The softening of America’s support for Ukraine is obviously having a ripple effect on their standing in the world. But of course that isn’t important to Trump.
“This week’s release of the 2025 Global Democracy Perception Index also showed a decline in the US’s global standing. The number of countries where the US is viewed more positively than negatively dropped from 76% to 45%. The US outscored China in just four European countries, including Lithuania.”
Putin told he’s made one of the ‘biggest tactical military mistakes in history’
[Finland President Alexander] Stubb said: "I don’t think Finland would have joined NATO if Putin had not attacked Ukraine. Of course, Finland and Ukraine are a different kettle of fish and we have a very different history.
"The second reason is I think Putin actually made one of the biggest strategic and tactical mistakes in recent military history - he underestimated the power of the Ukrainian military.
"He overestimated his own army and he underestimated the resolve of the unity of the West. He was trying to make Ukraine Russian, well, it became European. He tried to split the European Union, I’ve never seen it more united.
“He tried to split the transatlantic partnership, especially NATO, and ended up with neutral Sweden and Finland joining NATO.”
It’s like I said before the war started: Putin wants to take over Ukraine because he doesn’t want NATO on his border. Only… If he takes over Ukraine, he’ll have NATO on his border. And his blunder put 832 more miles of NATO on his border.
But his ace in the hole is traitor trump who’ll eviscerate NATO. Or at least massively destabilize it for a decade or more until it can stand fully on its own toe-to-toe w the Russkies without US involvement.
The situation in Ukraine today is like as if Operation Iraqi Freedom were still stuck in summer 2006, three years after the invasion, with America still holding only 20% of Iraqi territory, the USA having well over 2 million men killed or wounded, and Iraq actually being able to conquer and hold a bit of American land itself at some point.
Putin doesn’t give a fuck about nato on his border. That’s all BS propaganda for foreign consumption. The invasion of Ukraine is just a naked imperialist land grab because Putin wants to reconstitute the Russian/Soviet empire. In that regard, the Special Military Operation has had underwhelming results but it has obtained the land bridge to Crimea.
Yeah, but you’re saying that as if it’s a bad thing. 
Look at it from Putin’s point of view:
He controls 20% of Ukraine, he has control of crimea and the land to it, and it’s cost him less than two million men canon fodder.
And,most importantly, the rest of the world is once again afraid of the strong Russian empire
Where’s the mistake?
‘Afraid’? I think I’d say ‘concerned’. Concerned European countries seem to be stepping up their material support for Ukraine. After seeing the state of Russia’s weapons and the condition of Russian soldiers, I think other countries are confident that they have been facing a paper tiger. Putin’s mistake (beyond starting the war in the first place) is showing how weak Russia really is.
Yeah. If we imagine trump wasn’t president, NATO would be stronger and more resolutely anti-Russian here in 2025 than in any year since the 1970s. Gee thanks, Vlad. Tee hee.
Criminal trump is of course a counter to that strength and resolution, but it’s unclear how much real consequence that will have. I’m not optimistic on this front, but with “leadership” this mercurial, damned near any imaginable outcome has a non-trivial chance of happening. For good reasons, bad reasons, or no reasons at all.
For sure NATO ex-the US and Europe writ larger are both much more ready to deal with an aggressive Russia than they were. So far the change is more attitudinal than in immediately useable men & materiel, but they’re moving that way. The big question there is whether they can sustain the investments necessary at a rate and for a duration great enough to fully offset and then some the Russian’s parallel efforts to rebuild for further offensive ops while still attritting slowly in their self-imposed Ukrainian meatgrinder.
Ukraine did a daring Doolittle-Raid-ish strike deep in Russia that reportedly took 18 months to plan, according to statements made by Zelensky. Over 40 Russian heavy long-range bombers hit by drones.
Best part is that Trump was not informed in advance.
Fantastic hit. This just emphasizes how drone warfare is changing things. Even bases far from the front will have to have intensive EW defences and increased security. Hardened storage for everything, even far from the front. It isn’t the range of a particular drone. But how you can get it closer to target in other ways. All military forces have to be rethinking everything.
Love how slick the delivery system is. Drone hanger on the top of an average vehicle.
Oh no, this is much more amazing than the Doolittle raid. The Doolittle raid didn’t do much other than to tell Japan “we can surprise you, too”. This attack took out a sizeable portion of the Russian strategic bomber fleet if the number of planes struck is accurate.
According to BBC, it took out roughly one-third of the Russian bomber fleet that is capable of carrying cruise missiles.
I think it was obvious to most everyone that with Trump elected president we’d see other countries withholding intelligence from us. You can’t trust Trump to keep a state secret even in the best of times and you certainly can’t depend on him not to tip his ally Putin off about an attack.
What does it say for Russian security that so many drones could be smuggled in and hidden in (locally-acquired?) wagons? Maybe best for the rest of us not to know, but there must be quite a few Russians somewhat anxious about their situation now.
It’s lovely that this was a very clean military strike, and few (if any) civilians were hurt. While I’m delighted by this action, i confess that i worry about the implications for terrorizing the enemy by randomly killing civilians anywhere.
You could do this anywhere, really. The USA could never stop such a tactic.
I admit I don’t really see why this is a big deal. I doubt Ukraine was in the habit of informing the USA of operations that didn’t involve some sort of agreement about the use of a weapon they’d been given.
It’s just normal in the case of sensitive operations to not share the information with anyone. This operation was apparently planned when Joe Biden was President and I’d assume they didn’t tell him, either, or else Trump would have known, right? This is just proper, routine operational security. Sharing the operation with the USA presents a security risk even if the President isn’t a Russian stooge. More people know, more possible leaks, more exposure to spies; they’d have been idiots to inform the USA ahead of time.
Also, not sharing the info with an off/on participant in negotiations helps protect that third party’s standing (poor as as it may be).
I’m a little confused by this statement. The way I see it, it cannot have been a very clean military strike and an example of randomly killing civilians. As much as we hate to admit it sometimes, civilians are going to die when one nation prosecutes a war against another. Russians have been striking deep into Ukraine for a while now, killing many civilians, so I’m hard pressed to be overly concerned when the Ukraine makes a precision strike deep in Russian territory that happens to kill a few civilians.
Yeah. If powers with large hard-to-hide conventional forces deployed in static bases needed any reminder of how things are evolving…
You need to be able to fight BOTH conventional set-piece battles AND asymmetric warfare, including swarming, at the same time .
You have to stop this with counter intelligence not by hardening airbases. That is, roll up the networks that ran the op and/or manufacturer/smuggled the explosives, not have point defenses that shoot down small drones.