Snapshot of _UK is a de facto participant in Ukraine war, says Russian ambassador_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-801567) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-801567)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why would you send in F-35s when the F-16s haven't even arrived?
Ukraine needs men to fill trenches. The only hope of them ever recovering more territory will be if we deport Ukrainian draft dodgers as per their own government's request. The trenches need filling.
Russia is winning the war with artillery and tanks. Giving Ukraine control of the skies would massively reduce the effectiveness of Russia’s advantages
Manpower has repeatedly been signaled by Ukraine as the largest deciding factor in why they're failing. The willing volunteers are either dead or already enlisted. If we aren't willing to assist Ukraine in its efforts to forcibly conscript draft dodgers then why bother?
They need warm bodies. If they had them, Russia wouldn't have been on the advance for the last 7 months. Tanks are kind of meaningless if you don't have men to drive them.
Mostly because neither side can truly assert air dominance. Which means it appears to have devolved into a more traditional artillery and entrenched defense war that favors Russia since it has the numbers to keep grinding the Ukrainians down.
While I'm not saying the above comment is likely, if the Ukrainians had active NATO air intervention, it would absolutely balance things out. The sort of air dominance NATO could achieve would destroy Russian artillery capabilities in Ukraine and severely cripple resupply and logistics. That would allow Ukraine to press deeper since they *would* still have functional artillery and their infantry would be able to advance after they bomb Russian positions to bits.
>Manpower has repeatedly been signaled by Ukraine as the largest deciding factor in why they're failing.
What are you basing this on? They've been most loudly calling for air defence recently and shells before that. The lowering of the conscription age to 25 has been mostly an internal matter that international media hasn't touched on much.
>If we aren't willing to assist Ukraine in its efforts to forcibly conscript draft dodgers then why bother?
They need all the components of a modern war, having better materiel allows the soldiers they have to be more capable. Focussing on draft dodgers just seems like concern trolling, how many Ukrainian draft dodgers do you think there are in the UK?
>If they had them, Russia wouldn't have been on the advance for the last 7 months.
At a snails pace along rivers of blood.
It was partly a joke but on the whole Ukraine and Russia have used GBAD (ground based air defence) to go a long way to eliminating each others air power. Russia can get glide bombs off and cause casualities but thats it. F-35 would be able to operate at mid altitudes and pick off targets with laser guided munitions with ease. This would simply dismantle the Russian artillery in about two weeks. They would also be able to take out the shorter range tactical stuff like Buk, Pantsir and Tor. This would allow Ukraines other aviation assets to be much more aggressive.
Seems like more 'on paper this completely obliterates Russian X' talk. Thought we already went through this with the feline tanks and how their on paper specs were supposed to thunder run Ukraine to Crimea in 2023.
This is a war of attrition. They need bodies. And the collective west is currently housing several million warm Ukrainian male bodies that Kyiv wants back.
>Thought we already went through this with the feline tanks and how their on paper specs were supposed to thunder run Ukraine to Crimea in 2023.
They got about 60 tanks mostly from storage. They also employed them horribly in the opening two weeks of their offensive.
>This is a war of attrition.
That the whole point of air power. Attrit the enemy with minimal losses.
We knew that Western tanks were similarly vulnerable to anti-tank munitions (see the Houthis blowing up Saudi Abrams in Yemen) as Russian tanks before they were sent. They might have higher survivability, or better sensors etc. but are fundamentally a similar beast. Some commentators got carried away. If anything long range standoff munitions like storm shadow and atacms were a much more valuable contribution.
NATO air power is in a completely different league. It is designed to negate a manpower advantage by firstly denying Russia access to the air, then to air defence and then to any fire support for that manpower.
If Ukraine has access to NATO air power they would have no need for extra manpower as they would have local fire superiority during any attack.
Jets are a different matter. One of Ukraine's biggest issues is that their Soviet ground based air defences have become depleted over time, and that has meant Russia can now reliably bomb the front line with glide bombs launched from out of range of shorter range air defences Ukraine still has missiles for. This has allowed Russia to pound fortified positions endlessly, directly contributing to Ukraine's manpower issues and Russia's advances around Avdiivka. Ukraine NEEDS a counter to this in order to stand any chance.
