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 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not in a million years. Putin wants Crimea for its strategic location and ports. Nuking it would be pointless and make the area useless for what he wants out of it. Especially not when he can easily take it by force.

The US could have taken Japan by force too, but it was easier to force a surrender by nuking two cities. Heck, he could have launched a low yield and not even damaged more than a few square blocks and still forced a capitulation.

You don't order your nukes to stand by to launch without a reason.


And, bluntly, no, you can do a direct hit on a city and have it livable again within a few years. Particularly if you're not overly concerned about long life spans.

The expected US loses for taking Japan would have been massive. Russia would have it easier.

Putin wasn't going to nuke Crimea, it wasn't necessary. But he would have used them if necessary against any possible western military response.

Yeah, Russia would have lost a couple hundred to maybe a couple thousand men taking Crimea at most.

The invasion of Japan was estimated to, by very conservative estimates, cause between 500 thousand and a million allied casualties in the first two months. The 90 day planned invasion of Kyushu island alone was estimated to be 456 thousand casualties, going up to 1.2 million if it took twice as long.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31899680

Well, Putin got to show off in an interview earlier, announcing that he had ordered Russia's nuclear weapons to combat readiness as part of their takeover of Crimea.

Yes, that's right, he was ready to start World War three over Crimea.

One must now ask the question, if the people of Crimea had opposed Putin's annexation of their country, if they would have been on the receiving end of those nukes.

Not in a million years. Putin wants Crimea for its strategic location and ports. Nuking it would be pointless and make the area useless for what he wants out of it. Especially not when he can easily take it by force.

Putin did not want all of Crimea, that was just a bonus. What he really wanted was Sevastopol and the naval base there. But I do not think he would have nuked Crimea even if they had resisted. Nuking the place would not have been good for his approval ratings and is much harder to cover up than using the naval infantry from Sevastopol to "restore order".

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Putin did not want all of Crimea, that was just a bonus. What he really wanted was Sevastopol and the naval base there. But I do not think he would have nuked Crimea even if they had resisted. Nuking the place would not have been good for his approval ratings and is much harder to cover up than using the naval infantry from Sevastopol to "restore order".

According ot the man himself, he ordered nuclear weapons made ready for immediate use. So, what was he gonna use them on then?

The US? (WW3)

Western Europe? (Again, WW3.)

The Ukraine? (Aside from the fallout in Russia [in more ways than one] seems a bit overkill)

Crimea? Again, overkill, but remember that any actual resistance would have easily overwhelmed the initial Russian troop presence there. Threatening them with nuclear weapons if they didn't yield would be an alternate way to bring the issue to a rapid conclusion. (One way or the other).

Aren't Russian nuclear weapons always ready for immediate use? you know, MAD and all that.

 Tyran wrote:
Aren't Russian nuclear weapons always ready for immediate use? you know, MAD and all that.

If it's anything like the U.S., branches have different readiness levels, depending on what's going on. Probably something like the DEFCON system. Of course, this is Russia we're talking about, so 'maximum readiness' might translate to 'bust out the duct tape'.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, Russia would have lost a couple hundred to maybe a couple thousand men taking Crimea at most.

The invasion of Japan was estimated to, by very conservative estimates, cause between 500 thousand and a million allied casualties in the first two months. The 90 day planned invasion of Kyushu island alone was estimated to be 456 thousand casualties, going up to 1.2 million if it took twice as long.

Not taking into account civilian casualties or the ridiculous number dying from radiation poisoning years later (they either didn't know the full effects of nuclear weapons or thought they were acceptable. The tactics were to use them like conventional artillery, marching the troops in immediately after the nukes went off). So many Purple Hearts were made for Operation Downfall that they're still being awarded new today.

Putin would have to be insane to even consider using nukes at all. Unless someone's marching on Moscow then I doubt it would be anywhere near the table. Start launching those things and you set a president that anyone can do the same and their use will start cropping up all over. Of all the times since WWII people have considered using the things that's the reason why they've never been deployed again (we could have lived in a world without a communist China had it not been pointed out to the Americans that the Russians also happened to have nukes...).

We weren't ever going to use nukes in response to what Russia did in Ukraine so does Putin think he needs to get his ready? Is this just another bit of fearmongering to show his own population that he's a strong leader that means business, or is he genuinely paranoid about a strike from abroad?

