All Things Russia & Ukraine

[DocBarrister]

But Western military analysts say the strikes came at a staggering cost, depleted a dwindling supply of long-range missiles, hit no major military targets and are unlikely to change the course of a war going badly for Moscow.

"Russia lacks the missiles to mount attacks of this sort often, as it is running out of stocks and the Ukrainians are claiming a high success rate in intercepting many of those already used," wrote Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London.

"This is not therefore a new war-winning strategy but a sociopath's tantrum."

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wh ... 022-10-11/

DocBarrister

[MDlaxfan76]

'We can exterminate all of you': Pro-Russian activist issues warning to Ukrainians

A pro-Russian activist who proclaimed himself the people's governor of the Donetsk region has said his forces will kill "as many" Ukrainians as they have to.

Footage shared by columnist at the Daily Beast, Julia Davis, shows Pavel Gubarev share his thoughts on the people of Ukraine.

During the clip, he says: "We are coming to convince them, not to kill them.

"But if you don't want us to change your minds then we will kill you. We will kill as many as we have to.
"We will kill one million or five million. We can exterminate all of you until you understand you're possessed and you have to be cured."

The pro-Russian governor goes on to call President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "devil's spawn" and "Hitler 2.0".

I’m getting the feeling that the Ukrainians might feel the same way about him. This little dustup is going to make the US Civil War look like a school yard fight.

620,000 dead is a lot....sure hope not.

30k - 180k+ already dead in 6 months depending on who you want to believe. And that's whether they're accurate even if they're trying to be honest. Tons missing as well.

And yes indeed, hope we don't get any higher.

Agreed.

[Kismet]

Today's news

" Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia is ready to start gas supplies via a link on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that remains operational but it is the EU’s decision if they want it.

“Russia is ready to start such supplies. The ball is in the court of the EU. If they want, they can just open the tap,” Putin said in his annual address to the Russian Energy Week forum.

Remember: The pipeline had yet to enter commercial operations. The plan to use it to supply gas was scrapped by Germany days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.

Nord Stream 1, on the other hand, was operational but Russia has been shutting off supply or decreasing it throughout the summer. However, it had been shut for weeks when western nations reported leaks in the two pipelines, saying it was likely the result of sabotage.

“The pipeline that runs through the Baltic Sea can be repaired obviously but it will make sense only in case there is further use if they are economically justified and definitely when the security is guaranteed,” Putin said. “If together with our European colleagues we take together the decision to supply gas through the remaining one link of Nord Stream 2. Apparently it still remains operational, unfortunately we are not allowed to test it.” "

Sure, Vlad would have been NUTS to damage his own pipeline, right?

[MDlaxfan76]

'We can exterminate all of you': Pro-Russian activist issues warning to Ukrainians

A pro-Russian activist who proclaimed himself the people's governor of the Donetsk region has said his forces will kill "as many" Ukrainians as they have to.

Footage shared by columnist at the Daily Beast, Julia Davis, shows Pavel Gubarev share his thoughts on the people of Ukraine.

During the clip, he says: "We are coming to convince them, not to kill them.

"But if you don't want us to change your minds then we will kill you. We will kill as many as we have to.
"We will kill one million or five million. We can exterminate all of you until you understand you're possessed and you have to be cured."

The pro-Russian governor goes on to call President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "devil's spawn" and "Hitler 2.0".

So let's wade right in the middle of that & straighten it out. We have such a good record in that regard.
Fortunately the Serbs didn't have nucs or cruise missiles.

"wade in"???

I think the Ukrainians are doing a remarkable job of beating back the Russian military, using mostly Soviet era weapons augmented progressively with western weaponry, technology and intelligence (the more they get, the better they do).

Ukraine has the clear-eyed morale advantage of being on the ground defending their nation, their people, their families and communities. Information flow is open and free in their society at present, unlike the Russian situation.

Ukraine will defeat Russia, given the time and weaponry to do so.

Reading Ignatious, the Ukrainians are also quite clear-eyed that the enemy is not merely Putin, but rather the ideology embraced by many in Russia of an imperialist manifest destiny (my words); and that, if the Russian people don't come to grips with what they have done, what they have allowed to be done in their name, the terror of Russian aggression will continue.

