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Hitler was Germany's savior before the country was a rubble pile.
And the U.S. made that rubber pile happen, with U.S. and UK air force bombing killing thousands of German civilians in Dresden.
But back to the point of whoever it was that incorrectly stated Putin doesn't care about the Russian people - it's precisely because he cares that he opposes NATO near Russia. If he didn't care, he wouldn't oppose NATO missiles with nuclear warheads aiming at Russia and stationed from near its borders.
Regardless of how pro-Russian these Donbas separatists are now, got to wonder whether they will still be wanting to stick with Russia after the beating the Russian economy is about to take.
Investment firms, oil companies, ... are all pulling out and dumping their stocks. Whether China will prop them up remains to be seen.
Russian rouble is worth less than a penny.
Shell oil is pulling out of Russia and I see where Switzerland is going to follow the EU sanctions, I hope they freeze the oligarchs accounts.
so we have fighters from sovereign russia, ukraine, belarus and now turkey...lethal aid from 30+ others.
This isnt a world war yet?
I've wondered about that also. I also notice there doesn't seem to be Declarations if War in this day and age. That must have stopped with the end of WW2. Some countries just invade another country.
Judging from this initial invasion attempt, the Russian military machine may have been greatly overestimated.
Hard to say whether it was poor planning or just general incompetence of the Russian military, but it's only been a few days and they are so far behind the 8-ball that they are committing war crimes against non-military targets in order to stay in the game.
Just read where families of Russian soldiers who are killed get the equivalent of $110.
I've wondered about that also. I also notice there doesn't seem to be Declarations if War in this day and age. That must have stopped with the end of WW2. Some countries just invade another country.
The Kremlin has made it illegal in Russia to call it what it is, an invasion and a war. None of their media outlets are allowed to use those words.
And there's the fine line between the Kremlin and the west, our simple pleasures like Freedom of Speech. In the end, truth and freedom always wins.
A lot is said about the 'nazis' over running ukraine from within....
so in a nation of 44M people, of which 200K are regular army, 900K are army reserves, we have the over whelming faction of nazis, numbered ....... 900 nationwide.
that is significantly less than the actual nazis that are STILL in germany today
Quote:
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Tuesday that authorities counted 33,300 far-right extremists in 2020, an increase of almost 4% from the previous year.
At this point, You guys have any idea what Putin's end game is here?
Frustrated by their lack of progress so far, it looks like Vlad is getting ready to level the entire country of Ukraine over the next few days. Okay, so let's say eventually Russia either takes control and occupies Ukraine, or they just destroy the major cities and leave.
In the meantime, Russia is headed towards its worst economic catastrophy in over 100 years, to the point where the country might collapse. Every ATM in the country is out of cash. Moscow and St Petersburg are seeing massive protests, despite over 6,000 Russian citizens being arrested. Many of Putin's own people hate him.
The entire world also hates Vladimir Putin, he's quite literally the most hated man on earth right now. Much of Europe is already taking action to lessen their dependency on Russian oil.
So...why? Is there any logical explanation, trying to understand why Putin is risking LITERALLY the collapse of his own country financially just to recapture an old, mostly poor, former USSR territory? Is there any actual strategic play here? Or is it seriously just some old KGB agent that's still salty about what happened 35 years ago trying to return the USSR to glory?
Because if these heavy sanctions and SWIFT block remain in place for another 3 weeks, Russia will go broke.
Perhaps it was to help prevent a possible nuclear crisis. For all the political analyses and the still existing genuine residual fear of the West among a segment of the Russian population, Ukraine was never going to invade Russia. Nor was Western Europe. Having a neutral border zone is a political theory. A nice one, but only a concept. The problem is that Putin wanted to in some form 'reclaim' Ukraine.
That had to be done before possible NATO-accession and perhaps no time was better than the present. Of course, NATO will not now put boots on the ground nor the US establish a no-fly zone. Nor should they. The situation would have been much more difficult if Ukraine was a NATO-member. Wanting the country tied in to Russia (in some form), Putin saved the world from that nuclear-tinged crisis. (Some sarcasm here, but also serious.)
Of course, the price is becoming much higher than what he anticipated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sprawling_Homeowner
The United States lost.
The first part - for a 21st Century military with the world's largest defense budget to defeat a decrepit and weakened Third World army limited by years of sanctions - was a no-contest.
But as bad as the insurgency was, Iraq became the first country in Arab history to be ruled by Shiites. "Moderate" Arab states like Syria, Jordan, and Egypt were wary. The very reason they supported, or at least tolerated, Saddam Hussein was that Iraq served as a bulwark between themselves and the Iranians who put the Ayatollah in power in 1979.
The Sunni were the minority of Iraq but ruled. Thanks to Bush 43's and the warmongering neocon's blunders, the Shiites took power in Iraq. And they were all too glad to establish friendly relations with Iran.
Iran became the strongest power in the region with the exception of Israel. Iran was the one true winner of that war.
Billions in USD lost. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraq civilians, possibly up to 1 million. Dozens of thousands of permanently injured U.S. troops. Thousands of dead U.S. troops.
Putin doesn't want this. And remember - the USSR did for better or for worse experience in Afghanistan, at least to an extent, what the U.S. experienced in Vietnam.
And this is the flaw. What will happen over the next few years is less what Putin wants and more what Ukrainians decide. Putin's fear was that Ukrainians were becoming corrupted by the western forms of thought. So how far along that continuum are they? Was he too late?
How will Ukrainians respond in the longterm to the invasion outcome. Which will be some form of Russian domination or "adjustment." What Putin's border changes will look like. Whether Western Ukrainians come to accept a possible puppet state. Or perhaps a more acceptable neutral state. But with Russian-hatred inflamed. And more ethnic tension. Which is a deep irony for a country on Russia's border. With the excuse given that Russia deserved more security.
As for Donbass, that is nonsense. The world would have tolerated a Donbass carve-out. It would have been a crisis, but in the end viewed more along the lines what Putin did in Georgia.
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