It is just a bluff. Putin can't win a war by declaring he won. Few of the Ukraine / Putin / Russia / US / military experts I follow even mention the Putin bluffs and those that do treat them no differently from all his previous bluffs in this year. Even Serbia, usually a close friend of Russia, has rejected the referendums as a sham. It hasn't joined the sanctions against Russia but it says it can't recognize the referendums.
https://www.anews.com.tr/world/2022/09/26/serbia-to-not-recognise-sham-russian-referendums-results-in-ukraineOne of the oblasts Russia plan to annexe is Zaporizhia. This is a city about the size of Seattle in population, larger than Denver. It is Ukrainian held and well away from Russian territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_populationIn UK terms it’s about the size of the city of Leeds.
List of primary urban areas in England by population - Wikipedia
You may think Russia holds Zaporizhzhia city
because they hold the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station but this is actually a long way from the city.
Zaporizhzhia city (3/4 million) is over 2 hours drive from the nuclear power plant and is NOT held by Russia. It is ABSURD for Russia to claim that it is a Russian city. Population similar to Seattle or Leeds.
Putin is bluffing yet again, as so often. Russia can’t really expect NATO to take thiis seriously.
Point of clarity - Putin hasn't yet said that Zaporizhzhia is a Russian city and that Russian law and the Russian constitution applies there - but this is what he is expected to say towards the end of this week - along with similar claims for many other Ukrainian held cities.
The largest city Russia has captured is Kherson with a population of a little over a quarter of a million and Russia likely lose it soon. Russia is losing all along its front now except for a small part of Donetsk where it is still very slowly advancing. Other parts of Donetsk it's losing.
There is no way that Putin really expects the US and Ukraine to agree that Zapoorizhzhia is a Russian city. Without a fight.
If he could do that what's the point in conscription? Or the war? Just declare the war over and won on day 1 on February 24.
He can't really expect other countries to take this seriously and it is mainly for domestic reasons + yet more bluffs to attempt to intimidate NATO and stop them sending yet more advanced weapons to Ukraine such as ATACMS the 300 km ballistic missiles that Ukraine have been askign them to send for many weeks now, and the F-16s, Abram tanks and so on.
Eventually they likely send all these things if the war continues for long enough but with his bluffs Putin is able to delay that date and give his army a bit more of a breathing space first. But as we’ll see in reality the mobilization is achieving next to nothing and may be making things worse for Russia.
[Blog post mid-edit - need time to finish it but saving it mid edit as people need it right now]
I write titles of sections like mini abstracts - you can get a first idea of the article by reading just the titles and looking at the graphics - then drill into any section of special interest
He achieves a lot with his bluffs. He achieves nothing with actually using nukes just causes problems.
Eventually his bluffs fail though as people see through them / get used to them / just ignore them. He hinted in similar ambigous ways that he’d use nukes if
But many of his bluffs have worked. The whole point in nukes from his point of view is that he is able to get NATO to do or not do things by bluffing he will ue nukes if they don't do as he says.
Why Putin bluffs. Just with words Putin: 1. Stopped NATO sending MiG29 jets to Ukraine 2. Stopped NATO sending long distance artillery for a vital 3 months 3. Stopped NATO from sending their F-35s which would win the war quickly for Ukraine 4. Stopped NATO from sending tanks for a vital 2 months 5. Stopped NATO from evacuating fighters and civilians from Mariupol via a humanitarian corridor 6. Right now is stopping NATO from sending missiles with a range of 300 km as part of HiMARS 7. For months, stopped NATO from protecting ships to evacuate grain from Odessa by sea 8. Stopped NATO from sending their most advanced air defence systems to protect Ukrainian cities So he will keep bluffing. He gets constant feedback that it works. Background photo of Putin from: Vladimir Putin - Wikimedia Commons
If he actually uses nukes then he loses that hold on NATO and he also loses even luke warm support of China and India and just about all other countries in the world. Achieves nothing of value, and no military significance.
