Russia Gets Invaded.

- No Nukes.
- No Escalation.
- No Attacks on NATO.
- Belarus Still Doesn't Get Involved.

We should lift the restrictions on long-range weaponry and not only that, we should send trainers into Ukraine to Lviv, supported by AD systems and peacekeepers along the border of Transnistria and the border of Belarus up to Kyiv (but not beyond) allowing Ukraine to send their Western troops beyond the Dnieper River.

From a pure explosive power stance Taurus ain't much stronger than Storm Shadow (480kg vs 450kg warhead), but quite a bit more than ATACMS (275kg if single warhead) or Neptune (150kg), so if the Storm shadow ain't strong enough, chances are Taurus is too weak, too.

However, both Taurus and Neptune are designed more towards attacking bridges, so they could be more lethal against those targets than their pure warhead sizes would suggest.

Sometimes I wonder what kinds of feelings Putin has been going through during this war. Supposedly Stalin was fairly paralyzed for a while when Hitler attacked and things weren't exactly going his way, and someone could possibly have replaced him, had anyone had enough courage to do so. Supposedly Stalin was worried about how he had screwed up, and that was a defensive war. Now Putin has an offensive war against a much smaller opponent, yet he's still doing very poorly. Gotta be stressful, to say the least (and no, I have no pity for him). The incompetence on the Russian side is just mindblowing, of which the Kursk operation is just the latest example.

In the end, the chances are that the whole war is just the dying struggles of an old superpower (and by dying I mean 'on the way to acceptance' and probably nothing more). Might even be the last struggle, depending on how things go. And no, smaller wars against small/poor countries don't really count (I'm assuming Ukraine is among the more advanced countries neighbouring Russia, even though from a western point of view it still has a ways to go).

Russian military command is (currently) not wanting to redeploy units from elsewhere to deal with the new Kursk front. So, they'll have to accept some loss of face for letting Ukraine do this. I'll have to speculate and imagine that their will some russian officers falling out of a window soon.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/08/10/7469772/

Can Kiev get back on the offensive? How Ukraine can capitalize on Russia's waning momentum

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/can-ukraine-get-back-offensive

It's less about power and more about their designs, Taurus is specifically designed to takedown bridges while Storm Shadow isn't. Storm Shadow could blow sections of the bridge but they've already blown sections of the bridge, they're repaired quickly, what needs to be taken out is the pillars and Storm Shadow is less likely to be able to do that due to design.

Firstly, Taurus has longer range than Storm Shadow so I'm unsure if Storm Shadow can even reach the bridge. But the reason why it's better designed for bridges is because Taurus has a superior fuse than Storm Shadow, allowing it to destroy complex structures better than Storm Shadow, it has an "intelligent" warhead system, Storm Shadow detonates after a set time upon penetration while Taurus can penetrate multiple layers and the warhead can be programmed to explode in the perfect spot for maximum damage to the structure.

Essentially Taurus detects layers on impact and explodes where best while Storm Shadow is a timed fuse and doesn't track the amount of structure it has passed through, it explodes after a set amount of time upon impact. Taurus will break through the top layer of the bridge and then explode at the perfect spot in the pillars. German officers have said in leaked calls that it would only take about 10-20 Taurus missiles to takedown Kerch Bridge and they heavily implied that "unlike Storm Shadow/Scalp" Taurus would be able to penetrate the structure of the bridge and get to the pillars.

TLDR: Taurus fuse detonation is way better than Storm Shadow.

I was probably wrong about Storm Shadow not being powerful enough and was thinking solely of ATACMS being not powerful enough but Storm Shadow can't reach the bridge anyway and even if it's powerful enough, you'd need to get lucky that it would detonate at the exact optimal time to cause serious destruction to the pillars.

Russia in February 2022: "To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history. All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me."

Months of escalation management for nothing, months of debate for nothing, thousands of lives wasted for nothing. Yes, concerns about Russian escalation will go down as one of the biggest strategic mistakes of this war and by the west.