Here we go again-Ukraine once again

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Reece

That will just start WW3 Catfish, nice thought though! [...]

It is just about returning Putin's threat, if the world lets itself blackmail by him this will only be the first defeat in a series of many to come.
Do i think nuclear war is crazy? Of course. Can we stop him by other means? Clearly not.

Stop it now or there will be an all-out war. If he really is insane it will happen anyway.

[Aktungbby]

A sudden thought: Putin has attempted to use Nazi tactics such as a false-flag attack, some blitzkrieg tactics etc; Indubitably, many wish him gone as in 'Kaput' In WW II such a scheme to aßaßinate Adolf Hitler by sniper at his mountain Berghof was Operation Foxley. However it was never carried out: The proposal for the operation was submitted in November 1944, but was never authorised due to a division within the British government as to whether Hitler's removal was a sound way to expedite victory. By then, he was considered by the British to be such a poor strategist that it was thought possible that candidates who would be in line to succeed him might present more of a challenge to the Allied war effort. Poor Vlad the Bastard

has been pictured looking puffy faced in what could be signs he is seriously ill, it has been claimed. The Russian president has appeared more bloated around the face and neck recently, leading to suggestions from one expert that he may be undergoing treatment for an unknown condition with steroids.
Side effects of steroids include increased risk of infection, like coughs and colds, and "mood and behavioural changes."
According to Macmillan Cancer Support: "Sometimes, when taken in higher doses, steroids can cause confusion or changes in thinking. This can include having strange or frightening thoughts."
According to Fiona Hill, the British former senior White House expert on Russia, Mr Putin is "not looking so great" at the moment...Vladimir Putin has been pictured looking puffy faced in what could be signs he is seriously ill, it has been claimed.
The Russian president has appeared more bloated around the face and neck recently, leading to suggestions from one expert that he may be undergoing treatment for an unknown condition with steroids.
Side effects of steroids include increased risk of infection, like coughs and colds, and "mood and behavioural changes."
According to Macmillan Cancer Support: "Sometimes, when taken in higher doses, steroids can cause confusion or changes in thinking. This can include having strange or frightening thoughts."
According to Fiona Hill, the British former senior White House expert on Russia, Mr Putin is "not looking so great" at the moment. She said: "He’s been rather puffy-faced. We know that he has complained about having back issues. Even if it’s not something worse than that, it could be that he’s taking high doses of steroids, or there may be something else.
"There seems to be an urgency for this [invasion] that may be also driven by personal factors."
According to one of the Russian President’s former close colleagues, Putin is “increasingly going mad”.

Bottom Line: His Krieg has lost its Blitz and his shock and awe is certainly no longer awesome. He should not be immediately bumped off imho; his poor strategy is a helping unify the West and Ukraine's defense; if not an outright embaraßment to the Russian state as evidenced by mass arrests of protesters! I would hate the Russians to have an excuse to place a competent commander in charge of this unlawful conflict.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I hear there are also some on Ukraine's streets, without gas

GFD why are they not attacked

They have got to be kidding.
Near the end of Desert Storm, there was The Highway Of Death between Kuwait and Baghdad. Today, there is The Highway Of Declined Credit Cards north of Kiev.

Either someone's intelligence agency is buying cases of champaign or Pres. Zelensky needs to buy a lottery ticket.

Meanwhile, why attack a perfectly good road block? Those vehicles might come in handy for Ukraine once the fighting is over.

[Skybird]

I have started to lose my grim sense of black humour over all this, and Putin. I really think he now is kind of insane. Which means: things are out of control already.

He had the dream to bring back the Sovjet Union. He is old. His time is running out, he feels death crawling nearer to him every day. He may take medicine, or may suffer brain fog. But it is not uncommon that older people also start to change their personality, sometimes they become softer and more confused, sometimes paranoia and getting locked in in their inner worlds takes over. He made calculation errors and big undsiciplined moves and claims that are untypical for him. He always was a beast and a killer, a tyrant and oppressor, but he was extremely smart, disciplined, clever: without scruples, without remorse, too, yes, but he played all world leaders against the wall since very long time. And now? Mistake follows mistake, misassessment follows misassessment.

HE BLEW IT.

And he knows it. Its all lost, he can destroy the Ukraine, but he will not get from the world what he wanted. All the past twenty years - ruined in the present time'S events and actions.