During all this rhetoric and bluffs the US defence so no sign of any increased preparation to use nukes and no reason to change their own defence posture.
This is my previous post about the Institute for Study of War analysis and the US defence . Institute for Study of War Analysis of Putin’s speech - Putin did NOT say Russia’s nuclear umbrella covers annexed Ukraine - and US’s General Ryder says they monitor the rhetoric and see no reason to change their nuclear defence posture
There is absolutely no prospect of Russia capturing Zaporizhzhia in battle.
Russia wouldn't be able to capture Kherson now either, they captured it in the first few days of the war,
The largest cities Russia has defeated recently are Severodonetsk and Lysichansk each 100,000 approx - it took them weeks to gradually capture Severodonetsk.
Since then they haven't managed to keep going and ground to a halt, from early July no longer advanced more than an occasional village, also sometimes losing villages - and then in a few days lost just about the entire region they occupied in the Karkhiv oblast.. .
By 29th September Putin is expected to declare that Russian law now applies to Zaporizhia.
He might as well declare that he has defeated the whole of Ukraine and that Kyiv is now a Russian city.
There is no other possible response except to ignore him and continue with the war. If the West was to do anything Putin tells them to do because he uses his nuclear bluff card, then where would it stop?
"Will Berlin satisfy you? What about Paris, is that enough? Or do you need to annex London and make it part of Russia too? Or New York?"
Obviously we have to ignore these bluffs.
He might as well declare Kyiv part of Russia it is totally meaningless from Ukraine's point of view.
And he can't expect NATO to stop sending weapons to Ukraine the opposite this is likely to encourage them to send more.
Also - if he has already won the war why does he need to mobilize? It doesn't make sense.
He is doing this for domestic reasons not because he expects the West to agree.
Putin needs to frame it to his own people as an insurrection inside Russia.
This has two benefits for him.
1. He can legally send conscripts to Ukraine. He has been doing this illegally for seven months. But now he can do it legally by claiming this is not a foreign war but suppressing an uprising in Russia.
2. He can use it as a reason for martial law - he has now made it illegal for any soldier to resign their job. So - soldiers who have been fighting for 7 months and have had enough of the fighting will have to continue fighting until they are too wounded to fight or they die.
3. He also is using it as a reason to block all men from age 18 to 60 from leaving Russia.
5. he used it as a reason to mobilize 300,000 conscripts - the first wave of what likely will be 1.2 million Russians.
Putin clearly thinks this will turn the war for him. But with modern weapons untrained soldiers don't have the value they had at the time of the Russian tsars. They will most of them die if he sends them to combat with only 2 weeks training as seems to be the plan. And lower morale and add to supply problems having to supply crowds of useless untrained soldiers with food, water, fuel, munitions until they die or are so injured they can't fight or until they surrender to Ukraine.
But Putin is not a strategist and he doesn't seem to have a clue about how to fight a modern war - this isn't me saying it, this is military experts on Twitter, over and over, say that what is happening in Ukraine is bizarre and shows a complete lack of even the most basic ideas of how to fight a modern war.
If soldiers fought with swords then even untrained soldiers could perhaps do something.
I need to do a separate debunk about this in detail.
But in short the experts I follow say that in a modern war what matters is how trained they are, and how well equipped they are. Sheer numbers of soldiers do nothing. It is very easy for a small number of highly trained soldiers to kill large numbers of untrained soldiers quickly with modern weapons, like artillery, machine guns etc. It's not like an army of men with swords fighting each other.
It is all very sad. When Zelensky made his address a couple of days ago telling Russian soldiers to surrender - this is based on compassion for them, untrained soldiers have literally no chance in a war like this.
A million untrained raw recruit soldiers won't help Russia at all. They will cause numerous problems for them, to try to support them all at the front line while they won't help with the fighting.
