Where Do Things End With Vlad? (h/t romad1)

[gehringer_2]

Just now, romad1 said:

si hope they fight as well as they make ads

So everyone assumes Putin's Russian conscripts will just swamp the Ukraine army, and maybe with good reason, but what examples do we to have of the recent fighting trim of Russian ground troops?

[1984Echoes]

3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

So everyone assumes Putin's Russian conscripts will just swamp the Ukraine army, and maybe with good reason, but what examples do we to have of the recent fighting trim of Russian ground troops?

The Russians paid a heavy price when they tried to break out of the Donbass to grab Mariupol (in an attempt to start/ establish a land route from Russia/ Donbass to Crimea... along the coast...).

They might be able to overwhelm the Ukrainians with numbers and technology (tanks, etc...), let's say to again attempt to establish the land corridor to Crimea... or to take all Ukraine East of the Dnieper River (essentially the same thing, but with more northern Ukrainian land and cities and industry/ resources...); but they would pay a nasty, nasty, nasty price.

Ukraine is much more well-armed and trained this time... especially with anti-tank weaponry. 

No.. I think this is just posturing.

NATO is talking about adding Ukraine.

Putin is having a conniption fit.

This is the result.

Which... I don't think ends up in actual war but... Putin will do whatever he can to discourage Ukraine from entering NATO; which is why he keeps insisting that he gets guarantees that Ukraine is never allowed into NATO before he will back down... even if it ends up with some nasty skirmishes, or worse. This is the ENTIRE CRUX of the current situation.

[romad1]

13 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

So everyone assumes Putin's Russian conscripts will just swamp the Ukraine army, and maybe with good reason, but what examples do we to have of the recent fighting trim of Russian ground troops?

Very true. Putin should consider such things.  Sadly, he's in a terminal urgency to remake the Soviet empire and isn't thinking rationally or, perhaps he is thinking rationally and thinks he can bluster his way into taking over Ukraine (Munich style).

[romad1]

Tucker Carlson hardest hit.

[Jim Cowan]

3 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

Wouldn't work because they're not eligible for NATO.

But ASEAN would work just fine...

Yes, that was the joke.

[CMRivdogs]

Admitting to being a novice when it comes to the Putin Games. I really liked this explainer on the Ukraine 

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/12/14/vladimir-putin-emotional-chess-master/

Quote

“Putin’s attachment to Ukraine often takes on emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical overtones,” write Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Alongside his tangible geopolitical concerns, they believe, he is driven by the personal compulsions of historical fabulation and ethereal bonds to a land that he denies constitutes a country. Its capital, Kyiv, was the center of the Slavic state Rus a millennium ago. Its size places it second only to Russia in Europe. Its historic kinship with Russia is exaggerated by the Russian leader to justify making it the target of a sacred claim.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 countries along the lines of its 15 republics, including Ukraine. Imagine the trauma—as if the United States fragmented into 50 independent nations, with a searing loss of dignity and global standing. Putin called the Soviet breakup “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Rumer and Weiss see him impelled to retake the prize of Ukraine to burnish his legacy.

“No part of the Russian and Soviet empires has played a bigger and more important role in Russian strategy toward Europe than the crown jewel, Ukraine,” they note in their essay. “The country is essential to Russian security for many reasons: its size and population; its position between Russia and other major European powers; its role as the centerpiece of the imperial Russian and Soviet economies; and its deep cultural, religious, and linguistic ties to Russia, particularly Kyiv’s history as the cradle of Russian statehood.”

Washington policy makers gave no hint of understanding any of that when they moved to fill the power vacuum left by the Soviet collapse. Unlike Putin, they did not read the other side. As the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact disintegrated, its eastern European members eagerly courted membership in the opposing military alliance—the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And NATO, pledged to defend any member subjected to attack, gladly picked them up one by one, trophies of the West’s supposed victory in the Cold War.

Every one of the Soviet “satellites” joined the Atlantic alliance, plus Albania; the separate countries of the former Yugoslavia; and three former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Two other former Soviet republics were given a promise of eventual membership that was vague—but threatening, in Russia’s view. They were Georgia and Ukraine. So a shrunken Russia found itself confronted by an adverse military alignment right on its borders.

Americans are relatively ahistorical compared with other nationalities. Despite current jockeying over how American history is taught in schools, the country is still young enough to be mostly tone-deaf to echoes from the past that resonate elsewhere. But tuning in is required to understand Russia and, therefore, Putin.

 

[romad1]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

Admitting to being a novice when it comes to the Putin Games. I really liked this explainer on the Ukraine 

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/12/14/vladimir-putin-emotional-chess-master/

 

Ukraine has got Poland's problem:  its not convenient to defend its sovereignty against a dictator.  WWII was fought ostensibly for Poland's right to self-determination.  That war basically destroyed the country and left it under the thumb of one of the predators that invaded it in 1940.   

Realpolitik meet self-determination meet the jaded and fearful.   

 

[Jim Cowan]

There is a foreign policy columnist that I read regularly, Gwynne Dyer, who sees no threat of Russian invasion.  He thinks that there would be no military response from NATO, but that the resulting sanctions would cripple Russia's economy and possibly cost Putin some of his considerable popularity.  And it suits Biden very well right now to play up the supposed threat, to pull some attention away from domestic issues.  So that's an interesting assessment.

