“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Okay, can we all take a moment to say, this is the most bad-ass quote of the day? When I heard that some guy who was an actor playing the Ukrainian President on TV actually got elected as the President of Ukraine, it sounded ridiculous. But this guy is nailing it.
I doubt that it helps Putin that his opponent is a good looking guy with a good looking wife, young, good looking children, and strong stage presence.
If the guy was 6’2" and had a loyal horse that thought it was a dog, you’d almost feel like Putin had to attack the guy for fear of ever needing to stand in the same room and be compared.
Turkey has closed off Black Sea access to Russian warships (at least those that aren’t already there, presumably).
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1497566974028697600
EDIT: Reportedly, anyway. May not have been confirmed.
The responsive tweets make this one look questionable.
Confirmation, maybe?
According to Estonia’s Defense Chief, their intel has determined that Russia has enough heavy weapons ammunition for about 10 days of fighting, and that’s it. After that, small arms only.
Putin is furious, he thought that the whole war would be easy and everything would be done in 1-4 days.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, bub.
Pity that I don’t have Twitter to share…
Jerusalem Post seems to think so (found by clicking through from your link):
And, FWIW, Alexander Vindman just made the same statement on CNN (Smerconish).
I have to wonder what price Turkey is willing to pay to enforce this ban.
Putin became a war criminal the moment he invaded Ukraine. Maybe before, but this is a new level of criminality.
I wish I could be more confident in reports about Russian defeats and difficulties being described in this thread from unverified sources, but I’m doubtful because I’m not seeing any of it on mainstream media like CNN or CBC. Of course CNN is known to be slow and over-cautious in what they report, so one can be hopeful. What Ukraine needs is a lot more help from western allies. Sanctions are, at best, an inconvenience for Putin with zero strategic effect.
Putin and Erdogan were getting along pretty well for a while. I forget what the last bit of trading, cooperating, dueling, and sniping the two were last engaged in, over Syria, but I’ll venture to guess that Putin didn’t follow through on something.
If Putin goes down, that leaves Erdogan under US pressure to clean his own act up or turn to China and have continued freedom to misbehave.
That is unless Biden traded something to Turkey for this… Personally, I’m guessing that the Kurds have just gotten screwed again.
Some huge portion of any war that lasts longer than a few days is logistics – ISTM that Ukraine has nigh-unlimited logistical support from US and European quasi-allies from the west, while Russia has no such support right now, and it’s unclear if China would give them this support if they needed it. China right now seems to be paying lip service to Russia, but if China thinks Russia is going to get stuck in months or more of fighting, it seems unlikely to me that they’d want to support that. But we’ll see, this all depends on these Twitter reports being accurate.
More often than not, reality follows humanity’s perception of it. We like to make what we think is happening actually happen - even when that’s against our own self-interest.
Now is as good a day as any to embrace that.
I wouldn’t endeavor to summarize it on a dare, but … yeah:
Strange bedfellows. It’s textbook “Is the enemy of my enemy my enemy, or is the enemy of my enemy my friend.”
Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.
Reuters are quoting a Turkish official: “[Turkey] has not made a decision to close the straits to Russian ships”.
The news originally came from a Tweet by Zelenskyy thanking Turkey for its actions. He was either mistaken or it was genius. Either way there is now renewed pressure on Turkey.
Imho, the best possible outcome…
Putin will eventually declare victory and withdraw forces from Ukraine.
Russia will have once again taken territory from Ukraine. No one would dare attack the forces in the new Russian republics.
Ukraine emerges battered and bruised. Defiant but certainly aware they can’t poke the Russian bear. NATO membership is off the table.
International sanctions end and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is certified by Germany.
The worst outcome would be a prolonged and bloody war in Ukraine. Putin may just dig in and repeat the mistakes made in Afghanistan.
Best outcome for who? Putin?
Best outcome is this ends badly for Russia with Troops giving up, morale crapped out and a powerful enough group of Oligarchs in Russia forcing Putin out.
I have some thoughts on that which I’ll wait until the war is settled to share, but if Kiev stands and Putin gives up on trying to take it, I would expect that the US is going to feel pretty free to switch from supplying Javelins and defensive hardware to giving Ukraine the tools that it needs to start taking territory back.
I doubt that Russia planned for a quick switch to defense so I would expect that a quick incursion by tanks and hard shelling would meet fairly little resistance.
Ideally, US and the EU are already switching over to preparing a different set of supplies.