Western media is likely to spin it as Russia's fault, i.e. the taps would still be open if Russia had not annexed the Ukraine. Not that it'll do much good, as the Russians are too thick-skinned to be really affected, beyond maybe squeezing the gas tighter in response.
WI: NATO attempts to prevent Russian annexation of Crimea
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Western media is likely to spin it as Russia's fault, i.e. the taps would still be open if Russia had not annexed the Ukraine. Not that it'll do much good, as the Russians are too thick-skinned to be really affected, beyond maybe squeezing the gas tighter in response.
Quite, Into the Valley of Death rode the 600. That's why it's well known.
Russia most likely. Dissent had been growing in Crimea against Kiev for a long time and the population has always been pro-russian
NATO could base aircraft in Turkey with tanker support for ops in Ukraine. The main attraction would be they would not need overflight permission from other countries. I get the point about article 5 though, Ukraine was promised their territorial integrity would be protected if they gave up their nukes so there is an argument that the other guarantors such as the US could conduct a coalition operation like the one in Iraq or Libya outside of NATO's umbrella.
I agree.
And this is one main Russian argument too.
If the West agrees that self-determination is a given right (as it was practiced in Kosovo splitting from Serbia), why shouldn't the Crimea-population be given the same rights?
US bases in Turkey are within reach of Russian cruise and short range ballistic missiles. Practically all of the Black Sea is also within range of Russian long-range SAMs.
In the end, the Russians may find this as an excuse to invade Turkey via Georgia...
It's going to be a mess.
Because it's against the West's interests, that's why. It makes Russia stronger.
When all is said and done, international law is ultimately dependent on power politics when it comes to its relevance. It's unfortunate, but it is true: might makes right.
Well there's also the fact that we will never know because the Russians never gave a far and impartial referendum, and there is a lot of evidence that the referendum was heavily tampered whith (which suggests Russia at least wasn't confident about the vote) so claiming self determination is really, really not applicable here.
Yeah, part of the problem with trying what it did with Balkans against Russia is that Russia has considerably more military options when it comes to defending and retaliating against an air campaign. Particularly if NATO decides to confine it's ROEs in a manner similar to what it did in Serbia. In addition to potentially retaliating with missile and air strikes, there's also the fact that Russia's air defense net is vastly more powerful. The Serb air defenses consisted of a handful of Sa-3s and Sa-6s. Russian air defenses are considerably more numerous and more sophisticated. Combined with the fact they also have a reasonably considerable air force, that affords them more room for mistakes and allows them to pursue more aggressive measures to try and actually shoot down NATO aircraft, as opposed to attempting to maintain itself as just a "threat-in-being" like the Serbs did.
Even an "unlimited air effort" though... well, while modern American military resources are vast and certainly much stronger then Russia's, they aren't unlimited and America does have other commitments. The amount of resources that would have to be concentrated to overwhelm Russian air defense forces in theater would likely require stripping other combat commands to the bone, which would give American rivals in those regions additional room to maneuver. The same likely goes for a ground war as well. Suffice to say, the most likely "number one winner" of any NATO/Russia conflict in the vast majority of situations is liable to be China.
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Aside form the difference in the Serbian government of the time committing crimes that range from ethnic cleansing to genocide the conduct of the referendum by the Russians was not within democratic norms
How Russia Rigged Crimean Referendum
In Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea, turnout for Sunday's referendum reached an astonishing 123% of registered voters. Clearly, Vladimir Putin isn't even interested in a pretense of legality. His intention is to test Western resolve.
www.forbes.com
Crimeans vote peacefully in referendum, but have little choice
Before the polls had even closed they were denounced in the West as an excuse to give a veneer of legitimacy to Moscow's armed takeover of the peninsula
www.telegraph.co.uk
U.N. report claims Russia rigged Crimea referendum - UPI.com
The U.S. news magazine Foreign Policy said a UN draft report on human rights in Ukraine indicates Russia compromised the Crimean referendum in March.
www.upi.com
The fact that in spite of polls showing joining that joining Russia was popular the referendum was rigged shows that self determination was not the driving factor.
Combined with how Russia has treated Crimean Tartars in the aftermath of the invasion
Crimea: Persecution of Crimean Tatars Intensifies
Russian authorities in Crimea have intensified persecution of Crimean Tatars, under various pretexts and with the apparent goal of completely silencing dissent on the peninsula, Human Rights Watch said today. Crimean Tatars are a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to the Crimean Peninsula. Many...
Under Russian rule, Crimean Tatars face oppression and abuse - Emerging Europe
Six years after the Russian military occupied Crimea and seized the peninsula from Ukraine (based on the results of a carefully orchestrated referendum which was neither free nor fair), the human rights situation for local citizens under the occupation has become intolerable, especially for the...
emerging-europe.com
Crimean Tatars Face Unfounded Terrorism Charges
Russian authorities have brought unfounded terrorism charges against 24 Crimean Tatars, 20 of whom were arrested during heavily armed raids on their homes in the spring of this year, Human Rights Watch said today. Security officers tortured four of the men, denied lawyers access to search sites...
Russia Jails Crimean Tatar Blogger on Bogus ‘Terrorism’ Charges
A Russian military court today sentenced activist and blogger Nariman Memedeminov to two and a half years in prison for “making public calls for terrorism.” The prosecution was just the latest in the government’s relentless persecution of Crimean Tatar activists.
Crimea Bans for Journalists Are Choking the Truth
Russian authorities barred an independent Ukrainian journalist, Taras Ibragimov, from entering Crimea last weekend and issued him a 34-year-ban.
frankly Anschluss and Sudetenland are what I'm reminded of with Putin's actions against Ukraine.
