"Wargaming and the Ukraine war" Topic

I was at a large UK event this weekend. I won't name it as the organisers are a lovely fluffy bunch of people and did not have time to plan anything themselves due to the speed of the attack on the Ukraine. During several conversations with other wargamers and dealers at this event the theme was: "It seems strange to be here doing this while a real war is happening in the Ukraine". It seemed out of place, almost wrong.

Driving back afterwards it occurred to me that our hobby does not exist in isolation and we need to do something. We need to do something constructive, something positive.

I would like to suggest that any upcoming wargaming event this year does two things:

1) displays the Ukrainian national colours as an act of solidarity. At the event and in pre-event publicity. Put it on your web page.

2) organise collecting boxes at these events for any bone-fide charities which are supporting the plight of the Ukrainian people. This could include the Red Cross, UNICEF, Save The Children, Medicines San Frontier, etc.

This is the least that we can do and we SHOULD be doing it.

Barry Slemmings

How about buying from Ukrainian companies (Red Box for example) even if it is a small order that may take years to arrive if ever instead of Russian companies like Zvezda?

I think step number 2 is a great idea(!), and number 1 is a good one.

The Red Box idea is a good one too.

Now, to figure out how to keep from buying Russian oil.

That's the big picture Thresher01. We can virtual signal all we want but we are still buying Russian oil. Crazy world.

Capital ideas.

I was at Genghis Con (in Denver, Colorado) February 25-27 and won a door prize: a granary for my tabletop scenery made by Terrains4Games (TerenyDoGier), a Polish company. Ed, who ran the competition and arranged for the prizes (weeks back), had been in contact with the Terrains4Games folks that day, to see how they were doing. It seems they weren't producing much just then, because they were paying their employees to drive to the Polish-Ukrainian border and help move refugees away from the border.
Point: Others are helping as they can and could use our support as well.

Grelber

See this post about Strelets in Ukraine.

TMP link

Jim

We attended the show as traders and placed some second hand books, DVDs and buildings on our trade stand and marked them up as all money raised would be donated to Ukraine charities.

We raised over £60.00 GBP (GBP)(full total to be figured out when we cash up tomorrow) and some customers donated the change from their purchases as well.

Mark and I will chuck in a bit more tomorrow from our own wallets and we will donate online.

Thanks to all who donated.

Barrie
TimeCast

Well done Time Cast, I must have walked past you!

Barry (well, the other Barry)

smiles

I think this is an incredibly bad and naive idea.

Our hobby is about war and it is a good idea to remember that and have some respect and humanity about what we do.

However publicly picking sides in an ongoing conflict in which, thank God, we are not a participant and cheerleading seems an unwarranted idea.

By all means have collections for humanitarian agencies that will treat all victims of war; good idea. If you connect that to support for one side in war with complex origins and causes you take a step too far for me and I would not support such a move nor an event that did this.

So, would you prefer that Britain had not decided to support one side rather than the other in 1939, because Germany's Fascism, militarism and invasion of Poland had "complex origins and causes"?

Given Putin's current suppression of anything resembling political opposition or criticism of the war inside Russia, and thinly veiled threats to go nuclear if any other country stands in his way, I personally have no desire to see him succeed in occupying Ukraine and am not neutral about this particular conflict, so have no problem with organisers of wargame shows expressing support for Ukraine.

IMHO, the UK and Western Europe has "publicly picked sides" and this is a perfectly appropriate response.

arthur1815 +1

arthur1815 +2

arthur1815 + 3

Somebody has spent too long at uni if complex origins and causes stop them from seeing right and wrong.

Arthur1815 + 4

+1 Gwydion, good job, I feel the same way. People seem to be talking about this conflict with no understanding of the history regarding this situation. None whatsoever, or viewing with "rose colored" lenses, responding in knee jerk reaction. You have to admit the power of propaganda by the powers that be.

I don't condone neo Nazi paramilitary groups that are part of Ukraine military, that have been established by billionaires and funded by the CIA. And people in the USA complain about "White Supremacists". The Azov Battalion, why don't you Google it and educate yourself. Just one of several units. They were deployed to fight the mostly Russian populations in the Donbas regions, killing 11,000 people over the last 8 years. Wasn't there a Minsk Agreement? Are you going to run any fundraisers for these 11,000 people?

