bobzilla said:It won't happen.
Ok, well it will be confined to the two areas that they already controlled.
OK, well, yeah, they're hitting targets all over the country and taking control of airfields.
OK, but it's not THAT bad.
When are we going to just man up and admit we have no idea what is going to happen with these people?
I think we're thinking alike here, Putin isn't acting rationally, and when someone is not acting rationally, it becomes impossible to predict what comes next.
Fueled by Caffeine said:Ruble fell 50%. I believe.
poot poot better be hoping for a quick victory. Otherwise he's in for a rough ride at home with very unhappy populace.
r/Russia just went private.
I'm curious as to the Russian people's tolerance for this. If a "normal" country had this result, it would be over quickly. If a country like China or NK had this result, they could fool the people into believing some wacky narrative, or they just wouldn't care. I suspect Russia isn't that well controlled like China or NK, but I also don't think Putin loses much sleep over his people, though perhaps not as antagonistically murderous as Stalin was.
As I mentioned earlier Putin is fine with zero-sum or negative-sum results. As long as it hurts others more than it hurts him, we've got to assume he may do it.
Sadly, the only "good" way I see out of the present situation is for him to be assassinated by one of his bodyguards.
bobzilla said:FatMongo said:Javelin said:WWIII has begun. Hug your kids.
Lol.
No need for hysterics.
This isnt even close to WWIII. If for no reason then the militaries of Western Europe are so atrophied that they are unable to engage in sustained military operations against a capable adversary.
The US is certainly not going to go kinetic against the Russians over Ukraine - or really anyone in NATO, treaties be damned, because the American people arent going to support a war in Europe.
Now if China eventually takes Taiwan - which at some point they will - it will signal the fall of the United States as the lone Super Power of the globe and illustrate the ascent of the PRC as a peer to the US as far as global power projection.
Y'all also said Putin wouldn't invade he Ukraine. We see how well that worked.
Oh did I???
Point to where I said that and I will send you a $100 Snap On gift card.
In reply to bobzilla :
Throwing our collective hands in the air and giving up is not a productive methodology for analysis. Take the best available information and think about possible outcomes. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't. It doesn't mean you stop thinking about it.
Putin is ambitious. He's not suicidal. He knows that he can hit Ukraine without any immediate existential threat to his regime or to Russia proper. The minute Russian forces cross into NATO territory it triggers Article 5, which is very much an existential threat. I still contend that invading will be a less productive course than continued pressure and hybrid warfare would have been, but there may be other factors we are not yet aware of. In any case, the die is cast.
If I were President, I would quietly have a Carrier strike force in the Black Sea waiting.
In reply to FatMongo :
For what? To buy a single 19mm deep well socket?
eastsideTim said:As I mentioned earlier Putin is fine with zero-sum or negative-sum results. As long as it hurts others more than it hurts him, we've got to assume he may do it.
Sadly, the only "good" way I see out of the present situation is for him to be assassinated by one of his bodyguards.
Someone brought that up in an askreddit thread where Russian people were asked to respond and one said Putin had people lined up to take over on that case because of course why wouldn't you? Although I absolutely agree with your sentiment.
Somewhere in Ukraine my elderly uncle is trying to GTFO. He's always managed to extract himself from E36 M3storms, so I hope he got somewhere safe. I had already accepted I'd never see him again, but dude was still part of the family and I have a few good memories of him. Hope he pulls this one off.
tuna55 said:If I were President, I would quietly have a Carrier strike force in the Black Sea waiting.
I have a hard time reconciling my internal conflict on this:
As a career military man I want to engage and destroy the opposing force/As a 60 year old US citizen who has seen a lot of unjustified sacrifice, I see no positive benefit from killing them or having our people die over this.
If it is not worth dying for, it is not worth killing for/Turn me loose, I'll kill them all.
tuna55 said:bobzilla said:It won't happen.
Ok, well it will be confined to the two areas that they already controlled.
OK, well, yeah, they're hitting targets all over the country and taking control of airfields.
OK, but it's not THAT bad.
When are we going to just man up and admit we have no idea what is going to happen with these people?
I think we're thinking alike here, Putin isn't acting rationally, and when someone is not acting rationally, it becomes impossible to predict what comes next.
I think he's acting very rationally. He's used his puppet government in Belarus to launch numerous attacks over Ukraine's Northern border (closest to Kyiv). He's got troops fighting near Chernobyl. They're attacking from the South as well by sea. They're hitting Ukraine from 3 sides, quickly advancing toward Kyiv to reinstate their own puppet government.
Having very friendly governments in place in 2 border nations gives Putin a buffer against NATO, increases his resources, and gets the old USSR gang back together. I think instead of WWIII, we're heading for ColdWar II.
slefain said:Somewhere in Ukraine my elderly uncle is trying to GTFO. He's always managed to extract himself from E36 M3storms, so I hope he got somewhere safe. I had already accepted I'd never see him again, but dude was still part of the family and I have a few good memories of him. Hope he pulls this one off.
Im on a local (NC) gun forum, and one thing I hear a lot is, "Well they shouldve gotten out of there!" It's ignorant.
I said something to my class today (I teach American history and Civics), and I used the state were in instead of country due to size differences. What I posed to them was, "If something happened here in NC, and you had to leave, where would you go IF you could go somewhere?"
