Ukraine

I'd be careful about using terms like that. I'm not sure western governments are acting because they are 'good'. If that was the case we'd be intervening in conflicts all over the world. As far as I know, we're not in Sudan, or Israel/Gaza, and we're not doing anything about the persecution of innocent people in China. We're supporting Ukraine for two reasons. We want Ukraine to align to western values, and we don't want Russia to grow any stronger or more influential.

 

I see your point about getting rid of near obsolete armaments just as long as the defense budget runs to it.

As for a magic money tree, I never believe that, we all said during covid that at some point we will have to pay for this, and pay we are doing, maybe not directly but the squeeze now is partly covid based.
The austerity years were all about paying off government debt, run up by the previous Labour government.
Its one thing getting in debt looking after your own people, but getting in more debt paying for foreign wars needs to be carefully looked at regarding the advantages.

 

This is quite interesting.



If you don't want to watch it, here's a brief summary.

Russia's arms exports have been declining over the last few years. Not just since covid, but before.

India was a big customer of Russia's for weapons. As their military is dependent on Russian companies to support their equipment, this could be why India has refused to condemn Russia, for fear of losing tech support for their Russian weapons. The same may be true, to a lesser extent, for China.

India and China are reducing their dependence on Russian kit, because their economies are now big enough that they have their own arms industry.

Even smaller, poorer, former Soviet countries are switching away from Russian kit, buying from India instead, because they've seen Russia's poor performance in Ukraine, and concluded that they need something better.

Conversely, orders for US weapons have been increasing, as countries have seen their superior effect in Ukraine. HIMARS orders are up in several countries, and Germany has committed to make its own system based on HIMARS.

So in a nutshell, Russia is losing customers right left and centre, while the US is gaining customers.

Not mentioned in the video, because TLDR tries to be objective, but it did make me wonder, is our support for Ukraine, at least in part, just a way to market NATO weapons while simultaneously showing Russian weapons to be inferior, this damaging their economy further.

 

There's an article in the news today quoting Putin in 2018 talking about his hypersonic kinzal missiles and how they were ahead of the rest of the world.

With that, and recent news that Russian arms sales have been declining since 2018, while US arms sales have been increasing in the same timeframe, this gets me wondering.

Is the real purpose of this stupid war, really just a marketing effort? Like Russia and NATO having stands at a trade show?

The latest news, if we assume it is correct, suggest that Putin's flagship hypersonic missile is not really anything more to worry about than other more typical missiles. Apparently the Ukrainians have shot down six of them already with Patriots. I was watching DW news yesterday, they explained that Ukraine did this despite having only 8 Patriot batteries. By comparison the US alone is believed to have between 700 and 800 of them.

So I'm thinking, is this really just a sick trade battle? If it is, it looks like it's back fired on Putin, with sales in decline since 2018, and sliding faster since the war in Ukraine as observers note the surprisingly lack of ability of the Russians.

 

There are a number of reasons I reckon:

- Putin got away with invading Crimea in 2014 - he thought that the West would roll over again;
- East Ukraine has large gas and oil reserves;
- Putin is getting old - he wanted to make his mark on the world before he goes down below. In this respect he has been successful.

These 'nuclear capable' hypersonic missiles - not much use if they can be shot down over Russia before they get to their target.

I see that the 3 blokes who designed this invincible hypersonic missile have been arrested - probably being served at this very moment with Putins own brand of polonium tea . These designers are smart - they moved their families out of Russia before they were arrested.

 

I don't think anyone actually starts a war just as a way of marketing your particular weapons.
It does however have that effect, but it also lets China know what the western capabilities are to some extent.
Which is why things are sometimes slow, and Ukraine is not getting the top notch stuff.
It remains to be seen if Russia is also holding back, it would be interesting to know how much technology they have, between what they have used up till now, and going nuclear.

I get the feeling, not much.

 

I agree it's unlikely that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was purely a trade show, but I wonder if that was a contributing factor.

Eastern Ukraine is resource rich. And there is political kudos to be had by seizing territory if you can convince your people, as Putin did, that the people in the territory you plan to steal are on your side.

But if Putin's Russia was thriving, and if all forecasts had indicated they were likely to continue thriving well into the future, then starting a war would be a costly and self destructive idea.

Putin clearly thought it would be easy to capture the whole of Ukraine. When it quickly became obvious he'd got that wrong, he focused primarily on the east of Ukraine. If he'd captured that he'd have had the coal and oil, he'd have the vote winner of having 'liberated' ethnic Russians that lived there, and he could have gone to his former arms customers with proof that Russian kit is the best, thus winning back customers that had started to shop elsewhere. The prize would have been enormous.

Since things didn't exactly go to plan, it feels like it has very much turned into a trade exhibition. When Putin unleashed his 'unstoppable' hypersonic missiles, I doubt he thought they were the most cost effective tool for the job. I reckon he wanted to prove their capability to evade all current countermeasures. If it wasn't for the fact that almost all of them got intercepted, that would have been great for Russia. I think the strategic value of destroying the target was much less than the political value of proving he had the upper hand in terms of capabilities.

The US is already seeing orders for its Patriot system since it's proved itself in Ukraine, with other countries copying it on licence.

The UK has recently sent the Storm Shadow cruise missiles. They are not hypersonic, but apparently are very difficult to intercept as they immediately drop to low altitude after launch, and coupled with a low radar signature are very hard to even detect never mind intercept. There's ambiguous claims that they've already been used in Ukraine to successfully destroy Russian targets.

In other recent ambiguous news, the Russians have shown off the remains of a missile I didn't even know existed. Fired by the Ukrainians, it actually carries no warhead. So I had a little read up on it. Apparently this missile's job is not to blow things up. Instead it carries some fancy electronics. It gathers intel on enemy positions and radar kit, and at the same time, it cleverly emits its own fake radar return that's designed to trick enemy air defences into thinking it's whatever the owners want the enemy to think it is. Apparently it can mimic the radar return of various missile types or an aircraft, and can even fake the radar return of multiple objects. It's designed to activate enemy air defences so they reveal their position and strength, while at the same time depleting their ammo. I was quite impressed. I didn't even know such kit existed.

 

I just think Putin didn't want Ukraine becoming a westernised country, full stop.
Remember they first invaded the place around 2012/2013, so it started then and the west did nothing, so he thought he'd push a bit more.

There are lots of things we dont know about going on.
I saw a programme on the Falklands war the other night and some of the things that went on are still just filtering out.

 

I think that's how it started. But I think it has since turned into something else entirely.

 

Dont they always.

 

Putin wont back down until he is forced to do so, according to those in the Kremlin who have fled. In terms of Russian industry, a clever bloke has looked at industrial pollution levels in Russia, which have decreased 6 percent. The factories arent belching out as much smoke, due to lack of imported goods. I still say at the end of this year Putin will run out of cash.

 

Just what I heard said on TV today.
The US is worried that if Putin gets a good kicking and Russia becomes unstable there will be problems in lots of the small countries that Russia is keeping under the thumb.
And wars due to power struggles.

 

I have a feeling that NATO, especially the Americans, are counting on it. NATO loves a good power vacuum.

 

I dont think they do like power vacuums anymore, I just wonder if they have learnt the lesson of kicking out Saddam Hussein?

 

The US says it will support providing advanced fighter jets including US-made F-16s to Ukraine and also back training Ukrainian pilots to fly them.