So they went from world wide distribution in multiple media forms and outlets to an audience of MAGA’s.
It is all up from here for them.
5 Likes
I’m going to withhold my already oft-expressed opinion but I’ll take note of one interesting fact:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukrainian negotiators of taking too long to arrive as a way of dragging out the talks, saying that the U.S. had somehow orchestrated the delays.
I don’t see why he’d say this as some sort of trick. I read it as an admission that time isn’t on their side. I thought it was, in some ways. So that’s interesting.
27 Likes
“Foreign mercenaries that have arrived in Ukraine are conducting sabotage and raids on Russian armored columns and supply chains, and on the aviation that covers them,” the ministry said.
-
It’s always the foreigners.
-
This is absolutely what things look like when a military operation is going according to plan.
-
How the Actual Hell do foreign mercenaries conduct sabotage and raids against “the aviation that covers [the Russian invasion force]”? Are they going Rambo on a Russian air base, or what? Sounds like they’re taking a lot more casualties in the air than they expected.
13 Likes
I guess it depends on ones definition of “Holocaust”. As a Montanan with many Native American friends, they see “Holocaust” as 60 million dead over 400 years as opposed to 6 million dead in 6 years. The Armenians have their own take.
I personally don’t think this qualifies to that level.
I’m with Talleyrand on this:
“It’s worse than a crime. It is a mistake.”
10 Likes
We don’t have to guess about this, it doesn’t exist. Otherwise the stance that Biden and the other leaders of NATO are taking would be inexplicable. War with Russia is off the table, and that’s the reason.
6 Likes
It would still be a major loss for Ukraine if somehow a peace agreement allowed Russia to control these areas they’ve taken already, i.e. Kharkiv and Odessa and the eastern states. Doubtful Zelensky would even consider this as part of an armistice etc, I’m sure he just wants all the Russians gone, gone out of the whole country asap. Really a stuck situation right now from a negotiations point of view.
8 Likes
One hopes he can be coaxed to take an off ramp.
I fear he is at a tipping point and there’s little way of know which way he will tip.
3 Likes
Hence the part of the State of the Union speech devoted to the development of a U.S. based chip factory.
9 Likes
You probably should just jump on your high horse and go there, and leave my family out of it, not to mention the rest of the world who have no stake or say on the matter.
The foreign mercenaries brought along their own supply of Red Bull.
4 Likes
It would be stupid of Russia. The insurgency there would be brutal. The Ukrainians do NOT want them there…anywhere.
3 Likes
And hence my discussion further up this thread about how long it would take to get the GOP to pass Biden’s bill that would fund the project and, after that, how long it would take to build the labs and bring them online.
1 Like
I think we are on the same page. One thing though, I’ve been reading up in Putty. There might be two factors in play that is making him go beyond his usual mania. One is that he had COVID and might be having a psychotic reaction. The other is the possibility that he has had an illness that was not brought to light and was or still is being treated with steroids. Short term use can lead to confusion and anxiety. Long term use can lead to having hallucinations, delusions and cognitive impairment.
Who knows what he’ll do???
8 Likes
It used to be a fairly dirty process…environmentally. Lots of nasty chemicals.
4 Likes
I think what he sees is that he’s looking like a dope, so in the near term he’ll escalate to correct his image. He’ll flatten cities the way he did Grozny. And he’ll grow more harsh at home, with more arrests and curfews and martial law. Russians are already leaving in fear of what he’s going to do to them.
6 Likes
Russia and China are both getting kinda cozy with each other’s ambitions right now, as well. That ambition is to force an end to western liberal democracies across the globe. Both have been making moves in that direction for over a decade, while the west’s thinkers have not been willing to acknowledge their obvious intents, until now. Ukraine is not about NATO. Why the fuck is Putin so pro-T rumpp? Putin is using the GOP as a weapon of mass destruction against liberal democracy here in the US, just like he used T rumpp to weaken/destroy NATO. Ukraine is simply the first use of ground-based military force in the pursuit of his ambitions, and now that he’s started, he won’t stop until he wins, or he’s killed.
8 Likes
It seems like in this situation, there is at least some sentiment in Russian that is against the war. I don’t think that was true in Germany. And in the years after the war, there was also a charismatic figure who built a campaign on a Big Lie that the German army could have won the war but was “stabbed in the back.” As left_in_washington_state said the policy to collect reparations was “all stick,” which was especially painful as the world economy went south. Consider also, that all of Europe was recovering from the war at the same time, which isn’t the case now.
2 Likes
Funny thing happened on the way to kill bin laden. A helicopter crashed and had to be destroyed.
The remnants of the tail were fascinating to observers because this was a new and never-seen toy that nobody knew we had.
Yet tons of people knew, from builders to the military, clearly the stuff had been used and trained in and all that. And not a word or sighting or hint of it anywhere, until one crashed.
You don’t know what the military has until you know, and should always assume that what we know doesn’t ever cover the whole of what is.
8 Likes
15 Likes
I said nothing about a repeat of world war. However, as the daughter of immigrants who grew up in German occupation during WWII and who is here thanks to the intervention of American soldiers in that war, I am not sure we can tiptoe around the reality of what we are asking the Ukrainian people to do for themselves but also on our behalf. Ukraine is standing in the breach between Putin and the EU and they are paying a tremendous price for occupying that role. Also, with Putin and too many western pundits arguing for a non-NATO buffer between Russia and the west, what buffer will there be after Ukraine falls? There won’t be one. It is an entirely disingenous statement.
I can’t say that I have the answer. I don’t. I just have this feeling that the West is being too clever by half in making their arguments for staying out of the fighting. If Putin’s army kills tens or hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, that blood will also be on the hands of those who stood by and did nothing.
5 Likes