Yeah, so impotent that they drove 60 km into Russian territory and killed thousands of Russian civilians, just as theur grandfathers did, but the Kremlin is begging for mercy instead of following the examples of Stalin and Alexander I. And has already ceded Kiev and Odessa, some of the most important Russian cities, let alone having any intention to plant the flag in Berlin or Paris again.
Indeed. The old Russian babuschka didnt leave her Village. She couldnt imagine that the Russian state would allow her to starve for 7 months and then die…
Russia is not begging for mercy. But their enemy is stronger than many here thinks. They do what they can do. If it is foul play in Kreml, as you suggest with the Oligarks longing for fraternizing on Cote dÁzur again, then why are they still in War after 3 years? They could have assasinated Putin already.
I suspect that the truth is that the Russian leadership are not exactly eager to surrender, but they want so badly to believe that this is all a misunderstanding.
It's not. The West knows full well what it wants and will have, if the Russian leadership doesn't grow a pair.
You mean, why the Russians have not been doing carpet bombing and other Hiroshima & Nagasaki & Dresden? -- Russians are not jews. It was a jew Jacob Beser who enjoyed his participation (and then boasted about that) in the bombings of two Japanese cities filled with civilians. Today, western values are on a show in Gaza. Including the largest ever numbers of pediatric amputees.
But they've fooled us all. It's a big and for many,lethal game Biden,Harris,Trump,Putin,they are all on the SAME SIDE and WE are the ENEMY. Putin has got the Baddy part and he's acting it well. Luckily he is emotionally strong so he doesn't mind about the lack of approval from the mind fucked.
If the euroweenies and Stasi Starmer expand the war, Russia will not worry about "plant(ing) the flag in Berlin or Paris". They'll be planting a lot of Iskanders, Kinzals and Oreshnik missiles. And the French, Germans and Brits will be planting a lot of their dead.
And then 70,000 of them were killed before the few survivors surrendered or ran away back to Ukraine, leaving behind a king's ransom in abandoned Western vehicles and weapons.
But yes, you are right: they did kill (and torture) Russian civilians - although probably not thousands.
GM,could you drop the atom bombs already. All of them at once. Let's just get it over and done with, bloody impotent Kremlin. Just drop one on the Kremlin too, whilst your at it. That'll teach them. In fact, you'll outdo Trump, you'll stop this war in 24h!
They are simply repeating word for word what Hegseth told them to say to stay on the right side of the hegemony. They must buy US weapons and up their millitary spending to avoid being cut off from trade. The UK is particularly vulnerable to this after Brexit. In order to over-extend Russia, the US wants to bleed the EU dry and feed them feet first through the meat grinder now that it's running out of Ukrainians.
No, but European military activity should be taken very seriously.
After all, we did have German tanks in Kursk again, but right now there is precisely zero chance of Russian tanks being in Berlin again. Or even in Kiev...
Yes, it is a serious question. Don't cancel something you don't like by suggesting it's not a serious question.
I hate to admit it, but he has a point. More and more Russians feel that way.
In the Suvorov quote that many influential Russians are citing these days "the enemy" doesn't mean just the nazi regime in Kiev. It means all of those who waged war against Russia in any form, be it theft of Russian resources, participation in Nordstream, or sanctions.
The quote, from Alexander V. Suvorov:
"A man who loves his neighbors, a man who hates war, must finish off the enemy. So that one war does not start another."
The growing feeling in Russia is that pretending the US's war on Russia has ended without extracting pain from the US and its stooges just sets up the next war, which will be worse.
the difference to Suvorov times is that it would take Russia around 30 minutes to finish off every enemy of Russia on the entire planet. and in the case of the EU, it can even likely be done unilaterally, with minimum to no response (since they don't have any genuine counterstrike capability).
being a responsible 21st-century leader means to have enough restraint to avoid having to do that.
"Having enough restraint" has resulted in the current situation, in which there is a massive bombing raid on Russia every night and everyone feels they can invade and rape and murder at will whenever they feel like it. That should be completely unthinkable if the security of the country is to mean anything.
The only way to make it unthinkable is to punish those responsible in such a way that nobody ever even has such thoughts again.
Mutual destruction is not "finishing off". The critical bulk of Russias population is concentrated in a small hand full of large urban conurbations who would all die in a general Nuclear exchange. Nuclear war is not an option for anything short of true existential threat.
FFS, nobody is calling for launching the ICBMs at DC.
What is needed is to cut off arms supplies and physically isolate Ukraine.
That will require tactical nukes, but we are talking tactical nukes at objects located outside of populated places, so it can be done without killing pretty much anyone.
Then if Poland and Romania still insist on being suicidal, you do assist them with it by doing strategic countervalue strikes on them and wiping them off the map.
But that will not result in mutual destruction -- the US has never intended to defend anyone in Europe in case of a nuclear attack. Article 5 is a complete bluff when it comes to nukes.
Thus the Kremlin has a magic button it can press and end the war by physically blocking NATO from entering it. There are downsides, but they pale in comparison to the inadmissibility of the current situation.
The problem is that Russian elites stand to lose quite a bit from finally taking the gloves off, so it is not done. Reggular Russian people will win big time, but who has ever cared about them?
The USA is not only getting away with this unpunished, they are actually rewarded: a new market for their LNG, Ukraine's rare earth (or what will be left of it) and fat arms contracts with European countries. Only, what can Russia do about it?
There is lots that Russia can do about it. For starters, by taking all of Ukraine it can make sure none of the so-called mineral resources of Ukraine go to the US or EU. Russia could extinguish the Baltics as separate countries and demilitarize Finland and Poland. Russia could also eliminate the UK and France as nuclear powers (see my comments on that in the other thread... I think on substack you can see my post history).
By the way, the "vast mineral resources" of Ukraine are just as much a lie as the Ghost of Kiev. Ukraine has (more accurately "had") large deposits of coal and some iron ore but not much else.
Nobody did a better job of exploring in massive detail every square inch of Ukraine than the USSR, and the mineral resource maps they compiled are easily available online. Those are accurate, while anything published after 2014 are lies. The commentary in the US is also pretty much lies.
For example, titanium is not a rare earth nor are titanium deposits rare. Florida has massive amounts of titanium. What makes titanium metal a special deal is that getting titanium metal from titanium dioxide and other deposits takes a lot of energy. Same with getting metallic aluminum from bauxite. The real trick is having massive amounts of low cost energy. That's not the EU and it's not Ukraine, but it is Russia, which is why Russia is a titanium and aluminum powerhouse.
The lithium play is nonsense, as the deposits in Ukraine aren't very extensive or high grade. The USSR did an especially good job at exploring for lithium because lithium back in those days was *more valuable* than it is today. Why is that? Because lithium is the key material for making thermonuclear weapons. Thermonuclear weapons are so intensely valuable that it is actually cost effective to use materials like solid gold for tampers in them, and the ability to use lithium to power them instead of cryogenic deuterium is one of the key innovations that makes thermonuclear weapons practical.
So yeah, you bet the Soviets pulled out all the stops to find lithium, and they weren't at all impressed with the lithium deposits in Ukraine.
Something else to consider -- rare earths metal are "rare" in the sense that they come at a low concentration and not in concentrated deposits like some other elements.
The consequence of which is that their extraction is extremely environmentally destructive, as you need to process massive amounts of dirt and rock.
The Chinese were willing to pay that price, and they are a big country with lots of places that are useless desert anyway.
Ukraine being a depressed post-Soviet shithole that then got thoroughly wrecked by war makes it a place that can be easily sacrificed in a similar way.
Russia has made it abundantly clear that it wants nothing to do with Western Ukraine. The Nazis are concentrated there and toward the end of WWII the USA financed partisan groups to attack Russian troops even before the war ended.
On the other hand, Russia has invited Poland to take Lvov which was once Polish. The other nations bordering on Ukraine have claims on some territories there.
This article supports your discussion of Ukrainian rare earths. It isn't clear why Trump keeps pumping the "deal". He may not know that the deal is empty, but his handlers surely do.
Russia can - and should - take over all regions of Ukraine that it deems necessary to its security, including that of the citizens of the new oblasts. After that is done, there will be very few natural or industrial resources available to Westerners, whether they have papers to show ownership or not.
the European countries are "rewarded" with Ukrainians, all kinds of them. As for the Americans, they have lost a lot of money. "MONACO BATTALION: HOW UKRAINE’S ELITES HIDE THEIR CHILDREN FROM MOBILIZATION IN EUROPE: While ordinary Ukrainians die on the battlefield, the children of top politicians and business leaders enjoy a life of luxury abroad."
Who has won is not the question, who has lost is. Ukrainians a whole generation is jumping overboard the SS Titanic, a beautiful country and beautiful people massacred and sacrificed to EU standards of corruption, fraude and extortion.
Just wringing your hands over who has lost, who has been slaughtered by a vicious West doesn't accomplish anything if you don't cut off the heads of the vipers who did the killing.
If those vipers killed people and waltzed away happy that they enriched their military industrial complexes (Rhinemetall, the US, etc.), enjoying record profits from sales of overpriced energy (the US), while nailing down their control over their vassal stooges (the US), then they've won.
All you accomplish by wringing your hands about their victims while doing nothing to defeat those doing evil is you reinforce their belief that they can do anything to anyone and get away with it.
It's really that bad. Whether Russia has the willpower to engage in serious war against the foul Western alliance that has poured soldiers, weapons, and treasure into killing Russians, to fight a war now instead of a totally civilization-ending war later, is an open question.
For London and Paris submarines, and in the case of France, air-launched cruise missiles, make it difficult, but not impossible, because the arsenals are small and can be taken out in principle.
Germany should be smoldering ruins now, and Russian tanks should be making their way to occupy it, that is correct, Brussels too.
Washington is impossible right now but some missile strikes on some MIC corporate headquarters (Lockheed Martin would be a good pick) and some US oligarch mansions would be a good thing and should have already been done. With a public statement from Putin "we are even now and won't touch you again if you never touch us; let's think about developing friendship from here on". But without repaying the blood debt, which right now stands in the thousands, and has to be repaid with the blood of US elites (politicians, MIC execs and billionaires), not US soldiers (who are completely disposable) if it is to re-enforce deterrence, the current attempt at normalizing relationships is normalizing the catastrophic strategic loss for Russia.
I have to say, he makes a good point. Nothing prevents Russia from wiping out US tech, media and MIC execs any time they step out of the US. No more international travel for them by private aircraft, no more relaxing cruises on their yachts in tropical waters.
I don't think Russia either needs or wants to "march on" the clown car capitals. But there is a building viewpoint within Russia that it is time to inflict serious pain on those people and countries who thought it was a good idea to kill Russians and to destroy Russia.
Let's play a game called Global Nuclear War. Fortunately, the Russian authorities are not stupid and will not try anything that will tempt an American nuclear response. Perhaps "revenge is a dish best served cold" may be more appropriate.
"...the current attempt at normalizing relationships is normalizing the catastrophic strategic loss for Russia. How hard is that to understand?" It is impossible to understand such speculative, illogical gibberish.
It’s easy yesterday a whole investigation on a French broadcast, CNN affiliated…Trump is all over his ears a KGB agent. Nobody can say for sure Putin isn’t a CIA agent, some Trojan Horse they brought in to destroy from the inside the Brics multipolarity, and if you want some more of this daydreaming, Trump giving Taiwan to Xi and Xi giving in return Ukraine, are you still insisting on some willpower, or on the installation of the Fourth Reich…clown world?
The American Empire is in decline already. The same Oligarchy responsible for the Ukraine war have been conducting color revolutions all around the globe. The "global south" is well aware of the criminality of the American Oligarchy. They have kicked Africom out of the Sahel. Trump is in retreat to "Fortress America". The technofeudalists are maneuvering to create their own private fiefdoms.
Will the Oligarchy continue to "win"? Yes, until the American population awakens to this "plot". Will Americans ever understand it? Probably not in this decade.
The end of the ongoing Bankers War on Russia should include the investigation and imprisonment of those who agitated and promoted the war of aggression. The piggish warmonger Nuland-Kagan is personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings. She must be punished. There are other war criminals who deserve prison term and total expropriation of their wealth. Ursula is one of them.
The level of concerned trolling on many of the alt-forums that I frequent (not all are war-related) have definitely abated significantly... for the last few, I think they are continueing out of habit, or out of spite - even as their paychecks to repeat dross have been cut to zero. After all, they likely have no other zero real skills.....
What's bollocks is that you don't seem to realize that US and EU financed Kievan atrocities in Kursk oblast and elsewhere in Ukraine and Russia are generating a growing desire for revenge.
Kiev's nazis, paid, armed and trained by the US and the EU, hung a woman from wire and tortured her to death. That's just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of atrocities committed by the US's and EU's war effort against Russia. Add to that the gall of vicious US and EU propaganda claiming Russians are committing those atrocities and not the nazi scum the US and EU support.
If you think Russians are just going to ignore all that, you're making the same mistake the delusional and evil "elites" in the EU and US are making.
It does worry me. The "coalition of the willing" has weak military forces that can't win, but can die messy deaths, that could lead to nuclear war. They also have some cards - what if the EU told Trump, that the US needs the EU to have any hope against China. If the US doesn't assist Ukraine, then the EU will not co-operate with attempts to sanction China, instead signing trade agreements.
The US is short of allies in Asia - Trump's statements about asking ASEAN countries to check Iranian shipping going through the Malacca Straits shows how weak they are, as there is no way Indonesia or Malaysia will act against BRICS+, and Singapore will not do anything to disrupt China's oil supply. Japan, South Korea and the Philippines have been remarkably quiet.
How dare Sir Queer use that phrase. It's a sly way of suggesting the whole British population is in support of his words. He should wash his mouth out. I'm not Willing. And people who say " won't you fight for your country then". This isn't my country. This dreadful suburb of littered roads and fast food shops . My country is the one portrayed in Eric Ravilious pictures and it doesn't exist any more. And that was what WW2 conscripts were told they were fighting to keep and no sooner had the conflict ended than the desecration began
I think more Europeans take a growing domestic tyranny more seriously than any other threat, except for the faithful BBC audience that continue to roll up their sleeve just as Auntie tells them to.
All that gay BSM and mindfuckery inflicted on each new crop of potential managerial class boys in British public schools really does make their management's control later on in life easier.
Starmer is shaping up to be the worst prime minister in the history of the UK. I mean he has stiff competition to be the worst PM, Truss, Sunak, BoJo, Cameron, Gordon Brown, but seems to be winning.
Sunak is said to have resigned because he didn't want to be a War PM. In other words, peace was never an option, the decision to go to war had already been made when Sunak was in office and he wanted to get out while he could.
Circumcision identifies no one ethnically in the States. Pediatricians decided in the 60s to circumcise all males born in the U.S. based on fraudulent studies showing health benefits to the procedure. Those studies ignored the dangers of the procedure, which are about as prevalent as the health benefits. During the 60s and 70s, it was illegal in many states to refuse a doctor's orders, so parent's didn't have a choice on circumcising their boys.
The Germans identified Jewish boys and men by inspecting the individual for a foreskin. That's the only reason most native born U.S. Gen X men lack one.
A network of privately educated and socialised City of London executives, pretty simple concept. It's weird to not understand that and think it's something else
Just so people are clear. I hate Blair, and think he ruined this country. I did not agree with anything he did. But he was good at what he did, which is why he was successful in ruining the country. If you look at who benefited from his policies (the rich), they will say he did a great job.
True or not, both still pieces of shit. I would say the same of the uber-competent Bill Clinton. Now G.W. Bush was an incompetent piece of shit, just like Starmer. All of these people are/were menaces to their countries and the world.
He rabidly hates the British people. I don't think any of the others did. They may have been indifferent to what happened to the British, but Stasi Starmer actively hates them.
By getting Conscription enacted in law in Britain. Be careful 'many a true word is spoken in jest' and saying that the Rothschild's and the Rockefellers paid for the Holocaust is not being a Holocaust (and when the FUCK did it start getting called that) DENIER. And I can SAY THIS on Substack but NOT on You Tube. How is that eh.
It's really astonishing when you look at these so-called "leaders" and who their kids are, who they are married to, and who they are. At only 0.2% of the world's population, the jew shouldn't appear very often, and yet an astonishing number of them are jews, are married to jews, or they have married their kids off to jews. It's almost like there's been an infiltration of families. Keir Starmer's wife is a jew, and his kids are jews, and he converted to their so-called "religion." That alone explains why he is inexplicably anti-British (or more broadly, anti-White).
What if the British high commnadment think they are winning? Not a joke. Consider this. The decision was taken to keep the pressure on Syria and it finally paid off ! Israel's longterm enemy is no longer around and probably never will be. WHAT A BLOW. Dont you think this can have strenghthen the position of the most beligerent elements of the British deep state? Unlike most commenters I think they will send troops on the ground since tons of money are going to be diverted from the budget into the defense industry behemoths such as British Aerospace. Furthermore this troops will be the perfect alibi to then pull Poland, the Baltics and Romania into the war. The perfect wasteland for a 4B (British) Build Back Better City or London much need new wave of debt based investment. Consider a list like this:
-UK - 2 brigades
- France - 2 brigades
- Germany - 2 brigades
- Poland- 2 brigades
- Romania - 2 brigades
- Finland -1 brigade
- Baltics - 3 brigades, one each.
