All Things Russia & Ukraine

[old salt]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

[MDlaxfan76]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Unfortunately, Putin is willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of men in this death spiral.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

[old salt]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Soaring Death Toll Gives Grim Insight Into Russian Tactics

Moscow is sending poorly trained recruits, including convicts, to the front lines in eastern Ukraine to pave the way for more seasoned fighters, U.S. and allied officials say.

Feb. 2, 2023
The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials.

While the officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, they say the slaughter from fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and the town of Soledar has ballooned what was already a heavy toll.

With Moscow desperate for a major battlefield victory and viewing Bakhmut as the key to seizing the entire eastern Donbas area, the Russian military has sent poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, has been hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.

Russia analysts say that the loss of life is unlikely to be a deterrent to Mr. Putin’s war aims. He has no political opposition at home and has framed the war as the kind of struggle the country faced in World War II, when more than 8 million Soviet troops died. U.S. officials have said that they believe that Mr. Putin can sustain hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine, although higher numbers could cut into his political support.

Ukraine’s casualty figures are also difficult to ascertain, given Kyiv’s reluctance to disclose its own wartime losses. But in Bakhmut, hundreds of Ukrainian troops have been wounded and killed daily at times as well, officials said. Better trained infantry formations are kept in reserve to safeguard them, while lesser prepared troops, such as those in the territorial defense units, are kept on the front line and bear the brunt of shelling.

The last public Biden administration estimate of casualties came last November, when Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more than 100,000 troops on each side had been killed and wounded since the war began. At the time, officials said privately that the numbers were closer to 120,000.

“I would say it’s significantly well over 100,000 now,” General Milley said at a news conference last month in Germany, adding that the Russian toll included “regular military, and also their mercenaries in the Wagner Group.”

The State of the War
A New Assault: Ukrainian officials have been bracing for weeks for a new Russian offensive. Now, they are warning that the campaign is underway, with the Kremlin seeking to reshape the battlefield and seize the momentum.
In the East: Russian forces are ratcheting up pressure on the beleaguered city of Bakhmut, pouring in waves of fighters to break Ukraine’s resistance in a bloody campaign aimed at securing Moscow’s first significant battlefield victory in months.
Mercenary Troops: Tens of thousands of Russian convicts have joined the Wagner Group to fight alongside the Kremlin’s decimated forces. Here is how they have fared.
Military Aid: After weeks of tense negotiations, Germany and the United States announced they would send battle tanks to Ukraine. But the tanks alone won’t help turn the tide, and Kyiv has started to press Western officials on advanced weapons like long-range missiles and fighter jets.
At two meetings last month between senior military and defense officials from NATO and partner countries, officials said the fighting in the Donbas had turned into, as one of them put it, a meat grinder.

On Norwegian TV on Jan. 22, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s defense chief, said estimates were that Russia had suffered 180,000 dead and wounded, while Ukraine had 100,000 killed or wounded in action along with 30,000 civilian deaths. General Kristoffersen, in an email to The New York Times through his spokesman, said that there is “much uncertainty regarding these numbers, as no one at the moment are able to give a good overview. They could be both lower or even higher.”

Senior U.S. officials said this week that they believe the number for Russia is closer to 200,000. That toll, in just 11 months, is eight times higher than American casualties in two decades of war in Afghanistan.

The figures for Ukraine and Russia are estimates based on satellite imagery, communication intercepts, social media and on-the-ground media reports, as well as official reporting from both governments. Establishing precise numbers is extremely difficult, and estimates vary, even within the U.S. government.

A senior U.S. military official last month described the combat around Bakhmut as savage. The two sides exchanged several thousand rounds of artillery fire each day, while the Wagner private military company, which has been central to Russia’s efforts there, had essentially begun using recruited convicts as cannon fodder, the official told reporters. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.

The convicts took the brunt of the Ukrainian response while the group’s more seasoned fighters moved in behind them to claim ground, the official said. Wagner has recruited some 50,000 troops to fight in Ukraine, according to senior American military and defense officials.

Thousands of the convicts have been killed, a loss of life that has shocked American officials, who say the strategic value of Bakhmut simply is not in line with the price Russia has paid.