WHAT PUTIN’S PROBLEMS REALLY ARE - MORALE, CHAOS ON THE BATTLEFIELD, LOSING HIS BEST AND MOST TRAINED OFFICERS AND MILITARY EXPERTS, LOST HI STRAINERS TOO WHO CAN TRAIN NEW SOLDIERS BY SENDING THEM TO THE BATTLEFIELD, SUPPLY PROBLEMS
Putin's problems are
- lack of trained soldiers
- low morale
- not clear why they are fighting and not fighting for their homes.
- even fewer officers - many have died
- many generals and admirals killed
- lost many highly trained experts
- such as operators of anti-aircraft batteries, pilots, operators of long range missiles - these are experts that take years of training to replace them
- shortage of military trainers to train them all - he sent many of his trainers to the front line where many were killed - very short sighted - even before the war they had a shortage of trainers
- big shortages in basic equipment such as modern helmets, armour to protect them
- major issues in keeping their existing soldiers at the front line supplied with fuel, munitions, water, food rations
- chaos in the war with different commanders with different objectives not coordinating with each other
- units where half or more have been killed forced to keep fighting and work with others from other units similarly reduced
- lack of coordination within units - soldiers having to fight together who don't know each other and aren't used to working as a unit together
(it takes a fair while for a unit e.g. battalion to cohere together as an effective fighting unit
AND A FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE OF SYSTEMATIC LYING ABOUT SUCCESSES AND LACK OF ABILITY OF LOCAL COMMANDERS TO TAKE INITIATIVE, LEAVING IT TO THE HIGHST RANKING GENERALS TO MAKE DECISIONS - AND LIKELY PUTIN HIMSELF MEDDLING IN STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING)
- lack of an overall plan or strategy - the Ukrainians executed a clever plan over a couple of months to trap the Russians in Kherson and then do their real counteroffensive in Karkhiv - there is no sign of this level of complex strategic planning by Russia, their approach is almost robotic.
- a rigid structure where soldiers can't make on the spot decisions but have to wait for a general at the very top to tell them what to do - even officers and local commanders have to do what the general tells them to do
- Putin at the top of it all overriding even his generals although he has no military strategic expertise.
- Institutionalized lying where people at the lower level are encouraged to tell lies about how successful their operations are so that they can impress the high-ups - with the result that the generals often have unrealistic ideas about what has been achieved and how much is under their control
These are things he urgently needs to fix, but can't, they are systematic problems that will take years to decades to fix.
But he doesn't seem to even be aware of these issues which he could have learnt quickly by reading the tweets and commentary by Western military experts who are talking about it in great detail.
Instead of trying to fix these things, to this he adds
- rural people who have no idea even what the war is about and what their risks will be
- protestors who were drafted from anti-war protests
- elderly people some even over 60 with underlying conditions needing medicines every day (e.g. diabetic) and in poor physical condition
- hardly anyone with previous military experience and those who do - from decades ago - because he has already drafted in one way or another most that do have military experience
In a very careful well conducted draft the Russians could boost their capabilities by some time in 2023, not quickly enough to do more than make up for some of their losses in 2022.
But reports are that they will be sent to the front lines with only 2 weeks of training, with inadequate equipment, and expected to fight right away.
They won't add anything, are literally cannon fodder, likely half killed / out of action / maybe many will surrender / be captured. They will only add more chaos and problems to the battlefield for the soldiers left who do know what they are doing to try to fight surrounded by this rabble and the need to supply them with fuel, food etc alongside the soldiers who know what they are doing
Meanwhile Putin isn't letting the soldiers at the front line take a break and rest, which he should do. The Ukrainians rotate in / out of fighting, the Russians some of them have been fighting for 6-7 months without a break.
Putin also seems to be micro-managing the war. Telling soldiers not to retreat, for political reasons. Which makes them very vulnerable if they hold onto an outpost that they can't keep long term - until they are finally forced to run away and leave their equipment behind.
This is why this strategy can't help Putin to win and will likely make things far far worse.
I have seen multiple experts say these things. Most recently the ISW did a piece just about it.
