursuing the "war" really the best option?" It's already being called "Putin's Folly" in many circles. I expect that to spread in the underground. The Oligarchs want warm water ports so they can continue to sell their stuff on a global market. But instead of negotiating rights of way for their products, like the Keystone Pipeline was supposed to have done, they decided they could take it by force, and discovered they can't.

This is a lie. Not saying you are lying but you continue to repeat falsehoods. People have corrected you now multiple times and yet you keep repeating it. Don't be a Kremlin "useful idiot".

Russia has a warm water port Novorossiysk (and Sochi). Novorossiysk is the largest port in Russia. By tonnage it moves three times as much as Odessa. It has significant land available for expansion. It has an extensive network of oil and gas pipelines built connecting it to the rest of Russia for exporting oil and gas.

I expect Russia will be required to demilitarize, much like Japan was required to do after WWII, and just maintain a verifiable defense force. Maybe even join NATO when China decides to move against them (that will come sooner or later).

This is unlikely to ever happen. Countries don't demilitarize by choice they do so because they are under occupation and the occupying force does the demilitarization. Due to nuclear weapons Russia will never be a repeat of Germany or Japan where the Allies occupied it, demilitarized it, rebuilt it, and changed its government and only handed by self rule once they were confident they were on the right path.

Even if that would be the best thing for the world and Russia in the long term it will never happen. Case in point we haven't demilitarized North Korea. The best we can hope for is to contain Russia like North Korea and ensure it can't attack its neighbors.

 

[SteveDave_au]

Russian military has been proven to be potato on a scale that has shocked even the western analyst with the most pessimistic view of their capabilities.

I am not saying we should invade Russia in fact we absolutely shouldn't but without nuclear weapons it isn't clear Russia could provide much of a credible defense anymore.

Never underestimate the desire to defend one self. Germany found that out in WW2. America found it out in Vietnam (and Iraq and Afghanistan). And Russia is finding it out now. If NATO went into Russia they would most undoubtedly find it out then as well.

Only way this ends "well" is for Putin to be gone I think.

There is a difference between beating someone militarily and occupying them. Occupation is hard incredibly hard and it takes an incredibly long time. Destroying Russia military conventionally so they have no capability to extert force beyond their border for decades would not require an occupation. Granted this is all academic because Russia has nuclear weapons and nuclear powers don't get invaded.

Russia is seeing its military destroyed in a meat grinder, and they are so desperate they even sent air defense units from Moscow to the front. They have primarily raided the eastern part of the country for weapons and soldiers. They are looking weaker and weaker, but you know who isn't? Their neighbor to the south, China.

Also having to buy artillery shells from North Korea and Drones and Missiles from Iran probably isn't the best sign that things are going to plan.

 

[The Dark]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia. That doesn't mean the vote has any legal standing and it doesn't mean Russia now has territory in North America.

Also negotiation implies both sides give up something and that the compromise would be ethical. Russia has no interest in negotiating. It wants to annex all of Ukraine and subjugate its people. In WWII should the US have negotiated with Hltler to only exterminate half the Jews and he only gets to keep half of the stolen land in order to end the war. There are positions where compromise is not only impossible it is evil.

I'll quibble slightly with the first two paragraphs in that countries can set up such legal frameworks but typically don't. The major counterpoint here is the Velvet Divorce of Czech Republic and Slovakia, but the more modern one would be the secession of South Sudan from Sudan by referendum in 2011, said referendum being agreed upon by the government to end the 1983-2005 Second Sudanese Civil War.

I think the key here is that the central government has to agree to allow the vote, which isn't the case in your example.

 

[Celery Man]

So weird that whenever I call out a Russian troll and post that "donate to the Ukrainian military" page, the troll account suddenly disappears from the thread.

Every. Single. Time.

 

[JohnCarter17]

Stop speaking from ignorance and trying to make Kessler Syndrome a thing. It isn’t a thing, it won’t be a thing. Even if Russia hacked all of Starlink to set off their self destruct systems simultaneously, it wouldn’t happen.

Don’t listen to the fear mongers and learn something instead.

Kessler Clowns gotta Kessler Clown.

 

[passivesmoking]

And just how are you going to do that, Russia? Launch all your nukes set for detonation at an extremely high altitude so you blanket the entire planet in an EMP and set global technology back a century?

Or is all this just part of your superpower-wannabe cosplay?

The nukes? They genuinely might. Who's gonna stop them?

Their mutually assured destruction?

The people in the Russian military with the launch-keys who no more want to die in a nuclear Armageddon than any of us, especially not over something so utterly fucking pointless as Russia's dumb fuck invasion?

 

[JohnCarter17]

Putin lost his mind.

And therein lies the core issue- A delusional Putin.
Hopefully they don't get to the point where a debris field is a viable military strategy to knock out "military" satellites.

Putin shares these delusions of eternal prosecution by the west with the majority of russians. If Putin were to die tomorrow of natural causes or assassination, his replacement would stay course. This war is the will of the russian people.

This isn't actually true.

