Posted on 10/04/2022 5:08:38 AM PDT by dennisw
Expert argues THIS is how the war could end
Putin has spent the last week ramping up his war in Ukraine, from 300,000 conscripts to nuclear threats But his bluster is aimed at hiding the fact that Russia is losing the war, as Ukraine recaptures territory
Alp Sevimlisoy, of Atlantic Council think-tank == about what Russian defeat could look like Putin would not survive the defeat, he argues, while Russia itself could break up leaving the West competing with China over the spoils and NATO in a face-off with Beijing
Land grabs, hundreds of thousand of conscripts thrown on to the front lines, and a nuke for anyone who dares stand in his way: Vladimir Putin has spent the past week doubling down on his war in Ukraine.
But his bluster belies a simple fact: Russia is losing the war, and he knows it.
The despot is desperate. His army is in tatters, his battleplans shot, he's burning through his cash reserves at an unsustainable rate, and winter is looming. Meanwhile Ukraine's army continues to advance across the country, giving Kyiv a viable path to victory.
According to Alp Sevimlisoy - millennium fellow at think-tank Atlantic Council - that would mean Putin being deposed, Russia itself breaking apart, and NATO in a face-off with China over the spoils.
The West must begin preparing for that eventuality now, he adds, otherwise it will open the door for Beijing to muscle into regions such as Siberia, central Asia, Africa and South America where it already has toe-holds but will see opportunities as Russian power fades.
'We have to move into vacuums, seek to exert influence, and then we have to face up to the People's Republic of China. China is a globally-connected superpower, and we have to combat them effectively,' he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
It's actually even worse than that, because Putin's argument is that an outside country has the right to intervene in support of an ethnic minority in another country. Not a lot of countries are going to want to endorse that principle, and that's leaving aside the bogus nature of those referenda in Ukraine.
I think Russia needs to be defied with respect to the former, but I don't think any country will risk pushing them on the latter. Nor should they.
They actually have a more official name, Atlantacists. Their blog is called the New Atlantacist. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/category/blogs/new-atlanticist/
Considering Russia's incompetence in fighting this war, I bet the Nord Stream pipelines suffered catastrophic failure due to piss poor maintenance. These effing Russian elites are as dumb as our effing elites.
I'd posited some time ago here on FR that China was just hanging back waiting for Russia to lose the war, and China was learning from Russia's mistakes. Further, China wants the natural resources (oil) that Russia has. I stopped there.
Don't recall ever getting to the point thinking that Russia would break up and NATO v. China would be competing for the spoils.
Intersting. That certainly fits Chinese patience and playing the long game. Not sure about NATO. Don't see NATO (read that: the United States) taking on China. Certainly not with the demented useful idiot they put in the White House.
You mean like Scotland and Catalonia? 🤔
-btw did you notice how the Donbas didn't actually become independent?
And now these Russian elites want to go nuclear and we have Biden/Obama running things on our side?
Putin is a moderate. The others are far more hardcore.
I marvel at how unaware many are about the people at the helm steering us with shame, lies, perversion, you name it, and we act as though some guy across the globe is our big problem.
Our regime is quite pleased at how easily nudged into this Ukraine rah rah hogwash people are. It gives them support and cover while they are screwing you over.
Scotland is permitted independence if they vote for it. They had a referendum on that in 2014, and voted against it.
I don't follow Spanish politics, but from what I do understand, sure. Spain wouldn't support ethnic self-determination either.
Personally, I think that in general ethnic self-determination is fine. It starts to get squirrely if the "mother country" provides individual freedoms and legal protections that the breakaway enclave would not recognize. In that case, the argument is that the country is protecting the legitimate rights of those of its citizens who constitute a minority in that enclave.
original plan: knock Ukraine out in 3 days (all the while just a fake covering up Putin’s real plan)
plan B: consolidate hold on eastern Ukraine (also a fake covering up Putin’s real plan)
plan C: nuclear war (another fake to cover up Putin’s real plan)
plan D: rent out Russia as world’s largest ice-skating rink (do you know how scarce is ice-rink time?)
4D chess Putin style
No, Donald Pleasance (as his name is Christopher Pleasance)
Pure gaslighting.
