Posted on 06/27/2022 9:11:16 AM PDT by Phoenix8
Not a senseless war from Russia point of view.
Ukraine did not become NATO member, which was the primary reason for the war.
And Ukraine has lost a ton of apartment buildings. Most Ukrainians live in apartment style homes.
Absolutely
such a waste.
Wars should be fought by the political people who start them. There wouldn’t be any wars if the politicians had to fight them.
“They will deeply hare Mother Russia forever”
Russia doesn’t want that soiled pit part of Ukraine. But they Will have them demilitarized and de Nazified, and all this NATO crap gone, and the children taught the three Rs, not the three Ks.
50,000 is likely a conservative estimate.
One must inflate the losses of their opponent, to justify their own losses.
I would hope that even Putin would be appalled by the losses.
"A fresh New York Times report has confirmed what many already suspected - that the CIA is still very active inside Ukraine - especially with training as well coordinating weapons among its Ukrainian allies. The Times report details "a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training," based on US and European intelligence officials with knowledge of the operations. The report says Ukrainian forces are reliant on this Western clandestine network "more than ever" while outgunned by the Russians."This comes months after investigative journalist Zach Dorfman's bombshell expose in Yahoo News which detailed how a prior 8-year long CIA covert program to train Ukrainian fighters helped provoke the Russian invasion. The only question that remained after that March report was the extent to which the CIA was still active in the ongoing fight against the invading Russians.
"Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials," the report indicates.
Oh, no. There was no provocation by the west.
That’s an interesting combination of two articles with parts added that don’t reflect the actual articles.
Zach Dorhman’s article doesn’t say anything about how it ‘helped provoke the Russian invasion.
It does say the program was kept small with the number of CIA people in the low single digits, ie, less than 5. Less than 5 people did not provoke Russia to invade.
It also says that Biden pulled them out in February, before the invasion. That would have seemed to encourage Russia to invade, rather than discourage it, since the USA left and gave token military aid before the invasion.
It also says that there was a debate under Trump about the program -which was started under Obama- and it was considered to be reasonable under how both countries conduct proxy affairs and not seen as a provocation.
The NYT article doesn’t say anything about them being ‘more reliant than ever’ on the CIA. What it says is that they are reliant on international support for a number of things such as weaponry and even spies. The part about the spies then says that “most of this work takes part outside of Ukraine” (training). Of the few dozen commandos inside Ukraine, most are in Kyiv and none are on the front line.
The US Economy/ Military Industrial Complex always benefits from war.
Hmmm. Pravda. Well, at least they are more trustworthy then the US Lamestream media.
Pravda, CNN, ABC News, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, The Sun, etc. I take any of their reporting with a grain of salt.
We are going to lose 40,000 by making them take the covid shot...............................
This corroborates that, but who knows, since it's often one or the same source and all the MSM copies and paste from that.
At this point it appears a war of attrition, where Ukraine will be at a serious disadvantage.
The lines are already fairly drawn albeit I am sure the Russians would like to take a bit more of the ethnic Russian areas.
NEVER was this a war of complete destruction or complete conquest of Ukraine. It was apparent the Russian objective would be to seize ethnic and historic Russian lands and these will be easy to hold once cleared of the nationalist minority fighters in that area. The Russians had no intent in taking land which will require them to fight an endless campaign where the locals reject you.
The point of all this appears illogical/irrational, immoral, senseless.
Lets make this into a Las Vegas scenario:
If you are Ukraine, betting on NATO membership means there is a >90% chance you will be attacked.
If the 10% chance happens and you win, you stand to gain $500. There are some benefits to NATO membership, but they are by far underwhelming since you already have a special status with the EU, you are already de facto sovereign in near all ways, NATO is already conducting training with you, you are already being trained and equipped by NATO forces under the table (2015 -2022, now open and obvious)...
If you get attacked (>90% probability) you will de facto lose no matter what and that will be a $5,000 loss. Which begs the question, why would you bet on something with a marginal gain compared to the likely loss when the loss scenario is extremely high?
What were these geniuses thinking?
