Will Russia invade Ukraine?

[BridgeTroll]

Seabed warfare is a reality... and everyone and everything is vulnerable.

http://www.hisutton.com/4th-Leak-in-NordStream-Attack.html

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

[JPalmer]

Seabed warfare is a reality... and everyone and everything is vulnerable.

http://www.hisutton.com/4th-Leak-in-NordStream-Attack.html

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

We all know this is Russia sabotaging their own source of income...

[BridgeTroll]

Seabed warfare is a reality... and everyone and everything is vulnerable.

http://www.hisutton.com/4th-Leak-in-NordStream-Attack.html

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

We all know this is Russia sabotaging their own source of income...

You mean the one they have been using to blackmail Europe?  They will find buyers...probably the Chinese...  The point of the articles I posted is to show just how much vital communications and pipelines are vulnerable... every continent and country can be affected by an attack like that.

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-15

Russia continues to conduct massive, forced deportations of Ukrainians that likely amount to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign in addition to apparent violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin stated on October 14 that “several thousand” children from Kherson Oblast are “already in other regions of Russia, resting in rest homes and children’s camps.”[1] As ISW has previously reported, Russian authorities openly admitted to placing children from occupied areas of Ukraine up for adoption with Russian families in a manner that may constitute a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[2]

Russian authorities may additionally be engaged in a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing by depopulating Ukrainian territory through deportations and repopulating Ukrainian cities with imported Russian citizens. Ethnic cleansing has not in itself been specified as a crime under international law but has been defined by the United Nations Commission of Experts on violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area” and “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”[3] According to the UN definition, ethnic cleansing may be carried out by forcible removal, among other methods.[4] These definitions of ethnic cleansing campaigns are consistent with reports of the forcible deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children, as well as reports by Ukrainian sources that reconstruction projects in Mariupol are intended to house “tens of thousands of Russians” who will move to Mariupol.[5]

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/opinions/putin-prolonge-war-ukraine-winter-andelman/index.html

Still, there remain hardliners like Pavel Gubarev, Russia’s puppet leader in Donetsk, who voiced his real intention toward Ukrainians: “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”

This should be the real fear of any in the West still prepared to waffle over 100% support of Ukraine and its people.

[BridgeTroll]

Amazing information...

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base/

When Russian troops fled the Ukrainian town of Balakliia last month, they left behind thousands of documents that detail the inner workings of the Russian war machine.

By MARI SAITO, MARIA TSVETKOVA and ANTON ZVEREV
Photographs by ZOHRA BENSEMRA

Filed: Oct. 26, 2022, 11 a.m. GMT

[BridgeTroll]

Kherson Liberated!  Interesting article from BBC showing how ordinary Russians web searches for war information is blocked or falsified...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63246153

[BridgeTroll]

The retreat of Russians from Kherson across the Dnieper River will change the main battle lines to the Donbas and Luhansk regions as Ukraine is unlikely to cross the river and Russian troops moving from Kherson north to Donbas to reinforce depleted forces...

Negotiations are unlikely until Russia agrees to return occupied territory including Crimea... or hell freezes over

Informative article from Radio Free Europe...remember them?

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-winter-what-s-next-war-after-kherson/32128897.html

[JPalmer]

Informative article from Radio Free Europe...remember them?

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-winter-what-s-next-war-after-kherson/32128897.html

Radio Free Europe is a CIA operated propaganda agency...I'm sure it's objective.

[BridgeTroll]

Informative article from Radio Free Europe...remember them?

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-winter-what-s-next-war-after-kherson/32128897.html

Radio Free Europe is a CIA operated propaganda agency...I'm sure it's objective.

Lol...once upon a time...  Clearly you didn't read the article.  The information provided  doesn't need to be objective if it is factual.

[BridgeTroll]

Outstanding analysis of the state of war and negotiations in the Ukrainian conflict. It is a10 minute read but well worth it if you care about the situation there...

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/case-against-negotiations-russia

Opening paragraph...

Negotiations cannot end the Russian war against Ukraine; they can only pause it. The renewed Russian invasion in February 2022 after eight years of deadly “ceasefire” following the first Russian invasions of 2014 demonstrates that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not rest until he has conquered Kyiv. Ukraine’s resistance to the invasion this year shows that Ukrainians will not easily surrender. The conflict is unresolvable as long as Putinism rules the Kremlin. Negotiations won’t change that reality. They can only create the conditions from which Putin or a Putinist successor will contemplate renewing the attack on Ukraine’s independence. Before pressing Ukraine to ask Russia for talks we must examine the terms Ukraine might offer Russia, the dangers of offering those terms, and, more importantly, the likelihood that Putin would accept them.

[BridgeTroll]

An updated and comprehensive analysis...

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/target-russia%E2%80%99s-capability-not-its-intent

Opening paragraph...

TARGET RUSSIA’S CAPABILITY, NOT ITS INTENT
Dec 20, 2022 - Press ISW

Nataliya Bugayova

US policy should recognize that the Kremlin’s intent regarding Ukraine is maximalist, inflexible, and will not change in the foreseeable future. The West should stop expending resources trying to change a reality it does not control and focus on what it can shape plenty: denying Russia’s ability to wage a war against Ukraine.

Negotiations, ceasefires, and peace deals are not off-ramps but rather on-ramps for the Kremlin to renew its attack on Ukraine in the future under conditions that advantage Russia. They are means to the same ends—full control of Ukraine and eradication of Ukraine’s statehood and identity.

The vital US interest in preventing future Russian attacks on Ukraine can be best achieved by denying Russia the capability to carry out those attacks. The immediate requirement is preserving Ukraine’s momentum on the battlefield—accounting for a possible renewed offensive from Russia this winter—to ensure that Ukraine secures the most advantageous position possible. The West should also eliminate Russia’s ability to attack Ukraine in the future, including by denying Russia a military foothold in Ukraine from which to launch attacks, resisting "peace" deals that the Kremlin will use to buy time to reconstitute its forces, not empowering the Russian defense industrial complex with access to Western markets, and committing to building Ukraine's defensive capabilities over the long term.

[jaxlongtimer]

Great speech tonight by Zelensky. He is a master communicator and proof of the power of words over bullets.  Hope Congress responds with its full support.  If Russia gets away with this invasion, a la Hitler, Putin will be invading another country (e.g Moldavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, or even supposed ally, Belarus) shortly thereafter, and maybe more than one.  It is far easier to stop him now than making it into WW III later.  Again, lessons learned from the past.

[BridgeTroll]

Opposition of Ukrainian support from the republican party affirms my decision to leave that party.  It is positively shameful.

[BridgeTroll]

Opposition of Ukrainian support from the republican party affirms my decision to leave that party.  It is positively shameful.

https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/what-does-ron-desantis-think-about

You know who would have loved Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress yesterday?

John McCain.

All through it, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Zelensky’s speech might as well have been a Johnnie Mac special—one of those rousing, it’s always darkest before the dawn, let freedom ring numbers.

I suspect George W. Bush loved it, too.

And Reagan? Man, the Gipper would have been all over that bad boy. Especially this line:

I know that everything depends on us, on Ukrainian armed forces. Yet so much depends on the world. So much in the world depends on you.

I was thinking about all of this because of Joe Perticone’s piece yesterday about the RNC chair race. There was a line from Harmeet Dhillon, who is mounting a challenge to take over the RNC, that stuck out at me. Here’s what Dhillon said about the Republican party she wants to lead:

The party's base has changed. Some members of the RNC were elected during the Reagan era. I was a Reagan-era Republican, as well. But this isn't that party.