I think he has gone nutter. My official diagnosis would be: age-related cognitive and intellectual degeneration of brain functions, accompanied by severe personality changes, paranoia and delusions.

In other words he is a ticking nuclear time bomb, instabile, unpredictable, and utmost dangerous. Its said that he has brought his family into a nuclear bomb shelter somewhere in Siberia.

There may be people in the Western military, intel community, governmental services, who maintain contacts to their functional pendants in Russia. I think these contacts are needed now to someho get the second line officials in Russia putting bullets through some heads before it is too late. I start to think this might be indeed our only chance to escape a big inferno.

Telling the Ukrainians to sacrifice themselves for the higher wellbeing of the remaining world, is something I will never suggest and will never accept to be done in my name. We are all in this together. We do not draw lots. In the end, it also would be be appeasement that will not work, because Putin is insane. He next will do the same again (Russia still is encircled by enemies, isn'T it, and the Sovjet Union still in not reinstated, yes?) , accuse for example Finland of something and of being not submissive enough anymore and attack it, or strike Europe directly for being too Russia-hostile. He lives in his own world now. The hot wire to reality seems to have broken.

We also must win the media war. The control over the news is no more as total in Russia as it once has been, many people have returned from travels outside Russia, or have alternative media access. The news may make the round at slower pace, but it will make the round. And it must. We must make sure it does. Russians must relaise the brutal truth. The ordinary military must realise the truth. For the moment, however, my impression is that still a majority of Russians is behind Putin. That must be a major concern of ours. You do not break with your beoleives you held for a lfieitme from ione day to the nwext, you do not like to be told that you live not in the country of the light and the good, but the dark and the demons.

I now think Russian use of nukes in Ukraine, if it does not go as they want, is an absolutely realistic possibility. Not a certainty, but a realistic possibility. We must take it into account.

Markus, you warned of such an escalation already weeks ago, and I sat here and smiled for myself about that, did not take it serious. But I had to change my mind in past 2, 3 days, reading about their nuclear doctrine from 2020 really flipped some switches in my brain. You were right with your worries. Things are worrying.

I also noticed in past days that the attempts by real or self-declared experts on TV rejecting the nuclear risk, have intensified. If there is a thing in the world that rings my alarms in no time, then officials and experts pressing harder and harder telling me that everything is alright: nothing is more suspicous than this.

Beware the old men, they have nothing to lose and may have lost their senses already. History books are full of such bastards.


P.S. And just watch at his facial expression the lack of any, that is! This strange expression, his always desinterested, avoiding eyes. Its alienating to look him into the face. He always practiced a pokerface, and was very unmoved, always, but now - I don'T know, I have seen such facial expressions before. In mental hospital during my second practical. The diagnosis mostly was schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder. It may have been pokerface only in the past, but today - I dont know, I dont like what I see in his face. Something has changed for the worse. It rings general quarters on my ship.


He is a secret service man. It is sometimes said secret services have preferred certain personality structures they look for in candidates, attributes that make these people preferrably for the type of business they are beign asked for. Human kindness and honesty hardly are part of those wanted traits.

[Catfish]

^ I fear you are right.. if his invasion continues to fail he Putin may be tempted to use nuclear weapons. He uses them first, but .. retaliation? I have changed my opinion due to this article:


Sorry for the text wall, this is long, but you should read it –



"The danger is not that Russia thinks it can use a nuclear weapon against NATO and survive. Putin and his generals know they cannot.
But Putin may believe, or at least wants to create the perception in Washington that he believes, that he could use a relatively small nuclear weapon in Ukraine and not provoke a nuclear response. Why, he appears to ask, would America or NATO risk wholesale nuclear war when no NATO territory has been attacked with a nuclear weapon?

And he might just be right. It has often been questioned whether Washington would risk global nuclear war to respond to a nuclear strike by Russia on, say, a German or Baltic base. That scenario would immediately involve NATO allies. Yet the need, and indeed the resolve, of America to resort to a nuclear response that could lead to Russian nuclear strikes on American soil has always been questioned. The doubt about a nuclear response to an attack on a nonallied state, such as Ukraine, is even greater.

Ukraine may in fact be vulnerable to a Russian nuclear threat, and the West may be vulnerable to Russian nuclear coercion. While it is always hard to make policy on the fly, we are now, officially, off the map. There are no clear or fresh precedents on which to rely.