Appeasement of that ideology by the West would be disastrously costly.

I thought Tapper's lead-in last night was right on point.

[Typical Lax Dad]

'We can exterminate all of you': Pro-Russian activist issues warning to Ukrainians

A pro-Russian activist who proclaimed himself the people's governor of the Donetsk region has said his forces will kill "as many" Ukrainians as they have to.

Footage shared by columnist at the Daily Beast, Julia Davis, shows Pavel Gubarev share his thoughts on the people of Ukraine.

During the clip, he says: "We are coming to convince them, not to kill them.

"But if you don't want us to change your minds then we will kill you. We will kill as many as we have to.
"We will kill one million or five million. We can exterminate all of you until you understand you're possessed and you have to be cured."

The pro-Russian governor goes on to call President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "devil's spawn" and "Hitler 2.0".

So let's wade right in the middle of that & straighten it out. We have such a good record in that regard.
Fortunately the Serbs didn't have nucs or cruise missiles.

"wade in"???

I think the Ukrainians are doing a remarkable job of beating back the Russian military, using mostly Soviet era weapons augmented progressively with western weaponry, technology and intelligence (the more they get, the better they do).

Ukraine has the clear-eyed morale advantage of being on the ground defending their nation, their people, their families and communities. Information flow is open and free in their society at present, unlike the Russian situation.

Ukraine will defeat Russia, given the time and weaponry to do so.

Reading Ignatious, the Ukrainians are also quite clear-eyed that the enemy is not merely Putin, but rather the ideology embraced by many in Russia of an imperialist manifest destiny (my words); and that, if the Russian people don't come to grips with what they have done, what they have allowed to be done in their name, the terror of Russian aggression will continue.

Appeasement of that ideology by the West would be disastrously costly.

I thought Tapper's lead-in last night was right on point.

In the long run, the Missouri Appeasement was the right call.

[old salt]

Through Ukrainian eyes, this terrible conflict has become a clash of civilizations. They argue that most Russians support Putin’s brutal war in the way that most Germans supported Adolf Hitler. Unless Russia as a nation abandons the imperial dreams that Putin has evoked, the conflict cannot be resolved through negotiations.


“Russia has to go through the same process that Germany did after World War II,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak insisted Saturday in an interview with me and the other members of a group organized by the German Marshall Fund, of which I’m a trustee. “If Russian society doesn’t understand what they’ve done, the world will be brought into chaos.” He enthusiastically predicts that postwar Russia will dissolve into five or six smaller nations.

… So how will this clash of civilizations end? In the West, people try to imagine a negotiated peace. Putin might withdraw to the preinvasion lines. … Or mediators might devise a formula to defer final resolution of the status of the occupied territories. … Or the Russian army might rebel against the Kremlin’s dictates. ... Or Putin might be replaced by a successor who is unable or unwilling to continue the war.


Ukrainians I met in Kyiv unanimously rejected any such interim settlement. They want Ukraine to win back all of its territory, and Russia to lose decisively. The war will end, said Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the national security and defense council, “when the Russians understand that they have zero chance of victory.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... in-russia/

DocBarrister

From the same Ignatius article :
The Ukrainian narrative centers on the diverging paths the two countries took after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukrainians turned West, toward the European Union and embraced a freewheeling if corrupt version of democracy. Russia flirted with the West at first, under President Boris Yeltsin, but after a decade of chaos and humiliation, Russians welcomed the strong hand of Putin when he was elected president in 2000.

Russia never had a thorough post-communist housecleaning, and in the Ukrainian view, that’s the root of the current catastrophe. “Russians, somehow, are afraid [of democracy],” said Datsiuk. “This is what Ukrainians will never understand. They choose safe space and warm food instead of freedom.” The two societies diverged, says Alina Frolova, a former deputy defense minister who now heads a think tank called the Center for Defense Strategies. “Russia had 10 years of freedom after 1991, but they chose to go back to their traditional empire.”

Ukraine’s pro-Western democracy threatened Putin, and he has worked relentlessly, obsessively, to crush it. His war against Ukraine began in 2014, when he seized Crimea and parts of the Donbas region, and it culminated in this year’s scorched-earth invasion.

