This might be a little tougher than Putin thought...

[h-hawk]

May have been posted before but first time I have watched it i think-very effective.

"These are the victims who become perpetrators and make other victims completely without their will. Putin the misanthrope and butcher of the 21st century. Resist the beginnings"

 

[h-hawk]

Ignore the original caption - Ukraine is destroying stuff in the video.

 

[h-hawk]

Ha Ha

 

[h-hawk]

Standard procedure.

 

[mustang_hawk]

There are unwritten goals about the preservation of democracy in there.

But even if the goal is just to deter attacks, do you feel confident that modern day Turkey would live up to it's Article V obligations against Putin? Because if the answer is no, then they shouldn't be a part of the alliance . . . especially if they are potentially blocking out strategically important allies who we are confident that can be counted on.

You probably could have made that same statement about the US 2 years ago. Those types of leaders come and go.

 

[Tenacious E]

Severodonetsk becomes a huge mass grave for Russian army and Kadyrovites

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin needed propaganda success, so he demanded that his army capture the Luhansk Oblast. However, the city of Severodonetsk turned out to be a trap set by the Ukrainian military.

www.yahoo.com

I particularly enjoyed this passage: "Ukrainian troops had prepared for the siege of Severodonetsk for a very long time, and roughly understood in which directions the attackers would go, they prepared — maybe they laid mines, maybe they set up ambushes. The attackers were allowed into the city, and then this trap was snapped shut – and there they were all killed, and annihilated."

 

[seminole97]

Turkey and Russia have have not been historical allies. If Turkey wants to be strategically aligned with Russia then I hope they enjoy that.

They want increased influence in their neighborhood.
Turkey is looking out Turkey. It is a mistake to perceive them as a Russian stooge or satellite.

https://www.insideover.com/politics...urkeys-growing-presence-in-the-stans.html/amp

 

[Tenacious E]

Haven't seen an update for awhile on Russians killed, tanks lost, etc. Anyone know where those come from?

 

[h-hawk]

 

[Tenacious E]

Ukraine successfully strikes Russian targets on the southern front, says General Staff

On the Pivdennyi Buh river axis, the Russian invaders are focusing their efforts on improving their tactical position, maintaining their zone of control, and replenishing stocks of ammunition, fuel and oil, according to a June 7 update by Ukraine’s General Staff on Facebook.

www.yahoo.com

 

[h-hawk]

 

[Tenacious E]

Haven't seen an update for awhile on Russians killed, tanks lost, etc. Anyone know where those come from?

answering my own post:

 

[IACub]

This isn't really directed at you, I am only replying to you because you seem pretty knowledgeable. Why can't we just form a new organization called the No Autocracy Treaty Organization, with the acronym, "NATO+", and admit Ukraine and everyone else deemed a friend to democracy and foe to autocracy. NATO could then run joint exercises with NATO+, and NATO+ would not be constrained by the tyranny of the minority.

Yeah... that sounds like a lot of paperwork.

 

[h-hawk]

Haven't seen an update for awhile on Russians killed, tanks lost, etc. Anyone know where those come from?

You beat me to it!

 

[Tenacious E]

You beat me but mine has more foreign words on it!

View embedded media

if accurate, they have lost 42.1% of their ENTIRE supply of tanks?!?! and 24.9% of their armored combat vehicles! And 15.4% of their aircraft and they have not had to contend with a "real" air force... Ouch.

 

[Tenacious E]

You beat me but mine has more foreign words on it!

View embedded media

Also, I thought this was interesting breaking down the number of main battle tanks by NATO country. The number that Turkey has is surprising...

NATO tank strength by country 2024 | Statista

In 2024, the United States had approximately 4,657 main battle tanks in its armed forces, the most of any NATO member state.

www.statista.com

 

[IACub]

Also, I thought this was interesting breaking down the number of main battle tanks by NATO country. The number that Turkey has is surprising...

NATO tank strength by country 2024 | Statista

In 2024, the United States had approximately 4,657 main battle tanks in its armed forces, the most of any NATO member state.

www.statista.com

Turkey has a massive military.

 

[kc78]

You probably could have made that same statement about the US 2 years ago. Those types of leaders come and go.

That is true. I have no idea what the US would have done had Russia invaded Ukraine under Trump's watch. Some say it would never have happened because Putin didn't know what Trump would do. That might be true. Likewise, Trump might have just rolled over and let it go.

