Oglethorpe posted:

Oglethorpe posted:

MLSM posted:

How else would they stop Ukraine from joining nato genius

Frosted Flake posted:

and everybody advising Zelensky knew this and then encouraged him to terminate diplomatic talks anyways.

Oglethorpe posted:

Oglethorpe posted:

Oglethorpe posted:

pancake rabbit posted:

i've been in work meetings all morning and am very late to this but what is the strategic value in capturing what is arguably the most blighted unusable land on the face of the earth

not a rhetorical question i think i'm just dumb, is putin really trying to get an "i'll demolish the sarcophagus and turn all of continental europe into an irradiated wasteland" ace up his sleeve?

e: or is it because he thinks ukraine/nato would do something stupid with it, which honestly is much more believable

Oglethorpe posted:

Yudo posted:

Russia does not need to Invade Ukraine to stop it from joining NATO.

Frosted Flake posted:

How much of setting The Ukraine up to take the fall here was malice and how much was hubris?

Oglethorpe posted:

Joementum posted:

Joementum posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

It was not “on track”.

Christ, I know people don’t understand military postures but quickly -

Mobilizing, Concentrating and Working Up forces during diplomatic talks is a signal the talks are not proceeding. The build up was in response to being stonewalled.

The reason we believed there would be no invasion was that the “ask” (sign Minsk II) was so small relative the potential “cost” (Ukraine obliterated) that we thought it would be insane to further stall.

When you back someone into a corner, ignore their attempts to talk it out, they square up, you continue to ignore them, you say “we’re done here. What are you going to do, hit me?”

Sometimes they hit you.

Yudo posted:

Russia does not need to Invade Ukraine to stop it from joining NATO.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

its not a blasted wasteland. its just a place.

wynott dunn posted:

saw a ghoul earlier talking about russia invading the danzig corridor to connect with kaliningrad

they can’t help but frame this as a marvel movie - a plucky group of multi-billionaires just need to abuse the mentally ill to stop Vladimir Thanos

StashAugustine posted:

I do kinda wonder how much the US positively wanted Russia to get bogged down in a bloody counterinsurgency

pancake rabbit posted:

i've been in work meetings all morning and am very late to this but what is the strategic value in capturing what is arguably the most blighted unusable land on the face of the earth

not a rhetorical question i think i'm just dumb, is putin really trying to get an "i'll demolish the sarcophagus and turn all of continental europe into an irradiated wasteland" ace up his sleeve?

e: or is it because he thinks ukraine/nato would do something stupid with it, which honestly is much more believable

Al-Saqr posted:

awesome thanks for the vote of confidence america:-

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1496895423772086282?s=20&t=0EVXjc0Dp3xfK4BAu1BreQ

StashAugustine posted:

I do kinda wonder how much the US positively wanted Russia to get bogged down in a bloody counterinsurgency

Joementum posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

No it just needed Ukraine to sign Minsk II, and they refused.

pancake rabbit posted:

i've been in work meetings all morning and am very late to this but what is the strategic value in capturing what is arguably the most blighted unusable land on the face of the earth

not a rhetorical question i think i'm just dumb, is putin really trying to get an "i'll demolish the sarcophagus and turn all of continental europe into an irradiated wasteland" ace up his sleeve?

e: or is it because he thinks ukraine/nato would do something stupid with it, which honestly is much more believable

Al-Saqr posted:

belching a mouth full of Cheetos while waiting for a raid in FF14

“PUTIN HAS GONE TOO FAR aGAINST THE WEST”

Joementum posted:

Joementum posted:

vyelkin posted:

honest question, which other countries do you think are going to join NATO after this?

This is NATO's current membership:



there are a whole three countries in Europe that border Russia and are not already members of NATO: Finland, the country that Russia wants its neighbours to emulate ("Finlandization" is a term that was used for one potential end state for Ukraine); Belarus, Russia's closest ally and client state; and Ukraine.

who else is going to join? Moldova, which already has part of the country occupied by Russia? Georgia, which already has part of the country occupied by Russia and which already lost a war to Russia over this in 2008? Armenia, a Russian ally that hates NATO member Turkey? NATO has made it clear that they're not going to support non-NATO members against Russia and they're not going to let in countries that have existing territorial disputes with Russia, and Russia has now made it clear that overtures to NATO can be catastrophic.

Russia isn't surrounded by some infinite number of foreign countries that will decide to join NATO after this. Ukraine is by far the biggest, strongest, and most populous of Russia's European neighbours. Given that NATO already covers almost the entire continent, it should be comprehensible why Russia wants to draw a line in the sand here - there isn't much more for them to lose on the issue of NATO expansion.

brugroffil posted:

Weird how many countries have joined NATO and yet there has never been an attack on Russia. I guess "immediate" means "may decide to turn aggressive at some indeterminate point in the future and invade a nuclear power for ???"

Crusader posted:

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1496901116017135617

Yudo posted:

Russia does not need to Invade Ukraine to stop it from joining NATO.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

https://twitter.com/pvermillions/status/1496133137319043082

Joementum posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

How much of setting The Ukraine up to take the fall here was malice and how much was hubris?

Fly Molo posted:

okay so it’s fine if russia forms an offensive military alliance with canada mexico venezuela and cuba, right

that should be fine, the alliance hasn’t attacked yet