The Hidden Reason Ukraine Is Optimistic about Crimea - William Spaniel

[TexasTowelie]

Retaking Crimea has long been the goal for Ukraine. But why does Ukraine seem optimistic about its chances? The way that Russia has fought the war so far suggests that its position in Crimea is weaker than it might seem.

0:00 The Crimean Crisis
2:28 The Sevastopol Naval Base
5:02 Crimea's Demographic Challenges
9:13 Ukraine's Optimism
10:00 NATO Expansion as a Cause of War?
13:04 Separatist Regions as a Cause of War?
14:50 A Crimean Disaster?
19:21 Ukraine's Upcoming Tactics

[Uncle Joe]

1. This seems like a sound tactical analysis

The cutoff of Russia's land bridge to Crimea, after a while Ukraine won't even need to invade Crimea in order to get it back.

Having said that on a separate issue that being China and Taiwan, the same tactics will most like be applied should poop hit the fan there.

Thanks for the thread TexasTowelie

[PortTack]

2. According to Peter zeihan, geopolitical expert. Crimea won't be hard, taking back the Donbas

And Luhansk will be the tough ones to retake due to the direct supply route from Russia.

[Warpy]

3. Great analysis

Putin is a damned fool. It would have been much cheaper to lease dredging equipment and construct a deep water port instead of tipping his hand in 2014 by his first attempted land grab, something that not only gave Ukraine a sense of itself as a separate and aggrieved country, it also spurred Poroshenko to create a modernized military plus a home defense guard. I don't think we can fault that country for the military they created in a scant 8 years. Yes, they patterned it after western military forces, but they did the hard work, themselves. They knew what was coming.

Had Putin invaded in 2014, he'd have fought the remains of a badly trained and illequipped remnant of the old Soviet army there and he might have won the war. He'd never have won the occupation. Ukrainians have always been at their best as resistance fighters using guerrilla warfare tactics. As many careless smokers as we've seen proliferating in Russia, we'd have seen 100 times as many in an occupied Ukraine.

Zelensky has said Crimea will be where the war ends. My guess is that there will be so many sunken ships in Sevastopol's harbor that it will be rendered largely unusable as a deep water port and too dangerous for the Russians to try to clean up. At some point, with shells and rockets destroying everything even vaguely military, they're most likely to cross over what's left of that bridge and that'll be that.

If Putin had renegotiated the lease for even five years at a time and started dredging out a port on Russia's side of the Black Sea, no one would know Russia is kind of a paper bear, corruption and poor training making their military a lot less effective than it should have been. He could have stayed in power until he left feet first via natural causes or until he retired to his pleasure palace near Rostov on Don. Instead, the only question now is whether he'll put a bullet into his brain or someone else will do it for him.

(Today's "slip and shit" story about Putin might just be the first indication that Russians are being prepared for a change of government)