If you act crazy, no one wants to find out just how crazy you are and generally give you a wide birth and lots of leeway.
You can relax now Kurtster. You're amongst friends.
Re the endgame: I think he initially would be happy to take Ukraine and keep free democratic elections away on the distant horizon. But I think he underestimates the willingness of the West to keep up the sanctions.
He's given the renewables sector a massive shot up the arm. Not sure he realises that this is just speeding up his own demise.
. Strategic scenarios are being written and rewritten constantly...
It is a cottage industry. It's getting too hard to keep up with it all.
The most obscure is Putin's endgame. Ukraine and then what ?
An observation from my streetlife learned while working the mean streets of Cleveburg in the 70's and 80's. Being a sitting duck for robbery, etc.
(I did once stare at a loaded revolver 2 feet away pointed directly at me. I did see the loaded bullets in the cylinder facing me. They looked huge. The big round hollow dark gun barrel. Still a very stark image. The gun was shaking in his hands. I gave up the money and he got away. I made adjustments after that incident.)
If you act macho, there will always be someone who wants to challenge you and find out if you are the fastest gun in the West or the toughest fighter, etc.
If you act crazy, no one wants to find out just how crazy you are and generally give you a wide birth and lots of leeway.
I chose the latter for my street persona and am still here to offer this observation.
To me, the most pressing questions are what is the endgame and who are the players ?
Considering the general instability all around and increasing pressure on the Russian economy and its main beneficiaries, The implication is enough to send chills. Strategic scenarios are being written and rewritten constantly...
Yes and no. He fights like a cornered rat. Using anything at his disposal. All the more reason to isolate him and keep equipping the Ukrainian army. Even if he takes over the country, which is looking increasingly likely, the fight will go on and it is absolutely essential that we keep up the sanctions.
It'll be the people close to him that will take him out, for he has become too much of a liability.
Still an exceedingly crude way to go about gaining control. Just another way for Putin to up the ante.
Considering the general instability all around and increasing pressure on the Russian economy and its main beneficiaries, The implication is enough to send chills. Strategic scenarios are being written and rewritten constantly...
I understand the rationale for trying to cut power but are you even suggesting that there is a safe way to bomb a nuclear facility?
No, there isn't. And the Russians likely know that. They still need to shut them down. Or do they want to irradiate everything, incl. their own soldiers? Not very likely. PS: These things need to be safe though, like a-plane-might-crash-on-it-safe.
Still an exceedingly crude way to go about gaining control. Just another way for Putin to up the ante.
Starting this past Sunday, three days into the invasion, Ukraineâs nuclear regulator began reporting an unusual rate of disconnection: Six of the nationâs 15 reactors were offline. On Tuesday, the Zaporizhzhia facility was the site with the most reactors offline.
Geographically, Russia is just as likely (perhaps more) as other countries to suffer from a meltdown.
If you take away power a lot of things become more difficult.
I understand the rationale for trying to cut power but are you even suggesting that there is a safe way to bomb a nuclear facility?
Starting this past Sunday, three days into the invasion, Ukraine’s nuclear regulator began reporting an unusual rate of disconnection: Six of the nation’s 15 reactors were offline. On Tuesday, the Zaporizhzhia facility was the site with the most reactors offline.
Geographically, Russia is just as likely (perhaps more) as other countries to suffer from a meltdown. If you take away power a lot of things become more difficult.
I see the news is just getting better.. not. Yes, all part of a strategy to take out critical infrastructure it seems.
Starting this past Sunday, three days into the invasion, Ukraineâs nuclear regulator began reporting an unusual rate of disconnection: Six of the nationâs 15 reactors were offline. On Tuesday, the Zaporizhzhia facility was the site with the most reactors offline.
Geographically, Russia is just as likely (perhaps more) as other countries to suffer from a meltdown.
If you take away power a lot of things become more difficult.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Mar 3, 2022 - 7:08pm
VV wrote:
I'm beyond speechless... let's see Trump try and praise this "genius" move.
Is his true motivation not just the subjugation of Ukraine but to up the stakes to where other nations are simply forced to engage and begin WW III in order to try and protect the plant to avert a nuclear meltdown?