 Tyran wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not in a million years. Putin wants Crimea for its strategic location and ports. Nuking it would be pointless and make the area useless for what he wants out of it. Especially not when he can easily take it by force.

The US could have taken Japan by force too, but it was easier to force a surrender by nuking two cities. Heck, he could have launched a low yield and not even damaged more than a few square blocks and still forced a capitulation.

You don't order your nukes to stand by to launch without a reason.


And, bluntly, no, you can do a direct hit on a city and have it livable again within a few years. Particularly if you're not overly concerned about long life spans.

The expected US loses for taking Japan would have been massive. Russia would have it easier.

Putin wasn't going to nuke Crimea, it wasn't necessary. But he would have used them if necessary against any possible western military response.

To be fair, in hindsight, the realistic losses for a US invasion of Japan likely would have been relatively light as Japan was out of fuel (a single US carrier group's fuel usage for 1 month was more than all of Japan's national reserves), out of critical supplies for war materiel, had huge numbers of troops stuck overseas, would soon have been starving, and the entire industrial and transportation network was largely already smashed

If someone had an idea, just for a moment, that Russia wanted to use nukes against Crimea - he absolutely has no understanding what's going on here. You have no need to nuke somebody, who is waiting for you with hope and love.

Bringing an army in standby mode was absolutely adequate action in those circumstances, who knew how will behave some countries. You always have to be ready. And during this interview Putin said many times that standby mode was entered in case of external attack. Defending, not attacking.

And if somebody doesn't know, in every nuclear country part of their nukes are always in standby mode, ensuring nuclear parity.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not in a million years. Putin wants Crimea for its strategic location and ports. Nuking it would be pointless and make the area useless for what he wants out of it. Especially not when he can easily take it by force.

The US could have taken Japan by force too, but it was easier to force a surrender by nuking two cities. Heck, he could have launched a low yield and not even damaged more than a few square blocks and still forced a capitulation.

You don't order your nukes to stand by to launch without a reason.


And, bluntly, no, you can do a direct hit on a city and have it livable again within a few years. Particularly if you're not overly concerned about long life spans.

The expected US loses for taking Japan would have been massive. Russia would have it easier.

Putin wasn't going to nuke Crimea, it wasn't necessary. But he would have used them if necessary against any possible western military response.

To be fair, in hindsight, the realistic losses for a US invasion of Japan likely would have been relatively light as Japan was out of fuel (a single US carrier group's fuel usage for 1 month was more than all of Japan's national reserves), out of critical supplies for war materiel, had huge numbers of troops stuck overseas, would soon have been starving, and the entire industrial and transportation network was largely already smashed

Fourteen million casualties was one estimate, not taking into account the aftermath... That was under the assumption that the Japanese wouldn't surrender after the first found of nukes (ie more bombings after the first two). Given that they were training children to fight with bamboo spears and handing out bomb vests like sweets the Americans perhaps thought they were being conservative in their response.

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not in a million years. Putin wants Crimea for its strategic location and ports. Nuking it would be pointless and make the area useless for what he wants out of it. Especially not when he can easily take it by force.

The US could have taken Japan by force too, but it was easier to force a surrender by nuking two cities. Heck, he could have launched a low yield and not even damaged more than a few square blocks and still forced a capitulation.

You don't order your nukes to stand by to launch without a reason.


And, bluntly, no, you can do a direct hit on a city and have it livable again within a few years. Particularly if you're not overly concerned about long life spans.

The expected US loses for taking Japan would have been massive. Russia would have it easier.

Putin wasn't going to nuke Crimea, it wasn't necessary. But he would have used them if necessary against any possible western military response.

To be fair, in hindsight, the realistic losses for a US invasion of Japan likely would have been relatively light as Japan was out of fuel (a single US carrier group's fuel usage for 1 month was more than all of Japan's national reserves), out of critical supplies for war materiel, had huge numbers of troops stuck overseas, would soon have been starving, and the entire industrial and transportation network was largely already smashed

Fourteen million casualties was one estimate, not taking into account the aftermath... That was under the assumption that the Japanese wouldn't surrender after the first found of nukes (ie more bombings after the first two). Given that they were training children to fight with bamboo spears and handing out bomb vests like sweets the Americans perhaps thought they were being conservative in their response.

