Just one of these could level an entire European city within 20 minutes of being launched. Insane to think about. https://t.co/9MkZBxp8DN
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 22, 2024
November 22, 2024
Insane not to think about.
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European cities are fairly small, so it's not that impressive.
It took the Allies two days to bomb Dresden in WWII using 772 heavy bombers. That only destroyed about 3 square miles of the city and only killed 25,000.
Here are images of the missile flying over Kazakstan. Its flight time was five minutes.
https://x.com/Currentreport1/status/1859832831335375335
It is crazy not to think about it, but this war has been climbing a ladder of escalation since this border dispute within the bounds of the old USSR, that is none of our business, started.
Biden has until January 20th to "cement his legacy" as the destroyer of Russia, or touch off his own Viking funeral, taking us all with him.
Also, that video is a piece of AI. It's not real. It's designed to scare people. I see it works on some.
I'm not sure if anything will stop the NATO warmongers from dancing with death. Given the anti-life, anti-reproduction sentiment of abortion, green/climate, transgender, Israel-destruction politics of the Thunbergian faction, they may indeed feel that a noble suicide is better than allowing the status quo to continue.
In a full reversal of the MAD (mutually-assured destruction) phase of the US-USSR Cold War, the west is recklessly stepping over agree-on lines and rules. They'd probably welcome the nuclear destruction of a city or two, as that would "prove" their moral superiority to Russia.
Think of Ukraine's fate as you watch the final battle of Les Miserable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ILI27rfwtM
Matt Taibbi's new motto is...
"Can we Make America Boring Again?"
MABA!
The Emperor Has No Brains
This is a direct consequence of Biden allowing Ukraine to use medium range missiles against Russian soil. This is either the intended consequence or the unintended consequence, and I’m not sure which is worse.
If look at a population density map of Russia you will quickly see the vast majority of the population live in 2 cities, Moscow and St Petersburg. It would not be wise for them to start a nuclear war in which even the modest nuclear arsenals of France or Great Britian could eliminate the population base they care about without any US involvement.
Mach 10, multiple warheads. Even the inert warheads on this one act as "rods of God," and at that speed can destroy bunkers. Which is what is rumored to have happened. We have nothing on the drawing board even that can intercept them, and nothing like them in our arsenal. We would be forced to go nuclear or capitulate, which of course means "go nuclear," because our lives don't matter as much to our leaders as their power.
We will see if the Ukrainians attack Russia again with US weapons. It turns out that Ukrainians can program the ATACMS themselves, but what they can't do is create their own real time targeting info, so likely all they can do with them is try to hit large static targets like they did a couple of days ago. In other words, we have needlessly pissed off Russia for a weapon that won't change anything.
The vast majority (80%) of the population of Russia do NOT live in Moscow and St. Petersberg.
20% do, but that's not the "vast majority."
Were they playing this at the DNC?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PFzHwD9xiqM&t=37s&pp=2AElkAIB
It should also be noted that a single warhead could take out approximately 95% of the federal government of the United States, it insanely being concentrated in one small district.
Including approximately 90% of the US military leadership.
So there was no hypersonic missile traveling at mach 10? It's impossible that anybody in Kazakstan could have seen its overflight?
The "lines and rules" of which you speak were unilaterally created by Russian propaganda and spread by the lies of useful idiots in the west to scare the population. The "lines and rules" have been crossed numerous times without the dire consequences predicted. The only impact has been to restrain the valid actions of the frightened western leaders.
It's Moonraker + The Sum of All Fears.
Never give a Ukrainian the power to start a nuclear war between the USA and Russia, they would do it just to avenge Hitler.
Which has been the case continuously since the 1950's
For the last 80 years, the Russians have had missiles that could destroy an *American* city in 20 minutes. I don't understand why this changes anything.
Joe has already claimed the title of worse US President.
"The "lines and rules" have been crossed numerous times without the dire consequences predicted."
