We have no official boots on Ukrainian soil. Not so sure about unofficial American boots, and certainly we have citizens over there fighting. That may be legit individuals though, unlike Russia's involvement in eastern Ukraine prior to their invasion. I too am a bit nervous of what Putin may do as he keeps getting backed into a corner... but at the same time, I don't want Russia running around annexing everything and rattling their nuclear saber. My personal hope is that Putin retires (preferably out of a window that's a few flights up) and someone else declares victory while retreating back outside Ukraine's borders. I'm not sure how realistic that is... we'll have to see.

The only news reports I saw assigning blame for Nordstream is saying that Putin's doing it as a warning to the west. Not really sure what that would accomplish though. I doubt we'll ever know who really did it. I know carting natural gas around in ways other than pipelines doesn't really work, so I doubt it'd be the US looking to make cash, but that doesn't mean we didn't do it for other reasons. Then again, if we did and got caught, that'd be pretty massively detrimental to our relations with other countries. I don't see how it would be worth the risk. Still... history is full of stupid people doing stupid things, so who knows.

I think that's how most of us feel about it ("can't just let them do what they want" vs "don't want to push them to the point of utter despair"). And while Putin and co have very clearly been trying to mindfuck us with the threat of nuclear war rather than having any real intention of starting it, it doesn't take much for an accident to turn into a rapid nightmarish escalation. A plane that flies off course, a rocket fired at the wrong target, faulty intel... I'm also not so sure about Putin getting replaced or toppled being such a good thing. As far as I can tell other possible power players like the owner of the Wager group are not exactly a step up from Putin when it comes to their appetite for war. And not that I think he'll be president but someone like Kadyrov from his inner circle is clearly a psychopath. So yeah, I don't know man.

I'm all for supporting Ukraine with military material in its defense against Russia but I do get worried when I hear the US or UK government unambiguously state that they will not stop supporting Ukraine until they have basically taken back even Crimea, which will make any truce negotiation with Russia pretty much impossible. They have been humiliated and exposed, and for a regime built on strength that is a potential death spiral - they need something they can sell as a win after all this, no matter how stupid. Losing more territory than you even started with is one of the few things you can't possibly sell to anyone. So I would prefer it if our governments were a bit more agnostic and vague in what they see as the final point of this war.

Let's not forget that the West collectively looked the other way when Russia seized Crimea and fueled constant separatist fighting in the East of Ukraine for years. And now we're willing to strain our own economies, citizens and potentially risk a nuclear confrontation over Ukraine? That makes no sense. If we had actually done something then, maybe Russia wouldn't have tried to go all in on a full military takeover of the country. But here we are...




To be clear I never meant to say that selling more gas was the main reason for blowing it up - the absolutely primary reason I see is to simply take away a tool from Russia to control/influence Europe. There was always a possiblity of the EU getting desparate and cutting a deal with Russia to get gas again in exchange for a softer stance on Ukraine, as long as Russia had its hand on the lever. That is now gone. To me there is only one country who directly stands to gain from it and has the capacity to carry out such an action, and that's the US. The fact that no one in the media seems to like to talk about who actually did it (not that we can known either way) is an even bigger sign to me that it was likely them. Regardless of all the talk about allies and friendship and so on, I'm pretty sure that no one in their right mind in European intelligence services thinks it was anyone else. Russia has so much to lose and so little to gain that a false flag would have been borderline insane.

You worry too much about things you have no control over. And don't over think stuff. Russia is going to lose this one, like they lost in Afghanistan, like us lost in Vietnam etc. It's just another phase humanity is going through. And in some twisted horrible way Russia is going to be a safer place to live in when the Ukrainian military carries out all those convict executions.

And this is why you should've gotten that military training. Kind of puts things in perspective and allows you to switch off that jabbering of the mind.

You make it sound like I'm hysterically hyperventilating behind my PC or something. I'm just trying to make sense of a geopolitical situation, but clearly I have no control over any of it and don't know the true motivations or hearts of everyone involved.

Dude, take a breath!

Apparently Russia is now blaming the UK for the drone attack on their Black Sea fleet. I don't know, they seem to be totally losing their crap. It blows my mind that Russia will shoot missiles at Ukrainian civilians, than bitch and whine when a commando raid blows up military targets inside their borders. What'd you expect? I recently learned that apparently a lot of western military aid to Ukraine comes with caveats that they can't be used against targets inside Russian borders in an attempt to stave of escalation. Though I understand it on one hand, on the other Ukraine is seriously fighting off an attempt to destroy them as a nation, and is winning. To not go after targets inside Russia seems silly. But hey, that's war.... insane demands from politicians eclipsing legitimate military demands.

