Russia-Ukraine War (continuing)

trump wont be playing silly buggers for too long. If Putin is insisting on completely unreasonable terms he’ll bring the shutters down fairly quick. Course then he’ll have to come up with plan b.

We have Trump threathening Poland today

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-03-11/poland-defiant-over-big-tech-tax-plan-in-latest-spat-with-us

Sooner or later it dawn on the Polish that if Ukraine can go from ally to enemy in a few weeks over the invented in his own head slights of an old man, so can Poland and they are literally next in line on Russian shopping list, especially if someone worse than Trump like Vance endsup in whitehouse sooner or later

All that equipment turned useless like happened to Ukraine and billions wasted instead of being used on things like mines and drones that have proven so effective against Russian barbarians and neo Nazis

I always respect your posting here and perspective from other side of pond

But you don’t see it but you are being slow boiled, I see the same with my American colleagues and family, they are being manipulated into ever more extreme positions on various topics often doing compete 180 degree U-turns

Your arguments against Trump went from “our checks and balances will stop him” to “oh well the people have spoken” to now when asked if you will fight against Canada to “checks and balances up the chain of command will prevent that” which is funny as I thought Trump is at the top of the chain of your command

Will you have to resort to “I was just following orders” argument when ordered to roll into Toronto let’s say ?

This btw is exactly exactly what happened to Russians in 25 years of dear leader rule, they been slow boiled into invading what used to be their closest neighbours and often family and friends because an old man with too much power wanted to cosplay war

I would take all things from the WH very seriously. The saving grace is that it /they could be changed the following day to something differently type of ‘seriously’. The saving grace key point is to know which of the many utterances will Trump settle for He has , in a lot of cases. , put forward and lot of ‘ THOUGHTS to cherrypick from.
we are very lucky that he can flip flop, do a 180 degree turn, etc, etc. on a lot of issues. He seems to be blowing HOT and COLD, leaning towards RU and apparently leaning mainly towards UKR, etc, etc. As he has the ABILITY to change his mind on a WHIM

That is certainly suspicious.

Kind of mad thing to do if it was deliberate though, a freelance special military kamikaze operation…

This week we had RussianZ walk themselves into a freaking gas pipeline and straight into an ambush

Driving a ship into another and walking away without loss of life is minor in comparison

The captain gets to spend time potentially in a cushy UK prison which be at about same grade of comfort as a good Russian hotel

While the US loses one of the very few logistics ships (only 10 of these?) they have and would need in case of war with China

All completely deniable of course

I don't think there's going to be any Ukrainian war angle to the Russian captain of the container ship. Way too obvious and doesn't make sense at a time when the US were doing Russian's bidding. The only relevant thing him being Russian is that he or the crew are more likely to have been intoxicated to some degree while in charge of a vessel.

The tanker was a rental.

It was however was US flagged which is a rarity these days

Only 185 US flagged merchant vessels in 2024 (down from 3000 in 60s) while China has literally thousands, hell Russia has hundreds of tankers alone in its dark fleet now

Of which only 74 are tankers, and less than dozen specialised for aviation fuel

A few more “accidents” and US power projection is limited to its shores for a while

It's still a case of they can just rent another one.

Were I a marine insurer, I would roll out a quick policy update cancelling insurance on any vessels with Russian captains or first officers. They have gone from dragging anchors across the Baltic to ramming amidships.

That last paragraph has aged well in the last while. 🤨

Roman Abramovich (the russian oligarch) has a steel plant in Oregon, USA that has been supplying faulty substandard armour plates for U.S army vehicles. The kremlin pissing themselves laughing at the U.S. And then the U.S through NATO putting pressure to only buy US made substandard military equipment on it's supposed allies.

Has Kellogg lost his snap, crackle & pop? Brought out the tiget in Trump? etc…

Your fault lies in thinking that such an order would be illegal. It's within his and Congress's remit to order military operations against anyone. There's nothing inherently illegal about attacking Canada or Greenland or Ireland for that matter. There are no shortage of military personnel who would be happy to march to the beat of that drum.

There have also been multiple illegal actions taken to date in pursuit of his policies. Illegal firings, withholding authorized payments, arrest and detention of individuals in violation of the Constitution. Laws mean nothing to them