Russia, Ukraine and NATO 2022

[MFS62]

An updated list of companies still doing business in Russia and those that aren't as compiled by WINS news radio. (as of three hours ago)
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/bu ... quNxeV8t9Y

Later

[MFS62]

Either the pee tapes DO exist, or the guy is a fucking moron.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... n-1319948/

Even Sean Hannity can't get tRump to say anything bad about Putin. Putin must have something on him or has offered him a place to run when he's convicted.

Later

[Double Switch]

"Putin must have something on him AND has offered him a place to run when he's convicted." I'd say both.

[Willets Point]

Honestly, for Trump and his fellow Insurrectionists, I think they just really admire Putin because he's the type of authoritarian leader who hates LGBTQ people, Muslims, and immigrants as much as they do. He's the model of what they want for the USA. No compromat is necessary, they do this voluntarily. In Trump's case I expect he also has financial interests tied up with Russian oligarchs too.

[Edgy MD]

I just think his absolute power and authoritarian rule is appealing.

Small bullies want more than anything for the bigger bully to like them.

[The Hot Corner]

Either the pee tapes DO exist, or the guy is a fucking moron.

Even Sean Hannity can't get tRump to say anything bad about Putin. Putin must have something on him or has offered him a place to run when he's convicted.

I will go with clueless, self absorbed, moron.

[Lefty Specialist]

Pee tapes are kind of pointless by now. Even if one existed and was broadcast on CNN, they'd just say it was doctored up, call it fake news and move on.

I think Putin has something deeper and darker on Trump than that. Or he has the ability to take him down in some other way that we don't know about. Just about the only person he cares about beside himself is Ivanka. His other kids he could care less, but she's special to him. I wonder if Putin has his hooks in her in some way. Mad speculation, but his fawning behavior around Putin defies rational explanation.

[Edgy MD]

I think it's probably as simple as Putin having the indirect authority to call in his debt.

[Lefty Specialist]

At least 15 years in jail for this, and quite possibly a very painful death in a gulag.

[Lefty Specialist]

So we're a month in. Ukraine is getting pummeled in many cities, but the Russians are pretty much stalled. Putin will never be able to take Ukraine. He didn't have enough troops and expected a lightning shock and awe campaign where the government capitulated in a few days. They brought dress uniforms but not enough food and warm clothes.

The incompetence of Russia's military surprised everybody (not least of all Putin). But the staunch defense of the Ukrainians is off the charts, which is why the West was able to impose sanctions and make them stick. Had they collapsed in a day or two, there would have been a lot of tut-tutting, but it would have been business as usual for Russian gas and oligarch yachts.

Amazing things are happening. Greece and Turkey are working together (with France) on a humanitarian rescue mission. NATO is electrified and more united than it's been since the Cold War. There are rumblings in the former Soviet republics. China, which should have been running to aid the Russians, is holding back and is maybe thinking that taking Taiwan might not be that easy after all.

The problem now is that Russia needs an off-ramp. It can't 'win' in the conventional sense, by taking control and installing a friendly puppet government. That ship has sailed. And Ukrainians will hate Russians for generations after this, so giving the invader any Ukrainian territory as a reward to go away seems a non-starter. But in the meantime, civilians are getting pounded mercilessly, and 4 million mostly women and children are refugees in Eastern Europe. Even if they went back, in many cases there's nothing to go back to.

Ukraine will need Marshall Plan-level investment when this is over. But in order for it to be over, Vladimir needs something to show his people. Not sure how this ends in a face-saving (and possibly coup-preventing) way for him. His domestic propaganda machine is really good, but cracks are going to start to show at some point. The worry is that he might be desperate enough to go nuclear, at which point it's game over (for him and us).

[Edgy MD]

I like how they switch phones, seats and jackets in between lines, but you can see Zelenskyy's chair from frame three in the background of frame one, like he's hopping around the table.

[Frayed Knot]

... And Ukrainians will hate Russians for generations after this ...

Of course they always pretty much did -- Ukrainians didn't like being under the thumb of Russian Tsars or being subservient to the Russians under its forced inclusion in the U.S.S.R.; they certainly
didn't like being on the business end of Stalin's starvation tactics, especially seeing as how Ukraine was long the USSR's bread basket; and they sure didn't finally get their independence only to see
some Russian thug try and take it away again -- but, yeah, this whole thing will certainly kick that long simmer into a full blown boil.

I had a WWII history professor (a child in occupied Norway during the war) who opined that had Hitler treated the Ukraines better on his way into the USSR that they had enough built up resentment
to maybe join up with the Germans on their march eastward. Instead, he treated them like the inferior class of Slavs that he knew them to be so they went with the 'Devil you know' philosophy and
gave Hitler's army stiffer resistance than had he played his cards differently ... and That might have changed a whole buncha shit.

And while the stories we're hearing out of there might be scattered and anecdotal, there are certainly enough of them to make it seem like the typical Russian soldier doesn't have his heart in this:
surrendering freely; shooting themselves in the foot; running over their own commanding officer with a tank!!; etc. The other side, meanwhile, fighting for their homeland and never big fans of their
neighbors to start with, is much more engaged. So while superior numbers and weapons always matter, that other stuff matters too ... A LOT.


Frederick Forsythe, best know for DAY OF THE JACKAL and ODESSA FILE, centered one of his novels, THE DEVIL'S ALTERNATIVE, around a Ukrainian freedom fighter at a time (late 1970s) when much
of the west treated the USSR almost like it was a mono-culture from western Europe to the Pacific. Been a long time since I read it but Forsythe (much better than Ludlum IMO) was great at all that
international intrigue stuff and I remember being very engaged with it at the time.