As such, there are two steps that must be taken and soon.

The first is that President Biden and U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley must communicate directly to their counterparts—Putin and Russian Chief of Defense Gen. Valery Gerasimov—that the United States and NATO will continue to provide conventional military assistance to Ukraine, but that they have no need or intention to rely on any nuclear capabilities as long as the conflict is limited to conventional weapons and the territory of Ukraine.

It is a bad situation, one that Putin created, but America has no intention of making it worse, even as we have no intention of making it easy on Russia."

[...]

Putting Putin’s power on the block could increase his desperation, and up the risk that he might miscalculate. Anything that might push him to consider the unimaginable, a suicidal nuclear first strike against the United States, can only be taken under the most sober of circumstances.
But if a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear state does not cross that line, then what could?



By declaring that it would neither use nuclear weapons first, nor in response to a nuclear attack against Ukraine, NATO could demonstrate that it believes nuclear use to be a crime from which no leader could be redeemed.


Doing so would reduce the risk of Russia believing a nuclear attack was imminent. But by making clear that there are steps Putin should not even consider without putting the power he values so deeply at risk, America and NATO can present him with a stark choice that may help protect Ukraine and keep aid to the brave people there flowing."


Full article is here, and it is a very good one:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/rus...?mod=read_next

[Skybird]

Various news reports:

Time and again Russian crews damage their own vehicles to let them break down and not continue to advance into the fighting. Moral seems to be not really high amongst Russians.

Wide-spread shortages in fuel severly slow down the Russian advance, locally causing full stops. The nice thing in that is that I would expect fuel trucks approaching their positions are easier to attack than the tanks themselves.

Finland sends 1500 missiles, Norway 2700, Sweden even 5000. Yeah! Now we talk business!

The biggest Russian bank, Sperbank, is not affected by the blocking from SWIFT. Häh...????????

Germany orders liquid gas worth 1.5 bn.

Ukraine claims over 6000 Russian soldiers have been killed.

Turkish drone TB-2 proves to be highly effective again. Its probably the combat drone with the best bang-for-the-buck ratio on the market, insiders say. Cheap, autonomous in parts, long legs of 24 hours, carrying 650 kg of weapons.

German a## and former chancellor Gerhard Schröder insists on not breaking ties with Russia. Left wings in the SPD and the Green party mull a revolt against the plan to give the Bundeswehr a special 100bn budget additional to its defence budget. They demand to cut the existing defence budgets. Dear God, let it rain brains from heaven - or lightnign to free us from the hopeless cases once and forever.

[Jimbuna]

Russia intensifies its attacks on key Ukrainian cities - with fighting raging for a seventh day in the north, east and south.

Russian paratroopers have landed in Kharkiv in the north-east, Ukraine says, with heavy fighting reported.

In the south, Russia says it has taken control of the port of Kherson but its mayor says it's still held by Ukrainian forces.

A 40 mile-long convoy of Russian armoured vehicles is about 15 miles north of the capital Kyiv.

The United Nations says more than 800,000 people have now fled Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the US says it will ban Russian airlines from its airspace - following the lead of the European Union and Canada.

Major companies such as Apple, Google, Ford and Exxon Mobil have taken steps against Russia over the invasion.

[Jimbuna]

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I have started to lose my grim sense of black humour over all this, and Putin. I really think he now is kind of insane. Which means: things are out of control already.

He had the dream to bring back the Sovjet Union. He is old. His time is running out, he feels death crawling nearer to him every day. He may take medicine, or may suffer brain fog. But it is not uncommon that older people also start to change their personality, sometimes they become softer and more confused, sometimes paranoia and getting locked in in their inner worlds takes over. He made calculation errors and big undisciplined moves and claims that are untypical for him. He always was a beast and a killer, a tyrant and oppressor, but he was extremely smart, disciplined, clever: without scruples, without remorse, too, yes, but he played all world leaders against the wall since very long time. And now? Mistake follows mistake, misasessment follows misassessment.

HE BLEW IT.

And he knows it. Its all lost, he can destroy the Ukraine, but he will not get from the world what he wanted. All the past twenty years - ruined in the present time'S events and actions.

I think he has gone nutter. My official diagnosis would be: age-related cognitive and intellectual degeneration of brain functions, accompanied by severe personality changes, paranoia and delusions.

