Ukraine - Russia Conflict
- Thread starter randomradio
- Start date
Yeah, true. I thought you were discussing fording the river, but I do have a question - why would blowing up a dam dry up the river? I mean, dam basically prevents a portion of water from moving downriver and this creates a lake. So if river had been an issue before, it is going to be wetter, not dryer, downriver.
That being said, I am on the fence on who blew the dam. During the Homeland War, one of prerequisites for the operation Storm was the previous operation to liberate Peruča dam. Serbs had mined the thing, and were planning to flood the area of Sinj, Omiš and Trilj, killing some 50 000 people downriver from the dam. It is not clear that the attempt served any military purpose beyond just revenge. So while Russians blowing the dam may be irrational, I do not think it should be completely discounted. Still, it was not the same situation, as blowing the Peruča dam would not have otherwise affected military operations.
We left because Russia didn't do what was expected of them. They looked out for their own interests.
Russia was told by the Pak-China combine that the Russians will be assured of a role in post-US Afghanistan, but in return they must ensure India is excluded, from both the peace talks & in terms of diplomatic presence. The Russians obliged. They prioritized their own interests, at their 'ally's' expense, forgetting decades of cooperation wrt Northern Alliance etc. At the time this was a serious backstab.
The only talks we were part of were those where US was calling the shots.
Russia kept India out, US brings Delhi to talks table for Afghan peace plan
Under UN auspices, US, India, Russia, Pak, China, Iran must meet: Blinken to Ghaniindianexpress.com
All fake. Russia had nothing to do with India leaving Afghanistan. We left 'cause we couldn't guarantee the lives of our bureaucrats. You are blaming the wrong people here.
QUAD is not meant to replace bilateral relations. All QUAD members still maintain bilateral ties with ASEAN.
But any large-scale attempt to counter BRI (or offer an alternative) cannot & will not be initiated by any one country bilaterally. Nobody can individually muster that level of resources or incentive structures.
The IPEF was born out of QUAD, and is meant to eventually become a counterweight/alternative to the TPP. There are no deliverables that can match the size & scope of IPEF that any QUAD country can do bilaterally.
IPEF has nothing to do with QUAD. It's a trade bloc, an alternative to the failed RCEP. The only thing common between IPEF and RCEP is China and its allies are not invited. You can't broad-brush everything India is doing with the US in the Indo-Pacific as part of QUAD. You are just literally playing into the American narrative.
It doesn't affect us. The Russians are working for similar interests in the region.
The Chinese are rapidly building new subs. Once their first sub hits the water, they are gonna crank out subs like they did with the Type 054 and 052D.
Their carrier program will take the same route.
One would estimate they need at least 10+ carriers and some 50-odd SSNs before the end of the next decade.
A re-run of Vikramaditya fiasco waiting to happen seems like.
Never gonna happen though. Right now, India has more carrier-construction expertise than Russia does. No Russian yard knows how to build a carrier from scratch. And there is no need for us to waste billions helping the Russians figure out the A,B,Cs of building a carrier - we'd rather spend those billions on ourselves. Only thing they have expertise on is in putting reactors on surface ships (icebreakers though, not carriers). Don't know how expensive it will be to adapt the knowledge to carriers. Definitely more expensive than necessary, because the real intention of such an offer would be to get India to bankroll the development of a Carrier-building yard for the Russians' own eventual use. No thank you.
We have zero intention of sourcing Carriers from other countries anymore:
Cochin Shipyard readying to commission new dry dock, international ship repair facility: CMD
₹1,800-cr. dry dock on 15 acres will have capability to build bigger vessels, including aircraft carrierswww.thehindu.com
I'm not saying we will buy, I'm saying they will offer. And when the Russians offer, the Americans will counter, and that's what we need.
If the Russians don't offer, the Americans won't either.
In any case, with the current security situation, the Russians will advance their carrier and destroyer programs. And they will offer stuff only when they themselves are producing or inducting it. And our choice depends on how far ahead the Chinese are, 'cause we don't have a nuke carrier program yet.
