The article looks interesting but it requires a subscription.
(Maybe you can print it out and then show us only the parts we’ll like.)
Sorry, the article loaded for me but gave me some indication that other articles would be limited. In any case, as you know, Trump’s “human printer” is a very real thing. I just wish she would print those articles out on softer, more absorbent paper so they can be used for an actual purpose befitting their nature.
Well, the original Russian/Putin belief was that Ukraine would fold like a lawn chair. Even U.S. intelligence agencies were saying Kyiv would fall in a matter of days. So Putin thought it wouldn’t drag on like this.
The story always goes that Putin considers the breakup of the Soviet Union the worst event in his lifetime. The 1990’s were a relatively prosperous (or at least better than before) time for Russia. Then corruption set in as the people who ran industries like oil and gas kind of privatized those things and are generally known as the Oligarchs who effectively were in control of the country,
I don’t know if Putin always aspired to be its President yet when he perceived Yeltsin a fool and drunkard he decided it would be best if he were President starting in 2000. The Oligarchs had to answer to him or they would have unfortunate “accidents” and Putin himself also became extremely rich.
All the various “color” revolutions in Europe, to include Ukraine, spooked him into thinking that could happen in Russia. It’s generally believed, or generally believed that he believed the Russian Naval port of Sevastopol in the South of Crimea was rather attractive looking to the USA and UK. So he invaded and sham-election-annexed Crimea, hosted the Olympics and then the Football (Soccer) world cup. Leaders of other countries were a bit tiffed at the taking of Crimea, yet to my knowledge none of them boycotted either event and certainly didn’t wish to take on Russia to give Crimea back.
His surprise invasion of the rest of Ukraine was supposed to be quick. The Nazis overran it fast and the Soviet Union Russians took it back from them quick during WWII. That did not happen, yet it wasn’t a complete failure and Putin wasn’t going to give up as he too would have an unfortunate accident if he admitted failure. He had shifted the goalposts for victory a bit towards liberating ethnic Russians in the Eastern parts who were discriminated against in terms or travel, jobs and other factors. The same applies to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who joined NATO even before Trump was President. He decided that the Baltic countries (to include Sweden, Poland and Finland) were not in the North Atlantic so maybe Article Five might not apply,. It’s not really his decision - Congress declares Wars - yet this is very much his Congress.
So does Putin want to keep liberating ethnic Russians and at least experience the wrath of NATO East? Or take all of Ukraine? Or both. Dunno if Georgia is on his mind, I reckon he doesn’t care about the *stans except to keep using Kazakhstan to launch stuff into space.
Especially if the articles feature photos of Trump.
Someone please explain why Zelenskyy is coming to the White House Monday? To beg him to surrender to Russia? Maybe give up half his country? More of the mineral-deal crap? Of course there will be tons of thanks to the Trump Admin for their long travels…
Deprogramming.
Ukraine needs both US-supplied weapons and aid, and US intelligence support to help fight the Russian invasion. Russia is currently making a big thrust into Pokrovsk and is making headway because Ukraine is strained both for soldiers and weapons. Ukraine has fought a brilliant and innovative defense (and won’t give up until they are fighting with sticks and rocks) but they are very much the underdog which has been constantly undermined by weak and inconsistent US support (under both Biden and Trump, albeit more dramatically with the latter), and while the other NATO members have contributed some they are also trying to build up their own stocks of materiel and invest in modernized weapon systems and training. I’m sure Zelenskyy is thinking that if he can use how much Trump has been played by Putin that he can get some more support as as a bargaining chip, because right now it is Trump who is sitting at the table with a dumb look on his sucker face not “holding any cards”.
How has a guy who has owned so many casinos such a shitty poker player? Oh, that’s right; they all went out of business.
Stranger
So, mainly, it’s to keep whatever amount of aid the US can still give. Good point, but I really think it’s gonna be focused on Ukraine surrendering some territory besides getting the continued support.
For Trump to offer intelligence and weapons, even if initially done covertly, I assume the two together mean taking out important officers and allowing Ukraine to reach the Azov again. From the first hit, Putin will know Trump has betrayed him. If Ukraine has been brilliant and innovative, cutting a line between north and south Russian forces and reaching the Azov Sea would be a major crushing blow to the Russian morale.
Dunno if it would be restructuring, chapter 7 or chapter 11. Yet I’ve no feeling that Trump sees that he’s been played like a fiddle (or would that be zither) by Putin. They are chums.
i lean toward Locrian on this. The meeting will get off to a bad start regarding Zelensky’s attire and Trump will tell him the best he can do is get a ceasefire and ask Putin nicely not to make Ukraine demilitarize. I don’t think Trump recognizes any more brilliance in Ukraine than Putin would perhaps reluctantly admit to.
I think Zelenskyy has been tutored (included by European leaders) in how best to talk to Trump so as to flatter and not antagonize him.
I think that is a non-starter for Zelenskyy; he’s kept Ukraine fighting on the philosophy that they aren’t giving anything to Putin that isn’t paid for in blood, and frankly anything territory he would cede to Russia would just give them more opportunity to fortify and keep advancing. There is no real ‘cease-fire’ (if Russia wanted that it could offer it today just by stopping their attacks), much less an actual peace because the Ukrainians know what life is like under Russia (even those born after the fall of the Soviet Union have the cultural memories of planned famines, forced relocations, and people disappearing into the GULAG system never to be heard from again) and despite Putin’s fantasies do not see themselves as Russians.
