REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Saturday, April 27, 2024 19:51
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Friday, February 16, 2024 11:49 AM

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Even behind bars, the dissident leader was a threat to the corrupt Russian dictator.

By Anne Applebaum | February 16, 2024, 10:30 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/navalny-death-russia
-prison/677485/

Alexei Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021. Right before he boarded the plane, he posted a film titled “Putin’s Palace: The Story of the World’s Largest Bribe” on YouTube. The video, nearly two hours long, was an extraordinary feat of investigative reporting. Using secret plans, drone footage, 3-D visualizations, and the testimony of construction workers, Navalny’s video told the story of a hideous $1.3 billion Black Sea villa containing every luxury that a dictator could imagine: a hookah bar, a hockey rink, a helipad, a vineyard, an oyster farm, a church. The video also described the eye-watering costs and the financial trickery that had gone into the construction of the palace on behalf of its true owner, Vladimir Putin.

But the power of the film was not just in the pictures, or even in the descriptions of money spent. The power was in the style, the humor, and the Hollywood-level professionalism of the film, much of which was imparted by Navalny himself. This was his extraordinary gift: He could take the dry facts of kleptocracy — the numbers and statistics that usually bog down even the best financial journalists — and make them entertaining. On-screen, he was just an ordinary Russian, sometimes shocked by the scale of the graft, sometimes mocking the bad taste. He seemed real to other ordinary Russians, and he told stories that had relevance to their lives. You have bad roads and poor health care, he told Russians, because they have hockey rinks and hookah bars.

And Russians listened. A poll conducted in Russia a month after the video appeared revealed that one in four Russians had seen it. Another 40 percent had heard about it. It’s safe to guess that in the three years that have elapsed since then, those numbers have risen. To date, that video has been viewed 129 million times.

Navalny is now presumed dead. The Russian prison system has said he collapsed after months of ill health. Perhaps he was murdered more directly, but the details don’t matter: The Russian state killed him. Putin killed him — because of his political success, because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent for breaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well.

He is also dead because he returned to Russia from exile in 2021, having already been poisoned twice, knowing he would be arrested. By doing so he turned himself from an ordinary Russian into something else: a model of what civic courage can look like, in a country that has very little of it. Not only did he tell the truth, but he wanted to do so inside Russia, where Russians could hear him. This is what I wrote at the time: “If Navalny is showing his countrymen how to be courageous, Putin wants to show them that courage is useless.”

That Putin still feared Navalny was clear in December, when the regime moved him to a distant arctic prison to stop him from communicating with his friends and his family. He had been in touch with many people; I have seen some of his prison messages, sent secretly via lawyers, policemen, and guards, just as Gulag prisoners once sent messages in Stalin’s Soviet Union. He remained the spirit behind the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a team of Russian exiles who continue to investigate Russian corruption and tell the truth to Russians, even from abroad. (I have served on the foundation’s advisory board.) Earlier this week, before his alleged collapse, he sent a Valentine’s Day message to his wife, Yulia, on Telegram: “I feel that you are there every second, and I love you more and more.”

Navalny’s decision to return to Russia and go to jail inspired respect even among people who didn’t like him, didn’t agree with him, or found fault with him. He was also a model for other dissidents in other violent autocracies around the world. Only minutes after his death was announced, I spoke with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader. “We are worried for our people too,” she told me. If Putin can kill Navalny with impunity, then dictators elsewhere might feel empowered to kill other brave people.

The enormous contrast between Navalny’s civic courage and the corruption of Putin’s regime will remain. Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history.

Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.

Putin’s Palace: The Story of the World’s Largest Bribe



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 16, 2024 12:10 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Oh noez! A hookah bar? How dare he!

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Friday, February 16, 2024 12:28 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh noez! A hookah bar? How dare he!
Putin will be fine. He will be your next President (with Mr ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ Trump being Putin's ersatz president, Putin's stand-in for the Inauguration in DC.)

https://www.politico.eu/article/mueller-refutes-trumps-no-collusion-no
-obstruction-line/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 16, 2024 12:53 PM

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The List Is Long: Russians Who Have Died After Running Afoul Of The Kremlin

By Steve Gutterman | February 16, 2024, 16:41 GMT

Critics, journalists, and defectors have faced dire consequences after opposing Putin. From poisonings to shootings, mysterious falls from windows, and even plane crashes, there is a long trail of silenced voices.

https://www.rferl.org/a/enemies-kremlin-deaths-prigozhin-list/32562583
.html

Not included: 62 million Russians who were murdered by Russia before Putin became ruler.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 16, 2024 12:58 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh noez! A hookah bar? How dare he!
Putin will be fine. He will be your next President (with Mr ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ Trump being Putin's ersatz president, Putin's stand-in for the Inauguration in DC.)


#NotMyPresident





You people are silly. You're going to cry about some Russian journalist, but Ted wants to throw Tucker Carlson in the gulag just for having a conversation with Putin.

The lack of self-awareness coming from the modern day left is shocking.



--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Friday, February 16, 2024 1:43 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You people are silly. You're going to cry about some Russian journalist, but Ted wants to throw Tucker Carlson in the gulag just for having a conversation with Putin.

The lack of self-awareness coming from the modern day left is shocking.
In the Trilateral Statement, signed in January 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination. In return, Ukraine received security assurances from Russia, the US, and the UK. Completely unsurprising when the Leftists of the US and the UK hesitated, dithered, procrastinated, and did not honor their promise to Ukraine.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-s
tates-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/

The fundamental weakness of 99.999% of the Left is they cannot stop talking about diplomacy, legal procedures, court dates for the beginnings of trials, the appeals process, their feelings, etc. Eventually, the Left needs to stop talking, buy some steel-toed work boots, and kick the Nazis (or the Russians or the Trumptards) in the teeth, but the best leftists lack all conviction, while the worst Nazis (or Russians or Trumptards) are full of passionate intensity.

Nazis, Russians, or Trumptards can do tremendous damage before Leftists have gotten angry enough to finally go Nazi on the Nazis. Leftists have not yet learned from the Nazis how to routinely handle Nazis with the brutality Nazis deserve. Instead, the Leftists keep retreating behind the legal process rather than risk being seen as "bad". Leftists lack sufficient conviction to kill Nazis at the first signs Nazis are on the move. Nazis, Russians, and Trumptards don't have those scruples. See Trump for how easy it is to stymie the legal system that Leftists imagine will protect them from Nazis. Ukrainians sadly learned that when Russia attacked, the US and the UK would break the Trilateral Statement by not kicking Russia in the teeth with steel-toed boots.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 16, 2024 1:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You people are silly. You're going to cry about some Russian journalist, but Ted wants to throw Tucker Carlson in the gulag just for having a conversation with Putin.

The lack of self-awareness coming from the modern day left is shocking.
In the Trilateral Statement, signed in January 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination. In return, Ukraine received security assurances from Russia, the US, and the UK. Completely unsurprising when the Leftists of the US and the UK hesitated, dithered, procrastinated, and did not honor their promise to Ukraine.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-s
tates-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/

The fundamental weakness of 99.999% of the Left is they cannot stop talking about diplomacy, legal procedures, court dates for the beginnings of trials, the appeals process, their feelings, etc. Eventually, the Left needs to stop talking, buy some steel-toed work boots, and kick the Nazis (or the Russians or the Trumptards) in the teeth, but the best leftists lack all conviction, while the worst Nazis (or Russians or Trumptards) are full of passionate intensity.

Nazis, Russians, or Trumptards can do tremendous damage before Leftists have gotten angry enough to finally go Nazi on the Nazis. Leftists have not yet learned from the Nazis how to routinely handle Nazis with the brutality Nazis deserve. Instead, the Leftists keep retreating behind the legal process rather than risk being seen as "bad". Leftists lack sufficient conviction to kill Nazis at the first signs Nazis are on the move. Nazis, Russians, and Trumptards don't have those scruples. See Trump for how easy it is to stymie the legal system that Leftists imagine will protect them from Nazis. Ukrainians sadly learned that when Russia attacked, the US and the UK would break the Trilateral Statement by not kicking Russia in the teeth with steel-toed boots.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Sure buddy.

Tell us more about your support for the Nazis in Ukraine.


There's no reason to do anything but troll every post you make because you are a hypocrite to the core and nothing you say matters at all.


Have a great day.



--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Friday, February 16, 2024 1:55 PM

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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Sure buddy.

Tell us more about your support for the Nazis in Ukraine.


There's no reason to do anything but troll every post you make because you are a hypocrite to the core and nothing you say matters at all.


Have a great day.
6ix, since you don't even know you are a Nazi, it is no surprise you would call the Ukrainians the Nazis.

I'm sure Ukraine would have nuked the Russian Army if only Ukraine still had the nukes it gave away because the US and the UK said they would protect Ukraine from Russia. Biden took the easy way out by sending only weapons rather than directly using weapons on Russia. What Biden did was not anywhere near what was promised the US would do for Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, February 16, 2024 3:30 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Sure buddy.

Tell us more about your support for the Nazis in Ukraine.


There's no reason to do anything but troll every post you make because you are a hypocrite to the core and nothing you say matters at all.


Have a great day.
6ix, since you don't even know you are a Nazi,


Yeah. I don't. Because I'm not. You dumb fucking racist Democrat cunt.

Quote:
it is no surprise you would call the Ukrainians the Nazis.


I'm not calling all Ukrainians Nazis. I'm pointing out that the Ukranian army that you consistently cheerlead is made up of literal card-carrying fucking Nazis. This is a fact that even your Leftist shill media doesn't deny.

NBC News (March 5th, 2022): Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't

Not acknowledging this threat means that little is being done to guard against it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimi
r-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946


Newsweek (June 6th, 2023): Why Have So Many Neo-Nazis Rallied to Ukraine's Cause?

https://www.newsweek.com/why-have-so-many-neo-nazis-rallied-ukraines-c
ause-opinion-1804642



You are a stupid, stupid man.

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Friday, February 16, 2024 9:05 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Nearly everything Applebaum writes is a joke. Or a lie.
Or sometimes both.


Yes, it's true that Navalny died in prison.
Governments should take better care of politically sensitive prisoners. Look at Gonzalo Lira. Or Jeffrey Epstein. Or Julian Assange.

Quote:
Weeks After US Journalist Dies In Ukrainian Custody, Biden Uses Navalny's Death To Push For More Russian War Funding


But Navalny was not poisoned in Russia. When he collapsed, the Russian hospital that treated him not only sent him for treatment to Germany, they sent original blood samples with him.

And Navalny was no folk hero. He couldn't scrape enough support together to get a representative in the Duma. And that "Putin palace" story? I think it was just a real estate development gone sour.

Applebaum specializes in evidence-free accusations.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Saturday, February 17, 2024 7:12 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Nearly everything Applebaum writes is a joke. Or a lie.
Or sometimes both.


Yes, it's true that Navalny died in prison.
Governments should take better care of politically sensitive prisoners. Look at Gonzalo Lira. Or Jeffrey Epstein. Or Julian Assange.

Quote:
Weeks After US Journalist Dies In Ukrainian Custody, Biden Uses Navalny's Death To Push For More Russian War Funding


But Navalny was not poisoned in Russia. When he collapsed, the Russian hospital that treated him not only sent him for treatment to Germany, they sent original blood samples with him.

And Navalny was no folk hero. He couldn't scrape enough support together to get a representative in the Duma. And that "Putin palace" story? I think it was just a real estate development gone sour.

Applebaum specializes in evidence-free accusations.
I'm guessing you never imagined that not everyone in Russia would be an assassin for Putin. When poisoned Navalny arrives at a Russian hospital, the doctors don't know that they should let him die since the doctors were not paid by Putin. But in prison, Putin is paying the doctors to let Navalny die.

Signym, it is very easy to tell you never looked at Putin's Palace. Instead, you wrote fiction.

You should write Firefly fan fiction. Already you are writing Putin-approved fiction. Branch out into other areas.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 17, 2024 7:13 AM

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Germany and France both signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine on February 16. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a long-term bilateral security agreement with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on February 16 providing for bilateral cooperation in the military, political, financial, and humanitarian spheres until 2034.[13] The agreement also states that Germany will provide over €7 billion ($7.5 billion) in military aid to Ukraine in 2024, including a €1.1 billion ($1 billion) aid package that is currently being prepared and will include 36 howitzers, 120 thousand artillery shells (including 50,000 155mm artillery rounds), two Skynex air defense systems, missiles for the IRIS-T air-to-air missile system, 66 armored personnel carriers (APCs), several mine-clearing vehicles, and various reconnaissance drone models.[14] Zelensky also met with German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to discuss the launch of joint weapons production.[15] Zelensky later met with French President Emmanuel Macron to sign a bilateral security agreement and reported that France will provide Ukraine €3 billion ($3.2 billion) in military assistance over the course of 2024.[16]

NATO officials are increasingly warning that Russia poses a significant threat to NATO’s security. The Financial Times (FT) reported on February 16 that recent new assessments of Russia’s military capabilities and potential threats to NATO states have led Western leaders to recognize Russia’s continued military potential and to increase defense investment.[17]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-16-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Saturday, February 17, 2024 7:20 AM

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Can Ukraine Still Win?

As Congress continues to delay aid and Volodymyr Zelensky replaces his top commander, military experts debate the possible outcomes.

By Keith Gessen | February 15, 2024

https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/can-ukraine-still-win

Long before it was reported, at the end of January, that Volodymyr Zelensky had decided to replace his popular Army chief, Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian counter-offensive of 2023 had devolved from attempted maneuvers to mutual recriminations. The arrows pointed in multiple directions: Zelensky seemed to think that his commander-in-chief was being defeatist; Zaluzhny, that his President was refusing to face facts. And there were arguments, too, between Ukraine and its allies. In a two-part investigation in the Washington Post, in early December, U.S. officials complained that Ukrainian generals did not follow their advice. They tried to attack in too many places; they were too cautious; and they waited too long to launch the operation. The Ukrainians, in turn, blamed the Americans. They delivered too few weapons and did so too late; they insisted on their tactics even when it was clear these were unsuitable for the terrain and the opponent; and they did all this from the comfort of Washington and Wiesbaden, rather than from the trenches, tree lines, and open fields where Ukrainian soldiers gave their lives.

