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Notes -
This is nothing compared to other Ukrainian public relation efforts.
First there was picking American transgender woman as official spokesperson for Ukrainian army, who then went on unhinged rant threatening to kill "Russian propagandists" all over the world.
(speaking in English, not Russian, so it is clear that it were not Russians in Russia who were target of this threat)
This speech is there, it is something you will hear from mouth of cartoon Evil Mastermind(TM) in corny B movie, just before Action Hero(TM) storms in and drops the villain into his/her/their/zir/xir own shark tank.
Someone in charge then noticed this does not make Ukraine look exactly like Avengers team and decided to suspend Cirillo.
So sanity prevailed and all will be good (optics) from now?
Well, Zelensky just decided to make honorary "ambassador of Ukraine", of all people, Marina Abramovic, world famous performance artist.
It sounds like 4chan fake news prank, but it is real, reported by mainstream media(and then vanishing from their pages).
Ukraine knows well what it is doing, Ukraine tries hard to signal it is on the right side and win hearts and minds.
Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.
edit: links
Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!" - it's hard to blame Zelensky for betting on the other side. He has people's lives at stake. If sucking up to whatever Western weirdo is what helps to get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives - worth it thousand times over. I mean, the US red tribe can't be both "fuck all those guys over the border" and then be wondering "why those guys over the border suck up to Democrats?!" Because that's their only option, if the right says upfront they want nothing to do with it. Ukraine is toast without Western help, they just don't have the resources to fight Putin alone, especially given they can't afford to get a million of their own killed people like Putin can. So yes, sometimes it would look stupid. Sometimes it will be stupid - desperate people don't always look very attractive.
I don't believe for a second that giving weapons to Ukraine is saving Ukrainian lives. Especially now that it's apparently devolved into a static almost trench warfare situation. Every weapon given to them prolongs the conflict by X amount, and certainly results in some amount of casualties during that interval.
I believe you vastly overestimate Russian resources. The war is absolutely winnable for Ukraine + Western aid combination. If Ukrainians were more directly assisted or given even more advanced long-range toys, it'd have been winnable quickly. But alas, nuclear blackmail (increasingly non-credible) and so on, so they'll keep throwing men into the grinder, getting closer to the objective very slowly and at a staggering cost.
You know, there's the issue with the proposal of distant appeasers which isn't well understood, I imagine. You still live in 2022, if not in 1980s like some Chomsky. But this is late 2023. The war has not just eroded Russian credibility as a military power or a rational agent in the international arena, screw that – it has eroded the credibility of the state itself. It has become a clown show worse than any pro-Western transgender performance. Yes, muh "Ukraine is corrupt shithole failed state" is a cope, Russian rule has become an unambiguously worse option, and not only for nationalist reasons as it could be believed in 2004 or so. The thin, see-through veneer of "based traditional Orthodox white nation" or whatever, which still held for some delusional people, has cracked. It's a feudal absurdity that puts patriots in prison and has to cowardly assassinate near-successful insurrectionists after loudly pardoning them, an ostensibly democratic and by all appearances authoritarian polity where some Muslim warlord's fat son pummels insufficiently obsequious citizens and law enforcement sticks their tongues into their asses, as we put it, a superpower of wounded soldiers forgotten on tarp under the sun, propagandists who don't even try anymore, every promise broken. It cannot credibly offer you prosperity or freedom, but also cannot guarantee you peace and stability. It is no longer capable of bribing anyone into obedience, not even the most naive Eastern Ukrainians of Russian descent who have survived the last two years.
It is virtually politically impossible for Ukraine to give up on restoring at least 2021 effective borders, and for the West to give up on Ukraine.
You think Putin would not start nuking things if the Ukranians were advancing across the boarder and throwing conventional cruise missiles at targets in the interior?
Why cruise missiles, why this specific modality of escalation and not any other? I mainly meant more drones for the interior, but even for missiles, what does it matter?
