Just having a safe place to decompress between fighting makes a huge difference. Militaries need to be on constant alert where resistance forces can train and plain in safety. It also takes a lot of manpower to defend a border and those people can’t then be directly useful in the fighting. Russia could setup barricades, minefields etc, but that stuff take time, effort and resources to setup.
But if the population is friendly to the insurgents, couldn't they hide there after an operation?
It seems like the border with an insurgent-friendly country would be mainly useful for supply, training, etc. IIRC, the Taliban had a kind of "fighting season" where their fighters would migrate into Afghanistan from Pakistan, then return months later. It wasn't hit and run from border outposts.
I mean if it wasn't for Russia having and threatening with nukes I would applaud NATO getting involved; the various air forces of NATO countries would make quick work of the very exposed supply lines of the Russian invaders. So far, Russia has not shown much military dominance or strategy. But it can't be allowed to escalate due to the threat of nukes.
Edit: And how much will you give up to avoid a Nuclear War. Assuming the other side is not rational and can't be trusted to protect their existence in a MAD scenario.
Maybe Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are not worth "the world being destroyed".
Where does it stop.
I think it's a bit of a practical trade off. I'm in London and while it's tempting to do a UK/US no fly zone I'm don't especially want the risk of an off his trolly Putin nuking here. But maybe we could slip some planes and missiles to Ukraine - depending on what we can get away with.
They could maybe win against Sweden alone, since it's largely demilitarized, but they don't actually have a border, and I don't know why Finland wouldn't get involved.
PS: Finland also does conscription, so there's like a million fins who could be called up if a war broke out, and they'd all have training.
But he miscalculated the Ukraine resistance.
So chances are that
1. He has to pause after Ukraine, giving NATO time to level up. Leading to a new cold war.
2. If he wouldn't pause, at least he would be weakened by the Ukraine war.
Why would you think that?
- The collapse of the CCCP and Warsaw Pact was a catastrophe
- Peter The Great was great, and Russia should be extended to its old imperial borders
I'm not aware that he's expressed the desire to go to war with NATO. But I do believe that subjugating Ukraine is a prerequisite to occupying the Baltic states. In particular Kaliningrad, Russia's only ice-free Baltic naval base, is connected to Russia by a long, narrow landbridge, which is very vulnerable, being protected largely by treaty commitments.
Defending that landbridge with purely military force would imply aggression against Lithuania or Poland (or both), and both countries are in NATO.
"Russian proposals for visa-free travel between the EU and Kaliningrad have so far been rejected by the EU. Travel arrangements, based on the Facilitated Transit Document (FTD) and Facilitated Rail Transit Document (FRTD) have been made."
So it looks like you're right, and I'm wrong - it's not a proper corridor.
The only thing that gives me hope in this situation are the strong sanctions enacted against Russia, which may result in regime change (but will cause a lot of pain to ordinary people before they do so).
This is unprecedented and may trigger complete economic collapse.
This is the part that I’m gobsmacked by. Simply by uttering the phrase “this is an existential threat to the nation” gives Putin a legalistic means to change nuclear first strike terms to any conventional war response. The “eastward expansion” narrative doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. He’s displayed no compunction killing political rivals up to now, so why the sudden squeamishness killing far-right Ukrainian leaders (who, let’s face it, are indeed bona fide Nazi-admiring fascists)? That’s certainly far cheaper in political capital and easier than an invasion.
Oh yes it can be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arc_Light#Operations...
They don’t have the troops to counter civilian resistance either. I read an article about hostile army : civilian population ratios in recent conflicts. Russia is off by an order of magnitude and Ukraine has a history almost as bad as Afghanistan. Russia really thought they would be greeted as liberators.
Even if they did, they won't now. And that only means more bad news as then they wouldn't mind a Syria in their backyard as the only thing that's worse than that, in their eyes, is NATO in their backyard.
> ...history almost as bad as Afghanistan.
I don't know what history you are alluding to, but after advent of Islam in Central Asia, Afghanistan was a dominant power in the region, with its rule firmly established in South Asia for a century or two. Afghanistan's recent "bad history" is courtesy of Soviet and American invasions.
I mean there's been at least three assassination attempts at Zelensky in the past week, one by Chechens and two by a paramilitary group that, while supported by Russia, is not actually represented or (formally) under order by them. Plausible deniability.
That is mentioned explicitly:
>> in all of these cases, outside support, particularly the provision of weapons and safe bases, was crucial for the success of the protracted war strategy