And while your at it, check out what assurances the West gave to Russia regarding NATO. Take a look at the NATO map before and after 1997. Take a look at it. You poke the Bear and you cry when he's cornered and fights back, hard BTW.

You poke the Bear

Winnie-the-Putin … ?

Guys, I'll confess I don't understand what's going on here. I have opinions on the Russo-Ukraine War and on the diplomacy which preceded it, and in a non-miniatures forum I'd be happy to discuss them.

But I've been wargaming since about the Ia Drang, and miniature wargaming since about the Tet Offensive. That's a lot of real warfare--much of it unjust, one-sided, stupid or some combination of the three. But I've never seen this widespread intensity of concern, combined with a belief that every organization must take a stand on the issue, and every individual pledge his support.

What's going on here that wasn't going on in the Yom Kippur War, Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait, the Yugoslav civil wars, assorted Kurdish liberation struggles and western intervention in Libya, just to name a sample?

It's Europe and it's Russia and it's Putin. And he has well-known designs on the recently freed nations once under the thumb of the Soviet Bloc, and theoretically the ability to carry them out— and potentially more. And he has nukes.
That's what's different.

So, very different from Chinese behavior in Tibet, Sinkiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan in that it's taking place in Europe, Parzival?

It's also the first time I've seen "the other guy has nukes" given as a reason for seeing how far we can go without setting of WWIII. Normally the chimpanzee with a tommy gun is cut a certain amount of slack.

Arthur +, you cant live in this world in isolation, you need to take sides, there is right and wrong, Putin for what ever perceived slight has been fighting in the Ukraine when the "civil war" – sponsored Russian action, the destruction of Donetsk airport. Since then his sponsored militias, the wagner group and Russian personnel have been agitating in the areas of semi independence/terrorist areas, all our governments complained but did nothing, this led to an escalation to the Crimea and no real censor and now this war in Ukraine – doing nothing didn't work as it never does when dealing with a tyrannical bully like Putin

I admit I'm disappointed to find this thread is about political agitation and not actual wargaming of the present war.

I'm interested in following the course of the war with a reasonably accurate wargame. I know next to nothing about the terrain and layout of Ukraine, and wargames are really good teaching tools to show how & why armies are doing what they do.

I'm just saying why the reaction is the reaction, and yes, that is because "it's Europe." Look, this is a site that discusses things in English among a culture that is predominantly of English origin— whether the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Scotland or England itself. And for those who aren't from an English-influenced culture, these too are primarily from Europe or European-influenced cultures. So, yes, Europe is important to us in a way that other regions are not. As an American, I understand that Europe is essentially our front yard, or at least the house across the street. What goes on there very much concerns me. Heck, our two World Wars had their origins in Europe. So it's hardly surprising that people here would be up in metaphorical arms about what is going on in Ukraine, and especially involving Russia.
Heck, as someone who grew up during the height of the Cold War, I was naturally exuberant when the Soviet Union, the totalitarian state which threatened the world for nearly eighty years, collapsed and broke into multiple states who each had the possibility to truly breathe free.
So to see that totalitarian monstrosity rise again like some demented serial killer in a bad Hollywood sequel… well, again, I can see how men of my age and older might be very interested and concerned about that. I understand that the excesses of Communist China are less noted in a Euro-centric website, as would also be events in Africa and even South America, as perhaps they should not be, but that's the way the world works.

Look, I am as opposed to Xi as I am to Putin. But the situation with Putin is being watched by Xi, and I am well aware that failure on the part of the West to stand up now will indeed by seen as a signal to Xi that he can invade Taiwan.So for me, it goes hand in hand. But for others, well, people notice their own house is on fire before they notice their neighbor's is— and they notice their neighbor's house is on fire before they even register that a house three subdivisions over has burned to the ground. And they tend to get a bit more upset about the previous two than about the latter.

Understood, Yellow Admiral, but you'd probably be ahead to game out 1942-3 in Ukraine. The geography is the same, and you won't be in need of classified OOB. Wait 20 years, and you can probably get honest information on weapons capabilities.

Classified information is one of several reasons why I jump straight from WWII to SF gaming.

Well this has taken some interesting directions while I had my back turned.

Personally I am not interested in the politics. I AM interested in the humanitarian disaster which has been created by one nation deliberately attacking another for mere territorial advantage.

To put it bluntly, Putin is playing RISK with real lives and real countries.

link

We need to help the victims.

