All Things Russia & Ukraine

[old salt]

On the battlefield, Russia is suffering heavier losses in personnel and armor and aircraft than expected. This is due in part to the fact that Ukrainian air defenses have performed better than pre-invasion US intelligence assessments had anticipated. In addition, Russia has yet to establish air supremacy over Ukraine, a senior defense official said, as the Ukrainian Air Force and air defense systems fight for control of the airspace.

"Ukrainian air defenses, including aircraft, do continue to be operable and continue to engage and deny access to Russian aircraft in places over the country," the official said.
Without uncontested control of the skies, it becomes more difficult for an army on the move to see and strike targets from the air.

Together, these challenges have so far prevented the quick overthrow of major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, which US officials were concerned could play out in a matter of days. The city of Kharkiv near Ukraine's border with Russia also has not fallen to invading forces, which officials worried could happen on the first night of an invasion.

Officials caution that this picture of the battlefield is just a moment in time, and the situation on the ground could change very quickly as Russian forces keep up their assault.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/politics ... index.html

DocBarrister

Do you really think, at this stage, that the Ukrainians can keep the Russians from taking Kyiv & then force the Russians to retreat or hold in place ? Do you know what will happen to Kiev if Zellinsky & his govt & military forces don't relocate to the west of the country & declare Kyiv an open city? Kyiv will become Tripoli & Zelinsky will end up like Gaddafi. Ukraine needs a leader not a martyr.

[NattyBohChamps04]

Do you know what will happen to Kiev if Zellinsky & his govt & military forces don't relocate to the west of the country & declare Kyiv an open city?

How about you spell the man's name correctly. He has earned much more than that.

[old salt]

Do you know what will happen to Kiev if Zellinsky & his govt & military forces don't relocate to the west of the country & declare Kyiv an open city?

How about you spell the man's name correctly. He has earned much more than that.

I'm workin' on it, ... sticky [L] key. I got it right most of the time, like in the following sentence (which you did not quote).
Do you think it should have 2 Y's ? I've seen it that way on FNC.

[Brooklyn]

Aid sent by Obama was limited to non-lethal.

That's too much. All you need is thoughts and prayers:

Psalm 81


13 “If my people would only listen to me,
if Israel would only follow my ways,
14 how quickly I would subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes!
15 Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him,
and their punishment would last forever.



See? Combat isn't necessary. The forum's professing Christians should DEMAND that the USA refuse to send weaponry. All you need is thought and prayer.

[OCanada]

So much disinformation in here.

After tge USSR disintegrated thete was global fear about what would happen to the nuclear weapons. Ukraine was promised security if it gave uo its nuclear weapons .

When hostage taking became a thing. In the Middle East the US position was not to negotiate with hostage takers. We had the long Iranian hostage crisis. We had a hostage taken in Lebanon, memory?. I can’t recall if he died in captivity. About the same time a soviet was also taken captive. Shortly after the Soviets killed the hostage takers. Then they killed their families. I think no other Soviet diplomat was ever taken hostage.

Putin may or may not be a true black belt in judo. He is the President of the country and eliminates those that anger him. There are faux black belts who only hsve them bcs of money or political favoritism or whatever

Ask what happens to authoritarians in the end: go back to Mussolini and Hitler and move forward to Qadaffi and others. Very few find a giod end.

Organized crime in Russia, mafiaya, runs the country and Putin moderares to keep the peace. If the oligarchs get very unhappy he is in great danger.

Obama imposed sanctions on Russia over its actions. When Trump took office he eased the sanctions. He offered to send weapons promised if Ukraine would manufacture compromat to hurt Biden. Ukraine refused and Trump delayed sending javelins etc. Putin got what he wanted. Manafort was the pivot man. After Ukraine declined Manafort left and returned ti the USA and the Trump campaign. Those secret meetings w Putin for which there is no record? Involved Putin, Trump and a Russian translator. Ukraine was a key piece in Putin’s strategy after Georgia, Crimea etc. Trump got a great deal of help from Russia.

Trump family ties go back to the Genovese family and continued after Fred passed. In the 1990s the Russians pushed aside the Italians (recall Trump’s Atlantic City calamity). The Russians mafiaya became the primary source of funding for Trump. The money laudeting was staggering in its flow.

Cohen had deep ties to the Russian mob. He managed the club in Brighton Beach where they gathered. Kellyanne Comway’s grandfather’s nickname was Brute within the Family.

Trump didn’t expect to lose but they had options if he did. None worked in the end. Things they did not ever expect to be exposed are veing exposed.

