Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine on Monday that have long been controlled by Russian proxies.
By âEnterâ, they mean âAcknowledge formally that weâve been here for the last 8 years.â
Did Putin offer TFG a front row seat to the proceedings? He deserves one. Well actually, it would take two seats.
He was certainly a contributor.
Comments on Judis article?
He spells his name wrong. Thereâs an âaâ as the second vowel.
I canât comment since my rule is to skip reading altogether.
âPresident Biden made clear that the United States would respond swiftly and decisively, together with its allies and partners, to any further Russian aggression against Ukraine,â the White House said on Sunday (2/13/22).
Instantaneous and too easy.
Ah. Is that why everyone is shrinking from calling this the beginning of the invasion? Even markets are doing it. Stock futures are soaring and oil dropping hard. WTF?
Mentioned it on the main thread. Very lazy analysis, totally missed all the money questions on military spending after the collapse of the soviet union, then he proceeds to say that we shouldnât follow basic democracy rules about self-determination, that if it makes russia queasy, then fuck the rights of the citizens of a given country.
Iâll give you the TL;DR version- Itâs all Bill Clintonâs fault.
Pretty much. If he doesnât do much more than this, itâs the âminor incursionâ that Biden correctly noted would be a tough hurdle for unity on sanctions and repercussions.
The risk here is that putinâs likely just dipping his toes in the water to test that resolve, and if he doesnât see something thatâs too painful, might decide to move the troops to the Northeast and Belarus into full invasion mode.
But with immediate shelling not happening, possibility that this is the off-ramp heâs chosen, which is basically a stalemate and status quo.
agreed, except itâs only status quo as far as territory is concerned (as you said, theyâve been there for eight years already). I hope itâs his off-ramp, but heâs deeply in the hole right now. Official cancellation of NordStream 2 isnât a small thing, and the sanctions arenât the massive punitive measures a lot of us would have liked to see, but arenât trivial either. And security measures in Poland and the Baltics are going to keep going up. So Putin has very much come out behind on this so far. Way behind.
My barely-educated guess is there are going to be more âincidentsâ in the Donbass blamed on Ukraine, and this time it will be (official) Russian forces who are hit. âForcing Putinâs handâ to invade. Itâs hard to predict the actions of a completely amoral person.
So if Putin would have had to resort to violence to appropriate two Ukrainian provinces the U.S. would have reacted swiftly and harshly. But stealing them without firing a shot is sorta OK.
The media (not this report) keeps referring to these as âbreakaway republics,â which is a rhetorical freebie for the Putin govt. Puzzled and frustrated by the media brain that makes such writerly decisions. Like describing the descent of the American right into a racist authoritarian cult as âintensifying partisan divisions.â
Hasnât Biden validated that viewpoint with his muted response?
Just looking at the map, it seems the 2020âs will see gradual destabilization of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