In an interview on Tuesday, a senior Defense Department official pointed to myriad military supply and tactical problems to explain the Russian tactics. The Russian military is running low on critical supplies and replenishment, said Colin H. Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy. “They’re running low on artillery. They’re running low on standoff munitions, and they are substituting by sending convicts in human waves into places like Bakhmut and Soledar.”

The Russian military has been following the Wagner playbook and deliberately using the poorly trained troops to draw, and deplete, Ukrainian fire, senior American military and defense officials said.

Kusti Salm, Estonia’s deputy defense minister, in a briefing with reporters in Washington last week, said that Russia was better able to stand its losses than Ukraine.

“In this particular area, the Russians have employed around 40,000 to 50,000 inmates or prisoners,” Mr. Salm said. “They are going up against regular soldiers, people with families, people with regular training, valuable people for the Ukrainian military.”

“So the exchange rate is unfair,” he added. “It’s not one to one because for Russia, inmates are expendable. From an operational perspective, this is a very unfair deal for the Ukrainians and a clever tactical move from the Russian side.”

Moscow has thrown people it sees as expendable into battles for decades, if not centuries. During World War II, Joseph Stalin sent close to one million prisoners to the front. Boris Sokolov, a Russia historian, describes in a piece called “Gulag Reserves” in the Russian opposition magazine Grani.ru that an additional one million “special settlers”— deportees and others viewed by the Soviet government as second-class citizens — were also forced to fight during World War II.

“In essence, it does not matter how big the Russian losses are, since their overall human resource is much greater than Ukraine’s,” Mr. Salm, the Estonian official, said in a follow-up email. “In Russia the life of a soldier is worth nothing. A dead soldier, on the other hand, is a hero, regardless of how he died. All lost soldiers can be replaced, and the number of losses will not shift the public opinion against the war.”

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

[old salt]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

I'm sure the 19 US Gold Star families are heartened by your appreciation for their son's sacrifice in Grenada.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

I'm sure the 19 US Gold Star families are heartened by your appreciation for their son's sacrifice in Grenada.

Trump appreciated it. Don’t remember your PABA crying crocodile tears….

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= ... 89,7206289

[old salt]

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= ... 89,7206289

My first cousin appreciated it. He was a med student trapped in Grenada.

[old salt]

As soon as the shooting stops, the EUroburghers will be suckling on the Russian cheap energy teat again.

a. When is it you think the shooting is gonna stop? You're still thinking this is a months-long deal, not years-long, just like Putin. I think you're nuts to be so certain of that.

b. wanna put some money on the idea that the EU will to right back to Russia while Putin lives? The longer this drags, the more time the EU has to find new trading partners, new sources, and/or get used to prices.

c. oil ain't the only thing Russia needs from the EU. And this mess is far from over. If Russia gets more aggressive, that won't help him with EU relations long term.

You may have noticed, the rest of the world is still purchasing Russia's energy, grain, fertilizer, minerals & weapons exports.

For less and less, perhaps you hadn't noticed that...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/busi ... urkey.html

Russia Sidesteps Western Punishments, With Help From Friends
A surge in trade by Russia’s neighbors and allies hints at one reason its economy remains so resilient after sweeping sanctions.

By Ana Swanson, Jan. 31, 2023
WASHINGTON — A strange thing happened with smartphones in Armenia last summer.

Shipments from other parts of the world into the tiny former Soviet republic began to balloon to more than 10 times the value of phone imports in previous months. At the same time, Armenia recorded an explosion in its exports of smartphones to a beleaguered ally: Russia.

The trend, which was repeated for washing machines, computer chips and other products in a handful of other Asian countries last year, provides evidence of some of the new lifelines that are keeping the Russian economy afloat. Recent data show surges in trade for some of Russia’s neighbors and allies, suggesting that countries like Turkey, China, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are stepping in to provide Russia with many of the products that Western countries have tried to cut off as punishment for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Those sanctions — which include restrictions on Russia’s largest banks along with limits on the sale of technology that its military could use — are blocking access to a variety of products. Reports regularly filter out of Russia about consumers frustrated by high-priced or shoddy goods, ranging from milk and household appliances to computer software and medication, said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an event at the think tank this month.

