History in the Making: Russian Invasion

aircooled said:

I wonder what this means:

Biden said earlier that preliminary information suggested it is unlikely the missile was fired from within Russia.
 

I mean, it could have come from an occupied area, but that would seem to be an unnecessarily long shot.  Whether it came from an occupied area or Russia, I cannot imagine it makes much difference, so why make that distinction?

 

This smells like cooler heads have prevailed and they are trying to avoid confrontations. 

It's hard to see how a sam from Ukraine hits over their own western border. Wouldn't any Sam be facing east?

I guess it could have been fired from Belarus, but I am guessing it's just a minor distinction between Russia proper and Russian occupied Ukraine. It doesn't matter at all, but they've decided not to retaliate. Hopefully this discussion included a real and actionable warning to Russia. Of course now I'm essentially peddling a conspiracy theory, but this seems a likely possibility to me. 

As much as I'd love to see Poland mop the floor with Russia, which I believe they could and quickly, it's better for the world if they don't if we're talking ww3 as an end result. 

Polish President Duda is now stating the missile was "very likely" a Ukrainian SAM. Whether this is true or not - and I want to be clear that I have no reason to believe the statement is not correct or that there is any attempt at a cover-up - it just confirms that there is no support whatsoever in NATO for any sort of escalation, especially over something as minor as this.

02Pilot said:

Polish President Duda is now stating the missile was "very likely" a Ukrainian SAM. Whether this is true or not - and I want to be clear that I have no reason to believe the statement is not correct or that there is any attempt at a cover-up - it just confirms that there is no support whatsoever in NATO for any sort of escalation, especially over something as minor as this.

Agreed 100%. Although I feel for the poor Polish farmers.

Question for all: Is there a credible scenario where a Ukrainian SAM is headed west?

In reply to tuna55 :

Definitely. A guidance malfunction, mechanical failure, or even a launch on a westward trajectory resulting in a miss could have caused the end result. Remember too that the S-300 is a Russian system, and we've seen how well those have been working lately.

In reply to 02Pilot :

makes me wonder if i was a ukranian sam if it was fired after a real cruise missile and either missed or the missile was destroyed/crashed before he sam got to it.

tuna55 said:

 

 

As much as I'd love to see Poland mop the floor with Russia, which I believe they could and quickly, it's better for the world if they don't if we're talking ww3 as an end result. 

+1 to every bit of that.  

An Op-ed that touches on the question of how much of a favor the Ukrainians are doing the US:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/opinion/ukraine-russia-war.html

My position is that they are doing the US and the western world a massive service in regards to weakening Russia. I'm less convinced that the war is influencing China's thinking on Taiwan, but no doubt the Chinese are watching closely. 

red_stapler said:

I think there are 3 scenarios that are plausible at this time.

1. Russia attempted to attack the EU/UKR power intergrid facility on the UKR/POL border with a missile. Ukraine fired a lot of S-300 SAMs to intercept, 1 missed and hit this village about 10 miles away from that interconnect.

2. Russia attempted to attack the EU/UKR power intergrid facility on the UKR/POL border with a cruise missile. The cruise missile missed and hit Poland
2A. Russia deliberately attacked a small food production plant in Poland with same missile to see what happens (I consider this VERY unlikely)

3. Russia launched a S-300 in surface to surface mode from Belarus at either the intergrid facility or POL and missed. This would be at the very extreme range of a S-300 in surface to surface mode (unknown but around 70 miles, this would require 90 miles)

My opinion is that #1 is the most likely, and probably explains a lot of similar inexplicable missile strikes on seemingly arbitrary civilian areas.

Based on the statements from NATO leaders, it would appear that I was correct in my assessment and #1 is what likely happened.

For those wondering, S300 is a vertically launched system so the missile can go in whatever direction it needs to.  I'd imagine a system placed around Lviv was fired to the north (where the intergrid is relative to the city) and it ended up in Poland.

Just as a note, SAM systems such as the S-300 will have a feature that self-destructs the missile if it misses.  So, normally, there would not be missiles landing in random locations and exploding when a bunch are launched.

Even the C-RAM shown above (land based Phalanx system) has shells that self destruct after a period of flight.  As you can imagine, with the number of shells the Gatling style gun spits out, having them landing down range would be less than ideal.

As an interesting trivia, even an RPG (the very popular man portable anti-tank weapon) has a timer in the warhead that will cause it to explode after a set period of time in case it misses.  This feature was actually modified by the Taliban to use RPG's as a simple artillery, by firing them in an arc towards a target and timing them so they explode above the target.

This same feature was semi-famously also used and developed by Bin Laden and his followers by making the timing very short, so it will explode only a few hundred feet away, and this was how they took down the Blackhawk in the famous Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia.  In case you wondered how they managed to hit a moving helicopter with an RPG, they just fired at it, hoping the it would be caught in the early explosion (in that case, taking out the tail rotor).