 

[seminole97]

Also, I thought this was interesting breaking down the number of main battle tanks by NATO country. The number that Turkey has is surprising...

NATO tank strength by country 2024 | Statista

In 2024, the United States had approximately 4,657 main battle tanks in its armed forces, the most of any NATO member state.

www.statista.com

Turkey’s tank force is mostly old crap (M60 and older) with modern enhancements.

 

[seminole97]

That is true. I have no idea what the US would have done had Russia invaded Ukraine under Trump's watch. Some say it would never have happened because Putin didn't know what Trump would do. That might be true. Likewise, Trump might have just rolled over and let it go.

I think it would have been less likely to happen not because of Trump’s unpredictability, but because Trump’s wasn’t pushing NATO expansion like his predecessors and successor.
Putin wanted Germany and France to help make Minsk II a reality, and keep Ukraine as a buffer between Russia and NATO.

Nov 14, 2019
According to Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, President Trump realizes that attempting to seek to bring Ukraine into the Western orbit through NATO membership has been counterproductive. Indeed, that American policy, as developed by President George W. Bush and then sustained by President Barack Obama, has managed to help inflame U.S.-Russia and Ukraine-Russia ties without making life better for the people of Ukraine.
At a moral level, the poor state of relations is the fault of Putin. His petulance and brutality have led to more than 13,000 Ukrainian deaths since 2014 in the civil war in the country's eastern Donbas region, where Russia has stoked and armed a separatist movement. But at a practical level, we share part of the blame — and we certainly need to rethink a policy that has gotten stuck.
Since the spring of 2008, the United States and the rest of NATO have promised publicly to bring Ukraine, as well as the smaller and even more remote country of Georgia, into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By this pledge, we would have the same obligation to defend faraway lands in eastern Europe and western Asia as to defend Germany, Canada or our own territory from hypothetical attack.
Trump's own administration has failed to change the policy. On a trip to Georgia in 2017, for example, Vice President Mike Pence publicly repeated the pledge of eventual membership. The concept of NATO expansion, which dates to the Clinton administration, has incensed Putin — just as everyone from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to former Sovietologist and father of "containment" doctrine George Kennan, to former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia to former Secretary of Defense William Perry thought it would.
…
What's worse, NATO promised eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia with no timetable or action plan for how that might happen and no interim security guarantee. Completing the package of perverse incentives, NATO has also maintained its longstanding policy that, to be eligible for alliance membership, a country must have resolved territorial disputes with neighbors — no matter whose fault those disputes might be.
Taken together, this set of pronouncements has provided Russia a clear incentive to continue to stoke unrest and conflict within both Ukraine and Georgia — not to mention to seize chunks of each country, as has happened in 2008 in Georgia and since 2014 in Ukraine.
…
All that said, we would be remiss, with all the political attention on Ukraine, if we did not also use this opportunity as a nation to rethink our overall strategic approach toward that country. A month when we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall would not be a bad time to start.
-Michael O'Hanlon, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe."

 

[86Hawkeye]

I think it would have been less likely to happen not because of Trump’s unpredictability, but because Trump’s wasn’t pushing NATO expansion like his predecessors and successor.
Putin wanted Germany and France to help make Minsk II a reality, and keep Ukraine as a buffer between Russia and NATO.

Nov 14, 2019
According to Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, President Trump realizes that attempting to seek to bring Ukraine into the Western orbit through NATO membership has been counterproductive. Indeed, that American policy, as developed by President George W. Bush and then sustained by President Barack Obama, has managed to help inflame U.S.-Russia and Ukraine-Russia ties without making life better for the people of Ukraine.
At a moral level, the poor state of relations is the fault of Putin. His petulance and brutality have led to more than 13,000 Ukrainian deaths since 2014 in the civil war in the country's eastern Donbas region, where Russia has stoked and armed a separatist movement. But at a practical level, we share part of the blame — and we certainly need to rethink a policy that has gotten stuck.
Since the spring of 2008, the United States and the rest of NATO have promised publicly to bring Ukraine, as well as the smaller and even more remote country of Georgia, into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By this pledge, we would have the same obligation to defend faraway lands in eastern Europe and western Asia as to defend Germany, Canada or our own territory from hypothetical attack.
Trump's own administration has failed to change the policy. On a trip to Georgia in 2017, for example, Vice President Mike Pence publicly repeated the pledge of eventual membership. The concept of NATO expansion, which dates to the Clinton administration, has incensed Putin — just as everyone from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to former Sovietologist and father of "containment" doctrine George Kennan, to former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia to former Secretary of Defense William Perry thought it would.
…
What's worse, NATO promised eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia with no timetable or action plan for how that might happen and no interim security guarantee. Completing the package of perverse incentives, NATO has also maintained its longstanding policy that, to be eligible for alliance membership, a country must have resolved territorial disputes with neighbors — no matter whose fault those disputes might be.
Taken together, this set of pronouncements has provided Russia a clear incentive to continue to stoke unrest and conflict within both Ukraine and Georgia — not to mention to seize chunks of each country, as has happened in 2008 in Georgia and since 2014 in Ukraine.
…
All that said, we would be remiss, with all the political attention on Ukraine, if we did not also use this opportunity as a nation to rethink our overall strategic approach toward that country. A month when we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall would not be a bad time to start.
-Michael O'Hanlon, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe."