This. The Japanese government had their population convinced every US soldier was a raping, murdering psychopath whose sole function in life was to torture as many Japanese as humanly possible. Throw that sort of motivation on top of the fact that they would have been fighting for their homes and they had the makings for a Grade A cluster-feth on their hands. Our troops would have had to worry about grenades being thrown from every window and door, spears behind every bush, and traps every few feet. It would have been a meat-grinder. On top of that, commanders would have had to start worrying about unit discipline; that sort of situation would have bread hate like a wildfire, and some of our troops would have started taking that out on the civilian population, which would have started a cycle of violence that would have spiraled real quick. The A-bombs were probably humane when compared to the gak-hole and invasion would have turned Japan into.

The sad thing was a lot of the time Japanese soldiers wanted to surrender, they weren't allowed to.

"by the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners."

Really bad gak goes down in wars.

Nobody is going to use Nukes over anything happening in Ukraine. That's ridiculous.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
The sad thing was a lot of the time Japanese soldiers wanted to surrender, they weren't allowed to.

"by the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners."

Really bad gak goes down in wars.

That scene in the Pacific where a Japanese soldier exits a bunker, unarmed, and the American soldier holds his fire only for another soldier to gun the guy down comes to mind (saying something like, "so what? It was just a Jap"). Rather that whole series and its predecessor really. Its glazed over, but its hardly like the victors in any war are nearly quite as clean as history remembers them (what's the adage? When the Allies come to town expect them to steal anything and everything. That's a given, but its the Americans that you have to worry about. They know what they can pawn back home and won't waste their time on anything else). Humans are A-holes, its just flags that separate who's right and wrong some times. =P

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:
The sad thing was a lot of the time Japanese soldiers wanted to surrender, they weren't allowed to.

"by the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners."

Really bad gak goes down in wars.

That scene in the Pacific where a Japanese soldier exits a bunker, unarmed, and the American soldier holds his fire only for another soldier to gun the guy down comes to mind (saying something like, "so what? It was just a Jap"). Rather that whole series and its predecessor really. Its glazed over, but its hardly like the victors in any war are nearly quite as clean as history remembers them (what's the adage? When the Allies come to town expect them to steal anything and everything. That's a given, but its the Americans that you have to worry about. They know what they can pawn back home and won't waste their time on anything else). Humans are A-holes, its just flags that separate who's right and wrong some times. =P

History is written by the victorious.

Asadjud wrote:
If someone had an idea, just for a moment, that Russia wanted to use nukes against Crimea - he absolutely has no understanding what's going on here. You have no need to nuke somebody, who is waiting for you with hope and love..

Except Putin didn't actually know that when he made these calls. He started issuing orders the moment that the former government was clearly on his way out, by his own admission. As far as he knew, the Ukrainian military might have made a fight for it, or that his advisors were wrong about Crimea's interest. They've been wrong before.

Putin is not dumb, he has plans A, b, C, D, and so on.

Nuclear parity in this case is a hilarious excuse. By treaty, Ukraine, and by extension Crimea, were not only nuke free, but members of the nuclear non proliferation treaty. Without a full NATO membership, the odds of NATO members launching nukes in defense of Crimea/Ukraine is laughable, and even with full membership is remote.

Yup, nukes are a no-win situation for the person who uses them first.

Russia, the US, China, etc... none of these countries will use a Nuke unless another does so first.

The people who will be first to use a nuclear weapon would be a terrorist organization or a rogue state like North Korea who have nothing left to lose or fear from a counter strike. Terrorists getting a bomb and setting it off is significantly more likely though. It is possible though for a terrorist bomb to initiate a nuclear war through mistaken origin of the bomb and/or another country trying to take advantage of the chaos.

Yesterday In Konstantinovka city Ukrainian APC knocked down to death 6 year old child with mother. As usual our military remain unpunished so people started riot, military opened fire,
the "party" is still going on now.
Third truce may be the shortest.

Also yesterday in Mariupol there was 3 road accidents with Ukrainian military. Drunk military on armored cars are so nice... And again and again and again they are innocent. And who has the opposite view - he is the Kremlin agent


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Except Putin didn't actually know that when he made these calls.