Putin has put down two red lines, no Ukraine in NATO, he started a war over it.
No US missile attacks in Russia. He responded by demonstrating a new hypersonic multiple warhead missile against which NATO has no defense and no counterpart.
The rest of these "red lines" were made up by the West, like the "three days to conquer Ukraine" thing, and the Russians never said them.
You have to understand your opponent in a conflict like this, and if you simply swallow propaganda as fed to us, you will never understand what is going on. J6, for example, was just a case of these war mongers bringing their propaganda techniques home.
@Oh Yea: Huh? What are you talking about? I'm talking about stuff that began with the now-dead USSR.
Churchill coined the anti-Soviet term "Iron Curtain" in 1946 and was ridiculed, but then East Germany shut down the main escape route in 1961 with the Berlin Wall. The Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed in Czechoslovakia. Many died trying to escape the east, and East Germany invented internal techno-spying to maintain control. The west spent billions and billions on cold-war bases across Germany, etc. The west prosecuted and imprisoned many spies for selling secrets. The consequences for breaking the MAD rules were indeed dire.
This conflict is rooted in the USSR, not the recent "Russia, Russia, Russia" silliness...
Remember when bich claimed Putin could pull his troops back tomorrow, which was two days ago. Yeah, as expected Putin began strategic bombing as a response to the use of offensive US weapons in Russia. Technically, Putin’s response is proportional. Both sides are using ballistic missiles.
In normal times, there’d be an Oval Office address to inform us what the hell is going on. I hereby demand one.
You can thank Barack Hussein Obama for fundamentally transforming America, and his 4th term as President doing what he promised.
Now we are adjusting our nuclear policies
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3975117/dod-adjusts-nuclear-deterrence-strategy-as-nuclear-peer-adversaries-escalate/
All over the "dignity" of Ukrainians, who can't abide neutrality and to live with Russian speakers, and don't want a simple divorce, like the Czechs and the Slovaks.
If my memory serves there are a significant number of Althouse readers in Dnipro. Hope you are all well after these events.
Are you seriously asking me to prove that something DIDN'T happen, at night, in Kazakhstan?
Our government is utterly insane, murderous and suicidal. Since the 2014 CIA coup in Ukraine, the U.S. has been striving to start a nuclear war with Russia. And this is only one front in the insanity. The U.S. is responsible for the funding and development of the COVID virus. Fauci managed this. We created a global epidemic and unleashed it. What in the hell is wrong with us?
You claimed that the image was fake, so it is you who claimed that it didn't happen. It's a bold claim, I admit, and it seems like a pretty stiff climb for you to prove it, and yet you made the claim.
Isn't there a "norm" under which outgoing Presidents don't escalate potentially nuclear conflicts without getting the incoming President to sign on?
Did Trump give this his OK?
Is Congress on board?
It would be nice to have some sense that there are grownups involved.
Biden, or whomever is in control of the WH.. will give V some Pershing II missiles..
From one of my Facebook commenters: “The death cult obsessed with birth control, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, and that released Covid-19, and who talks openly about depopulation as a solution to their imaginary climate crisis would never start a nuclear war as yet another means of depopulation.” I’ve been thinking the same thing.
For a lot of survivors the biggest problem will be avoiding the cannibals.
The Russians were already firing ballistic missiles at Ukrainians- often civilian targets- so all we've done is allow the Ulrainians to slightly even the odds.
OK, the whole permission to attack Russia with western weapons came down to a claim that North Korean troops were on Russian territory defending it, which seems a pretty doubtful claim, but I have now seen two "proofs" of it.
One was a soldier, who purported to be Russian, remember, most Ukrainians speak fluent Russian, and he said that he was surrendering because he was scared that he would be killed by the North Korean soldiers, who were shooting the wrong way, and might have killed two of their guys. Of course that makes perfect sense and it would be impossible to fake it, right?
