Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

These are some of the many reasons.

T

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 12:00 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

America does not support Ukraine.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 12:20 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I have never seen Ukrainian colors anywhere in my neighborhood. Not house flags or backpacks or purses or jackets or even modest window decals or bumper stickers (the cheapest form of "support"). Not back in February 2022, and not now.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 12:24 PM

I've seen one bumper sticker.

Otherwise, I've only ever seen it on Twitter. And even on Twitter it's pretty rare now.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 4:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I have never seen Ukrainian colors anywhere in my neighborhood. Not house flags or backpacks or purses or jackets or even modest window decals or bumper stickers (the cheapest form of "support"). Not back in February 2022, and not now.

Local landmarks bathed in Ukrainian colors in show of support
https://www.presstelegram.com/2022/03/03/local-landmarks-bathed-in-ukr
ainian-colors-in-show-of-support/

Wanting it to be true signym doesn't make it so.

T

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 4:23 PM

Local, State Buildings Lit Up in Blue and Yellow in Support of Ukraine

Landmarks in the Bay Area and other parts of California have recently been lit up in blue and yellow in a show of support for Ukraine amid Russia's invasion.

The light display atop Salesforce Tower in San Francisco has been featuring the colors of Ukraine's flag.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/local-state-buildings-lit-up-in-
blue-and-yellow-in-support-of-ukraine/2824512/

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 4:51 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Oh yeah bc Sick Francisco Mayor Breed and Gavin "Noisesome" Newsom represent everyone in California.
/snicker
"We support Ukraine": It's a gubmint thing.

Edited to add: Yanno,THUGR, if you had ANY respect for democracy at all, you'd be interested in what PEOPLE are thinking, instead of trying to impose an official narrative on them.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 5:11 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The more stress Putin is under, the more unrealistic his expectations are. Last week, for example, loyal industry minister Denis Manturov was publicly upbraided for delays in the domestic production of aircraft. As Manturov tried to explain the formidable practical challenges, especially now that Russia is sanctioned and denied Western technology and investment and cannot buy some parts from Ukraine, Putin cut him off: “Don’t you understand the circumstances we live in? It needs to be done in a month, no later.”

Likewise, Putin – who has no meaningful military experience and little sense of the complexities of modern warfare – appears to have had unrealistic expectations of Surovikin. His answer, as usual, is not to recognise the scale of the challenge, but to blame the man on the spot.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/1/17/putinism-doesnt-work-on-t
he-battlefield

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023 5:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh yeah bc Sick Francisco Mayor Breed and Gavin "Noisesome" Newsom represent everyone in California.
/snicker
"We support Ukraine": It's a gubmint thing.

Edited to add: Yanno,THUGR, if you had ANY respect for democracy at all, you'd be interested in what PEOPLE are thinking, instead of trying to impose an official narrative on them.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

Exactly. You don't see any of that shit in Indiana. Even in the populous area near Chicago.

But I bet if you drove to Democrat ran shithole Indianapolis you'd see it. Just don't get shot while you're visiting there.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2023 7:01 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

How the War in Ukraine Could End Sooner Than Expected

by Peter A. Wilson and William Courtney

Predictions merit only guarded confidence when so many have proven wrong, e.g., that Kyiv could fall within days or Russia would quickly gain air superiority over Ukraine.

Policymakers might be prudent, however, to consider not only possibilities of a long war but also how it might end sooner.

Putin Could Fall

Putin's ex-KGB cohort in the Kremlin could be in trouble. A surprise, poorly executed draft of several hundred thousand men has been unpopular. Defeats in Ukraine have sparked a torrent of hardline pro-war criticism. Some Kremlin insiders may be experiencing growing discontent. Putin could be pressured or ousted by renegade security forces, such as those led by hardliners Yevgeny Prigozhin (Wagner Group) or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Abrupt regime change could be risky. Russia might become ungovernable. If Moscow persisted in its war, the West may continue to arm Ukraine, enforce biting sanctions, and control some $300 billion in Russian financial assets. Only liberalizers who withdrew forces from Ukraine might relieve the pressure.

Russia's Army Could Collapse

In World War I, a poorly motivated and provisioned Russian army collapsed, helping bring down an out-of-touch czar. Today, Russia might face a similar risk. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits frontline troops, Putin is mostly hidden from view far from any fighting. No surprise that morale of Ukrainian soldiers is strong and that of Russians is weak. In some instances, enforcers shoot those who refuse to fight.

In October, a British intelligence chief said Russian forces in Ukraine were overstretched and exhausted. Troops train at dilapidated bases, fight with obsolete equipment, and lack medical supplies. Soldiers complain of being sent into a meat grinder. Some mutiny. During this winter some might freeze without warm clothing.

Ukraine's Army Could Win

It repelled early Russian lunges to seize Ukraine's three largest cities—Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa. Recently, Ukrainian forces took back half the land in eastern and southern Ukraine, which Russians seized in the second invasion launched on February 24, including the only regional capital taken since then, Kherson.

If the ground freezes deep and long enough, Ukraine's army might conduct combined arms operations to push deeper into occupied areas. Even Crimea could be vulnerable if Ukrainians seized the rail hub of Melitopol. Such initiatives might take place before the Russian army could train and equip a large second echelon force, with the aim of conducting a renewed offensive against Kyiv or Kharkiv.

Finally, there remains the specter that a desperate Kremlin might escalate the war, such as by direct attacks on supply and training bases in nearby NATO countries or even limited use of nuclear weapons.

The former option might be unattractive because of NATO reinforcement of its eastern European flank and a lack of Russian long-range precision attack munitions. The latter might be deterred in part by NATO nuclear maneuvers or by Chinese, Indian, or other international opposition.

How this war ends remains uncertain. It does seem the West will continue to ensure that Ukrainian forces retain their qualitative lead in arms and access to Western intelligence information. A Russian mobilization of more conscripts, even if ill-trained and poorly equipped, could shore up Russian defenses.

The stage might be set for drawn-out attritional warfare. But policymakers ought not overlook contingencies that might seem unlikely but could end the war earlier.

Peter A. Wilson is an adjunct senior international and defense researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and teaches a course on the history of military technological innovation at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at RAND and was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the U.S.-USSR commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.

https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/01/how-the-war-in-ukraine-could-end-soo
ner-than-expected.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, January 18, 2023 3:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh yeah bc Sick Francisco Mayor Breed and Gavin "Noisesome" Newsom represent everyone in California.
/snicker
"We support Ukraine": It's a gubmint thing.

Edited to add: Yanno,THUGR, if you had ANY respect for democracy at all, you'd be interested in what PEOPLE are thinking, instead of trying to impose an official narrative on them.

Polish Russian Collaborator Signym who for years has promoted Putin’s’ way over Americas, has no idea how stupid she makes herself look with posts like this one.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Stupid people don’t know they’re stupid, and they certainly don’t know how obvious it is to others.

T

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Wednesday, January 18, 2023 6:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Stupid people don’t know they’re stupid, and they certainly don’t know how obvious it is to others.

Know thyself, Ted. Know thyself.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2023 6:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How the War in Ukraine Could End Sooner Than Expected

Putin Could Fall
Russia's Army Could Collapse
Ukraine's Army Could Win

That all seems rather one sided.