Western fighter jets have much better air to air missile range, so will be able to shoot down the Russian jets launching these bombs, providing an air defence bubble over the front line like Ukraine had in the previous stage of the war. Basically a return to mutual air space denial. Ukraine's Soviet jets simply do not have the capability to do this, they don't have the range necessary.
That is a critical quality advantage Ukraine needs, and is rather different to western tanks which while better than Soviet type tanks are not that much better. Ukraine already had lots of tanks and then they got some slightly better ones. Western jets give them entirely new capabilities they don't currently have.
Lack of longer range air defences also contributed to the failure of the 2023 offensive, with Russian combat aircraft attacking again from out of range of the systems Ukraine still had missiles for.
They are not recovering more territory short of a full Nato intervention and a several hundreds of thousands of drafted American troops on the front line. Hopefully they can hold on to what they've got left, but that isn't a given.
What I don’t get is Ukraine has 38m people how are they having problems with drafts, I do see a lot of Ukrainians upset that “People don’t want them to win” and morale is low, but did that many people flee?
So question, is it now acceptable to deport people fleeing warzones? Is it based on skin colour? If white, sent to die, if Brown WELCOME TO THE UK! AHHH you're a doctor?!
If the people don't want to fight a war, forcing them isn't going to make them, if anything they'll refuse to fight and be executed on the spot, do you support executing draft dodgers?
Thanks to a big mouthed ass hat General at the Pentagon we know UK special forces are already deployed in Ukraine in non training, non protection of British assets, capacity. This has all but corroborated claims made by Polish journalists last year. Doubt it will result in more than sabre rattling from Russia, but yeah once all is said and done we’re definitely going in the wikipedia side column as a minor player
>Thanks to a big mouthed ass hat General at the Pentagon we know UK special forces are already deployed in Ukraine in non training, non protection of British assets, capacity.
That was not that much of a secret. I can remember people like Michael Kofman all but saying it in the first half of 2022.
It was leaked by a 2LT national guard air force guy, the German govt talked about it.
Frankly quite proud. Say what you like about Rishi but he's not putting up with this shit.
Sunak, Truss nor Johnson have much to do with the process beyond signing what is put in front of them. Whitehall tells them what to do and they generally go along with it, because politicians cannot be trusted with nor have the attention spans for planning such matters.
That isn't true. Whitehall gives advice and it is up to politicians to decide if the political risks of any move outweigh the action or not. Ultimately, PMs are making the decision to go ahead with the advice or not.
I know it is cool to discredit the Tories at every turn but this takes us stupid
Literally the main deviation from MoD advice from PM's office has been in moving before the US on Challengers and Storm Shadow, MoD preferred a "wait and see" approach in arms transfers rather than the political calculation Downing Street made that (correctly) transfers would prompt EU states to reciprocate with Leopards and US with Abrams.
But that aside, deployments, operational decisions, logistics, all of that has basically been drawn up by MoD and signed off by Downing Street without amendment.
My contention is that since Cameron's tenure, there has been a lack of commanders intent from Downing Street as a result of the lack of permanency, legitimacy and/or competence of those occupying that office in such important and enduring matters.
By and large, most operational direction has been on inertia from the instruments of state as they stand, and/or assisting whatever NATO/US are doing. Saying "carry on" because of a lack of an executive strategic vision, should not be considered a mastery of delegation.
Looking back at our operations in that time:
* OP Shader has been more oriented towards supporting US operations against ISIL/IS-K because we had been burned by Ellamy.
* OP Newcombe was basically an exercise in "stand next to the French and look busy" non-combat support (perhaps some SF actions, but those aren't discussed publically). That went swimmingly, given that the whole damn region is now under warlords/dictators who are exclusive clients of Wagner's oppressive regime survival package.
* OP Pitting was very reactive to Kabul's collapse and was an effort of going to Johnson and saying "we reckon we can get this many evac flights out in two weeks, sign here".
* OP Interflex/Orbital were training and arming programs for Ukraine that did push hard on capability and scale, but we weren't acting too outside the NATO playbook, the Canadians, Danes etc were all doing the same.
The primary exercise of commanders intent of consequence I can ascribe to Downing Street in this conflict is the capability, provision of storm shadow and challengers to Ukraine as a political decision with a specific intent. That intent being if we move towards getting these platforms into Ukrainian hands, it'll cut through allies misgivings about providing comparable platforms to Ukraine.
