War in Ukraine (Previously - Will there be War?)

Apparently Biden has just given US permission for the use of (presumably "Western") long range precision weapons by Ukraine against Russia, in Russia.

A few forumites have suggested I and others are scaremongering when we even mention the fact we could end up in a real war with Russia.

By releasing a survivial booklet to all of their populations including advise on stocking longlife food and iodine tablets, are the Swedes and Fins scaremongering too ?


www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr4zwj2lgdo

Thank God we have Trump taking over soon as this is starting to pull the UK closer and closer to war both at home and abroad. The "orange man" as many of you like to ridicule him may well be responsible for saving your lives.

I think the probability of a major escalation with Russia is low. My reading of this last minute permission to allow ATACMS into Russia is basically because the Biden Administration is panicking that Ukraine will collapse before Trump takes office. It is a moral boost for the Ukrainian front lines who are starting to crumble, nothing more. It also makes the situation for Trump trying to get a peace deal more complicated since the Russian public are obviously going to be pissed off if US missiles (which from what I understand have to be targeted by the US so are not independent weapons) are fired into Russia. Fortunately Russians are too smart to fall for this trap, they are winning the war, are in the process of destroying the dollar as the worlds reserve currency and are not going to be drawn into a wider conflict*. People who are going to pay for this escalation by the Biden administration are primarily the Ukrainian people, but as we have seen the US government (and its vassals like the UK) do not give a damn about the people of Ukraine.

* - unless they are fired at civilian targets or nuclear power stations.

I suspect the military impact will be quite limited. Would be somewhat different if air assets were 'in range' but as you say they have moved them so they aren't.  Though that itself has some benefit to Ukr.

I think the escalation risk is different with this and has less to do with actual military impact. It's more one of impact on Russian domestic optics and how Putin feels he has to play to that especially in the light of his having talked it up. That said, as I've noted before, given that Putin is adamant that Crimea is Russian, it does undermine messaging that this is the first time Western/NATO member weapons have been used within Russian itself. And I'm pretty sure that Western weapons were used in the Kursk incursion from the start. 

I also think its very likely that the US had behind the scenes been warning Russia about use of NK troops in the conflict and that there would be a response. In fact from one perspective this is as much about ensuring that NK feels a price.

I think there is likely to be a response but it is likely to be hybrid/assymetric. Giving some quality weapons to the Houthis to target the Red Sea ? What about those cables and pipelines that the Russians have supposedly and probably been scouting?

I note by the way that undersea cable between DE and Finland has been cut in the last few hours. Of course correlation is not causation, but first of several?

I believe this is day 1000 of Putin's 3 day war?

One very possible scenario is IF the US launches missiles into Russia then Russia will respond by launching unstoppable hypersonic missiles against NATO bases in Eastern Europe. If NATO then responds it could get very nasty very quickly. The way I see it NATO currently has two options: 1) Accept Russia has won the Proxy war in Ukraine and try to negotiate a peace settlement accepting the reality that Russia is the dominant military power in the region or 2) Escalate to WW3, and I believe that currently NATO is not in a position to take on Russia/China/North Korea and Iran in a conventional war, most NATO countries do not have much of a Military Industrial Base, have had their weapons reserves severely depleted and would very quickly fold if thousands of body bags started to fly home.

As they sometimes say on airplanes "Fasten your seatbelts".

Of course, the big difference is the ATACMS are being "lobbed" towards Russian military assets actively involved in the invasion and attempted hostile-takeover of Ukraine.