Even so, Russian trade appears to have largely bounced back to where it was before the invasion of Ukraine last February. Analysts estimate that Russia’s imports may have already recovered to prewar levels, or will soon do so, depending on their models.

In part, that could be because many nations have found Russia hard to quit. Recent research showed that fewer than 9 percent of companies based in the European Union and Group of 7 nations had divested one of their Russian subsidiaries. And maritime tracking firms have seen a surge in activity by shipping fleets that may be helping Russia to export its energy, apparently bypassing Western restrictions on those sales.

While Western countries have not banned the shipment of consumer products like cellphones and washing machines to Russia, other sweeping penalties were expected to clamp down on its economy. They include a cap on the price that Russia can charge for its oil as well as restricted access to semiconductors and other critical technology.

Some companies, including H&M, IBM, Volkswagen and Maersk, halted operations in Russia after the invasion, citing moral and logistical reasons. But the Russian economy has proved surprisingly resilient, raising questions about the efficacy of the West’s sanctions. Countries have had difficulty reducing their reliance on Russia for energy and other basic commodities, and the Russian central bank has managed to prop up the value of the ruble and keep financial markets stable.

On Monday, the International Monetary Fund said it now expected the Russian economy to grow 0.3 percent this year, a sharp improvement from its previous estimate of a 2.3 percent contraction.

The I.M.F. also said it expected Russian crude oil export volume to stay relatively strong under the current price cap, and Russian trade to continue being redirected to countries that had not imposed sanctions.

Most container ships have stopped ferrying goods like phones, washing machines and car parts into the port of St. Petersburg. Instead, such products are being carried on trucks or trains from Belarus, China and Kazakhstan. Fesco, the Russian transport operator, has added new ships and new ports of call to a route with Turkey that transports Russian industrial goods and foreign appliances and electronics between Novorossiysk and Istanbul.

Sergey Aleksashenko, former deputy minister of finance of the Russian Federation, said at an event this month that 2023 would be “a difficult year” for the Russian economy, but that there would be “no catastrophe, no collapse.”

Some parts of the Russian economy are struggling, he said, pointing to car factories that shut down after being unable to secure parts from Germany, France, Japan and South Korea. But military expenditures and higher energy prices helped prop it up last year.

“We may not say that Russian economy is in tatters, that it is destroyed, that Putin lacks funds to continue his war,” Mr. Aleksashenko said, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin. “No, it’s not true.”

Russia stopped publishing trade data after its invasion of Ukraine. But analysts and economists can still draw conclusions about its trade patterns by adding up the commerce that other countries report with Russia.

Matthew Klein, an economics writer and a co-author of “Trade Wars Are Class Wars,” is one of the people drawing conclusions about this Russia-size hole in the global economy. According to his calculations, the value of global exports to Russia in November was just 15 percent below a monthly preinvasion average.

Global exports to Russia most likely fully recovered in December, though many countries have not yet issued their trade data for the month, he said.
“Most of that recovery has been driven overall by China and Turkey particularly,” Mr. Klein said.

It’s unclear how much of this trade violates sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe, but the patterns are “suspicious,” he said. “It would be consistent with the idea that there are ways of trying to get around some of the sanctions.”

Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington nonprofit, recently issued a similar analysis, estimating that the value of Russian imports from the rest of the world had exceeded prewar levels by September.

One of the case studies in that report was the jump in Armenian smartphone sales. Andrew S. David, the senior director of research and analysis at Silverado, said the trends reflected how supply chains had shifted to continue providing Russia with goods.

Samsung and Apple, previously major suppliers of Russian cellphones, pulled out of the Russian market after the invasion. Exports of popular Chinese phone brands, like Xiaomi, Realme and Honor, also initially dipped as companies struggled to understand and cope with new restrictions on sending technology or making international payments to Russia.

But after an “adjustment period,” Chinese brands started to take off in Russia, Mr. David said. Overall Chinese exports to Russia reached a record high in December, helping to offset a steep drop in trade with Europe. Apple and Samsung phones also appeared to begin to find their way back to Russia, rerouted through friendly neighboring countries.