I am sure we will spin this as some great victory, we already are... But the fact is, Ukraine lost much of it's land ~20%, a major industrial area and port city. Their economy is in shambles, they have millions displaced, thousands dead, damage to infrastructure and after this war you will not see what happened after 2014. Ironically, the same economic interests that pushed for this war will now not want to invest big there.
What did they gain? What will Ukraine walk away with?
What did we gain? Other than secretly claiming we were successful because we depleted the Russians... A BS argument. What did we really gain? We now have US citizens facing the death penalty in Russia (where we didn't try to stop their movement there) which we don't want to talk much about. We spent billions and billions. We will face a backlash (once the dust settles, the Russians WILL return the favor - and I can already read the idiotic headlines of our MSM that will call it a war crime, that the folks they are arming are bad while we ignore and forget what sort of in part thugs we were arming in Ukraine).
This was a stupid war.
We live in times where you have consolidation and censorship of information, communications, etc. You have massive government control over what the people hear, see and read, only a few major media conglomerates which control over 90% of what people hear, read and see which are essentially owned by the same big corporations and folks that are behind the scene advocating for this war.
Because the Euros and US wanted this, there was no one standing in the way screaming “Stop, what the f are you doing?” Western economic interests wanted NATO and EU membership for Ukraine, it makes sense to them, and our political leadership bows down to these interests. However, these interests are not concerned about the risks, cost benefit analysis, or even the morality and contractual agreements made with the Russians. They simply see dollars and sense, and for them if Ukraine is in NATO and the EU they can make a lot more money.
As I stated before elsewhere, sadly Biden will not get a black eye from this. The MSM will be on his side and spin it no matter what. However, even the Republicans that are near automatic “Russia is bad” and “support the war” will not exploit this to their advantage and to Biden's disadvantage. What is an epic failure and where there is nothing to show for other than billions spent and a colossal loss for us, isn't explained to the American people as just that “a huge loss for us.”
Did this war help inflationary pressures?
Besides using up our stores of expensive high tech weapons that are in limited supply (as we talk about the Russians being depleted and using up cheaper and lower cost systems), what did we achieve? Will Ukraine be a NATO member?
This war falls 100% on the shoulders of one man: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/
Ukraine can't force their way into NATO. They can't demand to be accepted. The Euro's don't run NATO, we do. We are the big boy and it's our club, even if some Euro dweeb is the figure head in charge for a day. We (i.e. Biden) gave the green light for NATO membership and in doing so he started a war. No ands, buts, or if's... We crossed a line which the Russians already defined in 1994 as a “red line” (sorry for the cliche but it's applicable here) for them. The war in 2014 was about that. The invasion of the Republic of Georgia was about that. Russia does not want US/NATO troops on their border (period). They want that about as much as we want Chinese troops in Mexico.
So Biden made a foolish, a dumb, gamble which makes no sense. Having armed and trained Ukraine over many years (several administrations), the pain threshold would be very high for Russia if they do invade. Surely if we just pull a fast one like we did in 2004 with Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, by the time they wake up, Ukraine will already be in NATO and we will get our way (the likely reasoning on our side). No, the Russians learned in 2004 and rightfully so, that we are NOT to be trusted. Past agreements/promisses mean little to nothing when a new administration comes (Iraq and Obama /Afghanistan and Biden/Vietnam and Nixon /ABM and Bush / Minsk Memorandum and Obama...). So when Biden in October 2021 gave the green light for NATO membership in a flash, the time until the shock-wave hits us from the bang would not be long.
So what did all these people really die for?
A bad gamble by Biden.
Ukraine had little love for Russia. That’s why Putin will replace them with New Russian settlers. Think they Ukraine Patriots will be permitted to resettle in the town they left?
I posted once that we might have considered sending humanitarian aide to Ukraine and acted as an intermediary. We might have had more success with that 1st route and negotiated some deal with a lot less loss of life. Who knows maybe Ukraine will pull off a stunning counterattack and defeat Russia on its own, doesn’t look that way. It now looks like Russia will gain the Donbas AND hate us as an enemy in the process.
However I guess Biden is improving.
Not too long ago the old senile fool thought withdrawing our military BEFORE our assets and people was a solid strategy in Afghanistan.
I still can’t believe he did that.
If that has leaked out, I'd bet it is 10x worse at a minimum.
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