Now the blowback is intense on Ukraine and is not directed at Biden internationally or nationally but the strategy beeds to be off load the responsibility from Trump to Biden.

[CU88]

February 26, 2022
Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 27

We are in what feels like a moment of paradigm shift.

On this, the third day of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it appears the invasion is not going the way Russian president Vladimir Putin hoped. The Russians do not control the airspace over the country, and, as of tonight, despite fierce fighting that has taken at least 198 Ukrainian lives, all major Ukrainian cities remain in Ukrainian hands. Now it appears that Russia’s plan for a quick win has made supply lines vulnerable because military planners did not anticipate needing to resupply fuel and ammunition. In a sign that Putin recognizes how unpopular this war is at home, the government is restricting access to information about it.

Russia needed to win before other countries had time to protest or organize and impose the severe economic repercussions they had threatened; the delay has given the world community time to put those repercussions into place.

Today, the U.S. and European allies announced they would block Russia’s access to its foreign currency reserves in the West, about $640 billion, essentially freezing its assets. They will also bar certain Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system, known as SWIFT, which essentially means they will not be able to participate in the international financial system. Lawmakers expect these measures to wreak havoc on Russia’s economy.

The Ukrainian people have done far more than hold off Putin’s horrific attack on their country. Their refusal to permit a corrupt oligarch to take over their homeland and replace their democracy with authoritarianism has inspired the people of democracies around the world.

The colors of the Ukrainian flag are lighting up buildings across North America and Europe and musical performances are beginning with the Ukrainian anthem. Protesters are marching and holding vigils for Ukraine. The answer of the soldier on Ukraine’s Snake Island to the Russian warship when it demanded that he and his 12 compatriots lay down their weapons became instantly iconic. He answered: “Russian warship: Go f**k yourself.”

That defiance against what seemed initially to be an overwhelming military assault has given Ukraine a psychological edge over the Russians, some of whom seem bewildered at what they are doing in Ukraine. It has also offered hope that the rising authoritarianism in the world is not destined to destroy democracy, that authoritarians are not as strong as they have projected.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has stepped into this moment as the hero of his nation and an answer to the bullying authoritarianism that in America has lately been mistaken for strength. Zelensky was an actor, after all, and clearly understands how to perform a role, especially such a vital one as fate has thrust on him.

Zelensky is the man former president Donald Trump tried in July 2019 to bully into helping him rig the 2020 U.S. election. Then, Trump threatened to withhold the money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine resist Russian expansion until Zelensky announced an investigation of Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Since the invasion, Zelensky has rallied his people by fighting for Kyiv both literally and metaphorically. He is releasing videos from the streets of Kyiv alongside his government officers, and has been photographed in military garb on the streets. Offered evacuation out of the country by the U.S., he answered, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” His courage and determination have boosted the morale of those defending their country against invaders and, in turn, captured the imagination of people around the world hoping to stem the recent growth of authoritarianism, who are now making him—and Ukraine—an icon of courage and principle.

In a sign of which way the wind is blowing, today Czech president Miloš Zeman and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, both of whom have nurtured friendly relations with Putin, came out against the invasion. Zeman called for Russia to be thrown out of SWIFT; Orbán said he would not oppose sanctions. Even Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson has begun to backpedal on his enthusiasm for Russia’s side in this war.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was part of the scheme to get Zelensky to announce an investigation of Hunter Biden, today got in on the act of defending Ukraine. He tweeted: “The Ukrainian People are fighting for freedom from tyranny. Whether you realize or not, they are fighting for you and me.” But then he continued: “And our current administration is doing the minimum to support them, even though Biden’s colossal weakness and ineptitude helped to embolden Putin to do it.”

The right-wing talking point that Biden is weak and inept and therefore emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine is belied by the united front the western world is presenting. After the former president tried to weaken NATO and even discussed withdrawing from the treaty, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have managed to strengthen the alliance again. They have brought the G7 (the seven wealthiest liberal democracies), the European Union, and other partners and allies behind extraordinary economic sanctions, acting in concert to make those sanctions much stronger than any one country could impose.

They have managed to get Germany behind stopping the certification of Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany that would have tied Europe more closely to Russia, and in what Marcel Dirsus, a German political scientist and fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University, told the Washington Post was possibly “one of the biggest shifts in German foreign policy since World War II,” Germany is now sending weapons to Ukraine and has agreed to impose economic sanctions.