Putin actually knew that. It was crystal clear to everyone familiar with Crimea. It was crystal clear for me 5 years ago when I first went to Crimea for vacation. People can joke as they want about 93% , but in fact Crimeans approve reunion with Russia absolutely.
How could respond Ukrainian military - yes, this is hard question, and of course Putin had alternative plans. But the Ukrainian army reacted so as one must react after 23 years of devastation.


UPD: some protesters will be charged with aiding terrorists article - said deputy chief of police in the Donetsk region Ilya Kiva on Radio "Vesti".
So unexpected...

Putin eats babies!

See, I can make horrible claims without backing them up about someone I don't like too!

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Putin eats babies!

See, I can make horrible claims without backing them up about someone I don't like too!

Here:


Information in English:
http://fortruss.blogspot.nl/2015/03/ukrainian-bmp-runs-over-mom-with-kids.html

Now you show me when Putin eat babies?

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:
The sad thing was a lot of the time Japanese soldiers wanted to surrender, they weren't allowed to.

"by the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners."

Really bad gak goes down in wars.

That scene in the Pacific where a Japanese soldier exits a bunker, unarmed, and the American soldier holds his fire only for another soldier to gun the guy down comes to mind (saying something like, "so what? It was just a Jap"). Rather that whole series and its predecessor really. Its glazed over, but its hardly like the victors in any war are nearly quite as clean as history remembers them (what's the adage? When the Allies come to town expect them to steal anything and everything. That's a given, but its the Americans that you have to worry about. They know what they can pawn back home and won't waste their time on anything else). Humans are A-holes, its just flags that separate who's right and wrong some times. =P

It was more than callousness. US soldiers had learned from experience that Japanese soldiers "surrendering" usually had bombs on them, or were right in front of another soldier who was going to come out shooting/going BOOM.

The video doesn't actually show anyone getting run over by a BMP. I don't doubt that it could have happened (I'd even agree that it's likely it did), but that video isn't evidence of anything other than an angry man kicking in the window of a car.

EDIT: Wow, that blog makes Fox News look fair and balanced. Masquerading as a news source without even bothering to even attempt to hide their bias is rather despicable, and makes me question the legitimacy of anything they post.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The video doesn't actually show anyone getting run over by a BMP. I don't doubt that it could have happened (I'd even agree that it's likely it did), but that video isn't evidence of anything other than an angry man kicking in the window of a car.

The baby carriage or whatever it was did not really look run over by an armored vehicle. It was way too intact/not flat enough. Could be the angle, but I don't see a turret and the doors look more like those on an MTLB, not a BMP (though getting run over by either would constitute having a bad day). 14 or so tons is a lot of weight.

So, if I will add some link to BBC or CNN or something like that - my post will be true, if not - this is a lie. And if in western news some event is not mentioned - this does not happened.
People, you have no way to check my posts or posts from your news. Have some criticism. Most of news are going without any photo- or videofacts, and just adding a BBC stamp means nothing, so you have just to believe it.
And what did you expect? Someone filmed the moment of death? I can find some video with dead little girl on a street with local post-soviet decorations, will it look truthful to you? How can you determine the truth it or not?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CptJake wrote:

The baby carriage or whatever it was did not really look run over by an armored vehicle. It was way too intact/not flat enough. Could be the angle, but I don't see a turret and the doors look more like those on an MTLB, not a BMP (though getting run over by either would constitute having a bad day). 14 or so tons is a lot of weight.

In accident suffered two children. One is dead, another one is luckily not even injured. Maybe shoved baby carriage belongs to second one.

The problem here is that neither the Russian, Ukrainian or Western news can be considered reliable as all of them are going to have considerable bias.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The video doesn't actually show anyone getting run over by a BMP. I don't doubt that it could have happened (I'd even agree that it's likely it did), but that video isn't evidence of anything other than an angry man kicking in the window of a car.

EDIT: Wow, that blog makes Fox News look fair and balanced. Masquerading as a news source without even bothering to even attempt to hide their bias is rather despicable, and makes me question the legitimacy of anything they post.

Did you even see the video? It shows a MT-LB vehicle crashed at the side of the road and at least one dead body behind it.
The blog is biased, of course it is. All media is biased one way or another, and this blog does not pretend to be otherwise. Take salt with you if you must, but do not disregard a message for its messenger. It is the only kind of place where you will find this information, because pro-Ukrainian and Western media are also heavily biased and will not report on this kind of incident.