The second was drone video of a Russian soldier in Kursk, who was about to be killed by a drone, and they did an analysis of his terrified face, I won't link it because it's very disturbing, and claimed that their analysis proved that he was North Korean. Of course, North Korea is on Russia's border, and there are ethnicities within Russia, in that area, who would be indistinguishable from North Koreans by means of facial analysis. And Kursk is actually in Russia, not Ukraine, therefore draftees can be used by the Russian army to defend pre-1992 Russian territory.
In other words, the whole claim is based on easily faked evidence. And this is Ukraine, we are talking about, the country that provided the fake "Black Ledger" to interfere in the US election in 2016, to try to beat Trump.
It's not fake. It's a real AI generated video.
Mach 10 is a little more than 2 miles/second. It would be difficult to become aware of something flying that fast in time to take a picture of it, but a webcam could do it. I'd think the view would be kinda smeared out.
Even if your claim is true, which I don't believe, Zelensky just lied about the same thing, and his own air force contradicted him, just last week, but even if it were true, it's none of our business. If Ukraine hates Russia that much, go ahead and fight them. Just stop asking us for weapons and money, because Russia has never done anything to us, but they did sell us Alaska and help us beat the Nazis. In fact, it's more like we helped them beat the Nazis.
If you are serious (this could just be trolling), what makes you believe it is AI?
Can someone tell me who is running the United States these days?
Most of us have known Joe Biden was incapable since 2020 when his handlers kept him 'lidded' from early morning on during his so-called campaign. But now? Today?
Joe is gone. Kamala is gone. Yet, we see the hand off of ICBMs to Ukraine with the encouragement- and help- to use them. To escalate things. We see the US supplying Ukraine with land mines and encouraging them to plant them all over (something future Ukrainian kids will no doubt be losing limbs over). And we now see Russia, properly responding to NATO's push.
Why now- when Biden's time is done- are those running the US trying to make one more strong push to trigger a world war, just before Trump takes office?
Is this the new covid? "Hell...covid is used up. Monkeypox isn't working. We'll need something bigger to hackle Trump. Let's just leave him with a big war."
Who is making these decisions of escalation for the United States? Who elected Antony Blinken, or some faceless director at the CIA as President?
History shows that Soviet/Russian leadership does not particularly care about the Moscow/St. Petersburg population base.
that depends on the distance. Aircraft flying at hundreds of miles an hour at 40,000 feet seem like they are crawling across the sky to an observer on the ground. Satellites in low earth orbit are traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, yet they are plainly visible as they cross the sky, pretty quickly, I admit, but not as a streak of light, like a meteor, which travel at 45 to 55 *thousand* miles per hour. Still I have noticed some streak across the sky and have been able to look up in time to see half their flight.
He thinks it's AI because he is so scared that he is in denial. Notice his projection. But sure, I would be happy to see evidence too, as long as it's not in the form of a tweet with a Ukrainian flag in the handle.
The dolphins from south park
can someone explain to me, WHY we are IN the soviet union.. FIGHTING the soviet union?
There is a faction within the neocon Intel universe that believes that a nuclear war with Russia can be “won” in some sane fashion. Russia’s emergence as a real economic competitor, particularly in oil and gas, and Russia’s embrace of traditional Orthodox Catholic values, naturally makes Russia the enemy of the feminist, gay, trans religion of the West. It’s both an economic and a religious war.
If the launch is on a high arc the descent is going tp be fast how do you steer a mach 10 missile
The only way this photo is taken is if it was a video and they screen shot it. No human phone combination would have the shutter speed to capture this picture unless they zoomed way in on a wider picture.
Also it would have to been taken at exactly the moment the missile went supersonic. Once the missile goes above a particular speed it travels faster than the shock wave and there will not be any visible air displacement in front of it.
The only thing you will see for 99% of the travel time of the missile is the depressurization of water vapor behind it.
