Hoth

lol, maybe that's why he's always sitting like 50 feet from everyone else at the table. He can get the drop on them. All dictators are paranoid about the people around them. Stalin would purge his staff periodically. Putin's definitely not dumb, but in a situation like this you can't really run Monte Carlo simulations of all the outcomes. He can't possibly have expected a lot of the stuff that's been happening, which is why he's nuclear saber-rattling. It's coming from a place of weakness, not strength in my opinion.

Modern missiles are even more difficult because they can alter their reentry vector. Really it’s better to avoid a launch at than than rely on interceptors.

Given that all the oligarchs that support him have had their yachts and villas and funds seized, you can bet there is more than a little grumbling behind the scenes. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Putin catches a bullet.

Their strategy is from the Soviet playbook, which means the Ukrainians should be familiar with it. Russia on paper is a vastly superior force and could probably reduce every city and village to rubble with bombers in a week unless the EU sends in some serious anti-aircraft materiel. Never underestimate the capacity of a highly motivated native populace to resist though. See Vietnam or Afghanistan for analogs. There are probably a few people alive in Ukraine who remember 10 million of their countrymen starving to death in the 1930s famines under Stalin's vicious rule, and there are certainly plenty who still remember Nazi occupation. These people have been hammered hard for a century and truly value their freedom.

Better hope someone in Putin's inner circle is level-headed enough to put a bullet through his boss' cerebellum.

lol Billys just dropping from the sky all over Moscow.

I'm not so sure about Chinese banks. Several are already balking at financing Russian commodities purchases due to concerns of secondary sanctions being imposed. Keep in mind the Chinese banking system is probably close to insolvency already and doesn't want to risk anything really tipping the scales.

Bank runs secured.

I’m going to make another argument. Russia is paranoid because it has no natural geographic features to provide a defense bulwark on its western border. It’s a lot of flat plains. This has left them vulnerable to invasion from the west over the centuries. Putin wants at the least a buffer of friendly nations on his flank to put some distance between himself and the West. The farce in this, the paranoid delusion, is the idea that Western Europe has any designs on taking over Russia. If he can’t have a bunch of Belaruses, clearly he’s okay with taking free countries by force and coercing them into supporting Russia.

Let’s not forget that the Russians are trying to take over a country roughly the size of Texas with 200k troops. It may have been a miscalculation not to deploy their best equipment from the get-go. An operation like this would be difficult enough without a highly motivated native population who do not want to be a Soviet vassal state again. It’s going to be a major logistical challenge for Russia getting fuel and provisions to their troops when they really don’t fully control transit routes. They certainly have air superiority, but not total supremacy and with EU sending in anti-aircraft weaponry they will pay a price in the sky as well. I don’t see Ukraine folding anytime soon, even if their leader falls. They will draw price for this treachery.

Sort of a nasty mix of mostly sleet with some freezing rain. Roads suck.

Oh look, it trended to dogsh*t. Winter of ‘22 rolls on.

Meh, the whole debt weapon thing is overblown if you ask me. I mean, if they tried to dump a trillion in treasuries all at once they’d probably get 50 cents on the dollar, which I doubt they want. In a scenario where the US and China are at war, I’d have to imagine that treasuries would still be the preferred safe haven asset, so the demand would be deeper than normal.

Of course he doesn't.

Did the Ukrainians have a revolution in 2013 to kick out the Russian puppet regime and establish closer trade ties with the EU?

There was a pretty substantial period when Britain was all alone. France was occupied and the U.S. had not entered the war.

I hope they give them hell, even if they are facing a superior force.

Would you have advocated the same of Churchill when the Germans were sitting across the English Channel?

I don't disagree. I hope it doesn't come to that. I don't much care for the idea of being drafted. Knees are getting a little creaky in my late 30s.

I seem to recall that we drove them into those caves. No military is made for endless occupation and ceaseless insurgent guerilla warfare. When we've sent our boys in en masse, we generally are quite effective at taking territory.

That was truly disgusting. Absolutely unforgivable.

Strange echoes of the thirties. We had our near miss with a depression in '08, followed by a decade of growing civil discord all over the world. Now, possibly, a major war. Let's hope not.

Ballistic missiles are striking control centers in Kyiv.

IMO, this is where you need leaders with real backbone. Putin senses weakness in the West. They've been appeasing and appealing to diplomacy and instituting weak sanctions. Guys like Putin only respect force.