In reply to aircooled :

And we have seen how effective and accurate the Russian equipment is

Some updates, with some expansion on the particularly interesting points:

• Russian forces conducted the largest set of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure since the start of the war, likely using a substantial portion of their remaining high-precision weapon systems.
• Polish officials announced that a likely “Russian-made missile” landed in Poland within six kilometers of the international border with Ukraine.
• Russian military commanders reportedly ignored existing plans for offensive operations in the Vuhledar direction and committed poorly trained reinforcements to costly assaults on Pavlivka out of impatience, generating continued criticism of Russian military leadership.
• Russian officials continued to set conditions to force the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to recognize Russian control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and thereby de facto recognize the Russian annexation of occupied Ukraine.
• Russians are increasingly turning to various platforms on social media to express their dissatisfaction with mobilization problems, which could ignite organized online anti-war movements in Russia.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensives in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna, and Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian logistics to the rear of Luhansk Oblast.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Vuhledar.
• Premature reports of Ukrainian forces capturing territory on the left bank of the Dnipro River provoked backlash in the Russian information space.
• Russian logistics routes from Crimea into southern Ukraine are likely highly degraded.
• Russian forces are continuing to supply their diminishing supplies with Belarusian military equipment.
• Russian officials continued to minimize the role of proxy officials in occupied territories in favor of Russian officials.

The Kremlin had prepared today’s massive missile campaign before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented his 10-point peace proposal at the G20 summit on November 15. Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine will negotiate with Russia if the Kremlin totally withdraws its forces from Ukraine, restores Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and ensures punishment for war crimes among other provisions on nuclear, energy, and food security.[14] The Kremlin likely deliberately planned a massive missile strike campaign on Ukraine in anticipation of Zelensky’s speech at the G20 summit given that a multi-direction missile campaign requires significant military preparation. The Russian pro-war community on Telegram claimed that the Kremlin retaliated for Zelensky’s “Russophobic” statements shortly after his speech, but the impossibility of launching such a massive attack on short notice highlights the Kremlin’s disinterest in setting the stage for negotiations with Ukraine.[15]

The Kremlin’s official narrative surrounding the G20 summit further confirms Russia’s disinterest in the prospect of peace negotiations with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not appear at the summit and instead signed numerous decrees granting honorary titles to Russian-occupied Ukrainian cities.[16]  Putin’s Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia will continue its “special military operation” in Ukraine, accusing Zelensky of unwillingness to negotiate with Russia.[17] Lavrov called Ukraine’s conditions “unrealistic and inadequate,” which has been the Kremlin’s recurrent position throughout the war.[18] Peskov also made a point to emphasize that Russia will still treat liberated Kherson City as the capital of Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast, and Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev repeated the original false narratives used to justify the invasion that Russia needs to defend Donbas and that Ukrainian “Nazis” failed to comply with the Minsk agreements.[19]

Russian army launched over 90 Kh-101 and Kalibr missiles, and over 10 combat drones. Air Defence shot down 77 cruise missiles and 10 Shahed-136, 1 Orion drone , - General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine says in the morning report

Yahoo.com: Poland says missile that killed 2 was 'very likely' fired by Ukrainian air defense

If it was Israel that was hit, the retaliation that followed would be cheered on. We need to blow some of Poopin the Impaler's toys up. Blow up some of Iran's crap for good measure also. Send a signal to China's Xi.

VolvoHeretic said:

Yahoo.com: Poland says missile that killed 2 was 'very likely' fired by Ukrainian air defense

If it was Israel that was hit, the retaliation that followed would be cheered on. We need to blow some of Poopin the Impaler's toys up. Blow up some of Iran's crap for good measure also. Send a signal to China's Xi.

To be fair, Israel generally takes care of their own retaliation.  

It's sad that war crimes punishment is so slow and disconnected from the atrocities. 

VolvoHeretic said:

Yahoo.com: Poland says missile that killed 2 was 'very likely' fired by Ukrainian air defense

If it was Israel that was hit, the retaliation that followed would be cheered on. We need to blow some of Poopin the Impaler's toys up. Blow up some of Iran's crap for good measure also. Send a signal to China's Xi.

I'm glad cooler heads prevailed.  Don't forget Russia still has a lot of nuclear missiles.  We start lobbing those around and the whole world disappears.  Even if everybody misses every target the radiation which has a million years half life. Wipes out people.  

Frankly if you are the country next to a war zone and don't get the occasional "oops" I'd be surprised. 

Sounds like Zelensky is still confident that it wasn't their missile. He says his generals say it isn't.

I am not sure if he is just covering his butt from being wildly confident it was a Russian missile and demanding NATO action, or truly being cautious.  Certainly not a bad message that this was theirs, but was only launched as the result of a Russian attack.

Of note is that Ukraine's air defense has increase wildly and even the very large attack Russia just make was largely shot down.