It is possible that a Russian State source was positioned to take the photo. It would have to be exactly placed and exactly timed. No rando with a phone took this picture.
Watch this:
https://x.com/realannapaulina/status/1859756048149819481
then this:
https://x.com/AdameMedia/status/1859330907410137546
I’m pretty sure the guy napping in there is unaware of the permission “he gave” to Ukraine or the statement released in “his” name.
I’ve seen a lot of analysis of that video, and, consensus of people I trust is that, it it a video of multiple launches run in reverse. Just like the rest of this war, everything we see or hear, is suspect.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is still at 90 seconds to midnight. Has been, ever since January 23, 2024. I wonder if they'll change it after Inauguration Day.
It's hard to figure what the hell Biden is up to here or if he's even the one who really decided to allow this. Who f****** knows?
Of course Russia told us they were launching this new experimental missile prior to launch. One would imagine that it was a intelligence boon for the United States now that Putin has tipped his hand after being baited into an emotional response.
I agree with Joe Bar, 8:20am
Ditto ditto. It's very foggy right now
Dixcus said…
“It should also be noted that a single warhead could take out approximately 95% of the federal government of the United States, it insanely being concentrated in one small district.
Including approximately 90% of the US military leadership.”
You’re trying to tempt us into cheering a nuclear strike there, aren’t you?
What hand did Putin tip? That he has medium range missiles?
Do you really think the Biden Administration approved the ATACMS attack on Russia because they wanted Putin to get mad and destroy a Ukrainian weapons factory in Dnipro? How does that make sense?
Nothing that Putin has done has surprised me. Everything has been a rational reaction to Western provocation, and if you disagree, you haven't been paying attention.
If Harris had won and Biden had done this, I suspect the reaction would have been significantly more intense. Fortunately Putin knows Trump will try and deescalate, and so his response has been proportional, but designed not to unduly start WW3 as he waits out Biden's term.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Progress in the woke of social justice amid ethnic Springs with benefits. Brown Lives Matter (BLM)
It looks like we’ll need a remake of Dr Strangelove. It will be a much shorter movie this time.
Quick reality check, Mach 10 is around 11,000 feet per second.
The fastest ordinary high powered rifle shots travel at near 4,000 feet per second. So it’s nearly 3 times that of a speeding bullet.
But not quite quite Superman faster than a speeding bullet where he’s actually able to go back in time as save Lois Lane from mortally.
No one wants to admit we have no good response to Russia's actions. Same if China invades Taiwan.
What do we do? No one wants to wrestle with that. There are no good options, and devastating escalation looms.
That's a very good question gilbar. Perhaps we can ask the people who voted for this
We could have chosen not to stage a CIA coup in Ukraine in 2014. I think it’s probably also likely that the U.S. built Wuhan type bioweapons labs on Russia’s border.
are meteors physics and air glow similar to physics of these missiles?
Achilles, it is a video, not a still photo.
Note - I am pretty sure Dixcus was referring to the video and not to the photographs in the link provided by Jaq - those may well be fake, based both on what you said and on the fact that Kazakhstan does not lie in the path between the alleged launch point - Astrakhan - and the Ukraine (Kazakhstan is further east than either of them). Astrakhan is on the Kazak border, however, so the photos might be real and have captured the missile before it got up to speed.
Hypersonic. Kinetic munitions... ity. Perhaps there is a prescriptive treatment for that.
I'm not in denial, I'm skeptical. Is there other evidence that Dnipro was hit by a new level of Russian military power? I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying I don't know what happened yet.
Go here and scroll down to the ludicrous image in Newsweek captioned, Damage to a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, following a Russian attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on November 21, 2024. Kyiv accused Russia of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile on the city.
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-dnipro-icbm-1989639
if reports of building a set to resemble oval office are true does FJB even have key to white house?
A machete is to atomic as scalpel is to kinetic. Revisited rites. All's fair in lust and abortion.
