History in the Making: Russian Invasion

ok this is silly. They hit Poland, presumably by accident. Let's take a geography lesson and note that this is the WESTERN border or Ukraine. Russia's army must be incompetent. Of all of the bordering countries to hit, Poland is the least likely to take this lightly, and has the most firepower to respond with immediately. This could be very bad.

Sick em Poland.

This village is fifteen miles from the border!!!!

The western border!!!!

The interesting question will be:  What will be Russia's response?

My guess it will be a quazi not-really-apology done in the most dickish way possible.  E.g. "Unfortunate, but such things can happen when you interfere with the righteous cause of unifying a people and ridding the world of nazi's "

It's probably, very unlikely Poland will make any actual response (such as attacking something).  It's definitely got to be making other NATO countries nervous about the potential though.

tuna55 said:

This village is fifteen miles from the border!!!!

 

The western border!!!!

(not real Russian response):

"Sir, you clearly underestimate our ability to F up a military action.  Have you even been paying attention for the last 9 months?!"  

tuna55 said:

This could be very bad.

This.

I fear the new Axis of Evil is going to be Russia, China, Iran, and N. Korea.

We do have satellites, radars, and airborne radars, that closely track such things.

BTW - the town looks to be maybe at most 5 miles over the boarder (scale, lower right).  Still a big miss though since there does not seem to be anything obvious on the other side of the border.

preach (dudeist priest) said:

tuna55 said:

This could be very bad.

This.

I fear the new Axis of Evil is going to be Russia, China, Iran, and N. Korea.

I think China would nope the heck out of WW3, they don't want to back the other autocracies THAT much, they're too pragmatic...Iran's population wouldn't be too enthusiastic about it either, especially at this moment, that would be more likely to trigger a full-scale revolt.

Right now, I am 99 and 44/100ths% sure that there are conversations happening between Poland, the US, Germany, and the UK, and probably NATO's political side as well. I very, very strongly suspect that all of the voices speaking to the Poles right now are telling them to be very careful about what they say and how they say it.

This has happened before, in Croatia and Romania (both drones, not missiles, but the fundamental problem is the same, especially in the Croatian case). No matter where the missiles came from, this is going to be treated as an unfortunate accident. Now, if it happens again, then it becomes harder to excuse. But exactly zero NATO members want to even think about invoking Article 5, because doing so over something so minor and plausibly deniable would inevitably create an incredible amount of division among member states. This will be a talking point for a few days, but barring any further cross-border incursions, it will die a quick death in the media cycle, and everyone will be happy about it.

Edit: Zelensky quoted in the Jerusalem Post: "How many times has Ukraine said that the terrorist state will not be limited to our country? It is only a matter of time before Russian terror goes further," added Zelensky. "The longer Russia feels impunity, the more threats there will be to anyone within reach of Russian missiles. To fire missiles at NATO territory. This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a very significant escalation. We must act."

Attempting to use this to drag NATO into the conflict is exactly why NATO leadership wants it to go away. Zelensky is not doing himself or his cause any favors by these sorts of over-zealous public calls for escalation, and privately there's more and more chatter among Western leaders about pushing Zelensky toward a near-term settlement.

In reply to 02Pilot :

Zelensky also has to play to his own people, though, too.  Anything less than demonizing anything at all Russia does could harm his position at home.  He probably knows nothing will come out of this.

In reply to eastsideTim :

It's a fair point, though I don't know that he has any real domestic opposition at this stage. Demonizing Russia is not the same as calling for NATO to respond, which is basically what he's doing. I understand his approach - the British did the same thing in both World Wars to try to draw the US in - but this incident isn't going to get him very far, and he should know enough not to overplay it. I think he's gotten used to using media exposure and public statements to steer Western policy in a way that may prove fleeting as time passes.

So far, the only response from Russia on the missile strike in Poland is to deny their munitions were falling anywhere near there. Complete denial seems the most likely outcome. 

Looks like they overshot the power plant

I guess I guessed wrong:

Their response is more of a "stop hitting yourself" a-hole response.