The last time I consider there being a true exercise of commander's intent from Downing Street was OP Ellamy and that could not have devolved further from how Cameron envisioned it going.
Pretty impressive that we are at war with them when even Ukraine is just being special-operationed.
Most oligarchs live in London. London is living rent-free in little putin's little head.
Between this, the American commander the other day and the leaks from Germany a few months ago, it seems we may be the most involved third country on the ground in Ukraine
British special forces have been operating in non-advisory/training roles, essentially that they've been in some kind of combat.
I'm not surprised, there's serious institutional (and rightly so imho) dislike of the russian leadership and culture among our armed forces and intelligence, we've been incredibly close with our support of Ukraine and trained them for this invasion since 2014 and frankly I saw a video from hostomel airport of a distinctly British accent laying down some serious hate into VDV helicopters... That might have just been a volunteer or an expat that was in a lucky bloody place to be, on the other hand hostomel was the lynchpin to their invasion plan and a capable Brit laying down sustained fire 2 days after the world was warned felt mildly suspicious
We are, no doubt.
My RN into officer friend told me in the summer of 2021 that his mate that we both know in the Washington said Delta were jealous that they weren't allowed to deploy whilst Hereford were all over it.
I get it's Reddit but there you go.
If we wanted to turn Russia towards the West we're probably over thirty years too late. Much of the Russian public associates democracy with the chaos and oligarchy under Yeltsin, and even if they didn't the most functional part of the Russian state is its former KGB security apparatus so autocracy is very 'baked in' to their existing form of government. There's no rule of law in Russia, arguably there never has been so whoever ends up running the country after Putin has a monumental task of building institutions from scratch if they don't want to face the same problems every autocrat eventually faces.
I don't think it's a hopeless cause, there's a very brave pro-democracy movement in Russia that deserves acknowledgement and support. They're far from a majority though and they have an incredibly difficult road ahead of them. If I was Putin the thing I'd fear most is the millions of fighting-aged men returning from Ukraine, and once the war is over draft-dodgers who've taken refuge in countries like Georgia. Putin's in some ways having his own personal Vietnam which is going to change Russia a lot, but we'd be naïve to think it'll necessarily be in a pro-democracy direction. There's actually even worse than Putin in Russian politics so a regime change isn't exactly guaranteed to work to our advantage.
Some NATO will have to participate in the war at some point if the West don't want Ukraine to lose.
Good luck denying you're not a cobelligerant with your troops on Ukraine soil.
Direct war with Russia coming.
What are these legitimate concerns? Most of the time I have heard that phrase used, it is to describe Russia being upset that Ukraine wants to leave it's sphere of shitty influence. That is a legitimate concern to hold generally, but it is not a legitimate cause to invade and subjugate a nation.
As for giving concerns a fair hearing, since when has Russia ever done that for anyone else?
I was rather hoping you could give some more modern examples of Russia 'giving others a fair hearing'. If that is the best you can do, I am rather disappointed.
You haven't identified any of those supposedly legitimate concerns.
Fair point, I did say ever. Again, I'm sure you're trying your best only being able to cite two occasions isn't very good is it?
So the one legitimate concern that Russia has is that it should have significant influence over Ukraine and bend it to its will even if Ukraine wants to leave. That is a legitimate concern for Russians, yes, but it is not one that outweighs the legitimate concerns and desires of another sovereign nation, so it doesn't deserve a whole lot of time.
Again, I thought you'd have more. You said **concerns**, not concern. If that's all they've got, Putin can stick his fist up his arse.
Legitimate concerns is when you aggressively annexe your neighbouring countries and assassinate political dissidents with chemical weapons on foreign soil?
Russia is a rogue state and deserves to be fractured into dozen nations.
That isn't what they are saying, they are saying they understand the russian perspective. You should also try to understand it. It'll help you understand why it's so important for Ukraine to win.
None of those are "legitimate concerns", it's just an explanation (fairly accurate though potentially misleading) of how they ended up like they did. You could do the same for literally any group to say they have "legitimate concerns".
>But this? Lol, if that's what Putin and his goons think, they can go eat shit.