It's laughable reading Ukrainian "intellectuals" contrast themselves from Russians, given their "national" history since 1991 as one of the most corrupt nations on the planet. What did their " thorough post-communist housecleaning" produce ? A "freewheeling if corrupt version of democracy', ...what an understatement ! They plundered the most prosperous of the Soviet Republics, then stood aside in 2014, unwilling & unable to defend themselves, as Russian little green men strolled in & seized Crimea & the Donbass. Every time the West would engineer a revolution & regime change for them, they'd elect another pro-western crook who'd then give way to yet another pro-Russian stooge. Yeah -- for the past 30 years, they've been a real laboratory for an evolving democracy. It's bad enough that we now have to finance their battle for survival as an ersatz nation (with no history of anything other than corruption), restored fully to irrational, indefensible, accidental borders, we have to listen to them telling us how they're better than their primitive Slavic cousins to the east. Give us a break. Their inability to craft a modus vivendi with their Russian cousins (like the rest of the SSR's did) has brought us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, ...or so we are told.

[a fan]

Their inability to craft a modus vivendi with their Russian cousins (like the rest of the SSR's did) has brought us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, ...or so we are told.

Your path doesn't avoid that. You get that, right?

Let's say Zelensky did/does what you said. Cede the territory, remain neutral.

You're the Ukrainian leader, charged with the safety of your people. What would you do?

Like this is a difficult question to answer.

[old salt]

Their inability to craft a modus vivendi with their Russian cousins (like the rest of the SSR's did) has brought us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, ...or so we are told.

Your path doesn't avoid that. You get that, right?

Let's say Zelensky did/does what you said. Cede the territory, remain neutral.

You're the Ukrainian leader, charged with the safety of your people. What would you do?

Like this is a difficult question to answer.

Accept a cease fire in place & a frozen conflict, without formally ceding territory, or formally accepting a change in borders.
Allow the Russian army N & W of the Dneiper to withdraw back across the river.
Begin negotiations for both nations to have unfettered access to the Black Sea, including free navigation of the Dneiper, including export of Russian grain, in return for Russian supply of natural gas & oil to Ukraine & the west, at global market rates.
Begin resettlement & repatriation of Ukrainian citizens. Continue accepting NATO & US military aid in training & equipping Ukrainian forces to defend the nation. Get my economy going. Then enter negotiations for a settlement for ongoing peace.
Agree to refrain from NATO membership, so long as hostilities do not resume. Continue receiving western military aid.

[MDlaxfan76]

Boy, Salty really goes off the deep end at these later hours in the day.

[a fan]

Their inability to craft a modus vivendi with their Russian cousins (like the rest of the SSR's did) has brought us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, ...or so we are told.

Your path doesn't avoid that. You get that, right?

Let's say Zelensky did/does what you said. Cede the territory, remain neutral.

You're the Ukrainian leader, charged with the safety of your people. What would you do?

Like this is a difficult question to answer.

Accept a cease fire in place & a frozen conflict, without formally ceding territory, or formally accepting a change in borders.
Allow the Russian army N & W of the Dneiper to withdraw back across the river.
Begin negotiations for both nations to have unfettered access to the Black Sea, including free navigation of the Dneiper, including export of Russian grain, in return for Russian supply of natural gas & oil to Ukraine & the west, at global market rates.
Begin resettlement & repatriation of Ukrainian citizens. Continue accepting NATO & US military aid in training & equipping Ukrainian forces to defend the nation. Get my economy going. Then enter negotiations for a settlement for ongoing peace.
Agree to refrain from NATO membership, so long as hostilities do not resume. Continue receiving western military aid.

US Military aid and training hasn't proven to have helped Ukraine to defend itself. Putin is STILL hitting them. Killing civilian Ukrainians at Putin's leisure.

Try again.

And remember, you think the entirety of Ukraine is filled with slimeballs and bad people. So if you're the head bad person, and you see that advanced weapons from the US does f*ck-all to keep Putin from doing what he wants...what would you do?

