OP didn't say anything about Russian Navy specifically. However, do you suggest that Russian Navy couldn't use Novorossiysk for military purpose if need be?
> While technically true, there is a big difference between the Estonian/Latvian border, and the Ukrainian one. I discussed this 7 months ago
Well, Russia is now getting additional 1,340 km border with a new NATO member (real, not imaginary one like Ukraine) and is apparently completely unfazed by it. In fact they continue to move military from that border into Ukraine. Really makes you think whether they were really worried about spooky-scary NATO or pursuing some other goal in Ukraine all along...
Regarding other analysis from your comment - this is not WW2, nobody is tank-rushing capital of nuclear superpower via highways lol.
EDIT: Also, I've re-read comment you referenced again and for a person with a lot of "defense consultant"-related buzzwords in profile you seem to be awfully poorly informed about European history. "Keep in mind this is a country who's arguably most important holiday commemorates the war where they lost 25+ million lives fighting off an invasion from a hostile alliance on their western border." is either intentional manipulation or pure ignorance because USSR _were_ part of the alliance and were happy to divide Poland and massacre its people at the beginning of WW2. They like literally started the whole thing themselves, but miscalculated with choosing their allies!
To discuss options for Russia's future without the specific context of its national security interests is meaningless when the country's decision-makers are almost entirely from said national security apparatus.
>>>However, do you suggest that Russian Navy couldn't use Novorossiysk for military purpose if need be?
This 2013 report suggests that Sevastopol has superior all-weather access compared to Novorossiysk: [1] I'm not familiar enough with the meteorology of the region to articulate why. They probably could switch to the Caucasian coastline as a fallback plan, but I'm sure Russia looks at the problem from the lens of "we're a nuclear-armed Great Power, why the fuck would we compromise on this?" Sevastopol definitely provides better power projection across the whole Black Sea. [2]
>>>Well, Russia is now getting additional 1,340 km border with a new NATO member (real, not imaginary one like Ukraine) and is apparently completely unfazed by it.
I think they were completely blindsided by Finland abandoning its long-standing neutrality, and have very few tools in their toolbox to leverage. While the Finnish border threatens their access to the North Sea, it poses less of a risk to Moscow than the Ukrainian border does. If you wanted to take Moscow from Finland, you need to secure the M-11 highway as an MSR....which means you have to secure St. Petersburg (good luck storming a city of 5 million+) or bypass the metro area and leave your supply line exposed. Russia is moving conventional combat power from the North, just as Russia is moving conventional combat power from everywhere into the Ukraine wood-chipper. They've also stepped up rotations of nuclear-capable strategic bombers in the north as a compromise to signal "don't try anything stupid up here, we've got nukes!" Of course the Finnish Air Force is rather large and capable, so I'm not sure how credible that threat is. Overall I now rank Putin pushing Finland & Sweden into NATO as the greatest geopolitical failure of the 21st century, dethroning the invasion of Iraq. Interestingly, Stalin made some similar blunders in the late 1940s/early 1950s against the West.[3]
>>>Really makes you think whether they were really worried about spooky-scary NATO or pursuing some other goal in Ukraine all along...
Even when Putin had Ukraine as a borderline vassal state they were bitching about NATO expansion in their near abroad. Some of these arguments were made in the US Congress before Putin even came to power. [4] In particular, skip to the comments by Jonathan Dean and Michael Mandelbaum.
>>>this is not WW2, nobody is tank-rushing capital of nuclear superpower via highways lol.
It doesn't matter what you or I think about tank rushes, what matters is what the Russians think about tank rushes. [5] In case you missed it, they initiated this invasion with a multi-axis armored blitz towards Kiev combined with an air assault to secure a nearby Aerial Point of Debarkation. The Russian military establishment has maintained that the offensive is the key aspect of warfare, and that the tank is the key component of the offensive, since the 1930s. Their current military thought leaders also place a priority on "active defense" aka preemptive elimination of threats. [6]
The qualifier "of a nuclear superpower" doesn't add much to the conversation. Of the major nuclear powers, only India has a capital closer to an adversarial border than Russia (I don't count Pakistan or Israel as "superpowers")....and India maintains an exceptionally large tank fleet, and has fought some of the largest post-WW2 tank engagements between their capital and their border with Pakistan.
>>>you seem to be awfully poorly informed about European history
Pretty sure ad hominems are against HN guidelines, but since you wanna go there...
