Somebody doesn't understand geo-politics.

Russians destroyed bridge between Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad which threatens groupings of ZSU with encirclement and/or complicates it's logistics.



This post was edited by Norlander on Sep 12 2024 02:42am

And they've stolen all the water too

And sucked all the air up

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-pleads-guilty-to-shipping-us-made-avionics-to-russia-violating-sanctions/

This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on Sep 12 2024 05:35am

Ukrainian draft dodgers protest against TIFF's "Russians at War" movie, Toronto, Canada.



This post was edited by Norlander on Sep 13 2024 02:44am

I doubt those are draft dodgers. Most probably Canadian-Ukranian citizens. Many of them could be descendant from Nazis that Canada harboured after WW2 to crush leftists and communist threats as well as labour unions. They also squashed and replaced earlier migrants from Russian Empire collapse as those were seen as a threat as they could have had allegiance with the USSR.

This was a great article about the type of folks that dominated Ukranian-Canadian diaspora post-WW2, eg Chrystia Freeland.

https://jacobin.com/2023/12/canada-ukrainian-nationalists-socialists-history-anti-communism-nazi-collaborators

All this continued escalation really puts us closer to the cliff than people admit.
You can have neocon warhawks who believe we can bleed Russia and they will still avoid direct engagement as long as they are winning the conventional war, as it is still Putin's rational self-interest
but the danger comes from risk of the unknowable, the potential for a radical event. And our inability to brace against the impact because we put ourselves right up to the edge.

Say we give long range missiles to Ukraine to strike deep into Russia. Putin calls it a red line, we call his bluff. And Ukraine strikes just some construction yards or depots or oil rigs or runways. We bleed Russia by knocking out logistics or 5th generation fighters. We give each other high fives, Russia just shrugs it off and repairs. They keep beating Ukraine, their incremental losses aren't our gain. What's the benefit? But now say Ukraine sends a Shadow Storm missile targeted at some Moscow military target and it strikes a shopping mall and kills 150 civilians. At that point, Putin cannot fail to retaliate. Even if he wanted to deescalate, he can't survive the domestic reaction and popular outrage, nor would he be willing to endure it anyway. He would need to escalate in a dramatic fashion to dissuade us. What would that look like? I maintain the most likely target would be a strike, either conventional or nuclear, on a US naval group since they are disproportionately valuable and vulnerable, isolated at sea away from collateral targets. A hypersonic missile could get past their defenses.

If nothing ever happens, people look back and say the fears were overblown. If something does happen, we look back at those who ignored the risk as fools. But the sensible outlook is to recognize the risk exists, its nonzero, its catastrophic if it occurs, and the escalatory steps the more realized that risk.

What escalation is Putin likely to enact, that the Russian miltary is not already applying?