The arguments were painful and significant. Was Zelensky right that, given the wobbliness of Western support, Ukraine had to keep up a brave face and the so-called military momentum, no matter the cost? Or was Zaluzhny right that a change of strategy and more troops were needed, no matter how unpopular these choices might be? The argument with the U.S. was significant, too. Was the failure of the counter-offensive, as the Americans argued, one of strategy or, as the Ukrainians counter-argued, one of equipment?

There was a third option: neither. The dominant factor was the Russian military. It was better than people had given it credit for, after its disastrous performance in the first year of the war. It was not demoralized, incompetent, or ill-equipped. Russian soldiers and their officers were fighting to the death. They had executed a brutal and effective defense and, despite all the losses they had incurred, they still had attack helicopters, drones, and mines. “People came to very strong conclusions based off the first month of the war,” Rob Lee, a former marine and an analyst of the Russian military at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said. “And I think a lot of those conclusions were wrong.”

Being wrong about war can be disastrous, yet it is extremely common. The political scientist Stephen Biddle’s influential book, “Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle,” begins by listing a century of analytical mistakes. “In 1914,” he writes, “Europeans expected a short, decisive war of movement. None foresaw a nearly four-year trench stalemate—if they had, the war might never have happened. In 1940 Allied leaders were astonished by the Germans’ lightning victory over France. They had expected something closer to the trench warfare of 1914-18; even the victors were surprised.” Biddle goes on to describe the debate over the tank, deemed obsolete after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and then resurrected by its awesome performance in the Gulf War, in 1990 and 1991. Biddle’s book came out in 2004; since then, two major American wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, have not gone as anyone had planned.
Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Stephen+Biddle+Military

“It’s impossible, basically, to predict a future war,” Bettina Renz, an international-security professor at the University of Nottingham and an expert on the Russian military, said. “Most people who start a war think it will be over quickly. And, of course, nobody starts a war that they think they can’t win.”

Once a war ends, or even earlier, military historians begin to describe what happened and who was right. Some debates remain unsettled, because the war they theorize never takes place. A famous instance is a debate many years ago, on the pages of the journal International Security, over whether NATO was adequately prepared for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The political scientists John Mearsheimer and Barry Posen, having calculated the relative balance of forces, said that it was; the defense intellectual Eliot Cohen, who had worked in the Pentagon’s famous Office of Net Assessment, said that it was not. The debate stretched over several months, in 1988 and 1989. A short while later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

The war in Ukraine has led to more than its share of arguments. In the run-up, the U.S. spent months warning skeptical allies that an invasion was imminent. This argument was mirrored inside Ukraine: Zaluzhny became convinced that the Russians were coming, and spent the weeks before the war urging a mobilization; Zelensky remained uncertain, and resisted the advice, worried that it would panic the population and give Russia an excuse to invade. There was widespread consensus that, in the event of an invasion, Russia would quickly win. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told congressional leaders in early February of 2022 that the Russian military might take Kyiv in as little as seventy-two hours.

When this did not happen, in part because Zaluzhny repositioned some of his forces without authorization and moved or camouflaged the country’s military hardware, a new round of arguments broke out. Was Russia a paper tiger, or did it simply fight in the stupidest possible way? Was China also overrated? Was the tank dead (again)?

Some of the figures in the argument were familiar: Eliot Cohen was back, urging the West to take a harder line with Russia (and China); so were Mearsheimer and Posen, counselling caution. (Mearsheimer sometimes went further, blaming the West for provoking the Russian bear and for violating the tenets of his books, which posit that great-power conflict is inevitable.) Both sides invoked Carl von Clausewitz, the nineteenth-century Prussian military theorist. Cohen cited Clausewitz’s observation that intangible “moral factors,” like the will to fight, are the most important thing in war; Cohen’s opponents held up Clausewitz’s arguments that defense always has the advantage, and also that war is the realm of contingency and chance. (“Clausewitz is like the Bible,” the American University international-relations scholar Joshua Rovner told me. “You can pull out parts of it to suit basically any argument.”)

Among analysts who had studied the Russian military and thought it would do much better than it did, there was some soul-searching. Russian units turned out to be shorthanded, and neither their cyberattacks nor their Air Force were as dominant as expected. The Ukrainian military had better cyber defenses than people realized, and they fought tenaciously. Importantly, they also had the full support of U.S. intelligence, which was able to tell them when and where Russian forces would try to land, and to help them prepare for it. But the biggest surprise was Vladimir Putin’s terrible war plan, which assumed that Ukrainians would not resist, and which he kept secret from his own Army until the eve of the invasion. “No one would have done a Ukraine war game that was set with the political and strategic starting conditions of the Ukraine conflict,” Scott Boston, a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who often “plays Russia” in the think tank’s war games, said. “You’d be kicked out of the room.”

So, was the Russian military as bad as it seemed, and would Russian lines collapse if subjected to a bit of pressure? Or was it a fundamentally competent military that had been given an impossible task? Boston said he kept thinking of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, between Somali militants and American special forces, in which two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and eighteen Americans were killed in a misbegotten snatch-and-grab mission inside the Somali capital: “You can take the best soldiers on the planet, and, if you throw them in a bad enough situation, it’s not going to go well.” Russian soldiers were not the best on the planet, but they were probably not as bad as they looked in that first month of the war, running out of gas for their tanks and asking locals for directions to Kyiv.

The very successful Ukrainian counter-offensive in the fall of 2022 presented evidence for both sides. In the Kharkiv region, thinly defended Russian lines collapsed when confronted with mobile Ukrainian units, allowing Ukraine to take back significant amounts of territory and cut off key Russian supply lines. But along the other axis of attack, in the city of Kherson, Russian forces held out for a long time and then made a large and orderly retreat, saving much manpower and matériel. The question became which army Ukraine would face in the summer and fall of 2023: the undermanned and demoralized one they saw in Kharkiv, or the organized and capable one they saw in Kherson?

The answer, unfortunately, turned out to be the latter. “The Russian military adapted,” Lee said. “They often require some painful lessons, but then they do adapt.” Lee agrees with some of the criticisms lobbed by both sides in the aftermath of the offensive. Strategically, he thinks the defense of Bakhmut was carried out for too long by Ukrainian forces, for political reasons; materially, he agrees that the West should have got its act together a little sooner to provide more advanced weaponry to the front. But, for him, these are secondary matters: “Most of it came down to the Russian side.” A failure to appreciate this was a major problem in U.S. discussions of the war. Dara Massicot, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me that the emphasis on Russian incompetence in the first months of the war created unrealistic expectations and complacency. “The narratives that the Russian military is an incompetent clown car, incapable of learning, that they are about to collapse, and so on, are unhelpful and have done real damage,” Massicot said. “They have not collapsed. They’re still there. They have stood in the field and absorbed billions’ worth of Western weapons and aid over two years.”

In early November, the behind-the-scenes disagreements over Russian capabilities broke out into the open, in the form of an extraordinary essay by Zaluzhny and accompanying interview published in The Economist. Zaluzhny admitted that the counter-offensive had stalled and that the war was now in what he called a stalemate. He identified several factors—technological breakthroughs, achieving air superiority, improving electronic-warfare capabilities—that, he hoped, might move the war into a new phase. But Zaluzhny had lost faith in the idea that, by imposing devastating casualties on the invader, he would be able to take them out of the fight: “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war.” Zelensky, in turn, was frustrated that the commander-in-chief was making his views public—worsening an already tense relationship between the two.

Some analysts hope that the upcoming introduction of the American F-16 fighter to the Ukrainian side will change the course of the war. (Most predict that the F-16 will be helpful but not decisive.) Some believe that dropping a requirement that Western weaponry not be used to strike inside Russia could help. (Others, while agreeing, caution that deep strikes cannot be a substitute for conventional warfare; ultimately, Ukraine will have to take back territory in a ground offensive.) Many are concerned about the fact that Oleksandr Syrsky, Zelensky’s new choice for commander-in-chief, is the general who insisted on defending Bakhmut even after it became indefensible; they are even more concerned about the military-assistance package that is being held up in the U.S. Congress. But if, as Zaluzhny told The Economist, there will be no “deep and beautiful breakthrough,” what will happen instead?

The political-science literature on war duration (as opposed to war outcomes) is pretty clear: If a war is not over quickly, then it will last a long time. This is because incentives change. Blood and treasure have been expended. Society has been mobilized, the enemy vilified. People are angry. The war must go on.

There is a wrinkle to this story, however, when it comes to regime types. The standard work is “Democracies at War,” by Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, from 2002. Reiter and Stam argue, based on a slew of examples, that democracies have a better war-fighting record than autocracies. The reason is that they are better at fighting (the soldiers are more motivated) and that they start fewer dumb wars of choice. In a late chapter of the book, however, Reiter and Stam sound a cautionary note. For the same reason that democracies tend to start fewer wars, they tend to grow weary of them faster: “When the promised quick victory does not materialize . . . the people may reconsider their decision to consent to the war at hand and actively withdraw their support.” According to Reiter and Stam, this is the main reason that Harry Truman decided to drop two atomic bombs on Japanese cities in the summer of 1945. When wars drag on, democracies’ chances of victory diminish. In fact, Reiter and Stam write, “The longer a war continues, the more likely autocracies are to win.”
Download the free book from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Democracies+at+War+Reiter

Putin has probably not read Chapter 7 of “Democracies at War,” but he has long been counting on the dynamics it describes. He has what he likes to think of as stability—he can decide on a policy and stick with it—whereas Western democracies are constantly changing their leaders and their minds. It was apparently his calculation, in the run-up to the war, that European voters would not long stand for the high energy prices that a war with Russia would entail; he believed, too, that the U.S. was preoccupied with its own difficulties and would not mount a sustained response. For nearly two years, he was wrong. Western democracies rallied to the side of Ukraine, and Russia seemed a lot less stable than Putin had supposed: a partial mobilization in the fall of 2022 was unpopular, and, in the summer of 2023, one of Putin’s longtime loyal oligarchs, Yevgeny Prigozhin, gathered a column of men and started marching toward Moscow. But Prigozhin was assassinated, and, in recent months, Putin’s expectations of Western disarray have finally begun to be met. Largely owing to Hungarian recalcitrance, the European Union took months to agree on a large aid package to Ukraine; more worrisome still, a group of Republicans has been able to stall a similarly large aid package in the U.S. Congress. And inside Ukraine, too, politics have reappeared. It is widely thought that Zelensky decided to remove Zaluzhny because he worried that Zaluzhny was becoming a political rival. (Zaluzhny’s public disagreements with his boss did not help.)

Hamas’s violent incursion into Israel on October 7th of last year, followed by Israel’s hugely disproportionate response, has scrambled the international map. It has also occupied the time of senior U.S. officials and weakened Joe Biden politically. Then there is this year’s U.S. Presidential election. The fact that, back in 2019, Donald Trump appeared to attempt to extort Zelensky—conditioning military aid on Ukraine’s willingness to investigate the Biden family—is not an encouraging sign for supporters of Ukraine. Neither is Trump’s long-standing skepticism of NATO, expressed most recently in his comment that he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that did not “pay.”

Most military analysts believe that, in the coming year, even if U.S. aid finally comes through, Russia has the advantage. Russia has used continued revenues from the sale of oil and gas to pay for weapons manufacturing: it’s producing munitions, missiles, and tanks at rates double and triple what they were before the war. Though Ukrainian forces have driven drone innovation on the battlefield, Russia, over the past year, has produced more drones. And the state has managed, by hook and by crook, to continue recruiting men into the armed forces. “Let’s be honest,” Zaluzhny told The Economist, “it’s a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life.”

Ukraine has some advantages. Western-supplied long-range missile systems possess precision and evasion capabilities that Russian missiles cannot match. These have allowed Ukraine to strike Russian airfields, barracks, and weapons depots well behind the front lines, including in Crimea; they have also helped Ukraine break the blockade of its Black Sea shipping lanes. Ukrainian soldiers have a better sense of what they’re fighting for, and the Army is the most respected institution in the country. Though Zaluzhny has been replaced, there is reason to believe that the reforms he’s been advocating, including a substantial increase in troop mobilization, will be carried out without him.

Military analysts are, however, a little hard-pressed to describe an actual military victory for Ukraine. Boston says he has not heard anyone discussing the equipment and firepower Ukraine would need. “Let’s say I want to have a breakthrough operation against Russian forces,” he said. “I need to have substantial artillery superiority at the point of the attack. I need to find a way to introduce land forces in sufficient numbers and have a way that they will not all get blown up by enemy artillery. The enemy artillery needs to be suppressed, needs to be destroyed, or needs to be blinded so that you can get enough of the land forces to punch the hole.” This needs to happen, furthermore, at multiple points, and Ukraine needs to have forces in reserve so that, if a breakthrough is achieved, those troops can take advantage of it. “That all, to me, sounds remarkably expensive,” Boston said. In a situation where a roughly base level of support is having trouble making it through a divided Congress, Boston found it hard to see a way toward an even greater level.

“Ukraine needs to prepare for a long war,” Olga Oliker, a former RAND analyst and Pentagon staffer who is now the head of the Europe and Central Asia program at the International Crisis Group, told me. Oliker believes that a long war could be won, but it may not look like the victory some maximalists have been promising. “You have to create the space for Ukraine to claim victory under less-than-ideal conditions,” she said. “Because, if you say the only thing that is victory is the Russians go home entirely from Crimea and Donbas, Ukraine is in NATO, and Moscow somehow disappears off the face of the earth—that’s an unrealistic goal. To me, Ukrainian victory is a situation in which Russia can’t do this again or at least is going to have a very hard time doing it again.”

