Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014) [Archive] - Page 6

OUTLAW 09

04-23-2014, 08:34 PM

Stan---I got what I need in profiling mirhond and the TTPs---thanks as it is being used in a future study on counter I/O that others have shown an interest in.

The Ukraine game has run its course and Putin is on third and heading home and we are not even in the game as they say ---simply because virtually the entire Russian defense industry sits in eastern Ukraine and Russian would need 6-10 years to rebuild it in Russia and they cannot wait as they have started their Force rebuild which has to be completed by 2020. Therefore they will not give up the eastern part to the "Right Sector" regardless of economic costs nor to the current "illegitimate" Ukrainian government nor US sanctions. By the way the 2020 plan foresaw building 42 plus ships and now the Crimea gives Russia an additional two shipyards and if coupled to Odessa gives them the necessary shipyards to complete the 42 in time for 2020.

The single question is now will the new US containment policy that is being formulated on the move and implemented on the move be in fact supported by NATO and more especially the Germans?

Russia has won their implemented UW and political warfare campaign and our national leaders and military leaders do no even understand the game.

That is the core question or a second core question is Putin really also after splitting the US from NATO and the US from the EU as part of his political warfare thus ending the "perceived" US unipolar hegemony---it was all in his Duma speech if people really read it and listened to his Russian intonation.

Stan

04-23-2014, 08:45 PM

http://euobserver.com/eu-elections/123887

Kaur,

Isn't this more of the same from the Soviet era when they were supported by the extreme left, performing the bidding for Moscow ?

Now to the extreme right with opposition to immigration and gay marriage ?

Seems they are but puppets and got sucked in when Zubarev talked about family, nation and religion (as if he even knew what he was talking about).

I'm glad Estonia didn't get sucked into this Sierra.

Stan

04-23-2014, 09:21 PM

Outlaw,

Stan---I got what I need in profiling mirhond and the TTPs---thanks as it is being used in a future study on counter I/O that others have shown an interest in.

Great to hear; maybe she will do the same herein and after.

The Ukraine game has run its course and Putin is on third and heading home and we are not even in the game as they say ---simply because virtually the entire Russian defense industry sits in eastern Ukraine and Russian would need 6-10 years to rebuild it in Russia and they cannot wait as they have started their Force rebuild which has to be completed by 2020. Therefore they will not give up the eastern part to the "Right Sector" regardless of economic costs nor to the current "illegitimate" Ukrainian government nor US sanctions. By the way the 2020 plan foresaw building 42 plus ships and now the Crimea gives Russia an additional two shipyards and if coupled to Odessa gives them the necessary shipyards to complete the 42 in time for 2020.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Vova wanted 512 ships by 2030, and, he stressed the need for Russian companies to learn Western technologies. He was also going to go Far East for that high tech sierra. In fact, South Korea and China were or still are considered strategic partners.

While the Ukraine may be in the top ten for metal, they are high hurdles from Finnish and Chinese metal and ship production capabilities. And, the corruption levels found in the Ukraine are limited only by one's imagination. So, Putin should find himself right a home :D

The single question is now will the new US containment policy that is being formulated on the move and implemented on the move be in fact supported by NATO and more especially the Germans?

Nope, I doubt any support will come from NATO. We jumped the gun with 600 soldiers and 12 aircraft as if that was threatening. Bravo Sierra. What's the deal with the Germans ? You mean Gerhard ? Everyone knows he is best buds with Vova, but to influence the entire German population with 1.7 million Turks to boot :rolleyes:

Russia has won their implemented UW and political warfare campaign and our national leaders and military leaders do no even understand the game.

That is the core question or a second core question is Putin really also after splitting the US from NATO and the US from the EU as part of his political warfare thus ending the "perceived" US unipolar hegemony---it was all in his Duma speech if people really read it and listened to his Russian intonation.

I doubt our military leadership does not comprehend, but I do believe our administration is lost in a euphoria of post elections. Unless he does a Clinton, he will cruise right through to retirement unscathed.

I sincerely doubt NATO would exist without its largest contributor bordering on 75%. Hard to split the sole financial source excluding the building in Belgium. Similarly, I think that UN thing in NY should be in Shanghai along with the duds inside. The EU can't afford to walk away from US.

TheCurmudgeon

04-23-2014, 09:28 PM

The Russians are comming ...

Apparently the Russian Constitution gives Russia the right to invade any country where a Russian citizen and sometimes not just citizens, just an ethnic Russian) is threatened. Not sure how that squares with international norms:

Meanwhile, Lavrov insists Russia is merely protecting its interests.

“If we are attacked, we would certainly respond,” he said.

“If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia, for example, I do not see nay other way but to respond in full accordance with international law,” he said. ...

Georgian sources tell WND that Russia intends to take action similar to what it did in Crimea by annexing South Ossetia to the Russian Federation. It’s part of an overall Russian strategy to set up buffer zones against NATO encroachment to the Russian border.

Residents of South Ossetia are said to be in favor of annexation, since there is a large concentration of ethnic Russians there.

“Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation,” Lavrov told Russia Today in an interview that is to be broadcast later Wednesday.

Lavrov denied that Russian troops are in Ukraine, although regional sources tell WND that the pro-Russian troops in uniforms without any markings are Russian Spetznaz, or special forces. The forces now have entered into eastern Ukraine, where ethnic Russians have been demonstrating to be annexed to Russia.

“The only thing I would like to highlight at this stage is that the Russian troops are on the Russian territory,” Lavrov said, without elaboration.

http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/russia-threatens-military-invasion-of-ukraine/

So, if a Russian is attacked say, in Miami, then Russia can invade and annex South Beach! Makes perfect sence to me.

Stan

04-23-2014, 09:53 PM

Ukraine Crisis Could Impact Chernobyl Radiation Shield (http://en.ria.ru/world/20140423/189331830/OPINION-Ukraine-Crisis-Could-Impact-Chernobyl-Radiation-Shield.html)

“The reactor is leaking as it is, that’s the worry. The current shield is not enclosing the leak fully, not preventing it,” Camrody said, reiterating the concern that geopolitics might interfere with the construction schedule.

kaur

04-23-2014, 10:00 PM

I'm glad that one educated man has written article about our discussion here. Beards, AK-100, KGB etc :)

Moscow's War in Ukraine Relies on Local Assets
By Mark GaleottiApr. 23 2014 21:20 Last edited 21:20

In many ways, the hunt for clear, undeniable proof of direct Russian involvement in the eastern Ukrainian rebellion — above all, the presence of its special forces and intelligence officers — has become a political Rorschach test. Those determined to deny any Russian role can airily dismiss all claims. Those eager to prove a link see evidence all around them. But both miss the point. It is safe to assume that Russian operatives are there, but to assume that they are the gunmen is to misunderstand the nature of the Russian campaign and the new kind of war being fought.

...

On the ground, the primary actors appear to be the local political and security elites. They are closely connected to Russia and have every reason to fear coming under the control of a new Ukrainian government. Just as in the Cold War, when the KGB was stirring up revolutionary wars and insurgencies around the world, the Kremlin's men are not on the front line. They are behind the scenes, coordinating, recruiting, training, arming and supporting.

This strategy of undermining Kiev is cheap, easy, cynical and effective. But it also means that when some kind of political settlement is reached, it will be harder to control these militants.

Just as Maidan Square, the source of a popular uprising, has become the crucible of violent nationalism, the militants from the pro-Russian side have dug in their heels in the battle for Ukraine. They will unlikely be comfortable returning to their normal lives. It is hard to see the thugs of Slovyansk and Mariupol duly handing in their shiny new guns. The new breed of local "commanders"— often linked with organized crime — will need to be co-opted or crushed.

In short, Moscow's decision not to fight this conflict through conventional means and with its own men may mean that it wins the war, but it will have a much harder time keeping the peace after that.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/498851.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+themoscowtimes%2Fopinion+%28T he+Moscow+Times+Opinion%29

kaur

04-23-2014, 10:40 PM

Another good comment.

The operational strategy and tactics used in Crimea depended to a large degree on the presence of a Russian base and others factors. Forces in the Southern Military District were on heightened alert and readiness because of the Sochi Winter Olympics. Russian forces were able to operate in a friendly, largely Russian-speaking environment, and Moscow knew, probably in great detail, the disheveled condition of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In this sense the operation could be difficult to replicate elsewhere, even if the political will exists in Moscow to attempt some economically unsustainable policy of land grabbing from neighbors. For example, the self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic is effectively cut off from a Russian military perspective, meaning it would be much more difficult to accomplish such an operation and largely depend on insertion by air. The same problems would be encountered in the Baltic states, but they have nothing to fear because Putin would never attack a NATO member.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/19th-century-thinking-but-21st-century-skills/498846.html

04-23-2014, 11:16 PM

Clearly one battalion of Airborne Infantry are not going to stop 40K Heavy Russian Soldiers, but I don’t believe that is their purpose.

Waiting to see what the further rotational units will be.

I suspect it will just be other companies from the various battalions of the
173rd Airborne Bde. Maybe if it lasts more than a year or so, it may include units from the Guard/Reserves similar to the rotations in the former Yugoslavia. But that will take some convincing of a bunch of governors and state AGs I think.

Fuchs

04-24-2014, 12:26 AM

Folks, keep in mind 40 k is less than a divisional slice in Western parlance.

The Western politicians who are raising alarms about Russian 'troops concentrations' have no reason to downplay their extent by counting combat troops or troops in manoeuvre formations only. I strongly suppose they're counting all of them.

And 40k army troops aren't many. Seriously, that's about the size of the Bulgarian army.

20k, 40k, 100k - the figures don't really matter. What matters is whether and how quickly the current crew in Kiev gets its act together and gets loyal armed forces under its control. They may need to purge ethnic Russians from their army and maybe join two manoeuvre formations into one to get enough loyal troops, intact equipment and spares, and this (or other measures to the same end) takes time.
It doesn't take 12_years_for_the_mayor_of_Kabul time, but it takes some time - probably months.

TheCurmudgeon

04-24-2014, 12:29 AM

I suspect it will just be other companies from the various battalions of the
173rd Airborne Bde. Maybe if it lasts more than a year or so, it may include units from the Guard/Reserves similar to the rotations in the former Yugoslavia. But that will take some convincing of a bunch of governors and state AGs I think.

I am not so sure. It takes a while to gt things rolling at the Pentagon. My guess is that there will be a good, better, best set of options given to the administration.

This is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Russia has a Air Force and Satellites. We can't bluff. We can't hide. Whatever action we take (or fail to take) Putin will know about within a matter of hours. To be credible, it has to be substantial and comprehensive.

Of course, we may have already given up on the Ukraine, but I am not getting that impression yet.:rolleyes:

TheCurmudgeon

04-24-2014, 12:32 AM

Fuchs

04-24-2014, 12:36 AM

What's the deal with the Germans ? You mean Gerhard ? Everyone knows he is best buds with Vova, but to influence the entire German population with 1.7 million Turks to boot :rolleyes:

Schröder is a retired politician and not even held in high regard in Germany, unlike his predecessor's predecessor, who as a 95 year old gets attention when he gives advice as an elder statesman.

The Turks are politically and bureaucratically close to zero influence in Germany. There's but one national level politician of Turkish descent (a mere member of the federal parliament, not of the ruling coalition) and I know only one notable state-level politician with Turkish roots. They have no lobby to speak of.

Germans largely ignored the Ukraine since antiquity. The annual sum of news reports about the Ukraine in 2012 maybe matched the time spent watching the Ukrainian music group during the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest.
There's simply no motivation to do anything drastic in response to the crisis in the Ukraine.

I suppose it's a good national trait to not be easily fired up into a hostile stance (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/).

Dayuhan

04-24-2014, 02:13 AM

A complete crock? Perhaps, but I think not. That is not the point though. The point was the Soviet Union broke up because it was opposed, as you conceded.

Actually it is a complete crock: I don't think you'll find a single serious oil market analysts that buys into the story that the glut was deliberately contrived as a weapon against the Soviets. That's just not what happened. It matters, because now we're hearing some people thinking we can use oil prices as a weapon against the Russians.

The Soviet Union broke up for multiple reasons, but first and foremost among those reasons was that Communism just doesn't work. It wasn't necessary for any outside power to break the Soviet Union up. The West found a viable containment line, enforced it, and waited for the internal contradictions to catch up. That took time, but averted a war that could have produced extinction for the species. Worth the wait, I suspect.

Saying if Ukraine goes all is lost is a load of bollocks. But that is not what is being said, at least not by me. I have said that it will be a lot easier to actively work to save Ukraine now thereby stopping Russian aggression now than it will be to let it go under and then having to stop Vlad later. It will be harder because if he gets away with this, Vlad's Russia will be materially stronger and much more confident therefore much harder to fight and stop.

How would they be materially stronger? The Ukraine isn't exactly an economic asset, and could easily become a liability if the consolidation of power becomes awkward. Containing Russia will be easiest if it's not just the US in play: if the Europeans are fully cooperating with economic leverage (they have a lot more than we do) and increased participation in their own defense. That may mean finding a line at which Europe will become alarmed and participate.

'Europe' doesn't matter. Poland matters. Sweden matters. The Czech Republic matters. The Ukraine matters. All of those countries and others have plenty of motivation to resist strongly. All they need from us are money and weapons and a little evidence of backbone. We've supplied none.

Europe matters because they have the economic leverage that's needed to put a real long-term price on what Russia is doing. Trying to pursue containment without a viable alliance with common motivation across the board is going to be a whole lot more difficult. I think you're looking at this purely in terms of military deterrence. Not sure that makes sense.

Foreign policy is who is in the White House. Reagan is part of my recent memory and I wouldn't think he would stand passively by. My opinion only of course. Bush II initiated the Surge in Iraq in the face of great opposition, that is in my recent memory too.

Do you think Reagan would have gone to war with Russia over the Ukraine? I don't. Avoiding direct military confrontation, especially along the other party's borders has been a consistent practice on the part of nuclear powers since the start of the Cold War, goes back to that whole mutual assured destruction thing. That doesn't mean all kinds of other maneuvers can't be made, of course.

Yes, exactly. In order to stop an aggressive thug like Putin, you actually have to do something.

The question is what, when, and where. Answering that question requires a bit of pragmatism and a reasonable assessment of threats and assets.

First, unless you want to freeze the world in place as it is at this second, Putin will always find an excuse to aggress. If he can't find one he'll just send in the provocateurs you mentioned above and create one, as he is doing now.

Of course... that whole game of "spy vs spy" has been going on a long time. He tries to make excuses, we try to counter and preempt them. Catching and exposing would-be provocateurs or holding referenda to preempt the Russians and show that areas do not feel threatened and do not desire re-union with Russia accomplish as much as deploying armor. If Putin can't find or create an opportunity and an excuse he can always just invade without one, but that changes his risk calculations dramatically.

Second, you are right about him having reasoned that the US won't do anything. But you are wrong about that not being peculiar to this administration. After having rolled the chief executive with a word over the ABM system in east Europe and made a fool of him in Syria I think he concluded that fecklessness is a prime characteristic of this chief executive. My opinion only of course.

Again, I don't think any US administration of the nuclear age would have gone to war with Russia over Crimea, or any part of the Ukraine. It's not a question of who's in office, it's a question of whether the Ukraine is important enough to the US to take the risk of going to war. It's not. He knows it. So do we.

Appeasement does not refer to the Cold War. It refers to Europe pre-WWII.

Appeasement is a policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power in order to avoid conflict. That doesn't necessarily refer to any particular case.

How lightly you dismiss all those real live people asking our help who live in a country being invaded by the Russians or looking at threat on the horizon.

Are we ready to have a showdown over the Ukraine? Are allies in place? re we working with a functioning government that has full control over it armed forces? Have we mustered the economic leverage for a prolonged confrontation? Are we confronting on terms advantageous to us, or on terms advantageous to our adversary?

If we're going to pursue confrontation, we want to be sure we do it in the way least likely to produce armed conflict and most likely to produce a long term win. That means being both careful and pragmatic about choices on when, where, and how. Letting the antagonist dictate these conditions does not seem a good idea to me.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 06:15 AM

Outlaw,

Great to hear; maybe she will do the same herein and after.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Vova wanted 512 ships by 2030, and, he stressed the need for Russian companies to learn Western technologies. He was also going to go Far East for that high tech sierra. In fact, South Korea and China were or still are considered strategic partners.

While the Ukraine may be in the top ten for metal, they are high hurdles from Finnish and Chinese metal and ship production capabilities. And, the corruption levels found in the Ukraine are limited only by one's imagination. So, Putin should find himself right a home :D

Nope, I doubt any support will come from NATO. We jumped the gun with 600 soldiers and 12 aircraft as if that was threatening. Bravo Sierra. What's the deal with the Germans ? You mean Gerhard ? Everyone knows he is best buds with Vova, but to influence the entire German population with 1.7 million Turks to boot :rolleyes:

I doubt our military leadership does not comprehend, but I do believe our administration is lost in a euphoria of post elections. Unless he does a Clinton, he will cruise right through to retirement unscathed.

I sincerely doubt NATO would exist without its largest contributor bordering on 75%. Hard to split the sole financial source excluding the building in Belgium. Similarly, I think that UN thing in NY should be in Shanghai along with the duds inside. The EU can't afford to walk away from US.

Stan---notice how though Germany has gotten extremely quiet as they were always for diplomacy as they are basically and will always be anti war anything.

They are not happy with Obama's moves and there are some quiet questions emerging in the German newspapers questioning NATO's abilities.

Also notice the rivalry between Poland and some of the other EU countries on creating a standardized energy process which they want cola and nuclear and Germany has moved on and the eastern EU countries with the Poles wanted to be able to get a far cheaper gas price as they can when they negotiate as individual countries.

The Russian strategic use of UW/political warfare has three components and splitting the US from NATO/EU is indeed one of them and right now the subtle indicators are there.

The Duma speech indicates that-and Putin has often spoken of the disappearance of the unipolar world with the US as the single power.

By the way the conventional army is still trying to understand UW meaning their do not understand the strategic piece---they got the tactical understanding of it, but UW used in a strategic fashion---they are lost.

Also goes for the concept of political warfare---not a single senior leader/thinker from DoD has ventured into this realm in the last weeks---they are far more interested in a "soft landing" for 3000 officers due to be cut in the next month and who have to be out then 60 days later than say figuring what Putin is up to.

Who said we an fight a two front war did not calculate the RIFing of officers in the middle of an issue.

Stan

04-24-2014, 06:33 AM

Fuchs,
That was exactly my point. Other than being best friends with Vova, he has no influence.

My point was also "why is this German's problem".

Looking back at this article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/02e13d64-1c92-11e3-a8a3-00144feab7de.html#axzz2zmIhXnll), it appears the Turkish influence is gaining ground.

This shift matters because German elections, run on a proportional representation system, are often decided by narrow margins. Ayse Demir, a representative of the Turkish Community in Germany, a countrywide organisation campaigning to persuade ethnic Turks to vote, says: “We can decide the election.”

ther ethnic Turks say they also appreciate Ms Merkel’s high-profile meetings with German Muslim representatives and calls for deeper integration. Far from feeling alienated by her party’s conservative Christian values, they identify with its religious core. As Dr Gulmez, a devout Muslim, puts it: “This is a party with values.”

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 11:03 AM

The Ukraine seems to be slowly but steadily clearing captured positions sometimes with armed (with baseball bats) civilians taking the lead other times with actual force backed up by light armor.

Guess two sides can play the agitated civilian game.

This is an interesting read.

http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/dmitry-tymchuks-military-blog-rating-the-extremist-threat-in-ukraines-oblasts-344749.html

Added by Moderator:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27138300

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 11:07 AM

Fuchs,
That was exactly my point. Other than being best friends with Vova, he has no influence.

My point was also "why is this German's problem".

Looking back at this article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/02e13d64-1c92-11e3-a8a3-00144feab7de.html#axzz2zmIhXnll), it appears the Turkish influence is gaining ground.

The number of dual Turk/German citizens is rather low thus they have a very limited to no influence in local German and or national German elections most come from mixed marriages and have completed schooling in Germany.

The idea of a dual citizenship especially for the Turkish side is a highly charged debate as the Germans want a single passport and the Turkish side is holding to two passports because of the Turkish military draft fearing the lost of draft age Turks living in Germany who are still drafted and must go back to Turkey or lose their passports ie citzenship.

davidbfpo

04-24-2014, 11:40 AM

Fuchs

04-24-2014, 12:05 PM

Stan, the German party landscape is fragmented and there's no party for Turks.

The greens are very Turks-friendly, but ideology-wise just not appealing to Turkish-born people.
The conservatives are ideologically more appealing to them, but at times annoyingly pro-Christian.
The social democrats may suit them, but then again they're now very similar to conservatives.
The pirates are only relevant among well-educated young people.
The socialists may attract votes, but they're pariahs on the national level and don't get into a ruling coalition.

The 'Turks' with German passport have no German party to represent them as a group, so their influence is close to zero. Besides, the "Turks" are actually split in "Turks", "Kurds", "Tatars" and others. And about a million voters among 50+ million voters are no heavyweight anyway in a proportional voting system.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 01:06 PM

Stan yesterday asked why had the USA moved lightly armed US Army paratroopers into three eastern NATO members territory.

Not unexpectedly the NATO AWACS fleet has been deployed, it works under the control of SACEUR. With at least one plane based in Rumania. As reported by NYT:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/world/europe/eastern-europe-frets-about-natos-ability-to-curb-russia.html?

I note this article refers to last week's "buzzing" of a US destroyer in the Black Sea, by a Russian aircraft:

Really? I don't recall any mention of that at the time. One trusts that the military-to-military 'hotline' was used to prevent misunderstanding.

Part of the headline comes from Mr. Pabriks, the former Latvian defense minister, when he refers to five minesweepers coming to the Baltic ( two from Norway and one each from the Netherlands, Belgium and Estonia) as:

David---have not seen an open EU/NATO discussion on just why did NATO/US disarm via the requirements of the 1999 and 2000 OCSE agreements placed on each country and yet Russia was allowed to maintain their full armored strength and not disarm much as the Russians while signing the EUMM agreements over Georgia in 2008 "agreed" to troop strengths that have been violated since 2011 and Russia now has over 17 bases in both enclaves which has to be overkill or they are there for so other reason.

NATO/US has as well not called Russia out for their violation of the INF---if one takes everything that the Russians have not done as agreed to since 2008 one might say either we the West simply did not care as we had moved on or we totally misread Putin much as the quote attributed to F. Hill in one of your links and are now paying for it.

What a misread---but as she stated it was all there to be seen.

Russia has been planning these moves for a very long time if we go back and analyze it---definitely since 2008.

Stan

04-24-2014, 01:18 PM

Kaur,
President Ilves told the Ukrainians this months ago.

What a shame that our 2007 lesson, free of charge, fell on deaf ears.

Close the borders
Find the money
All Russian passports are suspicious

How difficult to follow ?

But, we don't have Russian sympathizers on our borders ;)

I'm glad that one educated man has written article about our discussion here. Beards, AK-100, KGB etc :)

This strategy of undermining Kiev is cheap, easy, cynical and effective. But it also means that when some kind of political settlement is reached, it will be harder to control these militants.

Just as Maidan Square, the source of a popular uprising, has become the crucible of violent nationalism, the militants from the pro-Russian side have dug in their heels in the battle for Ukraine. They will unlikely be comfortable returning to their normal lives. It is hard to see the thugs of Slovyansk and Mariupol duly handing in their shiny new guns. The new breed of local "commanders"— often linked with organized crime — will need to be co-opted or crushed.

In short, Moscow's decision not to fight this conflict through conventional means and with its own men may mean that it wins the war, but it will have a much harder time keeping the peace after that.

Fuchs

04-24-2014, 01:35 PM

David---have not seen an open EU/NATO discussion on just why did NATO/US disarm via the requirements of the 1999 and 2000 OCSE agreements placed on each country and yet Russia was allowed to maintain their full armored strength and not disarm much as the Russians while signing the EUMM agreements over Georgia in 2008 "agreed" to troop strengths that have been violated since 2011 and Russia now has over 17 bases in both enclaves which has to be overkill or they are there for so other reason.

The CFE treaty involved cuts for Soviet Union/Russia as well, but made allowances because Russia has Asian defence needs.
http://www.osce.org/library/14087
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapted_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe_Treaty
(Look at the ratifications list!)

In the end, the CFE treaties were quite unimportant because the treaty parties have voluntarily cut deeper than required.

I remember that 98 mm mortars were developed in Poland and other countries to circumvent the limitation on ordnance of 100 mm calibre and greater - they were never produced in quantity because the ordnance limits proved to be irrelevant.

The Russians have furthermore begun to scrap their hordes of obsolete MBTs long ago. Their inventory of T-55s and T-62s is melting - literally.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 01:39 PM

Now this is an interesting piece of current history---over on the inforesist.org link that David referenced there is an article on a new Russia Medal being given out for the Return of the Crimea.

What they point out is really interesting especially when one reads the dates of the campaign which by the way Russians put great faith in dates on their medals from an historical point of view since they tend to wear them even on civilian clothing.

The start date of the Return of the Crimea was stamped in the medal as being 20 Feb 2014----anyone find that odd since the EU/Ukrainian agreement was not until 21 Feb and then the President fled on 22 Feb.

So did the Russians actual slip up in their hectic to get out a medal and actually reveal that the former Ukrainian president was part and parcel of this current Russian campaign against his own people and it actually began on 20 Feb and not later as argued by Russia---meaning after the president fled?

An interesting read it is.

http://inforesist.org/experts-named-12-facts-about-the-medal-for-the-return-of-the-crimea-which-are-stitching-russia-up/?lang=en

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 01:57 PM

The CFE treaty involved cuts for Soviet Union/Russia as well, but made allowances because Russia has Asian defence needs.
http://www.osce.org/library/14087
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapted_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe_Treaty
(Look at the ratifications list!)

In the end, the CFE treaties were quite unimportant because the treaty parties have voluntarily cut deeper than required.

I remember that 98 mm mortars were developed in Poland and other countries to circumvent the limitation on ordnance of 100 mm calibre and greater - they were never produced in quantity because the ordnance limits proved to be irrelevant.

The Russians have furthermore begun to scrap their hordes of obsolete MBTs long ago. Their inventory of T-55s and T-62s is melting - literally.

Fuchs---the key is they are still not in compliance on the numbers and yes they are melting but it is the old 55/62 and to some degree the 72s which really were for export anyway.

It is the numbers and their argument was they were at war with the jihadi's and could not come into compliance---and what has been the argument for their non compliance with the numbers in Georgia under the EUMM---they did not even mention it nor has the West.

The West took the numbers and reduced what they had in their then current inventories under the thought that hey the Cold War is over and Russia seems to be getting to a more peaceful point so hey let's save defense money and go down on our overall defense budgets using OCSE as the excuse. Besides who needs tanks and APCs in AFG or anywhere else for that matter.

That was in the end a massive mistake and now they are only able to muster what planes, mine clearing ships and AWCS. Even the German tank brigades say in Amberg and other locations have been decommissioned in the current German downsizing that is still going on.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 02:17 PM

kaur

04-24-2014, 02:35 PM

davidbfpo

04-24-2014, 02:45 PM

Written by three former US Ambassadors to the Ukraine:
First, the United States and European Union should greatly expand the list of individual Russians—inside and outside of government—targeted for visa and financial sanctions. Sanctions should apply to family members as well.

Second, the West should sanction key parts of the Russian economy, beginning with its financial sector. It should target at least several Russian financial institutions. The European Union, particularly Britain, must join in, with the aim of halting international credit to Russian entities. That would further stress the slowing Russian economy.

Third, the United States and European Union should block their energy companies from new investments to develop oil and gas fields in Russia. With Moscow dependent on oil and gas sales for seventy percent of its export earnings, such a measure would send shudders through the Russian energy sector.

Link:http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/does-putin-want-war-10327

TheCurmudgeon

04-24-2014, 04:19 PM

A little late, but if you can still get on this is pretty interesting:

http://csis.org/event/engage-or-contain-future-policy-toward-russia-trilaterally-considered

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 04:32 PM

Who would have thought that countries can even suffer from PTSD.

Interesting link and article:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117493/russia-suffering-post-traumatic-stress-disorder

Stan

04-24-2014, 04:42 PM

Outlaw,

Stan---notice how though Germany has gotten extremely quiet as they were always for diplomacy as they are basically and will always be anti war anything.

They are not happy with Obama's moves and there are some quiet questions emerging in the German newspapers questioning NATO's abilities.

The Germans have never done anything without calculating the end game and they have never jumped when the USG did. Not their style. But, they are entirely dependent on gas from Russia and we can't replace that. In their shoes, I would remain quiet too. Anti war ? How about freezing to death and not able to cook. Glad I dumped that BS Russian pipe in my apartment, bought a grill and installed an electric oven :D

Also goes for the concept of political warfare---not a single senior leader/thinker from DoD has ventured into this realm in the last weeks---they are far more interested in a "soft landing" for 3000 officers due to be cut in the next month and who have to be out then 60 days later than say figuring what Putin is up to.

Who said we an fight a two front war did not calculate the RIFing of officers in the middle of an issue.

We are supposed to reduce the Army to 420K and most are O3 and O4. So, you are about to be RIFed and you continue to worry about the Ukraine :rolleyes:

Dude, it's a budget year with continuing resolutions out the ying yang.

You are about to dump your first ten years in the Army and you are wondering what Vova thinks :confused:

Stan

04-24-2014, 04:47 PM

Here comes the not so subtle threat to both the Ukraine and NATO/US taken from Interfax today---interesting to see where Obama takes this while he is in Japan.

Thought Russia said those troops were not near the border?

16:48 RUSSIAN BATTALION TACTICAL COMBINED-ARMS GROUPS FROM SOUTHERN, WESTERN MILITARY DISTRICTS START DRILLS IN RESPONSE TO SITUATION IN SOUTHEAST UKRAINE - SHOIGU

16:48 SHOIGU: IN FRAMEWORK OF DRILLS AVIATION TO CARRY OUT FLIGHTS TO EXERCISE ACTIONS NEAR STATE BORDER

You know this already, but they overfly our borders every day with some vintage pile of sierra that barely breaks 350 kph.

Seems a mild response to a bunch of F-16s and friends flying in from all over creation :D

Stan

04-24-2014, 04:50 PM

Beard thing is solved here :)

http://time.com/74405/exclusive-pro-russian-separatists-eastern-ukraine/

Stan, it seems that it is easier to say than to be done in situation, where Kiev has lost monopoly of violence.

Kaur,
He looks like he means business even if he has an inferior weapon.

We made our EOD techs grow facial hair in the CAR to blend in.

Got to get with the local lingo if one wants to survive.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 05:28 PM

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 05:37 PM

Kaur,
He looks like he means business even if he has an inferior weapon.

We made our EOD techs grow facial hair in the CAR to blend in.

Got to get with the local lingo if one wants to survive.

kaur---the article has some minor holes---how does a "so called" criminal on the run and evidently in the Crimea for a number of weeks not get arrested by the local police when they fell under Russian control especially when the Ministry of Interior is running the place or better normally Russians needed a passport to cross into the Ukraine which the Crimea was Ukrainian and normally when on the run as a criminal in Russia one normally does not have a passport as that requires checking in with the local police/Ministry of the Interior or if he had one then it would have been revoked---unless he was paying bribes to keep it.

Then this paragraph stands out:

As TIME reported last month, thousands of state-sponsored Russian Cossacks were then streaming into Crimea to aid the Russian troops with that invasion. For most of March, Mozhaev says, he was there along with some of the men from his Cossack battalion, the Wolves’ Hundred, helping in the siege of a Ukrainian military base near the city of Bakhchysarai and guarding a local TV tower.