- Sweeden - 1 brigade
- Danemark - 1 Brigade
- Netherlands - 1 brigade
- Czech Republic - 1 brigade
- Greece - 1 Brigade
- Bulgaria - 1 Brigade
- Norway - 1 Brigade
- Portugal - 1 Brigade
- Spain - 1 Brigade
- Canada - 1 Brigade
- Italy - 1 Brigade
25 brigades which could double in a few months plus tens of airforce wings. Impossible? Why?
"...stones rearranged in their countries." is a possibility, yet RU may choose the style & confidence display of burning the forces once they land, as you state.
why arent you a little bit more polite? I didnt add anything substantial to your comment because your comment wasnt substantial. You claim that there will be no intervention because of fear to Oreshnik? That's everything you can say? That's "substantial"? Everything points to a real intervention, so you're wrong.
Yes that's my position. Russia has won the arms race. You don't go to war when you can't win. My statement essentially says that, unless these countries are willing to go to war with Russia (war, not an SMO) then they won't do it. If they are prepared to to go to war with Russia, they will. I don't believe they are ready or willing to go to war with Russia. They've spent the last 50 years not going to war with Russia. They're idiots but not suicidal.
Telling me I'm wrong when neither of us knows is a bit silly.
Communication and coordination among that many disparate countries, cultures, and languages is impossibly complex. They will not be able to react or counteract Russian tactics. Furthermore, any attempt to move or assemble these kinds of numbers on the battlefield will be immediately visible to Russian ISR and dealt with before they can be deployed to the front or become any kind of threat... Chip
NATO is still working. It's designed to take nation states money and give it to, mostly US based, arms companies. Its purpose to keep Russia busy is also still working although the US now wants EU nations to start fighting to avoid the US being drawn in with Russia using Article 5. The US is using the EU like a proxy just like Ukraine.
NATO has already done proof of concept with their mismatched armaments and old Soviet weaponry supply to Ukraine, and running out of stock on several items 3 years into this debacle. And that, after having 8 years to prepare...
Logistics is what war is about. That's why it wrecks economies.
On paper these forces exist, and more, but a 25 Brigade total assumes that all nations listed will particpate, and be able to rapidly deploy, and be kept supplied. The British Army at least could only really send light infantry units, and keep them combat supplied for a few weeks. The German Army much the same, and generally ammo stocks are low everywhere. Air defence is perilously weak and any attempt to deploy would missile and air delivered interdiction efforts. NATO would be forced to deploy air assets into harms way.
This has all the ingredients to turn very rapidly into a military debacle. Indeed many feel that this is in fact the plan, to send a tripwire force that Russia is bound to attack and overwhelm in the hope that the USA then gets involved. Or maybe they think Russia is bluffing? However it is my view that such an intervention force would trigger a general war in Europe and nations like the UK would be subject to direct attack from a Russia who have been backed into a corner. The USA then has a choice to walk/run or get involved. And direct US involvement means WW3 and MAD. So I think they will abandon NATO at that point, de facto or de jure.
They will troops,regular troops who will get killed then we will hear CONSCRIPTION is a necessity. They are creating the pretext to justify the course of action they have already decided upon.
25 Brigades is 8 division equivalents composed of troops from 18 different nations. Each equipped with slightly different TOE, each with slightly different logistics requirements entering the fight far away from the home logistic bases for each countries contingents. I also suspect that some of your numbers are pretty optimistic. Who would command ? What would happen when their rear areas come under fire. Its certainly possible with a year of preparation and buildup. What could Russia mobilize in that year ?
It’s failing, Macron asked his potential war industry to speed up its production, they asked him and what if the whole war is cancelled? Within 2 years he has to step aside, who will be paying for it? Moreover can you stop a war industry and doing business like nothing happened to the common markets?
After the coup the country was sold to Brussles. Then the country was sold again to the UK for 100 years of support. Then the country was sold again to Trump for continuing to supply weapons. This is what Western "freedom" means.
Macron: "Ukraine is a sovereign country. If it asks for allied troops to be present on its territory, it is not up to Russia to decide whether to agree or not,"
Ukraine is not a sovereign country. After the 2014 coup, the US took control of the Ukrainian State's security, intelligence, military and foreign policy.
Of course Russia will not agree and will decide the fate of these troops, just as they have the various NATO "advisors" and mercenaries to date.
No indeed, Putin cannot tell Macron et al what to do. But he can tell them what Russia will do if they do it. And he has..
So, what are they waiting for? Come on get stuck in eurotwits, and finally bring this ramshackle european arm of the western hegemon along with NATO, to an inglorious end.
Think, think twice and get all think tanks in emergency, a 30 days ceasefire would result in a catastrophy for Ukraine and EU warlords, all EU NATO can only produce 25% of what Russia’s war industry can pile up, now imagine the restart of the war after those 30 days what the outcome will be, Musk won’t have to go to Mars Ukraine will be reshaped in a Martian desert.
NATO troops in Ukraine would not be a Special Military Operation for Russia. It would be war, that would bring with it a whole different level of destruction for Ukraine and possibly wider. Russia is almost on a war footing, the West have no idea what it would take to get there especially when their shipping start to sink.
Has anyone in charge actually explained convincingly to the people how the war between Russia and Ukraine is anyone else's concern?
Or has the Z-man successfully conned everyone that Russia is trying to take over the world?
Depending on how successfully they have all performed, when the EU zone soldiers (et al) start returning from Ukraine in bags there will hopefully be a huge public backlash. Starting in France.
The bottom line is that whatever they think and whatever lies they tell, none of European leaders can actually get stuck into a war in Ukraine, not on their ownsomes. And they all know this. Ukraine knows this too. This is just more posturing to try to get the US sucked in. Trump knows this. Will the US get sucked in? Not on your nellie.
You're normally spot on Jullianne, but you've got this the wrong way round. Of course the Europeans can't effectively fight Russia, even with the US they can't. Ukraine and the EU are not posturing to get Trump drawn in. Trump is playacting, pretending he's withdrawing and abandoning Ukraine and the EU; but Starlink is still up, he's still sending arms, what's left of them. Both the US and EU have run out of arms. That's what the pause or ceasefire is about. A chance for the US to get the EU to rebuild, rearm and give lots of money from social programs to the US arms industry.
Hegseth explicitly said the US wants a 'division of labour'. The EU to be bled dry in Ukraine and the US to focus on China. All the EU leaders are doing is exactly what they were told by the US to do and say to their tax payers. Word for word. 'ball's in Putin's court', (non existent) threat to EU from Russia etc etc.
The people I feel sorry for,one person actually are young American USA men who have just got French citizenship after the most strenuous efforts and just in time to get sent to a war and get their legs blown off. What a bum deal.
What you feel & call a bum-deal (tragedy, tragi-comedy ?), others see as poetic-justice or folly or farse or irony or, simply and objectively, misfortune.
There's a growing contingent in Russia that welcomes the sending of troops from the EU and US into Ukraine, because then a necessary and much more violent war will start. Increasingly many Russians feel that the West's war on Russia (which is what Ukraine is) has to be settled with violent pain dealt to both the EU and the US in order to teach them for another few generations that screwing with Russia leads to pain and destruction within their countries.
There is widespread sentiment for a corollary of that violent pain thing, in that Ukraine must cease to exist as a country.
Those people embracing the strong form of the "settle this once and for all" sentiment also feel that toy countries that have proven themselves unworthy of existence (the Baltics) should also cease to exist and that those countries bordering the Baltic (Denmark, Sweden, and Finland) either have to become neutral again or face massive destruction.
For the others, countries like Poland, Germany, France, England, and even the US, the feeling is they have to feel what war is like within their own countries, perhaps with Russia removing the UK and France from the list of nuclear powers.
That's surprisingly easy to do. The UK as a nuclear power boils down to a single ballistic missile sub on patrol. Kill that one sub, for example, when it is entering or leaving port on rotation, and the UK cannot retaliate. The UK has zero other strategic nuclear assets that Russia cannot easily destroy in port or in depots. That's the nearly fake "deterrent" the UK has as a result of being able to sortie only one ballistic sub at a time.
France is even easier, as they no longer have the resources to always have at least one ballistic sub on patrol. They frequently have none on patrol, meaning Russia can strike easily reached targets with tactical nukes and France cannot retaliate with a nuclear strike. Although France has about 290 nukes compared to the mere 120 active nukes the UK has, those French nukes are mostly in storage or waiting for the occasional ballistic sub sortie, on a French carrier that spends most of its time in port, or in storage waiting for Rafael fighter bombers, which will no longer exist after a Russian strike on their airports. All those assets are very easy to strike with tactical nukes.
The bottom line is that in about ten minutes Russia can eliminate the UK and France as nuclear powers. Is the US going to launch nukes at Russia for that? Nobody seriously believes that the US will trade Chicago, New York, Washington, LA and many other cities just to keep up the pretext that the UK and France are genuine nuclear powers.
Europe is not really the point in your argument. It is the US. I saw no mention of what it would take to cause the US real pain without a barrage of return missiles. And in the end it is the USA (and their rulers) that is behind all this.
"I saw no mention of what it would take to cause the US real pain without a barrage of return missiles. "
Fair comment. When it comes to war between the US and Russia the US has many, many targets that Russia could strike which would not cause city killing exchanges while Russia presents virtually no such targets to the US. That's a result of the US being over-extended around the world with 800 military bases outside the US and what? ten or so active carrier task forces at sea.
In a matter of minutes, Russia could vaporize all of the US's carrier task forces. Those are all far enough at sea that Russia could literally vaporize them and nobody outside the task forces would notice anything except a very bright light on the horizon for the task forces near the Persian Gulf.
Russia could also vaporize the US base at Diego Garcia island without anybody noticing it. Russia could strike US nuclear weapons depots in Europe and key bases, such as Ramstein in Germany, the Aegis Ashore installation at Redizkowo, Poland, and US bases in Romania, the Baltics, Poland, and so on.
But Russia doesn't have 800 bases outside of Russia. It has two tiny ones in Syria, and that's pretty much it. All the other bases are in Russia itself. The US can't strike the Russian military without striking Russia itself.
In contrast, Russia can strike US bases outside of the US all day long, defanging the US's ability to "project force" overseas, without ever touching the US homeland.
People in the west keep barking about "Oh, Russia isn't ever going to use nuclear weapons because it doesn't want the US to nuke Moscow," but that same argument also applies to the US. It turns out those strategic arsenals on both sides aren't very useful because they are doomsday weapons.
That they are doomsday weapons also gives the lie to "automatic escalation" arguments. In point of fact, nobody in the US is going to say, "I know, let's kill three hundred million Americans right now because Russia just nuked the Truman task force cruising off Yemen. That's a great idea!"
The automatic escalation only kicks in when you cross the line to killing cities in the other side's homeland. Russia isn't going to be the first to do that and neither is the US. Anybody who thinks the US is going to kill hundreds of millions of its own people because the EU was stupid enough to start a war with Russia hasn't been paying attention.
Consider what would happen if Russia detonates a posieden autonomous torpedo under an Air craft carrier strike group? It would possibly disappear without a trace giving Russia a high level of deniability. That's one major reason the US cannot go to war against Russia in Ukraine. How exactly could they cross the Atlantic to Europe with their heavy equipment?
Putin could end this by publicly announcing that he will launch an ICBM without nukes from Pacific across the USA and Washington DC, over Europe and Ukraine and down somewhere north pole.
That would make our largest voting block - women - pay attention because they will understand they will die is they stay silent. Fear or loss of baby-killing are two ways to make women get off their thumbs and do something besides crushing manhood, fatherhood, suppressing good advances or changes their VagFeelies are not excited about.
You overestimate their ability their ability to respond to danger logically. Have you ever seen a woman in a serious car accident? What makes you think they'd handle The Apocalypse any better?
"Have you ever seen a woman in a serious car accident?" Yes I have. In that case they did just fine, responding logically and with solid control.
I also know women who are absolutely first rate physicians, including emergency physicians, who have nerves of steel when dealing with emergencies. I know one female emergency room doctor who worked in a big city emergency room in the US (lots of traumatic injury) who three times in her career in extreme emergencies tore open a victim's chest to manually massage the heart to try to get it started, succeeding once in saving a life.
I also know plenty of women pilots who have been absolutely rock solid in emergency situations. My personal opinion is that women make better pilots in civilian operations than men, because they tend to be more detail oriented and the younger ones don't have any testosterone issues about following checklists.
As Russia proved in WW2, women make courageous medical staff, pilots, and also make excellent snipers. In Stalingrad when the German sixth army first made contact and stormed the outskirts of the city the Panzer troops were shocked to discover they had been held up for days by antiaircraft batteries who had lowered their guns to zero elevation to fire point blank at tanks, none of the crews abandoning their positions but fighting to the death. All of those crews were women, mostly young women in their late teens and early twenties.
Just saying, women can handle the Apocalypse just as well as men. I think culture has a lot to do with it, as snowflake culture in the US doesn't exactly prepare either men or women for the apocalypse. But man, no way would I underestimate the ability of, say, Russian women to pick up a Kalashnikov and fight.
In addition to the Stentorian's point, there is a lot of risk there in doing a test where you send your trajectory over an opponent nation. You're one idiot politician away from apocalypse. When you get close to the point of contact, the risk of inadvertent conflict is high, always.
Not all men are made of the same stuff, and you only find this out when you put them to the test. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the lack of freezing in fear I had in civilian life applied when I was under fire. I watched soldiers who suffered from it, unfortunately, good people. The kind of politicians we have today does not bode well.
This nuclear severance plan is a nonstarter. There's just too much risk involved. If an error is made, nuclear release and you lose several cities. Just because France can't always have a SSBN on patrol doesn't mean that they don't have a reciprocal agreement with Great Britain, or that they won't avoid a sabotage attempt, put to sea and fire off their missiles, or fire whatever surviving land-based arms they have. Too much risk, and the MoD people are more risk-averse than that, I think. It's a desperation move.
Instead, tempt them to use their arms by forging forward. Either they will or they won't. You can be assured their first move will be tactical, not strategic. If they strike Russians, reciprocate appropriately. It would be extra juicy if the reciprocation were to happen along lines of communication in Galicia. Kill lots of Nazis along the way, do the world a favor.
"Just because France can't always have a SSBN on patrol doesn't mean that they don't have a reciprocal agreement with Great Britain, or that they won't avoid a sabotage attempt, put to sea and fire off their missiles, or fire whatever surviving land-based arms they have."
Respectfully disagree.
For starters, Russia easily could strike both UK and French nuclear weapons simultaneously.
The SSBNs they don't have on patrol don't have missiles loaded in their tubes - they're in refit or getting outfitted for patrol and the missiles go in last. It takes a long time, days, to put the missiles into the vertical launch tubes so they can fire.
Both UK and French SSBN bases are on the coast, of course, not deep inland. Russian hypersonic missiles launched from Russian subs would get to those bases and detonate within 30 seconds of launch. Even if the tubes were full and the subs were in the water in port and fully crewed with crews at the ready, that's far, far too little time for the SSBN to launch.
It's the same with nuclear weapons storage facilities, especially in the UK, which is a tiny country where no part of it is more than, what? 30 seconds? flight time for a hypersonic missile launched just offshore. Russian subs don't have to surface to launch those. Like US subs, they can launch from fifty feet or even more underwater.
In a first strike against UK and French nukes Russia wouldn't use sabotage. It would be hypersonic missiles launched from subs that delivered tactical nukes with yields around 10 kilotons, more than ample to guarantee destruction of their targets, for example, the French sub base at Île Longue across the bay from Brest. The low yield would destroy the base without damaging Brest at all. Likewise, nuking the French carrier at its base in Toulon could use a small nuke, five or ten kilotons. The dockyards are so large and the distance between the carrier to actual population is so big that they could use 10 kt without significantly damaging Toulon. If they really wanted to spare civilians, they could use a mere 1 or 2 kilotons.
I agree that the Brits and the French might have a reciprocal agreement, although it's stretching the imagination to think either the Brits or the French would volunteer to lose their entire country just because the other party to the agreement got de-nuclearized.
The UK sub base at Faslane and the weapons depot in Coulport servicing Faslane are both far from population centers in fjords ("Lochs") in Scotland. The main UK nuclear weapons storage center in Burghfield is stupidly close to Reading, but even there a 10 kt burst would leave almost all of Reading untouched. The French nuclear weapons storage depot is close to the town of Istres, but it's so far from Marseille that the only thing the residents of Marseilles would notice would be a bright flash on the northwestern horizon. Take out the depot at Istres and the French don't have any land based nukes to deliver with their aircraft.
"or fire whatever surviving land-based arms they have."
The Brits don't have any land-based arms. They put all their eggs in the Trident missile warhead basket. They don't have the money to maintain a nuclear arsenal other than those missile warheads, and they can't just pick up a Trident warhead and deliver it by plane. In fact, the Brits don't even have the money to maintain their Trident warhead arsenal. Of the 200+ warheads their government has authorized they only have about 120 functional ones, so few that when they send their one sub at a time on patrol all of the tubes are not full and the Trident missiles don't have as many warheads loaded as they are capable of carrying.
The only land-based arms the French have are those that could be delivered by Rafael fighter-bombers. The problem with that is Rafael aircraft are highly vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes with tactical nuclear weapons. They are very, very soft targets, not hardened missile silos that can ride out a multi-hundred kiloton ground burst nearby. Between eliminating French depots and airports that host Rafaels, France doesn't really have a land-based deterrent.
