Russia-Ukraine War

[pinstripers]

Stephen Moore @StephenMoore

America is importing 75,000 barrels a day from Russia. This means, Joe Biden is handing Putin over $10M per day for energy. The United States is financing their war machine.

[pinstripers]

Hopefully they are all masked.

[C0|dB|00ded]

https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/02/27/want-to-go-fight-for-ukraine-heres-what-to-do/

Want to go fight for Ukraine? Here’s what to do.

It is a new effort, a Ukrainian official tells Military Times, to help bolster the fight.

Several veterans have reached out to Military Times interested in helping Ukraine.

Before you go, this is what you need to know, according to the official, who spoke to Military Times Sunday on condition of anonymity in an interview repeatedly interrupted by ongoing airstrikes.

Here’s what veterans, other U.S. citizens or anyone else interested in helping out, need to know.

1. Apply to the Embassy of Ukraine in your country with the intention of joining the Foreign Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine (ask a military diplomat or consul for details). Applicants can visit the Embassy in person, call or send an email to start the process.
2. ... ...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/american-nato-military-veterans-fight-russia-with-ukraine

A Team Of American And British Special Forces Veterans Are Preparing To Join Ukraine’s Fight Against Russia


The 10 NATO-trained war veterans are taking up President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer for people to join a new unit of foreign fighters for Ukraine.

KYIV — A group of 10 special operations forces veterans are staging in Poland and preparing to cross into Ukraine, where they plan to take up President Volodymyr Zelensky on his offer to “join the defense of Ukraine, Europe, and the world,” according to a US Army veteran arranging their passage.

The group, composed of six US citizens, three Brits, and a German, are NATO-trained and experienced in close combat and counterterrorism. They want to be among the first to officially join the new International Legion of the Territorial Defense of Ukraine that Zelensky announced Sunday, according to text messages reviewed by BuzzFeed News. Two former American infantry officers are also making plans to come to Ukraine to provide “leadership” for the group, the Army veteran recruiter said.

I found the preceding stories about volunteerism heartwarming.

[C0|dB|00ded]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/2/23/22945781/russia-ukraine-putin-speech-transcript-february-22

Why is Putin attacking Ukraine? He told us.

In a recent speech, the Russian president laid out the nationalist ideas that animate him — and helped cause the Ukraine crisis.

A military assault is not Putin’s only fear. He calls the Ukraine Maidan movement a “coup d’état” undertaken “with direct assistance from foreign states”; there is no doubt he fears a similar movement against his own government. Bringing Ukraine to heel — demonstrating that a pro-Western protest movement in Russia’s historical heartland cannot succeed — is vital to protecting his own government.

“I think the bigger threat for him is a regime threat, not an actual military invasion,” Gunitsky explains. “He thinks the West wants to subvert his regime the way they did in Ukraine. That’s why NATO is only a part of threat.”

In the Russian president’s mind, there is a seamless connection between Russian nationalism and Russian security interests. Putin believes that the current Ukrainian government threatens Russia for reasons bound up in their imperial past; restoring Russian control over territories that he believes it rightfully owns would be one way of ending the threat.

Fyodor Lukyanov, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy analyst, argued that Putin really wants the West to listen to his concerns about Ukraine and come to the negotiating table. “From the beginning,” he argued, the buildup on Ukrainian borders “was not a preparation for war.” Rather, it was a reaction to the fact that “all attempts by Russia in previous years to offer a more or less normal discussion about security arrangements were simply ignored.”

I meant to post this stuff days ago but I've been out of pocket. I think it provides a solid primer into the mind of Vlad Pootin'.

I personally still believe this is all a Trumpian-esque charade for negotiation purposes. I doubt he would "go to war" in 2022 over Bolshevik Communist Russia nostalgia.

And all this nuclear talk is bullshit. Nobody believes his threats for a second. Pootin' could have melted the entire nation of Ukraine by lunchtime with conventional cruise missiles if he had wanted. He is not being thwarted by Ukrainian might. This is a 10% Russian effort in order to announce to the world that V. Pootin' is "crazy enough", if his demands aren't met. Again, pure Trump strategy - which works pretty well the first few times it's used.

