What hurdles does a peace plan face? The fact that Krasnov will not stop at simply ending US support, or even removing the US from NATO. He will take more and more measures to punish European support of ukraine, in order to try and get a better settlement for his boss in the Kremlin

The reason the crazy has been turned up to 12, is because Russia is stalled and their position gets weaker from here on in. Russia can’t advance, they’ve been smashing their hollow skulls against Pokrovsk and Toretsk for nearly a year. Ukraine is countering their FAB glide bombs now, is beginning slowly to push back in the Donbas, and domestic drone and weapon production is lessening their level of dependency on outside sources like the US. Ukraine hasn’t conscripted anyone under 25, and are getting decent uptake on the volunteer enlistment packages. Russia, on the other hand, has stalled, is sending men into battle on dirtbikes and donkeys, can’t remotely replace their hardware losses in any aspect, and if they wanted more manpower today, they would have had to enact wider conscription 6 months ago. Which they didn’t. Their capacity to make significant gains in Ukraine has essentially stopped, but Ukraine’s ability to erode their current holdings is accelerating.

In short - Russia’ options get worse from here on in. That’s why Trump is, on obvious orders, trying to strong arm a ludicrous deal that ukraine doesn’t need to accept. Trump isn’t going to stop punishing ukraine’s supporters until Russia gets more than it deserves, given the state of things on the ground.

Why would anyone agree to a complete capitulation, and paying reparations, and giving up land and people under the current conditions? Oh, and the US removes it’s forces from the Baltics at the same time, Ukraine gets absolutely nothing except for a temporary ceasefire with no security guarantees.

I mean - it’s just so completely obvious that Trump fully and completely works for the Russians. Full stop. They are coming with the exact same absurd Russian maximalist goals, zero concessions. But - what leverage do they have to tell Ukraine to accept it and that’s that? Fine - pull your support, America. Ukraine still has cards to play. Agreeing to your terms is literally signing your own death warrant, now or later.

He works for the Russians, always has, these jackoff tarriffs which only seem to be against allies is meant to disrupt the focus on Ukraine’s backers and force an immediate settlement where Ukraine only makes any concessions. It’s clear as goddamned mid-day sun that everything he’s doing is to unsettle NATO and get a win for Russia.

That proves several things, including his overall allegiances. It also suggests that Russia is truly desperate, doesn’t think they will get more Ukrainian land than they currently have, and want to freeze the conflict to call it a victory. The current strategy of thrusting small infantry squads anywhere you can fit them isn’t exactly a solid occupation strategy. Ukraine can kill many more of them, eventually, with drones, snipers, artillery, and counter-assaults. There isn’t a baked in guarantee that they’re allowed to keep all the stolen land they’re sitting on right now. Ukraine will kill most of them - eventually - and he’ll be left with nothing but a bleeding wound as his army tries to do the harder piece of warfare - pacification.

It’s in Ukraine’s long term interests to keep killing the Russian army as long as it can sustain it’s own losses.

This crazy old poopy pants manchild is serious in that he wants to blackmail people into giving him something for nothing. Thankfully, he’s so fucking stupid, and has created a cesspool of asskissers around him who are incentivized to suck up rather than actually DO anything.

He talks, says a lot of crazy shit, then backs down, having done damage and not actually gotten anything. Like being in a shortbus with a hormonal chimp with a chainsaw. We’re all just going to have to wait until his inevitable toilet stroke, and then watch the whole thing collapse.

Perhaps the “correct” way to view the collapse of Russia is like the Ottoman empire. The ottomans fell apart in stages over 300 years, gradually losing direct control and influence over the hinterlands, then suddenly in quick, sharp wars against their former vassals in Africa and the Balkans. Eventually, they end up with a relatively small rump state in Turkey. I think that’s possibly the most likely outcome with Moscow/St. Petersburg retaining a much reduced ethnic russian rump state and nearly everything else breaking away. But - the point is - it happens slowly, in stages, and in response to losing wars. Longer than single human lifetimes, so it makes it harder to recognize and comprehend until it’s all over.

The USSR had a shred of philosophical veneer. The kleptocratic petromafia slave “state “ that exists today is literally a nihilist barbarian horde. I like the sentiment and mental picture of your suggestions. Really speaks to the pointlessness of talking to these black hearted ghouls.

