Sadly, even if it’s 100% proven that Russia used sarin or whatever, it’s a safe bet that NATO/US will just say stern words, maybe impose a few new sanctions and then try to move on.
There is apparently an old Russian saying, “On average, we are doing ok – not nearly as well as last year but much better than next year.”
Then the west doesn’t need to be trading with them. Russia is the moral equivalent of the Third Reich at this point and every penny we send their way serves to feed their war machine.
If only he had been cackling evilly. That’d be better. Instead he was doing a cutesy, youthful laugh like, “Look at my carefree, wacky, Nazi salute! Ah life is a fun-fair!!”
The only source about CW use is Azov Regiment. So it’s best not to repeat this as fact just yet. We’re missing critical details, and it will take weeks if not months to sort this out.
It may very well have actually happened. A useful strategy for Russia would be to get this story out in drips and drops (no pun intended), and simultaneously push the narratives that (A) Russia didn’t use CW, and (B) Russia may have used CW and NATO isn’t doing anything about it.
It’s win/win for Russia. Either they get NATO directly involved, which benefits them, or they prove that NATO can’t respond to red-line provocations.
I’ll just say, the world’s definition of “denazification” has sure changed a lot over the last 2 months.
Whatever “benefit” Russia gets from NATO direct intervention is vastly dwarfed by the smacking NATO would/could deliver against their forces in Ukraine.
NATO could do stuff, but won’t. It knows that this opens the door to Russia escalating to so-called “tactical” nukes. NATO countries don’t have the political will to risk nuclear retaliation, so NATO stands down and is revealed as a paper tiger.
It’s high time we started taking Russia literally in terms of their words and actions. If you look at Russia’s Zapad annual military exercises, they usually end with a simulated nuclear strike on the EIS missile defense installation in Poland. (Note that “Zapad”, the word for “west”, seems to be echoed in the “Z” icon chosen by Russia to represent this war). The Zapad exercises are widely understood to have been the practice runs for the Ukraine invasion.
Russia has calculated that its attempt to reconstitute the former USSR may need to culminate in a nuclear strike on EIS (or a comparable asset, since the EIS deployment plan has changed in recent years). The more they lose, the more attractive this trump card appears, and the more they may risk to realize this chain of events.
I think europe needs to step up … IF you choose to use chemical warfare, all energy imports will be cancelled within 24 hrs. …
I believe there is political will in the populace to rip the bandaid off fast and once and forever, instead of having to rely on Hitler V2.0 for years to come … even if it means to make sacrifices for a couple of months.
Losing THAT money should hit the russians hard and really have them tread water
Yes, it hasn’t been independently verified, and that is something that will probably not be easy to do given the lack of access to Mariupol.
Here’s what the ISW say in today’s campaign assessment (a General Dvornikov special):
tl;dr on Dvornikov:
If there was political will to do this, then it would have already been done.
A foreign fighter is going to be a prize for Russiaan propaganda. I’m surprised we haven’t seen other captured foreign fighters in the news.
Guardian Blog (long article. Shortened for post)
I disagree
in (international) politics it is always important to have one more card up your sleeve to de-incentivate any escalations.
If you are at the top rung of the ladder too early, you have no more space to go…
e.g. good example for this is todays brit’s “there are all options on the table” if you (the .ru) go chemical … but for that to work you need to have more severe options.
you do’t want to outrun your options too early, but you don’t want to be too lenient neither … tricky terrain, for sure
Oh, I have no problem with that at all.
In Canada, we say we’ve got our feet in a snowbank and our heads in the oven, so on average, we’re room temperature.
May be fake, but if not I WANT SOME!!
NPR seems to be backing up that this is real.
Also fact checked here: {sorry for terrible USA Today format}
The stamp is not yet for sale though.
OK, I totally love the Ukrainian attitude.
Just the flight tracker checking in. Usual stuff in Poland and Romania with Tankers flying circular patterns and the E-3 Sentry aircraft, but I noticed an E-3 and a RAF tanker doing loops around Estonia and Latvia today. Now it may be a common occurrence I haven’t picked up on, but has anybody heard of movements or a buildup of tension in the Baltics of late? Could prove to be a distraction for NATO if the Russian bear growls (even if it’s a bluff) at actual NATO members…
My Estonian acquaintance has been telling me that tension has been rising in the Baltics since the invasion began, which isn’t a puzzling development, really. Between the war and the rhetoric coming out of Russia I’d be surprised if things weren’t getting tense there.