NOTE: Was the Cossack BN paramilitary, a loose conglomeration of individuals or under Russian management?

In late March, after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, “we were sitting around down there and wondering what to do next,” he says. “So we decided to go conquer some more historically Russian lands.” Eventually he wound up in Slavyansk, where Ponomaryov was glad to welcome him into his separatist militia.

Sitting around takes money and food so who was supporting the BN?

kaur---also go to the inforesist.org link and check their listing ---you will see another individual the SBU names standing next to your bearded guy--then check the individuals background from 2013 to 2014.

This was written in the article and it comes from the SBU side concerning Cossacks.

From the identified militants, a few notes can be made from the following gunmen who appear to be connected to the raids in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk . For one, not all are from Russia. While some may be local radicals, others appear to come from Belorechensk in Russia, or have connections to related neo-Cossack groups. This does not necessarily exonerate Russian state involvement, however. While it’s been known that military veterans and Russian ‘tourists’ have been actively involved for some time, the presence of Registered Cossacks of the Russian Federation connects Russia officially to the ongoing crisis. Registered Cossack organizations enjoy financial and organizational support from the authorities, including monthly salary as police auxiliaries. This, of course, isn’t the first controversial deployment of Cossack forces, who made a name for themselves on the world stage enforcing the law in Sochi.

Stan

04-24-2014, 05:46 PM

Not unexpectedly the NATO AWACS fleet has been deployed, it works under the control of SACEUR. With at least one plane based in Rumania. As reported by NYT:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/world/europe/eastern-europe-frets-about-natos-ability-to-curb-russia.html?

A fleet ? I read that "From a fleet" of 17 aircraft, NATO operates two flights per day, one over Romania and the other over Poland.

I note this article refers to last week's "buzzing" of a US destroyer in the Black Sea, by a Russian aircraft:

Really? I don't recall any mention of that at the time. One trusts that the military-to-military 'hotline' was used to prevent misunderstanding.

David,
it happens here and in Scandinavia with such frequency that it has become boring even for the newspapers. C'mon, these stone age flying bathtubs such as seen in Georgia with fuses missing from the bombs WTF ? Maybe Putin should invest in training ground crews :D

Part of the headline comes from Mr. Pabriks, the former Latvian defense minister, when he refers to five minesweepers coming to the Baltic ( two from Norway and one each from the Netherlands, Belgium and Estonia) as:

We do this every year and that's a good thing when one considers how much sierra the Germans and Russians left behind, anchored to the Baltic Sea.

Ironically years ago the presence of five of six minesweepers barely drew the attention of the press... until now. What was once a port visit (excuse for port call) has now become such a (ahem) statement. How's that ?

Do the Russians plan on putting more of their sierra into the Baltic Sea than is already stagnant and very much still there?

Why would I want minesweepers here and not in the Black Sea ?

Stan

04-24-2014, 05:52 PM

Outlaw,

I'm a smiggin cynical and about to turn 60. What message are you sending to an egotistical Russian leader suffering from mid-life crisis with a million idiots with firearms a stone's throw from your border ?

It might be a battalion, but in stark comparison, like my equally cynical Estonian and Ukrainian friends think, it's hardly worth laughing over.

So, the message is for whom and what exactly does that person end up getting out of it if all the countries here think it's BS ?

Stan---it is all about the messaging just as is the BN from the 173rd.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 05:55 PM

Nice to see somebody else picking up Gaidars comments in his great book and expending on them.

Personally I would not be worried too much about NG demand for various reasons already outlined in this thread long ago. Btw I also gave the Austrian Verbund a closer look after it's long fall, and it is quite stunning how uncompetitive gas is also in the electricity sector in Austria. In the long run I doubt that the Russians will get as much for their stuff as today.

Firn---noticed today that Putin in a press released admitted the sanctions were causing damages ie increased lending costs, or no loans or financing being available due to bank questions caused by the sanctions.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 05:58 PM

Written by three former US Ambassadors to the Ukraine:

Link:http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/does-putin-want-war-10327

David---the economic leverage is actually starting to bite in increased bank rates, no lending or loans being available from foreign banks due to the sanctions ---even Putin admitted today that the sanctions were causing some damage to the economy.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 06:07 PM

You know this already, but they overfly our borders every day with some vintage pile of sierra that barely breaks 350 kph.

Seems a mild response to a bunch of F-16s and friends flying in from all over creation :D

Stan---what initially puzzled me was the term Combined Arms Group which in the scenarios we ran with them ---Russian BNs are tied into a Bde strength unit or Groups in Russian speak.

The initial release had the flavor of only BNs maneuvering.

This Interfax release confirms the missing piece the movements are at least Bde levels which takes on a different flavor.

20:15 Russian Army to set up aviation brigades - Shoigu

Go back and check the open source photos of their positions and you will see at least 2-3 aviation brigades ie attack, support and transport.

kaur

04-24-2014, 06:13 PM

Stan

04-24-2014, 06:15 PM

Gents,
This Telegraph article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/10673501/Ukraine-crisis-sanctions-wont-worry-Vladimir-Putin.html) seems to have a different spin on your intel.

Ever served a tour in Africa ? Until the dictator dies, nobody wins. When he does finally expire, you still don't win and WE will pay for all this BS via humanitarian aid til the cows come home... Paradoxically.

I love the conversations and predictions. Are they real indicators when dealing with someone who is not affected and could care less ?

Seriously :cool:

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 06:20 PM

Stan

04-24-2014, 06:24 PM

Jeez already !

I'd gladly read your links, but you put out not one instance of effort and lead me into some blind adventure.

Send me a link that works, or, I will no longer respond.

10th ... no wonder :rolleyes:

20:15 Russian Army to set up aviation brigades - Shoigu

Go back and check the open source photos of their positions and you will see at least 2-3 aviation brigades ie attack, support and transport.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 06:29 PM

Jeez already !

I'd gladly read your links, but you put out not one instance of effort and lead me into some blind adventure.

Send me a link that works, or, I will no longer respond.

10th ... no wonder :rolleyes:

Stan---Interfax runs in a rolling principle as the releases go out so there is no specific link outside of a general one---will go back and dig out the open source briefing from breedlove.

http://www.interfax.com/news.asp

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 06:33 PM

Outlaw.

Growing state support has fed the Cossacks’ newfound importance. Those who belong to one of Russia’s 11 federally registered Cossack organizations — including the Central Cossack Army, to which Zaplatin’s group is subordinated — are officially recognized as volunteer civil servants, whose status and activities are regulated to some degree by a federal law signed in 2005.

Last fall, Putin — who’s reportedly an honorary Cossack colonel — signed a strategy for the development of Russian Cossacks until 2020. It’s aimed at setting out economic and logistic terms for even closer cooperation between Cossacks and the government.

In exchange, the Cossacks provide legions of ready-made public service professionals with years of experience. True to the Cossack tradition, many of those who belong to a registered society in Russia have served — or currently serve — in the armed forces or in one of the so-called “security structures,” such as the Interior Ministry.

Nenarokov, who also works as a combat instructor at the Federal Security Service’s FSB Border Guard Academy, estimates that about 40 percent of the military’s officer corps is made up of Cossacks.

“The role of the Cossacks in the near future will be that of a national guard, like the Italian Carabinieri,” he says. “It’ll be more like a national militia, rather than a police force per se.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130503/russia-cossacks-return

kaur---you just called the Time reporting into question---and this bearded Cossack was what "on the run as a common criminal"---what a poor cover story for being in the Crimea just in "time" to welcome Russian troops- and then "just sitting around" he decides to cross into the Ukraine with no Russian passport since he was on the run?

He had a passport and was not on the run---but still one must give him credit for even having a cover story for the Time reporter---that is the problem these days not many reporters even understand the background of the events they are reporting on and simply take for granted everything they see or hear as being gospel.

You found a really interesting article based on this paragraph referencing the Orthodox Church relationship to the Cossacks.

I have maintained here part of the problem in understanding Russia is that we must understand the four pillars that constitute their decision makers in a foreign policy strategy 1) security services, 2) military, 3) oligarchs and 4) Russian mafia/gangs and layered over all of them the Orthodox Church driving a form of religious nationalism or better formulated and what Putin is--- an ethnic nationalist.

“They don’t understand that we will fight to the end,” he says. “We don’t stop half-way.”

Not the words one would expect from a Russian Orthodox priest. But then, Nenarokov isn’t a typical clergyman.

A slight, whiskered man of middle age, Nenarokov also serves as a chaplain in the Moscow City Cossack Society, where he runs seminars on hand-to-hand combat training, one of the many activities aimed at helping revive the culture of Cossacks — the centuries-old defenders of Russia’s frontiers and, historically, the tsar’s most dedicated and seasoned enforcers of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and empire.

Stan

04-24-2014, 07:30 PM

Stan---use to be called the trip wire effect.

My question, your response above which few will ever get, is the same...

Outlaw,

So, the message is for whom and what exactly does that person end up getting out of it if all the countries here think it's BS ?

So, RB, explain the trip wire effect as it relates to this thread.... Please

Stan

04-24-2014, 07:38 PM

Stan---Interfax runs in a rolling principle as the releases go out so there is no specific link outside of a general one---will go back and dig out the open source briefing from breedlove.

http://www.interfax.com/news.asp

If you read it, copy it, and paste it. I have not the slightest idea of what a rolling principle means and how that prevents you from a copy and paste function as you are reading, before it purportedly disappears forever.

Let us not quote something that no longer exists and use it as support for an argument herein.

One more time and you can converse with yourself on this thread.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 08:04 PM

My question, your response above which few will ever get, is the same...

So, RB, explain the trip wire effect as it relates to this thread.... Please

Stan---here goes a history lesson from 1945 until 1994 --the US Army stationed the 2nd and 3rd Calvary Regts on a rotating basis on ground/air patrols along the interGerman border---theory was if the Soviet army charged across the border they would be engaged first by the Cav and then be rolled over by the Soviets allowing then the US leadership the excuse to go nuclear.

A sort of a speed bump/trip wire used in the decision making process by the national command authority---it was assumed that the Soviets knowing that when the speed bump/trip wire had been crossed--- the threat of mutual self destruction would bring them to their senses and or slow them down as they also knew small tactical ADMs were an option to the NCA and the NCA had ADM teams in place.

That was the theory---it was assumed that in reality the Soviets coming at full speed would have not really slowed down until they hit the Rhine river and it would have taken the NCA that long to figure out if they would go nuclear or not---at the same time the NCA would have released the ADM teams to implement previously pre-planned targeting against selected Soviet/GDR targets in order to gain more time .

That was the trip wire theory.

Currently the messaging to Putin is we are serious enough to back up NATO Article 5 if you attack one of the countries we have troops stationed in we will respond-response action not explained-a type of trip wire concept for the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria who are protected under NATO Article 5. It has been the Baltics and Poland demanding the trip wire as they do not believe NATO will and or could defend them and feel threatened by Russia actions towards the Ukraine and their military buildup.

That though does not apply to the Ukraine thus the verbal talk, diplomacy, and physical appearance of US leaders in Kiev tied to economic and non military support as well as possible intel exchanges and other items.

The serious side is does Putin care about the theory as he views the West and in particular the US to be weak and not in a position to respond military which by the way NATO/EU/US have all said they will not use force so actually Putin was right in his assumption---this reinforces in Putin's mind the responses he saw during Georgia and Moldavia.

What is interesting is a recent article indicating that Russia floated a month ago a plan to Poland and other former east block countries surrounding the Ukraine the division of the areas other than eastern and southern Ukraine---ie giving the Poles for example their old areas taken from them by Russia in 1939. By the way---can fish out the Russian Duma official that first floated (at the same time as Crimea was ongoing) that concept if needed as many in the West thought it was a crazy idea---maybe not so crazy if Poland is confirming it now.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/04/24/poland-russia-offered-to-divide-ukraine.html

That is how the speed bump/trip wire concept as it is tied to the thread and that is the messaging being sent with a single rotating BN---or do you disagree?

Does that explain it closely enough. Google might have it in more detail.

Not bad memory recall for someone with four wars (VN, Desert Strom, Iraq, AFG) worth of experience and a deep SF UW background in Europe and having not been physically on the interGerman border since 1986.

OUTLAW 09

04-24-2014, 08:30 PM

If you read it, copy it, and paste it. I have not the slightest idea of what a rolling principle means and how that prevents you from a copy and paste function as you are reading, before it purportedly disappears forever.

Let us not quote something that no longer exists and use it as support for an argument herein.

One more time and you can converse with yourself on this thread.

Stan---let me see if I get your comment/threat straight--when I cut and past as you suggested the actual date/time stamp of an actual released press release on Interfax and the date of the release and provide you the link where all releases are time stamped---this is not good enough for what--slow readers or non readers or what?

Rolling principle means all press releases are time stamped in a rolling fashion based on time stamp on a 24 hour basis and then cached under the date in the calendar that is on their web site where one can go back and conduct research.

Side note many releases are just summations or short headlines and are just directly linked to the time stamp.

Interfax carries three types of color coded releases---black for standard, red to highlight something of interest for the Russian government agency side and blue which is tied to an actual released article.

NOTE: Russia knows the press releases are being read and followed by the West and it is a form of informal communication between East/West and often reinforces private conversations and public actions.

TASS and NIA Nosvosti also news agencies for Russia do not use the color coded system as Interfax is considered to speak for the government---they do no have the rolling 24 hour cached concept.

You are right--- do not need to be on this site as much goes in circles as others on the blog side have much more to say especially in the areas of political warfare/UW which is really the current strategy for the Ukraine that Putin is employing and that is not being discussed in this thread and those writers have not crossed over for whatever reason.

A good example of this political warfare/UW strategy is this article which we have had a taste of here ourselves and I seemed to be the only one to call a spade a spade to the face of the writer or writers. This particular writer/writers was/were worth a separate blog topic.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/24/death-lies-and-propaganda-in-eastern-ukraine.html

By the way Daily Beast has three good reporters currently on the ground in the Ukraine.

Fuchs

04-24-2014, 09:04 PM

Fuchs---the key is they are still not in compliance on the numbers and yes they are melting but it is the old 55/62 and to some degree the 72s which really were for export anyway.

It is the numbers and their argument was they were at war with the jihadi's and could not come into compliance---and what has been the argument for their non compliance with the numbers in Georgia under the EUMM---they did not even mention it nor has the West.

The West took the numbers and reduced what they had in their then current inventories under the thought that hey the Cold War is over and Russia seems to be getting to a more peaceful point so hey let's save defense money and go down on our overall defense budgets using OCSE as the excuse. Besides who needs tanks and APCs in AFG or anywhere else for that matter.

That was in the end a massive mistake and now they are only able to muster what planes, mine clearing ships and AWCS. Even the German tank brigades say in Amberg and other locations have been decommissioned in the current German downsizing that is still going on.

The Warsaw pact doesn't exist any more, so it's difficult to tell how Russia could violate the '90 treaty. It's not a member of the '99 treaty and the West never was. There's no real case for complaining about Russian non-compliance here.

And yes, the Cold War is over.

The problem here (and all over the world, all the time) is that humans get used to almost everything, real quick. They got used so much to the post-Cold War world that they can freak out about 'threats' (http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.de/2009/09/pains-cold-war-so-called-rogue-states.html) that would have been barely recognisable during the Cold War when the noise level of threats was much higher.

So yes, the Cold War is over and yes, Russia is a marginal threat to us now. The fact that Ukraine is not "us" is at the core of the current crisis. They did NOT join "us", and thus Russia is still a very valid defence concern to them to say the least.

Their security problem isn't that Russia still has stockpiles of 25-50 year old military hardware. Their security problem is that they had a government which wasn't interested in preparing defences and their security forces are now ineffective even against the very small 'troops concentration' nearby.
A few hundred spec ops guys and a few ten thousand regulars are a seemingly insurmountable problem to the Ukraine because it has no loyal, competent, equipped security forces - their security forces are now less effective than Portugal's and that's no good in their neighbourhood.

04-25-2014, 12:59 AM

Stan---here goes a history lesson from 1945 until 1994 --the US Army stationed the 2nd and 3rd Calvary Regts on a rotating basis on ground/air patrols along the interGerman border---theory was if the Soviet army charged across the border they would be engaged first by the Cav and then be rolled over by the Soviets allowing then the US leadership the excuse to go nuclear.

A sort of a speed bump/trip wire used in the decision making process by the national command authority---it was assumed that the Soviets knowing that when the speed bump/trip wire had been crossed--- the threat of mutual self destruction would bring them to their senses and or slow them down as they also knew small tactical ADMs were an option to the NCA and the NCA had ADM teams in place.

That was the theory---it was assumed that in reality the Soviets coming at full speed would have not really slowed down until they hit the Rhine river and it would have taken the NCA that long to figure out if they would go nuclear or not---at the same time the NCA would have released the ADM teams to implement previously pre-planned targeting against selected Soviet/GDR targets in order to gain more time .

That was the trip wire theory.

Currently the messaging to Putin is we are serious enough to back up NATO Article 5 if you attack one of the countries we have troops stationed in we will respond-response action not explained-a type of trip wire concept for the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria who are protected under NATO Article 5. It has been the Baltics and Poland demanding the trip wire as they do not believe NATO will and or could defend them and feel threatened by Russia actions towards the Ukraine and their military buildup.

That though does not apply to the Ukraine thus the verbal talk, diplomacy, and physical appearance of US leaders in Kiev tied to economic and non military support as well as possible intel exchanges and other items.

The serious side is does Putin care about the theory as he views the West and in particular the US to be weak and not in a position to respond military which by the way NATO/EU/US have all said they will not use force so actually Putin was right in his assumption---this reinforces in Putin's mind the responses he saw during Georgia and Moldavia.

What is interesting is a recent article indicating that Russia floated a month ago a plan to Poland and other former east block countries surrounding the Ukraine the division of the areas other than eastern and southern Ukraine---ie giving the Poles for example their old areas taken from them by Russia in 1939. By the way---can fish out the Russian Duma official that first floated (at the same time as Crimea was ongoing) that concept if needed as many in the West thought it was a crazy idea---maybe not so crazy if Poland is confirming it now.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/04/24/poland-russia-offered-to-divide-ukraine.html

That is how the speed bump/trip wire concept as it is tied to the thread and that is the messaging being sent with a single rotating BN---or do you disagree?

Does that explain it closely enough. Google might have it in more detail.

Not bad memory recall for someone with four wars (VN, Desert Strom, Iraq, AFG) worth of experience and a deep SF UW background in Europe and having not been physically on the interGerman border since 1986.

History is a little flawed--trip wire went by the board well before 1994and started in the 50s. Your cav regiment IDs are also only half right--but that is not really important. In fact for much of the 70s and 80s, trip wire was not used as you describe. USAREUR/EUCOM believed they could win a conventional war and the cav regiments were to play a significant part in the active defense, being far from just a speed bump or trip wire. But that is not really germane to the current deployments of the 173rd Airborne units out of Italy.

Having elements of a Bn of the 173rd in the Baltic countries and Poland do not make the Article 5 violation any more urgent. A Russian invasion of any of the 4 countries could trigger a NATO response regardless of the presence of 150 US paratroopers. I would submit that the 173rd is getting to travel for another reason-- probably political and possibly tied to the US defense budget and Army impending downsizing--not the Ukraine.

Stan

04-25-2014, 04:38 AM

Outlaw,
It may have more to do with an individual's inept use of basic computer functions.

As a common courtesy to other members herein, one quotes using a wrap and provides a link.

If you subscribe and pay, you can read interfax all foxtroting day long.

---this is not good enough for what--slow readers or non readers or what?

mirhond

04-26-2014, 10:00 AM

Mirhond,
Russian cossacks with nazi backround is super irony. Russians say that Ukrainians and Russians are brothers, but now the representatives of extreme nationalism are fighting each other. At the same time Russia is trying to find allies in this fight among European rights. Oo, brothers, sort thing brother thing first out before going to crusade.
For me as outsider, this subculture of pravoslavye cossacks, is interesting new study topic. Mirhond, can you suggest me reading list? First book should be "Two hundred years together" by Solzhenitsyn?

1. Very good point. I believe a good decimation of Banderas and Cossacks killing each other would be helpful in restoring peace.

2. Sorry, I have no idea about these weirdos. I havn't read mentioned Solzh book, cant help with this either.

davidbfpo

04-26-2014, 11:29 AM

The canal authorities in Ukraine say Crimea has accumulated a huge debt for water supplied last year. The dispute is aggravated by the breakdown in relations between Kiev and Moscow. The water supply to Crimea has diminished from 50 cu m (1,765 cu ft) per second to about 16 cu m per second, Crimea's new pro-Russian authorities say.

Link with map:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27155885

kaur

04-26-2014, 12:27 PM

About cossacks and military. This is last year's military parade from Krasnodar. Cossacks appear 6:10

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evFU4_f2IR4

This is part of parade part with "Tigr" jeeps.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KM5vjuY1DrM

Photo from Crimea. Tigr with number 7842/21

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/3/4/1393955734649/Troops-under-Russian-comm-011.jpg

In parade second line, first Tige is with number 7845/21, wich means that this jeep is from same company that was in action in Crimea.

According to this article two last numbers indicate military district (21), two first numbers indicate military unit (78), third number shows company (4).

http://www.novayagazeta.ru/inquests/62578.html

davidbfpo

04-26-2014, 03:32 PM

The Security Service has released an audio recording of conversations concerning the murder of Volodymyr Rybak, Deputy of Horlivka City Council. As reported, it is the group under so-called ‘Shooter’, which operates in Donetsk Oblast, and a citizen of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant Colonel of the National Intelligence Agency (GRU) Igor Bezler.

Link:http://euromaidanpr.com/2014/04/25/security-service-of-ukraine-releases-conversation-of-terrorists-who-killed-deputy/

I waited till English sub-titles were added, although there is a transcript. The victim has been buried. An earlier BBC report:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27119621

OUTLAW 09

04-26-2014, 07:03 PM

History is a little flawed--trip wire went by the board well before 1994and started in the 50s. Your cav regiment IDs are also only half right--but that is not really important. In fact for much of the 70s and 80s, trip wire was not used as you describe. USAREUR/EUCOM believed they could win a conventional war and the cav regiments were to play a significant part in the active defense, being far from just a speed bump or trip wire. But that is not really germane to the current deployments of the 173rd Airborne units out of Italy.

Having elements of a Bn of the 173rd in the Baltic countries and Poland do not make the Article 5 violation any more urgent. A Russian invasion of any of the 4 countries could trigger a NATO response regardless of the presence of 150 US paratroopers. I would submit that the 173rd is getting to travel for another reason-- probably political and possibly tied to the US defense budget and Army impending downsizing--not the Ukraine.

The correct unit designations were the 2nd and 3rd ACRs and I am not sure even up to 1989 neither USAREUR/EUCOM but mainly USAREUR felt they could not win in a direct confrontation from the get go---if that were the case then a number of USA SF teams carrying ADMs destined to create choke points and to deny freedom of movement and slow resupply would not have been needed.

It was felt that the 2 ACRs would never be enough to slow, stop and or defeat the initial charges of the Soviet Army Ground Forces Germany.

USAREUR moved additional armored assets to Garlstedt Lower Saxony in 85/86 timeframes in order to give an additional slow down effect and to get them out of the so called drug infested large German cities which did not in the end work but it was a great completely new base.

That was just the Army issues---the AF side was even more complicated as the Soviet AD rings built using the SAM 6/8s would have based on loss calculations decimated USAF assets that were forward based.

Everything at that point in 1986 was designed to slow down and provide time for follow on forces out of the States to reach Europe.

Not sure where you get your information but the US needed time to get the large Reforger designated units into Europe as flow on follow on units---thus the need to create time in a holding formation. Remember the Reforger concept and you failed to mention that and the US had starting in 1968 moving a large number of it's units back to the States and kept pre-positioned equipment for the Reforger units to fall in on which they then turned back into the depots when completing the Reforger exercises---so where is this idea USAREUR felt they could win from the get go.

If you talked with those from the 2/3ACRs they never envisioned living long enough to see the 1st CAV make it into Europe from Ft.Hood which was one of the USAREUR designated heavy armored divisions. Remember in 1989 it was the Apaches that played hide and seek with opposition tanks and those Apaches came from the US.

Not sure where you were in 1986 but the Warsaw Pact conducted one of the largest exercises up to that point which had USAREUR stunned at what was pulled up to by the Soviet Ground Forces Germany within 30kms of the inner German border (and in Lower Saxony up to within 3kms) and what was then pulled into their secondary lines in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The last Reforger exercise was in 1989 and the Soviets also pulled up an equally large number of their Soviet Ground Forces Germany units and matched unit for unit near the innerGerman border.

There was some new thinking for that exercise that the old Fulda Gap scenario might have been in fact wrong when the Soviet Ground Forces suddenly shifted their armored assets more northerly and focused on the Lower Saxony border area (UK protected zone) which reflected their interest in cutting all follow on resupply coming in via Holland and a shorter run to the Rhine River. That was also one of the major thoughts behind the repositioning of US armored assets into Lower Saxony and extremely close to the inner German border as the UK did not even in 1989 have large ground forces based in the border area.

By the last Reforger exercise in 1989 we did see indications of this new Soviet concept being played out in their exercises.

This was posted today by a previously provided Ukrainian link and one can or cannot accept it but it is probably next to the Breedlove photo release one of the best listings of Russian Army Order of Battle arrayed now on the Ukrainian/Crimea border region by named Russian units and equipment available.

Reminds one of the inner German border days in 1989 but we only had to deal with T72/80s not the newer T80/90s.

So you are assuming the 173rd is just for what justifying more money in an already defined and approved military budget with a planned sequester feature kicking in at the middle of this year---come on wm the 173rd is happy to be on the road for live fire exercises especially if you have ever spent eight hours on just getting to and from their own Italian live fire ranges besides they get bored in a hurry if you have seen their old and now new installations as they finished their last AFG rotation and they had only African training events on the horizon in the coming years and with the current Army wide limited training budget they are happy to be on the move as there was not much to keep them busy and there was a serious conversation in late 2013 on whether they would in fact remain in Italy or be moved to Grafenwoehr and or back to the States as their artillery Bn is in Grafenwoehr after the latest round of base closures in Germany.

Heck with the limited training budgets and limited AF assets in Europe they were having trouble just getting their pay jumps in for the BNs.

http://inforesist.org/numbers-rf-armed-forces-put-on-full-combat-readiness/?lang=en

OUTLAW 09

04-26-2014, 07:38 PM

The Warsaw pact doesn't exist any more, so it's difficult to tell how Russia could violate the '90 treaty. It's not a member of the '99 treaty and the West never was. There's no real case for complaining about Russian non-compliance here.

And yes, the Cold War is over.

The problem here (and all over the world, all the time) is that humans get used to almost everything, real quick. They got used so much to the post-Cold War world that they can freak out about 'threats' (http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.de/2009/09/pains-cold-war-so-called-rogue-states.html) that would have been barely recognisable during the Cold War when the noise level of threats was much higher.

So yes, the Cold War is over and yes, Russia is a marginal threat to us now. The fact that Ukraine is not "us" is at the core of the current crisis. They did NOT join "us", and thus Russia is still a very valid defence concern to them to say the least.

Their security problem isn't that Russia still has stockpiles of 25-50 year old military hardware. Their security problem is that they had a government which wasn't interested in preparing defences and their security forces are now ineffective even against the very small 'troops concentration' nearby.
A few hundred spec ops guys and a few ten thousand regulars are a seemingly insurmountable problem to the Ukraine because it has no loyal, competent, equipped security forces - their security forces are now less effective than Portugal's and that's no good in their neighbourhood.

Fuchs---check your OCSE dates and Yes Russia is a signatory of the various OCSE treaties and thus required to meet disarmament compliance numbers as was the rest of NATO.

Check this link---you do not have to believe it or not but it is the current Russian Army Order of Battle of the forces arrayed on the Ukrainian and Crimea border regions and it is a tad larger than the current number of Russian special operations/GRU types already inside eastern Ukraine.

http://inforesist.org/numbers-rf-armed-forces-put-on-full-combat-readiness/?lang=en

Fuchs---check the Russian OB again and tell me you statement below is correct.

A few hundred spec ops guys and a few ten thousand regulars are a seemingly insurmountable problem to the Ukraine because it has no loyal, competent, equipped security forces - their security forces are now less effective than Portugal's and that's no good in their neighbourhood

If the Russian OB is correct and the forces arrayed are accurately portrayed THEN all current NATO countries would have problems countering the current Russian force composition-this includes the US--this is the new professional Russian Army in a very functional and efficient battle formation array designed for speed, shock and awe coupled with close air support and fighter air cover coupled with AWCS.

By the way this does not include the latest Russian Air Defense Bdes sent to Kaliningrad which can effectively limit NATO aircraft movements in the Baltics and the S300s based in the Crimea which will limit any aircraft movement in the south.

Remember the latest Russian Army troop movements came to a stop within 1km from the Ukrainian border and it was more than just a BN and it was accompanied by fighter aircraft providing air/ground attack support.

davidbfpo

04-26-2014, 08:32 PM

Professor John Schindler has a new commentary, a large part comes from a Belarus journalist's ten hour visit and detention in:
Slovyansk, which is the epicenter of Russia’s stage-managed “rebellion” in Eastern Ukraine.

It has a key passage on the local population's attitude to their new rulers:
You know, their attitude to the occupiers is as if to some kind of bad weather. Look – a thunderstorm, a tempest, or a gale has hit: What can you do about it?! They do not support this, they simply have to resign themselves to it. I heard various people utter the phrase: “Everything was okay before their arrival.” In a certain sense, this can be assessed as support for Ukraine. Naturally, it is weak. A person will probably not fight for this, and will even submit if the territory is occupied.
But nevertheless, I did not meet a single person who said: “Yes, they are my protectors, they are standing up for us here. And just you get out of here, European villains!” Not one person said this.

Then his summary:
There you have it: provocations, intimidation, ethnic cleansing among a freak-show of alcoholics, gangsters, Orthodox “warriors,” and GRU operatives, amidst lots of innocent people trapped with nowhere to escape … some great insights there into what de facto Russian rule in Eastern Ukraine actually looks like. As I write, Slovyansk “militants” have stated they will only free their OSCE captives in exchange for prisoners held by Kyiv. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, watch this space …

Link:http://20committee.com/2014/04/26/slovyansk-is-the-center-of-the-bermuda-triangle/

Fuchs

04-26-2014, 09:25 PM

Fuchs---check your OCSE dates and Yes Russia is a signatory of the various OCSE treaties and thus required to meet disarmament compliance numbers as was the rest of NATO.

Check this link---you do not have to believe it or not but it is the current Russian Army Order of Battle of the forces arrayed on the Ukrainian and Crimea border regions
(...)
If the Russian OB is correct and the forces arrayed are accurately portrayed THEN all current NATO countries would have problems countering the current Russian force composition (...)

I doubt it makes sense to discuss whether "all current NATO countries" actually "would have problems countering" a few ten thousand troops. There are always problems in warfare, but the meaning of "problems" in the strategic context is absurd here.

About the OSCE dates:

CFE treaty signed November 19, 1990

Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty signed November 19, 1999. Ratified by Russia (suspended 2007), Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine. Too few ratifications, thus not in force and not requiring Russia to do anything.

I wrote "1990" and "1999", so I see no problem with the dates.
I do see a problem with your counterfactual assertion that Russia violates a treaty which is actually not in force for lack of Western ratifications.

My "not a member" choice of words was maybe inaccurate, as they merely suspended their membership, but I was broadly correct even therewith.