Reminder: Russian interior is being routinely attacked now. Sometimes it's an entire border region being wrecked, sometimes it's a military airfield many hundreds of kilometers from the border, sometimes it's Moscow proper, and not just «a building» but a part of the city's business core, where progressive and corrupt Muskovites exchange crypto for USD under the watchful eye of FSB minders on a direct line to their Seychelles office, a sacred place. Sometimes it's straight up Kremlin. Ukrainians are routinely destroying infrastructure, have assassinated more than one propagandist near the heart of Russia, and in general are acting with complete brazen confidence that Putin is a bluffing bitch ruling a pyramid of treachery, grift and sheer indifference. What is the reason to believe otherwise? Answer me honestly, would you have anticipated two years ago that all this can be done to the Second Strongest Military Superpower without triggering the Judgement Day?
No, I am not 100% sure there is no level of attack which will trigger a nuclear response. But I am mostly confident it's not about Russia. Touch Kabayeva's child, Shoygu or Zolotov, you'll risk a great deal. Leave them alone and you're free to win the war by any means available. Even nuking major cities might not be off limits. Putin does not give a shit about much of anything geopolitical, he's shallower than a right-wing Twitter influencer, has no commitments and values his own life dearly.
@Botond173, do you have any argument except a sneer that looks to be frozen since 26/02/2022, when steel columns of Russian forces were advancing towards Kiev?
And? Where's the punchline that teaches us how they were wrong and you were right?
It was "advancing across the border" and cruise missiles -- with the advancing being the most important part. I do think if American cruise missiles were in frequent use by Ukraine rather than whatever bullshit they have cobbled together at the moment things would be considerably twitchier.
The point being that the fact that nothing so far has happened that approaches (what I imagine to be) Russia's nuclear threshold does not make me feel comfortable that the threshold does not exist somewhere in the near-ish possibility space.
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I recall a quip from an acquaintance or maybe a channel in Telegram that "Ukrainians deliberately struck the Moscow skyscrapers outside of working hours because they were afraid of Retaliation otherwise". I suppose the Red Line is now at "you can drone our capital as long as you don't accidentally kill anyone".
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The cruise missile strikes were accurate enough that no Russian units were hit. We know that. But it was possible for things to go a different way. Thankfully we didn't have to learn if those critics were right or not.
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Yes, this is what ardent supporters of the Ukraine basically believe, unironically. Namely that, in the end, all Ukrainians lands can and will be liberated by force, and that either Putler will not dare to escalate the war so as to avoid complete defeat, or that whoever replaces him after a palace coup, revolution etc. will not dare either. You’d think that basing your entire policy on this assumption is lunacy, but this is where we’re at.
Incidentally I observed the same attitude when Trump ordered missile strikes on Syrian military bases back in 2017 and 2018. There were reasonable people who made the argument that launching cruise missiles at military targets in a country where Russian anti-aircraft and air force units are present might result in rather dangerous escalation if any of those units are hit by mistake. A bunch of people on the net immediately waved these concerns off and trivialized the whole issue, saying “nah, everybody involved is just posturing, it’s just bullshit, if anything happens, they’ll just sort it out in some backroom deal”. But based on their opinions voiced before, it was clear that what they actually mean is “nah, the Moskal will not dare to do anything”. It was clear that yes, they actually believed that the Russkies will not actually respond if their units are “accidentally” smashed by cruise missiles.
Russia isn’t going to nuke Washington DC or New York if the Ukrainians fire some missiles into the interior, and in any case they don’t have the manpower to attempt a land invasion or anything close to it. But I don’t think @DaseindustriesLtd is a particularly ill informed NAFO shill and, in any case, I’d wager he knows more about Russia than you.
You're right, but that's not what I've meant. It's conceivable that the Russians would deploy nuclear weapons against Ukrainian units if the collapse of the Crimean front seems imminent.
I have actually bet money, on terms that seemed favorable, on Russia nuking major bridges over Dnieper (yes, including Kiev), more than a year ago. You can imagine how it went.
Anyway, the most important question is: does the US need to make totally sure that Russia won't nuke Ukraine? Because I think "oh shit, Russians have nuked Ukraine in desperation" is not the worst piece of news for the State Department.
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