>>> USSR _were_ part of the alliance
Oh? What "alliance" was that, specifically? As always, the devil is in the details. There were only two signatories to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the Soviet Union and Germany. The Soviets had a bilateral agreement for the partition of Eastern Europe. That made them "co-belligerents", not "allies". They never signed any treaty with the Axis at large (for example, the Pact of Steel or the Tripartite Pact). They submitted a revised proposal for joining the Tripartite Pact to Germany which was quietly ignored as preparations for Operation Barbarossa were already underway. At no point in time was the USSR allied with Italy, Romania (14 divisions, almost 10% of the invading forces), Slovakia, Finland, or Hungary. There is one thing we can agree on: the Soviets absolutely miscalculated....when they took their Western neighbor at his word that he would adhere to the Non-Aggression Pact that they had signed.[7][8][9][10] And you wonder why the Russians have no desire to repeat that mistake, when we tell them NATO isn't a threat?
TL;DR = Read more. Condescend less.
[1] https://jamestown.org/program/the-future-of-the-russian-blac...
[2] https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2022-04-27-from-sevastopol...
[3] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/docum...
[4] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-105shrg46832/html/C...
[5] https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/04/...
[6] https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/m/fmso-monograp...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-belligerence#Germany_and_th... [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_Pact#Soviet_Union [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa#Order_of_...
EDIT: forgot these two additional general resources on understanding Russian national security thought:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
https://csl.armywarcollege.edu/usacsl/publications/RUSSIAN%2...
You are moving the goalposts again. OP stated that Russia don't have any warmwater ports outside Crimea which is obviously incorrect.
> I think they were completely blindsided by Finland abandoning its long-standing neutrality, and have very few tools in their toolbox to leverage.
They could sign a peace agreement with Ukraine and quickly move their armies north no attack Finland, no? I mean, if Russia _really_ considered having (more?) borders with a NATO-member an existential threat (like they always pretend when discussing Ukraine in that context), then that would make total sense.
> Even when Putin had Ukraine as a borderline vassal state they were bitching about NATO expansion in their near abroad. Some of these arguments were made in the US Congress before Putin even came to power. [4] In particular, skip to the comments by Jonathan Dean and Michael Mandelbaum.
Well, Ukraine offered to commit to neutrality multiple times during peace negotiations in February and March, but Russia rejected the proposals and proceed with annexing more Ukrainian lands. Isn't it by now settled that they were just using NATO boogieman as a pretext for trying to (re)build their empire?
> It doesn't matter what you or I think about tank rushes, what matters is what the Russians think about tank rushes. [5] In case you missed it, they initiated this invasion with a multi-axis armored blitz towards Kiev combined with an air assault to secure a nearby Aerial Point of Debarkation.
Which failed spectacularly and kinda proves my point?
Also, they assumed that after initial missile barrage on Ukraine military assets they will achieve complete air superiority which didn't happen. I don't think anyone expects NATO to quickly achieve air superiority in Russian airspace, including Russia's own military analysts.
> The qualifier "of a nuclear superpower" doesn't add much to the conversation.
Of course it does! Russian nuclear doctrine permits them to conduct the first strike when "existence of Russian state is in danger", so they will most likely just tactical nuke the shit out of (hypothetical) NATO grouping on their border that is in the process of assuming attack formations. This also coincides nicely with their "escalate to de-escalate" playbook.
> Of the major nuclear powers, only India has a capital closer to an adversarial border than Russia (I don't count Pakistan or Israel as "superpowers")....and India maintains an exceptionally large tank fleet, and has fought some of the largest post-WW2 tank engagements between their capital and their border with Pakistan.
I have no knowledge of India's or Pakistan's nuclear doctrines. Do they permit first strike?
> Pretty sure ad hominems are against HN guidelines, but since you wanna go there...
Where is ad hominem exactly? Your portrayal of the start of WW2 makes you look on either misinformed or malicious (more on your talking points later). The fact that in next paragraph you are seemingly making U-turn on that doesn't change the formulation of your previous message.
> Oh? What "alliance" was that, specifically? As always, the devil is in the details. There were only two signatories to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the Soviet Union and Germany. The Soviets had a bilateral agreement for the partition of Eastern Europe. That made them "co-belligerents", not "allies". They never signed any treaty with the Axis at large (for example, the Pact of Steel or the Tripartite Pact). They submitted a revised proposal for joining the Tripartite Pact to Germany which was quietly ignored as preparations for Operation Barbarossa were already underway. At no point in time was the USSR allied with Italy, Romania (14 divisions, almost 10% of the invading forces), Slovakia, Finland, or Hungary.