There is no hope communicating with these insane barbarians. Empathy, truth. shame and hypocrisy don’t even exist. The entire society is based on brutality and brazen lies, you cannot trust anything they say. The only choice for a lasting peace for Ukraine is to keep fighting until the entire vile project of political russia collapses into something less malignant.

Makes you wonder what a lame duck Biden is apt to do that is different from if he had stayed in the race and had to run on the results. Maybe they’ll be less cautious, especially if you factor in that Russia has literally been invaded, and still done nothing.

They seem to be feasting on Russia’s ham fisted attempts to bring reinforcement columns along main roads. Russia was completely unprepared for this, and Ukraine obviously was. There is almost no mention of Russian air power operating in this area, and reports that Ukraine brought their own substantial AA assets in case they did. So - you have Russian infantry and armor moving along main roads, in slow convoys, being surveilled by Western satellites the entire time, getting slammed by drones and artillery before they can even get to Kursk.

Russia’s traditional war fighting MO has been “keep dying and surrendering in huge numbers until something major happens”.

Crimean War, Russo Japanese War, WW1, Polish-Soviet war, Winter War, WW2, Afghanistan, Chechnya 1.

If not for Lend/Lease giving Russia food, oil, guns, vehicles, bullets, boots and clothing, they would have been rolled back to middle Siberia. For all their hypermacho chest thumping, they’re shit at war.

Per childhood fairy tale monster Lavrov, it is time to acknowledge facts on the ground. The enemy must accept these realities.

Of course. How do you investigate harassment and identify site-killing lunatics without keyword searching.

It’s all stored and anyone who needs to see stuff their site hosts can get it. Plus - you’d be surprised how much criminal activity people are willing to discuss with strangers.

That there is already a good self deprecating joke. Don’t sell yourself short. Unless you ARE short, then may I recommend entering the priesthood

This is ancient, but still objectively correct. It also misses the point. Trump’s appeal to his base is not about being good or any attribute he has. It’s that he’s an avatar of hate that gives them murky permission to be up front with their own prejudice and moronic ideas. He’s made it a political position to be proudly uninformed, unapologetically racist, and irrationally intolerant about the lives of others that have zero actual impact on you. To hate immigrants, brown people, gays, electric cars, any talk of climate change, vaccines, democrats and democracy in general. It’s all white grievance, all the time. Why should we change anything? We’re not changing anything, we’re white america, and we’re the greatest because - reasons - and we don’t need to change anything. We don’t even need to have any ideas - you just have to hate The Other, and that’s enough for 46% of the biggest clueless losers in the country who honestly think government doesn’t do anything for them anyways, and thus vote against their own self interests, literally to their own personal destruction.

Also - for all the noice and bluster of this branding exercise that got WAY out of hand - he remains, ultimately, a fluke. He barely, barely, barely won in 2016 on the faintest of technical victories over a weak candidate with a bad strategy representing a two-term Democratic status quo position for a nation tired of politics as usual.

The same party almost never wins 3 terms in a row. He won not by being a good, virtuous person. He won by not being Hilary Clinton. And that’s ALL he won. Despite his constant claims of greatness, his party and the candidates he endorses have underperformed in every election since 2016. He was, and remains, a one-time fluke. Period. A cautionary tale about what happens with low voter turnout.

Yes, that’s exactly it. Their most advanced weaponry is being made and used instantly, as opposed to being drawn down from older stockpiles. This is suggestive that those initial stockplies are gone, and that they’re having to use things as fast as they can make them.

It paints a picture that they are struggling to keep up, that they’re not capable of further quick escalation, and that they’d be very sensitive to a disruption in the delivery of components required to make these things when they’re using them as fast as they can build them.

Yep. no doubt. Imposssible to quantify, but reports at the time were at least a million men fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc.

I make no claim that the 575k number is dead. Even UA says that’s their estimate of dead and wounded. And to be extremely generous, let’s say 30-40% of those wounded are probably so disabled, amputees or worse, that not only can they not fight anymore, but they can’t work jobs at their full pre-invasion potential. That would still be hundreds of thousands of lost labor force participants in a country who relies massively on heavy industry and resource extraction manned by able bodied, if often drunk, raw manpower. They won’t be shifting war amputees to service sectors desk jobs and call centers.

