It’s physically complete, the only thing that they’re talking about holding up is certification to actually run it. So, the sort of thing that could be back on the table in a second, no problem.
I’d rather see a more permanent or long-term off-the-table thing like an oopsie with a torpedo in deep water.
Also very much a possibility.
About the only thing anyone can say with confidence is that we should know by end of week some basics about the trajectory. He moved out troops from Belogrod to the Northeast and others in Belarus above Kyiv to forward attack positions. It’s hard to hold at those positions for too long, the logisitics as you disperse people from consolidated basing areas becomes much more expensive and problematic. So he needs to decide whether they move out to attack Ukraine, or return to their local staging area, all likely in the next few days. If we start seeing them return to bases, would at least be a signal that full invasion is delayed.
Putin is the bully here, not anyone else. And sure as hell not America. Putin has started this bullshit. He could stop it.
The Minsk Agreement is dead.
Stop the pipe lines
Cut the finances (SWIFT)
Call Russia a pariah nation.
Sanction Putin and his oligarch buddies.
Not agreeing with everything Judis says, but I do think here he has a point. “What happened [after the USSR collapsed] was that Yeltsin, with the help from American money and advisors, wrecked the Russian economy and polity and paved the way for Vladimir Putin, whom Yeltsin appointed as his successor.”
At that moment the USA bestrode the world unchallenged. And what did we do with our mighty powers in the newly freed Russia? We ran a f***ing experiment in think-tank neoliberalism, and when, predictably, it failed, we blamed it on the two-bit KGB op who was able basically to walk in and take over because of the depth of our failure. The free-market fairy can never fail, she can only be failed. And then we went and did something very similar in Iraq after 9/11. Global capitalism as currently configured is constantly sprouting the seeds of its own destruction, as it did several times during the 20th-century on a much worse scale. It’s good to see the West this time so far eschewing “force,” that euphemism for massively destructive bloody violence on a grand scale.
Feels like that remains to be seen. If, as the WaPo reports, the White House is struggling to decide whether Ukraine has “really” been invaded, then maybe yes. On the other hand, it might help his muted response succeed if the media accurately reported that Russia has now formally invaded the so-called “breakaway” regions of Ukraine that Russia has single-handedly created over the last ten years.
Putin shorting oil futures to cash in before making even more on the coming spike? I.e. profit both ways? He’s in a unique position to drastically affect energy stocks and securities and has every incentive to do so, being literally the world’s biggest and richest criminal and securities cheat. For all of his nationalistic bluster, I think this is ultimately about ego, power and money.
I suspect something of the sort. Big players head-faking the markets. Suck in a bunch of people to go one way with you, following a move that you created, then force a turn in the market that makes them all suddenly need to get out, providing “liquidity” for the reversal. Short term pump and dump.