This could mean that the Russian military is constrained by some agreement that it’s been forced into, but it could also mean that Ukraine’s defenses are sufficiently bolstered, and its allies sufficiently clear in their resolve, that the cost to Russia of a renewed offensive would simply be too high. There is also the hope, not entirely illusory, that Russian vulnerabilities will eventually become too much for the Putin regime to handle. “There’s a certain amount of instability that’s built into the Russian system that the Russians worry about,” Oliker said. “At some point, if they’re worried enough, they might be willing to negotiate.”

A senior Biden Administration official who has helped develop sanctions against Russia expounded on this theory. He said that, for some time, the Administration’s view has been that Russia can continue its current level of war expenditures into the spring of 2025, at which point it will run into trouble. He pointed to the freezing of Russian assets abroad, the running down of its hard-currency reserves, and the increasingly complex supply lines that Russia needs to evade Western sanctions. “It’s like a top that’s slowing down,” the official said. “They’re going to have to start making harder and harder choices, faster and faster, as we get into 2025. That’s a far cry from whatever Putin’s aim was in this war—which was, you know, reinstating Catherine the Great’s empire or something.”

The Administration official was painting an optimistic picture—one that depends on continued Western support. When I asked whether there was a contingency plan if the aid did not come through, he said there wasn’t one: “The contingency plan, frankly, is that the Ukrainians will keep fighting with less and less.” Ukraine is already running short of artillery shells, and it could eventually run out of air-defense interceptors. “So it’s a very stark choice in terms of the security assistance,” the official said. He estimated that, with the help of Western air-defense systems, Ukrainian forces could shoot down as many as ninety per cent of Russian air-attack assets. “Without it, that number will be zero soon.”

There is a third option for how the war might develop, beyond a “mutually hurting stalemate,” as it’s known in the literature, and a measured Ukrainian victory. As Michael Kofman, a longtime analyst of the Russian military who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, stressed to me, Ukraine could start to lose. That could mean a breakthrough by Russian forces, though they have so far been unable to achieve one, or just enough wearing down of Ukrainian and Western will that Ukraine is forced to negotiate concessions from a position of weakness. The question then becomes what, aside from the catastrophic humanitarian and political consequences in Ukraine, a Russian victory would mean for the world. If Putin wins, or feels like he has won, what will he do next?

Some argue that he would do nothing—that Ukraine is a special case, more central to Russia’s conception of itself as an imperial power than any other country. The counter-argument is that we don’t know. “In Moscow, they have all sorts of assessments of NATO power,” Massicot said. “I don’t think they can confront it directly. For one thing, the Russian Army is partially destroyed. The Russian Air Force has not exactly covered themselves in glory in this war. But they will downgrade their assessment of NATO as a cohesive alliance on the basis of our political will. From their point of view, they will feel that they have won a proxy war with NATO. And they’re going to be angry, they’re going to want revenge, and now they think we’re weaker than we are. That’s a dangerous situation.” Right now, the U.S. has about a hundred thousand troops in Europe; in 1989, there were three times that many. An ambiguous result in Ukraine, which leaves Russia capable of further offensive action, could mean a movement toward old troop levels. And Mearsheimer, Posen, and Cohen would have to dust off their essays on NATO preparedness.

It feels, in fact, like all the old Cold War arguments are back. Clearly, the Russian leadership is capable of brutal expansionist aggression. But just how far are they willing to go, and what exactly will they think of next? “The problem that I see is that the Russian economy has undergone a structural transition and is now on a militarized footing,” Kofman said. “So the Russian government is probably going to be focussed on regenerating military power for some time, both because it’s a matter of strategy but also because the militarized economy is going to be producing military goods and they will not have an easy way to transition it back.” This, Kofman concluded, means “that they could be in a position sooner than people think to actually contest the security and stability of Europe.”

Kofman, Lee, and Massicot recently published an article on the national-security Web site War on the Rocks in which they outlined a strategy for Ukrainian victory. “Hold, Build, and Strike,” they called it.
“This winter, Ukraine’s military is visibly running on fumes, as recent reporting shows M109 Paladin artillery outside Bakhmut receiving only smoke shells for ammunition. When we were last there in November, shell hunger was widespread along the front, and the situation has only gotten worse.”
https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/hold-build-and-strike-a-vision-for-r
ebuilding-ukraines-advantage-in-2024/

In the essay, they urged Ukraine to hold the line of contact in the coming months, spend 2024 building up its forces, and then strike, in 2025, when they could see an advantage. These ideas were not far from what Zaluzhny had been advocating over the past several months. “You shouldn’t fight a war till your first failed offensive,” Kofman said. “That’s not how most conventional wars go. If that’s how they went, they’d all be over really fast.” He went on to give an example from the Second World War. “You know Stalin’s famous ten blows?” These were ten major offensives, several of them on Ukrainian territory, that the Soviets undertook against Germany in 1944. But there were, in fact, far more than ten offensives, Kofman said: “They just don’t include all the offensives that failed.” Last summer was a good opportunity for Ukraine to take back territory from the Russian Army, but it will not, Kofman believes, be the last such opportunity.

Oliker, whose job at the International Crisis Group is to seek ways to end conflicts, does not see how this one can end just yet. She admitted that, in the aftermath of the failed counter-offensive, in the midst of a long cold winter, and with Western support in doubt, Ukraine is facing a very difficult moment. “But it was not a good moment for Russia in spring and summer of 2022,” Oliker said. “That’s war. If it is, in fact, a long war, prepare for a few more back-and-forths.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 17, 2024 8:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The Kremlin claims it was at war with the United States.

By Anna Nemtsova | Updated Feb. 17, 2024, 3:37AM EST

https://www.thedailybeast.com/despair-in-russia-as-putin-spirals-out-o
f-control

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman informed Russians this week that the “special military operation” that Putin launched in Ukraine in February 2022 was set to go on much longer because it is now “a war against the collective West.”

That’s right: a war.

It was remarkable to hear that word from Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Journalists were explicitly banned from using it and thousands of Russians have been detained, fined and imprisoned for using the word.

“Moscow deputy Aleksey Gorinov was sentenced to seven years in prison for saying ‘war,’” Sergey Davidis, head of the Political Prisoners Support group, told The Daily Beast. He said over 20,000 Russians have now been detained and punished for protesting against the war. “That includes 131 Russians who have been sentenced to long prison terms in punishment for peaceful or for more radical anti-war actions,” he said. “I don’t think punishments against the war will now be milder after the Kremlin openly says ‘war.’ Putin will be next to declare it.”

By “collective West” the Kremlin traditionally means 31 NATO countries and the 28 nations of the European Union. “This is a war when the countries of the collective West, led by the United States are directly involved in the conflict,” Peskov said.

“The Kremlin is deeply disappointed in Washington being unwilling to negotiate a deal for Ukraine without Ukraine’s participation. Nobody wants to sit down with Putin for the dream negotiations; Yalta-2,” Insider’s editor-in-chief Timur Olevsky told The Daily Beast. Putin is obsessed with the idea of revisiting the height of Soviet influence at the 1945, post-WWII peace talks. “Somebody flicked him on the nose, it looks like, so the Kremlin finally marks the failure of all their efforts to negotiate with the West.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 17, 2024 10:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The fury of the Russians in Ukraine

The resentment caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union continues to provide the fuel for Vladimir Putin’s imperial project

By José Andrés Rojo | Feb 16, 2024 - 12:46CET

https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2024-02-16/the-fury-of-the-russians
-in-ukraine.html

It is almost exactly two years since Vladimir Putin’s forces attempted in February 2022 to reach Kyiv to install a puppet government that would obey the Kremlin’s designs, expanding the war that began in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014 to the rest of the country. It was something you could have seen coming, had you taken seriously the bluster of some of the protagonists of what was happening in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. “Give me two years and in Ukraine, no one will say they are Ukrainian,” the prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Aleksandr Zakharchenko, told Pilar Bonet in March 2017, during a long conversation which recounts in her book Náufragos del imperio (Castaways of the Empire).

Zakharchenko, who spoke of himself as a hero with “burning, angry eyes,” and who was killed in a bomb attack on August 31, 2018, explained to Bonet that Russians have much more in common with the Mongols than with the Swedes: “Russia is a country of victors who have learned to survive. We survive everywhere; we may starve for a whole week, be wounded and covered in mud, but, crawling and ragged, we will defend our land.” “The war is already a reality,” he added. “All of Ukraine must be transformed into the DPR. When we succeed, a flood of hundreds of thousands of armed Ukrainians will rush into Europe, and they will not be refugees like those from Libya or Syria, but people with combat experience, well-trained and well-equipped.”

Náufragos del imperio is full of stories of people suffering the horror of the Russian invasion and is constructed from the unpublished workbooks, travel diaries, and materials that Bonet has been collecting since then. “Those who want to go to Sakhalin, to the right. Those who want to go to Vladivostok, to the left,” shouted the employees of the civil protection service of Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, in the face of the avalanche of refugees arriving from Donbas in August 2014. They had to decide, in an instant, between two places to start anew. Lives broken, massacred, and forcibly pushed into exile. With Putin’s invasion in 2022, things got even worse.

Zakharchenko admitted to Bonet during their first meeting in 2014 that he was “proud to feel Ukrainian.” Three years later, he had become a Russian, enthusiastic about Putin’s project. Bonet looks back to the collapse of the Soviet Union when there was a “brutal shift from a planned, centralized economy to a capitalist economy.” Privatizations were an opportunity for the old order to modernize, but they were “ruthless.” “Solidly established industries were turned into rubble and scrap metal; workers who thought they had stable jobs were left on the street, and highly qualified specialists had to retrain as shopkeepers or cab drivers.” The fury left by that fall is still intact. Putin exploits it and is confident of prolonging the war in Ukraine until he can win it. That is where we are.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 17, 2024 12:28 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Syrsky orders troops to abandon Avdiivka.

Many soldiers are trapped, with no good way out. It's not an organized withdrawal, it's a rout.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Sunday, February 18, 2024 7:20 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Russian forces have established “full control” over Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast as Russian forces continued to advance in the settlement on February 17, and Ukrainian forces have likely withdrawn from Avdiivka.

• Russian sources largely characterized the Ukrainian withdrawal as disorganized and costly and claimed that Russian forces managed to encircle large Ukrainian groups in Avdiivka, but ISW has observed no evidence supporting these Russian claims.

• Russian forces appear to have temporarily established limited and localized air superiority and were able to provide ground troops with close air support during the final days of their offensive operation to capture Avdiivka, likely the first time that Russian forces have done so in Ukraine.

• Delays in Western security assistance may lead to further significant constraints on Ukrainian air defenses that could allow Russian forces to replicate the close air support that facilitated Russian advances in Avdiivka at scale in Ukraine.

• Ukrainian forces reportedly shot down three Russian fighter aircraft — two Su-34s and one Su-35 — over Donetsk Oblast on February 17, likely having committed scarce air defense assets to help cover the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Avdiivka.

Limited effective air defense systems, dwindling air defense missiles stocks, and continued Russian missile and drone strikes against rear population centers are likely forcing Ukraine to make difficult choices about what areas of the frontline receive air defense coverage.[26] Recurring temporary localized and limited Russian air superiority would likely allow Russian forces to more aggressively pursue operational advances along the frontline. Widespread interrupted air superiority would allow Russian forces to conduct routine large-scale aviation operations and bomb Ukrainian cities beyond the frontline to devastating effect.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-17-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 18, 2024 1:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Flogging "the west" for more weapons is pointless because the cupboard is bare: there are no more weapons to spare, and everybody know it except delusional neocons, clueless western politicians, and cokehead Zelensky.

And since there are no more weapons to spare ... aftervall, the USA has plenty of other wars on its docket ... flogging the west for more money will only help Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs and western speculators who were hoping for a big Russia - or, failing that, Ukrainian- payday.

All of those pretenders of hardbitten, realworld analysis completley failed to stumble upon realworld facts, because they were too busy polishing their ideological turds to a high shine.

That includes CAPNCRUNCH, THUGR, and SECOND, and all those propagandists that they posted here. They collectively are as rabid and delusional as Israelis.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Sunday, February 18, 2024 6:00 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Flogging "the west" for more weapons is pointless because the cupboard is bare: there are no more weapons to spare, and everybody know it except delusional neocons, clueless western politicians, and cokehead Zelensky.

And since there are no more weapons to spare ... aftervall, the USA has plenty of other wars on its docket ... flogging the west for more money will only help Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs and western speculators who were hoping for a big Russia - or, failing that, Ukrainian- payday.

All of those pretenders of hardbitten, realworld analysis completley failed to stumble upon realworld facts, because they were too busy polishing their ideological turds to a high shine.

That includes CAPNCRUNCH, THUGR, and SECOND, and all those propagandists that they posted here. They collectively are as rabid and delusional as Israelis.
Signym, you are full of shit. Denmark says bullshit on you and the European cheese-eating surrender monkeys who have plenty of ammo held in reserve but pretend they cannot send it to Ukraine:

Denmark to send its 'entire artillery' to Ukraine, the country's prime minister says

By Nathan Rennolds | Feb 18, 2024, 11:32 AM CST

https://www.businessinsider.com/denmark-to-send-all-artillery-ukraine-
pm-russia-war-2024-2

• Denmark is sending all of its artillery to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said.

• Mette Frederiksen made the announcement while speaking at the Munich Security Conference.

• It comes as Ukraine faces severe munitions shortages.

Denmark is sending its "entire artillery" to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Mette Frederiksen appealed to other European nations to do more to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin's invading forces.

"They are asking us for ammunition now. Artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery," she said.

"I'm sorry to say, friends, there are still ammunition in stock in Europe," she continued. "This is not only a question about production, because we have weapons, we have ammunition, we have air defense that we don't have to use ourself at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine."

It comes as Ukrainian forces withdrew from the key eastern town of Avdiivka amid severe munitions shortages.

The Danish announcement will come as particularly welcome news in Ukraine as its military has been starved of artillery shells, forcing it to scale back some operations, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi told Reuters in December.

"There's a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (shells) - that's 122 mm, 152 mm. And today, these problems exist across the entire front line," he said.

Meanwhile, in more positive news to alleviate the ammo famine, the Czech Republic says it could supply 800,000 shells to the Ukrainian military.