BTW, AWACS is a specific system. The category of these systems is AEW&C (airborne early warning and control), a confusion similar to the widespread MLRS/MRL confusion.

kaur

04-26-2014, 10:56 PM

I speculate that those Tigrs that start with 78 belong to this 10th GRU brigade, because here is one that ends with 51.

http://www.yuga.ru/photo/polosa/1126.html

Little history http://www.ww2.dk/new/army/gru/10obrsn.htm

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aOWpormfMI8

kaur

04-26-2014, 11:31 PM

Article in Russian about cossacks joint exercise with spetsnaz in Southern military district in 2012.

http://www.vestikavkaza.ru/news/Spetsnaz-YUVO-provodit-sovmestnye-ucheniya-s-kubanskimi-kazakami.html

Cossacks in 2. Chechen war.

Cossack Detachment

Closer to January, on the initiative of Albastov, the Ataman of the Grozny department of the Tersk Cossack Division, the GRU leadershup agreed the formation of a parallel Cossack spetsnaz detachment. But in its first stages it acted independently from its Chechen counterpart.

Karl Andreevich Gerter, an atamann of Yakutsk Stanitsa was one of the first to join the division. An excellent hunter and mountaineer, he first served in the First Chechen War, as a Serjeant, when the reserve officers hadn't been called up. Keen to fight, he hid his officer's rank from the recruitment office. In the second campaign, this time in the Spetsnaz, he again became a senior lieutenant, deputy group commander.

Later, when he was 46 years old, he gained the rank of captain and special forces group commander. He also brought with him the Cossacks who were part of his group. These units were usually composed of the ataman of a stanitsa, and a group of between 9-12 men. They would come from all across Russia and even Belarus. Many Cossacks had no military special military training. They acted in ways deemed unusual, non-traditional, even by the GRU special forces.

http://www.agentura.ru/english/spetsnaz/gru1998-2010/

04-27-2014, 01:36 AM

This is not really the thread to discuss Cold War history, but I will respond to several obvious inaccuracies
The correct unit designations were the 2nd and 3rd ACRs
3rd ACR came back to the USA in 1968, returning for REFORGER 78 and 88 IIRC. The 2nd and 11th ACRs were the ACRs for the 2 USAREUR Corps.

I am not sure even up to 1989 neither USAREUR/EUCOM but mainly USAREUR felt they could not win in a direct confrontation from the get go---if that were the case then a number of USA SF teams carrying ADMs destined to create choke points and to deny freedom of movement and slow resupply would not have been needed.
Teams may have been planned for ADMs, but that was only one of many branches and sequels to the war plans. SF teams weren't just wandering around with man-portable nukes. Do you have any idea what a nut roll it was to get authorization for release of nukes in Europe? We used to practice the process in Corps/Division HQ CPXs.

It was felt that the 2 ACRs would never be enough to slow, stop and or defeat the initial charges of the Soviet Army Ground Forces Germany
The revision of FM 100-5 in 1976 was the basis for rethinking how the US Army would fight and win in Germany . The cav was a part of that effort, not the whole of it. I'm not sure where you get you claim to the contrary; perhaps, from anecdotal discussions with folks who were not really in a position to know. I used to play rugby against guys in those Cav regiments, many of whom were Troop Commanders or Squadron/Regimental staff officers. They were sure they were going to stop Ivan cold.

USAREUR moved additional armored assets to Garlstedt Lower Saxony in 85/86 timeframes in order to give an additional slow down effect and to get them out of the so called drug infested large German cities which did not in the end work but it was a great completely new base. 3rd Bde of 2nd AD arrived from TX (not German cities) in Garlstedt in 1978, not 1985, as 2AD (forward) and stayed there until 1990 when it deployed for DS/DS, returned from the desert and was finally deactivated in 1992. BTW Garlstedt is indeed in Niedersachsen, but is north of Bremen, in the NORTHAG sector. The majority of US Forces were in CENTAG. BTW, In addition to all of 1st AD, 3rd AD, 3rd ID, and 8th ID, 1st ID and 4th ID also each had a brigade forward--4th ID's Bde was in V Corps, 1st ID's Bde was in VII Corps.

Everything at that point in 1986 was designed to slow down and provide time for follow on forces out of the States to reach Europe.

Not sure where you get your information but the US needed time to get the large Reforger designated units into Europe as flow on follow on units---thus the need to create time in a holding formation. Remember the Reforger concept and you failed to mention that and the US had starting in 1968 moving a large number of it's units back to the States and kept pre-positioned equipment for the Reforger units to fall in on which they then turned back into the depots when completing the Reforger exercises---so where is this idea USAREUR felt they could win from the get go.
As part of the 1984 REFORGER/Operation CERTAIN FURY Planning team in CONUS, I know all about time frames for getting troops to Germany and equipped at the various POMCUS sites. TPFDD and TPFDLs still give me bad dreams.

Not sure where you were in 1986 but the Warsaw Pact conducted one of the largest exercises up to that point which had USAREUR stunned at what was pulled up to by the Soviet Ground Forces Germany within 30kms of the inner German border (and in Lower Saxony up to within 3kms) and what was then pulled into their secondary lines in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Back when I worked the problem directly in the 70s and 80s, we were well aware of the availability of Soviet forces in GSFG, NGF, CGF, and SGF and the Western MDs, not to mention the WP forces of EGer, Pol, Czech, etc.

The last Reforger exercise was in 1989 REFORGER continued until 1993.

There was some new thinking for that exercise that the old Fulda Gap scenario might have been in fact wrong when the Soviet Ground Forces suddenly shifted their armored assets more northerly and focused on the Lower Saxony border area (UK protected zone) which reflected their interest in cutting all follow on resupply coming in via Holland and a shorter run to the Rhine River. That was also one of the major thoughts behind the repositioning of US armored assets into Lower Saxony and extremely close to the inner German border as the UK did not even in 1989 have large ground forces based in the border area.
I mentioned this alternative in a prior post and that I was a member of those who were suggesting it back in1978 or so.

This http://inforesist.org/numbers-rf-armed-forces-put-on-full-combat-readiness/?lang=en(Relocated by wm from location in original post) was posted today by a previously provided Ukrainian link and one can or cannot accept it but it is probably next to the Breedlove photo release one of the best listings of Russian Army Order of Battle arrayed now on the Ukrainian/Crimea border region by named Russian units and equipment available.

Reminds one of the inner German border days in 1989 but we only had to deal with T72/80s not the newer T80/90s. From my review of the content of that link, the data is a presentation of someone's belief, not necessarily actuality. I assess it as F6.

So you are assuming the 173rd is just for what justifying more money in an already defined and approved military budget with a planned sequester feature kicking in at the middle of this year---come on wm the 173rd is happy to be on the road for live fire exercises especially if you have ever spent eight hours on just getting to and from their own Italian live fire ranges besides they get bored in a hurry if you have seen their old and now new installations as they finished their last AFG rotation and they had only African training events on the horizon in the coming years and with the current Army wide limited training budget they are happy to be on the move as there was not much to keep them busy and there was a serious conversation in late 2013 on whether they would in fact remain in Italy or be moved to Grafenwoehr and or back to the States as their artillery Bn is in Grafenwoehr after the latest round of base closures in Germany.

Heck with the limited training budgets and limited AF assets in Europe they were having trouble just getting their pay jumps in for the BNs.
I said political or budget related reasons--I did not further specify. I wonder how you got all of the above from what I said. Perhaps part of the political reason was to get them out of Italy before they started getting cabin fever and messed up Italy (all in good, testosterone-pumped fun of course--that's just what airborne troops do ;)) I don't know, but please don't put words in my mouth.

Stan

04-27-2014, 02:19 PM

REFORGER continued until 1993.

Yep, May 1993 in Kaiserslautern. most of us knew that though :cool:

But, it does ever so slightly relate to this thread, assuming the Ukraine joins NATO.

Maybe we'll call it REFORUK... but that could be confused with yanks returning to the UK :rolleyes:

carl

04-27-2014, 11:06 PM

Do you guys think Putin's grabbing of the OSCE officers is sort of a reply of the grift he ran on us in Syria? In Syria he managed to adroitly shift the attention of our chief executive from Assad's action to the status of his chem weapons stockpile. Got an agreement that was ignored and neatly put Assad's action into the land of the forgotten.

In this case he snatches the officers then will generously offer to intercede with himself to get them released. He thereby shifts attention from an looming invasion to some individuals and will gain great gratitude and approbation for himself when he is able to finally convince himself to release them, for a price of course.

The more I see of this the more I think we may be underestimating this guy. He's on the ball. Right now him vs our guys is like Bismark vs a very concerned high school sophomore.

TheCurmudgeon

04-28-2014, 03:01 AM

Yep, May 1993 in Kaiserslautern. most of us knew that though :cool:

But, it does ever so slightly relate to this thread, assuming the Ukraine joins NATO.

Maybe we'll call it REFORUK... but that could be confused with yanks returning to the UK :rolleyes:

We were confused anyway. I always thought REFORGER was a name of some super-secret forge we had somewhere.:p

mirhond

04-28-2014, 07:10 AM

"Discipline" in the Ukrainian army.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wwQIC37VVuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QQZnJ8ZinpA

Rookies have something to say to their superiors.
I could translate it, but I don't think it's neccessary, it's mostly "Get the fu(K out" ranting. Videos speak for itself.

Donbass militia claimed to capture a group SBU officers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onoxc7E7LO0
Faces are covered, the whole thing looks like Bravo Sierra (thanks to Stan for a new mot :) ) but, who knows, may be these guys are real saboteurs.

JMA

04-28-2014, 08:11 AM

John McCain with Charlie Rose (http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60379260)

The first 20 odd minutes is on Ukraine.

JMA

04-28-2014, 10:35 AM

Stopping Russia Starts in Syria (http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/anne-marie-slaughter-on-how-us-intervention-in-the-syrian-civil-war-would-alter-vladimir-putin-s-calculus-in-ukraine)

Anne-Marie Slaughter writes:

Obama took office with the aim of ending wars, not starting them. But if the US meets bullets with words, tyrants will draw their own conclusions. So will allies; Japan, for example, is now wondering how the US will respond should China manufacture a crisis over the disputed Senkaku Islands.

carl

04-28-2014, 01:50 PM

"Discipline" in the Ukrainian army.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wwQIC37VVuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QQZnJ8ZinpA

Rookies have something to say to their superiors.

Discipline or lack thereof in the Ukrainian Army isn't what Russia should be concerned about. Russia should be concerned about the enthusiasm of potential Ukrainian irregulars and insurgents, potential enthusiasm for plugging occupying Russian troops.

kaur

04-28-2014, 02:33 PM

mirhond

04-28-2014, 08:03 PM

Discipline or lack thereof in the Ukrainian Army isn't what Russia should be concerned about. Russia should be concerned about the enthusiasm of potential Ukrainian irregulars and insurgents, potential enthusiasm for plugging occupying Russian troops.

There are no evidences of "occupying Russian troops" in the first place.

Hardcore regime-fighter and make-believe mediator Khodorkovski is not welcome among common folk,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YlRS5ZMd6w
(the message is plain and simple: "Get out")

but local mafia boss Renat Akhmetov is not so biased.
http://24tv.ua/home/showSingleNews.do?hodorkovskiy_vstretilsya_s_ahmet ovim_i_tarutoy&objectId=436993&lang=ru
"We talked and his position is clear - Donbass is Ukraine" said Khodorkovski.

Stan

04-28-2014, 08:40 PM

Mirhond,

There are no evidences of "occupying Russian troops" in the first place.

I don't think Carl was saying there are occupying Russian troops, but, rather, that once there are, there would be a concern with Ukrainian irregulars involved in social upheaval.

It is in fact what sparked young Estonian irregulars from 97 to present day.

However, Vova knows how to use his miilita both at home and abroad.

This part of the world only responds to one thing.... The stick and no carrots, and vodka :D

kaur

04-29-2014, 10:42 AM

This site claims that Strelkov's last service place is military unit 36391, which is FSB anti-terrorist unit, that should fight against international terrorism.

Последнее место службы (в/ч 36391) - это Управление по борьбе с международным терроризмом 2-й Службы ФСБ России.

http://bmpd.livejournal.com/830579.html

It seems to me that Russia is now terrorism exporter like during Soviet time. Was it called state sponsored terrorism? Defence minister Shoigu may claim that military units by the Ukrainian border have left back to barracks and it may seem that situation has been deescalated (there will be no conventional war), but my humble opinion is that special services have set up insurgency in neighboring country. Russian media has brainwashed audience, there are many weapons available, networks of people have been mapped etc. There are plenty of levers to play with violent and nonviolent methods against central government in Kiev. Intensity of operations will be dictated according to political events calendar in Ukraine.

kaur

04-29-2014, 12:57 PM

FSB antiterrorist guy is involeved in kindnapping of OSCE observers with diplomatic passports. No comments.

Igor Strelkov – whom Ukraine's intelligence service describes as a wanted terrorist – made his first public appearance in the rebels' de facto capital. In an interview with Russian channels, he described the captured military representatives as "Nato spies". Strelkov said there was little prospect of them being freed unless Kiev's pro-western government traded them for jailed pro-Russian activists.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/26/ukraine-separatist-leader-defends-capture-nato-spies

What a joke!

Lavrov said Moscow was committed to implementing an agreement struck in Geneva on April 17 between Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union to ease tensions in Ukraine and disarm illegal groups but accused Washington of distorting it with "one-sided demands".

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-lavrov-idUSBREA3O0I420140425

Firn

04-29-2014, 01:27 PM

FSB antiterrorist guy is involeved in kindnapping of OSCE observers with diplomatic passports. No comments.

What a joke!

Pretty Putinesque, if you ask me. At least he is cutting in Russia's flesh as well as long as he continues to wound weak Ukraine. The impact on the European economy as a whole is so far obviously very limited. A giant, even if weakened, doesn't feel much if a weakling kicks a nearby dwarf.

Investors' Fear Crimps Russian Borrowing (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/investors-fear-crimps-russian-borrowing/499040.html)

Usually prolific borrowers on global markets, Russian companies are finding their funding lifeblood cut off by banks and asset managers who fear their investments will get caught up in the standoff between Moscow and the West.

With military tensions running high between Russia and Ukraine and a looming threat of tough Western economic sanctions, it is getting harder for companies to issue bonds or obtain loans — a situation that could eventually threaten some of them with default.

So far the balance sheet looks still fairly strong but the Russian fires of war are buring Russian capital and growth. It is still early days, early weeks. We will see how much the Russian economy will suffer.

BTW: Crimea Makes Economic Crisis Worse (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/crimea-makes-economic-crisis-worse/499109.html)

Instead, it seems that authorities are competing with each other to see who can do the most harm to the economy. One top Russian official proposed selling off the country's dollar and euro reserves without explaining how they would be replaced. Perhaps he would prefer the yen and yuan. But a quick look at the currencies preferred by the central banks of other countries is enough to show that they are far less reliable. Maybe he feels Russia should keep its money in gold.

For every difficult and complex situation, leaders should respond with better and more responsible economic policy — and not just make matters worse.

Personally it seems that most of the silly threats haven't been enforced. Most likely because some of the smarter guys have been able to make their case that those threats were, well, silly. But while almost all the silly stuff hasn't materialized not much has been done to help the Russian economy.

davidbfpo

04-29-2014, 02:44 PM

An open source RUSI briefing on the deployment of Russian and Ukrainian military forces:https://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/UKRANIANMILITARYDISPOSITIONS_RUSIBRIEFING.pdf

Fuchs

04-29-2014, 02:56 PM

FSB antiterrorist guy is involeved in kindnapping of OSCE observers with diplomatic passports. No comments.

Well, the Ukraine has sovereignty in the area so basically everything the guy does there is illegal.

Still, those OSCE observers were 'probably' not really OSCE observers.

Stan

04-29-2014, 04:40 PM

Maybe Gerhard (http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2014/04/29/ex-german-chancellor-schroeder-celebrates-birthday-with-putin-in-st-petersburg/) will get Vova to do something. Or, Vova will get Gerhard to make him smarter :D

BERLIN–Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder celebrated his 70th birthday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on Monday evening, as the U.S. and European Union stepped up sanctions against Moscow over its handling of the Ukraine crisis.

JMA

04-29-2014, 05:05 PM

No. Gerhard Schroeder was called to lick his boss' boots.

Tracing Russian Economic Assets – and Targets for More Sanctions (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/tracing-russian-economic-assets-and-targets-more-sanctions_786418.html)

Gazprom has special influence in Germany thanks in no small part to its employment of Social Democratic ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as chairman of Nordstream, a Gazprom subsidiary operating a pipeline to the Baltic states. Schroeder has been questioned in Germany for his close association with Putin and Schroeder’s defense of the Russian overlord in the Crimean annexation.

Maybe Gerhard (http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2014/04/29/ex-german-chancellor-schroeder-celebrates-birthday-with-putin-in-st-petersburg/) will get Vova to do something. Or, Vova will get Gerhard to make him smarter :D

carl

04-29-2014, 05:20 PM

It always amazes me how politicians come so cheap.

Stan

04-29-2014, 06:04 PM

No. Gerhard Schroeder was called to lick his boss' boots.

... operating a pipeline to the Baltic states

Actually, if and when the pipeline ever completes its 1200+ kilometer journey, it will cut off all transit countries.

Firn

04-29-2014, 06:05 PM

It always amazes me how politicians come so cheap.

At least the likes of Schroeder. I'm almost surprised that Berlusconi isn't there, but then again it is Schroeder's not Putin's birthday. :wry:

A friend, a good friend... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8h8ca5zn5Y)

They even dance in front of a gas station. :D

BTW: Did anybody notice that their business is called 'Cuckoo', after the famous brood parasite which happens to lay his eggs into foreign nests?

Stan

04-29-2014, 06:17 PM

At least they found a charismatic CPT to do the interview.

When asked "what's next in your plans here" he fessed up not really knowing.

They at least like the Estonian version of German pig and potatoes (http://www.delfi.ee/news/paevauudised/eesti/delfi-video-ja-fotod-vaata-milline-on-paldiskisse-saabunud-usa-sodurite-eluolu.d?id=68574479) for lunch :p

Video (http://www.postimees.ee/2777202/video-tana-amarisse-saabunud-usa-sodurid-naitavad-liitlaste-puhendumust): Täna Ämarisse saabunud USA sõdurid näitavad liitlaste pühendumust

Translation

Video (http://www.postimees.ee/2777202/video-tana-amarisse-saabunud-usa-sodurid-naitavad-liitlaste-puhendumust): USA soldiers arrived today at Ämari military airfield to show their members our commitment.

AdamG

04-29-2014, 06:41 PM

Moscow has voiced concern over an "unprecedented" increase in US and Nato military activity near Russian borders, amid an escalating crisis in Ukraine.

Russia's defence minister condemned "provocative" US and Nato comments.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-27200078

OUTLAW 09

04-29-2014, 08:27 PM

Head of pro-Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine Igor Strelkov is experienced FSB officer. This morning there was intensive discussion about Igor Strelkov's backround in Russian social media. Some active people found out that Strelkov is active member of one military history forum, where he also posted his short military career. Those military units will say nothing to outsiders, but after some search you can find that the numbers are connected to FSB subunits. One of the units has some period served also in Chechnya.

http://shgid.fmbb.ru/viewtopic.php?p=2983&highlight=#2983
http://russia.bestpravo.ru/fed1998/data06/tex20098.htm
http://forum.yurclub.ru/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=68629

kaur---all this means is that the Russian Foreign Minister, the Duma President, Putin, the Russian Defense Minster, and the FSB/GRU Chiefs cannot be lying as they all are stating there are no active duty Russian troops inside the Ukraine-(they never do mention what if they are Reservists)--or at least this is what Interfax, TASS, RIA/Novosti, Russia 24 and Russian TV is saying almost every day that they are saying---and you do understand that the Russia media and the Russian elites never lie.

But again it is the same Russian media that utters the word Nazi/Right Sector (means the same thing) more times daily than the entire German media has used the word Nazi in the last 30 years---there is an old saying---repeat something seven times and one starts to believe it---it is a left/right brain thing.

Fuchs

04-30-2014, 04:29 AM

Russians are arguing that they need now their own rating agency but that is 10 years away and with Russian criminal activity no one would trust the agency so they are tied to the three US rating agencies forever so to speak.

Hardly.
The U.S. rating agencies have no competence in their core business to speak of - they merely have market shares and reputation.

Plenty smaller rating agencies exist which could easily jump start subsidiaries or joint ventures.

Besides, rating agencies are so very useless, nobody "needs" them - other than for rackets. It's about time we establish test runs to expose how useless the financial sector's judgement on risks is. I've seen it myself many times; flipping coins would be quicker, cheaper and in no way inferior to bankers deciding on business loan requests.

kaur

04-30-2014, 09:38 AM

Last June there was roundtable in Nezavisimoje Vojennoje Obozrenije office, where colonel in reserve Igor Strelkov (the FSB guy now in Eastern Ukraine. Sitting by general Balujevski) explained how to fight terrorism in Russia. First you have to kill the leaders of terrorist, destroy their bases outside war theatre and close your borders for resupply. How Ukrainians should follow this advice?

http://anna-news.info/node/11634

What is Strelkov group doing in Eastern Ukraine? Here is nice explanation.

Many terrorist factions care about the level of popular support they enjoy within
a population they claim to represent. Empirically, this level of support can either rise
or fall in the aftermath of a campaign of terrorist violence. Under what circumstances
is the use of terror an effective tactic for mobilizing political support for an extremist
group? This paper models a scenario in which an extremist faction considers attacking
a government in the hopes of provoking a counterterror response that will radicalize
the population, increasing the extremists' support at the expense of a more moderate
faction. In our scenario, such radicalization can result either from the economic damage
caused by counterterror operations or by the way in which such operations change the
population's assessment of the government's motivations. We demonstrate that such
attempts at mobilizing public support can be, but need not be, successful, discuss
factors that make both the initiation of a terror campaign and successful mobilization
more or less likely, and relate our results to several empirical cases

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/dickson/dickson_propaganda.pdf

kaur

04-30-2014, 10:01 AM

To mirhond (Sorry moderator for text in Russian). Russian Kremlin connected statistical firm's analysis from January 2012 explains why Putin has chosen nationalist rhetoric to stay in power. Huge amount of Russians (most of them in countryside) support nationalistic ideas + nostalgie for Soviet time, when life was much better. Putin has choosen for his third term Prohhanov, Dugin and Kurginjan as his official ideologues. Kurginjan was the guy, who protected putch in 1991 and gave working place to head of KGB Krjutchkov (member of coup commitee).

Основной общественный запрос русского большинства в регионах явно направлен в
левонационалистическую сторону. По данным ВЦИОМ (2011), либеральный путь развития
сегодня готовы поддержать лишь 18% россиян. Гораздо больше тех (62%), кто готов
поддержать противоположный — скорее силовой сценарий, который мог бы радикально обновить российские элиты, политический класс, централизовать ресурсы на решение
стратегически значимых задач1. Однако и это консервативное большинство общества все в
меньшей степени связывает свои надежды с нынешним государством и его властными
институтами. Учитывая стремительную актуализацию националистической идеи, пусть в
относительно мягкой, приемлемой для большинства форме, именно от
левонационалистической идеологии можно ожидать статуса наиболее актуальной, способной
объединить новорусскую нацию в период ее становления. Это «русское большинство» при всех
накопившихся претензиях к путинской власти, все же относится к Путину намного более
терпимо, чем к большей части «сахаровских» лидеров, и на предстоящих выборах, вне всякого
сомнения, поддержит его. В своих программных статьях в «Известиях» Путин обращается
именно к этому провинциальному большинству, говоря об олигархах, разбогатевших на
залоговых аукционах середины 90-х и скупающих в Европе футбольные клубы. Но условная
поддержка Путина со стороны этой части электората еще не означает, что
левонационалистическая повестка будет снята, напротив, время ее еще только начинается. За
русских националистов борются и власть, и оппозиция. Власть приглашает на высокую
должность в правительстве Д. Рогозина, ее поддерживают ветераны национал-патриотической
мысли А. Проханов, А. Дугин и С. Кургинян.

http://wciom.ru/fileadmin/Monitoring/107/2012_107_4_Byzov.pdf

Look at this Kurginjan organised pro Crimea meetin in the center of Moscow (15.03.2014). Is this style copying somebody? You can find Hitler's Nurmberg rally yourself. Kurginjan's event is of course joke in comparsion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0vyneLOuWI

Stan

04-30-2014, 07:27 PM

Russian Air Force helicopters (http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20140430/1006072742.html) began flying on the border with the Baltic countries

MOSCOW, April 30 - RIA Novosti. Helicopters Army Aviation WEST Russia began flying over the North-West of the country, told reporters on Wednesday the head of the press service of the Western Military District, Colonel Oleg Kochetkov.

"Army Aviation Brigade crews Western Military Region, stationed in Pskov region, started planning a training flight in the skies over the North-West of Russia. First rise in the sky at the same time a squadron of different types of attack helicopters were armed WEST, Mi-28N" Night Hunter "and Ka-52" Alligator "- said Kochetkov

OUTLAW 09

04-30-2014, 07:44 PM

Russian Air Force helicopters (http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20140430/1006072742.html) began flying on the border with the Baltic countries

Stan---was behind four US Army Sustainment convoys headed from Berlin to Poland via Frankfurt Oder---three with four trucks each carrying two shipping containers.

Sustainment trucks were from KTown and they handle all container shipping for deploying units---were being accompanied by German MPs running flashing blue lights and were not maintaining required speeds then they were picked up by Polish MPs---looks like they were headed eastwards in a hurry.

Looks like the 173rd is in for a longer stay where they landed.

Fuchs

04-30-2014, 07:45 PM

3. GDP is estimated at right now .02% and sinking to potentially zero or lower if that is technically possible

It's not because you forgot to add "growth" behind "GDP".

OUTLAW 09

04-30-2014, 07:47 PM

kaur---a good find---the use of reservists is the Russian way of plausible deniability ---meaning hey we have no active duty personnel or the ground because you have not asked about nor mentioned reservists. The US does not seem to get the current Russia word usage meaning if they say red then they really mean yellow if they say green then they really mean pink---really does goes back to the Communist term dialectic materialism.

Secondly, watch the tactics actively shifting now as the population has not been pulled along with the buildings being taken over as in the Crimea so now they are trying to build a center of gravity around how many buildings equals the inability to hold the 25th of May elections so they can argue hey see we did not vote for the illegitimate government so we want Russia to step in and protect us.

Interesting is the fact that the local population while proRussian still does not want to de facto shift to Russia even with the massive agitation going on by the KGB/FSB/GRU and the Russian TV/radio media reports.

Like these two quotes on dialectic materialism from the past:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be."

"Change of form of motion is always a process that takes place between at least two bodies, of which one loses a definite quantity of motion of one quality (e.g. heat), while the other gains a corresponding quantity of motion of another quality (mechanical motion, electricity, chemical decomposition).

"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature."

Fredrick Engels
Dialectics of Nature

But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another, that from our point of view [may be] apparently irreconcilable with it, and so forth.

Vladimir Lenin
Materialism and Empirio-criticism

kaur---when one looks at how the self defense leaders all of a sudden assumed leadership check the Russian term "samoswanzy" from the 1584 period---it goes along way in explaining how they think and act.

OUTLAW 09

04-30-2014, 08:16 PM

04-30-2014, 09:58 PM

wm---you mentioned a number of posts ago that USAREUR/USECOM did not doubt they could stop a Soviet attack and I responded that I was not sure you understood the conditions in Europe up to 1989 and why Reforger was doomed to fail because USECOM could not hold the Soviet up long enough to get US based troops over in time.

This link confirms what I mentioned when I indicated that it was up to selected SF teams to try to slow them down until help arrived.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/01/29/the_littlest_boy_cold_war_backpack_nuke
Nice try but your FP article does not prove your contention. The fact that US SF teams trained to use SADMs in eastern Europe does not prove that EUCOM did not believe it could beat a Soviet /WP invasion of Western Europe. What do you know about MADMs and TADMs? Plans existed for their use as well. BTW, I believe the US stopped making/deploying SADMs in 1989.

OUTLAW 09

05-01-2014, 08:54 AM

Nice try but your FP article does not prove your contention. The fact that US SF teams trained to use SADMs in eastern Europe does not prove that EUCOM did not believe it could beat a Soviet /WP invasion of Western Europe. What do you know about MADMs and TADMs? Plans existed for their use as well. BTW, I believe the US stopped making/deploying SADMs in 1989.

Come on wm---just where were you in 1989?---by the way officially yes the SADMs were negated out in 1989 but not everyone gave them up until 1991(remember US Army Berlin did not leave until 1994) and secondly was not the entire Cold War ended in 1989/90 so the further need was not a given. Having been on a specific team in a particular point in time in West Berlin I did in fact know what the USECOM wartime contingency planning was to be for us---slowdown, channeling, area denial deep in the GDR as well as in other Warsaw Pact countries---literally a one way mission to gain time.

If in fact channeling/slow down/area denial efforts were in fact part and parcel of the USECOM war planning ---slowdown until further troops arrived means just exactly what---slowdown until help arrives---help to arrive took on an average Reforger exercise over eight weeks to get everyone on the ground---do you really think without the nuclear piece in play US Army units could have hung on for eight full weeks until reinforcements arrived?---come on wm just how many Reforger exercises were you part and parcel of---you would not be saying this then.

There were some planners that felt in 1989 with the T72/80s in place in the numbers that were in the SGFG in the GDR the slowdown would have been at the Rhine---and that is defined as what by yourself---winning?

So wm exactly where were you in 1989 when the last Reforger actually exercised the USECOM war plan across all of Germany with all of NATO involved from Rotterdam to the inner German border and oh by the way with massive use of all US/NATO SOF units for the deep fight?

I know where I was---I lead the "Soviet" Anti SOF Response Company using Soviet TTPs against US/NATO SOF to verify if they would be effective---they were by the way--so again USECOM practiced seriously in 1989 the complete war plan and it foresaw a massive slog just to get back to the inner German border---far from a complete "win' we were a tad short --so I am not sure where you get your facts concerning a "win".

OUTLAW 09

05-01-2014, 01:03 PM

Come on wm---just where were you in 1989?---by the way officially yes the SADMs were negated out in 1989 but not everyone gave them up until 1991(remember US Army Berlin did not leave until 1994) and secondly was not the entire Cold War ended in 1989/90 so the further need was not a given. Having been on a specific team in a particular point in time in West Berlin I did in fact know what the USECOM wartime contingency planning was to be for us---slowdown, channeling, area denial deep in the GDR as well as in other Warsaw Pact countries---literally a one way mission to gain time.

If in fact channeling/slow down/area denial efforts were in fact part and parcel of the USECOM war planning ---slowdown until further troops arrived means just exactly what---slowdown until help arrives---help to arrive took on an average Reforger exercise over eight weeks to get everyone on the ground---do you really think without the nuclear piece in play US Army units could have hung on for eight full weeks until reinforcements arrived?---come on wm just how many Reforger exercises were you part and parcel of---you would not be saying this then.

There were some planners that felt in 1989 with the T72/80s in place in the numbers that were in the SGFG in the GDR the slowdown would have been at the Rhine---and that is defined as what by yourself---winning?

So wm exactly where were you in 1989 when the last Reforger actually exercised the USECOM war plan across all of Germany with all of NATO involved from Rotterdam to the inner German border and oh by the way with massive use of all US/NATO SOF units for the deep fight?