[MFS62]

I think I like this guy:
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine ... tle-2022-3

A US Army veteran who has volunteered to fight against Russia in Ukraine said that he prepares for battle by thinking about Tucker Carlson ...
"When I need to amp myself up for battle, I just think about the most punchable face on the planet … Tucker Carlson," James Vasquez tweeted last week.

Later

[Edgy MD]

I'd really like our president to stop sticking his foot in his mouth for a day or two.

[Willets Point]

I'd really like our president to stop sticking his foot in his mouth for a day or two.

I feel like this comment was transplanted here from sometime between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021.

[Edgy MD]

I would agree.

We got rid of our intensely self-interested president, who said stupid stuff in his ill will. It was one of the greatest gifts this country ever gave to itself.

I celebrate having a president who is really trying to do his job, but he can say some foolish things also. He did it often enough when he was a vice president. Him making what may be the most important overseas trip by a president in decades (since Nixon in China?) with his (seemingly highly competent) spokesperson being back in the US has really left him off the leash and making some clunkers.

He's the compromise candidate, and was the best chance to build a broad enough coalition to turn the nation away from President Trump. I get that and I celebrate it. But I really hope his party is working really hard on identifying and nurturing a younger, more vigorous class of leadership.

[kcmets]

Amen

[Lefty Specialist]

I'm not so sure this was a flub. Of course they'll deny that's what he meant and the spokespeople will 'walk it back'. But he put the idea out there. It's an old political trick. Joe isn't senile, but as you noted he can sometimes say things you might wish he wouldn't. Remember he called Putin a war criminal just a few days ago, which is an extremely loaded term in its own right.

[MFS62]

We got rid of our intensely self-interested president, who said stupid stuff in his ill will. It was one of the greatest gifts this country ever gave to itself.
I celebrate having a president who is really trying to do his job, but he can say some foolish things also. He did it often enough when he was a vice president. Him making what may be the most important overseas trip by a president in decades (since Nixon in China?) with his (seemingly highly competent) spokesperson being back in the US has really left him off the leash and making some clunkers.
He's the compromise candidate, and was the best chance to build a broad enough coalition to turn the nation away from President Trump. I get that and I celebrate it. But I really hope his party is working really hard on identifying and nurturing a younger, more vigorous class of leadership.

The stuff that other guy did was more than just stupid when it came to Ukraine:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/26/politics ... WnmkbuhTfs

Experts say Trump's actions weakened Ukraine, divided NATO, emboldened Putin and helped get us to where we are today. And even with Trump no longer in office, his impact lives on in the form of Putin-friendly commentary in conservative media and from some Republican lawmakers.
"One of the key reasons Putin probably felt comfortable launching the invasion of Ukraine was the extent to which the West has been weakened and destabilized, and democracy undermined, and political divisions sown, in the five years since he attacked our election in 2016," said Garrett Graff, a historian and journalist with expertise in national security and Cold War issues.

Later

[Edgy MD]

What the-other-guy-did was worse than anything. I would ask that a frank look at our president's messaging in the face of brinkmanship not be confused through whataboutism with an endorsement of President Trump. The rejection of him in my preface could not have been clearer.

But here is where we are now.

[Lefty Specialist]

Let's not forget that the guy was impeached for basically extorting Ukraine, holding up defensive supplies so he could manufacture dirt on Biden. Which is why the 'I could do this better' argument is so laughable.

Yes, Putin thought his boy Trump had done a good enough job weakening and dividing the West that he could crush Ukraine without consequences. But Biden's team saw this coming and prepared for it. Those sanctions didn't happen overnight; they were the result of a lot of hard work done in advance. Sharing intel that would normally have been kept secret, even from our allies, was also a part of it.

Putin was able to survive the sanctions put on him in the wake of Crimea, and he thought things would be a little stiffer this time, but survivable if he waited them out. He didn't count on the willingness of a unified Europe being willing to cut his central bank off from the international finance system. Russia had stockpiled an enormous war chest of foreign currency in that bank, ready to use when regular sanctions hit. But sanctioning the central bank itself made those funds worthless, because they can't transact with anyone else. It's as if you were retired and somebody made your retirement savings disappear in a blink. This is why Russia is suddenly staring default in the face. That didn't happen on its own, and Biden's team doesn't get enough credit for it.

[Edgy MD]

Let's not forget that the guy was impeached for basically extorting Ukraine, holding up defensive supplies so he could manufacture dirt on Biden.

In no way would I forget it. Ever. Yo prometo.

[Willets Point]

I'm the last person you'd expect to defend Joe Biden, but saying things out of line seems to be the least of his problems. If anything, he plays it too safe, trying not to offend, exhorting bipartisanship when he should be using his bully pulpit to rage against his insurrectionist opposition and complacent members of his own party in order to push policy that will improve the general welfare of the majority of people in American and abroad.

[Edgy MD]

Sure, and I'm going to have policy disagreements with every president. Messaging mistakes in military (even nuclear) brinkmanship, though, is an own goal.

But what you describe certainly fits into my notion that we should be looking for a younger, more vigorous leader, though. He's a recovering stammerer and an elderly fellow, and self-expression was never his strength (or else he may have been president a long time ago), but that doesn't mean I have to like it. This is a scary war for most of the world, and the right words or the wrong ones can escalate or de-escalate hostilities.

[ashie62]

Joe Biden going off script to allude to regime change.

He went off script and state had to walk it back.

Joe needs to be removed....soon.