You know the answer. You just don't LIKE the answer because it shows that your path doesn't work, either.

[old salt]

Their inability to craft a modus vivendi with their Russian cousins (like the rest of the SSR's did) has brought us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, ...or so we are told.

Your path doesn't avoid that. You get that, right?

Let's say Zelensky did/does what you said. Cede the territory, remain neutral.

You're the Ukrainian leader, charged with the safety of your people. What would you do?

Like this is a difficult question to answer.

Accept a cease fire in place & a frozen conflict, without formally ceding territory, or formally accepting a change in borders.
Allow the Russian army N & W of the Dneiper to withdraw back across the river.
Begin negotiations for both nations to have unfettered access to the Black Sea, including free navigation of the Dneiper, including export of Russian grain, in return for Russian supply of natural gas & oil to Ukraine & the west, at global market rates.
Begin resettlement & repatriation of Ukrainian citizens. Continue accepting NATO & US military aid in training & equipping Ukrainian forces to defend the nation. Get my economy going. Then enter negotiations for a settlement for ongoing peace.
Agree to refrain from NATO membership, so long as hostilities do not resume. Continue receiving western military aid.

US Military aid and training hasn't proven to have helped Ukraine to defend itself. Putin is STILL hitting them. Killing civilian Ukrainians at Putin's leisure.

Try again.

And remember, you think the entirety of Ukraine is filled with slimeballs and bad people. So if you're the head bad person, and you see that advanced weapons from the US does f*ck-all to keep Putin from doing what he wants...what would you do?

You know the answer. You just don't LIKE the answer because it shows that your path doesn't work, either.

US military aid & training has saved the nation of Ukraine & guarantees it's survival. Russia is no longer advancing & adding territory.
The longer Ukraine survives & incorporates US & NATO weapons systems, the more secure they will become.
They knocked down 50% of the missiles in the most recent attack. That % will just get better as US air defense systems are added.

[old salt]

From behind the WSJ paywall. Walter Russell Mead is sounding worried :

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-nuc ... 1664824197
Opinion. Putin’s Nuclear Threat Is Real
The conflict isn’t only about Ukraine. He’s waging a global war on the U.S.-led order.
by Walter Russell Mead Oct. 3, 2022

Even as poorly trained, poorly led and poorly supplied Russian forces retreat on the battlefield, the danger that the war in Ukraine will erupt into a wider conflict continues to grow. Vladimir Putin has responded to the weakening of his military position by “annexing” four contested regions inside Ukraine, declaring that the conflict in Ukraine is a war for the survival of Russia, and raising the specter of a nuclear strike. The West is taking note of these moves and the sabotage of Baltic pipelines connecting European consumers to Russian gas. National security adviser Jake Sullivan has warned Russia that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic consequences for Russian forces, and Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, repeated that message Sunday morning.

As the Biden administration scrambles to manage the most dangerous international confrontation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, it must see the world through Mr. Putin’s eyes. Only then can officials know how seriously to take the nuclear saber-rattling and develop an appropriate response.

While American presidents going back to George W. Bush have failed to appreciate the depth and passion of Mr. Putin’s hostility to the U.S., the Russian president isn’t that hard to read. Like a movie supervillain who can’t resist sharing the details of his plans for world conquest with the captured hero, Mr. Putin makes no secret of his agenda. At Friday’s ceremony marking Russia’s illegal and invalid “annexation” of four Ukrainian regions, he laid out his worldview and ambitions in a chilling and extraordinary speech that every American policy maker should read.

Mr. Putin sees global politics today as a struggle between a rapacious and domineering West and the rest of the world bent on resisting our arrogance and exploitation. The West is cynical and hypocritical, and its professed devotion to “liberal values” is a sham. The West is not a coalition of equals; it represents the domination of the “evil Anglo-Saxons” over the Europeans and Japan. Mr. Putin sees this American-led world system as the successor to the British Empire, and he blames the Anglo-Saxon or English-speaking powers for a host of evils, from the Atlantic slave trade to European imperialism to the use of nuclear weapons in World War II.

