Ukraine, Russia, and the West

Yeah, very hard for me to believe that a no-fly zone would be put in place that would then be enforced by western countries blowing planes out of the sky or even patrolling.

The effect of this in galvanizing US and Euro opinion cannot be overstated.

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Probably beat himself to death.
(That said, I believe in like 20% of the reports coming out of UK/Russia about the war, casualties, public opinion, or related matters.)

No they won’t, they have been holding back pretty hard. They could level Kiev if they wanted to. For now, they don’t want to deal with the long term consequences (at home and abroad).

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bluecheckmark says 2 more IL76 downed by PVO.

Thanks you for reporting these rumors of rumors.

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CNN says kyiv has been told to turn off the lights for the whole city, avoid helping guided rockets

I posted a tweet from a sitting member of the Ukrainian parliament. If this rumor is circulating the Ukrainian parliament, that’s newsworthy.

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Have you thought about what step 2 of this means, and why it’s incoherent and not going to happen?

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that’s a bit poker brain. a country of 40 million is being bombed. we are already at practically ww3 scale.

Not even close.

What other countries? Belarus? What else? Is Putin going to invade Estonia with what he has left?

nexta reports that all $643b of assets belonging Central Bank of Russia are frozen.

Also you want to know the people you’re fighting with care about defending their own government. See Afghanistan.

Agree, and even if they choose to level the city I doubt they currently have supply lines to throw everything at the city in terms of bringing in artillery or keeping thousands of vehicles fueled

Yeah all the live feeds are dark.

Step 2 is shooting down Russian aircraft over Ukraine to enforce a no fly zone. A no fly zone is indistinguishable from a formal declaration of war. Might was well just send in tanks from the Russian POV.

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It would be:

  1. Declare a No Fly Zone over Kyiv and points west of Kyiv (I would assume).

  2. Put NATO planes over the No Fly Zone, and hope Russia balks.

  3. If they don’t balk, it can go two ways:

A) Back down from what was a bluff

B) It wasn’t a bluff, shoot down Russian planes.

At that point Putin has three options:

A) Back down on the no fly zone

B) Fight NATO in Ukraine

C) Attack NATO countries and WW3 begins

It is possible that NATO has intel that either it is really likely Russia will balk, or that Putin’s response to getting a plane shot down would be A or B.

I mean if there are Polish or Romanian jets flying over Kiev then Putin is going to send missiles at the airports in those countries and then it’s game on.