I would add that the Republic of Ireland, neutral for the whole 100 years since its birth, is considering dropping its neutrality and joining NATO. That's how scared people are.

Meantime civilians are dying and we – as people – can do something.

Barry Slemmings

>displays the Ukrainian national colours

I just ordered a bunch of blue and yellow dice for our next event, to be used as paired giveaways later.

Where WERE all you people when Putin seized the Crimea? And when he seized the Donbas? When my idiot cousins in the Old Country were standing down the German Army and closing nuke plants to buy more Russian gas? Or, as War Scorpio points out, when we violated commitments to Moscow?

By all means send money to CARE or the Red Cross: there's a real refugee problem, and that will help. The shows of "solidarity" like the measures taken by our political masters now, are things which might have averted the war--if they'd been done two aggressions back. Now it's theater. And the things which aren't theater run a serious risk of a much wider war, and many more dead civilians.

Bill, please nuke this comment in an hour or so. Even commenting on this thread is contrary to how I try to behave on TMP, and this comment certainly is.

What a very strange thread we have here. I flagged the one post that descended in childish name calling. That post has now vanished, as has my single post (which very specifically didn't mention anything to do with Russia or Ukraine) and a follow-up from another contributor which very, very briefly referenced mine. Doubtless a lifelong ban beckons?

My $.02 USD Cents,

I agree 101+% with Warspite1. Because a conflict is going on at the present time, does not mean that we wargamers-historians need not play it and/or set up a relief fund! If you think that is wrong, think of 'poor little Jimmy, who has a severe injury' and the convention is asking to voluntarily asking you to donate to his relief. I mean---I am sorry for 'little Jimmy's' bad luck, but looking at the BIG PICTURE, I am more sorry for all those people, caught up in 'Mr. Putin's War'. Especially the Ukrainians!
As wargamers and historian, don't we owe it to these folks to do all we can! If you don't like/want to give 'relief' money at a convention, then by all means--DON'T! I sure will!
Tom Semian
Irvine, PA. 16329

My $.02 USD cents--part II,
Today on the internet, I read that President Biden has just today, BANED ALL RUSSIAN OIL IMPORTS COMING INTO THIS COUNTRY!
Yeah! for PRESIDENT BIDEN! Now he is acting like I would hope a president of the U.S.A. would!

Tom Semian
7760 Route 62
Irvine, PA. 16329
U.S.A.

Where was the outrage when a president of a country in Europe, elected in a free and fair election, audited and commended by OCSE for its example to democracy, was overthrown by a mob infiltrated and spurred on by a neo Nazi cabal of thugs?

That was Yanukovych in 2013/14.

We sent congratulations to the thugs, and Senator McCain stood on a podium with the Svoboda leadership. That coup not only overthrew the elected government but effectively disenfranchised those who voted for it. Many being the Russian speaking people of Ukraine.

If you want to see how the west pushed this situation – watch John Mearsheimer's talk on Youtube.

An insane failure of diplomacy.

I'm not on Russia's side but I refuse to blindly follow the propaganda storm that helped create this mess in the first place.

We need negotiation and peace not a Gadarene slope to nuclear disaster.

Whataboutery central, the defence of the morally bankrupt.

If we did not express outrage about other events, when we should have done, supported people or regimes we should not have supported, and did not not take appropriate action when we should have done, we deserve to be blamed for those decisions and should accept it.

But that is NOT a valid reason for doing nothing again when another such event occurs.

To return to my original example, does anyone argue that because Britain had done nothing when Hitler seized Austria or Czechoslovakia, Britain should have taken no action when he invaded Poland in 1939?

My $.02 USD cents,

When Britain signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in 1938 (I believe that was the year), it was agreed that Nazi oppression would stop there! It did not! Instead, Hitler, his Nazi Cronies and most of the brain-washed people of Germany---invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.
So, for the record---Britain tried to have world peace, with the offering of Czecolovakia prior to the start of W.W.II in Europe!
This is a completely different scenario!
Tom Semian
Irvine, PA. 16329

arthur1815 and AuttieCat, give Chamberlain his due. He didn't give Hitler Czechoslovakia: he gave up the Sudetenland, which Hitler agreed would be his last territorial demand in Europe--and which the WWI Allies should never have granted to the Czechs in the first place. It was his seizure of the remainder of that country which demonstrated that Hitler's word was no good. Had the Czechs fought then, they should have been supported by France and Britain. But they didn't and weren't.