Biden has facilitated this extraordinary international cooperation quietly, letting European leaders take credit for the measures his own administration has advocated. It is a major shift from the U.S.’s previous periods of unilateralism and militarism, and appears to be far more effective.

Asked tonight what he would do differently than Biden in Ukraine, former president Trump answered: ​​“Well, I tell you what, I would do things, but the last thing I want to do is say it right now.”

For all the changes in the air, there is still a long way to go to restore democracy.

There is also a long way to go to restore Ukraine. Tonight the Russians are storming Kyiv.

[Farfromgeneva]

Finally knocked them off swift. Took way too long like front runners, really no different than the way China is behaving.

[runrussellrun]

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news ... dly-gamble

ussian President Vladimir Putin chose this war, Joe Biden said in his Thursday afternoon speech to America regarding the conflict in Ukraine. That is true, but U.S. elites also had something to do with Putin’s ugly and destructive choice—a role that Democrats and Republicans are eager to paper over with noble-sounding rhetoric about the bravery of Ukraine’s badly outgunned military. Yes, the Ukrainian soldiers standing up to Putin are very brave, but it was Americans that put them in harm’s way by using their country as a weapon, first against Russia and then against each other, with little consideration for the Ukrainian people who are now paying the price for America’s folly.

It is not an expression of support for Putin’s grotesque actions to try to understand why it seemed worthwhile for him to risk hundreds of billions of dollars, the lives of thousands of servicemen, and the possible stability of his own regime in order to invade his neighbor. After all, Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower?

Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening. That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin.

While the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine is no doubt connected to a variety of factors, including the Russian dictator’s read on U.S. domestic politics and the preferences of his own superpower sponsor in Beijing, the sense that Ukraine poses a meaningful threat to Russia is not a product of Putin’s paranoia—or of a sudden desire to restore the power and prestige of the Soviet Union, however much Putin might wish for that to happen. Rather, it is a geopolitical threat that has grown steadily more pressing and been employed with greater recklessness by Americans and Ukrainians alike over the past decade.

That Ukraine has allowed itself to be used as a pawn against a powerful neighbor is in part the fault of Kyiv’s reckless and corrupt political class. But Ukraine is not a superpower that owes allies and client-states judicious leadership—that’s the role of the United States. And in that role, the United States has failed Ukraine. More broadly, the use of Ukraine as a goad against enemies domestic and foreign has recklessly damaged the failing yet necessary European security architecture that America spent 75 years building and maintaining.

Why can’t the American security establishment shoulder responsibility for its role in the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine? Because to discuss American responsibility openly would mean exposing the national security establishment’s role in two separate, destructive coups: the first, in 2014, targeting the government of Ukraine, and the second, starting two years later, the government of the United States.

In the last year there have been two attempted “pro-democracy” inter-elite coups in pro-Kremlin states on Russian borders: Belarus and Kazakhstan. Both of those so-called “color revolutions” failed, but Ukraine represents a much more pressing concern, especially given the country’s push for NATO membership, which Biden officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly encouraged last year with no intention or possibility of actually making it possible. Yet rather than compelling the United States to rethink the wisdom of planting the NATO flag on Russia’s border, Putin’s escalating rhetoric—and troop movements—only made the Biden team dig in deeper.
related


This is a game that Biden and key figures in his administration have been playing for a long time, beginning with the 2013-14 Obama administration-backed coup that toppled a Russia-friendly government in Kyiv. This was the so-called Maidan Revolution, a sequel of sorts to the George W. Bush-backed Orange Revolution of 2004-05. Much of that same Obama foreign policy team—Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and others—is now back in the White House and State Department working in senior posts for a president who personally ran Obama’s Ukraine policy.

What did all these figures have in mind for Ukraine? The White House and U.S. foreign policy experts from both parties are united in claiming that Ukraine is a U.S. ally, a democracy, and a beacon of freedom, which are no doubt fine words to hear when you have been left to fight Vladimir Putin on your own. But to understand what Ukraine truly is, we must start where all geopolitics begins: by looking at a map.

Ukraine is situated between two greater powers, Russia and the European Union. That makes Ukraine a buffer state. Geopolitical logic dictates that buffer states cultivate and maintain cordial relations with the greater powers that surround them, unless they want to be swallowed up by one of those powers. That’s because siding with one great power against another often leads to catastrophe. No less an authority than the prophet Isaiah tells us so. He warned the Jews not to side with the pharaoh—a broken reed, he called Egypt, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it—in the dynasty’s conflict with the Babylonians. Isaiah was right: The Jews bet wrong and were dragged off into exile.

