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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

Something that's been concerning me about all these UFOs being shot down is that perhaps it could be best explained by the start of something else building up...

Realistically these UFO's aren't alien crafts but hostile spy drones. Perhaps the reason we haven't heard about these drones before could be that the US has never felt the need to act (the spying poses no real imminent threat), or maybe the hostile state sending the drones only now feels the need to spy on US military bases.

But however you look at this either the US is suddenly much more concerned about someone spying on their military bases, or some state suddenly feels the need to spy on US military bases.

We also know that NATO countries now seem to be willing to arm UA with weaponry not just capable of putting up a decent defence against Russian forces, but actually pushing them back into Russian territory. It seems the US and allies no longer just wants UA to hold their own against RU, but actually win the war.

Imo if UA is able to push RU back they're likely to try to reclaim annexed territories back from RU. It seems likely the US and allies would understand this is a probable outcome. After all would NATO countries be sending tanks and such expensive weaponry if they thought UA had no chance? It seems likely they are betting on a UA victory and all that entails.

Most experts agree the conflict in UA will pick up again in the spring. And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely.

If the US knows RU is likely a couple of months away from using nukes in UA then perhaps this would explain why they're suddenly so worried about these spy drones, or why there's been a sudden increase in them.

Maybe I'm making too many assumptions here, but it just feels like there's lots of chess pieces moving in worrying ways right now. This request being yet another.

Am I wrong to be concerned?

View on HN

You're not wrong to be concerned, just likely off on the probabilities by orders of magnitude.

1. Tactical nukes aren't a likely step for Russia if Ukraine takes back their territory - even if they go for Crimea. Russia knows that any use of nuclear weapons is crossing a line, and that the regime is done if they do so.

2. There isn't a reason for spying on these facilities if the goal is to analyze the US' ability to launch a nuclear strike. That strike would come from a submarine sitting on the ocean floor off the coast near Moscow. And there's no real countermeasures for those missiles.

The coast near Moscow?

Clunky, but I read that as "the nearest coast to Moscow".

Near is a relative term with ballistic missiles.

> Russia knows that any use of nuclear weapons is crossing a line, and that the regime is done if they do so.

Yeah well we thought that about the taking of Crimea in the first place, then we thought that about this invasion yet here we are.

> 1. Tactical nukes aren't a likely step for Russia if Ukraine takes back their territory - even if they go for Crimea. Russia knows that any use of nuclear weapons is crossing a line, and that the regime is done if they do so.

Is Putin not done politically if RU is defeated in UA, and Crimea is liberated / annexed?

> 2. There isn't a reason for spying on these facilities if the goal is to analyze the US' ability to launch a nuclear strike. That strike would come from a submarine sitting on the ocean floor off the coast near Moscow. And there's no real countermeasures for those missiles.

It's a good point. I suppose it depends on the nature of the conflict though. Maybe you're right, that in the event of an all out nuclear war there would be no point in trying to achieve a tactical advantage – but does either side really know the exact nature of the conflict well enough to make that assumption at this point? Perhaps both sides just know conflict is likely.

It’s easier for Putin to change the narrative in Russia than to try and fend off every western power (and many Russians as well) trying to personally assassinate him.

Let’s not forget that until a few months ago it was literally illegal to even call this war a war in Russia. But today, it’s not just a war, it’s a defensive ear, if you go by Russian state media (a defensive war that is somehow being fought entirely on another country’s territory).

> a defensive war that is somehow being fought entirely on another country’s territory

Russia figured out the magic trick to modern annexation. International law now mostly holds that you can't take land in a war, but that a country's sovereignty arises from the democratic will of the people living there. So Russia just invades under any pretense it likes, and holds "elections" where they get "the will of the people" to be whatever they tell it to be. Like joining Russia.

It's a sham, entirely, but it means they can tell their own people that they are following the law and it's everyone else that's against them.

And so now they can say "look, we did the song and dance that makes this Russian land, so we're defending 'our' people now".

> a defensive war that is somehow being fought entirely on another country’s territory

A bit like Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam, Korea, ...)

>war that is somehow being fought entirely on another country’s territory

Technically not true.

They've proclaimed most of these battlefield territories their own, so that is now a technically correct statement.

They even proclaimed a lot of territory they don’t hold as their own, including the entire Donetsk oblast, so it’s “defending” by trying to grab and hold more land.

It is not much of a trick of modern annexation, just a lie to feed their own population in order to legitimize jailing of people against the war.

