For the low-comprehension visitors here, search in vain so much as two syllables hereabouts advocating U.S direct involvement in this dust-up. Then kindly STFU about that whole line of Strawman bullshit. That was never our position, nor ever would be.
Besides, at this point, the EU is liable to send Ukraine all they need and more, and short of taking on all of Europe, or going batshit-crazy-nuclear, Putin's running out of troops, time, options, and most of all, the one thing he needs in war or peace, and hasn't got nearly enough of.
Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics. Strategists point out that nations, and wars especially, run on only two irreplaceable items:
Money.
And even more money.
'Twas ever thus.
They failed to do that, not only because of a low gray matter titer, but because any evidence of such doesn't exist In The Real World, because the Russian economy is in freefall, their market crashed, then closed, the ruble is past the toilet, in the pipes flowing to the sewage treatment plant, and their economy will take God-Alone-Knows-How-Long before anyone can seriously speak about any attempt for it to recover. A Trident warhead on Moscow couldn't have nuked their economy any better than Putin's invasion has done already.
FFS, even the effing permanently-neutral Swiss have chopped Putin's and Russia's financial dicks off at the base! Wake up and smell the vodka.
We mention these wee factoids because, well...
We yell because we care. If that applies, because this all happened while you were still in diapers, or before, the clown shoes fit, and you should wear them.
Meanwhile, back in Reality, Putin's entire economy just shit the bed. His piggie bank got ass-raped, got dick cancer, died in a fire, the flames were beaten out with a wrecking ball, and the ashes and debris were dropped into the meltdown at Chernobyl, and are part of the Earth's magma core. And it's not coming back ever, for any practical value of ever. Win, lose, or draw. Putin has flushed his economy and his nation down the toilet and onto the dung-heap of history for a dream of a restored Soviet empire that will never again be.
Vlad is now a liability to the entire Russian nation, and any future it might have. Ukraine, not so much. The people who think he has vast armies to call up: They have this wee problem with multiple other formerly free republics Vlad has warmly welcomed back into the Sov,er...Russian Federation, with a wet sloppy kiss on both cheeks, and a gun to their heads. If Putin pulls forces out of them, and he gets multiple Ukraines, and he's playing whack-a-mole for the rest of his short life. His own people are protesting this war en masse, because they can't buy food anymore. Despite being arrested by the KGB FSB, they're still coming out in droves, every day. If he pulls troops from the Chinese border, and the actual "traditional invasion route" into Russia, the one where they've had multiple unreported actual hot wars with China, with tens of thousands of actual casualties, it's suddenly and invitingly open to Xi.
And Vlad only started with 500K troops, and a limited reserve of bombs, rockets, missiles, etc. He can't buy more, and he can't pay anyone to make more, and nobody's taking his credit cards or his phone calls, including China. He can't sell shit to anyone, at any price. The Bosporus is closed. If he attacks Turkey to open it, that's NATO. Tries to sail the Mediterranean, that's NATO again. Tries to go through to the Baltic Sea? NATO again. And he's already committed half his army to get thumped on by pipsqueak Ukraine, with 40M people who speak fluent BFYTW.
If I can figure it out, so can Russian generals and their command staff. And all the political underlings yearning to be the next leader there.
Russians don't take a crap without a plan? Vlad's was evidently to crap himself. The jackals in his own government won't be so clumsy, and his rule will end, probably in a stroke occasioned by a few rounds behind the ear. And his bedraggled leftover conscript army wants none of his quest for glory over Ukraine, a country Putin has done more to unify in a week than any 500 years of history ever could. And every screaming one of them wants to do nothing but kill Russian invaders, including the grandmothers and grandfathers.
And. They. Will.
Sorry if that pisses you off, or caught you choking on Putin's wedding tackle, but that's where it looks to be headed.
And beheaded is liable to become another word you hear again, one of these days. Metaphorically, or actually. History is funny like that.
Don't be a Pu-tard. It's not even working for its namesake.
22 comments:
Time will tell.
I would laugh my ass off if China suddenly declared a large chunk of Russia, which they have already virtually conquered through immigration, to suddenly be part of China, and there was nothing the Russians could militarily do about it. Right up to the point the nukes start flying anyway.
Yeah, i dont agree.
The reserves are large.
China won't cut him off or attack.
India will Honor their deals
The right wing lunatics that are in control don't hold that much terrain or loyalty.
Ive got friends in Moscow and st Pete's, they're fine lots of food no deviations in life style, like Putin hate Soros and Biden.
Time will tell, so I'm posting for posterity.