The French would argue that of course with their usual line of stupid arguments, like "of course in a crisis we would disperse our Rafaels and nukes around the country." That's stupid because a nuclear decapitation strike would come out of the blue long before any Rafaels would be dispersed. It also would come out of the blue with no notice at all on coastal locations and a couple of minutes to air bases deep inside France, far too much time for anybody to identify the launch from near shore as a hypersonic missile, determine it is a threat, generate a valid nuclear launch order, get crew into a Rafael, fire the danged thing up, and taxi and take off and get far enough away to escape a nuke.
France also has limited funds: dispersing nukes is phenomenally expensive. That's why even the US clumps them together into a relatively limited number of storage depots where they can be defended at bearable cost. France doesn't have the money to defend nukes that have been dispersed to forty or fifty locations. Their military is also loath to do that, since dispersing nukes to very many locations guarantees that a Russian decapitation strike would involve very many ground bursts, with associated collateral damage.
The bottom line is that if Russia struck both the UK and France simultaneously, choosing a time when they could nail the one UK SSBN on patrol and when France had no SSBNs on patrol, Russia really could wipe out the nuclear deterrents of both UK and France, including their nuclear weapons labs and storage locations for raw components like plutonium, in about ten minutes, leaving no deliverable nuclear weapons in their inventories.
They could also do that with surprisingly few civilian casualties with no city killing, the exception being the small town of Istres. That has 44,000 people living in it, of which about a third would likely get killed by a strike on the French nuclear weapons storage depot just outside of Istres. The UK/US nuclear weapons depot in Lakenheath, mercifully, is far from even smaller towns. Only the village of Lakenheath itself, over a mile away, is nearby with a population of about 4,000.
Suppose either France or the UK had a nuke somewhere else, like in a US or NATO base in Europe? Would they try to use it against a city in Russia in revenge? If they did that, Russia would not only have a good chance of stopping it (outstanding air defense in Russia these days), it would absolutely annihilate the UK and France, striking all major cities. I don't see either the UK or France rushing to complete extinction over loss of their nuclear arsenals.
By the way, it wouldn't be a desperation move. It would be a harsh move, knocking the teeth out of somebody who made the mistake of screwing with Russia. That's the point of such a move, to teach a lesson to those who forgot how Russians dealt with Germans after 1945.
Just saying, the so-called "nuclear deterrents" of the UK and France are fake deterrents, a result of both the UK and France not having enough money to maintain a survivable nuclear deterrent against a far superior nuclear power like Russia. Russia could destroy them if it wanted to knock the teeth out of those imbeciles. I'm not recommending that, but I'm pointing out that the increasing numbers of people in Russia who want a harsh war with the UK and France do have some military options on their side that are not usually considered by Western audiences.
Ultimately, both the UK and France depend on the US for their nuclear umbrella. But there is no rational military planner either in the US or in Europe who believes the US is going to start a city-killing nuclear exchange with Russia, which would for sure kill over 100 million Americans, just because a few thousand French people died in a small village in the South of France. No way is the US going to give up, say, LA, Silicon Valley, New York, and all the rest for that, and every sensible person knows that.
Not true that the bases at Faslane and Coulport are far from population centres. They are half an hour from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The English occupiers strategically placed the nukes in their Scottish colony and don't give a flying you know what if Scotland gets nuked.
On the right side in section 1, enter "Coulport, Scotland" and press the go button. The map will pan and zoom to coulport. In the "choose a warhead yield" enter 10. In the basic options check Surface, for a surface burst, and then press the Detonate button.
The outermost light gray ring is just light damage, broken windows. Damage from that blast doesn't come remotely close to Glasgow. You could set off 100 kilotons (try it... change the 10 to 100 and press the Detonate button again) and still, nowhere near Glasgow.
In fact, a 10 kt blast in Coulport wouldn't even break windows in Ardentinny, on the other side of Loch Long from Coulport. Amazing, but true.
Russian hypersonic missiles are very accurate. They don't have to use big yields. They can afford to use small yields, like 10 kt, which would well and truly destroy the storage depot, while still sparing civilian populations. That's exactly what Russia would do if it wanted to denuclearize the UK and France.
What many people fail to consider when they speak of nuclear weapons is that possession of nuclear weapons is meaningless. What is of major consideration is the ability to deliver nuclear strikes (delivery systems). Now when it comes to nuclear delivery systems, Russia has Ship launched, submarine launched, Submarine launched autonomous nuclear torpedoes, silo launched ICBMs, mobile launched ICBMs, Air launched cruise missiles. Just from open source the Russians have a ridiculous array of delivery systems. The world's populations should be breathing a sigh of relief the Russian leadership is so restrained, patient, responsible and pragmatic in their approach to war.
The general points you make are correct, but you are mixing up France and the UK a bit.
France takes its independent deterrent very seriously since De Gaulle's days, and it is in a much better shape than the UK. It is the UK subs that are old and decrepit and can barely be kept afloat. The two newest French Triomphant SSBNs were built in the 2000s, while the newest UK Vanguard ones date to 1995 and 1998.
The French also have air-launched nuclear cruise missiles.
The UK likely has them too -- the Storm Shadows can certainly carry nuclear warheads -- but the French ASMP flies at Mach 3 so it's a much more dangerous delivery system.
In a hypothetical direct war to deal with the UK Russia sinks the one SSBN on patrol and nukes Clyde where the other three are parked, takes out a few airfields in the UK and a few key control centers with tactical nukes, and that's it. Then the UK is at the Kremlin's mercy regarding whether a proper strategic countervalue strike is carried out or not.
With France it is more difficult -- they may have two SSBNs on patrol, plus we don't truly know where the ALCMs are deployed around Europe and how quickly they might get them up in the air before they are taken out. A lot of objects around Europe would have to be taken out to make sure.
You're making some assumptions that are not true. For example, that the Triomphant SSBNs are newer than the UK's SSBNs doesn't mean that the French keep at least one of them at sea all of the time.
In point of fact, the French *do not* keep at least one SSBN at sea all the time. They can't afford it. There are many surprisingly long periods of time when the French have *no* SSBNs at sea. They're in port where they can be easily seen by Russian satellites.
That the French have air-launched nuclear missiles is fine, but those are launched by Rafaels. Eliminate the Rafaels, and eliminate the storage locations for those missiles and you eliminate the French deterrent. That's not hard to do for Russia in a matter of minutes and it involves a trivially small number of base locations, about twenty if you really want to make sure.
They don't keep Rafaels loaded up with nuclear weapons (or those weapons stored nearby) in many locations because it's too expensive to guard nuclear weapons in many different locations.
The French also don't forward-base (keep them outside of France) their nukes precisely because they do want to keep making De Gaulle noises about having an independent deterrent. Where they keep their nukes is well known, again, a result of the cost factor in protecting them together with the need to have special protective measures which are visible to commercial satellites.
The forward basing adversary is the US, which makes a fetish of spreading nuclear weapons all around the world. But even there the US reduces its forward basing to a manageable number of locations in Europe, fewer than ten, and those are well known because of the distinctive protective measures, again, visible from space, that the US nuclear military bureaucracy uses to guard its devices. It's not easy, not even for the US, to guard lots of nukes in many overseas locations. That's one reason why the US no longer has nukes on surface ships in the US navy: too hard and too expensive to guard them.
By the way, I'd like to shout out to Simplicius for this sub, as reading in the comments here is how I got onto this nuclear thing. Somebody in a comments thread here suggested reading Daniel Ellsberg's memoir, which I did, and that made me realize that not only I didn't know anything about a pretty darned near important subject these days (nukes) but also that there were lots and lots of very good books you can read.
A few months of reading later and I feel like the blindfold I was wearing before has come off.
I meant Daniel Ellsberg's fine memoir, "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner", a mere $16.46 in hardcover on Amazon.
It's an outstanding book. One of the interesting things about it is how it reveals Ellsberg to be so much more than the cardboard cutout, anti-Vietnam-war, Enemy of the State that the ever more war-centric US political sewer and their media allies make him out to be.
Time was that in the US there was a genuinely antiwar political movement that included a wide spectrum of Americans. No more, as the Dems, formerly the political home of so many antiwar Americans, has become the party of genocide and endless wars.
The book also reveals the endless lies about the US's nuclear war infrastructure, such as the nonstop lies about only the President being able to command a nuclear attack. When you read the details about how hundreds, possibly thousands, of people could have done that in the past you'll never again believe them when they tell you that this time, with current systems, only the President can do it.
This area is Russia,it always was and remains so. It has also always been the nightmare for all Russian rulers. A long,long border with no natural defensive features. No Russian ruler ever allowed threats,real or imagined along this border,as the Americans well knew
As Brian Berletic is saying for weeks on The New Atlas channel, USA ordered Europe to take on Russia while they will handle Iran and China. Is not that UK & Co are going for themselves ignoring the USA advice or orders, but contrary.
And this week we also had Karaganov stressing in the most explicit terms that the US is not going to ever launch nukes at Russia to defend Europe, that is "axiomatic" in his words.
Well, what is the Kremlin waiting for then?
BTW, Russia already got hit with nukes several times in this war, but the Kremlin kept it secret because it would have been too embarrassing to admit it. After all, if you officially announce "Our ammo depot in Toropets was destroyed by a NATO nuclear missile, the Khakhovka dam was blown up by a SADM, several of our airfields were hit with small tactical nukes too", then what is the decision tree after that?
1) You launch strategic strikes in retaliation
2) You don't, in which case nuclear attacks against you have suddenly become OK and can expand, just as happened with everything else previously unthinkable in this war.
So the Kremlin took the third option, to control the situation by controlling the information.
But you can't suppress obvious facts from public footage and basic logic.
Karaganov either didn't pay attention to the public footage and was never told the truth because he is not part of the small circle of people who get briefed, or he is part of the suppression of information effort.
Either way, escalation dominance in this war has been 100% on the side of the West so far. Up to and including the use of tactical nukes on Russian soil.
So why would boots on the ground in Ukraine finally force the cowards in the Kremlin to act?
P.S. It is an interesting question whose nukes it was that were used on Russia? It was always assumed it was the US doing it, by default, but maybe not. Officially the UK has no tactical nukes, so if it wasn't the US, it would have been France. Or Israel joined the party perhaps secretly and provided some. Or the UK does in fact have tactical nukes...
USAID wasn't shut down, but optimized. As Rubio said, from over 3000 projects, the focus will be on the most important 1000. That means that coup d'etats, assassinations, media narrative will be the main focus, while gender agenda will be postponed for later date.
The Toropets is a ”mystery”. It could not have been drones that penetrated the underground storages. But it was no nukes. You have zero radiation emitting from those strikes. You have to present some evidences.
If nukes would have been used, you and I, wouldnt be surfing on Simplicius substack right now…
Fusion leaves practically no radiation. It is the primary stage that is dirty, but there are ways around that.
And you refuse to face the reality of the cold hard logic here. You admit that it could not have been drones, and you are almost getting there in terms of acknowledging that all those bunkers cannot explode all at once given how hardened they are and how widely separated they are, including with earthen barriers between them.
But when I ran the decision tree for you, it is still too much for you to accept.
Let's do it again.
It was a tactical nuke, on a single target. Then on another one some time later, and a few more. Salami slicing. It was also small nukes on military objects. Well, aside from the dam. But there is plausible deniability behind all of these strikes.
What do you do if you are the Kremlin?
Option 1): Announce to the world that NATO nuked you, then launch a strategic strike on NATO in response. Which is WWIII.
Option 2): Announce to the world that NATO nuked you, then do nothing. Which automatically invites much more such strikes, because why not? You have been painted as the concentration of all evil in the world, and you have had your nuclear bluff called. They won't strike your cities, but they will go hard with tactical nukes at demilitarizing you, and they can do it quite quickly using such means. Well, then you have the option of reverting to the first option, or surrendering.
Option 3): Absorb the hit and pretend it didn't happen, stalling for more time. More time for what exactly is not clear.
But as long as the damage is not critical, Option 3) is indeed a rational choice.
Besides, as far as we now it was Russia who first started using tactical nukes on ammo depots and underground bunkers. If you start throwing such accusations, that fact will be brought up immediately.
The other side is also keeping quite about it so far. Because they too are running the exact same decision tree. The difference is they are also acting much more boldly.
A 2016 investigation found radiation levels on Bikini Atoll as high as 639 mrem/yr (6.39 mSv/yr), well above the established safety standard for habitation.
Bikini was where the first fusion bomb was detonated.
Yep. And they need to scare the populace with Fear Of The Russians and Abandonment by the US so the population goes along with borrowing the money they need for military spending. Maximum propaganda focussed on the great unwashed. It is so manifestly stupid and evil. In fact on the continuum between Evil and Stupid it may require two dots. One at both extreme ends indicating 100% Stupid and 100% Evil.
America has destroyed itself fighting Russia, many folks in America are starving and homeless, those of us who ain't spend all our energy avoiding the scenario of becoming homeless and starving.
Correct. East, West, North, South…the decay is quite evident. Hollowed out shells of soul~less humans, or are they…. My heart is heavy, memories of the grandmother(s) will persist for some time. God will guide. 💙🇷🇺❤️🐈⬛
So far the consistent pattern in this war is that the Kremlin makes loud proclamations about how such and such action is unacceptable, then the West does it, and all that follows is the Kremlin tucking its tail between its legs after that.
Why would it be any different with the boots on the ground?
Which, BTW, have been on the ground unofficially for a very long time. Literal Germans, plus Poles, Americans, Brits, French and all other kinds of fascist scum were in Kursk slaughtering Russian civilians. The Kremlin had all legal grounds to finally punish someone properly (the punishment being measured in megatons; many megatons). It didn't even then.
Also, Medevedev just said the following on Twitter:
>Macron and Starmer are playing dumb. Time and again they are told that peacekeepers must be from non-NATO states. No, we will send tens of thousands – just lay it out – you want to give military aid to the neo-Nazis in Kiev. That means war with NATO. Consult with Trump, scumbags.
What does that mean? That peacekeepers other than the Russian army are in general OK as long as they are non-NATO. What does "non-NATO" mean here? Are Swiss, Japanese, South Koreans, Israeli, etc. "peacekeepers" OK?
Correct point. At least half of Russian casualties are a direct result of non-ukraine action. Especially storm shadow and scalp. Remember they also managed to convicne biden to launch atacms. I dont blame London and Paris for feeling emboldened.
Those weapons require u.s. troops to input targeting data and from what I've read at least one u.s. person is present at firing. Can't find an article right now doing a quick search though.
I have the same sentiments with that Medvedev tweet.
Frankly, I’m 50/50 on wether Russia will take the “gloves off” once the Anglo/Franco “peacekeepers” lands on UKR.
I do hope Russia sends a convincing message and they can start by taking Odessa, bombing totally the hell out all it’s ports that’s infested with western personnel and equipments.
That ceasefire will hapoen and I’m really curious if Russia will do something against it.
((Zelensky)) can declare a ceasefire any time he wishes. Unless it is convenient to Russia, they will simply continue bombing, shelling and advancing and ((Zelensky's)) conscripted army will be forced to run.
Soy boy Macron and Stasi Starmer, and whatever nonentity is German Chancellor, will throw a tantrum but Russia will continue to obliterate the Ukrainian army until it surrenders.
NATO are not idiots. They are not going to congregate all in the same place, they will disperse. It's not as if they are not aware of dispersion being the most important thing in this war.
Will there be some Iskanders on hotels and restaurants? Yeah, there will be. But the bulk of the force will be dispersed into the Soviet apartment blocks, and it will be untouchable.
Just as Sumy was used to launch the Kursk operation -- the city was half emptied after 2022, then the AFU and the NATO "mercenaries" moved in and occupied every building in the city, but keeping the remaining civilians in. Russia mostly can't touch them because of the human shield that the civilians are.
Recent history of NATO, USA, israel have, do, and would kill human shields without a pause.
Be ashamed that Russia, Yemen, Hizballah, Hamas, and Iran care more for the enemy's people then the enemy's gov.s care for their own people or any innocent families.
Sad that Christians, non-Zionist Jews, and Muslims under Arab Zionist leaders show us how much virtue and honor those 'terrorists' that are only ones actively fighting against genocide or further NATO aggression and more killings.
Sad most of the world is not worthy to wipe the asses of those fighters. Are you?
The war winning move Putin has had at his disposal quite literally at a snap of his finger from the start of the war remains there — nuke the border crossings with Poland and Romania and physically isolate Ukraine. Pretty much nobody will die in those strikes, especially if a warning is given in advance. Then, if Poland and Romania still insist on being a logistic base for attack on Russia, by starting to move NATO forces directly into Ukraine and repairing those logistic line, nuke the countries of Poland and Romania directly. But hopefully it will not come to that.
This was such an obvious thing to do from the start, and it accomplishes three goals simultaneously:
1) Maintain a humanitarian image -- Putin comes out and says "We need to stop the slaughter, on both sides, and prevent further war. To do it we need to isolate Ukraine, and this is the only way to accomplish that". But he won't kill anyone in the process if it is done right, he will just sever transport links.
2) Accomplish the most important operational war objective, which is to cut Ukraine off from NATO. No more ammo and, most importantly, no more drone components going in. Russia wins the war within a few months.
3) Scare the Europeans into backing off by having actual nukes used publicly right on their borders.
But for a long list of reasons that we have extensively discussed, Putin is too weak, scared and compromised by suspect loyalties to do something so obvious.
Ideally it would have been tested first with heavy conventional missiles, then see how quickly they repair the transport connections, but we are past that point now, unfortunately.
