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.

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.

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.

GTR - Grand Theft Raccoon

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.