Their summary:
Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to overcome fundamental structural challenges in attempting to mobilize large numbers of Russians to continue his war in Ukraine. The “partial mobilization” he ordered on September 21 will generate additional forces but inefficiently and with high domestic social and political costs. The forces generated by this “partial mobilization,” critically, are very unlikely to add substantially to the Russian military’s net combat power in 2022. Putin will have to fix basic flaws in the Russian military personnel and equipment systems if mobilization is to have any significant impact even in the longer term. His actions thus far suggest that he is far more concerned with rushing bodies to the battlefield than with addressing these fundamental flaws.
Russia is losing . This will lead to them losing faster. It's not clear how fast. If they continue to fight back all the way you are talking about through to the end of this year and into next before Ukraine pushes them out completely.
If the front line just collapses, may happen much faster. I've seen some speculation it could end in months, before the end of the year.
Also - may be that another big win by Ukraine is so embarrassing as to change the political dynamics and Putin goes for peace or gets overthrown? (My own speculation there).
Fighting right now is slowing down a bit because of mud. What happens next may depend on weather and on what Russia do.
But Ukraine continue to advance in Donetsk.
Right now the city of Lyman looks at risk. Which is strategically important.
Also Kherson is looking very precarious. Though capturing the city itself is hard, they may be able to retake much of Kherson oblast and surround a couple of small pockets including the city itself and wait them out.
They might do another counteroffensive in Luhansk.
They might do a counteroffensive in the middle, perhaps Meltipol.
Any of those would be very humiliating for Russia.
And we have all the internal protests n Russia too, especially of women there. Those are a significant factor in Russia.
Russia is losing - it's a case of how long it takes them to realize it. This mobilization won't change that.
They may get a bit of a break in the autumn because of the mud - but on the other hand Ukraine can keep attacking them with HiMARS all the way through the autumn and weaken them even further for the winter when they can travel over the fields again hardened with the winter frosts and snow. And if Russia is weak enough the season won't matter much, as Ukraine could win advancing over the roads.
We may see more dramatic counter offensives before the ground becomes almost completely impassable outside of modern roads for tanks. For instance if they had another dramatic victory like the Karkhiv one, there is time to win back much of Kherson or Luhansk oblast, or both, on that timescale.
Or maybe not, maybe they don’t have the capability right now.
Then over the next few months Ukraine can continue to degrade the Russian positions with HiMARS. The mud won’t stop HiMARS.
They will soon get their NASAMS anti-aircraft system from the US and Norway same system that defends the White House. Russia haven't been able to do much back to Ukraine. Then when the ground gets frozen in winter Ukraine then can fight back again with more counter offensives.
From this interview Katherine Lawlor of the Institute for the Study of War tells DW's Nicole Frölich that the so-called referendums in occupied Ukraine are linked to the failing military campaign and mobilization of reserves.
Russia holds sham referendums | DW | 23.09.2022
At 3:12
Q. How willing do you think Russia is to escalate the conflict once there are counter attacks on what they perceive to be their own territory?
A. We'll have to wait and see but Russian forces have not retaliated for Ukrainian attacks into Crimea in an escalatory way and I wouldn't expect them to be capable of dramatic escalation in the near therm while they are still mobilizing these forces.
Most of the experts I follow aren't even discussing this, it's just another meaningless Putin bluff. But I do have another source to add in addition to the Institute fro the Study of War and the US ministry of defence.
Marti Flacks from CSIS interviewed on the BBC.
My transcript:
Q. And presumably once these are annexed into Russia, that reinforces the threat that Vladmir Putin made a couple of days ago that if any of their territory is attacked, Russia will respond with that veiled threat of nuclear weapons.
A. Well they are certainly going to be an effort by Russia to claim that these territories are now their own.
A.Obviously the results of these referenda will not impact the strategies or approaches of the Ukrainians in defending their territory or the support that Ukraine receives for its territorial integrity from the international community. So in terms of the facts on the ground, I expect this war will continue apace regardless of the results of this referendum.
