To pick a nit …
Mr. Sumner offered that “what might save us, me and you, is if the Russians love their children, too.”
And he “hope[d] the Russians love their children, too”
I don’t think he was so sure either.
I wonder if the Russian efforts to bring in Syrian and other mercenary fighters is because they expect them to be more willing to kill Ukrainians, especially civilians, seeing them as faceless enemies rather than cousins.
It’s a terror move. Just by proposing that they will bring in “scary jihadists”, the Russians hope to scare the Ukrainians into submitting.
Which is just asinine, because the “faceless enemies” thing works both ways. Do you think we’d see a Ukrainian grandmother out there trying to publicly shame a bunch of Syrians into leaving Ukraine? Any Syrian who goes there has to know they’re going to be surrounded by people who hate them, and that they’ll stick out like a sore thumb amongst all the Ukrainians and Russians.
These guys are going to live with a target on their back all day, every day.
Which just makes them more trigger happy. And those veteran’s of the Syrian Civil War have had targets on their backs for a decade or more.
Slight adjustment to analogy: the Giants have been insisting it’s just an “exhibition” game so of course they aren’t trying to utterly crush the poor high schoolers, it’s all in good fun. But then in addition to finishing the first quarter with a marginal 3-0 lead, videos have started showing up on TikTok showing pretty-damn-serious-looking 300-pound NFL linemen stomping high schools players’s faces into the ground, and wide receivers have gone to the sidelines and started punching out not only players on the high school team, but also proceeded into the stands and beaten down fans and even strangled to death one of the announcers just for knowing what the score is.
So in my book they won’t be a laughing stock, they are and will be straight up murderers.
It’s ironic because of course these folks that are being actively recruited seem to be from the Syrian NDF paramilitary and explicitly aren’t jihadists as we tend to think of them. Rather they have their origins in Druze and Alawite militias that were themselves raised largely out of fear of genuine jihadists fighting the Syrian government. To the actual jihadists they are heretics.
I really don’t understand this. Putin has nothing to gain. NATO is not threatening to invade Russia. Ukraine WAS friendly to Russia. Not anymore.
What a colossal screw up, that had no reason to do this and thousands of lives lost. And now this has screwed up their economy. The rest of the world is going to be hurt too.
Surrounding yourself with ‘yes men’ advisors is a bad, bad idea.
I hope there is a coup in Russia, but fear who might be installed as the next dictator. I fear the same for the US. They tried and failed. The first time…
Putin is afraid that if any former Soviet republic becomes a succesful democracy aligned with the West, it will give his Russian subjects rebellious ideas. Putin would rather be surrounded by ashes than democracy.
One comment I read that seems to make sense is that NATO getting involved is one of the few things that would galvanize Russian public support for the war. It would allow the war mongers to say “See? See? The evil NATO is at our doorstep just like we’ve been warning of!”
I was amused to see, when I clicked on the action notification, Lumpy Russia invades Ukraine.
This is what worries me. Does any nuclear power who rattles its sabres get to do whatever it wants, no matter how evil or horrific and regardless of the stranglehold on the rest of humanity, because we can’t know with 100% certainty that it’s not bluffing this time?
Technology has advanced a bunch in 40 years. Might be time to dust off the old SDI files.
The front lines have barely moved in more than a week. Russians are being killed or injured at the rate of up to 1,000 a day, according to Western intelligence estimates, and more, according to Ukrainian ones.
Russia’s military campaign could soon become unsustainable, with troops unable to advance because they lack sufficient manpower, supplies and munitions, analysts and officials say.
Russia needs to consider what they’ll acquire if they eventually win.
We’ve already discussed a insurgency that will fight for many years.
There’s also the economic cost of a bombed out country. The economy will be ruined. Keeping the country running will cost a lot for years. There would have to be some rebuilding of infrastructure.
I doubt Russia would ever fully rebuild the cities.
@nelliebly, and this is the crux of the matter, right here. What if Russia threatens a nuclear response if the west continues to provide aid or doesn’t lift sanctions? Do we just sit back, relax, and let it continue?
First use of nuclear weapons (except for perhaps the most limited use of tactical battlefield nukes and maybe not then) is tantamount to suicide. It’s only worth doing in response to a truly existential threat. Otherwise Russia could simply demand the unconditional surrender of the entire world. The whole debate over Ukraine and the balance of terror is what does Russia consider a truly existential threat? NATO participation in the war might be, but supplying Ukraine with tactical weapons and supplies isn’t.
But realistically, if NATO participated and confined its operations to Ukrainian battlespace, it would never be an existential threat to Russia, regardless of how Putin defines things. Indeed there is not a single thing in this scenario that is an existential threat to Russia.
This whole bloody thing is based on a bunch of his lies and regardless of what the west does or does not, Putin is obviously out to destroy Ukraine and its populace.
A fundamental truth is that nothing that Putin has done has demonstrated that he is honest, believable or predictable.
Are you in Russia? Out here, we can plainly see what Vladdy is. But it is different for Russians, and not entirely because of his media lockdown. There are, yes, protesters, but so far they are in the minority. The hardship was done to Russia by the west, without any justification, and so Russians, who are already accustomed to adversity, will bite the bullet and close ranks around their president.
The west is the enemy, and if Vlad says that NATO’s actions in regard to Urkraine pose an existential threat to Mother Russia, her children will accept it and will stand fast behind the Цар president. It will take much more than this little problem to dislodge Putin.
That program never went away – those files are current.