“Permanent neutrality” and demilitarization (which they also demanded) is a huge gain, since it’d make the 2028 invasion so much easier.
Apparently not. Gerasimov is noted in the article as being chief of staff - not even the commander - of the 41st Army. Sukhovetsky was apparently deputy chief, so if that report is correct, he was Gerasimov’s subordinate.
An army (in the sense of a military formation made of two or more corps) is a big organization and has many generals.
I have a grudging respect for a general who gets killed in battle. If nothing else is true, they were willing to be near the action with their men, not just in the rear with the gear.
Putin keeps talking about NATO moving east when in reality Russia’s actions are pushing his buffer states west – is NATO supposed to spurn those inquiries?
Ukraine first applied for NATO membership back in 1992 but was desultory about following up, running hot and cold as the leadership changed, until 2014 after Crimea’s annexation and the loss of the south-east regions.
An awful and weirdly ironic thing about this situation is that had the invasion been somehow prevented, the world would not know just how evil and vicious Putin is. There’s no real, actual point to this statement btw, but there it is.
I cannot speak for the world, of course, but I’ve felt that I’ve known this for decades. Nothing that the Russian forces have done in the past few weeks has surprised me, given what I feel I know about Putin’s ruthlessness, and his desire to re-establish Russia as a global power.
I agree that in retrospect (IMHO) that there is absolutely nothing surprising about this. However, also IMHO, though the invasion of Ukraine is not surprising, and is on a continuum with Russian actions over the past decades, there is something about the brazenness and “this is so WW II-ishness and would never happen in 21st first world countries” (if you know what I mean) that changes everything, even though the everything should have changed decades ago.
Here’s a horrible video, and an even worse one just below showing the aftermath.
An elderly couple in a civilian car stop by the side of road when they see a Russian tank in the distance. Open country and broad daylight. The tank cold-bloodedly fires at them repeatedly, destroying the car and killing them both.
If that was their main goal they’d have killed a lot more civilians than they have. Their bombardment of cities has been fairly limited as compared to their capabilities. They crushed Aleppo and Grozny with far more brutality.
I don’t know anything about Aleppo nor Grozny so I’ll just say that we would need to rule out the protective qualities of the relevant cities (i.e. the presence or lack of bomb shelters, how deep/reinforced they are, the material strength of the buildings, how close artillery was able to set up to the middle of the city, etc.) before we could establish that the difference is down to how the attackers are behaving.
I know that Kyiv has bomb shelters and a vast perimeter. If Aleppo didn’t then we would expect a different result, independent of what the Russians were doing.
Before this, however, I thought Putin had a good grasp both of the capabilities of his forces, and of the likely reaction of the rest of the planet; combined with a sane (if evil) unwillingness to bite off more than he could chew at any given moment. It turns out that he’s seriously lacking in one or more of those areas. He may eventually yet get this mouthful swallowed; but even if so, it’s going to make him very sick for quite a long time to come.
“The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military,” said Andrei V. Kozyrev, the foreign minister for Russia under Boris Yeltsin, in a post on Twitter. “Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the President. So they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military.”
I had to google ‘Potemkin military’. I found ’ The “Potemkin” term is taken from Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin, the governor of New Russia who is said to have constructed fake settlements to impress Catherine the Great during her 1787 journey to inspect the newly acquired Crimea and surrounding territories.’
Those fucking Liechtensteineranians, always sticking their nose in, stirring up trouble. Time for some sanctions on them too.
Perfect solution!
Last I read there were snags in that now also.
TLDR: Russia may see Poland as a participant in the war and the US doesn’t really have a bunch of F16s laying about to give to Poland.
Yet another sign of lack of a plan by Russia. I’m think the only reason they have got as far as they have is sheer numbers. It seems none of their equipment works as advertised.
I agree. Ceding to these demands just gives Russia a win and allows them to take their time breaking off chunks of Ukraine. Once Ukraine has a “friendly” government and no arms, Russia will not even need an invasion to take over the rest.
And that was just for accidentally being near a supply convoy, the car had already stopped moving forward. Itchy trigger finger and a desperate need to protect supply lines is going to lead to a lot more civilian deaths. No need to watch the up close video if you don’t want to see what people look like after being shot with a 30mm cannon, you can probably imagine what it contains.
So true. It’s not like we haven’t seen Russia at war with Putin at the helm.
So this guy starts a construction company, and after years of bribes, kickbacks, cutting corners, and skimming he has done pretty well for himself. But one day he visits his cousin, who is also in construction, and sees him with a mega-yacht and palaces. He asks him, “We’re in the same business, and after decades of stealing every lira/cent/leu/kopek I possibly can, I am quite rich, but nothing like this. How do you do it?” The cousin says, “Let me put it this way. You see those six bridges over there?” — “… No?” — “Exactly.”