Today Israel is no longer a buffer state; rather, it’s a regional power. But geography didn’t change, which means that Israel is still a tiny country surrounded by larger entities, like Turkey and Iran.

So how did the Jewish state transcend buffer-state status? Because it acquired what is reportedly a large nuclear arsenal with air, land, and sea delivery capabilities—the vaunted nuclear triad—which render it immune to an enemy’s first strike, and ensures, for the time being anyway, that Israel is no longer a stomping ground for empires. Conversely, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for U.S. security guarantees in the event its neighbors, Russia in particular, turned hostile.

What kind of strategy dictates that a state hand over its security vis-a-vis local actors to a country half the world away? No strategy at all. Ukraine was not able to transcend its natural geography as a buffer state—and worse, a buffer state that failed to take its own existence seriously, which meant that it would continue to make disastrously bad bets. In 2013, the European Union offered Kyiv a trade deal, which many misunderstood as a likely prelude to EU membership. Young Ukrainians very much want to join the EU, because they want access to Europe so they can flee Ukraine, which remains one of the poorest countries on the continent.

The trade deal was an ill-conceived EU project to take a shot at Putin with what seemed like little risk. The idea was to flood the Ukrainian market, and therefore also the Russian market, with European goods, which would have harmed the Russian economy—leading, the architects of this plan imagined, to popular discontent that would force Putin himself from office. Putin understandably saw this stratagem as a threat to his country’s stability and his personal safety, so he gave Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych an ultimatum: either reject the deal and accept Moscow’s $15 billion aid package in its place, or else suffer crippling economic measures.

When Yanukovych duly reneged on the EU deal, the Obama administration helped organize street demonstrations for what became history’s most tech-savvy and PR-driven regime change operation, marketed to the global public variously as Maidan, EuroMaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, etc. In February 2014, the protests forced Yanukovych into exile in Moscow. Consequently, Nuland and other Obama administration officials worked to assemble a new Ukrainian government friendly to the United States and therefore hostile to Russia.

In late February, the Russians responded to the American soft coup in Ukraine by invading Crimea and eventually annexing it and creating chaos in Eastern Ukraine. The Obama administration declined to arm the Ukrainian government. It was right to avoid conflict with Moscow, though by leaving Kyiv defenseless, it showed that the White House had never fully gamed out all the possible scenarios that might ensue from setting a client state on course for conflict with a great power. Instead, Obama and the Europeans highlighted their deadly miscalculation by imposing sanctions on Moscow for taking advantage of the conditions that Obama and the Europeans had created.

The White House seems to have taken a perverse pride in the death and destruction it helped incite in Eastern Europe. In April 2014, CIA Director John Brennan visited Kyiv, appearing to confirm the agency’s role in the coup. Shortly after came Vice President Biden, who took his own victory lap and counseled the Ukrainians to root out corruption. Naturally, a prominent Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, which was then under investigation for corruption, hired Biden’s son Hunter for protection.

By tying itself to an American administration that had shown itself to be reckless and dangerous, the Ukrainians made a geopolitical blunder that statesmen will study for years to come: A buffer state had staked its future on a distant power that had simply seen it as an instrument to annoy its powerful neighbor with no attachment to any larger strategic concept that it was willing to support. Russia then lopped off half of the Donbas region on its border and subjected Ukraine to a grinding, eight-year-long war, intended in large part to underline Russian capacity and Ukrainian and American impotence.

A buffer state had staked its future on a distant power that had simply seen it as an instrument to annoy its powerful neighbor with no attachment to any larger strategic concept that it was willing to support.
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Ukraine then made a bad situation even worse. When the same people who had left them prey to Putin asked them to take sides in an American domestic political conflict, the Ukrainians enthusiastically signed on—instead of running hard in the opposite direction.

In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign came calling on Ukrainian officials and activists to lend some Slavic authenticity to its Russia collusion narrative targeting Donald Trump. Indeed, Russiagate’s central storyline was about Ukraine. Yes, Trump had supposedly been compromised by a sex tape filmed in Moscow, but Putin’s ostensible reason for helping Trump win the presidency was to get him to drop Ukraine-related sanctions. Here was another chance for Ukraine to stick it to Putin, and gain favor with what it imagined would be the winning party in the American election.