Czech President Petr Pavel said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference on 17 February that it had a stockpile of about half a million 155 mm and 300,000 122 mm shells, which can be on the Ukraine frontline in a few weeks "if funding is found quickly."

Denmark has been a key supporter of Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the Nordic country's military aid commitments increased by 3.5 billion euros, or around $3.8 billion, since November — making it one of the biggest military donors by percentage of GDP, the institute says.

Denmark has pledged 8.4 billion euros, around $9 billion, in military aid.

With a crucial $60 billion US aid package stalled in Congress, European support is becoming ever more important for Ukraine.

Earlier this year, the European Union agreed to a new 50 billion euro, or around $53.9 billion, aid package for Ukraine.

"This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine. The EU is taking leadership and responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake," President of the European Council Charles Michel said at the time, per Reuters.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 18, 2024 7:10 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Fuck Ukraine.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, February 18, 2024 8:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Flogging "the west" for more weapons is pointless because the cupboard is bare: there are no more weapons to spare, and everybody know it except delusional neocons, clueless western politicians, and cokehead Zelensky.

And since there are no more weapons to spare ... aftervall, the USA has plenty of other wars on its docket ... flogging the west for more money will only help Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs and western speculators who were hoping for a big Russia - or, failing that, Ukrainian- payday.

All of those pretenders of hardbitten, realworld analysis completley failed to stumble upon realworld facts, because they were too busy polishing their ideological turds to a high shine.

That includes CAPNCRUNCH, THUGR, and SECOND, and all those propagandists that they posted here. They collectively are as rabid and delusional as Israelis.

SECINDRATE: Signym, you are full of shit. Denmark says bullshit on you and the European cheese-eating surrender monkeys who have plenty of ammo held in reserve but pretend they cannot send it to Ukraine:

Denmark to send its 'entire artillery' to Ukraine, the country's prime minister says


All of five artillery pieces and 5000 shells???


Quote:
By Nathan Rennolds | Feb 18, 2024, 11:32 AM CST

https://www.businessinsider.com/denmark-to-send-all-artillery-ukraine-
pm-russia-war-2024-2

Denmark is sending all of its artillery to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said.

Mette Frederiksen made the announcement while speaking at the Munich Security Conference.

It comes as Ukraine faces severe munitions shortages.

Denmark is sending its "entire artillery" to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Mette Frederiksen appealed to other European nations to do more to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin's invading forces.

"They are asking us for ammunition now. Artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery," she said.

"I'm sorry to say, friends, there are still ammunition in stock in Europe," she continued. "This is not only a question about production, because we have weapons, we have ammunition, we have air defense that we don't have to use ourself at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine."


Etc etc

Well, how to unpack that?

DENMARK apparently doesn't believe that Russia is going to attack them because they're willing to gut themselves.

But I'm sure Russia will be happy to blow up whatever Denmark sends. The more EU nations gut themselves, the more Russia will be able to demilitarize the EU as well as Ukraine.

Quote:
Czech President Petr Pavel said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference on 17 February that it had a stockpile of about half a million 155 mm and 300,000 122 mm shells, which can be on the Ukraine frontline in a few weeks "if funding is found quickly."


And apparently CZECHIA doesn't think that Russia will invade them either, bc if they did they wouldn't be gutting themselves either, no matter how much money they expected to make.

Clearly a lot of cognitive dissonance going on.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Sunday, February 18, 2024 9:40 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Remember the good old days when Europe fought against Nazis instead of fighting for them?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:06 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Remember the good old days when Europe fought against Nazis instead of fighting for them?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Europe was actually split. There were a lot of Nazi sympathizers/ collaborators in nations that we think are liberal democracies.

But I think this has more to do with globalist plans to plunder Russia, and the uber-elite's ability to pack national governments with moronic sycophants and opportunists. I have heard some incredibly stupid things coming out of their mouths. Like Baerbock's insistence thatPutin do a 360 degree turn.

No shit! That earned her the nickname Annalena "360" Baerbock.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:29 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

But I think this has more to do with globalist plans to plunder Russia . . .
I think the globalists are responding to Russia threatening to nuke the U.S.:

Russia Vows Nuclear Strike on Washington if Ukraine Wins

Feb 18, 2024 at 11:56 AM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-ally-nuclear-threat-ukraine-wi
n-1871005

A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons on the U.S. if Russia fails in its invasion of Ukraine.

In a Telegram post on Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, has claimed the Moscow would use nuclear weapons in the event that "Ukraine with its allies" managed to push Russia out of the war-torn country.

"Let's imagine for a moment that Russia lost and 'Ukraine with its allies' won. What for our enemies—the neo-Nazis with their Western sponsors—would be such a victory?" Medvedev wrote.

He goes on to talk about the "collapse of Russia," in which he describes a "return to the borders of 1991" when the USSR collapsed following the Cold War. Medvedev said that a Western victory would constitute a complete collapse of Russia, with "tens of millions of victims." He described it as "the death of our future. The collapse of everything in the world."

The post continues: "The collapse of Russia will have much more terrible consequences than the results of an ordinary, even the most protracted war. For attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To the global war with the Western countries using all the strategic arsenal of our state."

He goes on to make nuclear threats against key U.S. and European capital cities. "Against Kyiv, Berlin, London, Washington. Against all other beautiful historical places that have been long ago included in the flight targets of our nuclear triad," he wrote.

Concluding his message, Medvedev wrote: "Will we have the guts for this if the disappearance of a thousand-year-old country, our great homeland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the people of Russia over the centuries will be in vain? The answer is obvious."

Putin himself and other top Russian officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons as it continues its campaign, both in Ukraine and against NATO member countries.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:43 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Raise your privileged hand if you’re willing to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’

Hey, what’s a million-plus dead and wounded when you live thousands of miles away in a bubble of arrogant privilege?

In August 2023, U.S. officials estimated that approximately 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian troops had been killed or wounded since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Back in November, the United Nations Human Rights Office said more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians had died.

Recently, a former intelligence official told me that troop casualties are now over 1 million, and that the U.N. estimate of civilian deaths is dramatically higher. Over 1 million dead and wounded men, women and children.

Shouldn’t that obscenely horrific death and casualty number shock us? For a comparison, how would we react if every single man, woman and child in Dallas, San Diego, Austin, Jacksonville or San Jose were killed or wounded while large parts of those cities were leveled to the ground by air and artillery bombardments?

Sadly, tragically, but purposefully, there has been very little reporting on the human cost of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Some in the media have seemingly morphed into stenographers for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with each story beginning: “As Ukraine reports…” or “As Zelensky stated…”

Media sites can still be “anti-Putin” while professionally and ethically reporting the absolute facts on the ground. Facts that paint a horribly tragic picture.

If the rationale by our government, the United Kingdom and others in Europe (along with much of the media, academia and various defense contractors) was to use Ukraine and its people as cheap disposable pawns to be sacrificed in a proxy war against Vladimir Putin and Russia, then they are succeeding at a certain macabre level.

However, if the idea of supporting the Ukraine war with Russia was to “save the people of Ukraine” and the country’s infrastructure, then those who advocated for that course of action have failed miserably.

How miserably? Well, as CNN reported recently, the war has devolved into brutal trench warfare: “The frontlines of Russia’s war in Ukraine have become infested with rats and mice, reportedly spreading disease that causes soldiers to vomit and bleed from their eyes, crippling combat capability and recreating the gruesome conditions that plagued troops in the trench warfare of World War I.”

Does any of that matter or register with the privileged and “neocon” class on both sides of the Atlantic who — from the safety of thousands of miles away while enjoying six- and seven-figure salaries — continually advocate for the youth of Ukraine to march into the teeth of the Russian war machine?


MORE AT https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4473663-raise-your-privi
leged-hand-if-youre-willing-to-fight-to-the-last-ukrainian/

Meanwhile, partying at Munich Security Conference, hosted by Bild. "Drink to defeat Putin" was the order of the day.





-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:51 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Raise your privileged hand if you’re willing to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’
The Russians killed 4 million Ukrainians during Holodomor. But that is all in the past, except the Ukrainians know the Russians might kill another 4 million in the future. The Ukrainians fight in the present to show the Russians that time is not a flat circle.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Holodomor

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 18, 2024 11:25 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Raise your privileged hand if you’re willing to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’
The Russians killed 4 million Ukrainians during Holodomor. But that is all in the past, except the Ukrainians know the Russians might kill another 4 million in the future. The Ukrainians fight in the present to show the Russians that time is not a flat circle.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Holodomor

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


There were at least six points where war could have been avoided, from the initial coup ousting Yanukovich (promoted by "Fuck the EU" Nuland) to the Minsk agreements (both of them) to the shelling of Donetsk and finally to the cease fire agreement that Boris Johnson torpedoed. At every step, the west kept egging Ukraine on.
This isn't on Russia.
It's on the west.
No matter how much you try to distort history.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Monday, February 19, 2024 12:36 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There were at least six points where war could have been avoided, from the initial coup ousting Yanukovich (promoted by "Fuck the EU" Nuland) to the Minsk agreements (both of them) to the shelling of Donetsk and finally to the cease fire agreement that Boris Johnson torpedoed. At every step, the west kept egging Ukraine on.
This isn't on Russia.
It's on the west.
No matter how much you try to distort history.
On Sunday, Dmitry Medvedev clearly stated what this war is about: "For attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. To the global war with the Western countries using all the strategic arsenal of our state." Signym, Mikhail Gorbachev set the 1991 border and Putin hates the setting.

To paraphrase, Russia will nuke the U.S. rather than Russia continuing to live within the 1991 borders. Even clearer, Russia is taking back Ukraine and if you don't like it, Russia will nuke you.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, February 19, 2024 2:44 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


You're "explaining" what the USA did 20 years ago by what Medvedev says now???
Stop gaslighting us, SECOND. We're not as stupid as you are.

BTW, what Medvedev said

Quote:
What does this mean? It means only one thing – they risk running into the action of paragraph 19 of the fundamentals of Russia's state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence," Medvedev wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
"This should be remembered," Medvedev said.
Paragraph nineteen of Russia's 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out the conditions under which a Russian president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or to the use of conventional weapons against Russia "when the very existence of the state is put under threat."
Medvedev made specific mention of point "g" of paragraph nineteen which deals with the nuclear response to a conventional weapons attack.


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-medvedev-warns-nuclear-re
sponse-if-ukraine-hits-missile-launch-sites-2024-01-11/


Quote:
Concluding his message, Medvedev wrote: "Will we have the guts for this if the disappearance of a thousand-year-old country, our great homeland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the people of Russia over the centuries will be in vain? The answer is obvious."


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-ally-vows-nuclear-strike-on
-washington-if-ukraine-wins/ar-BB1itx8o

What he is saying, in different ways, it what Russia has always said: It will use nuclear weapons if it is existentially threatened, even by conventional forces.

Of course Russia now considers Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaparozhzhia to be part of Russia. So there's that.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Monday, February 19, 2024 7:48 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're "explaining" what the USA did 20 years ago by what Medvedev says now???
Stop gaslighting us, SECOND. We're not as stupid as you are.

BTW, what Medvedev said
The rulers of Russia have a thousand-year history of killing people and stealing their land. For example, Stalin killed 4 million Ukrainians during Holodomor and stole their land but magnanimous Mikhail Gorbachev set the border for Ukraine in 1991, giving all that land back to Ukrainians. Putin is attempting to cancel Gorbachev and reset the border back to 1990. Putin makes foolish threats to nuke the West if it "interferes" with the new border declared by Putin. The Putin plan is childishly simple: kill the owners, steal their land, and threaten to nuke anyone who interferes. It is a plan that can be repeated over and over, across Europe. Seeing how obvious Putin is, Putin's plan will be stopped in Ukraine by Europe.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, February 19, 2024 7:48 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Can Europe defend itself without America?

It would need to replace military aid, a nuclear umbrella and leadership

Feb 18th 2024

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/02/18/can-europe-defend-itself
-without-america

THE DEATH of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s foremost opposition leader, in a Siberian gulag on February 16th would by itself have served as a shock to Europe. But for leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of defence and security bigwigs, Mr Navalny’s demise was just one of several ominous developments for the continent. On February 17th Ukraine’s army, starved of American ammunition by Congress’s failure to pass a supplemental aid bill, was forced to withdraw from the eastern town of Avdiivka. That handed Vladimir Putin his first military victory in almost a year.

The deadlock in Congress reflects the baleful influence of Donald Trump, whose fierce opposition to aid for Ukraine has cowed Republicans into submission. But the spectre of Mr Trump’s return to office in November’s presidential election cast an even darker pall over Munich. A week earlier Mr Trump had boasted of telling an ally that he would not come to their defence if they fell short of NATO spending targets: “You’re delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

The confluence of Russia’s rearmament, Ukraine’s deteriorating position and Mr Trump’s possible return to the White House has brought Europe to its most dangerous juncture in decades. European states and armies are wondering whether they must navigate this crisis without their ally of nearly 80 years. The question is not just whether America will abandon Ukraine, but whether it might abandon Europe. For Europe to fill the space left by America’s absence would require it to do much more than simply raise defence spending. It will have to reconsider the nature of military power, the role of nuclear deterrence in European security and the far-reaching political implications of military organisation and structure.

In Munich the mood was fearful and determined rather than panicked. American and European officials remain hopeful that American aid will turn up in Ukraine. On February 17th Petr Pavel, the Czech president, said that his country had “found” 800,000 shells which could be shipped to the country within weeks. In an interview with The Economist Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, insisted that European arms production was increasing “as fast as possible” and said he was “very optimistic” that Europe could plug American gaps. Others played down the dangers of Mr Trump. “We should stop moaning and whining and nagging about Trump,” said Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, on February 17th. “It’s up to the Americans…We have to work with whoever is on the dance floor.”

