I’d be a lot more inclined to believe that a) he IS angry all the time and b) he doesn’t trust people to sit close to him.
Yep. I have no doubt he is as healthy as a 69-year-old can be.
Based on “I believe”. No more, no less; it’s simply my opinion and could easily be wrong.
My wife also thinks that WWIII has already started, just hasn’t gone fully global yet.
My silly Putin theory is that those “stewardesses” were really his personal harem, which is why they can sit next to him but everybody else gets the long table.
I wouldn’t say that yet, but although there are vast differences from the state of the world in 1939, there are also some disturbing parallels:
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Like Hitler, Putin is turning out to be more evil, ruthless, and dangerous than many had imagined.
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Like Hitler, he has started an unprovoked war driven by nationalist aspirations.
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An entire ethnicity is being demonized through relentless propaganda.
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The US is looking on, appalled, trying to help as much as possible while also trying, at least for the moment, to stay out of direct conflict.
Maybe I’m imagining too much here, but there’s no doubt that this has turned into a much bigger deal than when we were thinking that either Putin wouldn’t invade or that if he did, it would definitely be a limited incursion in support of the breakaway regions. I wish Biden would STFU about never directly interfering in Ukraine. We don’t know where this is going.
Have you read about the current state of Russian airlines? The stewardesses (and I believe other airline personnel) were there because they were unemployed and had nothing else to do.
Or – just spitballing here – he’s looking for a face-saving way to back out of Ukraine.
“My intelligence services gave me incorrect information! Bad service! No biscuit! We’ll be leaving now; sorry for the mess.”
This is the problem with being a yes-man around a dictator.
If you are realistic, and give him the info he doesn’t want to hear - off with your head.
If you kiss up to him, and give him the lies he wants to hear - off with your head, just delayed.
If that is the case and it comes to pass the rich and powerful Russians - particularly Putin - will be well out of the downwind path. As Putin has demonstrated he does not care about ordinary Russians dying.
It is very conceivable. Unfortunately.
This is my take on the situation. We are actually in WWIII which, by the way, has run longer than the 30-60 minutes I expected but we haven’t gotten around to nukes yet.
We date the start of WWII from when Germany invaded Poland even through “global shooting” was not taking place at that point.
How do you forget about Japan & China already years into their shooting war?
General reminder: It’s a good time to change your most important usernames/passwords.
I can’t disagree more. Everything Putin did was justification for a buildup of Ukrainian defenses.
There was already a line in the sand and it just needed a bigger stick to prevent the line from being crossed. It’s not like NATO isn’t directly feeding Ukraine the tools of war.
It would have been so much easier to deliver the weapons in person. As I said before, Putin created his own face-saving way out by lying about the troop buildup. If he wasn’t planning on invading Ukraine then mission accomplished.
Yes, exactly.
As I just asked …
Is a war between two countries only, in the same region, a world war?
By the end of September, 1939, there were combatant nations from Europe, North America, Africa, Australasia and South Asia involved. At that point, it was one regional theatre, but combatants from many parts in the world.
There were wars going on in Asia and wars going on in Europe but they didn’t join up into a global conflict until Japan attacked allied targets. (Khalkin Gol/Nomonhan was over before Germany invaded the Soviets).
I’m not going to call the current conflict WWIII unless NATO/US forces are directly engaged, or something like this goes hot:
But the Ukraine invasion could easily escalate and be considered the beginning in retrospect.
Retrospectively, by historians. That may be where this goes, but I’m a lot more cautious about calling it. If you think it is inevitable that NATO is going to get into a shooting war with Russia, fine. I don’t. It might get there, it might not.
Nope. WW I and II became world wars at least partially as relics of colonialism, with land fighting in Africa, Middle East and southern and eastern Asia (plus naval warfare all over). I don’t think fighting in Africa is at all likely here. Much of Asia ditto. Asiatic Turkey and the Caucasus could get involved, I suppose. And some naval warfare like long-range subs ( or God forbid long-range missiles) could be anywhere.
But it will be a lot less of the world than in the early 20th century. We live in a different and much more politically diverse world. Also Russia is not a behemoth militarily.
As long as you define “we” to exclude WWII scholars then you should be all good.
What about many countries from throughout the world, fighting in one theatre? Is is only a world war if there’s fighting in more than one region, or is it enough if there are combatants from around the world, fighting in one theatre? Because that’s what could happen here.
World War II was called that because it was an obvious sequel to the World War (Germany vs Britain and France - and eventually Russia and the US). Russia vs NATO will be a sequel to the Cold War. Let’s call it “The Hot War”
And Canada and Australia and South Africa and New Zealand and India, plus the Slovak Republic, plus Finland and the USSR, all combatant nations by the end of the 1939.