“Armenia is certainly not the only one,” Mr. David said. “There’s a lot coming through central western Asia, Turkey and the former Soviet republics.”

Shipments to Russia of other products, like passenger vehicles, have also rebounded. And China has increased exports of semiconductors to Russia, though Russia’s total chip imports remain below prewar levels.

One major open question is how effectively the Western price cap will hold down Russia’s oil revenue this year.

The cap allows Russia to sell its oil globally using Western maritime insurance and financing as long as the price does not exceed $60 per barrel. That limit, which is essentially an exception to Group of 7 sanctions, is designed to keep oil flowing on global markets while limiting the Russian government’s revenue from it.

Some analysts have suggested that Russia is finding ways around the effort by using ships that do not rely on Western insurance or financing.

Ami Daniel, the chief executive of Windward, a maritime data company, said he had seen hundreds of instances in which people from countries like the United Arab Emirates, India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia bought vessels to try to set up what appeared to be a non-Western trading framework for Russia.

“Basically, Russia has been gearing up toward being able to trade outside of the rule of law,” he said.

Mr. Daniel said his firm had also seen a sharp uptick in shipping practices that appeared to be Russian efforts to contravene Western sanctions. They include transfers of Russian oil between ships far out at sea, in international waters that are not under the jurisdiction of any country’s navy, and attempts by ships to mask their activities by turning off satellite trackers that log their location or transmitting fake coordinates.

Much of this activity had been taking place in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. But after media coverage of suspicious practices in this region, the hub moved south, off the coast of West Africa, Mr. Daniel said.

“They’re exploding,” he said of deceptive shipping practices. “It’s happening at an industrial scale.”

So far, the oil price cap appears to be accomplishing its goal of reducing the price that Russia can charge while keeping global supplies flowing. But it remains to be seen whether this shadow fleet of ships is big enough to allow Russia to buy and sell oil outside the cap, said Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, during a January panel discussion.

“If that fleet is big enough for Russia to really operate outside the reach” of the Group of 7 countries, the cap probably “won’t have the kind of leverage that policymakers wanted,” Mr. Cahill said. “I think we should know within a couple of months.”

Ana Swanson is based in the Washington bureau and covers trade and international economics for The Times. She previously worked at The Washington Post, where she wrote about trade, the Federal Reserve and the economy. @AnaSwanson

[Kismet]

Nice to see Salty is now posting articles from the New York Times. New subscription?
or looking for leaks from the Deep State?

Nice article on Chines spy balloon over Montana - SoS Blinken postponed planed trip this week to meet with Xi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... tagon.html

Pentagon Says It Detected a Chinese Spy Balloon Hovering Over Montana
The revelation comes days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing, where he is expected to meet with President Xi Jinping."{/i]

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= ... 89,7206289

My first cousin appreciated it. He was a med student trapped in Grenada.

Bruh, you don’t know what you talkin’ about.

ICYMI: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 9c83da565/

https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/opin ... 752749007/

[a fan]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

We know. But for some reason you’ve yet to explain to us—-you’re not blaming Putin. You’re blaming Ukraine for daring to protect their own sovereignty.

I don’t get why.

[jhu72]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

... Ronnie Rayguns' greatest moment.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

... Ronnie Rayguns' greatest moment.

“When the State Department pressured school officials to request military intervention they refused. The students themselves were polled, and 90-percent felt safe and were against evacuation. And some 500 of the students' parents cabled the president urging him not to put their children in danger with an invasion.”…. We got the W though.

[old salt]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

... Ronnie Rayguns' greatest moment.

“When the State Department pressured school officials to request military intervention they refused. The students themselves were polled, and 90-percent felt safe and were against evacuation. And some 500 of the students' parents cabled the president urging him not to put their children in danger with an invasion.”…. We got the W though.

They wanted out when the shooting in the streets started, days before the invasion. They were trapped in the middle of a revolution. There was a curfew in effect, threatening to shoot anyone on the street. It wasn't safe to try to get to the airport & they weren't sure about flights out.
I'm going on the first hand account of my cousin (who was one of the med school there) & his parents.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/p ... lties.html

Remember Grenada! We won that one!