If you split it that way, then our relations is friendly over the short, medium and long terms only with Russia.
All other major powers, only France comes the closest. The rest are just friends or rivals or direct competitors or enemies or a combination.
Talk is talk...
BrahMos II to be ready by 2013, says Pillai | Pune News - Times of India
The Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace is working on a project to develop the hypersonic cruise missile BrahMos II', which will have a speedtimesofindia.indiatimes.com
...and progress is progress:
Hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle can cruise at a speed of Mach 6
The HSTDV, based on hypersonic propulsion technologies, has been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).www.hindustantimes.com
All dates are just talk.
5 now, the first of the 2nd-generation sats just went up last month.
NaVIC guidance has been implemented for military applications, just need to scale up the orders.
Pinaka missile system successfully flight-tested for second day
BALASORE: India's indigenously developed Pinaka missile system, which is capable of striking up to range of 75 kilometres, was successfully flight-tested for thwww.newindianexpress.com
Besides, in the event of a conflict with China we are virtually assured of GPS signals. We only need NaVIC/GLONASS in the now hypothetical event of a West-aligned Pakistan.
It's a long ways away. We only have GPS as long as Russia provides GLONASS services.
Remember, all American tech being given to India can be withdrawn anytime if there's no competing alternative available.
You cannot view Russian energy industry through the lens of traditional market forces.
If the MidEast wants to cease all production for a year and then boot it back up once their geopolitical objectives/market prices have been met, they can do that no problem. MidEast is indeed a supplier's market.
Russia cannot do that. If they turn off their production for a year, their infrastructure will have to be decommissioned and rebuilt due to nature of their geography & climate. That process could take a decade. Can Russia survive without energy revenues for a decade? The USSR couldn't survive a price crash for 3 years, and that wasn't even a complete loss of revenue like what we're talking about.
Projection: $110 Billion in Repairs for Russian Pipelines on Permafrost - Eos
Permafrost thaw is a major threat to pipelines in the Russian Arctic, particularly those carrying natural gas.eos.org
“Sixty-five percent of Russia’s territory is located in the permafrost zone, but this is not mentioned in a single federal program document, despite the fact that the permafrost area is a vital component in the natural environment, of which the landscape, vegetation and coastline is dependent,” Aleksander Kozlov, Russian minister of natural resources and the environment, said in a statement.
In short, Russian energy is not as much of a supplier's market as the MidEast is. Besides, pipelines to Europe like NordStream-2 have been destroyed - and I don't know how long the overland lines going through Belarus & Ukraine could last, the latter is literally in a war zone. Building them back up takes a long time, so it's not going to be possible for Russia to quickly switch from one customer to the other on a whim.
Why should we think China will not leverage that?
When it comes to being cash rich, Russia is as rich if not richer than the ME. And they have a very low national debt as well.
Russia is a massive consumer of its own energy, so its internal market is as big as its export market. For example, its pre-war gas production was over 700bcm and they exported only 225bcm. The rest was consumed domestically. Similarly, Russia consumes over 3.5 million bpd of oil.
Permafrost isn't such a big problem, 'cause they have the money and tech to solve it. Plus their own domestic market plus exports to India are big enough to keep all their oil wells functioning. And as I said before, India alone will be able to absorb all of Russia's oil and gas exports well before 2030. India is expected to consume 7 million bpd of oil and 300+bcm of gas by 2030.
And their biggest weapon is their cheap currency. In order to balance its budget, Russia only needs oil to cost half of what the ME can handle. And Russia only needs to sell oil to India to balance its budget in just a few more years.
If the Russians are fine without the Indian customer (we are buying about half their oil export right now), so are we. Russia is not our only supplier, but we are one of only two big buyers Russia has right now.
Exclusive: India, Russia suspend negotiations to settle trade in rupees
India and Russia have suspended efforts to settle bilateral trade in rupees, after months of negotiations failed to convince Moscow to keep rupees in its coffers, two Indian government officials and a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.www.reuters.com
Because we are never going to put significant amount of Yuan in our forex.
