A sovereign nation will do whatever it can to protect its own interests.
Weapons shortage
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And join international organisations if it wants to.
Vlad the invader is a tinpot dictator running a country with a tinpot economy. He is nothing but a thug and a stain on the world.
And yet it's only ten years or so since Tory politicians were tripping over themselves to accept donations from Putin's bankers.
Funny how things turn around so quickly.
I wonder which team we'll all be expected to support by the end of this decade?
Funny how things turn around so quickly.
I wonder which team we'll all be expected to support by the end of this decade?
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I'm looking beyond the effect of Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the cause.
According to this link posted by ajohn; Russia has the most powerful army in Europe - considering its performance in Ukraine i wonder how the UK would fare in the combat zone, since it's ranked only 3rd.
Or is that an equivalence list to the one that placed the Iraqi National Guard at the second most powerful before Desert Storm blew away their pretensions. A military ranking like that means nothing unless tested in real time.
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I've been thinking about this recently.
There are probably other parallels, but compare Russia/Ukraine with the 2nd Gulf War. Ignoring the implementation, and the operational aspects (ie the Russian atrocities and their way of waging war on civilians) but concentrate specifically on the reason they felt the need to attack in the first place. Compare that with the reasons the Western Allies cited for the invasion of Iraq.
It's all to do with the thinking and the threat perception in the first place. Normally, there are cultural differences and perceptions between waring nations, and what seems right or a necessity to one side seems wrong and odd to the other, that's why people fight - they don't understand or account the thoughts and perceptions of others.
Yes, IMO, Putin and his cronies (as opposed to Russia) were wrong to attack Ukraine. And wrong for the wrong reasons too. He is a bad person, his regime is corrupt, and his motivations are evil, and justifications are false.
But it's difficult to criticise one country and justify that criticism when you may have done something similar yourself. And I presume from Putin's perception (or it may be just a justification for other reasons) he may feel he was right to invade Ukraine because "that is what countries do when they are threatened".
That would be Putin's ambitions to recreate Stalin's empire.
There are also nutters in other countries who hanker after their distorted vision of past empires.
Not Stalin's Empire: Imperial Russia.
And those nutters in other countries wouldn't be Bre*iters, would they now?
Performance of a military is not based on how many weapons or number of equipment they have.
When we trained to fight the old Warsaw Pact forces, we believed we faced and trained for a numerically superior force, and also supposedly competent and committed personnel. I suspect the thoughts of WW2 were still ingrained in the Russian people's psyche.
But Russia has changed. It is more corrupt, more divided. The weapons are crap, the personnel untrained, ill-disciplined and unmotivated. Money has been syphoned off to dachas and yachts of the elite, and the proletariat kept happy with controlled access to western goods and ideals whilst fed the party line.
Look at their "Spetsnaz". A name that would normally make a few hairs stand up with any opponents, and one that should have meant highly trained, highly skilled special forces. And yet every single Spetsnaz operation in Ukraine has failed - and failed against "normal" infantry. Look at their ships - they have taken to craning a lorry on the back to provide air defence! Look at their fat old fighter pilots - and their use of hand held Garmin GPS units stuck to the cockpit glass like in an old Ford Sierra.
There is no comparison between the Russian equipment, personnel or strategy and any of the leading Western/NATO militaries.
The clearest indication of Russian power came a few years ago, at the beginning of the Syrian crisis i think, when their only aircraft carrier wheezed its way through The Channel; belching coal-black smoke in defiance of 21st century conventions.
Their most modern cruiser is now a broken hulk and 50 year old reservists are receiving cold-war rifles and a pep-talk before being sent into battle. The West won't run out of bullets or missiles before Russia runs out of excuses for the poor state of its military.
I know a modern Western country that has only one carrier, and in its most recent of many breakdowns, set out from Portsmouth and only reached the Isle of Wight before needing to be towed home.
Putin has waged a pretty good information war with the west - well with the Twitter and FB mob, and made some pretty convincing statements about how they have modernised their forces and made all these new magnificent weapons. The western news outlets have amplified these reports and so everyone now seems to have the impression of Russia's greatness and cool abilities.
And yet we see in all of Russia's modern wars, that they have dumb equipment and dumb tactics from dumb leaders.
I remember the cold war when there was only occasional bragging from old Russia (similar to what North Korea does now), and what there was clearly just bravado, and was ignored and not spread by the media as sensationalist clickbait.
I'm sure the West's indigence services have got a good understanding of Russia's real capabilities - especially now.
Where was that built?
Broken britain?
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