Well, this is interesting [1];
Wrecked Russian fighter jets are being found with rudimentary GPS receivers “taped to the dashboards” in Ukraine because their inbuilt navigation systems are so bad, the UK’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said.
This is getting beyond absurd…
In his Monday speech, Wallace said Russian vehicles “are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them” and that soldiers were using “pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks” and attaching “overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks.
There are two points to be made here.
First, it’s obvious that the Russian military is not ready for prime time. It’s becoming obvious to observers that what Putin has at his disposal is an ill trained and ill-equipped military, to the point where Ukraine could have marched on Moscow and they wanted to. Essentially, Russia is facing the same problems today that they were facing in Afghanistan. In fact, the problems have from all appearances gotten worse than that.
One would have thought that Putin’s generals would have told him that. And even if they hadn’t it should be obvious to him by now that Russia isn’t going to get anywhere with these attacks.
Let’s assume for the moment that Putin did know the condition of his military before he gave the order to invade. Why would he have given the order when he did? The only answer to that is strategically speaking he knew that the United States was not a worry for the moment; the worst that he would receive from the Democrats would be a symbolic tongue-lashing, but nothing more consequential than that. And after watching this White House becoming screw up Central, he knew that he needed to move now because at the next election cycle we’d have somebody with some intelligence and some Stones back in the White House. All that forced his hand to attack when he did.
The other point to consider here is that Russia has repeatedly over the last 30 years been exposed as a toothless tiger… But never more so than the current example. When you consider that the Russian military is being held off by a ragtag bunch of ukrainians, the question becomes whether or not Russia would be able to defend its own turf much less turf that it’s supposedly taken over. I know of a number of high school football teams that could probably conquer more territory than the Russian military has in this case.
However, that can go one of two ways. He can either admit his current situation and back down, or he can get desperately stupid, or perhaps more correctly stupid because he’s desperate. If he does that there’s still the store of nuclear arms to consider. The thing is if nuclear weapons are in the same shape as his ground forces and his Air Force, his nuclear rockets are just as likely to land on Moscow as any place else. To be followed in short order by ours and that of about half a dozen other nations who have just about had enough.
All of this assumes of course that he remains in power which is also a question mark. The Democrats here in the States, are still firmly convinced that Hillary Clinton lost the election because of Putin’s interference, despite all evidence to the contrary. In short, they believe their own hype. There’s a goodly number of them wanting to depose Putin for that reason.
Indisputably, there’s a large number of variables here. That said and however this works out, I believe we can safely say that it’s not going to end well for Putin.