Exclusive: India to discourage foreign trade settlement in Chinese yuan - sources
India has asked banks and traders to avoid using Chinese yuan to pay for Russian imports, three government officials involved in policy making and two banking sources said, because of long-running political differences with its neighbour.
We are just suspending negotiations, not trade. Yeah, we don't care about yuans, but the Russians are getting dirhams.
Trade with Russia's not stopped.
We don't need to give Ukraine anything in order to strengthen ties with the US.
You really want greater ties with the US, then there's only one choice, you need leverage. You need to be friends with Russia if you want the US to make friendly concessions to India, it's as simple as that.
If we lose our relations with Russia with our current economic, political and military strength, which is extremely low, then we will automatically become America's lil b!tch. There's no 2 ways about it.
Yeah, but the traders and bankers are not interested in taking that risk. They are fine with yuan because China will face secondary sanctions.
With rupee you buy ruble products - Indian entities get sanctioned.
With rupee, you buy yuan and then buy ruble products - Chinese entities get sanctioned.
I have no idea how Ukraine fits in here.
Anyway, Russia will sell arms to India in a war with China. It's what they immediately did after Galwan, faster than anyone else. Most of the emergency contracts after Balakot and Galwan went to the Russians.
To both the Russians and Americans, a Sino-India war is the best outcome for weakening China.
I really have no clue how giving away French weapons to Ukraine to kill Russians will help our industry. I really don't. You will have to explain that in detail.
If we are to get our hands on exotic Russian tech, we need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will not use their own weapons against them. It requires a level of trust we cannot get if we simply play dumb games with them.
We only have 2 choices. Either remain fence-sitters and maintain status quo or become America's b!tch. We don't have any power for anything else.
And it's not just this, we have convergence with them in pretty much 90% of all global issues. We have the same views about the rest of the world save for our respective enemies, and their only demand is they don't want India to become America's b!tch. That's literally their only demand. And we are fine with that, it shows in our level of dependency on them.
We exercise with QUAD, we do not exercise with Vostok when it comes to the INDOPAC.
That should tell you where we stand in the Indo-Pacific.
And where Russia stands:
Quad, AUKUS attempts to contain China: Russia - Times of India
Rest of World News: Russia on Friday lashed out at the US and multilateral groupings like the Quad, of which India is a member, and AUKUS as moves to contain China, at th
The INDOPAC is another area where our interests & views have greatly diverged.
The Russians are terrible at military exercises in the first place. And they don't have the kind of threat QUAD is facing, so they don't care about it.
They don't have much interest in exercising or allying with the Indian military, and we are both fine with that. Their CNP affords them that privilege.
Our interests are different. We need the QUAD because we are extremely weak in the water, but it's not a military alliance. If it wasn't for that, then we wouldn't have cared much about it, like the Russians.
If we get our hands on exotic tech; nuke propulsion, carriers, SSNs, space tech, stealth bombers, advanced ISR etc, then our QUAD cooperation will end. We will be an independent power like the Russians too.
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The Nova Kakhovka Reservoir is downstream to the Dnipro Dam.
After the Ukrainians blew up the Nova Kakhovka Dam, they also emptied the Dnipro Reservoir, a huge clue right there. After a point the Ukrainians closed the dam gates, so now everything from Dnipro Dam to the Black Sea has no water flow.
The destroyed dam negatively affects only the Russians. Apart from inundating mostly their side, they cannot use the river crossing because the Ukrainians can release the water from Dnipro Dam anytime they want. Or if the UAF uses the dry riverbed, the Russians will be forced to blow up the Dnipro Dam to stop the offensive and the Russians will fall in an even bigger media trap. Of course the Ukrainians can always blow up the Dnipro Dam and get the same results, in case they decide the offensive won't work.
Pre-dam collapse, the Russians held the advantage. They reservoir was too wide for an amphibious crossing, especially with the Bradley's ridiculous design. And the Russians could further complicate the crossing downriver by opening the floodgates during or after a beachhead is created.
How does this threat even make sense?