Now simultaneously transport links must be cut in an impossible to quickly repair way and Europe must be scared into backing down.
I don't know what childish games Macron or Starmer are playing, but there is no way the US is going to back them up in Ukraine. Trump could have handled this better, but they are dreaming if they think they can change his mind.
I can just imagine the motivation to the Russians if France and Germany enter Ukraine. They thought hunting Leopards was great, just think how that would go.
There are Nato troops already "fighting" under the guise of mercs (They die. call them a merc)... From Maripol and on wards, many instances posted on "sites" of their existence.
My belief..Russia is slow rolling this. (One of the reasons) every Russian soldier is highly valued, needed for upcoming war.
The ceasefire is just a western charade.
Russians see this as. Russia vs "the West".. not Ukraine. Ukraine is just the battleground.
We have a parasitic class on top of the "worlds ponzi scheme", War is needed to keep the lie alive.
The Anglo-French troops gambit is based on a critical assumption - that once those troops are in theatre the americans will simply not let such close allies engage the russian army on their own.
That's it, the whole thing is underpinned by that. Maybe Starmer and Macron know something we don't?
On the other hand, those two men are almost laughably pathetic. How France and Britain were come to be ruled by the most unmanly men is beyond me.
I would not bet against the U.S. coming to the aid of its European allies in the event their direct involvement in the war. Trump is completely unstable. Anything that he has said in the past can be reversed in the blink of an eye, only to be reversed again or altered in another blink.
On the matter of controlling US forces, the US president's authority is absolute.
Congress can declare war on another country, though such as Act of Congress requires the President's assent. And even if Congress does, the US President, as CIC (a position not subject to control by Congress or SCOTUS) can act however he wants, including doing nothing.
"How France and Britain were come to be ruled by the most unmanly men is beyond me."
Add Canada, Australia, NZ, to that list... Add most of the Western Anglo nations while you're at it.
Oh, but that answer is easy!
25 years of gluttonous excess, on the back of hollowed-out, financialised economies. The people and leaders are self-congratulatory alike.
These are the "good-time" leaders. When faced with anything but the most trite challenges they all go to water, or they make themselves look big until the problem hopefully goes away.
The result of hollowed-out economies based on pure debt spending is that productive activities are all shut down in favour of easy debt. This deindustrialisation and financialisation process is sped up with ridiculous policies like "Global Warming" and DEI.
In 2019 the whole system hit the wall. Please research quantitative easing, ZIRP and NIRP. The western financial system was at the bottom of a giant liquidity hole that had been dug for 20 years prior.
What followed was a desperate attempt to secure the next 10 years until 2030, starting with the convenient leak of a US military biological agent to facilitate the injection of 20 trillion dollars into the global economy to fill in some of that enormous liquidity hole.
Please research quantitative tightening, when it started, and how much has been repaid, and when it was repaid.
They have bought themselves 5% of precious interest rate cuts' worth of time to implement their "final solution".
This plan is to subjugate the remaining productive nations in the hope that their upside-down world can continue.
In my opinion, the essence of their idea is very similar to the Eoi and Morlocks.
The problem with that analysis (which i agree with) is that these people will sleepwalk us all into disaster. These leaders don't understand real consequences because they have never faced them. And this is the greatest danger of all
Agree, but there is a shift occurring in global politics which is currently being resisted as vehemently as possible. The same events currently occurring in Romania, Germany, and other places are simply the tip of the spear.
Yes, Wells is a good frame of reference, along with the other old favourites Orwell and Huxley. Dystopia is here in the West unless strong nations such as Russia can make the Morlocks face consequences. The populations in the West are largely broken and atomised and the disgusting little men with glasses and dull women that make up the nomenklatura and their armies of media and bureaucrats in the West rule by diktat with no consequences, living in luxury and privilege with nothing but contempt for the cultures and peoples they have destroyed over the last 40 years or so. Unless there is serious organisation against them, their way of life, their own families etc directly they will continue to morph in Morlocks.
This culture is so feminized nearly every man has a number of women standing on our testicles. Safety nazis, 911 on speed dial, lawfare, the legal procedure is the punishment with the damaging crimes women do are ignored or not illegal, False rape she is hidden from news while he is shouted about and if-when it is shown she lied, well, 'don't do again' and his like has been crippled, 'arrested for Rape' on every background check for employment, housing, ...
When I was a young man in the late 1970's early 1980's the men I worked with and the young men I went to school with did not disrespect each other, the threat and sometimes the realization of being beaten for it kept everyone respectful, and girl friends and wives that got outline could be slapped and everyone would wonder what BS fem-vomit she did to deserve that.
Since than in professional workplaces I have stopped myself from punching disrespectful cnts of both sexes that fatherless because of Divorce-raping vile mothers they never got that smack then needed when they needed it.
Yea, this FemNazi Hell-hole along with the rest of this level of Hell around the world could use a Nuke war with 3+ Billions dead so survivors will be free of such Satanic forces, with only what local gov the create and be part of, and public hanging judges, mayors, teachers, abortionists, false-witnessers, .. will be possible.
.. I think that 3+ billion dead would be a small price to remove Satan and those vile vicious lying slimy betraying baby-killing Sick delusional psychotic Western Womanhood, 5th column supporting Satan.
From the American perspective, all this Eurotrash warmongering suits its imperial ambitions perfectly.
Europe will provide the cannon fodder ... I mean "peacekeepers"... to Ukraine while buying more overpriced American weapons to militarize for the fight against the Russian "orcs" that threaten their precious oligarchies-disguised-as-democracies.
In short, Europe's future is to become a ginormous version of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, America can pivot towards wars in the Middle East and Asia against Iran and China.
It's called a division of labor.
Who says that we are not already inside of a World War?
We are indeed already in world War, but the West messed up. They thought they had trapped Russia, but it is the other way around.
They missed the boat on a China take down by a couple years and counting. They thought Russia would fold within 6 months of hostilities in Ukraine, leading to a compliant Russian government.
Russia is stronger then ever, the USA spiral decline picks up pace, and China now had the ISR assets in place, anti-ship missile force fully deployed, world leading drone technology, and a nuclear force nearing MAD capability.
But that's what Chernobyl was for. It was a controlled Test arranged by The Elite to prove or disprove their growing certainty that use of nuclear bombs would not result in a "nuclear winter. The next spring after the Bomb dropped on Hiroshima a burnt and blasted Cherry Tree put out some BLOSSOMS. Well,and it's disturbing for us but The Elite got their answer. Nature is flourishing.Critters are flourishing. And lots of people have moved back. Young parents with small kids are setting up home there now.
I have not yet heard corp-media news or even alt-journalists ask how Russia, China, Iran, and perhaps others have hypersonic missiles, and we don't have missiles or defense system(s) that can destroy incoming Hypersonic missiles.
Is it DEI 'hire no white men' policies in those DoD research departments, or incompetence in planning or unwilling to divert some of the War department trillion dollars to real projects instead of pouring it out to contractors so they can kick-back bribes and-or political donations?
Which do you think it is?
Don't worry, those DEI researchers and Affirmative Action managers will have a shiny non-functional missile within decade.
The final test for any government is the death toll of their soldiers.
Boots on the ground has been fulfilled by proxy in Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
If the US/UK/French soldiers die in Ukraine Iran and China - where they will have to travel to, with all their gear...haha. Never.
That's where Russia is far ahead in this 'war thing' - they have an active front, on their border, a proxy force supported by 54 countries fighting them, their soldiers are dying and they've been fighting for 3 years and it seems politically/economically stable.
It sounds like the Russians would be fully justified in shooting any mercenaries who don't surrender....and some of these idiots even took videos of their war crimes...Putin may be a little too civilized for this conflict...
Russians soldiers at the front will be the real decision makers. And after seeing the atrocities performed against Russian civilians I'll bet justice will be served.
Anyone who doesn't surrender, mercenary or Ukrainian, will be shot -- that is the nature of war. The only question is whether mercenaries who are captured will be shot. They lack all Geneva Convention protections.
I doubt Putin will direct they be shot. That would create an excessive emotional response in the West, and there is more mileage in embarrassing the West by putting such mercenaries on trial for terrorism. Of course if you are a mercenary from a minor country, you are likely to be more dispensable, without any repercussions.
I am reading a lot of speculation that there is a high concentration of sheep-dipped NATO troops surrounded in "Kursk" including many officers, and that these are complicit in war crimes as far as the Russian's are concerned, notwithstanding their very presence is a criminal act. And I think Putin only said he would spare "Ukrainian troops" who surrender - and at least one comment has been made that as an ex-lawyer he is careful with his words. So there is a very high chance of some really bad optics here for NATO countries who have send advisors/trainer/mercs etc and found them bagged and surrounded.
Wishful thinking. Let me know when we see crowds of wives, mothers, girlfriends, sisters, demanding answers as to where their men have gone, nobody has heard from them, etc..
In the viral video of the two US mercs that were executed by a Russian soldier, both were wounded and one (with the go pro ) clearly had his guns up and called out “no” before he was shot.
Did anyone else see the video of captured Russian troops tied and laying on ground while that Nazi-Ukraine soldiers went to each and shot their knee caps .. that will teach Russians to surrender, better to set yourself on fire and dive into a Ukrainian troop transport.
That is one video I am sure Russian soldiers see before deployment. Kill, KIll, Kill, until dead seems about right and Just.
"The West has a Sunk Cost problem: they’ve invested everything not only into the Ukraine war itself, but now into the image of their own strength and ability to manifest peace at will."
The West has no problem other than entitlement. They can manifest peace at will any time. It is called agreeing to Russia's terms.
As for the ugly Freemason made Transgender Statue of Helios which has been disfiguring NY Harbour since the 19th century, give it back to France or smelt it into shell casings. Don't believe me? Get a good photo of "Liberty" and look at the face only. Is that a woman's face? And the torch, the same one that was placed on JFKs grave, a Luciferian victory trophy on conquering a country in the 19th century and a man in the 20th.
For an actual female torch lady, check out the classic Columbia Pictures Intro:
The next thing to be fed into the wood chipper is the poem about the vile statue by non-Christian Activist Emma Lazarus, celebrating a flood of replacements for the pre Civil War heritage American population.
Don't take this ballyhoo so seriously! The europeans know that if they wedge in they will be crushed by Russian assaults. They have no intention of risking that, and the US has already told them that if they incur internal assaults as a result of a deliberately aggressive action which is what this would be, there will be no Article 5 and the US could even pull out of NATO altogether because they would be risking US bases on the european fringe if not further in.
This is the eruopeans trying to get talked about and stay relevant. They are not relevant and do not deserve this attention. We can all ignore this hot air as indeed are european citizens who have no intention of fighting on the Russian front for this bunch of twits.
Eunuch (impotent) or ED European militaries today 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇪🇺 talk about war with the foremost military superpower 🇷🇺 today. Simply unbelievable! 🫢
Yeah, so impotent that they drove 60 km into Russian territory and killed thousands of Russian civilians, just as theur grandfathers did, but the Kremlin is begging for mercy instead of following the examples of Stalin and Alexander I. And has already ceded Kiev and Odessa, some of the most important Russian cities, let alone having any intention to plant the flag in Berlin or Paris again.
Get away with you. That was mercenary action which is very different from an officially sanctioned combat intervention as you perfectly well know.
On a positive note General Moron will have no lies to spread about Russia when this is over.
He'll pivot to criticising the Resistance in MENA.
A wasted life.
Hell of a lot of mercenaries. 70,000 of them were killed, and no doubt a few survived.
It's wishful thinking, that is all.
This is one of those copes that Russia supporters like to tell themselves.
Let us know when Russia is able to show the bodies of thousands of mercenaries, etc..
Whatever they were, they are now dead. No cope needed.
I applaud you. Give it all your best. Cope harder
" ... let alone having any intention to plant the flag in Berlin or Paris again."
Psycho.
?
Indeed. The old Russian babuschka didnt leave her Village. She couldnt imagine that the Russian state would allow her to starve for 7 months and then die…
Russia is not begging for mercy. But their enemy is stronger than many here thinks. They do what they can do. If it is foul play in Kreml, as you suggest with the Oligarks longing for fraternizing on Cote dÁzur again, then why are they still in War after 3 years? They could have assasinated Putin already.
There is a strong patriotic faction too. Not strong enough though.
Putin is balancing as usual.
While you are talking out your ass again.
& shittting outta his cake-hole.
I suspect that the truth is that the Russian leadership are not exactly eager to surrender, but they want so badly to believe that this is all a misunderstanding.
It's not. The West knows full well what it wants and will have, if the Russian leadership doesn't grow a pair.
The Russians have shown that they are quite capable of winning the day even under dire military and economic pressure!
So, what have they been waiting for, then?
Russia is meeting their objectives. It is a war of attrition.
You mean, why the Russians have not been doing carpet bombing and other Hiroshima & Nagasaki & Dresden? -- Russians are not jews. It was a jew Jacob Beser who enjoyed his participation (and then boasted about that) in the bombings of two Japanese cities filled with civilians. Today, western values are on a show in Gaza. Including the largest ever numbers of pediatric amputees.
Why do you have the exact same ip as the great moron? Are you your own wingman? I guess that explains why you are equally gormless.
You are completely full of shit.
Try dislodging an enemy force while you keep your citizens from harm at the same time.
But they've fooled us all. It's a big and for many,lethal game Biden,Harris,Trump,Putin,they are all on the SAME SIDE and WE are the ENEMY. Putin has got the Baddy part and he's acting it well. Luckily he is emotionally strong so he doesn't mind about the lack of approval from the mind fucked.
If you think that harris and the potato are on the same team as putin then you are a special kind of stupid.
I'm a VERY Special Person indeed. Privileged and Proud of it.
Ohhhh, Jane!
If the euroweenies and Stasi Starmer expand the war, Russia will not worry about "plant(ing) the flag in Berlin or Paris". They'll be planting a lot of Iskanders, Kinzals and Oreshnik missiles. And the French, Germans and Brits will be planting a lot of their dead.
If the Russians bomb London, Paris and /or Berlin it's not like they will kill any Englishmen, French or Germans.
Good one!
Ok. please explain.
The governments of those countries have all but banned their native populations. The capital cities are full of third world replacements.
Thank you, I didn't know that. I was last in Europe in 2018.
So, what has Russian been waiting for all this time?
your advice?
If you were smart enough to understand I'd explain it to you.
OTAN to get friskier, perhaps.
just ban the idiot already.
And then 70,000 of them were killed before the few survivors surrendered or ran away back to Ukraine, leaving behind a king's ransom in abandoned Western vehicles and weapons.
But yes, you are right: they did kill (and torture) Russian civilians - although probably not thousands.
Are you proud of that?
Huh?
GM,could you drop the atom bombs already. All of them at once. Let's just get it over and done with, bloody impotent Kremlin. Just drop one on the Kremlin too, whilst your at it. That'll teach them. In fact, you'll outdo Trump, you'll stop this war in 24h!
No, no, you don't understand. These European troops will only be there to keep the peace...
There's an old saying:
"When the fox preaches peace,
Farmer, watch your geese."
I believe it's very peaceful six feet under the rich black soil.
They are simply repeating word for word what Hegseth told them to say to stay on the right side of the hegemony. They must buy US weapons and up their millitary spending to avoid being cut off from trade. The UK is particularly vulnerable to this after Brexit. In order to over-extend Russia, the US wants to bleed the EU dry and feed them feet first through the meat grinder now that it's running out of Ukrainians.
At this point does anyone take European diplomacy seriously in the least?
No, but European military activity should be taken very seriously.
After all, we did have German tanks in Kursk again, but right now there is precisely zero chance of Russian tanks being in Berlin again. Or even in Kiev...
So who has won so far?
LOL, OK doomer.
"So who has won so far?"
Ask the crews of those destroyed German tanks.
Is that even a serious question?
Yes, it is a serious question. Don't cancel something you don't like by suggesting it's not a serious question.
I hate to admit it, but he has a point. More and more Russians feel that way.
In the Suvorov quote that many influential Russians are citing these days "the enemy" doesn't mean just the nazi regime in Kiev. It means all of those who waged war against Russia in any form, be it theft of Russian resources, participation in Nordstream, or sanctions.
The quote, from Alexander V. Suvorov:
"A man who loves his neighbors, a man who hates war, must finish off the enemy. So that one war does not start another."
The growing feeling in Russia is that pretending the US's war on Russia has ended without extracting pain from the US and its stooges just sets up the next war, which will be worse.
the difference to Suvorov times is that it would take Russia around 30 minutes to finish off every enemy of Russia on the entire planet. and in the case of the EU, it can even likely be done unilaterally, with minimum to no response (since they don't have any genuine counterstrike capability).
being a responsible 21st-century leader means to have enough restraint to avoid having to do that.
"Having enough restraint" has resulted in the current situation, in which there is a massive bombing raid on Russia every night and everyone feels they can invade and rape and murder at will whenever they feel like it. That should be completely unthinkable if the security of the country is to mean anything.
The only way to make it unthinkable is to punish those responsible in such a way that nobody ever even has such thoughts again.
Lying POS.
Maximalist hyperbole & illogic...To the max.
Mutual destruction is not "finishing off". The critical bulk of Russias population is concentrated in a small hand full of large urban conurbations who would all die in a general Nuclear exchange. Nuclear war is not an option for anything short of true existential threat.
As Mr Putin asked rhetorically, "Who would want to live in a world without Russia?"
that is only true in case of a nuclear exchange with the US. neither UK nor France have a credible nuclear counterstrike capability against Russia.