The Russian people have experienced 30 years of deliberate repression by an increasingly dictatorial government. They are essentially trained to not interfere.

They are not trained to support.

Should Putin die, the machinery in place will likely pick a different successor. At that point, the question becomes, "Is pursuing the "war" really the best option?" It's already being called "Putin's Folly" in many circles. I expect that to spread in the underground. The Oligarchs want warm water ports so they can continue to sell their stuff on a global market. But instead of negotiating rights of way for their products, like the Keystone Pipeline was supposed to have done, they decided they could take it by force, and discovered they can't.

Now they need an exit strategy that doesn't end with Moscow becoming a glowing pile of radioactive rubble.

It's strategically better for them to walk it all back after Putin dies (or is assassinated, because his tit is well and truly caught in a wringer and he's not getting out of that without a lot of blood and pain, and if the Oligarchs decide he needs to go, he'll be done), blame Putin for everything, do a bunch of mia culpas, bite the bullet in paying reparations, and negotiate with Ukraine to pay for the port space to do that quickly.

World peace is reestablished, Russia sanctions are gradually lifted, produce and product flow again, and all is right with the world.

I expect Russia will be required to demilitarize, much like Japan was required to do after WWII, and just maintain a verifiable defense force. Maybe even join NATO when China decides to move against them (that will come sooner or later).

That is an exit strategy that only requires one thing: Putin must die.

Do that, stop the war and everything else can be negotiated without firing another shot.

The warm water ports rationality needs to die already. They already have warm water ports, in Russia, and they could expand those ports cheaper than what this invasion is costing.

They are invading, because they want to restore the Russian Empire, not for economic reasons. It's hubris not a cold calculus.

Also, you usually have to have ships to take full advantage of a port, and Russia seems to be on a mission to convert their fleets to artificial reefs.

Nyet. Are single use submarines.

 

[Statistical]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia. That doesn't mean the vote has any legal standing and it doesn't mean Russia now has territory in North America.

Also negotiation implies both sides give up something and that the compromise would be ethical. Russia has no interest in negotiating. It wants to annex all of Ukraine and subjugate its people. In WWII should the US have negotiated with Hltler to only exterminate half the Jews and he only gets to keep half of the stolen land in order to end the war. There are positions where compromise is not only impossible it is evil.

I'll quibble slightly with the first two paragraphs in that countries can set up such legal frameworks but typically don't. The major counterpoint here is the Velvet Divorce of Czech Republic and Slovakia, but the more modern one would be the secession of South Sudan from Sudan by referendum in 2011, said referendum being agreed upon by the government to end the 1983-2005 Second Sudanese Civil War.

I think the key here is that the central government has to agree to allow the vote, which isn't the case in your example.

Fair point I added the word "unilaterally" for accuracy.

 

[Bilateralrope]

And just how are you going to do that, Russia? Launch all your nukes set for detonation at an extremely high altitude so you blanket the entire planet in an EMP and set global technology back a century?

Or is all this just part of your superpower-wannabe cosplay?

The nukes? They genuinely might. Who's gonna stop them?

Their mutually assured destruction?

The people in the Russian military with the launch-keys who no more want to die in a nuclear Armageddon than any of us, especially not over something so utterly fucking pointless as Russia's dumb fuck invasion?

Don't forget the possibility that someone sold some crucial part of the missiles on the black market.

 

[chriskrum]

Bullshit.

Pointing out that someone's thoughts are ridiculously stupid, and counterfactual isn't a "degradation of thought" it's the exercise of thought.

Of course, Russians are trained not to think, just to regurgitate.

I don't know what Russians are trained to think, but I'd like you to clarify if perhaps Chomsky and similar folks are Russian trolls, just so I read / listen to the approved materials going forward.

Oh, fuck off.

I don't need to "clarify" anything to an apologist for the ongoing atrocity in Ukraine.

Your gambit to derail the thread so you can sneak Kremlin talking points in is obvious.

You might want to up your game with some links to Tucker Carlson and the like.

Or, if you're sincere (you're not), feel free to track back through thousands of comments which would actually answer your question instead of concern trolling about needing clarification and "just asking questions."

 

[passivesmoking]

Yes. And they already have nukes in orbit. They definitely could use a 'Starfish' incident in LEO to waste entire constellations of satellites. There would be massive side effects, but he may be crazy enough to do it.

Somebody's been reading too much Tom Clancy.

Orbiting nukes are a ridiculous idea. It takes far more energy to put a nuke in orbit than it would to launch it on a ballistic trajectory with an ICBM, and once it's up there you can't get it down again. You can't do any maintainence, you can't do any checks, and you can't salvage and recycle the plutonium (which is hideously expensive) once it's decayed beyond the point of being a useful weapon, never mind what the constant exposure to solar radiation will do to the electronics and the secondary (if it's a thermonuclear device, and if you're going to the effort of putting nukes up there in the first place, why would you not put a H bomb up there?). And then when it does reach the end of its useful life, how do you dispose of it? The only remotely sane option would be to leave it up there forever, as there's no way to safely deorbit it. The enemy might mistake it for an attack, and even if they don't you're bringing a great big load of nuclear material and burning it up in the atmosphere or crashing it into (hopefully) the deep ocean.