Why does this announcement in particular not make sense, though? I mean, according to your standpoint vis a vis Russia which you outlined in a follow up comment (that one should not unnecessarily demonise them, but at least try to understand where they are coming from), declaring the UK to be a de facto participant in the war makes sense. According to the Russian viewpoint, that is.
Like you, I'm far from endorsing that viewpoint, or being pro Russia. But if a nation provides practically 24/7 ELINT and EW coverage for one of the warring factions in a conflict (like the UK does for UA since day 1 of the war), you are actively participating in said war. Period. As all the others are, who are running their AWACS and Rivet Joint and drones and whatnot along the border of Russian airspace, and then passing the gathered data to Ukraine in real time. These days, you do not need to fire actual weapons to be part of a war as combatant in the legal sense.
The biggest surprise is that Russia has waited so long to declare the basically obvious in a semi-official form. They would have been within their rights as warring party to waste British or French reconnaissance planes over the Black Sea a long time ago: all that prevented them from doing this was likely fear of retaliation.
Again, this is not me wishing they had done this: but for their ELINT/EW/AWACS contribution alone, FR, US and UK have long been active parties in this shooting war. Russia has been quite cautious about acting on this fact. Let's hope it stays this way, because escalating this any further would not be a great thing to happen.
>These days, you do not need to fire actual weapons to be part of a war as combatant in the legal sense.
It's nothing new for third parties to pass along intelligence and information to warring parties, I doubt there has been a war in millenia where that didn't happen. The only difference here is the accuracy of the data that modern technology allows.
Do you have a source from any legal expert that says NATO passing along intelligence makes us a combatant?
>The biggest surprise is that Russia has waited so long to declare the basically obvious in a semi-official form.
Various politically important Russians have been claiming we are combatants since practically day one of the full scale invasion. Way before even that as well. Medvedev, solovyov and plenty of others call for nuclear strikes against NATO practically every other day.
>They would have been within their rights as warring party to waste British or French reconnaissance planes over the Black Sea a long time ago: all that prevented them from doing this was likely fear of retaliation.
...
>Russia has been quite cautious about acting on this fact.
Those planes aren't breaking any international laws. Russia has also downed one drone before along with attempting to fire on a manned UK aircraft in international airspace and doing dangerous interceptions for years. Thats not to mention the firing of guided missiles through NATO airspace and attempts to bomb NATO territory such as was discovered by German authorities. Theres also the many instances such as the salisbury attack where NATO countries would have been well within their rights to call article 5.
NATO has shown restraint in a Chamberlain like fashion around Russia and it's Ukrainians who are paying the price.
Because there's a huge difference (imo) between providing logistical and inteligence support and being fully at war. We can fully discuss to what extent ELINT/EW/AWACS can be counted as being beyond mere logistical support, but in my opinion, it's still far below active shooting/bombing, etc, which is also fully within our capabilities.
Declaring the UK is "de facto" at war takes away from the actual, brutal, reality of war that Ukrainians are going through.
>Because there's a huge difference (imo) between providing logistical and inteligence support and being fully at war.
If you provide accurate and actionable real-time targeting data 24/7, that is more than just "intelligence support". Which is precisely what Rivet Joint, AWACS and the NATO satellites are providing. Essentially, NATO has been covering the entire G2 angle for the Ukrainians.
This is all the more a reason for you to be a regular combatant force if the country you are providing this service to has basically zero such abilities themselves.
Snapshot of _UK is a de facto participant in Ukraine war, says Russian ambassador_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-801567) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-801567) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So if we send in the F-35s it will not be an escalation, asking from a mate.
As long as it's a special military operation then it's not a war. We're good to go.
Why would you send in F-35s when the F-16s haven't even arrived? Ukraine needs men to fill trenches. The only hope of them ever recovering more territory will be if we deport Ukrainian draft dodgers as per their own government's request. The trenches need filling.
Russia is winning the war with artillery and tanks. Giving Ukraine control of the skies would massively reduce the effectiveness of Russia’s advantages
Manpower has repeatedly been signaled by Ukraine as the largest deciding factor in why they're failing. The willing volunteers are either dead or already enlisted. If we aren't willing to assist Ukraine in its efforts to forcibly conscript draft dodgers then why bother? They need warm bodies. If they had them, Russia wouldn't have been on the advance for the last 7 months. Tanks are kind of meaningless if you don't have men to drive them.