Do I understand it correctly, that the argument is that "it's a defensive war", because Putin in effect "called dibs, so it's ours, and we are defending it"?

So, more on how it is sold to the Russian people, rather, than there being anything technically correct about it, right? Because if it's the latter, then I suppose the closes would be "internationally accepted". And, none of the currently occupied regions, including Crimea, is recognized as such.

>Is Putin not done politically if RU is defeated in UA, and Crimea is liberated / annexed?

Nicholas II wasn't done after Russo-Japanese war loss, Alexander II wasn't done after Crimean War, Lenin wasn't done after Polish-Soviet war, Yeltsin wasn't done after First Chechen War... why would Putin be done? History of russia is full of counterexamples and them presenting as "we'll win or we'll nuke whole world" is a propaganda tactics and bluff.

> Alexander II wasn't done after Crimean War

That war started in 1853, Alexander II's reign began in 1855, obviously he wasn't done since this wasn't even a war he had started...

People need to temper their hot takes on history.

Nicholas II ended the Romanov dynasty.

Alexander II was assasinated.

Lenin implemented the red terror to ensure his grip.

Yeltsin was forced to resign to... you guessed it; Putin.

All these may not have happened directly after the loss, but it definitely swayed public opinion against them.

> Nicholas II ended the Romanov dynasty.

Attributing Nicholas II death to 12 year earlier Russo-Japanese war and not... ongoing WW1 is weird take.

> Alexander II was assasinated.

25 years later by revolutionary socialists, not some kind of revanchist.

>Lenin implemented the red terror to ensure his grip.

Actually totally reverse, Lenin then ended it with NEP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy

>Yeltsin was forced to resign to... you guessed it; Putin.

"Forced" 4 years later full of disastrous policies and, most importantly for russian state, low oil prices.

It's possible to lose a major war and still be somewhat OK domestically, see Saddam's 1st war for a recent example.

> It seems the US and allies no longer just wants UA to hold their own against RU, but actually win the war

There is no "hold their own". This would be a state of perpetual warfare. The only way to end the war is to allow Russia to claim Ukraine or push Russia out of Ukraine. Personally I would rather the Russian border to be as far east as possible.

Theoretically, the US might hope to turn Ukraine into Russia's Iraq - never any decisive loss, just gradually bleeding soldiers and equipment for 20 years for little benefit, until they get bored and go home.

A conspiracy-minded person who thought America blew up the Nordstream pipelines to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian gas might see a similar benefit to prolonging the conflict.

The US itself is in the state of being always a few years away from taken over by a crowd very sympathetic to the Putin's cause and Putin personally. Prolonging this conflict is therefore also quite risky to the current establishment or whatever you want to call the adherents of the post-WW2 world order.

The US is in the state of being always a few years away from taken over by any interest with money. When the money runs out, it is no longer a few years away.

See: Sam Bankman-Fried.

That is true, but Russia in particular had practically unlimited money to buy off both the US elites and their opposition, due to the rich natural resources and lack of need to support the high standards of living for the Russian population. Only China has more resources but so far they haven't formed a powerful message US politicians can use to rally their constituents to pro-China causes.

> And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely

The consensus military opinion I've read on this is that tactical nukes aren't very useful militarily; troops in the field are too dispersed. If there's a hardened target, then yes, otherwise not great.

They then have to be weighed against the costs of crossing that Rubicon.

> why they're suddenly so worried about these spy drones

I think this is largely because of opposition screeching.

I doubt the "spy drones" are of any particular military value anyway. It's more a test to see what will happen if you send something suspicious into your rival's airspace. The Trump administration chose to ignore them, the Biden administration in slightly different geopolitical circumstances chose to shoot them down.

Since this would have been an anticipated outcome, I don't think it really changes anything other than making it clear to China that the present US government won't necessarily overlook everything for the sake of good relations.

The U.S. has been pushing the UK to not include any Chinese equipment in any infrastructure they buy.

It’s not clear to me what the Chinese could have learnt thst they didn’t already know.

I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon (it takes marginally higher resolution images than a satellite but so do lots of less obvious stuff like aircraft and consumer drones that are perfectly entitled to be in US airspace). But the US was pushing the UK not to include Chinese equipment (and indulging in some very loud anti-China rhetoric mostly for domestic consumption) under the previous administration but was too cautious to pull the trigger, so them not being too cautious now is new information. Unmanned balloons are obviously a lower risk way of testing that than other ways it could test the US tolerance, and may play well with Chinese domestic audiences too.