FFS, nobody is calling for launching the ICBMs at DC.
What is needed is to cut off arms supplies and physically isolate Ukraine.
That will require tactical nukes, but we are talking tactical nukes at objects located outside of populated places, so it can be done without killing pretty much anyone.
Then if Poland and Romania still insist on being suicidal, you do assist them with it by doing strategic countervalue strikes on them and wiping them off the map.
But that will not result in mutual destruction -- the US has never intended to defend anyone in Europe in case of a nuclear attack. Article 5 is a complete bluff when it comes to nukes.
Thus the Kremlin has a magic button it can press and end the war by physically blocking NATO from entering it. There are downsides, but they pale in comparison to the inadmissibility of the current situation.
The problem is that Russian elites stand to lose quite a bit from finally taking the gloves off, so it is not done. Reggular Russian people will win big time, but who has ever cared about them?
The USA is not only getting away with this unpunished, they are actually rewarded: a new market for their LNG, Ukraine's rare earth (or what will be left of it) and fat arms contracts with European countries. Only, what can Russia do about it?
"what can Russia do about it?"
There is lots that Russia can do about it. For starters, by taking all of Ukraine it can make sure none of the so-called mineral resources of Ukraine go to the US or EU. Russia could extinguish the Baltics as separate countries and demilitarize Finland and Poland. Russia could also eliminate the UK and France as nuclear powers (see my comments on that in the other thread... I think on substack you can see my post history).
By the way, the "vast mineral resources" of Ukraine are just as much a lie as the Ghost of Kiev. Ukraine has (more accurately "had") large deposits of coal and some iron ore but not much else.
Nobody did a better job of exploring in massive detail every square inch of Ukraine than the USSR, and the mineral resource maps they compiled are easily available online. Those are accurate, while anything published after 2014 are lies. The commentary in the US is also pretty much lies.
For example, titanium is not a rare earth nor are titanium deposits rare. Florida has massive amounts of titanium. What makes titanium metal a special deal is that getting titanium metal from titanium dioxide and other deposits takes a lot of energy. Same with getting metallic aluminum from bauxite. The real trick is having massive amounts of low cost energy. That's not the EU and it's not Ukraine, but it is Russia, which is why Russia is a titanium and aluminum powerhouse.
The lithium play is nonsense, as the deposits in Ukraine aren't very extensive or high grade. The USSR did an especially good job at exploring for lithium because lithium back in those days was *more valuable* than it is today. Why is that? Because lithium is the key material for making thermonuclear weapons. Thermonuclear weapons are so intensely valuable that it is actually cost effective to use materials like solid gold for tampers in them, and the ability to use lithium to power them instead of cryogenic deuterium is one of the key innovations that makes thermonuclear weapons practical.
So yeah, you bet the Soviets pulled out all the stops to find lithium, and they weren't at all impressed with the lithium deposits in Ukraine.
OK, so what is Russia waiting for?
Something else to consider -- rare earths metal are "rare" in the sense that they come at a low concentration and not in concentrated deposits like some other elements.
The consequence of which is that their extraction is extremely environmentally destructive, as you need to process massive amounts of dirt and rock.
The Chinese were willing to pay that price, and they are a big country with lots of places that are useless desert anyway.
Ukraine being a depressed post-Soviet shithole that then got thoroughly wrecked by war makes it a place that can be easily sacrificed in a similar way.
Russia has made it abundantly clear that it wants nothing to do with Western Ukraine. The Nazis are concentrated there and toward the end of WWII the USA financed partisan groups to attack Russian troops even before the war ended.
On the other hand, Russia has invited Poland to take Lvov which was once Polish. The other nations bordering on Ukraine have claims on some territories there.
This article supports your discussion of Ukrainian rare earths. It isn't clear why Trump keeps pumping the "deal". He may not know that the deal is empty, but his handlers surely do.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-rare-earth-minerals
Bravo for that!
Russia can - and should - take over all regions of Ukraine that it deems necessary to its security, including that of the citizens of the new oblasts. After that is done, there will be very few natural or industrial resources available to Westerners, whether they have papers to show ownership or not.
If they want the minerals, oil and gas, or crops,
Molon labe.
Certainly that is what it would do if it could. But it's not clear they can, at least at a cost that is acceptable to them.
The lavish expenditure of lives of the old Red Army is no longer an option - thankfully.
Until the drone problem is solved and mobility, concentration and mass is restored to the battlefield, the Russians are stymied.
the European countries are "rewarded" with Ukrainians, all kinds of them. As for the Americans, they have lost a lot of money. "MONACO BATTALION: HOW UKRAINE’S ELITES HIDE THEIR CHILDREN FROM MOBILIZATION IN EUROPE: While ordinary Ukrainians die on the battlefield, the children of top politicians and business leaders enjoy a life of luxury abroad."
Mark Steyn reported "Ukrainians" living it up in the Swiss Alps, dropping a million dollars a day at Hermes and on luxury shopping.
I used "Ukrainians" because I wonder how many of them are ethnically Slavic.
Semi-imaginary short-term, Pyrrhic mini-rewards.
Who has won is not the question, who has lost is. Ukrainians a whole generation is jumping overboard the SS Titanic, a beautiful country and beautiful people massacred and sacrificed to EU standards of corruption, fraude and extortion.
Just wringing your hands over who has lost, who has been slaughtered by a vicious West doesn't accomplish anything if you don't cut off the heads of the vipers who did the killing.
If those vipers killed people and waltzed away happy that they enriched their military industrial complexes (Rhinemetall, the US, etc.), enjoying record profits from sales of overpriced energy (the US), while nailing down their control over their vassal stooges (the US), then they've won.
All you accomplish by wringing your hands about their victims while doing nothing to defeat those doing evil is you reinforce their belief that they can do anything to anyone and get away with it.
It's really that bad. Whether Russia has the willpower to engage in serious war against the foul Western alliance that has poured soldiers, weapons, and treasure into killing Russians, to fight a war now instead of a totally civilization-ending war later, is an open question.
So you are asking Russia to march on London, Washington, Paris and Berlin?
For London and Paris submarines, and in the case of France, air-launched cruise missiles, make it difficult, but not impossible, because the arsenals are small and can be taken out in principle.
Germany should be smoldering ruins now, and Russian tanks should be making their way to occupy it, that is correct, Brussels too.
Washington is impossible right now but some missile strikes on some MIC corporate headquarters (Lockheed Martin would be a good pick) and some US oligarch mansions would be a good thing and should have already been done. With a public statement from Putin "we are even now and won't touch you again if you never touch us; let's think about developing friendship from here on". But without repaying the blood debt, which right now stands in the thousands, and has to be repaid with the blood of US elites (politicians, MIC execs and billionaires), not US soldiers (who are completely disposable) if it is to re-enforce deterrence, the current attempt at normalizing relationships is normalizing the catastrophic strategic loss for Russia.
How hard is that to understand?
I have to say, he makes a good point. Nothing prevents Russia from wiping out US tech, media and MIC execs any time they step out of the US. No more international travel for them by private aircraft, no more relaxing cruises on their yachts in tropical waters.
I don't think Russia either needs or wants to "march on" the clown car capitals. But there is a building viewpoint within Russia that it is time to inflict serious pain on those people and countries who thought it was a good idea to kill Russians and to destroy Russia.
I am glad that you feel sure all that can be done without starting a thermonuclear war at any point.
I don't.
Let's play a game called Global Nuclear War. Fortunately, the Russian authorities are not stupid and will not try anything that will tempt an American nuclear response. Perhaps "revenge is a dish best served cold" may be more appropriate.
"...the current attempt at normalizing relationships is normalizing the catastrophic strategic loss for Russia. How hard is that to understand?" It is impossible to understand such speculative, illogical gibberish.
Well put.
It’s easy yesterday a whole investigation on a French broadcast, CNN affiliated…Trump is all over his ears a KGB agent. Nobody can say for sure Putin isn’t a CIA agent, some Trojan Horse they brought in to destroy from the inside the Brics multipolarity, and if you want some more of this daydreaming, Trump giving Taiwan to Xi and Xi giving in return Ukraine, are you still insisting on some willpower, or on the installation of the Fourth Reich…clown world?
The American Empire is in decline already. The same Oligarchy responsible for the Ukraine war have been conducting color revolutions all around the globe. The "global south" is well aware of the criminality of the American Oligarchy. They have kicked Africom out of the Sahel. Trump is in retreat to "Fortress America". The technofeudalists are maneuvering to create their own private fiefdoms.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-against-america
Will the Oligarchy continue to "win"? Yes, until the American population awakens to this "plot". Will Americans ever understand it? Probably not in this decade.
Cowardice has become a feature of the American character:
The aipac-occupied US congress.
The betrayal of the USSLiberty crew.
The moral paralysis re 9/11 false-flag & its organizers
The geriatric profiteers and stunning shortage of American patriots at all levels in the US government
The rule of oligarchs
The Resnicks-Adelsons effect
The accepted incompetence at the highest echelons of US government
Whistleblowers and "If it is Boeing – I am not going."
The Big Pharma racket
The fascist mega-corporation BlackRock
The cowardice and genuflection for the genocider bibi (who is afraid of his hysterical wife).
The end of the ongoing Bankers War on Russia should include the investigation and imprisonment of those who agitated and promoted the war of aggression. The piggish warmonger Nuland-Kagan is personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings. She must be punished. There are other war criminals who deserve prison term and total expropriation of their wealth. Ursula is one of them.
They weren't sacrificed to EU standards. This is a war between the US and Russia. With the EU, UK and Ukraine as proxies.
Worse than a sacrifice and a Holocaust, young Ukies meat grinder, go and visit their cemeteries for those who’re buried yet.
I thought you went down with USAID. Please everyone, don't feed the trolls.
The level of concerned trolling on many of the alt-forums that I frequent (not all are war-related) have definitely abated significantly... for the last few, I think they are continueing out of habit, or out of spite - even as their paychecks to repeat dross have been cut to zero. After all, they likely have no other zero real skills.....
Jesus you talk some fucking bollocks man
What's bollocks is that you don't seem to realize that US and EU financed Kievan atrocities in Kursk oblast and elsewhere in Ukraine and Russia are generating a growing desire for revenge.
Kiev's nazis, paid, armed and trained by the US and the EU, hung a woman from wire and tortured her to death. That's just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of atrocities committed by the US's and EU's war effort against Russia. Add to that the gall of vicious US and EU propaganda claiming Russians are committing those atrocities and not the nazi scum the US and EU support.
If you think Russians are just going to ignore all that, you're making the same mistake the delusional and evil "elites" in the EU and US are making.
No forgiveness for the sadists, both Ukrainian and western.
You've now gone full retard.
U tell him, Nancy Spungen !
It does worry me. The "coalition of the willing" has weak military forces that can't win, but can die messy deaths, that could lead to nuclear war. They also have some cards - what if the EU told Trump, that the US needs the EU to have any hope against China. If the US doesn't assist Ukraine, then the EU will not co-operate with attempts to sanction China, instead signing trade agreements.
The US is short of allies in Asia - Trump's statements about asking ASEAN countries to check Iranian shipping going through the Malacca Straits shows how weak they are, as there is no way Indonesia or Malaysia will act against BRICS+, and Singapore will not do anything to disrupt China's oil supply. Japan, South Korea and the Philippines have been remarkably quiet.
Excellent point about EU-China trade agreements. That is a big club. And how about technology transfers?
How dare Sir Queer use that phrase. It's a sly way of suggesting the whole British population is in support of his words. He should wash his mouth out. I'm not Willing. And people who say " won't you fight for your country then". This isn't my country. This dreadful suburb of littered roads and fast food shops . My country is the one portrayed in Eric Ravilious pictures and it doesn't exist any more. And that was what WW2 conscripts were told they were fighting to keep and no sooner had the conflict ended than the desecration began
I think more Europeans take a growing domestic tyranny more seriously than any other threat, except for the faithful BBC audience that continue to roll up their sleeve just as Auntie tells them to.
@aj hollis
All that gay BSM and mindfuckery inflicted on each new crop of potential managerial class boys in British public schools really does make their management's control later on in life easier.
What "European diplomacy"?
Why would anyone? It's atotal farce, you might say Minsk 3!
Starmer is shaping up to be the worst prime minister in the history of the UK. I mean he has stiff competition to be the worst PM, Truss, Sunak, BoJo, Cameron, Gordon Brown, but seems to be winning.
Sunak is said to have resigned because he didn't want to be a War PM. In other words, peace was never an option, the decision to go to war had already been made when Sunak was in office and he wanted to get out while he could.
Makes one consider just who is really running things in the UK. Hidden hands indeed.
Been running the UK and most western white countries for centuries.......
Clues: no foreskins. And genocidal tendencies.
Don't be a twat, zionists are antisemites, not Jews, twat.
Shut up Jew squeeth. You have been exposed as a Jew defending your tribe.
The chicken swinging small hat muthafucka strikes again.
Circumcision identifies no one ethnically in the States. Pediatricians decided in the 60s to circumcise all males born in the U.S. based on fraudulent studies showing health benefits to the procedure. Those studies ignored the dangers of the procedure, which are about as prevalent as the health benefits. During the 60s and 70s, it was illegal in many states to refuse a doctor's orders, so parent's didn't have a choice on circumcising their boys.
The Germans identified Jewish boys and men by inspecting the individual for a foreskin. That's the only reason most native born U.S. Gen X men lack one.
Yes. As European men refuse to have their foreskins removed for the Jew volcano demon maybe their power will be reduced.
Fraudulent Jew studies. By Jew ‘doctors’
No one is talking about "in the states".
WTF do Yanks think that everything is about them?
I am an example for Canada, eh. Late Boooomer here!
City of London. And they hustled a new Canadian PM and sent him over.
The Americans
The Americans are run by the same hands...
No
Yes. The Jew.
The Jew. The west is a colony of the Jew.
They all have surnames that begin with R and they Thank God It's Friday.
yep, BlackRock (who own big arms, fossil fuel, tech, animal ag and pharma)
A network of privately educated and socialised City of London executives, pretty simple concept. It's weird to not understand that and think it's something else
Very sensible
How could you leave out Blair? Remember the Iraq War.
At least Blair was a competent piece of shit. Starmer is an incompetent piece of shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84L-WU81SHY
Really?
we don't have to agree :)
No he was not.
Just so people are clear. I hate Blair, and think he ruined this country. I did not agree with anything he did. But he was good at what he did, which is why he was successful in ruining the country. If you look at who benefited from his policies (the rich), they will say he did a great job.
True or not, both still pieces of shit. I would say the same of the uber-competent Bill Clinton. Now G.W. Bush was an incompetent piece of shit, just like Starmer. All of these people are/were menaces to their countries and the world.
He rabidly hates the British people. I don't think any of the others did. They may have been indifferent to what happened to the British, but Stasi Starmer actively hates them.
The Jew see the goyim as cattle for their wars.
You're mentally ill, dude. Give it a rest.
why do you defend the chicken swinging sin merchant tribe? you one of them?
Yes, I'm an orthodox Jewish rabbi. Why not drop by to our synagogue for a few pretzels and a chat about how we're going to steal all your children.
You mean how you snip the foreskin then suck on it.
By getting Conscription enacted in law in Britain. Be careful 'many a true word is spoken in jest' and saying that the Rothschild's and the Rockefellers paid for the Holocaust is not being a Holocaust (and when the FUCK did it start getting called that) DENIER. And I can SAY THIS on Substack but NOT on You Tube. How is that eh.
cry harder jew....
Please enough anti-Semitism already!
who made you the thought police? why would you defend the genocidal sin merchants? address my points about the jew probkem or STFU...
https://www.holocaust.claims/
some nice examples of jew lies....
Theyre not Semitic,the Palestinians are. The irony of it.
Agreed. Catholics deserve some equity here.
It's really astonishing when you look at these so-called "leaders" and who their kids are, who they are married to, and who they are. At only 0.2% of the world's population, the jew shouldn't appear very often, and yet an astonishing number of them are jews, are married to jews, or they have married their kids off to jews. It's almost like there's been an infiltration of families. Keir Starmer's wife is a jew, and his kids are jews, and he converted to their so-called "religion." That alone explains why he is inexplicably anti-British (or more broadly, anti-White).
I bet "his boy" won't get conscripted.
What if the British high commnadment think they are winning? Not a joke. Consider this. The decision was taken to keep the pressure on Syria and it finally paid off ! Israel's longterm enemy is no longer around and probably never will be. WHAT A BLOW. Dont you think this can have strenghthen the position of the most beligerent elements of the British deep state? Unlike most commenters I think they will send troops on the ground since tons of money are going to be diverted from the budget into the defense industry behemoths such as British Aerospace. Furthermore this troops will be the perfect alibi to then pull Poland, the Baltics and Romania into the war. The perfect wasteland for a 4B (British) Build Back Better City or London much need new wave of debt based investment. Consider a list like this:
-UK - 2 brigades
- France - 2 brigades
- Germany - 2 brigades
- Poland- 2 brigades
- Romania - 2 brigades
- Finland -1 brigade
- Baltics - 3 brigades, one each.
- Sweeden - 1 brigade
- Danemark - 1 Brigade
- Netherlands - 1 brigade
- Czech Republic - 1 brigade
- Greece - 1 Brigade
- Bulgaria - 1 Brigade
- Norway - 1 Brigade
- Portugal - 1 Brigade
- Spain - 1 Brigade
- Canada - 1 Brigade
- Italy - 1 Brigade
25 brigades which could double in a few months plus tens of airforce wings. Impossible? Why?
