I never expected this to happen but I paid less for gas today, in California, than you did. Maybe diesel is more. I didn’t look at that price, but I only paid $4.55 for regular.Originally Posted by Alan
I never expected this to happen but I paid less for gas today, in California, than you did. Maybe diesel is more. I didn’t look at that price, but I only paid $4.55 for regular.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine at least 2,000 civilians have been killed.
On March 2, Karim Khan, a prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, announced that he had opened an investigation of the actions of Russian forces in Ukraine. Now there is a possibility that the ICC will find that Putin bears command responsibility for war crimes, and they will prosecute Putin to the full extent of the law.
I doubt the full extent of the law will extend very far in Putin’s case. They can convict him, but they can’t enforce any kind of sentence. About the best the West can do is economic sanctions and arming Ukraine to raise the costs of this particular aggression, and hope at some point the Russian elite will have had enough.
I understand what the news has said about Putin's motives to reestablish the Russian empire and also to buffer Russia from NATO nations. At least those seem to be the primary motives I've seen. But it doesn't make sense to me to take over a country where the people will probably be resistant to any form of puppet government for years, that has been devastated by the ravages of war, and has caused major economic problems in the home land.
Thinking that Putin is a pretty smart guy in a conniving sort of way, I'm not seeing how he will come out ahead. There must be more to it? Could it be part of a bigger plan.
Putin may be a victim of surrounding himself by yes men that are afraid to be honest with him. Everything I’m reading seems to indicate that his military is not near as ready as we (and he?) assumed it was. How often have the thiefs running his military said ‘yes, we have purchased 5,000 whatever piece of equipment’ when they only purchased 500 and spent the rest of the money on half a dozen trump tower apartments for family members? And we have no idea how badly covid affected them. They have a low vax rate and a subpar vaccine. How many soldiers are sick/dead/suffering long covid?
It’s kind of ironic that his biggest fear is a stronger nato/more unified Western Europe and this invasion has caused exactly that.
The other side of things seems to be that no one is willing to offer troop involvement for fear of escalation. In spite of a stronger NATO, will they really come to the aid of some one if it risks escalation. Maybe Putin is just testing the waters.
There are probably corrupt thieves skimming off Russia's military budget, but their overall military power is somewhat undisputable.
Once Ukraine is destroyed who is going to pay to rebuild it? What’s the point of owning a lot of ruble minus most of the people?
Their conventional military power does seem to have declined significantly since the days of the Warsaw Pact. They couldnÂ’t manage a fast decapitation operation against a government at a severe quantitative disadvantage in almost every category, and despite a long preparation time. That, and their dreadful logistics planning would seem to indicate truly terrible staff work. They had the resources to achieve air superiority in the first day or two, but have still failed to do so. The quality of their training and doctrine seems very poor, having fielded hordes of short-service conscripts with very limited proficiency in combined arms. That isnÂ’t to say they wonÂ’t prevail in time, especially given their apparent willingness to deploy thermobaric and cluster munitions, and other frightful means.
It seems reasonable to me that absent their nuclear capability, the West might have intervened. As it is, I think jp1 is right about this war reviving the democracies interest in standing up to aggression like this. The Germans have dropped their pretense that history ended in 1989 and military establishments are just for show. The Swedes and Finns are talking seriously about NATO membership. Even the Swiss have dropped their neutral stance to impose sanctions. And the sanctions seem to be biting more seriously than I would have thought. All in all, it would seem whatever imperial project he had in mind will be set back even if he “wins”.
Very good NYT article this morning on the background of how the west changed to act so quickly against Russia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/w...sanctions.html
Tradd, thanks for the article.
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