I know where I was---I lead the "Soviet" Anti SOF Response Company using Soviet TTPs against US/NATO SOF to verify if they would be effective---they were by the way--so again USECOM practiced seriously in 1989 the complete war plan and it foresaw a massive slog just to get back to the inner German border---far from a complete "win' we were a tad short --so I am not sure where you get your facts concerning a "win".

wm---just a side note---some of us were especially far more in tune with what the actual war plans were for USECOM than even USECOM fully understood up to 1984 and then into the 1989 Reforger exercise as some of us spent literally hours dissecting them down to our operational/tactical levels as we were major players in the first critical initial hours and days until the rest of the US Army came over.

The unit that some of us worked for over the years has been finally allowed to have it's existence declassified 30 years (Jan 2014) after it's deactivation ---what we did, where we did it, and how we did it is still classified until 2044 as some of the techniques and procedures that we developed are still in use worldwide today by several elite units.

So there will be no books, no stories/rumors nor leaked articles on what we did---we will literally disappear as veterans into the world of silence having played major unsung roles for years during the Cold War and will take those successes to the grave with us.

So again some of us fully understood the USECOM war plans as well as the limitations of US/NATO Forces in Germany up to 1989 and a "win" it would not have been---better yet call it a "draw" if USEOM had been able to make it back to the inner German border.

http://www.fayobserver.com/news/local/article_f8e10c82-f462-5835-956c-516fe4c4a0bf.html

05-01-2014, 01:16 PM

Come on wm---just where were you in 1989?---by the way officially yes the SADMs were negated out in 1989 but not everyone gave them up until 1991(remember US Army Berlin did not leave until 1994) and secondly was not the entire Cold War ended in 1989/90 so the further need was not a given. Having been on a specific team in a particular point in time in West Berlin I did in fact know what the USECOM wartime contingency planning was to be for us---slowdown, channeling, area denial deep in the GDR as well as in other Warsaw Pact countries---literally a one way mission to gain time.

If in fact channeling/slow down/area denial efforts were in fact part and parcel of the USECOM war planning ---slowdown until further troops arrived means just exactly what---slowdown until help arrives---help to arrive took on an average Reforger exercise over eight weeks to get everyone on the ground---do you really think without the nuclear piece in play US Army units could have hung on for eight full weeks until reinforcements arrived?---come on wm just how many Reforger exercises were you part and parcel of---you would not be saying this then.

There were some planners that felt in 1989 with the T72/80s in place in the numbers that were in the SGFG in the GDR the slowdown would have been at the Rhine---and that is defined as what by yourself---winning?

So wm exactly where were you in 1989 when the last Reforger actually exercised the USECOM war plan across all of Germany with all of NATO involved from Rotterdam to the inner German border and oh by the way with massive use of all US/NATO SOF units for the deep fight?

I know where I was---I lead the "Soviet" Anti SOF Response Company using Soviet TTPs against US/NATO SOF to verify if they would be effective---they were by the way--so again USECOM practiced seriously in 1989 the complete war plan and it foresaw a massive slog just to get back to the inner German border---far from a complete "win' we were a tad short --so I am not sure where you get your facts concerning a "win".
In 1989, I was not a member of POW Camp Berlin. Not that it matters, but I was preparing for an assignment to SOUTHCOM J2 where planning was ongoing for a little live fire exercise called Operation Just Cause.. But, like many people outside POW Camp Berlin, I was also happy to find that the Wall was coming down and GSFG would soon be out of the former DDR. I suspect that REFORGER 89 went forward as it did because its planning had been going on for at least a year. For most units involved in REFORGER, the exercise was the capstone event of an annual training cycle. And not uncommonly in training exercises, enemy forces' worst case scenarios are used; exercises are usually designed to stress the system. BTW, this last point goes quite some way toward explaining the array of Russian forces across the border from the Ukraine.

05-01-2014, 01:32 PM

wm---just a side note---some of us were especially far more in tune with what the actual war plans were for USECOM than even USECOM fully understood up to 1984 and then into the 1989 Reforger exercise as some of us spent literally hours dissecting them down to our operational/tactical levels as we were major players in the first critical initial hours and days until the rest of the US Army came over.

The unit that some of us worked for over the years has been finally allowed to have it's existence declassified 30 years (Jan 2014) after it's deactivation ---what we did, where we did it, and how we did it is still classified until 2044 as some of the techniques and procedures that we developed are still in use worldwide today by several elite units.

So there will be no books, no stories/rumors nor leaked articles on what we did---we will literally disappear as veterans into the world of silence having played major unsung roles for years during the Cold War and will take those successes to the grave with us.

So again some of us fully understood the USECOM war plans as well as the limitations of US/NATO Forces in Germany up to 1989 and a "win" it would not have been---better yet call it a "draw" if USEOM had been able to make it back to the inner German border.

http://www.fayobserver.com/news/local/article_f8e10c82-f462-5835-956c-516fe4c4a0bf.html

I find it interesting that you claim to know the war plan better than the planners, but I doubt the veracity of that statement. More importantly, a plan is just a plan; it is axiomatic that no plan survives first contact. In fact, nearly every op plan I have seen executed was frago'ed before it was converted from a plan to an opord. At the lowest tactical level that may not be the case so much, but then units at , say, battalion and below do not normally write op plans, at least not in my experience. YMMV

OUTLAW 09

05-01-2014, 04:04 PM

I find it interesting that you claim to know the war plan better than the planners, but I doubt the veracity of that statement. More importantly, a plan is just a plan; it is axiomatic that no plan survives first contact. In fact, nearly every op plan I have seen executed was frago'ed before it was converted from a plan to an opord. At the lowest tactical level that may not be the case so much, but then units at , say, battalion and below do not normally write op plans, at least not in my experience. YMMV

wm---you still have not mentioned where you where during the very last 1989 Reforger exercise ---were you at least in an European based Army unit that participated---a yes or no will do and yes I do know the plans very well from 1989 as I was tasked to fulfill them both operationally as well as tactically and yourself? And then differently from you I had to exercise the Soviet doctrine against the opord.

See when you mentioned every plan you have seen was frago'ed then you are way past the 1989 timeframe in active service and in those years all plans were submitted as opords in 1989 as they Army then adhered strictly to MDMP not as they do now and simply frago everything that walks and talks and acts like a plan---AFG in some units was up into the 300/400 series ranged frago numbers---come on wm--served there as well.

Quit sidestepping that every plan does not survive first contact---the wartime contingency planning for Europe was drilled at every Reforger exercise (in addition to surprises thrown in to mimic opord adaptions on the fly) if you had participated in them which you have not so I am not sure why you assume you are in fact correct and you challenge other's veracity who actually participated in them.

Come on wm you really do not believe units such as the 2/3ACR or 11ACR could have "won" against the Soviet Ground Forces Germany Tank Divisons who had already the T80s in 1985/86 in large numbers---even the Abrams in Europe initially had the 105mm gun not the 120mm which came into theater later in larger numbers. The ACRs only had the Bradley's and a bunch of 113s come on.

If you have participated in the last Reforger from 1989 then we can talk and exchange experiences on long the 141 rides over the Atlantic we both had just to get to Germany.

Again when you speak of SDAMs and the other related weapons--speak from experience as I have been trained on the darn thing and deployed with it out a C130 all based on an USEOM opord not a frago have you? Then we can converse and exchange experiences.

Until then continue thinking USECOM was "winning" as this conversation is going nowhere.

WM---by the way just to refresh your knowledge of Soviet Army units based in just the GDR as of 1989 not counting their back up units in Poland---in 1989 we had only a max of 270K and it was a lot of combat support mixed in. A majority of these units were deactivated after 1994 when they pulled out of the then GDR after reunification.

By the way count the number of actual Soviet Divisions (yes they are smaller than ours) inside the GDR and then tell me just how many Divisions we had along with NATO on the ground physically located inside Germany and you wonder why we worried every time there was a troop rotation on their side as the size actually doubled as units came in and units went out and often overlapped for several weeks increasing the actual number of Soviet troops on the ground by a factor of 2.

Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army (HQ Dresden) · 8th Guards Mechanised Corps, the 11th Guards Tank Corps
2nd Guards Tank Army (HQ Fürstenberg) · Soviet 1st Mechanized Corps, 9th Tank Corps, 12th Guard Tank Corps
4th Guards Tank Army (HQ Eberswalde) · 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, 6th Guards Mechanised Corps ; 10th Guards Tank Corps
2nd Shock Army (HQ Schwerin) · 109th Rifle Corps (46th, 90th, 372nd Rifle Divisions), 116th Rifle Corps (86th, 321st, 326th Rifle Division) 40th Guards Rifle Corps
3rd Shock Army (HQ Stendal) · 7th Rifle Corps (146th, 265th, 364th Rifle Divisions) ; 12th Guard Rifle Corps (23rd Guards, 52nd Guards, 33rd Rifle Divisions); 79th Rifle Corps (150th, 171st, 207th Rifle Divisions) 9th Tank Corps
5th Shock Army (HQ Berlin) · 9th Rifle Corps (248th, 301st Rifle Divisions); 26th Guard Rifle Corps (89th Guards, 94th Guards, 266th Rifle Divisions); 32nd Rifle Corps (60th Guards, 295th, 416th Rifle Divisions); 230th Rifle Division; three independent tank brigades
8th Guards Army (HQ Nohra) 4th Guards Rifle Corps (35th, 47th, 57th Guard Rifle Divisions) · 28th Guard Rifle Corps (39th, 79th, 88th Guard Rifle Division) · 29th Guard Rifle Corps (27th, 74th, 82nd Guard Rifle Divisions) · 11th Tank Corps
47th Army (HQ Halle) · 77th Rifle Corps (185th, 260th, 328th Rifle Division) · 125th Rifle Corps (60th, 76th, 175th Rifle Divisions) · 129th Rifle Corps (82nd, 132nd, 143rd Rifle Divisions) · 1st Guards Tank Corps and the 25th Tank Corps.

OUTLAW 09

05-01-2014, 04:23 PM

firn---an interesting aspect of the sanctions that is now hitting the Russian companies on the sanctions list---they are potentially losing their US software licenses as they have been initially informed of such a move by the leading US software companies such as MS, HP, IBM.

They are some serious worries about being penalized if caught using turned off licenses plus the loss of technical support will hurt as well as well as the loss of security updates as well.

Stan

05-01-2014, 06:17 PM

... the very last 1989 Reforger exercise

Outlaw,
Do you have some special link that the rest of us are unaware of regarding the last REFORGER? I have 1993, regardless of how effective or level of troop participation was. The date is either 89, 90, 91, 92 or 93.

Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army (HQ Dresden) · 8th Guards Mechanised Corps, the 11th Guards Tank Corps
2nd Guards Tank Army (HQ Fürstenberg) · Soviet 1st Mechanized Corps, 9th Tank Corps, 12th Guard Tank Corps
4th Guards Tank Army (HQ Eberswalde) · 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, 6th Guards Mechanised Corps ; 10th Guards Tank Corps
2nd Shock Army (HQ Schwerin) · 109th Rifle Corps (46th, 90th, 372nd Rifle Divisions), 116th Rifle Corps (86th, 321st, 326th Rifle Division) 40th Guards Rifle Corps
3rd Shock Army (HQ Stendal) · 7th Rifle Corps (146th, 265th, 364th Rifle Divisions) ; 12th Guard Rifle Corps (23rd Guards, 52nd Guards, 33rd Rifle Divisions); 79th Rifle Corps (150th, 171st, 207th Rifle Divisions) 9th Tank Corps
5th Shock Army (HQ Berlin) · 9th Rifle Corps (248th, 301st Rifle Divisions); 26th Guard Rifle Corps (89th Guards, 94th Guards, 266th Rifle Divisions); 32nd Rifle Corps (60th Guards, 295th, 416th Rifle Divisions); 230th Rifle Division; three independent tank brigades
8th Guards Army (HQ Nohra) 4th Guards Rifle Corps (35th, 47th, 57th Guard Rifle Divisions) · 28th Guard Rifle Corps (39th, 79th, 88th Guard Rifle Division) · 29th Guard Rifle Corps (27th, 74th, 82nd Guard Rifle Divisions) · 11th Tank Corps
47th Army (HQ Halle) · 77th Rifle Corps (185th, 260th, 328th Rifle Division) · 125th Rifle Corps (60th, 76th, 175th Rifle Divisions) · 129th Rifle Corps (82nd, 132nd, 143rd Rifle Divisions) · 1st Guards Tank Corps and the 25th Tank Corps.

If you insist on copying and pasting, at least provide the link and give the real author credit.

Such as...

Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Soviet_Forces_in_Germany)

The Group of Soviet Occupation Forces, Germany, was formed after the end of the Second World War from formations of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts. On its creation on 9 July 1945 it included:

Firn

05-01-2014, 06:21 PM

Outlaw, I think the statement of the RCB does actually reflect to a good extent the difficult position Russia is in. I wouldn't overestimate the impact of the software sector, but it is of course one aspect among many.

I think the RCB statement shows gives in it's condensed form a good quick snapshot of the difficult phase the Russian economy is in, especially if you have done first your in-depth homework. ;)

From an economic point of view Russia suffers so far clearly much more as it was predictable and predicted. Stil it is important to remind oneself that it looks like a long conflict, with lots of unknowns.

Steve Blair

05-01-2014, 06:57 PM

Outlaw,
Do you have some special link that the rest of us are unaware of regarding the last REFORGER? I have 1993, regardless of how effective or level of troop participation was. The date is either 89, 90, 91, 92 or 93.

Such as...

That marvelously dependable source Wikipedia lists the last REFORGER as 1993. Interestingly, it does not list 1989.

AmericanPride

05-01-2014, 09:24 PM

Meanwhile, the counter-Maiden in eastern Ukraine continues to escalate as the authority of Kiev collapses. From New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/world/europe/ukraine.html), quoting the (unelected) President in Kiev:

“Inactivity, helplessness and even criminal betrayal” plague the security forces, the acting leader, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, told a meeting of regional governors in Kiev. “It is hard to accept but it’s the truth. The majority of law enforcers in the east are incapable of performing their duties.”

What has Kiev done to ensure the loyalty of its security officers? Probably not as much as Moscow has done in trying to subvert them. And as I've mentioned previously, the austerity program will continue unabated and without regard for the political consequences:

On top of nerves, Ukraine’s economy is worryingly frail. The board of the International Monetary Fund voted Wednesday to approve $17 billion in loans for Ukraine, with conditions that will undoubtedly be felt as hardships by ordinary Ukrainians. Igor Burakovsky, head of the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting, said on Wednesday that Ukraine’s foreign debt amounts to $73.2 billion.

It's easy to blame Moscow for the complete failure in political strategy, and to suggest that there's an SVR/GRU boogeyman behind every unhelpful event, but the truth of the matter is that the Kiev administration has done nothing whatsoever to rebuild its legitimacy in the eastern regions and with ethnic Russians. The anti-Kiev sentiment is strong, and the organization and resources (allegedly) provided by Moscow does nothing to help matters. But this is an eastern mirror of the Maiden events in Kiev that ousted Yanukovych, and like Yanukovych, the Kiev administration has been careless in providing opportunities for its opposition to exploit.

And of course, in desperation with the failure of the regular army and the national guard units to actually secure the eastern territories by force, Kiev introduces conscription (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617592/Preparing-war-Ukraine-puts-troops-combat-alert-Russian-invasion-weeks-inaction-against-pro-Kremlin-uprising.html) (which was originally abolished by Yanukovych):

Ukraine's pro-Western leaders conceded on Wednesday they were 'helpless' to counter the fall of government buildings and police stations to the separatists in the Donbass coal and steel belt of eastern Ukraine, source of around a third of the country's industrial output.

From BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27247428):

On Thursday, his office said in a statement that conscription was being introduced "given the deteriorating situation in the east and the south... the rising force of armed pro-Russian units and the taking of public administration buildings... which threaten territorial integrity".

It appears that Kiev administration's political position is increasingly untenable.

kaur

05-01-2014, 10:38 PM

mirhond, thank you for forcing me to think :)

— Если отталкиваться от типа населенных пунктов, то где поддержка Путина выше, а где ниже?

— Максимум поддержки Путина сегодня приходится на большие и средние города. Особенно те, где сохранились остатки советской промышленности, которые заставляют людей ориентироваться на поддержку государства. Затем, по убывающей, идут малые города с населением до 250 тысяч и средние депрессивные города. Еще более низкая поддержка Путина — в селе. В совокупности малые, средние депрессивные города и село представляют собой консервативную провинцию, где фиксируется сильное напряжение и недовольство, связанное с отказом государства от выполнения социальных обязательств. А ниже всего поддержка Путина в Москве.

Если мы возьмем охват аудитории Первого канала, ВГТРК и НТВ, то он составляет более 90% населения, в то время как интернетом для получения новостей пользуются не более 20% россиян. Соответственно, люди зависят от того, что им говорит телевидение.

http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2014/03/13_a_5948629.shtml

AmericanPride, wouldn't it be more easy to handle Eastern Ukraine problems without Russian special services guys acting as provocators? I speculate that without Taliban it would be easier to promote peaceful solutions in Afganistan. Isn't easier to solve problems without spoilers?

AmericanPride

05-01-2014, 10:46 PM

AmericanPride, wouldn't it be more easy to handle Eastern Ukraine problems without Russian special services guys acting as provocators? I speculate that without Taliban it would be easier to promote peaceful solutions in Afganistan. Isn't easier to solve problems without spoilers?

Yeah - probably. But is it realistic to expect that?

EDIT: Also, I'm willing to bet that the Kremlin's masters are thinking something similar: wouldn't it be easier to maintain Ukraine's allegience without American money and political interference acting as spoilers?

carl

05-02-2014, 03:28 AM

Meanwhile, the counter-Maiden in eastern Ukraine continues to escalate as the authority of Kiev collapses. From New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/world/europe/ukraine.html), quoting the (unelected) President in Kiev:

What has Kiev done to ensure the loyalty of its security officers? Probably not as much as Moscow has done in trying to subvert them. And as I've mentioned previously, the austerity program will continue unabated and without regard for the political consequences:

It's easy to blame Moscow for the complete failure in political strategy, and to suggest that there's an SVR/GRU boogeyman behind every unhelpful event, but the truth of the matter is that the Kiev administration has done nothing whatsoever to rebuild its legitimacy in the eastern regions and with ethnic Russians. The anti-Kiev sentiment is strong, and the organization and resources (allegedly) provided by Moscow does nothing to help matters. But this is an eastern mirror of the Maiden events in Kiev that ousted Yanukovych, and like Yanukovych, the Kiev administration has been careless in providing opportunities for its opposition to exploit.

The current Kiev government has only been around a short time so they are outmatched by an organized military assault by Russia (sans unit patches of course). That isn't really an excuse because results matter right now. However results do matter in the long run too. We'll see how the Ivans do if they keep moving into Ukraine. The Ukrainians have a tradition of insurgency which matters in small war.

I don't know how strong the anti-Kiev sentiment is. Maybe, but most of the reports I read seem to indicate the people involved are Russian spec ops, drunks, Russian riot tourists and thugs. The latest XX Committee blog entry has a story about how the streets in the affected towns are empty except for the people I mentioned above. The Roma are gone because they were chased out.

And of course, in desperation with the failure of the regular army and the national guard units to actually secure the eastern territories by force, Kiev introduces conscription (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617592/Preparing-war-Ukraine-puts-troops-combat-alert-Russian-invasion-weeks-inaction-against-pro-Kremlin-uprising.html) (which was originally abolished by Yanukovych):

From BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27247428):

It appears that Kiev administration's political position is increasingly untenable.

I find it completely unremarkable that a country under attack institutes conscription. The Kiev administrations military position seems to be very bad and maybe getting worse. Political position? That is a longer run thing. We'll see.

carl

05-02-2014, 03:34 AM

Yeah - probably. But is it realistic to expect that?

EDIT: Also, I'm willing to bet that the Kremlin's masters are thinking something similar: wouldn't it be easier to maintain Ukraine's allegience without American money and political interference acting as spoilers?

Heck yea it's realistic to expect Russki spec ops types not to be there. You oppose them and force them out. There are many ways. They range from shooting them dead or putting a lot of pressure, actual real live that really hurts pressure, on Vlad the would be Great to withdraw them. But it requires action.

Yea you're right the Kremlin masters are probably thinking that. They probably thought the same thing about Western support for pesky Polish shipyard workers in the old days.

AmericanPride

05-02-2014, 04:46 AM

Yea you're right the Kremlin masters are probably thinking that. They probably thought the same thing about Western support for pesky Polish shipyard workers in the old days.

And that's the point. The morality of it is irrelevant. As you said, "results matter". And the result thus far has been continued Russian success, Ukrainian instability, and Western posturing. I don't think Moscow wants escalation any more than Washington does, insofar that escalation increases the chances of a decision point between credibility and costly intervention. The low-level agitation works in Moscow's favor and it'll be interesting to see how it shapes the elections - assuming they're going to be held. What we should be doing is attempting to mitigate any further losses rather than reversing Russia's gains.

mirhond

05-02-2014, 11:30 AM

mirhond, thank you for forcing me to think :)

— Если отталкиваться от типа населенных пунктов, то где поддержка Путина выше, а где ниже?

http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2014/03/13_a_5948629.shtml

AmericanPride, wouldn't it be more easy to handle Eastern Ukraine problems without Russian special services guys acting as provocators? I speculate that without Taliban it would be easier to promote peaceful solutions in Afganistan. Isn't easier to solve problems without spoilers?

1. Again, approval does not mean support.
2.
чем дольше на территории была советская власть, тем больше люди придерживаются советских патерналистских взглядов. Чем дальше на запад Украины, тем свободнее люди.
That's a message from West Ukraine to East - you are all soviet scum, while we are the paragons of freedom. So, why you still surprised that Kievan junta political sentiments arn't popular in the East? You can't handle the fact that these people don't like to be called bad names? Bad for you, then, your ignorance remain untouched.
3. I speculate that the world without poverty, illiteracy, inequality, opression, armies and organised religions would be much better - will my speculations help the reality?

05-02-2014, 12:15 PM

wm---you still have not mentioned where you where during the very last 1989 Reforger exercise ---were you at least in an European based Army unit that participated---a yes or no will do and yes I do know the plans very well from 1989 as I was tasked to fulfill them both operationally as well as tactically and yourself? And then differently from you I had to exercise the Soviet doctrine against the opord.

See when you mentioned every plan you have seen was frago'ed then you are way past the 1989 timeframe in active service and in those years all plans were submitted as opords in 1989 as they Army then adhered strictly to MDMP not as they do now and simply frago everything that walks and talks and acts like a plan---AFG in some units was up into the 300/400 series ranged frago numbers---come on wm--served there as well.

Quit sidestepping that every plan does not survive first contact---the wartime contingency planning for Europe was drilled at every Reforger exercise (in addition to surprises thrown in to mimic opordx adaptions on the fly) if you had participated in them which you have not so I am not sure why you assume you are in fact correwct and you challenge other's veracity who actually participated in them.

Come on wm you really do not believe units such as the 2/3ACR or 11ACR could have "won" against the Soviet Ground Forces Germany Tank Divisons who had already the T80s in 1985/86 in large numbers---even the Abrams in Europe initially had the 105mm gun not the 120mm which came into theater later in larger numbers. The ACRs only had the Bradley's and a bunch of 113s come on.

If you have participated in the last Reforger from 1989 then we can talk and exchange experiences on long the 141 rides over the Atlantic we both had just to get to Germany.

Again when you speak of SDAMs and the other related weapons--speak from experience as I have been trained on the darn thing and deployed with it out a C130 all based on an USEOM opord not a frago have you? Then we can converse and exchange experiences.

Until then continue thinking USECOM was "winning" as this conversation is going nowhere.

WM---by twhe way just to refresh your knowledge of Soviet Army units based in just the GDR as of 1989 not counting their back up units in Poland---in 1989 we had only a max of 270K and it was a lot of combat support mixed in. A majority of these units were deactivated after 1994 when they pulled out of the then GDR after reunification.

By the way count the number of actual Soviet Divisions (yes they are smaller than ours) inside the GDR and then tell me just how many Divisions we had along with NATO on the ground physically located inside Germany and you wonder why we worried every time there was a troop rotation on their side as the size actually doubled as units came in and units went out and often overlapped for several weeks increasing the actual number of Soviet troops on the ground by a factor of 2.

Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army (HQ Dresden) · 8th Guards Mechanised Corps, the 11th Guards Tank Corps
2nd Guards Tank Army (HQ Fürstenberg) · Soviet 1st Mechanized Corps, 9th Tank Corps, 12th Guard Tank Corps
4th Guards Tank Army (HQ Eberswalde) · 5th Guards Mechanised Corps, 6th Guards Mechanised Corps ; 10th Guards Tank Corps
2nd Shock Army (HQ Schwerin) · 109th Rifle Corps (46th, 90th, 372nd Rifle Divisions), 116th Rifle Corps (86th, 321st, 326th Rifle Division) 40th Guards Rifle Corps
3rd Shock Army (HQ Stendal) · 7th Rifle Corps (146th, 265th, 364th Rifle Divisions) ; 12th Guard Rifle Corps (23rd Guards, 52nd Guards, 33rd Rifle Divisions); 79th Rifle Corps (150th, 171st, 207th Rifle Divisions) 9th Tank Corps
5th Shock Army (HQ Berlin) · 9th Rifle Corps (248th, 301st Rifle Divisions); 26th Guard Rifle Corps (89th Guards, 94th Guards, 266th Rifle Divisions); 32nd Rifle Corps (60th Guards, 295th, 416th Rifle Divisions); 230th Rifle Division; three independent tank brigades
8th Guards Army (HQ Nohra) 4th Guards Rifle Corps (35th, 47th, 57th Guard Rifle Divisions) · 28th Guard Rifle Corps (39th, 79th, 88th Guard Rifle Division) · 29th Guard Rifle Corps (27th, 74th, 82nd Guard Rifle Divisions) · 11th Tank Corps
47th Army (HQ Halle) · 77th Rifle Corps (185th, 260th, 328th Rifle Division) · 125th Rifle Corps (60th, 76th, 175th Rifle Divisions) · 129th Rifle Corps (82nd, 132nd, 143rd Rifle Divisions) · 1st Guards Tank Corps and the 25th Tank Corps.

Outlaw,
This is my last post to try to correct your distortions. Where I was in 1989 is no more germane than having Mirhond show you an identity card ( BTW, Don't bother asking for one from me.)

Had you really read the Wikipedia article from which you plagiarized the GSFG OB list, you would have noticed your list was the 1945 organization. Scrolling a little further in that article you would have seen the later (1980s). Your first tip that something was amiss in the list you posted was the inclusion of corps HQS in your posted OB.

Can we stop cluttering this thread with fantasies about how WW III in 20th Century Europe might have played out? I, for one, am done doing so.

OUTLAW 09

05-02-2014, 12:26 PM

Outlaw,
This is my last post to try to correct your distortions. Where I was in 1989 is no more germane than having Mirhond show you an identity card ( BTW, Don't bother asking for one from me.)

Had you really read the Wikipedia article from which you plagiarized the GSFG OB list, you would have noticed your list was the 1945 organization. Scrolling a little further in that article you would have seen the later (1980s). Your first tip that something was amiss in the list you posted was the inclusion of corps HQS in your posted OB.

Can we stop cluttering this thread with fantasies about how WW III in 20th Century Europe might have played out? I, for one, am done doing so.

wm---giving the impression of actually understanding Germany/USECOM War Plan/Soviet forces and claiming "winning" is in fact playing the WW3 card.

That is unless you were actually physically in Europe and on the ground in 1989 which you were not so any comments on what was being exercised in 1989 from you are what correct or wrong?

By the way for your professional development search SWJ for an article on the critique of the Army's use of FRAGOs' vs OPORDs---it is enlightening as some of us have been complaining about this since 2006 as it especially applies to Bde Staff operations.

Check my comments on it---that might enlighten you as well.

Some of us know our subject matter and debating tidits here or there that are off or wrong or not correctly footnoted and or referenced is what 11th grade?

Maybe that is the reason JMA checked out of this conversation days ago.

Actually the thread could have closed down with the advent of the KGB/GSB mis/disinformation blogger who is online and providing his/her work back to the KGB/FSB for pay as well as profiles on every writer on this thread as well as individual email addresses which then leads onto FaceBook account holders and Twitter accounts.

And by the way the individual who did not provide his/her ID regardless of what you think is in fact a known entity working several other sites as well. The individual has helped in understanding the TTPs currently in use.

carl

05-02-2014, 04:07 PM

Mirhond:

Two questions because I'm curious.

What is Mr. Putin's salary? What is his net worth?

carl

05-02-2014, 04:21 PM

And that's the point. The morality of it is irrelevant. As you said, "results matter". And the result thus far has been continued Russian success, Ukrainian instability, and Western posturing. I don't think Moscow wants escalation any more than Washington does, insofar that escalation increases the chances of a decision point between credibility and costly intervention. The low-level agitation works in Moscow's favor and it'll be interesting to see how it shapes the elections - assuming they're going to be held. What we should be doing is attempting to mitigate any further losses rather than reversing Russia's gains.

You say "...we should be doing...". That is the key and effectively we are doing nothing right now. Mitigate, reversing, prevent, defending-we can figure that out but none of it can be done unless we get to doing.

Fuchs

05-03-2014, 12:14 AM

I take the freedom to dump a text from my blog here, since it relates to the topic. The properly formatted version is here (http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.de/2014/04/putins-way-of-aggression.html).

Putin's approach to aggressions is an interesting one. It appears he
has recognised the limitations of his freedom of action, found and began to
exploit loopholes.

An all-out conventional invasion, 1914-style, is apparently out of question to
him. Russia lacks the forces to pull this off on a grand scale, at least without
exposing itself too much.
His exploits appear to range up to army corps size instead (South Ossetia
2008) - with all other power being held in the back, as a political equivalent
to a "fleet in being". This restricts the freedom of action of other great
powers. Small powers can probably not pull off the same risky games for they
lack this component - even if they could easily muster forces equivalent to
the ones employed actively.

Traditional Cold War deterrence rested on the fear that a too bold move
might lead to World War III, and the demise of European civilisation. There
were no aggressive moves done in Europe proper after the Berlin blockade;
both blocs were content with keeping their own line*. Bold moves were
largely restricted to Asia, with proxies and at times small numbers of
opposing great power troops fighting against each other**.

There as a fear that some bold, yet incremental, moves could be dared in
Europe - and it was difficult to define when exactly such incremental
offenses should lead to mobilisation or war. A British satire (a "Yes, Prime
Minister!" episode, see 7:04 minutes and after) explained this better than
articles or books ever did. Also remember the metaphor of boiling frogs.

Putin appears to have thought of this incremental approach when he decided
to send paramilitary troops without national insignias into the Crimea.

He did apparently also take into account that the Ukraine is not allied with
any country.

Finally, the third ingredient; international law had been stretched somewhat
prior to the move.

Putin did stretch his freedom of action in face of International Law
proponents prior to the conflict with Georgia in 2008 by exposing
'peacekeeper' troops. Georgia proceeded to attack South Ossetia at some
point and this included firing on peacekeepers. At that point Putin had a
semi-plausible excuse for intervention. His intervention was not as blatant as
the intervention of Kuwait 1990, for example. Him withdrawing after fait
accompli avoided troubles as well.

The stretching of International Law for the invasion(s) of the Ukraine wasn't
done by Putin himself. This damage was done by Western great powers which
had a fit of arrogance and short-sightedly decided that rule of force suits
them better than rule of law. Rule of law was supposedly a concept to be
applied on other powers only.

Except that the "other powers" includes some great powers which evidently
can behave arrogantly as well.

