(August 6, 2023 at 6:26 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(August 6, 2023 at 6:19 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Actually, in the end, Finland is NATO-ized, in case you haven't been following the news. And in the intervening 80 years, USSR/Russia didn't fuck around any more, now did they?

that was only because soviet Union fell.   The final outcome of the contest between the Soviet union and Finland was certainly satisfactory from the soviet perspective.

Sure, until the USSR fell apart for other reasons, and Finland joined NATO because of a war Russia started to -- get this -- keep NATO away from the Russian border, lol. The Law of Unintended Consequences undid all the good your Tovarisch Stalin managed to achieve. NATO is now on Russia's border for how many hundreds of more miles?

At any rate, Putin has by his own decisions undid "Finlandization", because no one will trust Russia for a long time. And Russia mos' def won't fuck with Finland going forward. Looks like the Finns played the long game better.

Pardon my gentle chuckle.

(August 6, 2023 at 7:52 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(August 6, 2023 at 6:26 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: that was only because soviet Union fell.   The final outcome of the contest between the Soviet union and Finland was certainly satisfactory from the soviet perspective.

Sure, until the USSR fell apart for other reasons, and Finland joined NATO because of a war Russia started to -- get this -- keep NATO away from the Russian border, lol. The Law of Unintended Consequences undid all the good your Tovarisch Stalin managed to achieve. NATO is now on Russia's border for how many hundreds of more miles?

At any rate, Putin has by his own decisions undid "Finlandization", because no one will trust Russia for a long time. And Russia mos' def won't fuck with Finland going forward. Looks like the Finns played the long game better.

Pardon my gentle chuckle.

If Putin was really worried about NATO he wouldn't be feeding most of his cannon fodder and tanks into an 1000 km wide shredder.

(August 6, 2023 at 10:08 pm)LinuxGal Wrote: If Putin was really worried about NATO he wouldn't be feeding most of his cannon fodder and tanks into an 1000 km wide shredder.

I think he really is worried about NATO, he just misjudged how to best address it, imo. That he's worried about NATO is shown by the repeated nuclear threats followed by ... crickets.

Meanwhile, the Baltic is now a NATO lake, his country is ass-deep in alligators in a war it can't win, and even China is not happy with this turn of events that sees the possibility of insecurity on their northern borders should Putin fail and then fall, not to mention a hard roadblock to their Belt-and-Road plan at the Caspian Sea even if Russia might devolve this to a long and bloody insurgency. Italy is already bowing out of BaR, and that was China's planned inroad to NATO.

Putin screwed the pooch. Even if Russia wins militarily, which is doubtful at best, it's in a quagmire at least as bad as Afghanistan if not worse. And that brought an end to 70 years of Soviet empire.

(August 6, 2023 at 7:52 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(August 6, 2023 at 6:26 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: that was only because soviet Union fell.   The final outcome of the contest between the Soviet union and Finland was certainly satisfactory from the soviet perspective.

Sure, until the USSR fell apart for other reasons, and Finland joined NATO because of a war Russia started to -- get this -- keep NATO away from the Russian border, lol. The Law of Unintended Consequences undid all the good your Tovarisch Stalin managed to achieve. NATO is now on Russia's border for how many hundreds of more miles?

At any rate, Putin has by his own decisions undid "Finlandization", because no one will trust Russia for a long time. And Russia mos' def won't fuck with Finland going forward. Looks like the Finns played the long game better.

Pardon my gentle chuckle.

Hence the joke that there are thousands of Russian troops massed along the Finnish border. You just have dig down about six feet to find them.

Boru