> I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon

I suggest a balloon payload would be better aimed at monitoring (and establishing patterns of) RF traffic rather than visual data.

What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory? It doesn't even have a working economy anymore, the US tax payer is paying both the government and the military's salaries. It's most resource rich areas are now in Russian hands. They started with over a thousand tanks, hundreds of jets, got hundreds of soviet tanks from various places, got hundreds of artillery pieces and hundreds of thousands of ammunition and somehow we assume that the 120 stitched together leopard1, challenger, and other tanks will now be the wunderwaffe to help them win. All the while all authoritative western military institutions have said that the neither the US nor the EU can compete with Russia when it comes to either artillery nor missile production.

People on HN are engineers, how can we not comprehend that you can't just take random objects stitch them together and somehow the whole thing will still work. It's as if I'd have a rails project fire 90% of my engineering team and then hire cobol, C++ and Rust developers and then hope that if each one of them builds their own respective feature in their favourite language I can somehow stitch it together. Such a thing hardly makes sense for a random tank supply chain. Doesn't seem to work for the railway system which uses Soviet gauges and makes even less sense for an integrated air defense system.

EDIT: guys, how can you not talk about any of the facts when you guys respond?

When people agree that Ukraine loses multiple times as many people for every Russian that dies, when even the US Navy secretary says that Ukraine is depleting NATO weapon stocks, when even the thinktank that predicted the fall of the Russian government are now saying that NATO cannot match Russia in weapon stocks, then you are not winning, just because the borders don't change.

The border does not matter. What matters is how much western weapons and Ukrainian personal has been destroyed vs. Russia.

Russia has had 1 mobilization and those troops haven't even been committed to battle yet. Ukraine has gone through 12 or so. They lowered the mobilization age to 16. It goes up to 60 and it doesn't even exclude disabilities anymore. That's not winning. That's sacrificing your population.

Even the ex Israeli prime minister now said that the US blocked peace deals.

> What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory?

Because for this platform the definition of "victory" is not "did Russia collapse ?" but rather "did Russia loose more than they gained ?". And as time goes by the cost (both economically and politically) of the war is increasing (steeply) and the gains are stalling (at best).

The goal of the western world is not to "beat" Russia, but rather to show that launching any kind of agression against it is not a clever move.

Opinions quickly changed when this Russian equipment broke down constantly, or flat out did not work, or had key parts stolen while in storage for all these years. It turns out NATO has been equipping to fight the military Russia said it had.

> When people agree that Ukraine loses multiple times as many people for every Russian that dies

Sure, if you listen to the Russian propagandists and ignore the common sense in the simplest of questions, Ukraine doesn't have any chance of victory. But we'll soon get to the anniversary of Kyiv fallen in 3 days.

> That's sacrificing your population.

Big if true, but if you haven't noticed the population doesn't want to be butchered by Russians instead, or recycled by Moscow in the future wars, like Russian speakers of the 2014-annexed territories were.

> What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory?

A year ago, basically nobody gave Ukraine a chance to hold out more than a couple of weeks maximum. And here we are.

This war is very much undecided and can go both ways. Russian collapse is far from certain, but also far from impossible.

Ukraine has many generals trained by NATO, and is getting more NATO training. Yes the west is propping them up, but they have plenty of training. They are also helped immensely by Russia making a lot of military stupid decisions. They are winning now - a good defense is often better than a great offense.

Ukraine has no chance of outright battlefield victory, however sufficient military aid can keep them in the fight and produce a grinding stalemate like in WW1. The hope is that this war of attrition will eventually lead to regime change in Russia and perhaps a further fragmentation of the country to continue the process started in 1991. Even if Russia holds together politically and continues to occupy parts of Ukraine, they are losing so many soldiers that they won't be able to credibly threaten our allies for years to come.

IMO the only regime change likely in Russia will not make you happy. There're some very pro-military leaders arise recently. Putin does not allow for war to go full-scale. Those leaders will.

Fragmentation is possible but I don't believe it, at least for now.

Russia loses soldiers but they obtain much more soldiers with perfect battle training, they acquire priceless experience as to which weapons are effective and so on.

It's not that simple.

If anything, threat to eastern Europe is as huge as ever.

Sometimes I think that Putin slows this war on purpose. To train more soldiers, to weed out bad blood from commanders, to put their weapon to real test. Basically to build a real army.

> IMO the only regime change likely in Russia will not make you happy.

Don't be daft!