2014-02 Hypocrisy in effect

It would help if the same Western great powers reaffirmed the importance of
international law in a non-hypocritical way. They could admit guilt, seek and
accept a ruling about compensations and - most importantly - refrain from
further violations.

This won't happen, of course.Only losing aggressors have to show regret in
this world.

Another approach to close the loopholes would be to expand the collective
defence systems; offer an alliance of some kind to the Ukraine. This is most
unlikely as well. It would lead to further conflict and might end up being
much too expensive. The Ukraine is not too big to fail, after all. Nothing in
there is really crucial to the West (for historical reasons), while much in there
is crucial to Russia.

Finally, one could tune up the reaction to incremental moves and effectively
turn incremental moves into too big moves thereby. This appears to be the
preferred approach among Western great power governments.

kaur

05-03-2014, 09:57 AM

Fuchs, without describing Putin's motives (and ideologue) carrying out his actions, your post is not so good. Do you agree with this column?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/speeches-by-russian-president-putin-betray-fascist-inspiration-a-967283.html#ref=rss

What paramilitary troops? There were conventional Russian troops in Crimea. Even Putin admitted this month later.

Putin appears to have thought of this incremental approach when he decided to send paramilitary troops without national insignias into the Crimea.

OUTLAW 09

05-03-2014, 10:02 AM

I take the freedom to dump a text from my blog here, since it relates to the topic. The properly formatted version is here (http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.de/2014/04/putins-way-of-aggression.html).

fuchs---would have rewritten the article focusing on the concept of Russia using a strategic UW strategy in the conducting of a political war against both the Ukraine and the West (the West as his Duma speech indicated is viewed as being a "liberal democracy" and "western capitalism" as pushed by the US/IMF). By the way both qualities found in the EU which is also a Putin concern.

Then I would focus on the current five legs of a Russian stool that is in fact the current Russia political society/animal 1) the security services, 2) the military, 3) the oligarchs, 4) Russian mob/gangs and 5) the Russian Orthodox Church and the seat of the stool being in fact a new Russian ideology --"ethnic nationalism". Especially focusing on the interplay between each of the groups and Putin's foreign policies.

This new ideology "ethnic nationalism" is being driven by the following spokesperson Alexandra Dugin who pushes what he calls the "New Euroasianism" and/or "Nationalbolshevism" that is tied into the Russian nationalist groups who are in turn tied into European wide Nationalist groups who in turn have extensive media outlets supporting them ie what one sees currently in use in Russia airing proUkrainian videos and radio interviews.

This new ideology if one reads the Duma speech--- Putin inherently wants to lead globally.

Putin's' use of a strategic UW strategy is in fact being carried out by all five elements just mentioned.

This strategy is just not a rehash of version 2 of the Cold War but something new and needs to be fully understood by all players in the West as they is currently not a single counter UW strategy seen anywhere out there.

It is a strategy that can be turned on and off at his will anywhere on the borders to Russia proper as well as the ME ie Syria and he can sustain it virtually forever unless a counter UW strategy is found in a hurry and we fully understand in the West the term "political warfare".

Fuchs

05-03-2014, 12:11 PM

I was aiming at the core, not trying to write a comprehensive analysis of Europe's security situation or of Russia. And I don't think the reference to a poorly defined concept ("UW") helps in pointing out the novelty in there.
I was NOT satisfied with merely calling it "UW"; I wanted to show what I think is the core of the matter.

And that is core of the matter is that he has identified and is exploiting gaps in the European security architecture.

AdamG

05-03-2014, 02:37 PM

WaPo's version of the OOB - interesting about the UA 25th Airborne Brigade.
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/russias-buildup-on-the-ukraine-border/996/

OUTLAW 09

05-03-2014, 09:06 PM

You can write "UW" as often as you want, but buzzwords bring nothing to the table.

I am a European and there's at least one huge gap in the European security architecture which was meant to not allow war to slip into Europe.
This is a big deal to us.

Look at it from the long-term angle; the Ukraine crisis isn't only about itself, but it's like a computer which got disabled by malware. We ought to scramble to fix the vulnerability to protect other computers.
To save the disabled computer should be secondary to the community.

And sorry, but I don't see anything interesting in what you call Putin's "political warfare". I've seen too much of it in history books. It's normal.

The problem in the Ukraine is that he's staying below a certain threshold, and he does so because the threshold is high for a great power. This is essentially what GWB did to Iraq as well (getting away with an aggression without overt hostile intervention), except that his threshold was much higher due to the alliance situation, so his gang was much more brazen.

We need to lower the thresholds and make sure potential aggressors understand about the lowered level, so they don't mess up by misunderstanding them.

See fuchs---here is the difference between you the European and myself the American having lived say in Germany since say 1967 and understanding the European better than themselves.

What Europeans got in 1989 was the ability to disarm their militaries and to drive down their defense budgets to a level that was "comfortable" meaning militaries were now "cheap" compared to say 1985. Yes some participated in AFG, but again it was not a great investment and in the mean time they continued the disarmament---take Germany and the cutting of their armored brigades last year.

Then the European companies went on a spending and investing binge in Russia as it "appeared" to be the great next business market and they did in fact make great money in their investments and still do today so hey who wants to rock the boat and besides Europeans thought that if one invests a lot in another country then that country would not want to cause a war which seems to have not been true now.

So what is the European answer currently towards Putin---what is the lower threshold you are going to set---what not continue buying his gas.

Putin would really respect Europeans if in fact they placed sanctions on Russia that in fact hurt European businesses as well as that would show him Europeans are willing to sacrifice their money for an ideal---that ain't about to happen believe me,

What you think is a buzz word is exactly what is allowing Putin to stay under a specific level and do not think for a moment that what is being practiced by the "separatists" ie proRussian armed groups is nothing more or less that outright UW at the tactical level.

UW as a strategy gives a country the ability in political warfare to scale up and scale down their responses depending on what the Ukrainians do as well as what the Europeans do.

By the way the term political warfare fell out of use over 30 or so years ago and has not been discussed much since then.

But hey continue believing that buzz words do not count and continue believing that what you are seeing is not UW which seems to be the European way.

Fuchs

05-03-2014, 09:41 PM

kaur

05-03-2014, 10:19 PM

Fuchs

05-03-2014, 10:51 PM

Fuchs, I was used to your good habit to call things with their right names and your attempts to go to the roots of problems. Now you have twice rejected my comments, that there were Russian toops in Crimea (even Putin admitted this), you still have word "paramilitary" in your blog, I just don't understand you.

About cadre. Crimea case is best case study, which shows worst case scenario. This took place in favourable circumstances. In less favourable circumstances this cadre acts just like spoiler among allies in EU and NATO. There are several scenarious between those I named. I just don't understand why some European countries underestimate Russians. Today we see that Russians can act very efficently. In January Barroso and van Rompuy told Putin "Mind your own business" and told him about Ukraine's independent choice. Today Europe is happy that OSCE observers are freed in Slavyansk by FSB guy. How can you say that Putin is happy or unhappy? Do you know what makes him happy? It would be really intersting to hear.

Oh, you meant the blog.
Well, again - I don't see much of a difference between paramilitary and military. Neither was legally allowed to be there, so I'm not downplaying anything. I wonder why you see much of a difference between a military man with an AK-74 and a paramilitary man with an AK-74. The difference is especially marginal in Russia with its USSR traditions. The KGB operated a coast guard that included anti-submarine and air defence systems, after all. Warsaw Pact 'worker militias' were always meant to be auxiliary military forces in the event of war.
German paramilitary Cold War border guards were by defined as becoming combatants in the event of war.
There's really not that much difference between military and paramilitary.

And frankly, I'm not inclined to look up unreliable sources only to see whether the one or the other word is more accurate.
_________

The Slawjansk hostage episode was a show for the media. I doubt that the foreign politicians were stupid enough to fall for it and spend much time and effort on it.

What's going to be interesting is what the Ukrainians do once they have FSB guys captured. We might see some old school "confession"-style videos which could be very dangerous to Putin's racket and I think he might be very concerned about this.
I noted that the reports about the fighting in that town mentioned that the town was encircled. I wonder whether the encirclement is tight enough to really use it as a trap for the FSB personnel. They will likely not fight to the last man, after all.

I suppose right now it's about time to offer Putin a face-saving way out. He's already at his culminating point.
Let him build some more on his Crimea success (for Crimea is gone for good anyway), give him some political victory (such as Svoboda kicked out of government, something which the EU should like to see as well) and then he gets to write off the continental Ukraine.

Then in the next years the West can demand concessions from Putin for not inviting the Ukraine into NATO (but merely equipping its army). Such as a satisfactory (to us) solution to the Abchasia and South Ossetia conflicts, ratification for the border treaty with Estonia, withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, no S-300s for Iran and no arms exports to the Caucasus that could fuel a new war over Berg-Karabach.
The best about this is that the threat of inviting them could be held up indefinitely. It's a self-regenerating bargaining chip.

Firn

05-04-2014, 08:26 AM

I pretty much agree with kaur. I'm all for a diplomatic solution the big question is how to achieve it. For over two months Putin got plenty of time, tiny sanctions and mostly very diplomatic language to exit the conflict in internal triumph. Instead he continues to fan the flames of war in Ukraine. Looks like the unopposed occupation of Ukrainian territory went all too smoothly with the Ukrainians behaving all too nicely. Harsher economic sanctions as a sign of strenght seem so far sadly be the better path to 'de-escalate' the conflict in which Putin has factually escalated and escalated.

Overall it is of course much easier to start a bloody conflict then to end it. Even Putin should now that.

Ulenspiegel

05-04-2014, 09:08 AM

@Firn

My take was and still is:

1) Russsia needs the Krim for military reasons.

2) Russia needs some parts of the Ukraine for military and economic reasons.

3) The western Ukraine was a glacis for Russia.

3) Russia faced the problem that they may lose all this to a combination of (stupid) western political actions and soft power (EU).

Result: We saw already the occupation of the Krim and IMHO we will see the occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine in the future.

OTOH Despite the nice Russian performance, I have problems to sell this as real Russian strategic success, Putin had to choose between pest and cholera. He had to invest to maintain the status quo, that is a loss when the opponent had to invest much less.

And to sell Putin as extremly gifted strategist ignores the basic fact, that Russia was not able to control her backyard in the last years and will be unable to provide something that has a chance against the eroding soft power of the EU. Putin is good in his field (ex-KGB), but he stinks when we are talking about the creation of stable and competitive society. Good fever curve is the emmigration of well educated Russians, I bet it will will continue.

On "our" side we were reminded as Fuchs put is, that we have some ugly gaps in our strategic set up which may here and there lead to a small version of August 1914.

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 10:03 AM

Oh, you meant the blog.
Well, again - I don't see much of a difference between paramilitary and military. Neither was legally allowed to be there, so I'm not downplaying anything. I wonder why you see much of a difference between a military man with an AK-74 and a paramilitary man with an AK-74. The difference is especially marginal in Russia with its USSR traditions. The KGB operated a coast guard that included anti-submarine and air defence systems, after all. Warsaw Pact 'worker militias' were always meant to be auxiliary military forces in the event of war.
German paramilitary Cold War border guards were by defined as becoming combatants in the event of war.
There's really not that much difference between military and paramilitary.

And frankly, I'm not inclined to look up unreliable sources only to see whether the one or the other word is more accurate.
_________

The Slawjansk hostage episode was a show for the media. I doubt that the foreign politicians were stupid enough to fall for it and spend much time and effort on it.

What's going to be interesting is what the Ukrainians do once they have FSB guys captured. We might see some old school "confession"-style videos which could be very dangerous to Putin's racket and I think he might be very concerned about this.
I noted that the reports about the fighting in that town mentioned that the town was encircled. I wonder whether the encirclement is tight enough to really use it as a trap for the FSB personnel. They will likely not fight to the last man, after all.

I suppose right now it's about time to offer Putin a face-saving way out. He's already at his culminating point.
Let him build some more on his Crimea success (for Crimea is gone for good anyway), give him some political victory (such as Svoboda kicked out of government, something which the EU should like to see as well) and then he gets to write off the continental Ukraine.

Then in the next years the West can demand concessions from Putin for not inviting the Ukraine into NATO (but merely equipping its army). Such as a satisfactory (to us) solution to the Abchasia and South Ossetia conflicts, ratification for the border treaty with Estonia, withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, no S-300s for Iran and no arms exports to the Caucasus that could fuel a new war over Berg-Karabach.
The best about this is that the threat of inviting them could be held up indefinitely. It's a self-regenerating bargaining chip.

fuchs---you know you are an example of the European education system of the last ten years when you quote the below as you do but then again I have heard the same style of German left arguments in the 1969 timeframe meaning hey if it does not fit my definition of what I am explaining then it does not count---co me on fuchs paramilitary does not mean much in Russia.

1. German paramilitary Cold War border guards were by defined as becoming combatants in the event of war.
There's really not that much difference between military and paramilitary.

2. And frankly, I'm not inclined to look up unreliable sources only to see whether the one or the other word is more accurate.
_________

3. The Slawjansk hostage episode was a show for the media. I doubt that the foreign politicians were stupid enough to fall for it and spend much time and effort on it.

1. The BGS was in fact during the Cold War actually a federalized police force with military ranks as was say the French Gendarmerie in peace time and since there was no war they never did become "combatants"-- BUT are in fact Russian Cossacks holding a active Russian military/police reserve commission as an officer of the GRU actually not really military or just "paramilitary" however you define paramilitary OR--would you call a German reserve MAD unit paramilitary or military---come on fuchs

2. typical German student attempt to sidetrack a debate that one does want to agree with/nor listen would you not admit? You are as bad a responder as is mirhond. Hopefully if you have an actual blog for yourself you do not act in this manner.

3. If the OCSE hostage event was a media show---then for who?-- the proRussians in eastern Ukraine meaning hey EU/OCSE we here in eastern Ukraine can do what we want because we are an "independent republic"---(first of all they are neither independent nor a republic or for that matter democratic) and we can even ignore diplomatic passports if we want to --OR "we will talk with Russia on this event" just after taking the bostages and what then had to happen again for a propaganda show-- Russia sends a personal envoy and it took him a long while to get basically should have been an immediate release under the internal agreements handling of diplomatic passport holders.

So again fuchs do not be a typical German left student who hates another opinion other than their own voices being heard.

AND where are all of those German 1968 left students today in the German culture---all quiet chasing the Euro and handling their own kids in an authoritarian manner driving Ferraris and Audi 8s.

My biggest critique of the current "European"---you guys would demo up to about 1994 for anything if it crossed your value systems and beliefs ---where are the demos today in Germany, Italy of even France? The only thing that seems to motivate some of the left are when the neo Nazis march.

Where are the critical voices in European political parties, where are the critical voices in the culture or in press comments--so fuchs just what is a European these days?

By the way why would you support a position of wanting to help Putin dig himself out of a hole---is it not the current German Grundschule model of allowing the pupil to learn how on his/her terms one gets out of a hole-so why help him as that is not a way for someone to learn and grow--come on fuchs.

Part of the problem you are avoiding in getting to a lower threshold for Russia to understand is in fact the disunity among all 28 European EU members who are more concerned about the loss of profits and taxes from sanctions than setting a lower threshold.

If German students can never get to a common opinion then just how do you proposed getting a total consensus with 28 countries.

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 10:22 AM

* "para-" or not is irrelevant. Neither was legal.
* The supposed "cadre" thing never really worked. Wherever there are supposed examples of success (such as in Indochina) the success rested on indigenous unrest which was merely channelled. It was obvious that some Russians living in the Ukraine would fall for USSR nostalgia. This didn't require extra input.
The "cadre" thing didn't work because otherwise no foreign troops would have been necessary. I remember how desperately some Russians were looking for people in the Eastern Ukraine finally stepping up against "fascism" etc. during the Majdan thing. Very little happened, and was probably FSB-driven. The insurrection thing isn't really indigenous either. Whatever support the FSB built up, Putin was clearly not as satisfied by it as were Westerners about the Majdan thing.

* Europe did not "disarm".
* European companies didn't really go into a spending spree in Russia. Direct and other investments were quite modest. More importantly, it wasn't done "then", after the peace dividend began. Foreign direct investments (from rest of world) in Russia only took off when the increased energy prices improved the Russian trade balance as well as after deregulation by 2006. It dropped sharply after 2008.
see chart page 15 (http://www.kpmg.com/NL/nl/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/PDF/High-Growth-Markets/Investing-in-Russia1.pdf)
They can hardly have made much money in these a few years.
* It's not about whether Putin "respects Europeans". It's about whether he sees freedom of action or not. The personalising view on foreign policy ('I looked into his soul' stuff) is mostly bollocks on a continent that's rigged so fast as is Europe.
* The United States trade almost entirely across two oceans; their ports are universal interfaces to world trade.
Europe has more meaningful land connections to no less than three continents.
It also has worked its way out of seemingly perpetual intra-European conflict by seeking more cooperation, and that era of conflict is still in (some's) living memory.
It's typical American to think that cutting off some miscreants is a fine punishment. But to Europeans this means to cut off something meaningful. Confrontation instead of cooperation also risks a return of a pattern of hot conflicts.

Few Europeans seem to be interested in getting caught in a real, European-style, war over the stupid borders of a multi-ethnic state with which their own country isn't allied.
Playing with fire may be fun outdoors, but it's rather frowned upon in one's home.

fuchs---you really cannot mean this;

* Europe did not "disarm".

What were the troops levels of all the NATO militaries during 1989 with tanks/APC/aircraft counts versus those numbers in 2014.

What were the percentages of total budgets spent on each military in 1989 versus today 2014?

Come on fuchs---Europe did not disarm.

Few Europeans seem to be interested in getting caught in a real, European-style, war over the stupid borders of a multi-ethnic state with which their own country isn't allied.

With the large internal movements of ethnic populations now going on among the 28 members of the EU I thought it was all about multi ethnic cultures so the EU only cares about what---it's own multi ethnic cultures but not about others outside the EU---extremely egocentric if you ask me as it appears that then the EU is only interested in how much money they can make in these "other multi cultural countires" that are not part of the EU.

Come on fuchs you cannot believe your own sentence below;

They can hardly have made much money in these a few years.

Even at the height of the Cold War in the late 70s German companies were investing in and making money in Russia ---either directly or indirectly via the EU---remember once in 1973 the EU and that included Germany sold a massive amount of old Cold Storage stored butter (something like over 2000 tons) to the Soviet Union that made a ton of money for German farmers and the German government---and you really still believe there was not money to be made in the former Soviet Union and now Russia. Check the sheer amount of German investments made into Russia since 1994 and the profits taken out of that business and tell me they made little money. Heck Rheinmetal was sitting on a 200M Euro simulation center for the Russian Army that was giving them a 37% return on the sale as a profit--not bad at all and there was more in the simulation business pipeline for them after that sale.

come on fuchs---

JMA

05-04-2014, 10:44 AM

Too much criticism of Putin going on around here I believe.

Putin has only made his move because he believes he will get away with it. That directly means that the US and the EU misread the developments in post-Soviet Russia and now do not have the stomach for a confrontation which will have a negative impact on their – mainly the EU countries individual economies.

Putin made his move in Georgia in the last months of Bush 43’s presidency and now in the year of the mid-term elections. This is more a strategic weakness of the US than genius on behalf of Putin. I will state further that I would have expected the US to pull out of Europe some time ago given that they were funding more than 70% of NATO’s costs.

What is quite obvious is that there was individual and collective incompetence among the US and EU countries in failing to read the warning signs of a Russia morphing into a criminal dictatorial state massively funded by oil and gas revenues. Obama was warned by McCain, Romney and Palin yet was too clever by half. The Germans blinded by the commercial opportunities post-Soviet Russia offered convinced themselves that a commercial inter-dependence would ensure stability. Britain was in no position to do anything other than accept their London financial system being used to launder the Russian oligarchs ill gotten gains. In fact it would be hilarious if it were not so tragic.

It is clear than the US, rather like post-WW2 Britain, has lost the appetite for foreign adventures and entanglements. So better the US stays out of it and let the Europeans deal with trouble their own back yard. This must include the State Department especially that Nuland woman of “f*** the EU” infamy and the CIA.

The EU’s options are limited in options as the sanctions route will be too painful to bear for the sake of the peoples in the sights of an expansionist Russia. You can hear the Germans saying that the self-determination and freedom of the peoples of Crimea, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania etc is not worth the pain of sanctions and the possible loss of 350,000 jobs dependent on Russian trade. When the crunch comes the new supposedly self-styled ‘moral’ Germans will revert to type.

We can complain all we like about Putin but the bottom line is that it has been a massive miscalculation by the US and Germany and other EU countries, which has offered this option to Russia. Putin has exploited obvious weakness… no genius in that.

The two nations Europeans need to keep an eye on are the Germans and the Russians – with historical justification – and both need to be emasculated to prevent history repeating itself. Germany whilst economically strong would not frighten Luxemburg militarily but this is not the case with Russia.

In response to this recent Russian military aggression Russia should be reduced to the level where they will never be able to embark on military adventurism ever again. Sadly there are not enough political ‘balls’ across the whole of ‘western’ Europe and North America to put Russia firmly and finally in its place.

@Firn

My take was and still is:

1) Russsia needs the Krim for military reasons.

2) Russia needs some parts of the Ukraine for military and economic reasons.

3) The western Ukraine was a glacis for Russia.

3) Russia faced the problem that they may lose all this to a combination of (stupid) western political actions and soft power (EU).

Result: We saw already the occupation of the Krim and IMHO we will see the occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine in the future.

OTOH Despite the nice Russian performance, I have problems to sell this as real Russian strategic success, Putin had to choose between pest and cholera. He had to invest to maintain the status quo, that is a loss when the opponent had to invest much less.

And to sell Putin as extremly gifted strategist ignores the basic fact, that Russia was not able to control her backyard in the last years and will be unable to provide something that has a chance against the eroding soft power of the EU. Putin is good in his field (ex-KGB), but he stinks when we are talking about the creation of stable and competitive society. Good fever curve is the emmigration of well educated Russians, I bet it will will continue.

On "our" side we were reminded as Fuchs put is, that we have some ugly gaps in our strategic set up which may here and there lead to a small version of August 1914.

JMA

05-04-2014, 12:47 PM

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 01:04 PM

"There are none so blind as those who will not see"

If the European countries were to recognise what exactly is going on right under their noses they might have to do something about it.

Europe today:

http://www.movieposterskey.com/postersimages/see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil.jpg

JMA---like it---the Russians have been repeating over and over they have no control over the armed "separatists" and now they are "demanding" the OCSE/PACE do something.

Interfax from today:

15:28 RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: WE DEMAND THAT OSCE AND COUNCIL OF EUROPE INSTITUTIONS IMMEDIATELY MAKE AN OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF DEVELOPMENTS IN UKRAINE

In some aspects the Ukrainian government now has the US/EU over a barrel as well as the Russians---the EU/US have gone on full record they will move to the stage three sanctions against broad sectors of the Russian economy basically gas/oil and the banking system which in the end will result is a collapsing of the Russian internal/external economy if Russia moves into the Ukraine---that is a public statement and one hard to back down from without losing face in their respective countries.

Now along comes the Odessa fire and the Ukrainian government making moves against the cities/towns held by the "separatists" and are actually making headway which in the end will slow down if not stop the "separatist" movements thus a failure of the Russian UW plan for destabilizing the Ukraine.

Russia is clawing at the bit to cross over under whatever excuse they can create/come up with even if it was a fire caused by their own supporters, but in fully knowing the economic pain it will cause which has become evident to them in the last week or so.

So they cross over and get hit and their economy collapses---so is the Ukraine moving now because they feel Russia is in a checkmate position meaning inadvertently the US/EU finally got it right unknowingly and the Russians on the other hand if without any major reason for crossing do in fact cross over get politically isolated for years to come struggling to reconstitute their economy all the while claiming to be a superpower---am 300% sure Putin does now realize the hole he is in as it is a lose lose position, and I am not sure why fuchs here wants the West to get him out of that hole.

An interesting accidental turn of events.

JMA

05-04-2014, 03:24 PM

JMA---like it---the Russians have been repeating over and over they have no control over the armed "separatists" and now they are "demanding" the OCSE/PACE do something.

Oh yea? Last time OSCE people deployed they were arrested by the Russian proxies (should start using this term) and so could not do their job.

So tell the Russians... you had your chance and you blew it - and as we used to say back in the day... tango sierra or the Russian version... toughski sh*tski

Interfax from today:

15:28 RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: WE DEMAND THAT OSCE AND COUNCIL OF EUROPE INSTITUTIONS IMMEDIATELY MAKE AN OBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF DEVELOPMENTS IN UKRAINE

In some aspects the Ukrainian government now has the US/EU over a barrel as well as the Russians---the EU/US have gone on full record they will move to the stage three sanctions against broad sectors of the Russian economy basically gas/oil and the banking system which in the end will result is a collapsing of the Russian internal/external economy if Russia moves into the Ukraine---that is a public statement and one hard to back down from without losing face in their respective countries.
[snip]

The trick is to go for the jugular. If what it takes for full oil/gas and banking sanctions then the Russians should be encouraged to invade. This will work because the US and EU have proved they don't give a damn about what happens to the people of Ukraine anyways.

First step is to take the Russians back to the geographic status quo prior to the invasion of Crimea. They would need to pay reparations to Ukraine - make it $1trillion for starters and thereafter free gas and oil for ten years at current consumption rates. Also all holders of Russian passports would be repatriated to Russia unless they were in the possession of a Ukrainian work-permit and wanted to stay. Then the repatriation of any Crimean Tartars back to Crimea that want to go - with say $1million resettlement allowance per family.

Second step is to make sure that states/areas/regions in the Russian Federation where Russians constitute less than two-thirds of the population the process to self determination and full independence is initiated. This would apply to 13 of the 22 of the so-called Russian Republics. This merely a first step. the next would be to establish the ethnic Russian demographic back say 100 years and reverse that migration in the remaining 9 republics. Then Kaliningrad. Fix this, it is not Russian. Tale all the Russians home and hand it over to whoever it belonged to before the Soviets occupied it.

Third step is to deal with Putin and the oligarchs. Where ever their money is if that country finds it it is theirs not Russian. The British and others can sell off the assets for their own account.

Fourth, steps need to be taken that any oil/gas that would remain in Russia after the breakup will need to be used to pay reparations and fund the independence of the current vassal states in the Russian Federation. Probably need to wind-up Gasprom and others and let Exon-Mobil or BP or whatever to take over.

Fifth, Russia would not be allowed to maintain any army/airforce/navy and other than police and a few SWAT teams that's all.

Of course none of this will happen because the Russians know that any mention of their nuclear weapon arsenal causes the national wetting of the pants right across the US and most of Europe.

Ulenspiegel

05-04-2014, 03:32 PM

Too much criticism of Putin going on around here I believe.

Putin has only made his move because he believes he will get away with it. That directly means that the US and the EU misread the developments in post-Soviet Russia and now do not have the stomach for a confrontation which will have a negative impact on their – mainly the EU countries individual economies.

Putin made his move in Georgia in the last months of Bush 43’s presidency and now in the year of the mid-term elections. This is more a strategic weakness of the US than genius on behalf of Putin. I will state further that I would have expected the US to pull out of Europe some time ago given that they were funding more than 70% of NATO’s costs.

What is quite obvious is that there was individual and collective incompetence among the US and EU countries in failing to read the warning signs of a Russia morphing into a criminal dictatorial state massively funded by oil and gas revenues. Obama was warned by McCain, Romney and Palin yet was too clever by half. The Germans blinded by the commercial opportunities post-Soviet Russia offered convinced themselves that a commercial inter-dependence would ensure stability. Britain was in no position to do anything other than accept their London financial system being used to launder the Russian oligarchs ill gotten gains. In fact it would be hilarious if it were not so tragic.

It is clear than the US, rather like post-WW2 Britain, has lost the appetite for foreign adventures and entanglements. So better the US stays out of it and let the Europeans deal with trouble their own back yard. This must include the State Department especially that Nuland woman of “f*** the EU” infamy and the CIA.

The EU’s options are limited in options as the sanctions route will be too painful to bear for the sake of the peoples in the sights of an expansionist Russia. You can hear the Germans saying that the self-determination and freedom of the peoples of Crimea, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania etc is not worth the pain of sanctions and the possible loss of 350,000 jobs dependent on Russian trade. When the crunch comes the new supposedly self-styled ‘moral’ Germans will revert to type.

We can complain all we like about Putin but the bottom line is that it has been a massive miscalculation by the US and Germany and other EU countries, which has offered this option to Russia. Putin has exploited obvious weakness… no genius in that.

The two nations Europeans need to keep an eye on are the Germans and the Russians – with historical justification – and both need to be emasculated to prevent history repeating itself. Germany whilst economically strong would not frighten Luxemburg militarily but this is not the case with Russia.

In response to this recent Russian military aggression Russia should be reduced to the level where they will never be able to embark on military adventurism ever again. Sadly there are not enough political ‘balls’ across the whole of ‘western’ Europe and North America to put Russia firmly and finally in its place.

Sorry, we obviously live on different planets. Putin chose the lesser of two evils, that is not a gain but limiting his losses.

The deal in 1990 was, that the west did not destroy the buffer in Russias west. With the events the last 12 months it became clear that we, the west had not remember this part of the deal.

You still sell the affair as if Russian forces have occupied a part of a NATO or EU country. A realpolitiker would remember the Bismarck quote in respect to Serbia and the worth of a Pommeranian Grenadier.

Your "In response to this recent Russian military aggression Russia should be reduced to the level where they will never be able to embark on military adventurism ever again. Sadly there are not enough political ‘balls’ across the whole of ‘western’ Europe and North America to put Russia firmly and finally in its place."
is pure hyperventilation, sorry. The reaction of the former Bundeskanzler Schmidt, who was the main architect of the NATO double track decision in 1979-1982 and who was very pragmatic and a really hard bone when it mattered, should tell you the opposite.

Re economic sanctions: The west is the economically stronger fighter and, in addition, is able to perform an asymmetric economic war. Why your unelegant brute force approach? In my book that means self-inflicted pain, that can easily by avoided.

Fuchs

05-04-2014, 03:38 PM

Fuchs

05-04-2014, 04:49 PM

The deal in 1990 was, that the west did not destroy the buffer in Russias west.

It was apparently never written, signed or even ratified as a deal.

In fact, some Western politicians who were supposedly involved deny that any such thing ever happened, and point at how back in '90 the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union still looked quite intact and there was nobody thinking about the possibility of NATO/EC (no EU yet) expanding beyond the Oder river yet.

The only assurances which were proved to have existed were about how many Western troops would be stationed in East Germany (not more than the previous military strength of Est Germany; the Bundeswehr merely maintained a couple formations such as the MiG-29 wing in the East) - IIRC.

JMA

05-04-2014, 05:04 PM

I want everybody to understand that JMA's contributions here should not be taken seriously. He's merely jesting and never serious. For if he was serious, he would be lying and not merely writing nonsense of a failed kind of humour.
Luxembourg has a mere battalion as an army, of course.

Look I understand your humiliation over the state of the German military since around 1945. Seems a lot like Putin's nostalgia over the past Russian/Soviet Empire.

You yourself said here (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=125727&postcount=88):

One of the central themes of the Bundeswehr is its integration in society - avoidance of becoming a state in a state, a closed sub-society. This is out of a fear that an army could become powerful politically.

Then there was this:

No shooting please, we’re German (http://www.economist.com/node/21564617)

I quote:

One way of understanding Germany’s army is that it is a new type of institution, created not so much to wage wars but to atone for the past and make its repeat impossible. Thus the guiding principle of the Bundeswehr is “Innere Führung”. A loose translation might be “moral leadership”, though Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s defence minister, says that this does not do the concept justice.

