Quote (Black XistenZ @ May 15 2022 12:17pm)
Jeez.... Western Ukraine has extremely fertile soil and is literally one of the most agriculturally productive places on the entire planet. The region was already considered the bread basket of the Soviet Union, in recent decades, it has fed large parts of Northern Africa and the Middle East. The current problem is that they have tons of grain in their silos and no way of exporting it to their usual customers because Russian is blocking all of Ukraine's seaports.
On the list of the 100 most imminent problems the western parts of Ukraine needs to worry about, a food shortage is maybe number 98.
And what do you mean by "Russia will continue to do what it wants"? :lol:
They wanted to conquer all of Ukraine in a blitz, they couldn't. They wanted to encircle Kyiv and Kharkiv, but failed. Repeatedly. They wanted to eradicate the Azov Battalion guys who are hiding in the hugeass Azovstal factory. It's been over a month and they still haven't done it. They wanted to push forward on the Donbass front after massing their troops in the region - it's been a month and they've only made very limited and insignificant progress. Meanwhile, top tier armaments are being shipped into Ukraine by the NATO, Russia capturing additional territory becomes less and less likely with each passing day.
With my limited knowledge of the situation, I presume that Putin will go for resources, not just some land, whether that means keeping it or destroying it. Russia isn’t exactly a beacon of prosperity that I know of. You’re right that many of his advances have failed. The outside support is great on paper and definitely helped save a lot of lives. However, it gives Putin more reasons to attack wildly because everyone got involved and as we’ve seen, propaganda is quite strong and he may be dying. I also read there’s a coup underway, but with that, I remember story after story of “Putin won’t do this, he has no reason to do that” and they’ve been so incredibly wrong at the cost of thousands of human lives. Denial and ignorance are nearly equally dangerous. Can’t really say it’s between 2 countries when billions are sent (hope that’s tracked btw, see California giving $10 billion to criminals during bailouts and “Covid relief”) and weapons are being supplied. Not saying it’s necessarily bad but it gives him a great deal of validity with his rhetoric, as wild as it may be.
My theory is, 2 people fight and everyone watches. 3 people fight and suddenly chaos erupts and punches are thrown at random like in mobs and rioting. I doubt that Russia will totally take over and redraw maps and the world will move on, but I don’t think he’s going to stop peacefully and quietly withdraw either. Unless Ukraine gets lucky it’s going to get worse before, if, it gets better.