With the CIA’s Brennan and a host of senior FBI and DOJ officials pushing Russiagate into the press—and running an illegal espionage campaign against the Trump team—Ukrainian political figures gladly joined in. Key participants included Kyiv’s ambassador to Washington, who wrote a Trump-Russia piece for the U.S. press, and a member of the Ukrainian parliament who allegedly contributed to the dossier. The collusion narrative was also augmented by Ukrainian American operatives, like Alexandra Chalupa, who was tied into the Democratic Party’s NGO complex. The idea that this game might have consequences for Ukraine’s relations with its more powerful neighbor doesn’t seem to have entered the heads of either the feckless Ukrainians or the American political operatives who cynically used them.

Of course, Ukraine was hardly the only American client state to involve itself in domestic political gamesmanship. By appearing before the U.S. Congress to argue against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took sides with Republicans against a sitting American president—which seems like an even bigger potential faux pas.

The differences between the two situations are even more revealing, though. The Iran deal touched on a core Israeli national interest. As a U.S. ally, Israel was challenging the wisdom of handing nuclear weapons to its own (and America’s) leading regional competitor and rival. By contrast, Ukraine had no existential or geopolitical reason to participate in the anti-Trump operation, which allowed it at best to curry favor with one side of the D.C. establishment while angering what turned out to be the winning party. Russiagate was the kind of vanity project that a buffer state with a plunging GDP and an army equipped with 40-year-old ex-Soviet weapons in a notoriously risky area of the world can ill afford—especially one that lacked a nuclear arsenal.

And that was only the beginning. Just as Russiagate seemed to be coming to a close in July 2019, U.S. national security officials injected yet another Ukraine-related narrative into the public sphere to target the American president. This one appears to have been initiated by Ukrainian American White House official Alexander Vindman and his colleague Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst who had served as Vice President Biden’s point man on Ukraine during the Obama administration. When Vindman told Ciaramella about a phone call in which Trump had asked the Ukrainian president for information regarding allegations about the Biden family’s corrupt activities in Kyiv, they called on help from U.S. intelligence services, the State Department, the Pentagon, Democratic Party officials, and the press. Quick, scramble Team Ukraine—Trump is asking questions!

In order to cover up for what the Bidens and perhaps other senior Obama officials had done in Ukraine, a Democratic Congress impeached Trump for trying to figure out what American policymakers had been doing in Ukraine over the past decade. As for the Ukrainians, they again put themselves in the middle of it, when they should have stayed home.

The end result was that the Ukrainians had helped weaken an American president who, unlike Obama, gave them arms to defend themselves against the Russians. More seriously, they reinforced Putin’s view that, especially in partnership with the Democrats, Ukraine did not understand its true place in the world as a buffer state—and would continue to allow themselves to be used as an instrument by policymakers whose combination of narcissism and fecklessness made them particularly prone to dangerous miscalculations. The 2020 election victory of Joe Biden, a man whose family had been paid by the Ukrainians to protect them, can have done little to quiet Putin’s sense that Ukraine needed to be put in its place before it was used yet again as a weapon against him.

From the perspective of the U.S. national security establishment, Biden’s victory over Trump signaled that its actions in Ukraine would stay hidden. So long as the media continued to bark that the 45th president of the United States is Putin’s stooge, no one would be held accountable for anything. Except, as it turns out, D.C. political operatives aren’t the only people who can make history. Putin can, too. And the people of Ukraine will come out much the worse for both of their efforts.

[OCanada]

Nope but there are some points made. Disinformation and fifth column stuff

[Peter Brown]

Nope but there are some points made

Interesting article and worthy of some analysis.

[OCanada]

Too many factual errors bordering on historical illiteracy.

[Peter Brown]

Nope but there are some points made

Interesting article and worthy of some analysis.

Biden’s term going really great. Today, Putin just ordered his Russian nuclear deterrent forces on alert, raising the threat that tensions with the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1497928069922926597?s=21

I don’t mean to ALWAYS bring this around to this clown car administration, but you’re a lunatic if you can’t understand the direct line between the instability of the world today to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I mean, this crew isn’t even junior varsity and every day they risk your family’s future.

[seacoaster]

Boycott Stupid.

Meanwhile, you might check this guy's twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

[Dip&Dunk]

In addition, Russia has yet to establish air supremacy over Ukraine, a senior defense official said, as the Ukrainian Air Force and air defense systems fight for control of the airspace.

DocBarrister

Just be careful with terms, and yes I know this “analysis” came from CNN. It is correct they have have not established air supremacy but the Russians established air control basically in the first hours of the invasion. The difference being they can conduct the operations they want without prohibitive interference as opposed to no interference.

