This might be a little tougher than Putin thought...
- Thread starter Nole Lou
- Start date
With these and the fighter training, Britain is no longer f cking around. I love it.
I wonder if the powers that be are starting to make plans for the potential power vacuum that occurs if the Putin government goes belly up?,... Could get very dicey.
And one of those NATO weapons it can carry is the Storm Shadow
Just read where the French have a version of the Storm Shadow called the SCALP/EG.
...and the problem is?
This was going to happen when Putin died, in any event. It's how authoritarian regimes work.
A country with the most Nuclear weapons disintegrating? Seems ripe for some bad things happening...
"Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and associate fellow at Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, says if Mr Putin decides to pursue a second round of mobilisation, it could send a dangerous message to the Russian people.
"I think that they would be very alarmed by it because it would actually illustrate the fact that Russia is not winning [the war]," he told the ABC.
Sir Andrew believes the Kremlin will continue to focus on drafting soldiers from the regions and spare the men from the big cities for fear of causing protests.
"I imagine that's what he [Putin] would try and avoid," he said.
"There are people in St Petersburg and to a lesser degree in Moscow who have actually been quite effective in criticising Putin."
The former ambassador believes Mr Putin remains secure in his leadership for now, but that the first round of conscription and the ongoing failures of the war are having an impact.
"Every now and again you see him in a state of real worry. For example, to me when he went alone to the church for the Orthodox Christmas.
"That was a frightened and oddly uncomposed man."
Also with significant amount of warlords who can’t wait to sell those nukes to Iran or somewhere in Africa.
Show them the money! 100 million a nuke
Kaliningrad is trending, not sure why
Worth a read...
Why the Soviet nuclear arsenal stayed secure as the nation collapsed.
A professor of management science and engineering explains how cooperation between U.S. and Russian scientists helped prevent a post-Cold War catastrophe.When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the worry in the West was what would happen to that country’s thousands of nuclear weapons. Would “loose” nukes fall into the hands of terrorists, rogue states, criminals – and plunge the world into a nuclear nightmare? Fortunately, scientists and technical experts in both the U.S. and the former Soviet Union rolled up their sleeves to manage and contain the nuclear problem in the dissolving Communist country.
One of the leaders in this relationship was Stanford engineering professor Siegfried Hecker, who served as a director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory before coming to Stanford as a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is a world-renowned expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction and nuclear security.
Hecker cited one 1992 meeting with Russian scientists in Moscow who were clearly concerned about the risks. In his new book, Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers, Hecker quoted one Russian expert as saying, “We now need to be concerned about terrorism.”
Earning both scientific and political trust was a key, said Hecker. The Russians were proud of their scientific accomplishments and highly competent in the nuclear business – and they sought to show this to the Americans scientists, who became very confident in their Russian counterparts’ technical capabilities as they learned more about their nuclear complex and toured the labs.
Economic collapse, political turmoil
But the nuclear experts faced an immense problem. The Soviets had about 39,000 nuclear weapons in their country and in Eastern Europe and about 1.5 million kilograms of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (the fuel for nuclear bombs), Hecker said. Consider that the bomb that the U.S. dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945 was only six kilograms of plutonium, he added. Meanwhile, the U.S. had about 25,000 nuclear weapons in the early 1990s.Hecker and the rest of the Americans were deeply concerned about the one million-plus Russians who worked in nuclear facilities. Many faced severe financial pressure in an imploding society and thus constituted a huge potential security risk. “The challenge that Russia faced with its economy collapsing was enormous,” he said in an interview.
The Russian scientists, Hecker said, were motivated to act responsibly because they realized the awful destruction that a single nuclear bomb could wreak. Hecker noted that one Russian scientist told him, “We arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat, and a movement by anyone will affect everyone.” Hecker noted, “Therefore, you know, we were doomed to work together to cooperate.”
All of this depended on the two governments involved easing nuclear tensions while allowing the scientists to collaborate. In short order, the scientists developed mutual respect and trust to address the loose nukes scenario.
The George H.W. Bush administration launched nuclear initiatives to put the Russian government at ease. For example, it took the nuclear weapons off U.S. Navy surface ships and some of its nuclear weapons off alert to allow the Russians to do the same. The U.S. Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction legislation, which helped fund some of the loose nuke containment efforts.