Until this I would never believed that anyone would be capable of such a cowardly attack.
A couple retired generals doing commentary on CNN essentially made this sound like this was amateur hour militarily.
I'm beyond speechless... let's see Trump try and praise this "genius" move.
Is his true motivation not just the subjugation of Ukraine but to up the stakes to where other nations are simply forced to engage and begin WW III in order to try and protect the plant to avert a nuclear meltdown?
Until this I would never believed that anyone would be capable of such a cowardly attack.
What more evidence do we need that Putin is fucking insane?
I'm beyond speechless... let's see Trump try and praise this "genius" move.
Is his true motivation not just the subjugation of Ukraine but to up the stakes to where other nations are simply forced to engage and begin WW III in order to try and protect the plant to avert a nuclear meltdown?
Until this I would never believed that anyone would be capable of such a cowardly attack.
Last week I wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin rewrote the rules for the geopolitical game board. A week into his campaign to officially âdemilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraineâ itâs clear to me that Putinâs ambitions lie far beyond this stated goal.
He will, however, stick to that script until that part of the campaign is complete.
———
Okay, thatâs the lay of the land.
So, what are Putinâs real goals? Like I said at the outset, nothing less than breaking the back of Davos and their agents in the US/UK who have tormented Russia for more than a century.
How does he achieve that goal?
Putin is creating incontrovertible facts which his opponents must respond to. Again, heâs setting the operational tempo, like I said last week.
Their counter-moves are insipid and predictable. Ukraine has asked for admission into the EU. The EU is open to this. Georgia is now doing the same thing. Turkey is livid. Hungary is not getting involved.
No one is willing to actually send arms to Ukraine.
What does the EU achieve by adding Ukraine? Do they think because they signed a piece of paper with a person who is de facto not in charge of his country going to change the facts on the ground there?
Because if the EU accepts Ukraine into its ranks, then it will be responsible for the next stage of escalation, not Putin. It will then have to figure out how to oust the Russians from their territory.
Last night President Sundowner made the entire US State of the Union about Ukraine. Do they really think a president with an approval rating that is, at best 37%, capable of marshalling the US into fighting a war for Europe against Russia after bankrupting us with NATO for three generations?
If they are, they are more delusional than even Iâve contemplated at this point.
Is NATO prepared to expand now into Ukraine under the umbrella of EU membership?
Whatâs obvious to me is the neocons and neoliberals controlling the West think they can turn Ukraine into a quagmire for Putin, but what if Putin thinks he can turn Ukraine into a quagmire for them?
Russia is not capable of conquering Europe. But he doesnât need to to defeat them. He just needs to create a version of the map I posted above.
The Limits of Money Wars
If Putin and Russia have achieved, or are about to achieve, all of their military goals in Ukraine, what do they do to secure those gains?
They have to neutralize the financial war waged against them and create an environment where Europe spends money it doesnât have, with failing political capital domestically, and bankrupts them completely.
So we are a week in and I think it is time to take short pause and see what happened over the last 7 days.
The Russian attack began, as predicted, mostly by strikes with standoff weapons. 24 hour hours later the Ukie air force and navy ceased to exist. In this initial phase, few Ukrainian units were directly engaged.
———-
So far, that has worked pretty well. But here are the stone cold fact about the Ukie military:
Air Force: gone
Navy: gone
Long range, standoff capabilities: gone
Air defenses: gone
Regular ground forces: no less than 65% (some say up to 80%) of the Ukie military is surrounded and condemned
Assorted Nazi units: I donât have the figures, but A LOT of them are now either in the Donbass cauldron or in Mariupol. They will mostly not be taken prisoner, except for the leaders who will be tried and sentenced for their innumerable crimes.
So, in terms of the Russian goals, here is how I would score this:
Ukrainian disarmament: mostly already done, the Ukraine has nothing to threaten Russia with
Ukrainian denazification: only at the early start, but conditions are excellent and I am confident that most of the hardcore Nazis will soon be dead
One more thing I forgot to mention about the âno manâs landâ west of the Donbass operational cauldron. It is shown in the map below where the black and yellow lines touch (and add about 5-10km on each side)