Any new Russian leader, no matter how hawkish they currently talk, knows full well that Russian forces are depleted and will be incapable of waging a "major" war for many years to come.......

I saw a video recently where a column of Russian tanks was advancing along a road when the lead vehicle was hit by artillery. The others proceeded to ... just stop and wait until they were also hit.

Now I'm no expert in mechanized warfare but I think when you're caught by artillery fire on an open road with no cover you're not supposed to sit there and wait to get hit. Advance past the kill zone, retreat, or disperse but don't stop and wait for orders. Apparently this is the result of "perfect battle training" a year into the war.

There're hundreds of thousands of soldiers. There're dozens of thousands of tanks and other vehicles. Incompetence is unavoidable and those kinds of situations put this incompetence to focus and hopefully measures will be developed to prevent it from happening in the future.

Why would you hope for that? We should all hope that Russian soldiers remain incompetent and die or withdraw without hurting anyone else.

What tanks? T62? T34?..

"obtain much more soldiers with perfect battle training"

Funny how those soldiers with perfect battle training still suffer from enormous incompetence, resulting in routs such as in Vuhledar. The units that fought there were reportedly Russian elite marine units. They died like flies in an unforgiving terrain, without air and even arty support.

"Perfect" soldiers would not even start an assault in such conditions.

"All the while all authoritative western military institutions have said that the neither the US nor the EU can compete with Russia when it comes to either artillery nor missile production."

That is bullshit and you know it pretty well. Most Russian missiles are shot down by AA already and the terror waves have become smaller, indicating that Russians actually need to save the remaining missiles.

Russia can almost certainly outproduce the current West when it comes to arty ammo, but that factoid, while true, is irrelevant. Western artillery is much more precise and precision is what really matters. The Russians are great in turning random fields into a pocketed lunar landscape, WWI-style, but a single Excalibur round that obliterates a Russian headquarters or ammo dump has done orders of magnitude more damage.

Ukraine alone wouldn't be able to win this, no. But Ukraine with support of countries that, together, are about 30 times richer than Russia, is going to win this. The main problem is the human cost, but that is unavoidable when fighting a horde of orcs.

"When people agree that Ukraine loses multiple times as many people for every Russian that dies"

Russian propagandists agree on all sorts of bullshit, but it would be extraordinary if the ratio of losses on a static front favored an attacker. This only happens if the attacker is much stronger than the defender, like the US vs. Iraq, but in such a situation, the defender usually collapses rather fast.

We see the very opposite, the Russians have been trying to take Bakhmut for half a year, so far unusccessfully, and throwing more and more meat into the mix. Second army of the world, more like 140th.

> What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory?

Quite interesting question with the timing of this great summary of Russian information operations [1]. An excerpt:

> Russia uses the narrative that Ukraine is incapable of defeating Russia because of inherent power disparities between the two states to mitigate major Russian setbacks or Russian failures to achieve rapid successes in major offensive operations.

[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens...

  > What makes anyone on this platform believe that Ukraine has any chance of victory?

The reality is Russia isn't just at war with Ukraine, they are at war in Ukraine but they're fighting against a military backed by NATO. That doesn't mean Russia will lose, it really just depends on how much money and humans NATO wants to send into the meat grinder. As long as it's only Ukrainians dying, people in the US and EU are fine with burning the money.

So it really depends on what constitutes a victory.

Because when empirical evidence defies theory, it's time to reevaluate the theory.

Am I wrong to be concerned?

I don't think so. Normalcy bias is strong in the public right now and I don't blame people for wanting simple explanations for the recent events.

Regarding the balloons my unpopular opinion is that they may have received intel that the spy balloons are to condition the US into complacency and then replace the payload with something else using a later set of balloons. This would never make it into the news. Given that the military have recently been given pre-approval to take down anything that is deemed to be a threat that tells me there are more chess pieces in motion than we are aware of.

Regarding Russia I see a lot of comments about Russia never possibly using nukes. Adding to my unpopular opinions nobody can say that with confidence. Russia are approaching the end of their existence as a nation and are losing the numbers needed to fight their traditional methods of kinetic warfare and the only option left on the table is nukes. They just need an excuse. Existential threat has been the repeat narrative from the Kremlin and that is the legal language written into their laws regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

I can't speak for anyone else but I will do my best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

> Russia are approaching the end of their existence as a nation

Everything seems to be pointing to that, I really hope you are right.

