The current War in Ukraine has a lot of examples of both of these. I don’t include anything Vladimir Putin has said in either category. His utterances are just plain lies. But there are other examples. When I first heard that some NATO. former Warsaw Pact, nations were going to give Ukraine fighter aircraft my first reaction was disbelief. Ukrainian pilots aren’t trained to fly Western aircraft. How could that be true. Then I heard that began to sound more realistic. I even heard that Ukrainian pilots were being sent to Poland to fly the aircraft home. Then the complications began to surface. How would they do that? Flying from a NATO country would seem to be a direct intervention by NATO in defense of a non-NATO member. Looked to me like a potential fuse for a much wider conflict. It seems I wasn’t the only one with such thoughts. The possible donor countries; Poland, Slovakia, and Bulgaria, all issued denials that they even considered such actions, and for the same reasons that I thought it was unlikely.
The long Russian military convoy on the road to Kiev has been stalled. The fact that it isn’t moving has resulted in a lot of speculation by many armchair generals. The latest one I’ve heard is that the lead elements of the Russian convoy have refused to continue the attack. This has a reasonable chance of being true, since the Russian army includes a lot of conscripts, and Putin’s justification for the war is likely just as unbelievable to them as it is to me. But the report of refusals by Russian soldiers comes with a corollary report of mass surrenders. That part I find a little harder to swallow. I could understand reluctance on the part of military unit commanders to get involved in urban combat, or to fire at targets that are obviously not military. Those activities lead to clear violations of humanitarian laws of war. No sane commander wants to be in such a position. This is particularly true for the Russians, who have a hard time documenting any claim that they told civilians to get away from specific targets. Israeli forces attacking targets in Gaza are extremely careful about this and have superb documentation of their efforts to avoid civilian casualties. And despite this, many people don’t believe them. By way of contrast, the Russians have no experience with doing this and their record when attacking Grozny a few years back showed a blatant disregard for protecting innocent lives.
There are a few cases of actions that have made their way into reports by journalists. Pictures of burned out Russian military vehicles can get past the Ukrainian censors. Stories of repulsed Russian attacks also get through. Successful Russian attacks don’t get reported. It seems the Russians don’t allow their own press access to any operations. Western intelligence agencies may have allowed a few leaks, but not many. The Russians obviously know that American spy planes and AWACS aircraft monitor everything they do (not to mention satellite surveillance). The Russians are also probably embarrassed by the large number of their tanks that have been destroyed by American Javelin missiles, and by the inability of their aircraft protection systems to defend many of their helicopters.
Sanctions by many countries against Russia will certainly hurt the Russians. But they can also hurt the countries that apply them. For many, halting trade with Russia may result in economic costs to themselves. Russian Energy and Fuel supplies (and grain) will cost more to replace with alternatives from other suppliers, but the way things look to me right now, it’s the Russian economy that is being damaged the most.
My personal feeling is that the Russians should immediately call off the entire campaign and bring all their forces back to Russia. Then they should consider how their crippled economy can pay for the damage they have inflicted on a neighbor.
Wetherhorn 