Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

You would be thinking the Ukrainians will fire as much if these off now before Trumps takes over

Lof tempting targets

Kerch seems way too obvious but it would **** beautiful to watch it get blown to hell.
I wonder what else the Ukrainians could potentially target with them.

I also wonder is this a too late moment considering trump stop this in two months so if I were Zelenskyy I’d be hitting Russia as much as possible and make Moscow reap what they sow

This announcement is bullshite. The first wave should have been deployed, then confirm the approval. Why give them a heads up to prep, absolute bs

Russians in Berlin had a march against the fascist dictator Putin today. Banners calling for to end Putin and dispose of him.

Good news at last about Ukraine being allowed hit the smarmy Russian terrorists. Especially on the back of last night's attack on Ukraine electricity grid.

In a few months the far left who helped Trump get elected will learn all about hypocrisy and longingly look back at the time there were adults in the room

as bulldozers start preparing the ground for Trump Mediterranean Resorts by crunching over bones, from the river to the sea.

Btw on news today that Kushner already has larger property empire than senior thanks to his Arab contacts

But all that going off on a tangent, like your post.

just guessing here. maybe disruption, strain resources, shake up command and politics.

maybe like israel when they announced theyd strike iran when it was to israels convenience, to show a sort of impunity, confidence, inevitability.

if they hit something after announcement and its a success then how incompetent does the other side look to their troops, no confidence in command, push them towards rebellion. the other side announce their plans on the news and theres still nothing we can do, fck this.

Russia escalate further? What can they do? They already have imported thousands of North Koreans and a response was needed.

The jobless are starting to worry….

While Russia clearly still has a lot of armour there are signs they don't have enough to cover all unit's on the attack which will increase losses. As time goes on civilian vehicles will become more common.

I think Biden should leave a large **** sandwich for Trump to deal with before leaving office. Missile strikes in Russia opens Pandoras box. If Putin doesn't respond to the first strike then there's no reason to belief he reacts to the rest.

Just remember the mess that Trump left when he committed to leaving Afghanistan after he had left office.

Biden should allow a massive attack on Russian airfields and arms depots round Jan 10 then hand the keys to Trump. We'll see within a fortnight how much Putin really has on him.

Biden was forced to withdraw from the Democratic candidacy (wrongly, in my opinion) due to his obvious mental decline no longer being possible to hide from the public during the elections. The Dems preferred to run a nobody like Harris rather than go with the incumbent President Biden, because his mental decline was so clear and could no longer be hidden.

Lets not now pretend otherwise.

As for what Russia will or wont do. Firstly, the US hasn't confirmed this policy change, nor has any strikes actually occurred yet. Secondly, the idea that Russia will not respond to provocations, that it is too weak and must just sit back and take it has been proven false before. Russia has at all points reacted to its red lines being crossed - firstly by seizing Crimea in 2014 in reaction to the coup, then by intervening (in 2014) against Ukrainian forces when they were in danger of being overwhelmed, and then by intervening again (in 2022-24) after refusals to settle the conflict diplomatically. We are where we are now because Russia has consistently punished provocations despite public claims they were too weak to do so.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/world/europe/ukraine.html?_r=0

Despite growing jitters in the West, Ukraine’s military leaders say they are making a well-calculated gamble, betting that Mr. Putin feels he has too much to lose to invade, including the possibility of crippling international sanctions. So while Western officials view each new Ukrainian artillery barrage in Donetsk as drawing the country closer to the brink, the Ukrainians see their unchecked advance as further confirmation that Mr. Putin is mobilizing troops only as a scare tactic to keep them from reclaiming territory.
The government in Kiev is “calling Putin’s bluff,” said Oleh Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian diplomat, who said political leaders dismissed Mr. Putin’s moves as “psychological pressure.”
“If we pause, it would show Putin that any time he puts troops on the border, we will stop,” Mr. Voloshyn said.

But they lost that bet - Russia wasn't bluffing in 2014 and did intervene.

https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2014/02/how-ukraine-destroyed-the-myth-of-russias-great-power?lang=en

But now Russia’s bluff has been called. It is not yet clear what lasting impact the sudden downfall of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych will have in the region. But what is already clear is that the myth of Russian power has been thoroughly shredded. The heroic people of Ukraine’s Euromaidan protest movement, helped unwittingly by the EU and some eleventh-hour U.S. diplomacy, revealed Moscow’s real power status.

As a result, Putin lost Ukraine in the endgame on February 21. In the multiparty negotiations in Kiev that evening, Moscow agreed to early presidential elections in Ukraine, only to see the situation unravel within hours.

But Putin’s real power, as German journalist Clemens Wergin has noted, is relative: it depends on how much counterpower the West is willing to apply. With its economy, society, and military in decay, Russia’s strength does not have much of an original source of its own.

The above demonstrates how much of the analysis in 2024 is just the same warmed up analysis from early 2014 that imagined Russia's bluff had been called back then. If only NATO pushes a little bit harder, Russia will collapse. But it didn't in 2014. Why would things be different in 2024?

The absolute danger - and why US engaging in a non-deniable act of war against Russia such a bad idea - is that as a sovereign nation, Russia cannot tolerate other states directly attacking it. It has to respond to restore deterrence. Otherwise a negative precedent is set. And as noted, all the predictions from 2014 that Russia was bluffing and wouldn't react were wrong then.