-do you have a passport?
-do you know someone somewhere else to stay with?
-do you have the money to get out?
-do you have the money to pay for a place to stay indefinitely?
Im thankful that we dont have to really think about this (knock on wood lol), that we have it so good in this nation. But there are many people all over that dont have that luxury. Afghanistan was one, now Russia, and that's just in the last six months in places that have great American interests.
I hope your relative got out, I hope everyone does. But I know that's not a reality.
STM317 said:Having very friendly governments in place in 2 border nations gives Putin a buffer against NATO, increases his resources, and gets the old USSR gang back together. I think instead of WWIII, we're heading for ColdWar II.
We've been in Cold War II for 20+ years. Most of the west seems to have been too naive to realize it.
In reply to volvoclearinghouse :
Putin has cancer and Parkinsons.
In reply to FatMongo :
for berkeleys sake. Y'all, not a singular pronoun. Its plural and includes all of us. It's not all about you.
AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:tuna55 said:If I were President, I would quietly have a Carrier strike force in the Black Sea waiting.
I have a hard time reconciling my internal conflict on this:
As a career military man I want to engage and destroy the opposing force/As a 60 year old US citizen who has seen a lot of unjustified sacrifice, I see no positive benefit from killing them or having our people die over this.
If it is not worth dying for, it is not worth killing for/Turn me loose, I'll kill them all.
The Harry Truman strike force was in the Med as recently as late January. If Biden is shrewd, he's already done just that, moved the group quietly into the Black Sea. If Article 4 proceeds as it should, we should help build a wall of NATO forces at that border across Europe.
I'm with you, though. It's bad to go globe trotting playing policeman, but it's also part of an obvious pattern of taking over nearby countries since 2008 that Putin has been playing. We need it to stop.
hybridmomentspass said:slefain said:Somewhere in Ukraine my elderly uncle is trying to GTFO. He's always managed to extract himself from E36 M3storms, so I hope he got somewhere safe. I had already accepted I'd never see him again, but dude was still part of the family and I have a few good memories of him. Hope he pulls this one off.
Im on a local (NC) gun forum, and one thing I hear a lot is, "Well they shouldve gotten out of there!" It's ignorant.
I said something to my class today (I teach American history and Civics), and I used the state were in instead of country due to size differences. What I posed to them was, "If something happened here in NC, and you had to leave, where would you go IF you could go somewhere?"
-do you have a passport?
-do you know someone somewhere else to stay with?
-do you have the money to get out?
-do you have the money to pay for a place to stay indefinitely?
Im thankful that we dont have to really think about this (knock on wood lol), that we have it so good in this nation. But there are many people all over that dont have that luxury. Afghanistan was one, now Russia, and that's just in the last six months in places that have great American interests.
I hope your relative got out, I hope everyone does. But I know that's not a reality.
I heard someone spout off about that regarding the holocaust and, knowing the history of how many jews tried to leave, including those who were stuck on ships crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, only to be delivered into concentration camps, I got angry enough that I had to walk away.
The Bosporus is an important factor here, both right now and in the medium-term. First, the Montreux Convention prohibits aircraft carriers from passing through, so moving a US carrier TF through is a non-starter. More importantly, however, the convention allows Turkey to close the Straits to combatant vessels, which Ukraine has called on it to do. No answer yet, but a Turkish ship was apparently damaged in Odessa, which certainly won't put them in the mood to accommodate Russia. If Turkey does close the Straits to Russian shipping, it will be a significant problem for Russia, not least because a good chunk of its amphibious capability will be trapped in the Black Sea.
In reply to 02Pilot :
If they do close it and Russian ships try to exit and enter, what happens? I assume Turkish ships would attempt to stop them. I mean that seems like a good way for a shooting war to start between NATO and Russia.
In reply to tuna55 :
I can tell at least all of my work colleagues in Russia are very upset about the situation. I had a call with my Russian and Ukraine teams separately and the Russian team was very condensing about the actions that Putin has done and did not back anything about what happened.
My Ukrainian team were all out of Kiev and most were either bunkered down or trying to leave. Both sides were pretty scared about what the future holds.
Am I the only so ignorant about a worldly view that I had no idea until this week that the Russian flag is now red, white and blue? (more specifically, white, blue, red)
02Pilot said:The Bosporus is an important factor here, both right now and in the medium-term. First, the Montreux Convention prohibits aircraft carriers from passing through, so moving a US carrier TF through is a non-starter. More importantly, however, the convention allows Turkey to close the Straits to combatant vessels, which Ukraine has called on it to do. No answer yet, but a Turkish ship was apparently damaged in Odessa, which certainly won't put them in the mood to accommodate Russia. If Turkey does close the Straits to Russian shipping, it will be a significant problem for Russia, not least because a good chunk of its amphibious capability will be trapped in the Black Sea.
I didn't know that, but even without those agreements in place, I find it hard to imagine how you could "quietly" put a carrier strike force through the Dardanelles without anyone noticing....
In reply to John Welsh :
I wonder if F1 will do anything regrading UralKali sponsorship of Haas, as their livery is basically the Russian flag..
You'll need to log in to post.
