The Ukraine needs a lot of that, more air defense (the German Gepards seem to work quite well) and of course some main battle tanks. There is no need for NATO troops to get directly involved as long as there is enough supply for the Ukraine (Poland still has a bunch of Mig 29 which could be immediately be used by the Ukraine).
> However, since Ukraine's declaration of independence in 1991, [calling Ukraine "The Ukraine"] has become politicised and is now rarer, and style guides advise against its use. US ambassador William Taylor said that using "the Ukraine" implies disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty. The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically.
This is just wrong. If you search for the word Ukraine on the Russian government site kremlin.ru (there is an English-language version), you will find that this word is used there without the article. I am sure you'll get the same results if you search RT's web site.
The article isn't the Russians' doing, especially given that there aren't any articles in most Slavic languages, including Russian. It is a historical happenstance of the English language, probably back from the time when the name Ukraine was perceived as meaning borderland. People using it probably do so because they learnt the word decades ago.
"Ukraine" doesn't mean borderland, it's another Russian attitude with the aim to humiliate Ukrainian nation. You can also look at the map and see who is really a borderland of the civilized world.
This is an old and complicated argument. The Russians have their language. In that language, for several centuries, probably as long as the word Ukraine existed in it, it was governed by the preposition "на". There are other Russian toponyms that are governed by the same preposition — Cuba, Caucasus, Manhattan, "the West", Middle East, "the East", etc. It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на".
The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
No. There is no need to change language. If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". With Ukraine becoming independent country most semantic contexts though from the "region context" have naturally become "country context".
The issue here is that Russians to intentionally demonstrate their unrecognition and disrespect to Ukraine use "на" (as in the "region context") when they really speak about Ukraine as a country and thus, by Russian language rules, must have used "в".
>The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
It isn't annoyance. It is tens (actually looks more like early hundred) of thousands people dead for the reason that that factoid demonstrate - Russian refusal to recognize Ukrainian right to exist and to exist independent of Russia.
There is no such semantic distinction between these two prepositions.
You speak of a human language as if it were a programming language disregarding its history (while even for programming languages, history is important, which is why javascript or php are in the state they are currently in). Just as no-one was thinking of the troubled American past when they were using the word "master" as a name of their default git branch or of the primary database, so no Russian (at least none that I am aware of) relies on the preposition "на" to tell them that something is or is not a country. They do, however, rely on their vocabulary of linguistic collocations, developed through the years of using the language, that tells them that the word "Ukraine" wants the preposition "на".
Were you bothered by the preposition "на"? Did you feel, back in secondary school, that saying "на Украине" somehow made it into something less than a country? Can you remember the time when it started bothering you?
And yes, we also use "na" for islands (Cuba, Manhattan) but it's still deprecating.
What happened when your country invaded Ukraine was that practically from Day 1, everyone in Poland switched to "w Ukrainie" - a preposition used normally for the country.
Edit: "w Ukrainie" instead of "w" to make it more clear what I mean
Which part isn't true?
There's an online corpus of the Russian language [0], whose entries of usage of the word Urkaine date back to the 17th century — you can easily see which preposition that word took throughout centuries. If you search through books on Russian grammar on Google Books, you will find examples specifically prescribing the preposition "на" throughout the 20th century.
The whole controversy about the preposition started somewhere around the year 2000, and quickly became political. For a disinterested Russian, who is not into politics, "на" would be a natural preposition to use with this word simply because he would have encountered it in classical literature, in the movies, or on TV. It was semantically charged only for those who were aware of the debate. The response from the linguists used to be that if Ukraine wants to use the preposition "в", it is free to do so for the Russian language spoken on its territory; but that it should have no say on how a language is used in another country.
I understand that in the recent years the usage of this preposition has become a political shibboleth; but I am not speaking about it from a political angle. My points are that the usage of this preposition, with this word, in Russian, is 1) historical, and 2) to those who aren't making a political statement, semantically neutral (i.e. it does not, in itself, connote derision, imperial ambitions, or anything of the kind). I have not made any claims about the Polish language (other than that, to my knowledge, it doesn't have articles).
[0] - https://ruscorpora.ru/
Wrong grammar is when you put the verb before the subject in English. The grammar does not decide whether you say "on a call" or "in a call".
Wrong grammar would be if you used an incorrect case after the preposition, but the very choice of it involves the speaker and what semantics or meaning is meant by them.
Okay - you would find "NA" in the Russian corpus from the 17th century - but it is totally meaningless because East Ukraine was annexed in 17th century by Russia. I would have bet that this particular preposition was preferred.
I don't think any books on Russian grammar recommend a specific preposition - most likely you meant some stylistic compendium, but the style is something more subjective and even political in nature, isn't it?