You are arguing semantics here (co-belligerent vs ally, etc.) while seemingly agreeing with me that USSR was one of the states that started the whole WW2 on the side of "evil western allies".
> TL;DR = Read more. Condescend less.
Well, you keep repeating Russian propaganda talking points and make it look like they were just peacefully minding their own business in thirties and then sneaky westerners cowardly back-stabbed them in forties. This is one of their favorite tropes how the whole world is against them and keep trying to either attack or contain them for no reason what-so-ever besides maybe some ingrained "russophobia". The very existence of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact secret protocols was denied by soviets for longest time BTW.
These details, your comment history, repeatedly calling Kyiv "Kiev" and doubling down on describing Russian invasion in Ukraine as completely self-defensive measure against menacing NATO expansion makes me doubt you are arguing in good faith here, but calling someone a paid shill will indeed be against HN rules...
>>>OP stated that Russia don't have any warmwater ports outside Crimea which is obviously incorrect.
If Sevastopol is highlighted for its warm-water access, but Novorossiysk is not, then the issue is at best unclear.
>>>They could sign a peace agreement with Ukraine and quickly move their armies north no attack Finland, no?
Even leveraging interior lines and Russia's robust rail transportation network, pivoting 150,000+ men >1,100km (roughly the distance from Kursk to Petrozadovsk) is not something that happens quickly. Also, not all "NATO borders" are created equal. As I said, sharing a hostile border with Finland and sharing a hostile border with Ukraine do not present the same security implications for the heartland of the Russian state.
>>>Ukraine offered to commit to neutrality multiple times during peace negotiations in February and March, but Russia rejected the proposals
Did Russia reject the proposals, or did the West torpedo the negotiations? https://www.globalresearch.ca/diplomacy-watch-did-boris-john...
>>>Which failed spectacularly and kinda proves my point?
Yet the American "Thunder Run" into Baghdad was a spectacular success, and Russia's own armored drive on Tblisi in 2008 was also reasonably successful. The tactical concept isn't the failure point, the abysmal incompetence of the force trying to execute it is. Russia's armored blitz into Grozny in 1995 was also a brutal and costly failure. They had the same problem then of a poorly-led and poorly-supported underskilled army driving into urban terrain held by experienced and well-led veterans.
>>>Also, they assumed that after initial missile barrage on Ukraine military assets they will achieve complete air superiority which didn't happen. I don't think anyone expects NATO to quickly achieve air superiority in Russian airspace, including Russia's own military analysts.
The Ukrainians are turning off the search radars on their SAMs, and get fed extensive intelligence from practically every NATO ISR asset in Europe. They largely only activate their big long-range SAMs after NATO has already tipped them off to a threat. Combine that with generally threadbare Russian ISR of the Deep Battlespace, and Russian Air Force pilots not having the skill/experience to do very large US/Israeli-style strike packages. All of that has kept the airspace surprisingly contested.
By contrast, none of those limiting factors would apply to US airpower if we needed to peel back Russia's IADS. It's the one thing at which we are absolutely exceptional, and while Russian SAMs are still very respectable hardware, their personnel have demonstrated they are so incompetent/poorly trained....we'll probably walk all over them. Hopefully we don't have to find out.
>>>I have no knowledge of India's or Pakistan's nuclear doctrines. Do they permit first strike?
Same here, no clue.
>>>Where is ad hominem exactly? Your portrayal of the start of WW2
Rather than engage with the argument you attempted to attack my credentials and/or regional knowledge. I did not make a "portrayal of the start of WW2" [emphasis mine], as my comments contain no temporal specificity. I said that the Soviets were on the receiving end of an invasion from an alliance on their western border. That's an indisputable fact. I didn't clarify WHEN, merely that it happened, and that it colors their logic and thought processes.
Here's another statement about an adversary within my actual Area of Operations: "North Korea was on the receiving end of a bombing campaign that destroyed every structure larger than a footbridge in the country." That doesn't imply that the war was started by a US bombing campaign, nor does it assign any moral justification to North Korea's actions. It merely provides context for things that affect our military planning today, such as North Korea having thousands of underground facilities. The entire country is an underground bunker complex. I have to constantly bring this up to shake overconfident Marine Corps officers out of their complacency, by comparing a fight in North Korea to "like invading Iwo Jima, except the defenders have fortified a territory the size of Indiana". But back on subject...
