Talk:Suwałki Gap/Archive 1

Baseless assertion

the baseless assertion "Russia launched the war in the Donbass" contributes to the highly degraded credibility of this website. It hardly matters whether it's fixed or not, the well-deserved reputation as a western propaganda outlet will remain. 73.240.144.28 (talk) 03:56, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Please present your case at the article War in Donbas, with sourcing if you don't want to be dismissed out-of-hand, as for now, that article is fairly clear about who started what and with whose aid. Also, I've read the Russian-language articles on the topic but they were so full of Russian propaganda (e.g. that attacking a foreign country is in "self-defence") - you wouldn't approve of such US messaging, would you - that I had to dismiss them for unreliability. A rather mild sample of that is given in "further reading", Zverev paper. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:28, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I tend to partially agree with 73.240.144.28. This article is by all means good and interesting (thank you for that!), but it's 2nd half is dominantly written with Westernly eyes. Being "scientific" means that *all aspects are considered equally and in a well balanced way*. Now it focuses heavily on the A (Nato) being attacked by B (Russia) -scenario, but the B being attacked by A -scenario is completely missing. Why? Phrases like "we all know", "it is given", "Nato is not offensive" (generic - not from this article in particular) and all that stuff are unfortunately very dominant inside most people's heads, but that's not science. I use to advise people to sit down on the moon and look down onto earth, and to travel i bit backwards and forwards in time, to see clearly. But that's unfortunately outside most people's mental capabilities, both in west and in east. The latter part of this article could well appear in an american thinktank magazine, but wikipedia should be more autonomous. However, a plus for the big effort put in! With kind regards from Finland. 85.76.148.10 (talk) 10:54, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, first of all, the Suwałki Gap is mostly a NATO concern given that it is NATO that has the choke point, not Russia concern, so obviously Western analysts write much more about it than Russian analysts, and therefore the sources available generally assume a Russian attack on the gap. This is also what the Russian sources I have seen also assume (Zapad 2017, Zapad 2021...), and when they don't do that, they simply speak of the corridor as "hypothetical", without much details (see doi 10.5922/2079-8555-2022-2-3).

The scenario you are speaking of is NATO attacking Kaliningrad Oblast and/or Belarus. The problem is, even in the Russian literature, I wasn't able to see any plans for defence of either region against an invading NATO force in the context of the Suwałki Gap. The only one I know of is Hunzeker and Lanoszka (Western analysts), who openly say that during an invasion, NATO forces should not be limited to Suwałki, but then it assumes a Russian invasion. In short, I'm afraid there is simply nothing available from what you say. I could have missed something, though, so if you have anything you know of, please propose it. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:15, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Szmenderowiecki, it is true that the availability of sources is not well balanced, and that is unfortunate. I am afraid I cannot provide any good additional sources either, and as I said, the article is written with great care and detail! It is unfortunate that the lack of scientific studies from *both* points of view (west, east) makes it hard to not emphasize the *one* point of view. What I really would like to see is a structure that holds the identical headers (eg. "strategy" or "strategical importance") from first the A party's point of view, then (fully independently) from B party's point of view - both as seen solely with respective party's eyes! This is a widespread problem in the Eng Wikipedia, hence I used the phrase "Westernly eyes". Headers "Strategical importance for Nato" (potentially with subheader "Defence" etc) AND "Strategical importance for Russia" (with suitable subheaders) might provide a more solid grip? In general, I might also be somewhat critical to using the current Ukraine situation in wikipedia, as it easily becomes a sledge hammer, and is after all only about a short time in history while wikipedia should (imho) be less now-dependant. Best from Finland! 85.76.100.116 (talk) 15:04, 15 July 2022 (UTC)