Quote:
Finally, there remains the specter that a desperate Kremlin might escalate the war, such as by direct attacks on supply and training bases in nearby NATO countries or even limited use of nuclear weapons.

Here's an idea. Don't push nuclear war if you're not ready for nuclear war.

Looking at you Biden* and NATO.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2023 8:55 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Ukraine Interior Minister Killed In Chopper Crash...and Russia Exposed as 'Not So Strong' as people previously thought

but Does anyone have a plan to end this war?

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 6:32 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:

but Does anyone have a plan to end this war?

Yes, the Ukrainians do, but their plan requires NATO to do the maximum when supplying weapons and ammo to Ukraine. But NATO is only going part way because, you know, each country in NATO keeps expecting the other countries to take up the slack. The countries are economizing, including the USA. Here is the editorial:

Why won’t NATO send weapons that could end the war?

The delayed delivery of weapons systems doomed the victims in Dnipro. The West's continued refusal to send tanks and long-range missiles gives Putin the chance to raze Ukraine.

by Trudy Rubin | Columnist
Updated Jan 18, 2023

To understand why Russia’s war on Ukraine remains the key foreign issue for Americans in 2023, you should watch the video of a Ukrainian mother whose son died when a Russian missile blasted a nine-story apartment building in Dnipro on Saturday.

Timed at midday on the Orthodox New Year holiday, when people would be home, the Russians deliberately fired a 2,000-pound Kh-22 supersonic cruise missile — which was designed to sink aircraft carriers — at a building full of civilians. At least 72 apartments collapsed into a hideous mountain of concrete, household goods, and wires, while some remained partially intact with their front walls sheared off, leaving furniture dangling. The remains of 45 people — including two young doctors, a dentist, a boxing coach, and several children — have been pulled from the rubble so far, and many are still missing.

“Why did you kill him?” the bereaved mother in the video screamed, restrained by a relative as she railed at the Russians. “You used to come here, to our city, we were treating you as normal people, as normal relatives. Let you be cursed your whole life by all people, by me, by all mother’s tears. Let your whole country be cursed.”

In the meantime, Russian TV talk show hosts were praising their country for uniquely embodying traditional Orthodox Christian values, and decrying the Ukrainians — and Americans — as Nazis and Satanists. One prominent Russian official declared, “We are humans, and they [Ukrainians] are nonhumans.” Yet it is Russians who have embraced the inhuman behavior of Nazis.

Vladimir Putin is ready to raze Ukraine to the ground if he can’t conquer the country — so long as the West permits him. Decision time for the NATO allies is right now.

On Friday, NATO defense ministers will meet at Ramstein air base in Germany to discuss how to move forward with aiding Ukraine.

Contrary to popular perception, the U.S. and Europe have still not given Ukraine the weapons to stop Putin.

In Dnipro, Ukraine had no means of shooting down the Kh-22 missile, which had previously caused gruesome damage to civilian targets. Nor does Kyiv yet have the means to stop Russian ballistic missiles — never mind Iranian ballistic missiles, which Tehran may soon send as part of its new military alliance with the Kremlin.

In both cases, long-range Patriot antimissile systems are the only answer. They are required to layer over the mid- and lower-range Western and old Soviet-made systems that have so far prevented total Russian destruction of Ukraine’s power grid.

Ukraine has been begging for Patriots for months. Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told me in July in Kyiv that he was certain the United States would agree to send Patriots by the end of 2022, but by then thousands of Ukrainian civilians would have died.

Reznikov was correct. Dnipro is only the latest victim of Russian terror attacks as I saw in July in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and other cities where Russia’s missiles have shattered apartment buildings, markets, hospitals, and schools.

As Reznikov foresaw, the United States and Germany finally agreed to send one Patriot battery each in late December (the Netherlands will probably send a third). But one battery can only defend part of a city and requires months of training — which the Ukrainians are just beginning — to operate it.

So if the decision has belatedly been made on Patriots, why not send sufficient batteries to protect key cities and targets?

Administration excuses about shortage of batteries and high cost of missiles don’t wash if the goal is for Ukraine to survive until victory. More than a dozen U.S. allies possess Patriot batteries that could be donated — and sophisticated Ukrainians aren’t likely to overuse the missiles.

What are Washington and its NATO allies waiting for?

And if the Patriot barrier has been crossed, why not give the Ukrainians the long-range U.S. precision missiles — known as ATACMS — that could stop Russian missiles at launch?

As chess champion and prescient Ukraine defender Garry Kasparov tweeted, “The best defense is a good offense. Instead of just shooting down missiles, destroy their launch points, wherever they may be. Thousands of civilian lives could have been saved had Ukraine been given such weapons long ago and they still do not have them. Why?”

What is the White House waiting for?

Moreover, if NATO allies have finally recognized the reality that Putin will only quit occupied Ukrainian land if the Russians are driven out militarily, why not finally give them the tanks to do so? Germany’s Hamlet-like Chancellor Olaf Scholz is still dithering over whether to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks that Ukraine desperately needs (and has just appointed a new defense minister with no military experience). He won’t even green-light other NATO members who are willing to send their Leopards to Ukraine.

Light armored vehicles being sent by Berlin and Washington are helpful but not tough enough. So far, only the British have had guts enough to promise a small number of tanks to Ukraine in hopes of prodding Germany and other NATO members. President Joe Biden’s leadership is needed.

What is Germany waiting for?

There is no way to end the Ukraine war unless Putin’s dreams of restoring imperial Russia are defeated on the battlefield. The rage of a Dnipro mother reflects an entire country’s existential battle to drive out the Russians, whom Ukrainians now consider to be fascists, or — as they call them — “ruscists.”

But if this war drags on — because Ukraine doesn’t have enough of the right weapons — the country could be totally laid waste. If Russia isn’t ousted from Ukraine, Putin may regroup and try again, or try elsewhere to restore imperial grandeur, no matter the cost to his country.

The time to end this war is this year, by giving Kyiv everything it needs to defeat Putin. What are we waiting for?

Published Jan. 18, 2023

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/dnipro-patriots-ramstein-leopard-tank
s-olaf-scholz-mark-rutte-20230118.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 7:17 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:
Finally, there remains the specter that a desperate Kremlin might escalate the war, such as by direct attacks on supply and training bases in nearby NATO countries or even limited use of nuclear weapons.

Here's an idea. Don't push nuclear war if you're not ready for nuclear war.

Looking at you Biden* and NATO.

Russia is too chicken to directly nuke Ukraine, but it might arrange a series of "nuclear accidents" where the Ukrainians are said by Russia to have blown up their own nuclear power plants. Russia would express sympathy but insist it had nothing to do with these "accidental" explosions spreading radiation all over Ukraine.