Not everyone is so sanguine. If American aid were to evaporate entirely, Ukraine would probably lose, one American official tells The Economist. Mr Pistorius is correct that European arms production is rising fast; the continent should be able to produce shells at an annual rate of 1m-2m late this year, potentially outstripping America. But that may come too late for Ukraine, which by itself needs some 1.5m per year according to Rheinmetall, a European arms manufacturer. And a sense of wartime urgency is still lacking. European producers export 40% of their shell production to non-EU countries other than Ukraine; when the European Commission proposed that Ukraine should be prioritised by law, member states refused. The continent’s arms firms complain that their order books remain too thin to warrant big investments in production lines.

A Ukrainian defeat would inflict a psychological blow on the West while emboldening Mr Putin. That does not mean he could take advantage right away. “There is no immediate threat to NATO,” says Admiral Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s international military committee. Allies disagree over how long it would take Russia to reconstitute its forces to a pre-war standard, he says, and the timeline will depend on Western sanctions. Three to seven years is the range that “a lot of people talk about”. But the direction of travel is clear. “We can expect that within the next decade, NATO will face a Soviet-style mass army,” warned Estonia’s annual intelligence report, published on February 13th. The threat is not just a Russian invasion, but attacks and provocations which might test the limits of Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defence clause. “It cannot be ruled out that within a three- to five-year period, Russia will test Article 5 and NATO’s solidarity,” warned Denmark’s defence minister, citing “new information”. Some European intelligence officials reckon that even this is alarmist. But Europe’s ultimate fear is confronting such scenarios alone.

Europe has thought about such a moment for years. In 2019 Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, told this newspaper that allies needed to “reassess the reality of what NATO is in the light of the commitment of the United States.” Mr Trump’s first term in office, in which he flirted with withdrawing from NATO and publicly sided with Mr Putin over his own intelligence agencies, served as a catalyst. The idea of European “strategic autonomy”, once pushed only by France, was embraced by other countries. Defence spending, which began rising after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, has now increased dramatically. That year just three NATO allies met the target of spending 2% of GDP on defence, which was defined as the bare minimum at last year’s summit in Vilnius. This year at least 18 states, 62% of European allies, will hit it. Europe’s total defence spending will reach around $380bn—about the same as Russia’s, when adjusted for purchasing-power parity.

Paper tiger

Those numbers flatter Europe, however. Its defence spending yields disproportionately little combat power, and its armed forces are less than the sum of their parts. The continent is years away from being able to defend itself from attack by a reconstituted Russian force, which could appear as early as the late 2020s. At last year’s summit, NATO leaders approved their first comprehensive national defence plans since the cold war. Alliance officials say those plans would require increasing Europe’s existing (and unmet) targets for military capability by about a third. That would mean around 50% more defence spending than today, raising the total to 3% of GDP. Only America, Poland and Greece, the latter flattered by bloated military pensions, reach that level today.

More money is not enough. Almost all European armies are struggling to meet their recruitment targets, as is America’s. Moreover the rise in spending after 2014 delivered alarmingly little growth in combat capability. A recent paper by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London, found that the number of combat battalions had barely increased since 2015 (France and Germany added just one) or had even fallen, in Britain by five. At a conference last year, an American general lamented that most European countries could field just one full-strength brigade (a formation of a few thousand troops), if that. Germany’s bold decision to deploy a full brigade to Lithuania, for instance, is likely to stretch its army severely.

Even when Europe can produce combat forces, they often lack the things needed to fight effectively and for long enough: command-and-control capabilities, such as staff officers trained to run large headquarters; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, such as drones and satellites; logistics capabilities, including airlift; and ammunition to last for longer than a week or so. “The things that European militaries can do, they can do really well,” says Michael Kofman, a military expert, “but they typically can’t do a lot of them, they can’t do them for very long and they’re configured for the initial period of a war that the United States would lead.”

Poland is an instructive case. It is the poster boy for European rearmament. It will spend 4% of its GDP on defence this year, and splurges more than half of that money on equipment, far above NATO’s target of 20%. It is buying huge numbers of tanks, helicopters, howitzers and HIMARS rocket artillery—on the face of it, just what Europe needs. But under the previous government, says Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst, it did so with little coherent planning and utter neglect of how to crew and sustain that equipment, with personnel numbers falling. Poland’s HIMARS launchers can fire out to 300km, but the country’s own intelligence platforms cannot see targets at that distance. It will rely on America for that.

One option would be for Europeans to pool their resources. For the past 16 years, for instance, a group of 12 European countries have jointly bought and operated a fleet of three long-range cargo aircraft—essentially a timeshare programme for airlift. In January Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain agreed to jointly buy 1,000 missiles used in the Patriot air-defence system, using bulk to drive down the cost. The same approach could be taken in other areas, such as reconnaissance satellites. The difficulty lies in dividing the spoils.

Countries with large defence industries—France, Germany, Italy and Spain—often fail to agree on how contracts should be split among their national arms-makers. There is also a trade-off between plugging holes quickly and building up the continent’s own defence industry. France is irked by a recent German-led scheme, the European Sky Shield Initiative, in which 21 European countries jointly buy air-defence systems, in part because it involves buying American and Israeli launchers alongside German ones. When Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, recently called for Europe to adopt a “war economy”, Benjamin Haddad, a French lawmaker in Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, retorted: “It’s not by buying American equipment that we’re going to get there.” European arms-makers, he argued, would hardly hire workers and build new production lines if they did not get orders.

These twin challenges—building up military capability and revitalising arms production—are formidable. Europe’s defence industry is less fragmented than many assume, says Jan Joel Andersson of the EU Institute for Security Studies in a recent paper: the continent makes fewer types of fighter jets and airborne radar planes than America, for instance. But there are inefficiencies. Countries often have different design priorities. France wants carrier-capable jets and lighter armoured vehicles; Germany prefers longer-range interceptors and heavier tanks. Europe-wide co-operation on tanks has consistently failed, writes Mr Andersson, and an ongoing Franco-German effort is in doubt.

The scale of the required changes raises broader economic, social and political questions. Germany’s military renaissance will be unaffordable without cutting other government spending or junking the country’s “debt brake”, which would require constitutional change. Mr Pistorius says he is convinced that German society backs higher defence expenditures, but acknowledges that “we have to convince people that this might have an impact on other spending.” Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner in charge of defence, has proposed a €100bn ($108bn) defence fund to boost production. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, backed by Mr Macron and other leaders, has proposed that the EU fund such defence spending with joint borrowing, as it did the recovery fund it established during the covid-19 pandemic—which remains controversial among the thriftiest member states.

Europe’s manpower shortages are driving similarly weighty discussions. In December Mr Pistorius said that “in retrospect” Germany had erred in ending compulsory national service in 2011. In January General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the British army, said preparing Western societies for a war footing would be a “whole-of-nation undertaking”, and that Ukraine showed that “regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them”. His remarks prompted a national furor over conscription, though he never used the word. Several western European countries are studying the “total defence” models of Sweden, Finland and other northern European countries, which emphasise civil defence and national preparedness.

The sum of all fears

Perhaps the hardest capability for Europe to replace is the one everyone hopes will never be needed. America is committed to using its nuclear weapons to defend European allies. That includes both its “strategic” nuclear forces, those in submarines, silos and bombers, and the smaller, shorter-range “non-strategic” B61 gravity bombs stored in bases across Europe, which can be dropped by several European air forces. Those weapons have served as the ultimate guarantee against Russian invasion. Yet an American president who declined to risk American troops to defend a European ally would hardly be likely to risk American cities in a nuclear exchange.

During Mr Trump’s first spell in office, that fear revived an old debate over how Europe might compensate for the loss of the American umbrella. Britain and France both possess nuclear weapons. But they have only 500 warheads between them, compared with America’s 5,000 and Russia’s nearly 6,000. For advocates of “minimum” deterrence, that makes little difference: they think a few hundred warheads, more than enough to wipe out Moscow and other cities, will dissuade Mr Putin from any reckless adventure. Analysts of a more macabre bent think such lopsided megatonnage, and the disproportionate damage which Britain and France would suffer, give Mr Putin an advantage.

This is not merely a numerical problem. British nuclear weapons are already assigned to NATO, whose Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) shapes policy on how nuclear weapons should be used. The deterrent is operationally independent: Britain can launch as it pleases. But it depends on America for the design of its future warhead, and draws from a common pool of missiles, kept in the state of Georgia, with the country. If America were to sever all co-operation, British nuclear forces “would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years”, according to a bipartisan assessment published ten years ago. In contrast, France’s deterrent is entirely home-grown, but more aloof from NATO: uniquely among allies, France does not participate in the NPG, though it has long said that its arsenal, “by its existence”, contributes to alliance security.

Within NATO, nuclear issues were long on the “back burner”, says Admiral Bauer. That has changed in the last two years, with more and wider discussions on nuclear planning and deterrence. But NATO’s plans surely hinge on American forces; they cannot address what happens if America leaves. The question of how Britain and France might fill that gap is now percolating. On February 13th Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister and head of the pro-business Free Democratic Party, called in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper, for a “rethink” of European nuclear arrangements. “Under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be prepared to maintain or expand their own strategic capabilities for collective security?” he asked. “And vice versa, what contribution are we willing to make?”

Such musings have a long history. In the 1960s America and Europe pondered a “multilateral” nuclear force under joint control. Today, the idea that Britain or France would “share” the decision to use nuclear weapons is a non-starter, writes Bruno Tertrais, a French expert involved in the debate for decades, in a recent paper. Nor is France likely to join the NPG or assign its air-launched nuclear forces to NATO, he says. But one option would be for the two countries to affirm more forcefully that their deterrents would, or at least could, cover allies. In 2020 Mr Macron stated that France’s “vital interests”—the issues over which it would contemplate nuclear use—“now have a European dimension” and offered a “strategic dialogue” with allies on this topic, a position he reiterated last year.

The question is how this would be made credible. In deterrence, the crucial issue is how to make adversaries—and allies—believe that a commitment is real, rather than a cheap diplomatic gesture that would be abandoned when the stakes become apocalyptic. Mr Tertrais proposes a range of options. At the tame end, France could simply promise to consult on nuclear use with its partners, time permitting. More radically, if the American umbrella had gone entirely, France could invite European partners to participate in nuclear operations, such as providing escort aircraft for bombers, joining a task force with the eventual successor to the Charles de Gaulle aircraft-carrier, which can host nukes, or even basing a few missiles in Germany. Such options might ultimately require “a common nuclear planning mechanism”, he says.

Mr Lindner’s speculations were largely dismissed by German officials who spoke to The Economist in Munich. But the nuclear question, involving as it does the deepest questions of sovereignty, identity and national survival, points to the vacuum that would be left if America abandons Europe. “There will be a European nuclear doctrine, a European deterrent, only when there are vital European interests, considered as such by the Europeans, and understood as such by others,” pronounced François Mitterand, France’s president, in 1994. “We are far away from there.” Today Europe is closer, but perhaps not close enough. The same doubt which drove France to develop its own nuclear forces in the 1950s—would an American president sacrifice New York for Paris?—is replicated within Europe; would Mr Macron risk Toulouse for Tallinn?

The seemingly dry question of military command and control brings such issues to the fore. NATO is a political and diplomatic body. It is also a formidable bureaucracy that spends €3.3bn annually and operates a complex network of headquarters: a Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium, three big joint commands in America, the Netherlands and Italy, and a series of smaller ones below. These are the brains that would run any war with Russia. If Mr Trump withdrew from NATO overnight, Europeans would have to decide how to perform this role.

An “EU-only” option would not work, says Daniel Fiott of the Elcano Royal Institute, a Spanish think-tank. In part that is because the EU’s own military headquarters is still small, inexperienced and incapable of overseeing high-intensity war. In part it is because this would exclude Britain, Europe’s largest defence spender, as well as other non-EU NATO members such as Canada, Norway and Turkey. An alternative would be for Europeans to inherit the rump NATO structures and keep the alliance alive without America. Whatever institution was chosen, it would have to be filled with skilled officers. Officials at SHAPE acknowledge that much of the serious planning falls on just a few countries. Among Europeans, says Olivier Schmitt, a professor at the Centre for War Studies in Denmark, only “the French, the Brits and maybe the Germans on a good day can send officers able to plan operations at the division and corps level”, precisely those needed in the event of a serious Russian attack.

The question of command, though, is intrinsically political. Mr Fiott doubts that EU member states could agree on a figure equivalent to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the alliance’s top general and, by custom, always an American. That epitomises how American dominance in Europe has suppressed intra-European disputes for decades, as captured in the cold-war ditty that NATO’s purpose was to keep “the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down”. Sophia Besch of the Carnegie Endowment observes caustically that Europeans still defer to America on the biggest questions of European security. “My impression”, she says, “is that Americans often think more strategically about EU membership for Ukraine than many Europeans.” She sees little hope that Europe will bring bold new ideas to this year’s NATO summit in Washington in July, which will mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary.

Preparing for the worst

It is certainly possible that the shock to European security will be less dramatic than feared. Perhaps America will pass an aid package. Perhaps Europe will scrape together enough shells to keep Ukraine solvent. Perhaps, even if Mr Trump wins, he will keep America in NATO, claiming credit for the fact that a majority of its members—and all of those along the eastern front, and thus most in need of protection—are no longer “delinquent”. Some European officials even muse that Mr Trump, who is fond of nuclear weapons, might take drastic steps such as meeting Poland’s demand to be included in nuclear-sharing arrangements. For the moment, there are still intense debates over how far Europe should hedge against American abandonment. Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO, has repeatedly warned that the idea is futile. “The European Union cannot defend Europe,” he said on February 14th. “Eighty per cent of NATO’s defence expenditures come from non-EU NATO allies.”

Advocates of European self-sufficiency retort that building up a “European pillar” within NATO serves a triple purpose. It strengthens NATO so long as America remains, shows that Europe is committed to share the burden of collective defence and, if necessary, lays the groundwork in case of a future rupture. Higher defence spending, more arms production and more combat-capable forces would be necessary even if America remained in the alliance and under the current war plans. Moreover, even the most Europhile of presidents could be forced to divert forces away from Europe if, for instance, America were to be pulled into a major war in Asia.

