Counting Tanks: The Russian Message

[F2d5thCav]

@"guohua" (and Mr G)

Hard to be sure what the Russian intentions really are.

But one thing seems to be a tip-off.

Troop concentrations like that on/near borders usually mean invasion is imminent.

Our State Dept. screwed the pooch on that one back when Iraq invaded Kuwait.  "Oh, Sadaam is just bluffing."  I knew he wasn't because of where his troops were, and the strength they were amassing.

Ironically, Russia provides a great example of this.  The Soviets got all kinds of warnings the Germans were massing on their frontiers in 1941.  Stalin's government ignored all the warnings ... until the Germans poured over the border.

As to the current situation.

I don't see a conventional invasion taking place.  I expect this to go down more like Czechoslovakia in 1968.  Airborne and special forces troops will seize the capital of Ukraine and decapitate the national government.  Then, and only then, will the conventional forces cross the border.  Their mission will be two-fold.  One part will be to provide security on the ground for a puppet government erected by the Russians.  Their other mission will be to defeat any elements of the Ukrainian Army that want to continue to resist.

The Russians have fifth-columnists all over Ukraine.  Some Ukrainians will fanatically resist.  What I fear is enough resistance will take place that the Russians will resort to war crimes as a way of stamping out guerrilla warfare by hard-core Ukrainians.

People in our forum may or may not know that after the Russians pushed the Germans out of Ukraine in 1944, there were Ukrainian partisan actions against the Soviet Army well into the 1950s.  It wasn't all communist-style happiness and light there.

Cheers