Sweden and (especially) Finland have a NATO-in-all-but-name position with the US as it is. An attack on either would probably bring the US in no matter what the rest of the EU does. And if the USAF goes in, Russia's position degenerates rapidly.
For that matter, both Sweden and Finland have enough air forces to make a huge difference. Russia's military has not lived up to their bragging.
In more concrete news, some of the destroyed Russian vehicles that people have been posting pictures of on social media are being identified as command units for support formations like artillery. These are not supposed to be coming under direct fire.
What even is Putin's goal here with this war against Ukraine? What is he trying to do? Has he gone mad or finally senile?
Is he trying to rally for something? Is this a ploy to keep himself in power? Is it just a mindless landgrab? Or does he really thinks Ukraine is some nest of evil in a delusional fantasy?
Like, I knew there was considerable tension between the two states, but this was all very sudden. I can't keep up with this.
And the "de-nazifying" quote. It makes me uneasy. Such an act of labeling can easily be abused to kill anyone he doesn't likes.
What is happening?!
Part of it is that he seems to really be drinking his own Kool-aid, but there's more to it. Russia's badly mishandled COVID, the population is increasingly restive, and that's making both Putin and the oligarchy nervous. Internationally, Russia's influence is waning badly, to the point where their only real "weapon" against the rest of Europe is fossil fuel supplies. Europe is aggressively shifting to renewables because of climate concern, which will leave Russia in the dust. Nuclear weapons are of very limited use as a diplomatic "big stick".
Russia's other industries (particularly agriculture) are enough to make them a reasonably prosperous middle-of-the-road nation, but Putin isn't satisfied with that. He wants the Great Power status that the Russian Empire once held, or the former Soviet status as one of the world's two Superpowers. Within a few years, that dream and goal will be as dead as the Tsars as Russia becomes increasingly irrelevant on the world stage. The sort of reforms you'd need to genuinely reverse that trend would require dismantling the oligarchy, which will take Putin out.
The classic solution to this is a Short Victorious War. You leap on and crush a weak neighbor, proving to your citizens that you are a strong leader (and, hopefully, getting some loot to pump into the economy and provide a period of prosperity), show the rest of the world you're a force to be reckoned with, and give yourself time to build a new Big Stick or improve other parts of your situation.
Except that the war has proved it will not be Short even if it is eventually victorious, and the international response is "Slava Ukrainia!".
This is pretty much spot on. He's a secret police/propaganda wonk that found himself in charge of the whole country after Boris Yeltsin passed the throne to him, and he's spent so long building this bullshit mythology about himself that he's started to believe it, but is also aware that he and his cronies have spent the past 20 years looting Russia. The Federation is economically in shambles, militarily a husk of what it used to be, and increasingly irrelevant on the international stage. He still to some extent seems to be living in the 1980s in his own mind, but he's having a rude awakening that he's not pushing thousands of tanks through the Fulda Gap and what he does have is running into a hell of a lot more than poor bastards with Jeep-mounted TOWs.
Basically, he's created a situation ripe for losing power and rather than trying to fix his own mistakes has doubled down, only to realize that he's jammed his dick into a woodchipper and is now desperately fumbling for an emergency cutoff (hence the less than veiled threats towards nuclear strikes, Chernobyl "accidents", attacks on Finland/Sweden, continued crackdowns on protestors because he still doesn't seem to understand that Russians have internet access and aren't stupid, &c.).
What I don't understand. Zelensky has (probably correctly) said that the Russians are aiming at a blitz to Kiev, to target and eliminate the government and install a new one.
If I were Zelensky and his government, I would not be in Kiev right now. I'd be in a bunker in a town that is so close to a NATO border that Russians can't use heavy weapons without causing collateral damage on the NATO side.
That's not cowardice, that's self preservation. The US president would be flying around in his doomsday plane if war comes.
EDIT: Zelensky just called out to 'people with military training' in Western countries. "Come to our country, if you do not want to wait on the indecisiveness of your governments".
There's already been what amounts to a call-up by a lot of European right-wing militias, particularly the ones that were involved in the fighting in 2014 and have ties to the Azov Battalion. There seems to be a pretty broad spectrum of response from standard right-nationalists, anti-communists, neo-nazi types, &c.
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Topic: Maybe the WWIII thread (soon) (Ukraine) (Read 68779 times)