In other news, Germany says its Prime Minister is a coward afraid of making a decision because of the cost and because Putin's Army might be unable to prevent Ukraine from blowing up Ukrainian nuclear power plants "accidentally" which would spread radiation across Germany, as did the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986:

Berlin sets condition for U.S. on exports of German tanks to Ukraine

Germany will allow German-made tanks to be sent to Ukraine but only if the United States agrees to send its own tanks before the Germans send theirs. Ukraine has pleaded for heavy battle tanks.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stressed the condition about U.S. tanks several times in recent days behind closed doors, the German government source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230119001441/https://www.reuters.com/wor
ld/europe/berlin-sets-condition-us-exports-german-tanks-ukraine-source-2023-01-18/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 7:45 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

Berlin will allow exports of German tanks to Ukraine if U.S. sends its tanks -source
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-will-allow-exports-german-
tanks-ukraine-if-us-sends-its-tanks-source-2023-01-18/

Russian Soldiers Who Fled Front Lines Call Out Putin for Lying About War
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldiers-who-fled-front-lines-call-ou
t-putin-lying-about-war-1774839

Serbian President Vucic denounces Russian occupation of Crimea and Donbas
https://news.yahoo.com/serbian-president-vucic-denounces-russian-18310
0868.html
“We said from the beginning that we cannot support Russia's invasion of Ukraine,” Vucic said in an interview with Bloomberg on Jan. 18.
“For us Crimea is Ukraine, Donbass is Ukraine – it will remain so.”
Vucic suggested that the worst is yet to come in Russia's war against Ukraine. The president added that he hadn’t spoken with Putin for “many months.”
He stressed that his government doesn't always agree with Moscow’s foreign policy.
“We aren’t always happy with some of their positions,” the president added. ...
At the same time, Vucic said he was grateful to Russia for its support of Serbia regarding Kosovo, citing it as the reason why Serbia cannot support economic sanctions against Moscow.

It appears Sweden also wants to test their toys against Russian toys

Sweden to send infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-send-infantry-fighting-veh
icles-ukraine-2023-01-19/

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Russia is too chicken to directly nuke Ukraine

Have you been to Nagasaki? or maybe you went to vist or trip to the dome covers the top of a crater left by one of the blasts, on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands? have you talked with atomic veterans that were told to run out into sand burning by atomic fire in the Nevada Test Site?

I don't think its a matter of 'chicken'

Do you know what happens when one Nuke flies, do you not understand they all go in the air

maybe as crazy as Putin is he has a little sanity left

According to strategic military doctrines, full use and deployment of nuclear weapons are expected, of which shall ensure the mutually assured destruction of all parties involved.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

America does not support Ukraine.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I have never seen Ukrainian colors anywhere in my neighborhood. Not house flags or backpacks or purses or jackets or even modest window decals or bumper stickers (the cheapest form of "support"). Not back in February 2022, and not now.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

I don't think flags matter so much, if people remember how many waved Afghan flags during the Soviet invasion or how many people were flying the flag of South Vietnam....I know there was a famous photo with Reagan and jihads at the Whitehouse but outside tv speeches and political circles how many will truly wave those flags

its just another proxy war

It might not be Total but it is a way to damage and injure the Russian Army, hundreds of thousands of Russia causalities while hundreds of thousands of Ukraine people also die

Zelensky calls on the world to act fast against Russian attacks at WEF
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/zelensky-calls
-on-the-world-to-act-fast-against-russian-attacks-at-wef-123011900180_1.html

Canada announces it will donate 200 armoured vehicles to Ukraine
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-ukaine-armoured-personnel-carr
iers-donation-1.6717597

maybe nobody in the West likes that Bear growling, drinking vodka and living in the snow, its maybe like funding a wild fox and wolf pack to bite the ass of Bear but in reality nobody is truly going to replace their Flag with a flag of a Wolf or Fox

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 9:00 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

In a long and rambling post, I noticed this from Jayneztown:

Quote:
its just another proxy war

It might not be Total but it is a way to damage and injure the Russian Army, hundreds of thousands of Russia causalities while hundreds of thousands of Ukraine people also die

You are delusional, Jayneztown, with your "just another proxy war" explanation. The Russians have murdered 4 million Ukrainians in the past over political differences. The Russians would murder another 4 million in the present if the Ukrainians forget or misunderstand how Russians think about Ukrainians. (President Zelenskyy didn't believe Russia would attack. That was nearly a fatal case of amnesia for him.)

NATO will not do what Europe did when the Soviet Union existed. NATO will not let the Russians go unimpeded on another murder rampage across Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 1:16 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Putin ally: Russia’s defeat in Ukraine could trigger nuclear war
by Jared Gans - 01/19/23

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, warned on Thursday that a Russian defeat in Ukraine could cause a nuclear war to break out.

Medvedev said in a Telegram post that a nuclear power losing a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war, which he said was an “elementary” conclusion. Medvedev said nuclear powers have not lost major conflicts “on which their fate depends” before, but this should be “obvious.”

Putin has repeatedly threatened to use at least tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine as the conflict has dragged on much longer than experts think Putin intended.

Putin claimed in October that Russia would not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but President Biden cast doubt on that, questioning why he continually mentions Russia’s nuclear arsenal if he does not have any intention of using it.

Reuters reported that Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Medvedev’s comments do not mean that Russia is escalating the situation. He said his post is in line with Russian policy to use nuclear weapons after conventional ones have been used and the “very existence” of Russia is threatened.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/3819326-putin-ally-russias-de
feat-in-ukraine-could-trigger-nuclear-war/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 1:24 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost a year ago on February 24, Medvedev has repeatedly raised the threat of nuclear chaos and used insults to describe the West.

Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads while the United States has 5,428, China 350, France 290 and the United Kingdom 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

As president, Putin is Russia’s ultimate decision-maker on the use of nuclear weapons.

Washington has not detailed what it would do if Putin ordered what would be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since the United States unleashed the first atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

While NATO has conventional military superiority over Russia, when it comes to nuclear weapons, Russia has nuclear superiority over the alliance in Europe.

Putin casts Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West and has said that Moscow will use all available means to protect itself.

Since a grim New Year’s Eve message describing the West as Russia’s true enemy in the war on Ukraine, Putin has sent several signals that Moscow will not back down.

Putin said on Wednesday that Russia’s powerful military-industrial complex was ramping up production, and was one of the main reasons why his country would prevail in Ukraine.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/19/medvedev-warns-of-nuclear-war
-if-russia-defeated-in-ukraine

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 3:37 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Lavrov says Russia will "sober up" NATO and EU

Jan 19 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Moscow would do all it could to "sober up" the European Union and NATO, which he accused of setting out to weaken and defeat Russia.

His comments came on the same day that former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned NATO that a defeat for Russia in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war.

Nearly 11 months after invading Ukraine, Russia is increasingly presenting the war to its own people as an existential battle with the West. In televised comments, Lavrov said Moscow would set out to disabuse Western politicians of their "presumptuous" and "colonial" attitudes to Russia.

"I hope that the sobering up will come," Lavrov said. "We will do everything so that our colleagues from NATO and the European Union sober up as soon as possible."

"We have a common position on what goals need to be achieved and how to ensure that neither Russia nor Belarus is threatened by our neighbours - be it Ukraine or anyone else," Lavrov said in a statement after meeting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230119203215/https://www.reuters.com/wor
ld/europe/lavrov-says-russia-will-sober-up-nato-eu-2023-01-19/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 3:48 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost a year ago on February 24, Medvedev has repeatedly raised the threat of nuclear chaos and used insults to describe the West.

Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads while the United States has 5,428, China 350, France 290 and the United Kingdom 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

As president, Putin is Russia’s ultimate decision-maker on the use of nuclear weapons.

Washington has not detailed what it would do if Putin ordered what would be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since the United States unleashed the first atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

While NATO has conventional military superiority over Russia

HAHAHAHA!!!
*gasp!*
hahahahaha!

Your nuclear bogeyman depends on a counterfactual assumption.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 3:57 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

HAHAHAHA!!!
*gasp!*
hahahahaha!

Your nuclear bogeyman depends on a counterfactual assumption.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I assume you are certain Russia will win in Ukraine. If Putin was as certain as you are, Russian spokesmen would not keep mentioning using nukes to prevent losing.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 4:37 PM

I see that Second has had another unproductive day masturbating his fear boner to the fear porn.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 5:30 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I see that Second has had another unproductive day masturbating his fear boner to the fear porn.

All the Trumptards I know are fearful. They are scared of losing their jobs or blacks shooting them or inflation or paying taxes or illegal aliens on border or being caught cheating by their wives or the government taking away their guns or whatever. And so Trumptards think other people are fearful like they are. 6ix, get control of your cowardly soul.

For people who aren't chickens, there is Can Russia’s War in Ukraine End Without Nuclear Weapons?
https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/11/03/can-russia-s-war-in-ukraine-e
nd-without-nuclear-weapons-pub-88321

“For Putin, this war is a game of a chicken.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is failing. And as they continue to be pushed out of Ukrainian territory, there are enormous incentives for escalation. . . . It looks to me like Russian strategy is that they have acknowledged they can’t defeat Ukraine’s army, so they are looking to split off Western support and corrode the Ukrainian population’s willingness to continue to resist Russian occupation.

My expectation of what’s going to happen is that by next summer, Russia will have been pushed out of the entirety of the territory of Ukraine, including Crimea. It is so shocking how fundamentally bad the Russian military is at warfare. That’s going to give enormous incentives to escalation. So there will be a premium in the coming three months to signal very clearly and very concretely to the Russian government the consequences of crossing the nuclear threshold.

I don’t see meaningful military targets for nuclear use in Ukraine. There isn’t a port or an airfield or massing of large numbers of troops that would be a traditional battlefield nuclear target. President Vladimir Putin may be able to cover this humiliating defeat by launching a nuclear strike on Kyiv to affect regime change by killing the Ukrainian government.

. . . there may not be a meaningful military target, but I think the purpose would be to make Ukraine back off and at least divide the West—an attempt at psychological terror. If we’re going to have a strategy of least regret, it can’t be one that bets the farm on this being a bluff. This is very real.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 9:55 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

HAHAHAHA!!!
*gasp!*
hahahahaha!

Your nuclear bogeyman depends on a counterfactual assumption.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I assume you are certain Russia will win in Ukraine. If Putin was as certain as you are, Russian spokesmen would not keep mentioning using nukes to prevent losing.

Yeah, right.

Usually you have a three- word snippet to justify your misinterpretation. Now you don't even have that. Just blah blah blah...

Stop crapping up the board with bullshit.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Thursday, January 19, 2023 10:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I see that Second has had another unproductive day masturbating his fear boner to the fear porn.
All the Trumptards I know are fearful.

I'm not the one who sat here all day long crapping up this thread with nuclear fear porn while pretending to own a company.

Get fucked, idiot.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Friday, January 20, 2023 5:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

U.S. warms to helping Ukraine target Crimea

The Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin views as an integral part of his quest to restore past Russian glory.

Ukrainian officials fear their country cannot survive years of a stalemated conflict while Russia continues to pound cities and towns. So they see little choice but to target Crimea and put it in jeopardy, a senior U.S. official said, noting that the issue has come up at recent high-level meetings at the White House.

“We have in essence put limits on Ukraine, saying this war is going to be fought on your soil and not on Russian soil,” said Philip Breedlove, a retired four-star Air Force general who was NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. “To give Russia sanctuary from which to fight, without fear of reproach, is absolutely absurd. It makes no military sense.”

For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Now that line is starting to soften.

The Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations. In addition, fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed, U.S. officials and experts said — though they cautioned that the risk remained.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/us/politics/ukraine-crimea-military
.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, January 20, 2023 5:39 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Colonel Zhdanov says there is only one man in the world who knows when the war in Ukraine will end: President Joe Biden. He believes that the war will go on until the White House signs off on all of the additional military firepower Ukraine is requesting.

“President Biden has a detailed scenario of this war in the White House. The sooner we get weapons the sooner we finish the war, but it looks like the U.S. wants Russia to exhaust itself with all of its war efforts,” Zhdanov told The Daily Beast. “In Russia they now have a cult of death: on all levels, from propagandists to the Orthodox Patriarch, Russians are called to go and die in this war, as their grandfathers died in previous wars.”

According to the most recent polls by the Levada center, the number of Russians who believe the country “should definitely continue military actions in Ukraine” has dropped to 23 percent. And so, Putin is updating his rhetoric. He no longer talks about the “unity” of Ukrainian and Russian peoples. The Kremlin has given up on calling for Russians to die for the ancient Kievan Rus heritage. Instead, they are casting this war as a mighty battle against NATO.

On Saturday, his top adviser Nikolai Patrushev said: “The events in Ukraine are not a clash between Moscow and Kyiv; this is a military confrontation between NATO, and above all the United States and England, with Russia.”

Putin and Patrushev are both graduates of Soviet KGB schools. They have always seen the United States and its allies as enemies worth destroying at all costs.

Ukraine knows full well it is facing the wrath of that decade-old conflict with NATO.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-secret-attack-plan-would-be-ukrai
nian-nightmare

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, January 20, 2023 6:10 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

As U.S. and allies arm Ukraine, Russia warns that losing a conventional war "can trigger a nuclear war"

Updated on: January 19, 2023 / 3:08 PM

When asked whether Medvedev's eyebrow-raising statement represented an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine or Russia's broader standoff with the West, the Kremlin's top spokesman said Thursday that the remarks were in line with Russia's nuclear doctrine.

"There are no contradictions there," presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Striking an eerily similar note, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church professed in a Thursday sermon that "an attempt to destroy Russia would mean the end of the world." (and a Merry Christmas to you, too!)

"Today there are very big threats to the world, to our country, and to the whole human race, because some crazy people had the idea that the great Russian power, possessing powerful weapons, inhabited by very strong people… who have always come out victorious, that they can be defeated," said Patriarch Kirill, a staunch backer of all Kremlin policy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war-threat-us-nato
-weapons-tanks/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, January 20, 2023 8:36 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Ukraine’s Swedish-Made CV90 Fighting Vehicles Are Meant To Hunt Enemy Armor In The Woods

David Axe, Forbes Staff

Jan 19, 2023, 01:12pm EST

The Swedish government on Thursday announced it would donate to Ukraine up to 50 CV90 infantry fighting vehicles as well as some of Sweden’s Archer mobile howitzers.

It’s the latest in a flurry of arms packages from Ukraine’s NATO allies. Sweden along with Finland last year began the slow process of joining the transatlantic alliance.