For the money to put one nuke up there you could probably build and equip at least half a dozen Trident submarines, a far more effective, not to mention terrifying deterrent.

And as for detonating a nuke in orbit, you've basically just ended the space age if you do it. Not only will all hardware already up there be destroyed, you'll make space inaccessible for years to come.

EDIT: Oh, and of course there's then also orbital mechanics, I completely forgot about that one because the list of reasons why orbital nukes are a dumb idea is already plenty long enough. Once you've committed your nuclear weapons to a particular orbital track, you can only use them to attack targets on the ground that are on or near that track, unless you give them a ridiculous amount of cross-range capability, which only adds to the weight you have to get into orbit in the first place. Of course you could put them in a polar orbit, which will cover the entire surface of the Earth eventually, but that carries its own Pandora's box of problems.

 

[Sarty]

"Calling someone a foreign troll without evidence" as if they would have a framed Official Troll Certificate on their office wall, the way you hang a diploma.

lol

 

[Bilateralrope]

Yes. And they already have nukes in orbit. They definitely could use a 'Starfish' incident in LEO to waste entire constellations of satellites. There would be massive side effects, but he may be crazy enough to do it.

Somebody's been reading too much Tom Clancy.

Orbiting nukes are a ridiculous idea. It takes far more energy to put a nuke in orbit than it would to launch it on a ballistic trajectory with an ICBM, and once it's up there you can't get it down again. You can't do any maintainence, you can't do any checks, and you can't salvage and recycle the plutonium (which is hideously expensive) once it's decayed beyond the point of being a useful weapon, never mind what the constant exposure to solar radiation will do to the electronics and the secondary (if it's a thermonuclear device, and if you're going to the effort of putting nukes up there in the first place, why would you not put a H bomb up there?). And then when it does reach the end of its useful life, how do you dispose of it? The only remotely sane option would be to leave it up there forever, as there's no way to safely deorbit it. The enemy might mistake it for an attack, and even if they don't you're bringing a great big load of nuclear material and burning it up in the atmosphere or crashing it into (hopefully) the deep ocean.

For the money to put one nuke up there you could probably build and equip at least half a dozen Trident submarines, a far more effective, not to mention terrifying deterrent.

And as for detonating a nuke in orbit, you've basically just ended the space age if you do it. Not only will all hardware already up there be destroyed, you'll make space inaccessible for years to come.

I don't think leaving it up there forever is an option in LEO. There is still a very thin atmosphere that will eventually drag it down from orbit.

As for a higher orbit, that will require more energy.

 

[passivesmoking]

This will be unpopular, but here goes: Russia has a point.

You're right. That will be unpopular.

Nobody who puts genocide on the top of their list of options for solving a perceived diplomatic issue should allowed to have opinions, let alone have apologists validate those opinions.

 

[fenris_uy]

Does anyone have any credible insight into how this conflict will end? I mean, yeah, "Putin withdraws from Ukraine," but what would bring that about, politically? Or will this turn into another Israeli/Palestinian conflict that never really ends?

I have no insight into these matters. I'm really just asking.

I'm suspecting that unfortunately this will become more like Israel/Palestine than anything else. Unless something changes the calculus to directly cause WWIII, there's no apparent way out for either side. Russia wants Crimea, which itself has voted to be if not Russian, at least independent from Ukraine multiple times since 1991. Ukraine has never once recognized this (even dissolved the Crimean constitution unilaterally in 1995), and spent the previous 8 years shelling separatists, since the Western-backed coup of Ukraine. The geopolitical lines outside of that have been a steady encroachment of the West on Russia to attempt to encircle it. Little wonder they get skittish about hostile missiles on their borders when the US threatened nuclear hellfire over missiles located in Cuba.

As long as one side of this conflict can't decisively win, and Ukraine continues to refuse to negotiate, this will continue. It's awful.

Countries are sovereign. A part of a country has no legal standing to vote for independence or even more dubious becoming part of another country. Voting implies a legal framework and there is no legal framework that allows that.

Florida can vote to join Russia. That doesn't mean the vote has any legal standing and it doesn't mean Russia now has territory in North America.

Also negotiation implies both sides give up something and that the compromise would be ethical. Russia has no interest in negotiating. It wants to annex all of Ukraine and subjugate its people. In WWII should the US have negotiated with Hltler to only exterminate half the Jews and he only gets to keep half of the stolen land in order to end the war. There are positions where compromise is not only impossible it is evil.

I'll quibble slightly with the first two paragraphs in that countries can set up such legal frameworks but typically don't. The major counterpoint here is the Velvet Divorce of Czech Republic and Slovakia, but the more modern one would be the secession of South Sudan from Sudan by referendum in 2011, said referendum being agreed upon by the government to end the 1983-2005 Second Sudanese Civil War.

I think the key here is that the central government has to agree to allow the vote, which isn't the case in your example.

Or the Scotland independence referendum, that wasn't a thing, until the UK government allowed for it to happen.