Is Putin emboldened by weak leadership and appeasement?

[Jeremy K]

Putin agreed to have talks with zelensky , hopefully Ukraine will tell certain parties to F off and do what's in the best interest of Ukraine instead of getting in the way of a pipeline to appease outside influence. 

[Northcountryman]

1 hour ago, left field said:

Putin wasn't waiting for Biden, he is taking advantage of the worldwide chaos from the pandemic and the political nonsense of the last few years here.

Yeah he was- if that were true, he would've went on the offensive in '20.

[Robhuntandfish]

Nearly every external military assessment has been that Ukraine has outpunted their coverage so far. Nobody expects Ukraine to win, but the deterrence is that Russia over-estimated their ease of progress. So much so that Russia has now offered to meet in Minsk with the Ukrainian leadership before encircling Kyiv - Russia could easily overrun as they have only placed into force a small percentage of soliders from the 150K. The problem is, Ukraine shoots back, when they expected none, and it's giving Russia pause against original plans.
Why? Because Russia wanted to demonstrate precision warfare - similar to what US can do. They haven't been able to demonstrate it due to resistance and because, well, they can't. Sending in more troops means brute force and less precision with high risk of human atrocities and higher cost to Russia on various fronts. So far, Russia has demonstrated weakness in logistics, strategy, and capabilities. It's all on display and if anything, the NATO powers are learning from it. Obviously Russia is a force with nuclear capabilities, but its conventional means are comparatively weak. All it has is a hammer - trains and truckload of soldiers that just won't stop being delivered. That has been their entire history of capabilities - humans, and more of them, after the ones in front get terminated or suffer casualties.
They (Ukraine) have done much better than expected in this event. 
 

I think part of the change in expectation was also that Russia came in from 4 different fronts and with more force immediately than thought. If their coverage was to last 48 hours then they were doomed from the start.

Its too bad these folks just didn't stand a great chance from the start. We certainly could've gave them more hardware but dunno if the end result would be the same. I think they are most like countries and some people will be steadfast til the end and others won't. Either way lots of people will suffer at the hand of yet another tyrant in the world

Worked with a few Ukrainian folks at the casino years ago. And one young guy lived to fish. I gave him some spots to go and he and I hit it off and talked fishing every day. Was thinking how he must be handling this now.

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[Jeremy K]

Can we expect to start receiving refugees immediately or no because they can spot government BS from a mile away and don't guarantee future votes.

[Buckmaster7600]

The worst part about it for me is how many Americans would just let it happen here, including many on this site.

We are who we are as a world power because we’ve got a pretty good reputation of being well armed and have some sand. Problem is I don’t think we stand up to our reputation anymore….


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[Buckmaster7600]

Can we expect to start receiving refugees immediately or no because they can spot government BS from a mile away and don't guarantee future votes.

Absolutely not, the left won’t do anything for them. If they were a guaranteed vote they’d already be here!


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[Merlot]

1 minute ago, Jeremy K said:

Can we expect to start receiving refugees immediately or no because they can spot government BS from a mile away and don't guarantee future votes.

The Podium princess, Peppermint Patty, will set us straight at the next press briefing...good grief...

[left field]

15 minutes ago, Northcountryman said:

Yeah he was- if that were true, he would've went on the offensive in '20.

In 2020, Russia was being devastated with Covid. Bad time to put soldiers together.

[phade]

37 minutes ago, Jeremy K said:

They're fighting against 2 percent of the Russian army . 

Yeah, and their flag is still flying. They're doing better than expected. They didn't just roll over and take it dry. Let's remember they are not the one causing this. It is a force acting upon them. Right is right in any language.

[Northcountryman]

2 minutes ago, left field said:

In 2020, Russia was being devastated with Covid. Bad time to put soldiers together.

Putin could care less about the lives of his soldiers; would have been the perfect time IMHO. 

[Jeremy K]

3 minutes ago, phade said:

Yeah, and their flag is still flying. They're doing better than expected. They didn't just roll over and take it dry. Let's remember they are not the one causing this. It is a force acting upon them. Right is right in any language.

I agree they are proud people and will stand and fight.

[left field]

4 minutes ago, Northcountryman said:

Putin could care less about the lives of his soldiers; would have been the perfect time IMHO. 

To invade while the world was in the middle of covid would literally invoke the ire of every major country and start a full-scale world war. It would have been easy to rally the troops against Russia and Putin at that time. He also had an "ally" in the WH and why screw with that?

Better to wait until the world is in recovery with everyone wanting to get back to normal life. Now we have a good portion of the country and media say, "Yeah, Putin" and essentially "Fuck Ukraine". 

