re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

This might be the biggest proof that Russia is planning on announcing war and mobilization on May 9

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?? Kremlin spokesman: War declaration on May 9 'nonsense.'

Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed reports that Russia could officially declare war against Ukraine and start a national mobilization on May 9, when Russia celebrates the Soviet Union's victory in World War II.

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LINK

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potential coup activity.

I think the timing is right, cant do it quickly or he is a martyr. Plus it takes time to organize and you have to let the suffering sink in and you want some survivability, nobody wants to go on a one way trip.

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This surgery could not have come at a worse time for Vladimir. The time that Putin spends in theater and recovery for his surgery will be critical. We know he has burned bridges with the FSB. That leaves the siloviki and the military leadership. We can safely forget the military leadership as we have seen what they are made of. So who wants to protect Putin now that he is not the all-powerful genius? Going forward, who wants to take responsibility this shite sandwich? The populace can be managed post-coup with propaganda, but is there someone with the ambition to take over? Or will they protect Putin?

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Maybe he does not wake up from surgery.

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Man no pressure on the surgical team huh?

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This is the sad truth about the Russian people. They have never advanced beyond a strict hierarchical society and likely won’t. Russia should be broken up and ruled by democratic nations.

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The model here is possibly South Korea or Taiwan. Both nations have an inherent respect for hierarchy and have evolved into modern democracies.

There’s a book on this (can’t remember it now). But basically to follow the SK/Taiwan model, Russia should be under authoritarian (but non-corrupt rule) for the next few decades slowly working in Western values and gaining the trust of the western world until a true democracy can be established.

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Man no pressure on the surgical team huh?

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Or maybe the surgical team has been paid...

A little extra something, something in the IV.

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And if it happens that SPC is ready, he has been trained for that contingency.

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This whole thing is really reinvigorating the sense of pride I have in our military. The gap between "us" and "them" hasn't seemed wider at any other point in my lifetime.

Ukraine is a relatively special case. It came into the USSR as a Soviet Social Republic under Lenin because it had a history of status as a "protectorate" with semi-autonomy and had even established itself as an independent Republic for about 5 years after rising up shortly after the October Revolution. It has its own language. Most Russians culturally have traditionally seen themselves as the "Great Russian" branch of the East Slavs with the Belorussians ("white Russians") and Ukrainians (pejoratively the "little Russians") being the others and the "Great Russians" will generally want a nation of their own and would be hard to divide. They're also so geographically spread they're hard to occupy. But if they started dropping nukes, maybe we'd try. Russian media, of course, is playing up this "the West is coming for you now" to the Russian boomers, claiming the West is Nazi to invoke images of the Great Patriotic War (WWII).

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Russian nationalists would argue that is exactly what Western nations are doing in Finland, Poland, and Ukraine (and maybe even the Baltic states).

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Can Russian nationalists justify their invasions of Poland abd Finland ????

For sure. They justified invading Hungary and Chechoslovakia on Communist liberation ideology and they don't have that now. Now, it's "the west is coming for us so we have to take them out first" and then the ethnonationalist imperialist element sees itself as wanting Moscow at the head of pan-Slavic empire.