and that's why getting the nukes is important, they keep america the fuck out.
one of the the belden rules for life. keep those nukes babey!
:brace-cowboy:
Vladimir Putin is a fucking maniac who really shouldn’t have his finger on the button right now
I hate this characterization. It's basically how libs explain the war happening because they refuse to recognize that it was provoked by NATO. Putin isn't some madman hellbent on conquering Ukraine no matter what it takes. He knows very damn well the consequences of using nukes. He's basically threatening MAD. i.e. if NATO comes after Russia, it won't be good for either side.
Exactly this. I agree with the first 3 bullet points completely. The 4th one "It’s a complete losing battle that the US, NATO, pretty much anyone else has no business being in," well yeah, sure I agree, but it's a strange thing to say since the conflict wouldn't exist if the US and NATO hadn't relentlessly pressed it. But that last thing "pUtIn's a MAAAANIAC!" is just lib-brained nonsense. Obligatory yes, fuck Putin, he's a capitalist opportunist and not a comrade, but that said, he has been by far one of the most rational major actors in this conflict (even among other Russians like Medvedev). Ideally, no one would have their hand on the button, but that's not the world we live in.
if the russian army had rolled up to the western border of the separatist regions to protect them from kiev/azov sure, but attacking the rest of ukraine looks pretty stupid and it was completely trivial to predict that doing that would be dumb and bad, which is why we didn't think he would.
if the russian army had rolled up to the western border of the separatist regions to protect them from kiev/azov sure
That's what they did, and they got artillery shelled. They had to invade or just sit there and get shelled eternally.
attacking the rest of ukraine looks pretty stupid and it was completely trivial to predict that doing that would be dumb and bad, which is why we didn’t think he would
I'm not sure you understand how war works. You don't go to war with only part of a nation
if we're fighting over part of california i don't gain much of anything by half-assedly bombing baltimore
that might help convince the government of 'baltimore' to stop bombing 'california'. it might also be the only way to do it.
You understand that a national military has bases and supply warehouses all throughout the country and logistic networks to move them about to the front right? You understand the concept of barracks and reserves? Why would a nation attack another and only hit the things on the front and ignore the reinforcements behind it?
yeah no shit and the coverage from the beginning of the invasion indicated that russia was doing way more than that.
because ukraine has shit for a military until the nato proxy war materiel rolls in, and maybe you don't provoke that if you don't expand the fucking front all the way west.
because ukraine has shit for a military until the nato proxy war materiel rolls in
Even before the conflict, Ukraine had the 2nd largest military in Europe (#1 being Russia). It was NATO trained since 2014. Ukraine inherited 30% of the Soviet war industry, they had massive munitions supplies. Nobody else in Europe would be able to stand up to Russia like they could, and that's before they received $110 billion in western military heavy arms. Russia has had to destroy 3 Ukrainian armies (Their original massive army, their 2nd army filled with Soviet systems from donations from Poland, Baltic Nations, post-soviet states, Turkish TB2s, and then their 3rd army of NATO German/American munitions is being destroyed currently). Ukraine has suffered likely hundreds of thousands of casualties and lost thousands of MLRS, tanks, drones, etc.
Again, I don't think you are understanding how war works and how committing to a conflict with a nation state involves going all-in and striking their re-supply lines and economic and transport infrastructure
When you decide to attack someone else in a fight, you don’t limit yourself to only touching their hands. You go right for the throat.
no shit and the coverage from the beginning of the invasion indicated [...]
If there's anything western leftists can learn from this war, if they weren't already aware, it's that whatever "coverage" they get from western media can be immediately discarded. Same goes for the opinions of people who believe that coverage.
NATO has been arming and training Ukraine since 2014. US Congress had to pass a law forbidding the army from training Azov troops. Obviously the Azov guys just got around this by being in a different battalion when the training was going on.
The plan was clearly to capture Kiev and force a capitulation
This is not Advance Wars. You don't win by occupying all the enemy cities. You win by ending the enemy's ability to wage war.
Occupying Kiev would pretty obviously put a dent in Ukraines ability to wage war
How? Ukraine's government would just move their operations elsewhere, and occupying the city would be a brutal Staligrad-esque siege that would destroy troop morale and tie up resources. Russia gains nothing from that. The way to wreck a country's ability to wage war is to blow up supply depots and transport links, lure enemy troops and armor into meat grinders, and prioritize taking out AA to make those things possible.
it's not that easy to just move all the operations of running a war there's a lot of bureacracy involved it isn't just some guys in a hotel room with a whiteboard
So they roll up to the edge of controlled Donbass and instantly come under the constant artillery fire that's been going for eight years. What next, just experience the hell the people that live there have experienced?