This attack on “Anglo-Saxon” greed, brutality and hypocrisy is not original to Mr. Putin. He is reading from a script developed by opponents of British and American liberal capitalism and geopolitical power over hundreds of years. Napoleon could have delivered large swathes of this speech. Very different figures such as Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler as well as Joseph Stalin, Imperial Japanese leaders like Hideki Tojo, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden shared much of Mr. Putin’s critique. One can hear versions of it on many college campuses, and it plays a significant role in the intellectual and cultural life of many postcolonial countries and movements around the world.

Drawing on this widespread resentment of the liberal West allows Mr. Putin to appeal to currents of opinion in Russia and beyond that transcend normal ideological boundaries. Russians who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union can happily cooperate with Russians longing for the czars. Orthodox Christian traditionalists can make common cause with anti-Western Islamists. This is a hymn book from which fascists and communists can both happily sing. It appeals to the illiberal fifth column Mr. Putin hopes to foster in the West as well as to Africans, Latin Americans and Asians who resent continued Western wealth and power. Building a global front against Western and especially American power is central to Russian and Chinese foreign policy.

Mr. Putin’s version of the anti-American worldview gives a special role to Russia. “I would like to remind you that in the past, ambitions of world domination have repeatedly shattered against the courage and resilience of our people,” Mr. Putin told his audience in the Kremlin on Friday. In this view, Russia is the bulwark of the rest of the world against Western aggression and domination. And for Mr. Putin, the conquest of Ukraine is an essential step in preserving Russia’s ability to carry out its historic mission to curb the ambitions of the imperial West.

The Biden administration must remember that for Mr. Putin the battle in Ukraine is only one part of a global war against the American-led world order. And if Ukraine is going poorly for Mr. Putin, the global scene is more encouraging. While NATO has been strengthened and—thanks to Finnish and Swedish accession—is about to be expanded, the global order, already shaken by the Covid pandemic, has taken a beating this year. At least in part owing to Mr. Putin’s war, financial markets are in turmoil. Europe faces a daunting mix of double-digit inflation and fuel costs high enough to make important energy-intensive industries economically unviable. Rising food, fuel and fertilizer prices across the Middle East, Latin America and Africa threaten significant social suffering and political unrest. Mr. Putin can reasonably hope that over time these problems will strain the West’s cohesion.

Making threats about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine advances both Mr. Putin’s goals in Ukraine and his larger campaign against the American-led order. Nuclear weapons, he hopes, could shift the military balance on the ground, and the fear of nuclear war could force Washington to dial back military support for Ukraine. The threat or use of nuclear weapons could split Europe between “peace at any price” governments and governments of countries closer to Russia whose determination to resist nuclear blackmail would only grow.

There is one other consideration. Ever since taking power in Russia, Mr. Putin has been frustrated by his inability to parlay his country’s immense arsenal of nuclear weapons into real political power in the world. Nuclear weapons made the Soviet Union a superpower; Mr. Putin wants that stature back. Extracting significant concessions from the West by nuclear blackmail over Ukraine would be a major step in his goal of regaining the Soviet Union’s place in world affairs.

None of this is good news for the Biden administration. Yielding to Russian blackmail over Ukraine would be a massive blow to American credibility and power overseas and would look weak to Americans who have cheered Ukraine on. Yet deterring a Russian attack involves the risk of a deepening American engagement in an escalating war.

Mr. Putin’s armies are in headlong retreat across much of Ukraine. His support at home looks threatened. But the threat he poses to vital American interests must not be underestimated, and the threat that he will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine is real.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/would-we-r ... 1665068559
Opinion. The Question on Putin’s Mind: Would We Risk New York to Keep Odessa Free?
Biden’s efforts to deter him have so far had little success. Now the world’s future may hinge on them.
By Walter Russell Mead, Oct. 6, 2022

‘A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a joint statement after their summit in June 2021. But Mr. Putin doesn’t always tell the truth.

The reality is that as Mr. Putin’s failing military skedaddles east across occupied Ukraine, nuclear weapons look more attractive. That is not so much because a tactical nuclear strike would be effective against widely scattered Ukrainian forces in the field. It is more that Mr. Putin hopes the political shock waves set off by nuclear explosions in Europe would shatter the West’s resolve to support Ukraine. Is Germany willing to lose Berlin to save Kyiv? Are Americans ready to risk New York to keep Odessa free? These are the questions Mr. Putin is asking himself.