[ShockerPrez]

I agitated for the Iraq war. Never again will I support a war of choice. Shame on me. Seeing this dead little Ukrainian girl is it for me. I know that happened in Iraq and I had a part in it.

Kids are starving to death in Afghanistan and I had a hand in that too. Different scenario than Iraq, but here we are.

Understand I am not talking about whataboutism or moral equivalency, I'm just saying that not in my name.

There's a lot that goes into this, but I think I know how you feel. Americans (non military service families) have never really beared the brunt of these "wars". If they did, we would rarely partake. And we, the U.S.A never seem to improve the situation.

[BOBB]

I agitated for the Iraq war. Never again will I support a war of choice. Shame on me. Seeing this dead little Ukrainian girl is it for me. I know that happened in Iraq and I had a part in it.

Kids are starving to death in Afghanistan and I had a hand in that too. Different scenario than Iraq, but here we are.

Understand I am not talking about whataboutism or moral equivalency, I'm just saying that not in my name.

[pinstripers]

Evan Gershkovich
@evangershkovich

the images coming out of Kharkiv right now may be the most heartbreaking yet. civilians laying dead in the streets still holding the jugs of water and bags of food they had run out to get

[pinstripers]

BEREGSURANY, Hungary, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Clutching a mobile phone number of a woman she had never met, Nataliya Ableyeva crossed the border from Ukraine into Hungary on Saturday, entrusted with a precious cargo.

A stranger’s children.

Waiting at the border crossing on the Ukrainian side, Ableyeva had met a desperate 38-year-old man from her home town of Kamianets-Podilskyi, with his young son and daughter.

The border guards would not let him pass. Ukraine has banned all Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving, so they can fight for their country.

“Their father simply handed over the two kids to me, and trusted me, giving me their passports to bring them over,” 58-year-old Ableyeva said, the arms of the young boy she had known for just a few hours around her neck.

[1972Shocker]

Putin is either mental or is in the late stages of a terminal disease. Or both.

That actually is not totally out of the realm of possibility.

Marco Rubio Hints That He Has Info Something Is Amiss With Putin

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022...-putin-n528333

I wish I could share more,but for now I can say it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin He has always been a killer,but his problem now is different & significant It would be a mistake to assume this Putin would react the same way he would have 5 years ago

[pinstripers]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukrainian-forces-destroy-convoy-of-56-chechen-tanks-kill-general-near-kyiv-report/

[SB Shock]

Early trading, the Ruble is down 20% against the American dollar

[BOBB]

Old Joe can intimidate Putin by getting in contact and relaying to him his latest version of how he of the furry legs, made ole Corn Pop, who was a bad dude, stand down at the swimming hole.

So far it seems like the world is on board with "Old Joe's" approach. Russia is going back to an era of knockoff denim, empty shelves, and bogus Soviet metal played on Cuban guitars. Meanwhile, Germans are waking up to the absolute shambles they've left their military, realizing they don't even have helmets to send Ukraine, and are doubling their military budget. Turkey has closed the Bosporus.

If anyone has mismanaged this it's Putin.

[BOBB]

I wonder what NATO forces are delivering to the Ukrainian borders in the way of munitions?

My understanding is that Ukraine controls most of their borders that aren't shared with Belarus and Russia. Thousands of M4, M16, Hecklers from Germany, anything using the NATO standard 5.56 round, Stingers, Mistrals and most importantly, Javelins should be POURING into Ukraine in the next 14 days. Arm these glorious fighting bastards to the ****ing teeth and leave this Russian army burning in their fields.

7.62 would be better so they can utilize what they loot from the Russian corpses that haven't been incinerated in Putin's dystopian mobile crematories.

[shocktown]

Old Joe can intimidate Putin by getting in contact and relaying to him his latest version of how he of the furry legs, made ole Corn Pop, who was a bad dude, stand down at the swimming hole.

[ShockerPrez]

I just don't and won't believe Russian Generals would carry out a first nuclear strike. This is getting ridiculous.

But we need to be telling China that if Putin launches nukes, we have to answer that. As Fever said, Putin is either terminally ill or gone mad.

Surely there is back-channel comms ongoing between U.S. and Russia somewhere. The problem I have is that I can't trust my government's intetests necessarily align with mine. I can't totally believe that my government doesn't want war. And that is extremely unsettling.