Haven't you heard of bearing witness? It's what all capitalist hegemons fear the most.
Same. He's not a maniac. I'm a maniac. I have bipolar disorder. I have actual, literal, (hypo)manic episodes.
Putin doesn't have bipolar disorder, he's just a lib doing lib shit. This is the same nuclear brinksmanship we've been doing since the fifties, and it's exactly what nuclear weapons are for - Protecting your national sovereignty from foreign aggression. If Russia didn't have nukes NATO would have carpet bombed Moscow right now.
The reasonable thing to do a long time ago would have been to not provoke Russia in hopes of collapsing the state so the neoliberals could loot it's corpse. Then the reasonable thing would be to not ban Russian as literally the first act of a new Ukrainian nationalist, fascist adjacent coup government. Then the reasonable thing would be to acknowledge that Crimea is strategically vital to Russia and the RF taking defacto control of Crimea was forseeable and was, indeed, probably one of the goals of the coup operation (or Washington is just monumentally stupid). Then the reasonable thing would be to acknowledge that the Donbas has legitimate concerns that the hostile Kiev government might do little a ethnic cleansing, as a treat, and send in a joint peacekeeping force to maintain some kind of peace while Kyiv negotiates with Donbass. Then the reasonable thing would have been to not shell Donbas for years killing thousands of civilians and outfitting Nazi death squads. Then the reasonable thing would have been to support what's his ass when he tried to end the war and help him dispose of the Nazis who told him to fuck off. Then the reasonable thing would have been to tell Ukraine to stand down instead of sending their army in to Donbas to do a little sectarian violence. Then the reasonable thing would have been to negotiate some kind of peaceful settlement with Russia that would secure it's national interests without resort to open warfare. And it just goes on and on and on and on.
But Washington doesn't want to be reasonable. They want to devour the corpse of the RF for those sweet, sweet natural resources.
I hear leftist say that the war is all about NATO expansion, and say that the claim that Putin is looking to conquer Ukraine is a lib talking point... but did you people not watch Putin's declaration of war? It's mostly about Ukraine's right-to-exist, not about NATO.
I hear a lot of people say a lot of things. Sometimes you have to read between the lines to figure out what's really going on. For example, despite what they claimed, the US wasn't bringing peace and democracy to Afghanistan.
Thanks. This is all exactly as I remember it, but it's also too much to use as effective rhetoric.
Like, what do you expect when UK and US stated they're gonna send depleted uranium? As I said, the escalation ladder only continue to climb, this is just first step, next is give Iran back their uranium to make nuke
Ukraine gets depleted uranium, so Belarus gets weapons-grade uranium.
Basically, he has to respond and Belarus gets a weapons-grade uranium, which is probably the minimum he could do.
The difference is that the nukes in Belarus will just sit there. The depleted uranium is actually going to be used, and it's gonna do a lot of damage to a lot of people.
Putin has tried everything possible to reconcile with the west. He's been incredibly clear about what Russia's interests are and what Russia's redlines are. The only thing he's been diplomatically inconsistent about is the consequences of crossing Russia's redlines but even then he's always erred on the side of inaction or diplomacy, even when that costs him politically. Putin attempted to use diplomacy to stop Ukraine's war against the Donbas republics for eight fucking years before he took action, including backing 2 separate ceasefire agreements. Can you imagine the US attempting diplomacy for 8 years with a country that's constantly launching artillery against a US-backed separatist region? Imagine if what was done to the Donbas was being done to Taiwan or Kosovo, what do you think the US reaction would be?
Imagine if what was done to the Donbas was being done to Taiwan or Kosovo
Except Taiwan in this scenario shares a land border with Maine
going back in time to kill baby hitler
sending T-34s back in time to proto-socialist heretics and witches
going back to the oligocene to terraform earth such that europe forever remains an island
I did some napkin math and about 1/4 of all Americans who died from "gun violence" in the 20th century died in Europe. Barbarians, really. Worst thing to happen to the world.
Belarus and Putin having nukes to keep the imperialists at bay is good actually, and I hope Iran, Palestine, Syria and other capitalist anti-imperialist nations also get nukes
I think one big difference between now and the last world war is that it's basically impossible to hide oceangoing convoys of weapons and troops. Even if the USA reequips for a war economy, they have no way of delivering aid to their European allies reliably in a hypothetical non-nuclear WW3.