The future of the world may depend on his answers. Meanwhile, the Biden administration faces a terrible dilemma. To yield to Mr. Putin’s nuclear blackmail would be a cowardly act of appeasement from which Neville Chamberlain would recoil—and which would open the door to more nuclear blackmail. Yet to lead the Western alliance into an open-ended nuclear confrontation with Russia is to risk the most catastrophic of wars.

To avoid these unacceptable alternatives, the Biden administration must deter Mr. Putin from using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict even as it continues to support Ukraine in its battle to drive the invaders back.

Deterrence is more complicated than it looks, and the Biden administration’s efforts to deter Russia have had little success. In February, Mr. Putin blew past the Biden administration’s barrage of threats and diplomacy to launch the war in Ukraine.

Not deterring Russian aggression was one of the costliest failures in recent American foreign policy. But it isn’t clear that the Biden administration understands what went wrong—and how similar mistakes might be undercutting its diplomatic efforts today.

Unintentionally and unwittingly, the administration sent Russia mixed messages last winter. On the one hand, a dramatic burst of diplomacy worked to coordinate a broad Western response to the potential invasion, with Europeans joining Americans in threatening severe sanctions. Biden officials broke with precedent to declassify and publicize highly sensitive information about Mr. Putin’s plans in ways that dramatically undercut Russia’s official statements and propaganda. That intelligence helped build Western unity in the face of the Russian attack, and Biden officials are right to take credit for this unorthodox but effective campaign.

At the same time, however, senior American policy makers seriously overestimated Russia’s military strength and acumen. As storm clouds gathered over Kyiv, U.S. officials ordered all senior American diplomats to evacuate. They also urged allies to evacuate and offered Volodymyr Zelensky an airplane to flee.

This was hardly a message of deterrence. As the Russian leader finalized his preparations, the evident American belief in the invasion’s success would, if anything, have eased any doubts Mr. Putin might have felt. Further, since the Biden administration had reassured the Russians that American combat troops would not engage in any Ukrainian war, Mr. Putin did not need to worry about a powerful, immediate American military response.

We will have to do better this time if we expect to deter him from using nuclear weapons. Mr. Putin already knows that fear of a Russian nuclear response has affected American and allied policy. We have limited Ukraine’s access to long-range missile systems that could hit Russian territory. Other North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, including Germany, have made similar calculations.

From Mr. Putin’s point of view, in a war in which almost everything is going wrong, nuclear blackmail is working. Why wouldn’t he double down on the one tactic that works?

The only way to deter any possible use of nuclear weapons is to make Mr. Putin believe that the consequences of such use will be ruinous for Russia as a state and for him as its ruler, and that the West won’t flinch when the time for action comes.

To make his threats credible, Mr. Biden needs, first, to make up his mind that he is prepared to stay the course. “The double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,” the Bible tells us. Facing down Mr. Putin in a nuclear standoff is not a course for a man who lacks conviction.

If Mr. Biden is sure of himself, he must build an ironclad coalition at home and abroad behind those threats. Rather than playing down the danger, he needs to dramatize it. Making a prime-time speech to the country, addressing a joint session of Congress, holding an emergency NATO summit—these can all demonstrate Mr. Biden’s commitment to respond with overwhelming force to Russian nuclear attacks.

While Americans won’t unanimously support this policy, most responsible people in both parties recognize Mr. Putin’s Russia as a threat to American security and world peace. A broad show of national unity on this issue will send a sobering message to Moscow.

Deterring Russia doesn’t mean humiliating it. As President Kennedy understood, deterrence complements diplomacy. The more effective our deterrence, the more flexible our diplomacy can become. Deterrence however comes first. Mr. Biden must bar the door to using nuclear weapons before he can seek a path to peace.

[old salt]

This is how escalation can spin out of control.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-e ... rgn7djgbq6

In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. ...

[Typical Lax Dad]

This is how escalation can spin out of control.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-e ... rgn7djgbq6

In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. ...