And a few Oreshniks will wipe out the lot. This is not WW1, and troop movements and locations cannot be hidden.
No one is sending troops unless they want stones rearranged in their countries
wait and see
Well I would've thought that was obvious :)
"...stones rearranged in their countries." is a possibility, yet RU may choose the style & confidence display of burning the forces once they land, as you state.
Or both!
Yup, can even be more varied - good time to demo & play with some other new toys. Take-out all comms & ISR capabilities in Europa.
their lifetime in this battlefield will be measured in hours. it's futile posturing, about zero chance of it happening in reality.
Not even in this battlefield, but once they get "in-country".
Not possible, many EU countries only have armies on paper, most of them couldn't deploy a single brigade and keep it supplied.
dont think so.
Why don't you add something substantial to the discussion instead of flippant comments like this that just add noise?
why arent you a little bit more polite? I didnt add anything substantial to your comment because your comment wasnt substantial. You claim that there will be no intervention because of fear to Oreshnik? That's everything you can say? That's "substantial"? Everything points to a real intervention, so you're wrong.
That was polite.
Yes that's my position. Russia has won the arms race. You don't go to war when you can't win. My statement essentially says that, unless these countries are willing to go to war with Russia (war, not an SMO) then they won't do it. If they are prepared to to go to war with Russia, they will. I don't believe they are ready or willing to go to war with Russia. They've spent the last 50 years not going to war with Russia. They're idiots but not suicidal.
Telling me I'm wrong when neither of us knows is a bit silly.
Have a good evening
Communication and coordination among that many disparate countries, cultures, and languages is impossibly complex. They will not be able to react or counteract Russian tactics. Furthermore, any attempt to move or assemble these kinds of numbers on the battlefield will be immediately visible to Russian ISR and dealt with before they can be deployed to the front or become any kind of threat... Chip
Agreed Chip. NATO worked because the Americans ran it. Without them it's a circus.
NATO is still working. It's designed to take nation states money and give it to, mostly US based, arms companies. Its purpose to keep Russia busy is also still working although the US now wants EU nations to start fighting to avoid the US being drawn in with Russia using Article 5. The US is using the EU like a proxy just like Ukraine.
Jo. Too much truth in your post, Jo!
Indeed.
NATO has already done proof of concept with their mismatched armaments and old Soviet weaponry supply to Ukraine, and running out of stock on several items 3 years into this debacle. And that, after having 8 years to prepare...
Logistics is what war is about. That's why it wrecks economies.
I thought that was what NATO was all about.
On paper these forces exist, and more, but a 25 Brigade total assumes that all nations listed will particpate, and be able to rapidly deploy, and be kept supplied. The British Army at least could only really send light infantry units, and keep them combat supplied for a few weeks. The German Army much the same, and generally ammo stocks are low everywhere. Air defence is perilously weak and any attempt to deploy would missile and air delivered interdiction efforts. NATO would be forced to deploy air assets into harms way.
This has all the ingredients to turn very rapidly into a military debacle. Indeed many feel that this is in fact the plan, to send a tripwire force that Russia is bound to attack and overwhelm in the hope that the USA then gets involved. Or maybe they think Russia is bluffing? However it is my view that such an intervention force would trigger a general war in Europe and nations like the UK would be subject to direct attack from a Russia who have been backed into a corner. The USA then has a choice to walk/run or get involved. And direct US involvement means WW3 and MAD. So I think they will abandon NATO at that point, de facto or de jure.
We've been hearing about how the West is running out of ammo for years now. Yet the West ever always only escalates.
(To be fair, we've been hearing that same things about Russia for just as long, but Russian logistics aren't the issue here.)
And it's almost all drones now, so ammo isn't critical anymore anyway.
What they did give was sufficient to ensure Ukraine survived until that transition was completed.
The Brit’s could not even fight the argies in 82 without the Americans. Now they are even more a joke.
very thoughtful comment
The British won't fight. Why should they when their kids are already being raped as it is?
Propaganda!
what the British public may think or feel is irrelevant, as it always was. Decisions are taken top down.
They will troops,regular troops who will get killed then we will hear CONSCRIPTION is a necessity. They are creating the pretext to justify the course of action they have already decided upon.
very likely
25 Brigades is 8 division equivalents composed of troops from 18 different nations. Each equipped with slightly different TOE, each with slightly different logistics requirements entering the fight far away from the home logistic bases for each countries contingents. I also suspect that some of your numbers are pretty optimistic. Who would command ? What would happen when their rear areas come under fire. Its certainly possible with a year of preparation and buildup. What could Russia mobilize in that year ?
Nato is sufficiently integrated. The officials have been training together for decades
It’s failing, Macron asked his potential war industry to speed up its production, they asked him and what if the whole war is cancelled? Within 2 years he has to step aside, who will be paying for it? Moreover can you stop a war industry and doing business like nothing happened to the common markets?
All Liarbour prime ministers are Ramsay MacDonald but Sturmer doesn't even rise to that abject standard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwmgyJOHVoA
The Gaggle being droll about America's British and French imperial caretakers.
Blair was worse; he helped start a war of aggression, without the slightest provocation.
Starmer - so far - has only provided material support to war crimes (in Gaza); he hasn't taken the initiative in launching one. Yet.
Labour Party and Zionism have collaborated for over a century
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/06/18/727695/The-Labour-Party-and-Zionism-have-collaborated-for-over-a-century-
Blair started all this.
Wars?
If I remember correctly he went along with the Iraq debacle knowing full well it was lies.
Yes, but "started" what? The West has been carrying out wars of aggression for hundreds of years lol
Yes, when I saw the word "impotence" in the title I immediately thought of Starmer.
After the coup the country was sold to Brussles. Then the country was sold again to the UK for 100 years of support. Then the country was sold again to Trump for continuing to supply weapons. This is what Western "freedom" means.
David LLyod George, whose allowing of the Balfour Declaration' resulted in the vomiting of Europe's Jewish Problem onto the people of Palestine.
Macron: "Ukraine is a sovereign country. If it asks for allied troops to be present on its territory, it is not up to Russia to decide whether to agree or not,"
Ukraine is not a sovereign country. After the 2014 coup, the US took control of the Ukrainian State's security, intelligence, military and foreign policy.
Of course Russia will not agree and will decide the fate of these troops, just as they have the various NATO "advisors" and mercenaries to date.
No indeed, Putin cannot tell Macron et al what to do. But he can tell them what Russia will do if they do it. And he has..
So, what are they waiting for? Come on get stuck in eurotwits, and finally bring this ramshackle european arm of the western hegemon along with NATO, to an inglorious end.
Think, think twice and get all think tanks in emergency, a 30 days ceasefire would result in a catastrophy for Ukraine and EU warlords, all EU NATO can only produce 25% of what Russia’s war industry can pile up, now imagine the restart of the war after those 30 days what the outcome will be, Musk won’t have to go to Mars Ukraine will be reshaped in a Martian desert.
NATO troops in Ukraine would not be a Special Military Operation for Russia. It would be war, that would bring with it a whole different level of destruction for Ukraine and possibly wider. Russia is almost on a war footing, the West have no idea what it would take to get there especially when their shipping start to sink.
Right. People who refer to this as a "war" have NO FUCKING CLUE what war with Russia would actually look like. They really dont want any of that shit.
Russians are generally really lovely people and you can even push them very hard...to a point...then it is no mercy.
Has anyone in charge actually explained convincingly to the people how the war between Russia and Ukraine is anyone else's concern?
Or has the Z-man successfully conned everyone that Russia is trying to take over the world?
Depending on how successfully they have all performed, when the EU zone soldiers (et al) start returning from Ukraine in bags there will hopefully be a huge public backlash. Starting in France.
The bottom line is that whatever they think and whatever lies they tell, none of European leaders can actually get stuck into a war in Ukraine, not on their ownsomes. And they all know this. Ukraine knows this too. This is just more posturing to try to get the US sucked in. Trump knows this. Will the US get sucked in? Not on your nellie.
The US doesn't want to get sucked in as their controllers want them all in against The Resistance to Zionism in Palestine.
You're normally spot on Jullianne, but you've got this the wrong way round. Of course the Europeans can't effectively fight Russia, even with the US they can't. Ukraine and the EU are not posturing to get Trump drawn in. Trump is playacting, pretending he's withdrawing and abandoning Ukraine and the EU; but Starlink is still up, he's still sending arms, what's left of them. Both the US and EU have run out of arms. That's what the pause or ceasefire is about. A chance for the US to get the EU to rebuild, rearm and give lots of money from social programs to the US arms industry.
Hegseth explicitly said the US wants a 'division of labour'. The EU to be bled dry in Ukraine and the US to focus on China. All the EU leaders are doing is exactly what they were told by the US to do and say to their tax payers. Word for word. 'ball's in Putin's court', (non existent) threat to EU from Russia etc etc.
The people I feel sorry for,one person actually are young American USA men who have just got French citizenship after the most strenuous efforts and just in time to get sent to a war and get their legs blown off. What a bum deal.
What you feel & call a bum-deal (tragedy, tragi-comedy ?), others see as poetic-justice or folly or farse or irony or, simply and objectively, misfortune.
There's a growing contingent in Russia that welcomes the sending of troops from the EU and US into Ukraine, because then a necessary and much more violent war will start. Increasingly many Russians feel that the West's war on Russia (which is what Ukraine is) has to be settled with violent pain dealt to both the EU and the US in order to teach them for another few generations that screwing with Russia leads to pain and destruction within their countries.
There is widespread sentiment for a corollary of that violent pain thing, in that Ukraine must cease to exist as a country.
Those people embracing the strong form of the "settle this once and for all" sentiment also feel that toy countries that have proven themselves unworthy of existence (the Baltics) should also cease to exist and that those countries bordering the Baltic (Denmark, Sweden, and Finland) either have to become neutral again or face massive destruction.
For the others, countries like Poland, Germany, France, England, and even the US, the feeling is they have to feel what war is like within their own countries, perhaps with Russia removing the UK and France from the list of nuclear powers.
That's surprisingly easy to do. The UK as a nuclear power boils down to a single ballistic missile sub on patrol. Kill that one sub, for example, when it is entering or leaving port on rotation, and the UK cannot retaliate. The UK has zero other strategic nuclear assets that Russia cannot easily destroy in port or in depots. That's the nearly fake "deterrent" the UK has as a result of being able to sortie only one ballistic sub at a time.
France is even easier, as they no longer have the resources to always have at least one ballistic sub on patrol. They frequently have none on patrol, meaning Russia can strike easily reached targets with tactical nukes and France cannot retaliate with a nuclear strike. Although France has about 290 nukes compared to the mere 120 active nukes the UK has, those French nukes are mostly in storage or waiting for the occasional ballistic sub sortie, on a French carrier that spends most of its time in port, or in storage waiting for Rafael fighter bombers, which will no longer exist after a Russian strike on their airports. All those assets are very easy to strike with tactical nukes.
The bottom line is that in about ten minutes Russia can eliminate the UK and France as nuclear powers. Is the US going to launch nukes at Russia for that? Nobody seriously believes that the US will trade Chicago, New York, Washington, LA and many other cities just to keep up the pretext that the UK and France are genuine nuclear powers.
Europe is not really the point in your argument. It is the US. I saw no mention of what it would take to cause the US real pain without a barrage of return missiles. And in the end it is the USA (and their rulers) that is behind all this.
"I saw no mention of what it would take to cause the US real pain without a barrage of return missiles. "
Fair comment. When it comes to war between the US and Russia the US has many, many targets that Russia could strike which would not cause city killing exchanges while Russia presents virtually no such targets to the US. That's a result of the US being over-extended around the world with 800 military bases outside the US and what? ten or so active carrier task forces at sea.
In a matter of minutes, Russia could vaporize all of the US's carrier task forces. Those are all far enough at sea that Russia could literally vaporize them and nobody outside the task forces would notice anything except a very bright light on the horizon for the task forces near the Persian Gulf.
Russia could also vaporize the US base at Diego Garcia island without anybody noticing it. Russia could strike US nuclear weapons depots in Europe and key bases, such as Ramstein in Germany, the Aegis Ashore installation at Redizkowo, Poland, and US bases in Romania, the Baltics, Poland, and so on.
But Russia doesn't have 800 bases outside of Russia. It has two tiny ones in Syria, and that's pretty much it. All the other bases are in Russia itself. The US can't strike the Russian military without striking Russia itself.
In contrast, Russia can strike US bases outside of the US all day long, defanging the US's ability to "project force" overseas, without ever touching the US homeland.
People in the west keep barking about "Oh, Russia isn't ever going to use nuclear weapons because it doesn't want the US to nuke Moscow," but that same argument also applies to the US. It turns out those strategic arsenals on both sides aren't very useful because they are doomsday weapons.
That they are doomsday weapons also gives the lie to "automatic escalation" arguments. In point of fact, nobody in the US is going to say, "I know, let's kill three hundred million Americans right now because Russia just nuked the Truman task force cruising off Yemen. That's a great idea!"
The automatic escalation only kicks in when you cross the line to killing cities in the other side's homeland. Russia isn't going to be the first to do that and neither is the US. Anybody who thinks the US is going to kill hundreds of millions of its own people because the EU was stupid enough to start a war with Russia hasn't been paying attention.
Consider what would happen if Russia detonates a posieden autonomous torpedo under an Air craft carrier strike group? It would possibly disappear without a trace giving Russia a high level of deniability. That's one major reason the US cannot go to war against Russia in Ukraine. How exactly could they cross the Atlantic to Europe with their heavy equipment?
Putin could end this by publicly announcing that he will launch an ICBM without nukes from Pacific across the USA and Washington DC, over Europe and Ukraine and down somewhere north pole.
That would make our largest voting block - women - pay attention because they will understand they will die is they stay silent. Fear or loss of baby-killing are two ways to make women get off their thumbs and do something besides crushing manhood, fatherhood, suppressing good advances or changes their VagFeelies are not excited about.
You overestimate their ability their ability to respond to danger logically. Have you ever seen a woman in a serious car accident? What makes you think they'd handle The Apocalypse any better?
"Have you ever seen a woman in a serious car accident?" Yes I have. In that case they did just fine, responding logically and with solid control.
I also know women who are absolutely first rate physicians, including emergency physicians, who have nerves of steel when dealing with emergencies. I know one female emergency room doctor who worked in a big city emergency room in the US (lots of traumatic injury) who three times in her career in extreme emergencies tore open a victim's chest to manually massage the heart to try to get it started, succeeding once in saving a life.
I also know plenty of women pilots who have been absolutely rock solid in emergency situations. My personal opinion is that women make better pilots in civilian operations than men, because they tend to be more detail oriented and the younger ones don't have any testosterone issues about following checklists.
As Russia proved in WW2, women make courageous medical staff, pilots, and also make excellent snipers. In Stalingrad when the German sixth army first made contact and stormed the outskirts of the city the Panzer troops were shocked to discover they had been held up for days by antiaircraft batteries who had lowered their guns to zero elevation to fire point blank at tanks, none of the crews abandoning their positions but fighting to the death. All of those crews were women, mostly young women in their late teens and early twenties.
Just saying, women can handle the Apocalypse just as well as men. I think culture has a lot to do with it, as snowflake culture in the US doesn't exactly prepare either men or women for the apocalypse. But man, no way would I underestimate the ability of, say, Russian women to pick up a Kalashnikov and fight.
You can hedge your bets against the bell-curve if you like. You'd have more fun in Vegas, though.
You just jumped the shark.
I can well testify to that. My Russian wife, a professional nurse, is nothing but velvet-covered steel when it comes to emergency situations.
Of course, I might be a bit biased.
In addition to the Stentorian's point, there is a lot of risk there in doing a test where you send your trajectory over an opponent nation. You're one idiot politician away from apocalypse. When you get close to the point of contact, the risk of inadvertent conflict is high, always.
Not all men are made of the same stuff, and you only find this out when you put them to the test. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the lack of freezing in fear I had in civilian life applied when I was under fire. I watched soldiers who suffered from it, unfortunately, good people. The kind of politicians we have today does not bode well.
This nuclear severance plan is a nonstarter. There's just too much risk involved. If an error is made, nuclear release and you lose several cities. Just because France can't always have a SSBN on patrol doesn't mean that they don't have a reciprocal agreement with Great Britain, or that they won't avoid a sabotage attempt, put to sea and fire off their missiles, or fire whatever surviving land-based arms they have. Too much risk, and the MoD people are more risk-averse than that, I think. It's a desperation move.
Instead, tempt them to use their arms by forging forward. Either they will or they won't. You can be assured their first move will be tactical, not strategic. If they strike Russians, reciprocate appropriately. It would be extra juicy if the reciprocation were to happen along lines of communication in Galicia. Kill lots of Nazis along the way, do the world a favor.
"Just because France can't always have a SSBN on patrol doesn't mean that they don't have a reciprocal agreement with Great Britain, or that they won't avoid a sabotage attempt, put to sea and fire off their missiles, or fire whatever surviving land-based arms they have."
Respectfully disagree.
For starters, Russia easily could strike both UK and French nuclear weapons simultaneously.
The SSBNs they don't have on patrol don't have missiles loaded in their tubes - they're in refit or getting outfitted for patrol and the missiles go in last. It takes a long time, days, to put the missiles into the vertical launch tubes so they can fire.