The difficult questions around command and control, and its implications for political leadership, are probably here to stay. In the worst case of America’s complete exit from NATO, a “messy” solution would be needed, says Mr Fiott, perhaps one that would bring Europe’s overlapping institutions into greater alignment. He suggests some radical options, such as giving the EU itself a seat on the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s main decision-making body, or even a fusion of the posts of NATO secretary-general and European Commission president. Such notions still seem otherworldly. But less so with every passing week. •

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, February 19, 2024 9:38 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Remember the good old days when Europe fought against Nazis instead of fighting for them?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Europe was actually split. There were a lot of Nazi sympathizers/ collaborators in nations that we think are liberal democracies.

But I think this has more to do with globalist plans to plunder Russia, and the uber-elite's ability to pack national governments with moronic sycophants and opportunists. I have heard some incredibly stupid things coming out of their mouths. Like Baerbock's insistence thatPutin do a 360 degree turn.

No shit! That earned her the nickname Annalena "360" Baerbock.


Nothing short of 720 degrees out of Putin should be considered acceptable.


--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, February 19, 2024 12:18 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nothing short of 720 degrees out of Putin should be considered acceptable.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Putin murdered his political opponent in prison this weekend. Putin will murder Ukrainians by the millions if and when he controls them. Stalin did the same and shrugged as if it was nothing.

Kremlin critics blame Putin and his government for Navalny’s death in prison
https://apnews.com/article/russia-navalny-death-global-reactions-putin
-19e7fd6318763627f6917a92678cd190

Navalny was “brutally murdered by the Kremlin,” said Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics. “That’s a fact, and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, February 19, 2024 12:39 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're "explaining" what the USA did 20 years ago by what Medvedev says now???
Stop gaslighting us, SECOND. We're not as stupid as you are.

BTW, what Medvedev said...

SECOND: The rulers of Russia have a thousand-year history


And now you're "explaining" to us that our elites are doing what they're doing because of something that happened 1000 years ago??

Dood, YOU don't know Russian history and neither do THEY. Those are just excuses for them doing what they want to do anyway: plunder Russia.

Honestly, I don't know where you get this shit from.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Monday, February 19, 2024 12:51 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're "explaining" what the USA did 20 years ago by what Medvedev says now???
Stop gaslighting us, SECOND. We're not as stupid as you are.

BTW, what Medvedev said...

SECOND: The rulers of Russia have a thousand-year history


And now you're "explaining" to us that our elites are doing what they're doing because of something that happened 1000 years ago??

Dood, YOU don't know Russian history and neither do THEY. Those are just excuses for them doing what they want to do anyway: plunder Russia.

Honestly, I don't know where you get this shit from.
Tzars kill millions of Ukrainians and it means nothing. Stalin kills 4 million Ukrainians and it also means nothing. Putin threatens to kill millions in the West and it means nothing, too. Nothing means nothing to you, Signym. Instead, you create fan fiction about plundering Russia.

Putin pal threatens Armageddon nuclear attack on DC and London if Russia has to give back any Ukraine territory
By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon | Feb. 18, 2024, 3:10 p.m. ET
https://nypost.com/2024/02/18/world-news/putin-pal-threatens-armageddo
n-nuclear-attack-on-dc-and-london-if-russia-has-to-give-back-any-ukraine-territory/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, February 19, 2024 1:34 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You're "explaining" what the USA did 20 years ago by what Medvedev says now???
Stop gaslighting us, SECOND. We're not as stupid as you are.

BTW, what Medvedev said...

SECOND: The rulers of Russia have a thousand-year history

SIGNY: And now you're "explaining" to us that our elites are doing what they're doing because of something that happened 1000 years ago??
Dood, YOU don't know Russian history and neither do THEY. Those are just excuses for them doing what they want to do anyway: plunder Russia.
Honestly, I don't know where you get this shit from.

SECOND: Tzars kill millions of Ukrainians and it means nothing. Stalin kills 4 million Ukrainians and it also means nothing. Putin threatens to kill millions in the West and it means nothing, too.


European killed millions, likely hundreds of millions, in their conquest of the globe.
Europeans also enslaved hundreds of thousands of dark skinned people.
They also killed each other by the millions over their border and religious disputes.
Africans enslaved each other.
Nazis killed millions of Russians and other ethnicities.
Pol Pot killed three million people.
Mayans and Aztecs killed tens of thousands of victims to appeal to the rain gods.

Of course it means "something", but WHAT?

It means that, back then, those people did those things. If you want to draw lessons from history, and not just pluck convenient narratives from thin air, then you need to know WHY and HOW these things were done and determine whether the same impulses operate today.
For example, we don't sacrifice to the rain gods anymore, do we?

Quote:
Putin pal threatens Armageddon nuclear attack on DC and London if Russia has to give back any Ukraine territory
By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon | Feb. 18, 2024, 3:10 p.m. ET
https://nypost.com/2024/02/18/world-news/putin-pal-threatens-armageddo
n-nuclear-attack-on-dc-and-london-if-russia-has-to-give-back-any-ukraine-territory/


It would be helpful if you would read with comprehension. Medvedev is just restating

STANDARD RUSSIAN POLICY: IF RUSSIA FEELS EXISTENTIALLY THREATENED, EVEN WITH CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS ( EXAMPLE: A MASS ATTACK BY ALL NATO FORCES ON RUSSIA WITH EVERY CONVENTIONAL WEAPON AT OUR DISPOSAL) RUSSIA CAN RESPOND WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

In other words, Russia has NOT committed to "no first use".
NEITHER HAS THE USA.

Russia DOES limit its use of nukes to DEFENSIVE purposes.
(I know of no such statement from the USA, which keeps "first strike" on the table, AFAIK.)

Russia will not limit its strikes to the area of conflict, but will include decision-making centers in its targeting. So TPTB shouldn't feel too safe in their bunkers and distant capitals. Yanno, they're gonna have skin in the game.

*****

The latest wrinkle is that Russia now considers Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaparozhzhia, and Kherson to be part of Russia.

Yanno, if the western signatories (France, Germany) had just committed to the Minsk agreements instead of using them "to buy time to arm Ukraine" (as they later bragged) none of this would have happened. But being the weasely and dishonest people that they are, I would say they're getting what they deserve.

But trying to teach you history is like teaching a pig to read.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Monday, February 19, 2024 6:51 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nothing short of 720 degrees out of Putin should be considered acceptable.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Putin murdered his political opponent in prison this weekend.


In that case, anything short of 1,440 degrees is unacceptable.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 6:10 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Russia-Ukraine War Anniversary: 8 Experts Tell Foreign Policy What's Next

February 19, 2024, 7:00 AM |

By Angela Stent, Jo Inge Bekkevold, Kristi Raik, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Agathe Demarais, Franz-Stefan Gady, David Petraeus, C. Raja Mohan, Stefan Theil

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/19/ukraine-russia-war-two-years-anni
versary-news-zelensky-putin/

As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third year, the apparent impasse on the battlefield masks decisive shifts. The war’s main front is now political, with Russian President Vladimir Putin betting that divisions and hesitations in the West will hand him the victory he has failed to achieve on the ground.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third year, the apparent impasse on the battlefield masks decisive shifts. The war’s main front is now political, with Russian President Vladimir Putin betting that divisions and hesitations in the West will hand him the victory he has failed to achieve on the ground.

Worried about the consequences for their continent’s security if Washington disengages and Ukraine falls, European governments have increased aid in recent months. Collectively, they have now supplied or pledged more weapons to Kyiv than Washington—and more than double the assistance if economic aid is included. That marks a significant change from the war’s early days, but it hasn’t been enough to turn the tide for Ukraine.

When and how will this war end? The Kremlin has made it abundantly clear that the only negotiated end it will accept is Ukraine’s surrender, while the Ukrainians have made it equally plain that they will continue to resist being subsumed into Moscow’s empire. Two years on, peace in Europe is nowhere in sight.

To shed light on these and other shifts in the war, Foreign Policy asked eight prominent thinkers what comes next.—Stefan Theil, deputy editor

1) Bracing for a Long War

By Angela Stent, author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest

As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third year, the current dynamic stalemate looks set to continue. Neither side is winning or losing. The Russians are making incremental territorial gains at the cost of enormous casualties and lost equipment. The Ukrainians, having failed to achieve the objectives of their 2023 counteroffensive, are on the defensive and also experiencing significant casualties. This war of attrition is taking its toll on Ukraine, where President Volodymyr Zelensky recently parted ways with his top military commander, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, after fissures between the two became public. Both countries need to mobilize more troops, but there will be no Russian mobilization before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sham reelection next month. For Ukraine, whose population is less than a third the size of Russia’s, it will be more difficult for to mobilize the forces it needs.

The war is not only about troops but also about the continued supply of weapons. Russia is purchasing drones from Iran and increasing amounts of artillery ammunition and some missiles from North Korea. Ukraine is dependent on weapons supplies and financial support from Europe and the United States. The European Union’s recent approval of $54 billion in financial assistance will enable the Ukrainian state to continue functioning, and European NATO members will supply some additional weapons. But the United States remains key: It is the most important supplier of advanced weaponry, and its dysfunctional domestic politics may jeopardize Ukraine’s ability to continue to fight Russia. If Congress does not approve the requested $60 billion in assistance to Ukraine and if the U.S. government does not speed up the supply of advanced weapons, then the outlook for Ukraine’s ability to push back against Russia in 2024 is much bleaker.

There is little prospect of negotiations to end the war in 2024, nor can either side achieve a decisive victory. The Kremlin has made clear that it has no interest in negotiations that do not lead to Ukraine’s surrender, including the permanent loss of the four territories illegally annexed by Russia in 2022. The stated Russian goal remains the so-called “de-Nazification”—Russian lingo for regime change—and demilitarization of Ukraine. No Ukrainian leader would ever agree to such terms. Putin is awaiting the result of this year’s U.S. election and hoping that the next U.S. president will eschew support for Ukraine and return to business as usual with Russia. In that case, Ukraine’s ability to survive as an independent, sovereign state would be in question, with all the knock-on effects on the security of Europe and beyond.

Proposals for how the war might end—including the Korean model, which would involve an armistice, no peace treaty, and Western security guarantees for Ukraine—presuppose that Russia would ever accept an independent Ukraine. As long as Putin or a successor who shares his worldview is in power, that is unlikely to happen.

2) Like It or Not, We Are Now in Cold War II

By Jo Inge Bekkevold, senior China fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies

When Russian troops crossed into Ukraine in February 2022, it was immediately clear that the invasion would accelerate the geopolitical divide between the United States and its allies on one side and the emerging Sino-Russian axis on the other. In 2024, we are now significantly closer to a bipolar global divide reminiscent of the Cold War than only two years ago.

For one, the war has fostered the Sino-Russian embrace by increasing Beijing’s sway over Moscow. Largely isolated from the West as a result of the war, Moscow now increasingly depends on China as a market for its oil and gas exports, as a provider of a wide range of consumer goods, and as a partner for developing new technologies. Beijing’s support of Russia’s war effort has also widened divisions between China and Europe. This is evident in Europe’s rejection of China’s so-called peace plan for Ukraine, Beijing’s remarkable loss of influence in Central and Eastern Europe (with the high-profile 16+1 dialogue largely dead and buried), and the inclusion of China in NATO’s latest Strategic Concept.

Europe’s prewar dependence on Russian energy was the kind of vulnerability that the West now wants to avoid vis-à-vis China. Washington and Brussels are taking steps to de-risk their close economic ties with China; Beijing, for its part, is increasing its own self-sufficiency. Finally, Russia’s aggression has enhanced trans-Atlantic unity, prompted European NATO members to increase their defense budgets, pushed Finland and Sweden into NATO’s arms, and forced the United States to boost its military presence in Europe again.

Nonetheless, the current situation is different from the original Cold War. Today, the Sino-Russian partnership rests on a stronger geopolitical foundation than the Sino-Soviet one. At the same time, the trans-Atlantic unity created by Russia’s attack on Ukraine is fragile. Some European states are dragging their feet on defense spending, prolonging Sweden’s accession to NATO, advocating autonomy from the United States, or disagreeing with efforts to de-risk from China. Each case on its own may not be a threat to Western unity, but seen together, they matter. The most visible and important sign of Western fractures, though, is former U.S. President Donald Trump questioning the role of NATO and the U.S. security guarantee to its alliance partners during his presidential campaign.

Russia’s war has thus exposed the increased frailty of the Western bloc. Europe still suffers from its post-Cold War dreams and delusions. Accustomed to three decades of peace and globalization, many European politicians seem to be reluctant to face up to the realities of war, whether it comes in the form of an ongoing Russian invasion or it takes shape as a new cold war. Russian aggression also casts another spotlight on the rise of nationalism, populism, and polarization in the United States and a number of European countries. During the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, Washington was able to exploit the differences between Beijing and Moscow, whereas today, Beijing and Moscow are in a stronger position to exploit the differences within the Western bloc.

3) Can Europe Go It Alone?

By Kristi Raik, deputy director of the Estonia-based International Centre for Defence and Security

If Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 were wake-up calls reminding the West about Russia’s aggressive great-power ambitions, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was an electric shock for Europe’s continuously decaying defense. If that wasn’t enough, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has now openly invited Russia to attack European NATO members.

Now that Ukraine is entering the third year of a massive land, sea, air, and information war, there is a real threat that Russia will gain the upper hand on the battlefield. Already, U.S. military aid to Ukraine has dwindled to a trickle, and the prospect of Trump’s election victory in November means that European leaders face the gravest strategic challenge to their continent in generations. If Europe fails this test, Moscow would be emboldened to go further in restoring its sphere of influence and undermining its main enemy, which it has clearly said is NATO.

European leaders openly acknowledge the need to prepare for Europe being abandoned by the United States, but big words by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have yet to be matched with deeds. The actual steps Europe has taken to increase defense spending, boost arms production, and help Ukraine win the war are falling short. Western debates on Russia keep signaling a lack of strategic clarity and resolve. A Russian defeat is feared so much that many in the West would rather have it both ways: Russia shouldn’t win and neither should Ukraine. For Russia, such wavering is an invitation to continue fighting until victory. As we’ve heard many times, Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that time is on his side.

