According to Robert Barnes , the story about Russia attacking a Nuclear facility was false

You mean when George W got on that aircraft carrier and said "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" the war had only just begin?

up to that point what we knew as war was over, we learned the hard way wars change big time. japan and germany had no choice but to accept the invaders in occupation, iraq just waited and smiled while we built them back up.

The clips of Russians opening fire on humanitarian corridors didn't show Ukrainians with molotov cocktails, or Ukrainians resisting in any way.
I've repeatedly stressed that it is wrong to encourage civilians to attack a fully geared army with molotov cocktails and AKs and such and thus turn them into combatants - but this is NOT what went down during Russian attacks on fleeing civilians, so these two events must not be conflated.

Why are you guys so keen to relativize or excuse Russian war crimes? How come that the first impulse of you guys when faced with pictures of bombed out cities and civilians getting blown up is to pull tortured excuses or justifications for the attacks out of your arses? Why are you so keen to create a moral equivalence between attacker and attacked? I don't get it. It is definitely possibly to criticize both sides for their respective crimes and transgressions without falling into reflexive and unwarranted bothsideism.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 7 2022 03:04pm

Too early to tell IMO. If they can prevent Ukraine from joining NATO Russia will view losing a few thousand as soldiers as a worthy sacrifice. The sanctions also, not sure the ramifications of that yet. I think Russia undoubtedly is worse off as a result of this conflict but few years from now who knows what will happen.




There's no such thing as clean wars. Literally all wars have war crimes. You think firing artillery always lands where you expect it to land? You think Dresden being flattened or Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki are war crimes? Maybe, but that's not the way it went down in history, because in an all out war those are nonsensical notions.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 7 2022 02:57pm

IF, and its a big IF, Putin calculated even close to the expenses this will cost Russia, then NATO expansion is an existential threat to him. but occam's razor tells me he didnt predict this western response, and is now all in with a mediocre hand with no choice but to wait out the rest of the cards. withdraw cant be done, he's gone too all in trying to paint this as toppling Hitler. he fucked up.

All true, however, this "asylum industry" didn't exist yet, at least not in its current form, when Merkel made the key decisions in 2015. The asylum industry feeding on the teat of the state has gotten fat and contributed to the consolidation of Merkel's lunacy in the months and years that followed, but its contribution to the start of this misguided policy was limited. The beneficiaries of the asylum industry are vultures and free loaders, not machiavellis.

For Ukraine, it's simply to survive and have a functioning government. As time goes on, I imagine that the objects are to keep as much land as possible. For Russia, I think it's a lot more complicated. It appears that they wanted to quickly decapitate the government in Kyiv via Blitzkrieg tactics. In addition, I think they want to form a land bridge between Russia and Crimea and take as much of the Ukrainian coastline as possible in hopes that Ukraine (should it survive) cede those lands. If they can make it to Moldova, even better because Russia could claim most of the Black Sea resources.

As for Kyiv, the Russians haven't encircled it yet and supplies are moving in and out. I would HOPE that they are preparing for a very long siege (similar to Sarajevo, Stalingrad, etc.) given that the West has military advisors on the ground helping the Ukrainians out. I wouldn't necessarily call it "impressive" either since the border between Kyiv and Belarus is less than 200 km. Surrounding it from the South would have been really impressive though IMO. Russia is going to have to create more stable supply lines if they are going to hold the territory and that's assuming insurgency levels remain low-ish. Occupying territory requires A LOT of troops and I don't doubt that Russia is capable of doing it. The question is if they have the political will to do it given that their economy got nuked and they've lost thousands of troops already.