Does anyone know the name of the stock symbol for Ruble printing machines? I sense a disturbance in the force.
I'm reading there is a massing of Russian soldiers on the Polish border, supposedly in response to NATO troop movement. Putin has lost his damned mind. Hoping somebody on the inside decides to solve this problem for the world before WWIII pops off or a nuclear bomb gets dropped.
What happens if Putin effectively loses this war? If he has to retreat and forfeit any territories claimed? Is he a sore loser or is he a really sore loser?
He has a retirement plan involving several palaces he’s having built around the eastern hemisphere. He’s probably stolen up to $250 billion dollars that Oligarchs hold in his name. The only way he ever loses if he’s (hopefully) killed.
I was thinking about this last night. Not sure how much real support he has within Russia for this war. If it escalates to an unwinnable conflict or somehow Ukraine holds out and he can’t keep the machine going would he be strung up by his ankles in the town square?
It looks similar to me how Hitler decided to go to war with everyone all at once while his own military had pisspoor morale, were starving, and had broken supply chains. He arrogantly thought he could just traipse into another place and they would just roll over. To be fair, this did happen in Paris, but it ultimately didn’t work out for him in Russia. This is looking like the way Stalingrad looked for Germany but on a smaller scale. It’s possible Putin’s own people might be trying to lie to him. But social media and news reports can’t hide the truth. And his nuclear posturing just proves that he knows he’s in a very weak position.
They figured it would be like the most recent fall of Afghanistan. Ghani peaced the fuck out immediately and the afghan army dropped their shit and ran. Totally different ballgame when you do it to a country that has the will to fight.
I'm also quite shocked at the apparent shit quality of the troops and equipment that Russia is sending in. So much of the footage that I've seen (that is nowhere near a reasonable sample size, obviously), and the comments from the Ukrainian military, says everything is beat up and falling apart. I don't know if they're just throwing the shit into the shredder to start with to wear out the Ukrainians, and then will send in their "good stuff", or if this is all that Russia has left.
Romania and Moldova are now taking in refugees. It's amazing how a war pushes everything else to the side. Friday night in Las Vegas there was a shooting....13 injured, 1 killed. Two guys got in an argument with each other and shot the place up, apparently hitting everything but each other, then they both ran off. And no one saw anything. I haven't seen a word on the national news outlets about it.
As much as I want Ukraine to kick Russia's ass, I can't see Putin just shrugging his shoulders, and saying "Welp, they were tougher than I thought, guess I'll bring my troops home." I think he'll bring in larger and larger artillery. Not sure if he'd ever drop a nuke through. One thing to drop a nuke 8000 miles and an ocean away from you, another thing dropping one 500 miles from your own capital.
If that's the strategy, that's a lot of Russian families with dead conscript sons whose lives were thrown away just to probe Ukraine's weaknesses. Domestic support for this war is already weak, and I can't imagine Russians being ok with that exchange. Imagine if Bush had opened the Iraq War by sending National Guard units in unarmored jeeps with old M1s to find out where the Iraqis were weakest so we could deploy the Army Rangers and F-22s later.
As cold blooded as that might be, it actually makes sense in a bat shit crazy dictator sort of way. I'm sure Russia is suffering food supply shortages and supply chain issues worse than we are, why not sacrifice a bunch of those food disposal units as cannon fodder and get some use out of them? Then send in the A Team once the fodder has been chewed up and the enemy is feeling smug about their chances of resisting.
Yeah, but what if the larger and larger artillery doesn't do the job? At what point do we (NATO) start attacking Russia?
I don’t think he has exit strategy. I think his narcissism has deluded him into thinking his soldiers have the will to fight or they see a real cause here. A poorly trained and poorly equipped fighting force without a real mission being sent to a non-hostile and smaller country for no actual reason than some madman’s historical bone to pick. I think the only solution right now is a regime change from within. The more desperate he gets, the more he will try to goad the west/NATO into the conflict or as he’s doing now, scare them off with the prospect of nuclear war. In no way, should anyone back off at this point.