Exactly!

So while Germany has a number of 'people' going through the motions in the pretense of being a military to satisfy NATO in reality the performance of the German forces in Afghanistan been embarrassingly poor (and I'm being polite here.) Personally I wish it were otherwise but alas...

So Fuchs the sad truth is that Germany is merely going through the motions and together with Britain, France, Turkey and the rats and mice of NATO will not scare Russia even if there was a real chance of mobilisation.

So don't live in the past and dwell on past glories. It is gone, over, finished, kaput.

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 05:47 PM

@outlaw
I looked up the definition of "to disarm" and I found but one which offered an unspecified reduction of forces as "to disarm", whereas all the other meanings are about to give up forces or the capability to be hostile altogether.
It makes no sense to write "to disarm" when mere reductions in forces are meant, as there are better fitting words. I presumed and still presume that you meant more than an ordinary reduction. The choice of the word "disarm" was meant to imply that Europe made itself impotent militarily.
In that sense, Europe didn't "disarm" at all. To the contrary; the EU countries could overrun Russia up to Khazan with their armies because they reduced their forces to a level very high above what little forces the Russians have in their Western and Southern (Caucasus) regions.
This is a fact and totally tears apart all the repeated stupid talk and illusions about a supposed European military weakness.

Europe isn't motivated to use more than its left hand's little finger to deal with issues because nobody is even only poking it. The Americans prefer to use their whole left hand, but using a mere little finger only is very different from having no fists.

There's a huge difference between a multi-ethnic state with ethnicities being concentrated in certain regions and thus able to claim independence and a multi-ethnic immigration state in which immigrants can claim to be a majority at most in parts of some cities. The former is no nation-state, while the latter can be (and is in Europe).

You're totally moving goalposts on the money topic. This is what you wrote
"Then the European companies went on a spending and investing binge in Russia as it "appeared" to be the great next business market and they did in fact make great money in their investments"
then I brought forward a source that shows how FDI were only large in a few recent years and mention why and you come back with trade stuff and Cold War trade.
That's bollocks. You wrote about investments in -not trade with- Russia and how these were supposedly "make great money", and you are mistaken. Investments from 2006-2009 are unlikely to have yielded more returns than the original investment already. That would require a ROI of about 15%.

I want everybody to understand that JMA's contributions here should not be taken seriously. He's merely jesting and never serious. For if he was serious, he would be lying and not merely writing nonsense of a failed kind of humour.
Luxembourg has a mere battalion as an army, of course.

fuchs---this was taken from an article posted today in the Moscow Times website---notice the highlighted sentence concerning Europe---an interesting take on Putin's understanding of Europeans if you ask me.

After a lapse of more than a century, the Great Game has begun again — in Kiev of all places.

In the 19th century, the Great Game was the rivalry between the British and Russian empires for Central Asia. England was wary that Russia's relentless expansion would one day threaten the jewel in the imperial crown, India. Both sides vied to dominate Central Asia's markets.

Seizing their "rightful" portion of Kazakhstan would bring Russia great riches and enormous geopolitical advantages.

The game went into a state of suspension during Soviet times. Some commentators spoke of a new Great Game after the Soviet collapse and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, but that was more romanticism than realism.

There was a jockeying among Russia, China and the U.S. for markets, resources and military bases, but what was lacking was any grand geopolitical design or strategic imperative. All that changed with Kiev.

Though the final outcome of the Ukrainian crisis is uncertain, two things are already clear. Russia has revealed itself as non-Western, if not anti-Western. When push comes to shove, Russia will not play by the rules of the West because it does not see the world as the West does.

In Putin's Darwinian mind, the drift of Ukraine into the Western camp would complete NATO's encirclement of Russia, which, from the survival point of view, is inadmissible. Foolishly, perhaps, he is not overly concerned about the economic damage the sanctions will cause.

No doubt he believes that ties with European business are too tight and complex to permit sanctions that bite deep. Putin, the enemy of the rules of globalization, is counting on globalization to save him.

All the same, Putin's not taking any chances. He is aware that something has broken in his relations with the West. It will take time, but the West has already begun weaning itself from Russian energy. And so the main effect of Kiev has been to accelerate Russia's turn to China.

So again what is the European position or better yet the German position on Putin as one cannot really see a German "strategy" other than delay, use talking and then when things go badly talk again.

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 05:58 PM

It was apparently never written, signed or even ratified as a deal.

In fact, some Western politicians who were supposedly involved deny that any such thing ever happened, and point at how back in '90 the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union still looked quite intact and there was nobody thinking about the possibility of NATO/EC (no EU yet) expanding beyond the Oder river yet.

The only assurances which were proved to have existed were about how many Western troops would be stationed in East Germany (not more than the previous military strength of Est Germany; the Bundeswehr merely maintained a couple formations such as the MiG-29 wing in the East) - IIRC.

fuchs---actually go back to the 2 plus 4 treaty agreements concerning Germany and you will notice a number of items that Merkel is still holding which relate directly to German resistance to a stronger NATO response and a real reluctance to impose branch wide economic sanctions that the US is pushing.

I will go back to the things I have previously posted here---when the West/Europe really wants to get Putin's interest and when he will know the West is serious is when the West suffers economically as well if sanctions are imposed--then you will get Putin's interest and knows the West/Europeans are serious.

By the way there is also a touch of anti Americanism in many of the German actions since 2003 and it is not to subtle these days.

Really reread the treaties and you will fully understand German reluctance.

JMA

05-04-2014, 06:03 PM

Sorry, we obviously live on different planets. Putin chose the lesser of two evils, that is not a gain but limiting his losses.

There is the first problem. Why were the post-Soviet Russians allowed to believe that they would be allowed dominate nationalities/peoples/ethnic groups in vassal states to maintain the delusional dream of a 'right' to maintain an empire?

The deal in 1990 was, that the west did not destroy the buffer in Russias west. With the events the last 12 months it became clear that we, the west had not remember this part of the deal.

I hear about this supposed deal but see nothing in writing. If there was then the joke is on them... nobody believes promises made by the US.

You still sell the affair as if Russian forces have occupied a part of a NATO or EU country. A realpolitiker would remember the Bismarck quote in respect to Serbia and the worth of a Pommeranian Grenadier.

Spoken like a great appeaser. It doesn't take a genius to read the writing on the wall about Russia's future intentions.

Your "In response to this recent Russian military aggression Russia should be reduced to the level where they will never be able to embark on military adventurism ever again. Sadly there are not enough political ‘balls’ across the whole of ‘western’ Europe and North America to put Russia firmly and finally in its place." is pure hyperventilation, sorry.

Yes I know there are no balls big enough to confront Russia and dismember the federation and flush out the criminal regime either in Europe or North America.

Regardless if the same had been done with Russia as was done with post 1945 Germany there would not be this problem now. Bush #41 screwed this up Bush #43 and Obama have made a bad situation worse in the process opening the door for Russian expansionism.

The reaction of the former Bundeskanzler Schmidt, who was the main architect of the NATO double track decision in 1979-1982 and who was very pragmatic and a really hard bone when it mattered, should tell you the opposite.

Don't know the detail of that but the point I am making is that had the Russians been emasculated like the Germans were then we would not be having this problem now.

Re economic sanctions: The west is the economically stronger fighter and, in addition, is able to perform an asymmetric economic war. Why your unelegant brute force approach? In my book that means self-inflicted pain, that can easily by avoided.

It is like keeping a lid on a pressure cooker. What I am saying is now is the time to settle the 'Russian problem' once and for all. This will also provide Germany no reason sometime in the future to put a proper military together.

As I said in Europe one needs to keep an eye on both the Germans and the Russians. History has taught the world these two nations are the main protagonists.

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 06:19 PM

fuchs---this actually goes to what I see as a complete European weakness---the lack of the ability to tell truth from propaganda and call it propaganda when it is propaganda.

I have seen very very few articles in the European media pointing out to the massive Russian propaganda machine that is cranking out lie after lie into the Crimea, then eastern and now southern Ukraine.

Many have focused on the east but the real battle will be for Odessa which links them then to their Moldavia enclave, controls the southern portion of the Ukraine and takes over the Black Sea port of Odessa cutting the Ukraine off from a major sea port and taking out a major source of export revenue. Actually NATO general Breedlove has indicated that is what he was assuming would happen but he got told to shut up and got cut off from the media by the US White House as it did not fit the current situation and it scared the Europeans especially Germany.

This particular link is a video of evidently recent Russian aircraft reinforcements coming into the Crimea which has not been reported anywhere in Europe before-why not would be a good question for you?

http://inforesist.org/video-mass-transfer-of-russian-aircraft-in-the-crimea/?lang=en

Also if one checks the web site they have an actual video of the attack on the Odessa building that resulted in a large loss of proRussian lives which is being drummed into the media by Russia and the "separatists" and will be the main cause for the Russia military crossing into Odessa from the Crimea---remember most of the elite Russian army units that came into Crimea have not left the Crimea but are in fact sitting nicely on the southern Ukrainian border regions is full strength--also seemingly forgotten by the Germans/EU/NATO.

http://inforesist.org/video-what-was-happening-in-the-trade-units-building-in-odessa/?lang=en

Check the Russian media version of the attack and then check the video and accompanying Ukrainian explanations and one will see hard core propaganda at work coupled with now claims from today that the eastern Ukraine is forming self defense battalions in order to attack Kiev-so a "ragtag" group of farmers, former soldiers, merchants and salesmen are going to march as a armed battalion on Kiev OR fuchs those "paramilitary types" that are numbered in about the 2500 range. AND the term paramilitary does not make a difference?

Core is that the building was not firebombed by radical Nazis but rather set on fire internally on several floors and the tents were burnt down outside by actually proRussian demonstrators not radical proUkrainian soccer fans as depicted in the Russian media. BUT if one listens to eastern "separatists" they are now claiming they need Russian help to keep from being encircled and burnt alive referring to the Odessa event.

Have you as an European noticed the subtle word changes by both proRussians and Russia/Putin---at first they were being called "federalizationists" now they are being called "separatists" THAT is a massive word usage shift and means only one thing---war.

Check this link and the web site for a differing point of view that might not set well with Europeans.

http://inforesist.org

It is interesting that now the first European news agency is picking up the video info on the Russian fighter/bombers arriving in the Crimea---reported today also by AFP.

OUTLAW 09

05-04-2014, 06:27 PM

fuchs---you speak of Europeans---let's talk about German positions in the Ukrainian/Russian fight.

As I indicated to you Germans love to talk and then to talk and talk---they are basically afraid of action in any form.

Here they go again---another conference to end all the other conferences.

Die Ausschreitungen in der Ukraine finden kein Ende, internationale Vereinbarungen zum Gewaltverzicht in dem Land greifen bislang nicht. Auenminister Steinmeier wirbt daher jetzt fr eine zweite Genfer Konferenz zur Beilegung des Konflikts.

Fuchs

05-04-2014, 06:28 PM

fuchs---actually go back to the 2 plus 4 treaty agreements concerning Germany and you will notice a number of items that Merkel is still holding which relate directly to German resistance to a stronger NATO response and a real reluctance to impose branch wide economic sanctions that the US is pushing.

I just read the whole thing in original
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/372800/publicationFile/153338/ZweiPlusVierVertrag.pdf
(English text begins on page 13)
THERE ARE NO SUCH RESTRICTIONS IN IT.

Article 5 restricts what I already wrote about - Western forces in East Germany. That's it.

fuchs---you speak of Europeans---let's talk about German positions in the Ukrainian/Russian fight.

As I indicated to you Germans love to talk and then to talk and talk---they are basically afraid of action in any form.

That's clearly superior to being duped into believeing Iraq is a threat and invading it.

And may I remind you that talking is also America's preferred approach today?
The sanctions imposed by the U.S. are laughable. The EU is not united on how harsh sanctions shall be in part because the government of the UK acts as an agent of the City of London (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/03/uk-seeks-russia-harm-city-london-document) (their 'Wall Street').

kaur

05-04-2014, 10:50 PM

Fuchs:

Then in the next years the West can demand concessions from Putin for not inviting the Ukraine into NATO (but merely equipping its army). Such as a satisfactory (to us) solution to the Abchasia and South Ossetia conflicts, ratification for the border treaty with Estonia, withdrawal of Russian troops from Transnistria, no S-300s for Iran and no arms exports to the Caucasus that could fuel a new war over Berg-Karabach.
The best about this is that the threat of inviting them could be held up indefinitely. It's a self-regenerating bargaining chip.

You must be joking :) Why should they leave Transnistria? Tell me that they will give it back to Moldova. They leave Armenia and Azerbaijan alone? Tell my why? Beacause Europeans are asking nicely? Do they care about nicesities? Of course Kremlin will say that they have no ambitions and MFA will say that civil society acts finally. For me personally Russia's social capital is zero. This article is very suitable to this topic and helps you to measure the truth level. If you are not familiar, then Nashi is Kremlin organised, financied, controlled organisation, whosw stepfather Surkov today coordinates CIS area. This organisation is dead today, but new ones are flourishing.

Estonia had already formally complained of harassment of its diplomats in Moscow, but the protests on Wednesday were the most disruptive. The raucous protests forced the closure of Estonia’s consulate and the evacuation of diplomats’ families, about 20 people, said Franek Persidski, a spokesman for the consulate.

Protesters attacked the Swedish ambassador’s car at the embassy, prompting a formal protest from Stockholm. They also attacked Ms. Kaljurand’s car as it left the offices of a magazine where she had held her news conference.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry, questioned about the harassment of the diplomats, declined to comment. But a spokesman, Mikhail L. Kamynin, told Interfax, “We still believe that the tension and the reaction of civil society in Russia were provoked.”

Fuchs

05-05-2014, 12:57 AM

Kaur, it's difficult to see the strategic view when one is under impression of recent events and situations.

Look at a map, and remember how central to Russia it is to have a buffer in front of Moscow. NATO would be within 500 km of Moscow if Ukraine joined. He has to prevent this at almost any cost, or else his successful poker game about the Crimea would enter history books as totally backfired and disastrous to Russia strategically.

Russia can also not gulp the Ukraine in its entirety. We know how they got Chechnya under control; they flooded the country with more troops than there were civilians. They cannot do this with the Ukraine, even the Chinese couldn't pull this off.
There's no substantial Russian population in the Ukrainian territory the most close to Moscow, though.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Nativelanguage2001ua.PNG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine#Nationality

So even if Putin was able to bite off all Ukrainian areas with a relative majority of Russians he would merely guarantee that the remainder would seek an alliance with the West - and NATO would at Moscow's doorsteps (by Russian standards).

The threat of inviting the Ukraine is a huge and reusable bargaining chip of the West.

carl

05-05-2014, 04:02 AM

E

In some aspects the Ukrainian government now has the US/EU over a barrel as well as the Russians---the EU/US have gone on full record they will move to the stage three sanctions against broad sectors of the Russian economy basically gas/oil and the banking system which in the end will result is a collapsing of the Russian internal/external economy if Russia moves into the Ukraine---that is a public statement and one hard to back down from without losing face in their respective countries.

Now along comes the Odessa fire and the Ukrainian government making moves against the cities/towns held by the "separatists" and are actually making headway which in the end will slow down if not stop the "separatist" movements thus a failure of the Russian UW plan for destabilizing the Ukraine.

An interesting analysis. The most interesting thing to me is if it is true, a critical factor will be how well the Ukrainians fight. Despite all the talk of soft power, influence and economic sanctions, a critical factor is how well some small groups of men fight. Just like forever.

kaur

05-05-2014, 08:10 AM

Fuchs, I do understand the geographical thing you are saying. I don't remember at the moment when Putin has hinted that there are bargaining chips on the table. As I said in the EU-Russia summit in January leaders of EU told Putin "mind your own business and we will not discuss with you Ukrainian future". Putin went home, had nice olympic games in Sochi and said " F... you, EU!" grabbing Crimea and encouraging rebellion in other parts of country. Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Russians, economic levers, aggressive propaganda etc are all ways to say "F... you, if you don't do like I want." Russians are proposing peaceful solution to EU. There must be free trade area between Lisbon and Vladivastok in 2020, which is built according to formula EU + Eurasian Economic Union (were Russia intended to bring before last events Ukraine, Molodova, Central Asia countires etc). Nice plan, but didn't Russia cross some lines of point of no return? Quite few EU heavy weights think that he didn't and business as usual must continue. Looking at that Putin-Prohhanov-Dugin-Kurginjan etc СССР 2.0 show, Russia's road a head looks bad.

05-05-2014, 01:39 PM

By the way the inforesist article was picked up on and verified by AFP roughly six hours later.

Does the mere fact of repeating someone else's story verify its truth? If so, then the truth of the fairy tales of the Brother's Grimm must be indisputable.
Who, by the way, is this expert, Alexei Savich, that the AFP post cites?

Firn

05-05-2014, 02:02 PM

Russia to Prosecute Crimean Tatar Protesters Over Unrest (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-to-prosecute-crimean-tatar-protesters-over-unrest/499385.html)

On Saturday, Crimean authorities promised to dish out criminal charges to the group, which numbered about five thousand, according to the BBC Russian service. The group broke through border posts near the city of Armyansk and crossed the border into the buffer zone between Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula to meet Mustafa Dzhemilev, former head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, the ethnic group's representative body.

The group blocked several highways near Simferopol, Bakhchysarai, Stary Krym, Yevpatoriya and Oktyabrskoye, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

It is early times, early times. There was some promising talk about the respect for the Tartar minorities. Personally I already doubted the Russian ability to tackle the economic challenges, like the crushing fall in tourism and largely peacefully integrate the large and younger Ukrainian and Tartar minorities.

Putin initiated war and ethnic hatred, which is easy to start but hard to stop. So far he might be 'winning', but the Russians are already losing in other areas. The war comes not only at short-term price economically but the increasingly regime-like internal repressions will likely take their toll on the long-term prospects of the economy. Russia is indeed becoming more and more dependant on private consumption which relies to a large degree on the state's policies which in turn are still increasingly dependent on raw ressources, especially energy.

Stan

05-05-2014, 03:40 PM

Stan---hey dude as someone from the intel world why listen to CNN or BBC or the local Estonia news oven read the North Dakota Evening Times---they are say the same if your are correct and focus strictly on ratings on the internet usage.

RB, good points and simple answers.
Some of those sites you listed have a pristine reputation to uphold and won’t send innuendo to press. Not too sure about ND however !

Why compare anything at all ---why even quote anything as kaur does from the Russian side-hey their ratings might in fact be higher based on numbers of Russian "having" internet onnetions--in this case--one Interfax is a voice pipe for the Russian government and the other a voice pipe of Ukrainians--but then I did not expect you to understand that.

I’ve known Kaur for six or seven years, had beers, broke bread, etc. Although half my age, inspiring and would make a good buck sergeant. But, the level of experience that a Western government would expect from say an analyst is a far cry. I’m not betting the farm on your links, nor an inspiring SGT.

Voice pipes. In the 20 years I've been here and 18 working for the Estonian govt., I have learned that even Estonian so-called voice pipes are not to be taken with a grain of salt. Unless of course, someone actually managed to slip TS info and get it published before being shot to death. You are then correct, that the Russians know we are reading, and, they are indeed sending this sierra to press hoping we do said. How we interpret said, well, that's where our successors' come into to play. That raw data must be accompanied with the reporter's spin, to include, at the very least, the source's reputation. I for one would not send that to the NMIC.

No wonder EUCOM and other US entities get the world so wrong they fail to listen when the world is talking regardless of how the conversation is being carried my friend ---actually if you are interested watch anna.news they carry the proRussian, Russian and actually Syrian news events from Assad but hey maybe they are ranked 144,220 in usage and traffic ratings- so we are not to use them?--it is the words one must watch and listen to that use to be the smart intel way paralleling the means and methods side of the house.

I would not go blaming EUCOM. Worked for them for years and they rarely had anything to say without DC pushing the buttons. All the O-10s in the world back then got a sound bite of say in decision making. But, you knew that already.

By the way the inforesist article was picked up on and verified by AFP roughly six hours later.

Yes Sir, it’s called a wire feed.

AmericanPride

05-05-2014, 05:03 PM

It doesn't take a genius to read the writing on the wall about Russia's future intentions.

Crimea is the 4th time since the end of the Cold War that Russia exploited ethnic ruptures for political gain.

Yes I know there are no balls big enough to confront Russia and dismember the federation and flush out the criminal regime either in Europe or North America.

Regardless if the same had been done with Russia as was done with post 1945 Germany there would not be this problem now.

Don't know the detail of that but the point I am making is that had the Russians been emasculated like the Germans were then we would not be having this problem now.

And how would that have been accomplished? The emasculation of Germany in World War I led to World War II. Arguably, the emasculation of post-Soviet Russia is leading to this confrontation.

On the one hand, you are saying that Russia is a third-rate power and needs to be punished. But on the hand, you are saying it is a threat to world peace and harmony. Which is it?

Firn

05-05-2014, 05:57 PM

No solution for grand strategy, but another piece in the conflict by the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/04/pro-russia-trolls-ukraine-guardian-online) titled 'The readers' editor on… pro-Russia trolling below the line on Ukraine stories'. I have already pointed to an older story, pre-Crimea, with some detailed information on how 'fingers on the keyboard' get recruited to serve Putin's political interests. The Guardian has another older one (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/07/nashi-emails-insight-kremlin-groups-priorities), which I missed.

It is needless to say that current format of discussion and voting works pretty well in normal times, just like diplomacy. However if one side goes to war it can no longer function normally. An interesting aspect of the whole story is that not only the Kremlinbots vote each other up but also the useful non-payed idiots collect lots of Kremlin vote love. So that lot, often 'real users' tops recently the comment lists with their drivel.

The final word goes to Luke Harding: "It is not Comment is free, but rather Comment is paid for."

OUTLAW 09

05-05-2014, 06:21 PM

Does the mere fact of repeating someone else's story verify its truth? If so, then the truth of the fairy tales of the Brother's Grimm must be indisputable.
Who, by the way, is this expert, Alexei Savich, that the AFP post cites?

wm---and who is this person typing this response Alexei Savich or a UK citizen---the question and your responses can always be twisted which ever way one decides to take a response that is the freedom on this particular blog--come over to the other site and see if your responses get attention for yourself.

The article and video by the way has been both confirmed to have actually been recorded when it was, and reflects heavy aircraft movement by type by both the Washington Post editors as well as the NYTs and has been picked up by the German news media der Spiegel.

So wm who really cares whose name is on the article for that matter we could use yours if you would like.

Did in fact the video confirm or deny an event is the question and who really give a flip about the name.

OUTLAW 09

05-05-2014, 06:44 PM

RB, good points and simple answers.
Some of those sites you listed have a pristine reputation to uphold and won’t send innuendo to press. Not too sure about ND however !

I’ve known Kaur for six or seven years, had beers, broke bread, etc. Although half my age, inspiring and would make a good buck sergeant. But, the level of experience that a Western government would expect from say an analyst is a far cry. I’m not betting the farm on your links, nor an inspiring SGT.

Voice pipes. In the 20 years I've been here and 18 working for the Estonian govt., I have learned that even Estonian so-called voice pipes are not to be taken with a grain of salt. Unless of course, someone actually managed to slip TS info and get it published before being shot to death. You are then correct, that the Russians know we are reading, and, they are indeed sending this sierra to press hoping we do said. How we interpret said, well, that's where our successors' come into to play. That raw data must be accompanied with the reporter's spin, to include, at the very least, the source's reputation. I for one would not send that to the NMIC.

I would not go blaming EUCOM. Worked for them for years and they rarely had anything to say without DC pushing the buttons. All the O-10s in the world back then got a sound bite of say in decision making. But, you knew that already.

Yes Sir, it’s called a wire feed.

Stan ---then you inherently understand the term "confirm or deny"---yes it is a wire service but most editors of the major news feeds ask for confirmation before releasing which you already knew- I am assuming. Just as the mean and methods guys attempt to deny or confirm by other means.

Let's see now it is the WaPo, the NYTs and in Germany der Spiegel so I am assuming that no one in those organizations did a fact check as required before releasing remember these are western wire services not Interfax which relays straight propaganda for the FSB/GRU right now.

So the three above simply went with what a wing and a prayer and threw a dart against something pinned on the wall and said let's print it?

Come on Stan you know the game as well as I do.

Some in this business would call the simple release and accompanying video a "tip" and run with it--but then you knew that as well

Here on this thread it seems that one must quote something from a major source, double-check the author to make sure he is known and reputable and then be able to cross reference and double-check sources and oh by the way be sure to footnote and doubly make sure the footnote matches and is not misspelled. And make sure that is linked and pasted correctly.

It is a wonder that using this method gets any discussion going as I indicated to wm come over to the other side and mesh with the varied topics-- it is a different world and one does not have to ensure that the Ukrainian name on the article is a "well known author" or that is was carried by a non known entity on a poorly built web site which was probably poorly funded and run by two people getting info via a poor DSL connection from someone within the Crimea.

Noticed now that the mirhond's of the world are getting more press release attention from the wire services---do we need to double-check those press releases for their veracity as well? Before quoting them in this thread?

Of course I have seen these mirhond articles quoted as well on the Moscow Times as well a the Kiev Post so I guess they are questionable as well since they were referencing specific wire services.

By the way several of those wire service releases quoted much of what we have seen here via mirhond so I guess we can what ---state we have a "confirm".

Stan

05-05-2014, 07:43 PM

RB,

So wm who really cares whose name is on the article for that matter we could use yours if you would like.

Did in fact the video confirm or deny an event is the question and who really give a flip about the name.

Let’s back up to your post to WM for just a second. It was our job to discern open source in an IIR. So, to simply say that the author or his name means nothing is absurd. Do you contend that, regardless of the author’s background, experience and religious belief, the article is OK because there’s a video attached that could not possible be manipulated?

The video does not confirm anything to me without knowing who shot it and who that individual is. We're back to the reporter's spin on the report that an analyst needs in order to assess raw data. You contend it's real, confirmed or denied, but the author means nothing ? Huh ?

Stan ---then you inherently understand the term "confirm or deny"---yes it is a wire service but most editors of the major news feeds ask for confirmation before releasing which you already knew- I am assuming. Just as the mean and methods guys attempt to deny or confirm by other means.

Confirm or deny is for spies and the media does not enjoy the luxury of mistakes and ratings. MI however does enjoy the freedom of making mistakes along the way, often, only too often, with little more than a black eye on an OER.

Let's see now it is the WaPo, the NYTs and in Germany der Spiegel so I am assuming that no one in those organizations did a fact check as required before releasing remember these are western wire services not Interfax which relays straight propaganda for the FSB/GRU right now.

So the three above simply went with what a wing and a prayer and threw a dart against something pinned on the wall and said let's print it?

Come on Stan you know the game as well as I do.

Some in this business would call the simple release and accompanying video a "tip" and run with it--but then you knew that as well

Do the math on those and tell me who owns and controls them. Conversely, Interfax like most of the Russian media is a blend of private and state ownership with little neutrality (unless you like visits from the mafia and police).

Here on this thread it seems that one must quote something from a major source, double-check the author to make sure he is known and reputable and then be able to cross reference and double-check sources and oh by the way be sure to footnote and doubly make sure the footnote matches and is not misspelled. And make sure that is linked and pasted correctly.

Glad to see you are paying attention to my constant pestering !
And, why not double check for mistakes, plagiarism, using the basic functions herein ? Noticed anyone else not doing so ? You can dump an article on this thread and not even comment. Some may, some not. You don’t always have to see something that’s not yet there, you don’t have to address issues from a 60s mentality before the internet existed.

Noticed now that the mirhond's of the world are getting more press release attention from the wire services---do we need to double-check those press releases for their veracity as well? Before quoting them in this thread?

I think most of us ignore her and most of us found her on a war gaming site. Cute blond though.

By the way several of those wire service releases quoted much of what we have seen here via mirhond so I guess we can what ---state we have a "confirm".

So she also quotes press releases ? What a novel approach !

JMA

05-05-2014, 09:01 PM

@outlaw
[snip]

... the EU countries could overrun Russia up to Khazan with their armies because they reduced their forces to a level very high above what little forces the Russians have in their Western and Southern (Caucasus) regions.
This is a fact and totally tears apart all the repeated stupid talk and illusions about a supposed European military weakness.

This is a very strange thought pattern.

It has been discussed before that a deterrent - in this case a military one - only has value if the opossing party believes it will be used. There is no chance that EU countries would ever mobilise for such a purpose. European military weakness is clear and obvious not only in its constituted structure but also importantly that it poses no real deterrent to Russian expansionism because it will never be used.

Europe isn't motivated to use more than its left hand's little finger to deal with issues because nobody is even only poking it. The Americans prefer to use their whole left hand, but using a mere little finger only is very different from having no fists.

What is happening is that your Europe is finding a number of good reasons to see Russian actions - the annexation of Crimea and the on-going proxy war in Ukraine - as nothing to be alarmed about. No doubt they are now figuring out how to get out of NATO commitments to those states in the line of fire - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. I suppose Russian annexation of those states not be considered a threat to Europe either.

Europe has no credible deterrent to Russian expansionism without the US and the US is also trying to sneak out the back door to avoid a confrontation with Russia. That is the truth learn to live with it.

There's a huge difference between a multi-ethnic state with ethnicities being concentrated in certain regions and thus able to claim independence and a multi-ethnic immigration state in which immigrants can claim to be a majority at most in parts of some cities. The former is no nation-state, while the latter can be (and is in Europe).

This whole argument is meaningless unless the dates and reasons for migrations are taken into account.

JMA

05-05-2014, 09:17 PM

Look at a map, and remember how central to Russia it is to have a buffer in front of Moscow. NATO would be within 500 km of Moscow if Ukraine joined. He has to prevent this at almost any cost, or else his successful poker game about the Crimea would enter history books as totally backfired and disastrous to Russia strategically.

Given Russia's recent expansionism I suggest those who thought NATO was obsolete have been proved to be complete idiots.

The only European expansionism Russia needs to fear is financial/commercial/economic. Maybe you can provide a scenario where a NATO presence 500km from Moscow is a military threat to Russia other than if the Russians are planning actions which may/could result in NATO action?

Is it not obvious to you - as a German - that these small and vulnerable nations/countries seek protection under the NATO umbrella from subjugation and domination by a Russia with dreams of empire?

OUTLAW 09

05-05-2014, 09:38 PM

For those that have been writing here ----there has been totally missed in some or most of the comments---what are we in fact seeing now in the Crimea, eastern/southern Ukraine and with developments from today in Latvia and Russian attack helicopter flight training on the Estonian border---nothing more nor less than a new Russian UW strategy in a political warfare environment. We also have to mix in criminal elements and the oligarchs to get a better picture.

The following links were taken as I have stated a number of times from often overlooked websites and the "tip" on one led to the two links which are extremely critical in understanding what the Russians are calling New Generation Warfare broken into Phases. and how the US/EU/NATO are not even in the same game or on the same playing field.

Now take the Phases and overlay them on the hour to hour events in the Crimea, eastern and southern Ukraine and now with Lativa and one sees the relationship to their new strategy on winning a peace without going to war---or rather a Russian Sun Tzu approach.

Actually a number of posts here have been dancing around various Phases of the New Generation Warfare.

This is from the SWJ other side---Why Does Special Forces Train and Educate for Unconventional Warfare?

David---this link goes to what you have been writing about having a UW strategy and in the light on the Ukraine events, the cancelling of the Russian/Lithuanian Confidence Building treaty, and the new Russian Attack Helicopter Bde flight exercises along the Estonian border.

http://www.lithuaniatribune.com/67571/e-lucas-is-nato-ready-for-russias-...

