.What does all this mean? PAPER never refuses ink - especially red ink . Who decided how many dots there Q should be on this map and what is the source/s ? Can the number and location of the dots be independently verified? AAnd WHAT does each supposed to represent ?
Russia will have time to rearm.I don't see the benefit of trying to weaken it militarily except in the present case where it has broken international norms regarding the rights of internationally recognized states to not be attacked in their own borders.
After this Ukraine war is resolved one way or another Russia will still be free to rearm and will still be accountable for its actions.
Hopefully it will live in fear and contempt of the neighbours it has mistreated and be obliged to compensate them insofar as that is possible.
But we have seen how well humiliation worked with Germany after WW1 although I am not sure how accurate that interpretation of the causes of Hitler's rise to power is.
There are two possible explanations as to why America is holding back: it fears the possible consequences of a resounding defeat of Russia. As I have said previously maybe there thinking is it's a case of better the devil you know in Putin. It sounds like from Blinken's recent comments he is hoping Putin will finally see that he has no option but to negotiate as the West is not going to abandon Ukraine. There is another explanation, less likely, and a bit conspiratorial, that it suits the defense industry for a slow bleed of Russia too rather than a total defeat of Russia. A weak Russia can not do much harm to American geo political interests.
Waiting benefits Russia during a critical window for counter-offensive. When the mud season starts that window closes.
Ukraine don't really have a choice but to conduct an offensive, they are however doing probing attacks, seeking weaknesses, rather than taking a massive risk and committing the bulk of their forces. Yes, it's crazy to do it without air cover, but again they don't really have a choice.
It's really astounding Ukranian soldiers are being ordered to try break through Russian lines without air superiority.
If they are confident that they will get a lot more air assets within the next few months surely they'd be better off waiting and attacking these lines.
Another subtle observation by DP.
I never criticized the CIA or MI6 for not foreseeing the "coup" but they should have a better understanding of what happened. Of course, everyone knew Prigozhin was about to do something - his denunciations of the military leadership i.e. Shoighu and Gerasimov had escalated to the point of being unhinged. Note how Burns dodged a direct question and wouldn't call it a coup i.e. even now he doesn't know whether Prigozhin was striking at Putin.
It is embarrassing to see some of the Western media spreading CIA claims that they knew all along what Prigozhin was going to do. Notice how the headlines went from claiming that the CIA "saw signs" that Prigozhin would challenge the military leadership (didn't we all!) to "suspected Prigozhin was preparing military action" (i.e. one scenario among many) to your laughable claim that "The CIA knew and stood back to see where the chips fall". Oh, sure! Langley was an oasis of calm reflection that day as a madman headed to Moscow and Putin fled like the Czar.
Perhaps you think Lukashenko is really a CIA agent who deftly kept the keys to Russia's nuclear arsenal out of this lunatic's hands? And you are confident that the CIA knows what will happen to Prigozhin and the Wagner Group or is that another story that the CIA will "know all along" i.e. only after the event?
I see an airbase in Crimea was hit this morning.
That was always Putin's excuse and justification for his invasion. If NATO had never existed, he would have found other excuses. He wants Ukraine back under his control, and that's it. End of Story.
Its not so much the serfs that bother him (although they will be a factor) its the other power blocks in the Kremlin....Silovicki, Oligarch's. FSB, GEU, etc. the Et Tu Brutus moment.
No need for apologies, I know myself I can be a contrarian poster, which comes from having all kinds of different experiences in life……… but I’ll never be on any other side than that of any nation’s freedom and self-determination. One of those! :D
I think that Xi Jinping has warned him strongly against going Nuclear in any shape or form... he made it quite clear that he was not amused even at the frequency Mr. Putin was introducing it into the conversation.
As usual you revert to personal insults. Am I a bit cynical about American motives? Yes. But I'd call it realistic. America, like every country, serves its own interests first. In this case they happen to tally with Ukrainian self preservation, and that's a good thing. But anyone who thinks America's sole or even primary interest here is in promoting freedom and democracy is very naive.
Apathetic? No. Brainwashed by Russian propaganda? No. Believes there is no alternative to Putin? No. I've said time and again the only lasting hope is to overthrow the monster. Why do you keep repeating lies?
Nope, I doubt it very much that he wants to get NATO involved, its the one thing that he has ( so far) avoided, same as the west has avoided giving him an excuse to use "The Bomb".
It could be argued that he had already lost it when he made the decision to invade in Feb 2022. But ever since his "Election?? " he has shown a murderous disposition.
I never disputed that. The point is about endgame versus keeping the game going.
No, no theories, the answer to your question is well known and well worn on this thread, not least by yourself. I touched on it in my post just there as well.
Next question? Or are you going to address anything from my actual post?
Strictly for home consumption. He's trying to justify the war especially when his usual " Russia is under attack, and only I can save you" spiel is wearing thin. He's in trouble on all fronts now, Ukraine the World and internally in Russia itself.