... Ronnie Rayguns' greatest moment.

“When the State Department pressured school officials to request military intervention they refused. The students themselves were polled, and 90-percent felt safe and were against evacuation. And some 500 of the students' parents cabled the president urging him not to put their children in danger with an invasion.”…. We got the W though.

They wanted out when the shooting in the streets started, days before the invasion. They were trapped in the middle of a revolution. There was a curfew in effect, threatening to shoot anyone on the street. It wasn't safe to try to get to the airport & they weren't sure about flights out.
I'm going on the first hand account of my cousin (who was one of the med school there) & his parents.

Ain’t what I heard…..

[old salt]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

We know. But for some reason you’ve yet to explain to us—-you’re not blaming Putin. You’re blaming Ukraine for daring to protect their own sovereignty.

I don’t get why.

I've blamed Putin from the start. Putin is Putin. It takes two to tango & we're prolonging the war.

Putin was warning us for years what his grievances were, but we continued meddling in Russia's & former Russian states' internal affairs, fomenting revolutions, regime changes & NATO expansion.

We've helped Ukraine survive to the point where they can maintain their own independence & (with our continued help) defend themselves.
It's not our responsibility to sustain the war until they win back all their territory lost since 2014.

Based on previous experience with Biden, Blinken, Sullivan & Nuland, Putin knew what to expect when they came back into power. He acted when Zelensky refused to deal via the Minsk process & started pushing for EU & NATO membership, then cut off the water supply & overland access to Crimea.

Neither Biden nor Congressional warhawks are telling the American people how this will end or the potential consequences for the US.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

We know. But for some reason you’ve yet to explain to us—-you’re not blaming Putin. You’re blaming Ukraine for daring to protect their own sovereignty.

I don’t get why.

I've blamed Putin from the start. Putin is Putin. It takes two to tango & we're prolonging the war.

Putin was warning us for years what his grievances were, but we continued meddling in Russia's & former Russian states' internal affairs, fomenting revolutions, regime changes & NATO expansion.

We've helped Ukraine survive to the point where they can maintain their own independence & (with our continued help) defend themselves.
It's not our responsibility to sustain the war until they win back all their territory lost since 2014.

Based on previous experience with Biden, Blinken, Sullivan & Nuland, Putin knew what to expect when they came back into power. He acted when Zelensky refused to deal via the Minsk process & started pushing for EU & NATO membership, then cut off the water supply & overland access to Crimea.

Neither Biden nor Congressional warhawks are telling the American people how this will end or the potential consequences for the US.

Putin is prolonging the war. He can withdraw…..

[old salt]

Hopefully Ukraine throws in the towel so this could be over with.

They haven't killed enough Russians with our weapons yet.

Not yet. They are standing up to Russia when it matters. You want them to waive the white flag when it matters. When you see the whites of their eyes, run and waive white your flag.

In terms of stupid wars, this Crimean War is topping the original.

We know. But for some reason you’ve yet to explain to us—-you’re not blaming Putin. You’re blaming Ukraine for daring to protect their own sovereignty.

I don’t get why.

I've blamed Putin from the start. Putin is Putin. It takes two to tango & we're prolonging the war.

Putin was warning us for years what his grievances were, but we continued meddling in Russia's & former Russian states' internal affairs, fomenting revolutions, regime changes & NATO expansion.

We've helped Ukraine survive to the point where they can maintain their own independence & (with our continued help) defend themselves.
It's not our responsibility to sustain the war until they win back all their territory lost since 2014.

Based on previous experience with Biden, Blinken, Sullivan & Nuland, Putin knew what to expect when they came back into power. He acted when Zelensky refused to deal via the Minsk process & started pushing for EU & NATO membership, then cut off the water supply & overland access to Crimea.

Neither Biden nor Congressional warhawks are telling the American people how this will end or the potential consequences for the US.

Putin is prolonging the war. He can withdraw…..

Ukraine can now defend themselves behind the current line of contact. We're now providing more than they need just to defend the territory they now hold. We're now equipping them with the weapons necessary to go on the offensive to retake all the territory they lost (or surrendered without a fight) since 2014.