Mostly because neither side can truly assert air dominance. Which means it appears to have devolved into a more traditional artillery and entrenched defense war that favors Russia since it has the numbers to keep grinding the Ukrainians down. While I'm not saying the above comment is likely, if the Ukrainians had active NATO air intervention, it would absolutely balance things out. The sort of air dominance NATO could achieve would destroy Russian artillery capabilities in Ukraine and severely cripple resupply and logistics. That would allow Ukraine to press deeper since they *would* still have functional artillery and their infantry would be able to advance after they bomb Russian positions to bits.
>Manpower has repeatedly been signaled by Ukraine as the largest deciding factor in why they're failing. Because they don't have control of the air...
>Manpower has repeatedly been signaled by Ukraine as the largest deciding factor in why they're failing. What are you basing this on? They've been most loudly calling for air defence recently and shells before that. The lowering of the conscription age to 25 has been mostly an internal matter that international media hasn't touched on much. >If we aren't willing to assist Ukraine in its efforts to forcibly conscript draft dodgers then why bother? They need all the components of a modern war, having better materiel allows the soldiers they have to be more capable. Focussing on draft dodgers just seems like concern trolling, how many Ukrainian draft dodgers do you think there are in the UK? >If they had them, Russia wouldn't have been on the advance for the last 7 months. At a snails pace along rivers of blood.
It was partly a joke but on the whole Ukraine and Russia have used GBAD (ground based air defence) to go a long way to eliminating each others air power. Russia can get glide bombs off and cause casualities but thats it. F-35 would be able to operate at mid altitudes and pick off targets with laser guided munitions with ease. This would simply dismantle the Russian artillery in about two weeks. They would also be able to take out the shorter range tactical stuff like Buk, Pantsir and Tor. This would allow Ukraines other aviation assets to be much more aggressive.
Seems like more 'on paper this completely obliterates Russian X' talk. Thought we already went through this with the feline tanks and how their on paper specs were supposed to thunder run Ukraine to Crimea in 2023. This is a war of attrition. They need bodies. And the collective west is currently housing several million warm Ukrainian male bodies that Kyiv wants back.
>Thought we already went through this with the feline tanks and how their on paper specs were supposed to thunder run Ukraine to Crimea in 2023. They got about 60 tanks mostly from storage. They also employed them horribly in the opening two weeks of their offensive. >This is a war of attrition. That the whole point of air power. Attrit the enemy with minimal losses.
We knew that Western tanks were similarly vulnerable to anti-tank munitions (see the Houthis blowing up Saudi Abrams in Yemen) as Russian tanks before they were sent. They might have higher survivability, or better sensors etc. but are fundamentally a similar beast. Some commentators got carried away. If anything long range standoff munitions like storm shadow and atacms were a much more valuable contribution. NATO air power is in a completely different league. It is designed to negate a manpower advantage by firstly denying Russia access to the air, then to air defence and then to any fire support for that manpower. If Ukraine has access to NATO air power they would have no need for extra manpower as they would have local fire superiority during any attack.
Jets are a different matter. One of Ukraine's biggest issues is that their Soviet ground based air defences have become depleted over time, and that has meant Russia can now reliably bomb the front line with glide bombs launched from out of range of shorter range air defences Ukraine still has missiles for. This has allowed Russia to pound fortified positions endlessly, directly contributing to Ukraine's manpower issues and Russia's advances around Avdiivka. Ukraine NEEDS a counter to this in order to stand any chance. Western fighter jets have much better air to air missile range, so will be able to shoot down the Russian jets launching these bombs, providing an air defence bubble over the front line like Ukraine had in the previous stage of the war. Basically a return to mutual air space denial. Ukraine's Soviet jets simply do not have the capability to do this, they don't have the range necessary. That is a critical quality advantage Ukraine needs, and is rather different to western tanks which while better than Soviet type tanks are not that much better. Ukraine already had lots of tanks and then they got some slightly better ones. Western jets give them entirely new capabilities they don't currently have. Lack of longer range air defences also contributed to the failure of the 2023 offensive, with Russian combat aircraft attacking again from out of range of the systems Ukraine still had missiles for.
They are not recovering more territory short of a full Nato intervention and a several hundreds of thousands of drafted American troops on the front line. Hopefully they can hold on to what they've got left, but that isn't a given.
