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| Russian police explain glorious benefits of dictatorship to confused Russian peasantry. |
Nice to know there are some things in life you can always count on. Like Russian democracy. Unfortunately, Vlad doesn't seem to be quite as popular on the street as he is in his own head.
These don't mean much. According to some very optimistic counts there were 49 protests in Russia yesterday. This number includes single person protests or protests that nobody, besides the selfie-taker, noticed. A few thousand on the streets of Moscow metropolis is not enough. Plus most of these protesters would be gone by now if the planes were still flying. (Check the flightradar map - a very interesting picture indeed.) But as the only available destination is China, and as they don't feel as incentivized to leave Russia on foot, as millions of Ukrainians are right now, they are protesting. Nihil novi sub sole. We'll pay attention to these protests when they grow by at least an order of magnitude. For now what matters more is what is happening behind the scenes, esp. vis a vis Sino-Russian relations.
ReplyDeletewojtek
PS What happened to all those soviet jets you guys bought in the past from Ukraine and Moldova? I hear some of them are still flying? (And they were native versions, not the monkey types soviets sold us.)
They don't exist at a hangar at Nellis AFB as a secret subset of Red Flag, and they're not flown regularly out at Area 51 to evaluate performance envelopes and a/c signatures, as well as flight characteristics and possible tactical abilities. Because if they did exist there, and did fly there, and someone spilled the beans about that on the record, they might run afoul of the laws concerning classified military information.
ReplyDeletePretty sure the US AF spilled the lake about them flying out of groom lake in the early 2000's.
DeleteExile1981
Aesop, what is the "Red Flag" you mentioned?
ReplyDeleteThanks,
The Old Guy
@Aesop
ReplyDeleteThis is again splitting hair in 4. Or 10: "Under an agreement finalized on October 10, the United States acquired 14 MiG 29Cs, described by U.S. officials as wired to permit delivery of nuclear weapons, six MiG 29As, one MiG 29B, 500 air to air missiles and all the spare parts and diagnostic equipment present at the Moldovan air base."
What matters here is that Ruski knows that. Everything else is semantics, not really different from what happens with forcing us to give our jets to Ukraine. Which by the way, just happened. Except, we are giving these jets to you for free and flying them to Germany.
Your administration clearly forgot what a world war is. In fact, I guess they never knew what it's really like. That's where the stupidity of pushing for one must be coming from.
wojtek
If Putin is backed into a corner with no way out, all of the self-righteous government's of the world imposing these sanctions to destroy Russia's economy and in turn Putin, may regret overplaying their hand when he unleashes his nuclear arsenal on us all. When a person has nothing left to lose, he will take you down with him.
ReplyDeletePutin has backed himself into a corner. No one held a gun to his head and forced him to unleash a war of convenience to grab territory he's coveted since 10 seconds after the Soviet Union lost it. But they're likely to put a gun to his head to get out of that problem. And thanks for conceding he's enough of a megalomaniac to do the unthinkable, and that the most efficacious cure for that condition is 115 grains of knowledge in his brain pan.
ReplyDeleteThe only remaining question is whether the entire Russian leadership is willing to nuke the world and go down with Putin, or enlighten him by opening his mind. With that very pistol.
I'm betting on "B". Russian generals and such tend to be pragmatists at the end of the day, not romantics.
Even Hitlerite Fanatics like Speer were hesitant to carry out the Nero Decrees.
ReplyDelete@March 8, 2022 at 3:23 PM
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think Putin will launch nukes just because he "feels" something. That's not going to happen even in Russia. Nukes are kept as a threat against NATO invading their "space". At this point in time I think (perhaps I should say I hope) this means Ukraine and Caucasus. And, of course, Russia proper.
As for lack of comforts, let me remind you an old joke: when pierestroyka started, during one of their meetings, Reagan and Gorbachev brought some of their generals with them. These guys were put into a separate meeting, with lots of alcohol, to get "acquainted". As the vodka was flowing, they started bragging about who's got what. We have this; We have better; We have that; We have better; etc etc. Suddenly, one of American generals said: "Our soldiers can get 5000 calories of food per day". To which, a Russian general jumped out of his seat, screaming: "Now I know you're a liar! No soldier can eat a bucket of potatoes a day."
wojtek
I figure he'll unleash the hackers first and try to take down banking and command and control for infrastructure. Russian hackers are supposed to be pretty good.
ReplyDeleteThat sort of attack would paralyze us if done well, and would certainly be done with [plausible] deniability. He doesn't have to go diving in straight for the clitoris...*
n
*sorry once I thought of it, I couldn't let the reference go.
I have not read or heard much of anything from the MSM about which countries/governments are the best prepared to absorb the impact of a world wide nuclear war and be able to eventually rise from the ashes. Based on the actions these past 2 years of most governments around the world, I don't think the majority of the world's governments and the global elites of those countries care 2 cents about all of the world's population that would be killed off if a nuclear war should kick off. The scamdemic has forced all of the world's governments/elites to reveal their true colors and how little they care about your life and well being. I think Putin is just like a lot of people in one regard; he sees the other governments of the world as just a sorry bunch of criminals that exist just to enrich themselves and their circle of friends just like he does. There is no honor among thieves. We are all doing a lot of speculating right now but I have a bad feeling that Putin has been spending the past 20 plus years diligently and specifically preparing himself and his inner circle for such a time that the world is now in. He saw how the world treated his country after the fall of the Soviet Union. Instead of threatening his country further and extending NATO closer and closer to his doorstep over the years, I believe we could have handled their fall much more diplomatically and done a lot more to improve relations with Russia when they were weakened, rather than use their fall to take further advantage of them. I believe he is willing to take the world down with him if he should ever come to believe that he and his country are finished, especially if he thinks he has a chance of surviving a nuclear holocaust. The problem the world has right now is that we don't have real leaders of the world's great countries any longer, but rather we have a bunch of criminal mafia enterprises running things and making decisions they are ill equipped to be making. I'm afraid they are going to get us all killed.
ReplyDelete