Did Trump give this his OK?
===================
if Trump is not accepting intelligence briefings did they sucker him into one?
Is Congress on board?
==================
USA has been on global war without declaring one with Congress authority ever since WW2
Wilson is still the worst.
A regional nuclear war and/or WW3 would put Biden over the top.
Dixcus is an AI-generated hillbilly.
On what authority is the US doing this. Has the C-in-C publicly authorised all this? Is this how America is supposed to work? Can we look forward to some treason trials of the hidden officials when Trump is inaugurated?
because Russia has never done anything to us
In terms of large-scale kinetics, sure. But are you saying that Rissia never did anything to us during the cold war? All of those spies inside the government were just fiction? Cuban missile crisis? Thousands of nuclear weapons pointed specifically at us? Duck and cover...
Apparently we're there to play poker, since our backup leaders like Starmer get off the bench and do the talking for us when our lame duck president gets lost in the rainforest. Robotic Starmer announces we're doubling down. Not a check to see what Putin has, but a double down. I've seen the video. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure he's bluffing. And he's bad at it.
You do know that the Soviets put missiles in Cuba after the US put missiles in Turkey, right? The Russians pulled them out when we pulled our missiles out of Turkey.
It is not video run backwards. What weapon is Ukraine using, in that case? What are they shooting at? A giant flying saucer?
I have been paying attention and I disagree. Anexxing territory through a large scale invasion is not a rational response to a provocation.
Recall Russia's reason for this in the first place: denazification of Kiev. Was Kiev so full of Nazis back then that a war was the only solution?
I thought it was common knowledge the fake Oval Office is true. Read about it here:
newsweek.com/why-white-house-built-fake-oval-office
It is not video run backwards.
Unlike most people these days, I could be wrong.
What weapon?
Might be video of MLRS launches. And I didn't say the video came from Ukraine. It could be from Russia and still be fake. It's on RT after all.
What are they shooting at?
When you see an artillery piece fire at a distant target, the barrel is pointed at the sky. The round goes up, describes an arc and comes back down. Right? Artillery rockets work the basically same way.
In my mind the video evidence presented here is separate from the missile attack. Even if Russia hit Dnipro with a multiple warhead ballistic missile, which may well be the case, the video might still have been faked for propaganda purposes. The Russians would do it because it's scary. The Ukrainians would do it because they want THAAD.
Ukraine was already firing missiles into Russia. Ukraine has occupied Russian territory. If we support Ukraine we support these things and it is sophistry to suggest otherwise. This is not a significant change.
What has changed is the Ukrainians are now allowed to use more capable western missiles for long range strikes, rather than their own weapons. Until now the Russian forces had the advantage of being able to place logistics and artillery closer to the front lines, without risking them, than the Ukrainians could.
We should support Ukraine to win the war, or to achieve peace terms that are as favorable to the Ukrainians is possible. That means placing Ukraine in a position of strength, on the battlefield and in negotiations. Denying Russian forces an inherent advantage they previously had is consistent with that.
Just for the record I'm in the video is real camp.
Mirv's breaking through cloud cover at hypersonic speeds caught on a webcam. Looks right.
Also, the internet says that the Minuteman III reaches speeds of over 18,000 Mph (Mach 23) and the reentry warheads hit at 15,000, so the concern over time-to-target seems misdirected.
What a bunch of Ruskkie propaganda. Any real american would be willing take a few nuclear guided missles strikes to save the Donbass for Zelensky.
Thank God, we have a steady hand at the tiller, in Joe Biden. And strong believers in Democracy like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer, who don't flinch a few nuclear warheads hitting Europe or US bases in Europe. Unlike those Putin lovers, and namby pambies, who want us to roll over and let Nazi Russia take Zaporizhzhya. First, Mykolayiv and then Miami beach. All part of Putin's plan of world conquest!
