Wanna talk about Russia v. Ukraine?
Russia’s gonna get its coub de grace – finally, again, for reals this time?
Ukrainians will be marching down the Leningradskiy Prospekt by Christmas?
Have at it.
57 thoughts on “Russia/Ukraine Open Thread”
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It’s not finished, but the capture of cities along the major N-S rail route towards Donetsk forces the Russians to route their supplies on the rail lines to Rostov and Shakhty, and that in turn is going to make it extremely difficult for Russia to continue their grain and fertilizer exports. Unless, of course, the North Koreans aren’t able to supply that ammunition the Russian army apparently desperately needs. And then there could be another big reason the Russians would have trouble exporting grain and fertilizer.
Fortunately for Russia, they’ve still got Sergey Lavrov and Dmitry Medvedev, who are as good as fertilizer spreaders as anything John Deere has ever made. I’m not quite sure they’re going to get revenue out of them, though.
Putin wanted to keep it to a simple Zmack down; he didn’t plan for the US to turn it into a proxy war. The Russian Federation has 2 million Army reserves. Watch for major escalation in the coming weeks.
As the recession drags on, Pedo Joe is going to find support harder to come by for his next $10 billion cash infusion to save buttsex, corruption and child trafficking.
BTW Patriots, remember when your loyal GOP reps banded together to pass that appropriation bill for the border wall? Yeah, me neither.
It was less than 1/2 of what we’ve sent to the Ukrainian mob, so far. MAGA
Longtime reader, since I think 2013, and I may have left a comment or two back then, but lets just say I’m new here.
Why the hate for Ukraine on the right?
Yes, Swiftee, I’m sure that Putin is allowing tens of thousands of his soldiers to die because he has millions of troops and plenty of materials in reserve, and Russia could win everything it wants in a blitzkrieg. Ignore the fact that the Russians are increasingly fielding early cold war materials like T-62s, ignore the fact that S-300 missiles are being used for attacking land targets, ignore the fact that the Black Sea fleet is now largely in port to spare it from attack, and definitely ignore the fact that he’s recruiting soldiers from the jails of Russia.
Ignore the fact that government leaders in Russia are starting to openly call for him to resign, knowing full well that Putin’s opponents often end up with polonium poisoning or “falling” out of a window. So while Russia has a chance of keeping some of what it wants in Ukraine (though a decreasing chance every day), reality is, Swiftee, that the world is discovering that Russia is a paper tiger, and Putin’s disgrace is that tens of thousands of Russians who ought to be at home creating an economy in Russia, making families (and new Russians), are instead dead or maimed.
Putin delenda est!
Slava, though I’m emphatically on the pro-Ukrainian side here, the core of the argument is that Ukraine is too corrupt to become a viable partner, and thus aiding them is simply going to end up in horrendous debt and even possibly nuclear war. I concede that Ukraine has been historically corrupt, but my contention is that the corruption results from the efforts of the KGB/FSB to control the former Soviet satellite states via favored “oligarchs”. Figure out how to evict the FSB, and you’ve mostly solved the corruption problem.
Big part of evicting the FSB is to frustrate the designs of their head, Vladimir Putin, and force a reckoning among those who know who controls the polonium to go into peoples’ borscht.
SU, it is not hate but realpolitik and aversion to drinking propaganda from a hose.
The word to summarize the post-conflict posture of the advanced democracies towards Russia is “marginalize.” Push the Russians economically east and north. Don’t try to overthrow the oligarchy because the next one would probably be worse. Support the continuing corruption of this oligarchy. The west has a lot of experience doing this in the Greater Middle East.
The goal is to both contain Russia and constrain it. Do that with Russia, and future negative international behavior by China towards the global democratic alliance will be constrained. The basis for a successful transactional relationship with China will be established.
If the democracies “prevail” in the Ukraine–let’s just leave “prevail” somewhat undefined for now–then most likely Taiwan in the Far East will remain autonomous, democratic, and economically successful. The democratic alliance will have achieved a stupendous overall geopolitical victory. The overall future agenda for global society will be decisively set by the democracies and the free and open market economies that democracy empowers.
We’re playing for a lot of the big marbles in Ukraine.