> regarding the use of nuclear weapons

If they do that they are done. Also I'm not sure if they still have any working nukes. The maintenance is too expensive and I've seen how the things really are in russian science and aerospace industry. I would say that I would be surprised if the situation with nuclear crap is better.

>If they do that they are done.

unfortunately so are a lot of other people to. If they know they are done if the do a limited exchange then there is not reason not to let the whole arsenal off and go out in blaze of glory and hope the first mover advantage means you took out enough of everyone else nuclear capacity that is survivable for you. hopefully some sane adult in the room is able to remind the would be button pusher that nuclear submarines exist as a second strike and will get them no matter how many icbm launch facilities they took out.

Let's say Russia does decide to use nukes. What would they target? Their main objective in the war is to seize control of Ukrainian energy and agricultural resources; they don't want to turn it into an irradiated wasteland.

Using a nuke against Ukrainian military forces would be a waste since they are now dispersed and dug in. Many of those forces are close to Russian forces so a nuclear strike would endanger their own troops.

>Many of those forces are close to Russian forces so a nuclear strike would endanger their own troops.

If one thing is blindingly obvious lately, it is that Russia doesn't care about their own troops, only about winning. Peter Zeihan reminds us that historically Russia needs to lose about a half million men before they consider giving up on a war.

and many of those men are mercenaries, conscripted convicts, and drafted ethnic minorities who they haven't bothered to equip, do the decision makers care about them enough not to nuke them? Would they even count them as a loss?

Their main objective in the war is to seize control of Ukrainian energy and agricultural resources

I do not believe that is their primary objective. Should any resources survive their onslaught they are just bonus material. They have already destroyed most of the factories train tracks and a good deal of the power generation. Russia have no ability currently to replace these things or to rebuild Ukraine which would be necessary in order to make use of the lands resources.

What would they target?

The remaining power, hospitals, the remaining agricultural factories to starve everyone. That alone would drive out most of the remaining people. I believe the primary objective is to secure Russia. That requires conquering all neighboring former Soviet countries and Ukraine is just in the way and has a nice bonus water port. Should they succeed in taking Ukraine this spring then I would expect Poland and/or Finland to be attacked at some point later on.

Secure Russia against what?

I don't think that's the objective. The objective imo is to take down a government and country that is challenging the Russian people see them as kin and yet their getting more democratic, removing (some) corruption and moving closer to economic partnership with the EU. Putin has to destroy a brighter future for the people of Ukraine to prevent his own populace seeing that future as a possibility for themselves.

Putin has to destroy a brighter future for the people of Ukraine to prevent his own populace seeing that future as a possibility for themselves.

There is a lot of truth in that as well. I'm sure its a major driving force for him and others around him. They are a vestigial legacy that will cease to exist in any meaningful manor once most of the dictatorships and faux democracies fall.

Putin's primary objective, from everything I've seen and read, is to be able to reassemble at least some vestige of the former USSR with himself at its head.

At this point, I'd say it seems to be an open question whether or how much it matters to him how much of that land is actually habitable.

It also seems like a) he views Ukraine as a somewhat rebellious province—daring to defy him, its rightful ruler—and b) he views Ukrainians as Russians, and furthermore believes that any Ukrainian who does not subscribe to this view is either traitorous or mentally ill...so I could see some fairly strong arguments for him deciding that they "deserve" to be nuked.

Honestly, in my view, the strongest argument for the position that Putin won't use nukes is simply that he hasn't done so already, despite many fairly significant setbacks in his attempted annexation of Ukraine.

>Russia are approaching the end of their existence as a nation

I'm curious why you think that.

There are differing opinions on this but the most complete and eloquent I have heard recently was from Peter Zeihan [1]. I wish people would challenge his takes in the Youtube comments but the only time I have seen that was when he was on Joe Rogans podcast and even then they had nothing to back their statements.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXtScb_IZdg

Russia isn’t going to go nuclear unless Ukrainian forces start heading towards Moscow. They would sure like you to think that they would, though.

> Russia isn’t going to go nuclear unless Ukrainian forces start heading towards Moscow. They would sure like you to think that they would, though.

No, Russia isn't going nuclear unless Ukraine will move into Russian territory. While Putin annexed parts of Ukraine to be able to use draft soldiers there, it still part of Russian territory in his mind and minds of many Russians (starting with generals and oligarchs ending with ordinary citizens). So use of tactical nuclear weapons can't be ruled out.

Not so, Kherson was annexed and is now back in Ukrainian hands. You can conclude from this that RU accepts their annexations are BS.

