Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

[Hydra009]

USA vetoes G7 proposal to combat Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers

Another data point consistent with the prevailing view of Trump, unfortunately.

the US pushed to remove the word "sanctions" as well as wording citing Russia's "ability to maintain its war" in Ukraine by replacing it with "earn revenue".

So euphemistic!  I'm surprised he still refers to it as a war and not a "special military operation".

[Hydra009]

Elon Musk threatens to turn off Starlink

Whoops, wrong link.  That one is from last month where he denied it.

Elon Musk threatens to turn off Starlink

There we go, that one's from today.  That first link is truly r/agedlikemilk stuff.

Apparently, it's related to some weird feud with Poland:

Poland's minister of foreign affairs wrote on X: "Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year.
"The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider, we will be forced to look for other suppliers."

He's right, why should Poland buy American if some unstable wanker at the top can pull the plug at any time and leave them twisting in the wind?  I don't think Trump and Musk thought this spat with Ukraine all the way through, assuming they put any thought to it at all.

It's looking more and more like Poland's decision to buy heavily from South Korea was a good call.  At least they're a reliable ally.

[Hydra009]

Australia considering joining "coalition of the willing" (mostly European coalition in support of Ukraine, including sending peacekeepers)

Australia is among an number of allies ill-at-ease regarding the unreliability of the US due to Trump's unpredictability

There is no comfort in stale concepts of mateship and shared values when the White House is occupied by a transactional president who drops allies.

Even before this, the issue of Australia's perceived over-reliance on the US was a source of worry.  Well, that worry has only deepened.

Trump has signalled to Russia President Vladimir Putin that he wants him back in the G8 club of global powers. He will only help Ukraine if it hands over critical minerals. He froze European leaders out of a summit with Russia last weekend. His vice president, J.D. Vance, lectured Europe on free speech in a Valentine's Day address in Munich that played down the threats from Russia and China.

The implications are severe. This America is not our friend. It is a geopolitical business partner, on our side unless or until it finds a better deal.

For Australia, the logical choice is to strengthen ties with other western powers to hedge against being treated like Zelenskyy by the US, especially during a major crisis.

[Unbeliever]

Is AmeriKKKa a pariah nation yet?

[Hydra009]

Definitely one traitor revealed in that exchange...

And this sort of thing should be seen more by people who think that US's erratic foreign policy shift is somehow Zelenskyy's fault or that Zelenskyy can somehow salvage the situation.  Nothing he can do or say will ever be enough to truly change their minds.  These people have made their decision between Russia and Ukraine and it ain't Ukraine.

[Unbeliever]

So, is Ukraine officially an enemy of the USA now!?

[Hydra009]

So, is Ukraine officially an enemy of the USA now!?

Not officially, but Musk sure seems to be acting as Trump's attack dog online, and it's seems  suspiciously targeted at Ukrainians.  He's even blaming his own Twitter network problems on Ukraine.  For all I know, he fired half the people in charge of it and that's the reason.  Or one of the many people he's feuded with over the past two months or just people who don't like him, which is a very, very large number of people.  Always drama with this guy.

[Hydra009]

Echoing other statements by various countries, Germany also fears an erratic US leadership could pull the plug on the F-35s Germany has on order

This is a $9 billion usd order for 35 F-35s, and it could go down the tubes.  That stunt with Zelenskyy has caused serious harm to the US's reputation and ultimately, maybe its ability to sell arms.

I wanna walk you guys through a thought experiment.  Let's say that you're President and let's say that you're the most amoral person to ever walk the planet.  You don't care about either side of the Ukraine war, all you care about is money.

Well, that war is the perfect opportunity to showcase American hardware - Patriots, HIMARS, F-16s, Abrams, Bradleys, etc.  You send just a few tanks, and there's wall-to-wall coverage of them.  Hell, the Ukrainians will make an advent calendar out of 'em.  Lots of footage of the Ukrainians marveling at their capabilities, armor, and ability to save their crew even when they're destroyed.  Naturally, orders come pouring in.  Maybe not orders for the obsolete stuff that the Ukrainians are using, but you could definitely sell some Patriots, HIMARS, F-35s, etc.  Poland comes readily to mind, with a $10 billion contract for HIMARS.

From there, you can make a choice.

1) Embrace the "arsenal of democracy" role and pump out military hardware for Western countries, including Ukraine, and make fat stacks for decades and sleep soundly on beds made of money, knowing that you're protecting both children and your own bottom line.  A rare win-win.

---OR---

2) Betray your ally and have the rest of your allies worry, possibly cancelling ongoing orders, and definitely driving away lots of future business.  I mean, why should Poland buy HIMARS launchers if the US is going to pull the rug out from under them?  Same with the F-35s.  They could just buy from European defense companies instead, which by the way, are going gangbusters right now at your expense.  Defense partnerships are based on trust.  Business dealings are based on trust.  If no one trusts you, what do you do?  Bite the bullet and accept a worse bottom line?  Sell to Russia?  Cause Russia is literally bartering with Pakistan right now.  This doesn't exactly scream lucrative market.