But IS this 1938 or 1939? IS Putin a reincarnation of Hitler? Are we looking at an inevitable world war and only concerned with the timing? I'd think long and hard before I turned a house fire into a blazing city on the basis of a historical analogy.

Oh. And lack of any previous interest in a region does not mean you should never have any in the future, but it does make the present moral outrage look contrived, if not actually insincere. Hard for me to shake the feeling that--if we don't accidentally set off WWIII--about December there will be a new, more exciting moral outrage, and the State Department will rummaging around in the attic for that misspelled "reset" button. Might be December 2024, but I doubt it. This December feels about right.

Please feel free to PM me in January to tell me how wrong I was.

I think the Nazi stuff is a highly suspicious claim to make, given that President Zelensky of Ukraine is Jewish, and his great-grandfather died fighting the Nazis as a soldier in the Russian forces in WWII. Maybe there are suspect militia groups, but the whole of Ukraine cannot be lumped in with them. And while yes, Zelensky's campaign was backed by a notorious oligarch, he seems to have governed as his own man, with an emphasis on democracy, and not at all as anyone's puppet. And in a remarkable bit of irony, Zelensky was born and raised speaking Russian in one of the most pro-Russian regions of Ukraine, and apparently as a younger man was generally supportive of Russia. In any case, I can't seem to find any evidence of gross misbehavior or mal-governance by Zelensky. He seems to very much be a brave and committed Ukrainian patriot.
If he manages to survive and Ukraine wins this conflict, he will be able to govern outside of anyone else's shadow, which I suspect would be nothing but good for Ukraine.

"Highly Suspicious"?
Dark Sun and Das Reich symbols mean much?
Well now there is that UN vote on the NAZI issue. It was special to see Ukraine stand with the USA against the world.
Maybe we could wargame it out?

link

And virtually every country in Europe abstained – UN votes are rarely so straightforward as they might seem?

+ 1 John Simmons

"Maybe we could wargame it out?" Sure, but let's get the historical actions correct. The Azov battalion was sent ahead of Ukraine's 51st Mechanized Brigade to attack and capture a pro-Russia separatist checkpoint in the western suburb of Marinka. We can start there.

"Nazi stuff is a highly suspicious claim". "The Azov battalion flies the neo-Nazi Wolfsangle on its banner, a symbol used by the 2nd SS Panzer Division and other Nazi forces during World War II."

"The Azov battalion, financed by billionaire oligarch and the appointed Governor of Dnipropretrovsk Oblast, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, is commanded by Andriy Biletsky. Biletsky leads the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly (SNA) and its paramilitary wing, the Patriots of Ukraine." He said "The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen."

"but the whole of Ukraine cannot be lumped in with them" Are you including the Dnipro, Donbass, and Kharkiv battalions?

"I can't seem to find any evidence of gross misbehavior or mal-governance by Zelensky".

@Parzival,I'll give you a pass on this for now. Why not do some more research. Start with the 2014 coup. You realize Ukraine is consistently rated in the top 3 most corrupt countries in the world? Has it gotten better for the people of Ukraine since Zelensky? Hard to argue here, no?

Matrix NEWS,

It is now Ok, acceptable to note that the AZOV men who are NAZI can be mentioned on the Fake books site, but please note you will not be allowed to post thier uniform and unit symbols as they are to "NAZI". Understand the media world we swim in.
So to recap, AZOV Battalion good fighting baddie's, uniform pics still baddie. Please note, everyone should be careful when posting pics to remove those that have that "Dark Sun".
Could we live in a world with no good 'guys'?

Ukraine is consistently rated in the top 3 most corrupt countries in the world

It takes very little research to show that this claim is utterly bogus.

Well Badgerlock, I'm not sure what metrics are used in these reports honestly. I saw in Wikipedia the following:

Corruption is widespread in Ukrainian society.[1][2] In 2012 Ernst & Young put Ukraine among the three most-corrupt nations of the world—alongside Colombia and Brazil.[3] In 2015 The Guardian called Ukraine "the most corrupt nation in Europe".[4] According to a poll conducted by Ernst & Young in 2017, experts considered Ukraine to be the ninth-most corrupt nation in the world.[5]

As far as trends go, they do seem to be getting better….
How would you rate them?

I'll try again.

