re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

The Russians are liars and masters at propaganda. Hitler and Goebbels had nothing on this bunch.

Here is a direct quote from Goebbels diary:

He was commenting on Hitler's comments and his ambitions.

"Some day, the Fuhrer will make tabular rasa in Austria... He'll throw everything into it. This state is not a real state at all. Its people belong to us, and it will come to us...And the land of the Czechs is no state either. Some day it will be overrun as well."

Where have we heard such talk recently?

I agree with the Western Europe should pull their weight for what began and for the time being remains a regional conflict most acutely affecting them, I’ve even said this in the past ITT. My thought goes immediately to:

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For FY 2021 defense spending as a percentage of GDP

Top Ten
Greece — 3.82%
United States — 3.52%
Croatia — 2.79%
United Kingdom — 2.29%
Estonia — 2.28%
Latvia — 2.27%
Poland — 2.10%
Lithuania — 2.03%
Romania — 2.02%
France — 2.01%

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Bolded will suffer the most and the most immediately for inaction over time and they’re the ones most understanding of the issue at hand, and to their credit seem to have been and are acting accordingly.

It’s the weakness of the French, Germans, and Italians that is most the problem, even with the French in the top 10. Where the hell is Belgium as the headquarters of both the EU and NATO? They’ve been overrun in both directions their whole history in wars.

It really comes down to if we value Eastern European security either for their sake or our own in the context of attempting to not repeat the Cold War, it’s really us and the UK going at it together with those countries.

It is in our interest to continue to 1) Be the world power and 2)Have open and uninterrupted access to all (high value) European markets, among many other benefits.

I was of the same opinion as you in 2016 when I voted for Trump, but at this point I've completely swapped. I hate many things European (specifically Western) nations do -- their immigration, their progressivism, all of that. But, I'd rather them all be under the US control than anyone elses. And, overall, I think our defense budget is too small under Biden anyway

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Do the Ukrainian fighter jets have the capability if carrying any anti ship missiles? If they can’t position AA batteries on the island, does that open up additional offensive options for Ukraine?

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The Mig29 and the Su27 have the ability to carry ASM missiles but Ukraine doesn’t have any ASM missiles that are able to be carried by the Mig29 or Su 27s.

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I believe he meant that nobody can stop Russia from making the decision to strike a NATO member. Nothing the west does would have that effect on Putin. However, we can stop the actual strike itself.

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You are correct. Russia will make whatever decisions it makes about additional military expansion. We can't control those decisions. They may be foolish, but we can't control them. So we shouldn't fashion our international and domestic policy under the fantasy that our decision making will determine Russia's next move.

Part of the reason that the USA went after Iranian platforms in the Persian Gulf 1980's

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Margarita Simonyan, chief of RT, delivering the message the Kremlin wants to keep Russian elites buying in at the moment - that the Russian blockade of Ukrainian food exports will cause a famine and prompt the West to capitulate.

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The Russians want a blockade of grain to intentionally cause famine, so that the West will capitulate to end the famine.

Are the Russians anyone's friend? Sounds like not.

So who is winning, since the media has moved on?

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Definitely not - the calculation they're making is that Western leaders will cave in order to win elections by controlling food prices (democracies generally being responsive to such things whereas autocracies are less so). Most of that grain would ordinarily be sold to countries with governments that are relatively friendly to Russia. Putin DNGAF.

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Agree, but much like oil is a global commodity so if you’re removing significant amounts from the world market, it still creates shortages beyond those directly not receiving the grain in question.

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The Polish Border Guard Service said that 6 #Belarusian soldiers tried to dig under the #Polish fence on the border.

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I infer this as trying to escape rather than invade.

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Over the past 24 hours, 21 people tried to illegally enter #Poland from #Belarus, including citizens of Morocco, Senegal and India.

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This tells me rumors of Belarus entering the war are rampant and third country nationals are trying to GTFO while they can.