Russia and Ukraine

[Duty]

For the first time in my life I'm seriously empathising with my parents for being members of CND. 

[The Grand Nudger]

PS any Russian occupation outside of the small slivers of failed state territories in the Donbass it's vassal breakaway states already hold will cause problems that will eclipse Vietnam, every single day of said occupation.

That's what happens when you half ass invade a country and then give them years to aggressively militarize before you try to take another bite.

[WinterHold]

The back ups are

1. the west lack of any credible deployable land and air power that can remotely approach Russian lamd and air military capabilities in Ukraine and Belorus,  So Russian can militarily do whatever it wants there and no one can directly stop them
2. Russian nuclear arsenal makes any threat to attack Russia elsewhere in retaliation for Russian attack in Ukraine inconceivable and thus totally not credible.
3. Europe can’t even keep all the lights on, much less also supply all the heating needs, without Russian gas, so in the end the threat of long term economic retaliation too severe for russia to bear is also not credible.   Because russia could easily make the consequences of severe economic sanction on Russia unbearable for Europe.

And there is the fact that in the long run the west fears china whose economy is 10 times bigger and whose technology is competitive across many more areas, much more than Russia, which allows Russia to threaten to play the China card if the west still fail to come to their senses and realize they held no cards in this game in Ukraine which the west started.

Basically the west made some heroic poses, bragged a lot, made a show of nailing their own dicks to Ukraine, and now realized they can neither move away from Ukraine, nor keep Putin from cutting off their dicks.

Compare to western overreach and general lack of clue about the underlying balance of power, Putin is a master.    In truth, I would not say he had been particularly brilliant.   But he played his hand without serious errors.   Unlike the west, which does not appear to even know the rules.

1. Russia is caught in a pincer: U.S from the right; NATO from the left. That's a very tough spot in case of a war; Russia will be bombarded with nukes from the East and West. Along with economic sanctions, it will be a devastating war but the odds are on the west's side.

Russia knew that all along; that's why it gave the world to the U.S after the collapse of USSR. But now something changed and resurrected the Soviet spirit of old: all I can think about is a new ally-allies for Moscow, mighty enough to lessen the force of the pincer.

2. If the fight remained in Ukraine only, you have a point. But what do you think about this headline?

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacif...022-02-23/

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/23/china...index.html

This was yesterday btw. China is sharpening its claws as it seems. Now it's the time to see who is with Russia also from the beginning that gave it the bravery to invade Ukraine and break the pincer.

3. I'm sure the Europeans + Americans are thinking about their favourite game of all: a coup in Russia to replace Putin with a puppet like the zombies we have in the Middle East. Actually, their foreign policy backfired in Ukraine; maybe the west managed to keep a couple of Arab countries in bay; but that didn't work with Russia. Kinda like burning your own hand while playing with fire.

[Anomalocaris]

Germany told Russia that it can stuff it's gas up it's arse on Tuesday.  All this war is doing at the moment is alienating the customers Russia needs to keep from being the world's first fourth world country.

PS any Russian occupation outside of the small slivers of failed state territories in the Donbass it's vassal breakaway states already hold will cause problems that will eclipse Vietnam, every single day of said occupation.

Germany told Russia no such thing.    Germany basically told Russia that the gas which Germany is currently NOT importing, and in any case didn’t expect to import until 2023 because nord stream 2 pipeline is not online yet, it won’t be importing in the very near future.    

But the gas it is actually importing through Nord Stream 1, it will continue to import.

If the Russians stopped the gas export to Germany on Nord Stream 1?   Lights will go out and pensioners will freeze to death in Germany.    

As to what will happen in 2023?   Because germany decided to retire several nuclear power plants this year thanks to knee jerk reaction after Fukujuma nuclear accident 10 years ago, German demand for Russian gas will go up considerably.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The West and its allies are able to cripple Russia economically and make any occupation of the Ukraine untenable. Russia’s trading partners in the West and Asia easily exceed its trade with China.

Bear in mind that ‘are able to’ is not remotely the same as ‘are going to’. As Anomalocaris points out, the German aren’t going to let oldies freeze to death, and - more importantly - Western companies aren’t going to let their respective governments force them to sacrifice profits over Ukraine.