"A Web-magazine for miniature wargamers"

"Please avoid recent politics on the forums."

@ConnaughtRanger – The Azov battalion was sent ahead of Ukraine's 51st Mechanized Brigade to attack and capture a pro-Russia separatist checkpoint in the western suburb of Marinka.

We were talking wargaming here, what's the problem"?

Wikipedia is useless as a source, being subject to random editing by people with agendas, and that's especially true of political hot button topics. Citing Wikipedia is like citing the opinions of six drunks in a bar fight. Who knows? Some of them might be true about some things, but all of them won't be true about all things, and five minutes later their arguments will change.

As for the UN, it's not a democratic body run by democratic states, much less states where freedom of the people either exists or is desired. The vast majority of the member states are dictatorships of one form or another, who routinely vote against the US, and are routinely horribly wrong. It exists solely as a useful platform to lecture the world, but as a reliable source of information, opinion, or effective reform it cannot and should not be trusted on any topic.

In any case, I don't see crowds of Ukrainians welcoming the Russia liberators; I see millions of women and children fleeing the country. I don't see Ukrainians bombing hospitals and apartment buildings and gunning down little girls in the streets for fun. I don't even see Ukrainian troops invading Russia, or carrying out terrorist operations in Russian cities, or sending squads of brutal war criminals into Moscow to hunt down Putin's family. If the Ukrainians are fascists, they certainly don't behave like fascists. But the Russians do.

Is the government corrupt? I don't know— Zelensky certainly doesn't behave like a corrupt leader, either. If he was, he'd be hiding in some remote dacha in the Urals and threatening the rest of the world with nuclear attack if he doesn't get his way.

It's hard to accuse a government of little real power of corruption when the one doing the accusing is a megalomaniacal dictator with direct ties to Russian organized crime, who gives lip service to "democracy" and whose "election" to power is more suspect than a guy with glazed frosting on his lips standing next to an empty box of donuts claiming that somebody else stole breakfast.

I'm not saying that Ukraine doesn't have a problem with corruption, whatever that even means in context. But when did "corruption" become cause for invasion? If that were the case, the cities of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc., etc., should have been invaded decades ago. Corruption is when government officials will make policy decisions and actions based on bribery and not the requirements of law or the needs of the people. It's bad, yes, and it's criminal, yes, but changing that situation hardly excuses the atrocities being committed by Putin.

If the world wants Ukraine to reform, economic actions are the solution. Bombs are not. And that in itself is proof enough that this war isn't about "reforming" the Ukrainian government, nor "protecting" the innocent victims of fascism. Putin is a fascist himself, in deed if not in word. If he wanted to end fascism, he'd declare truly free and honest elections in Russia and step down.

To be clear— I do NOT think that the West should take any overt military action in Ukraine or against Russia, much less put a single troop on the ground. I do think we should supply Ukraine with effective, one-shot weapons and munitions (which we are finally doing), which are truly only viable as defensive weapons in use. You can't invade another country with nothing but shoulder-launched anti-tank/aircraft weaponry. My concern of course is that they can be used as weapons of terror in the wrong hands— but under the circumstances, I don't see that as a likely possibility. And where corruption exists, and we can prove that it does (claims are not proof), we can use this as an opportunity to promote reform while also allowing the good leaders within Ukraine (as Zelensky appears to be) to defend the citizens against Putin's criminal war. Who knows— maybe Western influence is what is needed to end the corruption, and now is when we have the greatest opportunity to apply that influence.

But I will agree that we must be cautious. Our actions cannot be overt, or give cause for Russia to strike against NATO allies. Not that Russia has a hope of winning such a war— if this war is showing anything, it's that the Russian armed forces are militarily incompetent. If you take Sun Tzu's Seven Questions and apply them to the current conflict, the answer is that Russia is doomed to lose.

link

(Note that in another forum here I have been saying the same thing as the above linked author; we essentially have the same assessment, though I was unaware that this article even existed.)

When wargaming this conflict, the rules would need to require the Russian forces to be stupid:

link

I don't think I'd want to play that game.

+1 Parzival

Sun TZU?

I love that guy, what did he say, oh yeah -

"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak." ― Sun Tzu

We have it all figured out, good work.
Working on a scenario fighting it out for the Biolabs.
Should be a great game. Whose the Baddies, which side?
Adding card actions for gaslighting combat charts, wild.