At any rate, I don't see this conflict going on at this pace for so much longer. I think on the 1 year anniversary of this war, it'll be over, most likely in the favor of Ukraine. We'll see. Regardless of the outcome, I think Russia's place on the world stage is coming to an end.

Actually I believe this is incorrect. There is enough evidence and events that hint in the involvement of US and perhaps Brits from 2014. Whether it's engineering or military tactics. A soviet mentality nation just doesn't do a flip like that in such a short time without outside help. Hell it took Estonia about 10 years and we are a small nation where things happen quickly. And one of our 'popular' politicians Mart Helme still lives in that time period mentally.

And then there's the question of what should have we done? I mean it is a sovereign nation and we can't just decide stuff for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... ainian_War

The US and NATO did provide Ukraine a lot of training and other military assistance after the invasion of Crimea. Prior to the Maidan revolution (Feb 2014), Ukraine wasn't particularly pro-west either. They were pretty much a Russian vassal state with a pro-Russian puppet government. Then they toppled their government, went pro-west, and Russia responded by invading Crimea (Feb-Mar 2014). There really wasn't much time for NATO or the US to do anything in that time. Not saying that US / UK / NATO training is the reason Ukraine is doing so well in this war. We trained the crap out of Afghani forces and see where that got us. Ukraine just seems to have a much stronger will to fight... plus training and equipment doesn't hurt.

I believe the Afghanis were never going to fight. When most of the population is so incredibly uneducated and/or stupid elevation to any kind of governing system other than authoritarian monarchy or oligarchy is close to impossibility. In the end the cause for change didn't come from inside the population like it was the case for most of Europe and the US.

Oh I didn't mean the West didn't do anything when Russia took Crimea or was stirring up shit in the Donbas years ago, I'm sure a lot happened behind the scenes but they never sent a strong signal to Russia. It was always sort of slap on the wrist, we'll write a strongly worded letter kind of stuff. Obviously I'm not saying they should have threatened to attack Russia, but they could definitely have made it much much clearer that they wouldn't tolerate the sort of encroachment on a sovereign nation's territory that Russia was doing. If Putin would have expected to what extent the West would eventually throw their weight behind Ukraine, I doubt he would have tried to take over the country. I firmly believe that his entire operation was based on the assumption that the West would shrug its shoulders and just do another round of not very useful sanctions.

Anyway, clearly it's always gonna be walking a tight rope when dealing with a (former) super power like Russia. I just remember seeing what was happening at the time, and being frustrated that Russia could do this while most of the EU at least was like oops well what can we do.

As for Afghanistan, it's a bit of a different situation I'd say. As much as people hated the Taliban, I don't think they were too keen on the Americans or the Afghan government either. But they had money and means, so they all tried to get their payday while they could...the stories about corruption among the Afghan government and armed forces are legendary. The Ukrainians are fighting for something they actually care about.

Latest estimates for Russian losses I've seen is upwards of 85,000 troops killed and I think 250,000 wounded. That's crazy. The US lost 58,000 troops in Vietnam, and that was over like 14 years. It blows my mind this is still going on. It speaks very poorly of Russia's opinion of its citizens. I guess that's not surprisingly. Losses of military hardware are pretty crazy too, of course.

Oh, for whoever was saying the Nordstream pipeline was blown up by the US for $$$... I still don't think that's the case, but apparently it actually is possible. Here's a story about LNG tankers loitering off the coast of Europe waiting for prices to go up so they can make a phat payday.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ships-carrying-2-billion-natural-110454279.html

GTR - Grand Theft Raccoon

Like I said I never thought there was a direct profit motive here, more of "we'll take away the leverage the Russians have on the European powers". If it was the US, I'm sure they then wouldn't proceed to fuck the EU over economically for every last dollar or euro - they're still allies and they still need them to some extent. Anyway, clearly I don't have any proof. It's weird how that entire story has moved out of the media narrative in a matter of weeks though. if there was any proof that Russian blew up a similar pipeline between Norway and Germany for example we'd never hear the end of it, and rightfully so.

*adjusts tin foil hat*

Well, today is the day Russia has reached 100k russian troops killed in Ukraine.

How many Russians need to die before this war ends? Oof. The fact Putin is trying to mass-kill Ukrainian civilians by depriving them of heat during winter is a new low.