Edit: Until everyone decides to go Kessler Syndrome and take out enemy satellites.
Submarines are also absurdly more capable than they were in WWII, able to launch missiles from, I think, underwater and guide them to surface ships far away.
And the Ruskies supposedly have that unlimited range nuclear torpedo.
I'm not that worried Putin so far has played the whole thing by cold war rules. Also why do a nuclear war when you're winning the conventional war
losing battle
the US defense contractors are winning, and that's all that really matters
This is like a late night/early morning Waffle House fight video:
Russia and Ukraine are the belligerents
NATO and the anglosphere are holding cameras and yelling things like "Worldstar!" and "beat his ass!"
Hexbear is the woman yelling "STOP!" repeatedly to no avail
Each day it seems more and more like we're the only people within the anglosphere who aren't hyped as hell about this war.
Tbh I think the hype has died down. You still have your super fanatic libs of course, and most people probably still think the cause of the war is 100% just Putin choosing to be evil, but I feel like most people have lost interest and an increasing number are even saying maybe continuing to funnel billions of dollars into Ukraine isn't helping the situation. I know it's easy to feel otherwise, but not everyone is a natobrained bloodthirsty reddit lib.
Boomers are still obsessed with it from what I can tell
Brandon gonna auto pilot us into nuclear war. Yay, don't have to repay stupid student loan
They're gonna find a way to pull some shenanigans. "If you had student loans before you got drafted, the GI Bill won't cover it.
Yay, don’t have to repay stupid student loan
:agony-consuming::posadas:
USA puts nukes on the front doorstep of every opponent and in every ocean: I SLEEP
Russia puts nukes on the territory of an ally nation with a NATO war on their borders: REAL SHIT
story as old as the cold war. after all, the "cuban" missile crisis didn't start with khruschev putting nukes in cuba, but with america putting nukes in turkey.
It started slightly more with the US invading Cuba but Kruschev turned it into a "look at those nukes in turkey ya midwits" situation as well
Sort of. I assume by "US invading Cuba" you're referring to the Bay of Pigs, which was in April 1961. America had already settled on putting missiles in Turkey in October 1959 after DeGaulle had rejected America basing them in France. While they weren't deployed until later, that was still the inciting incident of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khruschev was merely lucky that Cuba had recently become Socialist. Fidel figured having Soviet nukes in Cuba would prevent another Bay of Pigs while Khruschev figured that Soviet nukes in Cuba would counterbalance American nukes in Turkey, preventing the USA from launching a pre-emptive strike due to a perceived time advantage, since Turkey is a similar distance from Moscow that Cuba is from Washington.
I declare war between your tomato and my tomahto, where I say that solidarity was a bigger influence and you say it was da nukes in turkiye.
sorry. wasn't trying to be argumentative. I thought you were saying bay of pigs was the beginning instead of the nukes in turkey even though that came first. i didn't think you were weighing in on socialist solidarity as a factor. But if you're asking me to weigh in on that, I don't think ideology was a very big factor since khruschev proposed removing his missiles from Cuba if America removed theirs from Turkey. That put Cuba in danger for another bay of pigs, even though it de-escalated tensions between the USA and USSR. Khruschev's main focus was counterbalancing whatever aggressive actions the US had taken first, regardless of Cuba. While khruschev did initially secretly leave a few missiles in cuba, he eventually had them removed as well. And he had the last of the cuban missiles removed before kennedy kept his end of the bargain and had the jupiter missiles removed from turkey. so khruschev was willing to trust the americans to hold up their end of the bargain, when they could have easily kept missiles in turkey and then invaded cuba again.
I curse Europe. A glorified peninsula has been good for nothing but war, destruction and hunger.
Come on you fucker. Make Splatoon happen. The children yearn to be squids
Personally I'm not worried about this at all. This stuff was being done decades ago. Now it's being done again. Not great but not the end of the world. Besides, the end of the world could happen with the nukes staying in Russia anyway. And NATO shares nukes with more countries as well.
Honestly, not surprise. The yank/UK has proven that they gonna do everything to defeat Russia, that includes continue to climb the escalation ladder. The deplete uranium announcement probably broke the deadlock, next US probably send ACTAMS since the brits already send storm shadow, then stink bomb then final is nuke.
