Is Vladimir Putin happy to risk nuclear war to avoid admitting defeat?

As I've suggested in the past, if the board is going to allow limited political discussions, there are civil ways to go about it without directly naming politicians or parties that tends to be the motivation of many just to bash and hate. B is president, a D. Governor S is busing immigrants.
 

amwassil said:
Did you read the article or just the title? I suspect you know little or nothing about 'Ukraine'; start here to educate yourself. It's fascinating and I think you will enjoy the read. The territory currently called 'Ukraine' only became an independent country in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR. The current boundaries were established by Lenin, Stalin and Kruschev. So Stockman is correct to call it a 'fake nation'.

From another article by Stockman I posted previously What the hell was Washington thinking:


The war actually started in 2014 and Washington's pawprints are all over it.
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So because Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union Russia has a right to it? Putin loves you!
 

fuzzybuddy said:
Russia officially annexed parts of Ukraine. And Putin is amassing a vast army. Maybe, these are face saving options. Putin took territory and supposedly could have won the war, so his goals were "met", and being the statesman, he opted for peace?
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A view from the Russian side:

https://bigserge.substack.com/p/the-war-has-just-begun

This is an interesting angle:
One of the more fascinating aspects of the war in Ukraine is the extent to which Russia has contrived to attrit NATO military hardware without fighting a direct war with NATO forces. In a previous analysis I referred to Ukraine as a vampiric force which has reversed the logic of the proxy war; it’s a black hole sucking in NATO gear for destruction.

There are now very limited stockpiles to draw from to continue to arm Ukraine..

The increasing difficulties in arming Ukraine coincide with the rapid closing of Ukraine’s window of operational opportunity. The forces accumulated over the summer are degraded and fought out, and every subsequent rebuild of the Ukrainian first tier forces will become harder as manpower is destroyed and NATO arsenals are depleted. This depletion comes precisely as Russian force generation is surging, foretelling the Winter of Yuri.
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By 'Winter of Yuri' he's predicting a big late-fall winter offensive. What he thinks are Putin's goals:

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senior chef said:
Putin must be aware that if he DID use nukes on Ukraine he and the rest of Russia would be consider a pariah. I could easily imagine that all of Europe, and hopefully the U.S., would ban any and all trade with Russia.
I moreover, I hope that that left wing liberals finally get their head out of their a** and recognize that communism is evil incarnate.
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Russia doesn't have a communist system and hasn't since the wall came down in the early '90s. On the contrary, it's a good example of what can go wrong with a completely free market economy.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Russia officially annexed parts of Ukraine. And Putin is amassing a vast army. Maybe, these are face saving options. Putin took territory and supposedly could have won the war, so his goals were "met", and being the statesman, he opted for peace?
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One theory for Putin annexing parts of Ukraine is now he can claim that when Ukraine attacks those parts, they're attacking Russia, and that provides justification for more atrocities to be committed against Ukrainians.
 
Putin will never admit any kind of defeat in Ukraine.

If Ukraine is successful in maintaining its independence, Putin will definitely say he gave Ukraine some form of sovereignty or whatever, and then act as though he pulls all the strings over there. He'll help them rebuild when it's over, and the US will say let him, he owes reparations, saving the US money but also allowing Putin to prove his own lies.

This will strengthen and renew the Russian people's faith in Putin, and they'll be behind his subsequent *military operations*.
 
Does anybody remember Nikata Khrushchev, his 100 megaton bomb, his threats "We will bury you!", and his supposed banging of his shoe at the UN to show his anger?
 
amwassil said:
I have yet to express my opinions. I've linked/quoted from other commentators and simply indicated whether I find them factual and more likely or not.
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Your opinions are in post #20....unless you were directly plagiarising someone.

"Putin is neither crazy nor megalomaniacal. US foreign policy regarding NATO and Russia, however, is probably both. The reality is that Ukraine and Russia reached a tentative settlement in March - only to have the US torpedo it. The US is ready to fight to the last Ukrainian. The question is whether not Ukranians - other than Zelensky - share a willingness to sacrifice themselves and their country on that funeral pyre to 'weaken Russia'. Don't fool yourselves. Russia is not losing and Ukraine can not win. With Russian annexation of 1/3 of Ukraine by the end of this week, Putin forces the US and NATO to admit Ukraine is just their pawn."
 
@Pink Biz Thank you for reminding me.

But my opinion that really matters - to those who apparently think I'm a Putin stooge - is I agree completely with David Stockman here. I posted this link previously here.

What in the hell were those bloody-minded Washington/NATO neocons thinking? At any time in the last nine months they could have had a diplomatic settlement with Russia that would have:
  • Avoided/ended the war in Ukraine, thereby saving tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives and hundreds of billion of economic cost and destruction;
  • Allowed the Russian speaking population of the Donbas a substantial degree of self-governance and autonomy from the hostile government in Kiev;
  • Permitted the historic Russian territory of Crimea to remain under Russian control per the wishes of the overwhelming share of its Russian-speaking population;
  • Kept NATO out of Ukraine and its missiles away from Russia’s doorstep;
  • Removed NATO missile bases from the the old Warsaw Pact countries, where NATO had expanded in breach of Washington’s solemn promise made at the time of the German reunification to not extend NATO "one inch to the east".
Would this have furthered the national security of the US and Europe, permitted Europe’s then flourishing peaceful commerce with Russia to continue and avoided the current global plague of soaring energy and food prices caused by the Sanctions War?

