Let me get this straight, Trump abandoned nato, left us fractured with our allies and such Merkel was the de facto leader of the free world and you’re saying, with all of the criticism you have laid on Germany, Biden is weaker than then. The webs you weave.
Russia & Ukraine
- Thread starter UsualName
- Start date
Let me get this straight, Trump abandoned nato, left us fractured with our allies and such Merkel was the de facto leader of the free world and you’re saying, with all of the criticism you have laid on Germany, Biden is weaker than then. The webs you weave.
Wrong again.
Trump was hard on NATO because he recognized that they were freeloaders and that they potentially could not even be counted on in a crisis- such as the one we are seeing now. You point out/say- "hey, not so, maybe Germany is flaky and owned by Putin but other than that everything is lookin good." No. That only confirms Trumps criticisms and call for them to either get their act together or for new and different forms of alliance to be created.
Nato is only marginal reliable and on our dime at that. Even the Europeans are worried about it now.
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The European Union soy boys will be running with their tails between their legs once, war starts. Expect Emmanuel Macron to be among the first ones to save his worthless ass. These guys expect the US forces to do the fighting for them. Joe Biden might get some US troops killed in his display of false machismo. This asswipe clown doesn't have a clue.
Please. Trump went right into bed with Russia from before day 1. He never cared about the western alliance or its role against Russia. The arguments he made were pretext for appeasing Putin by weakening NATO. Trump had zero interest in challenging Russia. He did the same thing with North Korea.
"300 Javelins. 79 tons of security assistance for Ukraine's armed forces," the embassy wrote. "Tonight, the third shipment of $200 million in assistance authorized by President Biden arrived at Boryspil Airport in Kyiv. The US stands with Ukraine, and we will continue to provide Ukraine the support it needs."
Ukraine has a nice arsenal of anti tank weapons now. It’s still in doubt whether they will unload on Russia though.
There is a lot of emphasis on Russian troop and tank movements for understandable and visual reasons. Which also leads to a lot of interest in anti-tank javelin missiles being shipped and Ukraine also has a large number of home grown Ukraine manufactured anti-tank missiles that seem to be effective.
And there is daily news and pundit talk about whether Russia as amassed sufficient troops or not, blah, blah, blah.
All to be expected. But what is missing for me in that discussion is what role will Russia's longer range missiles play in this scenario if it goes balls to the wall??? There seems to be some kind of presumed understanding that Russia will just fight a retro WW2 kind of ground war so the emphasis is on calculating troops and tanks and then concluding that all of the Ukraine would be too big of an ordeal to bite off. That may be, but I personally don't know that. I assume that if Russia wanted to go scorched earth they would knock all of Kiev out with cyberattack and then unload missiles that definitely are advanced on the city. Not saying that will or want to, but I don;t where this business of assessing the conflict without assuming that longer range missiles will come into play comes from. Seems to be some implicit assumption that the heavy duty weaponry is banned or not up for consideration or something. Again, it may be, but I personally do not know that to be true.
It is clearer to me what it would look like if Russia threatened a NATO country with advanced missiles but less clear to me what the response would be if it is just a Nato ally but non-member country such as the Ukraine. I guess you just watch. But if so, then I will repeat again, that there is and should be more to this assessment than just sizing up how many tanks and troops are moving around. Russia may already have sufficient troops in place if they are planning on supplementing them with long range missiles. Ditto for air power. Russia has plenty of air power. Ukraine has an air force but it is mostly soviet leftover stuff with some western contributions but they have always cried that it is not adequate.
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I guess this is true in that the consensus is that Russia would invade rather than destroy and conquer. There is no doubt there can be a chain of events that leads to Russia using major weapons, that’s why I keep pointing out if Ukraine does let loose what is the next step.
Russia conquering Ukraine through Kyiv is actually a bad scenario for Russia- that’s never ending money, headaches and attention for them. Having completely bombed out major areas would not only make the occupation harder, it would galvanize the Europeans- Russia on the move like that would be a 5 alarm fire over there.
It’s not good to be Russia right now.
it was almost as if Putin had something over trump.
It is not easy to be Russia right now, is the way I would put it. But as discussed they are willing and able to endure hardship if it allows any turf expansion. Right now, they are on track to expand their turf by some amount. Probably not all of Ukraine. But probably not just a nibble on the east.
About 40% of Ukraine, all the way to the Dneiper River from the east would probably be about right for Vlad for now. No doubt the weak and disorganized response from the Americans and Nato has increased his appetite and a slight nibble on the east is not enough for him now.
Vlad needs to make sure he has a fine tuning knob on those missiles though. If one of them should land across a border into a NATO country that would be - as they would say in Maine- a gayim change-ahhh.
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