Posted on 01/02/2022 11:06:41 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday, delivered three strong signals that he intends to invade Ukraine.
Addressing military commanders and intelligence chiefs at the Defense Ministry, Putin offered a preemptive casus belli to justify invading Ukraine in order to address an existential threat to Russia. The Russian leader warned that the United States "will supply Ukraine with hypersonic weapons," which would reduce the nuclear strike launch-to-target time against Moscow to "five minutes." This, Putin insisted, would pose "the most serious threat" to Russia's security. One that means "we simply have nowhere to retreat further."
Note the explicitly existential nature of Putin's words: facing annihilation, back against the wall. This is not language that offers hope for credible compromise.
Of course, Putin knows full well that the U.S. is not actually going to deploy hypersonic weapons to Ukraine. To do so would be a provocation that would do little to advance U.S. strategic deterrence while giving Russia justification to attack. But what this hypersonic reference does accomplish is to allow Putin to present Ukraine's democratic sovereignty as an existential threat to the Russian people and nation. This hypersonic threat myth, then, is the military partner to Putin's ideological justification of Ukraine as a necessary subsidiary of Russia proper.
The next signal of invasion came from Putin's close friend and defense minister Sergey Shoygu, who invented the threat of an impending American-led chemical weapons attack, claiming 120 U.S. mercenaries had established themselves in civilian buildings along the battle contact line separating Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine. Shoygu said these Americans are preparing "Ukrainian special operations forces and radical armed groups for active hostilities" and a "provocation" involving "an unidentified chemical component."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Agree.
First, I do believe that the Russian troops on the border with Ukraine are for show. I don't think that Putin wants a traditional invasion of Ukraine as he knows how costly it will be.
That doesn't mean he doesn't want to capture all of Ukraine and its resources and make them part of mother Russia. Let's look a few years back at what happened. Russia and Ukraine were at odds. The Russian naval station (its only warm water port) is located in Crimea, which was part of Russia, until it was given to Ukraine. Putin used “little green men” to invade Crimea. The Ukrainian military was afraid to send troops against what Russia labeled as upset citizens, for fear of looking bad to the world and guilty of war crimes.
Right now Putin has lots of Russian troops who are now assigned as mercenaries on the Ukraine border. I fully expect that Putin will play the political game until things are so tense that Ukraine will do something militarily and then the little green men will be sent in to really turn up the heat. At that point Ukrainian military forces will be forced into all out combat and Russia will complain to the world of Ukrainian military attacking Russian citizens in eastern Ukraine. At that point Putin will either send in troops hoping that the west demands a truce and ceasefire or Putin will conduct a devastating attack that will scare the West into telling Ukraine to submit. I could envision an a non-nuclear missile attack against either Kiev or Odessa that destroys large parts of the city, or maybe even a blockage of the Black Sea by the Russian military.
While I agree, that Putin is not ready for a land war on the Ukraine border, I do believe he is planning on conquering it very shortly and making it either part of Russia or a Russian puppet state.
Ukraine is toast.
Biden should be shipping tousands of antui tank missiles and other heavy ordnance to Ukraine. But I dount that is happening.
Russia is about to take a client state and throw Europe under its hegemony via threat and energy control. The USA and NATO just lost its grip on Europe.
Sanctions will not stop Pooty.
You don’t understand the dynamics there. Most of everything the US shipped during the Donbas hostilities ended up in Russia for some reason.
To settle a 300 year old blood feud that has nothing to do with us.
LOL. This is 100% Russian gaslighting. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Then Putin handed out the medals to his troops. It’s 2022 now.
Why in God's name should we do that?
“While I agree, that Putin is not ready for a land war on the Ukraine border, I do believe he is planning on conquering it very shortly and making it either part of Russia or a Russian puppet state.”
It seems as if Putin is trying to reestablish the borders of the Soviet Union. Russia is in a demographic collapse. The Russian education system disappeared. The technically trained and competent Russian military and scientists are soon to retire or die at their desks from old age. At a recent fire on board a submarine where new technology was being tested the many deaths were all senior captains. A room full of technically trained men who were all so long in the service (old) they were all senior captains...working as technicians. One of them grabbed the youngest man in the compartment and threw him through the hatch before sealing them all inside so they could try (and fail) to stop the evolving disaster.
If Russia doesn’t retake the old borders, which are defensible, then the only alternative they’ll ever have when threatened is to go nuclear.
At best improving the borders will only save Russia for about forty years. Probably along about that time it will become a majority Muslim country...with a huge nuclear arsenal and very few technically trained people.
I’m still waiting for someone, from either side, to release a transcript of the Putin/Brandon call.
For some reason, all the really good leaks have stopped, even from the evil Ukrainian twin majors.
Obama and Soros were behind all of it.
Your spin is what is propaganda.
There’s plenty good reason Nato has and will not admit Ukraine as a Nato member to date.....nobody wants this failed welfare state on it’s back. It is and always will be a debtor nation.
Nato could have slipped Ukraine into it’s circle long ago .
........”The Ukrainian military was afraid to send troops against what Russia labeled as upset citizens, for fear of looking bad to the world and guilty of war crimes”.........
Actually when Ukraine lost Crimea they had zero ability to do anything.....Putin shut down all their military communications. They had no way of communicating. In fact our Leading Military Officers at Nato spoke about how impressed and astounded they were how Putin pulled it all off.....but that it also revealed Putins technical capability at that time.
“It seems as if Putin is trying to reestablish the borders of the Soviet Union. Russia is in a demographic collapse. The Russian education system disappeared. The technically trained and competent Russian military and scientists are soon to retire or die at their desks from old age. At a recent fire on board a submarine where new technology was being tested the many deaths were all senior captains. A room full of technically trained men who were all so long in the service (old) they were all senior captains...working as technicians. One of them grabbed the youngest man in the compartment and threw him through the hatch before sealing them all inside so they could try (and fail) to stop the evolving disaster.”
You are 20 years behind time. Browse open source from events related to the Russian versions of Raytheon and GBEB. Half of the engineers are in their 20s-30s. I know a 32-year-old naval architect from Sevmash who is making 490k rubles per month.
Gorbachev has said that no such promise was made by Baker (saw that posted "somewhere", maybe even here on FR).
The promise was real, there are tons of documented evidence. What Gorbachev was saying is it wasn’t fixed by any legally binding agreement, which is true.
I deny this article. I think it is a neocon psyop.
Keep poking that bear.
Ukraine did not respond because the military was in complete disrepair. For instance the army didn't even have batteries for their trucks. Also, after 75 years of Slavic brothers crap propaganda, Ukraine couldn't believe their "brothers" would shoot at them.
Keep in mind that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a reorganization. The CPSU went underground. Furthermore the KGB actually runs Russia and some of the Former Soviet Republics.
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