While that is probably true, even 10% reaching their target would be horrific, let alone the retaliatory strikes. Let’s not minimize the effects of nuclear war, especially at this point in time.
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They couldn’t. They absolutely couldn’t. On paper, sure, they may have a chance, but in practice these are either small countries with small armies, or large countries with a small economy and armies that are not nearly enough to handle a full-on war, not even together.
Also, there’s the willingness of those countries to actually wage a war. I mean, it’s one thing to joke about how shitty the Russian army is, but this area of the world has memories, very vivid ones at that, about what that army was capable of during WWI, WWII and, for many countries, even later on. The Russian army basically operates on steamrolling and wide-scale destruction instead of precision strikes, the psychological warfare of brutality toward the enemy and citizens, and also blatant cynism that comes with having a seemingly infinite source of people to throw out there - sure, most of them will be killed, but that still works towards grinding the enemy down.
So no, there’s a reason Eastern European countries would rather be part of NATO for protection and support, instead of being all HAH NO THANKS, WE’LL STAND OUR GROUND ALONE. There’s a reason we all joined NATO out of our free will, most of us the first moment we could. Nobody here wants to fight Russia if there’s a chance.
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There’s also the consideration that, while ICBMs are prestigious and do not require external assistance to get where they are going, they are far from mandatory in circumstances where there is still enough movement of goods and people to move warheads by some other means; whether that be fedex, whatever your human trafficking consultant advises; or the most unsporting diplomatic pouch in the history of the Vienna Convention.
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Advantage cited refers to Ukraine’s limited supply of ammunition for many of their artillery systems.
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In case you were wonder what, exactly, went wrong, here’s an expert take:
"It’s possibly just a simple, bad round. Some type of misfire where the round is launched, and then it just malfunctions.
Really? A malfunction, you say?
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Speaking of which, why hasn’t the Kaliningrad Oblast reverted to Poland by now? It seems silly for it to be part of Russia. Historically, it’s either been it’s own nation, part of Poland, or part of Germany.
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The region was added as a semi-exclave to the Russian SFSR; since 1946 it has been known as the Kaliningrad Oblast. According to some historians, Stalin created it as an oblast separate from the Lithuanian SSR because it further separated the Baltic states from the West.[37] Others think that the reason was that the region was far too strategic for the USSR to leave it in the hands of another SSR other than the Russian one.[33] The names of the cities, towns, rivers and other geographical features were changed to Russian names.
The area was administered by the planning committee of the Lithuanian SSR, although it had its own Communist Party committee.[citation needed] In the 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev offered the entire Kaliningrad Oblast to the Lithuanian SSR but Antanas Sniečkus refused to annex the territory because it would add at least a million ethnic Russians to Lithuania.[31][38]
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I know the history. What I don’t understand is how it stayed part of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It seems frozen in 1946 for no reason.
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I think it’s because of how it was a purely military enclave and so everyone living there when the USSR collapsed was either Soviet navy or somehow support for the Navy. No real historical ties to the area. And Lithuania didn’t want it. It was never Lithuanian. And Russia was never going to let such a strategically important harbor go into Polish hands.
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Germany renounced any claim to Kaliningrad. Poland is not likely to claim it, because “it was a net beneficiary of the Potsdam Agreement, which also decided the status of Kaliningrad”.
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Is anyone else wondering if this missile might date from the period when Dmitry Rogozin was Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of defense and space industries, on the Military-Industrial Commission of Russia, and behind the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry?
I’ve read that being sent to go play with civilian rockets rather than the aerospace gear his boss really cared about was…something of a lateral promotion; and handed out for being too much of a visible loyalist to disappear; but not effective enough to retain.
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(& @GagHalfrunt) So, like I said, frozen in 1946, politically.
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The blogs I’ve read say “this happens. To them, to us. It’s unusual, but it happens.”
On another source someone traced the arc. It didn’t hit the launcher.
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Politically, that is true. Apparently the Russians living there (until Corona came along) were trying to rediscover its history as Königsberg, and lure in German tourists. Given another couple of decades, it might have found its place in Europe apart from Mother Russia. But now we can expect Putin to do everything he can to ensure it stays an obedient pet oblast.
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The specific reason would be that, as part of transforming the newly annexed Kaliningrad into a military outpost, USSR destroyed all tangible links to the region’s prior history. Old German-style towns were torn down and rebuild as Soviet cities, all German inhabitants were “repatriated” to East Germany, even if their families hadn’t had anything to do with those lands for many centuries, and new Russian colonists were brought in to repopulate it. So after the collapse of USSR, there was no practical reason for the region not to remain part of Russia.
The general reason is that the inheritors of former USSR territories decided that keeping the borders of the old Soviet “republics” was the best all-round option. The first attempt to divide this part of the world into ethnic nation states after WW1 resulted in a series of wars as they fought to establish precisely where the borders should go. The internal Soviet borders were often arbitrary, but they had been stable for several decades, and everyone understood that trying to redraw them might turn ugly. Well, everyone except Russia, at least since 2008.
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In other words, the template for their Ukraine plan as well.
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Never Lithuanian politically, although at least the rural parts of the region used to have an ethnic majority of Lithuanians until WW2.
This community was instrumental in preserving Lithuanian language when the Russian Empire banned all Lithuanian press and forbade teaching the language in schools in 1864. Lithuanians living in what was then Prussia printed books locally, and a network of book smugglers (knygnešiai) distributed them to secret underground schools in Russian-ruled Lithuania.
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