So she is saying that the day after they annex these regions formally and declare them part of Russia it will change nothing on the ground though Russia will try to claim that they are their own, the war will just continue as before
Yes Lavrov said when they have annexed the parts that would be under Russian nuclear doctrine and be protected - however Putin didn’t say that.
Russia lie and are inconsistent. They say they will do things but don't do anything.
All the way through for 7 months they have been saying vague ominous remarks but do nothing.
They would lose so fast if they attacked NATO.
And if they were to use nukes against Ukraine again - they would lose so fast. Ukraine would get the fighter jets, ATACMS, the modern tanks, everything they asked for.
And China and India drop all support of Russia.
There is no way they could approve of nukes.
China doesn't give Russia military support. But it's been trying to keep neutral and not joined the sanctions against Russia and not opposed them in the UN.
But that would change if Russia used nukes.
And Russia can't win with a first strike either.
Some people think that somehow if Russia used all its nukes suddenly it could stop NATO from responding, that's not true.
NATO command posts are hardened and below the ground, their troops and ships widely dispersed they have nukes on subs, their planes everywhere, they have nuclear bombs on planes, lots of missile silos far too many for Russia to get them all.
There is no way to win with a first strike.
The whole point in things like nuclear bombers, nuclear subs, hardened command posts, multiple nuclear silos, dispersing the military so that there is no single concentration of ships, planes, people etc is to make it so that a nuclear first strike can't work.
If we were back at the times of pearl harbour a nuclear first strike might work. But today it can't.
That's the same both ways. NATO can't do a first strike against Russia either.
There is nothing to worry about here.
This is about why they do these things
==============
Politicians have political motives for saying things like this.
“When people say it is not a bluff, you have to take them seriously,” Borrell told the BBC on Saturday.
But that's just not true at all.
People often say something is not a bluff when it is.
He continues:
QUOTE Mr Borrell dismissed concerns that the EU's arms supplies were running low, and said it must continue providing military support to Ukraine, as well as applying economic sanctions against President Putin and his allies and conducting diplomatic activity.
So he obviously doesn't believe that Putin would really use nukes as he is saying to keep dong what we are doing and not to be deterred by the bluffs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63016675Stolenberg says
QUOTE “The likelihood of any use of nuclear weapons is still low, but the potential consequences are so big, so therefore we have to take this seriously,” Stoltenberg said on CNN.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-josep-borrell-chief-diplomat-russia-war-ukraine-nuclear-weapons-threat/But again - the US military aren't saying that.
You get many different reasons to want to play up the idea of a risk of nuclear war.
Here it is because the West wants people to continue to support Ukraine as their gas prices go up.
They could give long complex arguments - which are sound sensible reasons. But it is far faster and shortcuts arguments to say "doing it to prevent a nuclear war" like a slogan. But it's not true.
There are many reasons to continue to support Ukraine and to ignore PUtin's bluffs.
They are basically saying there "Putin could use nukes so we have to be even stronger at stopping him".
So they are playing along with his bluff and using it back at him, to get support for their policy to support Ukraine, because it suits their political purposes too.
But generals aren't involved in all these games and they give more objective assessments.
There is no other possible response except to ignore him and continue with the war. If the West was to do anything Putin tells them to do because he uses his nuclear bluff card, then where would it stop?
"Will Berlin satisfy you? What about Paris, is that enough? Or do you need to annex London and make it part of Russia too? Or New York?"
Obviously we have to ignore these bluffs.
Putin can't expect Ukraine to stop fighting and surrender Zaporizhia and the rest of Donetsk and stop attacking the bridges over the Dnipro and surrender half of Donetsk where Ukraine is currently winning battles against Russia, and retreat from Kherson Oblast where Ukraine are on the point of winning in the near future and just go away because Putin declares the war over.
He might as well declare Kyiv part of Russia it is totally meaningless from Ukraine's point of view.