Oh, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. I’m sure Trump’s primary motivation is to force Zelenskyy to grovel, and that will probably go about as well for him as the previous time around when Zelenskyy made both Trump and Vance look like the hapless twits they are. But I’m also sure that Zelenskyy and his advisors are going to be pressing Trump’s cabinet to give aid just to the US look like a strong world power (even though Trump is ceding that position with every global partner he insults and every alliance he betrays) and hoping they can sell that story up to the Oval Office. So…we’ll see. But regardless of what happens, the NATO nations on Russian ad Ukrainian borders are highly motivated to keep Putin tied up in Ukraine so he can’t rebuild the Russian military or realize any of his more grandiose notions, and both Poland and Sweden are busy arming up and motivated to provide at least some aid to Ukraine to kept things at least at the status quo if not further damage Putin’s ability to project power beyond the end of his comically long desk:
Stranger
I saw the press conference between Starmer and Trump that started with Starmer’s intro, then Trump’s incredibly condescending “What a beautiful accent. If II had that accent I’d have been President 20 years ago”. And later cutting a reporter’s question to Starmer off just as he was startling to answer. The PM was knighted for being a spectacular prosecutor. I saw none of that.
I do hope it’s true, that someone has given Zelensky the handbook for Playing the Deal-maker for the moron he is.
The really bizarre thing about a narcissistic head of state like Trump is that he doesn’t care about his image. Narcissists and tyrants are usually obsessed with image, but Trump doesn’t mind people seeing him being Putin’s little subservient chihuahua. He’s totally okay with being seen as the BDSM sub while Putin is the dom.
ACME Corporation 
I don’t think that’s true.
Trump is a senile idiot whose brains, to the extent he ever had any, are leaking out his ears, and he really believes all the flattery and slanted cherry picked information his staff is shoveling onto him. I think he is comically obsessed with his image, and has no idea how ridiculous and weak he actually looks. To people other than the MAGAts of course.
He’s the same narcissistic NYC slumlord from the 1980’s. Born on third base, acts as if he’s hit a triple. And as Stranger noted, six chapter 11’s. He has no sense of humor, no charisma yet he’s been able to fall upwards on many occasions, including two non-consecutive elections. I don’t know what the MAGAs see in him, yet once you buy into the Aura of Deal-maker, you are all in.
That’s interesting, as I recently read that an even more secret part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was that Russia engage Finland in the Winter War. Even the Finn’s will say - if that was all the USSR had to do - Finland would not be victorious. Yet they fought a “brilliant and innovative” as you put it fight up that Russia was not really winning. And the Germans saw this and concluded they could take Russia by Spring, especially if the Finn’s helped. They did not really. And somehow Leningrad survived an 872 day siege that my wife’s father was born into 8 days in. And the Germans were so sure it’d be over by summer that all they had at Stalingrad was spring outfits. -30C = -22 American.
James Hamel tried to book a reservation at the 16th Century, Michelin-awarded pub, The Bull in the Cotswolds. Not only did hundreds of people have a ‘not welcome’ party aimed at him, staff of the pub threatened to strike if Hamel was allowed to book a reservation.
The reported rejection comes just weeks after Vance’s predecessor Kamala Harris dined at The Bull as part of the pre-wedding dinner for Steve Jobs’ daughter, Eve.
Finland is really kind of the unheralded “Little Country That Could” of World War II, not mentioned much probably because they did join with Nazi Germany in fighting the USSR (a partnership of convenience which ended once they restored their post-Winter War borders minus some concessions) and because of their ‘frenemy” relationship with the USSR in the Cold War period as a neutral nation in the conflict that needed to protect its own interests.
Historically, Russia has really pretty bad at fighting wars and they’re living up to that reputation in Ukraine, but they’re also willing to just keep throwing bodies into the grinder until they absorb all of fire coming their way and exhaust the enemies resources. Frankly, if Ukraine had been properly equipped with air defenses and longer range weapons to strike at Russian depots, airfields, and weapon installations behind lines, and received consistent support and intelligence, they would have likely already fought Russia to a stalemate with Putin not having enough assets to effectively prosecute the continued occupation.
As it is, it appears that Russia is either depleted of or holding back most of their armor and artillery, using small unit tactics and constant drone attacks to wear down the Ukrainians so they can open up a weakness in lines through which to advance into the heartland instead of fighting on ‘border towns’, and I’m still of the belief that Russia’s industrial capacity is so hobbled that they just aren’t going to be able to sustain an invasion indefinitely or rebuild their military into an effective combined arms force against modern European weapons. But they still have men in uniforms that they can chuck into the front indefinitely (even though this is just making Russia’s already impending catastrophic demographic collapse that much worse) whereas Ukraine is struggling to field troops to operate the weapons they have. At some point something will break, or (maybe) Poland will have enough of this nonsense and send in planes and armor, or Putin will keel over and be replaced by someone who has enough sense to declare a ‘conditional victory’ and pull back to pre-invasion borders and come to some negotiated settlement on Crimea (or maybe go completely nuts trying to show what a real strongman he is and make everything so much worse) but right now the war is a holding action, and Zelenskyy is looking for just enough support to keep troops out front with weapons and ammunition.
They way this is going, these guys will only be able to get a meal at McDonalds, just the way God and Trump intended, I guess. May, “NO FASCISTS!” become a common sign in the windows of restaurants and pubs.
Stranger