The key take-away is that the physical borders of the Russian state are demonstrably insecure from the west. Attacking along the Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow axis has been used in 1812, 1915, and 1941 for a reason, all with catastrophic implications for Russia. Russia will continually act with extreme paranoia regarding its European frontier, probably until they have reliable buffer states as far as the Carpathian Mountains. Watch this Finnish Colonel for some background: https://youtu.be/CvonRMSuFpw
>>>keep repeating Russian propaganda talking points
Dates. Distances. Timelines. Treaties. US Congressional discussions. You have contested the accuracy of none of them. If you conclude that they are all "Russian propaganda", perhaps you are simply DEEP in an ideological bubble?
>>>and make it look like they were just peacefully minding their own business in thirties
Don't put words in my mouth, at no point have I implied that. Your inference of such is entirely a product of your own biases.
>>>repeatedly calling Kyiv "Kiev"
I also refer to Volgograd as "Stalingrad", Myanmar as "Burma", and sometimes even Ho Chi Minh City as "Saigon". Again, anything you infer from that is a product of your own mind. Unless you spell Munich as "München" regularly, and do the same for every other native-language rendition of every city, in every conversation, then demanding usage of "Kyiv" is just a meaningless virtue-signal. As a side note, do some Google Searches with the date range feature. Reuters.com was using Kiev vice Kyiv in their English reporting as late as 2019. Why did they wait 5 years after Putin invaded the Donbas to switch? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-rally-idUS... Reuters is still using "Munich", BTW. Those dastardly Anglophiles. /s
>>>but calling someone a paid shill will indeed be against HN rules
I'm not just a defense contractor, I'm also a NATO military officer. Just because I serve Russia's #1 geopolitical adversary doesn't mean I let my brain fall out of my head to be filled with whatever palatable nonsense is swallowed uncritically from major western sources. The number of field grade officers I knew who took the "Ghost of Kiev" at face value was equally shocking and disappointing. You must understand the context of why your opponent is making the moves that they make, or you will be surprised, caught off guard, or otherwise ill-positioned to send as many of them to Hell as possible. I find "Pressing 'X' to doubt" on most of the talking points coming from friendly sources more useful than the opposite approach.
Also spend some time lurking on the various intel fusion chatrooms on SIPR or JWICS if you have an appropriate security clearance, and read some of the historical orders for things like when we wanted to put anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe in 2007 (IIRC there are EUCOM Campaign Orders for that, you can search on Intelink.sgov.gov on SIPR). It's important to grasp what we're REALLY doing and not just what we say we are doing. You'll find yourself with far more questions than answers.
You seem to be hellbent on dying on that hill, but I don't see what is "unclear" about it since anyone can easily verify with 2 minutes of googling that Novorossiysk (as well as multiple other ports in the region) are warmwater. As someone who visited eastern Black See coast in January I can attest that water there is indeed in liquid aggregate state during the winter :)
> Even leveraging interior lines and Russia's robust rail transportation network, pivoting 150,000+ men >1,100km (roughly the distance from Kursk to Petrozadovsk) is not something that happens quickly.
But they would have managed by now if they wanted to, wouldn't they?
> Did Russia reject the proposals, or did the West torpedo the negotiations? https://www.globalresearch.ca/diplomacy-watch-did-boris-john...
Well, I think you could find some hot take on Twitter (which your linked article seems to be based on besides unnamed "multiple former senior U.S. officials") that supports any kind of wild theory on any subject. (maybe martians torpedoed the negotiations? go figure!)
However, Zelensky had always been reasonably pro-Russian until such political position became completely untenable. Remember that the guy was elected on program to "stop the war that is only going on because Poroshenko and his goons are making millions on it and we just need to stop shooting and make peace with Putin", etc. so I don't see any motivation for him to continue it instead of reaping significant political benefits from bringing the peace to his people. I guess next thing you are going to tell me is how revolution in 2014 was completely orchestrated by the West (my friends that participated are still waiting for their paychecks BTW!) and other such talking points that people with your views likes to repeat ad nauseam...
> Yet the American "Thunder Run" into Baghdad was a spectacular success, and Russia's own armored drive on Tblisi in 2008 was also reasonably successful. The tactical concept isn't the failure point, the abysmal incompetence of the force trying to execute it is.
Both of these were executed in conditions of air superiority, which is exactly what I talked about in very next sentence of my previous comment, no?
> By contrast, none of those limiting factors would apply to US airpower if we needed to peel back Russia's IADS. It's the one thing at which we are absolutely exceptional, and while Russian SAMs are still very respectable hardware, their personnel have demonstrated they are so incompetent/poorly trained....we'll probably walk all over them. Hopefully we don't have to find out.