Both UK and French SSBN bases are on the coast, of course, not deep inland. Russian hypersonic missiles launched from Russian subs would get to those bases and detonate within 30 seconds of launch. Even if the tubes were full and the subs were in the water in port and fully crewed with crews at the ready, that's far, far too little time for the SSBN to launch.
It's the same with nuclear weapons storage facilities, especially in the UK, which is a tiny country where no part of it is more than, what? 30 seconds? flight time for a hypersonic missile launched just offshore. Russian subs don't have to surface to launch those. Like US subs, they can launch from fifty feet or even more underwater.
In a first strike against UK and French nukes Russia wouldn't use sabotage. It would be hypersonic missiles launched from subs that delivered tactical nukes with yields around 10 kilotons, more than ample to guarantee destruction of their targets, for example, the French sub base at Île Longue across the bay from Brest. The low yield would destroy the base without damaging Brest at all. Likewise, nuking the French carrier at its base in Toulon could use a small nuke, five or ten kilotons. The dockyards are so large and the distance between the carrier to actual population is so big that they could use 10 kt without significantly damaging Toulon. If they really wanted to spare civilians, they could use a mere 1 or 2 kilotons.
I agree that the Brits and the French might have a reciprocal agreement, although it's stretching the imagination to think either the Brits or the French would volunteer to lose their entire country just because the other party to the agreement got de-nuclearized.
The UK sub base at Faslane and the weapons depot in Coulport servicing Faslane are both far from population centers in fjords ("Lochs") in Scotland. The main UK nuclear weapons storage center in Burghfield is stupidly close to Reading, but even there a 10 kt burst would leave almost all of Reading untouched. The French nuclear weapons storage depot is close to the town of Istres, but it's so far from Marseille that the only thing the residents of Marseilles would notice would be a bright flash on the northwestern horizon. Take out the depot at Istres and the French don't have any land based nukes to deliver with their aircraft.
"or fire whatever surviving land-based arms they have."
The Brits don't have any land-based arms. They put all their eggs in the Trident missile warhead basket. They don't have the money to maintain a nuclear arsenal other than those missile warheads, and they can't just pick up a Trident warhead and deliver it by plane. In fact, the Brits don't even have the money to maintain their Trident warhead arsenal. Of the 200+ warheads their government has authorized they only have about 120 functional ones, so few that when they send their one sub at a time on patrol all of the tubes are not full and the Trident missiles don't have as many warheads loaded as they are capable of carrying.
The only land-based arms the French have are those that could be delivered by Rafael fighter-bombers. The problem with that is Rafael aircraft are highly vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes with tactical nuclear weapons. They are very, very soft targets, not hardened missile silos that can ride out a multi-hundred kiloton ground burst nearby. Between eliminating French depots and airports that host Rafaels, France doesn't really have a land-based deterrent.
The French would argue that of course with their usual line of stupid arguments, like "of course in a crisis we would disperse our Rafaels and nukes around the country." That's stupid because a nuclear decapitation strike would come out of the blue long before any Rafaels would be dispersed. It also would come out of the blue with no notice at all on coastal locations and a couple of minutes to air bases deep inside France, far too much time for anybody to identify the launch from near shore as a hypersonic missile, determine it is a threat, generate a valid nuclear launch order, get crew into a Rafael, fire the danged thing up, and taxi and take off and get far enough away to escape a nuke.
France also has limited funds: dispersing nukes is phenomenally expensive. That's why even the US clumps them together into a relatively limited number of storage depots where they can be defended at bearable cost. France doesn't have the money to defend nukes that have been dispersed to forty or fifty locations. Their military is also loath to do that, since dispersing nukes to very many locations guarantees that a Russian decapitation strike would involve very many ground bursts, with associated collateral damage.
The bottom line is that if Russia struck both the UK and France simultaneously, choosing a time when they could nail the one UK SSBN on patrol and when France had no SSBNs on patrol, Russia really could wipe out the nuclear deterrents of both UK and France, including their nuclear weapons labs and storage locations for raw components like plutonium, in about ten minutes, leaving no deliverable nuclear weapons in their inventories.
They could also do that with surprisingly few civilian casualties with no city killing, the exception being the small town of Istres. That has 44,000 people living in it, of which about a third would likely get killed by a strike on the French nuclear weapons storage depot just outside of Istres. The UK/US nuclear weapons depot in Lakenheath, mercifully, is far from even smaller towns. Only the village of Lakenheath itself, over a mile away, is nearby with a population of about 4,000.
Suppose either France or the UK had a nuke somewhere else, like in a US or NATO base in Europe? Would they try to use it against a city in Russia in revenge? If they did that, Russia would not only have a good chance of stopping it (outstanding air defense in Russia these days), it would absolutely annihilate the UK and France, striking all major cities. I don't see either the UK or France rushing to complete extinction over loss of their nuclear arsenals.
By the way, it wouldn't be a desperation move. It would be a harsh move, knocking the teeth out of somebody who made the mistake of screwing with Russia. That's the point of such a move, to teach a lesson to those who forgot how Russians dealt with Germans after 1945.
Just saying, the so-called "nuclear deterrents" of the UK and France are fake deterrents, a result of both the UK and France not having enough money to maintain a survivable nuclear deterrent against a far superior nuclear power like Russia. Russia could destroy them if it wanted to knock the teeth out of those imbeciles. I'm not recommending that, but I'm pointing out that the increasing numbers of people in Russia who want a harsh war with the UK and France do have some military options on their side that are not usually considered by Western audiences.
Ultimately, both the UK and France depend on the US for their nuclear umbrella. But there is no rational military planner either in the US or in Europe who believes the US is going to start a city-killing nuclear exchange with Russia, which would for sure kill over 100 million Americans, just because a few thousand French people died in a small village in the South of France. No way is the US going to give up, say, LA, Silicon Valley, New York, and all the rest for that, and every sensible person knows that.
Not true that the bases at Faslane and Coulport are far from population centres. They are half an hour from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. The English occupiers strategically placed the nukes in their Scottish colony and don't give a flying you know what if Scotland gets nuked.
"They are half an hour from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city."
Yes, which means a 10 kiloton nuclear strike on Coulport wouldn't do a thing to Glasgow. Same with Faslane. Glasgow is way too far away.
If you want to see what a nuke that vaporized the depot in Coulport would do, visit https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
On the right side in section 1, enter "Coulport, Scotland" and press the go button. The map will pan and zoom to coulport. In the "choose a warhead yield" enter 10. In the basic options check Surface, for a surface burst, and then press the Detonate button.
The outermost light gray ring is just light damage, broken windows. Damage from that blast doesn't come remotely close to Glasgow. You could set off 100 kilotons (try it... change the 10 to 100 and press the Detonate button again) and still, nowhere near Glasgow.
In fact, a 10 kt blast in Coulport wouldn't even break windows in Ardentinny, on the other side of Loch Long from Coulport. Amazing, but true.
Russian hypersonic missiles are very accurate. They don't have to use big yields. They can afford to use small yields, like 10 kt, which would well and truly destroy the storage depot, while still sparing civilian populations. That's exactly what Russia would do if it wanted to denuclearize the UK and France.
What many people fail to consider when they speak of nuclear weapons is that possession of nuclear weapons is meaningless. What is of major consideration is the ability to deliver nuclear strikes (delivery systems). Now when it comes to nuclear delivery systems, Russia has Ship launched, submarine launched, Submarine launched autonomous nuclear torpedoes, silo launched ICBMs, mobile launched ICBMs, Air launched cruise missiles. Just from open source the Russians have a ridiculous array of delivery systems. The world's populations should be breathing a sigh of relief the Russian leadership is so restrained, patient, responsible and pragmatic in their approach to war.
The general points you make are correct, but you are mixing up France and the UK a bit.
France takes its independent deterrent very seriously since De Gaulle's days, and it is in a much better shape than the UK. It is the UK subs that are old and decrepit and can barely be kept afloat. The two newest French Triomphant SSBNs were built in the 2000s, while the newest UK Vanguard ones date to 1995 and 1998.
The French also have air-launched nuclear cruise missiles.
The UK likely has them too -- the Storm Shadows can certainly carry nuclear warheads -- but the French ASMP flies at Mach 3 so it's a much more dangerous delivery system.
In a hypothetical direct war to deal with the UK Russia sinks the one SSBN on patrol and nukes Clyde where the other three are parked, takes out a few airfields in the UK and a few key control centers with tactical nukes, and that's it. Then the UK is at the Kremlin's mercy regarding whether a proper strategic countervalue strike is carried out or not.
With France it is more difficult -- they may have two SSBNs on patrol, plus we don't truly know where the ALCMs are deployed around Europe and how quickly they might get them up in the air before they are taken out. A lot of objects around Europe would have to be taken out to make sure.
You're making some assumptions that are not true. For example, that the Triomphant SSBNs are newer than the UK's SSBNs doesn't mean that the French keep at least one of them at sea all of the time.
In point of fact, the French *do not* keep at least one SSBN at sea all the time. They can't afford it. There are many surprisingly long periods of time when the French have *no* SSBNs at sea. They're in port where they can be easily seen by Russian satellites.
That the French have air-launched nuclear missiles is fine, but those are launched by Rafaels. Eliminate the Rafaels, and eliminate the storage locations for those missiles and you eliminate the French deterrent. That's not hard to do for Russia in a matter of minutes and it involves a trivially small number of base locations, about twenty if you really want to make sure.
They don't keep Rafaels loaded up with nuclear weapons (or those weapons stored nearby) in many locations because it's too expensive to guard nuclear weapons in many different locations.
The French also don't forward-base (keep them outside of France) their nukes precisely because they do want to keep making De Gaulle noises about having an independent deterrent. Where they keep their nukes is well known, again, a result of the cost factor in protecting them together with the need to have special protective measures which are visible to commercial satellites.
The forward basing adversary is the US, which makes a fetish of spreading nuclear weapons all around the world. But even there the US reduces its forward basing to a manageable number of locations in Europe, fewer than ten, and those are well known because of the distinctive protective measures, again, visible from space, that the US nuclear military bureaucracy uses to guard its devices. It's not easy, not even for the US, to guard lots of nukes in many overseas locations. That's one reason why the US no longer has nukes on surface ships in the US navy: too hard and too expensive to guard them.
By the way, I'd like to shout out to Simplicius for this sub, as reading in the comments here is how I got onto this nuclear thing. Somebody in a comments thread here suggested reading Daniel Ellsberg's memoir, which I did, and that made me realize that not only I didn't know anything about a pretty darned near important subject these days (nukes) but also that there were lots and lots of very good books you can read.
A few months of reading later and I feel like the blindfold I was wearing before has come off.
Do you mean, “The Doomsday Machine” or “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers”?
I meant Daniel Ellsberg's fine memoir, "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner", a mere $16.46 in hardcover on Amazon.
It's an outstanding book. One of the interesting things about it is how it reveals Ellsberg to be so much more than the cardboard cutout, anti-Vietnam-war, Enemy of the State that the ever more war-centric US political sewer and their media allies make him out to be.
Time was that in the US there was a genuinely antiwar political movement that included a wide spectrum of Americans. No more, as the Dems, formerly the political home of so many antiwar Americans, has become the party of genocide and endless wars.
The book also reveals the endless lies about the US's nuclear war infrastructure, such as the nonstop lies about only the President being able to command a nuclear attack. When you read the details about how hundreds, possibly thousands, of people could have done that in the past you'll never again believe them when they tell you that this time, with current systems, only the President can do it.
This area is Russia,it always was and remains so. It has also always been the nightmare for all Russian rulers. A long,long border with no natural defensive features. No Russian ruler ever allowed threats,real or imagined along this border,as the Americans well knew
On the money!
And then can Western populations please get hold of all these ghouls that have stolen their countries and string them up from every available lampost.
Of course Ukrainie is not sovereign. So what? It would make no difference if it were.
that is sad
Beautiful ending, accept Jesus Christ and you will have ever lasting life. When we leave, we only leave our bodies.
AMEN! Chip
"This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"
Lay off the superstitious mumbo-jumbo, there's a good chap.
As Brian Berletic is saying for weeks on The New Atlas channel, USA ordered Europe to take on Russia while they will handle Iran and China. Is not that UK & Co are going for themselves ignoring the USA advice or orders, but contrary.
That is correct.
And this week we also had Karaganov stressing in the most explicit terms that the US is not going to ever launch nukes at Russia to defend Europe, that is "axiomatic" in his words.
Well, what is the Kremlin waiting for then?
BTW, Russia already got hit with nukes several times in this war, but the Kremlin kept it secret because it would have been too embarrassing to admit it. After all, if you officially announce "Our ammo depot in Toropets was destroyed by a NATO nuclear missile, the Khakhovka dam was blown up by a SADM, several of our airfields were hit with small tactical nukes too", then what is the decision tree after that?
1) You launch strategic strikes in retaliation
2) You don't, in which case nuclear attacks against you have suddenly become OK and can expand, just as happened with everything else previously unthinkable in this war.
So the Kremlin took the third option, to control the situation by controlling the information.
But you can't suppress obvious facts from public footage and basic logic.
Karaganov either didn't pay attention to the public footage and was never told the truth because he is not part of the small circle of people who get briefed, or he is part of the suppression of information effort.
Either way, escalation dominance in this war has been 100% on the side of the West so far. Up to and including the use of tactical nukes on Russian soil.
So why would boots on the ground in Ukraine finally force the cowards in the Kremlin to act?
P.S. It is an interesting question whose nukes it was that were used on Russia? It was always assumed it was the US doing it, by default, but maybe not. Officially the UK has no tactical nukes, so if it wasn't the US, it would have been France. Or Israel joined the party perhaps secretly and provided some. Or the UK does in fact have tactical nukes...
Whazzup, Hunter S.T.!
Fantasy. No proof. Just conjecture. You are really very tiring, not even good for entertainment anymore.
Nonsense.
Where do you get these narratives from - I thought USAID had been shutdown.
"Where do you get these narratives from"
Methpipe dreams. Or the piece of shit is a paid troll.
My money is on the latter.
USAID wasn't shut down, but optimized. As Rubio said, from over 3000 projects, the focus will be on the most important 1000. That means that coup d'etats, assassinations, media narrative will be the main focus, while gender agenda will be postponed for later date.
" ... Russia already got hit with nukes several times in this war ..."
Looney tunes.
No nukes has been dropped by NATO/US on Russian soil.
Incorect, unfortunately.
It is between 3 and about a dozen, three to seven separate strikes.
The Toropets is a ”mystery”. It could not have been drones that penetrated the underground storages. But it was no nukes. You have zero radiation emitting from those strikes. You have to present some evidences.
If nukes would have been used, you and I, wouldnt be surfing on Simplicius substack right now…
Fusion leaves practically no radiation. It is the primary stage that is dirty, but there are ways around that.
And you refuse to face the reality of the cold hard logic here. You admit that it could not have been drones, and you are almost getting there in terms of acknowledging that all those bunkers cannot explode all at once given how hardened they are and how widely separated they are, including with earthen barriers between them.
But when I ran the decision tree for you, it is still too much for you to accept.
Let's do it again.
It was a tactical nuke, on a single target. Then on another one some time later, and a few more. Salami slicing. It was also small nukes on military objects. Well, aside from the dam. But there is plausible deniability behind all of these strikes.
What do you do if you are the Kremlin?
Option 1): Announce to the world that NATO nuked you, then launch a strategic strike on NATO in response. Which is WWIII.
Option 2): Announce to the world that NATO nuked you, then do nothing. Which automatically invites much more such strikes, because why not? You have been painted as the concentration of all evil in the world, and you have had your nuclear bluff called. They won't strike your cities, but they will go hard with tactical nukes at demilitarizing you, and they can do it quite quickly using such means. Well, then you have the option of reverting to the first option, or surrendering.
Option 3): Absorb the hit and pretend it didn't happen, stalling for more time. More time for what exactly is not clear.
But as long as the damage is not critical, Option 3) is indeed a rational choice.
Besides, as far as we now it was Russia who first started using tactical nukes on ammo depots and underground bunkers. If you start throwing such accusations, that fact will be brought up immediately.
The other side is also keeping quite about it so far. Because they too are running the exact same decision tree. The difference is they are also acting much more boldly.
A 2016 investigation found radiation levels on Bikini Atoll as high as 639 mrem/yr (6.39 mSv/yr), well above the established safety standard for habitation.
Bikini was where the first fusion bomb was detonated.
Once you go deep into the Rabbit hole it is hard to crawl back.
Russia has not been using nukes - either.
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. As my grandmother would've said: "That boy's crazier'n a bessie bug!"
Only bugsy 'ol grandmas can communicate with those wacky bessie-bugz!
Yep. And they need to scare the populace with Fear Of The Russians and Abandonment by the US so the population goes along with borrowing the money they need for military spending. Maximum propaganda focussed on the great unwashed. It is so manifestly stupid and evil. In fact on the continuum between Evil and Stupid it may require two dots. One at both extreme ends indicating 100% Stupid and 100% Evil.
I live in England and have as yet to see a scared populace. ;O)
Just a stupid populace.
No, there aren't many Americans around here.
America has destroyed itself fighting Russia, many folks in America are starving and homeless, those of us who ain't spend all our energy avoiding the scenario of becoming homeless and starving.
Correct. East, West, North, South…the decay is quite evident. Hollowed out shells of soul~less humans, or are they…. My heart is heavy, memories of the grandmother(s) will persist for some time. God will guide. 💙🇷🇺❤️🐈⬛
So far the consistent pattern in this war is that the Kremlin makes loud proclamations about how such and such action is unacceptable, then the West does it, and all that follows is the Kremlin tucking its tail between its legs after that.
