The link is auto-translated by Google.
Sure, start the News thread. Or mods could move the OP and subsequent discussions out of this one.
cliffs:
- Russian army logistics hugely reliant on railroads, which works great on Russian territory
- they have 30k troops dedicated to railway logistics
- without railroads available, Russian logistics is bad, not enough trucks
- Ukraine cut off every railway connection to Russia
- push-based logistics => logistics leads strategy
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Are you guys surprised/not surprised that Bernie/AOC are in line with the Mearsheimer guy?
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“Then I heard a siren going off, quickly grabbed the dog, and ran to the shelter. After the air raid was over, I called my mom to tell her I was alive, she answered ‘what are you talking about? Of course, you are. Putin is trying to save you.’
“I called her again in a few days, hoping she followed my advice, read some independent news outlets, and watched videos I sent her,” Artem said. “Unfortunately, nothing changed at all. Even after the destroyed apartment buildings in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Sumy… She said we were hitting our own citizens with high-precision artillery.”
At the end of the conversation, he said to his mother “the same thing Ukrainian defenders told the Russian warship.” In the first day of war, Ukrainian guards of the Zmiiny (Snake) Island in the Black Sea famously told a Russian warship that demanded that they surrender to “go f*ck yourself.”
Later Basistiy posted a story on Instagram saying: “02/03/2022, the day I lost my mom.”
“My father knows what war is firsthand. I really hope that we will get in touch soon and he will understand everything and be able to convey this to my mom. Otherwise, I can consider myself an orphan with 100% certainty.”
https://twitter.com/AlexandruC4/status/1500208774405136386
Not sure about this, but this account is on this guy Bill Murray’s list, which gives it some credibility.
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https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1500206830944927745
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https://twitter.com/arappeport/status/1500207176706666504
Zelensky asked the US to provide Poland and three other Nato countries with US aircraft that would allow them up to then send Russian-made aircraft to Ukraine, the people said. Ukrainian pilots need Russian-made aircraft since those are the systems they have been trained to fly.
One US lawmaker who took part in the call said Zelensky had expressed appreciation for the stingers, but said they were insufficient because they were not able to fly high enough to take out some of the Russian aircraft. Highlight text While the US and allies have supplied a range of weapons to Ukraine, they are worried that Vladimir Putin would view the provision of warplanes as a big escalation that he might interpret as Nato effectively entering the conflict against Russia.
While the US and allies have supplied a range of weapons to Ukraine, they are worried that Vladimir Putin would view the provision of warplanes as a big escalation that he might interpret as Nato effectively entering the conflict against Russia.
A senior US defence official said the Pentagon had not been “actively entertaining” the idea of sending US air force planes to Nato allies to enable them to send their own warplanes to Ukraine. But one person familiar with the situation inside the administration said the US may be reevaluating its previous opposition to the idea.
Brendan Boyle, a Philadelphia Democratic congressman who participated in the zoom call, told the Financial Times that there was broad bipartisan support in Congress to find creative solutions. He pointed to the example of the US passing the Lend-Lease Act during the second world war to make it easier to provide countries with war supplies and weapons. “We have to start looking at analogies to the Lend-Lease Act in terms of a 2022 version of it for Ukraine,” Boyle said. “There is widespread bipartisan support in Congress and also popular American support for doing everything we can to arm the Ukrainians. Politically speaking, this is a relatively easy lift.”
“We have to start looking at analogies to the Lend-Lease Act in terms of a 2022 version of it for Ukraine,” Boyle said. “There is widespread bipartisan support in Congress and also popular American support for doing everything we can to arm the Ukrainians. Politically speaking, this is a relatively easy lift.”
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If Lindsay Graham was somehow president we would 100% have boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Bernie’s position isn’t Mearsheimer’s, tho.
Speaking on the floor of the US Senate](PREPARED REMARKS: Sanders Senate Floor Speech on Ukraine » Senator Bernie Sanders) on Thursday, Sanders expressed deep concern about the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. He warned that the United States “must unequivocally support the sovereignty of Ukraine and make clear that the international community will impose severe consequences on Putin and his fellow oligarchs if he does not change course.”
This is contrary to Mearsheimer.
Sanders quoted former defense secretary William Perry, who in a 2016 interview said, “In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken.
This is also contrary to Mearsheimer.
He seems to agree with Mearsheimer on the points where everyone is in agreement, including Mearsheimer.
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Not surprised, of course. Those two aren’t perfect on foreign policy but they don’t routinely fall prey to what ChrisV called toddler brain in foreign policy questions.
Are we doing the Putin green screen theory in this thread?
Well I guess it’s good that everyone ITT agrees with Bernie, clears up a lot of what I thought were disagreements:
One of the precipitating factors of this crisis, at least from Russia’s perspective, is the prospect of an enhanced security relationship between Ukraine and the United States and Western Europe, including what Russia sees as the threat of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), a military alliance originally created in 1949 to confront the Soviet Union.
It is good to know some history. When Ukraine became independent after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russian leaders made clear their concerns about the prospect of former Soviet states becoming part of NATO and positioning hostile military forces along Russia’s border. U.S. officials recognized these concerns as legitimate at the time.
Sanders quoted former defense secretary William Perry, who in a 2016 interview said, “In the last few years, most of the blame can be pointed at the actions that Putin has taken. But in the early years I have to say that the United States deserves much of the blame. Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when NATO started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia.”
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.
Clearly, invasion by Russia is not an answer; neither is intransigence by NATO. It is important to recognize, for example, that Finland, one of the most developed and democratic countries in the world, borders Russia and has chosen not to be a member of NATO. Sweden and Austria are other examples of extremely prosperous and democratic countries that have made the same choice.
For the last 200 years, our country has operated under the Monroe Doctrine, embracing the premise that as the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, the United States has the right to intervene against any country that might threaten our alleged interests. Under this doctrine we have undermined and overthrown at least a dozen governments. In 1962 we came to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union in response to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from our shore, which the Kennedy Administration saw as an unacceptable threat to our national security.
And the Monroe Doctrine is not ancient history. As recently as 2018 Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, called the Monroe Doctrine ‘as relevant today as it was the day it was written.…
To put it simply, even if Russia was not ruled by a corrupt authoritarian leader like Vladimir Putin, Russia, like the United States, would still have an interest in the security policies of its neighbors. Does anyone really believe that the United States would not have something to say if, for example, Mexico was to form a military alliance with a U.S. adversary?
Countries should be free to make their own foreign policy choices, but making those choices wisely requires a serious consideration of the costs and benefits. The fact is that the U.S. and Ukraine entering into a deeper security relationship is likely to have some very serious costs—for both countries.
Since everyone ITT agrees with Bernie, not sure what there is left to debate.
Bernie’s whole speech to anyone interested:
The difference is that Bernie likely agrees with Bill Haywood who said that NATO shoulders 20% of the blame, while Mersh writes that it’s mostly all on the West and is just repeatedly excusing Russia as hey they’re just a superpower doing superpower things. No one thinks NATO is perfect.
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