In a nutshell, it's not a grammatical or historical thing, it's just shameless linguistical colonialism in its purest form.
Surely, the main factor is that Russians disrespect everyone else too, including their own less lucky compatriots. Russia must be destroyed as a culture if they can't learn to behave as civilized humans, if they want to be enslavers only. Though, it looks like Putin is already succeeding in this task.
The world used to call Argentina "The Argentine," but that changed, too. There are a number of similar examples in the last hundred years or so.
Not everything is overnight, and your own link states that the change in terminology is both political, and recent. And while Wikipedia states the change was 1991, it's not like every person on the planet got a memo in the mail the next day letting them know what the new, approved, language is. For millions, it's still newish information.
It seems most Ukrainians agree that the worst would be to live under Russian dictatorship. Maybe they have experience in this area.
As far as conventional arms go: Russia has quite a few planes, tanks, and artillery; however, so long as the USA wills it, the Ukraine will have more anti-air missiles, more anti-tank munitions, and more long-range rockets.
In any long-range fight, being able to locate your enemy is key; the pentagons ability to identify the location of Russian positions appears to be unsurpassed. So long as they are passing this intel to the Ukraine, along with long-range weapons to act on it, any attempt at a Russian advance will be done without access to local command/supply posts.
Edit: suppose the old man has properly lost it.
If Putin drops a tactical nuke on a Ukranian military position, will Nato really respond in kind? Seems like damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
It was a small but interesting news item, that a few days before the invasion, some of the US stealth bombers were moved to Rammstein air force base. So at any time there would be the capability of a forceful answer. But this also shows how ridiculous the claims were, that the NATO would seek to attack Russia, as that is the thing the NATO has tried hard to avoid so far.
Both countries can’t use nukes because the other has them too. India has a fast growing economy at stake and Pakistan may be an economic disaster but Pakistani elites have huge assets in the west which can be frozen.
Usage of nukes in the Indian subcontinent has easily calculable first order effects.
In Ukraine it’s entirely different. It is ridiculous to suggest that the US will welcome the destruction of the entire human race if Putin even nukes civilian centres in Ukraine. They won’t. But there are second and third order consequences of such actions which are not in favour of Russia and certainly not in favour of Putin and his friends.
The new Cold War will be sealed and it will be game over for his regime. He wants western apathy and social disorder to continue. And he wants a disaster zone in Ukraine as his personal entry point into Europe proper.
If that happens, US helps to Ukraine stops, period. I would expect Europe is left on its own and that may be a bad time for Ukraine and actually not only Ukraine.
I certainly hope all this is incorrect since I have family and life in Europe.
Just what Russians are waiting. HIMARS flying over Ukrainian border into Russia and Balarus. Get some other allies involved, declare it a WW3 as pretext to invade Baltics.
How does Russia plan to take the Baltics when they cannot even take a city less them 300km from their border in 6 months?.
I'm not sure what the western forces game plan is and i'm not sure they actually want to help Ukraine too much, I think they are walking the fine line of wanting to hurt Russia enough and see what happens, but they don't want to truly arm Ukraine because if Russia really loses, they might just nuke.
They could have done much more and given way more, why those are large numbers, it's still not on the scale truly needed to defeat Russia. They still hold back plenty.
They are obviously not going to say that directly in public, so public statements mean little.
All of this could change in a second if Pooty either messes with Moldavia/Poland/Baltics or uses um unconventional weapons. I would not consider measured responses to be an open invitation for silliness
I was in favour that NATO would secure the skies, but that is now too late I guess.
Ukraine didn't even receive the latest and best equipment such as battle tanks. Once they receive those (I'm confident they will), it will make it easier for them to retake land.
'Securing' skies is a term that has been repeated a lot but in practice it means potentially shooting down Russian aircrafts to 'secure' a corridor.
This would mean a NATO member doing an act of war against Russia _without_ the purpose of defending a NATO member state.
The main argument is where do you draw the line? Why did NATO not provide air support for Georgia in South Ossetia, or for Crimea in 2014 but now does so for Donetsk in 2022?
In my opinion doing so would just give Russian propaganda a stronger argument that NATO is intended on attacking Russia rather than securing it's member states.
Shooting down Russian airplanes over Ukrainian territory when they are literally bombing Ukraine is not "an act of war against Russia". That's a bit of a far stretch don't you think?
If NATO bombs Belarus and Russian airplanes defend, you can hardly call that "Russian war against NATO".
It is an act of war. It is not a far stretch.
Russia did nothing, as usual.
That is literally a casus belli. It very much is an act of war.