The weapons Ukraine’s allies in recent months have pledged don’t include a lot of tanks—although that soon could change. But they do include a lot of heavily-armed infantry fighting vehicles that, while not tanks, still possess significant anti-armor capability.

The United States is sending to Ukraine an initial batch of 50 M-2 fighting vehicles that are battle-proven, long-range tank-killers. The Swedish CV90s, by contrast, are adept at destroying armored vehicles at close range—and especially in the woods.

The tracked, three-crew CV90, built by Swedish firms Hägglunds and Bofors, weighs up to 37 tons. In its standard version it carries up to eight infantry and packs a 40-millimeter autocannon in an armored turret. “It is one of Sweden's best combat vehicles,” Swedish energy and industry minister Ebba Busch stated.

The CV90 is popular in northern Europe. The Swedish army has 500 CV90s in several variants. The armies of Switzerland, Norway, The Netherlands, Finland, Estonia and Denmark also operate CV90s.

It’s not hard to see why. The CV90’s designers optimized the vehicle for operations in Scandinavia’s forests. It just so happens that eastern Ukraine, where much of the fighting is, also has lots of trees.

Consider the CV90’s main weapon—its 40-millimeter L/70 autocannon. The L/70 isn’t new. It first entered service, as an anti-aircraft gun, a few years after World War II. But it’s proved extremely durable and versatile. An L/70 can fire two-pound shells up to five rounds a second at a thousand-yard-a-second initial velocity.

That’s a lot of metal, moving really fast. Up close, the L/70 is like a chainsaw—especially when firing armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot, or APFSDS-T, rounds.

And that’s the key to the CV90’s anti-armor prowess. True, the CV90 doesn’t have a turret-mounted launcher for long-range anti-tank missiles like the American M-2 and Russian BMP fighting vehicles do. But it doesn’t need one while fighting on forested terrain.

Yes, the M-2 can fire a 50-pound TOW anti-tank missile out to a distance of two miles. But only under the right conditions. The missile requires a clear line of sight between the launcher and the target—both to allow the gunner to steer the missile via an unspooling wire and to prevent the missile from running into an obstacle and prematurely detonating.

The BMP-3’s 60-pound Kornet anti-tank missile travels even farther—up to five miles—but it’s a beam-riding weapon that also requires a clear line of sight for its guidance laser.

All that is to say, anti-tank missiles such as the TOW and Kornet don’t work very well in the woods, where obstructions abound. The L/70, by contrast, doesn’t mind the woods at all. Not when it’s spewing sabot rounds at a rate of several per second.

In 2011, Swedish army major Magnus Frykvall ran a simulation pitting a reinforced Swedish army battalion equipped with CV90s and Leopard 2 tanks against a Russian brigade with BMP-3 fighting vehicles and T-90 tanks.

The forested battleground was bad for tanks, and both sides lost 10 or a dozen Leopard 2s or T-90s. But as the two sides’ infantry fighting vehicles clashed in the woods, the CV90s proved vastly superior to the BMPs.

“The red side's IFVs had difficulty using their anti-tank missiles effectively, while the blue side's CV90’s 40-millimeter automatic cannon with APFSDS-T ammunition is highly efficient in this terrain,” Frykvall wrote. The Swedish force wrote off 48 CV90s. But the Russian force lost a staggering 81 BMPs.

The implication is clear. To make best use of its ex-Swedish CV90s, the Ukrainian army should deploy them in the east, where they can hunt Russian vehicles in the woods.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/01/19/ukraines-swedish-made
-cv90-fighting-vehicles-are-meant-to-hunt-enemy-armor-in-the-woods/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, January 20, 2023 9:21 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The Liberation of Crimea Is a Must

By Tamila Tasheva, January 19, 2023 6:00 AM EST

Tasheva is the Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea

For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a Russian delegation is absent from Davos. After a year of indecision, the West has finally managed to wean itself off the allure of cheap Russian energy. Ukraine has shown the world that Russia’s military is incapable of even the most basic political and military strategy. Russian war crimes are laid bare and their campaign in Ukraine is inexcusable for any rational observer. Over the past year of civilian bloodshed and destroyed infrastructure, Russia’s reputation on the global stage has been irreparably damaged. While Ukraine will be rebuilt after the war is won, it is difficult to say when the world will trust the Kremlin again. Ukraine can and will continue to defend its sovereignty and territory from this unjust aggression for as long as is necessary, and will secure an independent and democratic future for all her peoples.

Nearly nine years after the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, the de facto consensus of Western observers was shaped around the idea of condemning the occupation, but avoiding meaningful efforts that would have real impact on Russia and would make it respect the principle of inviolability of borders. But after the recent successes of the Ukrainian army in liberating Kherson, some leading international media outlets started to discuss and publish perspectives on deoccupying Crimea, mostly arguing why Ukraine should stay away. But a free Crimea is just as inevitable as the repulsion of Russian troops from Kyiv. The defense of the capital was the first step, and the march will continue until all of Ukraine is free.

One of the most common arguments against Ukraine’s liberation of Crimea is a deeply planted (even when not acknowledged) belief that “Crimea has always been Russian” and that people living in the peninsula are Russians, wanting to be a part of Russia. This assumption ignores when and how the Russian population arrived in the region. Claims of a Russian Crimea ignore the rich history of the peninsula and its diversity which lasted for centuries until the Russian Empire first annexed and colonized it in the 18th century.

Since then, the number of Crimean Tatars, i.e. indigenous people that emerged and have been living on the peninsula for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of the Russians, started to decline due to colonization, repressions, and Stalin-era deportation. The Crimean Tatar people have only one homeland — Crimea, and there is no way these people can co-exist with Moscow, which for centuries has tried to wipe them out. In particular, after the deportation of 1944 was over, the thousands of now empty homes were filled instead with Russian colonizers.

Today, Moscow continues this policy. The self-governing and representative body Medzhlis of Crimean Tatars, is forbidden and its members persecuted. 109 out of 155 persons from Crimea imprisoned in the peninsula and in mainland Russia for political reasons are Crimean Tatars. Aside from the massive inflow of Russian servicemen and their families, occupying law enforcement and civil servants, according to various estimations, not less than 700,000 Russian civilians have been encouraged and supported in relocation to Crimea since the 2014 invasion. If Crimea can be considered as “Russian,” it is a result of the brutal violent colonization which lasted for centuries and is ongoing today.

We are reminded again and again that Crimea allegedly “wanted to join Russia” in 2014. However, what happened was a carefully prepared military and intelligence operation against a temporarily weakened Ukrainian state followed by a so-called “referendum” staged to legitimize this occupation in the eyes of international audiences, not unlike the recent referendums in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. The difference is that today, a strong Ukraine standing defiantly has forced the international community to open its eyes. In 2014 it was politically convenient to verbally condemn Putin’s actions without jeopardizing access to cheap gas.

Whilst Russia’s claim to Crimea hinges entirely on its imperial heritage, the long-lasting connections between Ukraine and Crimea go back to ancient history. The essential interlink between mainland Ukraine and Crimea in terms of geography, economy, logistics, and communication did not start in 1954 or 1991. It was that connection that informed Khrushchev’s decision to give Crimea to the then Ukrainian Soviet republic.