In other words he is a ticking nuclear time bomb, unstable, unpredictable, and utmost dangerous. Its said that he has brought his family into a nuclear bomb shelter somewhere in Siberia.

Yeah, not sure if he is clinically insane but he is really displaying some serious signs of mentality illness, paranoia, detachment and delusion. I mean, what's up with these crazy table talks??





If his invasion of Ukraine stalls or blows up in his face, which I do not think it will, I worry if the West doesn't give him some kind of offramp, he could call our bluff and escalate to the point of no return. He's nearly 70, he's been in command of Russia for decades, and it's possible he's thinking of his legacy, and wouldn't mind being portrayed as the Russian who went all in. Kinda like Hitler. Does anyone think Hitler would not have used ICBMs in 1945 if he had them?

[Skybird]

The table thing: Putin is afraid of Corona, and I think I red he rejects vaccination. The French and German presidents refused to get tested by the Russian due to not wanting to hand them over their genetical fingerprints, and so they were kept at long distance to reduce the risk of infecting little AdolfVladimir.

[mapuc]

An interesting view on this huge column of tanks and other military vehicle-

It's a Danish article translated

Several media, including Swedish Aftonbladet and American NPR , write that the giant convoy consisting of soldiers, armored vehicles, tanks, self-propelled artillery and other vehicles has simply run out of food and petrol.

But there may also be tactical considerations behind the sudden stop, says Kristian Lindhardt, who is a major and military analyst at the Defense Academy.

- There are two reasons. Either it can not move on, or it will not move on. If it can not move forward, it suggests that the Ukrainians are successful. If it does not want to move on, it indicates that the Russians are in the process of thinking about it, he says to Ekstra Bladet.

https://ekstrabladet-dk.translate.go..._x_tr_pto=wapp

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Does anyone think Hitler would not have used ICBMs in 1945 if he had them?

Hitler said at the end if the Germans are not strong enough to give him the victory he wan ted, then they are evolutionary failures and do not even deserve to surivve him as a people or country. Htiler wanted Germany to fall at the end, and he wanted to take as many Germans with him as he could.

Well. Now look at Russia. Not really reassuring.

I think we must change a major political principle of ours, that is that NATO only defends its own members. We should not get involved with own troops and forces, but we should put Ukraine under protection of our nuclear umbrella and find a way to convince Russia that we indeed mean it serious.

And if the Russians strike by nuclear means then, then we must indeed strike back.

Not nice. But still, I stick to it.

[Catfish]

^ Please read this post

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...postcount=1550

and the link at the end, it's worth it.

[Skybird]

I have red it, Kai, and the things you quoted in bold. But I find the logic flawed. As I see it, if we do it, it does not teach the Russian Hitler any moral, but he would see it as a sign of weakness that encouragse him to press on. NATO then just would have said it would not retaliate, hasn't it? So then why not pressing it harder?

We need to use the lesson from Kennedy and the Cuba crisis here. Stay unmoved and determined on the core issue - missiles in Cuba: no way - but offer a secondary hidden tit for tat to break the deadlock. I have no clue what that could be.



Because the final problem is: that needs a sane and rationally calculating mind, and Putin seems to have lost his. He makes mistake after mistake. He seems to be delusional. He cannot be the one we adress. We must adress the circle around him and hope they are not as braindead as their master, so that they rebel against him.


And another complicaiton: The Russians have three nuclear suitcases, media say. One has Putin, one has the defence minister Shoigu, a close friend (if Putin has that), and if these two activate theirs, then the third suitcase in hands of chief of staff Gerasimov acitvates and gives access to the codes. The complication is that apparently this system may have been changed and only one instead of two suitcases is needed to launch the sequence. We must take into account that Putin can press the button all alone, without a second man as safety. If Gerasimov obeys.



Putin must be taken out, and that can only happen from within his circle.

[Skybird]

Too early to rejoice: in earlier news it was said that the Ukrainians had eliminated Kadyrov's announced Chechen special forces, days ago. They were probably reconnaissance or pre-commandos only. A main force of these criminals, known for their brutality and contempt for human life, is now said to be 50 km from Kiev, equipped with death lists of Ukainian leaders whom the Russian Hitler wants to see dead at any cost.

He is also said to be planning to set up a puppet regime led by a vasall and former Ukrainian president loyal to Russia, I suspect Yanukovich, who was sentenced to prison in absentia for treason.
As expected.