re: .

I will attempt to try your 'trust no one' method. I still have my original thoughts, but I'll try.

ETA: this does beg the question though...should I trust the person who tells me to trust no one???

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For the conventional wisdom, which was that some large scale action was probably likely but that Russia wouldn't move on Kiev or similar, this probably doesn't really tell us anything. People have just been lulled into thinking nothing may happen at all over the last week, and these moves just make that outcome seem less and less likely.

Of course, that requires you to jump ahead and assume this is more pretext being piled up for Russia. Which I think is the most sensible conclusion.

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Perhaps. Like I said before, I don't think the goal was ever to take over the whole of Ukraine. If they do move on Ukraine, they'll take the ethnically Russian territories and stop there much how they did in South Ossetia

If only the world was so simple. Russia desires buffer states to protect against their fear of another invasion by the west. They also see the hypocrisy of the United States still applying the Monroe Doctrine to the entire new world.

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Not annexation but I do think the goal is regime change and bringing them back into their SOI

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To be fair, this was the US's goal in 2013/2014 and was the reason John McCain was speaking at their rallies

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It was a promise made specifically to post-Soviet Russia

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No it was made specifically to get the Soviets to agree to German reunification... The Soviets

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Reports of an explosion in Donetsk.

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Isn't this a pretty common thing there?

How much do you want to bet that neither Ukraine nor Russia fired first because American Spooks did?

Update from my buddy in Ukraine says it's looking even worse today.

He's had plans for his wife/kid if shite pops off, but he said he's doing some "evacuation shopping" today as it's been by far the worst day since tensions started rising.

Putin said the Donbas isn't safe, and he got intel that Ukraine will attack them in coming days and he has ordered all civilians in the land to evacuate to Russia immediately, so he is moving 100s of thousands of people out to Russia. I know most in here, especially PT, don't want to hear this, but basically exactly what America has said he'd do all along.

Last thing he said is it's hard to see Russia doing all this without an aggressive action coming. Maybe not full on invasion, but they are about to bring down hell on the East and contact line at a minimum, is his best guess.

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Dennis Pushilin

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Apparently this video of him calling for evacuations was not scrubbed of metadata, and the date created was from the 16th