@phade This is an interesting take on the Russian attack and Ukrainian defense.

 

[steve863]

46 minutes ago, Northcountryman said:

Yeah he was- if that were true, he would've went on the offensive in '20.

 

And you are absolutely sure that Putin would not have invaded if Trump was still president?  You are simply guessing at that.  There may have been a crapload of reasons why he chose to invade now that we don't know about, but of course you Trump apologists think that Trump is the saviour of the world on all matters.  And if Trump was still president and Putin did invade what would Trump have done that is any different than what the world is doing now with only sanctions?  He would have done absolutely NOTHING different.  You guys think that it would have been a good thing if Trump started WWIII over this just to show how tough he was?   Unfortunately the worlds hands are pretty much tied and other than sanctions there isn't much that can be done without this becoming a global war which no one wants.  I have NO doubt that Putin thinks that he is smarter than Trump and Biden put together and he probably thinks he is one up on the rest of the world as well.  Time will tell if his thinking is correct or not.

 

 

[phade]

8 minutes ago, left field said:

To invade while the world was in the middle of covid would literally invoke the ire of every major country and start a full-scale world war. It would have been easy to rally the troops against Russia and Putin at that time. He also had an "ally" in the WH and why screw with that?

Better to wait until the world is in recovery with everyone wanting to get back to normal life. Now we have a good portion of the country and media say, "Yeah, Putin" and essentially "Fuck Ukraine". 

@phade This is an interesting take on the Russian attack and Ukrainian defense.

 

It's an interesting series of events. NATO just kicked into high gear calling in their Response Force for the first time, ever. 

Russia will be Russia I think is what we've learned.

Unrelated, one of my managers that I hired into my group, was an intelligence academy graduate and worked in logistics for special forces - he was active situation lead for incoming material from the OBL raid where he was killed. We learn and know some of the weirdest stuff as a country - OBL was a DIEHARD South Park fan. His room was filled with taped recordings of nearly every episode. Films of him watching it in his bedroom were found where he was belly laughing at episodes. Who would have thought that?

[Robhuntandfish]

I agree they are proud people and will stand and fight.

Hopefully they give the Russians enough of a taste of their grit that they turn tail. Def a proud and strong people

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[phade]

Also, Putin wears Sitka gear when doing outdoors stuff.

[Jeremy K]

1 minute ago, phade said:

Also, Putin wears Sitka gear when doing outdoors stuff.

I'm guessing Sitka won't use those pics for next year's  catalog. 

[Robhuntandfish]

 
And you are absolutely sure that Putin would not have invaded if Trump was still president?  You are simply guessing at that.  There may have been a crapload of reasons why he chose to invade now that we don't know about, but of course you Trump apologists think that Trump is the saviour of the world on all matters.  And if Trump was still president and Putin did invade what would Trump have done that is any different than what the world is doing now with only sanctions?  He would have done absolutely NOTHING different.  You guys think that it would have been a good thing if Trump started WWIII over this just to show how tough he was?   Unfortunately the worlds hands are pretty much tied and other than sanctions there isn't much that can be done without this becoming a global war which no one wants.  I have NO doubt that Putin thinks that he is smarter than Trump and Biden put together and he probably thinks he is one up on the rest of the world as well.  Time will tell if his thinking is correct or not.
 
 

This prob was spurned on by the Afghanistan mess to start with. Which def would have went different. And that is from a guy who isn't a Trump fan.

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[DirtTime]

5 minutes ago, steve863 said:

 

And you are absolutely sure that Putin would not have invaded if Trump was still president?  You are simply guessing at that.  There may have been a crapload of reasons why he chose to invade now that we don't know about, but of course you Trump apologists think that Trump is the saviour of the world on all matters.  And if Trump was still president and Putin did invade what would Trump have done that is any different than what the world is doing now with only sanctions?  He would have done absolutely NOTHING different.  You guys think that it would have been a good thing if Trump started WWIII over this just to show how tough he was?   Unfortunately the worlds hands are pretty much tied and other than sanctions there isn't much that can be done without this becoming a global war which no one wants.  I have NO doubt that Putin thinks that he is smarter than Trump and Biden put together and he probably thinks he is one up on the rest of the world as well.  Time will tell if his thinking is correct or not.

 

 

I do not feel that way. Trump was a bafoon of a man, but he did a lot for the USA. A LOT! He bombed Russian soldiers in Syria as well as taking on their troops when Russia was warned to stop using chemical warfare and didn't listen. Trump also had China far more concerned with us then they are now, and even had that tiny little jackass in North Korea backing down. I'm no die hard Trump sack licker, but he was 1,000,000 times better then the over the top bleeding heart liberals running the show now.