The article goes to heart of the new Russian strategy referred to as the New Generation Warfare.

There is a 15 page pdf explaining the current Russian doctrine in this new UW strategy.

http://is.gd/berzins

Thanks Outlaw 09.

One of our students from Finland passed this on to me last week and it is getting a lot of press.

A very timely and informative (and I think potentially very important) report from the Latvia - the National Defence Academy of Latvia and the Center for Security and Strategic Research.

The PDF of the report can be downloaded at this link: http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/PP%2002-2014.ashx
Note the excerpted figure one below for the assessment of Russia's view of the changing character of armed conflict. Also of note below that are the eight phases of the new generation of war.

I think this is a good analysis of the Russian version of unconventional and political warfare and we should study this so that we can develop the strategy to counter these forms of unconventional warfare and political warfare.

David---now take the Phases and one can overlay them on the exact hour by hour events in the Crimea, eastern and southern Ukraine and then watch the entire information operations unfold, the use of irregulars on the ground reinforced by intelligence officers and Spretnaz coupled with the Russian public political maneuvering ie 21 Feb agreement, Geneva, and Putin calls to US/EU leaders which really led nowhere but gained time and you have the perfect learning module for why one needs now a national level strategic UW strategy in order to counter political warfare or in this case what the Russians are calling New Generation Warfare.

And along the way do not forget the use of criminal elements and the oligarchs as part of the concept layered over by an ideology called ethnic nationalism.

Then watch our responses which have not even begun to answer the individual Phases the Russians are running through in a steady fashion---worth a doctorial thesis.

Question is what would Lind call it --4th or 5th generation warfare as it is a quantum leap forward and a leap we as a Force are not prepared (including senior military leadership/WH) for as we have gone in an entirely different direction misguided by COIN.

Robert might have some interesting comments on this as it drifts into his comments on war and peace---actually the Russian concept is to avoid war and gain peace as they define peace---they are as close to Sun Tzu as one can get in their thinking.

JMA

05-05-2014, 09:39 PM

Crimea is the 4th time since the end of the Cold War that Russia exploited ethnic ruptures for political gain.

And guided by the boiling frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog) premise will continue.

And how would that have been accomplished? The emasculation of Germany in World War I led to World War II. Arguably, the emasculation of post-Soviet Russia is leading to this confrontation.

No... nice try though.

On the one hand, you are saying that Russia is a third-rate power and needs to be punished. But on the hand, you are saying it is a threat to world peace and harmony. Which is it?

Yes Russia is a third rate power but is prepared to use its thrid rate military against those who are either unable or unwilling to confront them.

Germany have always been incompetent when it comes to major strategic decisions. This time it is the decision - based on economic greed - to trust the supposed mutual interdependence between the two states as the basis of stability. Now dependence on gas imports and trade and the 350,000 German jobs related to that makes the pain of fixing that mistake too much for the now 'fat and soft' Germans to bear.

AmericanPride

05-05-2014, 09:56 PM

And guided by the boiling frog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog) premise will continue.

No... nice try though.

Yes Russia is a third rate power but is prepared to use its thrid rate military against those who are either unable or unwilling to confront them.

Germany have always been incompetent when it comes to major strategic decisions. This time it is the decision - based on economic greed - to trust the supposed mutual interdependence between the two states as the basis of stability. Now dependence on gas imports and trade and the 350,000 German jobs related to that makes the pain of fixing that mistake too much for the now 'fat and soft' Germans to bear.

And you still have not detailed how you propose to "emasculate" a "third-rate" nuclear power so that it's incapable of any future military aggression...

Stan

05-05-2014, 10:01 PM

Russian attack helicopter flight training on the Estonian border-

The Estonian press (http://www.ohtuleht.ee/578091/vene-oppused-piiri-aares) and MOD are not taking this current and past trend very seriously. Why should they... We see it every year and coincidentally with an increase in aircraft and paratroopers.

Note to Outlaw: This could be considered the worst intel link known to man, but, sadly, most Estonian youth actually read it and believe it too.

However, the MOD statements are real.

It's hard to cry wolf here when you see him every day in one form or another.

kaur

05-05-2014, 10:55 PM

Russia Bound to Win Its Proxy War in Ukraine
By Alexander GoltsMay. 05 2014 22:34 Last edited 22:34

It seems that Kiev is much to blame for the Ukrainian crisis in general. At the same time, however, it is a pardonable mistake. After Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian separatists seized one city after another, the public demanded that Ukrainian leaders take decisive action to try to control the chaos. But in recent decades, leaders everywhere have failed to achieve victory against paramilitary forces that use civilians as human shields.

Objectively speaking, Russia is waging a proxy war in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that it is bound to win. While Moscow flatly denies any meddling in Ukraine, the facts speak otherwise. Several Ukrainian Army helicopters were recently shot down near Slovyansk by man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS. These weapons are not stored in police stations or even Ukrainian security service offices, meaning that the insurgents could not have seized them locally. What's more, it takes considerable skill to operate a MANPAD. The most likely explanation is that these weapons were brought in by units of Russia's special forces.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/russia-bound-to-win-its-proxy-war-in-ukraine/499534.html

Look at this launch. Nice filming position. Reminds me camera work from Iraq. Before launch guy, who films says "Davai!" which means "go". Text says that tape was given to Russian daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda" journalists.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h4LjkTFGNeg

This FSB guy Strelkov has brought Chechen insurgents know how to Eastern Ukraine.

05-05-2014, 11:19 PM

wm---and who is this person typing this response Alexei Savich or a UK citizen---the question and your responses can always be twisted which ever way one decides to take a response that is the freedom on this particular blog--come over to the other site and see if your responses get attention for yourself. First I do not have a clue who the guy is. The name I offered up, Alexei Savich, is cited as an aviation expert by the AFP article you placed such stock in as a verification. I would like to know his bone fides as an aviation expert. Second, I would appreciate your being a little more explicit about which other site you would like me to come over to. The Internet is a pretty big place.

The article and video by the way has been both confirmed to have actually been recorded when it was, and reflects heavy aircraft movement by type by both the Washington Post editors as well as the NYTs and has been picked up by the German news media der Spiegel.
The article and video have confirmed nothing as far as I can tell. I've looked at open source satellite imagery of military airfields in Crimea dated 2014. Those airfields had significant numbers of Soviet-era combat fighter aircraft as well as larger aircraft. (I'll admit my "squint" skills have atrophied so I'm not sure what they all were, and I did not have a light table to look at them as closely as one might like.) For all I know the videos and reports you cite are just people seeing those aircraft flying around to get ready for some kind of flyby for Putin on Friday.

The following account, from page 43 of John Prados' [I]The Soviet Estimate[/I, details the source of the 1950's "bomber gap" and is rather instructive I think:

The Russians scheduled another flyover for their Air Force Day ceremonies . . . . [T]he US air attach to the Soviet Union , Colonel Charles E. Taylor, went out to Tushino to watch the air parade. It appears that the Soviets . . .execute a deceptive flyover. Taylor saw first ten then eighteen Bison jet bombers fly past the reviewing stand . . .. The flyover was deceptive because the Soviets evidently pressed into service every available Bison and then had the first serial of planes circle, out of sight of the reviewing stand, to make a second pass overhead.

For confirmation, here from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap), is an alternative report, citing a completely different source,

Adding to the concerns was an infamous event in July 1955. At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield, ten Bison bombers were flown past the reviewing stand, then flew out of sight, quickly turned around, and flew past the stands again with eight more, presenting the illusion that there were 28 aircraft in the flyby. Western analysts extrapolated from the illusionary 28 aircraft, judging that by 1960 the Soviets would have 800.[5]

[5] Heppenheimer, T. A. (1998). The Space Shuttle Decision. NASA. p. 193.

So wm who really cares whose name is on the article for that matter we could use yours if you would like.

Did in fact the video confirm or deny an event is the question and who really give a flip about the name.

A good analyst cares whose name is on a report because source evaluation is a significant part of analysis. An IIR was (and I presume still is) evaluated in terms of the source and the content. The need for both should be obvious: a good source can be deceived and thus report as true something that is false, as the story above makes poignantly clear about Col. Taylor.

JMA

05-05-2014, 11:37 PM

And you still have not detailed how you propose to "emasculate" a "third-rate" nuclear power so that it's incapable of any future military aggression...

Actually I have... in a quick summary earlier.

But it won't happen... you mentioned the N-word and that is guaranteed to ensure the WH floor is once again awash with urine.

JMA

05-05-2014, 11:41 PM

Russia Bound to Win Its Proxy War in Ukraine
By Alexander GoltsMay. 05 2014 22:34 Last edited 22:34

Of course they will... the US has already 'run away' and the EU is pretending its nothing to worry about.

All acording to plan.

Stan

05-06-2014, 08:46 PM

'We're Not Laughing Anymore (http://www.rferl.org/content/eu-fuele-russia-relations/25371039.html),' Says EU Commissioner On Relations With Russia

The European Union's enlargement commissioner, Stefan Fuele, says the EU has contributed to the current conflict in Ukraine by "failing" to understand Russian President Vladimir Putin's past statements about the legacy of the U.S.S.R.

But first, he acknowledged, the 28 EU member-states must put aside their own internal differences and find common cause in engaging constructively with Russia. A number of European members -- including Germany, the Mediterranean states, Hungary, and Finland -- are seen as putting economic ties with Russia ahead of a unified EU front.

More at the link and videos too

kaur

05-07-2014, 11:20 AM

Fuchs

05-07-2014, 12:29 PM

I wondered already how long it would take till both sides accuse each other of being in cahoots with fascists... :rolleyes:

kaur

05-07-2014, 04:11 PM

Google translate from a book about Russian nationalists.

The most intensive training militants conducted in the spring - summer 1993. In Moscow suburban bases of RNE experts from GRU , MVD and FSB conducted training barkashovskih militants with an emphasis on fighting in urban enivronment and subversive activities . They practiced assaults of buildings and usage of explosives.
Not only naziz capital , but also the " fighters" from province. For example, in September 1993, a such training was held for korup form Krasnoyarsk , where was located second bigges organisation of RNE.
The abundance of representatives from security services in training suggests supporting the Nazis someone from the country's leadership . Barkashovites prepared to revolt . "Even in the spring of '93 RNE preparing for the fall events. Our bases actively trained stormtroopers , developed plans for various operations , "- said later the then head of the Security Service Alexander Denisov RNE .
Barkashov himself in April confidently stated that by autumn the situation in the country escalated dramatically , with the RNE in the protracted confrontation between the president and members of parliament to support the latter, " if need be, physically."

http://eajc.org//data/image/books/18/09/9/18099_d.pdf

kaur

05-07-2014, 04:13 PM

Greetings to Dugin and Barkashov from Donbass.

Firn

05-07-2014, 09:36 PM

Pretty early in this thread we discussed the huge problems Russia would face supplying the occupied Crimea, be it water, gas, oil, electricity and food. The headline Crimean Citizens to Get Russian Gas (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/crimean-citizens-to-get-russian-gas/499796.html) sounds promising, but for now the reality is:

Crimea is also facing a shortage of gasoline and diesel supplies resulting from its annexation, as the majority of its supplies were delivered overland from Ukraine. Russia has not yet been able to resolve the supply issue with the small oil terminal in the port city of Kerch, on the eastern side of the peninsula.

Pretty much what we said, capacity just doesn't grow magically and severing natural economic ties comes at high costs. BTW if Ukraine did indeed cut the water supply from the NCC at the entry it will take some weeks, I think, to be felt in Crimea. IIRC there is also another channel watering southwest Ukraine towards Odessa, possibly they might be able to divert also there.

The highly likely collapse in tourism (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/crimea-gets-196m-to-avoid-collapse-in-tourist-numbers/499798.html), perhaps the most important source of private revenue has promted some Russian plans. If the pension and public wages will get the promised big rise the Crimean economy will be dominated by the state.

According to data from the Russian tourism watchdog, Rostourism, nearly 6 million tourists visited Crimea last year, of which 65 percent were Ukrainians and 25 percent, Russians. The 2014 season will be different, warned Irina Schegolkova, a spokesperson for Rostourism.

"This year, the Crimean government plans to welcome about 3 million people, the majority of them Russians," she said, adding that in previous years most Russians either drove to Crimea in their cars or traveled by rail. For Russians, that means a detour through potentially hostile territory, which most will be unwilling to risk, she added: "The only alternatives are developing direct flights to Crimea or ferry connections."

So after talking about a moderate reduction in tourism demand a month or so ago the have at least cut them to a more propable number, only 50%. Still too high in my books, but we will see.

kaur

05-08-2014, 10:21 AM

1 opinion.

Russia intends to sit and watch Kiev suppress the rebellion in the southeast.

There are probably two reasons for this. The first is the fear of economic sanctions that the U.S. and Germany have threatened to impose in the event of any military intervention. The second is that Moscow does not want to get involved in a conflict that could be potentially destructive for its economy over large territories with large economic problems and a predominantly Ukrainian population whose sentiments are far from uniform, which Russia has never been particularly interested in.

Ukrainian forces will most probably regain control over those territories in time to make it possible to conduct a presidential election on May 25 with at least a semblance of legality.

It would however be erroneous to interpret this as a sign that an end to the Ukrainian crisis is in sight. A military operation, conducted by poorly trained troops and with support of paramilitary nationalist groups, cannot but cause anger among the population.

Ukraine is doomed to a long political crisis with a further radicalization of politics, with the factors of ethnicity, language and religion coming to the fore.

By refusing to intervene in Ukraine's southeast we have not averted the threat of sanctions but have just bought ourselves some time to prepare for them by re-orienting our economic, science, technology and other ties towards Asia and by putting import-replacement programs in place.

http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/book/Russia-will-not-risk-entanglement-in-southeast-Ukraine-16623

kaur

05-09-2014, 09:36 AM

Why Germans Love Russia

MAY 5, 2014

BERLIN — Like most foreign-policy experts, I was shocked by Russia’s
annexation of Crimea and its continuing “soft invasion” of eastern Ukraine. Can such a naked land grab really be happening now, in 21st-century Europe?

But Russia’s actions were not the only surprise. If you have followed the German debate about the Ukraine crisis, you have witnessed another strange phenomenon: a parade of former politicians and public figures going on TV to make the case for Russia.

According to these august figures — including former Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt — NATO and the European Union were the real aggressors, because they dared to expand into territory that belonged to Moscow’s legitimate sphere of interest. And it seems part of the German public agrees.

You thought that Germans were the champions of international law and a rules-based world order? Think again.

Both versions of anti-Westernism have been around for decades; until now, though, they have been confined to the political fringes. These days they are accepted by parts of the elite and sections of the political center. That, combined with the enormous investment by German companies in Russia, is placing constraints on how aggressively the government of Angela Merkel, Germany’s strongly pro-Western chancellor, can act against Russia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/opinion/why-germans-love-russia.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults&mabReward=relbias%3Aw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsite search%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26p gtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26content Collection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry929%23%2Fclemens%2B wergin%2F&_r=1

kaur

05-09-2014, 11:10 AM

Putin Too Clever by Half on Delaying Russian Referendum

May 8, 2014

Putin is engaged in the classic Leninist approach of two steps forward and one step back: He has absorbed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine and now will receive credit in some circles for being a peacemaker. He has made it more difficult for the West to come up with a united position because it is certain that some capitals will say this is not the time to push forward. Yet, he has left all his options on the table, not agreeing to any substantive change on Ukraine or anywhere else.

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42335&cHash=30ceb437ed9cb4dfb590925fe4ba7c84#.U2ydY9oayS N

According to one Ukrainian site (written in 2011) "Donetsk Republic" was organised by Aleksandr Tsurkan, who worked in Yanukovich presidential election team in 2004. Yanukovich lost to orange revolution and Tsurkan left to Donetsk to organise movement that could act as opponent to president Yuschenko. Last biggest event was protest meeting where gathered 15 persons. After Yanukovich became president this organisation became quiet.

http://zrada.org/hot/26-nation/244-pjataja-kolonna-ukrainy.html

2012. "Donetsk Republic" opened their "embassy" in Moscow in the office of Dugin's youth movement. That year Putin became president again under "Eurasian Union" banner.

http://gazeta.ua/ru/articles/politics/_v-rossii-otkrylos-posolstvo-doneckoj-respubliki/438919?mobile=false

Autumn same year Dugin's people arrived to Donetsk to share know how about Eurasianism. There was talk about "Eurasian Union", which is Putin's geopolitical project.

http://rusmir.in.ua/pol/3362-v-donecke-proshla-mezhdunarodnaya-nauchno.html

7.05.2014 Russia's present day "useful idiot" Bckman is in the game.

Ukrainian separatists opening mission in Helsinki
The eastern Ukrainian separatist group calling itself the "Donetsk Republic" will be opening a representative office in Helsinki, according to Finnish academic and activist Johan Bckman.

Johan Bckman says that the representative office will be opened on the 18th of this month at a conference in Helsinki where the keynote speaker will be Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, an ideologist of the creation of a Eurasian empire. Bckman added that he has had talks in Moscow with Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin on setting up a western European representative office in Helsinki. As Pushilin is on the EU sanctions list, it is unlikely that he will be present for the opening.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/ukrainian_separatists_opening_mission_in_helsinki/7226818

Bäckman is working for Russia's front organisatins for some time. He was one of the most active international election monitors in Crimea. In Finland he is representative of Russia's RISI institute, whose head is retired special service general. If you tell to Finn "Backman", usually very calm people lose their temper :)

It's very hard not to agree with Paul Goble.

Fuchs

05-09-2014, 12:05 PM

Why Germans Love Russia

pro Russia:

Schröder - de facto disrespected former Chancellor, without substantial political influence in Germany

Schmidt - much-respect elder statesman and former Chancellor (West Germany), but he was already over 70 when the wall fell...he hasn't exactly the most agile mind nowadays

Gysi - 100% political opposition (far) left wing figurehead with rhetoric gift, but without ability to influence national policies

far right wingers - some are in love with authoritarian strongman Putin as anti-homo, anti-Muslim crusader et cetera, others prefer to foster their condescension towards slavs.

There is a (correct) assertion that the mainstream media reports on the Ukraine with a bias, preferring the counter-Putin side of affairs. The fascist component of the revolution and of the new cabinet didn't get much attention in the news and negligible political groups such as the Klitchko brothers were hyped, for example.
Now imagine how the other Western media are biased if in a country accused to be too pro-Russia the mainstream media can be correctly accused of having a counter-Russia bias.

I suppose it's a 'both sides are bad' case - as usual.
Principles are still to be applied on 'good' and 'bad', and the right to self-determination was with Russia in the Crimea case as it was with the EU in the Kosovo case. At least Russia didn't bomb the Ukraine generally for months before it invaded the Crimea (as we did with Yugoslavia/Kosovo, supposedly to stop atrocities which were afterwards almost entirely disproved).

Russia's methods are illegal, but it has a point: The self-determination right of the people in the majority Russian districts (the sovereignty of the Ukraine stems from the same principle).

Now it's possible to point at a plurality of opinions in Germany and to point at non-enthusiastic opinions in Germany which take the greyscale nature of the conflict into account and to assert that Germany is Russia-friendly.

Well, I suppose a pluralistic society looks like this. It might be better to appraise the difficulty of the conflict than to go into an all-out adversary mode knowing only "containment", "sanctions" and turning the Ukraine into a proxy.
It's unlikely that the international community finds cure the root of the problem if major countries have a 100% adversary stance. I think the poorly-drawn borders are the problem, not a Putin regime attempt to re-establish the Russian empire. He may want it, but it would be way out of reach if the borders weren't so poorly drawn.

------
P.S.: Germany has a positive attitude towards Russia, and it goes both ways.
Germans thank Gorbachev more for the reunification than Bush, Mitterand and Thatcher combined. Russians have forgiven WW2 better than the Dutch or English, for example. Warsaw Bloc 'communist' ideology drove reconciliation efforts during the Cold War: According to ideology, it wasn't nationalities but plutocrats and fascism which caused the war. This may have helped relations despite the real-economy leeching of East Germany.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the USSR/Russia reached Germany in the past two decades, many of which (notionally all) were descendants of German immigrants to Russia of the 18th century.
Germany supported the Russian state with substantial loans during the 90's without visible strings attached.

It's naive to expect Germans to ditch a fairly good relationship in an instant only because Russia and another non-allied country are now in conflict. There were some lessons learned about how deteriorating relationships in Europe can have severe consequences - lessons which Americans never learned.

mirhond

05-09-2014, 01:51 PM

Following youtube links are in Russian.

Ukrainian SBU claims that they have got phone call between Donetsk self defence forces and Russian fascist Barkashov, where Barkashov gives intructions about referendum in Donetsk. "No federalisation, just Donets Respublic"

Aww, how sweet, old warhorse Barkashov, uheard and unseen along with his RNE for 20 years, is now in action again. Well, Kremlin shows mad skillz in political assets management :D

Meanwhile in Mariupol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSWwAPsO3Q0

Translation from 3:00
Soldier: Mr Yatzenuk &Co. thanks a lot for 1300 Hr(about 110 $) two months wage. Wish you everything I've heard from my brothers and systers here and in Kiev. I am ashamed. Think of it, we may turn the column against you.

Guys are little bit nervous, public doesn't show respect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XMvhQRPYPEA

carl

05-09-2014, 05:04 PM

mirhond:

Were you able to find out what Putin's net worth is and what his salary is?

carl

05-09-2014, 05:08 PM

I wonder how much Germany counts for anymore. Maybe it is time to stop worrying about them and 'Europe' and start thinking about countries like Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden etc.

kaur

05-09-2014, 05:30 PM

Fuchs:

P.S.: Germany has a positive attitude towards Russia, and it goes both ways. Germans thank Gorbachev more for the reunification than Bush, Mitterand and Thatcher combined.

Have you heard about this news?

MOSCOW, April 10 (RIA Novosti) – Members of Russia’s lower house of parliament have filed a request with the prosecutor general demanding the breakup of the Soviet Union be declared illegal and those responsible be prosecuted, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian media reported Thursday.
According to the Izvestia newspaper, the request, filed by members of several parties, says that in a 1991 referendum Soviet citizens voted to maintain the state’s territorial integrity, but the country’s leaders then committed illegal acts that led to the collapse.
In November 1991, a criminal proceeding was launched against Gorbachev, but the charges were dropped on the next day.

One of the initiators of the request, United Russia deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov, told RIA Novosti that the move was driven by a necessity to investigate the mechanisms of coups staged from abroad in the wake of current events in Ukraine.

This deputy Fyodorov is head of NOD movement.

Yet, Moscow hasn't been entirely successful at covering its tracks. When pro-Russian forces declared a "People's Republic of Donetsk" on April 6 and demanded with it a Crimea-style referendum, several separatists thanked the "National Liberation Movement" (NLM) for supporting their endeavour. This supposedly grassroots movement is led by Putin. (In the photo above, NLM supporters distribute flyers at a rally in Donetsk on March 1.)
Since 2011, the NLM (or RusNOD as it's commonly known in Russia) has been fomenting pro-Russian sentiments throughout "the Russian world" -- the Russky Mir, as Putin has encouraged Russians to say when referring to the lands of the former Russian and Soviet Empires.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/04/25/the_kremlin_s_faux_freedom_fighters

In their news section is one cossack atamans' meeting. Just example of their style.

http://rusnod.ru/news/theme3580.html

So, today in Russia there are forces in action that don't look at the history the same way as Germans. One-sided love?

Fuchs

05-09-2014, 05:59 PM

So, today in Russia there are forces in action that don't look at the history the same way as Germans. One-sided love?

Look closely at what you wrote here and at what I wrote here.

And then read this definition (http://tinyurl.com/knfglcn).

It's self-explaining.

I wonder how much Germany counts for anymore. Maybe it is time to stop worrying about them and 'Europe' and start thinking about countries like Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden etc.

You're more than a decade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_%28politics%29) behind the curve.

Even proven stupid politicians were smart enough to walk away from this attitude.
NATO in East Europe would collapse militarily if Germany turned neutral and Germany's economic influence on Russia is much greater than the American one.

http://atlas.media.mit.edu/profile/country/rus/
Russian exports to Germany: 6.1 %
Russian exports to USA: 5.0%

Russian imports from Germany: 15%
Russian imports from USA: 3.6%

You should wonder how much the United States count for anymore. They're having a loud voice, yet little substance in Russia's European backyard.
Obama seems to understand this.

OUTLAW 09

05-09-2014, 07:04 PM

First I do not have a clue who the guy is. The name I offered up, Alexei Savich, is cited as an aviation expert by the AFP article you placed such stock in as a verification. I would like to know his bone fides as an aviation expert. Second, I would appreciate your being a little more explicit about which other site you would like me to come over to. The Internet is a pretty big place.

The article and video have confirmed nothing as far as I can tell. I've looked at open source satellite imagery of military airfields in Crimea dated 2014. Those airfields had significant numbers of Soviet-era combat fighter aircraft as well as larger aircraft. (I'll admit my "squint" skills have atrophied so I'm not sure what they all were, and I did not have a light table to look at them as closely as one might like.) For all I know the videos and reports you cite are just people seeing those aircraft flying around to get ready for some kind of flyby for Putin on Friday.

The following account, from page 43 of John Prados' [I]The Soviet Estimate[/I, details the source of the 1950's "bomber gap" and is rather instructive I think:

For confirmation, here from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap), is an alternative report, citing a completely different source,

A good analyst cares whose name is on a report because source evaluation is a significant part of analysis. An IIR was (and I presume still is) evaluated in terms of the source and the content. The need for both should be obvious: a good source can be deceived and thus report as true something that is false, as the story above makes poignantly clear about Col. Taylor.

wm---you do understand that any IIR from a field HUMINT collector that is not a technical collector is in fact always a F6---hope you understand the significance of F6? And yes if you know the IIR collection system even an US Ambassador who is reporting via Cables is also a F6 as is the reporting from a OGA field agent a F6.

Before a F6 is in fact converted to a higher classification by the analyst there is far more in play than source and content as stated in the report. Have actually seen in some really stupid sounding/looking IIRs trigger a major reaction because a single word was mentioned and it had nothing to do with source and or content.

Am assuming you are evidently aware that sometimes a F6 has a single sentence in the report body and a single sentence in the Summary which in the end can trigger a formal report to the NCA ie the WH---you are aware of such reports since you are evidently a solid expert in IIRs and how the analyst works?

So again you seem to fully not understand the intel collection world just as you wedre not in Europe in 1989 so get real.

05-09-2014, 07:56 PM

wm---you do understand that any IIR from a field HUMINT collector that is not a technical collector is in fact always a F6---hope you understand the significance of F6? And yes if you know the IIR collection system even an US Ambassador who is reporting via Cables is also a F6 as is the reporting from a OGA field agent a F6.

Before a F6 is in fact converted to a higher classification by the analyst there is far more in play than source and content as stated in the report. Have actually seen in some really stupid sounding/looking IIRs trigger a major reaction because a single word was mentioned and it had nothing to do with source and or content.

Am assuming you are evidently aware that sometimes a F6 has a single sentence in the report body and a single sentence in the Summary which in the end can trigger a formal report to the NCA ie the WH---you are aware of such reports since you are evidently a solid expert in IIRs and how the analyst works?

So again you seem to fully not understand the intel collection world just as you wedre not in Europe in 1989 so get real.

If you reread the last paragraph in the post that led to the above response, you will note that I spoke about the analyst doing source and content evaluation.

BTW, one wonders why the language in your blog posts is so much more coherent than what is displayed on SWC threads. Do you have a ghost writer?

kaur

05-09-2014, 08:58 PM

Fuchs, pluralism is ok until it may paralyze system. If I'm reading this kind of overviews I become little bit scared.

Mrs Merkel, with her habitual reserve, has taken no clear stand but is believed to sympathise with the more robust American view of Mr Putin. Her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is a Social Democrat and former protg of Mr Schrders, and thus closer to the Russlandversteher. But even he seems to have grasped that Ostpolitik now looks naive and risks undermining Germanys transatlantic and European alliances. Voices on both the right and the left (mainly in the Green party) back a tougher line on Russia.

However, both Mrs Merkel and Mr Steinmeier also have German public opinion to contend with. And here recent polls show the extent of German ambivalence. One finds a majority opposing sanctions on Russia. In another, almost half of Germans yearn for a middle way between Russia and the West, with a clear majority in eastern Germany in favour of this.

This German self-identification as in some sense equidistant between the West, particularly America, and the East, especially Russia, has a long tradition. Historians refer to its 19th-century version as the Sonderweg (special path). West Germanys first post-war chancellors, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, tried to end the ambiguity by anchoring the new country firmly in western Europe and the Atlantic alliance, as it still is. Yet since Ostpolitik in the 1970s and reunification in 1990 the earlier sentiment has returned.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21601897-germanys-ambivalence-towards-russia-reflects-its-conflicted-identity-how-very-understanding

Fuchs

05-09-2014, 09:08 PM

Merkel's only policy is "preservation of power". There's nothing else.
The crisis has little potential to kick her out of office, so don't expect anything drastic from her, for doing nothing is her default stance (she's a German post-Erhard conservative, after all).

In the end, the Ukraine is not an allied power and lost a region which overwhelmingly preferred secession.

Besides, the football world championship launches in a few weeks. This means no politics or policy is going to happen for weeks. The bi-annual re-awakening of German nationalism during such (world and European) football championships isn't going to affect foreign policy either.

The priorities would be different if the Ukraine was in NATO or the EU, that's for sure. The Bundeswehr would now be in the Ukraine with much more forces than in the symbolic deployments such as the one to Turkey.

kaur

05-09-2014, 09:22 PM

Fuchs

05-09-2014, 10:27 PM

Accept that the Crimea was an incredibly low-hanging fruit which fell into Russia's hands for almost no effort - for a good reason.

Next, re-establish and reinforce an international climate in which aggressions are prohibited effectively - including the Westerners.

The U.S., the UK, Israel and France have become much too casual in bombing or invading foreign countries under pretences which wouldn't (and don't) pass in the UNSC (and wouldn't so even if Russia and the PRC had no veto privilege).

Estonia has ratified a treaty called the "North Atlantic Treaty" in 2004. The invasion of Iraq 2002 was a clear violation of this treaty.
Do you expect the government of Estonia to protest loudly and try to inflict some pain (such as kicking out some diplomats and CIA spies) once the U.S. president decides to casually bomb a country with cruise missiles the next time?
If not, Estonia would have little moral right to expect a less troubling neighbourhood.
Don't expect an unfriendly great power to be restricted by the rule of law if you side with great powers who de facto claim that only rule of force applies to them.

JMA

05-10-2014, 07:21 AM

What is the solution to Russia question? Russia under Putin has grabbed land from neighbouring country, has been fooling under insane propaganda screen his own people, his neighbours, European Union, whole world. Business as usual?

Sooner or later Russia must be emasculated - like with Germany after 1945 - otherwise this expansionism will not stop.

The fuel for this dream of reinstating the Russian/Soviet Empire is the oil/gas driven economy. To control the Russians this must be targeted.

There are a number of measures that need to be taken to to reign in the Russians... but the US has effectively run out of steam to the point of self imposed impotence. The Germans - true to their national character - will not suffer any economic discomfort in order to save small nations from falling under the Russian jack-boot.

There is real doubt that NATO without the US drive and enthusiasm - seen during the COld War era - will even act when a member state is moved against by Russia.

JMA

05-10-2014, 07:30 AM

Great powers do what they can - or think they can - get away with. You as a German would know this.

The Us and its western side-kicks did what they could get away with.

Now Russia is doing the same because the US and the West has ceased to be a deterrent to Russian action.