If the Ukrainians have a chance it will be because of the much referenced idiom Amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics. I just hope they can get to that point.

[jhu72]

Boycott Stupid.

Meanwhile, you might check this guy's twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

proof conclusive that the Russian soldiers have been lied to by Putin as to why, what, and who they are fighting. Now I am no military expert, but this doesn't seem like it is a strategy or tactic that leads to success for Putin. Man is a mad dog. He, personally needs to be put down. Meanwhile back in the good ole US of A, we have Trumpnista slime worshiping this guy.

I sure hope we are talking behind the scenes with some Russians who see and understand how critical it is for them that he be put down.

Note: this reporters' story would lend credence to the claim made by Ukrainian diplomats' story in the first 12 hours of disserting Russian soldiers claiming they were being lied to by their officers.

[Peter Brown]

Boycott Stupid.

Meanwhile, you might check this guy's twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

proof conclusive that the Russian soldiers have been lied to by Putin as to why, what, and who they are fighting. Now I am no military expert, but this doesn't seem like it is a strategy or tactic that leads to success for Putin. Man is a mad dog. He, personally needs to be put down. Meanwhile back in the good ole US of A, we have Trumpnista slime worshiping this guy.

I sure hope we are talking behind the scenes with some Russians who see and understand how critical it is for them that he be put down.

It’s easy to talk tough on the Internet when you conveniently forget Putin is sitting on about 10,000 nuclear warheads. You want to ‘put down a mad dog’?! You best not miss, cause he’s got nothing to lose in response.

[Farfromgeneva]

Nope but there are some points made. Disinformation and fifth column stuff

Disinformation is predicated on partial truths and small truths littered with tons of falsities and weak form interpretation.

Think I see where you stand but my only objection is the incremental “let me stick the tip in and feel around” wait and see if they Ukranian people can hold their own before we commit. It’s always complex and carries pros and cons but, like fighting, if you’re going to get in, get in and get down fast and serious. Not baby steps.

[Farfromgeneva]

Boycott Stupid.

Meanwhile, you might check this guy's twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

proof conclusive that the Russian soldiers have been lied to by Putin as to why, what, and who they are fighting. Now I am no military expert, but this doesn't seem like it is a strategy or tactic that leads to success for Putin. Man is a mad dog. He, personally needs to be put down. Meanwhile back in the good ole US of A, we have Trumpnista slime worshiping this guy.

I sure hope we are talking behind the scenes with some Russians who see and understand how critical it is for them that he be put down.

I also wouldn’t mind a sequel to Atomic Blonde. Charlize…

[jhu72]

Boycott Stupid.

Meanwhile, you might check this guy's twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

proof conclusive that the Russian soldiers have been lied to by Putin as to why, what, and who they are fighting. Now I am no military expert, but this doesn't seem like it is a strategy or tactic that leads to success for Putin. Man is a mad dog. He, personally needs to be put down. Meanwhile back in the good ole US of A, we have Trumpnista slime worshiping this guy.

I sure hope we are talking behind the scenes with some Russians who see and understand how critical it is for them that he be put down.

It’s easy to talk tough on the Internet when you conveniently forget Putin is sitting on about 10,000 nuclear warheads. You want to ‘put down a mad dog’?! You best not miss, cause he’s got nothing to lose in response.

Putin doesn't have the ability to use the nukes all by himself. He needs others in the chain of command to follow.

[Peter Brown]

Boycott Stupid.

Meanwhile, you might check this guy's twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko

proof conclusive that the Russian soldiers have been lied to by Putin as to why, what, and who they are fighting. Now I am no military expert, but this doesn't seem like it is a strategy or tactic that leads to success for Putin. Man is a mad dog. He, personally needs to be put down. Meanwhile back in the good ole US of A, we have Trumpnista slime worshiping this guy.

I sure hope we are talking behind the scenes with some Russians who see and understand how critical it is for them that he be put down.

It’s easy to talk tough on the Internet when you conveniently forget Putin is sitting on about 10,000 nuclear warheads. You want to ‘put down a mad dog’?! You best not miss, cause he’s got nothing to lose in response.

Putin doesn't have the ability to use the nukes all by himself. He needs others in the chain of command to follow.

And you think his entire staff will rebel against Putin if a gun is being held to their heads while he demands they launch?

These are delicate times, not times for cocky boldness.

Thankfully, our boy Joe is in Delaware for the weekend! What exemplary leadership in times of chaos.