Natural partners to who? They aren't very popular among their neighbours, which has probably something to do with the fact that they tend to invade them.
wut ?
Your Hitler argument is weak. It is very much a battle of wills. Why haven't Ukraine collapsed in the first days of the invasion? Because of thousands of Ukrainian volunteers that were fighting a long fight on the borders of Donbas and Luhansk, because of Zelensky who quite unexpectedly decided to become a hero, because of the Ukrainian army that stood and fought.
Was it inevitable? Not at all. In the South of Ukraine (Mariupol excepted) people were not ready to fight and the Russian army just rolled into Kherson practically unopposed. If Zelensky did what was expected of him and fled the country, would the Ukrainian army fight with the same determination? Would anyone send Ukraine weapons if the country didn't show the will to fight? I would bet not.
last saturday night cost 1.2 billion to defend israel
What would the effect be if Iran escalates in the Middle East, would it impact supplies to Russia?
Imagine what Russia would be like today if Putin had not gone down the criminal route after he was elected…But no, he didn't, and now we are where we are. But one thing for sure can be learned from it anyway, allowing laws to be changed, without opposition, is the first act of losing liberty and freedom.
China is rapidly decarbonizing some of its energy but the dirty carbon part is rapidly growing and outpacing it.
By 2100 the story of global carbon in the previous 3 centuries will be dominated by China, then India with America and Europe a distant 3rd.
Sometime in the 2030s they will out pass the entirety of US and European carbon since the beginning of the Industrial revolution.
They produce more carbon now in a year than the rest of the OECD countries combined which is pretty much everyone else.
Thinking that wars are won by "wills" is the kind of nonsense Hitler used to believe. Yes it makes a difference but a lot less difference than weapons and manpower and Ukraine needs more of both, urgently.
Nor will Russia run out of money in 2025. In 2022 people said in 2023 the country would grow broke. Didn't happen then and won't now. They have China and many countries helping them out and in addition doing all sorts of crooked stuff to get around sanctions.
One thing you are right about: Ukraine will not capitulate to a future as Russian slaves. But can they hold onto what they have now? I hope so but by it could be a very bloody and brutal summer if rumours of big Russia offensive are true
300 million per day I believe.
surely he will have to have security personnel in with him and maybe double the normal number because of the increased risk of what the inmates might do re Trump himself and that ‘briefcase’
Russia is reckoned to have spent 220 billion US $ on the war so far. Imagine if they spent that on their own country’s infrastructure. They’d be the envy of everyone.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/s/1peaaGQGjg
powerful stuff, Georgia aren’t having russia creep in the door.
Uhh…. the Dems aren't pushing these trials, and they're campaigning away. FWIW, two of the felony trials are state-level (Georgia, today's hush money trial)
What are you talking about? America aren’t in a war in Ukraine.
The yanks want out of this war badly, and Donald is their Trump card to achieve this. They can just blame Trump for abandoning Ukraine, and he won't give a toss about being the bad guy.
I have a feeling the uniparty is making sure Trump gets back in, because there is a real fear that they've gotten themselves into yet another deeply unpopular un-winnable war that threatens the entire political establishment. The public are getting sick of their taxes going on forever wars, and being seen as warmongers around the world.
Give him a big red button that’s attached to a fake suitcase and tweets to truth social a 💩 emoji everytime he mashes the button
Yip @ToweringPerformance this is why I have said here and elsewhere that the Dems are wasting there time and energy on pushing these cases rather than focusing on there own campaign and putting all there energy into that for that last 4 years. In fact the dems, by pushing for all these cases are just completely aiding Trumps election as next president of US in 2025 in my view
His polling numbers go up after every trial he appears in.
The pro-Russian Georgia Dream party, who are in power in that country are trying to ram through a Russian inspired Foreign Agent law. The implication is that they will use this to silence opposing politicians and media prior to upcoming elections later this year.
The opposition are, quite literally, going to fight them on it:
Yip, apparently nothing in the US constitution that stops someone running the country as president from inside a prison cell.
Like here where, I think, you cannot take up office in Irish gov if bankrupt .. this is not the case in the US I think.
So basically outside of possible embarassment which may lose him a few votes, none of these cases will harm Trumps go at being the be next president. Complete waste of time really.
If Trump goes to jail will he have the nuclear briefcase in the cell with him?
I seriously doubt they'll run out of money by next year. Or political will at the top. I'd reckon they can keep going for at least three or four years. Putin appears to have no climb down plan in his pocket. He has to keep ploughing on. Now of course whatever happens Putin will claim mission accomplished and I suspect the majority of his support will go along with it. They seem to have an unbounded capacity for belief in him steering Mother Russia and an incredible capacity for amnesia to suit that. That's the thing and problem with faith in any narrative, religious, national, or political, you have to believe all of it or the whole thing looks shaky.