Both the United States and Europe have much at stake. Ukraine’s defeat would likely do more damage to Washington’s credibility around the world than the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. It would mean losing a conflict that was eminently winnable—but that Washington did not choose or dare to win.

2024 is a critical year for proving Putin wrong and paving the way for Ukraine’s victory. According to calculations by the Estonian Defense Ministry, Western countries would need to invest just 0.25 percent of their GDP in military assistance to Ukraine in order to enable the country to continue defending itself in 2024 and prepare for a new counteroffensive in 2025. This investment would be crucial for changing Russia’s calculus regarding not just Ukraine but European security architecture at large. A long-term Western commitment would force the Kremlin to draw the conclusion that it cannot achieve its goals in Ukraine by waging war. It would also send the message that Europe is committed to its defense—and that Russia has no chance of gaining anything by attacking its neighbors.

Looking beyond 2024, Ukraine can win the war if the West steps up support and makes the cost of war unbearable for Russia. Moscow can win if the West fails to mobilize the necessary resources and, more importantly, will.

Should Russia win in Ukraine, there is a chance that this would finally be the effective shock to compel Europe and the United States to get serious about stopping Russian expansion. I’d rather avoid that test.

4) Time to Call Putin’s Bluff

By Anders Fogh Rasmussen, founder of the Alliance of Democracies and former secretary-general of NATO

After two years of war, a dangerous narrative has emerged in Western debates: The conflict is at a stalemate, and Ukraine is close to the limits of what it can achieve on the battlefield. This assessment is wrong—the means to deliver a Ukrainian victory remains firmly in the West’s hands. But leaders in Europe and the United States must show the political courage to make it happen.

A Ukrainian victory relies on two principles: first, ensuring that Ukraine has all it needs to defeat Russia on the battlefield; and second, a viable plan for a secure and prosperous Ukraine to emerge after the war.

Western leaders have been far too hesitant to supply Ukrainian forces with what they need to win. The long delay in providing tanks and armored vehicles allowed Russia to dig in and fortify its defenses, which made it far more difficult for Ukraine to recapture its territory. Similarly, the failure to prepare Western defense industries for a long war means that Russia—aided by impoverished North Korea and heavily sanctioned Iran—is now outproducing the combined might of the democratic world. This is unconscionable. The West must put its industries on a war footing to make clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his strategy of outlasting the West will fail.

2024 must also be the year when Ukraine’s supporters set out a clear plan for the country’s future. This should be built on three pillars: long-term security guarantees, accession to the European Union, and NATO membership. On this, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked me last month to co-chair a new working group to develop proposals on Ukraine’s security and Euro-Atlantic integration.

On security guarantees, there has already been significant progress. Last summer in Vilnius, Lithuania, the G-7 agreed to work on a series of bilateral security arrangements with Ukraine. Today, more than 30 countries are in negotiations with the Ukrainian government; Britain finalized the first security agreement in January, followed by Germany and France last week.

The prospect of EU membership provides a framework for Ukraine to rebuild after the war and can provide additional security guarantees through the bloc’s mutual defense pact. But ultimately, NATO membership remains the only surefire way to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security. On this, there is still too much hesitancy in Western capitals.

NATO leaders need to realize that if Ukraine is again left in the waiting room, it will only encourage further conflict and instability. As Sweden and Finland have recognized—and as Russia’s invasions of Ukraine since 2014 have made abundantly clear—gray zones are danger zones when it comes to Russia. At this year’s NATO summit in Washington, leaders should call Putin’s bluff and issue an invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance. Membership would not happen overnight, but it would send an unequivocal message to Putin that he cannot stop the process and that his war is futile. In that way, a membership invitation for Ukraine can help pave the path to peace.

5) Sanctions Need Time to Work

By Agathe Demarais, columnist at Foreign Policy and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations

What have we learned from two years of Western financial and economic sanctions on Russia? Three themes will define the path forward. First, Moscow is winning the information war on sanctions, as the prevailing narrative is that these measures are ineffective. Arguing otherwise is difficult: The Kremlin and its backers do a great job at intimidating anyone who dares to highlight sanctions successes. (A genuine question: If sanctions really are useless, why is the Kremlin so busy trying to discredit them?) That the Western public debate appears skewed toward sanctions failures does not help, either. Newspaper headlines typically focus on circumvention schemes that support Russia’s efforts to get hold of semiconductors. Smuggling certainly exists, but the reality is more nuanced than splashy headlines suggest. The big picture is that Russian imports of top-notch technology have sunk by around 40 percent compared with prewar levels—at a time when Russia’s high-tech needs have probably never been higher. This is not enough to stop Moscow’s war machine, and more needs to be done to beef up export controls. Yet a 40 percent drop remains a significant, albeit untold, sanctions success.

Second, the impact of sanctions on Russian businesses is becoming increasingly visible, especially in sectors that have been deprived of Western equipment and know-how, such as aerospace and energy. Faced with gradual wear and tear while lacking access to U.S. and European technology, Russian firms face growing maintenance headaches. S7, a Siberian airline, had to ground its Airbus jets and reduce head count in January for lack of access to engine parts. In the same month, Lukoil, a major Russian oil refiner, had to shut down a cracking unit after a Western-made compressor broke down. More such stories are likely to emerge in 2024, illustrating the important fact that sanctions are a marathon, not a sprint. Their cumulative impact will be high and highlight the fact that, grand claims of unlimited Sino-Russian friendship notwithstanding, Chinese gear cannot fully meet Russia’s high-tech needs. At least not at this stage.

Third, the Western debate on the future of Russia’s central bank reserves will remain heated, dominating discussions among like-minded allies. On the one hand, the United States and Britain are pushing for Western countries to seize Russia’s foreign exchange assets and transfer them to Ukraine. Their argument is a moral one: The aggressor must pay. On the other hand, several European Union countries—including Belgium, France, and Germany—oppose this plan, arguing that it would undermine trust in Western financial infrastructure and currencies. The European Central Bank (and, more intriguingly, the International Monetary Fund) has joined this cautious camp. With most of Russia’s immobilized assets held in Belgium, nothing can happen without getting EU states on board. Yet Brussels, Paris, and Berlin will likely not budge, especially as trans-Atlantic relations enter a wait-and-see mode ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November. As a result, a seizure of Russian reserves looks unlikely in 2024. Given the potential unintended consequences of such a move, this may not be bad news.

6) How Ukraine Can Help Itself

By Franz-Stefan Gady, consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies

To reduce its reliance on Western weapons deliveries, Ukraine is increasingly focusing on producing more of its own. The results have been evident, for example, in the Black Sea—where sea drones developed and produced in Ukraine have decimated the Russian fleet—and deep inside Russia itself, where there has been a sharp rise in reported explosions at defense-related facilities and infrastructure, such as refineries and fuel depots. While Kyiv rarely comments on these attacks, they are widely believed to come from Ukrainian-made drones.

These Ukrainian successes are important, but turning the tide in the war will require a decisive advantage in firepower on the battlefield, principally artillery munition and strike drones. That, it turn, will require a significant increase in military production not just in Europe and the United States but also in Ukraine itself. The challenge for Kyiv is substantial: Prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukrainian defense companies specialized in making Soviet-era equipment and struggled to meet the Ukrainian military’s demands for advanced weaponry. That’s why Ukraine’s 2024 defense budget still allocates the majority of procurement funds—about $6.8 billion—to purchases of foreign equipment.

As Ukraine scrambles to retool and expand its arms industry under wartime conditions, it’s getting help from Western governments, defense companies, and private initiatives. Germany’s Rheinmetall, for example, aims to begin producing armored vehicles in Ukraine this year. Kyiv’s Alliance of Defense Industries has recruited more than 60 companies, including dozens of foreign firms, to facilitate investment in the Ukrainian defense sector and localize production. Baykar, the Turkish manufacturer of the Bayraktar drone, announced this month that it had started construction of a drone factory in Ukraine.

There is substantial Western interest in Ukraine’s defense sector—in particular, homegrown drone technology. But Russian attacks still deter many U.S. and European defense contractors from investing in the country, since one Russian missile or drone could wipe out a multimillion-dollar investment. The Ukrainians have been trying to get around this risk by spreading production to smaller, dispersed facilities that are harder for Russian intelligence to detect and collectively wipe out.

Ukraine is also turning into a laboratory for new ways to develop and manufacture weapons. Without much government direction, private sector and citizen-run initiatives have created a decentralized innovation ecosystem for collaboration on electronic warfare systems, cybersecurity, strike drones, naval drones, loitering munitions, battle management technology, and more. Kyiv has set up coordination platforms that have generated hundreds of project applications from these initiatives, in turn producing dozens of defense contracts. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has also reformed and expedited its certification process, with new weapons directly tested on the battlefield. The challenge is not how to innovate but how to scale up production, given skilled labor shortages, supply chain bottlenecks, corruption, and Russian attacks.

One possible way forward is to expand Ukraine’s military industrial base on NATO territory using joint ventures with Western companies underwritten by a dedicated investment fund. That would not only give Ukraine a steady supply of NATO-standard weapons immune to political whims in the West but also send a strong signal to Moscow that it may not have time—and Western fickleness—on its side after all.


7) Where Will the War Go From Here? It Depends.

By David Petraeus, chairman of the KKR Global Institute, former director of the CIA, and retired U.S. Army general

Any answer to a question about the future of Russia’s war in Ukraine has to begin with: It depends. Because the course of the war will, indeed, depend on a number of critical developments.

Foremost will be the level of assistance on which the U.S. Congress finally agrees. This is hugely significant, as Washington has supplied nearly as much military aid as all of Europe put together. What’s more, U.S. decisions on delivering certain types of weapons, such as Western tanks and aircraft, have often led the way for other countries.

Of equal importance—given that Europe has provided twice as much assistance to Ukraine as the United States when nonmilitary aid is included—will be the level of support from the European Union and its members, as well as other Western countries.

Also critical will be the U.S.-led effort to tighten sanctions and export controls on Russia—and cut off schemes to evade them. Despite considerable success so far, evasion schemes continue to evolve, and continued focus will be needed.

Within security assistance, several items will be particularly important. In the near term, these include systems that enable Ukraine to identify, track, and destroy incoming drones, rockets, missiles, and aircraft. Ukraine’s critical needs also include longer-range precision missiles, Western aircraft, artillery ammunition, and additional cluster munitions, which have proved particularly important in fending off Russian attacks.

Needless to say, the course of the war will also depend heavily on Ukrainian and Russian resolve—and their respective ability to recruit, train, equip, and employ additional forces and capabilities. As much as Russian President Vladimir Putin appears in control, one should not assume that the Russian people will continue to go along with his war as enormous casualties mount and quality of life erodes.

Much depends, as well, on each side’s ability to refine new unmanned capabilities, such as the impressive sea drones deployed by Ukraine to force Russia to withdraw most of the surviving Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, Crimea, where it was based for more than two centuries. In fact, Ukraine’s campaign in the western Black Sea—using sea drones and missiles—has largely pushed Russian warships out and enabled Ukraine to restart large-scale grain exports that are critically important to Egypt and other countries.

Of enormous impact, as well, would be providing Ukraine with the nearly $300 billion in Russian reserves currently frozen in Western countries. This long-overdue initiative would also send a very important message to the Kremlin about Ukraine’s ability to repair the damage Russia has done and to build out its own military-industrial complex.

Finally, the course of the war will depend on each side’s ability to learn and adapt as the battlefield evolves; to develop, produce, and employ new weapons systems and other technologies; and to improve the capabilities of leaders, staffs, individual soldiers, and units.

This year promises to be another very difficult one for both countries’ military forces on the ground as well as their homefronts. Two years on, there does not appear to be a conceivable end to the war in sight.

8) Western Divides Will Decide What’s Next

By C. Raja Mohan, columnist at Foreign Policy and visiting professor at the National University of Singapore

The lack of decisive military gains for Ukraine in 2023 has produced deep divisions within the West. These divisions might be unexpected, but they are not surprising. All major wars have a powerful effect on the domestic politics of the countries involved; military setbacks can often sharpen internal political crises. The unity in Europe and the West triggered by Russia’s invasion in February 2022 has now yielded to serious differences on the major issues relating to the pursuit of war and the terms of peace. These divisions are acute within the U.S. political class, between the United States and its European allies, between Western and Eastern Europe, and within Central Europe. Ukraine, which has paid an enormous price in defending itself against the Russian invasion, has also not been immune to differences on the conduct of war. All these open divisions stand in contrast to the apparent unity in Russia, which has seen President Vladimir Putin consolidate his position after the Wagner mercenary army’s astonishing mutiny and march on Moscow last June.

2024 will test the capacity of all sides to preserve internal coherence amid the war’s rapidly rising costs. While its authoritarian system might help Russia suppress its own domestic divisions, it is hard to believe that the massive economic and human costs of Putin’s war of choice will have no political impact. For now, though, the question is whether the West can prevent the multiple fault lines in Ukraine policy from becoming a split. On the face of it, the West’s massive economic superiority over Russia should readily allow Ukraine to prevail in a prolonged war with Moscow. The West has been slow in responding to this imperative, and 2024 can tell us if the West can devise a strategy for assisting and supplying Kyiv to hold the current line of contact with Russian forces in the short term and prevail over Putin in a war that will likely last longer than many expected when it began.