Yes, it would have. In spades!
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The current territory called Ukraine is a hodgepodge of ethnic groups cobbled together by Stalin in 1939 and 1945. My opinion is that the Poles in the west should be granted the opportunity to determine by referendum whether or not they'd like to be restored to their ethnic homeland; the Hungarians and Bulgarians in the southwest should be granted the same opportunity. Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria would likely welcome their long-lost brethren. Those who wish to remain and create a Ukrainian ethnic nation in the center are welcome to do so.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...
- July 4, 1776
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Personally, I think it's a good idea to let the proper authorities investigate what happened to the pipeline. The Swedes, Danes, etc. have a lot of experience in underwater tech. If anybody can figure it out they can.

Meanwhile be careful what you read on the Internet. There is a lot of speculation around mainly designed to get clicks.
 
@amwassil - Ukraine tried to negotiate w/Russia in person, by phone, over Zoom, and via proxies about 20 times. Ukraine does not want Russia to have any of it's country, and why should Zelenski let him have it? "Historically" doesn't matter; in recent history, it's Ukraine.

Remember that Zelenski was elected fairly recently. Before Zelenski was elected, Putin had made a lot of key members of the Ukrainian gov't stinking rich Putin pawns and Ukrainians hated them. After the election, Putin and his pawns laughed at Zelenski (who actually used to be a pretty talented comedian), but Zelenski straight-up asked the people what they wanted, they told him, and he started cleaning house. Suddenly, not so funny.

After all the money Putin paid for the privilege of owning so many decision makers in the Ukraine gov't, imagine how pissed he was when this silly little TV personality won the hearts and minds of the Putin hatin Ukrainians, and exposed all his guys in office (in Ukraine).

Anyway, my point is, Zelenski wants what majority Ukrainians want, so he's not gonna give any part of Ukraine to Putin, he's totally fine with a multi-cultural Ukraine, and he wants to join NATO.

Putin doesn't like it, but it's really none of business. His attack was 100% in violation of international law.
 
Murrmurr said:
@amwassil - Ukraine tried to negotiate w/Russia in person, by phone, over Zoom, and via proxies about 20 times. Ukraine does not want Russia to have any of it's country, and why should Zelenski let him have it? "Historically" doesn't matter; in recent history, it's Ukraine.

Remember that Zelenski was elected fairly recently. Before Zelenski was elected, Putin had made a lot of key members of the Ukrainian gov't stinking rich Putin pawns and Ukrainians hated them. After the election, Putin and his pawns laughed at Zelenski (who actually used to be a pretty talented comedian), but Zelenski straight-up asked the people what they wanted, they told him, and he started cleaning house. Suddenly, not so funny.

After all the money Putin paid for the privilege of owning so many decision makers in the Ukraine gov't, imagine how pissed he was when this silly little TV personality won the hearts and minds of the Putin hatin Ukrainians, and exposed all his guys in office (in Ukraine).

Anyway, my point is, Zelenski wants what majority Ukrainians want, so he's not gonna give any part of Ukraine to Putin, he's totally fine with a multi-cultural Ukraine, and he wants to join NATO.

Putin doesn't like it, but it's really none of business. His attack was 100% in violation of international law.
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I have to disagree with most of your points.

Ukraine tried to negotiate w/Russia in person...
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Actually, representatives from Ukraine and Russia negotiated an agreement in March to end hostilities and grant autonomy to the ethnic Russian majorities in the east and south. But the US government torpedoed that agreement and even sent BoJo to Kiev in April to make sure Zelensky was perfectly clear there would be no agreement.

Ukraine does not want Russia to have any of it's country, and why should Zelenski let him have it?
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When you say 'Ukraine' I presume you mean the current regime in Kiev. It's at least legally doubtful that any regime in Kiev is the legitimate representative of 'Ukraine' since the ousting of Yanukovitch in 2014. The ethnic Russian regions of eastern and southern 'Ukraine' tried to break away from the Kiev regime after the coup that ousted Yanukovitch and the Kiev regime began a brutal pogrom of repression that lasted 7+ years.

Remember that Zelenski ... Putin had made a lot of key members of the Ukrainian gov't stinking rich Putin pawns and Ukrainians hated them...
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A lot of nonsense in these couple of paragraphs. Putin did not corrupt the 'Ukrainian' government. It managed that all by itself. With some help from the Obama admin with VP Biden at point and first son board member of Burisma.

Anyway, my point is, Zelenski wants what majority Ukrainians want...
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Then why not let 'what majority Ukrainians want' be determined by a nationwide referendum. Why does Zelensky and his band of corruptocrats make the call?

This is just not as simple and straight forward as you and many others seem to think and want it to be. Contrary to popular opinion, Putin did not start this war. It was started in 2014 by the illegitimate regime in Kiev that ousted Yanukovich in a US-backed coup de tat and then proceeded to punish the ethnic Russian population who elected him. Putin decided to try to end it - on his terms not the US/Nato or Zelensky's.

As David Stockman points out, and with which I totally agree, without the intransigence of the US this never had to get to the point of potential nuclear war or even the invasion in Feb.
 


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