Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

[Hydra009]

At about 11:50, you see some of the assassination attempt footage.

[Unbeliever]

"Unalived his attacker" - I like that terminology.

[Hydra009]

"Unalived his attacker" - I like that terminology.

Youtube is pretty crazy with censorship, so there are lots of euphemisms.  It can make for strange sentences.

[Hydra009]

Republicans gearing up for expanding Russia sanctions

The punishments would include a 500% tariff on imports from countries that buy Russian oil, petroleum products, natural gas or uranium, according to a draft of the bill seen by Bloomberg News. Other sanctions would also prohibit US citizens from buying Russian sovereign debt, according to the draft.

Good.  I look forward to this passing.  How could it not pass with 73 Senators on board?  Also, Graham says he has enough support in the House as well.

Russia is obviously the main driver of the war it started and also has an increasingly vulnerable economy, requiring China and India and to some degree, also Iran and North Korea, to prop it up.  Even just threatening expanding sanctions on Russia or threatening sanctions on Russia's trading partners is enough to cause serious problems for Putin's war effort.

In theory, this bill could cause other countries to avoid buying sanctioned Russian products entirely - shutting off Russia's main revenue stream, which would be catastrophic for Russia's economy and therefore undermine Putin's war effort.

Graham says that when faced with the prospect of economic ruin or peace talks, Putin would choose peace talks before economic ruin.  But why not both?  If economic ruin were to happen first, it would make peace talks much, much easier and with an assured amount of haste and sincerity, something Putin has yet to bring to any discussion of peace.

[Unbeliever]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Hydra009]

Trump says that Russia will have to give up all Ukrainian land

KRISTEN WELKER:

So you think you're close to a deal? What will Russia have to give up? Because Ukraine, there's been discussions they will have to give up some of the land that Russia's illegally claimed.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

Russia will have to give up all of Ukraine. Because that's what they want.

KRISTEN WELKER:

All of Ukraine? Meaning they wouldn't keep any of the land that they have claimed?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

No, no. Russia would have to give up all of Ukraine. Because what Russia wants is all of Ukraine. And if I didn't get involved, they would be fighting right now for all of Ukraine. Russia doesn't want the strip that they have now; Russia wants all of Ukraine. And if it weren't me, they would keep going.

The worm turns.  Very unexpected news.  We'll of course have to wait and see if words translate into actions, but I'm now cautiously optimistic that Trump is against Putin's land grab strategy.

[Unbeliever]

I never believe anything ArmagedDonald says.

[Hydra009]

It's a shift in rhetoric and a possibly important, though who knows where we'll be two months from now.

There has been some walk to accompany the talk, like sending F-16 spare parts to Ukraine and approving some new military aid to Ukraine

[Hydra009]

That said, there is a remarkable amount of confusion in this regime:

Order by Hegseth to cancel Ukraine weapons caught White House off guard

The cancelations came after Trump wrapped up a January 30 Oval Office meeting about Ukraine that included Hegseth and other top national security officials, according to three sources familiar with the situation. During the meeting, the idea of stopping Ukraine aid came up, said two people with knowledge of the meeting, but the president issued no instruction to stop aid to Ukraine.

The president was unaware of Hegseth's order, as were other top national security officials in the meeting, according to two sources briefed on the private White House discussions and another with direct knowledge of the matter.

The story of how flights were canceled, detailed by Reuters for the first time, points to an at-times haphazard policy-making process within the Trump administration and a command structure that is unclear even to its own ranking members.

The multiday pause of the flights, confirmed by five people with knowledge of it, also shows confusion in how the administration has created and implemented national security policy. At the Pentagon, the disarray is an open secret, with many current and former officials saying the department is plagued by internal disagreements on foreign policy, deep-seated grudges, and inexperienced staff.

Malice?  Incompetence?  A little of both?  Either way, it hurt our ally - it hurt civilians - and scared our other allies.  Not the kind of thing you can just blame on the dog and expect everyone to forget.  Turning over a new leaf is possible and doing better in the future is good, but jeez, if he ever needed a reason to let Hegseth go, this is a golden opportunity.

[Hydra009]

In less US-centric and more Ukraine-centric news, Ukraine shot down two Russian jets with their naval drones.

