This sort of mistake can happen even when you put superior gear in the hands of personnel are not drunken, undisciplined rebels.
 The Aegis control room on board the USS Vincennes |
Posted on 07/26/2014 2:15:43 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Why would the leader of a powerful country in reasonably good standing want to risk everything by putting himself in the same league with Muammar Gaddafi? ...Since the crisis began, he has been taking on ever greater risk—not to mention serious damage to the Russian economy—with negative return. ....
So it appears that Putin is not only a poor chess player, he is an exceeding bad poker player, constantly raising the stakes while facing a decreasing expected return. If he ever could return Ukraine to the fold—an exceedingly unlikely prospect—he would accomplish no more than a return to the status quo ante. ....
The pattern of events shows a dangerous pattern. At almost every stage, Putin miscalculates and then raises the ante. He clearly did not expect the protests that broke out against the scrapping of the EU Association agreement, nor did he foresee that the crackdown would bring even more people to the streets.
Miscalculation. Failure. Escalation. The pattern continued with the separatist movement. While it gained some traction in Donetsk and Luhansk, it went nowhere in most of the industrial East. Russian actions were quickly put down in Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa, where most of Ukraine’s high level industry—not to mention a good bit of Russia’s military industry—is located.
After the election of Petro Poroshenko to Ukraine’s Presidency came more setbacks. The rebel strongholds of Slaviansk and Kramatorsk were retaken by Ukrainian anti-terrorist troops and they began moving toward Donetsk and Luhansk. So Putin escalated again, sending heavy artillery and more sophisticated weapons, including the one that shot down MH-17.
Miscalculation. Failure. Escalation. The downing of MH-17 is a logical consequence of the pattern.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Maybe FR should switch to Cyrillic.
I'm so glad I don't have to be subjected to that here anymore.
Putin is a loser. His economic policies have been a disaster and now he is screwing up Russia's foreign policy. A competent president would have been able to maintain good relations with the Ukraine.
The guy's a joke and how anyone can admire him is a mystery to me. I suspect some (middle-aged homosexuals) get the hots when he takes off his shirt for them. Maybe they want to lick Putin's testicles, I don't know. Any attraction to Putin seems very strange to me.
They have been showing pre-crash videos of some of the wonderful people who were murdered because of Putin's incompetence. All I can say is that if you think he's some kind of genius, his peculiar genius killed a lot of wonderful, innocent people.
“It was a darn accident. If someone backs into your car at the grocery store parking lot, you don’t need to ask cui bono? Jeepers.”
It would be the equivalent to someone handing the keys to a monster dump trunk to a lunatic and telling them to drive to the grocery store parking lot and to run over cars with people inside of them.
This sort of mistake can happen even when you put superior gear in the hands of personnel are not drunken, undisciplined rebels.
The Aegis control room on board the USS Vincennes |
If your only “proof” is anonymous social media, then you haven’t got any evidence at all.
What about the Russian radar tapes that show Ukrainian fighter jets approaching MH17? What’s that all about?
The "Stans" will need help against ISIS types sooner or later and where will they turn? To King Barry?
Just my humble speculation.
The free world has the evidence of the prideful admission by the Russian forces conducting the invasion.
I just hope we can stop you guys from becoming the threat to the world that you were.
Why are you going after America with a lie?
There is no comparison, and it does not justify your reassembling the evil empire.
“I just hope we can stop you guys from becoming the threat to the world that you were.”
I live in New Jersey. We’re not much of a threat to anyone.
Your alliance is with the enemy, that is why we are on two different sides.
Ha! Green screens! I can still program them!
Okay, whatever.
Greg Satell Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
He's also a writer for the Kiev (Ukrainian) Post
If this guy is smarter than Putin then he should be able to answer these questions:
1. Why did the MH17 plane leave the international corridor?
2. Was MH17 leaving the route a navigation mistake or was the crew following instructions by Ukrainian air traffic controllers in Dnepropetrovsk?
3. Why was a large group of air defense systems deployed to the militia-held area if the self-defense forces have no planes?
4. Why did Kiev deploy BUK missile systems on the edge of militia-controlled zones directly before the tragedy?
5. On the day of the crash Kiev intensified Kupol-M1 9S18 radar activity, key BUK system components. Why?
6. Where did the launcher – from the video circulated by Western media and showing a Buk system being moved allegedly from Ukraine to Russia – come from? As the video was made on the territory controlled by Kiev, where was the launcher being transported?
7. Why haven’t US officials revealed the evidence supporting claims that the MH17 was shot down by a missile launched by the militia?
Is this a Putin miscalculation? Or is he taking advantage of a void in leadership from the West, particularly the US?
I agree. Putin is a genius. An evil genius.
What you say is correct but it's quite beside the point. Do you imagine that anybody can become the President of Russia without having walked to the Kremlin office over human remains? Dmitry Medvedev had lots of people killed in his fight for huge forestry resources that became ultimately the plinth of his political power. I lived in Russia during his rise to power. The favored method was "suicide" by drawing in a swimming pool with the "suicide's" hands and feet tied. There were several of those "suicides" as I recall. All of them were ruled suicides, in a fine Orwellian display of in-your-face doublethink. Just dare to call it murder in Russia. Make a big stink about it. Any journalist that did wound up dead.
Lots of journalists killed in Putin's Russia.
No, Putin is an evil KGB apparatchik with enormous designs for the world stage.
The West can either stand up to him now, stand up to him later when he's much more powerful, or simply knuckle under. Given our current leadership, there's no hope that anybody will credibly stand up to him now. Given the current trends going on here at home, I have to say I'll probably be too busy dealing with tyranny at home to care much about what happens half a world away. It seems quite likely that Europe will knuckle under. Europe knows it, too, but they're such wussies that they'll never admit it.
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