Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I answered your question but you still haven't answered mine. How about it?

Yeah I saw it. Thought it was a bit mad to be fair. Was more was thinking if Russia had of done that what would be said about it. Ukraine don't need to go down that route, will give propaganda value to Russia to use.

I mean it's easy to say "NATO no-fly zone doesn't need troops" but the reality is very different.

NATO would need to control any airfield from which operations were being conducted: this means security personnel, it means logistics personnel and equipment, it means flight crews and all associated personnel and facilities.

It also means they need air supremacy at and around the airfield which means NATO ground-based air defenses, logistics crews, engineers, transports, and security.

Securing air supremacy also means a certain radius of secured ground control which means NATO ground-based anti-artillery and mortar radars, security, etc.

Then they need to be able to supply these airbases which means supply and logistics flights and convoys which need to be able to GET TO the airfield; so you need to secure these supply routes from both air and ground offensives.

And then you have the mechanics of the actual no-fly zone itself:

• How does NATO identify Ukrainian anti-air assets versus Russian anti-air assets?
• How does Ukraine differentiate between NATO and Russian aircraft and missiles?
• How does NATO identify and differentiate Ukrainian aircraft and missiles versus Russian aircraft and missiles?
• Outside of standard Ukrainian units how do you stop Independent Territorial Army Unit #2344 from firing MANPADs at NATO aircraft?

Granted I'm an idiot and far from an expert on these things but none of this is as simple as people seem to believe.

NATO declares a "theatre of operations" which cover the borders of Ukraine only

They launch sorties from Nato airfields in Poland

Escalation of the war to a WWIII scenario is protected by the MAD (mutually assured destruction) scenario

Russian nukes probably don't work anyway. Have you not seen the clips of the Russian convoys?

There is a lot of bad blood between the polish and Ukrainian’s especially with older generations.

Poland will only get involved if there is a direct threat from Russia.

After a complete cleansing

Says it all really

The Chinese ambassador to the United States says that China will not send weapons and ammunition to support Russia’s war in Ukraine and that Beijing would “do everything to de-escalate the crisis”.

Qin Gang's comments come after US President Joe Biden warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Friday that there would be "consequences" if Beijing provided material support to Moscow.

Beijing denied reports last week that it was open to providing Moscow with armaments as "disinformation", but China has been reluctant to rebuke Russia for its invasion.

Speaking to US broadcaster CBS, Gang complained that public condemnation by the West "doesn't help" and that "good diplomacy" was needed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60802572

I don't think we've seen direct evidence of Russia using large thermobaric warheads yet. They have definitely used their TOS-1 thermobaric rockets. Many of their smaller man-portable devices also have thermobaric versions which have been documented in Ukraine to varying degrees; but in the grand scheme of things they wouldn't be particularly powerful individually.

Russia does however have thermobaric versions of many of their other weapon types such as their cruise and ballistic missiles; I'm not sure if any of those have been used or how many they might have. Russia has in the past claimed to have tested the largest thermobaric weapon in the world which is more powerful than the smallest nuclear warheads; but presumably even if it did exist it probably wouldn't exist in significant quantities. I also believe it can only be dropped from its strategic bombers which are unlikely to be allowed close enough to drop any as things currently stand; although it might be a possibility in Mariupol or in the East.

One thing they haven't used (certainly not extensively at least) is incendiary munitions; particularly white phosphorous munitions. There were some captured on video but it was suggested they were conventional incendiary munitions. Obviously using these over large suburban and city areas could cause significant destruction due to fire.

As far as I can tell Russia have used effectively every type of conventional munition at their disposal in Ukraine at least once. Cluster bombs, thermobaric weapons, incendiaries, "suicide drones", sea and land mines, etc. There have even been documented prototypes in Ukraine which are believed to be the only ones of their kind.

They have also used what appeared to be civilian grade tear gas against protesters; which is technically a chemical weapon.

So what's left for them to use? In order of likelihood maybe something like large thermobaric warheads, larger-scale or military-grade chemical, nuclear, and biological.

I mean operating from Polish air fields only adds lots of new challenges and makes others even more difficult; and doesn't really address any of the other problems with NATO operating over Ukraine.

And the thing about the Russian military stockpile is that most of it works at least for a little while; or for at least one use. Would you like to take a chance that 0 out of ~6000 nuclear warheads aren't in good enough working order to fly in the general direction of something important and go boom? For all their failures in Ukraine they have managed to cause quite a bit of damage; in case you hadn't noticed.

Speaking of chemical weapons:

And naturally enough two days ago Russia were talking about this very chemical plant being a target for Ukrainian "nationalists":

I've read that Finland and Poland together have the biggest field artillery in the whole of Europe, also Finland is an arms supplier and is so well prepared if russia were to attack.