Edit: So what would happen if Russia flies a fighterjet over NATO territory and they shoot it down. An act of war?
Ukrainian equipment is getting better with western donations while russian one is effectively running out of it. The newly mobilized units won't have anything better than soviet-era versions of T-72 and T-80, BMP-1 and D-20 howitzer, not even talking about T-62M. Ammo, missle and protective equipment already is getting really low.
Meanwhile, there are serious signals from US to provide M1A1 Abrams sooner than later.
This measure rather aims to prevent looming crushing defeat.
The Russians are “fighting the last war” again, expecting numerical superiority in armor and artillery to win. It isn’t working.
Latest Ukrainian offensive disproves your notion. Maneuver warfare still works and can be employed by capable troops. And this was with done with relative parity of equipment - situation would look way different if Ukraine had order of magnitude better western tanks.
Not only that, an approach that doesn't have enough vehicles simply cannot work. They're limited to moving a few miles a day; how are they going to be supplied with food, let alone enough ammunition?
Extending that thought process, if a partial mobilisation realises 200,000 troops to fight, then the next logical step after that fails is a full mobilisation with pundits suggesting up to 1,000,000 "soldiers".
There is some merit in thinking that the sheer size of Russia means they can just keep churning out men for a zerg rush at a rate exceeding that which Ukraine can deal with, at a cost:benefit ratio acceptable for Russia but crushing for Ukraine.
It is a very hard task even to just deploy, let alone with any gain. In February after months and months of training Russia has deployed to Ukraine about that number of the best forces it had (like Kantemirovskaya tank division). We've seen how it went.
The newly mobilized forces, even after 2-3 months of announced training, will be an order of magnitude worse with worse hardware (that if China doesn't help - there is a reason Putin made the announcement right after the Shanghai Organization summit, may be China promised something, though that would most probably accelerate US hardware to Ukraine). Deploying such forces to a battlefield, especially a one like in Ukraine - as they say it is much more harsh than even Chechen war - one risks loosing them as they come. For now Russia announced plans to use them initially in the 2nd/3rd lines of defense.
As an example - during recent Harkiv counter-offensive by Ukraine Russia was trying to stop Ukraine by throwing in significant new, recently recruited, additional forces without any staging, battle order forming, etc. - those forces were just destroyed as they came by Ukraine as a result.
Giving Ukraine more and better weapons will nullify any Russian number advantage and thus is the shortest path to end this war.
Even prior to the arrival of HIMARS, the decimation of Russian armour was astounding. And that was with weapons NATO infantry teams, the least specialist, most numerous bread and butter soldier force, are all trained on and supplied with.
As it stands; the Ukranians are better fed, equipped, supplied, intelligenced (!), and have the ability to rotate in and out of theatre to keep up momentum. As the offensive continues, their armaments increase in both quantity (captured russian equipment) and efficacy (NATO finally testing their weapons against that which they've theorised about fighting for the past 50 years). With every passing month, cadres of soldiers pass out from NATO training in the UK and throughout the EU.
Prediction - with that in mind - the Russians won't wait 2-3 months to deploy conscripts. They'll start loading trains this week.
It's going to be horrific. The metaphor of Russian gloves coming off will prove to be nothing but allowing them to shove greater quantities of meat into the grinder.
Already happening. https://t.co/Wklq8me5tq
Also keeping the mobilized in 2nd-3rd line defense makes little sense. The current units on the front must be tired, decimated and in need of either retiring back for some rest/recovery/replenisment.
Rusty soldiers will get sent right into first line with all their rusty weapons, and other stock they have to buy themselves if they wish to not bleed to death from simple wounds. https://t.co/JEAxSNOLer https://t.co/GBhRj0g3y3 https://t.co/JnlN5lq51G
Also all this mobilization is unexplicably happening at the start of fall/winter seasons. When/if Russians finally manage to ship most of the people to Ukraine, it will already be winter, and they'll be freezing to death in areas with no working infrastructure, just like during late winter/early autmn earlier this year.
I really don't get it. The leadership must be grasping at straws with very little regard for human life.
But the prospect of full blown WW3 is now much more real than it was a month ago, that's for sure.
China is a question but I'd say that noone is benefiting from WW3 apart from perhaps military industry. So I don't really believe China will be too happy because they have a lot going on internally and they don't really need aditional problems that RUS will inevitably cause them.
But as I said: I really hope that time will prove me wrong.
What do you mean? If nuclear escalation happens and WW3 is triggered there is absolutely no world for the military industry to benefit from. Weapons will be required, of course, so production will continue but there would be no semblance of economy or governments as we know them now.
Nukes flying are world-ending, at least the human world and societies we currently experience. There's no profit to be made in total global mayhem.