For Europe, the war in Ukraine offers two different paths. One is the continent’s rapid strategic diminution in relation to the United States and Asia as a result of Europe’s continuing reluctance to defend itself. The other is a path of geopolitical rejuvenation by strengthening its defense capabilities, developing a more strategic view of its role in the world, and thereby retaining a say in how the long-term balance of power in Eurasia is shaped. If Europe is ready to seriously address the security front, it will be easier to keep the Americans in and persuade a future Russian regime to discard its territorial expansionism in favor of security guarantees and a regional order in which Moscow can play a legitimate role. Alternatively, the Europeans should expect a future U.S. president to define the prospects for their continent in a direct negotiation with Moscow—and, for that matter, Beijing.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 6:25 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

It would be helpful if you would read with comprehension. Medvedev is just restating

STANDARD RUSSIAN POLICY: IF RUSSIA FEELS EXISTENTIALLY THREATENED, EVEN WITH CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS ( EXAMPLE: A MASS ATTACK BY ALL NATO FORCES ON RUSSIA WITH EVERY CONVENTIONAL WEAPON AT OUR DISPOSAL) RUSSIA CAN RESPOND WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

In other words, Russia has NOT committed to "no first use".
NEITHER HAS THE USA.
Russian rulers and their spokesmen have been making threats to nuke the US since Aug. 29, 1949. There was no real policy other than to make threats constantly. Some lawyer wrote a "policy" about when to use nukes but the "policy" means nothing to the ruler. The only real thing keeping Russia from nuking the world is its ruler's feelings.

The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, known in the West as Joe-1, on Aug. 29, 1949.

The relief and euphoria in the room was overwhelming. Kurchatov cried out, "It works! It works!" And Iulii Khariton, the scientific director of Arzamas, remembers Beria hugging him. All of the scientists knew that their own personal fates depended on the success of the bomb. One of them later said that if it had failed they would have all been shot.

Two months later the scientists principally responsible for designing the bomb won honors for their roles on the project. As the story goes, Beria adopted a simple rule in deciding who should get what prize. Those who would have been shot if the bomb had failed, became Heroes of Socialist Labor; those who would have been imprisoned were awarded the less prestigious honor, the Order of Lenin.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bomb-soviet-tests/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 7:56 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Russia calls pilot killed in Spain after defecting to Ukraine a "moral corpse"

February 20, 2024, 6:19 AM CST

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-spy-chief-killed-russian-
pilot-was-moral-corpse-defecting-2024-02-20/

MOSCOW, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Russia's foreign intelligence chief described a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine and was found shot dead in Spain as a "moral corpse" for betraying his country, in Moscow's first comment on the case since news of the killing emerged.

Ukraine's GUR military intelligence service has confirmed that pilot Maxim Kuzminov, who flew to Ukraine with his Mi-8 helicopter last August, has died in Spain, without giving the cause of death.

Spanish officials have confirmed that a body was found riddled with bullets on Feb. 13 in an underground garage in the town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southern Spain. Spanish and Ukrainian media have reported that the shooting victim was the pilot, who had been living in Spain under a fake identity.

"In Russia it is customary to speak either good of the dead or nothing at all," Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was quoted as saying when asked about Kuzminov.

"This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime," Naryshkin was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.

Western leaders say Russia frequently assassinates those it deems traitors abroad. Moscow says the West has not provided evidence to support such assertions. 62 million Russians murdered by Russians, plus Alexey Navalny's recent death in a Russian prison north of the Arctic Circle, is sufficient to contradict Moscow.

A Spanish court in Villajoyosa has opened a probe into the death of the shooting victim, a judicial source told Reuters on Tuesday. At the time of his death, the victim carried documentation identifying him as a 33-year-old Ukrainian national, but his identity was still under investigation, the source said.

Kuzminov's defection to Ukraine was presented last year as a major coup for Kyiv. At a news conference in Kyiv he said he could not understand why his "beloved motherland" would enter into a war with Ukraine.

Other members of the air crew died during his defection. Moscow said Kuzminov killed them; he said they panicked and fled, and may have been killed subsequently.

Reporting by Reuters Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Gareth Jones, Peter Graff

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 12:32 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Kremlin rejects call for independent postmortem on opposition leader Alexei Navalny

The Council of the European Union called on Monday for an independent exam.

By Kevin Shalvey | February 20, 2024, 10:50 AM

A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the body's request on Tuesday, saying, "Moscow does not accept such demands" from the European Union. (Putin murdered Navalny, but doesn't want that verified scientifically.)

Navalny, a long-time Russian opposition politician and critic of the Kremlin under Putin, died in prison at age 47 on Friday, the state prison service said.

Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny's widow, had vowed on Monday to continue his opposition against Putin. She released a video in which she alleged that Navalny's body was being kept from the family because he had been murdered.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, on Tuesday said those allegations were "unfounded, unsupported and borish."

"Whatever story the Russian government decides to tell the world, it's clear that President Putin and his government are responsible for Mr. Navalny's death," National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby said Tuesday morning.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/kremlin-rejects-call-independent-
postmortem-opposition-leader-alexei/story?id=107359619

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 12:38 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:

A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the body's request on Tuesday, saying, "Moscow does not accept such demands" from the European Union.


Good for them. Fuck the EU.

As unelected oligarchs, they might be able to fuck over the citizenry of Europe who foolishly joined and allowed them to make whatever demands on them they wanted to, but they have no jurisdiction in Russia or anywhere else.

Why is Julian Assange living a fucked up life for doing real journalism and all of the sudden you Lefty dipshits all suddenly care about this Alexei Navalny you never even knew existed until last week? Why is Eric Snowden hiding out the rest of his life for being a goddamned hero?

Where was the EU with their demands for an independent postmortem when Jeffrey Epstein was murdered by Hillary Clinton?

Not a fucking peep out of them then. Funny that, huh?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 12:58 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Solzhenitsyn’s Warning for the United States

His excoriating critique of Western liberalism is more relevant than ever.

By Eliot A. Cohen | February 20, 2024, 6 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warnin
g-for-the-united-states/677508/

I came across a slim volume, A World Split Apart, the text of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address.

What matters now as it did then is his critique of us. We have just seen a feckless House of Representatives pass a ludicrous impeachment of a Cabinet secretary by one vote — and then skip town while avoiding a vote on aid to Ukraine. We have seen the West’s inability to prevent the murder, by direct or indirect means, of a heroic dissident, Alexei Navalny, and the gleeful insouciance of the Russian dictator hours after it was reported. We have seen a foreign war used as an excuse to hound Jews on campuses and in the streets, and we have the horrifying spectacle of a possible return to the presidency of one of the most corrupt and dangerous politicians in American history. Which makes it worthwhile to return to Solzhenitsyn’s speech, a dark reflection for a different dark time.

The speech begins with a slap to our face: “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.” That is as true now as it was then, possibly truer. https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart

“Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.” When the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently rates America’s oldest and most prestigious university one of the very worst for freedom of speech, something is deeply amiss. And that is, of course, Harvard, the very university at which Solzhenitsyn spoke, whose motto is Veritas — “Truth.”

At the root of the West’s troubles, Solzhenitsyn believed, was the view that man is the measure of all things, that social problems of all kinds can be managed away, that evil is not embedded in human nature, and that the ultimate purpose of life is happiness. In large measure, we in the West still believe these things. Above all we talk endlessly about happiness, as measured by psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists. To which Solzhenitsyn observed, if “man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die.” And as he pointed out, if such a credo holds, “for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good?” Which may explain the struggles of many armies, including the American, to fill their ranks.

Of course, Solzhenitsyn’s imprecations were too harsh — that is the nature of prophets and seers, who of necessity scorn popularity. And of course, there are exceptions, although today they are found at the margins of the West more than at its core. The dogged persistence of Ukraine in its unequal war, the return of some Israeli citizens to their devastated settlements on the Gaza border, the example of not only Navalny but many other Russian writers and dissidents including Anna Politkovskaya and Vladimir Kara-Murza tell us that the wellsprings of courage are not yet dry. Perhaps they never can be. There is consolation as well in the thought that, in the end, the evil empire that Solzhenitsyn fought against collapsed of its own weight, that its persecution of him, like its successor’s murder of Navalny, bore testimony to its weakness, not its strength.

But the moment is an undeniably bleak one. Solzhenitsyn concluded: “The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?” True enough.

I am just old enough to remember the shock of Solzhenitsyn’s three-volume Gulag Archipelago, which brought home to Western audiences the full nature of Soviet terror, and not just of the Stalinist variety. In many countries (France most notably, but others as well) it broke through the tendency to think of the Soviet Union as being as much sinned against as sinning, or its actions as those of a superpower with only somewhat worse manners than our own. Yet versions of such cynical beliefs thrive today, as in Tucker Carlson’s flippant assertion that all leaders kill people, so what’s the big deal?

A few heroes are out there, but too few. There are some minor prophets, but they lack the furious eloquence of their predecessors. So perhaps it is the time to recall the old heroes and reread the old prophets, and ask what they would make of the crisis of the West, and how they would have met it. Then we should let their words and their example inspire us to meet this challenge, as we have others in the past. As Solzhenitsyn concluded, the way forward is upward.



"Before the Turn

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth—imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: The split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the president’s performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:03 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Western Liberalism is in its death throes.

Good riddance.

Thanks Joe Biden*. Killing Western Liberalism the one success you have under your belt.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:11 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

It would be helpful if you would read with comprehension. Medvedev is just restating

STANDARD RUSSIAN POLICY: IF RUSSIA FEELS EXISTENTIALLY THREATENED, EVEN WITH CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS ( EXAMPLE: A MASS ATTACK BY ALL NATO FORCES ON RUSSIA WITH EVERY CONVENTIONAL WEAPON AT OUR DISPOSAL) RUSSIA CAN RESPOND WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

In other words, Russia has NOT committed to "no first use".
NEITHER HAS THE USA.

SECOND: Russian rulers and their spokesmen have been making threats to nuke the US since Aug. 29, 1949.


Oh, boo hoo.

You think our ACTUAL bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't a threat to the Russian army storming across Asia to the Japanese Islands?
You think our missile bases in Europe and Turkeye and our transfer of nuclear warheads to Britain are for shits and giggles???

Grow the fuck up.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:11 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Western Liberalism is in its death throes.

Good riddance.

Thanks Joe Biden*. Killing Western Liberalism the one success you have under your belt.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Western Liberalism's decadence is from its fear of being rude to Trumptards and Russians. Perhaps the day will come, like a Bible story, were the Libtards rise up and slaughter Trumptards rather than meekly attempt to persuade them to behave marginally better than that complete criminal Trump and mass-murderer Putin.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Western Liberalism is in its death throes.

Good riddance.

Thanks Joe Biden*. Killing Western Liberalism the one success you have under your belt.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Western Liberalism's decadence is from its fear of being rude to Trumptards and Russians. Perhaps the day will come, like a Bible story, were the Libtards rise up and slaughter Trumptards rather than meekly attempt to persuade them to behave marginally better than that complete criminal Trump and mass-murderer Putin.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Oh yeah?

You and what army, pussies?

We got all the alpha males and all the guns.

Maybe Captain Marvel or Madame Web will save you if you try something stupid.



--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


"Western liberalism" stems from individualism, a tennnet that had its basis in French liberalism. But it's individualism taken to extremes: no morals, no commonality or mutuality, no responsibilties. Not even reality is allowed to intrude, as men are convin ed they can be women and women are convinced they can be men.

It is the ultimate fracturing of society into individual atoms, which can be much more easily ground down than people united by a common purpose, identity, and ethos.

Opposite of the MAGA crowd, who believe in an American identityy.
Opposite of religious people, who believe we should have morals in common.

To the extent that you are against Ametican nationalism, commonality, and ethics (after all, you're an inveterate liar, libeler, and sloth. Some of the ACTUAL Biblical seven deadly sins, IIRC) you are promoting moral decay.

Quote:
Western Liberalism's decadence is from its fear of being rude to Trumptards and Russians. Perhaps the day will come, like a Bible story, were the Libtards rise up and slaughter Trumptards rather than meekly attempt to persuade them to behave marginally better than that complete criminal Trump and mass-murderer Putin.


Oh, how could I have missed this???

Yeah, that might happen if you all could break away from your internet screeching long enough to go outside.
The big "liberal" faction is women. Nasty words, name-calling and lies are their stock in trade.
Good luck with that.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:25 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

It would be helpful if you would read with comprehension. Medvedev is just restating

STANDARD RUSSIAN POLICY: IF RUSSIA FEELS EXISTENTIALLY THREATENED, EVEN WITH CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS ( EXAMPLE: A MASS ATTACK BY ALL NATO FORCES ON RUSSIA WITH EVERY CONVENTIONAL WEAPON AT OUR DISPOSAL) RUSSIA CAN RESPOND WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

In other words, Russia has NOT committed to "no first use".
NEITHER HAS THE USA.

SECOND: Russian rulers and their spokesmen have been making threats to nuke the US since Aug. 29, 1949.


Oh, boo hoo.

You think our ACTUAL bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't a threat to the Russian army storming across Asia to the Japanese Islands?
You think our missile bases in Europe and Turkeye and our transfer of nuclear warheads to Britain are for shits and giggles???

Grow the fuck up.
Nobody in a responsible position in the US government is making threats to nuke Russia. Numerous responsible Russians, including Putin, are making threats to nuke the US. The US nuked two cities and issued no threats beforehand. Russia has nuked no cities but issued thousands of threats to do so. Russians are going to get themselves killed and it will be all their fault when it happens with no warning.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 1:47 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Russian politicians are reminding us of their "red lines" bc we have a history of using nukes when the going gets hot.

If you'll notice, they are reminding us of their DEFENSIVE use of nukes.

Specifically, in this case, they are telling the west not to attack the five oblasts of Ukraine that they have incorporated, or Russia proper, with NATO weapons wielded by NATO troops under NATO orders.

Russians are almost certain they will win. They also know our history of doing stupid and desperate things in hot situations, like false flags and using phosphorous and chemical weapons by proxy. And nuclear bombs. They're reminding us in no uncertain terms of their red lines.

So far, we have pretty much respected those red lines, and done "everything but" (kinda like the virgin who does evrything but): providing western weapons, ISR, training, "volunteers", helping them with their targeting. We even have a general there, and local commanders to help coordinate from behind the front lines. The NATO forces that are there are semi-detached and on the QT, and when Russia obliterates them, as it did to French troops who helped plan and conduct attacks on Belgorod, NATO doesn't say a word bc that would be an admission.

Anyway, the answer is simple: no NATO troops attacking Russia or those five oblasts. If some idiots in DC or London or Brussels decide to do that, well, there may be consequences. For them.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM



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