You’re not just barking up the wrong tree with addressing that post to me, you’re somewhere in a Siberian forest at the moment 😄
Nope, not yet anyway,,,,,,,Its possible that if Prigozhin had continued on and took the Kremlin, that might have been the trigger, give the reception he got when he was leaving Rostov, crowds were cheering an clapping him, quite the opposite of what the police ( yes, they bailed out too! ) got when they returned, bottles stones catcalls and insult's. It was a very big fence sitting moment.
Francie, go live there for a while, and you will understand why its not called a terrorist state for nothing. Before they terrorized other states, they terrorized their own people first.
The majority of Russians and Ukrainians I’ve met so far are in general more white of skin tone and more blue of eyes than many other “white European” people I’ve met. So I’d suggest the anti-western contrarian “racism” you’re talking about is in fact a VERY western elitism, born out of a superior sense of having done so much better in the last 100 years than a place like the USSR/Russia, with all its vastness of land and resources but which managed to fcuk everything up for itself time and again. Plus the further away the trouble is, the less we care about it.
There is no more “racism” toward the Ukrainians than there is toward Russians; it’s those poor incompetent stupid nations in the east who fcuk everything up from the revolutions and the gulags to Chernobyl and the infighting, and can’t get a handle on themselves at all. Those Slavs, eh.
It is easy to sit in scornful judgment and not bother to distinguish one nation from another, when all the suffering brought on by brutal imperialism is far enough away, and has been thus for decades. The west has been too comfortable for too long, and all these anti-west contrarian types who I’ve been meeting lately, frankly don’t know they are born, and are just a very annoying by-product of the west’s indulgence and imperviousness.
A month later and I say the CIA/MI6 still don't know what's going on in Russia.
Last week, Bill Burns and Richard Moore both gave their assessments of the "March on Moscow" and it's obvious that neither of them know what happened on 25 June, most importantly why Putin and Prigozhin reached a deal and what that deal entails. At least Moore recognises that it was a humiliation for Putin. Burns' comment about Putin wanting revenge as a "dish best served cold" is just cover for "I don't know where this is going". (Please don't say that they only pretend that they don't know in order to protect their sources. If they knew what is going on, they would have spared us their rambling open-source speculations, and without exposing any agent.)
How apt that Moore was speaking in Prague before the 55th. anniversary of the 1968 invasion. The West was caught completely off-guard back then even though the Kremlin had been preparing it for months. Was that the worst failure of Western intelligence during the Cold War? Perhaps, but they had no excuse for missing the even more consequential invasion of Afghanistan (ultimately, that invasion opened the door to one of the CIA's most effective actions but, then again, that opened the door to the Taliban😱).
At least the Americans, unlike the Europeans, saw the invasion of Ukraine coming but that was probably sigint and geoint, not humint. No wonder the CIA/MI6 are pleading with Russian citizens to come forward, but would any senior Russian military commander risk their lives with either the CIA or M16? Can they even promise safety in the West after Salisbury etc.?
In fairness, I'm not sure the Chinese know what's going on either. Xi Jinping can't have been pleased by the confusing media messaging following the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister's unannounced visit to Beijing on 25 June. Hats off to whichever Western intelligence agency can find the Chinese Foreign Minister and ask him about that meeting. 🎖️😏
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/21/1189450185/cia-director-william-burns-putin-is-the-apostle-of-payback
Short interesting piece on a Ukrainian M777 gun crew
Russian ammo on fire in Crimea
….
Yes and when confronted with that fact they go dumb. Like it’s unbelievable Finland and Sweden have been in the news applying to join for the last year and it had to be approved by all members with much difficulty . Yet these guys say NATO is aggressively expanding. How is it possible for them to have that take??? Unbelievable
The people who ignore Ukrainian self determination also believe NATO expanded to Russia's borders, while the fact is instead that everyone who joined since the '90s did so willingly and independently.
Let's be doubly blunt here. There's also a part of the "peace at any cost" crowd not factored in enough, and only highlighted to me of late elsewhere on Boards: outright racism. Within the seed of anti West contrarianism there's also a subset of what reads like blatant racism that dismisses Ukrainian concerns, hand waving away swathes of Ukraine cos "they all look and sound russian anyway"; lamenting the involvement of "white Europeans" in the conflict presumably seen as a kerfuffle between a bunch of Russian Slavs.
It's also noteworthy how in all the "peace at any cost" narratives espoused by people, Ukrainian self determination never, ever figures in the spitball. It's about giving Russia what it wants, giving Putin what he lays claim to - Ukraine just non existent in terms of the end result. They don't count, they're not allowed any agency; again, a by product of dismissively viewing Ukrainians as cosplaying Russians. An affectation of concern for the ordinary people caught on all this -bnut not enough concern to give them any ability to dictate their own destiny.
America are the ones keeping Ukraine in the game.
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