Putin’s already won this one.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

PS any Russian occupation outside of the small slivers of failed state territories in the Donbass it's vassal breakaway states already hold will cause problems that will eclipse Vietnam, every single day of said occupation.

The notion that Russian occupation of Ukraine will be mired in a popular guerrilla war is very likely a pleasant mirage.

It should be noted the american perception of US-Ukraine-Russia relationship is steeped in the self-deception that the US created to pursued ourselves that we were morally right to try to pry Ukraine away from Russia in the first place by pretending that is what Ukrainian people overwhelmingly Wanted.    In fact, anti-Russian sentiment is mostly restricted to relative young urban people.   Outside that there is considerable nostalgia for the former Soviet Union in Ukraine.   That should be totally unsurprising considering Ukrainian economy today,  after 30 years of independence, is roughly half of what it had been under the Soviet Union, and Ukrainian standard of living since independent have declined from those of the relatively developed world under USSR to being on par with that of third world, civil war torn Libya or Sri Lanka.

Our perception of the world since the end of the Cold War have become so conceited, blinkeredly self-serving and ideological, that We delude ourselves with the preposterous reasoning that because in our opinion it is morally reprehensible to pine for the Soviet Union, therefore the effect of poor performance after the fall of Soviet Union does not signify, and the resultant existence of Soviet nostalgia can be ignored and do not need to be accounted for in our perception of ground reality.  No wonder we can produce a trump. 

As to how much young people who hate Russia really love Ukraine and are truly willing to die to defend it, that can be judged by the fact 30% of the young educated Ukrainians have permanently emigrated to Europe and America, and permanent emigration seems to be the aspiration of most of those remaining.

[Anomalocaris]

The West and its allies are able to cripple Russia economically and make any occupation of the Ukraine untenable. Russia’s trading partners in the West and Asia easily exceed its trade with China.

Bear in mind that ‘are able to’ is not remotely the same as ‘are going to’. As Anomalocaris points out, the German aren’t going to let oldies freeze to death, and - more importantly - Western companies aren’t going to let their respective governments force them to sacrifice profits over Ukraine.

Putin’s already won this one.

Boru

No, we lost this one in 2005, when we instigated the color revolution in Ukraine.   We started this game with no cards.  We thought assertiveness and self-serving moralizing allows us to win the game without knowing the rules.   It could hardly have ended any other way.

I think every reaction we have now, every sentiment we express now, shows we’ve learned nothing.

[Deesse23]

1. Russia is caught in a pincer: U.S from the right; NATO from the left. That's a very tough spot in case of a war; Russia will be bombarded with nukes from the East and West. Along with economic sanctions, it will be a devastating war but the odds are on the west's side.

Russia knew that all along; that's why it gave the world to the U.S after the collapse of USSR. But now something changed and resurrected the Soviet spirit of old: all I can think about is a new ally-allies for Moscow, mighty enough to lessen the force of the pincer.

2. If the fight remained in Ukraine only, you have a point. But what do you think about this headline?

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacif...022-02-23/

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/23/china...index.html

This was yesterday btw. China is sharpening its claws as it seems. Now it's the time to see who is with Russia also from the beginning that gave it the bravery to invade Ukraine and break the pincer.

3. I'm sure the Europeans + Americans are thinking about their favourite game of all: a coup in Russia to replace Putin with a puppet like the zombies we have in the Middle East. Actually, their foreign policy backfired in Ukraine; maybe the west managed to keep a couple of Arab countries in bay; but that didn't work with Russia. Kinda like burning your own hand while playing with fire.

I see you are still batshit crazy after your 4 week "holiday". Looks like you did not use that time well.

---

If the Russians stopped the gas export to Germany on Nord Stream 1?   Lights will go out and pensioners will freeze to death in Germany.    

Put the pipe down, please.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Biden has vowed to shield USians from a spike in petrol prices. While this is a typically empty political promise, it also underscores the hypocrisy of the ‘we stand with Ukraine’ platitude. Westerners are perfectly willing to wail and moan about illegal invasions, until it means economic pain for them and lower poll numbers for politicos. 

Boru

[CarveTheFive]

Nothing to add except damn this is really sad. I was hoping this wasn’t going to go down.

Putin can suck my asshole.