I still do not get this we can’t let Ukraine win too bigly or else Putin will use a nuclear bomb and so we need to start reigning in Ukraine idea. It seems way way too easily exploitable by anyone with a bomb, and seems like realpolitk turned around sideways. I mean what’s the whole point of supporting Ukraine if they’re going to abide by only attacking Russia in Ukraine, basically doing a good clean war as much as one’s possible and then we say nah, you’re doing too good within the rules of the game, can you tone that back a bit?
https://twitter.com/cd_hooks/status/1576977350972932102
What does Ukraine get out of this deal? It’s a Russia freeroll.
That seems like the entire point of owning nuclear weapons - so long as you don’t use them, no other nation will invade you. If Russia can still get invaded even if they don’t nuke, then they have much less of a reason to not just use the nukes right now.
That and the opportunity for an insecure narcissist addicted to toxic masculinity to be able to lash out angrily at the world when he gets his wittle feely feels hurt.
An argument both for rolling the dice and supporting Ukraine to the hilt and for not supporting them at all in the first place. If your primary concern is for the existence of 2014 border Ukraine this is the key question.
If the primary concern is harming Russia then a long, bloody stalemate makes sense as a goal.
To me, a long bloody stalemate doesn’t make as much as sense as having Russia commit material and then having a decisive victory over them. Repulsing the Kyiv attack, the missile attacks on depots behind the lines, and the blitzkriegs seems to be doing damage and removing more people and supplies than a slow grueling fight where Russia gets to build up their infrastructure behind the front line.
But I could see how, if one’s goal were to have a long stalemate, then trying to pull back the reigns when your side is doing better, is coherent. It just seems kooky to me.
A long bloody stalemate doesn’t seem to be in the cards right this second. Let’s see the Russians find their feet and stabilize before we give them credit for doing it. Right now their big idea seems to be throwing brand new conscripts with AK’s and RPG’s maybe at modern artillery + drones + god knows what else. I don’t think that’s even going to slow the Ukrainians down honestly.
Processing the prisoners is going to be a major logistical headache actually.
I think it’s a game of trying to manage escalation. If the US escalates support to a level where Russia thinks that there’s no way they can win, then how Russia escalates in response becomes dangerous and unpredictable. If Russia has a path to victory that’s just costlier than they hoped, that’s probably less dangerous. And if Ukraine is winning bigly enough that Russia is losing territory that they see as Russia (certainly Russian leadership thinks of Crimea in these terms, and has since the start of the war), then god help us all. If the US didn’t care about how Russia would react they’d just have given the Ukrainians modern M1 tanks and F-35s right off the bat.
no idea if this is fake or not, but it should lower musks approvals in ukraine, which are annoyingly high
Fair point, change my post to M1s and F-16s.
main issue with american jets is training ukranian pilots before they can fly, and aircraft maintenance. air force/navy standards are very thorough for every pilot and every mission.
m1 tanks seem like they would dominate the open spaces in south of ukraine, but once they get into urban warfare, every tank is a target more likely to get hit than come out unscathed. so, they have got to be using up all the captured tanks and ammo, planning to eventually switch to 100% nato standard seems like proper use of resources.
The only Ukrainian manned air to ground missions I’ve heard of were using anti-radiation missiles to target Russian air defenses. This started when the US started supplying the Ukrainians with anti-radiation missiles that home in on air defense radars a couple of months ago.
I’ve definitely seen reports of the UAF attacking Russian front line positions:
https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1574862992717520913
https://twitter.com/UkrainianNews24/status/1543389814476742659
If this report is correct, that Ukrainian troops have reached Dudchany, that’s where I put this yellow X:
That’s a pretty big advance relative to ISW’s map from yesterday.
In Putin’s Russia you don’t read maps, maps read you.
Kasparov GOAT
https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1577006943499350016?t=jgnMHAF3A3n6lmXg2U4kDg&s=19
“* The one who supports Ukraine”
“* The one who supports Russia”