Russian Military Buildup Outside Ukraine

“Stuff” may be a bit strong, they are pretty small especially compared to conventional explosives. And since the advent of the H-bomb it’s even more compact.

Everybody did, including Trump.

That means NATO goes in, full on. I don’t think putin’s that stupid, but you never know.

We could at least try to stop the killing of Ukrainian’s with an attempt at diplomacy. Ukraine cannot remove sanctions and all the rest. Ukraine can offer what it has, but it doesn’t have power to remove sanctions and all the rest done to cripple Russia. So Ukraine simply doesn’t have the bargaining power.
Perhaps it won’t work and Putin’s all in, and want’s to raze eastern Europe to the ground and that’s that. But, regardless, but I would like to see an attempt, even a little one before we start engaging. We can amass the troops using that as leverage in diplomacy, that’s how things used to work. But we’re dealing with people who cannot define what a “woman” is, so I don’t have much hope.

The problem is, is that what constitutes a strike against Russia by the NATO resides with Putin. We gave him the leverage to let him decide where the line is. So if he decides sending military aid is direct involvement, then NATO is at war. And he can decide to move those goal posts any time he wants. We gave him that power when we emptied our entire arsenal of non-military options all at once.

Those of us whom you detest have been warning what kind of guy he was since he tepidly decide to run in 2020. When it came to foreign policy in particular, he has yet to make a correct decision in 40 some odd years in his career. There is not a moment of foreign conflict he has not exploited for financial gain. Russia’s bombs are not just destroying Ukraine, but all the evidence of his corruption since he was VP. It’s a perfect scenario for him. Crimea was taken under his watch. Obama assigned him as the lead for all things Ukraine. Biden is as corrupt as they come. He portrays weakness because he is, in fact weak.
Why do you think this is happening now? He appeared weak from the start, Afghanistan proved it. He is massively incompetent. He really, literally has no idea what he is doing. And his handlers are pursuing their agenda’s the world be damned if necessary.
That’s why its difficult to tell who the good guys are, if any.
We have, bad, worse and worst. Ukraine is less bad then Russia, but only because Russia invaded them. Prior to that, they are pretty close when it comes to corruption and evil deeds.

We gave the Taliban more than that. We could have armed Ukraine to the teeth with the equipment we left behind in Afghanistan. We could have told Ukraine, “Hey man, we’re leaving and not taking all this stuff with us. If you can move it, it’s yours.” Look what Ukraine could have gotten for free if we really cared:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/23/staggering-costs--us-military-equipment-left-behind-in-afghanistan/?sh=1d99bf4541db

U235 is down right abundant compared to what it takes to make fusion bombs, which a fairly large portion of our stock pile and Russia’s stock pile is.
You need Deuterium, Tritium, Uranium, Lithium deuteride, Plutonium and styrofoam for a fusion bomb. And both Russia and the US have plenty. But ICBM’s aren’t the only issue. They can be delivered many different ways in various strengths from planes, ships, trucks, tanks, etc.. You would use a fission bomb for a low yield targeted attack. The current stock pile makes Hiroshima look like a fire cracker.

Huh? China has been eating our lunch for the past 2 years. They make all our stuff. If China cuts us off, it will be way worse than anything we could do to Russia. China makes most of our critical basic medicines like Penicillin.
And why don’t we drill our own oil and make our own stuff? It would violate the Paris Climate Agreement. We have to off-shore our filth so we don’t see it, otherwise we’re killing the planet. Like bombs and war doesn’t, but we’re dealing with morons here.

Where do you think he gets his talking points from? His admin is full of well connected “former” media and big tech big-wigs. The DNC-MSM-Big Tech connection is uncanny and no accident. Don’t take my word for it. Feel free to look it up. You can’t make this shit up.
And this is why I am totally unsurprised at all that is going on. Biden is terrible, Harris is worse, Pelosi shames both of them in terms of corruption. It’s a big fat, unmitigated, but predictable disaster.

The problem is your sole source of information is the mainstream media, who lies regularly with reckless abandon. Putin wouldn’t have done it, if he didn’t believe his odds were very much in his favor. The fact that it all happened very shortly after a long and cheery negotiation with China tells a lot.
Does he want, what he says he wants from Ukraine or does he just want Ukraine? Either way, he gamed it so he wins.
The biden admin had the power and opportunity to prevent this and they have the opportunity to perhaps stop it and they won’t do it. Meanwhile, we secretly amass troops in Poland, which was a total ‘oops’ in that getting out, and the South Pacific. We can’t and won’t know what could have been because we didn’t even try.
As we mourn the plight of the Ukrainian people, know none of our leaders, in any country or of either party are lifting a finger to at least try to stop the invasion without further casualties. At least no leaders who actually have the means to stop any of it are trying.