Even someone who doesn't care about Ukraine at all would still help them out with weapons now, if for no other reason than to boost arms exports with other allies.  And I haven't even mentioned all sorts of ways you can make money with loans to Ukraine and interest from frozen Russian funds.  And you better believe having a grateful ally and trade partner after the war is a huge long-term windfall.

So...if morality isn't motivating this decision and greed obviously isn't motivating this decision, then what is?

[Unbeliever]

I hope that's a rhetorical question, because I certainly have no answer.

[the_antithesis]

That is an amusing tweet, muskrat.

You don't even know the meaning of the word loyalty.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

♫Muskrat Love♫ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYV_7a0FQs&pp=ygUMbXVza3JhdCBsb3Zl

[the_antithesis]

I am so trying to make muskrat happen.

[Hydra009]

Experts say that Twitter outage unlikely to be caused by Ukraine, probably it was just unsecured servers that were easy targets (they've since been secured)

I feel like I have to point this out because some household name points the finger - without supporting evidence - and people make up their minds based on the credibility of the person and not how substantiated the claim is.  And then it just kinda lingers without resolution.  So here's your resolution: Musk is famous for wild accusations without substantiation from cave pedos to neonazi talking points on Twitter and now to stuff about Ukraine and shouldn't be believed at all unless he substantiates what he's talking about.

[Hydra009]

There of course has been a lot of important news about Ukraine lately.  I've seen flurries of reports, some contradictory or speculative, and I've been reluctant to post this stuff until I'm relatively certain how things shake out.  I don't want to post something one day and then have to tell you guys that it's not the case the next day.

Apparently the peace talks in Saudi Arabia between the US and Ukraine were successful, but of course, these are not the parties at war.  Ukraine agrees to a 30-day ceasefire IF - and this is a big if - Russia also ceases fire.  The proposal has been passed on to Russia and afaik, we await an answer.

But I note that in the past few days, Russia has significantly escalated its missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and Russian state media has reportedly been happy with Trump and emboldened to no longer need to seek a ceasefire - if they can divorce Ukraine from its allies, they can simply overrun the country eventually.  Abruptly stopping the war would be a significant deviation from Putin's maximalist aims that he has consistently pushed for this entire time.  Also, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Russia has a tendency to break ceasefire agreements.  So color me skeptical.

But we all know by now that Russian losses are extremely high, equipment losses are heavy - so heavy that that armored vehicles are often being reserved more as fire support than frontline attackers, with infantry on foot or in civilian vehicles duking it out instead, along with donkeys and horses sometimes being deployed.  Russia is losing Toretsk even as it is gaining ground in Krusk and the rest of the frontlines are extremely static, even more static than they have been previously.  If Russia could take more territory, it would.

But the BIG news is that Ukraine is once again receiving US aid.  Not entirely clear on how much, considering that US aid shipments dropped off quite a bit from their peak at the end of Biden's Presidency, they were so low that there was speculation that Trump had cancelled them entirely and this was before that blow-up with Zelenskyy, mind you.  All I know for now is that the US, Ukraine, and Poland have all said that aid has resumed.

Ukraine is also once again receiving US intelligence, including US corporations like Maxar, which previously were forced to deny satellite data to Ukraine on Trump's orders.  As far as intelligence goes, France once again sent its AWACS over the Black Sea to provide all sorts of data to Ukraine, and France's intelligence to Ukraine has never been interrupted, unlike US and somewhat also UK intelligence.

So all in all, not a bad development for Ukraine.  Though I think I can safely say that although Ukrainians are grateful for the resumption of aid, they're still quite wary about the erratic nature of US foreign policy and have deep misgivings about Trump in particular.  "Once bitten, twice shy" sort of thing.  I don't blame them one bit.

[Hydra009]

About the proposed 30-day ceasefire, it also includes humanitarian steps like the return of PoWs, civilians taken prisoner, and abducted Ukrainian children to be returned.

We will see if Russia is serious about peace if it does either of the last two things.  They don't even called them abducted, but "evacuated" and Putin recently congratulated a mother whose son died in the war but she got a Ukrainian child.  It's presented as a "happy" story only because the Ukrainian's POV was not taken into account.

My educated guess is that Russia will try to respond with an unworkable counterproposal in order to maintain the illusion that they want peace but those dastardly Ukrainians don't and they're to blame for any ongoing fighting.

Putin is likely to insist on Ukraine relinquishing its territorial claims on Crimea and Donbas at the least, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson at the most.  Reminder that these regions have been formally annexed by Russia despite Russia not actually controlling all of them.  That's in the Russian constitution.  It would be strange if not impossible for Putin to undo that.  Also, Putin is a big fan of Soviet style negotiations where you ask for anything and everything and then wait for the West to offer concessions and those tactics definitely worked extremely well before in the earlier meeting with US negotiators.

We'll not only see who wants peace but who is favored depending on if Ukraine is pressured to give up its territory or if Russia is pressured to give up its ill-gotten gains.