This might be a little tougher than Putin thought...
- Thread starter Nole Lou
- Start date
It's always been clear that the only path to a Russian victory is a Trump Presidency.
Putin will withdraw and somehow claim victory if Biden wins reelection.
Putin will withdraw and somehow claim victory if Biden wins reelection.
Brookings Institute, 2019:
…there is one element of Trump’s thinking that should not be associated with the falsehoods he perpetrates, because it usefully challenges what has become a stalemated American policy toward Ukraine. 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.
What role America plays in the conflict?
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.
In fairness to President Bill Clinton, as well as first-term George W. Bush, it was one thing when NATO expansion brought into the Western community countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and even the Baltic States — whose annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940 was never recognized by Washington. But it is something else altogether to bring into NATO a former core part of the Soviet Union whose history is so closely intertwined with Russia’s own.
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.
This is why I asked the question that billanole wouldn’t answer, maybe you can offer your opinion.
Did the neocons pushing NATO expansion into Ukraine do so intending to provoke a conflict with Russia, or because they were genuinely naive to it?
Yes yes yes Natty Light. We all know your position on this.
Graphic
"Russian soldier asked a Ukrainian drone operator to shoot his friend instead of him The operator neutralized both."
"Russian soldier asked a Ukrainian drone operator to shoot his friend instead of him The operator neutralized both."
A Ukraine version of the beach attack with interesting comments.
Six law enforcement officers and a priest have reportedly been killed in what appear to be coordinated attacks by gunmen in Russia’s southernmost Dagestan province.
Attacks have been reported in a church and a synagogue in the city of Derbent and at a police traffic stop in the city of Makhachkala. Regional authorities say 12 law enforcement officers have also been wounded, though it is unclear in which city.
Two “militants” have also been killed following the attacks, RIA Novosti reported on Sunday, citing Dagestan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.
A priest was killed in the attack on the church in Derbent, according to the Dagestan Public Monitoring Commission Chairman, Shamil Khadulaev.
“According to the information I received, Father Nikolay was killed in the church in Derbent, they slit his throat. He was 66-years-old and very ill,” Khadulaev said.
He also said a security guard at the church armed with only a pistol was shot. Additional priests have locked themselves in the church and are waiting for help, Khadulaev said.
Meanwhile, the synagogue is now on fire with large flames and plumes of smoke billowing heavily out of a series of windows on at least one floor of the structure."
In what appears to be a coordinated attack that took place around the same time as the attacks in Derbent, a police traffic post in Makhachkala – about 120km (75 miles) away – also came under fire.
At least one police officer was injured in the attack in Makhachkala, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The head of the Dagestan Republic, Sergey Melikov, has since issued a message on Telegram saying that “unknown persons made attempts to destabilize the social situation. Dagestan police officers stood in their way. According to preliminary information, there are victims among them.”
Melikov said the identities of the attackers are being established, an operational headquarters has been set up and a plan for a counteroperation “Interception” is underway.
He urged the public to remain calm, saying “Panic and fear are what they were counting on in … They won’t get this from Dagestanis!”
The Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Republic of Dagestan said it had launched a terror investigation into the attacks under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
“All the circumstances of the incident and the persons involved in the terrorist attacks are being established, and their actions will be given a legal assessment,” the investigative directorate statement reads."
What is yours?
Did the neocons pushing NATO expansion into Ukraine do so intending to provoke a conflict with Russia, or because they were genuinely naive to it?
Wonder if Russians believe this crap (NATO supplied the weapons, CIA involvement).
Sounds like Ukraine hit something big and valuable in Crimea 👀. I would hate to be team Russia today.
I must be a horrible person because I loved that video.
Pics of more orcs being eliminated, please.
Time for us to remember again. Russia's economy is essentially the same size as Italy's. Time to curb stomp Russia.
Couldn't that start WW2 like Trump predicted?
I thought he predicted it would start the Boer War
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Vacation in a war zone and this is a possibility.
Donald Trump will post this on Truth tomorrow morning, and offer Ts and Ps for the Russian dead.