It's not "part of his mind" it's a propaganda tactic ment for you to think this way.

Ukraine has already taken over annexed Russian territory. Putin is pretending it never happened.

Again, it’s a lot easier for Putin to fluff himself to the Russian public than it would be to avoid Western nations wanting to assassinate him. Let’s not forget that until a few months ago the Russian public wasn’t even allowed to call this a war, and today they are sending their kids over to fight what they believe is a just war.

> Most experts agree the conflict in UA will pick up again in the spring. And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely.

This is a very significant claim. Could you please provide some citations to support it?

It's "mud season", a period between winter and spring where it's hard to travel off-road because vehicles are prone to getting stuck in the mud.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/world/europe/ukraine-russ....

My understanding is that later in the Spring conditions begin to improve. The tanks the US and allies have been sending recently are likely in preparation for a remobilisation of Russias forces once the "mud season" is over.

I'm sorry, I meant this part: "And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely."

> Imo if UA is able to push RU back they're likely to try to reclaim annexed territories back from RU. It seems likely the US and allies would understand this is a probable outcome. After all would NATO countries be sending tanks and such expensive weaponry if they thought UA had no chance? It seems likely they are betting on a UA victory and all that entails.

And what USA/NATO believed about Afghanistan? They through a lot of resources at it and it didn't stop it from collapsing(or it even helped collapse because there were enough resources to steal, so cleptocrats had incentive to fight to rule Afghanistan).

> Am I wrong to be concerned?

Fortunately yes.

There are very long and well-respected traditions when it comes to nukes, and despite Russian propaganda and shitposters going on about nuclear tidal waves and other nonsense, serious diplomats have maintained that nuclear policy remains the same, which means they'll only use nukes if there's an existential threat to Russia (which getting their ass handed to them in Ukraine is not), or enemy nuclear strike (which we aren't about to do).

Here's a deep dive from someone smarter than me in these things, it put my mind at ease and I hope it works for you too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOO0hCCSk4

Yeah, but the element of surprise and cold-served revenge is something that bad actors thrive on. So the least expected attack becomes the most impactful.

Could I ask two questions?

1: Do you believe there's a chance Ukraine will try to retake Crimea?

2: Do you believe Putin could see Ukraine trying to retake the Russian territory of Crimea with NATO weapons as an existential threat to Russia?

Unless I'm wrong, I think this is all you need?

I'm not saying Ukraine will try to take Crimea or that it's even likely, but I suppose it seems quite possible that could happen now that Ukraine has been armed with NATO tanks and Zelensky has suggested many times that he wants to "liberate" Crimea.

So am I correct in thinking where we disagree here is that you don't believe it's likely Putin would consider an invasion of Crimea with NATO weapons an existential threat to Russia? Presumably you believe Putin agrees Crimea isn't really theirs and that NATO sending weapons enabling Ukraine to invade Russian territory poses them no existential threat?

RU is gaining initiative since January. Most useful thing that UA got from NATO for now is military intelligence that has scale which maybe only China can match. This is available for UA since beginning. We still do not know how effective new weapons are going to be. Maybe that is why the volume of western tanks is so low. I don't think there will be Nukes.

The volume of Western tanks is low because the West has been hesitant to send any modern weaponry to Ukraine. What they’ve basically sent so far, with which Ukraine has demolished the Russian weaponry, is old, almost decommissioned weapons they weren’t using anyways.

We have seen some old equipment, but we have also seen HIMARS, Starstreak, NASAMS, Patriot, HARM, M777 (with Excalibur smart rounds), several types of drones, and bunch more stuff that is pretty much state of the art. Now there's 300 Bradleys and bunch of tanks on the way.

Yes, no F-35, which would be fun to watch, but I understand NATO has to keep some aces up its sleeves.

ETA: there were also some ... mysterious happenings. Like we still don't know exactly what blew up the airbase on Crimea. We don't know exactly what blew up the bridge. We don't know exactly what is hitting airbases many hundreds of kilometers behind the borders - some of them further from Ukraine than Moscow.

> Most useful thing that UA got from NATO for now is military intelligence that has scale which maybe only China can match. This is available for UA since beginning.

I've read (months ago) that the intelligence Ukraine is getting from US is relatively limited and already filtered out / processed. It's probably one of the tools US is using to "steer" the war.

> Most experts agree the conflict in UA will pick up again in the spring. And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely.