Russia has sought to subjugate its neighbors for centuries. NATO expansion is just a sorry excuse for Russia being Russia. You can bet the Baltic states would again be subjugated by Russia had they not had the ability to join NATO.

 

[seminole97]

[USA] has sought to subjugate its neighbors for centuries. [The Monroe Doctrine] is just a sorry excuse for [the USA] being [the USA]. You can bet [Cuba] would again be subjugated by [the USA] had they not [had security guarantees from the Soviet Union.]

Fun game.

 

[Slappy Pappy]

Fu ck you pussies!

 

[pink shizzle]

Fu ck you pussies!

View embedded media

Full send, MFer!!

 

[timinatoria]

Morbid question. With all of these dead Russians being left behind, or worse, executed Ukrainians, will the wolves, bears, packs of dogs, and such in Ukraine develop a taste for human flesh?

 

[IACub]

Fun game.

Cuba hasn't had a "security guarantee" since the fall of the Soviet Union. The United States has had 30 over years to "subjugate" them. Not to mention we've had a stable border with Canada and Mexico for almost 2 centuries. Say that about any one of Russia's neighbors.

 

[Slappy Pappy]

And everyone is SHOCKED, just SHOCKED by Germany delaying sending heavy weapons again.

 

[IACub]

And everyone is SHOCKED, just SHOCKED by Germany delaying sending heavy weapons again.

View embedded media

Maybe you could, you know, just update the software sooner? I feel like there are people who could help expedite this if it was really a priority.

 

[seminole97]

Cuba hasn't had a "security guarantee" since the fall of the Soviet Union. The United States has had 30 over years to "subjugate" them. Not to mention we've had a stable border with Canada and Mexico for almost 2 centuries. Say that about any one of Russia's neighbors.

How many countries has the US invaded in the last 20 years?
Would you bet your life you can name them all?

 

[Tenacious E]

Maybe you could, you know, just update the software sooner? I feel like there are people who could help expedite this if it was really a priority.

Just ask Elon to do it. Elon was like oh, there is a microchip shortage? No problemo my team will rewrite all firmware and such to use something in its place in a matter of days.

 

[h-hawk]

And everyone is SHOCKED, just SHOCKED by Germany delaying sending heavy weapons again.

View embedded media

Coward and POS-hope Germany realizes what their leader is.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Turkey’s tank force is mostly old crap (M60 and older) with modern enhancements.

Rather be in a M-60 than a T-72

 

[h-hawk]

Just die already!

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Just die already!

View embedded media

He ain’t gonna die.

 

[h-hawk]

 

[86Hawkeye]

Coward and POS-hope Germany realizes what their leader is.

They've not been historically good at that.

 

[h-hawk]

 

[Tenacious E]

View embedded media

Germany is such a curious country. It is like it has a multiple personality disorder. I’m not sure each personality isn’t being sincere, yet you are left with a contradictory mess.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

Germany is such a curious country. It is like it has a multiple personality disorder. I’m not sure each personality isn’t being sincere, yet you are left with a contradictory mess.

It’s pretty much ingrained in them to avoid conflict, seek peaceful resolution.

Couple world wars as the aggressor left a mark.

Seevice in the military is disdained and looked down upon. I could go on….

Wife and I watch a couple German news shows every week and they are waking up to the fact that they have to look to defense but there’s still an entrenched faction that’ll be tough to overcome

 

[seminole97]