And he can't expect NATO to stop sending weapons to Ukraine the opposite this is likely to encourage them to send more.
Remember one of the annexed regions is Zaporizhia, a city of 3/4 million controlled by Ukrainians which after Putin annexees Zaproizhzhia oblst he wil lclaim is a Russian city. Obviously it isin’t. He can’t seriously expect 3/4 million people to to hand it over to Russia without a fight because he declares that Russia has won.
Russia also only controls half of Donetsk and it doesn’t fully control any of the Oblasts. In addition, Ukraien has been attacking Crimea for some weeks now destroying half of the Black Sea Fleet’s fighter jets in one set of 4 milssile strikes, and damaging railway lines and munitions stored by the sideof the railway in another and Putin did nothing - Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Nothing will happen after Russia annexes these oblasts except that it will be in the humiliating position of claiming that a city is in Russia that is in fact 100% controlled by Ukraine with nothing it can do about it and with Ukraine winning on all fronts with none of the oblasts 100% Russian territory.
This is of domestic value for Putin. He can send conscripts legally to these regions and send many more, openly which he previously did illegally - because he can send them to domestic operations not to foreign wars. He can prevent his soldiers from leaving the army or surrendering with the harsh new laws. He can use his claim that Russia itself is under attack to justify martial law and to prohibit young men from leaving Russia. But he can’t use annexing these oblasts to persuade the rest of the world that they are already part of Russia.
But this won’t actually do anything to prevent Ukraine advancing
The Ukraien advance has slowed down partly because of mud. It’s getting to that time of year, when it’s wet then the mud stops tanks and heavy equipment advancing on rough tracks.
https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1574048951526985728On this:
"For now, the rain is making it difficult to use heavy weapons everywhere. We can only use paved roads," Ukrainian army sergeant Roman Malyna told AFP, as tanks and APCs maneuvered under the downpour.
"For now, because it's hard to move forward due to the weather, we are targeting their armored vehicles, ammunition depots and groups of soldiers," he said.
On Friday, Kupiansk's military administrator Andriy Kanashevych told AFP that it might take Ukrainian forces 10 days to fully secure the area.
, Ukrainian Push Slowed by Rain, River and Russian Holdouts
ISW reports it like this:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-24QUOTE Voice of America reported that recent rainfall has slowed Ukrainian attempts to advance further east of positions along the Oskil River because muddy cross-country terrain makes it difficult to effectively transport heavy weapons and equipment.[16] The recent weather patterns in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast may explain why recent Ukrainian advances near the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border have largely been along existing roadways to the east, which allows Ukrainian troops to threaten Russian positions without having to risk traversing muddy terrain under Russian artillery fire. To the extent that Ukrainian advances are confined to roadways, however, the limited effective Russian forces in the area are more able to concentrate to slow their advances. The fact that Ukrainian forces continue to make gains nevertheless suggests that Russian troops on this axis are weak and vulnerable.
So it rather depends on the weather, in October they can still fight in fields but depends how wet it is.
Ukraine long range weather Long range weather for Ukraine | Ukraine 30 days forecast
And for Izium specifically - they have some dry weather over the next week. Specially at the end of the week and going into the next weekend - don’t know if that is enogh to dry out the mud enough so they tanks don’t get stuck - above 20 C in middle of the day and humidity quite low with 0 chance of rain with current long term forecast.
Also the big Karkhiv Oblast counter offensive was mainly rapidly moving lightly armed wheeled vehicles rather than tracks - they would also be affected by much but not as much as the tanks, could race across the fields while tanks continued along roads.
See:
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@707292/extSo what they decide to do may depend on the weather as well as what Russia decides to do.
But amongst the military experts I follow none are even contemplating the possiblity that Ukraine might just withdraw from all the areas that Russia is going to declare to be part of Russia and stop the fighting and surrender all that land to them. It’s not a credible scenario and Putin knows that.