Yup!

If you die from a bullet or a nuke, does it really matter? Your still dead.

LOL! Why not? I would do the same thing if I were him.
Does this sound like a man reeking of desperation, crippled and losing?

It hasn’t mattered to this point, why would it start? I think we in the west, started to believe in the dignity of human life and believed the lie our leader do too. It seems to me not to be the case. In our most civilized state as a planet, we managed to kill more people in 100 years, than history has as a collective. <-hyperbole (for the dense).

That’s because you believe in the delusion of MAD. I don’t know what it will look like, but I know it will most certainly not look the way we think it will. I do think western Europe in the biggest danger, though.

It’s not one man’s pride. It’s one man’s pride at the moment. There are loads of nasty people with loads of nasty pride, on both sides. And that’s the part people don’t want to hear.
Putin is the figure we hate, he’s not the only one who agrees with himself. He didn’t do this alone and most assuredly his death would escalate things massively.

So your willing to risk nuclear war over Smolnik or Ozd?
And what if NATO attacks?

you got a source for this one?

Real estate. Its all “Location! Location! Location!”, isnt it?

Earthquakes, nukes, and a giant volcano. All very low probability, high consequence disasters awaiting this area. Till then, I’m just gonna enjoy the su… I mean rain.

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I was 8 when Mt. St. Hellen erupted in 1980. That was a doozy!

Leave it to Vlad though, to renew the awareness of MAD for a new generation.

Im ready to die for Lithuania!

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@Californiagrown this is something I’ve been trying to convey - if you’re trying to deescalate with Putin, it dramatically increases the stakes. Here’s a incomplete clip from Putin’s ideologues on Russian State TV (unfortunately it’s not subtitled) but the gist of it is - despite not winning, they cannot make a deal with Zelensky, nor with the Americans. For them Zelensky is subhuman and Biden’s conciliatory messages signal US weakness, and cutting a deal with an opponent who publicly outs himself as weak is shameful - loss of respect.

Russian culture is so fucking weird.

Think of the culture as a combination of antebellum South and a high security prison.

Edit: Here’s a Russian Karen in Georgia (the country) freaking out because the former slaves are being uppity. And this one fled Putin’s Russia, think what the others are like then.

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I need the bullet points haha, don’t have time for Twitter threads. Now we’re getting somewhere!

So what’s the best path forward? Imply we will be ramping up involvement? Will that not help paint the US as aggressor, again to a large chunk of the international community?

You should really check Kamil’s megathreads, they’re an excellent introduction for Westerners.

As I’ve stated before, Biden should shut the fuck up first and foremost. Now, I’m no expert but I know what Russian pozor culture requires, and these two steps should be taken immediately to undo the massive damage done by horrible messaging from the Administration:

  • Reopen the embassy in Kyiv, even if it’s just one person, a charge d’affaires. Yeah, I know about Benghazi, but the US embassy staff ignominiously fled out the country a week before the Russians attacked, yet another mind boggling signal of US weakness. The US doesn’t have an ambassador in Ukraine for three years now, which is insane. I assume a person willing to take the risk can be found

  • Have someone visit Kyiv and meet with Ukrainian officials. If the Lithuanian minister of defense, who’s on the chubby side, can do a photo op in downtown Kyiv with his Ukrainian counterpart so can someone from the DoD.

These immediate steps would be absolutely essential to show some willingness to assume risk.

Putin would much more easily sell a negotiated deal to his public if he could frame it as a deal with NATO and their puppets and not with subhuman Ukrainians. The more the West is reluctant to support Ukraine, the worse it is for Putin because it shows they’re incapable of defeating a racially inferior foe.

don’t need one, its common sense as to why they want control of a decommissioned nuke plant

And the Atomic Energy dept are very concerned of this matter

Holy crap, some proper investigative journalism from the NYT. I was…not expecting that.

LOL at the Biden criticisms.

What part of dementia did youse all not understand? Dude was slurring his words, even while drugged up for those occasional pathetic campaign speeches.

Then we have Kamala, a living testament to the Peter Principle. I still think she paid someone to take the CA bar exam.