It doesn’t seem likely to me, I haven’t really heard that opinion from foreign policy experts on Hoover or the Economist etc. Of course anything is possible but it’s hard to see what would be gained.

I suppose I mean likely as in > 20% chance, not necessary the most likely outcome.

RU has said that they will use nuclear weapons if their territory is threatened and UA and RU have territorial disputes.

Personally I don't see a situation in which UA is able to take Crimea and RU doesn't launch a tactical nuke. Putin isn't going to allow Crimea to be taken, and I honestly suspect he'd rather risk his life than live with the shame of such a defeat.

But this assumes that UA would try to retake Crimea and that's something that will only happen if UA manages to push back RU. And while Zelensky has suggested he wishes to liberate Crimea, whether he will or not probably depends on US support. So there are at least a few conditionals here, but I personally don't think Putin launching a nuke is that unlikely in the event of an embarrassing defeat where contested territory is taken from them.

Embarrassment is one thing; currently neutral countries reconsidering their trading relationship with Russia in the wake the nuclear red line being crossed, is another.

> RU has said that they will use nuclear weapons if their territory is threatened and UA and RU have territorial disputes.

Ukraine already "occupies" territory which is part of the Russian Federation according to its constitution.

Also, I don't believe Russia ever said this. Russia has a nuclear doctrine, which basically says that Russia can use nukes if the existence of the Russian state is threatened. (and of course to retaliate against a nuclear strike)

> if their territory is threatened

Yabbut the Russian government considers half of Ukraine to be Russian territory, including a good chunk of Donbas that they don't even occupy.

I don't think they'll try to use tactical nukes, even if Putin is on the rocks politically; it's really hard to occupy territory that's been devastated by a nuke, and you need the right equipment. The Russian forces are notoriously ill-equipped.

Also, I suspect the Russians doubt whether their tactical nukes actually work. These devices need constant maintenance, and critically they need fresh tritium. I doubt that manufacturing and distributing tritium is higher on the MoD's agenda than delivering artillery shells to the frontline.

Russia has also said it will not attack Ukraine. Russia has also said their flagship sunk in a storm. Russia has also said there are American biolabs in Ukraine making supersoldiers.

What Russia says is worthless. Not sure what makes you serve as their personal rebroadcasting device.

1. Russia is incentivized to use tactical nukes to destroy ukrainian infrastructure like bridges which are very hard to destroy with other means.

2. US warned that there will be catastrophic consequences if Russia used nuclear weapons. It's not clear what exactly do they mean. But it would be logical to suppose that this would indicate full scale NATO invasion.

3. In this case Russia military doctrine allows to use strategic nuclear weapon which is certainly will be used against USA, probably military targets first.

4. This is likely to trigger full scale nuclear response to Moscow and other major cities and consequent response from Russia. After initial strikes there will be armageddon plan which will destroy every big force on the planet just in case.

I don't think that this scenario is very probable, but there's clear path to the end of the world.

My only hope is that China would not allow #1 to happen and if China would decide to isolate Russia, it'll not last long economically.

You're trying really hard to create a path to Armageddon, but your item #1 is extremely weak. Just to confirm - you're saying that bridges are hard to destroy with anything but nuclear weapons?

2. Would probably be "just" sinking black sea fleet with a non-nuclear bombardment or equal. The consequence needs to be a loss that has political and military significance but does not need to more than necessary.

3.& 4. Would mean Russia's self annihilation and they won't go there.

It's no joke that nuclear powers are saber rattling ofc.

I naively hope that somewhere high up in the chain of command between Putin deciding to order a nuclear strike and human hands actuating physical controls, there's at least one person with the good judgment and cool head of Stanislav Petrov[1], and the superhuman willingness to sacrifice themselves for a chance at saving untold millions of lives.

Basically, I'm hoping for violent mutiny of nuclear forces in the event of a first-strike order. It feels very strange to wish that people on the other side of the world who I will never meet will just give up their lives/futures and those of their families and kill if necessary to prevent the first domino from falling.

[1] In 1983, Stanislav Petrov's early warning system showed a total of five inbound US nuclear missiles. He correctly assessed these to be false alarms, and disobeyed standing orders to trigger an immediate and compulsory nuclear counter-attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

> Perhaps the reason we haven't heard about these drones before could be that the US has never felt the need to act

My understanding, and it could be completely wrong (sourced from various tweet threads), is that the first balloon discovery prompted StratCom to change the nominal focusing range of our radar and optical networks, after which we suddenly discovered there were a lot more UFOs than anyone even realized, and that StratCom is just as surprised as the general public is.