Here you can see it better. If this is not enough proof for you, than the problem is with you. We have a crashed APC, dead people, blood, a lot of witnesses and an angry crowd. I would say that is plenty of evidence for saying that means that the APC ran over some people. Or maybe you are just so biased that you can't see reality anymore? For how could the glorious infallible and totally not-fascist Ukrainian Army ever make any mistakes in its operation against terrorists and the evil Russian hordes and their monstrous dicator?

 CptJake wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The video doesn't actually show anyone getting run over by a BMP. I don't doubt that it could have happened (I'd even agree that it's likely it did), but that video isn't evidence of anything other than an angry man kicking in the window of a car.

The baby carriage or whatever it was did not really look run over by an armored vehicle. It was way too intact/not flat enough. Could be the angle, but I don't see a turret and the doors look more like those on an MTLB, not a BMP (though getting run over by either would constitute having a bad day). 14 or so tons is a lot of weight.

The vehicle was an MT-LB, not BMP. The carriage itself was not run over, only the mother pushing it and her older daughter. The child died on the spot, and the mother later in hospital. The baby was not injured afaik.

 Tyran wrote:
The problem here is that neither the Russian, Ukrainian or Western news can be considered reliable as all of them are going to have considerable bias.

Trying to make the BBC, CNN or, in this case, even RT equivalent to a page that classifies the piece of news as being about "war crimes" and speculatiing that this is due to the people dead being considered "subhuman" is a farce. If we consider what we know, which is that all evidenve points to an 8-ish year old child's dead due to being run over by a BNP, there's really not much else we can say yet. We don't know if it was on purpose, we don't know if it was an accident. Calling it a "warcrime" is premature and blatantly an attack on the blog's political enemies.

Yes, everyone has a bias, but there's degrees of insanity as well. Leaving out reporting on stories is potentially bad (even then there's no way in hell this could be reliably confirmed), outright propaganda is another thing.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Here you can see it better. If this is not enough proof for you, than the problem is with you. We have a crashed APC, dead people, blood, a lot of witnesses and an angry crowd. I would say that is plenty of evidence for saying that means that the APC ran over some people. Or maybe you are just so biased that you can't see reality anymore? For how could the glorious infallible and totally not-fascist Ukrainian Army ever make any mistakes in its operation against terrorists and the evil Russian hordes and their monstrous dicator?

You'll note that I said that I agree that it's likely that said incident happened, but that the previous video you linked provided little evidence in itself. But please, do attack me for being biased while setting up a strawman so you can bash Ukraine some more. I've never claimed that there aren't some rather unpleasant people (to say the least) involved in the Ukranian side, so I'd be much obliged if you stopped pretending I did. Just for future reference, this:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
On the other hand, the opposition is partially neo-nazis as well. There's some rather unsavory types on both sides.

is my first post in this thread, the 11th post in the thread in total.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Did you even see the video? It shows a MT-LB vehicle crashed at the side of the road and at least one dead body behind it.
The blog is biased, of course it is. All media is biased one way or another, and this blog does not pretend to be otherwise. Take salt with you if you must, but do not disregard a message for its messenger. It is the only kind of place where you will find this information, because pro-Ukrainian and Western media are also heavily biased and will not report on this kind of incident.

Here you can see it better. If this is not enough proof for you, than the problem is with you. We have a crashed APC, dead people, blood, a lot of witnesses and an angry crowd. I would say that is plenty of evidence for saying that means that the APC ran over some people. Or maybe you are just so biased that you can't see reality anymore? For how could the glorious infallible and totally not-fascist Ukrainian Army ever make any mistakes in its operation against terrorists and the evil Russian hordes and their monstrous dicator?

You do realize that the only thing that that video proves is that an APC had an accident and probably killed those two people as a result of that accident? Because if it was on purpose then why is the APC still there, crashed?

Saying that it "ran over some people" is just another example of you guys spreading propaganda.

PhantomViper wrote:

You do realize that the only thing that that video proves is that an APC had an accident and probably killed those two people as a result of that accident? Because if it was on purpose then why is the APC still there, crashed?

Saying that it "ran over some people" is just another example of you guys spreading propaganda.

With such logic you can say that people in Kiev at 2014 came to the Maidan because they felt lonely and set fires because they felt cold. It's just a solipsism.