https://archive.ph/nqSNJ
As fascists are want to do, once it becomes clear they can't win, they just seek to destroy as many civilian targets as they can reach.
no disrespect intended but that comment made me have to google the phrase "wont to do" because I thought maybe i'd been using it wrong all along. Turns out its wont but it only ever seems to be used in that particular phrase
I'm not quite sure what you mean, was I using it wrong? I think the term "wont" like that has pretty much disappeared entirely except for this one weird old phrase.
EDIT: Turns out I used "want" not "wont" before.
It's alright, I didn't realise I had used the wrong word there lol
this statement is in compliance with international law and not much of an escalation, because Ukraine was already doing that. nato press avoids talking about how many ukrainian attacks on Russia have basically been terrorism, but they're definitely allowed to attack military targets on paper, or else Russian would have to limit their air attacks to the contested oblasts, which they also do not
The escalation here would be that F16s would be taking off from NATO bases outside Ukraine. This is different from the west simply sending weapons to Ukraine making the west a direct active participant.
where does it say that? Putin saying they'll shoot down f16s outside Ukraine could just be in Russia's territory or if they fly over a neighboring country like Belarus
F16s basically can't operate from within Ukraine, so they would have to be taking off from NATO countries. Russian officials have stated that Russia may strike airfields housing these F16s before. It's most likely that Russia will just shoot down f16s in Ukrainian airspace, but it's pretty obvious how this can escalate into a direct confrontation with NATO.
F16s are notorious for needing very special conditions in the airfields to operate. They have neither the time nor the resources to make and maintain the airfields domestically in Ukraine. But the NATO countries have the budget assigned and the places far behind the front lines to be able to do it. If they try to do so inside Ukraine, they risk being targeted by Russian missiles and air force, specially now that the Ukrainian air defence is basically depleted. Using NATO bases is not just an adventure, it is necessary given the conditions to which the AFU has been degraded after two years of war. Two years ago, that was maybe realistic, but Russia made sure to strike airports and hangas non stop at the start of the war. There's a reason we have seen less and less Ukrainian planes as time passes, and more and more Russian ones.
@Kirbywithwhip1987@lemmygrad.ml
Ukraine has the right to strike “Russian military targets outside Ukraine” in line with international law, the Nato secretary-general has said for the first time since the start of the full-scale war nearly two years ago.
What is Jens Stoltenberg thinking at this moment?
As you said before,
Is he stupid?
Saw this. Could very quickly escalate with use of NATO airfields outside Ukraine.
Russia shouldn't let itself be walked over and may need to conduct strikes on airfields in NATO countries that are responsible for hosting these flights. Not just the planes but runways, fuel storage, weapons storage, command and control, etc.
I suspect that the status quo works in Russia's advantage at the moment. The west is lagging behind industrially, and as long as there isn't a direct threat from Russia, it's politically impossible to start creating a war time economy. End result is that the west is becoming increasingly more depleted militarily while Russian military strength grows. The risk of attacking assets in NATO territory would be that it could be used as a justification to ramp up military production in the west.
And of course, Russia is winning on the economic front as well. There's now a whole alternative economy in place that's outside western control. Europe lost a huge amount of trade, access to food, fertilizer, and cheap energy. Meanwhile, Russia was able to reroute their trade to friendly countries. In effect, Europe is the entity that's actually being sanctioned right now, and they're doing it willingly to themselves to boot.
Russia also chose to largely ignore the media game. They don't really care what people in the west think, and people in the west seeing Russia as being weak ends up playing into Russia's favor because it makes it harder for western leadership to convince people that there is an urgent threat. The west is trying to sell contradictory messages right now. On the one hand they paint Russia as weak and incompetent, and on the other they say that Russia will invade Europe. The more Russia plays along with the incompetence narrative the less seriously people take the second.
Given all that, my expectation is that Russia will likely opt out for hunting f16s in the air over Ukraine, which I'm sure they're very much capable of doing. They might end up having to deal with a few long range missiles getting through, but that's obviously not going to change anything strategically. Russia will shrug that off and just keep doing what they're doing.
I love living in a meritocratic democracy. It means that only the best and brightest rise to the top to lead us.
me looking in my toilet after I poop
"Yup... the best and brightest right there... just floatin' on the top"
- instant war with a draft
- stop giving me hope that someone will stand up and treat the US how it treata everyone else,
Given the political unrest we're already seeing in the west, I imagine we'd see mass riots if the idea of a draft to fight a war with Russia was floated. There's a reason they keep repeating that the west isn't at war with Russia.
Agreed. Restarting the draft would immediately activate people. No one in the US wants to die for this fucker
Sorry to hijack, but could you please provide the source where Stoltenberg admits the actual reason the war started? Need to dunk on libs who still think in 2024 that the information wasn't out there before the war or that it was due to some indivisible issue like Ukrainian sovereignty over those regions but can't remember the right terms to search for it
Oh it was here https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm#:~:text=The%20background%20was%20that%20President,condition%20for%20not%20invade%20Ukraine
this bit in particular
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.
All this time, it's been Russia that has had to have the cooler heads. The western leaders truly want a nuclear war, there's no other explanation.