WW3 does not necessarily mean nukes at all. I personally think - based on how Russian generals used the military funding to enrich themselves - that most of the Russian nukes are not operational. They might have some low-yield "tactical" nukes (something like nuclear grenades). And I seriously doubt that US would use theirs since as soon as you use nukes, everyone will and after that there is no winner anymore.
Unless you calculate you can be the last man standing in a world with drastically reduced pressure on natural resources due to depopulation
Even if it stays that way - Russia against the West - and even if on paper Russia will lose since they are alone - nukes can fly especially over Europe. I'd understand why someone would call that a World War.
There is also a formality in the definition of war vs "special operation". When Russia formally declares war against Ukraine, the West will be considered a cobelligerent if they supply Ukraine with weapons. The partial mobilization is a step towards that
If you want to go and fight, do it yourself
Nobody is going to directly engage a global nuclear superpower in armed conflict unless they are literally being invaded.
> purely from a population perspective, Ukraine will fail eventually unless they can effectively force-multiply like we've never seen in any other armed conflict.
Successful invasions and occupations are not decided "purely from a population perspective".
USSR directly engaged USA, China did the same in Korean War.
Those aren't active US serviceman.
That feels like it would increase the risk of nuclear escalation and strengthen domestic Russian support for the war.
Ukraine has a long waiting list of people wanting to fight, Russia has been having to recruit in prisons as there is a shortage or Russians wanting to go be cannon fodder. This mobilization is supposed to help that but even so I'm not sure Russia has much of a manpower advantage. Also with modern weaponry sending out crap unmotivated troops doesn't work that well - one of the first groups of prisoners sent out just surrendered to Ukraine en mass.
If I look at other conflicts, especially in the middle east, population numbers aren't everything. Occupying a territory cost money and people the longer it last unless the occupation is willing to commit genocide and eradicate everyone who lives there. Ukraine is also a very large country, and even with the goal of lebensraum, it will take time for Russia to move Russians settlers over there so that they don't need to spread their military to uphold control over all the land. Ukraine on the other hand can focus their military on the conflict border without needing to keep troops behind to prevent insurgence.
Thats interesting, I'm not doubting you but I would like to see the original source if possible, got a link?
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/157165441023281152...
Btw, history calls with a rude interruption to remind that the Germans were also the first to give the Yugoslavian civil war a nice big push to get it going.
https://apnews.com/article/f07f4162e6bb20a7039c69d10e526a62
p.s. EU (Germany+France) + Russia + China as foundational to next layer BRI + BRICS, countering "Anglo-Saxon" Empire of Waters.
This is what the war is actually about. Take out the Schnaps and get Schroeder and Merkle drunk and they will tell you all about it. :-)
[preemptive p.s.s. Yes, of course, but that's why NS2 had to be stopped.]
And thats fine, because the issue is neither russia not the west. The issue is east europe, the region of it thats sandwiched between russia and central europe (germany). Just to be clear, my aim is not germans but german politics which find it extremely convenient that a weak east europe cant compete with germany.
In regards to croatia and slovenia, and pretty much all other east eu countries, indeed germany has a good humanitarian track record and has been a steady supporter of democratisation of these countries. But somehow it managed to block their development through excessive regulation, and excessive chauvinism.
There is no debate about east europe on here where a person from that country doesnt throw in corruption and poverty, none of which are on a scale as bad as so dominate every.single.discussion.
Americans dont exhibit the same behaviour when it comes to india, yet india is far poorer and far more corrupt than any east eu country, yet germans always poop on poland, hungary, romania, and so on. A very inhibitive approach in my view, and very non allied like behaviour.
That is not intended to defend people who speak ill of their neighbours. Bad manners are always ugly. Just pointing out that being nice is not a prerequisite for being a useful and even so.ewhat dependable ally.
To me it appears exactly that. One is abusive one is complacent. S/he hits me because s/he loves me. Thats the attitude of people in allied countries each time germany or the eu imposes sanctions because of “corruption” or some other wanna be do good reason, all the while their corrupt partners in the two entities walk free. In fact it hits the very same people, whom somehow think bowing their heads and slaving around europe is a good idea. Instead they should develop a personality and standup. When they warned germany its policies towards russia would backfire and were ignored they should have played the sanctions game just as hard. Do business with russia, but dont sell scrapyard cars in east europe. Abuse workers and smear them in the media, dont do business in east europe.
Is it time to make this a reality? I really don't see it ending without it happening. russia has shown that it has no regard for the suffering of any troops of any nationality. So purely from a population perspective, Ukraine will fail eventually unless they can effectively force-multiply like we've never seen in any other armed conflict.