Yeah, they can barely handle Ukraine it seems, so my impression is they’d be fucked. However that could also pull in Iran and Saudi, which would be bad news for the world in general.
Israel per se has fuck all to do with this, to be honest. Attacking a foreign flagged civilian vessel is a big deal, especially when the eyes of the world are upon you and you cannot declare something to have happened on the fog of war. There’s an American P-8, which is an intelligence as well as an anti-ship/anti-sub plane, covering the ship. No one knows what it’s rules of engagement are, but the implication is that it’s there to defend the civilian ship. Attacking the US plane would be an act of war. Attacking the ship may trigger the American plane to defend it by launching weapons against the attacking vessel.
The one thing that the Russians could legitimately do is block the ship physically. They can play chicken by threatening to steer into it, but I can’t think that they’d risk widening the war at this point. No shade on Ukraine - this one is going to go down as one of the greatest victories in the history of warfare - but if they can’t make progress against Ukraine then NATO will go through them like crap through a goose.
I don’t think we need to be caring about who would win in a conventional war with Russia. We need to be worrying about who would lose in a nuclear exchange with them.
pretty much everyone is not stupid enough to do that, because as we’ve known since the 60s at least, we’d all lose. Russia has nuke subs ready to do retaliation, we have a fuckton of them too, China does, random other countries like the EU and even Israel is ready to nuke the fuck out of everyone else just in case. Putin makes weak nuclear threats and he knows that “we’ll nuke you!” would result in most of Russia being completely smashed, along with most of the EU and USA. The danger is some idiot feeling nihilistic and egotistical enough to try it. It would never be a reasonable policy decision by any country.
For those not in the know, the Azov Battalion was originally a volunteer unit that was founded by far-right figures (and admittedly, and somewhat bizarrely, partially funded by a Jewish-Ukrainian oligarch). However, in 2015, it was folded into the Ukrainian National Guard, and subsequently subjected to the ordinary controls on recruitment and retainment (ie active neonazis were kicked out).
There is some suggestion that the unit still has elements of a far-right culture that linger, but it would be disingenuous to continue calling them a neonazi unit, as recruits from all over Ukraine regardless of leaning or origin; Jewish, Liberal, Leftist, etc; have been assigned to the unit through normal channels and very few of the original members remain.
I appreciate that you are trying to keep a nuanced view of things and not trying to support an 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' mindset. Unironically, I absolutely agree with your stance regarding not supporting Nazis even when a common foe is about.
However, as outlined, Azov is, at this point, not much more than an ordinary Ukrainian National Guard unit with a sordid origin and a very questionable symbol it's retained from that, not unlike the symbol of Finland's air force.
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