Give it up, with European rains that river bed has no chance of drying out before the end of summer. Silt will just swallow any vehicle alive to the point where I'd be more worried about drowning in mud than being killed by the enemy if I was asked to drive across it.
A gunpowder factory is on fire in the city of Kotovsk, Tambov Region. According to the latest data, four people were killed and two were injured.
Something has blown up in Berdyansk.
ЗАПОРІЖЖЯ.ІНФО
I'm not saying we had to leave because of the Russians. We were backing all the same people as the Russians were, but in the end Chi-Pak told them they'll be allowed to stay in Afg safely but only if they exclude India from talks & the peace process. They took the offer. They could've said if India is not included, we cannot guarantee that we won't let India start sh!t against you (Chi-pak) via Tajikistan/Panjshir (i.e. what an 'ally' is supposed to do) - but they didn't bother.
Dude, IPEF was literally unveiled at the QUAD Tokyo summit.
Weapons sold to Pakistan & China don't effect us? Okay. It would be cool if Russia thought the same about weapons sold to Ukraine.
Oh but they won't.
What they can deploy in the IOR will always be a fraction of their total capacity. The primary mission of Chinese SSNs is still to keep their Bohai Sea SSBN bastion clear of hostile SSNs. The US & Japan have got the PLAN mostly covered. We only need to worry about any possible stragglers coming into the IOR in an attempt to break any blockade we might impose on them.
Like I said, we already have indigenous OK-650B version running as of 5+ years ago - that's decades ahead of anything Chinese have. SSN construction yard is already coming up.
On the nuclear submarine front, the technology inputs we have are already ahead of what the Chinese are working with. What we need now is the capital to realize the scale we need. That's not something Russia can help us with.
It doesn't work like that. Russia offered OK-650B, where is the American S6G offer to counter that?
On the other hand Americans are offering ToT on F414 which is decades ahead of Russian engine tech. The level of ToT is beyond what was offered even to treaty allies like South Korea. Despite the fact India & the US were on opposite sides of the Cold War.
Technology offers come when your interests align. Not because someone else offered something. We got Soviet/Russian tech back then because our interests aligned with USSR/Russia. We're getting American tech now because our interests align with the US now. Simple as that.
Russians don't need a carrier. In the Arctic they can go anywhere and still be within a 100 miles of the Russian coast, in the Pacific they'll be junior partner to PLAN on the surface anyway, rest of the waters Russians have access to are small seas, difficult to hide a carrier on the move, and they cannot resupply a carrier on the open ocean during wartime because all the Russian ports are deep inside what are essentially NATO lakes. It's why the Soviets never went big with a carrier fleet. They just keep Kuznetsov around because of pride reasons. Besides, this is the time for Russia to stop wasting money on white elephants and spend on stuff they actually need.
As of India we already planned for a nuke carrier. But we later decided we don't need it. Now that we're planning for a 2nd Vikrant, IAC-2 will be delayed & in all likelihood be a class of 2 x QEC-sized flattops with IEP. Not that different to Fujian.
So?
Well it shows BrahMos-2 has essentially shown zero progress in nearly a decade's time.
Again, that's not how it works. America will provide GPS for as long we are fighting America's enemies i.e. China. Because it's in America's interests to do so.
Do you think the US is supplying weapons to Ukraine because otherwise China might do that instead? Or because it's in American interest to bleed the Russians dry?
Interests, not competing offers. The US is not going to keep the signals on if we go and attack the UK simply because Russia is also offering signals. I don't know how you come up with such skewed worldviews buddy.
Most of Russia's forex is frozen.
India will only keep buying oil as long as EU is willing to buy it off us. Remember, India is not a consumer of Russian energy, we never were. We are essentially a refining & transshipment hub. And we will only remain as such till the time the likes of Qatar don't scale up their LNG export infrastructure (they're rapidly working on it now to tap the European market).
LNG supply deals with European customers likely after summer: Qatar's minister
“Agreements with several European destinations... are very close to being finalised,” he said at a media event at the QatarEnergy headquarters
Once that is in place, EU will not longer be compelled to buy Russian energy via the Indian proxy. At that point the sanctions regime can & will be expanded to anyone buying Russian oil period. And that's when we will stop the buying.