Russia. You can tell, just by the statistics. The Russian population in Crimea had been growing over the course of a century since 1897. In that year, just 33.11% of the population were of Russian descent while the Ukrainian population was just 11.84%. By 2014, the number of Russians had grown to 67.4%, while the Ukrainian population was only 15.7%, a sharp decline from 1970, where Ukrainians made up 26.5% of the population and the Russians 67.5%. The rest of the population was taken up by Tartars, Belarusians, Armenians, and Jews. I would warn you to take the 2014 census with a grain of salt, as that census was taken by the Russians after they invaded Crimea. But there are some interesting facts about the difficulties of Ukraine to exert it's influence in Crimea.
Demographics of Crimea - Wikipedia
John Bolton is elected president I flee the country to New Zealand
yeah I'm going to be terrified at possibility of World War 3
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NATO can only push Russia so far, given the military balance favors Moscow should things overly escalate.
People say this repeatedly. It's not true.
Yes NATO (outside of the US) as a whole is far less militarized than Russia, and the forces of the member nations are typically after thoughts when it comes to budget allocations, but despite this Euro-NATO alone possesses a slightly superior force in terms of deployable combat units. The sheer economic disparity between Europe and Russia esnures this. Europe as a whole outmasses Russia militarily whilst barely trying.
It is true that there is far less co-ordination amongst NATO members than within the Russian military, and that they would be slow to mobilize, perhaps handing the Russiasn the initiative at the start of a conflict, but not so much that Putin's armies will roll unopposed to the Rhine. More like heavy fighting in Poland and the Baltics that would see the Russian forces eventually repulsed, but EuroNATO forces would find it difficult to push very far into Russian territory. And that is without US intervention.
If US forces deploy en masse its game over for any Russian attempt to use military force to their advantage.
(This is all excluding nuclear weapons ofc, which is the real reason that no direct conflict will occcur)
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The Russians would decimate European NATO, definitely a push to the Rhine is possible. Further is less likely because of the Anglo-French nuclear weapon stockpile. RAND looked at it and find it would take less than 72 hours, on average, for the Russians to overrun the Baltics alone.
That would be accurate if such was even possible:
WASHINGTON: The Army has had to cancel so much training that only two of its 42 combat brigades are ready for combat, Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters at the Association of the US Army conference here today. It’ll take until June to get a solid force of seven brigades ready for any unexpected contingency — and that’s assuming no further budgetary disasters.
While the service has been able to protect funding for brigades headed for or deployed in Afghanistan, Odierno explained, those units aren’t available for a contingency elsewhere — and they’re not properly trained for one. “They are trained as advisors,” he said. “They’re not trained as brigades to conduct combat operations because that’s not their mission in Afghanistan.”
To put this into perspective it took 23 BCTs to do Iraq in 2003.
Agreed.
I think people are missing a few things beyond the obvious 'why would NATO intervene' question. The first question is how would a NATO intervention play in Ukraine? Before the War in Donbass started, there was not inconsiderable discontent with events in Kiev in eastern Ukraine, where even outside of the two immediate areas of revolt, pro-Russian protests sprung up. How would internal reactions be different? Would more people in Eastern Ukraine see Russia as a legitimate power or be disloyal to Kiev? It is without a doubt hard to say, but I can see battle lines being drawn over NATO intervention.
The second question of course is how do NATO members like Turkey and Greece react? Would they even want to support a mission to Ukraine? If certain members didn't want to support the mission, then that does cause not insignificant problems in actually using force rather than the threat of force to deter the Russians.
The second question of course is how do NATO members like Turkey and Greece react? Would they even want to support a mission to Ukraine? If certain members didn't want to support the mission, then that does cause not insignificant problems in actually using force rather than the threat of force to deter the Russians.
The RAND report only really goes into detail on the Baltics which, yes, would be overrun very quickly. It is quite obvious that NATO has no intention of deploying heavy forces to protect them, and has instead placed small tripwire units that will guarantee Russian conflict with NATO units, rather than just local defence forces and presenting the movement as a fait accomplit. Instead the plan seems to be to let the Russians expend their opening assault on the Baltics, whilst NATO mobilizes to fight them in Poland. This is where larger forward deployed units are being set up, and of course holds the Polish Army itself, which has no intention of letting Russia occupy them again and will fight to the knife. The rest of EuroNATO will be drawn in by the doomed last stand of the tripwire units, and the rapid reaction brigades will start deploying into Poland to form battlegroups that will fight the real battles.
As for the US military currently being largely undeployable, that is a rather recent (and one would hope short term) development due to global pandemic, and doesn't apply to the scenario at hand.
The point is that Euro-NATO can hold the line in Poland, whilst the US spins up a big hammer to smash the Russians back across the border and make them call time out.
The weakness with this strategy is of course the rapidity with which the Russians can overrun the Baltics probably is far faster than any units can form up into Poland to mount a counter offensive. And the Polish army certainly won't be over extending itself to manage that alone. The risk is that despite having invaded and occupied NATO members and engaged in combat against the armed forces of a large cross section of NATO members, triggering article 5, that Putin could then refuse to enter Poland and instead sit on his newly conquered territory spinning a pile of bullshit justifying his actions and portraying the building NATO response as "unwarranted imperialist aggression." along with threatening nuclear destruction should NATO now invade "Sovereign Russian soil". This has a possibility that civilian government might then waver instead of responding with force.
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