And after all what would be the point in mobilization if he believed he could end the war just by declaring these regions to be part of Russia?
The most sensible thing for the West would be to do nothing. Because it’s an own goal by Russia. At least not to do anything right away, leave Russia worrying about how they might respond, meanwhile if there were any injured then the first priority is to help them. Radiation sickness specialists and burns specialists. Focus the attention of the world on what happened. Political things persuade China and India to sanction Russia. Perhaps action to try to get Russia booted out of the security council.
Militarily - to offer Ukraine everything it asked for. Putin has been succesfully stoping supplies of fighter jets, ATACMS etc by bluffing and saying that if the West supplies these systems Russia will use nukes. If Rusisa has already used nukes those bluffs are useless. The US would surely immediately send everything Ukraine asked to Ukraine. It has no motivation any moer not to. It would also be top priority to stop Russia. Everyone wold see them as a rogue country that has to be stopped immediately. Even their closest allies.
We already see that even Serbia has rejected the referendums as a sham.
So long as the US doesn’t respond in a way that would alienate the pro Russian states, they would be very opposed to the further step of using a tactical nuke against Uraine. After all, with some change of politics, they might be next.
Same also for Turkey, India, China, just about all nuclear and non nuclear states would be united in opposition to Russia. Again so long as the US doesn’t use nukes against Russia.
But the US policy even if the US itself is attacked is no longer to use nukes, especially not right away.
So Putin would be worrying what the US would do next. He’d lose suport from just about everyone who has ofered even luke warm support.
And then - he might well be booted out of the UN security council. Though many say that’s impossiblek as I explain ther are three ways of doing it.
1. if Russia boycotts the Security council the rest can vote it out - not likely to do that.
2. by claiming Russia isn't the Soviet Union. However no objections in 30 years makes that complicated.
3. as a procedural matter, only needs 9 votes and with 10 rotating members, doesn't need ANY permanent members to vote. The main issue with 3 is that if allowed as precedent would let other countries like US be removed. But it might be considered a risk worth taking.
. Can Russia Be Removed from the U.N. Security Council?
I go into that here Russia can’t win this war with nukes - it’s just losing - same as when the USSR lost its war with Afghanistan - there is no way to use nukes to win a war
Also there is no way Russia could win a nuclear war no matter how barbarian and ruthless they were.
RUSSIA CAN’T WIN WITH A FIRST STRIKE
Some people think that somehow if Russia used all its nukes suddenly it could stop NATO from responding, that's not true.
NATO command posts are hardened and below the ground, their troops and hsips widely dispersed they have nukes on subs, their planes everywhere, they have nuclear bombs on planes, lots of missile silos far too many for Russia to get them all.
There is no way to win with a first strike.
The whole point in things like nuclear bombers, nuclear subs, hardened command posts, multiple nuclear silos, dispersing the military so that there is no single concentration of ships, planes, people etc is to make it so that a nuclear first strike can't work.
If we were back at the times of pearl harbour a nuclear first strike might work. But today it can't.
That's the same both ways. NATO can't do a first strike against Russia either.
There is nothing to worry about here.ts of missile silos far too many for Russia to get them all. There is no way to win with a first strike. The whole point in things like nuclear bombers, nuclear subs, hardened command posts, multiple nuclear silos, dispersing the military so that there is no single concentration of ships, planes, people etc is to make it so that a nuclear first strike can't work. If we were back at the times of pearl harbour a nuclear first strike might work. But today it can't. . No point in a surprise nuclear first strike as it’s impossible to win that way - and NATO’s article 5 is defensive not retaliatory - IMHO much of the Twitter / social media panic is based on not understanding these points That's the same both ways. NATO can't do a first strike against Russia either. There is nothing to worry about here.
Short summary from a Ukrainian who works for the Ukraine's defence sector
https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1574170332868616192.
https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1574170338627227648.
https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1574170342867599360.
All in one page:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1574170331241234433.html.jpg){kind=link}