If anything cynicism of this war at home would help him there if it stopped, no matter where it stopped. The tiebreaker imho would be Odessa. Russians very much consider that a Russian city™. Not taking that would hurt him at home, even if he took all of Donbas. Though again this faith and capacity for amnesia which the Kremlin has massaged for two decades helps him.
On BBC they had an interview with commander recently from somewhere along the 1000km long front he had some interesting points:
But most importantly one point he made really stuck with me; “If Russians win they will exterminate me and my mates and our families”
The choice is between potential death and certain death for them.
It’s been two years since Bucha and it seems some have forgotten what Russia “winning” will mean in reality, direct extermination of millions and forcing out millions more at best or Russian serfdom at worst.
True, but to do that they need to build the infrastructure to mine those resources. Within Russia herself a lot of the oil/gas infrastructure was made in and often maintained by western companies. That source is now effectively shut off, so they'll have to build their own and that's going to take time to spin up. Farmland is easier, though a fair chunk of it now looks like a moonscape full of mines and they also need to repair or build infrastructure to get it from the fields to ports and to market.
And that market itself is now more reduced and further away. Because of sanctions Western concerns aren't going to buy much of it so they have to open other markets, markets which don't have nearly the same amount of cash to pay for it. Russia knew this all too well, or should have known going into this. Look in which direction the vast majority of Russia's pipelines were running to before this mess. It wasn't to their "friends" in China, nor the "Global South".
There is a bit of the old doom and gloom in the thread in the last couple of months. Which is understandable as Ukraine seemingly is not getting closer to liberating its territory anymore. But there are encouraging voices coming from Russia. They are desperate for "peace talks", even the Pope is pushing for Ukraine to "raise the white flag", and I just wonder what kind of dirt Russians have on Pope Francis. The reason for all that peace mongering is simple — Russia is collapsing.
By my estimates, they will run out of money in 2025. Even the contract soldiers that are paid fantastic (by Russian standards) salaries are deserting at a rate of 15-20 a day ( https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-troops-mobilization-desertion-problems-convictions-1881268 ). If Russia has to mobilize, then conscripts will be running home in droves.
This is a battle of wills. If Ukraine is starved of ammo and has to slowly retreat, Russians are seen as successful, and it gives Russia a moral boost. If Ukraine just holds more or less what it has now, Russia will eventually fold.
A good point regarding China. I have been listening to right wing podcasts of late and it’s insane how pro Trump/anti Ukraine they are. My judgment has become cloudy.
In 10-20 years Russia would become a Northerner Korea, sanctions rarely ever get dropped, points at Cuba and Iran
That’s before we consider the world decarbonising, especially China who is not only doing that but will lose 300mn of its population as they age and die in this timeframe
the same dysfunctions in US politics cut both ways btw, short of Trump destroying the US republic and then winning a second civil war and crowning himself king the sanctions will stay and mount
And that’s before we consider Europe where half the states close to Russia have populations that viscerally hate them and have a say in EU policies.
Be careful of falling for cynicism and ignoring existing examples, that’s precisely one of the objectives of Russian propaganda. Ukraine will lose not when it’s military is defeated but when its population and its allies get brainwashed into thinking they lost and giving up.
I think the only offensive use these jets are going to see once they become operational is going to be SEAD, suppression of enemy air defense. The AGM-88 HARM that Ukraine already have are designed to integrate seamlessly with the F-16 and will allow for quite a few additional attack modes when compared to what's available on the jury-rigged implementation on Ukraine's MiG-29 or Su-27 fleet. Creating a SAM-free zone close to the border would make life for the Ukrainian Air Force's ground attack units a whole lot easier. Beyond that, air defense is going to be their primary task, at least until Ukraine has enough aircraft for a properly sized strike force.
You have been up very early in the morning getting busy, fortifying yourself with a few burgers for the day ahead no doubt!
Your NYT story, while unfortunate of course (had read it before) still does not mean the US sent "mostly junk" weapons. These weapons seem to have caused Russian military a lot of problems anyway, and the glorious new Reich Russian Empire in Ukraine has been on hold.
Russia had been hinting from day 1 of the invasion about use of nuclear weapons if too much Western "junk" gets sent to aid Ukraine. Their most recent battlefield successes occured after flows of "junk" from the US slowed + dried up. Just an odd cooincidence.
May be tough for likes of you to understand but leaders of democracies, even ones with Presidential systems like US, cannot govern by fiat.
There has been more military expenditure and NATO activity in N. and E. of Europe since 2014, and it has increased since 2022. It involves new European countries that border Russia that were formerly neutral (Sweden and Finland). So people are worried about something wouldn't you say, and are acting accordingly.
Russia/Putin have been belly-aching about it anyway (edit: e.g. "unfriendly" actions of Finland in joining NATO etc. that are occuring for no reason at all in a hard vaccum).
russia has best tank.
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