Russia and Ukraine

[emjay]

And what do you think about the no fly zone... do you think there should there be one? Before, I would have said no... for fear of it provoking WW3... but I'm not so sure now, thinking perhaps the ship has already essentially sailed on that, like I said in my previous post, because he seems determined to bring it about... so maybe it's time to start thinking about getting out in front of that?

Putin is probably going to call this another "aggression" towards him/Russia. As we can see, he has started a war of aggression, invaded a country, and even before he started this war he is looking to put the blame on others: Drug addicts / Nazis, NATO, Ukrainians in general, whatever. He will throw around accusations until something (may) sticks, as he is already doing.
Thus i would not recommend calling out a no-fly zone. He 100% will try to exploit it.

As far as WWIII goes: I grew up and lived during (most of) the cold war: Only a literally crazy person would start a nuclear war, since it certainly means end of civilisation as we know, at least on the European continent. As much as Putin is reckless and dangerous, i dont think he is willing to rule over a nuclear wasteland called Ukraine or whatever. That being said, i have no illusions, that he would not hesitate a nanosecond to wage all out conventional war.

Tl;dr
One one hand he needs to be stopped, on the other hand, he will be looking for anything to justify himself and maybe gather allies around him under that pretense. This is like wabbit hunting!

That's another thing, just not knowing how truly unhinged/crazy this guy is... ie how much he believes his own propaganda/rhetoric. And basically that being the case, combined with massive paranoia, as has always seemed to be the case with Russia, makes me think there is potentially a real risk here. Especially since paranoia and/or delusions often have a self fulfilling prophecy aspect about them, and this situation seems a prime example of that... like you said, how he's justifying this to himself, blaming others for what he himself is doing, in what seems a very dangerous feedback loop.

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And what do you think about the no fly zone... do you think there should there be one? Before, I would have said no... for fear of it provoking WW3... but I'm not so sure now, thinking perhaps the ship has already essentially sailed on that, like I said in my previous post, because he seems determined to bring it about... so maybe it's time to start thinking about getting out in front of that?

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Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying here... could you rephrase?

There's been a trend of people around the world making bookings at Ukrainian AirBnBs, paying full price, and never going. It's a way to get money into the hands of Ukrainians who desperately need it.

The no-fly zone is not a bad idea, exactly, but more or less a useless one. Russia is using surprisingly little air power in Ukraine (although that may change if the war continues to not go Putin's way). Russian military thinking is heavily geared towards armour and artillery.  Putin's threats regarding a no-fly zone probably aren't serious. Short of nukes (which he's absolutely NOT going to use) he doesn't have the resources to punish any countries that participate in a no-fly zone. This is why, for all his posturing about the sanctions being an 'act of war', he hasn't done anything about it.

Boru

Thanks, I had no idea, so glad I asked.

And yeah, good points... reassuring. I agree if it's just conventional war he's threatening then it's maybe all talk, and beyond his resources/capabilities, but I still fear the possibility that he could take this nuclear, just dependent on how unhinged he really is, which we can't really know.