Remains to be seen what China will do, but as far as India is concerned, we have no interest in endangering our own economy for Russia's sake.
If China decides to do the same (after all, the West is China's most important trading partner, not Russia...plus they have their own designs on Russia), the Russians are essentially screwed - on autopilot toward the same situation as 80s USSR because the revenues from oil and gas-related taxes and export tariffs account for 45% of Russia's federal budget as of 2022. I would not stake my reputation on whether there will actually be a collapse or not (probably not, to err on the safe side) - but it would be foolish to think their conditions & options on the international stage will remain the same as they were going into the war.
The problem is, the Russians did not go into this prepared for a long-drawn war. They were hoping for a smooth, bloodless takeover like in Crimea - at most minor action against non-mechanized units like Azov & some fighting around Kiev before the Ukrainian leadership was forced to sign a surrender. Yes, some sanctions lasting about a year or two before they leverage their position as biggest supplier to EU to tide over it. And that's what their reserves & stockpiles were designed for.
Everything that happened since the airborne attack on Kiev failed, is essentially the Russians moving on autopilot. The longer the war lasts, the worse it gets for Russia. Not in terms of their outlook on the battlefield (I still think they will eventually win, provided they manage to see the war through instead of abandoning in the middle of it due to trouble back home like in WW1), but in terms of their national outlook & economic health - and as a result, the desperation of their foreign policy.
The question is why aren't Chinese traders & bankers worried about it. They face just as much risk of sanctions as we do.
Russia was not at war then. That's why I said pre-2022.
The Russian outlook in 2020 and now are two very different beasts. Like I said above, they went into it expecting a skip & a glide for the VDV and ended up issuing reservist mobilization orders.
Like I keep saying, things change.
The real aim is to build additional infrastructure in India with Western financing. The MILAN sale would be a nice way to show our intent & get a foot in the door. The support packages for Ukraine vary from few millions to tens of billions. We would be vying for the biggest slices of the biggest pies. And the greater the scope of the technologies authorized for ToT/domestic production will be (both for export & our own use, as per needs of the day).
So why does Russia sell stuff like S400 to China? They know full well it be reverse engineered & you say China is a long-term threat. The Chinese actually have a history of directly fighting & killing Russians.
It's interests & the larger strategic picture that matters. China's sphere of interest clashes with Russia's. Ours doesn't. When Russia's long-term perceptions vis a vis China start coming to the fore, that's what matters. Not that we sold peanuts like anti-tank missiles or mortar shells to Ukraine or that Russia sold missiles to Pakistan.
You are equating plankton with whales here.
That's what the Russians would like you to believe.
I don't know what 90% of the world you mean. Either way, we are not a global power, the rest of the world is of no real concern to us. We are at the moment a regional power dealing with existential threats within our own region. That's what matters. It simply does not matter if our view & that of Russia's aligns with regard to what should happen with some rebel group in Sudan.
In all the things I mentioned, which are of concern to us (minus our enemies which you decided to omit despite the fact they are the most important):
Afghanistan: Russians are happy to deal with Chi-Pak, at our expense.
Yuan: Russians would love to have us accept it, we don't.
Ukraine war: We've said that this isn't the era for war (read into it what you will), Russians disagree
QUAD: Russians say it's to contain China, doesn't acknowledge that we had to do it because of China's unchecked expansionism
INDOPAC: Russia is aligned with China in rattling our friend Japan's cage. Shortly after we skipped their Vostok drills, we exercised with JMSDF instead
Space: Russo-Chinese space station & lunar base going ahead. India not invited. Now are we to blame if we decide to sign Artemis Accords?
Just what I could think off the top of my head.
Ukraine Shows The Fight To Make The Bradley IFV Safer Was Worth It
Infantry Fighting Vehicles don't last long in Ukraine. But, unlike BMP-1s or even Western M113s, America's donated M2A2 Bradleys keep crews alive to fight another day.
www.forbes.com