Would be pretty cool if Ukraine pulled off a feint retreat and counterattack
https://twitter.com/chuckpfarrer/status/1533218076522688514?s=21&t=oIBY4-litw0PS1JUc7Dgkg
he didn’t though, that’s the translated closed caption adding a word
You speak Ukranian too?
Fuck, they’re attacking Kyiv again?
i don’t speak it, but i understand it more or less
Gotcha. Same for Belarusian?
Also if not orcs, what did he actually call them?
probably similar with belarusian, but i think they use russian more often, than in ukraine, where whole regions speak ukrainian 90%+ of the time.
he said “живая сила и техника” by which meant “live forces and equipment”. the CC said “orcs and vehicles”. /shrug
1 Like
I suspect this isn’t true. Taylor is the former ambassador so isn’t necessarily in the loop. Plus he was Trump’s guy so a lot more likely than normal to be fos.
https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1533444461610553346?t=GemXlEFBgDV7VIwKucoHdQ&s=19
Wasn’t expecting a Leroy Jenkins reference.
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1533468675965177858?t=2wL2Ps97kKPLG_Cu1PAg_Q&s=19
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1533468683879718914?t=Mr0UjlnObvX_JbIW-DC2FQ&s=19
Don’t know what he means by escorts.
one more escalation on the fringes. which is kind of putin’s style. kasparov once described it as death by a thousand cuts.
DNR charged three foreign fighters (one brit, two moroccan) with … crimes i guess. they didn’t specify. the investigation is moving to a prosecutor, and since DNR has declared martial law or something similar, the prosecution expressly can seek capital punishment.
they didn’t release whether those fighters were captured or simply confirmed to have been fighting in donbass.
it seems he refers to some ukrainian grain freighters being able to leave the black sea while escorted by turkish navy.
there are many problems with that approach, (mines/expense/additional navy in the theater) and would likely have only a symbolic effect on the markets.
2 Likes
https://twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1533505067881533441
https://twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1533505073623482368
1 Like
Seems like standard superpower behavior.
US was meddling in Middle East for 50 years before 9/11, especially the prior decade, lobbing cruise missiles whenever it felt like it.
Once attacked by a handful of terrorists on its own soil, rules changed and it launched not one but two preemptive wars to force full regime change in response.
1 Like
Lol at that
Anyways. This is absurd:
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1533619320093388800?s=21&t=VnSx-jgWu32ZqiZIvnCabg
1 Like
Why lol at that?
Let’s do a thought experiment:
During the 1990s air war against Serbia, US bombed the shit out of Serbian targets for 78 days.
Now imagine Iran gave Milosevic a sub and he used it to fire on a US city in response.
Do you think US counter-response would be “fair play, we’re bombing you after all, we wouldn’t want to be hypocrites.” Or do you think US puts boots on the ground in Serbia and/or bombs the shit out of Iran?
Seems obvious to me that superpowers don’t take kindly to being directly attacked, even when it’s within bounds of a conflict they started.
Walk me through the thought process on the Russian side that would lead them to attack NATO over a Ukraine long range missile strike on a military target inside Russia. Does Russia think NATO will just stand down? What do they expect to gain? How do they think it will end for them?
Do you really think Russia wants war with NATO right now? Because I’m not getting that vibe.
I didn’t say they would attack NATO. I don’t know what they would do. Maybe they launch a massive bombardment of Kyiv with strategic assets they have yet to use in the war. Maybe they attack logistics points coming to the country. Maybe they covertly release a nerve agent in a Warsaw train station or sponsor some other saboteur mission. I don’t know.
Taking it on the chin with no response at all seems unlikely though. I think there is a good reason NATO’s actions have been measured so far, and I am guessing they have walked through the possibilities in greater detail than you have.
IDK I find this way of thinking a bit weird. Like if during the Iraq War, third parties had supplied Iraq with weapons which Iraq then used to strike the US homeland, what do you think America would have done to those third parties? Backing up further, what would have happened if other countries had been pumping billions of dollars of weaponry into Iraq which resulted in heavy losses of American military assets and soldiers? Like if for some reason there were limited ways America could respond conventionally, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that people on cable news would have been calling for the use of nuclear weapons unless the foreign powers stopped supplying Iraq.
Russia has been incredibly tolerant of third-party meddling so far, not out of any goodness of their hearts but because their escalation options are basically a binary choice between “zero” and “serious risk of nuclear annihilation”. The tone of your post is “lol check out the chutzpah of these Russians” but to me “no literally using your military hardware to strike the Russian homeland” is an incredibly passive place for a red line to be drawn.
2 Likes
Forcing Russia into this binary choice is good strategy on the part of the West.