It seems that modern warfare is more about breaking the enemy's economy and infrastructure (I'm sure the .gov has people working on the latter, but I wonder about their quality) than breaking the other guy's shit, although that's a component. Russia has been hedging, making agreements with the old frenemy China, but China isn't the world.
I wonder if any of our folks have considered how taking that much international trade off the books may effect the global economy. With this bunch, probably not.
Russia's military has been touted as first-rate. Not run by (professed) Communists now, but still by Russians, not the best at organization. Seems I may have been mistaken about their capabilities. They don't have the woke problem we do--no trannies in OMON--but it seems they're not that much better than ours. Better, but a matter of lesser degree.
--Tennessee Budd
EU is not going to do anything worth noting. There are too many people there who got rich thanks to Putin, esp. in Austria and Germany. So one must assume that there are also what Russians call "kompromaty". Therefore an ongoing US involvement is necessary. But certainly not direct. (That could actually be counterproductive.) However anything short of stepping on UA soil is fair game, as long as Ruski slowly goes ahead(*), while loosing aircraft, armor, specialists, and logistics at a rate that will drain them by the time they reach Dnipro. And then just leave them alone ;)
wojtek
* False sense of some kind of "success" hopefully might prevent the generals from replacing Putin too soon, while also preventing Putin from going nuclear (and in UA he has a full range of options in this regard).
Couple of Comments:
Putin may still think he is dealing with the UKR Army of 2014, where none of their weapons, plans or communications worked. The UKR, unlike Arab armies seems to have improved. Perfect? No. But much better, and More Determined.
Would Putin have been able to finance his Army and Navy enough to think of fighting if F. Joe Biden had continued the Trump policy of Fracking, Exploration and more Pipelines? Oil at $100/bbl finances a lot more Russian Weapons that $60/bbl oil. A Europe dependent on Russian Gas and Oil will freeze in the dark if Russia closes the taps. Hope for an early Spring. Green Policies and mythical "reliable renewables" made financing Putin's idiotic attack possible.
Zelensky was elected in part because he wanted to try rapproachment with Russia. Did that fail, or did we in the West money whip him away from his original plans? I think Zelensky mentioning EU Membership, NATO Membership, and Nukes (WTF!?!?) last week might have pushed Putin over the edge.
I'm eith you Budd (literally and figuratively, Roane county!). I enjoy out hosts ascerbic wit, his handle with prose far superior to most... But Putin didn't get to be Putin by being retarded. The most powerful man in the world just doesn't seem like a doddering octegenarian whit shits himself, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and reserve my acceptance of western accounts until corroborated. They simply have less-than-zero credibility with me. Thats right, I assume the news media is patently false out of the gate until proven true (in fact, I assume the polar opposite of what they say to be true). No, I don't believe for one second that russian troops are txt'ing their "momma" saying they are afraid and killing civilians. Of all the things in this war that most certainly never happened, that is most certain of all. Until you show me weapons trailers buried in the Iraqi sands, their word ain't worth a shit.
I understand and sympathize with the reasons why Russia invaded Ukraine.
And I hope the Ukrainians kill tens of thousands of Russians.
" Ukraine, a country Putin has done more to unify in a week than any 500 years of history ever could. "
This is exactly correct.
I've been to Ukraine a couple times, worked with some Ukrainians in the USA. I voted Trump in 2016 specifically because I expected Hillary to lead to exactly this situation. I had a suspicion it might not be as easy as all that for the Russians, but better to avoid the situation entirely.
Well, here we are. And from day 2 it's been clear all the big brains misjudged those people completely.
Putin in particular got wrong his opponent, his moment, and his methods. He's had a lot of very sensible things to say over the years, but this is going to shatter everything he's worked for. It's a damn shame.
Glory to Ukraine!
Well, the Ukrainians are still touchy over the whole starvation shizy from the '30's. I think this was their "paybacks are a bitch" moment. I am sure everyone has a relative that suffered, went mad, and was dirt napped over the craziness that was collective farming and a hatred of The Orthodox. Sometimes long memories will be their own engine. Putin was all ready for the Glory of Rome moment when reality happened. I'd never trust the Europeans to do anything that wasn't in their own best interest. So if supplying Putin with weaponry is beneficial to those Prada and Gucci moneybags, they will work both sides. China is NEVER to be trusted with anything. Full Stop. So I assume the Genghis Khan ancient roadway has already been measured and is ready for repavement. As always, Professor, your summation was 100%.
This is precisely why I don't think Putin ever intended to rebuild the Soviet Union. Maybe if he could, he would. But I suspect he knows that he doesn't have the resources to do that.
Which is why I think the tactical goal of the Russians in Ukraine is to wreck it so that it can't be used as a launching point for the west, which is their strategic goal. Not to occupy it.