Russian Ministry of Defense calls reports of missile strikes in Poland "a deliberate provocation aimed at escalation", denies that photos of debris of the missile appeared on the media are part of Russian missiles

The US should publish the missile tracks and ask how they allowed Ukrainians into Russia to launch the missiles.  I would think it would be useful to prove it was a Russian missile.  Not for escalation purposes, but as another reminder of how reckless the Russians are.

tuna55 said:

ok this is silly. They hit Poland, presumably by accident. Let's take a geography lesson and note that this is the WESTERN border or Ukraine. Russia's army must be incompetent. Of all of the bordering countries to hit, Poland is the least likely to take this lightly, and has the most firepower to respond with immediately. This could be very bad.

I'll be honest, I'm still surprised Germany didn't make more of a stink about their embassy being hit.

Mr_Asa said:

tuna55 said:

ok this is silly. They hit Poland, presumably by accident. Let's take a geography lesson and note that this is the WESTERN border or Ukraine. Russia's army must be incompetent. Of all of the bordering countries to hit, Poland is the least likely to take this lightly, and has the most firepower to respond with immediately. This could be very bad.

I'll be honest, I'm still surprised Germany didn't make more of a stink about their embassy being hit.

Me too. Even though embassies are supposed to be property of the country that runs them, it seems like everybody understands that that's not really exactly the case.

so, are there actually missile traces showing their paths originating within Russia?  Is it possibly a Ukraine false flag action?  my apologies if i've used the term "false flag" incorrectly.

Your use of false flag is correct.  Doing something to make it look like someone else did it (normally used to justify your own attack or action).

I think it's almost certain there is proof, but I can not say for sure.  Ukraine is under pretty heavy surveillance.  There may be some security concerns (as in, how exactly did you capture these, and how accurate they are) that might make the military not want to release them though.

It certainly would be possible for Ukraine to do some semi-credible false flag attacks since they use a lot of the same weapons.  But there is that surveillance.

In reply to aircooled :

Can you imagine the E36 M3show that would result from tracks showing the missile in question originated in Ukrainian-controlled territory? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot - that's a guaranteed way to lose Western support, and faster than anything the Russians could do. If the Ukrainians want to play that game it's not going to end well for them, but I think it's highly unlikely.

I think there are 3 scenarios that are plausible at this time.

1. Russia attempted to attack the EU/UKR power intergrid facility on the UKR/POL border with a missile. Ukraine fired a lot of S-300 SAMs to intercept, 1 missed and hit this village about 10 miles away from that interconnect.

2. Russia attempted to attack the EU/UKR power intergrid facility on the UKR/POL border with a cruise missile. The cruise missile missed and hit Poland
2A. Russia deliberately attacked a small food production plant in Poland with same missile to see what happens (I consider this VERY unlikely)

3. Russia launched a S-300 in surface to surface mode from Belarus at either the intergrid facility or POL and missed. This would be at the very extreme range of a S-300 in surface to surface mode (unknown but around 70 miles, this would require 90 miles)

My opinion is that #1 is the most likely, and probably explains a lot of similar inexplicable missile strikes on seemingly arbitrary civilian areas.

Polish PM Morawiecki: "I am calling on all Poles to remain calm in the face of this tragedy... We must exercise restraint and caution." and "We decided to increase the combat readiness of selected units of the Polish armed forces, with particular emphasis on airspace monitoring."

Polish President Duda: "We do not have any conclusive evidence at the moment as to who launched this missile... it was most likely a Russian-made missile, but this is all still under investigation at the moment.”

This all sounds very much like what you'd expect from people who wanted a story to go away. The most significant response I can plausibly envision would be a deployment of US air defense units along the border, but more likely it will be a strictly Polish affair.

preach (dudeist priest) said:

tuna55 said:

This could be very bad.

This.

I fear the new Axis of Evil is going to be Russia, China, Iran, and N. Korea.

I would exclude China. They aren't ACTUALLY going to do anything to mess up exports with their largest trading partner, the US. Just as an example, they export more to the US than the ENTIRE EUROPEAN UNION. A certain segment thinks "they will call the loans" but there is the saying that "If you owe the bank $100, it's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, it's the banks problem." The money and exact wording change depending where you see it, but I think everyone understands the intent. 

I have more thoughts on the China thing, but it gets too close to political and I don't want to get the thread locked and myself banned. 

I wonder what this means:

Biden said earlier that preliminary information suggested it is unlikely the missile was fired from within Russia.
 

I mean, it could have come from an occupied area, but that would seem to be an unnecessarily long shot.  Whether it came from an occupied area or Russia, I cannot imagine it makes much difference, so why make that distinction?