> hostile spy drones

In the form of naked eye visible . . . balloons.

Because "hostile spy drones" is more plausible than . . . invasion from another planet?

19th century science fiction meets Phillip K Dick.

Those recent balloons are just distraction from the Nordstream pipeline news. It's to flood the news stream with new breaking news. Typical USA playbook.

> And in the event of a potential UA victory the use of tactical nuclear weapons from RU seem likely.

No.

The ISW consider Russia using nuclear weapons to be extremally unlikely; the Russian rhetoric around them simply being to provoke western fear (and thus delay the sending of western weapons), as you have so aptly demonstrated.

The ISW publish daily reports on the Ukraine war that are well worth reading

https://www.understandingwar.org/

A recent assessment by ISW of Putins nuclear threats are here:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/special-report...

The UFOs are mostly spy drones (although it's still to early to say how many of them are - maybe all of them are?). These drones are more likely opportunistic than tactical. Even the US response to them is valuable intelligence, as it has opened up the possibility of a DOS attack forcing the air force to waste missiles (which are not only expensive, but take time to replace).

Under Putin, Russia is unlikely to resort to nukes so long as Ukraine doesn't storm actual Russian territory (as opposed to annexed land). If Putin were to be replaced, the new guy will likely be a hardliner, and then it's anyone's guess (although still leaning towards unlikely).

America has already privately contacted all levels of the Russian government to spell out the consequences of nukes, and enough people in government (including Putin) still fear America's direct involvement in this war (rhetoric notwithstanding). No nation can ever be allowed to actually use nukes in conquest; the ensuing arms race as every despot rushes for their own immunity to the American military would be catastrophic.

Spy drones, or weather balloons? I've seen more evidence, so far, for weather balloons. It honestly seems like a really childish conspiracy theory to claim that China is spying on people using the biggest, most conspicuous aircraft imaginable. Slow moving, massive balloons, visible for hundreds of miles, and slaves to the wind. Easy to spot, easy to predict, easy to avoid, and easy to take down.

I'm going to need to see a lot more evidence that these are spying machines.

Sounds like WW3 planning. Great.

Eh I think it is the people getting agitated instead of NatSec council. Case in point that Chinese balloon spotted in Montana. I think Biden admin want to sweep that info under the rug, but since a local publication in Montana publish it, all hell broke loose.

I'm not sure. It is impossible to theorize what Russia would do in the wake of that kind loss, nor is it possible to theorize the conditions that would trigger the use of nuclear weapons and in what way. The last time nuclear weapons was used was in a very different situation, and with radically different technology, and thus with radically different policies.

As with the build up to the invasion in late 2021, I think we would see much more happening before something as serious as that occurs; it is difficult to truly hide your intentions in today's world with the technology we have.

> such expensive weaponry if they thought UA had no chance? It seems likely they are betting on a UA victory and all that entails.

> And in the event of a potential UA victory

Ukraine are not going to win the "war", by any meaningful measure. There are no western countries that assign anything above a 0% probability of victory. The equipment that we are sending is excellent, but it is all old and literally surplus to requirements. The headline number (X bn of arms sent) makes for nice reading, but all the equipment would otherwise be rusting in a field somewhere and is better used being blown up (or blowing up some russian equipment) in the Ukraine.

The NATO tactic remains to contain the conflict, bog Russia down in a long drawn out campaign (decades would be great) and avoid having to actually face a pointless one sided war (direct russian conflict) that frankly would be embarrassing for everyone and simply result in the pointless killing of millions of people, while simultaneously making everyone hate each other even more from multiple generations.

>The equipment that we are sending is excellent, but it is all old and literally surplus to requirements.

Can't speak about anything else, but the Challenger 2 Tanks the UK is sending are old or surplus. They're the UK's current main battle tank, and extremely capable.

Challenger 2 entered service with the British Army in June 1998 and the last of the 386 tanks was delivered in April 2002, with an out of service date of 2025.

In 2019, then-British Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt labelled the Challenger 2 as obsolete. Indeed the decommissioning has effectively started with just over 200 remaining, and many of those not in a fit state to be deployed. The plan, announced in 2021, involved upgrading 148 Challenger 2 tanks to Challenger 3s and retiring the remaining 79 vehicles.

As I said above, we are sending extremely effective equipment, but its not the stuff rolling off the production lines at the skunk works. These main battle tanks that are being sent were destined for the scrapyard in the next couple of years.

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