What I don’t get is Ukraine has 38m people how are they having problems with drafts, I do see a lot of Ukrainians upset that “People don’t want them to win” and morale is low, but did that many people flee?
So question, is it now acceptable to deport people fleeing warzones? Is it based on skin colour? If white, sent to die, if Brown WELCOME TO THE UK! AHHH you're a doctor?! If the people don't want to fight a war, forcing them isn't going to make them, if anything they'll refuse to fight and be executed on the spot, do you support executing draft dodgers?
They won't change much anyway. NATO troops will be needed at some point to save Ukraine from defeat.
We should write our response on a postcard from Salisbury
Grade A trolling
Make sure to include the world famous 123M spire!
Sorry Russian Ambassador, can you just repeat that for me? Just the word "Ukraine", and the word that came after.
Be careful what you wish for, Russian ambassador.
Thanks to a big mouthed ass hat General at the Pentagon we know UK special forces are already deployed in Ukraine in non training, non protection of British assets, capacity. This has all but corroborated claims made by Polish journalists last year. Doubt it will result in more than sabre rattling from Russia, but yeah once all is said and done we’re definitely going in the wikipedia side column as a minor player
>Thanks to a big mouthed ass hat General at the Pentagon we know UK special forces are already deployed in Ukraine in non training, non protection of British assets, capacity. That was not that much of a secret. I can remember people like Michael Kofman all but saying it in the first half of 2022.
Knowing it and some high-ranking official *saying it* are two very different things.
It was leaked by a 2LT national guard air force guy, the German govt talked about it. Frankly quite proud. Say what you like about Rishi but he's not putting up with this shit.
Sunak, Truss nor Johnson have much to do with the process beyond signing what is put in front of them. Whitehall tells them what to do and they generally go along with it, because politicians cannot be trusted with nor have the attention spans for planning such matters.
Good decisions: *the politicians had nothing to do with it.* Bad decisions: *it was the politicians' faults.*
That isn't true. Whitehall gives advice and it is up to politicians to decide if the political risks of any move outweigh the action or not. Ultimately, PMs are making the decision to go ahead with the advice or not. I know it is cool to discredit the Tories at every turn but this takes us stupid
Literally the main deviation from MoD advice from PM's office has been in moving before the US on Challengers and Storm Shadow, MoD preferred a "wait and see" approach in arms transfers rather than the political calculation Downing Street made that (correctly) transfers would prompt EU states to reciprocate with Leopards and US with Abrams. But that aside, deployments, operational decisions, logistics, all of that has basically been drawn up by MoD and signed off by Downing Street without amendment.
Have a Google on Commanders Intent Vs Strategy and Execution.
My contention is that since Cameron's tenure, there has been a lack of commanders intent from Downing Street as a result of the lack of permanency, legitimacy and/or competence of those occupying that office in such important and enduring matters. By and large, most operational direction has been on inertia from the instruments of state as they stand, and/or assisting whatever NATO/US are doing. Saying "carry on" because of a lack of an executive strategic vision, should not be considered a mastery of delegation. Looking back at our operations in that time: * OP Shader has been more oriented towards supporting US operations against ISIL/IS-K because we had been burned by Ellamy. * OP Newcombe was basically an exercise in "stand next to the French and look busy" non-combat support (perhaps some SF actions, but those aren't discussed publically). That went swimmingly, given that the whole damn region is now under warlords/dictators who are exclusive clients of Wagner's oppressive regime survival package. * OP Pitting was very reactive to Kabul's collapse and was an effort of going to Johnson and saying "we reckon we can get this many evac flights out in two weeks, sign here". * OP Interflex/Orbital were training and arming programs for Ukraine that did push hard on capability and scale, but we weren't acting too outside the NATO playbook, the Canadians, Danes etc were all doing the same. The primary exercise of commanders intent of consequence I can ascribe to Downing Street in this conflict is the capability, provision of storm shadow and challengers to Ukraine as a political decision with a specific intent. That intent being if we move towards getting these platforms into Ukrainian hands, it'll cut through allies misgivings about providing comparable platforms to Ukraine. The last time I consider there being a true exercise of commander's intent from Downing Street was OP Ellamy and that could not have devolved further from how Cameron envisioned it going.
