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[bloop_bleep]

Fuck your Russian peace talks. How long exactly have we given Russia a chance to fix this diplomatically? How much have we given away to Russia, at the cost of our spines and consciences? Russia makes a farce out of your peace talks and your treaties and your diplomacy. They take you for fools, because you have been fools. They are unscrupled bandits and fascists. They will sign a treaty fuck your mother then sign another treaty, all while laughing at you. They respond only to concrete action. They spit on everything else.

And the idea that a no-fly-zone means nuclear war is bullshit. Why does mutually assured destruction stop being a thing when a conventional war ON FOREIGN TERRITORY happens?

Appeasers like you are what caused this situation.

[Starver]

Don't worry.  Everyone you mentioned is lying in one way or other.  Like, maybe stop believing everything that Politicans say?

...though I am cynical about politicians in general, it is autocrats (or wannabes) that I distrust even more.

(Like a certain alleged President where I'd look up to make sure if he tried to tell me that the sky was blue.)

President Zelensky is using an age-old negotiating tactic called "Ask for MORE than you want".  Poor Zelensky never gets his "No Fly Zone".  He's just have to do with tons of Anti-Tank and Anti-Aircraft weapons.

This is what I'd say, sort of. But not with your attitude. He can't very well say he'll have to do without.

Some doomed types could fool themselves (or at least try to fool the world) that All Is Okay, Thank You. Right the way up to the point their Palace is invaded by the People, or whatever, because the mirage of competence dropping. This is not President Z's case. He is neither incompetent (he at the very least has the nouse to have competent people dealing with their specialities, none of this Bunker Mentality of a Supreme Leader), and he is not sugar-coating things for the pure sake of appearance.

(Yes, he downplayed the risks of invasion, immediately prior to the invasion, but at that time the act of screaming about it may well have been far more counterproductive. Especially if the brinkmanship from Russia had stopped short. Which might even have been one of Putin's alternate playbook scenarios. Scare Zelenskyy into paranoia and then... do nothing. On the world stage, and locally, Zelenskyy would have suffered ridicule. But he didn't go that way, and so here we are.)

Seriously, he is an ACTOR doing his fucking job.

Even though it is his job to fight a war, if there is a war that must be fought, he is definitely doing more than was prominantly advertised in the "Now Hiring" advertisement. And don't disparage him for being an actor. Actors have been good national leaders in other times and countries. And this guy's no reality-show character with dillusions of adequacy.

As for the US politicians, the current POTUS may not be perfect, I will agree. But there definitely could have been worse positions to take. And if there are aides advising Biden, or even just being listened to... Well, good! It's not a bad thing to have happen for anything of actual importance. The rest of your criticism seems like it has a temporal disjoint to it, though. It fit more to four years before now.

Haven't seen much about other, smaller, voices. Especially not from South Carolina, so I can only guess what opinions are emminating from there. Warhawk(/chickenhawk?) stuff, is it?

[heydude6]

Appeasement is definitely a loser’s game. I do genuinely believe in building a golden bridge though. Not much of one, Putin can’t remain in power, but maybe we can take him to a farm rather than the gallows.

Even if it is way more than he deserves.


Realistically, I still believe stalling is the winning tactic for Ukraine. Let Putin destroy his entire army in his vain attempts to conquer us. Maybe the Russian mob will be able to take over once Russia becomes defenceless.

[ChairmanPoo]

Putin *is* the Russian mob

[wierd]

I bet most Russians nukes wont fly. The chain of command also probably wont access to massive suicide, and even if they do probably lots of them will fail to work properly.

Here's the deal here:

The tritium in the larger bombs will have decayed by now.  Tritium has a half life of about 12 years.  This means that by now, the tritium in the really big bombs has likely turned into essentially useless helium 3.

The half-life of the PU239 ignition systems at least, are probably still good. (Half life of several thousand years.)
The smaller, dirtier uranium bombs may still be quite servicable-- Halflife of U235 is 700 million years.

Given that much of the cold-war brinkmanship was about who had the biggest terror-dong, in terms of "Make go boom-booms", most of the devices constructed would have been hydrogen bombs. (and thus would be suffering the decay problem.)

In addition to that, the Uranium based devices were kinda... Uhm.... They kinda got sold to the middle east were rendered inoperable in pretty significant ways during the 90s. (I remember there being political talking points of former soviet warhead materials being sold to the middle east as well, from the remaining arsenals inside Russia proper-- however, the bulk of the warheads were positioned strategically in the 'Eastern Bloc', and the fate of those weapons was "rendered permanently inoperable".)

Tritium is a controlled substance by the world nuclear regulatory agencies for a reason. This is kinda that reason.

