Posts Tagged ‘St. Petersburg (Russia)’

Newer Entries »

Russia Now Getting U.S. Forces Directly On Its Border

Saturday, December 16th, 2023

Imagine a timeline in which Russia became a normal country.

Imagine, instead of Putin and a corrupt oligarchy, that Russia had a functioning democracy and a viable economy. It wouldn’t need to be perfect, just something as functional as that seen in, say, Poland or Hungary. There would still be controversies and scandals, but Russia wouldn’t be an international pariah, and would still be fully plugged into the global trade system.

And a normal country wouldn’t have launched an illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine.

In such a timeline, old Russian foes Finland and Sweden would never see the need to join NATO. And Russia wouldn’t be getting U.S. bases right on its border.

The US will gain access to 15 military bases along the border with Russia under a defence deal to be signed with Finland next week.

Russia would regard the presence of Nato infrastructure near its borders as a threat, said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.

“This will certainly lead to tension. We can only regret this,” Mr Peskov said.

The treaty must be approved by Finland’s parliament.

Elina Valtonen, the country’s foreign minister, will be present in Washington during the signing to meet Antony Blinken, the United States secretary of state.

Washington signed a similar pact with Sweden on Dec 6 that gives the US access to 17 military bases.

Concerns raised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led both Finland and Sweden to abandon their military non-alignment and apply for membership in the Nato.

Finland joined in April, while Sweden is still waiting for its bid to be ratified by Nato members Hungary and Turkey.

To be sure, the U.S. already has some access to the military bases of NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But Finland is much larger than all three combined, and has a vast border with Russia. And the Finns, as I’ve noted before, are no pushovers, having fought the Soviet Union to stalemate during The Winter War.

And now you add American force projection to Finland, and there chances of Russia securing its vast northern flank in any potential war against NATO is essentially nil. Plus it puts St. Petersburg at risk of being captured in a swift pincer movement.

And with real U.S. Air Force support, Russia will be completely incapable of establishing or maintaining air superiority. Ukraine has already made it prohibitively dangerous for Russian aircraft to overfly their territory. How well do you think Ivan will fare when he has to go up against F-22s and F-35s? (And yes, there are already F-22s in Estonia. And Finland and Poland already have F-35s on order.)

Of course, Russia could have avoided all this by not launching an illegal war of territorial aggression in Ukraine. But that would require it being a normal country, which is evidently too much to ask…

(Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 9 Comments »

Russo-Ukrainian War Update for March 20, 2022

Sunday, March 20th, 2022

Some significant changes since the last update, mainly that Russian forces have finally taken Mariupol, allowing Russian forces in the east to linkup through Donetsk. But elsewhere a slow, grinding stalemate seems to prevail.

Here’s the Livemap snapshot:

  • Here’s The Institute for the Study of War assessment:

    Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way. The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.

    The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically. Russian forces concentrated considerable combat power around Mariupol drawn from the 8th Combined Arms Army to the east and from the group of Russian forces in Crimea to the west. Had the Russians taken Mariupol quickly or with relatively few losses they would likely have been able to move enough combat power west toward Zaporizhiya and Dnipro to threaten those cities. The protracted siege of Mariupol is seriously weakening Russian forces on that axis, however. The confirmed death of the commander of the Russian 150th Motorized Rifle Division likely indicates the scale of the damage Ukrainian defenders are inflicting on those formations. The block-by-block fighting in Mariupol itself is costing the Russian military time, initiative, and combat power. If and when Mariupol ultimately falls the Russian forces now besieging it may not be strong enough to change the course of the campaign dramatically by attacking to the west.

    Russian forces in the south appear to be focusing on a drive toward Kryvyi Rih, presumably to isolate and then take Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west but are unlikely to secure any of those cities in the coming weeks if at all. Kryvyi Rih is a city of more than 600,000 and heavily fortified according to the head of its military administration. Zaporizhiya and Dnipro are also large. The Russian military has been struggling to take Mariupol, smaller than any of them, since the start of the war with more combat power than it is currently pushing toward Kryvyi Rih. The Russian advance on that axis is thus likely to bog down as all other Russian advances on major cities have done.

    The Russian military continues to commit small groups of reinforcements to localized fighting rather than concentrating them to launch new large-scale operations. Russia continues to commit units drawn from its naval infantry from all fleets, likely because those units are relatively more combat-ready than rank-and-file Russian regiments and brigades. The naval infantry belonging to the Black Sea Fleet is likely the largest single pool of ready reserve forces the Russian military has not yet committed. Much of that naval infantry has likely been embarked on amphibious landing ships off the Odesa coast since early in the war, presumably ready to land near Odesa as soon as Russian forces from Crimea secured a reliable ground line of communication (GLOC) from Crimea to Odesa. The likelihood that Russian forces from Crimea will establish such a GLOC in the near future is becoming remote, however, and the Russian military has apparently begun using elements of the Black Sea Fleet naval infantry to reinforce efforts to take Mariupol.

    The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time. Maxar imagery of Russian forces digging trenches and revetments in Kyiv Oblast over the past several days supports this assessment.[1] Comments by Duma members about forcing Ukraine to surrender by exhaustion in May could reflect a revised Russian approach to ending this conflict on terms favorable to Moscow.

    Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts.

    (Hat tip: Chuck Devore.)

  • What the invasion revealed about the Russian military:

    Lots of problems, including a reiteration of the inability of the Russian air force to conduct combined arms operations, especially given their limited flight training (8 hours a month).

  • Speaking of limitations:

    Lots of tweets wonder aloud why there have been no confirmed T-14 Armata sightings in theater in Ukraine. We’ll know Russia is really desperate if they start hauling T-64s out of mothballs and into service. (Ukraine actually has a lot of modernized T-64 Bulats, as the original T-64 factory is there.)

  • “We Have Questions About Russia’s Claimed Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile Use In Ukraine.” “In the end, not everything adds up here. That’s just the reality. It is just as possible we are seeing a standard Iskander-M attack in the video as one by Kinzhal.” Russia had produced an awful lot of vaporware when it comes to wonderwaffen, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see their hypersonic missile fall into this category.

    And since we’re talking hypersonic and eastern Europe:

  • Poland is blocking trucks into Belarus.
  • Britain has sent more than 4,200 NLAW anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.
  • Ukrainian civilian drone enthusiasts are carrying out realtime coordinated reconnaissance on Russian troops:

  • News from St. Petersburg:

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 1 Comment »

    Newer Entries »