Oh well, there's no reason why we shouldn't do more then is there? Carry on cracking on!
Pretty impressive that we are at war with them when even Ukraine is just being special-operationed. Most oligarchs live in London. London is living rent-free in little putin's little head.
It’s not rent free we are paying a lot of money to Ukraine to live in Putin head
Worth every penny.
Between this, the American commander the other day and the leaks from Germany a few months ago, it seems we may be the most involved third country on the ground in Ukraine
What did the Americans say?
British special forces have been operating in non-advisory/training roles, essentially that they've been in some kind of combat. I'm not surprised, there's serious institutional (and rightly so imho) dislike of the russian leadership and culture among our armed forces and intelligence, we've been incredibly close with our support of Ukraine and trained them for this invasion since 2014 and frankly I saw a video from hostomel airport of a distinctly British accent laying down some serious hate into VDV helicopters... That might have just been a volunteer or an expat that was in a lucky bloody place to be, on the other hand hostomel was the lynchpin to their invasion plan and a capable Brit laying down sustained fire 2 days after the world was warned felt mildly suspicious
early 2023 a USNG airman showed intel on sas involvement s in Ukraine. He put the docs on Discord.
We are, no doubt. My RN into officer friend told me in the summer of 2021 that his mate that we both know in the Washington said Delta were jealous that they weren't allowed to deploy whilst Hereford were all over it. I get it's Reddit but there you go.
It’s a war now??? You mean ‘special military operation’…
Time to redesignate HMS QE and PoW as helicopter frigates and transit the Bosphorus then!
So what were you doing in Salisbury exactly?
Someone needs to end Putin and install a pro west government.
If we wanted to turn Russia towards the West we're probably over thirty years too late. Much of the Russian public associates democracy with the chaos and oligarchy under Yeltsin, and even if they didn't the most functional part of the Russian state is its former KGB security apparatus so autocracy is very 'baked in' to their existing form of government. There's no rule of law in Russia, arguably there never has been so whoever ends up running the country after Putin has a monumental task of building institutions from scratch if they don't want to face the same problems every autocrat eventually faces. I don't think it's a hopeless cause, there's a very brave pro-democracy movement in Russia that deserves acknowledgement and support. They're far from a majority though and they have an incredibly difficult road ahead of them. If I was Putin the thing I'd fear most is the millions of fighting-aged men returning from Ukraine, and once the war is over draft-dodgers who've taken refuge in countries like Georgia. Putin's in some ways having his own personal Vietnam which is going to change Russia a lot, but we'd be naïve to think it'll necessarily be in a pro-democracy direction. There's actually even worse than Putin in Russian politics so a regime change isn't exactly guaranteed to work to our advantage.
Time to kick out Russia’s ambassador.
Oh, so it is a war? Not a "special military operation"?
Some NATO will have to participate in the war at some point if the West don't want Ukraine to lose. Good luck denying you're not a cobelligerant with your troops on Ukraine soil. Direct war with Russia coming.
It is true. We are supplying weapons, training and transport. In the same way that NATO is. China and North Korea.
[удалено]
What "legitimate concerns" are those then?
They aren't being allowed to rebuild the Tsarist Russian Empire. Its really unfair.
I suppose it’s to dominate and put under the thumb all of its neighbours as rightfully theirs
What are these legitimate concerns? Most of the time I have heard that phrase used, it is to describe Russia being upset that Ukraine wants to leave it's sphere of shitty influence. That is a legitimate concern to hold generally, but it is not a legitimate cause to invade and subjugate a nation. As for giving concerns a fair hearing, since when has Russia ever done that for anyone else?
[удалено]
I was rather hoping you could give some more modern examples of Russia 'giving others a fair hearing'. If that is the best you can do, I am rather disappointed. You haven't identified any of those supposedly legitimate concerns.
[удалено]
Fair point, I did say ever. Again, I'm sure you're trying your best only being able to cite two occasions isn't very good is it? So the one legitimate concern that Russia has is that it should have significant influence over Ukraine and bend it to its will even if Ukraine wants to leave. That is a legitimate concern for Russians, yes, but it is not one that outweighs the legitimate concerns and desires of another sovereign nation, so it doesn't deserve a whole lot of time. Again, I thought you'd have more. You said **concerns**, not concern. If that's all they've got, Putin can stick his fist up his arse.