Why would it be any different with the boots on the ground?
Which, BTW, have been on the ground unofficially for a very long time. Literal Germans, plus Poles, Americans, Brits, French and all other kinds of fascist scum were in Kursk slaughtering Russian civilians. The Kremlin had all legal grounds to finally punish someone properly (the punishment being measured in megatons; many megatons). It didn't even then.
Also, Medevedev just said the following on Twitter:
>Macron and Starmer are playing dumb. Time and again they are told that peacekeepers must be from non-NATO states. No, we will send tens of thousands – just lay it out – you want to give military aid to the neo-Nazis in Kiev. That means war with NATO. Consult with Trump, scumbags.
What does that mean? That peacekeepers other than the Russian army are in general OK as long as they are non-NATO. What does "non-NATO" mean here? Are Swiss, Japanese, South Koreans, Israeli, etc. "peacekeepers" OK?
What does the very such concession mean?
Correct point. At least half of Russian casualties are a direct result of non-ukraine action. Especially storm shadow and scalp. Remember they also managed to convicne biden to launch atacms. I dont blame London and Paris for feeling emboldened.
What source are you using for your assertion?
Those weapons require u.s. troops to input targeting data and from what I've read at least one u.s. person is present at firing. Can't find an article right now doing a quick search though.
You miss the elephant in the room - this war . You know , the kremlin always protested the expansin and never took action until it took . Same here .
I have the same sentiments with that Medvedev tweet.
Frankly, I’m 50/50 on wether Russia will take the “gloves off” once the Anglo/Franco “peacekeepers” lands on UKR.
I do hope Russia sends a convincing message and they can start by taking Odessa, bombing totally the hell out all it’s ports that’s infested with western personnel and equipments.
That ceasefire will hapoen and I’m really curious if Russia will do something against it.
((Zelensky)) can declare a ceasefire any time he wishes. Unless it is convenient to Russia, they will simply continue bombing, shelling and advancing and ((Zelensky's)) conscripted army will be forced to run.
Soy boy Macron and Stasi Starmer, and whatever nonentity is German Chancellor, will throw a tantrum but Russia will continue to obliterate the Ukrainian army until it surrenders.
NATO are not idiots. They are not going to congregate all in the same place, they will disperse. It's not as if they are not aware of dispersion being the most important thing in this war.
Will there be some Iskanders on hotels and restaurants? Yeah, there will be. But the bulk of the force will be dispersed into the Soviet apartment blocks, and it will be untouchable.
Just as Sumy was used to launch the Kursk operation -- the city was half emptied after 2022, then the AFU and the NATO "mercenaries" moved in and occupied every building in the city, but keeping the remaining civilians in. Russia mostly can't touch them because of the human shield that the civilians are.
It will be the same in Kiev, Odessa, etc.
Recent history of NATO, USA, israel have, do, and would kill human shields without a pause.
Be ashamed that Russia, Yemen, Hizballah, Hamas, and Iran care more for the enemy's people then the enemy's gov.s care for their own people or any innocent families.
Sad that Christians, non-Zionist Jews, and Muslims under Arab Zionist leaders show us how much virtue and honor those 'terrorists' that are only ones actively fighting against genocide or further NATO aggression and more killings.
Sad most of the world is not worthy to wipe the asses of those fighters. Are you?
There is no need to kill human shields here.
The war winning move Putin has had at his disposal quite literally at a snap of his finger from the start of the war remains there — nuke the border crossings with Poland and Romania and physically isolate Ukraine. Pretty much nobody will die in those strikes, especially if a warning is given in advance. Then, if Poland and Romania still insist on being a logistic base for attack on Russia, by starting to move NATO forces directly into Ukraine and repairing those logistic line, nuke the countries of Poland and Romania directly. But hopefully it will not come to that.
This was such an obvious thing to do from the start, and it accomplishes three goals simultaneously:
1) Maintain a humanitarian image -- Putin comes out and says "We need to stop the slaughter, on both sides, and prevent further war. To do it we need to isolate Ukraine, and this is the only way to accomplish that". But he won't kill anyone in the process if it is done right, he will just sever transport links.
2) Accomplish the most important operational war objective, which is to cut Ukraine off from NATO. No more ammo and, most importantly, no more drone components going in. Russia wins the war within a few months.
3) Scare the Europeans into backing off by having actual nukes used publicly right on their borders.
But for a long list of reasons that we have extensively discussed, Putin is too weak, scared and compromised by suspect loyalties to do something so obvious.
I generally like your analysis but you rely too heavily on the idea that nukes are real.
Not even sure that nuclear weapons is needed for that.
Ideally it would have been tested first with heavy conventional missiles, then see how quickly they repair the transport connections, but we are past that point now, unfortunately.
Now simultaneously transport links must be cut in an impossible to quickly repair way and Europe must be scared into backing down.
None are so blind as those who will not see... Chip
None are so crazed as those that see what is not there...Johnny
Indian, Bangladesh, Kenyan, etc
I don't know what childish games Macron or Starmer are playing, but there is no way the US is going to back them up in Ukraine. Trump could have handled this better, but they are dreaming if they think they can change his mind.
I can just imagine the motivation to the Russians if France and Germany enter Ukraine. They thought hunting Leopards was great, just think how that would go.
There will be no European troops.
… and if they do go there they won’t last long, and shortly after complete mayhem in the countries sending those troops.
It’s almost like Russia WANTS them to go there just so they can get even.
It’s Starmer and Macron that are walking into the trap - not Russia.
There are Nato troops already "fighting" under the guise of mercs (They die. call them a merc)... From Maripol and on wards, many instances posted on "sites" of their existence.
My belief..Russia is slow rolling this. (One of the reasons) every Russian soldier is highly valued, needed for upcoming war.
The ceasefire is just a western charade.
Russians see this as. Russia vs "the West".. not Ukraine. Ukraine is just the battleground.
We have a parasitic class on top of the "worlds ponzi scheme", War is needed to keep the lie alive.
The Anglo-French troops gambit is based on a critical assumption - that once those troops are in theatre the americans will simply not let such close allies engage the russian army on their own.
That's it, the whole thing is underpinned by that. Maybe Starmer and Macron know something we don't?
On the other hand, those two men are almost laughably pathetic. How France and Britain were come to be ruled by the most unmanly men is beyond me.
I would not bet against the U.S. coming to the aid of its European allies in the event their direct involvement in the war. Trump is completely unstable. Anything that he has said in the past can be reversed in the blink of an eye, only to be reversed again or altered in another blink.
Correct and in the end he is one man, and his authority is not absolute.
On the matter of controlling US forces, the US president's authority is absolute.
Congress can declare war on another country, though such as Act of Congress requires the President's assent. And even if Congress does, the US President, as CIC (a position not subject to control by Congress or SCOTUS) can act however he wants, including doing nothing.
I am aware of the legal authorities. However, as much as I like Trump i wouldn't trust him in this case
Well then, someone needs to inform Trump about that. He has been actively defying court orders as though he is an absolute monarch.
Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Just like Starmer.
Starmer knows full well what he is doing.
"How France and Britain were come to be ruled by the most unmanly men is beyond me."
Add Canada, Australia, NZ, to that list... Add most of the Western Anglo nations while you're at it.
Oh, but that answer is easy!
25 years of gluttonous excess, on the back of hollowed-out, financialised economies. The people and leaders are self-congratulatory alike.
These are the "good-time" leaders. When faced with anything but the most trite challenges they all go to water, or they make themselves look big until the problem hopefully goes away.
The result of hollowed-out economies based on pure debt spending is that productive activities are all shut down in favour of easy debt. This deindustrialisation and financialisation process is sped up with ridiculous policies like "Global Warming" and DEI.
In 2019 the whole system hit the wall. Please research quantitative easing, ZIRP and NIRP. The western financial system was at the bottom of a giant liquidity hole that had been dug for 20 years prior.
What followed was a desperate attempt to secure the next 10 years until 2030, starting with the convenient leak of a US military biological agent to facilitate the injection of 20 trillion dollars into the global economy to fill in some of that enormous liquidity hole.
Please research quantitative tightening, when it started, and how much has been repaid, and when it was repaid.
They have bought themselves 5% of precious interest rate cuts' worth of time to implement their "final solution".
This plan is to subjugate the remaining productive nations in the hope that their upside-down world can continue.
In my opinion, the essence of their idea is very similar to the Eoi and Morlocks.
The problem with that analysis (which i agree with) is that these people will sleepwalk us all into disaster. These leaders don't understand real consequences because they have never faced them. And this is the greatest danger of all
Agree, but there is a shift occurring in global politics which is currently being resisted as vehemently as possible. The same events currently occurring in Romania, Germany, and other places are simply the tip of the spear.
Spot on.
You are right,except Starmer is not sleepwalking,he's being prodded from behind.
Yes, Wells is a good frame of reference, along with the other old favourites Orwell and Huxley. Dystopia is here in the West unless strong nations such as Russia can make the Morlocks face consequences. The populations in the West are largely broken and atomised and the disgusting little men with glasses and dull women that make up the nomenklatura and their armies of media and bureaucrats in the West rule by diktat with no consequences, living in luxury and privilege with nothing but contempt for the cultures and peoples they have destroyed over the last 40 years or so. Unless there is serious organisation against them, their way of life, their own families etc directly they will continue to morph in Morlocks.
Perfect description of the BBC.
With the exception, now, of the US, most of the West is governed by women or eunuchs.
This culture is so feminized nearly every man has a number of women standing on our testicles. Safety nazis, 911 on speed dial, lawfare, the legal procedure is the punishment with the damaging crimes women do are ignored or not illegal, False rape she is hidden from news while he is shouted about and if-when it is shown she lied, well, 'don't do again' and his like has been crippled, 'arrested for Rape' on every background check for employment, housing, ...
When I was a young man in the late 1970's early 1980's the men I worked with and the young men I went to school with did not disrespect each other, the threat and sometimes the realization of being beaten for it kept everyone respectful, and girl friends and wives that got outline could be slapped and everyone would wonder what BS fem-vomit she did to deserve that.
Since than in professional workplaces I have stopped myself from punching disrespectful cnts of both sexes that fatherless because of Divorce-raping vile mothers they never got that smack then needed when they needed it.
Yea, this FemNazi Hell-hole along with the rest of this level of Hell around the world could use a Nuke war with 3+ Billions dead so survivors will be free of such Satanic forces, with only what local gov the create and be part of, and public hanging judges, mayors, teachers, abortionists, false-witnessers, .. will be possible.
.. I think that 3+ billion dead would be a small price to remove Satan and those vile vicious lying slimy betraying baby-killing Sick delusional psychotic Western Womanhood, 5th column supporting Satan.
Not at all. Feminization has gone on for years. EU is a matriarchy. The only men allowed is either ”bent over” or Soya.
They both have their Controllers,their Handlers,they sleep with them.
From the American perspective, all this Eurotrash warmongering suits its imperial ambitions perfectly.
Europe will provide the cannon fodder ... I mean "peacekeepers"... to Ukraine while buying more overpriced American weapons to militarize for the fight against the Russian "orcs" that threaten their precious oligarchies-disguised-as-democracies.
In short, Europe's future is to become a ginormous version of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, America can pivot towards wars in the Middle East and Asia against Iran and China.
It's called a division of labor.
Who says that we are not already inside of a World War?
We are indeed already in world War, but the West messed up. They thought they had trapped Russia, but it is the other way around.
They missed the boat on a China take down by a couple years and counting. They thought Russia would fold within 6 months of hostilities in Ukraine, leading to a compliant Russian government.
Russia is stronger then ever, the USA spiral decline picks up pace, and China now had the ISR assets in place, anti-ship missile force fully deployed, world leading drone technology, and a nuclear force nearing MAD capability.
Tough talk, but you neglect the possibility of stupidity on one or both sides leading to a nuclear holocaust.
But that's what Chernobyl was for. It was a controlled Test arranged by The Elite to prove or disprove their growing certainty that use of nuclear bombs would not result in a "nuclear winter. The next spring after the Bomb dropped on Hiroshima a burnt and blasted Cherry Tree put out some BLOSSOMS. Well,and it's disturbing for us but The Elite got their answer. Nature is flourishing.Critters are flourishing. And lots of people have moved back. Young parents with small kids are setting up home there now.
Your take on Chernobyl is unsupported by any evidence and, frankly, is batshit crazy.
Like the worlds political administrations are then.
I am not neglecting that possibility, unfortunately I feel it the likeliest scenario.
I have not yet heard corp-media news or even alt-journalists ask how Russia, China, Iran, and perhaps others have hypersonic missiles, and we don't have missiles or defense system(s) that can destroy incoming Hypersonic missiles.
Is it DEI 'hire no white men' policies in those DoD research departments, or incompetence in planning or unwilling to divert some of the War department trillion dollars to real projects instead of pouring it out to contractors so they can kick-back bribes and-or political donations?
Which do you think it is?
Don't worry, those DEI researchers and Affirmative Action managers will have a shiny non-functional missile within decade.
Two. But by that time the opposition will have something that is two decades ahead again. The USSA/MIC is toast.
The final test for any government is the death toll of their soldiers.
Boots on the ground has been fulfilled by proxy in Syria, Libya and Ukraine.
If the US/UK/French soldiers die in Ukraine Iran and China - where they will have to travel to, with all their gear...haha. Never.
That's where Russia is far ahead in this 'war thing' - they have an active front, on their border, a proxy force supported by 54 countries fighting them, their soldiers are dying and they've been fighting for 3 years and it seems politically/economically stable.
It sounds like the Russians would be fully justified in shooting any mercenaries who don't surrender....and some of these idiots even took videos of their war crimes...Putin may be a little too civilized for this conflict...
Russians soldiers at the front will be the real decision makers. And after seeing the atrocities performed against Russian civilians I'll bet justice will be served.
They are serving justice currently. All invaders are being executed if they refuse surrender.
As it should be.
Refusing to surrender means you're fighting on. If you're killed, that's not an execution.
Anyone who doesn't surrender, mercenary or Ukrainian, will be shot -- that is the nature of war. The only question is whether mercenaries who are captured will be shot. They lack all Geneva Convention protections.
I doubt Putin will direct they be shot. That would create an excessive emotional response in the West, and there is more mileage in embarrassing the West by putting such mercenaries on trial for terrorism. Of course if you are a mercenary from a minor country, you are likely to be more dispensable, without any repercussions.
I am reading a lot of speculation that there is a high concentration of sheep-dipped NATO troops surrounded in "Kursk" including many officers, and that these are complicit in war crimes as far as the Russian's are concerned, notwithstanding their very presence is a criminal act. And I think Putin only said he would spare "Ukrainian troops" who surrender - and at least one comment has been made that as an ex-lawyer he is careful with his words. So there is a very high chance of some really bad optics here for NATO countries who have send advisors/trainer/mercs etc and found them bagged and surrounded.
Wishful thinking. Let me know when we see crowds of wives, mothers, girlfriends, sisters, demanding answers as to where their men have gone, nobody has heard from them, etc..
There is already one viral video of Western mercs being shot instead of being captured alive.
In the viral video of the two US mercs that were executed by a Russian soldier, both were wounded and one (with the go pro ) clearly had his guns up and called out “no” before he was shot.
Executions clearly and totally justified.
Did anyone else see the video of captured Russian troops tied and laying on ground while that Nazi-Ukraine soldiers went to each and shot their knee caps .. that will teach Russians to surrender, better to set yourself on fire and dive into a Ukrainian troop transport.
That is one video I am sure Russian soldiers see before deployment. Kill, KIll, Kill, until dead seems about right and Just.
"The West has a Sunk Cost problem: they’ve invested everything not only into the Ukraine war itself, but now into the image of their own strength and ability to manifest peace at will."
The West has no problem other than entitlement. They can manifest peace at will any time. It is called agreeing to Russia's terms.
As for the ugly Freemason made Transgender Statue of Helios which has been disfiguring NY Harbour since the 19th century, give it back to France or smelt it into shell casings. Don't believe me? Get a good photo of "Liberty" and look at the face only. Is that a woman's face? And the torch, the same one that was placed on JFKs grave, a Luciferian victory trophy on conquering a country in the 19th century and a man in the 20th.
For an actual female torch lady, check out the classic Columbia Pictures Intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4T4vdAV5Vk
The next thing to be fed into the wood chipper is the poem about the vile statue by non-Christian Activist Emma Lazarus, celebrating a flood of replacements for the pre Civil War heritage American population.
All Americans are illegal immigrants, bimbo.
Don't take this ballyhoo so seriously! The europeans know that if they wedge in they will be crushed by Russian assaults. They have no intention of risking that, and the US has already told them that if they incur internal assaults as a result of a deliberately aggressive action which is what this would be, there will be no Article 5 and the US could even pull out of NATO altogether because they would be risking US bases on the european fringe if not further in.
This is the eruopeans trying to get talked about and stay relevant. They are not relevant and do not deserve this attention. We can all ignore this hot air as indeed are european citizens who have no intention of fighting on the Russian front for this bunch of twits.
As I stated previously, Trump can change his mind at any time. Nothing that he says should be trusted.
But will he? If Trump decides to risk US forces in a fight over Ukraine I am a banana.
No,as usual us Brits will be sent in to do usas dirty work.
City of London's dirty work.
Except never underestimate what the cornered animal (Europe) will do... Chip