Posted on 08/15/2024 4:48:13 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Something tells me Nuland is still acting Generalissimo.
Not likely. Ukraine’s move into Russia is being competently done.
Maybe that is inevitable like in the Terminator movie series. May be postponed but never removed from the board.
They know this war is ending soon and they want whatever negotiation leverage they can use
This article is full of crapola. After already losing 400-500k men, the Ukraine has to be running low on men soon.
That's OK. The Zeepers are willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian life.
What's she going to do about it? Not a damn thing and Putin knows it.
She's so hopelessly out of her league.
USGovernment spokeman NYT: “.. according to US officials.”
I think it’s hilarious.
“Hey, let’s do a Thunder Run towards Kursk”!
“Nah, the Russkie’s will never buy it.”
“Well, they keep banging their heads in the Donetsk, the idiots will probably never see something on their right flank.”
“Alright, take a brigade of volunteers and make sure they know they’ll never make it back.”
“Sure. I’m sure Putin will move his forces to cover. It’ll be fun anyhow.”
“After already losing 400-500k men, the Ukraine has to be running low on men soon.”
The same line we trotted out every year in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
The reality is men will fight on forever to get foreign invaders off their land.
The problem is young Americans don’t understand patriotism. They have been taught since kindergarten to hate their own country. That isn’t true in the rest of the world.
Hitler thought that Germany's move into Russia was competently done too.
It was until he fucked up trying to push into Moscow after starting so late.
Ukraine ping
In 1969, China invaded Russia without Russia having invaded China first. Brezhnev asked Nixon if he would object if he nuked China. Nixon committed to obliterating Russia if Brezhnev did so. Brezhnev backed down.
https://www.scmp.com/article/714064/nixon-intervention-saved-china-soviet-nuclear-attack
Apart from the fact that China was merely, to Nixon, the lesser of two evils, the US has strong religious and ethno-racial ties to Ukraine, which it did not to China. Protestant missions are permitted in Ukraine, but illegal and subject to prosecution in Russia. For the same reason that Nixon committed the US to a nuclear response over China in 1969, Biden has likely extended, in secret, a nuclear umbrella over Ukraine.
Note that China was a Russian client state, much as the Warsaw Pact states were. The regime owed its victory over the Nationalists to copious Russian supplies of former American Lend Lease gear. Mao rode into the new Chinese capital of Beijing in a Jeep transferred from Russian WW2 Lend Lease stocks the Russians never paid for.
If Putin starts a nuclear war, he’ll have decided to kill himself along with his entire family and all of his closest friends. A veteran of WW2 with combat medals who had seen his share of mass death, Brezhnev decided not to commit suicide. Putin is likely to do the same.
But the larger reason two nuclear states are unlikely to nuke each other has to do with how leaders rise through the ranks. The saying goes “there are old soldiers and bold soldiers, but very few old, bold soldiers”. Leaders don’t survive long enough to get to the top by being reckless. Their specialty is shoving people into the line of fire to absorb the arrows meant for them. For this reason, the fact that national leaders have very well-honed instincts for self-preservation, the odds of Putin initiating a nuclear attack, in the face of a US commitment to retaliate in kind, are nonexistent.
Events will tell, but Russia’s military has been exposed as badly flawed, even incompetent. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s has proved to be more resilient and capable than was generally expected.
You believe that Joe Biden &/or whoever is actually in charge in the White House would respond to Russian use of nuclear weapons inside their own borders by launching a retaliatory nuclear strike on Russia, initiating an all-out exchange? That's quite interesting, given that the European members of NATO were never fully convinced that America was committed to such a suicidal action, even if Warsaw Pact conventional forces invaded western Europe.
NATO gambled everything on hoping Russia would pivot to defense of the homeland. However, anyone to include NATO knew that Russia only had 400k men operating in Ukraine, and over 500k in reserves. The Russian offense continues to quicken it’s pace in the Donbas, and across the entire frontlines. The pivot to counter Ukraine’s Kursk gambit saw only reserves streaming into the town and nuclear power plant in the first few days, as Special Forces units staged hit and run delaying operations to destroy armored vehicles. In what is now day 8-9, Russian reserves are pouring into the area of the power plant and then moving forward to contact; this has allowed Ukraine to overestimate their successes and to double down after failing to reach their objectives in the first 36 hours, and to date.
Zelinski is doubling down, but his forces lack an exit stragety as the exceed the initial 20km breach with extended supply lines, and as Russian forces mass for a crushing counter attack.
The biggest change attributed to this incursion into Russia is that the West is now laying the groundwork for replacement of Zelinski. Hit pieces dropped by the western MSM throughout Germany and the US point to Zelinski’s knowledge of the NORDSTREAM destruction, and since Zelinski must remain at war to stay in power, the west is led by the US is no longer in a position to write more blank checks to Ukraine/Zelinski as American forces pivot to defense of Israel and possible confrontations with an undetermined number of groups, Mid East nations, and even China/Russia.
Tick Tok, the Ukrainian PR War is not meeting the same successes as on-line, and there are actual indicators that the Ukrainian president’s inner circle are actively preparing to escapt to western countries as the Russian forces BEAR down in a rentless drive to crush the AFU.
Ukraine sent troops to aid us in Afghanistan. Russia cut back door deals with Iran, who was aiding the Taliban in its efforts to kill U.S. troops during much of that same war.
However, the US did mediate between Russia and China and we placed over 200 specialists to monitor communications on both sides to ensure early warning of any future attack, and thus gave both sides assurances neither would blindside the other in the future. The US maintained this guaranteed monitoring of communications and satellite imagery well into the late 70’s.
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