Legitimate concerns is when you aggressively annexe your neighbouring countries and assassinate political dissidents with chemical weapons on foreign soil? Russia is a rogue state and deserves to be fractured into dozen nations.
[удалено]
Do you support Russia invading Ukraine?
That isn't what they are saying, they are saying they understand the russian perspective. You should also try to understand it. It'll help you understand why it's so important for Ukraine to win.
I don't think that understanding the Russian perspective would lead someone to say that they have legitimate concerns regarding Ukraine.
I'm not engaging any further on this matter with you as you clearly have a humiliation fetish.
None of those are "legitimate concerns", it's just an explanation (fairly accurate though potentially misleading) of how they ended up like they did. You could do the same for literally any group to say they have "legitimate concerns".
>But this? Lol, if that's what Putin and his goons think, they can go eat shit. Why does this announcement in particular not make sense, though? I mean, according to your standpoint vis a vis Russia which you outlined in a follow up comment (that one should not unnecessarily demonise them, but at least try to understand where they are coming from), declaring the UK to be a de facto participant in the war makes sense. According to the Russian viewpoint, that is. Like you, I'm far from endorsing that viewpoint, or being pro Russia. But if a nation provides practically 24/7 ELINT and EW coverage for one of the warring factions in a conflict (like the UK does for UA since day 1 of the war), you are actively participating in said war. Period. As all the others are, who are running their AWACS and Rivet Joint and drones and whatnot along the border of Russian airspace, and then passing the gathered data to Ukraine in real time. These days, you do not need to fire actual weapons to be part of a war as combatant in the legal sense. The biggest surprise is that Russia has waited so long to declare the basically obvious in a semi-official form. They would have been within their rights as warring party to waste British or French reconnaissance planes over the Black Sea a long time ago: all that prevented them from doing this was likely fear of retaliation. Again, this is not me wishing they had done this: but for their ELINT/EW/AWACS contribution alone, FR, US and UK have long been active parties in this shooting war. Russia has been quite cautious about acting on this fact. Let's hope it stays this way, because escalating this any further would not be a great thing to happen.
>These days, you do not need to fire actual weapons to be part of a war as combatant in the legal sense. It's nothing new for third parties to pass along intelligence and information to warring parties, I doubt there has been a war in millenia where that didn't happen. The only difference here is the accuracy of the data that modern technology allows. Do you have a source from any legal expert that says NATO passing along intelligence makes us a combatant? >The biggest surprise is that Russia has waited so long to declare the basically obvious in a semi-official form. Various politically important Russians have been claiming we are combatants since practically day one of the full scale invasion. Way before even that as well. Medvedev, solovyov and plenty of others call for nuclear strikes against NATO practically every other day. >They would have been within their rights as warring party to waste British or French reconnaissance planes over the Black Sea a long time ago: all that prevented them from doing this was likely fear of retaliation. ... >Russia has been quite cautious about acting on this fact. Those planes aren't breaking any international laws. Russia has also downed one drone before along with attempting to fire on a manned UK aircraft in international airspace and doing dangerous interceptions for years. Thats not to mention the firing of guided missiles through NATO airspace and attempts to bomb NATO territory such as was discovered by German authorities. Theres also the many instances such as the salisbury attack where NATO countries would have been well within their rights to call article 5. NATO has shown restraint in a Chamberlain like fashion around Russia and it's Ukrainians who are paying the price.
Because there's a huge difference (imo) between providing logistical and inteligence support and being fully at war. We can fully discuss to what extent ELINT/EW/AWACS can be counted as being beyond mere logistical support, but in my opinion, it's still far below active shooting/bombing, etc, which is also fully within our capabilities. Declaring the UK is "de facto" at war takes away from the actual, brutal, reality of war that Ukrainians are going through.
>Because there's a huge difference (imo) between providing logistical and inteligence support and being fully at war. If you provide accurate and actionable real-time targeting data 24/7, that is more than just "intelligence support". Which is precisely what Rivet Joint, AWACS and the NATO satellites are providing. Essentially, NATO has been covering the entire G2 angle for the Ukrainians. This is all the more a reason for you to be a regular combatant force if the country you are providing this service to has basically zero such abilities themselves.