Before Russia’s occupation, Moscow claimed that its military and naval bases in Crimea are the guarantors of security in the region. Now these ships and equipment launch missiles over the whole territory of Ukraine, destroying civilian infrastructure and lives. What is now evident is that Russia’s occupation was not the will of people, but a strategic first step to prepare for a full-scale invasion in 2022.

The Ukrainian government is working on different practical aspects of the reintegration: law, re-establishment of public governance, judicial and law enforcement systems, revitalization of economy, infrastructure, environment, cultural heritage. Those efforts will allow us to ensure peaceful transition back under Ukrainian rule.

We will have to rebuild and make Crimea welcoming, diverse, and free land again.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230119122143/https://time.com/6248233/uk
raine-liberation-crimea/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 12:21 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

More hopium?

Boy, are YOU gonna look stupid!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 6:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

More hopium?

Boy, are YOU gonna look stupid!

No, it is you that looks like a moron in these threads comrade.

T

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 7:10 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
More hopium?

Boy, are YOU gonna look stupid!

Russians have a plan for victory based on misunderstanding America's loss in the Vietnam War:

Some of Putin’s top propaganda merchants realize nuclear threats are starting to ring hollow so they recommend slaughtering American servicemen in vast numbers instead.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, delivered a sermon marking Orthodox Epiphany in Moscow this week. He spoke to those who wish “to defeat Russia,” using the occasion to deliver a threat to the West: “We pray that the Lord admonish those madmen and help them to understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.”

Russia’s top propagandists, from former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev to state TV host Vladimir Solovyov, have been spreading the same not-so subtle nuclear threat far and wide—and yet, Putin’s mouthpieces are now worried that the “boy who cried wolf” routine is no longer being taken seriously by their target audience in the West. The dilemma manifested during a live broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov. After the lineup of talking heads took turns reiterating that Russia’s defeat would mean the end of the world, their agitprop was suddenly deflated by Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute of the Middle East.

“First of all, our main enemy is certainly the United States. What does the U.S. react to? They react to two things: the threat of physical annihilation and the liquidation of a certain number of military personnel. What we know based on wars in Vietnam and Korea is that several tens of thousands of annihilated American servicemen will cause the public opinion in the U.S. to be severely strained. I will repeat: not several thousand, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, but a certain number of tens of thousands. Who will liquidate them, where they will be liquidated and in what way is completely irrelevant, but this is one of the objectives if we want to influence the American leadership. We have absolutely nothing to lose.”

Head of RT Margarita Simonyan described the mood in the country: “In every home, in every kitchen and living room, in every courtyard all conversations are only about what will happen next, how it will all end... I don’t see any possible course of events except for the following: first of all, they will not stop. I’m not talking about Ukraine or Zelensky [She is talking about the West]... They will keep raising the stakes to the point that it will cause us pain. Safety of the territory of the Russian Federation will be at issue, not just the newly added territories. I don’t doubt that they will do all that they can so that we have to be concerned about the safety of Moscow, or at least seriously thinking about it... This will certainly happen!”

Simonyan concluded: “This can only end with an immediate threat that is voiced and presented, a threat of a nuclear confrontation.” She argued that the failure of the West to acquiesce to the list of demands presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December of 2021 led to the invasion of Ukraine. Simonyan said that after Putin’s ultimatum was made public, she told her friends: “Guys, there will be a big war, for sure. By the end of winter, something very big will happen!”

She claimed that this time, the refusal of the West to back out of its support of Ukraine would lead to even bigger consequences: “It’s true that no one will win in a nuclear war, but who needs the world if Russia isn’t in it? It was voiced out loud, it was said by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin!” The head of RT concluded: “I don’t see any other outcome... It will be a wrecking ball! It will be all-in! It will be like two planes, flying head-on into one another. Someone will have to back down and something tells me that it won’t be us.”

Andrey Kartapolov, the head of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, followed up Simonyan’s diatribe by boasting of the Motherland’s nuclear might and absurdly claiming that Russia defeated the West in World War II, causing NATO to be “afraid of WWIII.” Resorting to grotesque threats, Kartapolov addressed the West with a line from an old Soviet movie: “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt when we cut your throat. We’ll slice just once and you’re in heaven... Our victory will take place wherever the Russian soldier will stop—and wherever he stops, from there he will never leave.”

Not everyone in the studio went along with the notion that only bringing the planet to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe would solve Russia’s quagmire in Ukraine. Political scientist Sergey Mikheyev took exception to Simonyan’s scenario of a head-to-head confrontation, arguing that the art of diplomacy should not be reduced to that deplorable state. He argued for asymmetric measures to achieve Russia’s goals. Solovyov chimed in to soften the blow, telling Mikheyev: “Sergey Alexandrovich, we’re just irresponsible journalists. We can afford to do that.” Mikheyev retorted under his breath: “We aren’t even journalists.”

Americanist Dmitry Drobnitsky likewise derided Simonyan’s idea of a “head-to-head” confrontation accompanied by nuclear threats, arguing that this strategy would repulse Russia’s current sympathizers like India or China.

Even Satanovsky dismissed the simplistic thinking behind Simonyan’s narrative, telling her: “If the stakes are that we’ll stop existing, we can’t limit ourselves by thinking they’ve read what the president said and believed it—no, Margarita, they don’t believe it.” He argued that his idea of killing thousands of U.S. troops to avoid destroying all of America was much more doable. Not one pundit in the studio argued against Satanovsky’s macabre proposal. Drobnitsky had only one exception: “In our country, we embraced one American we wouldn’t want to kill: that would be Tucker Carlson.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-henchmen-threaten-tens-of-thousan
ds-of-dead-us-troops

Why are Russian adults either theatrically belligerent or silent? Because expressing doubt is illegal. A Russian teen faces years in jail over social media post criticizing Ukrainian war. She was arrested for terrorism charges after she made a post criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/01/21/russian-teen-terrorism-arr
est-social-media-post-ukraine-bell-dnt-tsr-vpx.cnn

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 8:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Russians have got their Reasons: Russian State TV Host Says There Was No Other Choice But to Invade Ukraine

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov suggested Russia had "no other choice" but to invade Ukraine in February 2022, and that doing so has "saved millions of lives."

The clip of Rossiya-1 host Solovyov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was shared on Twitter.

Solovyov, who's been nicknamed "Putin's voice" for his support of the Kremlin, made the remarks during an episode of his radio show, Full Contact (Polniy Kontakt).

"What would have happened if we hadn't stopped the Ukrainian Nazis on the counter? In a few hours they would have reached Russia's borders in Donbas, destroying the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, wiping it off the face of the earth with the artillery their NATO b****rds have provided them since 2014," he said.

"They would have brought death and destruction! On February 24 we had no other choices. We saved millions of lives of our compatriots, those who put their faith in us," he concluded.

The Kremlin propagandist said 50 countries are against Russia, and that they're united by "Satanism."

"No matter what they say, no matter how they try to find beautiful words, this candy has a rotten filling. The destiny of this country depends on you. If we don't win, not Russia but the whole world will disappear. Who needs the world if there is not Russia in it?" he concluded.

Solovyov finished his broadcast on state TV by saying: "We are fighting against Satanists. This is a holy war and we have to win."