[romad1]

Gas prices near record highs as Berlin rejects pipeline from Russia | Gas | The Guardian

this is an interesting development. 

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

There is a foreign policy columnist that I read regularly, Gwynne Dyer, who sees no threat of Russian invasion.  He thinks that there would be no military response from NATO, but that the resulting sanctions would cripple Russia's economy and possibly cost Putin some of his considerable popularity.  And it suits Biden very well right now to play up the supposed threat, to pull some attention away from domestic issues.  So that's an interesting assessment.

Putin must remember how much the military involvement in Afghanistan and even the Caucasus cost Russia. But OTOH, if you've gone to the expense of moving 170000 ground troops you've done it to generate a credible threat -- and also to see how his  idea of 're-uniting' greater Russia is playing in Russia itself.

Also I think in Putin's case you have moved them to put yourself into a position to let yourself be goaded into using them - to set up a situation even in his own mind where the West has 'forced his hand' and is therefore the responsible party to the bloodshed.

[gehringer_2]

13 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Gas prices near record highs as Berlin rejects pipeline from Russia | Gas | The Guardian

this is an interesting development. 

there will be at least some segments of the Euro politic who will think this is great because it is more incentive to get off fossil - it could even be if Germany actually has a workable plan to get off fossil.

Edited December 14, 2021 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

there will be at least some segments of the Euro politic who will think this is great because it is more incentive to get off fossil - it could even be if Germany actually has a workable plan to get off fossil.

Have you been to Germany recently?  The amount of arable land devoted to corn is weird.  Its such an American thing.  That and the solar and wind farms are very interesting.  I have heard that a KW is twice the cost in Germany as it is in Austria which has docile relations with Russia. 

[gehringer_2]

6 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Have you been to Germany recently?  The amount of arable land devoted to corn is weird.  Its such an American thing.  That and the solar and wind farms are very interesting.  I have heard that a KW is twice the cost in Germany as it is in Austria which has docile relations with Russia. 

How much is a kWhr worth if it's a kWhr not tied to being nice to Vladdy?

[romad1]

9 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

How much is a kWhr worth if it's a kWhr not tied to being nice to Vladdy?

Or the UK and Norway

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, romad1 said:

Or the UK and Norway

Germans were once pretty mean to Norway, won't hurt them to be nice to them from now on....

Edited December 14, 2021 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

22 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Germans were once pretty mean to Norway, won't hurt them to be nice to them from now on....

Because of that high cost, the whole Nord2 argument against is pretty tough to make if Putin isn't rattling sabers.  Its kinda all kinds of stupid to do this now.   Its the irrational that is worrying in this situation.  

If Putin is doing this because of some sense of terminal urgency it may be very ugly.   For starters, we may well have to arrest all his oligarchs and freeze their accounts.  He doesn't want a proxy war where the West has a huge open border to supply weapons and INT to a motivated Ukrainian population, perhaps where Poland and Romania also supply well-equipped troops. 

[1984Echoes]

5 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Admitting to being a novice when it comes to the Putin Games. I really liked this explainer on the Ukraine 

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/12/14/vladimir-putin-emotional-chess-master/

 

Having a historical attachment does not mean that Putin OWNS Ukraine. Russia does not OWN Ukraine, in fact, Stalin BRUTALIZED Ukraine because of their independent farmers refusal to join in with Stalin's "collectives". Which directly led to their deaths, as well as a resulting "collective" famine that wiped out 10-12 million Ukrainians IIRC...

Putin definitely has an emotional attachment to Ukraine, because of the historical connections (Kiev as the birthplace of the Rus (who everyone knows... were Swedish Vikings)), but Ukraine still has the right to self-determination.

And they have decided that they prefer the European Unions capitalistic economy versus Putin's kleptocracy/ dictatorship... and have also decided that they are safer under NATO's brotherhood of like-minded democracies rather than under Russia's/ Putin's KGB/ Mafia/ Police State. Putin did after all steal Crimea from them as well as southeastern Ukraine's two provinces of Donetsk & Lugansk.

FYI in case anyone cares...

[romad1]

41 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Having a historical attachment does not mean that Putin OWNS Ukraine. Russia does not OWN Ukraine, in fact, Stalin BRUTALIZED Ukraine because of their independent farmers refusal to join in with Stalin's "collectives". Which directly led to their deaths, as well as a resulting "collective" famine that wiped out 10-12 million Ukrainians IIRC...

Putin definitely has an emotional attachment to Ukraine, because of the historical connections (Kiev as the birthplace of the Rus (who everyone knows... were Swedish Vikings)), but Ukraine still has the right to self-determination.

And they have decided that they prefer the European Unions capitalistic economy versus Putin's kleptocracy/ dictatorship... and have also decided that they are safer under NATO's brotherhood of like-minded democracies rather than under Russia's/ Putin's KGB/ Mafia/ Police State. Putin did after all steal Crimea from them as well as southeastern Ukraine's two provinces of Donetsk & Lugansk.

FYI in case anyone cares...

very much care

[mtutiger]

 

[romad1]

According to the John Boehner book, Don Young took a knife to Boehner's throat he was so angry at him.  So, this is a play on that.

[romad1]

and this

Nice

[1984Echoes]

Good response.

[romad1]

Give them the Helos.  Give them the missiles. 

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1471880387840380931

[romad1]

 

They appear to have annoyed several members of congress. 

[romad1]