Mothra said:
whiterock said:
Canada2017 said:
trey3216 said:
Canada2017 said:
trey3216 said:
Canada2017 said:
trey3216 said:
Canada2017 said:
Putin says he is not bluffing about using nukes .
Are we having fun yet ….are we cool again ?
just like he wasn't bluffing about 3 days. Just like he wasn't bluffing about NATO countries giving Ukraine supplies. He's a dead man walking and he knows it. At least he can mobilize his "army" away from the Kremlin and his vacay spots so he won't die in the next 3 weeks.
A 'dead man walking ' in command of thousands of nuclear warheads is an incredibly dangerous individual.
A dead man walking who KNOWS his only chance of survival is to 'win' …….is even more dangerous.
Biden's handlers need to somehow find even the slightest amount of common sense and work a face saving deal with Putin .
One that allows him to survive ( for now ) yet regain Ukraine's lost territory.
he's not gonna win this war and he knows it. It's all but lost as it sits today. "Mobilizing" the army away from the government may be his only shot to stay in power for any stretch. The walls are crashing in, and I don't believe for a second there will be a nuke fired because someone else is the one who has to follow the orders. Even China has turned their back on Russia in this one, aside from buying whatever minerals/commodities they can for $.50 on the dollar.
Putin is still ex KGB....he knows where the bodies are buried.
And if going to die anyway .......might choose to take many others with him .
he's already taken over 50,000 in his little 3 day war.
Would be very easy to add a couple of zeros to that number .
The US has already miscalculated once .
And the same dementia case is still ( nominally ) in charge .
This admin is doing far better than I would have imagined. They are more cautious than they could be. Or I would be. But they are playing hardball. Fun to watch.
No question we are attempting to put Putin in a situation where he will face a stark dilemma: withdraw to the status quo ante, or lose the entire Crimea to include Sebastopol. That may not sound significant, but Sebastopol has been a Russian naval base since the reign of Catherine the Great. Losing it would be a strategic defeat of tremendous historic significance. And, of course, Russia wouldn't need it if we sank the Black Sea Fleet......
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11234251/America-hit-Russias-military-devastating-strike-Putin-nukes-Ukraine-says-general.html
I've been watching for YouTubes with Ben Hodges for months. More than any other observer, he has been not just accurate in explaining key dynamics, but granular. He predicted the Russian collapse we are witnessing would occur in August, rather than September, but spot on about the mechanics of what would cause it = logistics.
I think we are also making clear preparations for Ukraine to take the war into Russian territory. This would be not an attempt to "invade Russia" in the classical sense, but rather to not let borders get in the way of defending Ukraine. We will support Ukranian attack, via air, artillery, or infantry, any logistical hubs necessary to prevent Russian encroachment on Ukrainian territory.
This is good. Make Putin risk his own skin. Losing Sebastopol. Losing Black Sea Fleet. Losing historically Russian territory. All amid complete logistical collapse of the Russian military....... Putin is clearly facing the stark dilemma of immediate strategic retreat from Ukrainian territory, or strategic defeat of the Russian military, and.....failure of the Russian state under the Putin regime.
Looming.......At some point, Belarus is going to realize it's picked a loser for an ally. Current head of state will not likely switch unless under heavy pressure, but opposition forces could at any point from here start to agitate to bring down the regime. Nato has lots of contiguous border with Belarus, as well as lots & lots of linguistic and cultural ties. VERY easy to not just support unrest/insurgency in Belarus, but instigate it. I would be surprised if we don't see that happen before Thanksgiving. You read it here.
Why would undermining Belarus be important? Well, where do we think those 300k troops Russia just mobilized will be deployed? If i was Putin, I would deploy some/all of them to Belarus to pose a strategic risk to Kiev. It would force Ukraine to divert resources away from the south. We have 60-90 days before that that could happen. Ergo......watch Belarus.
Pushing the offensive into Russian territory would be incredibly dangerous, and give Putin just the cover he needs to park a nuclear warhead in downtown Kyiv (or some other place).
We underestimated his threats to invade Ukraine before. It would be a mistake to do so again, IMO.
Valid point, and taken. Always a counterweight on the scales But....
We cannot allow Putin to make the strategic assumption that he does not need to defend his own borders. We instill that fear by cutting across a salient, maybe a 20 mile lateral move across Russian territory to encircle Russian position along the UKR border. Or maybe we bomb a railway bridge 50km inside Russia to interdict supply lines. Maybe we send rockets to destroy a border supply depot.... We have to make Putin spread out his army to defend his own borders, to keep him from sending those troops into UKR. (It will take several hundred thousand troops to do that.....so it cannot be dismissed that this mobilization is to cover a planned strategic retreat.)
And then there's this: technically, we've already done most of what you fear. UKR is already bombing Crimea, which is (according to Russia) Mother Russian territory. Same for the Donbas, which will in days become (according to Russia) part of Mother Russia.
So, yes, we can't send 100k troops on an axis of attack headed for Moscow. But we cannot allow him to conclude that we are scrupulously going to limit the battle space to the borders of UKR. We will do whatever is necessary to secure the return of 100% of former Ukrainian territory to Kiev. That includes veiled threats of escalation by US if Putin uses these 300k troops to open new axes of advances toward Kiev.
To not think and act that way invites Putin to continue using his army to grind ad infinitum.
The imminent plebiscites in Donbas to join with Russia are a sign of weakness. Among the many benefits to Russia: it leaves open justification to come back to reclaim them in the future. Also leaves open the justification to treat any future attacks in the Donbas as attacks on Mother Russia. We will ignore that latter concern. And Putin will not nuke anyone for it. But he has to try to instill strategic ambiguity, too......