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-vladimir-solovyov-ukraine-in
vasion-war-1775296

A modern day Goebbels, only Goebbels at least understood the art of subtlety.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 1:04 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

What you're doing, SECOND, is called "demonization".

Quote:
to portray (someone or something) as evil ...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demonize

Yanno, if you want to fight someone, you must know yourself, and know your enemy. (Sun Tzu, Art of War). You know neither. All you know is propaganda. So you're still gonna look stupid, bc you ARE stupid.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 1:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What you're doing, SECOND, is called "demonization".

Quote:
to portray (someone or something) as evil ...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demonize

Yanno, if you want to fight someone, you must know yourself, and know your enemy. (Sun Tzu, Art of War). You know neither. All you know is propaganda. So you're still gonna look stupid, bc you ARE stupid.

It was four months ago that you quoted an article predicting that the Russian General Staff has a plan. If that secret plan doesn't bring overwhelming success to Russia in the next six months to a year, Putin should fire his General Staff and devise his own Secret Plan. That is what Peter the Great would do.

Signym, here is where you quoted the article:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=11621
68#1162168

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 3:58 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

What has been made clear to me is that Russia doesn't have "a" plan, it has a lot of contingencies depending on circumstances.

Also, why the artificial deadline? There are several reasons for Russia to go slow:
Allow international support to catch up
Attrit Ukraine and NATO as much as possible
Avoid a "triggering" incident that will fire up the NATO nations

So that's just you, imposing a narrative over reality, again.

FWIW I have no idea what Russia's plans are. They may switch from a static front/war of attrition to "big arrow" offensives or anything in between. The General Staff doesn't consult with me.

Anyway, I got work to do.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 4:15 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

If you want to read something useful, try this

https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-the-world-blood

or at least this

https://sonar21.com/if-you-havent-read-big-serge-you-must/

They have maps and everything.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 6:07 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

What has been made clear to me is that Russia doesn't have "a" plan, it has a lot of contingencies depending on circumstances.

Also, why the artificial deadline? There are several reasons for Russia to go slow:
Allow international support to catch up
Attrit Ukraine and NATO as much as possible
Avoid a "triggering" incident that will fire up the NATO nations

So that's just you, imposing a narrative over reality, again.

FWIW I have no idea what Russia's plans are. They may switch from a static front/war of attrition to "big arrow" offensives or anything in between. The General Staff doesn't consult with me.

Anyway, I got work to do.

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 6:29 PM

Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 7:00 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

Plush, it's bullshit.

Russia took Soledar, is flanking Bakhmut and advancing towards Zaparozhia. I don't know why you trust liars, THUGR.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 7:36 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What has been made clear to me is that Russia doesn't have "a" plan, it has a lot of contingencies depending on circumstances.

Also, why the artificial deadline? There are several reasons for Russia to go slow:
Allow international support to catch up
Attrit Ukraine and NATO as much as possible
Avoid a "triggering" incident that will fire up the NATO nations

So that's just you, imposing a narrative over reality, again.

FWIW I have no idea what Russia's plans are. They may switch from a static front/war of attrition to "big arrow" offensives or anything in between. The General Staff doesn't consult with me.

Anyway, I got work to do.

Do you recall this from September 15, 2022?

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Russia is fighting with one hand tied behind it's back bc of the self-imposed limits of an SMO. Taking out a significant portion of Ukraine electrical power (and therefore water) should remind you that if Russia were to escalate to an "anti-terrorist" operation (a la Chechnya) it could destroy Ukraine in a couple of days.

First, take out ALL of the grid, substations included. Then, bomb Kiev, starting with it's government buildings, TV stations, internet and telephone relays etc. And then start bombing every known military command center, troop concentrations, border crossings where foreign weapons/troops arrive, railways etc. Russia has got a lot of missiles left. It would be remarkably easy.

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=11622
00#1162200

If Russia has this capability you wrote about, Signym, it should have used it back in September. But Russia didn't use it, which means either Russians are incompetent at war planning or Russians don't have the weapons you imagine.

I don't know who wins this war, but the longer the Russians delay "bombing every known military command center, troop concentrations, border crossings where foreign weapons/troops arrive, railways etc." means Russia is less likely to have a good future. If Russia wants a better future, Russia better hurry up and win. (Or Russia could evacuate everybody who wants to speak Russian as their first language, declare victory, and withdraw from the war. That could easily be done in two weeks.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 8:13 PM

K2PO

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Do you recall this from September 15, 2022?
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Russia is fighting with one hand tied behind it's back bc of the self-imposed limits of an SMO. Taking out a significant portion of Ukraine electrical power (and therefore water) should remind you that if Russia were to escalate to an "anti-terrorist" operation (a la Chechnya) it could destroy Ukraine in a couple of days.

First, take out ALL of the grid, substations included. Then, bomb Kiev, starting with it's government buildings, TV stations, internet and telephone relays etc. And then start bombing every known military command center, troop concentrations, border crossings where foreign weapons/troops arrive, railways etc. Russia has got a lot of missiles left. It would be remarkably easy.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=11622
00#1162200

Talk about hopium...

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 10:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
Plush, it's bullshit.

That's really not even the plus. That just about sums it up.

But yea, there was a time the economy in America was doing great and people could spend the emotional energy giving a shit for all the false narratives.

We ain't there now.

Fuck Ukriane. Fuck Russia. Nobody cares.

--------------------------------------------------

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Sunday, January 22, 2023 5:27 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

That's really not even the plus. That just about sums it up.

But yea, there was a time the economy in America was doing great and people could spend the emotional energy giving a shit for all the false narratives.

We ain't there now.

Fuck Ukriane. Fuck Russia. Nobody cares.

Russia has succeeded! But at what? This: The World Economy No Longer Needs Russia

With alternative sources in place, Putin’s attempt at blackmailing Europe on energy has failed.

January 19, 2023, 10:38 AM

By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Lester Crown professor in management practice and a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, and Steven Tian, the director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.

For much of the past year, and since his invasion of Ukraine last February, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been riding high on his supposed energy omnipotence, holding the global economy hostage to his whims. Since last summer, Putin has choked off natural gas supplies to Europe, hoping that Europeans, shivering and without heat during the winter, would turn on their leaders and make it politically infeasible to continue support for Ukraine.

The threat was potent: In 2021, a whopping 83 percent of Russian gas was exported to Europe. Russia’s total global exports of 7 million barrels of oil a day and 200 billion cubic meters (bcm) of piped gas a year accounted for about half of its federal revenue. Even more importantly, Russia’s commodities exports played a crucial role in global supply chains: Europe was reliant on Russia for 46 percent of its total gas supply, with comparable levels of dependence on other Russian products including metals and fertilizer.

Now, as we approach the one-year anniversary of Putin’s invasion, it is apparent that Russia has permanently forfeited its erstwhile economic might in the global marketplace.

Thanks to an unseasonably warm winter in Europe, Putin’s moment of maximum leverage has passed uneventfully, and, as we correctly forecast last October, the biggest victim of Putin’s gas gambit was Russia itself. Putin’s natural gas leverage is now nonexistent, as the world—and, most importantly, Europe—no longer needs Russian gas.