Time will tell.
You're assuming he doesn't have a plan.
You're assuming they haven't thought out our economic moves.
You don't know who else is in on their plans or that his generals weren't in on the planning.
You assume he wants to reconstitute the USSR.
You don't know where his subs are, but you can bet if we fire a shot they'll turn up.
Yeah, he has crappy logistics. We have none, nor does NATO for all intents. You really think Poland is going to allow operations from its soil? That would be nuts.
The only thing you can be sure of, is what you are being fed by most mainstream media is wrong, and probably the opposite of what is really happening. The other for sure thing that's popped up is a lot of the images and video are from 2014 and earlier.
"Putin is literally Hitler!", "Putin's isolated, and a gibbering mess in a bunker ready to shoot himself", "The generals will put a bullet in his head" is all bullshit projection. Just about everything in your post was out of character for the man, far as I can observe.
Read what he said his conditions were, and his stated goals before this started.
There's a long game here we aren't privvy to. I don't know what it is, but I see a lot of chess pieces out. I can guess a few things; NATO won't fire so much as a pea shooter, at least in the open, because as you've said many times "The enemy gets a vote too", and Putin, as well as Xi, will be able to tell the 'breakaway' states that NATO will leave them high and dry as well.
The other thing we can be assured of is that Joey Potato and the bozo explosion will do the exact wrong thing.
The west is playing a dangerous game, essentially forcing Putin into a corner with no face-saving way out. FDR did that to the Japanese in 1940-1941 with the oil embargo, and instead of backing down and losing face, they gave us Pearl Harbor and Bataan.
And the lack of Russian air cover shows how difficult it is to operate a modern military when you're broke. Pilot training and precision guided munitions are expensive, while MANPADS are cheap. Having the new fancy toys like F35s is nice, but can you afford to operate them properly, and are you willing to risk them in battle, since you don't have the funds to replace them? It's no wonder that warfare is moving away from WW2-style slugfests to anonymous cyber, economic, information, and biological types of warfare.
his options for going nuclear seem to have narrowed
I think your current thought experiment fails the test of time.
Putin isn't the retard you suggest. We will watch and we shall see.
Money? Indeed, follow the money, a little deeper than above
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/russia/the-real-backdrop-nobody-will-discuss/
Could the 'kickoff' have had something to do with increased shelling?
Or the Zelensky statement about nukes? I'm sure that it would be hard
to make a working bomb out of waste, but a dirty bomb would certainly be possible
Beware believing Russia or the US. Both are incentivized to lie like rugs. As an example, when SWIFT was denied to Russia, that didn't include oil and gas payments. You know, where Russia gets most of its money. Another, despite what America's colonial puppet masters do in the EU, most other countries will now be thinking about using the Chinese equivalent of SWIFT, least they be the next to suffer Biden's wraith. Not siding with Russians ( although I think the ratcheted up anti-communism is a bit much ), just pointing out that our information is suspect. They people that profited off Corona are telling us the truth now? Come on!
It would be ironic if Putin, trying to emulate Stalin by way of cribbing Hitler's playbook, ends up as Mussolini on a lamppost.
As for Tsar Vlad's personal level of intelligence, well, even the smartest men will fall to the Terminal Hubris that uncontested power brings. I'd even posit that the intelligent are more prone to this than the stupid. Power with Ego is a strong drug, even more addictive and delusional than cocaine. As smart as Vlad may be, he's still just a mere man. He's not omnipotent and omniscient, and you fail Sun Tzu's maxim of knowing your enemy if you assume such.
My concern is that Putin isn't a total idiot and understands all the things you've pointed out. He knows time is short and the situation must be salvaged or he is going to sudden a sudden, unexpected heart attack. So he starts indiscriminate artillery strikes or, Ghu help us, pops a tactical nuke or 10. The S will hit the F so fast the S and the F will vaporize in a blinding flash of light.
I'm wondering if there isn't any single commodity Russia needs to keep it's economy afloat that it can't get through it's land border with it's single largest trading partner and world's largest economy, China. Asking for a friend.
They're going to have to become friends.
That worked out so well last time, the Russian government, in place for 80 years, collapsed in bankruptcy.
And that was when we were willing to sell enough wheat to Russia that their people wouldn't starve.
Russia and China are currently partners of convenience, never friends.
Even when both were fully bore Communist, they weren't really friends. Each was using the other to get the full use of them they could, with plans for a backstab. Shark vs shark so to speak, and each watching the other for a sign of weakness for an opportunity to strike.
China is playing it coy now, looking to see who's going to offer the better long term deal for China. It may well be that they could get a nice, fat benefit by playing peacemaker.
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