This has nothing to do with right or wrong or morality but all to do with power... again you as a German would know this.

Accept that the Crimea was an incredibly low-hanging fruit which fell into Russia's hands for almost no effort - for a good reason.

Next, re-establish and reinforce an international climate in which aggressions are prohibited effectively - including the Westerners.

The U.S., the UK, Israel and France have become much too casual in bombing or invading foreign countries under pretences which wouldn't (and don't) pass in the UNSC (and wouldn't so even if Russia and the PRC had no veto privilege).

Estonia has ratified a treaty called the "North Atlantic Treaty" in 2004. The invasion of Iraq 2002 was a clear violation of this treaty.
Do you expect the government of Estonia to protest loudly and try to inflict some pain (such as kicking out some diplomats and CIA spies) once the U.S. president decides to casually bomb a country with cruise missiles the next time?
If not, Estonia would have little moral right to expect a less troubling neighbourhood.
Don't expect an unfriendly great power to be restricted by the rule of law if you side with great powers who de facto claim that only rule of force applies to them.

kaur

05-10-2014, 11:38 AM

Fuchs, your last post reminds me this episode.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/02/18/sprj.irq.chirac/

I was reading this article. Argument was clash of civilizations.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraine-latvia-welcome-the-clash-civilizations-10441

What kind of culture modern day Russia is cultivating? Is this narrative ok to west? They have cultivated the victim story since 1991. They have will to get revanche. Should west help Russia to aquire (feeding state buget) enough capacities achieve revanhce?

JMA

05-10-2014, 12:13 PM

Stating the obvious that all but the blind can see:

Putin’s dangerous game (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/10819671/Putins-dangerous-game.html)

He sends out so many mixed messages that no one is really sure what he wants. But for a clearer picture, we need only look at what he does: and his arrival in Crimea, like a latter-day conquering hero, was calculated to encourage separatists in Donetsk.
Then again, his every move is being encouraged by the vacillating responses from the West.

Johannes U

05-10-2014, 03:44 PM

with tougher sanctions if Russia accepts the Donezk-Referendum but not the presidential elections ...
what was the book about the beginnings of the 1st WW called: the sleepwalkers .......:(

carl

05-10-2014, 04:00 PM

You're more than a decade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_%28politics%29) behind the curve.

Darn. late to the party again.

Fuchs

05-12-2014, 01:16 PM

FYI

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/images/w-RUSIv4.jpg

(I suppose the size is OK, considering the nature of the graphic.)

25th ABN was disbanded for unreliability (surrendering of AFVs to rebels). It was their only mechanised airborne outfit (BMD-1, BMD-2).

kaur

05-12-2014, 02:39 PM

mirhond, thank you! No answer is also answer :)

kaur

05-12-2014, 08:09 PM

Poll Finds 94% of Russians Depend on State TV for Ukraine Coverage

The Levada Center, a Moscow-based independent research organization, revealed that 94 percent of the population relies on domestic television networks to follow developments in Ukraine and Crimea. The outcome of the poll, which was conducted in April, was based on the opinions of a representative sample of 1,602 adults across 45 regions.

The Levada Center found that 44 percent of respondents think foreign media outlets are "not very objective" about the situation in Ukraine, while 50 percent consider Russia's state media outlets to be "generally objective."

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/poll-finds-94-of-russians-depend-on-state-tv-for-ukraine-coverage/499988.html

France won't cancel warship deal with Russia: sources

France will press ahead with a 1.2 billion-euro ($1.66 billion) contract to sell helicopter carriers to Russia because cancelling the deal would do more damage to Paris than to Moscow, French diplomatic sources said on Monday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-france-russia-mistral-idUSBREA4B05920140512

mirhond

05-12-2014, 11:58 PM

Geography lessons with American ministry of truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs3Im-YES5E

Ukraine is located somewhere in Pakistan.

ps. I love CNN and Foxnews! They always amuse me with wondorous discoveries, like palm trees in Moscow, for example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EZJQiAlxio

Dayuhan

05-13-2014, 12:23 AM

Just tell us with couple words what was the "golden age lost by sins of fathers"! How many times should I say "Please!" :D

I can tell you in one word: fantasy. Most nations have at least one "golden age" myth, some have several. Connection to historical reality is neither necessary nor advantageous; it's an appeal to emotion, and the desire to believe in the epic greatness of the past seems ingrained in the race. It works.

Fuchs

05-13-2014, 12:26 AM

CNN also also needed years to recognise the independence of South Sudan.

Dayuhan

05-13-2014, 12:45 AM

Sooner or later Russia must be emasculated - like with Germany after 1945 - otherwise this expansionism will not stop.

The expansionism will stop when/if the perceived cost and risk to the leadership clique exceeds the perceived potential gain to the leadership clique. (I don't think the people calling the shots are too concerned with the cost/benefit equation for "Russia" generically, only for themselves.) I see no particular reason why that would require the emasculation of Russia. As Fuchs has pointed out, the strategy so far seems to focus on the gathering of low hanging fruit, though in the case of Crimea the fruit was already on the ground and needed only to be picked up. I see little reason to interpret that as a conquering juggernaut that can only be stopped by emasculation, unless of course you really want to. Trying to raise the fruit a bit might be easier and less risky than trying to emasculate the scavenger.

The fuel for this dream of reinstating the Russian/Soviet Empire is the oil/gas driven economy. To control the Russians this must be targeted.

Very bold, but how do you propose to do that?

JMA

05-13-2014, 02:11 PM

The expansionism will stop when/if the perceived cost and risk to the leadership clique exceeds the perceived potential gain to the leadership clique.

Given your knowledge of the Russian/Ukrainian situation what circumstance will that be?

(I don't think the people calling the shots are too concerned with the cost/benefit equation for "Russia" generically, only for themselves.)

Can you elaborate on that?

I see no particular reason why that would require the emasculation of Russia.

Perhaps if this territorial aggression was likely to end with Ukraine. But is it? Will there be no more?

As Fuchs has pointed out, the strategy so far seems to focus on the gathering of low hanging fruit, though in the case of Crimea the fruit was already on the ground and needed only to be picked up.

Fuschs says a lot of things, much of which is plain wrong. In this case though he is correct in that the US and the EU are currently impotent and unable to act in concert to reverse this Russian aggression.

I see little reason to interpret that as a conquering juggernaut that can only be stopped by emasculation, unless of course you really want to. Trying to raise the fruit a bit might be easier and less risky than trying to emasculate the scavenger.

Well if like with Germany after 1945 you want to be sure that they will no longer be able to stage any acts of military aggression Russia gets emasculated in one of a couple of ways. Then peace in Europe will become a reality.

Very bold, but how do you propose to do that?

Why ask me, I won't be doing it.

kaur

05-13-2014, 02:49 PM

Dayuhan:

the strategy so far seems to focus on the gathering of low hanging fruit, though in the case of Crimea the fruit was already on the ground and needed only to be picked up.

How you define the height from the ground? :)

When Vladimir Putin justified his annexation of Crimea on the ground that he owed protection to Russian speakers everywhere, this newspaper took a dim view of his line of argument, pointing out that since linguistic borders do not match those of states, it would lead to chaos.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-world-according-to-putin-2014-5#ixzz31bQcKfQN

Fuchs

05-14-2014, 12:01 PM

Outlaw and others,
don't underestimate the power of ideology and narrative.

I've seen how quite normal Russia-friendly people turned 150% pro-Kremlin during the Ukraine crisis. This happens when they access the official Russian view of events and buy into it.

I've also observed that conservatives and right wingers tend to fall for Putin's 'charm'. He's a de facto autocrat and they like it. He's homophobic and they're homophobes, too. He decries Western culture, decadence et cetera - they do too. Natural allies.

There are certainly a couple paid online propagandists, but they're merely the seeds. Putin understood how to trigger certain demographics into supporting him and some true believers are indistinguishable from the paid seeds.

You Americans know the 'talking point' culture well; the Putin regime uses the same approach.
And to the American right wingers: The Putin true believers - they sound to us like Fox News true believers sound to liberals and foreigners. Think about that.

Fuchs

05-14-2014, 04:17 PM

By the way an IP address (...) they mean absolutely nothing to us as it is the hops you have taken and from where you started that is highly interesting--and by the way your IP address constantly changes each time you come onto the other commercial Western media boards which reflects definitely Tor usage.

Dynamic IP addresses are standard in Germany and some other countries. Almost everyone here has a dynamic IP address unless one wants to run a private server.

I am also allowed to use a proxy service of an institution nearby in order to access what they have a license to access - and that's no Tor at all.

"definitely" was an exaggeration.

kaur

05-14-2014, 07:41 PM

Here is very intersting reading in Russian how Kremlin helped to organise referendum in Criema. Article is mostly based on (it seems to be) hacked mails by "Anonymous International" (who ever they are). Know how came directly from Russian presidential administration - internal affais deparment guys (who are responsible for elections and party terrain), PR firm " Secret advisor", public opinion research firm WCIOM etc. Full orchestra I dare to say.

http://slon.ru/russia/kak_kovalas_pobeda_v_krymu-1095637.xhtml

The Slavyansk FSB guy Strelkov/Girkin's mail seems to be hacked also.

Suppousedly full list of Russian media experts, who got medals from Putin.

Etc, etc.

http://b0ltai.wordpress.com

If you trust the source, then really good job done by hackers.

kaur

05-15-2014, 01:01 PM

Outlaw, thanks for kind words.

Couple words about Russian civil society, their ideology, leaders and alliances. In the beginning of March this year, week before Crimea referendum, delegation from Crimea parliament headed by speaker Vladimir Konstantinov (previously head of Yanukovich "Party of regions" head in Crimea) visited Russian Duma. In front of the Duma, according to correspondent, they were greeted by Russian civil society groups. I did find by flags 2 organisations - "Oficery Rossi" (Russian officers) and Dugin's youth organisations. First organisation's leader is son of high ranking KGB officer and worked in FSB himself. Later was sent to lead national security departement in public service academy under presidential administration. Dugin's youth movement hosted "Donetsk Respublik" so called embassy in Moscow since 2012. I posted in this thread picture where Donetsk guys greeted Dugin. So, Russian officers organisation together with Eurasian fascists greeting Crimea leader in front of Russian duma :D

Andreas Umland has collected works about Dugin's ideology here

http://archive.today/c6bde

Duma event http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJaPEw0P9b4

Eurasian Youth Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Youth_Union

What makes things even more messy, is that during all this anti-western agenda is promoted and carried out by elite, whose kinds are studing and living in the west. In the picture on the right from Crimean guy is "United Russia" high ranking official Zheleznjak (waiving with hand), whose daughters are studing in Europe. What about Putin's daughters, Yakunin's family etc?

http://www.online812.ru/2014/05/14/007/

kaur

05-15-2014, 01:28 PM

Things will get even more silly from ideology side. Dugin, Ukrainian socialist, nationalist, all in Eurasian movement. This all is so wierdl :D

One of the worrying results of the March 2006 elections to the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, was that the so-called “Popular Opposition” bloc led by the head of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Natal’ya Mikhailovna Vitrenko (b. 1951), managed to come close to passing the 3% barrier (with 2.93% of the official turnout) and thus almost entered the Rada. Vitrenko is the premier representative of radical anti-Westernism in Ukraine; she has also made herself known with her frequent invectives against Ukrainian politicians whom she does not hesitate to call “natsisty” (Nazis). Both of these circumstances are ironic in as far as Vitrenko has been for some time officially allied to a well-known Russian propagator of the West’s worst invention: fascism.

Vitrenko, along with former UNA-UNSO and current “Bratstvo” leader Dmitro Korchinski, entered in 2004, and is now listed in the directory of members of, the Highest Council of the International Eurasian Movement (see here, 31st March 2006). There was also an announcement in 2005 that Vitrenko and Korchinski were going to enter the Highest Council of the Eurasian Youth Movement (here, 31st March 2006), the International Eurasian Movement’s youth section with branches in, among other countries, Ukraine. Both of these organizations, the International Eurasian Movement and Eurasian Youth Movement, have been created by, and are entirely devoted to the ideas of, a certain Aleksandr Gel'evich Dugin

http://hnn.us/article/23821#sthash.F8p6pJi1.dpuf

kaur

05-15-2014, 02:41 PM

Couple week sago Ukrainian SBU published intercepted phone call between Russian fascist Barkashov and "Donetsk Respublik" activist Dmitri Boitsov.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13xZ_TDEFSU

Here is phone call interception between Dugin and "Donetsk Respublik" Pavel Gubarev's wife after Pavel's arrest by Ukrainian authorities.

http://info-news.eu/russian-fascist-instructs-separatists-in-ukraine/

Couple months ago was already discovered Gubarev participation in Barkashov's movement.

Earlier this week pro-Russian protesters under the leadership of Pavel Gubarev, the self-proclamied governor seized several buildings in Donetsk Regional State Administration and raised the Russian flag. During one of the seizures Gubarev put forward a number of demands to the local authorities, including the holding of a referendum on the status of the region.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/03/oops-pro-russian-donetsk-separatist-leader-discovered-to-be-nazi/

If you just think for a moment how FSB is controlling internal political environment (especially extremist organisations), then there should be no doubt that Russian officials must have some control over them. If you control them, then you can say "Do" or "Don't". At the moment they have green light in Ukraine.

"Barkashov and Power Ministries"

http://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/09-1_Dunlop.PDF

Fuchs

05-15-2014, 03:58 PM

The publication of intercepted phone calls appears to have become a very fashionable political tool. Cablegate may have lasting influence this way...

mirhond

05-16-2014, 12:03 PM

special for kaur

a call from oligarch Kolomoyski to Rada deputy and wannabe prezident Tzarev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo0TYWDNej0

essence of the call:
K: One jew got killed and Mariupol, you are to blame, there is a 1 mln $ reward on your head, tell your relatives and subjects to get the fu(k out of here.
So, kaur, will you buy it? Does it sound like truth for you?

2 Stan

Hey, I'am a male! You might be confused by my avatar. :D

kaur

05-16-2014, 02:10 PM

If I were Ukraine oligarh and there were wannabe Tsarev, who is rocking the boat, I would tell him get lost (with your sparatist ideas). If I were jew, I would tell him to get lost with your fascist Russian ideologues.

Just for mirhond. This is nice piece of Kremlin propaganda. "Sunday night" with Vladimir Solovjov. Guests are Dugin, Prohhanov, Tsarjev, Zhirinovski etc. Best guy is from Israel, who talks about extremists in Ukraine in this kind of company. Good job, Russian propaganda!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA86A3QFlkE

TheCurmudgeon

05-16-2014, 04:13 PM

Workers of the World Unite (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?_r=0)!... against Russia.

THIS is effective counterinsurgency.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Thousands of steelworkers fanned out on Thursday through the city of Mariupol, establishing control over the streets and banishing the pro-Kremlin militants who until recently had seemed to be consolidating their grip on power, dealing a setback to Russia and possibly reversing the momentum in eastern Ukraine.

By late Thursday, miners and steelworkers had deployed in at least five cities, including the regional capital, Donetsk. They had not, however, become the dominant force there that they were in Mariupol, the region’s second-largest city and the site last week of a bloody confrontation between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militants.

mirhond

05-16-2014, 08:30 PM

Workers of the World Unite (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?_r=0)!... against Russia.

THIS is effective counterinsurgency.

No footage, no photos, no links, only text, moreower - there is not an even a single note of the event in the major Ukrainian media.
Only one link from Mariupol itself:
http://www.0629.com.ua/news/516729
Appeal from trade unions to the sity residents not to respond on provocations and preserve peace.

and other from news agency:
http://www.ua-ru.info/news/15253-metallurgi-ochistili-mariupol-ot-barrikad-separatistov.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Steelworkers and citizens cleaned up the mess left after separatists.

Conclusion - article is Bravo Sierra.

davidbfpo

05-17-2014, 06:38 PM

Two of the Moderators have looked at this thread and I give notice that the posts regarding information operations, especially between Mirhond and Outlaw09, will be moved to a new thread. If there is time the more direct personal exchange will be edited and so enable the thread to appear in the Media, Information & Cyber Warriors (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=80) arena.

Clearly info ops are part of the events in Ukraine.

Update: I have given up. It is impossible to seperate out the posts, they are spread over a month amidst four hundred posts.

First, instead I have opted to remove a small number of recent posts - which are rather sharp in tone - between a very small number of members. Or superfluous to the discussion over the Ukraine / Crimea.

Secondly, if anyone wishes to post on the info ops aspect from now, post them on this thread: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=156528 the title refers to Russian cyber ops, but on review is about info ops.

mirhond

05-21-2014, 10:44 AM

http://www.newstube.ru/media/mid-rossii-trebuet-osvobodit-zaderzhannyx-na-ukraine-zhurnalistov

LifeNews ENG crew captured by Ukrainian "silovikian orcs" (thanks to carl for such colorful definition)

Fun starts at 00:36 - crew brought MANPAD along with cameras, press bages and other stuff. If there was a "Most lame Propaganda" Award - this video would probably got it.

kaur

05-21-2014, 11:47 AM

mirhond, is this better?

K
iselyov Defends TV Network After Caucasus Footage Labeled as Ukraine

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – May 20, 2014) The deputy chief of a pro-Kremlin television holding has dismissed as an “accidental error” his network’s use of footage from a gunfight in the North Caucasus to illustrate supposed recent anti-Russian violence in eastern Ukraine, a news report said.

The footage – first used in a Rossiya television report in 2012 about a clash between government troops and militants in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria – resurfaced again on the network’s prime-time Vesti program last week, this time as part of a report about supposed atrocities against pro-Russian civilians in Ukr aine.

http://russialist.org/kiselyov-defends-tv-network-after-caucasus-footage-labeled-as-ukraine/

carl

05-22-2014, 01:43 AM

The Eurasia Daily Monitor of The Jamestown Foundation reported today that in addition to those steelworkers, wealthy Ukrainian businessmen in the east are bankrolling the formation of armed units that are then put sort of under the control of the Kiev gov to oppose the silovikian orcs.

Vlad must be very upset that locals are acting on their own hook. To me one important thing about this is it might be an indicator of the possibility of Ukrainian insurgent forces forming to oppose Russian forces if they roll across the border since forces are already forming to oppose the orcs. If that happened Vlad might have a tar baby on his hands dwarfing the North Caucusas. I wonder if his rule could survive that.

kaur

05-22-2014, 07:11 AM

During last week, there has been a lot of talk about Donbass rebels' leader Girkin/Strelkov. Hackers broke his email and some guys have written articles. If you are intersted about his life curve, then Google Translate this :) Like already previously said, he served in FSB from 1996- autumn 2013. He retired in the rank of colonel in anti-terrorist unit. From 2000-2005 he served in Chechnya.

Та же самая информация содержится на открытом военно-историческом форуме. Срочная служба в 1993-1994 годах – Московский округ ПВО, Одинцовский район, стрелок роты охраны. Не помпезно, но честно. Следующее место службы по контракту в феврале-декабре 1995 года — 166-я гвардейская мотострелковая бригада. Во время службы Гиркина воевала в пригородах Грозного — на Новых Промыслах и в Черноречье, несла потери. С марта по октябрь — Гиркин, по его словам, командир орудия в 67-м ОГСАД, то есть отдельном гаубичном артиллерийском дивизионе. На этом служба в частях Минобороны заканчивается, последующая биография описывается скупыми номерами воинских частей: с августа 1996 по июль 2000 года – в/ч 31763, с июля 2000 года по апрель 2005 года – в/ч 78576, с апреля 2005 года до февраля 2013 – в/ч 36391.
Если часть с номером 31763 нигде не засветилась, то в/ч 78576, что в городе Грозном, — это управление ФСБ по Чеченской республике, а в/ч 36391 расположена в Москве, на улице Большая Лубянка, дом 12. По мнению некоторых знатоков — это управление по борьбе с международным терроризмом, что в письмах подтверждал и сам Стрелков – «действующий старший офицер», «служу в антитерроре».

http://www.fontanka.ru/2014/05/20/223/

davidbfpo

05-22-2014, 12:48 PM

A new thread was requested to cover the position of the Russian economy and its international transactions. So a large number of posts (101 in fact) have been removed from this thread to The Russain economy (catch all): http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=20692

Wheerever possible posts relating to the economic aspects of contemporary Ukraine have remaiend in place.

Given recent events and some light moderation :wry: there are now a number of seperate threads on Russia covering politics, cyber & info ops, the military, terrorism, politics & power, the Russian pysche and more. Some threads on Russia are not in the Europe arena notably watching fleet movements.

davidbfpo

05-22-2014, 02:19 PM

Bloodshed at Ukrainian checkpoint:
Three days before Ukraine holds a presidential vote, pro-Russia insurgents attacked a military checkpoint Thursday in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 11 troops and wounding at least 33 others in the deadliest raid yet in weeks of fighting.

Three charred Ukrainian armored infantry vehicles, their turrets blown away, and several burned trucks were seen at the site in the Donetsk region. A military helicopter landed, carrying officials who inspected the area.

Residents said attackers used an armored bank truck, which the unsuspecting Ukrainian soldiers waved through, and then mowed them down at point-blank range. Their account couldn't be independently confirmed.

In the town of Horlivka, a masked rebel commander claimed responsibility for the raid and showed an array of seized Ukrainian weapons.
Link:http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/11-Ukrainian-troops-dead-30-wounded-by-rebels-5497149.php?

Some footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-gn0ULip1Q and allegations about armed helicopters being used:http://www.interpretermag.com/ukraine-liveblog-day-94-russian-backed-separatists-launch-attacks-near-donetsk/#2838
(http://www.interpretermag.com/ukraine-liveblog-day-94-russian-backed-separatists-launch-attacks-near-donetsk/#2838)

mirhond

05-23-2014, 08:16 PM

Kolomoiski's minions burned down the house of Rada deputy and presidency challenger Tzarev (previuosly they burned down his neighbour's house by mistake)
http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/3366154-v-dnepropetrovske-sozhhly-dom-tsareva
Kolomoiski definitely not a yapper - that's a perfect example of political struggle.

kaur

05-23-2014, 08:44 PM

mirhond, Russian billionaire's employees and orthodox chekists are running insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. During last raid they killed almost whole platoon of brother nation soldiers. Oh, Tsareev was guy, who Russians thought would lead Novorossija. Will he?

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-ukraine-secessionist-from-moscow-builds-greater-russia-one-province-at-a-time

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/2014/05/window-on-eurasia-can-russian-orthodox.html

Putin said that he is moving Russian troops away from Ukraine border. This should be sign of good will and deescalation. He should make one phone call to bring also back his irregulars from Donbass. If he says that he can't do this, there are two possibilities. First, he has lost control of his oligarhs. Second, he is not interested in deescalation. I think he has lost control and православные чекисты will rule!

mirhond

05-23-2014, 08:49 PM

Pro_Ukrainian volunteer batallion "Donbass" got busted in Donetzkaya oblast' and begs for help at Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/dmitry.tymchuk?fref=ts

Give them moar coach fire support!:cool:

upd. Another hilarious Bravo Sierra about KGB agent provocateurs in Kiev

http://baltija.eu/news/read/38319
"Russian saboteurs who robbed local authority buildings in Kiev captured by SBU"
*I can't resist posting a picture directly*
http://baltija.eu/img/upload/sbudok.jpg

So, what those notorious saboteurs had:
a 76 mm case, DShk MG magazine, 7.62x54R clip and ammo belt, two empty mortar shells, a handful of 12,7 mm rounds, several F1 grenades, Mosin rifle breechbloks and landmine case - enormous rusty arsenal, possibly survived WWII. ^_^. I believe SBU captured a deep recon group lost in time-space anomaly around 1942.

the text of article itself is either a perfect jewel of dumbness or trolling so subtle that I almost bought it.

*thanks, kaur, your compatriots who posted this are extremely professional*

mirhond

05-23-2014, 09:32 PM

Putin said that he is moving Russian troops away from Ukraine border. This should be sign of good will and deescalation. He should make one phone call to bring also back his irregulars from Donbass. If he says that he can't do this, there are two possibilities. First, he has lost control of his oligarhs. Second, he is not interested in deescalation.

Faulty logic - there is another option: Putin has no control over separatists and they are on their own during the whole mess.

kaur

05-23-2014, 09:43 PM

mirhond, where is your source criticism? Do your homework and check the backround of that site. This is considered to be Russian propaganda site there and thay are doing exactly this as you showed. I visitid this site years ago and it seems that content is the same.

The fact is that this Sunday there must be presidential elections in Ukraine. Conflict is going on and Putin is not making things easy there. I'm 101% sure that he could it easily, but he just will not. Why should he? Russian channels have not switched of warpropaganda also. Show goes on.

Ps take a look at this picture and think about fraternal nation.

https://news.pn/en/criminal/104792

According to the results of the poll, 79 % respondents sees the Belarusians as frater, 66% the Ukrainians, 14% the Kazakhs, 8% the nations living in the territory of the Russian Federation, 7% the Armenians and Tatars.

http://www.news.az/articles/society/88678

About faulty logic. Putin can call Malofeejev and tell that tax police with FSB will start raid in his firm tomorrow. He will be sent also to court with international terrorism charges as sponsor. FBI will also informed. Putin will order FSB to start cooperation with SBU against Donbass republic. Putin will take off money from Dugin organisations. Putin will tell Russian TV stations that tomorrow morning will start black propaganda campaign against Borodai/Girkin/Malofeejev etc.
Sorry for faulty logic. Putin will not call to those people. Their puppet masters will get orders via chain of command.

mirhond

05-23-2014, 10:15 PM

mirhond, where is your source criticism? Do your homework and check the backround of that site. This is considered to be Russian propaganda site there and thay are doing exactly this as you showed. I visitid this site years ago and it seems that content is the same.

The fact is that this Sunday there must be presidential elections in Ukraine. Conflict is going on and Putin is not making things easy there. I'm 101% sure that he could it easily, but he just will not. Why should he? Russian channels have not switched of warpropaganda also. Show goes on.

About faulty logic. Putin can call Malofeejev and tell that tax police with FSB will start raid in his firm tomorrow. He will be sent also to court with international terrorism charges as sponsor. FBI will also informed. Putin will order FSB to start cooperation with SBU against Donbass republic. Putin will take off money from Dugin organisations. Putin will tell Russian TV stations that tomorrow morning will start black propaganda campaign against Borodai/Girkin/Malofeejev etc.
Sorry for faulty logic. Putin will not call to those people. Their puppet masters will get orders via chain of command.

1. OK, the whole site looks like BS, you are right:p
2. For what reason Putin would help blatantly hostile and shaking Kievan power? Because of his kind heart and righteousness?
3. Well, you aren't lost to rational thinking if you can see your own fallacies and biases.;)

kaur

05-23-2014, 10:31 PM

Putin: "I'm speaking without any irony."

http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000002898482/putin-to-honor-ukraine-election-results.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

kaur

05-24-2014, 12:29 PM

What's Putin Up to Now? Four Possible Explanations
By Carol Matlack May 23, 2014

1. He’s bluffing to buy time.

2. Sanctions are biting Russia harder than expected.

3. Putin has realized that his Ukraine strategy hasn’t worked and that he needs to regroup

4. Putin believes his Ukraine strategy is working so well that there’s no need to stir the pot further.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-23/whats-putin-up-to-now-four-possible-explanations#r=most%20popular

Fuchs

05-24-2014, 01:07 PM

He has put a secession of the Eastern Ukraine on the agenda - a very different situation than six months ago.

What he lost is the prospect of a Moscow-friendly government in Kiev.

Firn

05-27-2014, 11:16 PM

Ukraine’s Next President Vows to Restore Order and Mend Russia Ties (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/europe/ukraine.html?ref=europe&_r=0)

The turnout was indeed quite high, especially considering the difficulties to vote in annexed Crimea and the two oblasts where thousends of insurgents roam. So roughly 1 in 8 could not participate in the national elections. The vote itself was surprisingly clear, giving Poroshenko a decisive wing. Not much chances for Moscow in the medium term to get a friendly Ukraine into it's orbit.

There are mostly hard choices ahead of the elected president, which will be sworn in later.

Fuchs

05-27-2014, 11:25 PM

The vote itself was surprisingly clear, giving Poroshenko a decisive wing. Not much chances for Moscow in the medium term to get a friendly Ukraine into it's orbit.

What he lost is the prospect of a Moscow-friendly government in Kiev.

I think Putin gave this up when he decided to take the Crimea and its voters. Maybe he already did so at the moment when Yakunovich fled, knowing that Y. was 100% corrupt and had discredited his political wing (= demotivated many of its voters) for many years to come.

JMA

05-28-2014, 08:37 AM

kaur

05-28-2014, 08:41 AM

After presidential elections fight continues in Donbass.

Here is one photo series from Donetsk about batallion "Vostok". Speculations started that Chechens are now involved. This is not the same Vostok that we remember from Georgia-Russia war.

http://stainlesstlrat.livejournal.com/723894.html

Here is Russian war correspondent Arkadi Babchenko's blog with couple videos. All in Russian.

http://starshinazapasa.livejournal.com

Very good article about Russian hand in Ukraine.

This war, without a doubt, go down in textbooks: it is conducted in the south-east of Ukraine by Moscow PR-agencies, commercial companies, their employees and friends of employees. Even sophisticated minds of Western political consulting gurus to this is not yet reached. This war is a new type of "Novaya Gazeta" explored in a number of sources, the documents become the property of the editorial board, and eyewitness accounts of our correspondents. In this issue you will find:

- materials of the criminal case involving Alexander Boroday;

- letters and "biography" Igor Girkin (Strelkova) and his companions;

- lists for the award based on the results of the Crimean campaign submitted to the presidential administration;

- Corresponding corporate employees who have taken an ideological row Ukrainian project, in particular, "the Privy Councillor", "Internet Research Agency" (FIA), the company "ArtMedia."

No doubt that money on PR-support of our Ukrainian politicians mastered more agencies and individuals from this craft. But today tell only those who acted directly on the territory of "brotherly country".

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnovayagazeta.livejournal. com%2F&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

kaur

05-28-2014, 12:39 PM

Chechens from Russia in Donetsk. Episode starts at 8:18 https://news.vice.com/video/bullets-not-ballots-in-donetsk-russian-roulette-dispatch-42

kaur

05-28-2014, 01:08 PM

This guy is enforcing fire discipline in the unit. Fraternal nations in war ...

Fuchs

05-28-2014, 02:20 PM

carl

05-28-2014, 04:32 PM

Ukraine has no other option than to try to 'repair' relations with and coexist with Russia as the West failed them at a critical moment in their history even if it is just going through the motions.

Ukrainians will know that their only hope of independence and freedom from Russian domination will be to obtain nuclear weapons.

I wonder about this. Western govs did fail but maybe not the West. I read an article that argues western business interests, privately directed, stopping doing business and pulling or threatening to pull out of Russia had a very great effect. Those that did did so without direction because after what Putin has done recently the uncertainty of doing business in Russia may not be worth the return. Supposedly this gave Vlad and the boys great pause. Firn would probably know more about it.

Another thing that in my own uninformed opinion had an effect was the prospect of a really nasty insurgency getting going if regular Russian forces moved into Ukraine other than Crimea. It's one thing to take something easy, like Crimea, but it is another to face the prospect of an insurgency conducted by people who really know how to do it. In that sense the Ukrainians have taken care of themselves.

Then again the whole thing may start up again in a few months. Jamestown Foundation says the Russkis had to pull their forces back for the moment to demob conscripts and bring new ones in.

But ultimately your right, they'll nuke up again, or try to. Pakistan and North Korea have proven that if you have nukes and a bad attitude, you can get away with almost anything.