No, it’s the other way around. He can lose a war in which the West was ostensibly involved, he cannot lose a war only to Ukrainians.
Yes, I should have been clearer in my original post - no understanding of Russia among the current decision makers.
In addition, how did they managed to fuck up intelligence assessments so badly? I’m not talking about intelligence gathering which was great, but assessments that Kyiv will fall in 72 hours which dictated Biden’s policy choices.
For example, the majority of weapons US sent before the invasion was meant to be used in a post-occupation insurgency - assumption was that Ukrainians will fold immediately and therefore US messaging in the first days of the invasion was deeply fatalistic.
Now, Ukrainians criticism of US, especially in English is very muted, but I recently watched a Telegram interview of a well connected Ukrainian defense journalist Butusov who claimed that the Ukrainian military were very exasperated by opinions of visiting American officials in the months preceding the invasion.
Allegedly, per Butusov, when Ukrainian military officials claimed “that they could hold off the Russians because they’ve been fighting them for eight years and know their capabilities and weakness”, most of the Administration officials were repeating a trance-like defeatist mantra and tried to convince them Ukrainians that they’ll be overrun in a matter of hours.
Just a wild guess, but since the intelligence gathering before the invasion was as good as it was - maybe the the US intelligence was just the Russian intelligence. They knew that all the Russian assessments said Kiev would fall in 72 hours, the Russians seemed to be confident of that, so there you go.
This is the only way I see Americans getting on board with active intervention between Russia and Ukraine.
The leftists are so far gone that they re-coined the phrase “sticks and stones will break my phone, but mean words are the worst thing that can, like, ever hapen to you”
Ironically, this would make the Russians ‘racially inferior’ to the Ukrainians, no? (rhetorical)
I think a lot of this is the result of a politicians’ point of view (entirely personal opinion). A career politician knows nothing but government, nothing of self-dependence or self-defense, nothing of pride in country or love for thy neighbor.
If the US was invaded as Ukraine has been, I truly believe our politicians (most, not all) would view the average citizen as but a lowly human who could do no more than live their life quietly discontent under foreign occupation. I don’t think there are many politicians who believe in the power of the individual, or the power of community, or the strength of resistance that would ensue. As such, I think this perception may have been projected onto the citizens of Ukraine in thinking they too are powerless without government.
That has been the record, but it doesn’t and didn’t have to be that way. Trusting him too much when he couldn’t be trusted and calling his bluffs could be tried, they just weren’t. Second, outside of de-escalation, what is the other option? War? That’s not going to go well for anybody.
It’s proud, that’s for sure.
That’s what I have been saying to whole time. Don’t expect anything resembling pragmatism, maturity and sober mindedness from this admin. We need a Churchill, but we got the Mad King.
Don’t believe the hype. It makes a cute story line. I am sure the same could have been written about Iraq and Afghanistan, with all the friendly fire incidents and the ‘soldiers turn jihadi’s’ moments we had. Fog of war, we know very little of the actual truth on the ground there.
My father has a phd in medical physics. When I asked him if your proposition here was reasonable, he laughed out loud. I’ll take his version of ‘common sense’ over yours. I was actually assuming you had SOME sort of source other than crazy ideas floating in your head.
The actual reason they took it is strategic positioning/direct routing, as has already been discussed in this thread. I’ll leave it at that. THAT is actual common sense.
You crack me up. You are so pro-Putin that you can’t acknowledge the obvious. Putin thought this would be over in a few days, yet here we are a month later with the situation for Russia looking more and more dire.
LOL! I was waiting for that one… I think you could have gone a little harder, but I will take what I can get. You’re not going to accuse me of being a member of the FSB? Disappointing.
in what capacity? unless you’re actually a physicist, or similar, then your word doesn’t carry that much weight. I work in the coal mining industry, but that doesn’t qualify me to answer questions about a lot of the science revolving around the uses of coal. I would rely on scientists/researchers for that.
If you are a scientist, then I will value your opinion more. I’m perfectly willing to change my position if you can support yours.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard ‘I work in the medical industry, so I know ____’, and it turns out the person is a receptionist or a tech or whatever, and is absolutely no more qualified to answer questions about medical treatment than I am. It’s a poor version of argument from authority.
I am in Nuclear Fuels Quality Control…not a scientist by any means, however, we have numerous conversations with the Nuclear Engineering dept and one of the biggest concerns of the International Atomic Energy and the USNRC regarding Chernobyl is the mining of the Uranium from the explosion in 1986
the other concerns is the way Russia has siezed Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia and the stress the workers are being put under
And dont forget, one of the stipulations between Russia and Ukraine when the USSR fell…was Ukraine was to turn over all nuclear weapons over to Russia and that no-one can go into Chernobyl and mine the Uranium
all bets are off now that Russia once again controls Chernobyl
I’m confused. You’re worried that the country with the largest nuke arsenal in the world will scavenge the remains of spent fuel rods to what? Create a nuke?