We need to form a prayer circle, hoping the world survives until 2024 with a leaderless USA.

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So… random dudes on twitter has all kinds of solutions, but the US administration with all its intelligence agencies, staffers, advisers etc are just so dumb that it never occurred to them that showing some backbone and then entering negotiations with the Kremlin could end the conflict. That’s what you seem to think, that it’s just silly incompetence and ignorance that’s driving the bad messaging.

I’m not so sure. There is such a thing as being willfully obtuse. If you are Joe Biden, why not let Putin fight it out and cripple Russia in the process? You think Joe Biden places a higher value on Ukrainian lives than Putin does? What possible reason would you have for believing that?

It’s not about having access to vast amounts of intelligence, it’s about knowing Russians. From public statements I understand that the late John McCain understood them, as does the former ambassador to Russia McFaul. I’m very skeptical that others do understand Russian political culture and what drives them.

I’m yet to find someone in the current Administration who demonstrated his or hers understanding of Russian culture and power vertices. That’s also pertinent for the current crop of Western European politicians.

A letter to Financial Times from a guy who isn’t a rando is under a paywall, so I copied the text from reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/tkq12u/letter_a_defence_attaché_despairs_at/

From Carl Scott, Air Commodore (Retired), Oakham, Rutland, UK

The recent article by Maria Stepanova “The war of Putin’s imagination” (Life & Arts, FT Weekend, March 19) was exemplary. However, one jarring note was the unfounded notion that no one expected this aggression from the Kremlin.I served as the UK’s defence attaché in Moscow for five years, 2011-2016, during which time this long, dark march to war was obvious, the path to conflict lit by the many pronouncements emanating from the dark red walls of Vladimir Putin’s palace.

We reported the inevitability of conflict in detail, regularly and with the despair of Cassandra. One of the earliest reports opened with a line from Sherlock Holmes, whose statue stands outside the British Embassy wall: “There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast.”The evidence of Putin’s chosen path was never concealed. His many declarations were meant to be heard and understood: the colossal rearmament programme, the demand for more complex, more lethal weaponry; the militarisation of society; the distortion and seizure of the popular narrative; domination of education, the media and the courts to exclude contrasting views and, ultimately, the alienation and destruction of those among the Russian people who understood the folly of his declared ambition.

The list is remorseless, the consequences could not be ignored. But they were.

It was not until I returned to the UK on the eve of our withdrawal from the EU, a manoeuvre which greatly emboldened those in Moscow, that I understood how our society had changed in the years I was serving overseas.

All was subjugated to the City, all served the interests of our lucrative status as a safe haven for corrupt, and corrupting, wealth. The values we were demanding of other nations had long since faded from our own actions.I despair at the decisions Putin has taken, but even more at the prospect of finding credible leadership at home in the UK among those who have compromised so long with his regime and the wealth it offered.

I think the reason no one in the administration has shown any understanding, is that they have chosen to show no understanding. I guess that’s where our perceptions differ.

If I can read a few Kamil megathreads and gain a rough understanding, how can it be that everyone in the White House are clueless about it? No, I think it’s deliberate.

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If its not global warming or other (american) leftist pet causes, it doesnt exist in their world.

They really are that dumb.

But if Ukranians identified as a unicorn and got mistreated at a Moscow starbucks it would be raining missiles in minutes.

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Which is precisely why I am not in favor of the West getting more involved. Don’t get in the way of your enemy making a mistake. Don’t give Putin a way to back into a justification for this war. He’s going to lose a war that he can’t justify starting. Let him.

There’s no shortage of people to be found in varying levels of the United States government who do understand Russia and Russians as well or even better than you do. I’ll take your word that McCain understood Russians and it seems rather self-evident that Joe Biden doesn’t understand anything, even basic numbers and social decorum. The Biden Administration, however, is absolutely choosing both domestic and foreign policies quite deliberately.

For a scaled-down example, I am very competent in the implementation and maintenance of ERP software, as were many others working for the State of Maine. We still couldn’t hit the layup that is implementing new software. It was a republican administration idea, after all, and there’s no room for something like that to succeed in the next administration, who is more woke and more enlightened in their ideas concerning governance.

When the one guy in the entire state who knows the programming language of the legacy system dies, we’ll probably have to pull up our bootstraps and do the actual work involved with sound administration and governance.

For now blaming other people for the failure of government to act as a functioning bureaucracy is meeting all of the important political goals.

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