A small update.  I think the note (2nd to last) about Russian moral is particularly telling:

• Russian sources and proxy officials are flagrantly touting the forced adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families.
• Ukrainian sources continued to clarify the damage caused by the massive November 15 Russian missile strike across Ukraine.
• The Russian information space largely followed the official Kremlin framing of the missile strike on Polish territory as a Western provocation.
• Wagner Group financer Yevgeny Prigozhin is continuing to establish himself as a central figure in the pro-war ultranationalist community likely in pursuit of ambitious political goals.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the directions of Svatove and Kreminna.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian forces and logistics nodes in southern Ukraine.
• Multiple reports indicate that the morale and psychological state of Russian forces in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts are exceedingly low.
• Russian officials continued their efforts to replace proxy officials in occupied territories with Russian officials, forcibly relocate residents, and integrate occupied areas with Russia.

From the southern front (Iran):   Things are looking a wee bit unstable there.

• Certain components of the ongoing protest movement in Iran may have reached the threshold identified in US military doctrine for a “latent and incipient” insurgency.
• Regime security personnel sustained relatively significant casualties.
• Protest organizations are trying to sustain the recent high protester turnout for at least three to four more days.
• At least 40 protests took place in 33 cities across 18 provinces.
• The regime may be trying to blame the Izeh attack on the Islamic State (IS) as part of an effort to associate the protests with terrorism.
• Anti-regime outlet Iran International published purported leaked memos from the Artesh Ground Forces.
• Likely Iranian proxies conducted a rocket attack on US forces in northeastern Syria.

Regime security personnel sustained relatively significant casualties on November 17. At least six security personnel have died across Iran in the past 24 hours. Unidentified individuals stabbed and killed two Basij members and injured three more in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi Province.[9] Unidentified individuals also stabbed and killed a Law Enforcement Command (LEC) officer in Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province.[10] An LEC Special Units member died on November 17 after unidentified gunmen shot him in Esfahan City, Esfahan Province on November 16.[11] And two LEC Border Guards members died in an unspecified “accident” near Saravan, Sistan and Baluchistan Province.[12] Anti-regime militancy and smuggling is common around Saravan.

Probably to aircooled and 02, but if anyone has ideas of what it means...

There has been a lot made of The Wagner Group and Prigozin (sp?)- what if they lose on the battlefield?  Like get decimated?   Most of the things I'm seeing is he's putting more and more into the mercenaries to try to get a position to take vlads spot.  But at the same time, they have taken a lot of losses to Ukraine, and he's also putting less qualified people on the lines.

It *seems* that he's risking a LOT by putting his private army out there the way they are being used.  And if they basically go away, what happens in the power vacuum that is starting in Moscow?

So apparently this is still moving along, do the American prisoners get a say in whether they'd like to be swapped for a real-life supervillain?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/europe/russia-bout-exchange-talks-intl/index.html
 

In reply to alfadriver :

Good question. Might be more of an O2 question.

Its pretty clear The Wagner group is one of the most effective units Russia has (left), but even they have really made almost no real advances recently and seem to be more focused on defense at this point.

As far as a potential power grab, I am not sure if the head of the Wagner group has that ambition. He is clearly motivated to keep the war going as long as possible (money).  Not sure he has the military power to overcome Putin loyalists either.

In reply to aircooled :

From what I've been reading, the Wagner Group is maybe the second line troops placed to shoot the retreating front line drafted reserve troops.??

Wagner is pretty shadowy, in the same way that Blackwater or Tepper Aviation are. I have little doubt their being used for internal security functions as well as frontline operations inside Ukraine.

As far as Prigozhin, he's definitely pushing an agenda inside the Kremlin. He's a hardliner, and he has Putin's ear because he commands an effective and useful force; the relationship has echoes of Hitler/Röhm or Hitler/Himmler, or Stalin/Dzerzhinsky or Stalin/Beria. If Prigozhin does have ambitions to move into Putin's chair, he's playing a dangerous game, but the longer things drag on in Ukraine, and the longer Wagner remains a prominent fighting force, the more he's got on his side. I imagine Prigozhin is every bit as ruthless as Putin, and has probably learned well the lessons of how to stay alive (lesson #1: eliminate your enemies and rivals before they do the same to you), but he's still a subordinate. If Putin starts sensing a power play, Prigozhin could find himself quite abruptly taking his first and last flying-from-a-window lesson.

Ukraine is getting 30 Gepard German Flak Panzers (twin 23mm radar guided AA tank).   These should be great for taking down drones, and maybe cruise missiles if they get a clear shot?  Looks like the Russians maybe building their own drones with the help of the Iranians so likely more of them to come (they have to be running a bit shot of the cruise missiles).  I would suspect they will be doing night attacks (no reason to launch them in the day) and these should make quick work of them if they can be in the area.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/07/26/ukraines-gepard-anti-aircraft-tanks-have-arrived/?sh=7d74385a38af