Taking a page out of the Sherwin-Williams playbook?
I was actually referencing a slightly darker character. But it still works for S-W.
Confuse the hell out of the Russians: release 99 red balloons in Kiev:
Hey, when you’re a working comedian and actor and you have a gig you make the most of it. It’s a rough life.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be the most extreme example of “fake it 'til you make it” and becoming the role the actor plays.
It’s like Julia Louis-Dreyfus really becoming President of the US.
Give it time…
They probably did an audit and realized they are not working properly. 
It is going to be a really rough week for the Russian military. Cold and rainy in Ukraine this week. So more hits to the morale. Probably some cases of frostbite. There was a report of some troopers fragging their commander (he survived initially but died later). So if there’s a report of it, there’s probably quite a bit more going on unreported. It might be a bad week to be a troop commander in the Russian army.
Overall, as I stated a couple of weeks back, the ground war is effectively over. Russia cannot win. They have no further assets they can safely commit to the war, and the units they have in place are spent. All the Russian army can do now is bleed, and it is a question as to how much they are going to bleed before they get out of Ukraine. I read that some units have already been withdrawing to Belarus.
Crimea should be interesting. Whether Ukraine can take back Crimea is going to mainly be a question as to whether the people of Crimea legitimately want to be in Russia or Ukraine. If they have the support of the populace, then it should be reclaimable. However, if they are not coming in seen as liberators, then they should stay out. Russia made a terrible mistake. Ukraine should not repeat it.
As a small aside, comedians, especially ones that specialize in political observation, are generally extremely intelligent and quick-witted. Mark Russell and Al Franken spring to mind.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have been making a living as a comedian and actor, but he is also a trained lawyer.
Having had their asses kicked for the past few days, forcing them to retreat around Kyiv and Chernihiv with heavy casualties, Russia has decided to “radically reduce” Russia’s military activity around the two cities in order to “increase mutual trust” and help lead to further negotiations and achieving the “ultimate goal” of a signed agreement between the two sides:
Guardian live feed:
Russia’s defence ministry said Russia will “drastically reduce” military activity outside Kyiv and Chernihiv.
Speaking on television after talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiating teams in Istanbul, Russia’s deputy defence minister said Moscow has decided to “fundamentally cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” in order to “increase mutual trust for future negotiations to agree and sign a peace deal with Ukraine.”
Translated: They’ve been forced to drastically cut back military activity outside Kyiv and Chernihiv because they’ve run out of resources and they’re losing.
If this was only about negotiations, they would be piling on the pressure to get more leverage. The negotiations are an excuse.
Sorry; my understanding was this is a message board, where we can throw out suggestions and such for conversation. Didn’t realize I had to have specific qualifications to suggest a possible diplomatic solution to the conflict on the SDMB.
However …
The problem is that that cuts Ukraine off from the sea, making it a land-locked country, which makes taking their grain to global markets that much more difficult.
Apparently I at least have a geographic understanding of the area. And I’m astute enough to know that
I’d say roll the Russians back to their 1991 borders and tell them to go f*** themselves
isn’t exactly a viable negotiation ploy.
From Illia Ponomarenko:
Russia says “military activities in the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas will be reduced for the sake of mutual trust”.
Interpreting this for you guys into the human language: “We have been smashed in the face, so we need to buy some time to redeploy troops to Izium and Donbas.”
I don’t know if Russians are really withdrawing troops from Kyiv, but what I know for sure is that Ukraine continues engaging them northwest of Kyiv.
From Nexta TV:
Hackers destroyed Rosaviation data
As a result of a cyber attack on the infrastructure of the Federal Air Transport Agency, all documents, files, aircraft registration data and mail were deleted from its servers. About 65 terabytes of data were erased.
The authorities are looking for a backup copy. The Aviation Herald writes that there is no backup copy of this data - the Russian Ministry of Finance has not allocated funds for it. The department was even forced to switch to a paper document flow.
What serious government agency doesn’t keep backups?
Apparently backups cost too much… how much does losing 65 TB of data cost? 
Also known as
“Run away!! Run away!!!”
If you hit a Wikipedia article it would provide sufficient background. It’s not like you need a degree in a topic.
I’m not an official negotiator, I don’t have to be tactful.
Translation:
Please don’t have any weapons in Ukraine so our next invasion will work. K thanks.
I know, right? I run a very small photography business here, and everything is backed up twice. And I have more than 63 TB worth of hard drives. You can get that much magnetic hard drive space for about a grand these days. (Though government backup servers would probably use a different medium, I presume? That would be like $50K worth of tape drives. But, still, if you wanted to cheap out, you can do it for a grand or two.)