After WW2 Ukraine rebelled against the USSR. 7 million Ukrainian citizens starved to death in the ensuing retaliatory famine. Ukraine has not forgotten.
17 Likes
I’m skeptical that Russia would have spent as much as it has to mobilize these huge military assets at the Ukrainian border if it did not intend to make a military move.
3 Likes
That’s all we are saying.
8 Likes
Undoubtedly, but how long would / could the internet be down here? Russia sure seems to get a lot of hacking practice in.
6 Likes
He’s done it a couple of times now since 2014, involving troop numbers very similar to now.
Only Putin knows whether he’s gonna call the whole thing off in a few weeks and say it was just exercises and they’re done, or if he’s crossing over and invading.
Nobody except him individually knows for sure, and that’s how he likes to play the game.
12 Likes
A few, very rare, other commentators have said essentially the same thing such as Palmer in the 'Palmer Report". Their position was that if Putin could actually do this why didn’t he do it earlier when conditions were more favorable than now? Such as when TFG was around to thoroughly muck foreign relations up.
9 Likes
Yeah but has Putin every faced off against mad Irish fishermen when the fish are running?
14 Likes
They never were more favorable than now. Until Nordstream 2 was completed, the main gas lines heating Northern Europe run through Ukraine. An invasion of Ukraine would almost certainly end up in the pipelines being shut down, if not actively attacked and disabled by different actors.
That would have led to immediate responses by Germany, who wouldn’t have liked headlines about citizens freezing to death because the gas lines were severed.
With Nordstream 2 at least physically complete, if not yet approved to be turned on, russia got a way to try to “bribe” Germany into at least sitting on the sidelines and not being forced into a military response.
10 Likes
Putin was busy getting concessions on Syria (no more US presence there), Afghanistan (no US presence there. Trump did most of the work in handing things over to the Taliban), North Korea pretty much allowed to roam free with a weakened US Pacific alliance.
On Ukraine, the controversy over the Russia investigation with Mueller really digging into Manafort’s dealings caused Putin to hedge. In addition, Putin tried to undermine Zelensky through the back door in the UKR scandal that led to Trump’s first impeachment. That attempt backfired, but he intended it to weaken Zelensky, and get pro-Russian types installed at UKR’s state owned gas entity, Naftogaz with the help of US grifters like Rick Perry.
Putin really expected that Trump would be in power to make this move. He then decided he had to take advantage of Biden in year 1 while he was bogged down with the pandemic and still has a lot of assets in the GOP to help. It hasn’t worked thus far. Putin isn’t infallible. We just didn’t stand up to him because Trump was his blocker.
30 Likes
True that, but…Biden and NATO have built up a coalition of countries, including the US, to make up the difference in LNG shortages should Putin pull that lever.
It has also been floated that shorting and freezing the banks accounts of Putin’s favorite oligarchs will seriously piss off his friends who find themselves unable to pay their dacha bills. Including Putin himself, but a lot of experts say that is a bridge too far.
6 Likes
Next thing you know, he’ll shoot a few missiles into the sea, to show that Russia is just as ‘mighty’ as North Korea.
3 Likes
Shouldn’t that be “Asses of Evil”?
15 Likes
May it be so
1 Like
Saber rattling is also a great way to stir up the nationalist support in Russia. Putin has learned the lesson (as do most dictators) that turning the conflict into us-versus-the rest of the world encourages his supporters to rally round the flag and strengthen his position in his own country.
Something tells me that the oligarchs who profit from his control of the country would not like to have sanctions imposed on them and their money.
6 Likes
Wouldn’t actually work, not in any near term, not at the volumes needed. It’s not like this is just sending over an LNG ship or two, there’s a whole infrastructure that would be needed to be built to support a line of stuff running into Bremerhaven to run out from there. Think simple things like holding tanks and distribution lines.
Real replacement strategies are being discussed, but are measured in investments over years to build up to a point of energy independence from Russia, this is not something they can pull off overnight.
7 Likes
That’s what happens when they go in search of a way to justify their premeditated conclusion.
2 Likes
Heck, go back a bit further, and Putin mucked around with the election to get Zelenskiiy installed in the first place, he was expected to be a rollover peacenik that would sign a peace deal acknowledging the loss of Ukraine and Luhansk/Donetsk, and thereafter be a convenient puppet figurehead that russia could manipulate at will and work to separate Ukraine from the West.
5 Likes
Zelensky is complaining that it’s not as bad as it looks and media and world leaders are blowing it out of proportion.
2 Likes
The last thing Putin wants is pictures of burned out BMPs and glorified T-80s littering the roadsides all done in by NATO hardware. That’ll really sell back home.
Also where is Nord Stream 1 in all this?
2 Likes
-
Zelenskiiy is going to say what he thinks he need to say that’s best for Ukraine’s chances of staying out of occupation.
-
Ukraine’s interests are far from the only interests at play here. Putin has specifically demanded, for example, that NATO pull all troops out of Bulgaria and Romania-- two NATO allies, which would effectively ceded control over the entire Black Sea minus Turkey to the South and enable him to force project from the Black Sea across much of Southeastern Europe. Let alone that he also wants the rotational forces out of the Baltics and Poland, which would leave basically the entirety of the old Warsaw Pact area at risk of imminent occupation.
16 Likes