Great. Goodbye Russian-made electric guitar amp tubes. Thanks Putin!
Putin is so fucking ruthless he poisoned a former Russian spy AND his daughter in England with polonium in their freaking TEA, man
Welp. hopefully Ukraine is still standing when I wake up.
If there’s anything I’ve learned since 2016, if a crazy man is shouting crazy things and threatening crazy actions then you really can’t be surprised when he follows through and does something crazy. If someone plants thousands upon thousands of troops at the border then we can’t be surprised when an invasion happens. I just wonder how my mother is going to blame this on Biden.
In response to the last sentence of your post, I expect it will be something along the lines of “Putin would never have done this if dear sainted Donald Trump were still President rather this senile old wimp.”
Reminds me of “Do you really think the Russians would have invaded Afghanistan if Ronald Reagan were president?”
Putin may be a lot of things, but mad isn’t one of them:
An increasing number of politicians and media analysts claim Putin may be mentally unstable, or that he is isolated in a bubble of yes-men who don’t warn him of dangers ahead. Many commentators say he is trying to restore the Soviet Union or recreate a Russian sphere of influence on his country’s borders, and that this week’s intrusion into eastern Ukraine is the first step towards an all-out attack on Kyiv to topple its government and even move against the Baltic states. None of these assertions is necessarily true.
The Russian president is a rational man with his own analysis of recent European history. Coming from a former Communist, his blaming of Lenin for giving excessive scope to local nationalism in drawing up the Soviet constitution is remarkable. Similarly, his criticism of the way national elites destroyed the Soviet Union in its final years is sharp.
Does he want to turn the clock back? People often quote his statement “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. But it bears pointing out that he enlarged on it later, saying: “Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.”
It is crucially important for those who might seek to end or ameliorate this crisis to first understand his mindset. What happened this week is that Putin lost his patience, and his temper. He is furious with the Ukraine government. He feels it repeatedly rejected the Minsk agreement, which would give the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk substantial autonomy. He is angry with France and Germany, the co-signatories, and the United States, for not pressing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to implement them. He is equally angry with the Americans for not taking on board Russia’s security concerns about Nato’s expansion and the deployment of offensive missiles close to Russia’s borders.
No longer “may”.
Mods maybe a new thread?
I was just thinking that Zelensky is effectively just a comedian who was elected in as the only guy everyone trusted. You’ve got to appreciate that the man is sticking through for his people when Putin’s probably called to have his head collected and brought in an urn full of oil.
I hope the man makes it through and proves to have been someone who really was that trustworthy all along.
I live and work just a few miles away from Joint Base Lewis McChord. We’ve been hearing a lot of helicopter traffic over the last few hours. Just now, i was in the parking lot and saw several planes in formation flying away from JBLM in a northwesterly direction, and Flighradar informs me they’re C-17s - troop transports.
Sure looks like the Army is moving (or getting ready to move) troops and materiel somewhere.
Definitely
He can entertain the rest of the prisoners in whatever Siberian Gulaug he ends up.
It’s like a Robin Williams movie that took a very dark turn.
Not to be unsympathetic, but the words/behavior of Zelensky and many Ukrainians all the way up until 24 hours ago was a prime example of denial and sticking one’s head in the sand.
Goddamn Putin!
Superpowers act like assholes, who’d have thought.
only those who slept through the last 22 years
What’s up with Belarus? Why are they involved?
The president of Belarus is a Putin-esque authoritarian who invited the Russians in for “drills” a few weeks ago, after which they mysteriously decided to hang around for some reason.
It is time to fight.
You know who I haven’t heard from since the start of this crisis? The United Nations. Does it still exist? Will it condemn Russia?
(Sorry. I shouldn’t be making jokes).