Far from freezing to death, Europe quickly secured alternative gas supplies by pivoting to global liquefied natural gas (LNG). This included an estimated 55 bcm from the United States, two-and-a-half times more than prewar U.S. exports of LNG to Europe. Coupled with increases in supply from renewable sources, nuclear, and, in the interim, coal, these alternative supplies have reduced Europe’s dependence on Russian gas to 9 percent of its total gas imports. In fact, Europe now purchases more LNG than it ever purchased Russian gas.

Furthermore, Europe’s unseasonably warm winter means that not only have the worst-case scenarios been avoided, but Europe’s full storage tanks have barely been drawn down and can carry over into next winter. In January, German storage tanks were a record 91 percent full, up from 54 percent last year, meaning that Europe will need to buy significantly less gas in 2023 than in 2022.

The implications are tremendous. Europe is now assured sufficient energy supply well into 2024 at a minimum, providing enough time for cheaper alternative energy supplies—both renewables and bridge fuels—to be fully onboarded and operating within Europe. This includes the completion of an additional 200 bcm/year in LNG export capacity by 2024—enough to fully and permanently replace Russia’s 200 bcm/year gas exports once and for all.

Furthermore, the days of globally expensive energy amid “Russia-driven supply squeezes” are over for good. In addition to Europe’s lower expected demand for LNG, China is pivoting away from global LNG in favor of domestic sources. Coupled with the rapidly increasing LNG supply, it is little surprise that the gas futures market is now pricing gas to be cheaper than prewar levels for years to come.

Putin, on the other hand, has zero remaining leverage and no way to replace his erstwhile primary customer; he is finding out the hard way that it is much easier for consumers to replace unreliable commodity suppliers than it is for suppliers to find new markets. Already, Putin is drawing practically no profit from gas sales, as his prior 150 bcm sales of piped gas to Europe have been replaced by a measly 16 bcm to China and pocket change in global LNG sales, barely enough to cover expenses. There are no markets for Putin to replace anything close to that 150 bcm shortfall: China lacks the necessary pipeline capacity to take any more for at least a decade and prefers domestic and diversified sources of energy anyhow, while Russia’s laggard technology makes it impossible to scale LNG exports beyond a slow trickle.

Putin’s oil leverage is likewise diminishing. Gone are the days when fear of Putin taking Russian oil supplies off the market caused oil prices to skyrocket by 40 percent over two weeks. In fact, when—in response to last month’s rollout of the G-7 oil price cap, which we helped develop—Putin announced a ban, from Feb. 1, on oil exports to countries that accepted the price cap, oil prices actually went down.

The Kremlin’s ability to wage war is already constrained, but the worst is yet to come.

Why? Because it is now apparent that the world no longer depends on Putin’s oil. The oil market is turning to favor buyers, not sellers, amid increasing supply—more than enough to compensate for possible drops in Russian crude production. (In December, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Russian media that the government was prepared to cut crude production by up to 700,000 barrels in 2023.) Oil prices are lower now than before the war, and in the second half of 2022 alone, there was a surge of supply by 4 million barrels a day from producers such as the United States, Venezuela, Canada, and Brazil. With even more new supply expected this year, any lost Russian crude will be seamlessly and easily replaced within weeks. And this time, Putin cannot coerce Saudi Arabia to ride to the rescue by drastically cutting OPEC+ production quotas as it did last October. That’s because the United States is now pausing crucial Saudi arms and technology transfers amid heightened international scrutiny of OPEC+’s significant surplus unused capacity.

Putin’s leverage has also evaporated because the G-7 price cap gives him a lose-lose choice, which erodes Russia’s energy position no matter what he does. China and India, without explicitly participating in the cap, are leveraging it to drive a hard bargain with Russia, with discounts of up to 50 percent, so even though India is buying 33 times more Russian oil than it was a year ago, Russia is not making much profit, given its $44 break-even cost of production on top of costlier transportation. But if Putin cuts production even more, as he has threatened to do, he will be forfeiting all-important oil market share, long a Putin obsession, amid an increasingly oversupplied oil market and further cutting into his own revenue when he is already starved for cash.

Even Putin’s other commodities cards are all used up. His gambit to weaponize food abjectly collapsed when even his nominal allies turned on him. And in certain metals markets where Russia historically dominated, such as nickel, palladium, and titanium, blackmail-fearing buyers combined with higher prices have expedited reshoring and reinvigorated dormant public and private investment in critical mineral supply chain and mining projects. These are mostly in North and South America and Africa, home to many undertapped mineral reserves. In fact, in several crucial metals markets, such as cobalt and nickel, the combined output of new mines to be opened in the next two years adds up to more than enough supply to replace Russian metals within global supply chains permanently.

Putin’s failed economic gambits are yet another set of miscalculations to add to an increasingly long list, from his underestimation of the people of Ukraine to his underestimation of the collective unity and willpower of the West.

Of course, Putin’s failed economic and energy warfare has not been without consequence. The spillovers have impacted many lives, transformed supply chains, changed trade flows, and consumers still feel the pinch of higher prices as the newfound lower prices take some time to work through the economy.

But what matters is that the end is in sight. Never again will Putin be in a position to cause such chaos and disturbance in the global economy, because he has permanently weakened Russia’s most powerful hand—its energy and commodities might—beyond repair. The war on the battlefield is still being fought, but on the economic front at least, victory is in sight.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown professor in management practice and a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management. Twitter: @jeffsonnenfeld

Steven Tian is the director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/19/russia-ukraine-economy-europe-ene
rgy/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, January 22, 2023 5:50 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

European leadership on Ukraine comes from smaller nations

“If all other countries had contributed in the same way as Denmark, the Ukrainians would be in a much better position right now,” Danish Defense Minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen boasted in regard to his country’s astounding disclosure that it was donating its entire stock of 19 CAESAR 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine.

The Danish contribution of a French-made weapon, one Ukrainian soldiers have classed as an artillery prize on the battlefield, was announced Thursday, on the eve of the Ramstein meeting. Ellemann-Jensen’s remark, one European diplomat told Yahoo News, was not an idle one. For months, smaller, less wealthy countries, particularly those geographically closer to Russia, have been trying to persuade, cajole or shame their bigger, wealthier allies, particularly those at a safe distance from Russia, into doing more for Ukraine. (To put Copenhagen’s commitment in perspective, France, a country with 11 times the population of Denmark and which manufactures the howitzers, has sent only 18 CAESARs to Ukraine.)

“We hear about how difficult it is for some of our allies to source ammunition or deplete their stocks of certain platforms to help Ukraine,” the European diplomat said. “Well, some of us are emptying our arsenals entirely, leaving us far more vulnerable to a Russian attack.”

Indeed, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas tweeted yesterday that her Baltic nation, with a population of just 1.3 million and a shared 183-mile border with Russia, was now donating more than 1% of its gross national product to Kyiv. Estonia's latest security assistance package, according to Kaimo Kuusk, Estonia’s ambassador to Kyiv, includes all of the Estonia armed forces’ FH70 towed howitzers.

More at https://news.yahoo.com/how-germanys-doctor-no-disrupted-allied-unity-o
n-tanks-for-ukraine-223212660.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, January 22, 2023 8:36 AM