[Jeremy K]

4 minutes ago, Robhuntandfish said:

Hopefully they give the Russians enough of a taste of their grit that they turn tail. Def a proud and strong people

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My guess is putin wants his pipeline and he wants fresh water for Crimea if this goes to the table.

[ApexerER]

24 minutes ago, steve863 said:

 

And you are absolutely sure that Putin would not have invaded if Trump was still president?  You are simply guessing at that.  There may have been a crapload of reasons why he chose to invade now that we don't know about, but of course you Trump apologists think that Trump is the saviour of the world on all matters.  And if Trump was still president and Putin did invade what would Trump have done that is any different than what the world is doing now with only sanctions?  He would have done absolutely NOTHING different.  You guys think that it would have been a good thing if Trump started WWIII over this just to show how tough he was?   Unfortunately the worlds hands are pretty much tied and other than sanctions there isn't much that can be done without this becoming a global war which no one wants.  I have NO doubt that Putin thinks that he is smarter than Trump and Biden put together and he probably thinks he is one up on the rest of the world as well.  Time will tell if his thinking is correct or not.

 

 

If Trump was still in office we would be producing even more oil today then we were at our peak. We would be an even bigger exporter than we were. There is no doubt that we would be supplying our allies with oil and natural gas as well as ourselves. We would be able to have sanctions that actually cut instead of the paper cut we (if that) gave him. How is this so hard for you people with blinders on to see????? 

Not to mention the horrible withdrawl from Afghanistan, hanging our allies out to dry hurting our NATO partners. 

 

Edited February 25, 2022 by ApexerER

[Northcountryman]

20 minutes ago, steve863 said:

And you are absolutely sure that Putin would not have invaded if Trump was still president? 

Of course not!! Anyone that would claim otherwise is blowing smoke!!

 

21 minutes ago, steve863 said:

You are simply guessing at that. 

Well... yes, but a fairly eductaed guess, I would say.  Cant the same thing be said about your position as well though, Steve?

22 minutes ago, steve863 said:

There may have been a crapload of reasons why he chose to invade now that we don't know about, but of course you Trump apologists think that Trump is the saviour of the world on all matters.

No need to be insulting- this is a very lively and useful debate- dont  ruin it with insults!!

23 minutes ago, steve863 said:

And if Trump was still president and Putin did invade what would Trump have done that is any different than what the world is doing now with only sanctions?  He would have done absolutely NOTHING different.

Never would have come to this in my view ( and that of alot of others on here).

24 minutes ago, steve863 said:

You guys think that it would have been a good thing if Trump started WWIII over this just to show how tough he was?   Unfortunately the worlds hands are pretty much tied and other than sanctions there isn't much that can be done without this becoming a global war which no one wants.

Again, wouldnt have come to that cuz Putin would never have moved if my man was still Prez!! 

25 minutes ago, steve863 said:

  I have NO doubt that Putin thinks that he is smarter than Trump and Biden put together and he probably thinks he is one up on the rest of the world as well.

Well, if youre right than hes right at least about being smarter than the latter, but not the former

[Northcountryman]

37 minutes ago, left field said:

To invade while the world was in the middle of covid would literally invoke the ire of every major country and start a full-scale world war. It would have been easy to rally the troops against Russia and Putin at that time.

Nah, I completely disagree, I think it would have had the opposite effect, actually.  Only explanation as to why he didnt-that is logical, at least- is that my Man was in the White House and he was waiting- biding his time for new leadership. And now, that time has come-unfortunately for Ukraine, Europe, etc....

[Buckmaster7600]

In 2020, Russia was being devastated with Covid. Bad time to put soldiers together.

Military aged males weren’t affected by Covid. Unlike you and the other brain washed lefties Putin was well aware of the science.

Why would Putin do anything while all the world powers were destroying themselves from within?


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[Northcountryman]

21 minutes ago, DirtTime said:

I do not feel that way. Trump was a bafoon of a man, but he did a lot for the USA. A LOT! He bombed Russian soldiers in Syria as well as taking on their troops when Russia was warned to stop using chemical warfare and didn't listen. Trump also had China far more concerned with us then they are now, and even had that tiny little jackass in North Korea backing down. I'm no die hard Trump sack licker, but he was 1,000,000 times better then the over the top bleeding heart liberals running the show now.

Not the most eloquently put, but I agree...I think! lol