You assume NATO will just "walk over" Russian layered defense of endless Thors, Pancirs, Buks, S-300s and S-400s in hours to allow tank blitz on Moscow? That is a quite a surprising take for me, but okay. I mean, Ukraine _slowly_ putting them out one-by-one with HARMs, but it takes quite some time...
> Rather than engage with the argument you attempted to attack my credentials and/or regional knowledge. I did not make a "portrayal of the start of WW2" [emphasis mine], as my comments contain no temporal specificity. I said that the Soviets were on the receiving end of an invasion from an alliance on their western border. That's an indisputable fact. I didn't clarify WHEN, merely that it happened, and that it colors their logic and thought processes.
> Here's another statement about an adversary within my actual Area of Operations: "North Korea was on the receiving end of a bombing campaign that destroyed every structure larger than a footbridge in the country." That doesn't imply that the war was started by a US bombing campaign, nor does it assign any moral justification to North Korea's actions. It merely provides context for things that affect our military planning today, such as North Korea having thousands of underground facilities. The entire country is an underground bunker complex. I have to constantly bring this up to shake overconfident Marine Corps officers out of their complacency, by comparing a fight in North Korea to "like invading Iwo Jima, except the defenders have fortified a territory the size of Indiana". But back on subject...
Something that is factually correct but presented in certain way is one of the best and most effective kinds of propaganda. A quote from the master of the subject:
"Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run."
I believe is is important to frame the start of WW2 in the correct way. There is a reason why USSR/Russia propaganda always insist on framing that their Great Patriotic War started in 1941, and the reason is not because USSR had nothing to do with it in 39-40, quite the opposite in fact.
>The key take-away is that the physical borders of the Russian state are demonstrably insecure from the west. Attacking along the Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow axis has been used in 1812, 1915, and 1941 for a reason, all with catastrophic implications for Russia. Russia will continually act with extreme paranoia regarding its European frontier, probably until they have reliable buffer states as far as the Carpathian Mountains. Watch this Finnish Colonel for some background: https://youtu.be/CvonRMSuFpw
As a highly experienced military officer with access to all kinds of closed chatrooms with scary-looking abbreviated names what is your assessment on the likelihood of western invasion into Russia in 21st century? What would be the motivation of invaders and their plan to prevent the war from quickly escalating into nuclear? Do you believe that Russian analyst has different assessment than you on the matter? If so, why?
> Don't put words in my mouth, at no point have I implied that. Your inference of such is entirely a product of your own biases.
And I suggest that framing and wording of facts presented by you is an indication of your biases. Apparently we will have to disagree on this one.
> I also refer to Volgograd as "Stalingrad", Myanmar as "Burma", and sometimes even Ho Chi Minh City as "Saigon". Again, anything you infer from that is a product of your own mind. Unless you spell Munich as "München" regularly, and do the same for every other native-language rendition of every city, in every conversation, then demanding usage of "Kyiv" is just a meaningless virtue-signal. As a side note, do some Google Searches with the date range feature. Reuters.com was using Kiev vice Kyiv in their English reporting as late as 2019. Why did they wait 5 years after Putin invaded the Donbas to switch? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-rally-idUS... Reuters is still using "Munich", BTW. Those dastardly Anglophiles. /s
I don't see anything funny or "virtue signaling" on having courtesy to use geographical names preferred by people that live there. I didn't know that Germany prefers "Munchen", but I happen to mostly call it like that my whole life because that is how it is called in my native tongue (Russian).
> I'm not just a defense contractor, I'm also a NATO military officer. Just because I serve Russia's #1 geopolitical adversary doesn't mean I let my brain fall out of my head to be filled with whatever palatable nonsense is swallowed uncritically from major western sources. The number of field grade officers I knew who took the "Ghost of Kiev" at face value was equally shocking and disappointing. You must understand the context of why your opponent is making the moves that they make, or you will be surprised, caught off guard, or otherwise ill-positioned to send as many of them to Hell as possible. I find "Pressing 'X' to doubt" on most of the talking points coming from friendly sources more useful than the opposite approach.
So let's assume for a second you are actually who you say you are, as opposed to some FSB-dude (or even better-trained Olgino worker) and present you with very simple question: do you believe that security concerns are indeed _the main motivation_ for the invasion? no empire-rebuilding for ideological reasons and political gains involved?
