I find this pretty insulting considering it took a lot of introspection to arrive at my political stances
Everybody has cruise missiles. Especially if you have a navy, and Germany has a pretty decent navy / naval export business
My fervent hope is that Xi sees this, and really re-thinks his plans/ideas for Taiwan. Both the unpredictable nature of military operations and the absolute fucking dumpster fire that's going to be the Russian economy after this.
And how many countries/populations who were pretty neutral prior to hostilities being dragged in the opposite direction.
Really does feel like Vlad has to make the decision of flattening Kyiv and as you said the world will have a front row seat to those war crimes after they “promised” not to fire on innocent civilians or buildings. Or, he’s going to have to commit a force level to take that city which probably means a lot of dead Russians as there are just more them running around early on in a surge.
I think that’s already happened thanks to: It also helps that Taiwan has made it known they have no problem blowing up all their chip factories if it comes down to it.
no clue why Putin thought, if he truly did, that Ukraine would let him walk over them. Even as an uneducated westerner, when I think of Ukraine my initial thought would be "Probably don't fuck with."
Kiyv has a subway system and (I’m assuming) a sizable underground sewer system, so they’d have to tunnel rat the whole city or risk insurgents popping up behind them.
It’s gotta be just a matter of time before Putin is just like fuck it and go scorched earth since his strategy of as little destruction as possible to make the rebuild easier has failed.
I’m not sure how comparable the two really are from a battle perspective. but in the world’s view, and the blowback China would get? Absolutely Agree
I’ll post the Podcast links here in a little bit but leading up to this a lot of Russian observers have argued that 1. He has always been delusional. 2. Prior to Covid he became more and more isolated from “reasonable” voices in his government. 3. When COVID hit he essentially has been alone only listening to the thoughts in his head. The mad man has gone truly mad is the conclusion by most of these folks.
Remember that he grew up in a Soviet world, worked for the Soviet system, idolizes the history of the Russian Empire, and has surrounded himself with people who are the same. He genuinely believes what he said about Ukraine not existing as a state because of that. In his mind, they are Russian and were only being led astray by the system he’s spent his whole life opposing.
If Russia gets frustrated and escalates strategies that cause civilian collateral damage are NATO and other countries compelled to intervene directly?
No, and probably won’t unless Russia accidentally shoots down another airliner. At that point there’s a slim chance a no-fly-zone might happen, but no boots are grounding in this unless Poland/The Baltics get directly attacked.
Gen. Petraeus gave a really interesting Interview on MSNBC yesterday. You know this but for those of you that don’t he pretty much wrote the 21st century counter insurgency doctrine for the US military. He talked about how fucked the Russians would be even if they were to severely weaken if not topple the Ukrainian military because of exactly what you are talking about.
Russia also seems to have a pretty noticeable supply line problem; that’s like a gold mine for insurgency.
The ONLY way it happens is if the US gets probably a signed commitment from the Chinese that they won’t assist Russia in anyway. But those are easily broken. It turns into WW3. We would have to make a bet that psychopath doesn’t start lobbing nukes all over the world, it’s just not a gamble anyone wants to make, for good reason. I doubt you would see boots on the ground. It would be all air support. But it just isn’t going to happen.
FYI for the thread, I’ve got my two weeks active time coming up pretty soon so next week my analysis posts will pretty much stop, but I’ll try to keep going with my “what that is/what it does” posts as much as I can. I’ll probably be dozens of pages behind though so sorry if I miss a lot of stuff.
I really hope Ukraine is confiscating all these abandoned military vehicles that we are seeing pics of. They could really boost their land unit numbers rather quickly.
giving up stewardship of the club doesn't mean he's selling his share of it. although I think that's probably coming.
I'm more than a little surprised/confused/impressed at how calm both the Ukrainian citizens and the Russian soldiers are in these interactions. Like the Russian soldiers need gas, they are sitting ducks for air strikes, and they just laugh at the "need a tow back to Russia" jokes. Maybe this is how many wars are, and as was mentioned previously, Hollywood has poorly rendered it. I think more likely these Russian conscripts have no idea why they are there and don't want to be there. Like I get the feeling from these clips that they would much much rather hop in the car with those guys to go drink than continue on. It just isn't at all what I expected.