Nobody ever considered this. Thanks.

[Seacoaster(1)]

This is how escalation can spin out of control.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-e ... rgn7djgbq6

In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. ...

Not an original thought. What does the foreign policy and military affairs punditocracy say about the hostage situation unfolding in Europe and Central Asia? Russian adventurism and the Czar's utterances about "any means available" essentially hands the world a situation in which Russia holds the world hostage. Retreat, appeasement, back to some land deal, etc.; all of these leave the world with a anarchic regime ready to prey. This adventure in Ukraine has made it clear that the world cannot allow Putin to remain in charge in Russia, or at least made clear that he cannot be allowed to hold Europe hostage.

[Kismet]

This is how escalation can spin out of control.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-e ... rgn7djgbq6

In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. ...

Not an original thought. What does the foreign policy and military affairs punditocracy say about the hostage situation unfolding in Europe and Central Asia? Russian adventurism and the Czar's utterances about "any means available" essentially hands the world a situation in which Russia holds the world hostage. Retreat, appeasement, back to some land deal, etc.; all of these leave the world with a anarchic regime ready to prey. This adventure in Ukraine has made it clear that the world cannot allow Putin to remain in charge in Russia, or at least made clear that he cannot be allowed to hold Europe hostage.

Another view

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/ ... clear-bomb

[PizzaSnake]

This is how escalation can spin out of control.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-e ... rgn7djgbq6

In war, nothing is inevitable and not much is predictable. But the war in Ukraine has a direction that observers can see and that we should name. What began as a criminal Russian aggression against Ukraine has become a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. The two sides are locked in an escalatory cycle that, along current trends, will eventually bring them into direct conflict and then go nuclear, killing millions of people and destroying much of the world. ...

Not an original thought. What does the foreign policy and military affairs punditocracy say about the hostage situation unfolding in Europe and Central Asia? Russian adventurism and the Czar's utterances about "any means available" essentially hands the world a situation in which Russia holds the world hostage. Retreat, appeasement, back to some land deal, etc.; all of these leave the world with a anarchic regime ready to prey. This adventure in Ukraine has made it clear that the world cannot allow Putin to remain in charge in Russia, or at least made clear that he cannot be allowed to hold Europe hostage.

Another view

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/ ... clear-bomb

This.

"Let me add one more observation, which is that the epistemology of thinking about the risk of nuclear war is deeply challenging. We have nine nuclear states, and we have zero examples of full-scale global nuclear wars being fought. We don’t know whether nuclear wars don’t happen because nuclear deterrence is working on some level or simply because decision-makers are deciding to take another path. So there are substantial challenges to understanding nuclear risk."

[a fan]

US military aid & training has saved the nation of Ukraine & guarantees it's survival. Russia is no longer advancing & adding territory.
The longer Ukraine survives & incorporates US & NATO weapons systems, the more secure they will become.
They knocked down 50% of the missiles in the most recent attack. That % will just get better as US air defense systems are added.

Translation: I'm too stubborn to answer an obvious question, because I don't like the answer.

You're so full of it. You protected our nation for how long? And yet here you are, pretending that if you were the leader of a country that you'd sit idly by and let another country lob missiles into our cities, trying to kill as many civilians as possible because the enemies troops can't beat you on the battlefield.

Nukes, Old Salt. Ukraine is gonna get nukes. Wake up, and stop blaming Biden's little D because you're petty and ideologically lazy.

They removed their nukes, and are now paying the price for choosing the peaceful past. And yet you're on here, blaming them for the invasion ...blaming them for making the peaceful choice.

They won't make the mistake of listening to guys like you ever again.

And they're not gonna get icbms, because.... what for? They're gonna build the little f'ers that Putin is threatening to use.

And now Asia is a mess, and it has NOTHING to do with whether or not the US helps.

[CU88]

What do those who want to give Putin his current (not his last for sure) land grab think he will do to the people and communities that will fall under his control?

They all become Russians and are treated like Moscovites???

Will he rebuild their lives, homes, jobs, infrastucture, etc...???

[Bandito]

Boy, Salty really goes off the deep end at these later hours in the day.

This is the definition of trolling fyi.