Russia would need a rather large quantity of tritium to properly re-arm their (remaining) nuclear arsenal.  While Russia is CURRENTLY deep into the kind of belligerency needed to do that, they have not been previously.  It is very difficult to produce tritium in the quantities needed without causing world radiological monitoring stations to start going off.  (See also, how we TOTALLY KNEW about North Korea's nuclear program)  I suppose Putin could have ordered an absolutely mind-destroying number of tritium sign illumination devices through grey markets, but that would be very hard to keep concealed.

Russia violating the nuclear disarmament treaty in that way would have been big news. So big, nobody could have kept it quiet.

It is probably to assume that Russia has some potentially viable uranium based devices on hand, and maybe a few straight plutonium devices-- (those were never the most popular, as they are dangerous, cranky, have a difficult refinement/enrichment process, and leave a lot of bad byproducts after detonation-- for only modestly more boom than Uranium, when compared to the boom of tritium based devices) -- but the bulk of the arsenal is probably not fit for deployment, and would need a costly restart of nuclear materials production, that would be impossible to conceal, to reactivate.

Basically, you might get Hiroshima bombs, but quite likely not Tsar Bomba.

[Strongpoint]

Putin *is* the Russian mob

No. Russia is a very complex country. Putin is not Kim Jong-Un and Russia isn't North Korea. .

Russian revolt, merciless and senseless, has some potential to materialize. Possible sources:

1) Russian radical imperialists. You may ask aren't those love Putin? No. They never did. For them, Putin is a thief and a coward, not some holy leader. At best, they tolerated him for being better than some stinky Western puppet. And they are far from happy about how "successful" this war is. They do understand that revolting during a war is a treason but their speakers like Girkin-Strelkov are far from being happy.

2) Ethnic minorities. Russia's economy goes downhill. Guess who will suffer the first in a fascist state? Also, there are a disproportional number of ethnic minorities dying in Ukraine. It is not because of some creative ethnic cleansing but because of their poverty. Ethnic Russians have money to avoid conscription by giving a bribe, ethnic Russians have a more varied choice of profession and they are less likely to become professional soldiers.

3) Local elites. Those people, appointed by Putin, rule their regions for decades. They always were loyal to Putin but now, when their quality of life goes down (like, you know, no vocations in Switzerland) they may start getting funny ideas. And they have some real power - local law enforcement is usually more loyal to them than to Moscow.

But we need months (at least) to see any of those becoming a major factor.

[feelotraveller]

I tried to read up on this. It was confusing.

There is the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, whose leader resides in Kiev.
And there is the Ukrainian Orthodox church, which is a branch of the Russian orthodox church.

Could do far worse than start with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Moscow%E2%80%93Constantinople_schism

[martinuzz]

I don't really understand why the US mention that of the max 100000 Ukrainian refugees they will take in, they will focus on lgbti, journalists and activists. The latter two I understand, but lgbti have better rights in quite a few countries in northwest Europe, where we don't have states and supreme courts that would like to see them not exist at all.

[LordBaal]

They should focus on kids.

[Criptfeind]

I don't really understand why the US mention that of the max 100000 Ukrainian refugees they will take in, they will focus on lgbti, journalists and activists. The latter two I understand, but lgbti have better rights in quite a few countries in northwest Europe, where we don't have states and supreme courts that would like to see them not exist at all.

Ukraine is in southeast Europe, so that's where most of the refugees are going to end up. Primarily Poland. Which, the US can be bad in this regard, but not as bad as Poland. Unless said northwest Europe countries have committed to taking 100% of the lgbti refugees it makes sense.

[martinuzz]

Ukrainians are free to travel within the EU, they don't have to stay in Poland. So yeah, basically the western European countries have already committed to taking in all lgbti, or all Ukrainians that want to move there for that matter.

Practical problems, like enough housing, are another matter.

[Criptfeind]

Yeah. Housing, transportation, a source of income, these are the things people need. I'm sure they would all love to move to the Netherlands but without specific help most are going to probably end up staying in Poland.

[LordBaal]

Ideally it would be just temporary for the great majority of them.

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah. Housing, transportation, a source of income, these are the things people need. I'm sure they would all love to move to the Netherlands but without specific help most are going to probably end up staying in Poland.

There's plenty room offered in Europe. But most refugees are reluctant to go further than Poland for reasons of proximity, finances, familiarity, mutual support, and communication.

[Lord Shonus]

I don't really understand why the US mention that of the max 100000 Ukrainian refugees they will take in, they will focus on lgbti, journalists and activists. The latter two I understand, but lgbti have better rights in quite a few countries in northwest Europe, where we don't have states and supreme courts that would like to see them not exist at all.

LGBT+ people are being actively amd openly targeted by this war, so they're by dar the most vulnerable.

Europe also isn't the paradise for them you imply - I know several people who immigrated precisely because their home countries wer far more hostile in general despite having less loud posturing.