Do you know what "salami tactics" are? They are when you do each escalation in such a tiny manner as to make any response seem like an overreaction, then you do another, and another, each one a tiny amount. Guess what, the other guy gets to play his hand too, and as Obama once said, Ukraine is a core security interest of Russia, and not the United States, so Russia will always escalate further than we will, or, or we can have a nice nuclear war and save the world from global warming and overpopulation.
"Anexxing territory through a large scale invasion is not a rational response to a provocation."
If the provocation is overturning your democratic vote, banning your religion, confiscating your churches, and forcing you to speak a dialect that is only spoken on the other side of the country, it's completely rational.
"Recall Russia's reason for this in the first place: denazification of Kiev. Was Kiev so full of Nazis back then that a war was the only solution?"
Still is.
How do you know it looks right? Have you seen it before?
I'm saying that it looks like what I think it would look like. I don't have to have seen it before to have that opinion.
The photo on the left doesn't look like a ballistic flight path and Kazakstan wouldn't have been overflown.
If it was a deliberately created fake, it would be made to look like what people think it would look like. The propagandists wouldn't put it out there unless it looked like what people think it would look like.
When Godzilla stomps on Tokyo it looks like what I think it would look like. Same with images of Bigfoot, UFO's and the Loch Ness Monster. Are they real?
I've seen a picture of Bigfoot riding Nessie across the water and he's giving a big middle finger to the photographer. It looks exactly like what I think it would look like if that happened. Maybe it did.
The US doesn't care about Ukraine. This war is about degrading Russia and gathering operational intelligence.
"According to Putin, it can travel at speeds up to Mach 10, and there is no way of intercepting it."
We don't have to intercept your missile, Vlad, we just have to turn Moscow into a parking lot...which is what we'll do if you keep pissing us off.
Others have already pointed out that a missile flying from Astrakhan to Ukraine would not in fact fly over Kazakhstan (note spelling), which I believe is now calling itself Qazaqstan to suit the actual pronunciation of the name instead of orthographic rules that only apply to Slavic languages. Someone below replied that Astrakhan is close to the Kazakh/Qazaq border, so it could have been filmed from Qazaqstan. The problem is that the third picture at the link appears to be filmed from an angle impossible to reconcile with that claim. I don't think hypersonic missiles take off from runways pointing away from their destinations and then make big loops around the airport before they head in the right direction. It looks like ever-gullible 'Jaq' has been fooled again by a tweet showing him something he desperately wanted to believe.
Of course we do have things like this in our arsenal, both 'rods from God', like the one that killed Soleimani without injuring* any of the three guys in the car with him, and nuclear missiles too fast to be shot down by any Russian anti-aircraft weapon.
It's good that 'Jaq' admits that "Ukrainians can program the ATACMs themselves", but an honest man would have admitted that I convinced him that was true after he repeatedly denied it, and if he would reconsider his bigoted assumption that Ukrainians are too stupid to hit moving targets with them. They've hit thousands of moving targets so far in this war. But he still wants to pretend that the US has troops fighting in Ukraine, despite the utter lack of any evidence whatsoever, and that North Korea does not have any troops fighting in Ukraine and adjacent areas of Russia, despite the abundance of evidence. He really should go back to the kiddies' table and leave the discussion to the grown-ups.
Anyone interested in learning (that's not 'Jaq', of course) more about the Russian "ICBM", which they called that to avoid admitting that building it violated an arms-control treaty, would best start with this Tweet from Thomas Theiner (link) and keep on scrolling:
"Last night russia fired a RS-26 IRBM (!! NOT AN ICBM !!) from the Kapustin Yar test site at Dnipro in Ukraine.
Test site?
Yes, of course test site. The RS-26 never went into production and russia rid itself of its last test model last night."
*At least physically. I imagine all three are still having nightmares about that moment, and wake up screaming every night. Assuming they haven't also been killed by now.