From article:
“The most significant to him is the formation of “hydrate plugs” which under certain circumstances are formed from the natural gas/methane in the pipelines and preventing them requires constant work “requiring vigilance, expertise, diligence and constant water removal.” If they are not removed, the solid hydrates can cause cracks and fires. To clear these plugs in pipelines this size requires weeks of “Slow depressurization from both ends simultaneously.”
In 2000, he notes, the Russians tried to remove a hydrate plug from a pipeline in Siberia using a butane torch and they ruptured the pipe and destroyed “several miles of very expensive pipeline.”
“Both Nord Stream pipelines were fully charged with natural gas and just sitting at the bottom of the sea — ‘Hundreds of millions of cubic meters of explosive “gaseous hydrocarbons being transported by Russians, and subject to Russian maintenance.”
This theory, while not definitive in the absence of evidence, is persuasive enough to me that the finger pointing at everyone else should take a long pause. It's pure speculation, while the need for constant maintenance of undersea gas pipelines and Russian incompetence is not.”
Abortion in Russia - Statistics
Statistics
Despite a significant reduction in the abortion to birth ratio since the mid-1990s, the countries of the former Soviet Union maintain the highest rate of abortions in the world. In 2001, 1.31 million children were born in Russia, while 2.11 million abortions were performed. In 2005, 1.5 million abortions were registered in Russia; 20% of these involved girls under the age of 18. Official statistics put the number at 989,000 in 2011, though Russian pro-life activists say that number is much higher.
Abortion statistics were considered state secrets in the Soviet Union until the end of the 1980s. During this period, the USSR had one of the highest abortion rates in the world. The abortion rate in the USSR peaked in 1965, when 5.5 million abortions were performed, the highest number in Russia’s history. Nevertheless, the legalization of abortion did not fully eliminate criminal abortions.
According to the World Health Organization, roughly 73 million induced abortions occur worldwide each year, with 61% of all unintended pregnancies and 29% of all pregnancies in general ending with an abortion. The WHO also keeps a database of each country’s abortion laws, policies, and level of abortion support in the health care system.
Tracking the rate of abortion in various countries around the world is difficult because many nations do not record or report abortion rates. This is especially true in nations where abortion is illegal, and thus no official records are kept.
One frequently cited database of abortion rates is the World Abortion Policies report created by the United Nations. This report measures the number of abortions performed on women between the ages of 15 to 44 in a given country. The U.N. data offers a strong example of the shortcomings of abortion statistics: It covers less than a third of the world’s 193 countries and is increasingly outdated, yet it remains some of the best data available.
Top 10 Countries with the Highest Abortion Rates (annually per 1000 women) - United Nations
Russia - 53.7 (2004)
Vietnam - 35.2 (2000)
Kazakhstan - 35.0 (2004)
Estonia - 33.3 (2005)
Belarus - 31.7 (2004)
Romania - 27.8 (2004)
Ukraine - 27.5 (2004)
Latvia - 27.3 (2004)
Cuba - 24.8 (2004)
China - 24.0 (1998)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country
Ukraine would collapse too if it weren’t inappropriately propped up by the US. It has barely advanced since the (official) end of the Cold War 30 years ago, with most Ukrainians living in Soviet-era tenements. It’s a kakistocracy “led” by a puppet of the globalists.
Scotland had two referendums for independence and neither of them involved
- holding a referendum that had no legal or constitutional standing
- rigging the question so that a single “yes to independence” included secession, independence AND annexation by a foreign country
- preventing over 50% of the settled population of Scotland who might’ve voted “no” from voting despite them being born Scottish and still living in Scotland
- driving over half of the elegible “no” voters from an area under English military occupation out of the region before going door-to-door for votes
- balloting the English in England to inflate the “No” vote
- counting unused ballot papers as votes in favor of “No”
If the Scottish referendum had been like that, it might’ve been as bogus as the one in Zaporizhzhia.
It will be very hard to hold the “Stans” in the Russian Federation.
Sadly, Putin is ramping up, rumors are over a million former military soldiers are being called up. This is WW3.
It’s the war of the “centrist” wing of the Dem Party and Trotskyite neo-cons, not my war.
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