These newly disabled veterans will become burdens on a state that probably won’t honor the support agreements to their full extent, making them worse than simply unproductive - it will make them bitter living testaments to the stupidity of this war and it’s broken promises. In the cold caclulus of Russian brutality - these people are better off dead telling no tales and drawing no pension than they would be alive. Russia’s interal ethnic cleansing and useless mouth disposal of their own people sometimes gets lost in the ocean of wickedness that this entire war has been.

Definitely off topic, and suggestive of decades old axe-grinding whataboutism. But - since it’s a topic of apparent interest to you, let me counter in good faith with another OpEd angle for “why was iraq invaded”, beyond the simple motive of vanity revenge. Pure speculation, no claim this is fact.

In the initial months and years Post 9-11, there were dozens of AQ cell attacks across the globe, including inside the US and Europe. Gunman squads, workplace murders, bombings across the globe, Spain, Belgium, France, etc. Stopping them all is essentially impossible. The US is also in a position of having to “respond” to deal with the american electorate’s bloodlust. You can’t just do nothing and bleat on superlatives about moral superioirty. Someone has to die. They are unable to find and stop AQ cells from carrying out attacks on soft targets against civilians, in areas only protected by local law enforcement. So - what do you do? Deploy your army everywhere in your own country to try and interdict attacks after they’re already happening? Well, that’s not a great plan.

Maybe the conscious decision was to create a global flashpoint in someone else’s backyard, which would draw in the irrational hatred of global jihadism, where they could fight directly against the US military, instead of against civilians, and where collateral damage would be the lucky host country’s problem. Put simply - invite the jihad inclined global population to come to Iraq and die fighting the US Army instead of having them come to you and kill people in malls, airports and gas stations. Of course the idea is morally reprehensible - criminal even. But it’s also logical. That is not the same as saying it was a good idea, before you go down the ad hominem route. Offered only as a possible line of thought of “why was Iraq invaded at all”. But - brought up only because of an incongruity with your assertion that Iraq was a vanity revenue project and therefore(?) at least somehow comparable to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine because of it’s ongoing insistence on being an independent country.

Now, perhaps you’re doing what you seem to be - trying to equate the US actions in Iraq as a moral equivalent to what Russia has done to Ukraine. If that’s your angle, well - you be you, i wouldn’t try to change your mind. I would only, in that case, say that Russia invaded Ukraine, first in 2014 and again in 2022, without any pretext 9/11 style attack. Russia’s simple, naked imperial genocide was not provoked by any Ukrainian-spawned outrage, but if you’d care to make the case that even that is not true, but all means, let’s hear it.

Nation of cynical thieves who don’t even have a word for empathy eating themselves at the first hint of trouble? I’m shocked. SHOCKED.

Well - not that shocked.

I worked for one of the major dating sites about a decade ago. Let me assure you, that people act like debased hyperhormonal chimps in heat when they think nobody is watching. Oh, and by the way - someone is ALWAYS watching.

If you’re a male who has some combination of a steady job, are remotely reliable, not drug or booze addled, have most of your teeth and hair and can tell a joke and hold a conversation - you’re golden. It is UTTERLY unfair to ladies, but just being able to hold that low bar will get you much farther than you might think.

It’s a strange dilemma - for a dating site to suceed, you have to protect the women. From the guys’ perspective, it’s shouting into the void, on the off chance you might EVER stand out enough to get a reply a week. From a woman’s perspective, it’s like the ozone layer protecting a constant bombardment of radiation and lethal rocks from space. A cornucopia of typically BAD CHOICES that manage to slip through the various cracks that the sites/apps put up to protect them.

But - the women ARE the site. If you have the WOMEN, then the men would follow you buck naked through the flaming tar pits of hell to get to them. But - the average male is a monosyllabic goblin with skeletons in his closet and bad intentions much more often than you’d think. It’s why Bumble tried female-only communication initiation. The women on dating sites have an invisible shield tbey don’t even realize exists around them to prevent bots, unsolicited dick pics, one word messages, repeat-offense harassers, and wide-net-casting quagmires who have more deeply held mysoginstic beliefs than they do good pick up lines.

“… and THAT’S why it’s totally justified for me to have murdered thousands of my own citizens, rather than behave like a democratically elected leader”.