Though technologically impressive, such delivery systems don't meaningfully alter threat analysis. Our system of protection is based on deterrence. We have always assumed that a nuclear first strike by the Russians would get nukes to the target. Putin has always known, and continues to know, that such a move will result in the obliteration of Russia.
This display should catch the attention of the Israelis, inasmuch as it demonstrates that the Iron Dome can be defeated.
👍🏻
Because there have long been rules that both sides honored. Until FJB (or, more likely, his handlers) approved launching US built missiles, requiring US targeting information, from Ukraine.
In a case of history rhyming, the Allies of WWI - including the US - sent troops into the Soviet Union in the Russian Civil War. The US had ~13k troops there from 1918 to 1920. Progressive President Woodrew "Make the World Safe for Democracy" Wilson sent them there.
Commies and the Soviets sucked. But the grandkids of those Progressives are the Neocons of today.
Evidence that these require "US targeting information"? Zero. The USSR in fact provided troops who killed hundreds, if not thousands, of American military in the Korean and Viet Nam wars, which is far beyond anything the US is doing here. It is far from unprecedented, and US permission to fire 20 missiles into Russia in return for the 4,000+ (I think that's the number) the Russians have fired the other way, is not in fact an escalation, especially since the Ukrainians are only firing at military targets, while the Russians are mostly slaughtering civilians. Bringing in North Korean troops, and firing a multiple-warhead ballistic missile (with or without warheads) at civilian targets, are massive escalations. Try to keep a sense of proportion.
The thing about nuclear weapons is that the threat of them has great value, while the use of them has zero value. Which is why they have not been used since WWII.
I do not trust any information we are receiving about RU/UK war.
Putin is rapidly learning a lesson that Henry Kissinger pointed to some sixty-seven years ago: unless you wildly detach your actions from your political goals, nuclear weapons are useless. Threatening nuclear exchange should only be done by those countries facing existential crisis. Even under those circumstances Kissinger questioned the credibility of the threat. Is Russia facing existential crisis? Or more to the point, is Putin facing existential crisis? Well, no one is mobilizing to march to Moscow or has any plans to, so it would appear not.
What is indicated is that Putin is running out of wiggle room in squeaky bum territory. His brief 'special operation' never materialized and he found himself in a war because of his mis-estimation of Ukrainian will and capabilities. Nonetheless he decided to escalate into war in belief that if he mobilized his forces accordingly he could overwhelm Ukraine and cause its collapse. Didn't happen. Putin by 2023 found himself having to put his country on a war footing so that he could do what? Retain control over territory he had control over at the outset plus a bit extra? Secure the acquiescence of a recalcitrant Ukraine to Russian suzerainty? Acquire greater security from the 'threat' of NATO? None of these objectives have been attained and indeed some now will never be. Think, just for example, about the enlargement and development of NATO's strategic deployments. Think about the enduring enmity of Ukrainians for Russia. Yes, material support for Ukraine has ensured that Putin's goals are not met. Threatening nuclear war or direct strikes at NATO members is not credible: he is not into self-immolation for Russia and not prepared or capable of taking on a larger conflict that risks everything and serves no purpose. The threats are a gambit in order to avoid taking some very unpalatable decisions, such as wider and deeper recruitment and further augmentation of an already over-stretched security budget.
No. Most of the people advocating depopulation live in areas that would be the first to go.
I doubted you, Bob Boyd, but damn you are right. That photo is out there!
Rocco:
Are you saying Wilson was wrong to send troops to help the Whites against the Reds in the Russian Civil War? That's not obviously true. The Tsar was allied with the U.S. against Germany, and Germany sent Lenin to Russia in a closed train as a weapon to weaken the Tsar's government - a horribly effective weapon, as it turned out. Seems to me the Whites, bad as they were, were the lesser of two evils as well as the legitimate heirs of our Imperial allies, and the main thing Wilson did wrong in Russia was to fail in defeating the Bolsheviks.
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