While those were positive measures, Hecker said, it was ultimately the cooperation among scientists, what they called lab-to-lab-cooperation, that allowed the two former superpower enemies to “get past the sensitivity barriers” and make “the world a safer place.”
Since the end of the Cold War, no significant nuclear event has occurred as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its nuclear complex, Hecker noted.
Lesson: cooperation counts
continued at link...
Why the Soviet nuclear arsenal stayed secure as the nation collapsed.
There are probably assassination attempts we do not know of but I am a little surprised the Russian military is letting Putin destroy their men and materials. It will take Russia decades to recover.
We can only hope the military will keep a close eye on their nukes no matter what happens. I am a little encouraged by their officer who refused to start WW3 on a false alarm decades ago, and their patience after the meteor explosion where they apparently did not jump to conclusions then either.
I'm just worried the country breaks up and they basically end up with a bunch of Oligarch warlords selling nukes for cash.
Maybe they are sending Putler to an island.
It already happened once in 1991. And we have lots of cash, and even better, access to international recognition and support. Your worry is my biggest hope.
This is going to be a lot messier than what Putin's normal death would have been without this Ukraine episode,... I can picture a collapse of the whole of Russian society, dissolution of member states, the expansion of organized crime, and incursions by outside nations attempting to capitalize on the situation,... All in the presence of nuclear weaponry,... Could be bad shit.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses UK Parliament – BBC News
You've got to think there are already backchannel communications going on so that the West can be involved in trying to hold the country together. It's not actually in our best interest for Russia to fall apart into a bunch of warring factions.
You don't think there are tons of people in Russia currently positioning themselves for the next in power? I guarantee you that there's backchannel communications and promises to support the new Russia as long as they work to keep certain things in control.
Not saying you're wrong...just think this would be a much more fractured situation then the end of the Soviet Union was...
Russia pulling out the big guns at the UN.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...-united-nations-appearance-speech-1234675837/
Basically saying NATO went too close to Russia and helped cause this. Sad to see him take the Bernie Sanders/Thomas Massie approach, but not surprising given his previous takes on the war.
Roger Waters Says Ukraine Invasion Was ‘Not Unprovoked’ at UN Security Council
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...-united-nations-appearance-speech-1234675837/
Basically saying NATO went too close to Russia and helped cause this. Sad to see him take the Bernie Sanders/Thomas Massie approach, but not surprising given his previous takes on the war.
I haven't seen Sanders praise Putin the way Waters does.Russia pulling out the big guns at the UN.
Roger Waters Says Ukraine Invasion Was ‘Not Unprovoked’ at UN Security Council
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/...-united-nations-appearance-speech-1234675837/
Basically saying NATO went too close to Russia and helped cause this. Sad to see him take the Bernie Sanders/Thomas Massie approach, but not surprising given his previous takes on the war.
Waters also praises Assad and Maduro, while calling Zalensky and the Ukrainian governments since the 2014 Russian invasion "Nazis." A real pro-authoritarian pos this guy.
I don't recall saying he does, I said they share the same hot take of "provoking Russia with NATO encroachment".
Bernie Sanders blames Putin for the Ukraine crisis, but says the US is 'hypocritical' to dismiss Russia's security concerns
https://www.businessinsider.com/san...aine-crisis-also-calls-us-hypocritical-2022-2
The independent from Vermont explicitly blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crisis, but also said Moscow had "legitimate concerns" about NATO's eastward expansion towards Russia and that the US was "hypocritical" to dismiss their concerns.
"It is good to know some history...Invasion by Russia is not an answer; neither is intransigence by NATO," Sanders said. "It is also important to recognize that Finland, one of the most developed and democratic countries in the world, borders Russia and has chosen not to be a member of NATO."
"Putin may be a liar and a demagogue, but it is hypocritical for the United States to insist that we do not accept the principle of 'spheres of influence,'" Sanders went on to write.
Sanders in no way says we "provoked" Putin. Gtfo with that shit.
Shhhh. If Sanders is critical of NATO and equivocates on Putin/Russia, then the elected MAGA dummies will be all in on helping NATO/Ukraine...
It happened in the 1990s; so long as an autocrat runs Russia, it will keep happening every time he/she dies.