Russia is now out of options to effectively counter Ukrainian naval drones.  When the naval drones were just fireships that exploded on impact, Russia could deploy helicopters to rake the drones with machine gun fire from a position of safety.  Then one day, the drones unexpectedly deployed machine guns and shot up the helicopters, a disastrous battle for Russia and effectively kept helicopters at bay.  As a last resort, the Russians used jets on the naval drones until they too were attacked by drone-mounted AA.  At this point, there's nothing they can do.  Ships are vulnerable to drones.  Helicopters are vulnerable to drones.  Jets are vulnerable to drones.  And Ukraine can afford to lose dozens of drones to take down any of the above.  Ultimately, Russia will have no choice but to abandon the sea to Ukrainian control, which will put an end to sea-based attacks on Ukraine and cause all sorts of logistics headaches for Russia.  And you better believe China is jotting down notes considering that naval power factors heavily in its own hypothetical matchup with Taiwan.

[Unbeliever]

In other war-related news, India has fired missiles into Pakistan:
By Associated Press

Tensions escalate after India fires missiles into Pakistan-controlled territory

The missiles struck locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in the country's eastern Punjab province. One hit a mosque in the city of Bahawalpur in Punjab, where a child was killed and a woman and man were injured.

This just happened within the past few hours. I sure hope we're not about to have another major conflict, we've got too many as it is!

[Hydra009]

Yeah, I read about that too.  India said the strikes were focused and "non-escalatory" and Pakistan vowed reprisal (guess they didn't get the memo), albeit with some delay.

I admittedly don't know much about this conflict, but it struck me as strange that India said the sites they bombed in Pakistan were militant training camps yet Pakistan had encouraged journalists to visit there - presumably to discredit India's claim.  Pakistan also claims civilian deaths/injuries, which would also seem to be incongruous with India's claims.  These two accounts contrast sharply and imho, India had better put forward a hell of a case to justify these escalatory "non-escalatory" attacks.

[Hydra009]

I've been looking at recent war footage and it still astounds me how carelessly Russians treat UXOs.

There's a video of a landed Ukrainian drone (landed intentionally or jammed, I don't know) not far from a Russian dugout and a Russian soldier retrieves it and brings it inside like it's an amazon package or something.  BOOM.  Darwin award.

Then there's an already wounded Russian soldier in the field picking up a downed Ukrainian drone and tossing it as hard as he can - the drone explodes on impact and even though he's not very close to the blast, it's still game over.  Not sure if that blast added to his already serious wounds or not, either way that was pretty stupid.

And finally, several Russian soldiers pick up and move anti-tank mines, which is nothing new, both sides have been doing this for years.  The Ukrainians had a viral video of a civilian smoking a cigarette while successfully moving an antitank mine.  The difference is that he was fairly careful about it and aside from the cameraman getting a bit too close, did it away from others.

In contrast, one of the Russian soldiers inexplicably decided to drag several antitank mines behind him from some sort of tether or something, clanging them against each other and the ground as he walked towards his fellows.  BOOOOM.  Multiple Darwin Awards.

I know training isn't the Russians' strong suit, but simply training them not to touch the explodey stuff would do wonders for their battlefield losses.  The orc allegations are kind of hard to beat when they're often literally like Wormtongue hovering over some gunpowder with a lit candle:

[Hydra009]

The Russians are upset about:

A) living under a dictatorship where people are imprisoned or killed if they criticize the dictator
B) feeding their loved ones to the Ukrainian woodchipper
C) suffering horrible economic problems due to A & B
D) some Western public official did/said something "offensive" that ultimately hurt no one

If you said D, congratulations.  Naturally, they threatened him with bodily harm.  A completely proportionate response to a joke.

The Czech official had this to say:

"For four years, the Russians have been bombarding Ukrainian cities with missiles and killing innocent people," Kopečný commented to TN.cz. "That doesn't bother them. But a pair of symbolic Ukrainian socks showing what it might look like if the same happened to their cities made them furious. I wish they had the same sensitivity toward the cities they're destroying themselves."

[Hydra009]

Russia celebrates its "victory" day in true tanky fasci...er...fashion

Ukrainian observers noted the absence of electric scooters and donkeys at the parade, which have become a familiar sight along the frontline.  There's a certain disconnect between the image Russia shows to itself and the world and the image it shows to Ukraine.

Speaking of duplicity, Putin once again violated his own ceasefire.  Trump is certainly right about Putin stringing him along.  I'd go so far to say that Putin is making a mockery of Trump's peace efforts to the whole world.

Unfortunately, he's not working alone.  Ukraine uncovered a spy network for Putin linked to the Hungarian government.

US warns of a potentially significant air attack against Ukraine